Nilsi

Debating essentially means persuading others of your vision. Creating beauty means actualizing a very high level vision. One might argue that the world is inherently beautiful, and I tend to agree, but this notion becomes quite meaningless when it comes to actually creating beauty. Take the example of an architect with a vision to construct a magnificent opera house. This endeavor requires more than just some lofty ideal of „creating beauty.“ The architect must engage in numerous debates and battles to bring this vision to life. Convincing investors to provide funding; sourcing the appropriate materials and managing their logistics; the leadership and coordination of a large team of workers; etc. With this happy-go-lucky attitude towards the creation of beauty, your vision will inevitably be influenced and distorted by all sorts of external forces and you will end up with an extremely compromised low grade form of beauty.

Your question is putting the cart before the horse. I would suggest you first humble yourself and focus on learning sales and marketing skills, setting aside any big lofty ideas for now. Start by choosing a well-established business model (e.g. insurance, real estate, advertising) to focus on these core skills in isolation. In a nutshell, sales and marketing is about convincing others to do business with you. Once this has clicked for you, you have a solid foundation for running your own business. Additionally, it's crucial to gain a realistic understanding of how the capitalist world operates (i.e. predominantly on economics and power politics). Stay aware of current trends and learn to distinguish between what's genuinely impactful and what’s merely fads, delusions, or fantasies. The best way to gain accurate feedback is to invest your hard-earned money - venture capital style-, which will quickly dispel you of any overly idealistic tendencies you might have. Simultaneously, study a diverse range of subjects to remain open to new ideas and insights. This approach will allow you to efficiently do research and development in a large search space and you’ll be equipped with all the necessary skills to actually realize your projects and truly impact the world in your desired way.

I understood this concept very well on an intellectual level; yet, in my hubris, I convinced myself that it didn't apply to me and that I could brute-force my way to success. I had thought that, even if my life turned to shit in some areas, at least I would achieve some material success. The most shocking revelation, however, was that this more holistic reorientation also led to business success. I'm not certain how broadly this principle can be applied though. In theory, narrow goal optimization should still be able to achieve its intended goal. By some divine chance, it didn’t work for me, giving me the opportunity to rethink my approach to life.

Nature is so wholesome

Just want to share this beautiful artifact of human greatness and dignity again — nowhere have I seen the spirit of what it means to be human expressed more gracefully as in this performance.

As promised, I’m going to share my experience with you. Although it’s obvious, I want to preface this by stressing how IMPOSSIBLE it is to convey to you the depth of emotions and experience I went through and how meaningful these last few months were to me. But here we go: For anybody who's unfamiliar with the profession of sales and what an average day in a call center looks like: just imagine you’re sitting in a cubicle for 8+ hours straight, calling up strangers (I work in B2B, so the strangers are mostly managing directors and CEOs of medium to large companies), trying to convince them that they need whatever product you’re selling (we’re selling out-of-home advertisement, aka billboards) and that they need it from you. This is, of course, a big challenge, since advertisement is something that any company is actively researching and implementing already, so the only lever you have in this game is making such a strong personal impression on them that they are convinced that someone this competent and charismatic must have something that’s different and more valuable than what they already have. Imagine someone like Barack Obama ringing up your phone to tell you about a metal fork and why you absolutely need one. You obviously already own a metal fork, and you know the concept of a fork, but since it’s the president and he’s taking the time of his day to call you and tell you about the metal fork he has, you would perhaps buy one from him. This is a bit like what my job is. Now, the first two months of this experiment, this was literally what my life was about. Every single thought and action in my entire day somehow revolved around selling my product. The thought of such a narrowly focused life probably makes you want to throw up in your mouth already… but at least the money was right… right? Like an alchemist chasing fool's gold, I did all the goal optimization I could and jumped through all the hoops, only to make less money than I previously had (which is still good money, but definitely not worth sacrificing everything that makes life meaningful and valuable to it). This was such a tormenting and humiliating experience for me because I knew how much I had to neglect and even hurt to live like this, and it didn’t even pay off. All that pent-up frustration and stress eventually reached its climax in a kind of rude spiritual awakening that made me seriously question my motivations and life choices and shattered my childish idea of turning metal into gold by just zeroing in on that one narrow goal. This shift also drained me physically to the point of not being able to speak or eat and having the worst fever of my life. Now that I was forced to take a break from work, I somehow had to reassemble my life and figure out where to take it from there. I basically just sat in my apartment and contemplated life for two weeks straight. What happened during that time is still a bit nebulous to me, but I re-emerged from my short hiatus with more clarity and sense of purpose than ever before. What became painfully obvious to me was that narrow goal optimization in the way I had done it will guarantee a miserable, shallow, and inhumane life and, in my case (thank god), wouldn’t even achieve the narrowly defined goal I had set out to optimize for. So, in a leap of faith, I decided to take the opposite approach and orient towards a life that would encompass all dimensions and facets of being and being human without trading them off against each other. Far from embodying this holistic approach perfectly, I still gradually regained a sense of direction, and most notably, my relationships improved drastically. All of a sudden, work felt like play again, and my colleagues became something I hadn’t known in a while: friends. Even more shocking: I started to become really damn good at my profession. My conversations with customers became more authentic and noticeably enjoyable for both parties. The atmosphere in our office shifted from professional and reserved to friendly and familial. Even our team lead, who always loathed us and despised work, started inviting us to lunch and even organized a fancy Christmas party for us. My entire experience of life shifted very dramatically very quickly, and I fell in love with reality to a degree that was absolutely shocking to me, even after 7+ years of serious contemplation and a ton of mystical and spiritual experiences. As far as my once-cherished goal of making a lot of money goes: I made A LOT of money these last couple of weeks — so much so that I’m being hailed as THE new superstar in our company. And although this may sound shallow to some of you, I’m very fucking proud of myself for finally getting the success and recognition I was so relentlessly fighting for this past year. Just to put this into perspective: I became disillusioned with academia at the tail end of 2022, dropped out of college in January of this year, applied for a career in sales without any prior experience, and landed the perfect job for my unique situation in March, to now having earned as much money in a couple of weeks as the majority of employees in my country earn in an entire year. But that’s not even the best part. The best part was finding love again. I found love for life, reality, and myself to a degree that would’ve made me sick to my stomach before. But I also found love — the human kind. The kind you feel for another person with whom hours in their company feel like seconds, whom you notice a shocking amount of your thoughts and dreams revolving around, who leaves a little void in your heart the moment they leave the door. Of course, I had heard that such a kind of love exists, but to actually have it happen to me is an absolute gift. And it’s not like I was running dry on love and gifts at that point. I apologize for the overly sentimental and borderline cringe-inducing depictions of my experience, but I’ve gone through a lot this year and am still a bit overwhelmed by how it somehow all turned out so perfectly. If I had to share one key lesson from all of this, it’s that you cannot reduce the infinite depth and complexity of life to some finite metric and expect to find a meaningful life in the optimization of that narrowly defined goal. So let’s conclude this mess with the most overused, pretentious-sounding but profoundly wise quote from Lao Tzu: „The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.“

If you were magically transported into a professorship in a world class university and had to teach a class, what would it be about?

That being said, see you guys come December!

Partying has always played a fundamental role in human societies throughout history. It serves as a way to break down societal boundaries and roles, and to experience the rapture of losing your sense of self and separation. In ancient Greece, for example, their festivals were renowned for their unruliness. These celebrations encouraged participants to indulge in excessive drinking and revelry, allowing them to shed all their societal masks and roles. It was a cathartic experience, a massive, orgiastic celebration of life in its most primordial form. This same principle holds true today. Modern parties offer a similar function, providing individuals with the opportunity to temporarily let go of their societal roles and inhibitions. This experience is not only enjoyable but also therapeutic. Incorporating such moments of boundary-breaking and uninhibited expression into one’s life should be an integral part of any holistic spirituality.

I noticed that as I grant my (sexual) desires unconstrained freedom, they progressively venture into more transgressive territory (I'll refrain from delving into explicit details). This curiosity piqued my interest and made me embark on a research journey into the realm of sexual transgression, where I stumbled upon the works of the French philosopher Georges Bataille. Bataille delved into the subject of sexual transgression, particularly emphasizing the profound connection between eroticism and death. He argued that eroticism transcends the realms of mere sexual pleasure and biological instincts, encompassing transgressive and excessive experiences that push boundaries and break societal taboos. He believed that erotic experience reaches it’s zenith when it approaches a limit, a point of no return and an abandonment of rationality and control — death, of course, being the ultimate manifestation of this. Bataille formulated these ideas in his mind-melting novel „Story of the Eye,“ which is like a fetishistic version of Leo’s God Realization poem. The story follows the sexual escapades of two teenagers (boy and girl), as they engage in increasingly taboo and shocking acts of sexual desire that culminate in their ultimate act of transgression: raping a priest to death, plucking out his eye and shoving it up the girls pussy.

He’s on my reading list

Thinking in images still leaves you within Deleuzian virtuality — a dimension where ideas, concepts, and images coexist as overlays of experience. Truly unmediated thinking is what McGillchrist calls the Master (as in „The Master and his Emissary“) — a natural intelligence untouched by virtuality — which is also what people mean, when they rave about „embodied cognition.“ Virtuality is not to be dismissed though; it serves as the origin of philosophy, art, and science. Nietzsche’s ‘Birth of Tragedy’ gives profound insight into the interplay of these intelligences. True ‘Art’ begins with unmediated contact with reality (the Dionysian principle) and flourishes through refinement in the virtual (the Apollinian principle). I.e. genuine meaning arises from direct interaction with reality, evolving into high culture through reflection, abstraction, and conceptualization. Overindulgence in virtuality leads to extreme distortion, as seen in some 20th-century French intellectuals, who become perversely disconnected from life. Conversely, shunning virtuality entirely leaves one akin to an animal, unable to contribute anything of cultural significance.

This is just a lazy excuse. Go out every weekend and socialize heavily, do your deep work in the morning and every trimester or so spend a few weeks in complete solitude. For example. There is no limit to self-improvement, that’s literally what Life is. That doesn’t mean you should be hubristic about it. Destiny will strike sooner or later and put severe limitations on you — but the self-improvement keeps going, just with new constraints on it.

I’m saying that unintelligent women would come up with all sorts of elaborate requests and stories in your thought experiment, while a intelligent woman realizes that what she truly wants is a man whom she can devote herself to.

She would choose to give her power away to a guy she trusts and respects and serve him with her love. Assuming she’s a highly intelligent woman.

Can’t wait for the new Polo G album. The singles have been absolute bangers, so far.

It’s basically the path of becoming a master trickster. You‘ll learn how to be completely fluid in your identity, make up cover stories on a fly (ever tried calling up a big company, asking to speak with their CEO?) and think on your feet — while also cultivating invaluable traits like clear communication, assertiveness, being relatable, work ethic, persistence, fearlessness… which will make a respectable man out of you. It‘s very psychologically challenging, but also incredibly fun.

Just enter „sales“ in the search bar of some online portals. Look for positions that do not require specific, tangible qualifications. They often just ask for vague qualities like „high motivation“ and „excellent communication skills.“ You should seek out companies that prioritize the sales process over maintaining a polished image. This means avoiding large organizations, start-ups and all „serious“ companies, where your role primarily involves making a few daily calls to existing clients or warm leads, or some bs like contacting prospects on LinkedIn or Email. It’s absolutely necessary to join a company that encourages cold calling to completely unfamiliar prospects and imposes no restrictions on the number of such calls you can make each day. By engaging with strangers and facing the challenge of generating interest and trust from scratch, you’ll swiftly be forced to get your act together. It's these positions that I would recommend applying for. Draft a compelling CV and then call up the prospective employers. They love this, because it shows you’re not reluctant to pick up the phone. The initial phase will be brutal and you will be absolutely clueless, however, even in my first month in a commission-based sales position, I did earn a income of 7,5k (which is not that bad). Being paid solely based on your performance leaves you no choice, but to find a way to make this work. As you gain experience and hone your skills, it’s entirely possible to make five-figures a month (even six-figures, if you’re really on your a-game). At this point, you can either opt for a more chill work schedule, reducing your working hours while enjoying the financial rewards, or you can commit to mastering the art of sales and further elevate your income potential.

I might sound like a broken record, but a sales job will force you to get your shit together and allow you to make unbelievable amounts of money in a very short time span. What makes this so cool is that you need no qualification or assets for such a job, you just need the balls to do it. If you work on a commission only basis, any call center in the world will let you sell their stuff. Talking to 100s of strangers a day, trying to convince them to give you their money, is the best kind of therapy for a young dude trying to become a competent and respectable man. You can of course just play the Buddhist game, keep planting trees and find fullfillment and mastery in the simple things, but it sounds like you're hungry for (some degree of) success and recognition, which is understandable. At the end of the day we're western men and there is a Faustian spirit in us (it's in our blood, our ancestry, our culture) that seeks adventure, knowledge, domination -- doesn't matter how spiritual and idealistic you are, if that part of you doesn't find some outlet for expression, you will start to resent yourself and the world.

I would rather use my spare money to invest in education/professional development, nutrition & supplementation, networking, etc. — this is how you create real income. I don’t know your situation, but planning 40 years ahead is kinda ridiculous to me. I‘m concerned with how I can make as much money this month, this year and the next couple years — that’s about as far as it goes. You could figure out how to make a million in 4 years, if you were actually serious about it. Once you’re rich enough to not know what to do with your money, you can start worrying about investing. This is just my way of doing things (and how most of the wealthy people I know roll). If you’re very neurotic, conservative and don’t have high ambitions, what you’re suggesting is probably the right move for you.

Focusing on the messenger is an extremely potent methodology for getting at deep truths. Nietzsche calls this the genealogical method, meaning what the message reveals about the underlying psychology of the messenger. This idea has been expanded upon by postmodern/critical theorists like Deleuze — to discern whether a message is motivated by slave morality (reactive forces), or master morality (active forces) — and Foucault, to tease out the underlying power dynamics in all claims on truth. This has nothing to do with identity politics, where you intentionally appeal to different group identities, to sway public opinion in your favor (i.e. propaganda). Geneaology = revealing deep truths; Identity politics = obscuring the truth.

What do you mean „is it that easy?“ You take 40! years to make a million dollars, which will barely be enough to finance your retirement, if you live very modestly. Figure out how to make a mill in 4 years. That’s when economic laws start to become fun.

Even within the framework of a Deleuzian Rhizomatic society, where hierarchical structures supposedly yield to interconnected networks, there are certain fundamental principles we can not get around. Think about the laws of economics, game theory, evolution, and other systems dynamics. It is undeniable that inherent disparities in genetics and upbringing persist and privilege few individuals with an initial advantage. These advantages are only reinforced by the laws of economics. Power differentials always grow and further the divide. Evolution works by way of the occasional emergence of advantageous mutations, but operates in such a way that these traits remain scarce initially. This deliberate scarcity prevents the risk of destabilizing the entire system. Even in an era of democratized exponential technology, which would empower humanity to influence the course of evolution, the propensity for arms races persists. First movers and the less risk-averse will always outrace the herd, producing runaway effects that ripple through the network. The only people talking about „ableism“ are the unable that got dealt a bad hand by life. Slave morality all over again.