Nilsi

I’ve never in my entire life heard anyone claim that rape or beheading a child has anything to do with absolute truth. So honestly, I don’t see your point.

This, to me, is what Jesus really meant when he said “love thy neighbor.” A neighbor isn’t some idealized figure. A neighbor is the guy who plays loud music at night, has politics you can’t stand, maybe smells a little weird. And still - there’s this quiet recognition that somehow, in all our chaos and contradiction, we’re participating in the same mystery. My Muslim friends and I roast each other all the time. I’ll joke about how wild it is to believe a book is the literal truth, they’ll tell me I’m going to burn in hell forever, claim they’re more manly, I’ll fire back that we Europeans are more refined, whatever. It’s all love. They still invite me to iftar, feed me, look out for me. That’s the formula right there. Real love isn’t about pretending we’re all the same, or smoothing over the differences with fake admiration. It’s being able to laugh at those differences, name them, and still choose each other. That’s why, when Jesus is asked before the crucifixion, “How will we know you’re with us?” - he doesn’t say “when you’re pure” or “when you follow the rules.” He says, “When there is love between you, I will be there.” And honestly, you don’t even have to keep the Christian frame. Just treat people like people. It’s not rocket science.

I don’t think people actually disagree all that much about the Absolute. I can sit down with my Muslim friends, with Leo, with a bunch of European philosophers, and we’ll all more or less vibe on the same core thing - maybe even agree on some fundamental properties. But the second we start talking about what that means for how we should live - who gets to speak for it, who gets to lead, what counts as alignment - suddenly it’s war. That to me is the real issue

I do think there’s a legitimate materialist critique to be made about the porn industry - especially how it can exploit young women. That said, if you’re really concerned, just watch amateur content where people actually seem to be enjoying themselves and making a bit of money on the side. Problem more or less solved.

Fair enough.

I see it a bit differently, though I know we disagree on this. I don’t see it as many people contributing to one shared cutting-edge, but rather as many people working on their own cutting-edge - often in ways that are completely opposed, yet still genuinely doing advanced philosophical (or however you want to define it) work. So honestly, I’d give you more credit than you seem to give yourself. What you’re doing is unique - not just another interchangeable iteration of “doing the work,” but something distinct and beautiful in its own right.

I appreciate you - I just find the way you’re advertising yourself off-putting. The same goes for Nietzsche - and yet I have a quote of his in my signature. So don’t take it the wrong way.

My god - if it weren’t for your disgusting rhetoric, I might even agree with you.

Fair enough, you guys - just wanted to make sure the fun was explicit.

I’m convinced everyone has that one uncle who brings back this kind of crap from his holiday in Istanbul.

At 21, you’re still a child. Sure, you need guidance, structure, and higher values to aim toward - but at that age, you should be just as concerned with making friends, dating, partying, exploring, messing up, and learning from all of it. The list of people who skipped that part of life and ended up deeply stunted, perverse, or unhinged later on is virtually endless: Osho, Marc Gafni, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Bankman-Fried, Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Neumann, Elizabeth Holmes, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, Kanye West, Jared Leto, Shia LaBeouf, Marilyn Manson, Jim Carrey, James Franco, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Howard Hughes, etc. People who repressed their youth, only to have it erupt later in strange power fantasies, sexual confusion, or spiritual delusion. Even I see traces of this in myself - though I only skipped a few years of social life between 19 and 22. I can’t imagine who I’d be if I hadn’t had a stretch of fun before that, and now again in the past couple years. Fun is not optional - it’s integral to development.

Is that an allusion to Lacan? lol

It’s wild what some of you infer just from me pointing out that even Trump is human and can show a flicker of genuine sympathy. At no point did I use that to justify Republican politics or redeem him as a person. I just thought it was a small, oddly human moment - worth noting, nothing more. But somehow, you twist that into me being complicit with everything he says or does. As if I’m not perfectly aware that he’s a con man. He is. That’s not the point. The point is: he’s still human. And I find it genuinely disturbing that even acknowledging that is too much for some of you.

If you can’t see that I’m nonetheless critical of Trump - and that I find his entire political project absolutely disgusting - I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

Fuck off with your ideological nonsense. I’m done letting you people gaslight me. How far gone do you have to be to believe that everything someone does is pure fabrication, completely devoid of any genuine sentiment? That kind of cartoonish take on deception is the real delusion. Deception works precisely by blurring the line between the authentic and the performed - a basic principle in acting, sales, marketing, and every adjacent field that professionals understand instinctively. But of course, through the lens of your bourgeois rationalism, all of this is conveniently dismissed as nothing more than petty human noise - too messy, too emotional, too real for your sterile frameworks to handle. So yeah - don’t @ me with that nonsense again.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple - and I wasn’t making a point about gender politics. I just genuinely noticed that he lit up a bit in that moment and made some surprisingly loving comments about women. Maybe they weren’t rational or even true, but still - it showed a flicker of actual humanity. Anyway, before anyone twists my words: he’s still obviously an idiot. And of course, he immediately used that brief moment of compassion to segue into some dumb rant about Democrats. So no - I’m under no illusion that he’s changed or ever will.

Fair enough. But I think it’s a real trap to fall too in love with pain - to the point where you’re just torturing yourself to death because you’ve conditioned yourself to associate pain with success. David Goggins is probably the purest example of that.

200k/year at your age is incredible. If you keep building your career and invest wisely, you could fully escape the corporate grind by your mid to late thirties probably - if that’s what you want and if you can stick it out that long. Don’t throw this away too lightly. You’re in a very fortunate position with a clear path to financial freedom. That said, if walking away feels absolutely necessary, that’s valid too, of course.

I think sticking to the first principle is even more effective. You don’t need to romanticize pain. Pain is a bitch. You just push through it anyway. Because you're in love with your vision. To me, that’s a more humane way to face struggle. (But maybe that’s just me.)

Then you probably don’t care much about perfume either. Just grab a solid cologne like Dior Sauvage you can wear in any kind of context. You will smell clean, put-together, and girls will appreciate it.

Why do you wear nice clothing (assuming you do)? I just like it. I like beautiful things. And let’s be real - a woman won’t care what perfume you’re wearing as long as you smell fresh and clean. Honestly, from experience, some of my bolder perfume choices have actually been perceived as irritating - or even outright repelling. But I don’t care. I wear them because I like them. And I like the kind of women who appreciate unapologetic self-expression. Granted, that kind of woman is rare - and even rarer to find in combination with everything else you might be drawn to in a woman. So maybe wearing these perfumes is less about attracting anyone, and more like saying a prayer: a gesture of alignment with the possibility of a miracle. And being ready to seize on it when it comes.

Maybe you’re not aware of this if you haven’t studied psychoanalysis in depth - and I say this having studied a few semesters of psychology myself, where I often debated professors who treated it as little more than a historical footnote - but late Freud and Lacan don’t believe these symptoms can be cured. They don’t disappear; they just shift forms. The best you can hope for is to become conscious of the structure of the unconscious itself - and learn to live with it.

But the point of psychoanalysis is precisely that these thoughts don’t ever just lift. You can try to escape them in the way I described - and I agree, it’s a futile route - or you can become conscious of the structure of the unconscious and see it for what it is. Trying to address these thoughts is like playing whack-a-mole: every time you knock one down, another pops up somewhere else. That’s one of Lacan’s core insights. And that’s exactly why it’s called the unconscious. What actually interests me is your take on this - not the therapeutic side effects or the supposed benefits for people dealing with mental health issues. I can’t contribute much there. But I do think I have something to say about the metaphysics of all this. So I’d really like to know what you think you’re actually working on - not what you’d say to a radio host or write in a master’s thesis, but what’s really at stake for you in this.

Tom Ford has some seriously "rustic" scents. Go to a perfumery and sample "Tobacco Oud." If that’s not manly enough for you, I don't know what is. In fact, I bet you it will be way too strong for you. This is something I only wear when I feel on top of the world - otherwise, that shit wears me.

I’ve got a godlessly large Tom Ford perfume collection. My favorite is some random Parisian musk perfume I picked up though. Pure perfume, none of that eau de toilette or eau de parfum shit. Smells like pure sex.