Because what's a couple of million people to a billion? Even if they decide to kill us, we will still win. But why don't we? Again, minimal information and fear.

There is a book I once read about how taxes were invented. Well, not exactly invented in the way we usually imagine it, because taxation is actually almost as old as organized civilization itself. Ancient Egypt was collecting taxes thousands of years ago, sometimes in the form of grain, livestock and other goods because money as we understand it today did not even exist. Ancient Mesopotamian societies also kept records of what people owed to temples and authorities.

The interesting thing is that taxation originally had a much more obvious purpose than the complicated systems we have today. Governments and rulers needed resources to maintain armies, build roads, run administrations, feed officials and respond to wars or other emergencies. Sometimes taxes were temporary and introduced because of a particular crisis, while other forms became permanent because governments discovered that once a system of collecting revenue existed, there was always something else the state needed money for.

And this is where I think the relationship between governments, wealth and ordinary people becomes interesting. A government can introduce a tax by saying that it will affect people who have more, and obviously the majority of people will support it because it sounds fair. Why should someone with millions or billions contribute the same amount as someone struggling to survive? But the complicated part comes later, because the people who actually understand the system best are often the people with enough money to hire accountants, lawyers and financial advisers who understand how to legally structure their wealth.

A wealthy business owner might therefore be taxed on one source of income while earning money through another structure, another company, investments, deductions, assets or business expenses. Meanwhile, an ordinary employee usually has much less room to maneuver because their income comes directly from a salary and taxes can often be deducted before they even receive their money.

So the problem is not simply that the government taxes the rich and the poor. The real problem is that the ability to understand the rules creates another form of inequality. Two people can live under exactly the same tax system and experience it completely differently because one understands the system well enough to structure their finances around it while the other simply receives a salary and pays whatever is automatically deducted.

And this is why information becomes power.

So whenever I hear someone say "eat the rich", I feel like you are too caught up in the external activities and hate, so you make excuses rather than taking full 100% responsibility for your life and you excuse yourself by becoming a victim.

We were all given the freedom of choice, and a choice can only be made when you have options. So poverty usually conditions a person to believe that they don't have options.

We will therefore end up blaming the government, the rich, economic systems like capitalism, or whatever else we can point at.

Which reminds me that a few months ago I wrote about "Why capitalism is good" and how it's the only economic system that works, and if you wanted to become rich, capitalism would be the best option, although it's also the most "unfair" as many people say.

But what exactly is capitalism?

At its simplest, capitalism is an economic system where individuals and private organizations can own property and businesses, invest capital, produce goods and services and keep the profits from those activities. Instead of the government deciding what every factory should produce, what every shop should sell and what every product should cost, the market is largely allowed to coordinate these things through supply, demand, competition and prices.

If I open a bakery and you open another bakery next to mine, we compete for customers. If I make terrible bread and charge too much, people will probably go to you. If your bread is better and cheaper, you get more customers. That competition creates an incentive for both of us to improve. Of course, real capitalism is much more complicated than this because governments still regulate businesses, collect taxes, control certain industries and intervene when markets fail.

And this is where capitalism becomes interesting. It can create enormous wealth because it gives people an incentive to create, invest, compete and take risks. But the same mechanism can also produce enormous inequality because people do not begin the race with the same amount of capital, education, connections, opportunities or information.

Someone who starts with nothing and someone who starts with a billion dollars can technically both participate in the same capitalist market, but pretending that they are playing the same game would be ridiculous.

Then there is socialism.

Socialism, broadly speaking, puts much more emphasis on collective or public ownership and on distributing economic resources more equally. Instead of leaving most productive assets entirely in private hands, the state or society may own or control important industries and use taxation, public services and redistribution to reduce inequality.

Then there is communism, which in its classical theoretical form goes even further. The idea is not simply that the government should collect more taxes or provide free healthcare. It is based on the idea of eventually eliminating class divisions and private ownership of the major means of production, so that productive resources are collectively owned rather than controlled by private capitalists.

The problem is that when you put these ideas into the real world, things become much messier than they look on paper.

A system can sound perfect theoretically and still fail because of the people operating it. You can design an economic system around equality, but if the people controlling the resources are corrupt, greedy or incompetent, you have simply concentrated economic power in a different place.

This is especially what makes me wonder what would work, especially in third-world countries.

I would give the example of African countries because an economic system like communism or socialism can become extremely dangerous when the government is deeply involved in everything and there is weak accountability. If the government controls the major industries, decides who gets resources and also has politicians who can abuse that power, you have created an environment where political power can easily become economic power.

And once the person who controls the government also controls the resources, you have a serious problem.

Capitalism has its own problems, but one of its interesting features is that ownership and economic power can exist outside the government. A politician cannot simply wake up one morning and decide that every private company belongs to him without creating legal and political consequences. Of course, governments can still regulate, tax, restrict or even destroy businesses through bad policies, which is why institutions and the rule of law matter so much.

This is also why I find China's economic model interesting.

China is officially socialist, but its modern economy is not simply the centrally planned communist economy that existed in the early decades after the revolution. From the late 1970s onward, China gradually introduced market forces, decentralized economic decision-making, opened itself to foreign trade and investment, and allowed a much larger non-state and private sector to develop. In 1992, the country formally embraced what it called a "socialist market economy."

So China basically demonstrates something important: markets and socialism do not necessarily have to exist as completely separate worlds. China maintains substantial state ownership, especially in strategic industries, while also allowing private businesses, competition, investment and market forces to play a major role in the economy.

That does not mean China's system is perfect, nor does it prove that communism and capitalism are secretly the same thing. It simply shows that real-world economies rarely fit neatly into the ideological boxes we use to describe them.

And this is why I wonder what would happen if something similar was introduced in many African countries.

A lot of businesses would probably die because politicians would try to use their power to take things for themselves, punish their enemies, reward their friends or interfere with industries for political reasons. And when you have weak institutions, even a system designed to distribute wealth equally can end up distributing power to the people who control the government.

So perhaps the real problem is not simply capitalism or socialism.

Perhaps the real problem is power without accountability.

Because whether the person holding the power is a billionaire businessman or a government official, if there is nothing strong enough to hold them accountable, they will eventually find a way to use that power for themselves.

And this brings me back to the rich.

Maybe the question should not always be "How do we destroy the rich?"

Maybe the more interesting question is:

"How do I understand the system well enough that I am not permanently trapped at the bottom of it?"

So I came across a YouTube vedio that explains the different levels of wealth, and it begins with how, if you earned one dollar per second, then to make one million dollars would take you about 11 and a half

days. But to make one billion dollars would take you over 31 and a half years....

You see, it's easy to think of wealth in terms of rich or poor, but broadly speaking, there are arguably five different levels of rich, and at each level, things change very drastically. The difference between what a millionaire can do and what a billionaire can do is simply staggering.

In this article, we'll be exploring what life is like at each of these different wealth levels and delving into how the ultra-rich spend their money, including some of the most bizarre and extravagant purchases you've ever heard of. But as you go through these different levels, you'll realize that one of the biggest changes that happens at each wealth level is perspective.

Because prices feel relative to how much you earn. So if you compare someone who's earning $40,000 a year with someone earning $400 million a year, it's 10,000 times more, which means a Lambo that costs $300,000 to them is the equivalent of spending $30. A $10 million piece of art feels like $1,000. A $50 million home in the Hamptons feels more like $5,000.

So whilst to us each of those purchases would feel so major, to a billionaire, it's not even something they'd really need to think about. And of course, when you're that wealthy, it's not just items and experiences that you can buy, but we'll get to that.

Let's instead start off with the first level of rich: the top 1%.

Even though this phrase is synonymous with being extremely rich, if your income is over about $200,000 a year, you would technically be part of the top 1% of worldwide earners. And so being in the top 1% may not make you feel quite as rich as you would think.

Because sure, you can typically afford a nice house and car, but with those things come higher costs, and so you probably don't feel very financially secure, and you're likely still working a full-time job.

Which is why beyond this level, wealth starts to be measured in net worth rather than income. Because the more wealth you have, the more assets you have, and you're probably not making your money from a normal salary.

So the next level of rich is a net worth of $10 million to $30 million.

At this level, your needs are met. You can live very comfortably. You have a really nice house. You often fly first class internationally. If it's a special occasion, you might book a $2,000 suite. You can afford any healthcare you need, and in fact, no emergency financial situation can destroy your life.

And yet you're still not rich in the way that money doesn't matter. You still have to be sensible and careful when it comes to big decisions. And in the banking world, you're still not classified as having an ultra-high net worth.

Which brings us to our next level: a net worth of $30 million to $100 million.

At this point, you start playing in the big leagues, and most likely you run or have a controlling interest in a very large company. You always stay at five-star hotels, and you have multiple residences all around the world that you can stay in as well.

You take holidays during prime time, for example, going to Monaco for the Grand Prix or Cannes for the film festival, and you won't bat an eyelid when the place you're staying at costs $10,000 to $20,000 per night.

You have personal assistants, and are starting to have people that others have to talk to in order to get to you. You can buy pretty much anything that normal people think of as stuff rich people buy. You can buy any cars you want, the fanciest jewelry, and so on.

Instead of flying first class, you'd fly private. Although, having said that, you typically charter a flight or own a private jet fractionally through a service like NetJets, instead of buying it outright and having to maintain it.

But still, at this level, another big change that happens is your social circle.

You probably start socializing with congressmen, senators, and community leaders. You're likely very well respected within some very high-class circles.

Interestingly, though, since you're likely surrounded by other ultra-wealthy people, you may start to feel you don't have enough. Sure, you may have just bought a new Ferrari, but your friend has a limited-edition version where only five were ever made.

And sure, you had dinner with a local governor, but your billionaire friend just had dinner with the president.

Even at this level, people are still looking above them, which brings us to our next level of wealth: $100 million to a billion dollars net worth.

To be at this level, you likely have ownership or control of a business that most of the public have heard of, even if they haven't heard of you directly.

At this point, you can likely socialize with movie stars, rock stars, and the corporate elites. You can go pretty much anywhere you want, and always in style.

You have multiple residences with staff all over the world, with elite cars at every residence. If it's your thing, you might have a private island, and of course a private yacht to get you there.

Almost any experience you can dream up, you can have.

Want to play tennis with your favorite star? Call his people. For a donation of $100,000 or more to his charity, you can probably play a match with him.

Want your favorite band to come and play at your private party? Well, for the right price, they probably will.

What about if you love art? Your people could arrange for the curator of the Louvre to show you around and show you some masterpieces they haven't exhibited in years.

If you can dream an experience up, you can likely have it. Donations and fees can get you to almost anyone.

And once you have many hundreds of millions of dollars, it's the same when it comes to buying things. You may hire people specifically to find you the most extravagant versions of items you can think of.

For example, the Australian company Toilet Paper Man produces 22-carat gold toilet paper for a cost of over $1.3 million.

And if you are going to quite literally flush money down the toilet, why not get a gold toilet, or an entire gold bathroom to go with it?

In fact, if you're ultra-wealthy, you can literally have gold everything.

How about a 24-carat gold water bottle, which in itself is a piece of designer art and comes with spring water from France and Fiji combined with glacier water from Iceland?

Or alternatively, how about the world's most expensive iPhone that has a 24-carat gold casing and more than 600 white and black diamonds, plus sapphire glass for the screen?

This obviously isn't available to the general public. To buy one, you're going to need over $15 million.

But this is the key: at this level, it's not just about buying the fanciest, most luxurious items. It's about getting the rarest and most exclusive things you possibly can.

For example, you could get a limited-edition pen that costs $160,000, has 4,810 diamonds inside, and only eight are made each year.

Or if you want to go a lot bigger than that, many billionaires turn to art, and not just rare paintings, but things like this dead shark art piece created by Damien Hirst, which sold for $12 million.

Or let's say you like piano. Well, here's the same crystal piano that was used for the Beijing Olympic Games, which was purchased at a private auction for a record $3.2 million.

You see, when you're at this wealth level, your mind is the only real limit to what is available.

But then we have our final level: the one-billion-dollar net worth and above.

Now before we get into what you can do as a billionaire, which honestly is pretty insane, it's worth noting that the number of billionaires on Forbes's annual rich list has significantly increased in recent years.

Yes, and there's now around 2,755 known billionaires. Of course, it's possible there are more who have generational wealth but simply do a good job of staying very, very private.

But either way, Forbes has estimated these 2,755 billionaires are worth a combined $13.1 trillion and therefore have more wealth between them than the poorest five billion people on Earth combined.

These statistics are overwhelming, but let's actually visualize it to put things into perspective.

The difference between one billion and the kind of wealth Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk have is insanely vast.

Think about it.

So after thinking and visualizing these examples, we've now got a better idea of the scale of a billion dollars. So now let's look at what you can actually do with it.

Because essentially, you can buy anything. And I do mean anything.

We're no longer talking about luxurious items and experiences..Firstly, you can buy access.

You can ask your staff to contact almost anyone on the planet and get a callback. It's amazing the level of access and respect a billionaire can get you, where within an hour you could ask your people to get in touch with someone and they'd be able to do it.

And I'm not just talking about contacting celebrities. It works the same with powerful people within politics as well, especially because the billionaire may well be a donor to their political party.

And so if you're a billionaire, you may occasionally meet with the heads of state and have conversations with them.

Which brings us to the second thing a billion dollars can buy: influence.

As a billionaire, you have many ways to shape public policy and the public debate. And this isn't always done in some kind of evil way, like lobbying for lower taxes for rich people. Although obviously that does happen.

But the simple fact is, because of your wealth and connections, you can absolutely influence big changes in the world, and not just on a political level.

Because another thing you can buy is impact through philanthropy and charity.

Your money can literally change countless lives.

The question is, how do you distribute it?

Clean water for villages? Fund new hospitals? Try to save a dying species of animal?

With money, you can impact almost anything of your choice.

But one of the biggest differences with billionaires that is often overlooked is the ability to essentially buy time..You quite literally don't have to wait for anything..No lines, no sitting around.

Just think about it. You've got your own private jet. So you just show up at the airport whenever you want, sit down in the plane, and two minutes later you're in the sky and can go wherever you wish..When you arrive, a driver will have already been arranged to pick you up and take you wherever you want to go.

Your assistant will have already got the best table at the restaurant you mentioned wanting to eat at, or maybe your assistant arranged for a celebrity chef to come to one of your vacation homes instead, at whatever time you choose..Everything you could need is taken care of for you..However, believe it or not, there are some downsides to being this ultra-wealthy.

Firstly, it's nearly impossible to have normal emotional relationships at this level. It can become increasingly difficult to have friends and family that love you for who you are..They exist, but it's pretty hard to know which ones they are.

Because your world is likely filled with yes-men and people looking to take advantage at every opportunity. Your trust and connections with people are undoubtedly considerably weakened..Dating also becomes an odd experience.

On the one hand, some of the world's most beautiful and intelligent women are all around you at parties and events. But again, finding someone you have a genuine emotional connection with is a different story, especially because your time is so valuable that you're always busy and unable to invest in making deep connections with new people.

And even if you do find someone, the relationship balance is skewed in a strange way when you have essentially unlimited money.

Because no matter whether you pay for everything or whether your partner makes their own money, either way, something about the dynamic feels off.

And finally, and most crucially of all, no level of money can give you truly everything.

Because death is the great equalizer, and losing loved ones, losing your own health, and facing your own mortality are problems that no amount of money can solve.

I saw on Reddit how someone talked about how he met Sylvester Stallone at a party, who had obviously had a very successful career.

He said he was such a great guy, had huge levels of wealth and luxury, a smart and beautiful wife, and yet he also had a special-needs son who died young.

In his words, nobody has it all. Nobody.

In fact, if you are reading this and feeling poor, I think it's worth rethinking.

Because in this article, we've looked at several levels of wealth. But the fact that you are reading this means you are nowhere close to the bottom of the total wealth pyramid.

It's easy to look up and feel frustrated that some people have so much more than us. But just look down the wealth pyramid for a moment.

If you have internet access to read this, plus some food in the fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep, then you are richer than 75% of the world.

In fact, even if you have one dollar to your name right now, you are still richer than the majority of the world who are either in debt or have absolutely nothing.

What this article really highlights is that rich versus poor is so arbitrary.

It's not two groups.

There are many, many different levels.

And compared to most of the world, you might well be a lot richer than you think.

When people cared about music, I heard songs I hated just to be that guy who knows this artist, when people liked some esoteric character I read about them to assimilate to the group, when people were doing this or that I just jumped on that bandwagon , cause I bought into an idea of what it means to be cool from people who were genuinely cool, but I didn't have the forsight to realize what I really craved was, "Their confidence to stay true to their real interests without letting the outside world influence them."- (that is why all these different people from all over them place we're cool to me and why I tried to be them at the same time. I just craved that quality to be myself.)

The trick is that, I didn't know how to follow that narrow line of doing something cause you realize you must and it's important in your life Vs Doing something cause you wanted others to see you a certain way.

Now as an adult, I see that the line is much broader to walk on when I can accept that I cannot be the doctor and the lawyer at the same time, I cannot be Superman and Batman. I have to choose one that my heart truly wants and stick to it and let it fill my soul with things I care for even if it means some people will look down on me for enjoying Nigerian films. But the trick here is that the "Right" people will like me and be in my life cause now I can relate to them in a much deeper and profound way as I can go after things I really love.

The keeping this balanced is to have an open heart, and learning to do something if you really need it even if it's not part of your identity, don't be so stubborn, be whatever you are also see that you have some bad aspects you need to change, some you want to pick up but aren't good at yet. And stay in that delicate place and dance with the ability to be honest and change when you need to and always try and be honest with who you are, what you need to change, what you need to stop doing and what new thing you need to learn all the while staying true with how you really feel and what your heart Really want.

{-So let there be a time when someone asks me about this new thing that I will never want to do and let me say, no idk what that is, even if that person was so cool and wanted to relate to them, let there also be a time where I actually look it up cause it was important cause this person was a coulege and I need to know it for work. Let there also be a time where I am ok with not hearing or watching something's just cause I don't want to, let me be ok with not being a person other people thought I was, and slowly, very slowly cultivate the skill to be the person I really am, all the while allowing myself to develop qualities I admire in others even if it does not come easy to me. LET ME BE FREE TO EXPLORE, MAKE MISTAKES, FEEL BAD AND GOOD AND COME TO A PLACE WHERE I CAN BE WHO I REALLY AM UNAPOLOGETICALLY. Let me be fluid as water, flow like the wind and allow myself to get into the cracks of my undiscovered personality. Let me........be ......ME.}

If all this seems overwhelming, it's ok. It's gonna be easy for some hard for most, but in the end it will not matter, but you will pay for it if you don't develop the skill, Welcome to Adulthood, it's not always a piece of cake, but hey who likes eating cake everyday ? Huh."

How is this? Does it deserve that title too

When the first son was born, he subjected him to an experiment where he had to follow specific instructions in order to do anything. Thinking for himself was prohibited. He had to ask permission even for the simplest things, like tying his shoelaces or going to the washroom.

The younger son, however, was raised differently. He was encouraged to think for himself, given problems to solve, and sometimes even trusted with responsibilities like deciding what the family would eat or where they would go for a vacation.

When they were old enough, the older son was 14 and the younger one was 11. Their father sent them to the city with instructions to buy specific items from a specific mall. He already knew the journey wouldn't be easy because the older son would insist on following his instructions exactly, while the younger son would try to think logically and use shortcuts.

And that's exactly what happened.

The same items they had been sent to buy were available in several nearby malls. The younger son kept insisting that they should buy them there instead because it would save time and energy. But the older son couldn't be convinced. He believed that their father had specifically mentioned a particular mall, so that was the only place they were supposed to go. Since he was older and stronger, the younger brother eventually gave in and followed him. The older brother was determined to fulfill his father's instructions exactly as they had been given.

After a couple of hours, they finally returned home.

What awaited them was unbelievable.

Their parents had moved out.

The house had been left completely clean, with no sign of where they had gone.

Both boys broke down, but the younger son didn't collapse as much as the older one did.

For the following week, as they struggled to survive on the streets, it became clear that the younger son adapted far more easily. He found it easier to solve problems, make decisions, and navigate an uncertain world, while the older son, who had spent his entire life relying on instructions, struggled to function without someone telling him what to do.

I think the story is much deeper than it first appears because it is not really about two sons. It is about two different ways of existing in the world. The scientist is not just a father raising children. He represents any force that shapes us before we become independent. Depending on how you look at it, he could represent God, parents, nature, society, education, culture or even evolution. The experiment itself is a question that humanity has been wrestling with for centuries. Is it better to create people who obey perfectly or people who understand deeply?

The older son was never taught how to think. He was only taught how to follow. Every action, even the smallest one, required permission or instruction. Over time he lost the ability to trust his own judgment because every answer already existed outside of him. The younger son on the other hand was constantly encouraged to make decisions, solve problems and carry responsibility. He was allowed to make mistakes because mistakes were part of his education. The father was not simply teaching him to make choices. He was teaching him how to think under uncertainty.

That is why the journey to the city is so important. It is not really about buying groceries. The city represents the real world. Childhood eventually comes to an end and every one of us is sent into a world where our parents are no longer standing beside us giving us instructions. The father knew that before they even left the house. The shopping was only the surface level task. The real experiment had already begun the moment they stepped outside.

The nearby malls are perhaps the most symbolic part of the entire story. The younger son immediately notices that the exact same items are available much closer. In his mind the purpose of the mission is to obtain the items, so if there is a faster and more efficient way of doing that then the purpose has still been fulfilled. The older son cannot accept that because in his mind the purpose is no longer the groceries. The purpose has become obedience itself. He has confused the instructions with the reason behind the instructions. The map has become more important than the destination.

I think this is something we constantly see in religion. When Jesus challenged the Pharisees, many of His disagreements were not because He rejected the Law, but because they had become so obsessed with following every rule that they had forgotten why those rules existed in the first place. They would ask whether someone had technically broken the Sabbath while Jesus would ask whether compassion had been shown. They were preserving the letter of the law while He kept pointing back to its spirit. The same thing can happen outside religion. A student memorizes formulas without understanding the concepts behind them. An employee follows company policy even when common sense says there is a better solution. A society keeps traditions alive simply because they have always existed even when nobody remembers the reason they were created.

Another thing I noticed is that although the younger brother knows there is a better way, he still follows the older brother. That part says something interesting about the world. Being right does not always determine what happens. Sometimes hierarchy wins over wisdom. The older brother was not followed because he had better reasoning. He was followed because he was older and stronger. History is filled with moments where people knew something was wrong yet still followed those with more authority, whether that authority came from age, religion, government, culture or simple physical strength. Truth and power are not always found in the same place.

Then comes the most unexpected part of the story. They return home only to find that their parents have disappeared. I do not think this is simply abandonment. I think it represents something every human being eventually experiences. One day the people who always guided us are gone. Parents die. Teachers leave. Mentors disappear. Even the beliefs we inherited begin to be questioned. There comes a point where nobody is standing over our shoulders telling us what to do next. We are left alone with reality.

The fact that the house is left clean is important too. Nothing has been destroyed. Nothing is missing except the parents themselves. It is almost as though they were saying that their responsibility had ended and now the sons must discover whether what they had been taught was enough. The real examination was never the shopping trip. The shopping trip only revealed who they had already become.

The older son completely falls apart because his entire identity depended on someone else providing certainty. Once certainty disappeared, so did his sense of direction. The younger son suffers too, but not to the same degree. He is still hurt because he loved his parents, but uncertainty is not new to him. He has spent his entire childhood learning how to think, adapt and solve problems without waiting for someone else to rescue him.

Living on the streets becomes the final lesson. The streets represent reality stripped of comfort and protection. Nobody tells you what to do. Nobody guarantees success. Nobody hands you certainty. The only thing left is your ability to adapt. The younger brother survives more easily not because he is smarter by nature but because he spent years developing judgment instead of dependence.

What I find fascinating is that the father probably knew this would happen from the beginning. The boys believed they were being tested on whether they could buy groceries. In reality the groceries were irrelevant. The father wanted to know who each son had become. Had one become a person who could only survive inside a system of instructions, or had one become someone capable of navigating reality itself?

I think that is why the story resonates beyond parenting. It speaks to education, religion, politics and even personal growth. Every institution faces the same question. Are we producing people who can repeat instructions or people who can understand principles? Are we creating followers who become lost the moment authority disappears, or individuals who can face uncertainty without collapsing?

To me the story is not arguing that obedience is bad. Obedience has its place. Rules protect us. Discipline matters. But obedience without understanding eventually becomes dependence. Wisdom begins when you understand the purpose behind the rule and can still pursue that purpose even when the world no longer looks exactly the way you expected it to.

People feel bad about a lot of things, and I was weighing how you can tell someone they're poor, they're ugly, or they're a fool. After a lot of consideration, I felt like most people feel more offended when told they're a fool than ugly. I don't know why, but it sticks for long.

So I kept wondering  you can be smart-sounding and not actually smart, which I think most people are. In this world, someone is called smart because they meet the criteria or standards this world has set for what smart is. Someone who can solve differential calculus would be considered smarter than someone who can peel a potato perfectly without touching the inside. We confuse skills, because peeling a potato perfectly is not in the category of "being smart"  you can't win a Nobel Prize for that, it's not even helping society.

I used to think smartness was all the things people believe smartness to be. And thinking that way makes you not even interact with people properly, because you think you're above them. You're not. I've seen people cross from what we call "dumb" to what we call "smart," and if it's that easy to cross the IQ sides, it means there's nothing like fixed mental capabilities  because humans don't have limits.

So please stop calling people dumb, illiterate, or fools because they don't know what you know, or don't understand the way you understand. It would have been so boring if our minds were all created the same. We are each unique individuals, and to know that, try to know people individually and not as a collective. Also, don't predict people too early  you will never like people that way. If you cannot live with people that way, avoid them, but don't judge them.

Remember that in another life, maybe everything you think is smart now might be the opposite. It's just that whoever created the standards existed in this timeline. It's not about the brain, but what society dictates what standards society sets for specific things. They're just labels. Not you.

I was listening to a crime story recently. A woman had been murdered and her body dumped at a garbage site. A man on his way to work found her the next morning and called the police. Before they arrived, a teenage boy scavenging for scraps came across the body, and in the minutes he stood there alone with it, he did something almost impossible to justify. When the police arrived, they arrested him on the spot. He insisted he hadn't killed her that he'd simply found the body and, having never been with a woman before, let the opportunity override every ounce of judgment he had. He was convicted and sentenced to decades in prison.

I couldn't stop thinking about that story. Not because it's shocking ooh it is but because of the question sitting underneath it: how does a person's judgment collapse that completely, that fast?

The easy answer is "he's a monster, end of story." I don't think that gets us anywhere useful. The more honest answer is that human beings carry an enormously powerful drive that evolution built for one purpose reproduction and we are given almost no real education on how to manage it. We're told to suppress it, feel ashamed of it, or joke about it, but rarely are we taught how it actually works, or how to live with it without it running our lives.

What the drive actually is

Sexual desire isn't a character flaw or a modern indulgence. It's ancient. Long before ethics, law, or religion existed, natural selection favored organisms that prioritized survival and reproduction above almost everything else. That machinery didn't disappear when humans developed morality it's still sitting underneath it, running in the background of every person alive.

Dopamine is central to why this drive is so persistent. It's often mislabeled as the "pleasure chemical," but it's more accurate to call it the motivation chemical. It doesn't just reward you after something feels good it teaches your brain to want that thing again, and it does this whether the behavior is healthy or destructive. Sex, food, gambling, social media likes anything that spikes dopamine gets flagged by the brain as "worth repeating," regardless of the consequences.

This is also why arousal changes how people think in the moment. During intense arousal, brain regions responsible for evaluating risk and long-term consequences become less active, while reward-seeking circuits take over. This is part of why "post-nut clarity" is a real, widely reported experience people look back at decisions made in a state of arousal and genuinely don't recognize their own judgment.

None of this is controversial neuroscience. What's controversial and where I think a lot of commentary on this topic goes wrong is the conclusion people draw from it.

Where the "instinct made me do it" argument fails

It's tempting to take all of the above and conclude: the instinct is more powerful than the conscious mind, so when someone acts on it destructively, they weren't really in control. That conclusion doesn't hold up, for one simple reason the vast majority of people carry this exact same neurochemistry, feel these exact same urges, and don't rape anyone, don't hurt anyone, don't cross the line into abuse or violence. If the drive itself were sufficient to explain the worst outcomes, we'd expect a much higher rate of people acting on it destructively than we actually see.

What separates someone who feels an intense urge and walks away from someone who acts on it in a harmful way isn't the strength of the urge it's everything else: the judgment they've built, the boundaries they've internalized, the impulse control they've practiced, the empathy they have for another person's humanity, and in acute cases, the presence of things like isolation, untreated compulsion, or a personality that struggles with impulse regulation generally. The neuroscience explains why urges are hard to manage. It does not explain away the choice to act on them in a way that harms someone else. That gap between feeling an urge and deciding what to do about it is exactly where responsibility lives. Collapsing that gap doesn't make the science more honest; it just launders away accountability.

This matters for the street boy in that story, too. His account of "the opportunity presented itself" isn't a description of an unstoppable force of nature it's a description of a choice made in a moment where every reasonable person would still be expected to not do what he did. The severity of his sentence is a separate legal question, but nothing about brain chemistry makes what he did understandable in the sense of forgivable or inevitable.

Where repression fails too

The opposite failure mode is just as real, though: pretending the drive doesn't exist, or that willpower alone is a strategy. This is often where the most rigidly moralistic environments run into trouble not because morality is the problem, but because building an identity entirely around "I am above this" leaves a person with no framework for what to actually do when the urge shows up anyway. Suppression can silence the behavior temporarily, but it rarely dissolves the underlying drive, and in some people, unacknowledged pressure builds until it comes out in a distorted or damaging form.

The same is true of using masturbation or pornography as an emotional coping mechanism rather than a sexual outlet. Because sexual arousal can temporarily quiet anxiety, some people start reaching for it not out of desire but out of stress, loneliness, or emotional pain. That works in the short term. It doesn't resolve the actual problem, and because brains are wired for efficiency, they keep returning to the fastest route to relief which is how a coping mechanism quietly turns into a compulsive habit.

Sexual desire isn't a curse and it isn't something you can shame or suppress out of existence. It's a powerful biological system that has to be actively managed understood, channelled, and given healthy outlets rather than denied or indulged without limits. Societies and individuals that try to pretend it isn't there, or that treat awareness of the problem as the same thing as solving it, tend to see it resurface in worse and more destructive forms.

But "powerful" is not the same as "irresistible," and understanding the machinery behind an urge is not the same as excusing what someone chooses to do with it. The instinct explains why the pull exists. It doesn't decide what happens next. That part is still on us.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Part One

Random thoughts are genuinely random, the title is not a futile pretentious attempt on sophistication. Random thoughts are literally random thoughts. I don't plan any of my essays beforehand, I don't prepare a layout, I don't even write knowing how to write or how to proceed or even how to end them. I write what is in my heart, I write what I feel. That is it, that is random thought and I hope as you follow (followed) along my works you will pick up (have picked up) on the raw feel of my writing. Random Thoughts are named after what they truly are Random.

As a principle I try not to discuss current events in my random thoughts series. You have the news, friends, social media and general he said, she said or this happened that happened to follow up on current events. Here I like to focus on deeper issues that touch our souls and make us feel, make us think. After all it is by thinking we reaffirm our existence as Descartes infamously said "I think, therefore I am".

Although from time to time there arises issues, I simply cannot ignore and I feel obliged to share my perspectives upon. Not because I view myself superior or my thoughts essential to the betterment of humanity but because I have thoughts, a tiny platform and I believe change happens a on a miniscule step at a time. I want to do what little I can do for the good of our shared existence.

So, let's address the Elephant in the room… more like the Elephant in the country and take a look at the current situation our Kenya is embroiled in.

Before I get to it I would like to put forth this disclaimer. Although I believe myself to be well read and critical thinker, in no way am I an expert in geopolitics, economics, social unrest, ethnic tension and general governess. The following points I discuss are in no way a magic key to solve problems that took decades in the making (some centuries). I am only here to share some of my views and suggest an alternative way of observing what is going on in our country while sidestepping our outrage culture and offer pointers on how to think critically and see beyond the mayhem and the fog.

I agonized over how to approach such a complicated subject matter in an accurate yet brief way, where I could discuss my ideas in a way that will resonate with people while (hopefully) without rubbing them the wrong direction. I was lost for a little while, then fortunately I stumbled upon the song "Daima Mkenya" by the renowned Kenyan artist Eric Wainaina.

I don't know the clear intention of the artist as he wrote this song but the beauty of poetry is it can be interpreted according to the audience. The following is my interpretation of the song titled "Daima Mkenya". I will follow the lyrics and explain my thought process, interpretation and certain observational points where I feel the public has lost clear sight.

Part Two

"Daima Mkenya" By Eric Wainaina

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=LdXhhm9dAmA&si=IW6ZlDZ2sr3-TDsW

https://open.spotify.com/track/5XmItENlwZeMn4rJY8VZRm?si=XhzI9LDRRM2HxsdFDvypEA

Swahili Lyrics:

Umoja ni fahari yetu

Undugu ndio nguvu

Chuki na ukabila

Hatutaki hata kamwe

Lazima tuungane, tuijenge nchi yetu

Pasiwe hata mmoja

Anaetenganisha

Naishi, Natumaini

Najitolea daima Kenya

Hakika ya bendera

Ni uthabiti wangu

Nyeusi ya wananchi na nyekundu ni ya damu

Kijani ni ya ardhi, nyeupe ya amani

Daima mimi mkenya

Mwananchi mzalendo

Kwa uchungu na mateso

Kwa vilio na uzuni

Tulinyakuliwa Uhuru

na mashujaa wa zamani

Hawakushtushwa na risasi

au kufungwa gerezani

Nia yao ukombozi kuvunja pingu za ukoloni

Naishi, Natumaini

Najitolea daima Kenya

Hakika ya bendera

Ni uthabiti wangu

Nyeusi ya wananchi na nyekundu ni ya damu

Kijani ni ya ardhi, nyeupe ya amani

Daima mimi mkenya

Mwananchi mzalendo

Wajibu wetu

Ni Kuishi kwa upendo

Kutoka ziwa Mpaka pwani

Kaskazini na kusini

Naishi, Natumaini

Najitolea daima Kenya

Hakika ya bendera

Ni uthabiti wangu

Nyeusi ya wananchi na nyekundu ni ya damu

Kijani ni ya ardhi, nyeupe ya amani

Daima mimi mkenya

Mwananchi mzalendo

For those who don't understand Swahili here is the translation.

Translation:

Unity is our pride

Brotherhood is our strength

Hatred and tribalism

We don't want at all

We must unite, build our country

Let there not be even one

Who divides us

I live, I hope

I sacrifice myself for Kenya always

The truth of the flag

Is my identity

Black is for the people, red is for the blood

Green is for the land, white for peace

I am forever a Kenyan

A patriotic citizen

In pain and suffering

In tears and sadness

Our freedom was won for us

By the heroes of old

They were not frightened by bullets

Or being imprisoned

Their goal was liberation, breaking the chains of colonialism

I live, I hope

I sacrifice myself for Kenya always

The truth of the flag

Is my identity

Black is for the people, red is for the blood

Green is for the land, white for peace

I am forever a Kenyan

A patriotic citizen

Our responsibility

Is to live with love

From the lake to the coast

North and south

I live, I hope

I sacrifice myself for Kenya always

The truth of the flag

Is my identity

Black is for the people, red is for the blood

Green is for the land, white for peace

I am forever a Kenyan

A patriotic citizen

Sometimes the loudest, most deafening sound is silence itself. In the age of constant communication, 24 Hours news coverage and social media every sound is much amplified and often twisted till it no longer resembles its original content. It is the bad news we always hear, death, violence, disruption, destruction, migration and so many more sad stories. In the mist of this we instinctively look for the positive take, if there be a good news or we wish to even settle for the tiniest amount of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel kind of deal but more often than not there is none. It is only silence. Loud deafening silence!

We lose hope, we wrap ourselves in despair and we will only see darkness ahead of us. Please, do trust me when I tell you this, because I feel the exact same way too. But luckily we are very wrong. We are not hopeless and the atmosphere is not as dark as it seems.

I am not trying to make light of what we are going through. People are dying, homes being demolished, communities being uprooted, religious sites burning down and millions being displaced. I am not, again NOT trying to make light of what is going on but I just want to remind you as sad as what we are going through is, this really is not the end of us. It won't be.

Your despair, your fear, your anger and hate is the ultimate goal of the perpetrator causing the civil unrest and violence. They want you to be scared, they want you to be angry, they want you to lose faith and mistrust your community… they want to break the very social bond that binds us as a country. Without our societal bond and sense of belonging, we are merely people existing in a close proximity, without our bonds we are not a country.

The silence however deafening it is, however painful it is… is still much powerful than the noise that is being created by the few. Remember we are a nation of over a 100 Million, the disturbers of the peace and harmony are a tiny fraction of us, they are just shouting out loud. Don't let their noise disturb you or rob you of your faith. You the peace loving, harmony seeking Kenyans are the absolute majority. Your silence will triumph over their nonsensical noise. Never fear, never break your bonds, and never despair. Don't you give in to their fear mongering! We were here long before they came and we will be here long after they are gone.

Part Three

As I go through the first verse I am forced to consider and discuss an extremely uncomfortable territory, especially given the current tension there seem to be everywhere. Then again as the renowned novelist James Baldwin once said "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced". Thus let's face our uncomfortable reality and let's discuss Ethnicity: Race, Tribe, Clan…

Again I am not here to resolve a deep-rooted and very complex problems with a single flashy essay but I believe I can offer some nuanced thoughts and may be help someone out there have a new perspective in this given problem. As I mentioned earlier, it is my core belief positive change is our destiny as long as we keep walking even in our miniscule steps, one foot after the other.

I remember reading a quote somewhere that went in the lines of "Our ethnicity does not make us proud, nor does it shame us." Let's dissect it and see what it has to offer because my following points can really be condense down to that single sentence.

There is a reason you love your parents, siblings, family, neighbors, community and such. It is an evolutionary instinct. As humans evolved somewhere along the road we realized we are much better of sticking together than "lone wolfing" our life. Thus Families lead to communities, communities to tribes, tribes expanded and somewhere along the way we came up with the concept of boarders and countries (I don't want to get in to the details, I know I kind of botched the anthropology there but I am here to discuss on how to make our country more peaceful and harmonies not to dissect human behavior and societal evolution). What I am trying to say is, there nothing wrong in you loving your Ethnic group, or being proud of your identity. That I applaud. After all you are the end product of millions of years of evolution and thousands years of social behavior construction. It would be unfair to expect anyone to be absolutely nonchalant when it comes to their identity and origin. After all we are all humans first. Thus do love your ethnicity and be proud of your identity, there is no harm in that.

A problem will start to arise when you start to believe just because you are from a certain ethnic group, you are somehow superior to the rest. Or to put it in another way when you start to believe because someone is not from your ethnic group, they are somehow inferior to you.

That is when things start to get twisted in our country's politics. This is not a problem any one policy can fix or a problem that we shall leave for a future date. You individually must examine yourself, if there is such a feeling buried deep in you, uproot it and throw it far away. It will do you no good. Remember a country is but the people, all it takes is couple thousand confused and ill minded people to cause mayhem. Don't let yourself be part of destruction and don't end up in the wrong side of history. Examine yourself and throw out your ill guided misconceptions. Remember you still can love your ethnicity and even be proud of your identity but your ethnicity does not put you up in a pedestal or doesn't throw you down in a ditch. Ethnicity is just that, a singular parameter in our wide and diverse group identities. Always remember those wise words and live by them "Our ethnicity does not make us proud, nor does it shame us."

Part Four

As we discuss what an individual (you) can do to head on the path of positive change we also must observe the macro ramifications of ethnic politics, mass media, politicians, social media, activists and activism.

I am not here to praise or ridicule any single individual or organization by name. As much as I would like to get in to it I am afraid that will be counterproductive. I don't want to change my platform in to a partisan propaganda machine. Thus I will refrain from my individual views, admirations or disgust and rather focus on the public perception of individuals and organizations. Principally the consequences of the aforementioned entities on the public narrative and their influence on the mass.

Let's start from Politicians and Activists. I am sure there are some you admire, some you hate with passion and some you can't care less about. Please be reminded, I am not here to bag on honorable public servants who are working tirelessly for the good of their community and their country. I am here to point out some observations of mine, I believe the public should focus more upon. Regarding the snakes in the grass.

It is very curious how much in this world is not original. Almost everything is either only a repackage or built upon a preexisting entity. I think most of you are familiar with George Santayana's famous quote "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I want you to keep that in mind as I elaborate the following argument. There are two concepts you need to know before I present my observations.

Number One: "Barnum-Forer effect".

The Barnum-Forer effect is a psychology phenomenon that refers to the gullibility of people when being subjected to descriptions of themselves, especially if they are beforehand informed the descriptions are specifically tailored to them and when those said descriptions are immensely positive. Individuals tend to give high accuracy ratings to these descriptions of their personality and believe them to be precise when in fact the descriptions are very vague and general enough to apply to basically anyone.

Number Two: "Escape goats in Politics"

These is a tried and proved diabolical but extremely effective political strategy. From the rise of Nazis and Adolf Hitler to the current trend of populist leaders and far right politicians, escape goats are a gold mine for evil politicians and activists. Instead of solving an issue that is holding back a nation in Economy, Security or Sociopolitical aspect (which takes a lot of hard work), politicians, activists and leaders have been using escape goats to direct the public anger away from them and from the issue at hand. Escape goats can be immigrants, minorities, neighboring nations, religious organizations, world super powers… and so many more.

Now, that you have a clear understanding of the Barnum-Forer effect and the political manipulation of escape goats let's discuss how these applies to our situation and how it relates to our politicians and activists.

Remember what I mentioned in an earlier chapter, I am not here to name names or offer radical solutions. I am only here to offer a different angle on the ways we view these politicians and activists that have a huge following and that incite violence in a regular bases that tend to use those two tactics I discussed earlier.

Part Five

First, listen to the way they address their mono ethnic political base. They rile them up using the Barnum-Forer effect. They tell them how special they are, how it's in their blood to be on top, that they are superior to others, that they are unique, how they are gifted, how the rest is inferior to them, how strong they are, how unstoppable they could be… and many more. The mass obviously eats this up because they are humans and our psyche can be easily manipulated. They believe and rally behind these empty and wicked statements for the same reason you believe your horoscope. It is positive, it makes you feel good and you are told it is specifically tailored to you.

Second, is the Escape Goat strategy. We are a poor nation drowned in misery, we all suffer. Our struggle is our daily reality. It is rational and conceivable that we get angry at times, hunger can be very irritating. When that anger arises in the public, this lazy evil politicians try to find escape goats to hide their own incompetence. While other immoral activists see this as an opportunity to be capitalized on. They further rile up the angered public and offer an escape goat that will help with their political agenda. They don't offer solutions, listen attentively, they never do offer solutions. All they do is redirect the public anger in a way that suits them best.

When it comes to politicians and activists, I hope this was an eye opener. Please try to look behind the curtain, read between the lines. Observe as they try to appeal to the worst in you by telling you, your ethnicity is the superior one or when they side step offering solutions only to give you an escape goat to redirect your anger upon. These politicians and activists are egocentric megalomaniacs, they don't care about you, they never did, and you are but a stepping ladder to their diabolical quest for power.

Part Six

As we go along lets now shift our focus from individuals (politicians and activists) to organizations. Specifically mass media and social media.

We are very much connected, may be to a fault. Technological advancements and the rapid growth of the online community has linked us all in ways that can be fruitful and constructive but if poorly utilized in ways that can breed chaos and destruction. When I view the influence of media (both mass and social) I try to distinct them in three categories. Let's examine who they are and what they do.

It's only fair to start with mass media since it is an existing establishment and its credibility with the public is well founded. When we discuss mass media we are talking about mainly TV, Radio and Publications.

The danger of mass media is we assign a value of credibility in it without verification just because the public's trust is put up on it. The question is are they trust worthy? Mass media organizations have been propaganda machines for as long as our modern history goes, most of them were either directly under the influence of the government or even if they were owned and operated by civilians they were highly censored and influenced. Just because some change has occurred on the very top of the establishment that does not insure a ground breaking change down in the nitty and gritty corners of our society. There might me a new leader in place but most of the journalists that have been lying to us all their life's are now playing in a new jersey and are now soldiers of truth and justice. I know it doesn't sound fair to accuse them of being a puppet for the government in the previous administration, after all they were only trying to win a bread right? I don't think so! I believe one should be held responsible for one's action regardless of the situation. Lying was a choice they made, thus they are liars. It is unfair to expect us to trust them now just because they are wearing a different jersey and are playing for a new coach.

The other problem I observe in mass media is incompetence. Like every profession, journalism needs technical training and expertise in real world experience. Every time I see their reporting or presentation, I seriously question how many of our "trusted professional journalists" do actually know what the fuck they are doing.

Yes it is easy to put our trust on mass media, after all it reaches out to millions, right? Who in their right mind would actively and purposefully deceive an entire nation? If you are questioning yourself that, you my dear reader are not well versed in the diabolical politics of media and I suggest you research about the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the collapse of the State in 1991.

I might not be able to offer you a decisive solution on where and how to get your news? We all have to rely on sources other than ourselves. Thus I advise you a proven scientific approach on how to consume news, which is: diversify your source of information, if you only listen to one station or watch a single TV broadcast or read a single newspaper, you are very much susceptible to be biased. Even if you disagree with their approach and reporting it is beneficial to follow diverse sources of information and make an informed, logical and critically thought out idea of what is currently going on. I know that is a lot of work, but misinformed citizens are a threat to themselves and the security of the product of the online world. You are the product. As I mentioned earlier these online reporters are financially incentivized to get as many reactions as they can possibly get and to rile up the public. They make money (and by money I mean they make shit load of money) in three main ways.

Number one: Selling advertisement or selling the page itself. This strategy is mainly used on facebook and telegram. These reporters get paid to promote a product or an idea and they financially benefit from it. The more followers they have the higher they can demand, the more daily interactions on their page the higher they will earn. They are literally counting on your outrage and reactions to make bucks. It is not common but they can also sell their platform for a profit. Many would rather buy a page that is already built and has major follower than create a following from the ground up. And it's not cheap a page with just 1,000 followers can earn you upward of 10,000 in the black market. Mind you that is only a thousand followers, you can picture how much pages with hundreds of thousands and millions of followers are worth. This is not reporting, this is a financial game, a very corrupt and manipulative game at that.

Number Two: Making money on Youtube. The Youtube platform offers you an option to get a cut from the ads google sell on your account. Thus the larger number of subscribers you have and the larger number of views you get, the more money you are going to make. You can also make sponsored videos or spin a story covertly while being paid under the table. As I mentioned earlier this is an economic system that is built around not of the public's interest, journalistic integrity or even common sense. These so called independent reporters just want to capitalize on your anger and reaction to then profit of the chaos they help create.

I am not going to ask you to average out the noise as I did for mass media, at least those are establishments under direct over sight from the public and to some extent form the government. Meanwhile online reporters are free to spread fake news and profit from it while facing absolutely no consequences, non what so ever! I hate to see you being manipulated and your emotions capitalized for the financial benefits of irresponsible selfish pigs.

Thus, I urge you to unsubscribe from these Youtube channels and unfollow pages on facebook, twitter Instagram and telegram. I am sure you have vivid examples in your head of what I mean as you reading this. I am not trying to keep you uninformed, rather I am telling these people you trusted to inform you are selling you lies and they are financially incentivized to keep selling you lies. You are a precious product to them, they sell your subscription, your follow, your clicks and they benefit from it immensely, while you boil over with anger and spiral in depression and your beloved country descend in to further chaos and destruction.

Number Three: This is by far the most evil way online reporters abuse their medium. They get paid from political entities and interest groups that want to further a certain agenda and they help them by straight up fabricating scenarios that don't exist. They directly get paid to cause unrest, violence and chaos.

As you have read my detailed explanations of how you are being manipulated to the financial benefit of few diabolical individuals who capitalize on mayhem and public unrest, I hope I have opened your eyes and you will be skeptical about the next "click bait" that pops up on your screen. Be aware of your interactions on social media, avoid insult trading and shouting contests. Avoid being outraged and focus the connection you have to be more informed, to inform others, promote truth, expose lies and use the miracle of technology to the greater good of your community and our beloved country. I hope you will be more vigilant on who you choose to follow and who you will subscribe in to. Don't be a puppet in a system that benefits from your outrage and in the chaos of your daily life to the destruction of your community and country

Part Seven

Pretending to think for us,

They enter and scheme house disputes,

Spreading hatred like bread,

How many houses have they brought down?

Those they have advised, those they have heard,

Shame, she emerged naked and exposed,

Her dignity, her honor that was,

Was pushed aside, they mocked her.

There is a huge difference between caring for someone and manipulating someone to further your own interest. Let me ask you dear reader? Which of the politicians, activists, reporters… you know are doing on the grounds work to help the community they so passionately advocate for. Which one of them have opened schools, built hospitals and roads, invested in local entrepreneurs, did something, anything rather than talk over and over again on how much they care about their community?

The sad truth is unemployment is rampant in our country, it is an existential threat to the survival of our nation. Factoring in our high birth rate and the large youth population, unemployment if undealt with will be the needle that broke the camel's back well more like the boulder that broke the camel's back given how enormous the threat is.

But we don't see any of our politicians, activists and reporters address it, do we? There is a reason for that. The base of their movement is the youth, the unemployed, starved, hopeless, desperate, angered, looking for a purpose in life youth. Rather than working on actual policies and steps that will help these underprivileged and desperate youth population, these evil individuals would rather use the youth in their political game to further their political agenda and economic interest.

They don't want to help curb the crisis, why would they? It is a very simple logic, isn't it? What youth will take to the streets, lock down roads, lute and burn villages and religious organizations, torture and murder if said youth has a job, a steady income and a purpose driven life. They are counting on the miserable life of the youth, so that they can manipulate and use them as pawns in their diabolical game.

They are not the ones losing their lives on the streets, it's not their community's economic system that is being disrupted, it's not their family and friends that are being murdered cold blooded on the streets. They couldn't care less about what happens to us. Most of them (politicians, activists and reporters) are not even based here. Their businesses, life, families even passports are fucking foreign.

Ethnic politics will only be the destruction of our country. We are almost in an election year and I am sure there will be hundreds of political parties competing for the vote. What pains me the most is I already know for certain most Kenyans are not even going to consider policies of the party they are about to elect. All they care or will ever care about is "is he or is she from my ethnic group?"

Even our political parties are founded on the bases of ethnicity. Which makes absolutely no sense to me, I understand in a diverse and federal country like ours ethnicity is bound to play some role in parties in regards to language, culture and what not. Then again governess is not limited to culture and language! The political leadership of over a 100 million nation is not a fucking exhibition or festival!

We should all care less about what the name of the party is or what ethic group the members are from and focus on issues that will affect the peace and development of our country for the foreseeable future. Let us ask the important questions that actually matter. What is their development plan? How do they plan to combat poverty? What is their views in regional security? What is their health care plan? How do they plan to serve the public? What are their international policies? How do they plan to secure human rights? And so many more essential questions that the future of our country depend upon.

Conclusion

This has been a very long essay on many sensitive topics, by this point I assume you are wondering several thoughts and are a little exhausted. I have been wrapping up each point I have raised as I go through my essay thus there isn't much I can say on my conclusion. So, let me leave you with three brief points which more or less compress my essay.

1: There is nothing wrong with loving your ethnicity or being proud of your identity but remember to always keep misconceptions of superiority in check, after all "Our ethnicity does not make us proud, nor does it shame us."

2: Beware of how you consume content from mass media or social media, beware who to follow, beware who you listen to. Always have a healthy level of skepticism and sort through the information you get bombarded with logic and critical thinking. Do not be a pawn in others game, do not let others manipulate you for their political gain and economic purposes.

3: Focus on issues rather than ethnic politics. Listen, read, debate and engage in a constructive manner that will benefit you, your community and our beloved motherland, Kenya.

Kenya forever!

Love.

What does it feel like to be loved?

Can I even feel?

Sometimes it's hard to word emotions. Way too many sometimes. For me. But I can word it for others. I can feel what they feel and see what they see. For the longest time..for the longest time.

But sometimes I just stare. Sometimes it feels like I'm looking onto something I am completely detached from. Completely. So overwhelmingly engulfingly completely detached. Am I even here?

"I keep pounding on my chest, because my heart's not there."

I don't think anything is, B.I. I don't think anything's there.

I don't think I'm here. I don't feel it. I don't feel.

All I do is bleed. And draw on my walls with it. I cannot fathom a world that's not void and red. Colourful. Happy.

Does anyone know what happy is?

Expectations. How is anyone expected not to be lost? I kneel between all my walls and floor and roof. I look down and up. Is this what everyone sees in me anyway? Regardless of my efforts? There is too much void not to leak. How is anyone around me?

How am I expected to express all of this? How am I expected to gather this and show it outside this box? How am I expected to even break out of this and ask, ask if there are colours outside? What they look like. How they feel.

How am I expected to say that I feel, when all that I feel is sinking? How would everyone else know? But..

Let it be known that I cried. Let it be known that I bled from my wrists and the cuts in my eyes. Let it be known that the art you see from outside are ruins of what once was, or could have been. Let it be known that it is all what I choose to be a sacrifice.

Let it be known that I screamed and sang. Danced and drowned. And through the cracks in my heart, I saw, and chose not to speak out of them. Because the times that I, or anyone, tried, it sealed us in even more. I chose to settle, for the few cracks that let me see outside. And cry. I chose to lose.

Let it be known that I wanted to be loved.

Inside.

Let it be known that I tried, and wanted, to live.

If you think that cult members are desperate or weak, you are easier to recruit into a cult than you think. Because just that little belief that you are immune is the first thing that starts preventing you from having your guard up.

Cults recruit people who are functional and thoughtful and curious and even intelligent socially intelligent. Good people can get recruited into a cult. But cults recruit people who quietly feel like something is missing and feel alone for noticing it. And what's weird is that everybody with an IQ over a hundred feels that way that there's something missing. And everybody feels like they are the only ones feeling it. This is a universal trait that most people just may not be willing to admit.

To get good at influence or persuasion or leadership to make the world a better place, to change the world, you should be thinking in terms of what the other person is going through in their mind instead of what the operator is doing to someone. Please consider that difference of understanding what someone else is going through versus what I am doing to somebody.

The Setting

There are a ton of people out there that think cults start by shifting your beliefs, and that's actually the opposite of what happens. It has nothing to do with your beliefs. It starts with where you are when the conversation takes place. It could be a retreat, maybe a gym, a volunteer group, some kind of seminar you're going to, a mastermind. Maybe it's church or maybe it's church adjacent. Maybe it's an online group or some kind of chat room that feels calmer than the rest of the internet for you.

These places aren't random. They already filter human behavior for openness. We feel more like we can let our armor down. We can be more vulnerable in certain places. So if you choose to be there, your nervous system is already decided at the moment that you walk in. Your nervous system already decides this is safe, this is relevant, this is worth paying attention to.

Most people think persuasion happens in words. About 95% does not happen in words. It is context. Persuasion is always going to be context. And context tells your body how hard it needs to defend you. In these environments, it tells you that it doesn't need to defend itself very much.

Regulation

This is the first interaction, and the first interaction with a cult recruiter is not persuasive. It is a regulating event where we're regulating something inside of us. Something is being regulated. So it's small things that happen. It's eye contact that lasts just a little bit longer than you might have expected. Maybe a voice that doesn't rush. It's somebody who doesn't seem to need anything from you at all.

Your shoulders drop a little bit. Your breathing slows down. Your internal noise goes quiet a little bit. If you've ever had a thought in your head of, "I don't know why, but I just feel calm around this person," that wasn't you getting some kind of intuition. That was your body deciding that the person doesn't feel like a threat.

I'm not saying that this means that you're being manipulated. It means that you're with a good communicator. Some of the later stuff might be manipulation, but once your body decides that, your mind stops asking certain questions. The moment that your body decides that something feels safe, your mind will stop asking questions certain types of questions.

Recognition

There's all this talk on the internet about love bombing and how cults do this love bombing. They're not flattering you at this stage. They're not selling you on some idea. They're recognizing something that you have never really said out loud. They're gonna say, "I can tell you don't think like most people. You seem like a person who's always noticed patterns that other people miss. You've probably felt out of place in more than one situation in your life."

The uncomfortable part about this is, even when you know that sentence could apply to other people, even when you know that it's kind of a cult recruiting sentence, it still lands and it still has an effect on you. Because being fully seen and not judged policing and not judged is more addictive than being right.

Your brain is not asking the question, "Is this accurate?" What your brain is really asking is, "Do I want this to be true?" That's the most important distinction that you could ever teach your children, is the difference between your brain asking whether something is accurate or whether the brain wants this to be true. The moment somebody touches something that you already believed about yourself, your brain quietly marks that person, or puts a little tag on that person, as somebody that's very safe to listen to, which means that your defense systems don't come up automatically by default.

Weaponized Identity

You see this all over the internet too, even with these cult experts, that they're going to present you a villain. "We hate these people, these people are disgusting," all this. That's not true. No cult in the world starts with a villain, but it does start with a type a type of person. So they get you to agree that there's another type of person, and then there's you.

They might say, "Most people don't get this. Most people are asleep at the wheel. They sleep through their life. Most people trade comfort for certainty. Most people live on the surface."

I mean, those are all true statements. That's not me manipulating you. That's me saying things that I know you're going to agree with because there are people out there. But notice what just happened. Nobody told you what to believe. What I told you with those statements is who you are not, and you don't want to be most people. The agreement forms without any argument, and the alignment happens without any decision. You're not pushing away from somebody, you're just feeling yourself.

If all I do is get you and me to agree to have a common type of person that we are not, I automatically gain instant alignment without you ever realizing that it's happened.

Cognitive Dissonance Invitation

They're not inviting you to some big meeting and saying that we're going to burn some incense and do something crazy. They're just implying something. They're going to say, "This isn't for most people. Not everybody makes it to this phase. Some people just aren't built for this kind of thing."

Suddenly the question isn't, "Do I want to do this?" It's, "What does it say about me if I walk away?" Now my identity is being threatened. We see all the sales training stuff on the internet about scarcity. "Sale ends Sunday, 12 seats left, 12 tickets left," whatever. It's effective, but scarcity doesn't pull you forward. Identity is what pulls you forward.

There's a moment that most people have where something feels off in a conversation and we ignore it. And it's not because you're wrong, but it's just because we don't trust what we're seeing. And that's where all of this starts. "Look, I know you don't want to watch another ad. I don't blame you, but I have seen this change too many lives to just let you scroll past it. There's a moment that most people have where something feels off in a conversation and we ignore it. And it's not because you're wrong, but it's just because we don't trust what we're seeing. And that's where all of this starts."

NTI level one isn't about learning a bunch of tricks. It's about finally understanding what you've been noticing your whole life already. You start to see behavior a lot more clearly. The body language, the emotional shifts, the intent that's behind someone's actions. So you don't guess anymore. You read what's going on. You understand what's going on. And you can actually respond with precision.

Most people ignore what they see. This is where you learn to trust it.

The Ask

This is the most dangerous moment of the entire process. This is where the person will ask them, "Can you show me that thing that you mentioned earlier? What's that really about? Can you send me that?"

The question feels super friendly, interested, and genuinely curious about something you're interested in or something you're smart about. It's voluntary. It feels harmless. But the moment that you ask, something flips. The person is asking the recruiter. So now you're no longer evaluating. You're participating. Your brain now automatically labels the next step as self-directed, that it came from within you.

All humans protect the path that they believe they chose themselves. From this point on, there's no more recruiting happening. They're getting you to a point where you're essentially doing something that I would call self-investing. You're doubling down on something that you've agreed to yourself, who you are.

Definitions

In the definitions part, beliefs don't get attacked. The cult wants you to outgrow one or two beliefs. The old world that you lived in starts feeling a little bit clumsy. Language feels cleaner when you're here in this cult, sharper. It's more honest. The old world starts to sound dull and boring. They have language that makes your regular life sound childish.

Cults are not just deleting your reality. All they're really doing is relabeling, renaming, and redefining all of that stuff. If I can shift language, if a cult can shift language, the thinking follows automatically. And this is what's happening on a national scale for most of us.

I want this to be a huge warning. You think this is a video about somebody joining some cult somewhere in San Bernardino. This is national. You don't notice this happening. You notice that some thoughts feel easier than others, and that's the trick. They're easier to accept, easier to adopt, easier to compare to the world around you.

Isolation

Nobody's going to tell you to cut people off. What they're going to do is prepare you for what other people are going to say. "When you go back into your life, your family's not going to understand, your wife, your husband, they're not going to understand. They're going to try to pull you back. It's very seductive. They're afraid. They're stuck in the old system."

And this isn't isolation yet, but it's preemptive invalidation. So when those people eventually question you the spouse, the coworkers, the friends that you hang out with their concern feels predictable, and you feel clever for having predicted it. All of this makes it super easy to stop taking the people in your life seriously.

Weaponized Morality

Eventually, you're getting pulled into a cult, and it stops being interesting and starts being super important. "All the stuff we're talking about matters. This helps people. This is so, so much bigger than personal preference. This is about truth."

The moment that morality enters the room, logic loses authority. In disagreement, when we used to disagree with an idea, that felt intellectual. Now disagreement feels unethical. Doubt starts to feel selfish. If you're doubting the idea, you must be a selfish person. Questioning what somebody is saying starts to feel like you're betraying the cause. That's the moment that leaving the cult becomes super hard. There's a leader, there's doctrine you have to follow, you're isolating yourself.

The Commitment

No one ever says the word "join." They say, "You're one of us now. You finally get it. You've done the work faster than everybody else." All those sentences, they're not very dramatic, but they all sound like a verdict like the judgment's being passed in a positive way. Because now, leaving the cult, if I want to stand up and leave, it doesn't feel like I'm changing my mind. It feels like I'm betraying who I have become.

And this is the biggest piece. If you look at a narcissistic relationship, it goes through this entire exact process, pretty much verbatim, with a spouse. It's a cult too—a cult with one member.

The Social Coffin

They ask you to do one small thing. "You've been through so much. You've been through all these things. The only thing I want you to do is share this. What I want you to do is explain this to somebody. And there's somebody here that's brand new, and you're senior to them now. So what I want you to do is correct their misunderstanding that they have, and I want you to defend it."

This is the real trap. The fastest way to believe something is to explain it out loud. Your mouth convinces your brain more efficiently than evidence. Once you've defended something, you do not want to be wrong anymore.

Sunk Social Cost

The final lock is in cost. And it's not money first. The cost is consistency for your pride, the story that you've already told other people about who you are as a person. Walking away now is not just going to make you wrong or whatever they want to call you. Walking away is going to mean that you have to admit that you've carried something false long enough for it to cost you something totally real. Most people don't leave after that. This is because they're cornered painted into a corner by their past certainty.

Let me wrap with this. There's a part here that nobody likes. If at any point you thought, "Yeah, but I would see all this coming," that's the hook. And that should be a warning to you. There's not a cult out there that's going to be out there stealing your freedom from you. There's no cult in the world that wants to steal your freedom. They all want you to feel stupid for wanting it back.

Is there actually a solution to the Problem of Induction, are you aware of any?

I read this today,

"it seems that we can’t do without inductive generalisations and inductive reasoning generally, they are, or at least have been so far, simply too useful to refuse"

And these immediately raised a question in me,

The Problem of Induction, mostly associated with David Hume, seems to be built on something deeply unsettling,

we observe patterns in the past, we expect those patterns to continue, but when we try to justify why we expect them to continue, we realise we are already assuming the very thing we are trying to prove,

Take something as simple as the sun,

"The sun has risen every day in recorded human history, therefore it will rise tomorrow"

At first glance that sounds perfectly rational, almost undeniable even, because it has been consistently true for as long as we can remember. It is undeniably useful as a prediction. Entire civilizations, calendars, and sciences have relied on that kind of expectation.

But the problem is that usefulness is not the same thing as certainty.

The fact that something has happened repeatedly does not logically guarantee it will happen again. It only gives us confidence because of repetition. And that confidence itself is inductive.

That is Hume’s knife, the assumption that "the future will resemble the past" cannot be proven without already relying on induction itself, which makes the whole thing circular, and this is where my problem begins,

If we openly admit that we cannot do without induction simply because it is too useful to refuse, then are we not allowing utility to quietly justify belief,.not necessarily truth, but belief, And at that point I have to ask,.when does "it works" slowly become "therefore it is true"

Because those are not the same thing.

Truth is usually understood as correspondence with reality, utility is simply effectiveness in helping us navigate reality, something can be incredibly useful and still not be ultimately true.

Newtonian physics is a perfect example,

it worked, and in many ways still works, but Einstein showed that it was not the final or fullest truth about how reality operates, which makes me think,

when people say "we must keep induction because it works", that sounds less like a truth claim and more like pragmatism, almost like saying,

"we cannot prove this foundation is solid, but we have no choice except to keep building on it"

And that feels closer to William James than Hume,

because Hume’s position feels much darker to me,

it is not "truth is whatever is useful"

it is more like,

"we have no rational foundation for induction, but we are psychologically wired to rely on it anyway"

That is which is crazy right?

because it suggests that reason itself eventually reaches a wall, and when it does, habit takes over,

which leaves me wondering….

if our most basic way of knowing the world rests on habit rather than certainty, then where exactly does epistemology end and pragmatism begin?

And is that not where modern science itself still quietly lives? Not in absolute certainty, but in patterns so reliable that we have learned to trust them as if they were truth.

You know Robert Greene, the guy who wrote The 48 Laws of Power.

He and 50 Cent wrote a book called The 50th Law, and it is about one thing:

Fear.

In the Bible, one of the most repeated phrase is: “Do not fear.”

In Dune, they say: “Fear is the mind-killer.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Sun Tzu wrote about fear in war, because whoever controls fear controls the battle.

Viktor Frankl wrote about fear and despair in concentration camps.

I had watched a two hour podcast on how to make money by Alex hormozy and the whole conversation was about fear.

Philosophers, generals, religious books, psychologists, businessmen, they all keep coming back to the same enemy:

Fear.

Life is a game of fear.

Most people think fear is only when a dog is barking at you, or when you are on a stage speaking to people.

But that is not true.

Real fear is all the time.

Fear is all we feel.

Fear is smart. It hides.

It comes as laziness, comfort, excuses, shyness, perfectionism, overthinking, “tomorrow”, “not now”, “I don’t care”.

Fear becomes your god.

It controls your decisions, your future, your personality.

It is like a parasite in the brain.

It lives through you, as you.

It kills you while you are still alive and takes over.

We have to be conscious of fear.

Start seeing it in our daily decisions.

Then, understand fear.

Meditate, journal on fear.

Write a 100 things that scare you and watch them.

Then, fight fear.

This is the best fight a human being can fight.

This is the only fight I tell you.

You don’t start with big things.

You start by conquering the body:

Cold showers

24 to 48 hr Fasting

Hard intense exercise

Wake up early

No phone for a day

Sit in silence

Shock the body.

Teach yourself that discomfort is not death.

Then move to life:

Say what you really think

Talk to strangers

Apply for the job

Start the business

Tell the girl

Ask the question

Admit you were wrong

Try and fail

Try again

Do one thing that scares you every day.

One small victory against fear every day.

After some time, something happens.

You start to change.

You will see a different you, a happier you.

You feel lighter.

You feel more dangerous.

More free.

More alive.

You will see how much fear had blinded and paralized you.

Then you will get addicted to doing things that scare you. The body will follow.

So remember:

Fear is the enemy.

Be conscious of it.

Face it.

Fight it.

We grew up believing the future would always get better.
More modern. More civilized. More democratic. More fair.
And for a long time, it looked true.
Every generation before us seemed to live better than the one before it.
Technology was advancing faster than ever.
Poverty dropped in many parts of the world. Education spread. Information became accessible.
We were told humanity was evolving, becoming smarter, more rational, more peaceful.

We believed another world war was impossible because surely people had learned from history.
But now look around.
Most countries have been in a civil wars for almost 6 years.
Global tension is rising, World war lll doesn't seem so impossible, infact it might have even started.
Powerful nations are openly preparing for conflict again. Countries are rearming.
Wars that once would have shocked the world now barely stay in the headlines for more than a week.
Governments are becoming more authoritarian while still pretending to be democratic, some don't even pretend anymore.
Trust in institutions is collapsing. Propaganda spreads faster than truth because outrage travels faster than facts.
People are even dummer and less informed for some reason.

Economically, things are becoming harder too.
The gap between rich and poor keeps growing.
Middle class is poor now.
Young people work harder than previous generations but feel less secure about their future. A normal job no longer guarantees stability, a home, or even dignity in some countries.
And now AI is entering the picture.
Entire industries are beginning to change overnight.
Jobs people studied years are disappearing.

At the same time, loneliness, depression, and anxiety are rising everywhere, especially among young people.

It does not look good.

Muhammad Ali cheated a lot.

A lot of people don't understand the female gaze. Most people think Beyoncé is too good for Jay-Z. She is not. But if you understood the female gaze you would know Muhammad Ali is the shit. I just realized it recently.

Muhammad Ali is 6'3", handsome, charming, very smart, well-spoken, and he beats up men for a living.

Muhammad Ali was married four times, has nine children, and there was a lot of infidelity. Who knows how many women he had been with. There are stories of him stealing a man's wife in the club right there and then.

Alamo Brown from Euphoria Season 3 one of the coolest and most interesting characters in the history of cinema is a pimp and he owns a strip club. He became a pimp because he wanted to possess pussy. And he thought he did. But at the end he realized he doesn't. He says, "I may run this club, but pussy still runs me."

You might be inclined to think women run pussy because they have it. But no. Pussy also runs women. They have a higher authority over it, yes, but they don't run it. The reason a woman will walk miles to sleep with a guy that beats her, cheated on her, and treats her like garbage is because pussy runs her. Because Mother Nature likes this guy. And Mother Nature is the one who runs pussy. Not only pussy she runs the world. She runs every living organism that exists. But not the universe. God runs the universe.

A woman sees a guy. She thinks he is ugly. He talks to her. She thinks he is stupid and arrogant and brags a lot. She hates him, in her head that is. But if her body wants him, like really wants him, she won't be able to control herself.

And when it comes to highly attractive men, no matter how much they try not to cheat on their dearly beloved wife, they will do it again and again and again. They are not in control. You would be getting morning, afternoon, nighttime, all day every day wood.

You wanna know who doesn't get a lot of morning wood?

Nietzsche.

Friedrich Nietzsche never had children and was chronically ill for most of his life. He stared so deeply into the abyss that the abyss stared back and took everything his health, his relationships, his sanity at the end. A man who understood the will to power better than almost anyone who ever lived, and yet Mother Nature looked at his bloodline and quietly closed the door. Not because he was stupid. Because he was too consumed by understanding reality to actually participate in it. That's the cruel irony.

The reason it's hard for the human brain to understand reality is because the brain was designed for survival. Using your intelligence to survive and become powerful is admirable and rewarded by Mother Nature but to use it to understand reality and be consumed by it, that is deadly.

When people are too intelligent and get consumed by philosophy, when they stare too long into the abyss, they become less attractive and have less to zero sex drive. Because they have a lesser will to live. So reverse Darwinism is not really reverse.

A lot of what drives men to that final exit is tied to this. When a man feels completely disconnected from his biological purpose, when Mother Nature has seemingly withdrawn her investment in him and he can feel it without being able to name it that emptiness becomes unbearable. 70 to 75% of people who die by suicide annually are men. Even though women generally carry harder emotional loads. But women are anchored by something men aren't Mother Nature never fully abandons a woman because the womb is too valuable. A man without that anchor, without purpose, without being chosen by anything that is a specific kind of loneliness the world doesn't talk about enough.

Even though a woman's life is harder and more depressing in many ways, women are generally happier than men and they live longer too. That is because women are relatively superior to men in the eyes of Mother Nature. No matter what, a woman possesses a womb "a miracle between her legs" as Alamo called it.

Mother Nature gets her way.

Either way.

All the time.

If you have ever watched a Mafia, Gangster or Drug cartel movie you have heard the threating phrase when one of them is about to be busted, “If I am going down, I am taking everybody with me.” But what if everybody is already down there with you?

The director of Get Out (I am sure you have seen it, if not what are you waiting for?) Jordan Peele used the “Sunken Place” in Get Out to shine light on the systematically marginalization of the Black community and specifically the under representation on the big screen.

The movie was beautifully put and marvellously executed. If you have seen it, you know the scariest moment is when the main protagonist (Chris Washington) is in the “Sunken Place” able to see the outside world through a screen but not being allowed to interact with it or affect it in any way. The terror was on this alones, in a deep dark cold place with no one else.

That got me thinking, what if there were a bunch of people in the “Sunken Place” with him? Will he has strived to get out (no pun intended) or will he has just settled there and get comfort in the consensual misery?

Isn’t that what we are as Kenyans, Africans? Aren’t we all just lost in the “Sunken Place” deprived of all, what almost the rest of the entire world considers a “given”. Like necessities to the body like Food and Health care, to necessities to the mind like Education and necessities to Society like free speech and I don’t know couple years without a bloody civil war???

We see and conceive what is out there through our “screens” but it is not a single person in the “Sunken Place”… No, it is a whole society, generations and generations of people lost in misery. But that is the point, the word “Whole”… we stopped feeling the pain and convinced ourselves “this is normal”.

I don’t know what the “Sunken Place” will mean to you as you watch the movie but for me it reminded me of the Frog that thought he was taking a bath in a warm water, while “They” were heating up the water gradually and cooking him alive… the only thing worse this time, the frog is millions of Human beings. We are too comfortable in the warm water, we have forgotten we are being cooked alive!

I was spiraling down in to my seasonal depression and boredom. Asking those mind boggling existentialism questions like “Why am I here?”, “What am doing with my life?”, “Am I good enough?,” “Why isn’t the world fair”, “Does life has a purpose”, “Is there a meaning to all of this”… you know those  questions you ask in youth life till career, family, kids… makes you forget about them by your 30’s. Anyhow as usual I did not find an answer to any of my questions but by one of my late night sessions of reminiscing thoughts a quote from a 20th century mathematician and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein came to mind and gave me a little ease and a smile… “I don’t know why we are here but I am pretty sure it is not to enjoy ourselves”

Cosmological Boredom

I don’t want to be alone. I really don’t want to be Alone! If you thought I am talking about personal relationships and human interactions… you know nothing about me! And that is all right me being “Kavuti” and hiding behind my walls built from bricks of Art.

Anyways, the loneliness I am talking about is on a cosmological scale. In the more than 13 Billion years existence of the universe, with plus 10 Billion galaxies, 1 Billion Trillion stars and more than 10^24 Planets oww by the way if you like your zeros that is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the observable universe… from all those astronomically gigantic numbers Earth is the only planet to have developed an intelligent life form that is capable of asking the question “Are we alone in the universe?”

Thus far, whatever little data we have clustered suggests we really are alone in this gigantic fabric of mystery that is the universe… and that cosmological chill of being alone in a universe far wider than our craziest imagination… that loneliness, it bores me!

Starting with definitions is sometimes boring, especially when it is an article you have had a burning desire to write but somehow never found the thrill or motivation to begin. It makes me wonder: can our desires be cut short simply because we lack the motivation to chase them?

Maybe motivation is not always the problem. Maybe what we lack is a system.

So today, I want to write about systems.

"Systems" is an extremely broad topic because almost everything can be understood as a system. My personal definition of a system is simple: a flow or process that takes you from point A, to B, to C, and eventually to Z. In more formal terms, a system can be defined as a set of interconnected parts or components working together toward a specific goal or function. Systems have inputs, processes, outputs, and feedback.

But systems are not just machines or human inventions. Everything seems to follow some kind of system, from the universe to the smallest atoms. Rivers flow from source to mouth, never the reverse. Trees begin as seeds and, under the right conditions, grow into something far greater. Even growth itself seems to obey invisible patterns. Things thrive because certain conditions exist, and when those conditions are missing, the system struggles or collapses.

Although we haven't reached collapsing yet, I'm willing to take you there. That's why I'm inviting you into my system. And I'm trusting that through my design and experience, we will not arrive there as travellers but as seekers.

Going back to where it all started  I was in a church service when a man stormed in and went directly to the pastor to demand who had parked a car in front of his, blocking the exit and preventing him from driving out. The man believed that whoever owned the car was one of the congregants. As I watched this unfold, I got a chance to observe the reaction of the other believers  and a reaction, by the way, is simply an action triggered by another action  and most of them were surprised by what the man did. After the service, when I got home, this moment really disturbed me. I started asking myself: why do people get surprised when something they didn't expect actually happens? Is it because it disrupts something within them? And what exactly is that something that gets disturbed?

While I was sitting with that question, I was also trying to fix a bug in some code. Every time I ran the script it kept failing, and then it dawned on me: what if I'm writing the script the wrong way? When I double-checked, I found the issue, fixed it, and the code was deployed.

That was my eureka moment. Just as I kept writing my code incorrectly and kept getting wrong results, that is the same thing that happens when something within a person gets disrupted. Think of it this way you follow a certain route to school every day, then one morning you wake up and take the same route, only this time it's closed and you have to find another way. Doesn't that disrupt a certain routine? A certain process? Even the smallest changes in a system can make the whole thing come down. Small changes like adding neutrons to uranium can create a weapon of mass destruction. Small changes in the American housing and banking system, where financial institutions were lending money to people who couldn't afford to repay it, quietly built pressure until 2008 when the whole thing collapsed, wiping out savings, jobs, and livelihoods across the entire world.

Systems work perfectly as long as they are not disrupted. And when a system collapses, it is usually the people following it who suffer the most. This is because they were so deeply integrated with it, so much so that they built their identity around it. So when it collapses, it collapses with all their hopes and dreams inside it. We believe in systems so much that anything challenging them feels like a personal threat.

Which brings this question are we really ourselves, or are we the systems we follow?

Because even before I mention anything else, we are all biological systems, living inside an ecological system, which is sustained by an astronomical system. When I say I am a Democrat or belong to a certain political party, I am placing myself inside a political system. When I call myself a capitalist or a communist, I am stepping into an economic system. When I go to school, I am inside an education system. When I follow law and justice, I am operating within a legal system. Healthcare has its system. Family and relationships have theirs. Even following a certain doctrine places you inside a belief system. And it goes further down the line than most people are willing to look. Do we even have the right to call ourselves our own people? Who are you without the systems you follow both the major ones and the ones you have quietly built for yourself?

Because even I, who can see them and notice them, am not free from them. You can never jump from a system into freedom. It is always from one system to another. By design, we cannot survive without a system. In the current society, trying to break away from all systems entirely means death. The best you can do is acknowledge them, notice them, and decide consciously how much of yourself you give to them.

The system knows what you are going to react to, what you are going to defend, what you are going to buy, and who you are going to hate.

So are the systems we live in currently designed for us or were they always there, and we simply had to adjust the moment we were born?

I have a few theories.

Theory one: some systems were deliberately designed to shape you.

There is a man most people have never heard of named Edward Bernays. In the early 20th century, Bernays did something that had never quite been done before he studied how the human mind works and then used that knowledge not to heal people, but to move them. He understood that people do not make decisions purely from logic. They make decisions from desire, identity, and emotion. So he engineered those things.

He ran a campaign that convinced American women that smoking cigarettes was a symbol of independence and freedom. Overnight, a behaviour that was considered unacceptable for women became fashionable. He did not force anyone. He simply redesigned the meaning attached to the action, and people followed willingly.

He also ran a campaign for a meat processing company that convinced Americans that a heavy breakfast of bacon and eggs was the healthy, normal way to start the day. That is not a tradition that came from generations of culture. It was an advertising decision. And it became a system that millions of people still follow without ever questioning where it came from.

He even helped orchestrate the overthrow of Guatemala's democratic government by framing it as a fight against communism, protecting the business interests of a fruit company. What Bernays understood, perhaps better than anyone at the time, is that if you control what people desire and what they fear, you don't need to force them into a system. They will walk into it themselves and call it a choice.

This is where my theory begins. Some of the systems we live inside were not discovered. They were constructed, deliberately, by people who understood human behaviour well enough to design inputs that produce predictable outputs. Just like a script. Just like code. And if you think that era is behind us, consider your phone.

Every time you scroll, pause, or react online, that behaviour is being recorded. Algorithms are not just recommending content to you  they are learning you. They study what makes you stop, what makes you angry, what makes you feel seen. Then they feed you more of it. Not because it is good for you, but because your continued attention is the output the system was designed to produce. The system already knows what you will react to before you react to it. That is not an accident. That is engineering.

Theory two: even when nobody designed it, the system still learns you.

Today, the most powerful systems are not run by a single person with a plan. They are run by algorithms. And algorithms do not have intentions, but they do have an objective keep your attention as long as possible.

To do that, the algorithm has to learn you. Every time you pause on something, every time you react, every time you feel a spike of anger or curiosity or sadness the system records it. Over time it builds a map of you. Not the you that you present to the world, but the raw you. The one that flinches at certain words. The one that cannot scroll past a certain kind of story.

And once it has that map, it feeds you more of whatever keeps you engaged. Not what is true. Not what is good for you. Just what keeps you reacting.

This connects back to the disruption idea from earlier. Remember how the people in church were surprised when the man stormed in? Their internal system got disrupted. Now imagine something that studies exactly what disrupts you and then delivers it to you in a controlled dose, every single day, just enough to keep you emotionally activated but never enough for you to feel resolved.

This is just the logic of a system optimising for engagement.

The result, whether anyone planned it or not it doesn't matter.

Also not every system was built by someone in a room with an agenda. Some systems are simply the ones that outlasted everything else. Language is a system nobody designed from scratch. Culture is a system that accumulated over centuries of people trying to make sense of being alive together. Even your daily routine the order in which you shower, eat, check your phone  is a system you built without realising it, simply because repetition made it stable.

These systems were not installed. They emerged. And yet they shape you just as powerfully as the ones that were deliberately constructed. Maybe more, because you never question what you never noticed being built.

So after going through my two theories which is it?

Probably both. And that is what makes the question so difficult tonsit with....Some systems were designed with intention, built to produce specific human behaviour at scale. Others emerged naturally and simply became the water we swim in. But whether a system was engineered or evolved, the effect on the person inside it is often the same  you begin to mistake the system for yourself.

The political label becomes your identity. The algorithm becomes your taste. The routine becomes your personality. The belief becomes your truth.And the system keeps running, quietly, with or without your awareness.

The question I keep returning to is not whether you can escape systems. I already told you  you cannot. The question is whether you are aware enough to know which system you are inside, who benefits from you staying there, and whether the person it is shaping you into is someone you actually chose to become.

Although today is my birthday, I woke up feeling so detached. There is no longer the joy and excitement that used to fill the atmosphere. Now it’s just numbness.

Have birthdays started to get weird? Not that I hate my birthday. I just don’t feel connected to it anymore. It feels like a reminder of how much has changed, of how much hasn’t. Of the people who used to call, of the ones who said “I’ll always be around” and meant “until it’s inconvenient.”

I don’t mean to be a party pooper. I’m just tired of pretending this day feels good when mostly, it feels like a report card for things I didn’t finish. A tally of who didn’t show up. A mirror I didn’t ask for.

Birthdays get quieter. No one warns you about that. They get lonelier. More loaded. You think the older you get, the more solid things will feel. But a lot of the time, you’re just better at carrying the uncertainty.

And still part of you waits. For that one name to pop up. For someone to say, “I know this year was rough. I’m glad you’re still here.”

But most of the time, it’s quiet. Not peaceful quiet. Just quiet...Or maybe I hadn’t fully stepped into adulthood until I turned 23 today.

Self- awareness is who or what body and mind appear to, not awareness of body and mind as the self, as defined by the dictionary.

Merriam-Websters specifically defines self-awareness as “an awareness of one’s own personality or individuality”. This is the idea that I am my body and mind: a being of form. The form of this being is the body (individuality) and mind (personality) that I am.

But notice: I am over here (subject), and my body and mind are apparently “things” - objects - I (subject) am aware of. Therefore, if I accept that I am them, there are ostensibly two of me: I (subject) and body-mind (composite object) who I now supposedly am.

Eckhart Tolle's enlightenment consists entirely of seeing through this massive self-created problem in a flash. In the introduction to his beautiful book, “The Power of Now”, he writes:

One night, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing motorbikes everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.

“I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.”

I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words “resist nothing,” as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.

When the mind stops two become one: the illusion that I (subject) can be other than subject - an object, being the body and mind - drops. Body and mind are now seen directly to be mere concepts. The ineffable reality doesn't comprise of separate, interrelated things. There are no things. There is only the One. Concepts are seen for what they are, as mere ideas, and not the realities they are always attempting to replace. As if though we can actually know ANYTHING! Impossible!

So, how do you get this self-awareness?

Forget about what you are aware of. Specifically, don't pay the slightest attention to your own body, mind, thoughts and feelings. They are irrelevant. Instead, observe who or what these apparent things - none of which really exist except as self-defeating, self-imprisoning concepts - appear to.

Who or what do body and mind appear to? They always appear to I who am observing them. Cultivate awareness of I.

Don't define I. Don't try to figure out who or what I am. See what happens when I try to figure out who I am and I arrive at a definition (just another concept!) The definition is a mental object of which I (subject) am aware, so once again I have missed myself. I have given power to the enemy.

The great adversary (called Satan in the Bible) is how I have defined myself and who I now therefore think I am. For all these are objects of which I (subject) am aware. So therefore they are all not-I (anatta). Anatta means: not-self.

By defining who I am, I am limiting myself. I now confine who I am and what I may and may not do and be, to my definition. Furthermore, all “things” - including this supposed “body-mind” - have a beginning and end. So, as long as I identify in any form or manner with them, the physical body's fight-flight-freeze-fawn survival responses are triggered over and over, causing all the misery in the world!

You be different. Cultivate awareness of yourself as subject.

The purpose of this self-awareness is mental inaction, mental non-reactivity, and action that is not a reaction. This mental non-reactivity is unconditional freedom: freedom from all forms, and freedom from all self-imposed limitation.

To arrive at mental inaction, and action that is not a reaction, there must first be awareness of my mental reactions, and their massive impact on my life. I think my feelings are caused by others: specifically what they say and do to me. I think my feelings are caused by my circumstances and untoward, undesirable events. Meanwhile, all my feelings are actually caused by my own mental reactions to people, circumstances, events and my environment.

Bringing attention back to I whenever I suffer, in and out of meditation, I see my mental reactions, and I see what they do to me. I see what I am doing against myself. Seeing this, I see the alternative. By learning not to react at all, and how to act without any undercurrents of reactivity in my actions, I lose my fear of people, circumstances, events and my environment. I gradually come to see I am invulnerable and indestructible. My body's fight-flight-freeze-fawn survival responses become completely turned off. I lose my mental and emotional dependence on people, circumstances, events and the environment to feel good. The day comes when I no longer wonder what it takes to feel good. I now realize that everything that now happens to me makes me feel good. Regardless of what happens, I feel good. This is complete freedom from all suffering.

Once this self-awareness is firmly established, positive action without any undercurrent of reactivity can easily be learnt by directed, focused attention on a meditation subject of choice. Do not allow the current of intention coupled with carefully directed attention to divide this immensely powerful healing current by giving rise to thoughts and feelings of doubt: doubt in yourself, and doubt in the power of your practice. Allow the current of attention to be totally undivided. This is the power of mindfulness: to be so totally attentive that unhappiness of any kind is absolutely impossible.

If, in the process of directing attention, doubt and mistrust are felt, bring attention to bear on the source of attention (I, beyond definition), to ensure that I don't react to these feelings. Then they magically vanish, feeding the power of this mindfulness: complete, undivided attention.

In the mental mirror of my mind, there appear to be two of me: I (subject, awareness) and what I see in the mirror (a composite object: body-mind, thoughts-feelings). But only one of them is real: who is looking, not what is seen. Pay attention to who is looking. Completely and ruthlessly destroy the self-defeating self-image in the mirror of mind. When I am One, when only one of me remains (who is looking), Nirvana is seen: that Life and Reality are perfect, and always were perfect.

Sometimes we find ourselves trapped, trapped in versions of ourselves, hating on each and everyone of them; simultaneously chasing the one version that would change our lives forever, and when we finally become that version, bang, we start hating it too. The chase goes on and on and in the meantime, as Ferris would say, life goes by without us realising it. Funny thing is the said concept doesn't limit itself to us as people, but it lingers on each and every thing we do in life. Eventually we'd start hating the job we do, start looking for the next big gig and everything just starts crumbling like dominos.

But that's how we all choose to evolve, isn't it? We focus on something that at the given moment seems like the most important moment of our lives but in retrospect loses its meaning because eventually the passion would fade and it would just find something entirely new to focus on. While the world's in such a dire state, and our lives have been turned around for God knows how long, living life to its fullest doesn't really seem like a bad idea.

But to what extent shall we stretch the concepts and definitions of life to live it in the best way possible. Wouldn't that mean that we have again kept a version of life on a pedestal that we'd constantly be chasing? Are we stuck in an infinite loop of longing and not getting what we desire? Was Hank Moody really right when he said longing for something is better than actually having it? Damn. Perhaps we better drink to a deep and dreamless slumber.

I need you to hear this, and bear with me this is just my observation. I have been around gifted kids all my life. I have tried to be like them, but all in vain. I will start with one of the most famous, well-known Stanford researches by Lewis Terman. 

In the early 1920s, psychologist Lewis Terman set out to prove that genius could be measured, selecting over a thousand children with extraordinarily high IQs and following their lives with almost prophetic certainty that they were destined for greatness. Years turned into decades as these “gifted” children grew into stable, successful adults doctors, professors, pillars of society but not the world-changing visionaries he had imagined. And in a quiet twist of fate that history would later find ironic, two boys who had been excluded from his study for not scoring high enoughvWilliam Shockley and Luis Walter Alvarez went on to win Nobel Prizes, leaving behind a conclusion far more unsettling than his original hypothesis: that brilliance alone does not shape destiny, and that the spark that changes the world often flickers outside the boundaries of what can be neatly measured.

This was just a story most of us know, so I'll tell you my personal experience and story being around gifted kids and how I came to this conclusion. It's personal because it happened that one of my family members, who is my younger sister, our last born my younger sister has one of the most gifted minds I have ever come across. She had never struggled with education like the rest of us; everything used to come to her with ease and naturally. Whether it was maths, science, or any other subject, she didn’t have a favourite because all of them were.

 Now, with the combination of being a last born and a gifted kid, you know that she would be the apple of my parents’ eye. In short, she was my parents’ favourite. She always got everything she wanted, and being a sharp girl, she maximized on this opportunity. Most people would end up being spoiled brats, but she wasn’t. She was always this responsible girl trustworthy and reliable. Me, on the other hand, I was the opposite. My mom used to change her phone and laptop passwords because I was playing games there a lot, but I just knew who I had to ask for the password in case she changed it and that was my younger sister.

 Academically, she used to do so well. There was a time she scored 489/500, and my parents started throwing around dangerous phrases like, “You know she can come into your class and defeat all of you?” (I was two classes ahead)

So I remember this one moment when they decided to take us to a boarding school. Although we were in separate schools, I think this is where she started drifting. Although she wasn’t that bad, because she was still managing to score 400+, this wasn’t enough for her. According to my parents, she had set the bar high, and she should maintain it or move higher bthere was nothing like declining in their vocabulary. 

So my mom decided to push her further. She bought books, arranged for tuition, and did all the things parents do to make their children perform better in school. My mom wanted my sister to join Kenya High like her, and it was either that or that, so she kept pushing, hoping for the best. So my sister sat for the KCPE. She passed well in fact, she got 100 more marks than me, meaning that if she never did one exam, she would still be at the top or the same as me. Although she couldn’t qualify to meet the pass mark for joining Kenya High School, she was close. And this this was the beginning of her fallout with my mom. She still joined a national school, but you know it wasn’t Kenya High, right?

So a lot started happening. There were these little arguments between her and my mom. Suddenly, she couldn’t be trusted anymore. All of a sudden, she started performing poorly in school, and this escalated matters at home. “Is this why you perform poorly?” “Is this why you all hate me so much?” This matter became so bad that by the time she was in Form 3, I was the mediator between her and my parents yes, me, the black sheep, the irresponsible kid who was never trusted. It went on until she was expelled from the school, but she finally finished. And even though she had declined so much in education, she still got a grade that could qualify her to join a university. 

The relationship is still bad, to the point that sometimes I fear she might run away and never return. I know this got really personal, but I feel like gifted kids have one of the most heartbreaking downfalls because of the standards they set when they’re young. Suddenly, if they can’t meet them, it breaks them, because this is the only thing they’re good at. When suddenly the world shifts its attention and looks the other way, they start seeking attention, and sometimes these things end up making them sabotage and jeopardize their future. I know because I have a friend he was also very gifted academically but when things started falling out of place, he ended up indulging in drugs, then hard drugs. Someone who had sworn to never touch any drug in his life. The last time I heard from him, he was in rehab.

The first thing you have to understand is the trap of being a gifted child. Many people who are talented but broke grew up being told how smart they were. When you were a kid and everything comes easy to you, your brain learns a dangerous lesson. It learns that success is something you are and not something you do. You start to value your identity as a smart person more than you value the actual work. This creates a massive fear of failure. If you try something hard and you fail, then you might not be that smart person everyone said you were. So what do you do? You stay in your comfort zone. You do things that are easy for you.

I don’t know if this makes sense to you this is just my observation. I could talk about a lot of people I know, but I have chosen the ones I’m very familiar with. Yes, not just gifted kids I know anyone can end up having the same fate but I specifically chose them because these are the ones who are mostly misunderstood. I blame society, and this includes family, school, the church, and society in general. If every kid was treated equally and not some as special and others not, maybe we wouldn’t be having such cases. Parents acknowledging, yes, one of my kids is really bright, but also this one is so much more talented in sports or something else. 

They also gave the gifted kids the spotlight, and if they didn’t meet the standards, they made a big deal out of it. Then parents ask why their son or daughter is behaving this way, when they took part in making this happen. But society is always right, isn’t it? Well, maybe some of you have always been gifted and weren’t aware of this. Now you know your future is in your own hands. Stop pleasing people. Achieve things because you want to, and not to please anyone. Also, if you have siblings that are gifted and have followed this same pattern, look after them and protect them from this brutal reality.