Building a strong individuality is crucial to be a balanced, efficient and happy person. It makes you worthy as a person, interesting, and able to impact the world. But for those without the tools and weapons to defend it, their individuality will go away or mitigate at the first confrontation. At that moment it becomes up for grabs, anyone wielding enough aggression or manipulation will take it away. You can’t let that happen since it’s your most valued possession. The strongest countries and powers in the world are built around a common culture and a single belief: protecting that culture is worth dying for.

At the individual level that protection is called identity. You will encounter people in life whose goal is to strip you of that individuality, as they see an opportunity to use you, thus diverting you from your goals. When you are a strong individual you have put individuality at the center of your life, then you’re going to be driven, you will have principles, values. All of this makes you a very positive person to be around for certain types of people, but for others, it may be the opposite, as you become less malleable, not easy to move around, cumbersome. Your independence and agency need protection but the only person who can protect those is you. One look around yourself and you will see numerous individuals who have allowed external forces, such as companies, ideologies, and media, to shape their identities, turning them into unwitting puppets or slaves.

First tool: know yourself. Most just skim the surface of their own self and don’t dig deeper because the are scared to face it, lazy to do the work, or don’t even think of looking because their identity has been injected with some pre-made ideology. It’s like someone grafted an extra appendix onto them and their body hasn’t rejected it, not realizing it was a foreign entity in the first place. Knowing yourself is crucial because you can’t defend something that’s being subverted from you if you don’t know what is being subverted. The person who knows you the best is actually you. It’s very romantic to say that your partner knows you even better, but that’s not a normal state — it has to be you. Having portions of yourself that you keep only for yourself doesn’t make you a liar, it’s totally human to have a personal garden.

So work on knowing yourself, psycho-analyze yourself, do talk therapy, take any chance you get to become fluent in yourself. That is the most important language you can speak. If you become your own best friend, you will never be alone again. It doesn’t mean you won’t seek the company of others, but when you are in that company you will be that much conformable and confident. You want to understand everything that revolves in and around your head and body, all of that is your universe and excitingly vast. However, you have to do the terrifying work of looking at the galaxy and realizing you have to explore it all on your own terms. You might discover things when you are with or around others, but you aren’t actually discovering — you are confirming things you have already discovered by yourself. You confront your individuality to theirs and something you already knew comes up, you just sign it off.

You test that identity around other people, you project your identity through an expression called a personality. You will see children, and teenagers in particular, putting their identity to the test. They will tend to go through phases or cycles of personalities: they are looking for the personality that will be the most palatable to others and the one most comfortable for them. This is why trends and fashions emerge. It’s not a problem unless you become stuck, failing to recognize that this sifting process is just a part of refining your personality.

At times, you may encounter individuals who struggle with group rejection of their personality. In some cases it will lead to social rejects developing symptoms of social anxiety who will have a tough time becoming whole and productive. In other cases, it can give rise to strong-willed individuals who toughen themselves up to the point of developing an incredibly robust and attractive personality. The feedback you receive should aim to help you feel at home within yourself — You don’t construct your identity solely for others, but you do want it to have the capacity to connect with them.

The essence of defending your identity implies that you’re putting it at risk by engaging with others. It’s effortless to uphold your identity when you’re alone. You can’t whimsically define your identity subjectively, by yourself, at any given moment. It’s when you confront your identity in public that you discover if it’s truly made of the good stuff or cardboard. The internet has made easy for people to fantasize their life and live a dream identity of sorts. You will see a lot of people who exude strength online but crumble in face-to-face interactions. And in social settings, you need a key to safeguard your identity.

The most important key: the boundary. A wall set up to protect the identity. And it is as strong as your commitment to it. It’s a tough as your mental strength. And yes people will think that you are inflexible and stubborn but that’s exactly what you expect of a wall. The only danger is if you surround yourself with so many walls that now can’t move anymore and people can’t see you. For the people who want to fuck with your boundaries: firstly, if they intend to harm you, they’ll only harm themselves against the brick; secondly, if they aim to ascertain your worthiness as a friend, ally, or partner, they’ll realize your sturdiness. If a boundary fails, you appear weak. Having a boundary fall in the face of others, especially if they break it down themselves is catastrophic because they know they can do it again. Each subsequent wall you raise will be met with skepticism and diminished power. You may find yourself in situations where you must choose between protecting your boundary and potentially upsetting others. Always opt for the former. When you allow a boundary to fail, you also teach yourself that you are weak, you reinforce a cycle of destructive behavior. It makes it more likely that you’ll let it happen again in the future, having done so once before.

A strong sense of identity projects a robust personality, acting as an emissary of your inner castle. This aura naturally draws like-minded, benevolent individuals who will contribute to your growth and strength rather than stealing your resources. It radiates a core of authenticity that really shines and captivates many, making it an attractive target for those who covet it’s rare and precious. Some will even see it as a challenge, luring in psychopathic personalities intent on snuffing that flame out just to see if it’s even worth anything. They will push your buttons, see if you are willing to negotiate, to compromise your individuality for them. They don’t really care about your objective nature they just want to see if they can get you to change. To see, again, if you were strong to start with or if it was all bullshit. You can’t even get angry at that because it’s just their real nature — on the other hand, you suck if you allow the bridge to go down. And they will leave — plot twist — because it’s the only “test” they needed. The manipulation they employ is very pernicious but the end result remains same: they leave you broken down.

As you walk with this identity into the world and attract people (as this strength is inherently attractive), it’s important to recognize that not every person you feel a mutual attraction with will necessarily be a good match. People will knock on the door but not every one of them deserves to be let inside the boundaries. It’s perfectly OK to decline certain connections if you sense they may pose a danger to your identity. This may lead to more time spent in solitude, but eventually, you will encounter your people.

The right people are the ones to enter the kingdom and add to the treasure. There are people like that in this world — you meet and you intuitively understand. Their pure identity will meet your pure identity, blending and intertwining not to dilute, but to form a larger collective. They understand that keeping you as an ally is a far better choice than pillaging you. They will respect the walls and wait for the bridge, as they themselves possess seated boundaries and understand their purpose. The wrong people get upset when you stipulate your boundaries and they attempt to negotiate around them. The wrong people and collectives want to create a melting soup where the differences fade — that is a toxic group. It’s either ruled by a tyrant or destined to collapse. And when that collapse happens, you are doomed as well because you decided to subscribe to that group, you allow it to provide you with the boundaries and now it’s all gone. The right collectives recognize we are stronger when each individual identity within the group are kept alive, it’s a pot where every single ingredient retains its independent flavor.

The right people value your strength because it not only protects them but also provides you with the emotional wealth to support them. In times of crisis or trauma, you will be able to open your doors and welcome them in and they will know they will be protected. Boundaries can expand around others as well. Walls can be put around those that you love. They can even encompass concepts, ideas. It all begins with building strength within yourself and then expanding outward. It doesn’t work the other way around: too many hippies think they will change the world and spark the revolution but they can’t defend themselves in the first place, meaning they are useless — you want to be of use to others? develop your identity, own you individuality.

This is how we reduce parasitic manipulation to almost nothing and create communities around ourselves, kingdoms with our peers, and really strong systems with the ones we love.

It’s autumn now, and you’ve packed away all your shorts. As she shuffles la vie en rose you trade cool raindrops for ephemeral moods and the silence afforded by chilled intense downpours. You’ve ditched the heat-wave dancers that supported your spirit throughout the summer and switched it back up to jazz. It’s autumn now, and you’re still untethered; you’re anchored by a new responsibility, mental bonfires smouldering well into the night, and wine, family, fellowship. Something akin to resolution rising, collecting neon moss dangling from branches — a hand-knitted letter of admission to care college? The comfort of dark notes coming together in timely melodies. It’s now autumn, a step back, momentarily breather, nestle in and take comfort — and then the wind blows again, spilling both rice bowls and fish across the restaurant floor.

#1 You constantly wait for things to be perfect to even try. You create weird prerequisites for you to even attempt things. It’s a false sense of perfectionism. Perfectionism is: you try something and never finish it because it’s not good enough — whereas you have nothing to finish, you have yet to even attempt. The perfect plan is actually the one that comes into action, and you will make it up as you go.

#2 You use external factors to skip action. It’s always the situation or the mood or other people. Mood follows action: and while you tattoo the precept on yourself, you still can’t go swimming because you’re too sleepy. You’re the one who didn’t sleep, you created the circumstance. The more you get it done, the more you teach yourself that things can get done, the more you become a winner. Stop looking at people around you to explain your failures. You’ll become a man: it’s not always gonna be your fault but it’s always gonna be your responsibility.

#3 You need to be encouraged externally to do things that are good for you. You want people to pat you and push you forward to get shit done. That person doesn’t exist. That person is you. You need to use the undying fire inside your heart, instead of one you need to constantly fuel with wood outside of you. If you run out of wood you are shit out of luck. Wood are these people around you that serve as motivation sources, once they stop you stop. One day you will be the one in the pool, the music studio, the gym, the company, the ranch counting the corpses of people whose spurt of motivation died down. Until then, I won’t twist my panties if you don’t get it done, I only care about achievers. I give you the keys, you open the door.

#4 You expect an external savior. Look back at a tough situation you had before: of despair, desperation or helplessness. And think what type of adult should have been there for that kid to be happy? And now become that adult. Without becoming it, you are easy to abuse, without it you go through life trying to grab the hands of people and won’t be able to stand back up for long. Becoming that adult will teach you how to walk on your own. At the same time you will become of use to people because you will be able to pick them up, or rather show them a way to pick themselves up too.
You wait for a special trigger in the sky. Those don’t happen in real life, except the time you realize you have to take responsibility for your happiness and future. That is the magical moment. Once you get to that the moment, everything I say will become an evidence. You are your own trigger. You have to fully recognize your flaws and fragilities. Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility is solid and forever. Dependance is passing, childish and a flukey cope.

#5 Your sources of motivation are external. Hence your control is external. But no baby is born knowing what is an internal or external motivation source, those are things you develop in your brain, they are just beliefs/illusions. Which also means — just switch your belief. Stop believing your agency is external, start believing it’s internal — and just like that you make things happen, instead of things happening to you. No more fate. Look at people who believe in determinism: they’re blackpilled and fucking losers and their sink deeper and deeper into apathy, funny how that works. Whereas you will always believe in freewill, you will know that it’s all about your responsibility and you will lead a better life. And even if you could prove to me that destiny is real, it doesn’t change how your outlook should be. You can just believe in fate, and that it’s all positive things laid out for you. All you have to do is go after them, it will make life great.

#6 You have bought in to the lie that genetics is everything. You have people and organizations in your life who claim they are doing you a favor and are brutally honest by saying “bad genetics or bad chemistry are a major factor”. Is that actually a sight of relief? Does it actually make you feel better? No, it again externalizes your sense of agency, it’s just cope. Real honesty is to say that you don’t work hard enough, you’re not consistent enough, not patient enough, and always blaming someone else. They infiltrate mental health and addiction into the genetic level and made it a scientific matter like generational trauma — the genetic basis has never been proven. Inspect what you or your family claims runs in the blood — that is this bloodline’s biggest cope. No. What you make of your genetics is what matters — if you take two clones, you tell one they have good genetics, the other bad ones, at the end of 10 years this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy — but the only difference was mindset. The pygmalion effect means that the way you talk to people about their potential dictates their actual potential. Don’t use it on yourself to sabotage yourself. When you complain about genetics, you complain to nature… I mean you’re part of nature, but nature doesn’t plot, doesn’t overthink. It just made you, it’s a cosmic force. You can’t call customer service and get a reimbursement. Instead, look at the force that made you as a great blessing, be grateful to it, and move on with your life.

#7 You’re entitled. And that ensues from the way you look at life and project it onto other people. Something good about a person? It couldn’t have been because they worked on it, surely… so you deserve it as well. You put yourself in spoil and envy, and you put others in luck and height. You are faced with people who are actually in responsibility, control, who go out and earn things. As you still believe that things should fall into your lap, you get jealous and denounce a lack of fairness. If you knew how the game is played, you would see someone better and think OK they got it from legitimate means, I have to learn from them, I have to see how they obtained that. Don’t take advice from roaches, take advice from achievers.

#8 You use your previous lack of action as an excuse to not get involved in the future. You know what… just because of pride you should want to put in the work now, even if the results won’t be immediate. Just to prove that you can, just to see if you can. You are trying to protect the remnants of your ego. The more you accumulate mistakes, the tougher it is to get started. The sunken cost fallacy is a bias that tells you it’s late to start. #1 and #8 are a frightful combo. Mom has a ritual in the stuck mornings, she says “Look up, what do you see?” “A roof” “Look down, what do you see?” “A bed” “Under the covers, what do you see?” “Two legs, two arms” “Do they move?” “Yes” “Then get up!”

Think about all this negativity exposed and how it made you feel. And transform that feeling into the type of energy you need to change your life.

I love how our generation has access to all these mental illnesses and there’s always gonna be one you can get because the spectrums are wide like the horizon and you’re the one being labelled as if there’s something wrong with you not fitting in with society instead of society not fitting in with you.

Autistic compensations

• creating scripts to use in social situations
• repeating phrases exactly as others have said them
• watching others in order to understand social skills
• practicing facial expressions and body language
• learning and using social skills seen on TV and movies
• using behaviours learned from watching others interact
• deliberately copying someone else’s behaviours, body language, or expressions during interactions

As the wipers slide around in the constant spray, we awe at the green-amber-red landscapes. The road is shiny with the yellow line in the middle, it stresses hope as if to reveal signs.

The artist is present with his magical lyrics, they speak of past and future. He allows the moment to absorb us, she energizes me in magnetic jolts while my heart and head radiate. We discover the connectedness of the artist, the thief in the night in the day, he channels a higher power. The artists reflect their own feelings in the moment but those magic words will continue, for centuries to come, focusing the light of a relationship in a single tactile phrase-point.

And the choir lifts up and leaves and gives space and our weekend is filled with intimacy.

Giving into nothing and everything. The mouth is wide and you can walk through it and never say a word. As I went, I saw little patterns repeating in a rhombus and fleur-de-lis crystallized in gold. We don’t see the dawn of the sun until it’s time and we don’t roam to find out. Jay Ee Tee focuses the O; and boat fees to Valletta. And who is to say that a ferry will make everything right?

With beautiful glasses and zero fuss, he sits on blue plastic and muscles transform into bones. Jay is a gull who eats all the time and he doesn’t mind that the ferry’s legs are spinning through the harbour, covering the fish with a crusty water blanket.

I’m walking down Athens that morning, the first of the long summer days. I stop at the corner of Xerxes’s Place, and I can see its narrow, cobblestoned lane, its sagging houses. A hush comes through the air, and out comes my old friend, the old man with the hat I last saw at the débutante ball.

“So you got a plan, Mr. Leos?” he asks.

“A beautiful plan. You could call it, ‘To sell a girl into marriage.’ I really think you ought to make about three or four times what the Iktinos-Rothschilds could make in Maltese real estate.”

“Well, you get back to us when you’re done.”

“I will try, Mr. Grant. By Zeus, I will try. ‘You always gotta milk the shit out of your cow’ as the uptown saying goes.”

We both let out gracious, nosy, upper class laughs and part ways. An image of an udder slowly dissolves through my mind as I walk down to the amphitheatre.

He had a party that summer and paid all the bills on the side and gave me $3,500 and offered $55,000 for a girl with her maidenhead. I must have gone mad on hearing that promise. The woman who runs the underground scene, a lady named Blanche, gave me the bill for my chariot fare to the Hill of the Nymphs, where fifty brides were waiting for their suitors. Ophelia was hypnotically beautiful, and delicate. We discussed her name and remembered I had one time saved her from being a prostitute. Her mother almost had me put on trial and lynched. But everyone knew the girls at Temple Corinth, and they get good, good money.

Mr. Grant asked me if I had found the right girl. I said maybe I had, but I still had to give Lady Blanche the marriage papers. I took Ophelia to his apartment. He gave me the money and I walked out of there. I began to think of my other affairs. I had some business in Argos. I liked the atmosphere. I thought I could make a good living there. I did not want to take any chances and lose my life and my freedom, so I got water from the fountain, heated it to wash my face, and departed. It was raining that day and I remember the hypnotic drumming of the droplets unravelling the mystery of how work gets done and money gets made.

You know, looking at the flame at a campfire, I think it’s so captivating because fire is the only thing that hasn’t changed since the dawn of humanity and monkeys became men. It hasn’t changed in shape, smell, feel, sound, color, size. Even watermelons and bananas are widely different since only like 1645. Tomatoes just started existing. And you can compare food and fire because you can get more nutrients out of the former with the latter.

You could change the nature of campfires by branding them. This year’s Fire Blaze S is the first entry-level Fire, priced at $80,000. The most recent additions to the Fire lineup are the $90,000 (including the $80,000 for the special edition) Blaze S, the $75,000 X6, and the $60,000 R7. The X6 is like a more powerful X3, and the X6 is like a brighter X5. With the Blaze S, Fire fans can choose between a 2-mode ambient temperature control system and an ambient temperature sensor.

Imagine you’re a young girl before the Stone Age, and you’re waiting for your brother to get home from hunting. While waiting, you have a campfire going, and you’re watching it with the best of intentions. It’s your guardian and it creates an aura of safety around you, where animals and ghosts can’t harm you. They’re afraid of the mystical portable sun. Scared and sacred are almost spelled the same.

You’re helping the campfire put out a blaze, but all of a sudden, a huge bug flies in front of the light and projects a scary silhouette in your eyes. You quickly put your fire out, your brother comes home, and you’re so distraught at what’s happened that you collapse on the floor. In the midst of your meltdown, you pass out and have a dream. You are sitting on a stone slab in the middle of an incredibly dark forest. You are watching a woman who’s been there for a while, and she says, “Well, you’ve come a long way, baby. You’re a fine young lady, but you’ll always be my monkey girl.” She turns to you and kisses you, and you awaken, relieved.

Stories and novels consist of three parts:

Narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z.

Description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader. “The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary.”¹

Dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech.

1. He regretted that this afternoon’s groom wouldn’t be along—they had always been able to cram so much into such nights: they knew how to attach women and how to get rid of them, how much consideration any girl deserved from their intelligent hedonism. A party was an adjusted thing—you took certain girls to certain places and spent just so much on their amusement; you drank a little, not much, more than you ought to drink, and at a certain time in the morning you stood up and said you were going home. You avoided college boys, sponges, future engagements, fights, sentiment, and indiscretions. That was the way it was done. All the rest was dissipation.

In the morning you were never violently sorry—you made no resolutions, but if you had overdone it and your heart was slightly out of order, you went on the wagon for a few days without saying anything about it, and waited until an accumulation of nervous boredom projected you into another party.¹

2. He was critical about women. A single defect—a thick ankle, a hoarse voice, a glass eye—was enough to make him utterly indifferent. And here for the first time in his life he was beside a girl who seemed to him the incarnation of physical perfection.²

3. Nevertheless, they fell in love—and on her terms. He no longer joined the twilight gathering at the De Sota bar, and whenever they were seen together they were engaged in a long, serious dialogue, which must have gone on several weeks. Long afterward he told me that it was not about anything in particular but was composed on both sides of immature and even meaningless statements—the emotional content that gradually came to fill it grew up not out of the words but out of its enormous seriousness. It was a sort of hypnosis. Often it was interrupted, giving way to that emasculated humor we call fun; when they were alone it was resumed again, solemn, low-keyed, and pitched so as to give each other a sense of unity in feeling and thought. They came to resent any interruptions of it, to be unresponsive to facetiousness about life, even to the mild cynicism of their contemporaries. They were only happy when the dialogue was going on, and its seriousness bathed them like the amber glow of an open fire. Toward the end there came an interruption they did not resent—it began to be interrupted by passion.

Oddly enough, Anson was as engrossed in the dialogue as she was and as profoundly affected by it, yet at the same time aware that on his side much was insincere, and on hers much was merely simple. At first, too, he despised her emotional simplicity as well, but with his love her nature deepened and blossomed, and he could despise it no longer. He felt that if he could enter into Paula’s warm safe life he would be happy. The long preparation of the dialogue removed any constraint—he taught her some of what he had learned from more adventurous women, and she responded with a rapt holy intensity. One evening after a dance they agreed to marry, and he wrote a long letter about her to his mother. The next day Paula told him that she was rich, that she had a personal fortune of nearly a million dollars.¹

Imagine yourself on a sleepy morning in Italy. A group of Italian workers are cleaning up the sidewalk while an old coffee shop owner is telling them how to properly do it. You will immediately find yourself getting the feeling that the energy you thought to be lost the night before is back inside you.

In one experiment, groups of students were asked to assemble sentences from scrambled sets of words, after which they were sent down the hall to do another experiment, the point of the experiment was this walk. One group was given a set of words related with the elderly (e.g. Florida, forgetful, bald, gray). The time it took them to get to the other room was measured. That group walked significantly slower.

In a mirror experiment, people were asked to walk around a room for 5min at about one-third their usual pace. After which they were much quicker to recognize words related to old age.

Priming seems to work both ways: thinking a certain way influences you to act a certain way. And acting a certain way reinforces certain thoughts.

In another experiment, students were asked to rate the humor of a cartoon while holding a pencil between their teeth so that the point was facing to their left and the eraser to their right. Other students did the same while holding a pencil by pursing their lips, so that the point would be aimed straight out. The groups were unaware that these actions made them either smile or frown, but the first group found the cartoons funnier.

Simple gestures can also unconsciously influence thoughts and feelings. People were asked to listen to messages through new headphones, supposedly to test the quality of the audio equipment. To check for any distortions of sound, half the participants were told to nod their head up and down while others were told to shake it side to side. The messages they heard were radio editorials. Those who nodded (a yes gesture) tended to accept the message they heard, but those who shook their head tended to reject it.

A study of voting patterns showed that the support for propositions to increase the funding of schools was significantly greater when the polling station was in a school than when it was in a nearby location. A separate experiment showed that exposing people to images of classrooms and school lockers also increased the tendency of participants to support a school initiative.

Reminders of money produce some troubling effects. Similar to the old-age experiment, participants were primed to the idea of money by constructing sentences from words related to money. Other primes were more subtle, including the presence of an irrelevant money-related object in the background, such as a stack of Monopoly money on a table, or a computer with a screen saver of dollar bills floating in water. Money-primed people became more independent and self-reliant than they would have been without the associative trigger. They persevered almost twice as long in trying to solve a very difficult problem before they asked the experimenter for help. Money-primed people were also more selfish: they were much less willing to spend time helping another student who pretended to be confused about an experimental task. When an experimenter clumsily dropped a bunch of pencils on the floor, the participants with money (unconsciously) on their mind picked up fewer pencils. In another experiment, participants were told that they would shortly have a get-acquainted conversation with another person and were asked to set up two chairs while the experimenter left to retrieve that person. Participants primed by money chose to stay much farther apart than their nonprimed peers (118cm vs. 80cm). Money-primed undergraduates also showed a greater preference for being alone.

Consider the ambiguous word fragments W__H and S__P. People who were recently asked to think of an action of which they were ashamed were more likely to complete those fragments as WASH and SOAP and less likely to see WISH and SOUP. Feeling that one’s soul is stained appears to trigger a desire to cleanse one’s body, an impulse that has been dubbed the “Lady Macbeth effect.” The cleansing is highly specific to the body parts involved in a sin. Participants in another experiment were induced to “lie” to an imaginary person, either on the phone or in e-mail. In a subsequent test of the desirability of various products, people who had lied on the phone preferred mouthwash over soap, and those who had lied in e-mail preferred soap to mouthwash.

Lastly, an experiment was conducted in an office kitchen at a British university. Members of that office paid for the tea or coffee to which they helped themselves during the day by dropping money into an “honesty box.” A list of suggested prices was posted. For a period of ten weeks a new banner poster was displayed above the price list each week, either flowers or eyes that appeared to be looking directly at the observer. On average, the users of the kitchen contributed almost three times as much in “eye weeks” as they did in “flower weeks.” Evidently, a purely symbolic reminder of being watched prodded people into improved behavior. As we expect at this point, the effect occurs without any awareness.