I must admit that this Andrew Tate person (or at least his public persona) pissed me off more than I expected, but probably for reasons other than one might expect. For instance, I agree with most of what he’s saying. I don’t like his flamboyant behaviour, or the way he doesn’t seem to really connect with women, but that’s not what pissed me off.

What pissed me off is that he tries to teach people never to be content with anything, never to settle for “good enough”, never to transcend base greed, never to stop trying to acquire status by flaunting status symbols, never to stop and think and understand that appearance of power and appearance of freedom do not magically produce the real thing, when acquired. I kept having an argument with a simulated Tate in my head, and it bothered me that I couldn’t answer some of his boisterous arguments in an immediate and satisfactory way. “Where’s your Bugatti?”, for instance, is something I can’t answer with a satisfactory sound bite. I don’t have enough money to be able to afford such an object, and then decide against it because I’m being reasonable, or because I don’t really want it. It is true, however, that when I acquired a significant amount of money, I stopped caring about “status symbols” to a very large degree, which is something I understand; when I was financially threatened, I felt the need to maintain a defensive posture that would prevent the “sharks” from smelling my blood in the water, so to speak, so I kept the appearance of having money when I was deeply in debt and everything felt very fragile. I would buy the most expensive car I could possibly manage, in order to maintain the appearance of wealth and security, in order to discourage attacks by my enemies. I don’t know if any of it worked, but that was my reasoning. It was all based on instinct, the way a cat puffs itself up to appear bigger when scared, and acting on such instinct probably only depleted my scarce resources, but in hindsight I don’t see how those resources could have been used for something constructive; the situation was too profoundly bad for constructive measures at that point, and I correctly felt that I need to just buy time, survive while maintaining a defensive posture, until the situation that was presently outside of my control improves. One would expect that, later, when I not only got out of debt, but started making quite a bit of money, I would start preening like that Tate peacock, but that didn’t happen. What I noticed is that I was buying the stuff that I would normally need, but I could do it properly now. If I needed a laptop, I could just buy a proper one that meets my needs, not something second-hand from ebay, or something barely adequate because it’s cheap. If I needed clothes, I could just walk into a store and buy whatever I needed. I pay the bills immediately, not postpone it until the latest possible moment. I buy the fuel when I need it, not when I can afford it. If I feel like going somewhere for a day, I just do; I don’t have to wait until I have enough money for fuel. If I need a computer, I buy really good components, not the cheapest ones that barely work for me. So, money is good, and poverty is shit. However, what I noticed is that this peaked quite quickly; basically, for the most part, I still buy the same kind of stuff that I previously used, but I can easily afford it now. Before, I had to buy a seven year old car, and even then it was a stretch. Now I can just go to a car salon and buy something, but I still drive cars of exactly the same type and class I did before; it’s just that I buy them new now, and I can easily afford it. I once thought that, if I could buy a new BMW M5, that I would immediately do it, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I bought normal cars, and when I found a good deal on them. I wondered why that was, and one possible answer was that I don’t have enough money to buy such a thing and not reduce the amount of money I have significantly, and that certainly is one factor, but that would not have stopped me in the bad years, when I felt financially vulnerable and threatened; I’d spend everything I had on such a status symbol, and go into debt as much as possible; the self-preservation preening instinct was just too strong to allow for reasonable action. When I look at Tate, it seems that for some people this never goes away even when they become wealthy, they develop an insatiable greed in their years of poverty, a greed that can never be sated, a hole that can never be filled. That didn’t happen to me; I reacted with defensive instincts when I was in real trouble, but once I replaced all the things that wore out or broke during the bad years, I basically got to a point where I relaxed and calmed down, capped my expenses at a reasonable, slightly above average level, and started saving money.

That’s one thing that annoyed me with Tate – he tries to provoke people into keeping up the endless spiral of greed and preening, into destroying themselves financially and making potentially dangerous financial moves in order to be able to afford a lifestyle of incredible wastefulness, because he convinced them that freedom and safety are only possible at the upper echelons of wealth. Considering how he and his brother are currently in a Romanian prison, under whatever fake charges America told the Romanians to invent, and his opulent and boisterous lifestyle not only didn’t prevent that, but arguably caused it, I could flip the question and ask him where his Bugatti is, now. This, however, doesn’t satisfy me, because the fact that I don’t actually have enough money to really do all the things I would want to is something I feel to be a valid argument against me, so let’s see how I would actually answer it if I wanted to be perfectly honest. I would answer that I am a slave, a prisoner and a cripple. I can’t fly, or teleport, or change shape of my body, or extend my mind as well as I would want to. I am confronted with my limitations whenever I try to do anything I have no talent for – I can’t read or compose music, for instance; I have only limited understanding of electronics, and always had issues with mathematics, because I am slightly dyslexic to the point where I make mistakes copying long sequences of numbers and symbols, and I make mistakes when solving long equations, even when I completely understand how they should be solved. Some things come to me with trivial ease, and for some my brain just doesn’t work and it feels like trying to push through a brick wall. So, I’m limited by my lack of ability, by my lack of talent, by fundamental immutable physical limitations of my body, by the characteristics of the world, by limited resources at my disposal, and so on. The most painful limitation is that God hides himself from my sight; I feel the presence, and I can be much more than I can see, but for the most part I have to try really hard not to think about it because it hurts like fucking hell. I can’t meditate because I immediately hit an artificial wall, that was put there because God apparently thinks I have to remain in the state of separation in order to do the things I have to do, so when I meditate and hit that wall I feel helpless frustration caused by the fact that it’s not up to me; I actually sometimes wish that it were because I fucked up, because then I could work on fixing it, I could repent, or work hard to repay whatever debt, or something. So, I am limited, and I hate it, but the point where I get incredibly pissed at the imagined “where’s your Bugatti?” question is that the damn fool asking it doesn’t understand the enormous extent of my problem. Sure, I can’t buy a 5M USD car, but honestly, I can buy a 200K USD car, and I still bought one that’s ten times cheaper, just because I knew that a more expensive car won’t solve my problem. I won’t get my abilities back. I will still hit a “presence, but no information” barrier when I meditate. It will still hurt like a motherfucker when I accidentally think about all the things I can’t reach. I will still feel damaged when I try something that’s outside of my talents. I will still feel vulnerable to attack. I don’t have a Bugatti because I’m not wealthy enough, but that’s beside the point; the reason why I don’t have an M5 is because I know it wouldn’t solve my problems. The illusion of power doesn’t interest me. The illusion of safety doesn’t interest me. I want the real thing, not illusions and trinkets. I mentioned my weak points and limitations, but this one is not one of them; you see, I am not prone to self-deception. I know what the problems are, and I know what doesn’t solve them, even if I don’t have the actual solution available. I don’t do stupid moves that have the purpose of creating pleasant illusions. If truth hurts, I would rather feel the pain. So, that seems to be the root of my irritation with Andrew Tate – I see the guy who’s taking the path of self-deception, and by some instinct this makes me do the opposite, and it hurts.