Hugh Hefner, Amygdala Hijacks, And The Hypoxic Amygdala

An interesting tidbit in this article which was in the comments:

Hefner liked to say he was untroubled by criticism, but in 1985 he suffered a mild stroke that he blamed on the book ‘The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten 1960-1980,’ by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.

Stratten was a Playmate killed by her husband, Paul Snider, who then killed himself. Bogdanovich, Stratton’s boyfriend at the time, wrote that Hefner helped bring about her murder and was unable to deal with ‘what he and his magazine do to women.’

After the stroke, Hefner handed control of his empire to his feminist daughter, Christie, although he owned 70 percent of Playboy stock and continued to choose every month’s Playmate and cover shot. Christie Hefner continued as CEO until 2009.

I had wondered whether Hef was evil or not. I knew his kid has insulted Trump earlier, and he clearly didn’t seem to form bonds of loyalty with women. I assumed as a rabbit he would never dive on a hand grenade for a friend, and I would certainly have known better than to rely on him. But so many people spoke well of him I never wanted to render a verdict for sure, even as his face contained several warning signs to me.

Obviously, this stroke would indicate he was at least an extreme narcissist, with an extremely triggerable amygdala. You do not want to spend large amounts of time around such a character.

A traditional stroke is usually due to an inflammatory process, or physical/structural defect, or a physical trauma. Either it is an embolism, most often where a small piece of atherosclerotic plaque, that grew in response to an inflammatory issue, breaks off a blood vessel wall and enters into the blood somewhere else, travels to the brain, and wedges in a blood vessel feeding a part of the brain, blocking it. That part of the brain, suddenly deprived of the oxygen and nutrients blood delivers then begins to shut down, producing the stroke. Alternately, either a defect in a blood vessel, or a trauma that damages a blood vessel allows blood to leak out into the intracranial space between the brain and the skull, forming a hematoma, or pocket of blood. This pocket of blood is pressurized by the blood vessel, and it is like inflating a balloon inside the skull. The “balloon” presses against a piece of brain, squeezing blood out of it, and preventing blood from entering it. No blood equals no nutrients and energy, which equals no function. Again, you have cognitive dysfunction and a stroke.

Clearly there is no reason that reading a book should either cause a piece of atherosclerotic plaque to break free, or damage a blood vessel in the brain. Something else almost certainly happened here.

I’ve mentioned before that rabbits can be amygdala hijacked into strokes. The strokes are not due to embolisms or hemorrhages though. They are a case where the amygdala burn rate of ATP, glucose, and oxygen enters some sort of feed-forward state that cannot be interrupted, and which will proceed until the amygdala redlines, and enters an emergency-shutdown mode.

I have actually done this to someone purposely and it can be a sight to behold, because in shutdown mode the body’s motor functions will begin to shut down too, and become uncoordinated. Literally, it looks exactly like a stroke. One minute they are highly agitated, the next they enter a hyper-calm state, somewhere between fearful and defeated/resigned, like a prisoner about to be executed, and the next thing you know they are stroking.

My assumption is that it begins with the initial amygdala-hijack, which causes an extreme discomfort. The extreme discomfort somehow trips the amygdala/ACC/aversive-stimulus further, which then produces even more amygdala-activation in response to the initial amygdala-activation. That additional amygdala activation becomes so extreme that the rabbit realizes they are entering stroke territory, they panic, and that additional amygdala activation from that panic pushes their amygdala over the edge. The amygdala fully freaks out and enters emergency-shutdown mode.

It has always seemed strange to me to be inside a brain you have so little control over that you can’t avoid something like that. It is almost like they can’t see forward to the future, so living in the moment, they rage and rage without any caution until it’s “Bang! Lights out.” By the time they realize it, it is apparently too late to stop.

Notice Hef had to stop his association with the magazine and hand the responsibility to deal with it off to someone else. That is how powerful the amygdala-linkage had become in his brain. The terror of another hijack/triggering was so strong he could not even go near the daily operations. He actually had his feminist daughter take it over.

I do find it interesting that characters with such defective amygdala are the natural players, who naturally have the ability to exude the care-free, low-amygdala state that women find attractive, even as such a terror and lack of control stalks them. Hef could effortless seduce the most beautiful women, but he could never have endured the stress of a soldier, cop, or firefighter’s day to day life. By contrast, soldiers, cops and firefighters are usually the guys with approach anxiety, who pedestalize women, and end up appearing to women as more uneasy than the natural players like Hef. Meanwhile they can face death effortlessly, as Hef is actually having strokes over bad words about him.

You see this in how the online Pick Up Artists, be it Heartiste, or Krauser, or Roosh, always seem to gravitate to the study of that field because it is shocking to them that such a violation of their natural instincts could be a path to success. It is as if the narcissist, always hiding their amygdala angst from an early age, is also training themselves to perfectly operate in the PUA environment. The non-narcissist, who growing up never needs to hide that terror like the narcissist, ends up wearing their amygdala stress on their sleeve openly – unless trained in pickup.

I remember an interview Lara Logan did on 60 Minutes with a Special Forces team, in Iraq if I am not mistaken. Seated next to her was a Special Forces guy who gave off the appearance of a guy who you could drop in the middle of the shit, and he wouldn’t blink as he killed people left and right in a workman-like manner. Young athletic, and just a warrior appearance. But he seemed uncomfortable with her sitting as near to him as she was. I got the impression she liked that feeling of control, and would have friend-zoned him in real life in a second.

I remember at the time picturing a guy like George Clooney, who couldn’t handle one tenth of the stress that guy could effortlessly shoulder, throwing his arm over Lara’s shoulder and getting her in the sack in about ten minutes, seemingly without the slightest care. I also figured the Special Forces guy had a wife at home who probably didn’t need to worry about him cheating on her while he was overseas killing terrorists.

We are two different creatures, defined by amygdala, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the narcissist rabbit’s strengths. A player like Hef almost certainly can’t learn to operate in K-selection. But a K-strategist can easily learn to dominate in r-selection simply by studying game and learning to play the role of carefree knave.

A Special Forces guy who can dominate in combat, and effortlessly AMOG a rabbit in the office in asinine political battles is probably the most dangerous man alive. And best of all, he doesn’t need to worry about encountering an uncomfortable truth, and falling over unconscious like a possum.

Now that I think about it, that ultra-dangerous guy would be kind of like our President. And God knows we could use more like him in politics.

Study game to make yourself stronger. View it as amygdala-exercise. And most of all, spread it through the K-world. It is part of what Scott Adams refers to as the talent stack we need amassed on our side.

Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because you want to look cool and careless as you slay your enemies