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.