Author Archives: danijel

Prey species

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I would say that humans in general, and people in the West in particular, have a very strange way of understanding evil. For instance, decades ago I played with the Star Wars lore when explaining certain spiritual concepts, and stated that Darth Vader was the “avatar” in that context, the one who did whatever had to be done in order to defeat evil, and that he wasn’t actually evil – he’s an extremely brave person that handles dangers personally instead of sending his minions to die while hiding in his far away fortress, for instance. If I recall correctly, I made that analysis somewhere around 1997-1998, which means it predates the prequels. Lo and behold, now the official Star Wars canon supports my interpretation; Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader is indeed “the chosen one”. To me, this interpretation was completely obvious when watching the original trilogy, but I honestly never found anyone else with the same interpretation, because, apparently, the fact that someone wears black, speaks in deep ominous voice, is profoundly threatening, and kills and tortures people whenever he deems appropriate, is simply too much of an obstacle for them to be able to see that person as, fundamentally, something God brought into existence to re-balance things. Apparently, the things God creates to re-balance things need to be “good”, and “good” beings are basically the fluffy bunnies of the world, never the eagles. It is here that I got the first inklings of the idea that humans don’t really have any concepts of right and wrong, or an understanding of the actual God. It’s all genetics, a projection of fears and desires of a prey species that imagines God as someone who will save them from the predators. The fact that something that is obviously and inherently a prey species grew to become the world’s top predator through use of tools doesn’t seem to change the way they internally perceive themselves. Christianity, obviously, is largely at fault here, because I can’t really see this mentality in the Roman Empire, for instance, but the fact that such an ethical system was so widely adopted makes me believe there’s something genetic there, especially when I perceive how the humans tend to emotionally identify with and root for the prey animal when watching an eagle or a lion hunt. Perhaps it is because in a normal human society, most humans are deprived of any power, and only the small number of rulers acts as a predatory subspecies.

I found a more recent example of this in the Witcher games (spoilers and in-game lore ahead). There’s a character there, Gaunter O’Dimm, who is generally accepted to be the devil of some sorts, “evil incarnate”. At the first glance, that checks out – he apparently tricks people with wordplay and “fine print” when fulfilling their wishes, which turn out to doom them. He is also known to kill people who annoy him and curse others. However, at a deeper inspection, this interpretation falls apart, because he seems to be very picky about his targets, and very obviously fails to exploit an opportunity to trick and ensnare Geralt, flat-out refusing to grant a wish that would have deadly unforeseen consequences, and his trade with Geralt is inherently fair; he saved his life in exchange for help, and he helped Geralt succeed and literally adhered to the terms of the deal. Also, the advice he gives to good people is actually very good; at a wedding party he teaches an old woman about time as an essential ingredient of a cookie, gives Geralt good and accurate advice when he needs to find Yennefer, or when he seems to come to an impasse with Shani, or when he asks how to save Ciri. There’s no trickery involved; the advice is very straightforward and helpful. When I tried to categorise the character, I had to categorise him as “lawful good”, which came as a surprise to me. Another surprise came when I tried to identify similar characters in the game, and I came up with the Lady of the Lake. They both seem to have their own rules which they both impose on the world and personally obey; they promote what they see as good and punish what they see as evil. However, since the Lady of the Lake looks cute and sexy, apparently nobody else saw that she’s the same category of entities as Gaunter O’Dimm, the “devil” of the in-game world. However, let’s see the facts. Olgierd von Everec was a nobleman who surrounded himself by a gang of cutthroats and thugs, and studied black magic. He tried to marry a good and beautiful woman, but since he “ran out of money” (which doesn’t look like an accident for someone who roamed the world with his thugs rather than tend to his estate) her parents chose to give her to another, an Ofieri prince. He then proceeded to curse the Prince, and sell his soul to the “devil” in exchange for wealth and eternal life; he then proceeded to destroy everything he touched, including his wife, and proceeded to feel sorry for himself all the while destroying everything he touched. We see his gang setting fire to some people’s estate which they took by force and terrorized the owners, and we see him planning to destroy more people who didn’t “show hospitality” to his gang. Basically, he’s scum of the earth in every conceivable way, and if not for Gaunter O’Dimm, Geralt would actually die as a consequence of doing a contract for Olgierd; he was captured and would have been executed.

The second known victim was the spotted wight of the Trastamara estate in Toussaint, who used to be a beautiful arrogant noble woman whom Gaunter O’Dimm tested by pretending to be a beggar and asking for alms, and she responded that she would rather give the remains of her feast to the dogs than feed him, at which he cursed her to basically become an ugly creature that can’t eat.

See a pattern there? Guess who is also known to curse people for very similar reasons? Lady of the Lake. Remember the Golyat, the giant Geralt and his guides kill when first entering Toussaint? To cite Witcher lore: “According to legend, Golyat had once been a knight who violated his vows, for which he was punished by the Lady of the Lake.”

So, when Gaunter O’Dimm punishes the arrogant noblewoman for violating the ancient rite of hospitality by turning her into a monster, he’s the devil, and when the Lady of the Lake punishes a knight for “violating his vows” (we can assume he did something particularly cruel and ugly) by turning him into a monster, she’s what? The protector-saint of the five chivalric virtues? In my analysis, both are “lawful good”. They have rules under which they act, they help the good characters and punish the evil ones, under their rules. For instance, Gaunter O’Dimm kills the pestilent useless drunkard who annoys him by preventing Geralt from reaching his table to talk to him, and he “shows particular interest” in a mage who made him the object of his study, and it’s hard to tell whether he cursed him to die when leaving a circle drawn in a room, or simply foresees this as a future event, considering his mastery of time.

It’s interesting that both Gaunter O’Dimm and Lady of the Lake see Geralt the same way; they understand that he’s someone who is wise, compassionate, brave, honest and extremely competent, and is essentially someone who keeps reducing people’s suffering and removing evils from the world, but this reality is not something that is either widely known or obvious to people; you need to be able look beneath the appearance and into the reality of things. Also, they are both some sort of a predator that selectively attacks cruel, arrogant and evil people, thus motivating others to adhere to moral principles, because they show by vivid example the dangers of being a callous bastard – you can cross paths with someone who will really end your career.

As a comparison, look at how the Crones of Crookbag Bog do things, and I categorise them as “lawful evil”, because they follow certain rules, but the end-result is that Velen, which is “under their protection”, is a hell on Earth. For instance, when a crone says a “prophecy” to Geralt, it’s a lie that consists of enough elements of truth to make it really dangerous, which is an attribute I would associate with Satan. They also have the ability to appear beautiful in order to seduce and deceive; the humans in Velen pray and sacrifice to them as if they were protective deities.

All in all, I would say that humans as a species are very much obsessed with good and evil, but they also have a terrible track record at being able to define those two in terms that have any bearing on the actual reality. When I heard someone state that all legally sane people can tell the difference between right and wrong, I started laughing. People couldn’t tell the difference in case of Jesus, which one would expect to be as obvious as it gets. One would expect equal propensity for mistaking saints for devils, devils for saints, and all kinds of dubious characters for either/both. Or, as I would put it, if one isn’t firmly founded in the darshan of God, everything he knows about reality amounts to shit.

It’s nothing, really…

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New York broadcast a PSA with advice in case of a nuclear attack:

But nothing’s going on, there’s no danger, really, move along now people, no conspiracy theories, it’s not like America is in a hot war with Russia, hoping Russia will pretend it’s just yellow rain and not America pissing on them.

 

Liberalism

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Liberalism, as it exists currently in the west, is very much a misnomer – theoretically, it should be the worldview of “you do you, I’ll do me”, basically being able to pick the direction and shape of your life, without external limitations being placed upon you by religion, nation etc.

However, in practice it turned into violent, intolerant mobs attacking people who think differently (not only on the Internet, but with bricks and chains as well; google “Antifa” for details), with practices of labeling that I haven’t seen since the collapse of communism; basically, they invent a loaded label that would sound harmless enough in a free society, but would get you persecuted and imprisoned in a communist totalitarian country. This is not liberalism; there’s absolutely nothing “liberal” about this setup. This is totalitarian Marxism, with very few minor tweaks introduced to get it past people’s bullshit detector – class warfare is rebranded as environmentalism, social justice or fight for the “rights” of some group that’s marginalized for good reasons, such as crazy people who can’t adjust to reality and want to pretend they are the opposite gender (in benign cases) or aliens or cats (in less benign cases). In a normal society, a male swimmer or wrestler who starts claiming he’s a woman would be given psychiatric help. In this insane society, they are believed and everybody who has a problem with them is bullied by the neo-marxist “social justice” mobs.

This is not how I understand liberalism. In a truly liberal society, such a person would say he’s a woman, and I would say “go fuck yourself”. He’s within his right to claim nonsense, and I’m within my right to call him out on it. In a totalitarian society, there’s an ideological police that doesn’t allow you to call out people on their bullshit if it’s the kind of bullshit that’s promoted by the central committee of The Party. I’ve lived in a country that had official ideological bullshit protected by the police and the courts, thank you very much, so I know what it looks like. It’s not liberalism, it’s totalitarian Marxism dressing up as something else so it would pass by our defenses.

The Marxist worldview is basically this: there was a money tree in the early past, and some people got to it first and took most of the money for themselves, so it wasn’t equally distributed among the people. That’s called “the initial distribution of capital”. Search/replace “capital” with ”privilege” and you suddenly understand where the modern leftists are getting their inspiration. Basically, there’s the initial accumulation of capital/privilege, it causes a self-perpetuating circle of social injustice, and we need the revolution to redistribute wealth and cancel privilege or whatever, and then it’s all going to be great and rosy, we just need to kill all the “reactionaries”, meaning the people who object to such a wonderfully progressive plan.

However, if we focus on the actual liberalism, I’m having serious issues with that, as well. You see, liberalism is only superficially egalitarian, because “you do you, I’ll do me” works fine when we’re talking about fashion and taste. However, the huge differences in personal power that result from vast differences in individual wealth make that sound like “let them eat cake”; there’s a reason why nefarious super-wealthy people like Soros advocate for “open society”, because in a society without limits, someone like him, with immense wealth, can do whatever he wants, and everybody else is basically left without any influence or protection. Liberalism in an economically equal society means that the excesses of individuals cancel each other out. In an economically vastly unequal society, where the few billionaires own half the world, it means that those billionaires get to do whatever they want, because you no longer have religion to set the basic principles of the game that must not be violated (for instance, that breeding children for replacement organs for rich people is off limits), and you no longer have national borders that would protect citizens from external threats and foreign ideologies that threaten the local traditions and society. One can now say that “human rights” will protect you, and I say “bollocks”, because the human rights are an arbitrary concept that’s voted into existence by some globalist clique, in order to replace the religious concept of divine-ordained law, and some globalist clique can also vote changes into existence, that will turn the world into a giant concentration camp. If the covid lockdowns are not sufficient demonstration of the principle to you, then you are too stupid to argue with.

So far, a combination of religion defining the basic morality of the playing field, the state defining the fair basic rules and punishments for transgressors in alignment with those religious principles, the people accepting the basic rules without question, and the free market capitalism implementing the practicalities, proved to be the only system that is both just and fair. I’m not saying “equal”, because I really don’t care about that too much; what matters is that the rules of the playing field are fair. The fact that there will be losers is actually essential, because that’s what happens in a free system. What prevents the free system from becoming a merciless predatory nightmare are the religious principles that make you help the victims of a fire or an earthquake, instead of attacking them in their moment of weakness, and either selling them on the market as slaves or recycling them for spare parts for the rich people. Obviously, liberal capitalism, without moral restrictions that have to come from a place much higher than the “free market”, inevitably turns into a Darwinian nightmare that selects for power and ruthlessness. “Human rights” as an alternative protective concept isn’t worth shit, which is obvious from the fact that “secular humanism” has been an incessant bloodbath since it first came to power in the French revolution. “Equality, liberty and brotherhood” in practice meant mass guillotine orgies. “Human rights” in practice mean some globalist forum controlling everybody’s fate “because they know best”, and, incidentally, they get to tell you what “human rights” actually mean, because they are making this shit up as they go. Basically, if you accept “human rights”, you basically replaced a Church that prays to God for guidance and believes it is ultimately responsible to God for their actions, with a Church that believes there is no God, and they are the next best thing.

Eagles hunting rats

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There’s an aspect of the current Russia/Ukraine war that is seldom addressed.

I’ve seen analysts wondering why Ukraine isn’t tactically retreating and regrouping their forces, instead giving them the suicidal orders to stand and fight until they are destroyed or forced to surrender. One argument was that they are buying time for some kind of reinforcement army to arrive from the west and turn the tide of war, but that’s nonsense, because there isn’t any army in the West that will save them. That’s obvious from the fact that all the new weapons and reinforcements are immediately sent to the Donbass front line.

The actual reason is that their positions in Donbass have been heavily fortified over the years, and those fortifications are their greatest assets. The second greatest asset that they have is Putin’s reluctance to hit civilian targets, which they are abusing by hiding in populated areas which greatly limits Russian ability to use heavy weaponry to dig them out. Basically, it’s not really a war of equal parties; it’s a situation similar to a fox or an eagle trying to dig out a small animal that is hiding in a hole in the ground. Of course the small animal is not “tactically retreating”, because the moment it leaves the hole in the ground, it’s dead. The only place the Russians are having a problem with them is a reinforced concrete hole in the ground surrounded by apartment buildings full of innocent people. The only “tactical maneuver” Ukraine has at their disposal is to fire at Russian positions from a civilian building, and if the Russians fire back, they make a video with dead civilians and upload it to the Internet, and they wait for something to change geopolitically with the passage of time, for instance a new front opening in Lithuania or Moldova, NATO entering direct hot war with Russia and so on. Basically, they are a groundhog or a meerkat hiding in the underground tunnels, while an eagle is camping at the exit, ready to eat them if they try to make a run for it, and they are counting on something changing if they wait long enough, because it’s not like they can do much about it in any case. There have been attempts by both Ukraine and America to distract the Russians and try to force them to change the winning strategy – bomb civilians in Donbass, attack that tiny island outpost in the middle of nowhere, cook up trouble in Moldova and Lithuania, and so on; it’s not working, because the Russians actually know how to wage wars, apparently. They are very unlikely to change their pattern of action before they retake the entirety of Donbass, and before they completely destroy all the Ukrainian fortifications and troops there. Only then would I expect them to say that “phase 2” is complete, and it’s anybody’s guess what they would do next. It’s very obvious what they are doing now – they are taking their sweet time digging the groundhog from a hole in the ground, because they have all the time in the world, they don’t want to do risky things that would have them lose men and equipment, they don’t want to endanger the civilians more than absolutely necessary, and the enemy is doomed anyway so they might as well win at the smallest possible cost to themselves. It’s not like they have long supply lines that cost them money; for them, it’s basically home turf, and they have endless supplies of fuel, food and equipment. Basically, the longer this takes, the more troops they get to rotate through the war and have them gather experience, and NATO is seriously bleeding assets on the other side, in a situation where they can’t afford it.

Update

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I haven’t been writing much because of several reasons; first, it’s quite obvious that things are proceeding according to the patterns I explained before, and I have nothing new to add, for the most part. Second, I’m actually trying to avoid watching the news all day because it’s toxic; it keeps me at a heightened stress level and I can’t keep this up indefinitely, so I take breaks whenever it’s possible.

As I see things, the situation in Ukraine will soon reach a point where the entire Ukrainian state will completely collapse; its actual functioning army has held for so long because it was utilizing the static fortifications they built over the years in the occupied parts of Donbass, which made it very hard for the Russians to advance unless they were willing to either accept great casualties on their side, or use weapons of mass destruction against the enemy, and they decided against both. However, when those fortifications fall, and the Ukrainians lose the majority of the fighting force because all of their viable army is currently holding those positions, there’s nothing that can really stop Russia’s westward advance. When Kramatorsk falls, it’s game over for Ukraine.

In order to prevent the imminent collapse of Ukraine, America prodded Lithuania, which in this picture resembles that little snarky critter that protrudes from Jabba the Hutt’s slimy arsehole, to blockade Kaliningrad and provoke Russia into opening a new front there in order to protect their assets. The Russians are taking their sweet time formulating a response, which means they understand the situation perfectly, and are designing a response that will improve their strategic position.

The G7 made another fantastically stupid move by blocking Russia’s gold exports. The idea is to reduce Russia’s ability to liquidate their gold holdings when they need cash. What the G7 idiots don’t understand is that Russia doesn’t need liquidity; they are functioning at a large surplus for the last decade or something, and using this surplus to buy more gold, so access to an international credit line or ability to sell assets for cash don’t actually mean anything to them; if anything, they have a surplus of foreign currency already, and their foreign trade is increasingly migrating towards non-Western directions, and the clearing is performed in non-Western currencies. This means that the Russian state/central bank will be able to buy more gold at subsidised prices, because that’s where the surplus will go, and the gold producers will be unable to sell gold to G7 countries, and/or for G7 currencies. As a result, Russia will have even greater gold reserves, and introducing a gold-standard for the Ruble will start looking like a really good idea. Also, this will reduce the amount of physical gold available on the G7 markets, putting increasing strain on the paper market, and making it very tempting for someone with lots of resources to attempt a short squeeze against it. I would read this as “China” and “US bonds”. All kinds of shit will hit the fan if events start following this course, because flooding the market with US bonds and draining all the physical gold from the Western markets is absolutely the last thing America and Britain would want.

Crypto currencies are doing what is expected of balloons in a cactus field, but that’s expected by all but the most hardened cryptins (from “crypto” and “cretin”, if it’s not obvious enough). Psychologically, the collapse of all those unbacked “assets” and derivatives is necessary for re-establishing the economy of sound assets, which means that shares of companies that make money and pay dividends are worth more, and things that are actually more important for survival are worth more. Crazy, right? The problem is, once things start going that way, the G7 economies will start figuring out that “G” stands not for “great” but for “gowno”, pardon my Polish.

Also, the governments had a splendid idea of trying to avoid inflation by refusing to raise salaries. That’s an incredibly stupid idea because this will produce an instant public revolt when people who can’t afford food simply dispense with the entire political class, by hanging them all at the lamp posts, and, likely, at all those surveillance cameras they installed lately.