Monthly Archives: January 2023

Situation in Ukraine

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The Russians have elevated the command over the Ukraine operation to the level of Gerasimov, who is the chief military commander of the Russian Federation (above him are only the defense minister Shoigu and President Putin), which means that, for all intents and purposes, this is elevated to full strategic level and the entire might of the Russian army is behind it now.

The warships and submarines departed from Novorossiysk, which probably indicates something significant.

There is a cold spell in Ukraine and the ground is frozen everywhere except on the Black Sea shore.

The Ukrainian equivalent of the Maginot line in Soledar and Bakhmut is broken. The last 500 Ukrainians who failed to evacuate from Soledar were killed by Wagner. I don’t know what’s the exact situation in Bakhmut, but the last I’ve heard sounded like complete disarray and its fall is imminent.

If I were commanding the Russian forces, I would use the momentum to completely demoralize and crush the Ukrainians, because this kind of a thing is contagious and you need to press the advantage once you achieve such a breakthrough. I expect they will use a synergy of energy denial, winter, demoralization and overwhelming force. I don’t know about the timing, but I would say that the breakthrough in the Bakhmut area looks like something that has been intentionally delayed in order to coordinate it with “something”, and too many preparations have been going on for that “something” to be anything less than a decisive blow.

 

Status symbols

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I was thinking about utility and futility of status symbols recently, in relation to the Andrew Tate controversy, so let me share my thoughts here.

First of all, status symbols are useful when you interact with new people, because you want them to properly identify your social position, in order to avoid the slow and impractical process of introduction, and in order to get to the point where they react to you appropriately. For instance, if you don’t dress appropriately for your social status when you try to buy something expensive, you might find yourself in an awqward position where they don’t believe that you have the money to buy what you want to buy, and if they don’t take you seriously it might require excessive effort on your behalf to convince them. Dressing appropriately is not as essential as behaving appropriately, but it helps. Status symbols are, in those cases, the equivalent of a uniform for a doctor, fireman or a policeman; if you don’t have a uniform, you might be as qualified for your job as ever, but people might not believe you without some convincing, and an appropriate uniform makes this tiresome step unnecessary. Note that this step is only necessary in the environment where people meet you for the first time. If everybody knows you’re a doctor or a policeman, for instance if you live in a small town, the uniform is nowhere near as important, which might be why people pay more attention (and money) to status symbols when they live in big cities. If people don’t know you, the kind of car you drive, as well as your suit and watch, are something that tells people something about your level of social success and standing. Certainly, there are people who fake this by wasting all the money they don’t have on status symbols, and they can “hack” the first impression, but it will only get them so far, and if they make a poor impression later on, it will all backfire on them heavily. So, status symbols are useful, but also “hackable”, and thus not reliable.

The second point is that status symbols can backfire if you don’t know what you’re doing. For instance, if you live in a small town, where everybody knows you, wasting money on status symbols doesn’t add anything to the impression you’re making, because everybody already knows what you do and what kind of money you’re making, so if you behave wastefully, they won’t think you’re wealthy, they’ll think you’re an idiot. Also, status symbols put pressure on your environment to try to match you, and this might financially strain them, so they will subconsciously blame you for putting such pressure on them, which won’t make them like you very much. You basically motivate people to alienate you and think poorly of you, because that’s a less expensive way of dealing with the pressure you are exerting.

The third point is that in a small environment, where people know you, they will judge your social status by the most expensive thing you own, for instance your house. Spending money on an expensive car or a watch doesn’t do anything after that point, because everybody already knows you’re rich because you own a big house. Also, if you don’t own a big house, but you own an expensive trinket, they will think you’re an idiot, so that is counterproductive. In a big city, however, that might work, but as people get to know you, it will backfire later. It is always better to surprise people positively as they get to know you better, because otherwise the positive first impression will backfire on you. A normal car parked in front an expensive house in a good neighbourhood makes a much better impression than a fancy car parked in front of a shitty house in a cheap neighbourhood, because if your primary status symbol is less impressive than secondary and tertiary ones (cars, clothes and trinkets), you will leave a very poor impression, because such behaviour is usually associated with people of low class. People of high class, however, usually have their priorities straight and they feel comfortable with their status, and so don’t spend excessively on trinkets.

Also, status symbols are not necessary if you are famous. For instance, if someone is a famous musician, actor, politician or something, everybody who recognizes you will already know your social standing, and spending excessive money on status symbols will do nothing for your public recognition; it might, however, leave an impression of gaudiness and wastefulness, so acting appropriately means that you have to present yourself according to social norms for decency. For instance, if Bill Gates goes somewhere dressed cheaply, and people recognize who he is, they won’t suddenly conclude that he’s poor. If anything, they might like him more because they won’t feel he’s signalling his enormous wealth in ways that make them feel like losers, thus making it a preferential choice for them to isolate and reject him.

So, basically, the status symbols are sometimes useful, for instance when you need to present yourself to new people in such a way that the first impression you make is useful for them to assess your social standing correctly. For instance, I told my son that he has to present himself more formally, because people would otherwise underestimate him, because he’s young; he is a competent young professional and needs to present a public persona that conveys a correct impression. If he dresses like a broke loser, people will tend to treat him as such, and that’s neither pleasant nor useful. That doesn’t mean he has to overspend on clothes and trinkets, but a nice shirt  and a clean looking watch can already do most of the work. However, status symbols very quickly reach a point where people feel as if you’re rubbing it in, and exerting pressure on them to act wastefully, which is basically why Andrew Tate pissed me off; he actively tries to set a standard of wasteful behaviour, to which I react with “how about ‘no‘”, and he achieves the exact opposite of his intentions, despite the fact that I actually like him quite a bit. There is obviously a line of propriety regarding status symbols; you need to look like you belong there, but you also need to avoid presenting in such a blatantly ostentatious way as to intentionally make other people feel bad, because that tends to end badly, and especially so when ostentatiousness is combined with arrogance and haughtiness.

The endless spiral

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I must admit that this Andrew Tate person (or at least his public persona) pissed me off more than I expected, but probably for reasons other than one might expect. For instance, I agree with most of what he’s saying. I don’t like his flamboyant behaviour, or the way he doesn’t seem to really connect with women, but that’s not what pissed me off.

What pissed me off is that he tries to teach people never to be content with anything, never to settle for “good enough”, never to transcend base greed, never to stop trying to acquire status by flaunting status symbols, never to stop and think and understand that appearance of power and appearance of freedom do not magically produce the real thing, when acquired. I kept having an argument with a simulated Tate in my head, and it bothered me that I couldn’t answer some of his boisterous arguments in an immediate and satisfactory way. “Where’s your Bugatti?”, for instance, is something I can’t answer with a satisfactory sound bite. I don’t have enough money to be able to afford such an object, and then decide against it because I’m being reasonable, or because I don’t really want it. It is true, however, that when I acquired a significant amount of money, I stopped caring about “status symbols” to a very large degree, which is something I understand; when I was financially threatened, I felt the need to maintain a defensive posture that would prevent the “sharks” from smelling my blood in the water, so to speak, so I kept the appearance of having money when I was deeply in debt and everything felt very fragile. I would buy the most expensive car I could possibly manage, in order to maintain the appearance of wealth and security, in order to discourage attacks by my enemies. I don’t know if any of it worked, but that was my reasoning. It was all based on instinct, the way a cat puffs itself up to appear bigger when scared, and acting on such instinct probably only depleted my scarce resources, but in hindsight I don’t see how those resources could have been used for something constructive; the situation was too profoundly bad for constructive measures at that point, and I correctly felt that I need to just buy time, survive while maintaining a defensive posture, until the situation that was presently outside of my control improves. One would expect that, later, when I not only got out of debt, but started making quite a bit of money, I would start preening like that Tate peacock, but that didn’t happen. What I noticed is that I was buying the stuff that I would normally need, but I could do it properly now. If I needed a laptop, I could just buy a proper one that meets my needs, not something second-hand from ebay, or something barely adequate because it’s cheap. If I needed clothes, I could just walk into a store and buy whatever I needed. I pay the bills immediately, not postpone it until the latest possible moment. I buy the fuel when I need it, not when I can afford it. If I feel like going somewhere for a day, I just do; I don’t have to wait until I have enough money for fuel. If I need a computer, I buy really good components, not the cheapest ones that barely work for me. So, money is good, and poverty is shit. However, what I noticed is that this peaked quite quickly; basically, for the most part, I still buy the same kind of stuff that I previously used, but I can easily afford it now. Before, I had to buy a seven year old car, and even then it was a stretch. Now I can just go to a car salon and buy something, but I still drive cars of exactly the same type and class I did before; it’s just that I buy them new now, and I can easily afford it. I once thought that, if I could buy a new BMW M5, that I would immediately do it, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I bought normal cars, and when I found a good deal on them. I wondered why that was, and one possible answer was that I don’t have enough money to buy such a thing and not reduce the amount of money I have significantly, and that certainly is one factor, but that would not have stopped me in the bad years, when I felt financially vulnerable and threatened; I’d spend everything I had on such a status symbol, and go into debt as much as possible; the self-preservation preening instinct was just too strong to allow for reasonable action. When I look at Tate, it seems that for some people this never goes away even when they become wealthy, they develop an insatiable greed in their years of poverty, a greed that can never be sated, a hole that can never be filled. That didn’t happen to me; I reacted with defensive instincts when I was in real trouble, but once I replaced all the things that wore out or broke during the bad years, I basically got to a point where I relaxed and calmed down, capped my expenses at a reasonable, slightly above average level, and started saving money.

That’s one thing that annoyed me with Tate – he tries to provoke people into keeping up the endless spiral of greed and preening, into destroying themselves financially and making potentially dangerous financial moves in order to be able to afford a lifestyle of incredible wastefulness, because he convinced them that freedom and safety are only possible at the upper echelons of wealth. Considering how he and his brother are currently in a Romanian prison, under whatever fake charges America told the Romanians to invent, and his opulent and boisterous lifestyle not only didn’t prevent that, but arguably caused it, I could flip the question and ask him where his Bugatti is, now. This, however, doesn’t satisfy me, because the fact that I don’t actually have enough money to really do all the things I would want to is something I feel to be a valid argument against me, so let’s see how I would actually answer it if I wanted to be perfectly honest. I would answer that I am a slave, a prisoner and a cripple. I can’t fly, or teleport, or change shape of my body, or extend my mind as well as I would want to. I am confronted with my limitations whenever I try to do anything I have no talent for – I can’t read or compose music, for instance; I have only limited understanding of electronics, and always had issues with mathematics, because I am slightly dyslexic to the point where I make mistakes copying long sequences of numbers and symbols, and I make mistakes when solving long equations, even when I completely understand how they should be solved. Some things come to me with trivial ease, and for some my brain just doesn’t work and it feels like trying to push through a brick wall. So, I’m limited by my lack of ability, by my lack of talent, by fundamental immutable physical limitations of my body, by the characteristics of the world, by limited resources at my disposal, and so on. The most painful limitation is that God hides himself from my sight; I feel the presence, and I can be much more than I can see, but for the most part I have to try really hard not to think about it because it hurts like fucking hell. I can’t meditate because I immediately hit an artificial wall, that was put there because God apparently thinks I have to remain in the state of separation in order to do the things I have to do, so when I meditate and hit that wall I feel helpless frustration caused by the fact that it’s not up to me; I actually sometimes wish that it were because I fucked up, because then I could work on fixing it, I could repent, or work hard to repay whatever debt, or something. So, I am limited, and I hate it, but the point where I get incredibly pissed at the imagined “where’s your Bugatti?” question is that the damn fool asking it doesn’t understand the enormous extent of my problem. Sure, I can’t buy a 5M USD car, but honestly, I can buy a 200K USD car, and I still bought one that’s ten times cheaper, just because I knew that a more expensive car won’t solve my problem. I won’t get my abilities back. I will still hit a “presence, but no information” barrier when I meditate. It will still hurt like a motherfucker when I accidentally think about all the things I can’t reach. I will still feel damaged when I try something that’s outside of my talents. I will still feel vulnerable to attack. I don’t have a Bugatti because I’m not wealthy enough, but that’s beside the point; the reason why I don’t have an M5 is because I know it wouldn’t solve my problems. The illusion of power doesn’t interest me. The illusion of safety doesn’t interest me. I want the real thing, not illusions and trinkets. I mentioned my weak points and limitations, but this one is not one of them; you see, I am not prone to self-deception. I know what the problems are, and I know what doesn’t solve them, even if I don’t have the actual solution available. I don’t do stupid moves that have the purpose of creating pleasant illusions. If truth hurts, I would rather feel the pain. So, that seems to be the root of my irritation with Andrew Tate – I see the guy who’s taking the path of self-deception, and by some instinct this makes me do the opposite, and it hurts.

Fake dharma

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I had a “pleasant encounter” with a global “script” last night, and I think some of it might be worth sharing because it’s universally relevant.

There’s a list of “spiritually impure” things that are supposed to be forbidden by God and doing them is supposed to represent a sin, which makes a soul impure before God and inadmissible to heaven, or something along those lines. Everybody seems to know the list – don’t steal, murder, fuck outside of wedlock and so on. Looks completely common sense, until you think about it.

Because, you see, you can diligently avoid doing all those prohibited things for your entire life, and be a spiritual midget. Also, you can do all those things at some point in your life, and be a great saint. Take St. Augustine for an example – if I remember correctly, he lived with a woman out of wedlock, even fathered a child with her, but then his family didn’t condone the relationship so she was quietly sent away. This is by no means a good or a moral thing; I mean, sending her away. However, regardless of what one might expect, the man was a great saint. St. Jerome, the translator of the Bible, probably the smartest man of his time alongside St. Augustine, had homosexual encounters in youth, which troubled him greatly later in life, but is remembered as a great saint. St. Paul persecuted the Church in its early days and is likely responsible for many deaths, and is a great saint and the most important person in the history of the Church beside Jesus. Jesus constantly broke this or that silly “commandment”, including stealing wheat from someone’s field during Sabbath; he also instructed his disciples to obtain swords, and as a result one person was injured. Krishna stole, killed and had sex, and yet He was God. Milarepa practised black magic and killed many beings, and yet he was a great saint.

So, if having “sinned” doesn’t seem to preclude spiritual greatness, and being “sinless” doesn’t create holiness, there’s something seriously wrong with the very concept, and I think I might know what.

You see, this list is the concept of sin that is created and maintained by Satan, and is specifically enforced by the laws inherent to the very structure of this world. In the real world, sin is s different thing; sin is a state of consciousness that resists and rejects God. This state of rejecting God can result in evil actions, but the opposite is in fact possible – a person aligned with the will of God can perform actions that could be qualified as sinful, but this is not in fact the case, because it doesn’t matter what something looks like, it matters what it actually is, in its true nature. If something results in holiness and manifestation of God, it is obviously not sinful. If something results in spiritual vacuum and boredom, it can obviously not be aligned with God, and is thus sinful by definition.

Interestingly, some of the worst people I know didn’t murder anyone, didn’t steal anything as far as I know, and you wouldn’t find any items from the “black list” on their record, yet they hated God wherever He was present, and they are sin incarnate. On the other hand, all the greatest people I know did all kinds of shit at one point. I’m not saying one should see all actions as permissible, but there’s obviously more to holiness than keeping score against some list of prohibited actions. That’s why I called my spiritual system “darshana yoga”. Find God first, then align your actions with That, and keep the goal present on the path. Notice the conspicuous absence of any detailed instructions, and lists of prohibited and recommended specific actions. Basically, if you’re a living presence of God, as long as you are able to maintain that during any action, I don’t care what you do.

About pimps and hubris

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I recently got flooded by all kinds of videos by or about that Andrew Tate guy who is supposed to be controversial. I watched lots of it, mostly because I have an instinctive dislike for the guy and I wanted to get to the bottom of that, since my dislike obviously doesn’t have anything to do with the things he is actually saying, which are both true and so self-evident one really has to wonder about the nature of the world we live in if it’s controversial that 2+2=4, the sky is blue and rocks are hard.

Also, I don’t know whether I dislike the actual person or a persona he’s putting on for the sake of the audience; there are contradictions there, so I got interested enough in the guy to watch a lot of his stuff.

Recently, he got arrested in Romania on what looks like fabricated charges, which appears only to have increased both his fame and the amount of his stuff in my YouTube feed, so I had enough material to articulate my opinion, so here it is.

He is a pashavi, which is what yoga and tantra would call a “physical” type of a human, who is for all intents and purposes a body only, and perceives only the physical world. I heard that Gnostics also have some classification, into physical, intellectual and spiritual types, but Gnosticism is not my thing so I am not too familiar with its nuances – in any case, you can probably understand what I’m trying to say. The guy thinks he figured out the rules, he’s winning the game, and all men want to be him, and all women want to fuck him. That part is actually funny; what I find annoying is the “if you have it, flaunt it” attitude (money, houses, cars), which I perceive as crass, rude and oozing hubris. The reason why I think that is obvious from what happened to him – someone in the top echelons of politics or intelligence agencies simply pressured the Romanians to put him in jail, and this suddenly put him in a position where all the things he was so proud of were suddenly of very little use. Basically, I find it very annoying when someone who is basically a slave flaunts “status symbols”. Conversely, one of the most impressive status symbols I’ve seen is the fact that Mahavatar Babaji from Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi” is described as being dressed in a simple piece of cloth and owning only that cloth and a staff. Why is that impressive, you’ll ask? It’s impressive because he can materialise a huge palace or any other object if it’s needed to give some student a lesson, he travels by teleportation and can basically do whatever he wants. The minimalist appearance is in fact the ultimate statement of power; basically, compared to him, an expensive car is merely compensation for not being to move quickly on your own, so you need an expensive wheelchair. An aeroplane is just evidence you can’t fly on your own. A house is a thing weak beings use since they are otherwise harmed by so many things. When someone flaunts signs of human weakness and limitation as status symbols, it strikes me as a sign of idiocy. Having the best, jewel-encrusted wheelchair still makes you a cripple. Just have your normal wheelchair, it’s actually less pathetic.

What kind of status symbols make sense? Something that has something to do with your accomplishments – for instance, the protagonist of Carl Sagan’s book “Contact” wearing improvised jewellery made from throwaway synthetic rubies she made when designing MASERs for amplifying radio signals from the Arecibo telescope. The other example is Tim Cook wearing an Apple Watch, or Mate Rimac driving a “Nevera” to his wedding, or Richard Feynman drawing Feynman diagrams on his van, or the guy who designed the Mars rover having a “my second vehicle is a Mars rover” bumper sticker. What did that Tate dude do to make his money? He’s pimping out cam whores. Literally, he whored out his girlfriends to entertain perverts on the Internet for money for him. I would understand if Elon Musk or Mate Rimac wanted to flaunt their accomplishments; at least Rimac acquired Bugatti the right way. Just buying one because you can afford the cost is a second-rate accomplishment. Driving one because you own the company would be another matter entirely. That, BTW, is also the reason why I feel contempt for all those Arab petroleum billionaires who flaunt their wealth around, and their only virtue is being born at the place where the black stuff squirts from the sand, and somebody is prepared to pay huge money for it, and they don’t think it’s ethical to just take it from you and have you enslaved, although they easily could.

What do I consider to be proper status symbols? The things that can never be taken away from you. The things that show pride in your personal accomplishments – a doctorate in physics, a Nobel prize, a technological artefact that improved the world and made you rich, a medal of honour, a scar you earned by doing something virtuous, a monument commemorating your heroic death, praise from the people you helped. Pimping out your girlfriends and buying a Bugatti to show off your great success? Go fuck yourself. You know whom I admire? I’ll tell you a story. A Russian fighter-bomber pilot, a squadron commander, got shot down in Syria fighting ISIS. His wingman was ordered to return to base immediately because of enemy fire from the ground. He disregarded the order and stayed in the air, providing air support to his commander, under enemy fire, until he saw that his commander died taking out himself and the surrounding terrorists with a hand grenade rather than be taken alive, and he himself ran out of fuel and actually had to return to base. No Bugatti, no 300M dollars, no yacht, no private jet, no whores.