Thursday, October 31, 2024

Girls Should be Good Homemakers

 

I wrote this originally on reddit, but feminazi woke mods deleted my post and banned me. So, I rewrote it here in the interest of freedom of speech and truth about relationship. Do not let feminazis silence the truth.

Women have to be good homemakers irrespectively if they work or do not. Cleaning and cooking are the reasons men marry women. Every woman who wishes to marry one day should be good at doing this thing and willing to do it for her husband. Women who do not do domestic chores are useless and no one will marry them. Yes, they have to work and then do chores after or before work.


Saturday, October 26, 2024

Melancholy of Me and My Friends

 

Now we finally got to the final chapter of Me and My Friends Series, Melancholy. Melancholy can be examined in its own right, but that would be short and simple. However, will miss important details. Instead, I decided to make it a somewhat summary and synthesis of all the previous traits. 

Melancholy is the outcome of three other traits combined. Great intelligence, facing all or mostly obstacles in the world first produces cynicism, then escapism and satirical humor and then melancholy. However, if cynicism, satire and escapism are tactical responses to the reality, then melancholy is the overreaching summary. It is the final stop and a crowning achievement. It is also a summary or an umbrella term that covers all three to a certain extend.

Finally, melancholy is one of 4 (five in other versions) tempers. Together with sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and supine they make the tempers or humors that people are divided into. Each temper has its own characteristics, I covered them partly in my other article and posts on MAL.


Melancholy often associated with sadness. However, it is a particular form of long-term chronic sadness. After all, when you know the world can be so much more than it is but unable to do anything about it. When everyone stands in the way of your ideas and prevents you from getting ahead. What else can you feel, but melancholy.

You can mock your enemies and stupidity of the world with striking humor to make you feel better. Be cynical about the world and refuse to work the treadmill that feeds others but not you. Escape with a good book, movie or videogame. However, when you finish playing you still feel this overreaching feeling that it's all futile and nothing will ever change. The melancholy never does not go away for good; it can only be temporarily eclipsed with the other three.


There is a saying that in "with much wisdom there is much sorrow". That is true. The smarter you are, the better you understand just how ridiculously unfair and fucked up our world and life is.

From my experience, everything in world is luck describes world much more accurately than hard work is rewarded. Most the rewards I got or did not get was due to luck and other such things completely independent of my own efforts. A lot, but not all, of hard work I did gave me nothing of value.

Post financial crisis economy makes its even worth with all these volunteering opportunities, where they do not even pretend, they will pay you anything for the efforts you make. Actually no, they promise that someone will hire you for a paid work sometime down the line in future based on your volunteering experience. A clear scam. However, they will not hire a person who needs to be paid and paid well for a job they can make someone do for free. 


Post crisis economy is designed for idiots, too dumb to realize people obviously just using them and will give them nothing in return. A person with more than room temperature IQ should avoid working in such economy.

Room temp IQ idiot, they want to hire, would just believe anything they tell them and work hard for no reward. Such an idiot could be happy in his own way, but you do not wish to have his kind of happiness. Yes, you are sad, but you do not want to be like an idiot, run around like a puppy dog and be exploited by those around you. 

Idiots live for other people sake, get exploited by them and then get dumped. They end up with nothing because they are stupid.

Melancholics are smarter than that. We will not be used for others sake, instead we will use other for our sake.



We do not settle on just what we have here and now. We want to see things change and improved. However, we are few and there are many who instead want things to continue the same and not change. Conflict with such people make us melancholic and cynical as we feel powerless to get what we want from life and people who control stuff. That powerlessness to change things you want to change about the world leads to other things we indulge, such as escapism and satire.



Occasionally we can lament the fact that some people get good parents or other benefactors who give them anything they want, and we do not get the same. We have less simple because fickle fate gave us stingy or abusive parents. 


So how you go from there? You can just live a Charlie Munger strategy and keep on living an escapist life until life will finally deal you a good hand. Yet time goes on and on and a good hand does not come. Leaving you to wonder if that will ever happen.


I guess you can use Astrology to find out when good times are finally coming. 

On 20 of November this year Pluto will finally leave Capricorn for good and continue its journey in Aquarius. Capricorn was always associated with conservatism, preserving status quo and resisting any change. We have seen a lor of that in the years after Financial Crisis of 2008 when Pluto was in Capricorn. In contrast Aquarius is associated with radical change that more than willing to uproot and overhaul, all structures and foundations.

In 2025 Neptune will begin its transition into Aries and Uranus into Gemini. Both will complete this transition only in 2026. It's typical for outer planets to dip into new sign, then backtrack out during a transitional year or two. Pluto begun its transition to Aquarius in March of 2023 and is about to complete it only this year.


Melancholy Connects

Different tempers work differently with each other. Some can get along and others do not. However same tempers can at least understand each other and Melancholy is no exception. For example, in my conversation with TrueHellDei it became clear from the start that she has the same melancholic disposition as I do. That early conversation about the world and religion let me conclude this much.

That common trait let us connect, find common ground and grow increasingly found of each other. I said many good things about her, retrospectively I can say I did so because she is as melancholic as I am. Melancholy was that common ground and foundation on which our relationship was build.

My other friends have some of the same melancholic disposition to them.

That is how we melancholics are. We only like each other's company.

And Disconnects

You might call it snobism, but reality is that people of different termers think too different from us because they come from a completely different mindset that is based on different premises and worldview.  Choleric for example likely believe in their own inferiority and deficiency, that is why they torture themselves and others around them to "improve" them. We melancholics do not think problem is with us, we think it's the world that is broken. 

Thus, an interaction between Melancholic and Choleric would be a constant argument where Melancholics would assert that problem is with the world and Choleric instead insist the problem is with Melancholic and world is perfect. Such an interaction is an insufferable torture. I can even say it from experience as my parents are Cholerics.

Conclusion

A melancholic's great intelligence entitles him to stand above room temperature idiots and other stupid types. Al least in his own mind. 

Thus, we should unite and figure out how to exploit the rest of society for our sake. After all society was likely designed by other melancholics just like us to work for them. They likely called themselves upper class/caste or something like that to make sure they are entitled to rip benefits from everyone else's work. Now that this place is vacant, we simply need to find way to get there. 

Society is large enough to comfortably provide for a group of savvy melancholics, on the other hand its rules are too complicated and convoluted for a single mind to overcome them. Thus, we should work together and brainstorm how to bypass them.

4/5 Tempers/Humours and -deres

I thought recently that 4 Tempers and different types of deres do correlate with one another.


Saunguine - Genki

Choleric - Tsundere

Melancholic - Kuudere

Phlegmatic - Dandere

Supine - Deredere


I am personally a Melancholic and I also like girls of the same type.

Many of my waifus with significant objective flaws also melancholic/kuudere types. I find likable nevertheless, probably because they have the same 'flaws' as me.

Tomoko, Ranko, Mako Reizei, Roberta, Mei Misaki are all clearly Melancholics/Kuudere.


I also like Phlegmatic and Supine types as well. However I think many would find these types likeable, they are very girly.


In contrast I really hate Choleric, this type annoys me the most and I try to avoid them.


Sanguine is kind of more complex, may be this one more depends on individual person.

I have a sanguine friend, but he is a guy, I am not sure how a girl of such type will be.


I found a couple of temper tests; you can do it too:

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/O4TS/

https://www.idrlabs.com/temperament/test.php



This one actually got me choleric instead.

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/O4TS/results.php?dat=MTcgMTQgMTMgNg--

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Escapism of Me and My Friends

Next chapter in the series about my psycho. So, what to do when life refuses to give you what you want. If you have power and money, you can force your way. However, if you do not have either then you can either give up and live in a role your parents and society pigeonholed you or escape. We are the latter type.

There are two fundamental ways of escaping. One is to indulge yourself in something that will make you forget about reality and its problems. The other is to physically move somewhere where people would hopefully appreciate you more. I will begin with the former.


First type escapism is simple. It's just desire to forget about the shit we have here and now and just indulge in a good fictional, book, movie or a video game where world is better and more interesting.

There are many forms of internal escapism. The simplest ones are alcohol and drugs. There are plenty of people who can only do that. I can perfectly understand them. It is much better to drink yourself to death or oblivion, that to clean shit after some retarded twat who was lucky enough to be born of wealthy parents, but thinks he is better than you and deserves what he got while you deserve only shit. The retarded twats would be angry with your life choices but fuck them.

Me and some of my friends do drink every so often, but this is not our primary way of escaping. We have great and wonderful world of fiction and video games at our disposal. Sure, not every book and movie are worth your time, but there are some that do. They provide wonderful experience of how world and society could have been if better people would be in power.

Video games are even better. They are more immersive. The better ones can at least feel like you are in a better world and doing something you much rather do instead of what society willing to offer you.

Some video games have such a good story and writing they deserve a Nobel Prize in Literature. This is truly a medium for intelligent people. Doubly so now that books and especially movies mostly cater to less smart and wise audiences.

There is Japanese anime too. Some titles are as wise and profound as best philosophers. Not to mention wonderful art, created by people who actually understand what appeals to people and why and able to deliver it.

Finally, music. While the most popular artists are the worst garbage possible and not worth your time. However, such pop artists are but a tip of musical iceberg. Music is much bigger than that, dig dipper and you will find many wonderful songs and titles. Once again Japanese are at forefront of that. Yukka, Nakagawa Kentaro, Yuki Kajiura and many others make some of the most wonderful songs out there.

And when there is no any external mediums then people like Fedya can entertain us with his funny and engaging humor. During his childhood, Fedya and his friends invented many interesting and curious ideas on their own and they played games, imagining themselves someone else. I was in a different school at that time, so he told me about it afterwards. Me and my brother too invented a fictional world or two of our own.

The humor is also a form of escapism. Nothing quite as uplifting as reducing current social orthodoxy into a ridiculous joke.

With all of that you can shut the "real life" out of your world and live a much better and wonderful existence. Existence, surrounded by fiction, compere to which reality is like a turd compared to a foie gras.

I write the whole blog about fiction that can make your life better than what it is.


Fiction is wonderful, however, in the end of the day, it is not enough. Sometimes the reality creeps back and annoyingly demand your attention to its ugly mug. A nasty weather or unpleasant people can bring you back to reality you so desperately want to avoid.

One way of dealing with them is to only deal with people and places you like for one or the other reasons. I try to do it and sometimes even develop habit of dealing with the same people I am chill with over and over again.


There is also another thing. No matter how good fiction is, its fundamentally an illusion. You want something concrete and bigger. You want to make the fiction you like into reality. You want it to become life on the ground.

There were many dreamers that dreamed of things bigger than what reality have afforded them. Some of them even managed to get their hands on resources to make their dreams into reality. It is because of people like that we have planes, computers, internet and other such wonderful things.


Yet there is one other a even more grounded form of escapism. A simple physical move from one place to another. You can move a city a country a continent even. I did that. In Russia I felt I will never manage to get ahead in life. Majority of classmates and adults looked down on me and my ideas. It was obvious they will never give me enough power to make things my way or at least enough money to indulge myself into things I love.

Because of that I chose to emigrate from them as far as I could. To Australia to be precise. I can move elsewhere providing there will be better conditions for me. After all, if people do not value you, there is no need to suffer them. Just go and find some different people who will value you. That is why friends who you can pick and choose are better than parents and relatives that cannot be changed.

I did not ask Javier or Tsukasa about their reason for coming to Australia, but I felt it was the same thing. They too wanted to escape places that did not value them and get somewhere better. Together we created an escapist community of sorts. Sure, not everyone of our classmates was like that, for some it was just a career move to advance in a corporate ladder back home. However, we ended up dividing into informal groups friends that somewhat reflect our views and aspirations.


That is escapism and next is the final chapter of these series, melancholy.

Cynicism of Me and My Friends


After I detailed on the kind of humor me and my friends like it's time to get further into the psycho and get to the more serious level: cynicism. Certain people dislike cynicism, some simply misunderstand what it means, others however dislike it for its very core property: ability to see thought lies and deceptions.


First is cynicism. It is an often maligned and misunderstood word. To put it simply it's a critical mindset and look on life. The kind that does not just accept everything they are being told and make their own decisions and conclusions.

Cynics do not blindly trust social orthodoxy, our teaches or parents, religion or various other things that broader society agrees on. Cynics do not trust anything really. We see many flaws and issues with the dogma, society tries to sell us. Our high intelligence allows us to see it for a lie and a fraud it is. 

We are smart, but in our own way. We are not type that would try to win approval of superiors without making sure first they can actually reward us with something meaningful. We are not dumb like puppy dogs.

This is the kind of intelligence that is disliked by certain people. Certain people want to see subordinates simply working for status quo without raising questions or criticizing anything. They want gofers and flatteres to pander to their egos. We are not the type who can be satisfied with such humiliating role.



Various "respected" people in society tell you various good sound things such as work hard or tell the truth. However, how true any of that. Will you really be rewarded for doing all that. It will sure benefit them if you do so, but will it benefit you.

Reality of life is that far not always good guys prevail, hard work rewarded and so on. Just like with that example about "fake explementary" from a humor article. Certain people, favored by establishment get ahead and we are simply fed lies about how they earned it. 

They want us to work hard, but they will divert our efforts to themselves and their favorites, and we get nothing out of it. We are too smart to work for nothing and they are angry with that, decrying our cynicism, nihilism, egoism and other such things. They are the real crooks and just angry they could not con us with their mumbo-jumbo. Though many of them are more of unwitting tools of the crooks who are far above pulling the strings.

The state, the school and even your parents all have some designs for you. However far not always these designs benefit you personally. When you flat out refuse to be their tool and be used by them, they get angry and hate you, decrying you for being a waste of their time and effort. Instead, they should blame themselves for being so greedy, selfish and dumb to begin with. Thinking that kids are just dumb tools who will do anything you want unquestionably is dumb and that is why they got burned with that.

More often than not, these so called "respected" people use moral as a tool to fool you into working without being properly rewarded. That is why we are mistrustful to downright hostile to moral.



Too much experience with that kind of unfair dealing is what makes one cynical and mistrustful of people around them and society in general. If you know you can be cheated out of your fair share and will not be given enough, then you will not accept offers easily. You cannot accept vague promises. You need a strong enough proof the deal is real, and rewards will be delivered. 



There is other side to this however as well. We are not the type to be disgusted with that on some purity or honesty grounds. If we are the ones who cheat others rather the ones who is being cheated on, then we can get on board of the scheme. Ripping off others for our beenfit is not something we are against.

Once Fedya discovered how Catholic Church use to sell indulgences for the sins, essentially making money off people desire to avoid hell and go to heaven after death. Fedya labelled it "selling tickets to heaven" and for a while pondered who he can do something like that and make money selling tickets to heaven to modern believers. Nothing came out of it of course but you can clearly see where he and we come from. I myself sometimes thought of becoming corrupt priest of the greediest Catholic Church and make some money this way.

There are more examples. Olya tried to make money from Conrad Adenauer Foundation, and I came there with her for that reason once, hoping to get something for myself from that. Tsukasa wanted branded good for cheap and went to DFO, I went with him though did not buy anything as its still more expensive than K-mart. We are smart guys.



On the other hand, there is appeal of true meritocracy that can actually appreciate and reward intelligence and talent such as our own. In theory it's the way where we can do something useful for society while also being rewarded for it. 

However, we are not the types who will forgive or forget if we are passed for promotion or being sidelined for benefits for privileges scion. People should not forget about what they owe us.



Cynicism is fundamentally highest form of intelligence. Just like satire it is a reflection of a great intelligence of a person.

However, there is two sides to this coin. If there is a good lucrative opportunity, then we will exploit it for our benefit. However, when there is no good opportunity then we are not stupid enough to do something that does not give us enough.

Our great intelligence allows us to see if there are good opportunities around or not. When there is no good opportunity, it is best to just wait for better days, even Charlie Munger agrees with that. So that is what we do most of the time. Just spend time in wait for a good opportunity. However, that is in the next article, escapism.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Humor of Me and My Friends

Couple of days ago I tried to write an article on what unites me and my friends. The article soon turned into an unnavigable bloated mess. I guess I need several articles to tackle each of the aspects of our friendship separately. I will begin with an easier one, a humor.

Back in the days we of course did not think deep about what we make fun of. We just said what we wanted and liked. Many years later I analyzed as I tried to better understand myself.


As I said before humor and to be more precise satire is what unites pretty much all of my friends. However just saying we like to laugh is not enough. There are different kinds of humor out there, what is funny for one is offensive to others and so on. As I said the humor, we like is either a satire or a deadpan. There is also dumb repetition of words we find funny.

By satire I mean that we like to laugh at the world around us. At its absurdity to be precise. Every so often we see something that makes no sense in our opinion, and we make fun of that. Sometimes it is just keen observations on some silly situations around us. Other times its some socially charged topics. We do not shrink from criticizing and mocking various rules, cultural and social norms and so on. 

A lot of the jokes are about that. A more conservative person might find out humor offensive to feelings of the people around us. However, if we think it makes no sense or wrong, then we make fun of it.


Sometimes such humor addresses certain social issues. For example, once a daughter of school principal was trying to answer a certain math question. It was clear that she does not know that particular topic. However, math teacher did not want to fail daughter of her boss, so she decided to just let slide with some dubious remark.

My friend followed it closely and then just shouted to the whole class: "fake" (I think it's the most accurate translation). Because of his reputation as a funny man no one took it as a serious protest against favoritism, but rather just another crazy stunt from a class joker. 

Back then for some time we made fun of her and other "exemplary" students. There were a number of such "exemplary" students in our class whose marks were all excellent and school intended for all of them to graduate with red exemplary diplomas and a golden medal because that would be good for a school reputation. Because of that teachers were willing to forgive these select students' occasional fails.

In retrospect I think this bout from my friend was like protest cry against unfairness of the world and system where some students, well-liked by teachers, are treated better than everyone else. However back them we did not think of it that deep, we just made fun of "fake excellence".


This joke is just one example of the kind of humor Fedya and my Russian friends favored. We had many more, it will take forever to list them all. Many of them are connected to a certain situation and will take a lot of time to explain.


I was in the same class with Javier and Tsukasa for only 5 weeks. We did kept contact for some time after we were split into different groups. However, we managed to have couple of inside jokes. 

First is "lasagna". I think Javier coined it because of Tsukasa's tendency to wear several t-shirts one over the other to keep warm during winter. Several layers of t-shirts are like several layers of pasta in lasagna, hence the joke. I think Tsukasa disliked this joke. However, word stick and we ended up saying it for not particular reason all the time, just because it's a funny word. Javier made it funny.

The other one "good food is the biggest lie" joke. That started when Javier bought a schnitzel (chicken) and chips in one of the uni cafeterias. The schnitz was visibly burned and looked very upsetting. The box in which all that was served had a simple design with just two words on it "good food". I asked was so good about it, since food did not look that good. Then I think Javier responded it's the biggest lie. That too sticked and we kept repeating "good food is the biggest lie" for some time.


On the other hand, we tend to avoid self-deprecating humor. I guess everyone is sensitive about themselves and do not want to be offended. Sometimes we tread fine like with that, but we do not cross it.


The other humor, Fedya was particularly good at, is dead pan. It was inspired by actor Leslie Neilsen who starred in many Zucker brothers' movies, such as Aeroplane, Hot Shots and Naked Gun. In movies Neilsen would do the most absurd things with a dead serious face. The contrast between absurdity of action and seriousness of the person who does it produced unique comedic effect. Gintama anime does that well too.

Fedya even practiced doing or saying any absurd thing with a dead serious face just like Nielsen could. He succeeded and them often said the most absurd things in tone and wording of the news report to our amusement. He tried to teach me as well, but I could not.


The last one, funny word humor was basically like lasagna joke eventually became. Fedya even kept the row of words that together sound funnier than on their own.


There is one deceptive thing about humor. It looks silly, people who do it are often seen as nothing more than funny. However certain types of humor are actually a reflection of a great intelligence. A great intelligence that exposes issues in society but disguises itself as a joke to avoid retaliation from powerful and influential people whose power this expose threatens. That is our kind of humor.


To analyze us interest in humor further, I think it was one thing that let us forget about many unpleasant things in life and instead laugh at it. It allowed us to see unpleasant things around as pathetic jokes rather than evil devils and feel better about ourselves as we are not as much of a joke as they are.

I will continue this series with articles about cynicism, melancholy and escapism later.

Sunday, October 20, 2024

On Talking Down

I do not deal with people who talk me down or disrespect me. People who think that I am inferior to them or to some abstract moral standard they espouse are not worth a moment of my time.

Unfortunately, my parents regularly talked me down, I hate them for this very reason. No matter what they said about me, I always repeated to myself that this is bullshit and none of what they say is true.

My real friends do not see me as inferior. Those who do are not my real friends. I know a number of such fake friends who would self-describe themselves as my friends but whom I do not consider a friend.


Talking down is just a cunning ploy to control a person by controlling a goalpost around them. I am not stupid enough to fall for something like that, no matter what moral, religious or other justification they will pull out of their ass for that.

People who talk down are themselves toxic and horrible people. I do not want to deal with such people.

I will not associate with those who do not think I am awesome.

Saturday, October 19, 2024

On My Friends

I do have not too many, but rather diverse friends. There seems nothing that connects them all together. I pondered over this myself. Many, but not all, can be explained with common interest in video games and tech. However, what about the rest. Eventually I found the thing that connects them all: cynicism followed by, melancholy, escapism and satire.

People as diverse as Fedya, Olya, Javier, Tsukasa, Sameer, Ben Yahtzee Croshaw and TrueHellDei all have this skeptical, cynical and satirical outlook on life. This is the one thing that let us connect to each other and appreciate each other's company.

However, what does it mean. The answer is somewhat compelling and consist of many parts. Each of these three terms has to be analyzed separately and then put together.

At first, I wanted to write it all in the same article but very quickly that became too confusing.

So instead, I split these into four main categories and wrote a separate article about each of them and linked them all here:

Humor

Cynicism

Escapism

Melancholy

Hopefully it will help you better understand me and my friends.

What Drives People Together and What Drives them Apart

Reviewing Dungeon, no Deal... got me thinking that I need to write a more generic article about things and forces that either drive people together or drive them apart. 

Some people have tendency to favor their families and then distant relatives over others. Sometimes this mindset extrapolates into nationalism where they favor their own nationals over others, often falsely believing that citizens of their country are more related to them genetically than foreigners. 

Such people might then think that people who are not like them would always treat everyone the same, regardless of their creed or origin. After all this would be polar opposite of what they themselves do.


However, reality is different. People always unite on some common ground. The difference is that sometimes this common ground is obvious and clearly identifiable. Other times is ambiguous and obscure. Common ethnicity, looks and blood ties are something one can often see with their eyes. 

On the other hand, common interests, hobbies, similar personalities and so on are much less obvious for an average observer. Yet these things connect people none the less. It's like a gravity force: its invisible, but its strong and the only reason we walk the Earth and not float in the sky.

Friday, October 11, 2024

Reasons for Apple Success

 

As of now, Apple Computers is one of the most valued companies in the world. They have left not just most other tech companies behind, but also most other businesses as well. They are making billions and billions of profits.

However, if you look at Apple products from a rational techie point of view, they are very underpowered, ridiculously overpriced and very poor quality. They would be a questionable buy even if they were 80% discounted, that is unless you plan to resell them on ebay for more.

Quite an anomaly here. Why such a poor product succeeds as much as it does. The short answer is feelings.


We like to think that people are rational beings and make decision based on logic and facts. Such a view would be prevalent among the engineering and tech community as you do need these things together with math to actually make any product work at all. Thus, mostly logical and rational people succeed in engineering careers. including software engineering.

However, world is bigger than just engineering community. It has people who fail at math and sciences who nonetheless succeed in life based on other abilities such as emotional "intelligence", favoritism, cronyism, beauty and such. 

Such people as well as those who promote or marry them clearly do not make their decision based on logic and facts. They make them based on either feelings or social reputation. I will analyze each of these parameters separately.


Social reputation is the idea that certain items signify your status in society. For example, in military there are chevrons, starts, bars and other such devices denote rank. One star general is below the 5 star one. These ranks and devices that represent them are coveted by people.

Some extrapolate this logic into civilian world and luxury item manufacturers make a lot of money on it by associating their brand with high social status, Rolex, Versace, Rolls Royse are an example. 

To a certain extend Apple did tried to associate their brand with a social status. For example, these old ads of Mac vs PC were aimed at precisely that impression. These have not succeeded, but eventually they got there by other means.


Second and most important aspects is feelings. Feelings do seem rather simple on the surface: just because I like it. They see something, they love it and buy it. No thought process involved whatsoever. Sometimes people even buy things as expensive as cars for such superfluous reasons such as because its red, cool, pretty or has good vibes. Laptops or smartphones are much less expensive and important so such approach would be followed by more people in regard to their tech. It is because of people like that marketing departments exist and every so often invent various over the top ad campaign.

Sometimes emotional people later rationalize their decisions with some hastily combined arguments. Such arguments mislead people around them into thinking there are some rationales behind such decision when in fact there was none. It was an emotional decision.

However, what makes people like this or that and dislike something else is a rather tricky question. Many people as different as fiction writers, philosophers, astrologists, politicians and psychologists pondered over this question. So far biologists and psychologists have not produced a definitive mapping of the feelings compartment of human psyche, at least it's not publicly available.

Because there are no concrete set of rules for appealing to feelings, certain people with a knack or gift of getting such things often succeed in life or business. I do not know Steve Jobs personally so I cannot know if he reversed engineered feelings or just stumble upon the solution randomly, but whatever he did worked. However, if reverse engineered feelings do exist somewhere in Apple, value of this information is indeed high as it will all but guarantee business success.

In fact, I myself try to reverse-engineer feelings and become rich from that.


Tech world is crowded with companies that are run by rational tech savvy people who make sound rationally good tech products for equally tech savvy rational customers. In a world like that a company that appeals to feelings rather than logic would have no real competition for irrational emotional technically and mathematically illiterate casuals who buy based on feelings and emotions. Apple is such company. Apple's success made some of them try to imitate them in various ways in order to snatch at least part of their huge customer base. 

However just imitating Apple design decisions will not guarantee success. Line of thinking that it's something in their usability or convenience is fundamentally wrong. There is nothing rational in what makes Apple as popular as it is.

All Apple success comes from such non-engineering things, such as marketing, design, presentation and vibe. Outer appearance over the substance. 


Because of that one way to imitate Apple's success is to just take a sample of such illogical emotional Apple fans and just show them different design options to see what they like more.

The other is to reverse engineer feelings. To do this we need to take samples of what succeeds against any logical sense and try to figure out common patters behind these successful examples.


There is a lot of money to make by exploiting the stupid illogical people who do not think rationally. Apple's success is a proof of that. There are still a lot of room for more out of the box thinking tech companies who will manage to grasp illusive vibe that makes such people buy Apple products like hot cakes.


PS: Fundamentally emotional illiterates who cannot into math want to feel they are as savvy and advance as smart guys who actually get this stuff. Apple gives them feelings. The feeling. It does not offer then a choice that is actually smart. It only makes them feel they are making a smart choice. All Apple sells is an illusion (delusion) that their products are good. People buy into the delusion and refuse to wake up from it.

That is just one of the delusions, emotional people like to indulge.

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Why We Should Learn from Muslim Approach to Women and Relationship

Often Islam associated with a lot of restrictive rules that mostly apply to women. Some even call it oppression. People see Muslim women covered from head to toe and think they are as conservative and restrictive as Amish, Jehovah Witnesses or other radical Christian groups. 

At the same time there is another aspect about Muslim women, based on (in)famous harem of Turkish Sultans that is occasionally used as an inspiration for harems in porn movies.

So where is the truth in all that. In reality is in between these two extremes, both of which are actually true.


Since I have a number of Muslim friends, some of them have invited me to visit their place. When I visit unmarried guys, we hang out in their place just like we would with people from other places. 

However, once I was invited by a married Muslim guy who had four kids. One might expect to be able to meet his wife and see his kids, but that is not what happened. He told me that per Islamic tradition a part of house where wife and kids live is off limits to anyone, but husband and we have to make do of the only room not used by them. It wasn't that the guy was inhospitable, far from it. It was just an Islamic tradition. Together with me there was another Muslim guest who had to abide by the same rules. I did not meet his wife or kids, but we still had good time as he showcased various things.


Back in the days I did not think too much of this experience. However, many years later I came back to this and decided to analyze this tradition and decipher the reasons for such approach. Connecting dots from several separate pieces of information got me to an interesting conclusion. 

Muslims make their women cover their hair and keep parts of home where they live off limits to any visitor to prevent spousal infidelity and adultery. Most of the rules about women have this simple goal in mind. The less other men see someone's wife, the less likely they would want to sleep with her. That is why wife is kept in an area off limits to visitors. That is why when she is in public she is covered from head to toe. Some go even further by forbidding married women from going out without husband supervision.

Adultery and infidelity is a common problem in the Western world as well. A lot of marriages and relationships collapse because of infidelity. Reducing female attractiveness to strangers is one way of fixing it. The problem does need fixing and younger generations increasingly refuse to enter relationships and marriage because they do not want to repeat mistakes of those whose marriages have ended in a painful divorce.


However, there is one more thing that I have discerned from these rules. The word harem or haram actually means forbidden or off-limits. It is used for variety of things forbidden for different reasons.

Fundamentally every Muslim household function as famous harems of Turkish Sultans. The only difference is in size. Someone as powerful and influential as a ruler of the Ottoman empire can afford a huge palace for his wifes' together with eunuch servants and other fancy things. A more ordinary Muslim can only afford a designated off-limits room or several. 

Rules for each are the same, husband is the only male who can enter and the whole place is serves as entertainment area for him. That is wifes are not expected to be modest when they are alone with husband, they expected to be sexy, entertain him and seduce him into fucking them. All that of course happens in the closed-off area away from curious prying eyes. I could not verify it myself as I had not opportunity, nor a talent for sneaking into closed off areas. 

Of course, each household is different, not everyone has private orgies with their wifes, but such a possibility is not too farfetched.

Thus, approach when wifes are modest with people other than their husband and only allowed to be sexy when there are alone with their husband is fundamentally much more adequate arrangement that will lead towards greater relationship satisfaction. Why so? Imagine the opposite situation, that often happens in relationship in the West and Russia.

At home wife is lazy and takes this time to relax and do nothing. She wears old clothes as she is too afraid to damage expensive fancy dress she is saving up for some special occasion. Any husband is unlikely to find that attractive and they do not. Instead, they look at their wife and think why they were so stupid to marry in the first place. It's a wife's problem but most of them do not think this way and instead blame their husband for being impotent.

Then when she goes out for that special occasion, she puts her best dress, does make up and so on. In doing so she often takes longer than necessary, making her husband worry if they will be late and so on. After all this stress with being late he no longer cares if she looks good or not. 

However, once they finally arrive at the special occasions, there lots of strangers can see his wife at her best without seeing how much trouble she caused her husband to get this pretty. Some of them might like her so much, they will try to cheat with her.

All in all, a typical western approach I outlined above is a self-defeating way of life, that will only cause more divorces and unhappy marriages. Sure, not everyone takes it as far as that but there is a clear tendency for self-defeating behavior that leads to divorce and unhappiness. If wife wants to be loved by a husband, she has to work hard to look good at home in his presence, not on special occasions when she meets outsiders. It she does not do that her husband will lose interest, and it will end up sad.


Sure, not every Muslim would be able to elaborate on all that as much as I did, must just do it because God says so. However, it does work, and their marriages are more stable and happier than those in the West. It's not that divorce is forbidden in Islam, it's not. However, few ever go this way. 

Thus, we should study Muslim experience and use it to improve our own relationships between genders. We do not have to become Muslims ourselves and follow other rules of Islam, some of which are rather useless. Instead, we should create a composite system that will work in our secular society.

For example, it would make sense that only women in a marriage or in a relationship would dress modestly in public. Single women still need to look attractive to interest potential partner. We do not want to go path or arranged marriages, negotiated between families as this have plenty of issues on its own, for example, differences in tastes between parents and children.


However, the rest is possible for any couple to do on their own volution. Every wife can and should dress modestly in public, but at the same time wear sexiest lingerie at home for her husband. Doing this will make relationship more stable and satisfying for both sides.

On Greek Gods

Zeus was promiscuous rather than rapist. Kind of most popular guy on campus whom all the girls want and who makes their dreams come true. Pu...