Date: July 26, 2023 | Author: Commander of the Night Watch
Preface
These hidden constraints and the thresholds used to filter people are woven together like hidden compartments beneath the water. The fish raised in the ocean believe they now possess the entire sea — but in reality, they are still inside the grid. They don’t have much room to move, even though the nets forming that grid are indeed installed within the ocean itself.
Someone who habitually invokes Metternich has claimed that Putin is cut from the same cloth as the grandiose-but-underdelivering Mussolini. Anyone who has actually organized and led a team of more than ten people in real life — and kept it running well — would never say such a thing.
Cherry-picking fragmentary historical records and using analogy to imply inevitable causal relationships is a way of showing off cleverness, not a method for analyzing problems and making decisions. Eastern modes of thinking tend to favor association and analogy over logical argumentation and rational debate, using them to suggest that two things must have some singular, necessary correlation.
Why do some people slow down in their progress once they reach middle age?
Because they can no longer tolerate people who are more capable than themselves — and they have begun to harbor arrogance and prejudice.
In truth, all living beings share one fundamental nature: an instinctive drive to defend their interests in wealth and territory. In exactly the same way, they instinctively defend their reputation in thought and belief.