The recent posts on IQ, the intelligence gap, etcetera on Vox’s blog and his Sigma Game one too, along with a number of other recent considerations I have been mulling over with regard to the general malaise of this planet’s humanity both as a whole and as considered in their multiply fractal subdivisions right down to the individual, have got me to a point where I may begin to try to articulate a concept that I have been living with most of my life.
In simple terms it goes something like this:
Broadly speaking, almost nothing is really relevant, and yet, your life is absolutely relevant (regardless of whether you are aware of it, reach anything like your full potential in various facets of life and so on).
If you have read my post on violence and gunfights, you may be able to better understand what I mean. The long and the short of that post was that pretty much 95% of everything related to those two topics (assault/violence/gunfights) that you come across is bullshit.
The fact is that even if you train obsessively, unless you kinda go looking for it, the likelihood of you being in an actual gunfight are pretty close to nil. The chances of you being in some violent altercation are somewhat higher, but you can mostly negate those by the simple expedient of increasing your situational awareness in general even if you take zero time training in martial arts or using a firearms under stressful situations.
In the event that you DO end up in a gunfight, again, most of all the detailed supposedly pivotal information provided by armchair and paper experts, but even, too often, by supposedly highly trained “operators” is, again, mostly almost entirely irrelevant. If you can operate your weapon effectively under duress and hit a head-sized object repeatedly at twenty feet or less almost all the time, you are in the top 0.1% of people when it comes to being effective in a gun fight. The calibre or type of gun you use being a minor consideration at best.
Now, extend that sort of general realisation to pretty much everything else.
Unless you are in Ukraine or Gaza, the wars in those places are essentially mostly irrelevant to you. Not completely of course, because your petrol and heating costs go up, and so on, but the impact is not immediately drastic for 99% of the population on Earth compared to those who are actively involved. If you are generally prepared for the apocalyptic economic collapse that maths says will happen at some point, you are well ahead of the curve with respect of most of the rest of humanity. Obsessing about every detail of those conflicts can only lead to added anxiety and lowered immune systems without providing you any further benefit.
Given this overall philosophy, life could easily become seen as a futile exercise and one could easily slip into depression. That too is a trap, because while it is true that 95% of literally everything is bullshit, there is that 5% that makes it all worth it. And it would do so even if it was only 1%.
I always excelled at my job when I was in the corporate rat race and outperformed every financial target that was expected of me, even in those jobs where I was ultimately fired. And yes, I was “let go” on a number of occasions. And an even higher number of times I walked away on my own. How is it possible, you say that I double the expected profit margins and yet get “let go”? I must be lying, or missing out some part of the story, right? Not really. The only part of the story I am missing out is that several times I uncovered either outright fraud or incompetence within the higher ups. I didn’t even make it public for the most part, but the higher ups were aware I was aware. And they were also aware I was not corruptible. The idea a person would not either join them nor be against them necessarily, threatened them instantly (which is understandable).
My work in the UK was never seen by me as a “career”. If I had viewed it that way and applied myself that way, I would undoubtedly be a very wealthy person. That route however would have required a level of internal repression of my basic nature that made the prospect absolutely intolerable to me. I simply saw it as a job. In fact, as a job with a specific firm that would last as long as it lasted. Several years in the best cases, a few weeks in the worst cases. When I did my job, I did it very well and I put as much effort into it as needed to ensure I did outperform every target they had for me. I could do that precisely because it wasn’t that important to me. I am honest and I was hired to do a job so I did it well, but the job itself was not particularly interesting or meaningful to me. I took my satisfactions where I could and so on, and it’s nice to have a nice portfolio of prestigious jobs behind me, but I was perfectly happy being a mercenary that understood the value of both being a team member in a good team, or working independently when required.
I mention this to try and explain the perspective that most of life is filled with irrelevancies. Even the big events, while meaningful to you and some certainly will feel or even be life or death events from your perspective, are ultimately, in the scheme of things, not all that big a deal.
Your divorce and family implosion is a huge deal to you and your children, of course, and yet, most divorces are survived somehow. The culture is going to crap mostly everywhere, and yet you are generally comfortable enough as the world goes to Hell in a handbasket. From a bird’s eye view, very few things matter, and those that do are often things most people have very little control over.
So, if you have this perspective, I wanted to share with you my method for absolutely avoiding nihilistic despair, because I see people, especially younger people, falling into this absolute trap of thinking that since life is so “bad” nothing really matters. That is a mistake, a big, big error and one you should never make.
So here is my recipe:
- Never, ever, assume the global is the personal and vice versa
- Find the level of “resolution” that is important to you for different aspects of life and operate there. For example:
- My professional work was relevant to me as maybe an 8 bit grayscale arcade game. You can still enjoy it and do well at Prince of Persia in monochrome, but you will not cry tears of despair if you need to switch to another 8 bit monochrome game like Bubble Bobble.
- My personal life was always in full 8k colour and maximum level graphic card importance to me, though it had many facets and perspectives and within it each facet and perspective had a generally high level of resolution but not all had the highest resolution setting.
- Have a compelling future. Without a target, something to aim for, an idea that motivates you to get out of bed in the morning, life can be misery, so, create something to work towards. And yet…
- Be flexible in the extreme towards that future goal, because life invariably will throw monkey wrenches, the whole monkey, and the whole monkey’s troop with their monkey wrenches and also a few grenades in whatever plan you make. Life is essentially war, and as Clausewitz supposedly said, no plan survives contact with the enemy. This does not mean you are a butterfly with never solid targets, but rather the opposite, that whatever happens, and whatever route-changes you need to make, including drastic ones, you nevertheless continue heading towards the same goal from whatever unlikely position you end up finding yourself. The truth is that many high-minded concepts are usually extremely unlikely to happen in one or even two years, but relentless action in a specific direction almost always produces effective results over say 20 years.
I can attest to that “20 years” concept in a number of fields, where my interest was always high. In some cases I achieved a level of understanding or competence that then resulted in me deciding I had achieved what I wanted in that respect and then moved on to other interests, and in some cases the interest remains or even deepens and will continue to do so until death. A few examples (not to boast, but to give examples to those who might be new readers here as the numbers increase regularly):
- Astronomy – I figured out the real history of Humanity to a previously unrealised degree, what happened on Mars and probably in other places of our Solar system to a degree that everyone else is still catching up to, including those who admitted plagiarising some of my work. I have reached a level of understanding of this that is sufficient for me to not devote much time to it now, primarily because my children and other endeavours occupy me and interest me more. Left to my own devices in a bubble universe, I would probably continue to explore this topic endlessly. And I still dream of building my own mini observatory.
- Martial Arts – At age 54, and with a farm to try to get into some if not profitable at least break-even production level, 5 children and other things to do too, my interest for physically training with other people is not zero, but again, other priorities come into effect. If I won the lottery tomorrow and I could have my own little dojo build next to the house, I would happily entertain regular training with others, preferably not as teacher (unlikely, given the location) or at least, if I am to teach, so that I can also train with the guys while doing so. But as it is, my training today is mostly along a different route, which involves more generic concepts, like overall health, situational awareness on a daily basis and weapons training.
- Catholicism – Having been a Zen Agnostic until age 43, so given only some ten years of study on it, I am still a relative “novice” at being a Catholic (compared to my own somewhat obsessive-compulsive standards, though I surpass many supposed “professional” theologians at understanding the dogma, application of it, history and realities of Catholicism) and the lessons in it, like those of martial arts, are infinite, so I think in some way this topic will continue to deepen for me with time.
- Hypnosis – Having done and studied this deeply for nearly 20 years now, this remains a fascinating topic, though in deepening it, some related aspects have probably taken a front-seat, even if directly related to hypnosis, like the neurology and physiology of the brain as well as aspects of the mind, electromagnetic fields we all have, and other aspects related to mirror neurones and so on, all fasciante me and continue to be of interest.
Those are just my “hobbies” so to speak, my most important topics relate to relationships with women and ultimately marriage, relationships with my children, and loved ones, and relationships with my friends and the things we can achieve if we work together on some things we care about.
I certainly am not short of things that keep my interest despite me being acutely aware of the hellscape we live in and the mutant wastelands we are surrounded by, with roaming radioactive mutants, polluted skies and rabid zombies, along with gay, mentally ill, would-be “overlords” that want to destroy people like me down to the very last DNA strand.
Before I was Catholic I kept myself busy this way and never fell into despair. After becoming Catholic, not only is despair impossible, but I am at times mildly euphoric as I recognise that however hard things may temporarily seem from any given perspective of the day, eventually, due course, whether I see it myself with my own eyes or not, victory, for our side, is absolutely inevitable.
I hope therefore, to have given a few of you reading this some positive concepts to think and act on.
What Next?
There are three paths I can go down with respect to the next book I write.
NAZI MOON (linked) is now available at least in the US and CANADA and should be available soon in other countries too.
I have been asked to do the relationship book by friends and men in general for years; at least 20 of them. I resisted the impulse* for at least a couple of decades, primarily because, as one of my alter egos/nicknames —given to me by friends in Italy over 20 years ago— said in one of the graphic novels he appears in: “Any man that says he has understood all there is to know about women, is either a liar or insane.” And it’s close enough to the truth in some ways. Nevertheless, I feel that after two divorces, a lot of women in between, and finally a proper Catholic marriage, not to mention 4 children I fathered, I have probably made —and persevered!— and (one hopes), learnt enough that it is probably acceptable to pass on a few pointers to younger men; at least on those issues I feel I have now got enough experience to retroactively note when I did the right thing (regardless of outcome), and when I did the wrong thing (again, regardless of outcome). I mention this, because as I say, there have been a lot of people asking me for this for a long time.
With regard to my non-fiction, each book I have written so far, is really mostly a compilation of my theories and conclusions formed with many years of experience.
The Face on Mars was the result of a lifelong interest in Astronomy from very early childhood. I understood what a light-year was at age four, thanks to an uncle who was, and remains, a total geek to this day. He also sent me a telescope in my early teens, with which I observed the mountains of the moon, and how the moon itself moved. I also saw Haley’s comet with it, from our home in Africa at the time. And to this day the concepts I put forth in that book were then, and for the most part continue to remain today, unique. Some have badly plagiarised aspects of it (hello Graham Hancock) but the overall main issue had not been understood by anyone I am aware of before I saw it. And most remain totally ignorant of it, despite the predictions and theories I made back in 1995, playing out as correct in the intervening time. The update in 2014 also added a new dimension to the reality of my ideas, which is partly expanded on a lot more in my fiction work.
Systema was similarly, a book I wrote after I had personally spend decades in the martial arts world. And I wanted to demystify a LOT of the nonsense that goes with many martial art “concepts” and their related egos, and which —in particular— seemed to have a vortex of “mystic ninjas” concerning the Russian system. Which is an impression many martial artists might have if they have not experience of it firsthand. By merely watching YouTube videos or hearing “fantastic” stories of almost magical ability, they are most likely going to assume it is some woo-woo nonsensical “martial art”. That thought is disabused within minutes of confronting any of the top exponents of it. Unfortunately, as always, along with the really good practitioners, there were also a lot of “mystic ninjas” and some of the practitioners did nothing to demystify the situation, so I did it. I have been doing martial arts since I was a very small child, thanks to my dad, so I had pretty extensive knowledge of it before I put hand-to-keyboard after almost four decades of it.
Reclaiming the Catholic Church was in some ways the “odd man out” because I had a road to Damascus Event in 2013 and the book came out in 2020, that is, only 7 years later. However, I had been reading different books on all the main religions, mysticism, “spiritual” and even New Age stuff, again, since my teens, and literally infiltrating various cults as a hobby, in order to see if anyone had anything that was demonstrably true, real, or worthwhile. I had settled on a basic Zen-Agnosticism, with a clear understanding there must be an intelligence behind creation (the math, astronomy, biology and physics, as well as logic, pretty much confirms it many, many, many times over) but no sense of a God as such that was specifically interested in us mere mortals, much less me specifically. That changed in a radical, unexpected and utterly surprising way, that while “subjective” in the sense that I cannot prove it to anyone else, was absolutely objective and very much so for me. The other part that helped was that because the Catholic Church has ALL of its rules and dogmas written down, it was fairly easy to follow the thread of its history and see the astonishing truth it is founded on. As it was, to see that the current inhabitants of the Vatican are, without putting too fine a point on it, flat out Satanists.
BELIEVE! Instead, published a year before RTCC, was a much smaller work, putting out my new, or updated, basic outline philosophy. For those who have read both books, you will notice that BELIEVE! is not even a fifth of the size of RTCC, at just under 100 pages, and is a lot more open with respect to overall views and concepts. RTCC was the follow up that basically said, “OK, so that’s sort of where I am with respect to religion as a whole (BELIEVE!) now let’s take a look at this one path that I state is the best one I can see so far, and in this book, (RTCC), I went full autist, covering every aspect of Sedevacantism (i.e. the actual, current, only Catholicism left) and demonstrating it in a manner that no one has so far even attempted to refute, much less succeeded. The result is that RTCC is the foundation on which BELIVE! is really sitting on, which is probably why even if a much smaller and less detailed book, BELIEVE! has resulted in now over 100 people converting to Sedevacantist Catholicism (aka simply: Catholicism).
The reason I point all this out, is because in these last two non-fiction books, it becomes obvious that even my overall looser and more generic ideas, as expressed in BELIEVE!, for example, clearly have had a lot of genuinely positive effects on people who read them. And we know it was this that sparked the results, because BELIEVE! came first, and yet, even without all the details (presented in RTCC), it had a serious impact on people’s lives.
I see a LOT of confusion, struggles and heartache among young men today concerning intimate relationships and finding the right woman.
I literally get questions, emails, or messages on the topic to a frequency that is starting to become hard to keep up with. And as anyone that reads my blog knows, I have a rather low opinions of PUAs, and would very much hate to be mistaken for one. That said, I know for a demonstrable fact that my advice benefits these younger men, because they are getting married, having babies, and resolving issues they had for many years of their lives. I have literally had everything from friends, neighbours and even strangers, asking for advice, on an ad hoc basis, to hypnosis sessions with people that were under clinical care as supposedly paranoid schizophrenics under medication that went on to stop the medication (yes with doctor approval and full knowledge of my sessions with them) and go on to have a productive life with a functioning relationship, when prior they were 29 year old virgins. And I have been doing this for at least 15 years, with positive results.
So, perhaps, there is some utility in putting together some of the baseline concepts concerning male-female interactions and so on.
The other options (SF saga continuation) or YA SF books are, respectively, more a divertimento for myself and, a less fun, but I think helpful addition to the current dearth of adventure stories for boys mostly. I am not aware of anything like the Hardy Boys and so on coming along anytime recently, which is why Castalia House is doing well printing old classics. I would not enjoy writing such books as much as my own adult Science Fiction, but it would not be too difficult to do and they should be able to be produced fairly quickly. Although, I am not likely to be acclaimed as a children’s author anytime soon, or even long after I am dust, so the effort might not be worth it.
Anyway, I’d appreciate your thoughts on the matter, so please feel free to leave comments after you vote, thanks.
* Vox, on this post, referring to someone else, Taleb, in this case, said something that holds true for most of us. Personally I have always genuinely tried to resist the temptation, and often people have been quite “deflated” when trying to make me their “guru”, when, after being asked something I know little or nothing about or at least I don’t feel qualified to take a stand on, I simply say “I have no idea”. Some were quite insistent nevertheless and I always consciously dissuaded that, as I explained in some detail in my book Systema: The Russian Martial System.
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By G | 12 December 2023 | Posted in Ancient Technology, Believe, Books, Brazilian Ju Jitsu, Catholicism, Christianity, Face on Mars, Hypnosis, Increasing Happiness, Karate-Do, Martial Arts, Nazi Conspiracies, NAZI MOON, Overlords of Mars - 1, Overlords of Mars - 2, Poll, Reclaiming the Catholic Church, Relationships, Relationships, RPGs, Sedeprivationism, Sedevacantism, Social Commentary, StCZA - Module 0, StCZA - Q.O.R.G., Systema, Systema, The Dirty Old West, Writing