I was thinking about socialism and how wrong ideas never seem to die, regardless of how harmful or useless they proved to be. For instance, at one point more than half the world tried to implement socialism in one form or another, and it invariably produced widespread human misery. It simply does that by design, with its “eat the rich” paradigm. It eats the rich and then everybody is poor, there’s nobody to blame, and then the infighting begins, millions die, everybody is poor, and eventually people completely give up on the system and adopt some form of social Darwinism, which works excellently, produces enormous wealth and prosperity, but, of course, not everybody succeeds and then some fucking idiot re-introduces socialist ideas, like, how about redistributing that wealth so that those few poor people don’t get excluded from the widespread prosperity, so taxes are increased, the state bureaucracy is increased, free market is stressed by taxation, the worthless people get welfare and reproduce exponentially (because they are rewarded with more welfare for reproducing and failing at everything) while contributing exactly jack shit, the state goes into debt, scientific and high-tech programmes are curtailed because the socialist politicians think that all money must go to social programmes because socialism, and if there are problems, blame the evil black beast of capitalism and ask for more state control and socialism as a solution. The problem is with the concept that the poor possess virtue, that God is on their side, and that people are equal and therefore deserve the same outcomes regardless of their actual abilities and choices.

If you try to introduce some alternative to socialism or use common sense, you’re immediately attacked and “de-platformed”, as it is called – you’re a x-ist and x-phobe and all the tolerant multicultural people want to kill you. Somehow, there’s an implication that they are good, that they are progressive, despite the fact that what they are proposing was actually all tried in Stalinist Russia, and is by definition regressive because it’s a step backwards in history, and despite the fact that their socialism is probably the only political system that was scientifically tested and tried, and proved not to work, so basically if someone wants to benefit mankind, socialism is the only system he should never attempt to use because it’s worse than useless.

There are, of course, other ideas that are a disaster; determinism, for instance, which basically states that whatever you do, the end result will be the same because it’s determined by outside forces, be it God, destiny, karma or societal circumstances. By adopting such attitude you are guaranteed to fail, and this is the main reason why Catholic countries are economically usually worse off than the Protestant countries, because the Protestant countries are closer to the Jewish belief that God will reward the righteous people with wealth, while those who are not in his favour will be poor. The Catholics believe that God doesn’t work like that, and that wealth can actually be a hindrance or a temptation. Be it as it may, beliefs of this sort influence people’s work ethics and attitude, and if they believe that wealth is a reward from God, they will try to attain it, and see their success or lack thereof as feedback. I actually see the Catholic position as a contamination with Cathari beliefs that were semi-officially canonized together with St. Francis and St. Claire, where worldly possessions are seen as a spiritual burden and avoided altogether. How useful that is in a spiritual sense, it’s difficult to tell, but as an influence to economy it’s a disaster, because the wealthy and successful individuals are shunned in favour of ragged demagogues. If the wealthy aren’t respected and admired, the end result will be social apathy and widespread misery. But determinism causes an even worse problem: those who actually invest effort in order to change their situation are seen as “not having faith” or “not accepting the will of God”. This gives apathy and despondency an aura of spirituality and elevates it to the position of almost-holiness.

I understand that such negative attitudes about wealth might have been the result of unity of church and state, and that the church was so preoccupied with amassing wealth and power that it neglected its spiritual role, and that those who preached poverty might have played a constructive role of redressing an imbalance at one point, but such ideas are actively harmful from the position of economy. If you see wealth as a snare of Satan, well, nobody wants to be ensnared by Satan. I personally believe that poverty is a snare of Satan and that wealth means freedom to pursue forms of spirituality that are not pre-determined by the shackles of poverty, but I’m the enfant terrible of spirituality and nobody really listens to what I have to say.

The problem isn’t social injustice. The problem are the bad ideas that produce misery, suffering and death wherever they are implemented, but somehow still get to wear a halo of sainthood.

And regarding sainthood, it might be a very good showcase of all the widespread misconceptions and illusions which hinder spiritual and personal growth of individuals, because when you think of it, sainthood seems to be defined by poverty, self-denial, extreme compassion, self-sacrifice, detachment from all worldly issues, celibacy and, essentially, removal of oneself from all practical matters of society.

Wanna hear my definition of sainthood? A saint is a person who has a first-person realization of God, and attained success at harmonizing his/her entire life with the nature and character of God.

Which means that for me, an ideal saint is Krishna, the warrior-king who lived a life of first-person godhead and who fought, had sex, fooled around with his best friend, and inspired holy scriptures of the highest order. He wasn’t poor, he wasn’t celibate, he wasn’t self-denying, he wasn’t dedicated to “fighting his ego” or “controlling his thoughts and desires”, and to whom yoga was the art of correct action, not denial of action or removal from the world. To me, St. Francis and St. Claire are worthless examples and worthless people, because they did exactly jack shit to improve anything in the world, and if one tries to emulate their lifestyle it will be a personal disaster. The thing is, Bhagavad-gita wasn’t a result of two renunciate monks discussing haute spirituality in some cave. Bhagavata-purana wasn’t inspired by the life of Shuka the renunciate. It’s about Shuka the renunciate praising the life of Krishna the warrior king as the perfect example of what God looks like when he comes into this world.

So yeah, being a saint isn’t about being poor and naked and celibate and “controlling your ego”. It’s about being in the flesh what God is in His pure spiritual nature, and while we’re at that, we should have in mind that the probable reason why all the renunciate sages fail to understand true spirituality is that they fail to take notice of the fact that Vishnu is married to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and fortune. So the next time you think of how spiritual some poor person is, or how spiritual you must be because you’re poor, or how spiritual you are because you are ignorant of worldly affairs, remember that that the perfect image of God in this world fucked the goddess of fortune (who looks like a billion dollars BTW) while not otherwise preoccupied with waging wars, manipulating politics and inspiring holy scriptures. And the barefoot sages, they merely wrote it all down while trying to figure out what the fuck they were missing in the entire picture.