Eternal Truths

A man needs novelty and usefulness in order to grow. He slips into a life devoid of meaning sans usefulness and never have a shot at knowing meaning sans novelty.

A messy work is essential for novelty. Restoring orderliness to the created mess is essential for usefulness before you start the cycle again. Allowing mess to accumulate is seeking novelty without making it useful. Similarly, only striving for orderliness is to never try to glimpse at the novel.

Life is an interplay between mess and order. The real mastery is to be able to create both. He who has mastered this aspect of life is able to take risks, live, while still producing outcomes. He is neither reckless nor cautious in his approach to life. He lives and thrives maintaining perfect balance between his will and the nature.

A sign of intelligence is method of argument - principled and focused on the point. All perspectives of argumentation are aimed at the point. On the contrary, the unintelligent take a part of the argument, make it a pivot point, and point at another issue in order to prove their intelligence thereby derailing the argument.

The only common point between various lines of argumentation taken by the intelligent is the core issue. The only common point between various lines of argumentation taken by the unintelligent is the pivot point. Core issue is the casualty.

A man must overcome affinity for material possessions, not as a cope for lack of it, but as a flex for not being buyable. Even kings bow down to sages who have mastered themselves, for the sage possesses what the king lacks.

Abundance affects optimality. It is beneficial to engineer scarcity for optimal outcomes. The purpose of abundance is to be able to engineer scarcity. Sans abundance one has to contend with enforced scarcity. In the former there is intent, in the latter there is helplessness.

Your niceness stops being a weakness when you learn to withdraw the niceness upon sensing ingratitude and do so permanently. Niceness itself is not a weakness but sustained niceness despite disrespect is a weakness.

Preoccupation with trivialities, seeking incessant validation and emotional response to criticisms are symptoms of a mind not engaged in the act of creation. In the absence of an aim the mind wanders and finds abode in the noise of the world - the matters irrelevant to the self.

Be so good that people hate you. Be so wise to ignore those who hate and focus on those who don't. Meaning if you are good, really good, you will find haters. Some out of envy, some because they cannot comprehend why you are good and some who think you just got lucky.

Best form of teaching consists of pointers that promote you to take action. They are like signboards showing you the right path. Once you are on the path, it is up to you to learn. Lessons you learn by direct action and practice can never be transformed into instructions in its entirety. The last mile is the mile of action and the experiences of action are inexpressible. Theory and instruction serve as a foundation, but mastery requires personal engagement with the subject matter.

Life is all about trade-offs. Nobody has it all. One must sacrifice one thing in order to achieve another. Resistance to this sacrifice is suffering. Be willing to sacrifice, accept your situation, so that the energy spent resisting is routed to create the life you desire.

The first person to talk all the time is usually the last person that must be talking.

Lack of nuance in arguments implies lack of understanding even if the argument being made is correct. One may criticise rightly but get the whole reasoning wrong. It is not enough to be correct, it is more important to get the reasoning right.

Making permanent enemies or perceiving one as such, breaking all blood tied bonds, burning all bridges just because you are too emotional about your brainwashed values is foolish. You are influenced by the politics of the day without having any influence over the same politics.

If there is one lesson you must draw from your daily political occurrences is that there are no permanent enemies, only permanent incentives. Politicians are rarely emotional, alliances made depending on reaching objectives of self while exploiting weakness in others. Alliance made on temporary shared incentives.

But politicians have a goal and thus they are pragmatic with their approach to politics, and you have no goal thus you are irrational with your approach to politics. An astute observer of the political events over a considerably large time span, should not miss this crucial lesson.

A woman who is into you is more intrigued by your silence than your words. She will then make every effort to insert herself into the silence, trying to disrupt your thoughtless streak in order to extract a glimpse of the world she thinks you were imagining.

Demonstrate greatness through your own actions, not by claiming the achievements of your ancestors. You inherit the responsibility to preserve and contribute to their greatness. You do not inherit entitlement to their greatness itself. Your ancestor's greatness isn't yours to claim, it is yours to match. Honor their legacy through deeds, not futile words reeking of arrogance and ignorance.

Time is your greatest investment. Invest time in exchange for knowledge, acquired through the means of practical application. Everything else such as wealth, fame power follows as a consequence over which you have no complete control. Focus on the right investment of time. Open yourself up for rewards from existence. Don't anticipate.

Promiscuous reading mangles your thoughts and ideas, in the process it destroys your writing and coherence. It is not a good idea to "sleep around" with many books, many thought processes and in particular those which espouse terrible ideologies.

Old books that have stood the test of time are a better read than most modern books, social media posts, blogs or essays. This is true because old books have reached you in filtered form whereas the writings of present time are delivered unfiltered.

There is no time to think when you are building things. When there is no time to think, you don't philosophize, write, read or contemplate anything beyond what's needed for the creation. Oftentimes, incessant thinking on less urgent matters is because you aren't engaging enough with the existence. You aren't learning. You aren't building.

Time filters falsehood. No falsehood can live through the passage of time unblemished. Truth alone has the power to pass through time and it does so with increasing intensity. Thus impatience is the trait of the truth averse and patience the trait of a seeker.

Rituals often are a product of evolved thinking manifested into correct actions. There is an awareness for the existence of the ritual. It serves as a medium to internalize the right thinking and the resulting correct actions. These thoughts, the thinking patterns, the knowledge form the soul of a ritual.

Over time however, there is a tendency to do away with the pursuit of knowledge, and the thoughts diffuse out of the psyche leaving behind a shell of practices. The awareness for the existence of a ritual is lost as a result of complacency. Once the knowledge of purpose for a ritual is lost, the practices themselves become prone to adulteration. The adulteration often reflects the prevalent degeneracy.

It is important that the pursuit of knowledge, the patterns of evolved thinking must not be tampered with once the ritual has set in. Rituals cannot be a substitute for evolved thinking. It can only be an anchor to the right thoughts manifested as right actions. Knowledge therefore takes precedence over ritual.

This doesn't mean ritual has no place. In fact rituals are applied knowledge. Just as rituals lose their soul sans knowledge, knowledge itself transforms to ignorance sans rituals. Ignorance is not just lack of knowledge, but also includes knowledge that hasn't been verified in practice.

Write with a certain ignorance.

One cannot write freely while burdening oneself to produce original ideas. The preoccupation with originality leads to dissipation of motivation to write. Thus, one ends up scavenging existing writings for quotes or snippets that support the idea.

The purport of writing is to educate than to be original in ideas. Yes you are going to say what has been said before, but you are saying it in a manner that is personal to you. This personalization is the originality for the writer.

The more you cite or quote, less original and artificial your writing, since you eliminate personal experiences in the process.

Money doesn't get you class, you can only look classy. Knowledge of the material world doesn't build character, it can only make you appear refined. Intelligence doesn't automatically imply wisdom.

Each of these facades fall apart when instigated by trouble. The wealthy start to show their lack of class, the knowledgeable start to speak like an ignorant and the intellect doesn't save you from bad decisions, as wisdom would.

Trouble separates those who are rich in the truest sense, from those who merely appear rich. It separates those who have an abundance mindset and those live in scarcity.

Every persisting problem has cyclical nature to its occurrence. Tracing the source of the problem often leads to the return to the starting point of the investigation. Such problems can only be solved by breaking the cycle.

Breaking the cycle means having the wisdom to sacrifice of ones own ego, to consume the bad and transform it into good. It also means ruthlessness out of love to put an end to bad and enforce ones own will. The former is creation of the good and the latter is destruction of the bad.

The ability to breaking the cycle is nobility and the trajectory of the existence is influenced by the noble souls.

An overthinking mind is like a burning torch, ready to set fire to everything it touches. Calm your mind for a life of serenity.

Speak with clear intentions. Be aware of the words you choose. Do not speak words designed to hurt. The urge to use hurtful words when emotionally vulnerable must be resisted as hurtful words are the one that cause the most grief. Silence coupled with awareness over speech is the most important skill one must master.

"Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual." -- From Dune Messiah

The above quote captures my thoughts when I visit places which are remnants of a great civilization. It is a conversation with a past world where people knew to build great places. Those skills, those people lost to time.

But this emptiness of purpose is not limited to empires and civilizations. It is equally valid at an individual level. When you are too fixated on a purpose, to the extent that purpose is conflated with identity, what happens when the purpose is achieved?

Identity stagnates or decays sans a new purpose. New purpose implies building a new identity, letting go of past achievements, making room for new ones. When an individual thus reinvents, there comes a new time, a new empire and a new civilization as a consequence of combined efforts of such awakened individuals.

Being egoistic with a trusted person and shunning every ounce of ego with a person unworthy of trust is a sure way of finding misery. People who are egoistic among loved ones while too accommodating with others are a good exhibit of this behavior and are often miserable.

The feeling when you witness people sabotage their own lives out of fear and manufacture unfavorable circumstances or create enemies that don't exist, is unmatched and unexplainable. You have so many things to say but so little words to express and stop people from ruining themselves.

Money doesn't buy class. It only amplifies those without class. Classy people conduct themselves regardless of money. I have seen plenty of people without much money but with exceptional character. Only those with shady upbringings show their true colors when in possession of wealth.

Greatness is a consequence of right lessons distilled from the suffering in life.

A man must overcome affinity for material possessions, not as a cope for lack of it, but as a flex for not being buyable. Even kings bow down to sages who have mastered themselves, for the sage possesses what the king lacks.

Constraints force direction on our efforts and necessity forces innovation. Lack of constraints and necessity is slack and slack enables lethargy. A person with necessity will in most cases outsmart a person with discipline but without necessity.

The skills you bring to the table is dwarfed by the network you bring to the table. Skills matter when you are in a role responsible for execution by the means of zooming into details. Network is important when you are in a role responsible for execution by the means of leadership, connecting various ideas and crafting a grand vision.

Networking doesn't just mean the number of people you know. It also entails the quality of people you know. When you come from an environment that has a culture of excellence you will make connections that are equally valuable. This is what makes the network high value.

When you posses such a high value network, it neutralizes any weakness regarding personal skills. Strong network makes you suitable for leadership role. Marry that with strong skills and you are unstoppable, indispensable.

If you happen to come from environments where the culture of excellence is non-existent, your best bet is to up skill to the largest extent possible. You will have knowledge of all the tools of the trade, but you will lack a valuable network.

You can leverage your skills to build the network of competent. In the process you will find many people relatively less competent with skills, but with a strong network because they come from places where excellence is valued.

You can whine about the unfairness and bitterness of the world or you can be the light and illuminate those who come in your proximity. It is hard, but imagine being a presence which brings out the spark among people, give them a taste of sweetness in life, make them feel hopeful.

The difference between a winner and a loser becomes clear when you examine their response to setbacks and losses. The winner takes accountability even when the circumstances are out of his control. The loser shifts responsibility even when the situations were within his control. This translates to elegance in the demeanor of the winner and arrogance in the behavior of the loser.

Being scared is the most unmanly behavior which is a consequence of ideologies of the present. When a man becomes unapologetic of his existence and shuns the feelings of fear, he will find most of his adversaries vanish. What remains are the worthy adversaries and in most cases they aren't what you imagined.

The nature of a person can be assessed by looking at the way he shares information.

There are people who withhold even an insignificant knowledge. There are those who leave out the important part, leaving an impression that they helped and only when you follow on the information you realize the folly. There are also those who deliberately mislead.

Finally there are those who share the wisdom and knowledge generously. It is a pleasure to know and interact with people of this last kind. These are the people of abundance and one never feels depleted in the presence of abundant people.

This is my definition of rich and poor in many spheres of life.

When god gives you intelligence, wealth, power or knowledge, it is your obligation to use it wisely than to hoard it in ignorance or squander it in arrogance.

Improper use leads to suffering, proper use leads to peace and prosperity.

A person used to disrespect only responds to disrespect. Treat him with respect, he will think you are unworthy and will return the gesture by disrespect. He does this because he is internally convinced that he deserves the ill treatment.

Once you understand this fact you begin to understand why certain people do not reciprocate kindness. Why certain communities cannot be civilized. Why it is not reasonable to use reason when dealing with the public.

Every civilization that was once great and finds themselves as a faint shadow of its glorious past, has one phenomenon in common - degeneracy amongst its population. Further, such a degeneracy is normalized and rationalized through perverse use of intellect. There is no ascension sans introspection and subsequent correction.

World is a lot worse than your optimism allows and a lot better than your pessimism projects.

If you are too pessimistic, you will be surprised at the kindness the world has to offer. But such a kindness comes at the price of flawed decision making due to your own pessimism.

On the other hand, you will be constantly let down by the world due to your excessive optimism. But the upside is that your decision making is charged by your sheer positivity - a prerequisite for the ambitious.

The latter is the strength of the leader and thus being let down is his burden.

Prefer slow and sturdy growth over fast and fragile growth. It is important to take risky decisions in order to grow. But, it is not wise to risk the growth process itself. Fast growth is risky growth. The speed puts emphasis on quick outcomes. Slow growth on the other hand puts emphasis on the process which will lead to necessary outcomes over time. Invest in the process and let the outcomes compound.

I do not worry about perfection, but do seek perfection. I iterate due to the former towards the latter. Iterations have no meaning if you do not have a defined perfect state of what ever it is that you are trying to build.

Perfection and lack of clarity do not go together. The problem starts when desire for perfection and lack of clarity are operating at the same time. Seek places or situations where there is clarity and your desire for perfection will make sense again.