The group delusion

Political, economic or religious groups don't exist in the real world. They're a product of our minds.
Of course, even though these groups are not physically real, they are treated as such, leading people to identify as members of one or more of them. These individuals do exist—they are real—and as they declare their affiliation with a group, we also assume the reality of the group itself.
That's where the delusion starts, but it doesn't end there. We profile groups, therefore we have a pretty clear idea of a set of characteristics associated with each one of them. As a consequence, we tend to attribute that set of characteristics to all the group members, as if they were not unique human beings but just repetitions of a certain pattern. A procedure that would appear unacceptable if it were applied to us, is light-heartedly used to simplify the rest of the world.
This might be fine under certain circumstances. However, we need to keep in mind that hardly any of those group members will be correctly described by that specific set of features. In fact, the majority of them might not showcase most of those attributes at all.
This distinction is not just important; it is fundamental. The consequences of this mental trap can lead to social disaster.
Groups can be very useful as conceptual tools. Be extra careful not to take them too seriously though.

Sinister agenda - Part Six: Collective Madness

Find the other episodes of the "Sinister Drawing" saga by following this link.

However, the sinister drawing also has a side effect that, who knows, might even work against the person who causes it.
Italians, but perhaps not only them, are progressively and inexorably sliding into an abyss of collective madness. They now live in a virtual world where they believe they are involved and engaged in struggles increasingly distant from the fabric of their lives, crises of which they only know what the propaganda feeds them, regardless of the faction they follow.
Once upon a time they argued over the shared fence with the neighbor, the price of eggs, boiler maintenance. Now they gather in the public square and tell each other to fuck off in the name of distant countries, peoples, and events.
Not to mention the time and energy they spend for free, uncritically accepting partisan directives, when for more reasonable and paid requests they do not hesitate to flip the middle finger to their employer.
Truly incredible is the power of propaganda, the thoroughness of the brainwashing imparted.
Goebbels seemed like a loser who, without the rise of Nazism, would have been destined for oblivion. But it is incredible how much talent, even malicious talent, historical events can leave buried or bring to light in an absolutely arbitrary manner.
The Nazis were defeated, of course, but some of their techniques were thoroughly studied.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

The pathological disorder

I will never understand what drives those people who already have so much money and keep wanting to accumulate more.
I think it's a pathological disorder, because it makes no rational or practical sense.
For me, money brings one single, great advantage: no longer having to worry about making it. Being able to finally dedicate oneself to everything else. That is, the good part of life. 

P.S. I reserve the right to confirm all of this once I have finally crossed the threshold of poverty.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Accepting chaos

People often struggle to accept the elusiveness of an extremely complex, globalized, and interconnected reality, where a seemingly minor event taking place in some obscure corner of the globe can upend their comfortable lives thousands of miles away.
They therefore tend to favor explanations that are at once simple to understand and fascinating to follow. A bit like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster, whereas the most symbolically fitting cinematic model would actually be that of existential art-house dramas.
The most typical of these explanations involve monolithic mass-control plans operated by a small group of super-powerful individuals, all in cahoots, to screw over us billions of poor pawns.
Reality, of course, is more akin to a chaotic tangle, weaving together numerous control schemes, centers of power, mandarinates, random events, opportunism, insights, visions, mistakes, strokes of luck, and power dynamics. It is somewhat the translation onto a global level of what happens to us every day in our small, insignificant lives. We ourselves are tiny nodes of an extremely complex graph, and we experience this firsthand every single day: how can we think that the entire world can instead be simplified with a Japanese cartoon narrative?
The more you can accept, understand, and manage chaos, the more your feet remain planted on the ground and the better your chances of staying afloat. By following supreme-plot theories, on the other hand, you get lost in a parallel virtual reality that can easily turn into a genuine madhouse.
My advice: stay out of it. Better confused than crazy.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Sinister agenda - part five: the translation

Find the other episodes of the "Sinister Drawing" saga by following this link.
And yet, notice: the polarizations that work best in the context of the "matrix" are precisely the "translated" ones. The examples are the usual ones. There are two peoples fighting a real war, thousands of kilometers from here. And in parallel, two factions develop among us–"translated" factions–which simulate a conflict whose roots, motivations, and ideals belong to ecosystems totally alien to ours and therefore difficult to understand in their most minute cultural details and anthropological recesses. These are the most recondite and ancestral elements of the dispute, and precisely for this reason the most fundamental ones. This elusiveness is the reason why the whole issue is simplified in a banal, pathetic, and sadly ridiculous way.
The same happens for other issues, translated onto dimensions other than the spatial one: fascism and anti-fascism on the temporal dimension, viruses and vaccines on the scientific one, capitalism and communism on the economic one. What makes these polarizations effective is precisely the elusiveness of the themes, very far from the concrete areas of the lives of the people who fall for them, and therefore persistent as they are not directly verifiable. The motto by now is well known: "Let the chickens squabble over translated issues. It will then be easy to screw them over in their most intimate context."

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Bleak outskirts, Sunday evening

Bleak outskirts
Neon lamps
Fine rain
Freezing wind
Oily puddles
Misted-up glass
Wet cardboard
Soggy soles
Quick steps
Squelch squelch
Damp breath
Stuffy nose
Crows perching
Crushed cockroach
Faded posters
Dead traffic light
Faded crosswalks
Sparse flowerbed
Mangled umbrella
Creaking hinges
Frayed doormat
Flickering light
Muddy footprints
Concave steps
Polished handrail
Moldy smell
Rusty bolt
A yank at the door
Dim light
Dirty dishes
Shabby slippers
Torn curtain
Drops on the window
Dregs of red wine
Leftover omelet
Stale bread
Blackened moka pot
Leaking shower
Crusted toothpaste
Unmade bed
Yellowed book
Fluttering moth
Staring eyes
Lucid insomnia
Dawn breaks
It's already Monday

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Crime news

The true squalor lies on the part of the media in feeding tragedies to the public as if they were soap operas.
And on the part of the public in devouring them as if they were chunks of meat thrown into a tiger cage.
A disgusting thing. Both on the part of the jackal media and the morbid citizens.
Damn world, how disgusting.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Wake up!

It's not like writing "Wake up!" at the end of a sentence turns the bullshit you just spewed into a stroke of genius.
It remains bullshit, followed by "Wake up!"
So, doing the math, that makes two pieces of bullshit: 1) the one you wrote before "Wake up!" and 2) "Wake up!
P.S. Wake up!

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

The scam

Many people are convinced that a fresh wave of arrogant science, narrow-minded materialism, and cold atheism has been trying for a few centuries now to sweep away the noble edifice of a philosophical-religious tradition that has existed forever, one that is in a sense innate to European culture. Perhaps even to human nature. I am referring obviously to all currents of thought inspired by idealism, whether secular or religious.
Life, our nature, the one that surrounds us, the desire to fulfill ourselves in the world we discover around us: this is the true starting point, the fixed foundation on which to build any cultural structure. And the stimulus to understand all this is the type of curiosity that has guided human activity for dozens of thousands of years, long before anyone spoke of science, materialism, or atheism. This is our true tradition.
Only a little over two thousand years ago, the delusions (albeit nice and interesting ones, mind you) of the idealists and their various mystical-metaphysical spin-offs began. They explained to us that everything we see and hear is not real; indeed, it is foul material to be kept away from. The senses are fallacious, the universe must be interpreted through narrative, or even through science fiction. Higher ideas are all that matters. The idealized horse, which you will never see, is more important than the ones you happen to have observed in real life: beautiful, certainly, but insignificant. And then the body is trash, while the soul is sublime. The life we lead is despicable, and for this reason it must be lived in self-contempt, in guilt, in repentance and expiation, preferably near a cave, mocking the fools who enjoy the spectacle of shadows at the bottom, awaiting that sublime and truthful one that will come after death, which is therefore not the end but the beginning of true existence. 
Very ancient spiritual and anthropological conceptions such as animistic and Dionysian ones, but also polytheistic ones, which celebrated nature and life, and which were fully in line with what we feel and intuit, have been replaced by abstract ideas, demiurges, Manichean entities. All junk to which our mind immediately opposes its legitimate doubts. Doubts that bad teachers have never been able to dispel with honest arguments, always forced to take refuge in dishonest, absurd, and above all unfalsifiable answers, thus intellectually petty by definition: higher knowledge, sacred spirits, faith, miracles, myths, the kingdom of heaven, the last judgment.
Taking it out on science, atheism, and so on is like missing the finger pointing at the moon. The truth has always been observed with our eyes, heard with our ears, touched with our fingers, and breathed with our nose, and until Plato, or whoever else, introduced idealism as a new paradigm, it had been known to everyone. And it is a wonderful reality, not something to be distrusted.
Whoever rejects idealisms and their developments, whether religious or philosophical, is simply trying to understand this reality. Questioning idealistic systems is a completely normal consequence of this noble, ancient, human activity.
Idealism has not suffered a cowardly attack from behind. It is idealism that has attacked human nature. And finally, after dark centuries, someone has arrived to avenge it.
The deception had already been exposed by Galileo Galilei, Giordano Bruno, and other poor wretches who were marginalized, imprisoned, or even burned at the stake over the centuries. It was finally demolished by Nietzsche with the transvaluation of values and shattered by Popper with the falsification principle.
It is incredible that so many people still slip on the mush that remains of it.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

The aquarium

Although to someone who is splashing around in an aquarium
you try to explain that they are splashing around in an aquarium,
they will not understand that they are splashing around in an aquarium,
precisely because they are splashing around in an aquarium.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

The real conspiracy

I have never understood why those who cannot resist the charm of conspiracy theories, instead of dealing with unverifiable cases—the moon landing, 9/11, the Pluto-Jewish cabal, and so on—do not instead focus on conspiracies that are right before everyone's eyes, for centuries if not even millennia.
I am referring to the petty, cowardly, insidious, and criminal brainwashing inflicted upon children and youngsters for religious, patriotic, military, or political purposes.
Who the fuck would think, in adulthood, of believing in kingdoms of heaven and final judgments, in the supremacy over populations living in territories beyond arbitrarily drawn borders, in supreme reasons to get oneself killed, in fallacious systems of government, if such beliefs were not planted in individuals' heads when their minds are in their formative stage, still vulnerable and unable to assess what is best for their own well-being?
I believe it is the most squalid and heinous collective crime that has been and continues to be committed on a global scale. A piece of filth against which everyone, having suffered it, should rebel. And from which, above all, we should keep our kids safe.
Paradoxically, it is often the very same parents who offer their children as a sacrifice on the altar of social convenience. The same parents who might get indignant if their kids get a failing grade in math. The shame of a bad grade, no; fraud and mental manipulation, yes. Crazy. An outrage for which I can find few acceptable justifications, but many sordid motivations.
The time for awakening has come: conspiracy theorists of the world, unite! Leave aside your useless speculations on unverifiable topics and point the finger at this most obvious carnage. Finally fight for a better world. Save our youth from organized and legalized plagiarism, whether mystical or secular.

Future generations will thank you. If you care about being remembered for choosing the right side of history, this is your moment.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Distrust

The skeptic and the contrarian are personalities characterized by profoundly different attitudes.
The former is a virtuoso who cultivates doubt, tries to understand, and knows how to suspend judgment. He is ready to question everything, but proceeds with method, seeks evidence, and uses reasoning.
The latter is a collector of obtuse certainties, often the victim of ridiculous polarizations. He prejudicially rejects any official statement, sometimes just for the sake of doing it. Driven by the urge to appear more "clever," he ends up being a compulsive denier.
The skeptic is inspired by curiosity and a critical sense. His tools are facts, data, and logic. He pursues his goal with rigor and patience.
The contrarian is driven by phobia and vanity. Speculation and distrust are the tools in his toolbox. He has no time for analysis, he jumps to conclusions quickly.
The skeptic studies the system, identifies its constraints, and cautiously maneuvers the degrees of freedom.
The contrarian jerks around, struggles, kicks, and ends up tangled in a skein of alternative fibers.
The skeptic swims upstream, alone, toward the source. The contrarian, on the other hand, is sucked into a turbid whirlpool, at the bottom of which he will find nothing.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.