- Joined
- Jan 24, 2021
- Messages
- 1,927
Hey guys, I thought I'd give a little of my perspective on this topic, since it's something that's been on my mind lately, and in some ways I've felt like it's always been a part of my life in one form or another.
I don't want to make this about any particular issue, because although lately things have gone south in a big way all around the world, as we all know it's only the cloud at the top of the volcano that has been boiling for millennia. Societies have always been hostile to individuals, to people who seek to become conscious of themselves and maneuver outside of the boundaries that societies set for them.
I also don't want to make this about myself, but I do want to give a small bit of context. To put it bluntly I have never been someone who fits comfortably into any position someone else has set for me. I have always had a deep love for the world that I live in, for the people striving in it to make it a better place, even for the nature of this reality we live in that is not always pleasant, accommodating, or just. But I have always been anti-authority, I have always seen risk in places where others see comfort, felt oppressed by boundaries that others conform to so easily that it seems they do not even notice. In some ways I am far more optimistic and idealistic than others I know, while at the same time I know that my nature is of someone who is built for war and not peace. Perhaps that is what makes it difficult for me to live comfortably in the restrictions of society, because when I feel backpressure it is as if I have found the catalyst for who I really am, rather than a sign that I should take a step back.
Take that for what you will, I only want to point out that it is possible to reconcile the predilection to fight against the impositions of a society with a deeply constructive and accepting mindset, rather than a nihilistic or some other equally degenerate perspective. Anything else is likely to eventually end in self destruction or, facing such, a desperate leap into the lifeboat of conformity, to which sequence of events nature has attached a virtually permanent future incapacity of self-determination.
With that in mind, here are my reflections on living well in a hostile society.
...
The Top And Bottom Are Similar, But It's Better To Be At The Top
I have never been rich, but it seems to me that there are a lot of similarities between being at the top and bottom of a society, with some important differences.
Society is built around the middle class, and this is the safest, most conformist place to be. When you are middle class, you are at the center of the herd. There is nothing particularly distinguishing about you for anyone to target. All the propaganda of society is created for you, you are society's favorite resource because although you are not the biggest resource individually, together you constitute the stable and easily led 'body' of society. Laws, regulations, public infrastructure, all of it is built for your permanence and general wellbeing (as long as you stay there and accept what society takes from you).
When you are at the bottom of society, by default everything is hostile to you. You have little value to society or to other people, you are looked down on and questioned as to why, if you have any use whatsoever, you are still down there? Society looks at you as a burden rather than an asset. Women (all else being equal) want nothing to do with you, and people often try to find ways to grind you down a bit for their own pleasure.
When you are at the top, when you are very rich, in some ways, everything is also hostile to you, because everyone wants some of what you've got. Governments pursue you for money, your friends and family pursue you for money, women pursue you for money. The threat of kidnap, blackmail, or robbery is ever present. The public infrastructure of society does not receive you easily, as it was built for the middle class and cannot cater to your additional requirements.
But there are important differences: at the bottom, most of the people with whom you share this space are disfunctional, desperate, and unreliable. You have no money or power to build alternatives to the things that are out of your reach. Whereas at the top, you have private networks, private parties, you have the money to make problems go away, to secure certain freedoms, to build spaces in which you can thrive with others of your kind. So long as you are willing to accept that everything needs to be paid for and secured, vetted, and maintained carefully, the world is pretty much your oyster.
What does this have to do with living in a hostile society? Well, if you society is hostile to you, either you aren't in the middle class, or very likely soon you won't be. And since there is nothing good at the bottom, you really must aim for the top. Build a reserve of ‘f*** you’ money, and focus on creating relationships and networks with people who are either moving toward the top, or already there. Even if money was never your thing and you dislike rich people and think they’re all greedy fatcats, it’s time to get practical. It’s your only way to thrive long term.
...
The other thing about the top and bottom of society is that, as strange as it sounds, it’s far easier for someone at the bottom of society to offer something to someone at the top, than it is for them to offer something to someone at the middle.
When I have gamed girls very poor (like someone who has not had more than a few hundred in their account for six months or more, which tends to reflect in certain ways) I ran into an interesting occurrence: beautiful girls either rejected me nicely or enthusiastically talked to me, while average girls regularly gave me harsh or dismissive rejections. And when my circumstances changed, this changed as well: average girls would be interested or nice, while very beautiful girls would often look very annoyed by my approach.
This led me to two important realizations: average people (or middle class people in financial terms) are impressed by those things that make you the ‘best’ of the middle class: stability, conformity, reliability, speaking the ‘language’ of normality. Essentially, these people value security above everything else, because that is what they feel is their strong point, and what they either have or don’t have in common with you. They are filled with jealousy toward what is above, and despise what is below, and are on high alert to anything different to themselves, and their first instinct is to see you, especially if you look like you come from below, as a threat.
On the other hand, non-average people are impressed by non-average things. When you approach a beautiful girl, a girl who knows she’s beautiful, and you don’t look like you belong anywhere near the same crowd as she does, several possibilities occur to her: a) you think you deserve her anyway, which raises all kinds of questions. b) you think you share with her something that lies outside of the classes that you two operate in, which raises even more interesting questions and c) you’ve got a big pair of balls to go and take your shot like that, which is interesting to her because audacity and courage are attributes that not only operate outside of class altogether, but make her question herself, as someone who probably hasn’t ever had to have either of those to get the things she wants, and who wonders in the small hours of the morning when life might get around to testing her on these things. And because you don't look like you come from the middle class, you look like you are the embodiment of these things, like the incarnation of something powerful from the chaos of the wild.
This goes for rich people in general, not just women. If there is one principle that this article revolves around, it’s this: when you can show other people how to live well, how to squeeze the juice out of life and lick it off, you will always have a place with them. Because money cannot buy audacity, courage, strength of character, the understanding of how to live and love alongside all the problems that the world imposes on human being. But if you can even, for a moment, show someone that you understand these things, they will give you things in a moment that others toil their entire lives for, just to discover how to acquire some of it for themselves.
And when you have a victim mentality, when poisonous resentment and hatred fill the corners and crevices of your mind, no societal rank or amount of money will get you the adoration of anyone, and even the trophies you have will corrode, and your friends and acquaintances will turn into pernicious enemies, and at the end of your life all the material securities you relied on will disintegrate right before you do.
Body And Mind
There are a lot of bad situations you can find yourself in. Perhaps you are in jail, locked in a tiny cell with no chance of liberty for many years. Perhaps you are in a similar situation, except you are a child and it’s your family home. Perhaps you were living the typical middle class lifestyle, and then someone you love got horribly sick and it wiped out your wealth and happiness simultaneously. Perhaps outwardly everything is fine, and you are locked into a prison of disfunctional or negative thoughts. Or, perhaps society has decided that, for one reason or another, you are no longer compatible with its ‘values’, and the opportunities you always thought were a given, have suddenly vanished.
The first thing to realize is that everything you have can be taken away, at any time. Even your life and liberty are not sovereign. You have no right to not feel pain, to not face troubles or difficult decisions, to not have to make mistakes and bear them. Just as you did not decide to come into existence, you do not decide when you will leave the same, or even what happens in between. Your life is only ever slightly within your control, and even when you do things well and are rewarded, the next day it could all change.
What then, is your role in this existence?
Your role is to learn and adapt, to take what you can control and try to turn it into slightly greater influence and slightly better results, and accept when something is just not yours to decide.
The first thing, of course, is your mind. The mind is your most powerful resource, because it controls your internal reality. Isn’t it surprising how independent the mind is from circumstances, how one person can be in horrible circumstances with a strong, peaceful mind, and another is in relative comfort and riddled with anxiety and anguish? To have mental peace, first someone must accept reality, stop trying to deny it or force it out, but instead welcome it, and sit with it without struggle. Maybe all they will be given is the chance to observe this reality for a few moments longer, or perhaps they will be given a chance to change it. This is not within their control. But what is in their control is to simply dismiss the mental chaos of anger or denial, and be ready, ready for what is happening now, and ready in the following moment, for what comes in the following moment.
Your body is the next thing you can control. It is not always in your control, but it usually is. It is your greatest asset, the inheritance that nature has given you to maintain and to grow. It is the most ready reflection of your mind to those who look upon you, both in terms of what you have created with it, and how you move it. It is like a horse, the reflection of its owner. When it moves effortlessly, easily, capably, without concealed tension, violence, pain or discontent, people perceive its owner as understanding the true nature of things and how to manipulate it. But when it is neglected, or moves jerkily as if hampered by unseen restraints, people perceive its owner as being neglectful, or harbouring disfunctional or unseen mental burdens.
Meditate, exercise, eat well, sit with your body regularly and listen to what it tells you, guide it toward proper expression, and it will be your loyal horse and reflect well on you wherever you go.
The next thing you can control, is how you adapt to the situation you find yourself in. This is a problem for people who perceive themselves as fighting for something, who perceive the volume of their discontent as a form of self-validation. But it’s not hard to do if you don't let your ego run rampant, and it pays dividends.
Is your lifestyle suddenly restricted in some way? Find enjoyment and satisfaction in adaptation. Try to think of small ways to express yourself, to create opportunities, to be resourceful. The beautiful thing is that this is what the human mind is built for – adaptability. It is why humans are soft and unarmored creatures. Even the strongest man alive is vulnerable to virtually every predator in nature, even the weakest or youngest of these predators. This is because nature prepared a much better gift than claws or teeth, a gift that would give us rule over all the other animals and take us so far beyond them that we scarcely perceive as having come from the same root: adaptability.
Be grateful for the chance to use it. Smile in your effort to survive, be alert to what is effective and useful, open your mind to possibilities you never considered. Look forward to tomorrow when your mind will be stretched a little further, become a little more adaptable. Take pride in your successes, and laugh at your failures, and soon you will thrive anywhere.
This is your lot, your role, it is this experience of moving into adaptability that you will carry with you to the end of your life and reflect upon with contentment, and you will look with pity on those people whom nature never tested, for nature only tests those she wishes to work upon.
...
Those are a couple of my thoughts on how to live well in a hostile society. In some ways, what has happened recently is a good thing, because it's very hard to make the decision to live a certain way when one's enemies are so obscured, and restrictions are so integrated and invisible, that one wonders if they even exist. But when they manifest themselves openly and painfully, when one realizes that that uneasy feeling as one wandered the garden was real, it is both a relief and an opportunity: now the problem is in the open, now it can be dealt with, and now is the time to live decisively, intentionally, for the things that one values.
I don't want to make this about any particular issue, because although lately things have gone south in a big way all around the world, as we all know it's only the cloud at the top of the volcano that has been boiling for millennia. Societies have always been hostile to individuals, to people who seek to become conscious of themselves and maneuver outside of the boundaries that societies set for them.
I also don't want to make this about myself, but I do want to give a small bit of context. To put it bluntly I have never been someone who fits comfortably into any position someone else has set for me. I have always had a deep love for the world that I live in, for the people striving in it to make it a better place, even for the nature of this reality we live in that is not always pleasant, accommodating, or just. But I have always been anti-authority, I have always seen risk in places where others see comfort, felt oppressed by boundaries that others conform to so easily that it seems they do not even notice. In some ways I am far more optimistic and idealistic than others I know, while at the same time I know that my nature is of someone who is built for war and not peace. Perhaps that is what makes it difficult for me to live comfortably in the restrictions of society, because when I feel backpressure it is as if I have found the catalyst for who I really am, rather than a sign that I should take a step back.
Take that for what you will, I only want to point out that it is possible to reconcile the predilection to fight against the impositions of a society with a deeply constructive and accepting mindset, rather than a nihilistic or some other equally degenerate perspective. Anything else is likely to eventually end in self destruction or, facing such, a desperate leap into the lifeboat of conformity, to which sequence of events nature has attached a virtually permanent future incapacity of self-determination.
With that in mind, here are my reflections on living well in a hostile society.
...
The Top And Bottom Are Similar, But It's Better To Be At The Top
I have never been rich, but it seems to me that there are a lot of similarities between being at the top and bottom of a society, with some important differences.
Society is built around the middle class, and this is the safest, most conformist place to be. When you are middle class, you are at the center of the herd. There is nothing particularly distinguishing about you for anyone to target. All the propaganda of society is created for you, you are society's favorite resource because although you are not the biggest resource individually, together you constitute the stable and easily led 'body' of society. Laws, regulations, public infrastructure, all of it is built for your permanence and general wellbeing (as long as you stay there and accept what society takes from you).
When you are at the bottom of society, by default everything is hostile to you. You have little value to society or to other people, you are looked down on and questioned as to why, if you have any use whatsoever, you are still down there? Society looks at you as a burden rather than an asset. Women (all else being equal) want nothing to do with you, and people often try to find ways to grind you down a bit for their own pleasure.
When you are at the top, when you are very rich, in some ways, everything is also hostile to you, because everyone wants some of what you've got. Governments pursue you for money, your friends and family pursue you for money, women pursue you for money. The threat of kidnap, blackmail, or robbery is ever present. The public infrastructure of society does not receive you easily, as it was built for the middle class and cannot cater to your additional requirements.
But there are important differences: at the bottom, most of the people with whom you share this space are disfunctional, desperate, and unreliable. You have no money or power to build alternatives to the things that are out of your reach. Whereas at the top, you have private networks, private parties, you have the money to make problems go away, to secure certain freedoms, to build spaces in which you can thrive with others of your kind. So long as you are willing to accept that everything needs to be paid for and secured, vetted, and maintained carefully, the world is pretty much your oyster.
What does this have to do with living in a hostile society? Well, if you society is hostile to you, either you aren't in the middle class, or very likely soon you won't be. And since there is nothing good at the bottom, you really must aim for the top. Build a reserve of ‘f*** you’ money, and focus on creating relationships and networks with people who are either moving toward the top, or already there. Even if money was never your thing and you dislike rich people and think they’re all greedy fatcats, it’s time to get practical. It’s your only way to thrive long term.
...
The other thing about the top and bottom of society is that, as strange as it sounds, it’s far easier for someone at the bottom of society to offer something to someone at the top, than it is for them to offer something to someone at the middle.
When I have gamed girls very poor (like someone who has not had more than a few hundred in their account for six months or more, which tends to reflect in certain ways) I ran into an interesting occurrence: beautiful girls either rejected me nicely or enthusiastically talked to me, while average girls regularly gave me harsh or dismissive rejections. And when my circumstances changed, this changed as well: average girls would be interested or nice, while very beautiful girls would often look very annoyed by my approach.
This led me to two important realizations: average people (or middle class people in financial terms) are impressed by those things that make you the ‘best’ of the middle class: stability, conformity, reliability, speaking the ‘language’ of normality. Essentially, these people value security above everything else, because that is what they feel is their strong point, and what they either have or don’t have in common with you. They are filled with jealousy toward what is above, and despise what is below, and are on high alert to anything different to themselves, and their first instinct is to see you, especially if you look like you come from below, as a threat.
On the other hand, non-average people are impressed by non-average things. When you approach a beautiful girl, a girl who knows she’s beautiful, and you don’t look like you belong anywhere near the same crowd as she does, several possibilities occur to her: a) you think you deserve her anyway, which raises all kinds of questions. b) you think you share with her something that lies outside of the classes that you two operate in, which raises even more interesting questions and c) you’ve got a big pair of balls to go and take your shot like that, which is interesting to her because audacity and courage are attributes that not only operate outside of class altogether, but make her question herself, as someone who probably hasn’t ever had to have either of those to get the things she wants, and who wonders in the small hours of the morning when life might get around to testing her on these things. And because you don't look like you come from the middle class, you look like you are the embodiment of these things, like the incarnation of something powerful from the chaos of the wild.
This goes for rich people in general, not just women. If there is one principle that this article revolves around, it’s this: when you can show other people how to live well, how to squeeze the juice out of life and lick it off, you will always have a place with them. Because money cannot buy audacity, courage, strength of character, the understanding of how to live and love alongside all the problems that the world imposes on human being. But if you can even, for a moment, show someone that you understand these things, they will give you things in a moment that others toil their entire lives for, just to discover how to acquire some of it for themselves.
And when you have a victim mentality, when poisonous resentment and hatred fill the corners and crevices of your mind, no societal rank or amount of money will get you the adoration of anyone, and even the trophies you have will corrode, and your friends and acquaintances will turn into pernicious enemies, and at the end of your life all the material securities you relied on will disintegrate right before you do.
Body And Mind
There are a lot of bad situations you can find yourself in. Perhaps you are in jail, locked in a tiny cell with no chance of liberty for many years. Perhaps you are in a similar situation, except you are a child and it’s your family home. Perhaps you were living the typical middle class lifestyle, and then someone you love got horribly sick and it wiped out your wealth and happiness simultaneously. Perhaps outwardly everything is fine, and you are locked into a prison of disfunctional or negative thoughts. Or, perhaps society has decided that, for one reason or another, you are no longer compatible with its ‘values’, and the opportunities you always thought were a given, have suddenly vanished.
The first thing to realize is that everything you have can be taken away, at any time. Even your life and liberty are not sovereign. You have no right to not feel pain, to not face troubles or difficult decisions, to not have to make mistakes and bear them. Just as you did not decide to come into existence, you do not decide when you will leave the same, or even what happens in between. Your life is only ever slightly within your control, and even when you do things well and are rewarded, the next day it could all change.
What then, is your role in this existence?
Your role is to learn and adapt, to take what you can control and try to turn it into slightly greater influence and slightly better results, and accept when something is just not yours to decide.
The first thing, of course, is your mind. The mind is your most powerful resource, because it controls your internal reality. Isn’t it surprising how independent the mind is from circumstances, how one person can be in horrible circumstances with a strong, peaceful mind, and another is in relative comfort and riddled with anxiety and anguish? To have mental peace, first someone must accept reality, stop trying to deny it or force it out, but instead welcome it, and sit with it without struggle. Maybe all they will be given is the chance to observe this reality for a few moments longer, or perhaps they will be given a chance to change it. This is not within their control. But what is in their control is to simply dismiss the mental chaos of anger or denial, and be ready, ready for what is happening now, and ready in the following moment, for what comes in the following moment.
Your body is the next thing you can control. It is not always in your control, but it usually is. It is your greatest asset, the inheritance that nature has given you to maintain and to grow. It is the most ready reflection of your mind to those who look upon you, both in terms of what you have created with it, and how you move it. It is like a horse, the reflection of its owner. When it moves effortlessly, easily, capably, without concealed tension, violence, pain or discontent, people perceive its owner as understanding the true nature of things and how to manipulate it. But when it is neglected, or moves jerkily as if hampered by unseen restraints, people perceive its owner as being neglectful, or harbouring disfunctional or unseen mental burdens.
Meditate, exercise, eat well, sit with your body regularly and listen to what it tells you, guide it toward proper expression, and it will be your loyal horse and reflect well on you wherever you go.
The next thing you can control, is how you adapt to the situation you find yourself in. This is a problem for people who perceive themselves as fighting for something, who perceive the volume of their discontent as a form of self-validation. But it’s not hard to do if you don't let your ego run rampant, and it pays dividends.
Is your lifestyle suddenly restricted in some way? Find enjoyment and satisfaction in adaptation. Try to think of small ways to express yourself, to create opportunities, to be resourceful. The beautiful thing is that this is what the human mind is built for – adaptability. It is why humans are soft and unarmored creatures. Even the strongest man alive is vulnerable to virtually every predator in nature, even the weakest or youngest of these predators. This is because nature prepared a much better gift than claws or teeth, a gift that would give us rule over all the other animals and take us so far beyond them that we scarcely perceive as having come from the same root: adaptability.
Be grateful for the chance to use it. Smile in your effort to survive, be alert to what is effective and useful, open your mind to possibilities you never considered. Look forward to tomorrow when your mind will be stretched a little further, become a little more adaptable. Take pride in your successes, and laugh at your failures, and soon you will thrive anywhere.
This is your lot, your role, it is this experience of moving into adaptability that you will carry with you to the end of your life and reflect upon with contentment, and you will look with pity on those people whom nature never tested, for nature only tests those she wishes to work upon.
...
Those are a couple of my thoughts on how to live well in a hostile society. In some ways, what has happened recently is a good thing, because it's very hard to make the decision to live a certain way when one's enemies are so obscured, and restrictions are so integrated and invisible, that one wonders if they even exist. But when they manifest themselves openly and painfully, when one realizes that that uneasy feeling as one wandered the garden was real, it is both a relief and an opportunity: now the problem is in the open, now it can be dealt with, and now is the time to live decisively, intentionally, for the things that one values.
Once you have an established "trust" (brand).