Numa – it’s rare to see a link to EIR these days. What do you think LaRouche and his crew were really up to on the big-picture view. Thanks

When 500 richest families of Russia have stollen 95% of Russia’s wealth

And the rest of global oligarchs want to take it away, what is the only force to help?

The idiotic 150 million or so sheeple of Russia converted to nationalism under Putin

(the same sheeple that rejected patriotism and paradise they lived in in 1985 and collectively failed to recognise not until they have lost it in the 1990s)

The fundamental problem with Russia is that it has absolutely lost its DNA colours
The best of it was exterminated through 1914 WW1, 1917 Revolution, 1941 WW2
The heroes died in those wars and revolutions

And Karlin is not exactly the Hero of our Time, simply because you are still alive
If you are a Russian and alive, you cannot be a Hero, by definition

There is some of dynamics of peoples’ country of origin who have received Russian citizenship between January to September 2021. That is, for the first 9 months of this year.

It’s not the same as immigration, but it depends (except in Donbass) in most cases on the ability of people to already live in the country for the last five years.

So Uzbekistan immigrants have a very different situation from Armenia or Belarus, as Uzbekistan continues to reject joining the Eurasian Economic Union, and Uzbeks need to leave the country periodically. Whereas Armenians can receive citizenship simply by living in Russia continuously, as they do not need a residence permit.

This is why Uzbekistan is mainly rejecting the Eurasian Economic Union – they could lose all their young people to Russia. Uzbekistan also has initiated laws to try to prevent their people becoming Russian citizens (if an Uzbek becomes Russia citizen, then Uzbekistan denies them Uzbek citizenship).

Tajikistan doesn’t have the same strict anti-emigration government as Uzbekistan. (But Tajik immigrants have recently provided the members of Taliban of Ekaterinburg who were building IEDs in the centre of the city, so non-selective immigration can seem dangerous in terms of terrorism potential).

Tajikistan 69,699 (+ 57 %)
Ukraine 292, 854 (+ 0,5%)
Kazakhstan – 35,720 (+ 21%)
Armenia – 34,145 (+ 74%)
Uzbekistan – 23,094 (+ 55%)
Azerbaijan – 23,057 (+ 75%)
Belarus – 18,396 ( + 342% )
Moldova – 18,252 (+ 53%)
Kyrgyzstan – 13,308 ( + 73,5%)
Georgia – 3789 (+ 59%)
Turkmenistan – 2710 (+ 98%)
Vietnam – 1296 (+ 178%)
Turkey – 1038 (+ 85%

Whereas some of the hipster leisure class activities, can have a wide cultural influence on people lower than yourself, while still being equally exclusionary in terms of who can be owners of the cultural production.

I think this is an important point. Hipsterism could be seen as a cultural reflection of that big political movement from the 1980s and 90s, where free market economics and globalisation was paired with social liberalisation and certain culturally liberal trends. In the UK this was the era of ‘Cool Britannia’, which took some inspiration from the upper class and upper middle class counter culture movement in the 1960s. Old formality had to be replaced with more egalitarian and ‘relevant’ attitudes, this was also taking account of the social mobility that had occurred and the growth of the middle class and number of people with higher education, working in clerical jobs and so on.

In the 80s the governments had abandoned the post-war policies of heavily taxing the upper classes, since this was also combined with globalisation they started to reach higher levels of wealth again (sometimes it is said that these hereditary wealth disparities are approaching 19th century levels). Hipsters and their influence may be a measure of how successful this model has been, the upper classes reinventing themselves for a more ‘democratic’ and ‘meritocratic’ age, at the same time as regaining very significant economic power and influence.

And a similar thing can be seen in many countries, most of Europe, even Russia as you point out. I wonder if any countries are escaping it. I notice that younger highly educated Belarusians aspire to some Russian or Lithuanian/Polish equivalent (till Covid and the 2020 election this culture could clearly be seen developing in central Vilnius for example) but it is blocked by the strange economic and state system Luka has managed to maintain, and now could be interesting to the various Westerners who aspire to create some form of ‘post-hipster’ culture.

One of the differences is that 20th century leisure activity such as horse riding, had influence that can’t be easily filtered down to lower classes. Horse riding was an exclusive leisure class activity, only allowed limited cultural influence to those who don’t have enough money to pay for the horse.

Yes, I think the equestrian sports and some of these other typical upper class activities were deliberately orientated to be inaccessible to most other layers of society, you read that they guarded them and tried to keep them exclusive even against other people from lower classes who had acquired enough wealth. In some way they are probably a carry over from more overtly aristocratic ideas of society, where hierarchy and class differentiation was an ideal.

This is what can still be observed in the university city I was talking about, and some other areas of England, where even though there is some hipster feel on a surface level the gap between the wealthy group and the local population is still too large and glaring for the hipster thing to manifest. Another feature in this social landscape is the local middle class which is mostly too poor by national standards, and too few in number, stuck between the genuinely wealthy gentry types and the more numerous working class and whose outlook will be shaped by their attitude to these other two groups, especially when they are younger.

f the rugby, rowing and horse riding

One of the differences is that 20th century leisure activity such as horse riding, had influence that can’t be easily filtered down to lower classes. Horse riding was an exclusive leisure class activity, only allowed limited cultural influence to those who don’t have enough money to pay for the horse.

Whereas some of the hipster leisure class activities, can have a wide cultural influence on people lower than yourself, while still being equally exclusionary in terms of who can be owners of the cultural production.

Activities like making independent films, coffee connoisseurship, designing handmade clothing, or working with elite ideologies relating to gender and farming, and promoting electric mobility solutions – these have been as exclusive and expensive as horse riding.

But the former “hipster” activities, have been exported as fashions and consumer trends down to the middle class and lower middle class. Whereas 20th century leisure class fashions for horse riding or polo, had not been very exportable to other classes, and seemed to become more of an inbred circular activity by the late 20th century.

21st century trustfunded hipsters have been in an extremely privileged and powerful position, as they have the same elite entrance costs as the most expensive golf community or horse riding group, but these communities have had the ability to write parts of the contemporary world culture, and the future consumer trends. At least they been able write many of the next fashions of the middle class people, even in middle income countries.

working class culture, mass production energy drinks

I guess there are two different issues here.

1. Hipsters/leisure class youth, displacing local people (often displacing black and brown residents who belong to the proletariat). The first sign of this are the nighttime raids by hipsters writing stenciled graffiti and sticker art on the walls. Within a short time, streets will be overtaken by electric bicycles.

2. Hipster/leisure class values filtering through from the upper class, to the middle class and lower middle class.

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In wealthy cities in Russia, we are seeing the version of 2.

Whereas in places like Bedford Stuyvesant, or Bricklane of London (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/29/brick-lane-the-melting-pot-of-culture) – it’s more process of 1.*

Of course 2 is more significant than 1, and it is transforming world culture.

But 1 is more funny to see.

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* Analogous to what happens in New York, in East London, some of the Indian/Pakistan/Bangladesh and Carribean streets, are starting to be ethnically cleansed by hipsters, and apparently the local people protest against it.

This is a traditional Bangladesh street in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_Lane where the local people have protested against the invasion of hipsters.

But you can see in videos now that hipsters are undeterred, and evidently beginning to displace the traditional Bangladeshi proletariat. They cover the streets with hipster graffiti, even while the Bangladeshi people still live there. Streetartists are like the scouts that arrive at night, before the invasion.

At first there is only some mysterious sticker art outside your traditional Bangladeshi curry shop. In weeks, there will be youth rolling along the street on $5000 electric bicycles.

Video Link

young people in terms of making them less able to relate to each other socially

In my employer and as part of our industry, we have close relations with some elite Western European university.

I’ve written about it too many times here already. But my experience in such place, and living near, is that the young people seem extremely polite, intelligent, and also surprisingly pacified, quiet and well behaved.

Almost like some kind of behaviour managing drug has been applied to them.

I’m not sure if it is just the status of the elite and luxurious education that has filtered for such well behaving personalities, or if the next generation of youth are really becoming like this en masse.

I guess the question is whether the same personality traits are filtering to the proletariat.

real hipster

I believe the hipsters are in the beginning just upper class youths, from the millennial generation, who have access to hereditary wealth (e.g. trust funds), and can live in non-practical areas of New York or London without attaining a normal job or profession. I.e. Hipsters are the primary “leisure class” of youth among the millennials and now Generation Z in the world’s wealthiest countries.

They often have expensive consumer products, and their restaurants have crazy prices, but they try to naturalize it as an expression of their preferences – the idea is not appear to be trying to be status-signalling or materialistic.

In their shops, they serve Blue Mountain coffee, or manuka honey, because the hipsters are “passionate about food”, “passionate about coffee”, not because they have trustfunds.

So instead of buying a BMW, they can be studying for years in art school, and riding in London or Brooklyn on $10000 electric bicycle, or having elite views about gender or coffee farming that shows you might have been studying humanities courses in Dartmouth and Brown University.

As Marx writes, the middle class always imitates the upper class, and we see that the leisure class values are now filtering down to the middle class, and even to the much poorer middle class of middle income countries.

In recent years Russia among middle class youth in major cities you can the influence of the hipster aesthetics and values, without the elite socioeconomic status. There are all these craft beer shops and expresso coming up like mushrooms.

It’s kind of scary to see how automated these processes seem to be, and how easily they cross the borders.

social policing and monitoring of behaviour, it sounds like this has already died out in Russia.

In Belarus it is likely more still traditional culture on average and with relatively more social support, so perhaps they have much lower crime. Although I also doubt they produce much reliable data that could be used to compare (I mean if their police data, was anything like their coronavirus statistics).

Yes if you some kind of fan of reading the world’s most crazy and wild murders, we have more of these every week in the small articles of local newspapers in Russia, than you can find most days in front pages of national medias of Western Europe (excluding those occasional weeks when Norwegian Islamists are hunting victims with bow and arrow).

Those stories are indeed wild, I heard of some sensational cases in Belarus (chainsaw murders, a serial killer estate agent and so on), but they arose more rarely. As far as I know there are still a lot more police in Belarus compared to Russia, and more services for the mentally ill. My wife pointed out to me the way in which babushkas and public officials still engage in different kinds of social policing and monitoring of behaviour, it sounds like this has already died out in Russia.

On the subject of strange crime stories a couple of weeks ago someone pointed me towards this BBC news site:

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-58877222

This is from West Africa, and in a strange dialect of English I had never seen before (I didn’t realise pidgin variants of English had become formalised written languages in this way).

My unscientific view is that the proletariat is being pacified by technology, and that peoples’ energy is so directed to their iPhones, there is simply less time for street violence.

It is not implausible, everyone seems to have them in public places. I have heard Jonathan Haidt talking about the effect they have on young people in terms of making them less able to relate to each other socially, maybe this spills over into transferring all of the old quarrels and social hierarchy stuff into the online space.

Then, the ageing population is something I hadn’t considered before but seems like a strong explanation.

A couple more untested theories I have considered are the decline in heavy industrial labour and the masculine culture that goes with it and the receding threat of any major war breaking out which might require mass conscription or something like it. In England in the 90s these were still lingering influences from previous decades that have since gradually disappeared.

And I guess there is any economic growth in your area, there will probably be hipsterization, expresso bars and craft beer?

Half of the European culture sphere, which includes let’s say as far Vladivostok, seems to be trying to convert into a Williamsburg nowadays.

This is quite an interesting one, my town actually has a small craft brewery making one or two ales already, but the quality is not great. There are no expresso bars though, there is a tea room and a cafe (these are orientated towards an older clientele) and a part-time ice cream parlour. Emergence of real hipsters seems to be inhibited by the working class culture, mass production energy drinks, fizzy soft drinks and alcohol still seem to be dominant over coffee and craft beers.

Despite the area being mainly made up of ex-mining and industrial settlements mixed with countryside, the capital of the county is an old medieval city and has one of the UK’s top universities in it; here you can see some ‘world elite’ international students mixed with wealthy English from the Shires. So far there are still more of the rugby, rowing and horse riding types (may have failed to get into Oxford and Cambridge), who limit hipsterdom from the other end of the social scale.

The classic hipster seems to thrive in a more fully urban environment, on the other hand it is probably only a matter of time before it permeates at least the university city. There are probably more parts of Western Europe outside of urban areas that are still like this, where traditional terroir culture and old class culture distinctions are still hanging on.

been a big story in the national medi

Yes if you some kind of fan of reading the world’s most crazy and wild murders, we have more of these every week in the small articles of local newspapers in Russia, than you can find most days in front pages of national medias of Western Europe (excluding those occasional weeks when Norwegian Islamists are hunting victims with bow and arrow).

murders in the streets of provincial towns (is this organised crime related

I’m no criminologist, but it seems to me that often these kinds of massacres are related to inadequate treatment of psychiatrically ill people (e.g. for people who read Russian, random murderers of young women in the park, can seem completely motiveless https://www.e1.ru/text/criminal/2020/09/11/69464051/ ) .

Organized criminals are usually just killing each other, often without detection – so it’s effect on normal people is not so much. Often police won’t even know about those.

However, Russia has problems inadequate investment in psychiatric health, as in most all other areas of public health, and this probably results in lower prevention of such cases.

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For a “funny story” I remember reading, last year in Khabarovsk there was an 80 year old axe murdering grandmother, who has recently died from coronavirus.

​This is an 80 year old grandmother who dismembered people with an axe. Her last victim she killed with an axe when she was 80 years old (probably she could be given a medal as one of the world’s oldest female axe murderer).

Video Link

more fighting and more crime in general. People in their early 20s now seem quiet and quite gentle

Yes this seems to be an international reality to some extent. I’ve seen some people speculate that it is related lack of lead in modern petrol.

My unscientific view is that the proletariat is being pacified by technology, and that peoples’ energy is so directed to their iPhones, there is simply less time for street violence.

This is combining with the more provable fact of aging populations. Most violence crime is caused from young men, and their proportion of the population is increasingly small in all developed countries. So there is this simple demographic reason for a moderation of violence – a smaller proportion of young men.

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Although computerization of the population can add to traditional violence (between friends drinking together), strange elements. The second most recent “Uralmash massacre” (where massacres at least as an annual event), was reflecting a computerization of the population. There was a group of 30s men, meeting in an apartment for sex or drinking with 16 year old school girls they meet in the internet. One became angry and shot 6 others. For such discordant demographics I would blame the internet of the older men drinking with teenage girls. (https://www.e1.ru/text/criminal/2020/11/09/69533301)

insular and more rough feel, now it is quite mellow and you can walk around the hills and enjoy the picturesque

And I guess there is any economic growth in your area, there will probably be hipsterization, expresso bars and craft beer?

Half of the European culture sphere, which includes let’s say as far Vladivostok, seems to be trying to convert into a Williamsburg nowadays.

It’s a very different culture to British media. In Russia, if three 18 year old female medical students are cut to death with an axe, then it reaches national media, but only in small the margins of the websites. https://regnum.ru/news/accidents/3385287.html If this happens in Norway or UK, it will probably be the first story on CNN.

But this is really extreme; it would have been a big story in the national media in Britain in the 1920s, besides nowadays. Likewise with double murders in the streets of provincial towns (is this organised crime related?).

Feeling is different. I think it can relate a lot to how many noisy hooligans or youth are in your area. UK has a very aging population, so it should be becoming quieter actually. But in youthful proletarian areas will always seem less safe.

It is becoming quieter in general. I was talking about this with some friends quite recently, if you are over a certain age and can remember nightlife and the general feel of the towns and villages in the 1990s, it was more edgy, there was more fighting and more crime in general. People in their early 20s now seem quiet and quite gentle or soy, they may be looking after small pedigree dogs rather than a bull terrier and drinking lattes in pubs where 20 odd years ago people used to smash glasses over each other reasonably regularly.

The exceptions I have experienced are mostly where there are a lot of immigrant or ethnic minority populations of certain kinds, so in London and Manchester, for example, there are parts that retain an edgier feel. Places seem to be becoming less edgy as the actual proletariat (people who work in heavy industry, manual labour in factories etc.) shrinks.

Where I live at the moment the region is full of ex-mining villages and smaller towns which used to be centred around mining and heavy industry of various kinds, it used to have a insular and more rough feel, now it is quite mellow and you can walk around the hills and enjoy the picturesque scenery.

London murders that don’t get beyond the local

London only has around 150 murders per year (with a population of 9 million people).

British media is talking about murders in London every week, if not every few days. So clearly a high proportion of murders are reported in the media, as it’s how the British media attains customers – murder is their favourite clickbait.

For comparison, in Sverdlovsk there are around 280 murders per year. But only two or three per year are high profile enough to reaching national media. Most murders are not reaching even local media reports. And I follow a lot of stories like brutal double murders of people in the street, but they are only in local, and not reported in national media.

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It’s a very different culture to British media. In Russia, if three 18 year old female medical students are cut to death with an axe, then it reaches national media, but only in small the margins of the websites. https://regnum.ru/news/accidents/3385287.html If this happens in Norway or UK, it will probably be the first story on CNN.

different feel compared to the Eastern European capitals I have visited or lived in, they are still obviously connected to the nation around them whereas London has a detached feel,

Technically UK violence indicators are at such low levels, that there probably isn’t much space for them to improve. ​The room for improvement is mainly seeming to be exhausted, and we these multi-decade flat lines on the graphs are characteristic of the UK.

Feeling is different. I think it can relate a lot to how many noisy hooligans or youth are in your area. UK has a very aging population, so it should be becoming quieter actually. But in youthful proletarian areas will always seem less safe.

There is also some media influence, as murders are not something most people will see even during the murder waves. We see this psychology with the coronavirus pandemic – people are saying even during the peak “everything looks normal, coronavirus must be a hoax”. This is like how my parents talk about the 1990ies if you ask them if it was dangerous.

British media has been obsessed about the theme how there are increasing waves of murders in London. This is like the opposite of Russian media – British media uses murder as its clickbait. But the graphs show London as one of the more non-exciting and flat cities in terms of crime (and London’s population has increased by almost 2 million people since 1997, so its per capita murder rate is significantly lower now than in 1990s).

The correct one is obviously the Orthodox one. It’s up to you to choose.

It is the interpretation of the Orthodox Church.

That gets us back to my second question: which interpretation is correct, that of Roman Catholic or Orthodox Catholic church? How does one who belongs to neither choose (always assuming that one wants to)?

Well yes, I do. It is the interpretation of the Orthodox Church.

You keep contradicting yourself. If

no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation

than how come you repeatedly quote the scripture implying that you know what the quotations mean?

Also, two mutually contradictory stories are told by the parties concerned about the split between Roman Catholic and Orthodox Catholic church. Thus, at least one of them must be a lie. How does one choose which one to believe? Or even how does one decide to believe one of them, rather than dismiss both?

The part where I am lost following him, is the claim about the dangers of Western Europe, which has been a hipster paradise for some decades. For example, London is a city where murders are reported as national news (in Russia double murders of young women often do not escape only being reported in local city newspapers).

I think this thing with the reporting of murders does happen in the UK as well; my sister has been living in London for about a decade and is quite near an area with a high level of West Indian and African immigrant population, there are various stabbings and murders that don’t get beyond the local newspaper. (Likely it is always black male victims and perpetrators though). Sometimes even more extreme things don’t receive widespread coverage, in my home town a couple of years ago a local woman was raped and stamped to death by a group of asylum seekers and it received no coverage beyond the local paper, probably due to concerns about community cohesion.

London may not in factual terms be unsafe, but going by my last visit in 2018 it sometimes has that feel. Maybe it is due to the transient, hyper-diverse population and strong feeling of anonymity (or I am getting older so am noticing it more). There is a different feel compared to the Eastern European capitals I have visited or lived in, they are still obviously connected to the nation around them whereas London has a detached feel, after the 1960s it was like an imperial capital with no empire attached, it was still a bit like that in the 90s, now it is an ultra diverse world city with a medium sized country as an appendage.

It appears that the only Church you don’t know is the Orthodox Church. The ‘churches’ you are talking about are the pseudo-Christian sects founded by those who ”went out from us, but they were not of us for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of usâ€� and interpret the Holy Scriptures/Holy Writ/Svyashchennoe Pisanie (that they call the ‘Bible’) after their own fantasies.
But ”no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”. The Church has the key of interpretation because, as the Holy Apostle Peter said: ”For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount”.

sense of ‘honour’ amongst street-hooligans fight amongst themselves

“Honour code” of the criminals in Russia is traditionally the opposite of this one – it says “do not fight yourselves, only fight outsiders”. People like middle class university students could be “outsiders”, and people I knew who were beaten were middle class youth.

If they think you are a thug they shouldn’t complicate you. I’m one the most immune people walking in any dangerous late night place in Russia, because any criminals could hear I pronounce certain words and that I’m from a more criminal area than themselves.

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If Karlin’s argument is that Russia is becoming far safer since even ten years ago, and especially is very safe in the wealthy cities – of course, this is correct.

For all his Dada sense of humour, I strongly support that he wants to boast about this – he is even helping people by providing more tourism.

Russian streets are a very safe place now, at least in any area tourists will be visit. Boasting about this healthy. And for his own life, even if he lives in one of the traditionally less fashionable places of Moscow, Lyublino is guaranteed to become a gentrified hipster paradise within the next future years.

The part where I am lost following him, is the claim about the dangers of Western Europe, which has been a hipster paradise for some decades. For example, London is a city where murders are reported as national news (in Russia double murders of young women often do not escape only being reported in local city newspapers).

In London, this is the place where I always see people are sitting in the grass eating picnics, or walking around with LGBT flags, while riding on an electric skateboard.

With Russia, when you saw all the emergence of weak looking hipsters, specialist coffee bars, craft beer shops, vegan restaurants – the first thought “this is becoming like London”.

Romanian, worked in London for a couple of months and considered it the worst place he ever worked, except Brussels. I can personally vouch that Romania

I believe Romanians are stereotypically considered to have the most criminals of any nationality living in UK, Ireland, and Western Europe more generally. In the negative stereotypic can be viewed like the Western Europe variant of Italian Americans in early 20th century New York.

Here can be one of the less celebrated advantages of being a poor country in the EU open borders system – criminals are often people with the highest emigration intensity, being highly mobile, and generating greater profits in wealthy countries, and they probably send some of the money home as remittances.

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Before joining EU Romania had double Western European murder rates, and now it has converged to them.

Brussels.

I experience horror of Brussels trying to pull my luggage along a road, avoiding puddles and garbage bags in the street – it is almost like they designed to be as unpleasant for us as possible. That said, I need to revisit to actually have a just opinion of the city.

As tourist, sometimes places which seemed bad on the first day, become completely different from the initial impression. I had a bad impression of Napoli in my first day visiting. After a few days Napoli, I felt it was the coolest city in Europe.

You might be right about the authorship of ‘Credo quia absurdum’.

However, the rest of your post directly contradicts official position of all Christian churches I know. In essence, you suggest that one should believe in Christian God, while considering allegedly “sacred� Bible text BS. But your quotes are from the same Bible. So, if parts of it are BS, how do you determine which parts are and which are not? Isn’t it more consistent to consider the whole either correct of woefully wrong?

Interesting map, though I wonder by what degree it’s skewed by reportage of robberies versus actual incidence. Nice stats on Albania, I suppose Kanun law comes into play here? Steal a fidget-spinner = get shot?

Dmitri

An advantage of Russian “street education�, is that your cortisol level never raises when walking in supposedly “gangster� parts of London.

Again anecdotal, so perhaps not worth a lot, but I do feel there’s some sense of ‘honour’ amongst street-hooligans in EE (i.e. they generally fight amongst themselves, they’re capable of obeying social mores when needed) that’s absent in places where the riffraff is overwhelmingly alien, like in Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam or London, where they feel like an occupying hostile underclass.

RE: London, this is only anecdotal, but a close high-earning friend of mine, Romanian, worked in London for a couple of months and considered it the worst place he ever worked, except Brussels. I can personally vouch that Romania is an extremely safe country.

No, things are more simple. People make them complicated. Christian faith (that’s what we are talking about and you know that) is not a course in cosmology, biology or economics.
Christian Faith means trust, confidence in the words of Christ that it is ”the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise Him up at the last day” and that ”No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets: ‘And they shall be all taught of God’. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life”. And that the ones who do what Christ commanded them they will have eternal life. ”And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life”.
But the Christ knew that ”there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him”. Those ones chose not to believe: ”From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him”; ”They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us”.
BTW, an educated person should have known that the phrase ‘Credo quia absurdum’ was uttered by Tertullian about 1000 years before Thomas Aquinas and it was not a general assertion but explaining why one should believe in the Resurrection (et mortuus est dei filius: [prorsus] credibile est, quia ineptum est. et sepultus resurrexit: certum est, quia impossibile/and the Son of God died; it is [utterly] credible, because it is unfitting; and he was buried and rose again; it is certain, because it is impossible).

I assume this is quite common biologists – they find all kinds of interesting things in nature, and far more complexities, which contradict religious texts.

Meanwhile, some physicists have a temptation to mysticism, as their work and methods presents these incredible systems, without any explanation for them. Utu was recently pointed Eugene Wigner’s mystical “philosophy” (more mysticism than philosophy) of mathematics. Usually, physicists lack acquaintance with philosophy, and underestimate the alternative viewpoints which are possible.

Reading of philosophical debates should ideally make the person more skeptical, as they see the advantages and problems of many alternative views, and this likely results in more agnostic perspective.

While ideally training in computer science, many other types practical engineering, should make people more modest, as they experiences lots of little steps, and that one small mistake in one area, will ruin everything else. This is experience of daily careful practical work, should ideally be making people more modest, if also pedantic.

As for interpreting religious texts, stereotypical professions of people who will be likely to read them from the intended perspective of their authors are probably poets, musicians, artists, “holyfools” and users of psychedelic drugs (saying without dismissing those people, who had probably a more important role in creating our history and culture than most any modern professionals).

Above $300,000 salary? – dude enjoy yourself, you’re a baller from most of our perspective. You’re like in the beginning foothills of entering the executive suite.

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But Kahneman (2010) argued that salary increases your happiness/well-being until around $75,000 or $80,000 at 2008/9 currency levels. At this point it seems to flatten, and increases in income above don’t have much effect on those. https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 (Although it increases how people rate their life satisfaction).

This paper was using 2008 survey information, so adjusted for inflation, this will be around salary of $95,500 – $102,000 today.

Probably in countries (non-America) where there is a stronger welfare system, the level could be slightly lower.

So those wealthy countries like Switzerland where bus drivers have salary of $60,000 (or e.g. in Singapore around $40,000), might not be so far already to attaining for much of their population, situations where further raises in income would have diminishing returns for happiness.

–

I have a relative whose salary has climbed very fast when they were young, and above around $250,000 when were 29 years old, single, quiet nerdy person without much expenses. They consider it prestigious, but they can’t spend most of it even when it was lower, they prefer cheap than expensive restaurants, and it has just collected in the bank current account. They buy good brand of new car every year, and now plan to help invest to buy investment apartments – but otherwise sounds to me not much difference if their salary has been half.

I have little doubts that this is a long term effect of the ‘scientific atheistic’ education you’ve been submitted to (brainwashing) in the SU and upon which you stumbled again in the US.

It’s a lot more complicated than that. First, there are lots of gods and faiths, and for the life of me I cannot say that any one of them is better than the others. But we can disregard that for the sake of the argument. I assume that you primarily mean Christian faith. To be professionally competent, I have to know too much to take many of the assertions in the Bible as something other than the sign of deep ignorance. I do not even mean the place in the Old Testament where it says that you should not eat pigs and hares because they have hooves and do not chew cud. This just betrays a person who never saw a hare in his life. I am not even talking about the time line (which is taken literally in Judaism), which contradicts known laws of nature (e.g., the rate of radioactive decay).

Let’s disregard all of that and look at the creation story. How does it explain the fact that exactly the same genetic code is used by all living things, from viruses and bacteria to plants and animals? Or how can you explain from religious point of view the fact that all eukaryotes, including humans, have smaller and faster ribosomes (protein-making machines) in the mitochondria in every cell, which closely resemble ribosomes of eubacteria, but in the cytoplasm our cells use larger and slower ribosomes to make proteins, which closely resemble archaebacterial ribosomes? This can be easily explained by evolution and symbiosis of anaerobic archaebacteria with aerobic eubacteria, but how does one explain it by creation? Or how can you explain the fact that in embryonic development of all mammals (including humans) the fetus goes through the fish-like stage, with clear gill slits? There are many more facts contradicting biblical narrative that being a biologist you cannot help knowing. So, the only option that remains for an educated person is the attitude expressed by Thomas Aquinas: “Credo quia absurdum�. I do not find it satisfying.

“communism is far more compatible with christianity than capitalism…a Christian can never hate a Jew: this is one of the advantages of Christianity”. Nicolai Berdayaev

Nothing really impedes you to share the faith. It is not a matter of some people being ‘lucky’ (kinda ‘luck of the fool’, as we say in Romania) to have it. It is only your own volition not to seek it. I have little doubts that this is a long term effect of the ‘scientific atheistic’ education you’ve been submitted to (brainwashing) in the SU and upon which you stumbled again in the US.
Faith is not a matter you stumble upon. You have to seek it: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” And the door is next door to you. There are lots of Russian Churches in America.

Lol you’re more like “BallerfromTN�.

You’d be surprised how steep the curve is in the US. With annual income above $200,000 you are in the top 10%, above $300,000 – in the top 3%, above ~$500,000 – in the top 1%, etc. The people everyone considers rich (like Gates, Buffett, and their ilk) are in the top 0.001%.

If I recall correctly, 2,36 million people died in those same 12 months. Natural decline is being estimated at around 1 million (according to people who seem to be reliable).

According to the expert, excess deaths will be 800000. https://ura.news/news/1052510131

Excess deaths might even undercount the mortality from coronavirus, as the countries which controlled the pandemic have positive excess deaths (and many countries have higher official coronavirus deaths, than they have excess deaths).

But I’m no statistician or demographer, so I can’t really evaluate much more than that. Essentially I just repost things I read in the media.

closely with my own impression

This doesn’t answer why France would fall three times in one year, why Spain would have 1500% more per capita robberies than Hungary (while having 4 times lower homicide rates than Hungary). Why England would have 6 times lower deaths from assault than Spain, or 9 times lower assault deaths than Sweden.

The reason is because these are drawings by Reddit users, which use the unanalyzed eurostat figures.

There will be different reporting methods, and also legal definitions for these crimes, between these different countries.

When the reporting methods or legal definitions change, then there can be increases or decreases of many times (as we see with France) in 2019. It’s the usual issue for crime statistics of unprocessed figures, which have been amplified by the reddit users.

Surely there is something useful for the Eurostat database, but it would require people to process it and understand the different reporting methods and definitions.

Obsolete data. USA now has much higher homicide rates than Russia:

The purpose of posting the World Bank database, was to show how the homicide in Spain is 4 times lower than Hungary (while Spain supposedly has 1500% more per capita robberies than Hungary, if you use the unprocessed eurostat figure which Redditors use to make the map).

The World Bank database has a 2 year delay, and the information is being processed by the UN (hopefully in a useful way).

So next year they should update with the 2019 figures. The figures for the 2020 year will be uploaded I guess in 2023. So I will wait until they analyze it before going to the conclusion (again assuming that UN is doing a good job with this, which who knows for an amateur netizen like myself to judge whether they are making an accurate comparison).

is covid the only cause of death in russia?

Robbery rate in Europe:

Variation in this map will be
based in how police are reporting in each country, which we could guess immediately intuitively from the absurd size of the differences (for example England 400% higher than Scotland, even though Scotland has higher homicide rates than England).

For 2016-2017, France was more reporting than 3 times higher data than in the 2017-2019. It’s a change in the administrative procedures in how France records the data not robberies. France doesn’t change by 3 times between two adjoining reporting periods, but they have changed something in their reporting definitions.

similar to Baltics Switzerland

You have to compare equal reported data, using the same definitions and methodology. This is why it is work for professional data analysts, not copy/pasting first pictures on Google. Even Google picture methodology finds for Eurostat receiving opposite figures in different years.

When you see these unrealistic varieties like Spain having 1500% higher robberies than Hungary, then you know immediately that it is a variation of the recording definitions between the countries.

Eurostat is just posting the numbers it receives on its website. I don’t believe Eurostat is expecting that this information should be used for comparisons without analysis.

UK is a barbaric dump.

Your map says that Scotland has 4 times lower robbery rate than England, yet the homicide rate in Scotland is higher than England. It’s likely just difference in the way the police report or record these across the borders.

for a grand total of less than 6 months and had my phone stolen

I’m living in Western Europe for all these years, and haven’t seen any crimes so far. But there is the limit of the anecdote.

such attitudes are just asking to get “mugged by reality.�

If you are talking about Colombia or St Louis. For somewhere as safe like London it’s one of more unlikely places.

Nike shoes wearing,

Lol I have experienced following me for money because of this – in Russia. In London, local criminals would have probably better shoes than me.

the cold, hard statistics that I cited above.

Where France increased by 3 times in 2 years?

The output obviously based in the administrative procedures in the police data in the different countries, so United Kingdom can have 6 times less “deaths due to assault” than Spain.
Even though Spain has half homicide levels than United Kingdom. Spain records 0,6 homicides per 100000 people. Meanwhile for the unprocessed Eurostat data, Spain has 1500% higher robbery rates than Hungary.

top 3% income-

Lol you’re more like “BallerfromTN”.

society with beggars and homeless in the streets

This is does not seem very new for America, rather more it’s defaults. Even the phrase “private opulence and public squalor” is most of a century old.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00004698

urrent mad policies continue, this is going to happen within 1-3 years. You have to move to currencies that depend on the USD

Buy nice things with your baller salary. A few guns to protect nice things, and a scary dog. Security bars on your windows. Maybe good sound insulation to protect you from neighbours’ wheatgrass music?

met a Russian national hockey team member or a KHL champion

Lol sadly no these are all people in Western Europe. (I have no experience with any paid corporation job at all in Russia).

But I’ve superficially met executive people who have been apparently somekind of champions in their sports in their countries in Europe.

One person who is a manager, who was saying he sometimes has to flie on the plane to his country to help to advise in national events related to his former sport.

This dude looks like a visual stereotype of a healthy, successful athlete, somehow perfectly retaining this persona from his youth. But his job for the last decades has been management in a corporation.

From my limited sample, all these “sports champion” managers, presented very relaxed and “chill” personality. Who knows what it’s like to work actually with them though, that’s just my impression from superficial meeting.

younger professionals now require more flexibility, work-life balance, so employers have to cater to

I think it’s important that everyone conforms in early years.

But after you can be sure they know their job, everyone should be managing their own schedule, however eccentric their timing might be. I guess it depends a lot by industry though.

“Don’t outshine your boss�, etc.

And the main one is behaving obsequious to immediate superior. And when people who are doing this, it looks really bad and embarrassing, but at the same time you can see they will be successfully. These obsequious people are really climbing people.

don’t really think he’s a “servant leader� but it’s his PR. You can see it in those Q&A sessions

Yes that is one of aspects of his political persona.

His real personality though is of course not quite the same, and he is a kind of personality which would also climb effectively in most corporate environments I’m sure.

London is of course great plus there are many great places in the UK, Ireland, etc. However, it looks like recently the cost of living has gone up so high that it doesn’t make sense for many immigrants to stay there. Some Poles and Lithuanians have returned or left for other places. Not just because of the Brexit, but because it got too expensive plus the living standards back home have already improved.

watch you bag in shitty Third World

In Spain and Italy much more famously you will lose your bag, than in London.

At the same time, according to the statistics, Spain and Italy seem to be some of the world’s the safest countries in terms of violence, so the things are not always connected.

If you know any Spanish person, they are always terrified about the location of their bag in any public spaces, and concerned about everyone else’s bags. But it’s not exactly the worst effect for quality of life.

Russia

Never anything bad happened to me, but I’ve known people whose bags have been stolen, people who were beaten and their phone stolen as students. So I’m not sure there is much comparison for Russia from the anecdotal side. An advantage of Russian “street education”, is that your cortisol level never raises when walking in supposedly “gangster” parts of London.

90%+ white areas of Europe

I guess the statements depends if Spain and Italy are categorized white or brown. But those are definitely the places usually believed as the countries where you have to watch bags most carefully in Europe.

China. Warsaw. Japan. 90%+ white areas of Europe or White/Latino areas of the US.

According? I doubt you can not watch your bag in Warsaw, but I’ll ask Poles’ their impression if I remember. But all Poles I know are kind of people who watch their bags, streetsmart mentality people.

It’s an interesting topic about “watching your bag” ratings between countries, but I don’t think individual impressions will be helpful.

For example, I have multiple years of experiences of Western Europe, and I still have not seen any crimes. I was arguing with AP and said this to him more than 2 years ago. It’s now 2 years later, and I still didn’t see any crime.

But that doesn’t obliterate your experience with a phone in three weeks in London (and I believe you lived in London many years before?).

I heard from people who have phones stolen from in Western Europe. A woman who they stole a phone from and then the criminals throw the phone at her head. So she didn’t lose a phone, but just hit her head instead. Many people in Western Europe, who had things like bicycles stolen, etc.

this is relevant for your particular quality of life.

Doubt because I don’t do zapois and try not interact with riffraff in general.

It’s only important what happens in your life, saying this without irony. It’s a sign of healthy mentality when enjoy Lyublino gentrification, without worrying about politics in Somalia.

But normal people have been killed, by even educated people. Of a classmate I had known many years ago who has been killed by fighting (not murder but somekind of head injury), the incident has involved all students from what I read. Students outside of a street of bars.

assault is concerned. Whilst this might not be quite sufficient to define a civilized society, it comes extremely close. It is certainly necessary to any such definition. The contrary case is barbarism.

I agree that the safety from violence is the main thing. That’s why I only think about murder rates. If you have to watch your bag more carefully in Madrid, it’s not much of deterrent. If you have to watch yourself for e.g. kidnapping in Colombia, then I’m a bit more deterred.

But those sport dudes’ personality has always seemed very “relaxed� and “chill�.

My point was, yes, they are chill in their off-time, but they’re not all that chill or relaxed when they’re winning those competitions.

it’s a self-interested EQ

Yes, it’s all geared towards efficiency. Both personal career wise and to retain employees. I don’t know how this relates to the KPIs, whether the high EQ/Servant leadership style is more efficient or a more traditional, hierarchical style.

It seems that especially younger professionals now require more flexibility, work-life balance, so employers have to cater to that.

Self-interested EQ and entitlement sense is one of the areas where there can be probably overlap to psychopathic personalities. If they know which people to use charm against, how to create the correct impression for every situation, and focusing on the superiors.

Well, that’s just a little bit of cunning. It reminds me of Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power. A pseudo-psychology book that teaches one to navigate life using psychological manipulation. This book is apparently highly requested in the US prison libraries. One of my nationalist friends was a huge fan of it and he became successful. It teaches things like “Create an air of mystery”, “Always say less than necessary”, “Don’t trust your friends too much”, “Don’t outshine your boss”, etc. “Avoid the unhappy and unlucky”. LOL

Any trait like humility is easier to be fake, in people who don’t actually have it.

Yes, I’ve seen people deliberately fake it, it’s especially amusing to watch successful, confident dudes try to act humble, some can be very good at it. They only have to do it part of the day.

This is funny.

It is. 🙂 I don’t really think he’s a “servant leader” but it’s his PR. You can see it in those Q&A sessions where he has to answer the most mundane questions sometimes. Like a caring father, he’s supposed to solve everybody’s little problems. As if it can’t be taken offline. 🙂

Again just one person’s experience.

Actually, I’ve seen a trend of this. Some of these jobs you can’t do if you don’t take good care of yourself.

hockey champion

You met a Russian national hockey team member or a KHL champion? That’s pretty awesome. Yes, the hockey dudes are very chill, they are simple people (in a good sense).

That’s admirable and must be really fascinating, it means you understand Nature.
But it’s sad in a way because Russia (or Ukraine) educated you and Russia lost you.

Research is fun. An important thing is, you never get bored: we know so little that nature keeps surprising us. Another good thing is, when you run your own lab, you have no bosses, at least as long as you are funded (when you lose funding, you discover that you have many bosses). In my book, the best thing about research is that when in your short lifetime you figure out something nature spent millions of years perfecting, you feel very smart.

I went to school in Lugansk, which is no longer Ukraine and never will be. As the saying puts it, the army shoots its own people only once, after that it shoots foreign people. I went to Moscow State and grad school in Russia. Seeing current level of biomedical science in Russia, I don’t think it lost me: it simply does not need my skills.

As I mentioned, if one is within the upper 20-30 percentile, one can have a great life.

Well, according to American stats (which I am no longer sure I can believe) I am in the top 3% income-wise. Still, I don’t want to live in a society with beggars and homeless in the streets. I do not want to live in a society where convicted felon who died of fentanyl overdose is made an official hero. Or where MSM call widespread looting, arson, mayhem, and murder “largely peaceful protests�, but a non-violent demo against massive election fraud, where the only victim was an unarmed woman murdered by government-employed thug, “violent resurrection�. I also do not want to live in a society where I have to get fraudulent “vaccine� because some senile half-corpse and his puppet masters say so. In my system of priorities wealth does not compensate for the loss of freedom and ability to believe what the media tell you.

You could take your 401Ks and go back to Ukraine or Russia, and live very nicely, but you’d have to leave your child behind (unless she agreed to move, too).

As to 401(k) and 403(b), they won’t amount to much unless you move them out of USD-denominated assets before the USD loses 80-90% of its value. If current mad policies continue, this is going to happen within 1-3 years. You have to move to currencies that depend on the USD as little as possible: every currency will suffer at first, but they will recover with the speed inversely proportional to their dependence on the USD. Buying real estate in Russia is also a way to preserve value.

I certainly won’t go to Ukraine before every Nazi there hangs on a lamppost.

EQ is becoming more

Yes the people climbing through management – it’s a self-interested EQ that has likely main reason that they climb beyond their competition, combined with a sense of entitlement.

Self-interested EQ and entitlement sense is one of the areas where there can be probably overlap to psychopathic personalities. If they know which people to use charm against, how to create the correct impression for every situation, and focusing on the superiors.

It’s a ladder and your ability to climb in the ladder depends on the people above you. There is often determined by the people’s own sense of entitlement (where most people are happy to climb only to a lower level)

Humility in leaders is also named as a desirable trait in some companies.

Any trait like humility is easier to be fake, in people who don’t actually have it.

Workers actually humble, are probably less likely to be noticed for it, than workers with just a strong EQ.

And being humble is the opposite of what causes people to try to climb all the time.

Putin’s image is a little bit of a “servant leader�,

This is funny.

CEO or any kind of executive must be a strong individual, both mentally and physically

Again just one person’s experience.

But I’ve met some of upper management people who are things like rowing champion or hockey champion. But those sport dudes’ personality has always seemed very “relaxed” and “chill”.

On the other hand, CEOs I’ve met have been very socially responsive – ask a lot of questions about you, seeming to be interested in you, acting very “involved”.

London is “dangerous

Yes you wrote in the thread to me about that London is dangerous, which was strange to read – since I’ve been in London. It’s a safe place not just from my subjective experience of walking everywhere there, but also in the objective indicators.

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/number-of-russians-preparing-to-emigrate-reaches-record-low/#comment-3589295

police displaying no interest in investigating

Of course police wouldn’t be interested anywhere about your phone. One hour of police investigation time would probably cost more than several iPhones, certainly with the London salaries. And of course you need to watch your bag anywhere in the industrialized world, far more even in the world’s safest places like Spain or Italy.

London plummeting

According to? Personal, emotional impressions? And compared to what scale?

Emotional comments can be useful for describing impressions, but it also ends at that point – i.e. it’s useful for finding out about your opinions (“I like pistachio icecream”), but to bind other people we need some objective information.

impacts my quality of life… typical murder in Russia

Sure this is relevant for your particular quality of life.

But the question is about objective situation, not one person’s view.

As for my subjective experience, one of my classmates has been killed that I know (2 of my classmates have already died – one killed, one in an accident). Although I’m sure the event is not classified as murder but simply fighting. So there is some tangential impacts of the objectively counted differences in the violence levels, even if not direct ones.

There is a cold war going on right now, with lots of proxy wars. Most (not all) parasites are gone, sucking the lifeblood from other hosts (or withering, like Ukraine). Yet Russia is fairly secure.

This is kindergarten compared to the real Cold War. Don’t you remember the size of the troops? Every man did 2 years of military service. The rockets are much better now, so they no longer need that.
Yes, with missiles in both Crimea and Kaliningrad Russia is very secure.

Yes, some redistribution is necessary to maintain social cohesion and make a country livable, but more productive people should always get greater rewards than less productive ones.

That’s what I meant by saying that the strong should rule — I mean not only in the political sense, but they should be in the decision making positions where it often correlates with higher comp, obviously.
But you and Dima are also correct that many talented and ambitious people will not submit to any kind of “redistribution program”. The Ukrainian talk show host Gordon just had an interesting interview with the one Sergei Pugachev, who used to be in Putin’s inner circle but then fell out with Putin and his wealth was expropriated. Apparently at one point, Putin had approached him with a request to draft up some ideas on how to repatriate the capital earned in Russia back to Russia. And Pugachev reacted with complete dismay, as in, “Are you crazy, how dare you try to have control over our money and dictate to us where to put it!”. And he’s kind of right (aside from the question as to whose money it is). The only way this ideal of the strong supporting the weak can be achieved is through a sense of kinship. When you literally view your compatriots as your relatives, things look different.

However, about 5-10-fold differential would reflect the difference in individuals’ contribution to the society. The differential should not be less than that.

In the US corporate world it’s much, much higher than that.

When I was sent to a research institute after graduate school as a junior scientist, there was a lazy moron who did nothing for about 20 years in that institute.

This is actually a classical problem. Younger professionals are sometimes put off by subordination. I had a friend who was trained as an officer in the military and he left the military partly because of some rigid older dudes who he didn’t want to be in charge of him. Income considerations were also part of it, but sadly a potentially good young officer was lost. He went on to work in the banking sector. So you may have been in a similar position and sadly that also coincided with the collapse of the USSR. Some people must have bailed exactly for those reasons.

I was and still am interested how living things work

That’s admirable and must be really fascinating, it means you understand Nature.
But it’s sad in a way because Russia (or Ukraine) educated you and Russia lost you.

That perverse redistribution was a serious flaw from the very beginning. However, not that flaw, but boundless greed of the elites brought the USSR to ruin.

I don’t really have experience of this, things seemed very homogeneous from what I remember of the 1980s. I have to study the 80s to know for sure how things were (dissidents, relationships, economy, etc). Of course, there were those who worked at warehouses and had better clothes and there were special party stores. Greed was part of it, but probably also a sense of freedom, creativity. The meme of “jeans and zhvachka” represents not only the material goods, but also the ability to do what you want without restraints, to be how you want to be.

I think the EE elites still have this yearning to be on the same level as Western elites, to be considered of equal standing, to be part of the group.

Now the decay is accelerating, the country is rapidly becoming barely tolerable.

As I mentioned, if one is within the upper 20-30 percentile, one can have a great life. However, one will not be connected with the broader society and will have an isolated existence which I don’t think is mentally healthy. Unless you can create some kind of a community for yourself. But it is true that certain things are definitely easier in Europe, especially EE, than in the US.

There is also polarization, and Americans themselves are aware of it and that this can be a problem for the future. This polarization is sweeping across the whole Western world and is becoming a problem in the Baltic States, too. It is a new problem, that appeared shortly before Covid.

I saw one Empire dying, and I hate to see the same signs all over again.

It is uncanny (and worrisome). As I told my Western friend when Covid started: “Just because something hasn’t yet happened, doesn’t mean it won’t happen”, and I was thinking back to the unexpected things that happened in the USSR in the 1990s. There were a lot of firsts in 2020 for Americans, but I must say they took it with a considerable level of stoicism (if you discount the madness of the spring-summer of 2020).

being too old to start afresh once more.

You could take your 401Ks and go back to Ukraine or Russia, and live very nicely, but you’d have to leave your child behind (unless she agreed to move, too).

According to journalists, among CEOs of large companies, there are something like between 400% to 1200% higher rates of psychopathy, than among the general population. ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-psychopathic-ceo )

In the social process to rise to becomes rulers, there is a likely a strong selection process for psychopathic traits, among which includes low empathy.

I’m not sure about psychopatic traits, but, of course, a CEO or any kind of executive must be a strong individual, both mentally and physically — for instance, high level executives often have robust physical training routines, some do “crazy” sports like alpinism, etc. Obviously they are more ambitious which may correlate with less concern for others.

However, this is an old fashioned view. In certain industries, EQ is becoming more and more important. Humility in leaders is also named as a desirable trait in some companies. In particular, in early stage companies this can make or break a company. Some kind of a combination of drive and humility is probably the best.

Recently, the concept of servant leadership has become a thing. The focus is on serving the organization and its employees, facilitating their growth. Interestingly, in a way it is more like the military or diplomatic corps, because that’s considered “service”. Not sure how it translates into the company financial success, though. This could be a great approach for EE/Russian politicians to adopt. 🙂 I think at least Putin’s image is a little bit of a “servant leader”, especially when he does those long press conferences, where they expect him to take care of every little public concern.

In history of advanced countries, there seems to be incremental process that can at least attenuate the situation – to develop strong bargaining position of non-elite people, institutionalized checks and balances, humanistic and fair legal framework.

In the Nordic countries it’s visualized as a triangle – government in one corner, business in another, trade union / individual worker in the third and they are all supposed to be in balance in terms of power.

strong should rule but they should be gracious

And “wolf will live with lambs, and leopards lie with goats”, but only in the end of history after judgement day – even utopian dreamers in the bible are not too confident about this possibility in our pre-judgement day time.

According to journalists, among CEOs of large companies, there are something like between 400% to 1200% higher rates of psychopathy, than among the general population. ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-psychopathic-ceo )

In the social process to rise to becomes rulers, there is a likely a strong selection process for psychopathic traits, among which includes low empathy.

This is not helped that the mass of people seem to be incredibly passive and patient, and people on top can seem surprised how they can take a lot more of what they want from them than anyone will intuitively imagine.

In history of advanced countries, there seems to be incremental process that can at least attenuate the situation – to develop strong bargaining position of non-elite people, institutionalized checks and balances, humanistic and fair legal framework. Pessimistically, this can require centuries of historical development to emerge (for example, in North-Western Europe).

Where I would agree with you, is that AP seems to have received a bit of “Fox News interpretation” of Paris and AK “Solovyov interpretation” of London.

AK argues that London was dangerous, and yet I believe in the same thread that he lived in San Francisco (a city where homicide rates around 4 times higher than London), and the superficial atmosphere for tourists in San Francisco is a bit of an opposite from the ultra safe feeling for tourists that I’ve seen walking in all supposedly dangerous parts of London.

AP seems to imply dangerous (presumably on non-terrorist apocalypse years i.e. 2015 – when it is a bit dangerous), where homicide rates are close to half of Moscow, close to 10 times lower than Ekaterinburg, 10 times lower than Des Moines Iowa, 12 times lower than Chicago, 48 times lower than St. Louis Missouri.

The main part of this anti-record of the last 12 months is by coronavirus. Around 800000 Russian citizens have already been killed by coronavirus. Just more than a year ago, it became evident that authorities are prioritizing business interests over public health in relation to the pandemic (no lockdowns), as well as lack of determination to impose anti-pandemic measures, and now life expectancy will be a lot lower during the time period of the pandemic.

As to the “parasitic� satellites, as you call them, during the height of the Cold War, during the era of conventional wars, the satellites were not a luxury but a necessity security-wise.

Can’t agree. There is a cold war going on right now, with lots of proxy wars. Most (not all) parasites are gone, sucking the lifeblood from other hosts (or withering, like Ukraine). Yet Russia is fairly secure.

I agree on principle (with the caveat that the strong must support the weak – strength should be cultivated and the strong should rule but they should be gracious and generous and this should be within one homogenous nation).

That warm and fuzzy feeling is OK as a feeling, but it should be placed in strict bounds when it’s supposed to serve as one of the foundations of social order. Yes, some redistribution is necessary to maintain social cohesion and make a country livable, but more productive people should always get greater rewards than less productive ones. Of course, more than a hundred-fold differential typical for capitalist societies does not reflect anything except thievery (which could be perfectly legal; e.g., lobbying is legal in the US, whereas in other countries the same actions are crimes of corruption). However, about 5-10-fold differential would reflect the difference in individuals’ contribution to the society. The differential should not be less than that.

In the USSR the differential often was reverse. I am not even talking about those who used the Party to boost their career. When I was sent to a research institute after graduate school as a junior scientist, there was a lazy moron who did nothing for about 20 years in that institute. He was not a Party member, but he was paid more than me because he spent 20 years there (it did not matter that he spent those years as useless ballast). I worked a lot because I like what I do and I was and still am interested how living things work. I produced enough data to publish several papers in English from the USSR. I guess that’s why I found a job in the US in 1991 so easily: I wrote to ten labs and got four job offers. But that useless piece of crap was paid more than me until I moved out.

That perverse redistribution was a serious flaw from the very beginning. However, not that flaw, but boundless greed of the elites brought the USSR to ruin.

The US was a good country when I came here in 1991, then it slowly deteriorated before my eyes. In 2000 it still was an OK country, got worse by 2010. Now the decay is accelerating, the country is rapidly becoming barely tolerable. I saw one Empire dying, and I hate to see the same signs all over again, being too old to start afresh once more.

Thanks! I wish I could share your faith. Could be great comfort and consolation. As the things develop, we need both.

And you can’t be poor in the US, in Europe you can get away with it and still have a somewhat ok life, but in the US you have to avoid poverty at all costs (as there are other things, related to health, safety, etc., that come along with it). Ideally, one should be among the top 20%-30% income wise. Plus, you make very conscientious decisions about your spouse, where you work, who you hang out with, etc. Europe is more relaxed that way.

Agree. Being ‘poor’ in the USA can be deadly to your family, health, safety, etc. due to the abysmal lack of social capital in ‘low-income’ communities in the USA.

In the US, medical insurance is essentially an insurance against bankruptcy. And it hits the working class the most or those in the lower middle, because the poor get the very generous Medicaid. So you want to strive to be above a certain level, otherwise you lose a lot in terms of quality of life.

The medical insurance, pharmaceutical and private healthcare industries in the USA are a Capitalist scam. ALL classes of Americans get hit really hard as they get older and need hospitalization. While the poor gets Medicaid and the old gets Medicare, both are funded by the US government which would need to borrow trillions of dollars just to keep those two State-funded public healthcare programs afloat in the years to come. Working-age Americans get their private medical insurance from their corporate or government employers but that’s not true for small businesses who have to purchase their own private medical insurance for both their owners or employees.

This healthcare timebomb is going to explode as tens of millions of baby boomers retire en masse in the coming years. The US government is already close to US$30T in debt which would increase dramatically as it would need to borrow trillions more to cover welfare spending for and pay retirement benefits to aging boomers. Working-age Americans will see their taxes go up as the US government resorts to regressive taxation to fund these ‘unfunded liabilities’ which would require tens of trillions of dollars in the decades to come.

The demographic cliff is here. This is it, we’re now f**d for like a decade.

Thus, you create a loser-oriented society that discourages the very people that should be encouraged.

I agree on principle (with the caveat that the strong must support the weak – strength should be cultivated and the strong should rule but they should be gracious and generous and this should be within one homogenous nation). I wouldn’t say people weren’t working in the USSR, but, frankly, there were issues with productivity. As to the “parasitic” satellites, as you call them, during the height of the Cold War, during the era of conventional wars, the satellites were not a luxury but a necessity security-wise. So it’s understandable that they tried to maintain that. The US took a lot of the German scientists. And without private enterprise, the USSR could not compete, and that went against the ideological core.

Re: America. Freedom is deteriorating not just in America, but sadly in other places as well. And you can’t be poor in the US, in Europe you can get away with it and still have a somewhat ok life, but in the US you have to avoid poverty at all costs (as there are other things, related to health, safety, etc., that come along with it). Ideally, one should be among the top 20%-30% income wise. Plus, you make very conscientious decisions about your spouse, where you work, who you hang out with, etc. Europe is more relaxed that way.

Yes, medical is crazy and hard to understand why, maybe there are two many nurses, every doctor has like 2 of them. In Latvia, doctors take their own notes, for instance, and they check your vitals, etc. In the US, medical insurance is essentially an insurance against bankruptcy. And it hits the working class the most or those in the lower middle, because the poor get the very generous Medicaid. So you want to strive to be above a certain level, otherwise you lose a lot in terms of quality of life.

Natural population decline in January-August 2021 has been around 593500, across 8 months.

But URA.RU is writing, October 2020-beginning October 2021 (12 months) has been a natural population of decline 1 million, which is an anti-record of peacetime modern Russian history. URA.RU is posting from a professional demographer, ex-employee of Rosstat.

Death numbers can fluctuate

Much of the natural population decline of these 12 months (October 2020-beginning October 2021) is directly caused by coronavirus pandemic.

humanism cannot .. acts as if ends justify the means

Yes this Kant’s view, which should be one of the 10 commandants of political morality.

Hegel

Yes this is very famous Hegel’s theory of “List der Vernunft” when rejects almost directly Kant. Marx used a lot of Hegel’s codebase apparently almost with reflection, and so his resulting system is including such parts of Hegel codebase (among others) as unchallenged assumptions.

Its total idiocy (and disrespectful) for prebaltika to disassociate themselves from it

But they don’t. The involvement of Baltic citizens in the local CheKa has been openly discussed for a long time, they opened the so called “CheKa bag” (archives of agents). It’s commong knowledge that some Latvians oppressed other Latvians. And a lot of information has been trickling out over the recent years. What do you expect when everything was penetrated? I’m not justifying. Just saying there is a spectrum of involvement from very minor to serious. People were coerced, too. Similar to how secret services recruit now as well using kompromat, etc. You couldn’t do any international academic research without being scrutinized, or go to a sports camp in Sweden without being asked to report on your friends. People as young as 18 were approached by CheKa and asked to rat on their fellow students. What does it say when even athletes are approached?

The reason of course for this is because huge sections of the so-called “nationalist – elite� Latvian politicians, businessmen, academics and officials in the national institutions are former KGB, or from families with strong connections to KGB.

It’s a mixture of former Communists and many politicians / businessmen that were never in the party or KGB. But it is true that dissidents (including real nationalists) were pushed away from politics pretty early on.

that plenty of Latvian kids and men eagerly wanted, even dreamed of joining

That’s a big overexaggeration. Some men, maybe. But it wasn’t really a part of the broader culture.
Btw, my mom was approached several times and encouraged to join the Communist party in the 1980s, she was diligent and has a Slavic patronym (from the Polish era way back), but she never joined even the party, much less the KGB.

Latvian nationalism was NEVER a big thing in Latvian SSR, or some huge undercurrent in Latvian national consciousness.

Well, it was supressed during the SSR, but there’s always been a strong nationalist core (since the late 19th century) that’s been constantly nurtured.

Romantisation of interwar period only done by diaspora

Not true at all. The first republic is romanticized by large swaths of society but also criticized and the benign authoritarian system of that time, very light by EE standards, is looked down upon by local liberals. The second generation diaspora is already nauseatingly liberal (not in the good, classical liberal way but the current “pink”, anti-majority, anti-nationalist way).

Well, Tatarstan has never been independent from Russia, right? It’s more integral to Russia, come on, it’s a big piece of land right in the middle. Again, diaspora plays a certain role (both positive and negative), but you’re totally blowing it out of the proportion. The locals have agency. The old diaspora was good, they were strong, nationalist and wholesome, they are a piece of our flesh and soul, but, as I said, the second gen (their kids, grandkids) is already too Westernized. The problem is also that many of the ones who returned came from places such as Berkeley where I imagine they were heavily brainwashed into liberal and globalist ideology.

If the Russian diaspora were bigger and more active, let’s say, if the Whites had prevailed or some sort of a civic republic had been formed but then destroyed, and there was a big Russian diaspora in the West, it might follow a similar pattern, with the older generation being closer to the core nation and its values, but their children already dissolute. Or even neoliberal.

Btw, Michael Ignatieff, the rector of the Central European University in Hungary, came from a Russian diplomat family and important statesmen of the Russian Empire. You can see a little bit of that pattern there.

Would the independent state have formed without them(russians/slavs) ? No.

The independent state was formed in 1918 when the Slavic population was not large. If you mean if independence could be re-instated without them in 1991? It’s an interesting question. Maybe yes, maybe no. They have contributed and continue to contribute.

Would there have been a civil war, ethnic violence between Latvian seperatists and ethnic Russians if they had rejected separation? LMAO – NO.

There were a few small skirmishes (some involving the National guard and the Soviet troops when they were still there, as far as I know, but they were miniscule). The street brawls ended in the late 1990s somewhere (and they were not always ethnic/political). These populations don’t have the temperament for it, but anything is possible. If there had been a physical confrontation, the Slavic population would’ve suffered, too. As we see in Ukraine, the potential for violence is closer than we imagine, but it’s quite unthinkable. Nothing of the sort that happened in Ukraine should be allowed to happen.

I believe that no more than 10% of Latvians in 1991 desired the nation-state and ideology that exists now.

Dream on. They still desired that nationstate, maybe more like a Nordic democracy (which are super protectionist, btw), although there are plenty of libertarians and pro-capital oriented people. For instance, it was very difficult to introduce the progressive taxation as there was a lot of pushback, it took over 20 years (!!).

I don’t know much about Abkhazia, it seems they have baggage left over from the Russian and Ottoman Empires, as well as religious issues.

Basic competence from the bandits who took over there would have resulted in Chechen state existing in some form today.

Dudayev was killed already in 1996. And Mashadov had to flee. Russia wasn’t going to allow them to have a state.

If “lucky� can mean blessed, Amen. Always enjoy your comments, which are balanced and insightful.

Population loss is about 700000.
Ukraine (with fake statistics, so nowhere near the truth) is about 350000.

Birth rate is not that low………. its just that from collapse in the 90s there is not enough woman of the general child – giving age around. Death numbers can fluctuate – but the facts are that the years of highest birth-rates after the war, directly align with the life expectancy ages for Russia now.
For the same reasons, there should be sizeable population loss in west Europe countries in the mid 2030s.

In Marx’s theory, there are already some anti-humanist assumptions , which could have been basis for future politically anti-human disasters.

As you may remember, Karl Popper (someone you might like) includes Marx in the same tradition as Plato and Hegel as the “enemy of the open society” (and, of course, George Soros is also a great fan of Popper).

Marx was influenced by Hegel and his philosophy can be considered “anti-humanist” in the sense that it has a strong totalitarian (or “absolutist”) vibe. Hegel is, of course, much more complex than Marx (I doubt even most academics understand Hegel completely).

It looks like it was a serious dilemma for some Russians and for those who may have wanted to preserve the SU but didn’t want to keep the system that had stalled

The system had serious flaws from the get-go. To guarantee something to everyone you must take that something from productive people and give it to incompetent and/or lazy trash. Thus, you create a loser-oriented society that discourages the very people that should be encouraged.

However, the USSR was not destroyed by its faults. It was deliberately destroyed by the elites who wanted to steal a lot more than the system allowed. They sure succeeded: many of the mega-thieves are former functionaries of the Party or Young Communist League (i.e., the worst scum of the society). That’s why I strongly believe that nothing short of extermination of these vermin would have preserved what was good about the system. Many stupid Soviet policies that were not needed for its survival alienated the most active and capable people. Thus, when the scum was ruining the USSR, there was almost nobody to defend it.

But that’s in the past, which we cannot change. At least for now Russia is avoiding the trap the West caught itself in. I know the US best. Today America is getting the worst of both worlds: rampant political oppression papered over and supported by “unanimous� MSM sleaze-balls combined with charging you for everything. Healthcare is a typical example: in the US your health is the least of its concerns. When you come to the ER, the first question is what is your insurance, the second question is how you are going to pay for things your insurance does not cover, and only the third question is what is actually your medical problem. So, mandated vaccination is hardly surprising: the US freedom is increasingly becoming concentration-camp style. Compared to that, modern Russia is remarkably free. However many issues I have with its political system, it beats the American one hands down on every score.

Cheka never sleeps and nothing could be done without them,especially in the early 80s…..(bla bla)…. when it comes to true political freedoms

FFS can we stop these paranoid, moronic prebaltika lies about Soviet Union and our security apparatus? Its total idiocy (and disrespectful) for prebaltika to disassociate themselves from it :

1. Grybauskaite? This Lithuanian bitch is perhaps the most connected to the KGB of any politician throughout the post-Soviet space. What does it say about the embarrassing conditions of the baltic ethnostates, that if they don’t have ex KGB in power then nearly all the time as PM or President they have some American/Canadian dropped into power there?

2. Let me remind you that revealing all who served in the KGB in Latvia is still a state secret…… even though the Latvian gutter parliament has passed laws wanting all ex KGB to be named. As you will know, the Constitution of Latvia bans ex KGB from voting. You have to ask yourself sarcastically “why” there would be a deadlock of the supremacy of the laws of the Constitution being subverted by the ( US puppet, and sometimes even north American diaspora nazi tramp) Latvian President refusing to allow for the information to be released ? Don’t insult everyone’s intelligence by calling it a “reconciliation” move by this Fascist state.

The reason of course for this is because huge sections of the so-called “nationalist – elite” Latvian politicians, businessmen, academics and officials in the national institutions are former KGB, or from families with strong connections to KGB.

Why? Because KGB was a very normal, highly respected (not feared) organisation that plenty of Latvian kids and men eagerly wanted, even dreamed of joining……. and contrary to BS myth, Latvian nationalism was NEVER a big thing in Latvian SSR, or some huge undercurrent in Latvian national consciousness. It was that weak. Romanticisation of interwar period only done by diaspora, slippery American scum (and Khrushchev destalinisation orders that released thousands of Latvian nazi scum imprisoned, and removed any job restrictions – willfully encourage many of them to work deeply into Soviet state apparatus)

I remember what it was for us in Tatarstan in early 1990s – there was alot of confusion , but nothing to be melodramatic about because Tatar nationalist/separatist ideology was highly cosmetic in nature. The link with Latvia is that I don’t think it was much different in Latvia. History only making seperatism in Latvia slightly more of an issue…… the real reason for difference in outcomes is that in Tatarstan we did not have all the evil Nazi 1940s diaspora/Soros scum making us equate pro-westernism and American wealth/big houses with separatism…. and forming some bizarre hypnosis synergising Communist state with Russian nation state and Russian imperial state.

The most clear proof of this is the ethnic Russian/slavic people in Latvian SSR who were absolutely critical ( together with psychologically flawed CP local leaders) in separate state of Latvia being formed. A strange Riga cosmopolitan, reactionary nonsense that was corruptly exploited by US-backed pseudo-civil society nationalists.

Would the independent state have formed without them(russians/slavs) ? No.

Would there have been a civil war, ethnic violence between Latvian seperatists and ethnic Russians if they had rejected separation? LMAO – NO.

The new state was entirely different in conception to the modern-day filth Latvian state that exists now. I believe that no more than 10% of Latvians in 1991 desired the nation-state and ideology that exists now. Criminal exploitation.

I would emphasise that Abkhazian independence was far more a genuine civil society product,. The only thing worse or more fake than Latvian independence (after ukrop) was Chechen independence – which was less about creating a Chechen state, but more about dissolving any Chechen state structure. Basic competence from the bandits who took over there would have resulted in Chechen state existing in some form today.

So it seems to me the only certain hope is God.

If you can believe that, consider yourself lucky.

humanism cannot .. acts as if ends justify the means

Yes this Kant’s view, which should be one of the 10 commandants of political morality.

In Marx’s theory, there are already some anti-humanist assumptions , which could have been basis for future politically anti-human disasters.

Although of course Marx’s theory had been almost completely violated, idiotized and re-written by Lenin et al, who had converted it for their own purpose as justification of political violence (before power) and authoritarianism (after power). I.e. “ordinary dictators” exploiting the intellectual prestige of some “Marxist style” sounding vocabulary.

Natural population decline (that is population decline, without including the population boost from immigration) of the last year (October 2020- October 2021) has been the largest in peacetime history of Russia – the natural population loss in Russia has been around 1 million people since this time one year earlier. https://ura.news/news/1052510131

Of course, the cause of this anti-record decline in natural population, has been to significant extent a result of the mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic in Russia by the authorities.

Life expectancy had climbed above Bangladesh in recent years, but likely this year life expectancy in Russia will be falling below Bangladesh again. (Note – Bangladesh is a third world country, with GDP per capita many times lower than in Russia).

However, on the positive side, this life expectancy fall caused by the coronavirus pandemic will be temporary, and the multiple year trend has been steadily improving life expectancy in Russia. Nonetheless despite improvements in recent years, demographics in Russia can be characterized still by this problem of having life expectancy of a developing country, with the fertility rate of a developed country.

–

Probably mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic by the government should have been expected from the beginning (the same authorities which have mismanaged the HIV pandemic for many years).

Still, there was no unexpected anti-epidemic success here that some people might have imagined, considering the increasing state capacity in Russia.

Taking children away from parents and raising them “socially� is a good way to produce monsters (like those dogs Napoleon raised in “Animal farm�), but no way to produce decent humans.

I read in a history of the Gulag that it was attempted in some camps with the babies of inmates, the babies were supposed to be looked after communally by nurses while their mothers worked. It was discontinued because many babies became ill and died.

Unusual and powerful ideas about human biology and sexuality seem to have mushroomed within Western Marxism after they attempted to synthesize Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis. I recently mentioned this in another thread. It is still influential in the West c.f. Judith Butler’s idea that the claim that there are two human sexes is the face of Fascism in today’s world. I don’t think she intended it as hyperbole.

There is a related problem with the apparent moral claims and exhortations made by Marx in his various works; because these moral statements are supposed to be the expression in the superstructure of evolving economic relations in the base, they can’t have any normative value and must be purely descriptive. This is quite strange.

However, history has no subjunctive mood: what is done is done and cannot be undone.

Good turn of phrase. Perhaps one could say history, by and large, is written in the optative mood, full of broken hopes and dashed dreams. So it seems to me the only certain hope is God.

Is everything happening in this Reality according to the will of God ?

That question is answered here:

https://www.manglacharan.com/post/guru-panth-and-guru-granth-sri-sarbloh-guru-granth-sahib

https://mobile.twitter.com/Kharagket/status/1105167528882589698

ਵਾਹਿਗ�ਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗ�ਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

I freely admit that my generation (that’s the one among which Strugatskys were popular) was wrong wrecking the USSR instead of fixing it. Problem is, the latter could have been achieved only by hanging all commie elites (who actually betrayed and looted the USSR)

It looks like it was a serious dilemma for some Russians and for those who may have wanted to preserve the SU but didn’t want to keep the system that had stalled (possibly already in the 1970s – already then one had to get off of the “oil curse”).

I hope you understand that we are not trashing your generation. For me, my whole life, saying anything disrespectful towards the parent generation was a big taboo, a big “no no”, it wouldn’t even occur in my mind. And this is the first time in my life I realize they may not have done everything right. I’m not saying they should’ve preserved the SU, but they should’ve sequenced the economic transition and made it gradual. It’s probably easier said than done, and, yes, many were very naive back then and didn’t have the knowledge about finances, many were tired of the system and wanted the release from it asap, etc., it’s all understandable, but they should’ve found a way to take care of the population.

Omg, she wrote a letter to Macron to release this long time Venezuelan ter*orist from the Red Brigades. Hahahahha! Omg, they’re having her blog on Echo Moskvi.