I apologize for not writing any articles in quite a while; work, among other things, had to be prioritized.

I’ve been listening to Dave Ramsey’s YouTube channel; from what I gathered, he’s a personal finance adviser who helps people get out of debt. His recurring advice is to reduce spending, pay off all debt, pay all necessary things with cash and not credit, don’t finance depreciating assets like cars, basically all the standard common-sense stuff. However, what piqued my interest is that people seem to get into debt for similar reasons regardless of their income level – it’s not that they go into debt because they can’t make ends meet, they can’t make ends meet because they spend above their income level. To an outside observer this looks irrational, but I think I get it.

There seems to be strong peer pressure involved, real or imaginary, to send outward signals of being in a higher income bracket than you in fact are, because of both positive and negative expected social attention. The positive attention is “neighbors” assuming you’re doing well and feeling envy, which boosts your ego. The negative attention is inviting scrutiny and competition if you send signals at or below your actual income level. Essentially, it’s like a cat puffing up to appear bigger than it actually is, when facing a potentially threatening situation. If you appear bigger, others will think twice before confronting you. If you appear normal or smaller than you actually are, potentially dangerous challengers might feel encouraged to encroach upon your territory. In such a challenge, you might actually lose, but any challenge is fraught with inherent dangers and if you can avoid it altogether by posturing, the better.

The problem is, posturing might be causing you other problems and might prove to be even more expensive in the long run, so on one hand it’s more dangerous than it appears and is definitely not free, and on the other hand its benefits might be overstated. Sure, you may argue that having an expensive suit, watch and car can give you an advantage in the business world and might land you a deal you would have otherwise missed on, but it is my experience that those kinds of posturing almost never work, and if they appear to, it’s usually an illusion because you landed the deal because of your other merits, and due to low self-confidence you ascribed the result to your paraphernalia. Sure, people will check out your clothes, your watch, your car, your house and other things, both consciously and unconsciously, because that’s what people do, but your competence, knowledge and actual confidence will play a much bigger role than your trinkets. Sure, there are social circles where nothing but posturing matters, but it’s my experience that those are not where the actual money is being made. For each YouTube channel where the author makes videos about his Lamborghini, there’s another channel with more subs where the author simply talks in an interesting way.

So, I conclude that expensive trinkets primarily serve the purpose of alleviating one’s anxiety, insecurity and discomfort in an uncontrolled environment. The more threatened and weak you feel, the greater the need for investing in a protective outward pose. Sure, when you’re trying to make the best possible first impression, it’s useful to check all the expected boxes, basically if people expect you to be wealthy you are expected to drive an expensive car, and if you don’t, they’ll start questioning what’s wrong, and that’s never good. However, your idea of an expensive car might actually be much more expensive than what would suffice for checking the right boxes.  A several years old nice car will do just fine. A brand new car of the same class will not improve the impression. A brand new car from a lower class, that costs more than the older high-end car, will actually be likely to start the gossip. An expensive, but not super-expensive watch might start more questions than a Casio. If you wear a Casio, the assumption is that you don’t care about watches and nobody will give a second thought about it. However, a Frederique Constant will raise the question why you didn’t buy a Jaeger-LeCoultre or a Patek. Too much posturing raises red flags – what is this guy trying to hide? What kind of incompetence, weakness or bullshit is he hiding or trying to sell? I am always suspicious of perfect façade, and trust me, I’m not alone in that. If someone looks wealthier than Bill Gates, I am almost certain he’s some kind of a con artist. If I’m trying to hire a subcontractor for some job, it’s not the guy with the most expensive gadgets who’ll get the contract, but the guy who demonstrates the most straightforward competence in the subject matter. You do, however, need to check the right boxes, or people will instinctively assume there’s something not quite right. You need to dress appropriately for your job, you need to behave appropriately for your expected social role, you need to demonstrate that you generate expected levels of income and own property. The problem starts when people are insecure and assume they need more posturing than would actually do, and in doing so, they kill themselves financially.

Sure, it’s easy for the financial advisers to tell you not to buy a car you can’t really afford, but if you’re socially threatened, if you feel insecure, those fears are strong enough to make you sick or even kill you if you don’t deal with them in some manner, and for most people the most straightforward way requires the least amount of thinking – you just buy expensive shit and live a lifestyle above your income until you’re ruined, and then your self-confidence really collapses and it’s difficult to find your way out of that tunnel. The proper way out of the trap is to gradually build your confidence by realizing people hire and appreciate you for your skills, abilities and character, and not for the things you own. Then you can buy things because you like them, not because they are a shield you desperately cling to, fearing immediate attack on the first sign of weakness.

Don’t get me wrong: you do need to send social signals, and you occasionally do need a shield. Just be careful not to overestimate the amount of shielding you need, lest you spend your way into an early grave. For instance, the price difference between a brand new Mercedes E350 CDI and a two years old Mercedes E220 CDI is a factor of 2. There’s no difference in the strength of a social signal sent by either car in a business environment. There’s no difference in the strength of a social signal sent with a 5000 USD Rolex Explorer and a 20000 USD Jaeger-LeCoultre. They all check the same boxes. The main difference is, if you’re not sure of yourself and you overspend in order to increase your perceived shielding, you will end up bankrupt. Also, your insecurities will cost you dearly in other places, so you’d do well to sort yourself out first.

I’ve been thinking about status symbols.

Initially, I’ve been questioning myself, thinking along the lines of “this is a shallow and superficial thing; why am I even considering it”, but after some thought it turned out to be a very profound matter.

But let’s not jump to the conclusion immediately; instead, I’ll guide you through my process of thinking, so that you may see how I came to my conclusion, and see whether it makes sense for you, too.

I was looking into mechanical watches, as I occasionally do, since they are a mystery to me. They are in essence obsolete technology. Their proponents talk about precision engineering and craftsmanship and what not, and I think to myself, are you fucking kidding me? Those things are Victorian iPhones. They are the only personal enhancement device one could wear on his person, and use it to show his elevation above the unwashed masses, by arriving for tea exactly on time. The unwashed masses had to rely on the church bells, which didn’t give you the ability to arrive accurately within seconds. To arrive accurately within seconds made you an upgraded human being, one that could tell time more accurately. The fact that they were expensive separated the gents from the serfs, so to speak, and people always wore them prominently, so that people knew you had a watch even when you didn’t have to use it to tell time. The fact that you had it elevated you in perceived status; the dirty peasants knew better than to mess with you, and the gents recognized you as one of their own. You were someone they could do business with, or at least share a cup of tea and get to know you, because by apparently belonging to their social circle, you were worth knowing.

I was taught to perceive this pattern as superficial, elitist and misleading, because basing your judgment on a superficial impression of a person is wrong, or so I was told. Don’t be superficial, you need to know someone better before passing judgment. Also, I was taught to perceive these things as materialistic, lacking any spiritual value or background, and as such essentially worthless.

But let’s return to the issue of watches. Today, having a watch is no longer a differentiating factor – they became so cheap, you can get an excellent one almost for free. It has a superbly accurate quartz movement that’s an order of magnitude more accurate than a mechanical watch, it’s reliable, cheap to maintain by changing the battery every few years, some look very good, and some are excellently made. I have a Casio Edifice chronograph, which is extremely well made, reliable and for some seven years or so that I abused it in all possible ways I think I changed the battery twice, and other than that I just put it on and did whatever. I paid $130 for it, or something in that ballpark, and I got the functionality that’s identical to the mechanical Omega Speedmaster Professional, which costs around $3500 for the base model. So, essentially, a mechanical watch is a 27 times more expensive way of getting the same functionality and looks. Who in his right mind would pay that much more? Well, it turns out, many people. If you pay 27 times more than you have to, it’s a statement. The first part of the statement is “I can afford it”, and the second part is, “I know better”. So basically, by buying a mechanical watch you’re saying that you have huge amounts of disposable income, basically you have money lying around in piles that you have no useful purpose for since you already solved all your material problems, and you can pursue hobbies such as haute horlogerie, which makes you not only a wealthy person, but one of refined taste and knowledge, essentially you’re making yourself known to people of similar status and inclinations, so that they can avoid the arduous task of getting to know and discarding masses of irrelevant people and get straight to you. It is very similar to the way in which animals use scent or scratch marks to make their presence known to other animals of the same species. It’s a very quick and efficient way of telling another tiger that you live there. It makes accidents avoidable, and if someone really wants to find you, it’s easy.

The human signals are not only about financial status. More often, they are a complicated thing, signaling your taste, level of education, personality, even spiritual depth. Those signals are sent by modifying one’s physical appearance and behavior. Examples:

So you see my point? It’s not that the person in the first picture doesn’t have money. The problem is, money can’t buy taste, and the more money you have, the more tasteless shit you can wear around your neck, signaling your lack of class. Let’s say those three sit in a pub and you can choose which one to approach and start a conversation. What you were previously likely willing to dismiss as superficial is now quite useful. It is useful if one wears symbols of his religion; if one wears a cross around his neck, you know what that person likely stands for, and how you can not insult him by accident. If one dresses like a Hare Krishna, you know that person is most likely vegetarian and you know what food not to offer him. Also, you already know everything there is to know about that person’s religious beliefs. You know what books he’s read, what he believes, what he practices, and based on your personal inclinations you can do with that information whatever you want, but you just cannot deny that it was effectively communicated. If a person introduces himself as a PhD or an MD, you know a great deal about that person already: you don’t have to talk to someone for hours in order to figure out that this person is smart. It can be communicated more quickly and easily, so that you can either start or avoid communication, to your preference. The looks can tell you much more than you might be willing to accept, and it’s not just looks, but the overall bearing of a person, the way he holds himself, the way he talks, and many other things you unconsciously take in, in order to form an impression.

By modifying your appearance, you signal your system of values. You choose whether to be approachable or isolated, whether you’re in the mood for work or fun, you communicate your ideas of work and your ideas of fun, you communicate your opinion on the situation you are in, and your level of control over the situation. By choosing your clothes, you also make certain choice of language and actions expected and acceptable – for instance, you expect perfect command of language from a well-dressed gentleman, and you expect slurred talk and poor command of language from someone who looks like a street thug. Also, from a well-dressed gentleman you expect to be ignored, because this choice of attire signals isolation and very specific focus. From someone who looks like a thug, you expect to be treated disrespectfully and invasively. Sure, those impressions can be deceptive, but if you’re honest with yourself, you will recognize that you remember those exceptions better because they are so rare it is shocking. In most cases, people really communicate so much about themselves, that if you understand their signals, you can tell what they want to communicate, you can see how they perceive desirable qualities, and you can use that to guesstimate much about themselves, all by the most superficial of impressions. People want to believe that they are deep and difficult to understand, but most are really not.

So, what watch would you wear? Whatever you choose is a signal. If you don’t wear one, it means you think you’re a modern person who has a smartphone with him and doesn’t need a watch (or, alternatively, that you are beyond material things). If you wear a cheap one, it means you just don’t give a shit, you use it to tell time quickly when you’re on your bike or running, or you don’t feel like getting your phone out just to check time. If you wear a fake one, you basically signal that you’re a pretentious, insecure and deceptive person, who wants to show off as better than he is, because he thinks if you knew the real him, you would loathe him. If you wear an expensive watch, you can choose one everybody will recognize as expensive, such as Rolex, or one that is possibly much more expensive, such as Vacheron Constantin, which very few will recognize, but those few are the only ones you want to target with your signal. You can choose a message you want to put out: “I’m someone who has money, taste and power. What I want from you is to recognize this, and either get out of my fucking way, or do business with me” is a message you communicate with a Rolex. “I am so incredibly wealthy, powerful and sophisticated, that everybody who needs to know who I am already does” is a message you communicate with a Patek Philippe or a Vacheron Constantin. However, there are other possibilities: “I have money, but I want people to think I’m not superficial, so I decide to send signals that are unrecognizable to most, if not all, because I’m not really sure what I’m trying to do here” is a message you will send with a Grand Seiko. And let me be quite clear with this: everybody will tell you they do things for themselves and they don’t care about how others perceive them, but that’s bullshit. People dress in a way that communicates their self-image, their values, their priorities, their understanding of themselves and their relationship with the wider universe. Even if you deliberately dress like shit, it’s to show others that you want them to think of you as a person who wants them to transcend the outward appearance and judge you on other qualities – essentially, it’s a call to get to know the deeper you. Whether there is anything there to know, is another matter.

The surprising thing is, this way of communicating your essence to others, it’s not restricted to the physical plane. In the spiritual plane of existence, it is even more important and pronounced, because the outward appearance tells you much more about the soul’s true nature than it does here. The souls clearly show their spiritual achievements and status in their appearance. If you can imagine one wearing his academic degrees in his appearance, as jewels or medals, you get the general picture: it’s like doctor in the hospital wearing a name tag with his title on his white coat. You immediately recognize him as a doctor. In the spiritual world, you don’t need a uniform or a name tag, because all of this is communicated from your appearance. Nobody would need to tell you that someone is a saint or an angel; it would be obvious the moment you see him. Much of our behavior in this world seems to be derived from our expectation that things should work the same way here as they do in the spiritual world, and so we put great weight on first impressions and outward appearance.

It’s certainly something to think about.

Every time I say something somebody doesn’t like, there’s a response I can predict with reasonable confidence: I’ll be accused of some bias.

As a response to this, I made an illustration:

This picture depicts one of my photos along with the equipment that was used to capture and process it. I used a Sony camera with a Canon lens, Soligor macro extender and a Viltrox Canon-Sony adapter. The computer is a 15” Macbook Pro Retina (the last one with proper ports), and the software used is Adobe Lightroom. The picture itself was taken with Olympus E-PL1 camera with its 14-42mm kit lens and edited on my other computer, a Windows 10 desktop machine, also in Lightroom. As you can probably guess, every part of that machine was made by a different manufacturer, and I picked them according to my preference.

So, what am I trying to say here? It’s not that I don’t give a fuck about what I use. I’m actually very careful about my gear, and I know exactly why I chose something. The camera is a sensor-stabilized 35mm mirrorless device with a tiltable screen and a high-performance electronic viewfinder which allows me to get 100% magnification straight from the sensor while working in strong daylight or on the forest floor. The lens is a super-sharp unit with large aperture and excellent portrait-rendering of background blur. Coupled with the macro extender to reduce the minimum focusing distance, it allows me to make f/1.8 macro shots which are essentially controlled blur with one sharp detail. The macro extender was chosen because it’s a light plastic tube with metal mounts, and it has electronic connections that allow communication of focus and aperture commands and information between lens and the camera. The Viltrox adapter was chosen because it’s well made, the electronics are as good as the best and the most popular device on the market, but it’s much cheaper; and so on. At first it looks like a haphazard combination, but each component was carefully picked according to my very strict criteria.

That’s what I mean when I say that I’m a meritocrat. It’s the Martin Luther King kind of meritocracy – I don’t care who made it, what label there is on the box, or what color it is. I just want it to be good, to perform well and to give good results. That’s my personal bias: I hate crappy shit. I love stuff that works well. I’m brand agnostic and I can work with anything. And now the controversial part: I have exactly the same criterion for everything, humans included. I don’t give a rat’s arse about superficial criteria. I don’t care about gender, race, skin color, sexual orientation or whatever else, but I hate assholes, I hate liars, I hate stupid people, basically, I treat humans like I treat lenses. I don’t care if you’re a Canon, Nikon, Olympus or Sony. What I care about is how you render images, how you behave under pressures and rigours of daily functioning, I care how you act from day one to decades into the future. In the end, it’s all about the end-result.

Lenses, cameras, computers and people can be either good, or they can suck, and it’s never neatly organized by brand, color or some other superficial designation. Yes, people can suck. They can be worthless. They are not the same, or even alike. The same manufacturers can make equipment that’s great, and equipment that’s shit. Likewise, there are people that conform to the same superficial designation of race, gender or whatever, that can be either great, or shit. Yes, some people are worthless shit. Some people are great. And that’s how I see things. With me, you don’t have rights because you’re human. You have privileges if you’re great. And if I dislike you, you can comfort yourself that it’s because I have some bias against some group you belong to, but that’s never true. If I dislike you, it’s because I think that you, as a person, are a sack of shit.

But yeah, I also think that some groups, in general, are shit. I think there are lens manufacturers that are shit, and I am generally skeptical of anything Sony makes, because they tend to make overpriced shit that looks good on the outside but usually has serious build quality issues, and non-existent after-sale support. Guess what, that didn’t prevent me from buying their camera when they made a good one. So, what’s my punch-line here? You’re not racist if you think the Africans are, in general, aggressive retards without any sense of good taste. You’re a racist if this opinion clouds your judgment about a particular African who happens to be an intelligent, educated, kind person with excellent taste. So it’s perfectly fine to think that most members of some group are sub-par, as long as you keep judging every individual on his own merit. It’s also fine if you initially assume the worst about an individual because he’s a member of some shitty group, as long as that doesn’t stop you from allowing the individual to prove his worth. That’s my take on bias. It’s fine to have it, but you need to be a meritocrat. You need to allow the exceptions to raise up, even if you’re fully justified in having prejudice and making generalizations. Generalizations are usually all justified, but you need to have in mind that those are merely emotional representations of statistical trends, and if you look at the graph of statistical distribution of datapoints within a group, you will see two things.

First, the position of the normal part of the population justifies your prejudice. Second, the existence of datapoints beyond 2 standard deviations to the right justifies giving the group members a chance to prove themselves. This is how it would be possible for a white guy to be racist against Africans, marry an African girl who happens to be an exceptionally smart and kind person, and still be racist against Africans, because he understands that there are rules and there are exceptions. Not understanding the existence of general rules doesn’t make you tolerant, open-minded and liberal, it makes you stupid. Not understanding the existence of exceptions makes you a closed-minded person, to the point of being outright evil. Believe in the general rules, but allow for the exceptions.

I noticed something when I was browsing through my YouTube subscriptions these days.

The technology channels are very interesting, if repetitive. The gadgets that we have available today, and I mean the smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, are wonderful to the extent of surpassing most of science fiction predictions, except for the lack of AI. However, when I see what people do with it all, it becomes a fucking nightmare. ISIS recording destruction of precious historic artifacts in high def video; a bunch of utter morons constantly typing from their amygdala region, producing angry but at the same time demented comments, anxious that they will miss an event and fail to voice their worthless, idiotic opinions. It looks like millions of monkeys slamming on typewriters, and the result certainly isn’t Hamlet. More likely, it’s the common denominator and essence of monkey. We live in an era of the most beautiful technological artifacts, and the worst degeneracy of human spirit.

I am deliberately exposing myself to that in order to observe my reactions, and I can tell you, I’m getting depressed, because I feel that it’s all completely impervious to anything I could personally do.

For instance, labeling the opposition in order to provoke the “audience” into some kind of “moral outrage” which removes need for any further discussion, this appears to be the mainstream of what is considered to be an argument. Unfortunately, this always works, because the main motor of everybody’s participation in any kind of social activity is peer approval, which is most easily gained by manifesting outrage at everything that is accepted by consensus to be outrageous, and approval of everything that is accepted as laudable. Call someone a Nazi and you basically won, because if he’s a Nazi you’re not expected to actually argue with a Nazi, right? Publicly approve of helping puppies, hungry children and vulnerable minorities and you will be accepted by your peers as a good person, without any need to actually personally exhibit traits of goodness in any kind of a real situation. It’s all easier than solving actual problems, or deciding what is actually good or evil. You fight Hitler by calling him Hitler, as if all problems can be solved by proper labeling, which will result in likes on Facebook and retweets. Call a victim of pedophilia a pedophile-apologist if he refuses to claim victimhood and deals with his situation in some other way. Always sympathize with victims, always try to find the “oppressors”. Unless the oppressors happen to be Muslims. In that case, attack the victims, because the leftist organizations are financed by Muslim money.

And what can I do to oppose such idiocy? Because, you see, that’s what it all is. You don’t defeat evils by creating public outrage. You don’t become good by liking all the right things. You don’t actually win the second world war again if you call someone you don’t like a Nazi, punch him in the face, and then say, “of course it’s right to punch a Nazi, right?”. That’s how you become the closest approximation to the actual Nazis, because you mislabel in order to justify violence, and then you start persecution. It’s not even the right question; the right question is whether it’s permissible to call someone a Nazi in an argument, let alone justify evil actions based on labels. It is not – labeling doesn’t give your arguments strength, it only allows you to avoid using any, and instead to use ad hominem and ad consensu gentium, which are logical fallacies.

You become good, actually good, by appropriating aspects of God’s spirit, and thus participating in eternity.

Tell me, how many do you know who have succeeded in that? Not many, right? And tell me, what do you think is the rightful position of all the rest, in the eyes of Eternity? Precarious at best, yes?

If that isn’t motivation enough to stop deceiving yourself and others with worthless endeavors, I don’t know what would suffice.