Confidence vs. Arrogance Arrogance is masked insecurity; a bluff of flamboyant pomposity, a staged overcompensation for a lack of confidence in oneself. Arrogant people are insecure, and they know they are insecure; otherwise they wouldn’t desperately need an arrogant demeanour of bravado to blind them to their flaws. Confidence is assuredness in your ability to excel in a specific field, after experiencing objective empirical evidence of your subjective aptitude. You accept…
The military is gay: Uniformed homo-erotic fantasies *“You're in the army now, bitch!”* The fetishization of the military is the homo-erotic fantasy of weak males with crippling insecurities and no conviction in their masculinity. Theirs are unresolved daddy issues with internalized abuse and humiliation from other males - such that the abused end up identifying with and justifying their abuse (and even enjoying being abused). Self-loathing works this way. The military is…
Government is an unnecessary evil: Evil must not be made necessary My laptop has an integrated webcam cover slide. It’s a pretty neat feature. It gives you some peace of mind knowing that you’re safe, at least from FBI/NSA Facebook backdoors that live-view you and digitally map your face. But why did the manufacturer do this? What made them waste their profits on research funding and new designs, plus pay salaries for their engineers to come up with, prototype, and…
Philosophy is skepticism & doubt... and you can doubt that too When I was a kid, I used to make up funny scenarios with my younger brother. One of our jokes was an imaginary situation in which we had a time machine and went back to the time of ancient Greek philosophers. We’d arrive in our time machine, show off our technology in an attempt to impress them, and we’d then claim to be gods of Olympus, and expect to be worshipped. The punchline was that they’d respond with…
Why the West is NGMI [Part 1]: The death of religious identity Rejecting your religious identity without first proposing an alternative is like a serpent shedding its skin before having already developed new skin underneath. Without an alternative frame to protect itself, it is now vulnerable and exposed to threats, and it will die quickly. This is what the West has done in its self-righteous suicide; it rejected Christianity before first outgrowing it. Three core Western…
Second chances We all deserve a second chance, right? Not really. It’s nice to get one, but we don’t ‘deserve’ it. We may have deserved the first chance, that first benefit of the doubt. And I say “maybe,” because even to a first chance we’re not entitled. And what did we do with our first chance? We failed to make the most of it - that faith from grace given to use by people assuming that we were good until proven otherwise. Despite their initial good faith and risk in…
@thesotiris