Seeking Dominance in Every Single Shape Form And Way

2.6 seconds — the 0 to 60 speed on cyberbeast.

I think what is so fascinating about cyber truck is that it is dominant in every single shape form and way.

For example, the 0 to 60 speed for that massive is 2.6 seconds! This is much faster than almost every single Porsche 911 car.

Yeah yeah yeah, people might make the argument that a Porsche car is better on the track or whatever. But honestly speaking… Who goes to the track? Nobody.

Also, being really good at racing on the road I think is not really that impressive of a skill anyways. I think sounds fun, as it gets your adrenaline going, it etc.… But for the most part, it doesn’t really matter. Why? Any 5 foot 2 we could drive a car very well, but ultimately in real life, in embodied reality, a small or short man is not impressive.

Where do things matter?

Ultimately standing upright, in the flesh, in embodied reality is what matters the most. 

For example, I’ve been spending a lot of time in Holmby Hills, Beverly Hills, apparently the apex of society success and richness.  and a lot of these guys are actually really really short. Like 5 foot five, 5’4” tall.

I still think one of my most grateful things is that I’m quite tall, around 5‘11“ tall. I think the average man in America is only 5 foot 8 1/2 inches tall.

How and why does this matter?

First, whether we like it or not, we are so driven by our material things. For example, cars, I think for the modern day man, and also perhaps woman,  so much of our time is fixated on buying a new car. Why? Because for most Americans, you actually spend a lot of time in your car; most people unfortunately have to work or go to work, and most people drive to go to work. As a consequence, it is the transportational zone that you best prefer.

Weekend warriors

Also where vehicles are important or desired; most people do not have time off until the weekend, whether Saturday or Sunday. As a consequence, most people want to get away for the weekend, maybe go to the beach, go hiking, go to the nearby city etc. As a consequence , a lot of people also have to drive to get there.  

Your external avatar

Vehicles are interesting, because they are a true externalization who you are, your beliefs, your value systems etc.

Tell me what car you drive, and I will tell you what you value.

For example, I put zero faith in anybody who talks about value, economics, whatever, who doesn’t drive a Toyota Prius. Even a Tesla, if you are truly value oriented, Tesla is not the way. Why? It is certainly the coolest option, but actually not the most practical nor the most economical.

If you really really want to build capital, save money and wealth, and stack, the optimal path is maximum frugality, a maximum Spartan lifestyle, which means essentially just driving a used old 2010 Prius. People often ask me, and I joke… How much I spend a month on gas. I told them that I only spend $38 USD a month on gas!

Living in public takes guts

It looks like there’s this weird race towards virtual reality, augmented reality or whatever. Ultimately, nobody really cares for these things. What we really want is to flex in the flesh, in real life.

For example, this is where people would still prefer to have a real life car instead of a meta-verse car; ultimately we still love physics. This is why we love the roar of the engine, the feeling of torque and responsiveness, moving through time and space etc. For example, visual experience nerve forget is being with Dylan in his yellow Porsche 911 GT three, with a naturally aspirated V6 engine right behind us, accelerating onto the freeway, hitting around 7000 RPM. The roar of the engine is distinct loud and fun, very visceral. 

Kids

Modern day capitalistic consumer, individualistic society is anti-kids. Why? People who have a disposable income, can spend more money on superfluous things, rather than kids. Unfortunately, kids and children is a shrinking market. Let us consider the baby boomer generation in America, which people had 3 to 4 kids. Now it looks like people are having on average 1.2 kids, because people would prefer to have dogs or whatever.

And also, how and why did dogs get so popular all of a sudden? My theory is that modern day man some sort of intimacy or love or compassion or companionship or whatever, without any downside. Humans are messy complex and require courage to interact with. This is why whenever you see any sort of single guy in LA with some sort of wimpy looking stray rescue dog, it is a signal of cowardice. 

This is also how the modern day man lacks social skills; once again, to interact with real life human beings in the flesh is messy, unpredictable. This is where people are confused by me; and I break all the rules, essentially I break the simulation.

Courage is the future

I recently visited the Pacific Palisades Public library, highly recommended a great library. There we got a library card, and in the new book section and I picked up a hardcover book of a new translation of the Iliad by Emily Wilson, I really enjoy it. 

Anyways, when it comes to men, the heroes, it all comes down to courage or cowardice. The only bad or negative attribute of a man is cowardice.

This becomes interesting, because ability strength and dominance is actually not that important. Everybody already knows that Achilles is the supreme and Apex warrior, and nobody is a match for him. Even Hector knows this.

But I suppose when it comes down to it, when it comes down to battle, the question is this;

Will you cower, or confront your fate with courage? 

I suppose this is where Nietzsche gets the motto “Amor fati”– love your fate. Even when we think about when Paris went to battle in the beginning of the Iliad, The true fate should have been he should have been killed.

What is “fate” anyways?

From a truly physics based approach, there is no such thing as speech. There’s no such thing as predestination or whatever.

I don’t think there’s anything fated for you or us or whatever. However a simple observation is that if you never leave your apartment or your house and go outside, if you never adventure, if you never publish anything online, if you never take any sort of economic risks, nothing is going to happen.

Risk & adrenaline

I suppose when it comes down to it, the reason why I am built for investing because for the most part, I have strong stoic armor. I grew up poor, on the verge of being homeless, and also I’ve gone through periods in my high school college years in which I lost all my money. Therefore as a consequence, even though I still am very highly emotional to investments, losses, risk, I think I’m probably at least 30 to 80% less sensitive than average person. This is what gave me the courage and the conviction and the tenacity to invest in bitcoin, and in other crypto currencies.

Becoming?

I like this idea that we are always in a process of becoming. The reason why this is such a radical view is that with the typical American consumer self improvement thing; the generalized idea is that you’re either improving or “dis-improving”.

For example, it runs on some sort of continuum, spectrum, barometer or meter.

For example, I think people think the general idea of 0 to 10, in terms of productivity or whatever. Everyone always wants to be a 10.

However, the reason why this line of thinking is foolish is because the true reality of things is that embody reality is not a binary. Would you call a T-Rex a 10 out of 10? Or a rhino 10 out of 10? How about a chimpanzee monkey or human being?

Technically if you think about human beings, might be the wimpiest creatures on planet earth, yet humans are the Apex predator because of our higher level intelligence, of skills and cunning. For example, even if you took the worlds most dominant fighter, strongman or whatever, he will never be a match for the bull, the gorilla, etc. 

What do human beings strive for or towards?

I think we all strive towards more dominance, power, and supremacy.

For example, going to the Huntington botanical gardens, essentially the tallest trees get the most sunlight, and as a consequence, flower. Unfortunately the short, the shorty guys at the bottom, do not get any sunlight, therefore do not reproduce and do not produce flowers. 

Also at the California science center, when analyzing the biological life exhibit, one of the head scientists said something like “If you look at nature long enough, her primary goal is to procreate”.

So if the purpose or the point of life for us as human beings is to procreate, the funny thought:

How many kids (should) we have?

Back in the day, the more children you had, the wealthier you were. However nowadays, there’s a strange paradox; in the states, it seems that only poor immigrant families are having kids anymore; it is very common to see Mexican or Latino families with three or four kids, whereas the average affluent American tech person is either single, unmarried, no kids, maybe drive some sort of base level Porsche, And maybe have no intention of having any kids. Would prefer to have dogs.

I said this is fine; better for me ! When Seneca grows up, and all of these childless millennials die off, Seneca will reign supreme, and will inherit greatness, and his future progeny shall flourish. 


Courage is the future?

I think the main problem of modern day life is that there are no longer any areas for our courage. The closest thing might be intellectual or political courage, but this is also superficial at best.

I think the first practical way we could exude or exhibit or output courage is through extreme weightlifting. This is where the whole Max philosophy is interesting; until you have attempted a one repetition maximum of a given lift, you don’t know what true courage is.

I suppose other one is hand-to-hand combat; most men, myself included, either have not been in a street fight or a fistfight. I’ve done a lot of boxing when I was in high school, which was good. For the most part, modern day men doesn’t know how to fight. Thus the appeal of fight club.

Also, monitor day man is not allowed to exhibit his feelings, or get angry. To exhibit anger is considered evil in modern day society, and as a consequence you have a bunch of these resentful emasculated men, all antisocial, not sure what to do with themselves.

So what should we do?

First, it seems natural to be social. We make the wrong mistake that we think that humans desire money or whatever. Not true. We desire other human beings.

For example, no human being in his right mind would want to have all the trillions of dollars in the world, if he was forced in solitary confinement by himself.

Therefore a simple takeaway point, human beings make us happy. But I suppose the nuance is we want to interact with other human beings on our own terms?

How to live life?

I think the path to living the greatest possible light is twofold; doing physically active things, and also, being around other human beings.

For example, the reason why I think so many people love traveling is that typically speaking, most people when they are on holiday or traveling, do not just stay in their hotel room all day and just watch Netflix. No. They prefer to go see the sites, to take the subway, and to go on adventures! And meet cool people on the way. 

Also, humans are happiest when we are upright, not sitting in our cars. My simple suggestion is consolidate all that money from your car and put it into bitcoin, which will actually appreciate value overtime, and instead, invest your time energy and money for hiking, walking, taking the subway and going to the local museum, shooting street photography etc.

The last standing photographer

Am I the longest lasting photographer?

First, I still shoot on average 1000 photos a day. Actually the primary issue have right now is that I can’t keep up with reviewing my photos. I need to figure out a solution. But don’t worry, I’m working on it.

Second, it seems that I have been able to stay motivated, despite all of this ridiculous social media stuff. The first and only famous guitar for to have the balls and intelligence to delete his Instagram, at the peak. Now that I have deleted my Instagram, I can truly live forever. 

Third, intelligence with information; it seems that my open source approach has really really been the most smart approach. Why? I own it all, nobody owns it. Or in other words, I own the privilege and the right to keep it open and free; no annoying publisher has control over me. 

Still… Probably one of my proudest and most glorious and courageous decisions that I’ve made in my life, looking back I smile at it; is when I was approached by a publisher to publish my “learn from the Masters“ series, they told me to publish it. And I said only new ones that I wanted to PDF book to be 100% open and free, but they said that was not possible. I said no. Best decision of my life. 

I suppose where people get shortsighted is that they compromise their morals ethics and beliefs in order for some sort of grey notion of success, but in truth, the ultimate success is being ironclad in your own personal ethical beliefs. 

I’ve seen it all, even the death and demise of Google; now with ChatGPT, there is really no more reason to use Google. YouTube is the killer app for Google at the moment, but once PT makes the video production thing open, this will be the death of Google.

Short Google, long ChatGPT.


Now what?

Don’t buy a new car, buy a new license plate. Just order the black and yellow California drivers plates, they look super cool, like Batman.

Also, a simple modification you could do to your car is by some sort of satin paint, and just paint your rims all black. Rust oleum makes a great primer plus paint spray paint, it also looks great in gloss black.

Also, shave off your emblems– the best modification you could do to your car just get rid of emblems.  a funny recent thing that I just did is I put a NASA sticker where my old Toyota emblem used to be. 

Travel

Apparently right now is the best time to travel.  the currency is very weak in Japan, and also turkey Istanbul. If you are paid in US dollars, good for you. Also the Korean WON is weak — go to Korea!

Also, come travel with me to Cambodia and Angkor Wat. Lara Croft and tomb raider style. 

Photo futures?

The future of photography is not iPhone or iPhone Pro. A telling sign; all of the people that I know on the photos team either shoot with the film camera, Rico GR camera, Sony seven camera, a digital Leica, a digital medium format Hasselblad camera, even Olympus cameras! 

If the Apple photos team and engineers aren’t even using iPhones to take pictures, this is a telling sign. 

It’s kind of like the best question to ask whenever you go to any sort of car dealership, or talk to any sort of car salesman. Ask them what car they personally drive.

Same goes with business people and investors; ask them what they are currently investing in.

Same when it comes to meeting your doctor, or your pediatrician; ask them what they would do if they were in your shoes, or ask them what they did for their kids.

For example, a simple workflow for vaccinations and whatever; ask your pediatrician which vaccinations they did for their own personal blood children, and do all of them.

Or another one; ask your dentist what toothbrush, toothpaste they use; and just use that.

Never trust a salesman who sells a car which is contrary to the car they actually drive.

For example, don’t trust any Tesla employees who don’t actually drive Teslas. Also don’t trust any Toyota sales people who don’t drive Toyotas. 

Now what?

Just get your ass outside, make photos, travel, and live your best life!

ERIC