On the book PsyWar with glossary of the basic terms

 “During the COVID-19 debacle, it is a proven fact that Americans were lied to by a handful of dysfunctional senior federal health bureaucrats who ignored their oaths, silenced dissent, stifled freedom of speech, and dismissed early drug treatments in favor of a mass mRNA “pseudo-vaccine” program. While this never prevented viral infection or halted pandemic progression, it did garner billions of dollars for the participating drug companies.

Marching in lockstep, every American’s right to “Freedom of Speech,” so fundamentally engrained in our constitutional Bill of Rights, was made  a mockery. For physicians, the Freedom of Speech to speak out against the dysfunctional COVID response was twisted into a recognized punishable offense in some states.

As a result, compassionate American medicine, accurate medical research, and the inviolate concept of patient informed consent was effectively destroyed in the United States. Many of our once esteemed national medical associations and colleges, have become nothing more than conduits of “misinformation” espoused by the federal health agencies who now are desperately trying to minimize the injuries and deaths caused by an ill-advised and ineffective mass mRNA vaccination campaign.

How did we arrive here and why has this gone unchallenged? The controversial new book PsyWar is a highly provocative deep dive, which takes the reader through a step-by-step account of how modern communications technology and social media has now been coupled to a biased corporate mass media monopoly. This has created a nightmare of propaganda and censorship that has suppressed the truth of the COVID-19 debacle.

The book outlines the current heroic David/Goliath fight still underway by true physicians, against a small but powerful group of unconstitutionally motivated federal bureaucrats. It is a continuing fight, largely hidden from the American public.

PsyWar is a carefully referenced book with numerous examples that support the authors’ contention that modern cognitive and psychological warfare tools have been employed by the US government as part of a mass formation psychological strategy to mold American opinion. It describes the various tactics used by global governments who now clearly define what is mis-, dis-, and mal-information in the world. It presents often shocking and still controversial histories starting with the 1964 Warren Report, to illustrate the origin of this information control and how modern social media serves as an advocacy conduit used to minimize any set of popular beliefs that the government finds inconvenient.

This book is thought-provoking reading for all Americans who believe that Freedom of Speech is vital for the continuance of our Republic.”

—Dr. Steven Hatfill, pathologist and biological weapons expert, and author of Three Seconds Until Midnight

A PsyWar Glossary

Astroturfing (ergo, fake grass roots) is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from  and is supported by grassroots participants. Astroturfing gives organizations credibility by hiding information about the source’s financial or governmental connections. An Astroturf organization is an organization that is hiding its real origins in order to deceive the public about its true intentions.

Asymmetric warfare is a type of war between opponents whose relative military power, strategy, or tactics differ significantly. It often involves insurgents or a resistance movement against a standing army or a more traditional force.

Advocacy journalism is journalism that advocates a cause or expresses a viewpoint with a specific agenda. It is often designed to increase or decrease the Overton window. It is a form of propaganda.

Bad-jacketing. Rumors and gossip meant to disenfranchise and destroy a movement or quell enthusiasm.

Black ops is an abbreviation for “black operations,” which are covert or clandestine activities that cannot be linked to the organization that undertakes them.

Black propaganda falsely claims a message, image, or video was created by the opposition in order to discredit them.

Bot is an automated account programmed to interact like a user on social media. Bots are used to push narratives, amplify misleading messaging, and distort online discourse. The name “bot” came from a shortened version of the name robot.

Botnet is a network of devices infected with malware, controlled by an attacker to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks or spread malware.

Chaos agents are a person or people that purposefully causes chaos or mischief within a group, for their own personal entertainment or as a tool to cause organizational fragmentation. It is a tool often used by intelligence agencies.

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Controlled opposition, disruptors, and chaos agents. Historically, these tactics involve a protest movement that is actually being led by government agents. Nearly all governments in history have employed this technique to trick and subdue their adversaries. However, in fifth-gen warfare, controlled opposition often may come in the form of disruptors and chaos agents. Either “real” people or bots that generate outrageous claims that delegitimize a movement (examples currently may or may not be); “snake venom in the water” or “everyone is going to die who took the vaccine within two years.” Another tactic is placing agents of chaos whose job is to basically disrupt organizations and events. This may also come in the form of “reporters” who assert fake or highly exaggerated news stories, and who most likely are funded by the opposition. “Undermine the order from the shadows” is the tactic here. 

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Cyberstalking involves the use of technology (most often, the internet!) to make someone else afraid or concerned about their safety. Generally speaking, this conduct is threatening or otherwise fear-inducing, involves an invasion of a person’s relative right to privacy, and manifests in repeated actions over time. Most of the time, those who cyberstalk use social media, internet databases, search engines, and other online resources to intimidate, follow, and cause anxiety or terror to others.

Data mining is the software-driven analysis of large batches of data in order to identify meaningful patterns.

Decentralized and highly non-attributable psychological warfare (memes, fake news).

Deepfakes are synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness or voice convincingly with that of another. Deepfake techniques include using a type of artificial intelligence called deep learning to create convincing images, audio, and video hoaxes.

Deep state is a type of governance made up of potentially secret and unauthorized networks of power operating independently of a state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals.

Denial-of-service (DoS) attack involves overwhelming a system with traffic to exhaust resources and bandwidth.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic to a web property.

DNS Tunneling is the use of a domain name system (DNS) protocol to communicate non-DNS traffic, often for malicious purposes.

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Emotional appeal is a persuasive technique that relies on descriptive language and imagery to evoke an emotional response and convince the recipient of a particular point of view. An emotional appeal manipulates the audience’s emotions, especially when there is a lack of factual evidence.

Fearporn is any type of media or narrative designed to use fear to provoke strong emotional reactions, with the purpose of nudging the audience to react to a situation based on fear. Fearporn many also be used to increase audience size or participation.

Fifth generation (fifth-gen) warfare is using non-kinetic military tactics against an opponent. This would include strategies such as manipulating social media through social engineering, misinformation, censorship cyberattacks, and artificial intelligence. It has also been described as a war of “information and perception.” Although the concept has been rejected by some scholars, it is seen as a new frontier of cyberspace and the concepts behind fifth-generation warfare are evolving, even within the field of  military theory and strategy. Fifth-gen warfare is used by non-state actors as well as state actors.

Flooding is a tactic that manipulates search engine or hashtag results by coordinating large volumes of inauthentic posts. Flooding may also be referred to as “firehosing.”

DoD Military Deception Missions are attempts to deliberately deceive by using psychological warfare to deliberately mislead enemy forces during a combat situation.

DoD Military Information Support Operations (MISO) Missions: Military Information Support Operations (MISO) missions involve sharing specific information to foreign audiences to influence the emotions, motives, reasoning, and behavior of foreign governments and citizens. This can include cyber warfare and advanced communication techniques across all forms of media. In the case of a domestic emergency, MISOs can be used on domestic populations.

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Gatekeeping is a process and propaganda technique of selecting content and blocking information to sway a specific outcome. It is often used in news production to manipulate the people by manipulating the writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, and repeating of news stories.

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Hypnosis is a procedure that guides one into a deep state of relaxation (sometimes described as a trancelike state) designed to characterized by heightened suggestibility and receptivity to direction. Hypnosis can be implemented it in digital media, movies, advertising and propaganda. Trance-like experiences aren’t all that uncommon. If you’ve ever zoned out while watching a movie or daydreaming, you’ve been in a similar trance-like state.

Hypnotic language patterns are used to influence and persuade by employing techniques such as lulling linguistic patterns, metaphor, and emotionally appealing words and phrases. Hypnotic language patterns and propaganda  are connected through the use of persuasive and manipulative techniques to influence public opinion and highlights the powerful impact of language on shaping public perception and behavior.

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Infodemic is the rapid and far-reaching spread of information, both accurate and inaccurate, about a specific issue. The word is a conjoining of “information” and “epidemic.” It is used to describe how misinformation and disinformation can spread like a virus from person to person and affect people like a disease. This use of this technique can be deliberate and intentional.

Inverted totalitarianism is a managed democracy, where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled. Regulatory control is superimposed upon the administrative state, and a nontransparent group of managers and elites run the country from within.

Limited hangout is a propaganda technique of displaying a subset of the available information. It involves deliberately revealing some information to try to confuse and/or prevent discovery of other information.

A modified limited hangout goes further by slightly changing the information disclosed. Commercially controlled media is often a form of limited hangout, although it often also modifies information and so can represent a modified limited hangout.

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Mass formation is, in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically. Mass formation within a population can happen suddenly.

Mass formation psychosis describes the individual under the spell of mass formation. Although this term is not found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), it is our opinion that it is just a matter of time before this amendment will be included.

Mass surveillance is the surveillance of a population or fraction of a population. This surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizations, but it may also be carried out by corporations. Often specific political groups are targeted for their beliefs and influence.

Modified limited hangout is a propaganda technique that displays only a subset of the available information, that has also been modified by changing some or all of the information disclosed (such as exaggeration or making things up). It is meant to confuse and/or prevent discovery of other information.

Moral outbidding (see purity spiral)

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Nudging is any attempt at influencing people’s judgment, choice or behavior in a predictable way that is motivated because of cognitive boundaries, biases, routines, and habits in individual and social decision-making posing barriers for people to perform rationally in their own self-declared interests, and which works by making use of those boundaries, biases, routines, and habits as integral parts of such attempts. In fifth-gen warfare, nudging can take the form of images, videos, or online messages.

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Operation Mockingbird was organized by Allen Dulles and Cord Meyer in 1950. The CIA spent about of one billion dollars a year in today’s dollars, hiring journalists from corporate media, including CBS, the New York Times, ABC, NBC, Newsweek, Associated Press, and others, to promote their point of view. The original operation reportedly involved some three thousand CIA operatives and hired over four hundred journalists. In 1976, the domestic operation supposedly closed, but less than half of the media operatives were let go. Furthermore, documentary evidence shows that much of Operation Mockingbird was then offshored to escape detection. It is rumored that British intelligence picked up many of the duties of Operation Mockingbird on behalf of the US intelligence community (see the Trusted News Initiative).

Othering is a phenomenon where individuals or groups are defined, labeled and targeted as not fitting in within the norms of a social group. This is a tactic used by the deep state, politicians, and the media. Chaos agents as well as propaganda are used to create a sense of divide. This influences how people perceive and treat those who are viewed as being part of the in-group versus those who are seen as being part of the out-group. This can happen on both a small and very large scale.

Outrage porn, also known as outrage journalism, is a form of media or storytelling that aims to elicit strong emotional reactions to expand audiences or boost engagement.

Phishing is the practice of sending fraudulent communications that appear to come from a reputable source, aimed at stealing sensitive data or installing malware.

Propaganda is a form of manipulation of public opinion by creating a specific narrative that aligns with a political agenda. It uses techniques like repetition, emotional appeals, selective information, and hypnotic language patterns to influence the subconscious mind, bypassing critical thinking and shaping beliefs and values. Propaganda can use a form of hypnosis, whereby putting people into a receptive state where they are more prone to accepting messages.

Psychological Bioterrorism is the use of fear about a disease to manipulate individuals or populations by governments and other organizations, such as Big Pharma. Although the fear of infectious disease is an obvious example, it is not the only way psychological bioterrorism is used. Other examples include propaganda regarding environmental toxins, unsafe drinking water, soil contamination, and climate change risks. Another name for psychological bioterrorism is information bioterrorism.

Psychological warfare involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.

PsyWar is when psyops is used by governments against a foreign population or even against the citizens of a government (domestically) in a coordinated fashion.

Publicly available raw data and surveys used to sway public opinion by use of memes, essays, and social media posts.

Purity spiral is a form of groupthink where it becomes more beneficial to hold certain views than to not hold them, and more extreme views are rewarded while expressing doubt, nuance, or moderation is punished (a process sometimes called “moral outbidding”). Moral outbidding makes it beneficial to hold specific beliefs than to not hold them. Although a purity spiral often concerns morality, it is about purity.

Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts a victim’s files and demands payment in exchange for the decryption key.

Realpolitik is political philosophy (or politics) based on practical objectives rather than on ideals. The word does not mean “real” in the English sense but rather connotes “things”—hence a politics of adaptation to things as they are. Realpolitik thus suggests a pragmatic, no-nonsense view and a disregard for ethical considerations. In diplomacy it is often associated with relentless, though realistic, pursuit of the national interest.

Repetitive messaging is a propaganda technique whereby a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously throughout media without regard for truth or consistency.

Sealioning is a trolling or harassment tactic in online discussions and blogs. It involves the attacker asking relentless and insincere questions or requests for evidence under the guise of civility and a desire for genuine debate. These requests are often tangential or previously addressed and the attacker maintains a pretense of civility and sincerity, while feigning ignorance of the subject matter. Sealioning is aimed at exhausting the patience and goodwill of the target, making them appear unreasonable.

Shadow banning (also known as stealth banning, hell-banning, ghost banning, and comment ghosting) is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user’s content from some or all areas of an online community. This is done in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user, regardless of whether the action is taken by an individual or an algorithm.

Social credit systems: China’s social credit system is a combination of government and business surveillance that gives citizens a “score” that can restrict the ability of individuals or corporations to function in the modern world by limiting purchases, acquiring property or taking loans based on past behaviors. Of course, how one uses the internet directly impacts the social credit score. This is the origin of the social credit system that appears to be evolving in the United States. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics are a kind of social credit system designed to coerce businesses—and, by extension, individuals and all of society—to transform their practices, behaviors and thinking.

Social engineering is any manipulation technique that exploits human behavior and error in order to gain access to sensitive or confidential information. Where some scammers would steal someone’s personal information, social engineers convince their victims to willingly hand over the requested information like usernames and passwords. “Nudge” technology is actually applied social engineering.

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Surveillance capitalism is a business model based on the unilateral claim of human private experiences as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. These personal data are then extracted, processed, and traded to predict and influence human behavior. Specific data concerning individuals is the commodity. In this version of capitalism, the prediction and influencing of behavior (political and economic) rather than production of goods and services is the primary product. The economic success of this business model is a major contributor to the profitability of Google, Facebook, TikTok and many other social media companies. The data and tools of surveillance capitalism has been exploited for political purposes by Cambridge Analytica. In many cases the surveillance state and globalist governmental organizations have fused with surveillance capitalism to yield a new form of fascism commonly known as techno-totalitarianism.

Switchboarding describes the federal government’s practice of referring requests for the removal of content on social media from state and local election officials to the relevant social media platforms for removal.

Synergistic use of mixed media to build excitement or to create outrage.

Synthetic media is a term used for the artificial production, manipulation, and modification of data and media, through the use of generative AI and artificial intelligence algorithms for the purpose of misleading people or changing an original meaning. Often referred to as deepfakes.

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Virtue signaling is sharing one’s point of view on a social or political issue, often on social media or through specific dress or actions, to garner praise or acknowledgment of one’s righteousness from others who share that point of view or to rebuke those who do not.

Web crawler, also known as a spiderbot, is an automated Internet program that systematically browses the World Wide Web for specific types of information.

White propaganda is a type of propaganda where the producer of the material is marked and indicated, and the purpose of the information is transparent. White propaganda is commonly used in marketing and public relations. White propaganda involves communicating a message from a known source to a recipient (typically the public or some targeted sub-audience). White propaganda is mainly based on facts, although often, the whole truth is not told.

World Economic Forum (WEF) is one of the key think tanks and meeting places for managing global capitalism and is arguably coherent enough to qualify as the leading global “deep state” organization. Under the leadership of Professor Klaus Schwab, it has played an increasingly important role in coordinating the globalized hegemony of large pools of transnational capital and associated large corporations over Western democracies during the last three decades.

Wrap-up smear is a deflection tactic in which a smear is made up and leaked to the press. The press then amplifies the smear and gives it legitimacy.  Then, an author can use the press coverage of the smear as validation to write a summary story, which is the wrap-up smear.

Yellow journalism is newspaper reporting that emphasizes sensationalism over facts. Advocacy journalists who support government narratives often use it to sway public opinion.

Zero-day exploit is a technique targeting a newly discovered vulnerability before a patch is available.

PsyWor

Enforsing The New World Order

by Robert W. Malone and Jill G. Malone

For a long time, I was more of a homeless nomad ...

 People say I am a hermit, but it isn’t really true in the strictest definition. My dictionary says a hermit is someone who lives alone (true in terms of people, untrue in terms of all the other living things I’m up here with), apart from the rest of society (mostly true, but not strictly so), and especially for religious reasons (depends on your definition of religion, I suppose, but it’s a bit of a stretch for me, I’d say).

I know what they really mean when they say I’m a hermit though, what with my scruffy “Wildman of the Woods” looks and apparent social isolation. I exist in the popular image of what you might think a hermit would look like and how a hermit would live. Probably, even how you imagine they’d talk, too.

I don’t mind being called a hermit, it makes me laugh, but am I really a hermit in the truest sense?

For a long time, I was more of a homeless nomad—“The Tramp of Treig” rather than “The Hermit of Treig.” A vagrant man who haunted the local mountain bothies and existed as legend in the visitors’ books that were kept in those isolated huts. Whisperings of this odd fellow written in pages sitting up on the shelf; the unofficial bothy history lying among the cobwebs, puddles of candle wax, empty gas cylinders, and all the other useless and unwanted crap that’s been left behind by generations of hikers.

It wasn’t till 1986, the year before my fortieth birthday, that I was finally granted permission to build this cabin in the woods. That was when I found my home, and my hermit identity evolved and grew arms and legs all on its own.

I don’t shun the outside world at all. I quite like most people and very much welcome the company of the few close friends and family who come here to stay and get away. Every few weeks I’ll hike out to the local shops for supplies, and get my post, too. I am no stranger to a pint or two at the pub either. It’s just that I prefer to meet people on my terms, or rather, I like to be in control of my own day; deferring only to what the weather wants to do or what the seasons have in store; how I feel, rather than bending to the wills and whims of other humanoids. If you can grant me that, then you can call me a hermit as much as you like and you’ll always be appreciated here, and that’s about it.

Well, it isn’t really. There are some obviously hermit-like behaviors in the way I choose to live. My log cabin in the woods has no clear pathway to its doorstep. It just emerges from the trees when you are only a few paces away from the gate. In fact, if you didn’t enter these woods already knowing I was hidden in here, you’d likely miss my place entirely; but again, none of that is because I don’t necessarily like people.

It is quite funny how incapable we are as a species of seeing anything from any other perspective than how it might directly relate to us. My decision to immerse myself in this place is not one based on pulling away from all of you, rather it is to give myself wholly to this wild space instead. To be a part of the nature here, not forever set apart from it in some sanitized domestic setting, with all its noise and problems.

I came here to find solace. A sanctuary of sorts. A deeper understanding of what this part of Scotland really is. Warts and all.

None of that means I’m necessarily armed with a higher wisdom or that I have developed some spiritual enlightenment or religious purpose—like that hermit fella from the dictionary definition. I don’t think I have a unique insight anyway, but I’ll let you decide that for yerself.

I may live alone, but I’m far from alone in the rich history of loners. The outsider, isolating themselves from the collective in some outlying place, is a consistent theme that stretches right back to the dawn of collective human civilization. For, as long as we have chosen to live together, there are always those who have chosen to live apart.

In ancient times, most populations would have had themselves a semi-professional hermit. Back then, they were celebrated as someone who sat outside of politics, corrupting influences and wider social ills. The hermit was the keeper of the stories, an important standard-bearer and comprehensive archivist of the history of a community. Most significant of all, they were taken as the ultimate barometer as to what was right and what was wrong. Their ability to live without reliance on anything, or anyone, meant they were the ultimate source of apolitical and acultural opinion. The only people truly on the moral high ground. In reality, their chosen lifestyle probably meant they struggled to give constructive advice on any social direction, anyway; as really, what’s the point of sparing any thought for all that rubbish if you’ve already seen how senseless it all is? I know that’s how I feel.

You don’t have to stick up a cabin in the woods and isolate yourself forever to feel the benefits of a little time alone. There are hundreds of thousands of religious scholars, thinkers, creatives and leaders who have headed to the wilderness part-time to form, reflect and refine their world views and ideas. In Christian belief, Jesus of Nazareth was said to have taken to the remote Jordanian desert for forty days and nights, as did Moses on Mount Sinai. Islamic tradition tells the story of the Prophet Muhammad receiving his first angelic revelation while living alone in a cave near Mecca, and Hinduism has seen millions of Sadhus, Hindu holy people, living a monastic existence, in a near-permanent state of prayer, whilst receiving trickles of well-wishers and worshippers.

Much art, science and literature has been produced by those people who chose to temporarily execute their ideas without interruption. Famous recluses, such as the scientist Charles Darwin, writer Emily Brontë, philanthropist Howard Hughes, director Stanley Kubrick, even the Beatles guitarist George Harrison, all found some form and presence through their occasional voluntary seclusion from society.

“Not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations,” American naturalist Henry Thoreau wrote back in the nineteenth century. Prophetic words, which might as well be inscribed into hermit law (if there were such a thing) because, honestly, there really is a little hermit waiting to be released out of us all (before they can promptly disappear for a while to figure it all out).

Protest at the direction of society is probably the biggest influence on the decision to go hermit full-time. A feeling that stretches from a general malaise, right through to a downright disgust, at wider mankind’s environmental destruction, our predilection for warfare, our generally regressive political directions and increasing disregard for others. All fair enough, I’d say, but in modern times I’m afraid its various manifestations have given the formerly good word of the hermit a very bad name indeed. More often than not, introversion and reclusion, the fundamental character traits of a hermit, have become closely associated with those who have a real visceral anger and forceful hostility towards humankind. I hear about them on my radio from time to time. People the news describe as “lone wolves.” These hate-filled fellas who get guns and knives and occasionally go out on these awful killing sprees.

This is absolutely not the way of the hermit, and is a dreadful smear on all those who prefer the quiet life—all introverts, as well as hermits and recluses. This violent phenomenon has taken the former idea that we are gentle, and gently enlightened people, quietly and peacefully engaged in seclusive thought, and then bastardized it as simply time for us to manifest our menace. According to that typecast, some of us are at best weirdos, and at worst potentially dangerous criminals. Today public opinion and press speculation too often paints the hermit, in all their guises, as someone who should be feared and avoided; no longer a person to venerate, and certainly not someone to emulate.

I hope this book helps undo some of the damage because, in truth, both the positions—either that we have some special mystical power or prowess, or that we pose a threat—fall well wide of the mark. It might be tempting to put us all in one convenient box, but ultimately I am afraid we are all individuals, with our own individual thoughts, feelings, and reasons for living as we do. Speaking for myself, I certainly don’t believe I’m particularly special. I’m not armed with some higher knowledge or a greater sense of purpose, nor do I possess a highly evolved set of survival skills, or harbor superhuman abilities to hang tough in terrible conditions. I am just Ken Smith, a man who prefers to do things his own way.

I hope in your reading, you might see some parts of this life that you may wish to adapt or adopt into your own. The freedom of a grand horizon, the taste of something gratefully and sensitively taken from the wild, the liberation to be had from discovering that not everything that is good has to cost you money.

I don’t want you to ever think that my way of life is unattainable and unique to me. It certainly isn’t, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with you seeking the metaphorical or physical wilderness every once in a while for yourself, too. If I can do it, you can do it. After all, as I’ve already said, people like me have existed within every culture on earth. We are just as much a part of human history as we are fundamental expressions of the human condition. We are not an oddity or curiosity that somehow sits enigmatically and inexplicably outside normal human society. We are as much a part of you, as you are of us.

Argh, maybe this beer is going to my head after all (and I can’t even sober up now that the bloody shrew has stolen my last Jaffa cake!), so let me finish on this, and then I’m letting the fire die out and climbing into my bed.

I’ve spent the majority of my life living outside the conventions of mainstream society, and I’ll tell you what I think is weird, and it ain’t the hermit. It’s how entire generations of people have been conned into believing that there is only one way to live, and that’s on-grid, in deepening debt, working on products you’ll probably never use, to line the pockets of people you’ll never meet, just so you might be able to get enough money together to buy a load of crap you don’t need, or, if you’re lucky, have a holiday that takes you to a place, like where I live, for a week of the happiness I feel every day. And then they have the bloody cheek to guilt you into somehow being grateful for it?

No. I’m pretty certain I’m not the weird one, and yet here we are, my friends. Let’s be honest, you didn’t buy this book just because you were curious about me, did you? You’re here because that small part of you, the hermit that sits within us all, wants to know if there is something more, and if it can be done.

Well, it can.

THE WAY OFvTHE HERMIT

MY INCREDIBLE 40 YEARSvLIVING IN THE WILDERNESS

KEN SMITH

Richard Proenneke, Alaskan Wilderness Hermit

Richard Proenneke, Alaskan Wilderness Hermit

Richard Proenneke (1916-2003) spent 30 years of solitude in the remote Twin Peaks region of Alaska, beginning in 1968. Proenneke was eminently qualified for his goal. Considered by observers a "mechanical genius," an amatuer naturalist and meticulous observer, he was eventually employed by the National Park Service for his knowledge and wilderness experience. Proenneke was by no means an anti-social recluse fleeing civilization. He maintained a circle of friends and associates, was "an inveterate letter writer and diarist," and extended his positive attitude toward self, nature, and other people.

Proenneke became known through books and videos. Sam Keith reconstructed Proenneke's first-year journal and published it in 1973. John Branson edited the 1974-80 cabin years, representing Proenneke's years of public recognition. Bob Swerer assembled Proenneke's vast collection of photographs and films into several popular videos. Keith's version captures the style and rhythm of the days and nights, of nature, work, and solitude. Despite editing, Branson's version at 500 pages challenges the casual reader. These years of increaased social involvement and Parks Service dealings sacrifice the pristine solitude of the early years.

Proenneke immersed himself in the details of whatever tasks presented themselves. He built his log cabin from hand tools, explored the mountains and rivers on foot and canoe, meticulously observed animal behavior and habitat, and recorded his thoughts with a sympathetic attachment to the wilderness. At the same time, he regularly corresponded with family and friends, and increased his personal contacts during visits away from the cabin. He made occasional stays in his hometown in Iowa several months between his 1968 to 1998 Alaska life, and had increasing social contact as awareness of his life and project grew. From the beginning, an old pilot-friend flew in food and supplies on a regular basis over the years, permitting Proenneke to perfect his wilderness situation and stay in his beloved cabin year-round. Eventually his stay extended to 30 years.

Keith's reconstructed journals -- which Proenneke appreciated but acknowledged to often be a paraphrase of his rough notes -- reveal parallels to wilderness philosopher Thoreau, whom Proenneke read and admired, along with Aldo Leopold. As editor Branson puts it,

The more one examines Proenneke's life at Twin Lakes, the more one sees Thoreau's philosophy put into practice. ... Proenneke was not a philosopher like Thoreau, but he was concerned about how the individual could find contentmnet and purpose and fit into society and nature.

Proeneke once wrote:

Somehow I never seem to tire of just standing and looking down the lake or up at the mountains in the evening, even if it is cold. If this is the way foldks feel inside a church, I can understand why they go.

And when he returned from the mountainside once, he felt

like a man inspired by a sermon that came to me firsthand, that came out of the sky and the many moods of the mountains. ... Everywhere I looked was fascination.

As his fame spread in the 1980's, Pronneke took on more formal tasks, volunteering for and eventually being employed by the National Park Service while living in his cabin. He is more distracted by filming and Park Service relations and well-meaning visitors, noisy hunters, editors seeking a writing deal, fan mail, and friends overwhelming him with gifts of processed foods. At one point, Proenneke hardly sleeps worrying about all the "garbage" of social intrusion he has unwittingly brought upon himself with the Keith book and film showing nationally.

My cabin and cache have been full to overflowing for quite some time and each new load makes me wonder where I will stow it all. ... I do apprecite everything but wish they would consider the poor miserable brush rat mmore fortunate tham they and spend their money to beat death and taxes.

The earlier years better reveal the remarkable degree of self-sufficiency that Proeneke attained in survival skills. His skills made his wilderness odyssey seem natural, inevitable, even easy. He was a sociable hermit who would not suffer in an emergency or despair in solitude. Despite his unassuming manner, he was a meticulous craftsman proud of his individual accomplishments but modest enough to keep a perspective, even in his private thoughts and in the heyday of fame.

Proenneke has good advice on what the modern wilderness hermit requires: an absence of needs, simplicity in food, enough physical exercise as a source of health, patience with weather and circumstances, making due with hand tools (with the bonus of the work increasing one's confidence). Just as important are the more philosophical characteristics: understanding the relativity of time, distance, and events, resigning oneself to the natural life cycles, and holding an appreciation of simplicity in what is beauty and pleasure.

In addition to his journals, Proenneke documented on film everything about his environment, from his cabin-building to the natural setting of his daily life. The early writings and images especially are an invaluable testment not only to one life but to the dreams and goals of the aspiring wilderness hermit.

Proenneke entered the wilderness at 51, and in 1998, at the age of 81, having stayed in Twin Lakes year-round for 30 years, entrusted his cabin to the National Park Service, which has maintained it ever since for visitors. He subsequently lived with his brother, and suffering ill health, at a nursing home, until his death in 2003 at age 86."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

BOOKS: One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, by Sam Keith from the journals and photographs of Richard Proenneke. Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Books, 1999, c1973; More Readings from One Man's Wilderness: the Journals of Richard L. Proeneke, 1974-1980, John Branson, editor. Lake Clark, AK: National Park Service, 2006. Also available on the web as http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/lacl/proenneke.pdf

VIDEOS: Alone in the Wilderness (2003), Alaska Silence and Solitude (2004), The Frozen North (2006). Like the book, the video Alone in the Wilderness covers the first 16 months, with narrative from Keith's version of Proenneke's journal.

Source →
https://www.hermitary.com/articles/proenneke.html

Books on hermits - reviews

 

"The Way of the Hermit: My Forty Years in the Scottish Wilderness; London: Pan Books,2023; The Way of the Hermit: My Incredible 40 Years in the Wilderness; Toronto: Hanover Square Press, 2024, by Ken Smith with Will Millard.

From the outset, Ken Smith (b. 1947) indicates that his motive for being a hermit is not religious or spiritual. Early factors include introversion, his working class origins, indifference to schooling. At 15 Smith quit school to work for the UK Forestry Commission; he enjoyed the solitary outdors in later job.

The decisive event was a harrowing incident in his late twenties living in native Derbyshire, when a gang of skinheads assaulted him to the point of near-fatal brain damage requiring four operations, two months of hospitalization and ten months without working. Recovered and re-entering society, Smith soon became disillusioned by the values and priorities of the world around him, concluding that "I knew I needed to escape that system and all its trappings, as quickly as I possibly could." He worked outdoors a while longer, scrimping and saving for his exit.

The first venue was travel to northwestern Canada and Alaska to experience wilderness living, in part inspired by reading Richard Proenneke (1916-2003), the American hermit and survivalist, author of One Man's Wilderness: An Alaska Odyssey (1973). Returning to the UK, Smith tramped about the country a while, staying in a series of bothies in northwestern Scotland, before resolving to live in a wildness cabin of his own. But Smith had no property. By chance he learned the name of the landowner of the largest estate in the Treig area, and petitioned him for some land for constructing a log cabin for himself.

Not only was Smith granted permission but he was even given employment as a ghillie, that is, a ”manservant” attending to the estate owner’s hunting and fishing expeditions and their guests —— plus oversight of all aspects of estate land maintenance. Smith readily accepted, soon constructing his log cabin by hand, and over the years perfected his survival skills: hunting, fishing, foraging, gardening, construction, wood-chopping —— and walking (the latter including walking twenty-five miles one way to a village shop for supplies).

The rest of the book describes the "way" of the hermit, or, perhaps, the way of the solitary-minded wilderness survivalist. The Way of the Hermit is chock-full of anecdotes, ruminations, insights, and practical wisdom, lived advice about wilderness, nature, winter survival, and lots of stories. Ken Smith is a modest, congenial, and reflective host to the reader, generously offering a unique and thoughtful memoir.

© 2025, Hermitary.com

Solitude: The Science and Power of Alone Time, by Netta Weinstein, Heather Hanson, and Thuy-vy T. Nguyen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2024.

As the authors note from the outset of the book, the science of solitude is new but growing quickly, as attested within these pages. Evidence collected for this book reflects thousands of interviews, surveys, conversations and psychology lab sessions, with diverse groups of people by age, gender, ethnicity, and geography. From anecdotes to testimonials, the goal of the authors is to compile a grand picture of solitude and alone time habits and practices, turning these observations into insightful conclusions and helping establish a working sense of solitude for everyday people.

The presentation is congenial, conversational, informal, entertaining, and useful. Two of the authors (Weinstein and Nguyen) are academic psychologists, and one (Hanson) is a science journalist.

Chapter One quickly summarizes the history of eremitism and historical hermits distinct from solitude to focus more broadly for the est of the book on the concept of solitude as relevant to everyone else. (A few historical names — Pascal, Emerson, Thoreau — will recur in later chapters.) The premise of the book is -- as the title of Chapter Two indicates -- that “Everyday Solitude [is] for Everyday People.” In short, solitude offers a range of applications that can function within the needs of everyone.

Solitude is simply time alone, and how one chooses to be aware of solitude in daily life, or occasionally as disruption or curiosity can differ widely per individual. Scientists still do not define solitude broadly because solitude applies individually, and even varies within one person. But enough is known by psychology today to present vectors of solitude, or, rather, forms of solitude expression, as the authors do.

These solitudes are presented as four broad types: 1) complete solitude, or Buddha-style solitude, 2) private solitude, or down-to-earth-solitude, 3) companionate solitude, or partners-in-solitude, and 4) public solitude, or Alone in a Crowd. Thousands of interviews and research studies illustrate these wide applications, and the authors set out to document representative examples.

Solitude is distinct from involuntary aloneness, and is specifically not loneliness. Solitude is a natural condition of daily life’s ebb and flow, contrasting one moment to another individually, socially, collectively, or in conscious withdrawal, however long. A highlight of a conscious solitude is the benefit of autonomy, resilience, and a flow with nature.

To illustrate the benefits of solitude, the authors use the metaphor of a compass. Here the directional points are not geological or cultural but show the relations between what solitude does. So, north represents self-refection; south: rest, relaxation, and renewal; east: enrichment and creativity; west peak experiences and the good life. Thus we start with self, yielding a comfort zone, then moving to engaging with life and peaking with an internalization of the benefits of solitude. This parsing of sequential stages is essential for the average pursuant of solitude because it provides a psychologically healthy approach that builds on experience as much as psychological observation in the first place. Nothing need be rushed, skipped, or assumed. The auhors present a path or way, reflecting both science and historical wisdom.

Two chapter titles encourage beginners as well as seasoned practitioners. Chapter 9: "Can We Get Better at Being Alone?" and the final chapter, 10: "Solitude Across a Lifetime."

All this may sound familiar to readers comfortable with the subject of hermits and eremitism. But reading the many conversational snippets and anecdotes in this book will be pleasant confirmation that many average people are already attracted to the benefits of solitude and are waiting for a practical presentation and "how to." To further motivate readers, the authors even offer a helpful concluding “solitude checklist."

Take your solitude pulse.
Start small, stay mighty.
Adopt a thoughtful approach.
Create a framework.
Be curious.
Opt for a low-sensory environment.
Be open to experimentation.
Believe in belonging.
Practice “integrated emotion regulation."
Beware “sneaky infiltrators."
Plan for and protect periods of solitude.

This book is a delightful excursion, easy to read, easy to identify with the many sources the authors include, and a refreshingly positive invitation to incorporate solitude into daily life.

© 2025, Hermitary.com

How to Cut the Gordian Knot of Feminism

Feminism, it seems, is at the nadir of its disrepute. Almost everyone, from the far right to the far left, seems to have a complaint against the feminists, most of them justified. And yet at the same time, feminism seems to be unstoppable in its influence. Few criticize it in general terms, let alone that the entire experiment was a mistake. Indeed, one place feminism seems the most solidly entrenched is among the “neoconservative” operatives of the establishment Right.

And so feminism marches on, apparently impervious and oblivious to the opprobrium in which it is held by millions.

Only a few eloquent souls, like academic Janice Fiamengo, are willing to confront feminism head-on and criticize it in depth for its “hatred of men, social dysfunction, and victimhood ideology.”

Yet when asked in a recent interview if she had a “magic wand” solution to reverse the destruction, Fiamengo seemed to share the general assumption that such a thing is not possible.

But I believe it is, and what is more it is feasible. We can continue trying to cut off the multiple hydra heads of the feminist monster or disentangling the various threads of the Gordian Knot. (Perhaps a more modern analogy is playing Whack-a-Mole.) Or we can cut it with one fell swoop.

We can break the back of feminism and bring the malcontented ladies under control once-and-for-all. I did not think this up by myself. It was first proposed by Professor Daniel Amneus, the greatest scholar ever to confront feminism and the catastrophe of fatherless children.¹ It was also suggested by the late Phyllis Schlafly, who made a career of combatting feminism (starting with her single-handed defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s) — and a name for herself as one of the most influential political figures of the 20th century — when even most men were faint of heart. She must surely be considered one of the most effective political operators of all time and one of the few who combined political skill with ethical integrity.

According to Amneus, feminism’s central impulse is the demand for unlimited sexual freedom and female-dominated reproduction, surpassing in importance all else on its agenda and to which all else is ancillary. “A woman’s right to have a baby without having the father around is what feminism is all about.”

This is what gives feminism all its leverage over men, over society, over all of us. “The linchpin in the feminist program is mother custody following divorce,” Amneus insists. “Pull that pin…and the feminist structure collapses.” More than anything, this is what undermines masculinity and patriarchy and turns the most stout-hearted men into frightened, cowering sissies – at the same time that it turns their children into aggressive nihilists, rebelling against their impotent fathers and everything else. “Until then, men must remain afraid of women, of marriage, of feminism.”

And it does not stop there. Men today increasingly fear not only “the divorce court judges”, as Amneus said, but all government officials, who learned from the matriarchy how to create and enforce the other bureaucratic tyrannies of the “Deep State” and who understand that ordinary men heading families pose the principal impediment to their power.

The feminists’ first substantive achievement, after obtaining the vote, was the welfare state, and their next major accomplishment was no-fault divorce. Both of these governmental innovations furthered their professed goal of decimating the American family by transferring sovereign authority over children from married fathers to single mothers — first in low-income communities, and then among everyone else. Beneath the political radar screen, the subtext enabling both developments was court decisions that gradually weakened married fathers and shifted power to divorcing mothers. This shift was codified in the no-fault divorce laws, which were the proud achievement of the feminist bar associations. The National Association of Women Lawyers describes no-fault divorce as “the greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken.” Within very few years, “no-fault divorce became the guiding principle for reform of divorce laws in the majority of states.”

As long as women can divorce at whim, take along the children and everything else, and consign men to state-enforced servitude, men must fear them. Nothing cows men and extracts concessions with remotely the same effectiveness. As the poet said, “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”

This is why repealing no-fault divorce and making the marriage contract legally binding — with a presumption of father custody — will break the back of not only the divorce/custody machinery but the entire feminist movement. In fact, a legally enforceable marriage contract will carry an effective presumption of father custody: Women may file 70%-80% of divorces, but mothers – who are confident of getting custody of the children – file close to 100%, almost always without any legal fault grounds.²

Other Injustices?

All the other injustices men suffer — all of which are less important anyway and leave them open to the accusation of “whining” — can be rectified more easily once this is addressed and implemented. Here is why:

Women’s two major weapons and source of leverage over men are sex and children. If they control these, they control men. Nothing does more to weaken the patriarchy, not even abortion, because if women can claim monopoly control of the children there is no extortion they cannot commit and no price they cannot demand from men – both fathers and politicians. Fear of this is what emasculates all men and makes all women despise men generally. Only women who despise men demand “equality”. Women who respect men understand – as they have understood for millennia – that male strength benefits women as well, and a woman gets the full benefit by marrying a strong man.

Further reasons why child custody exceeds all other issues and injustices in importance and urgency:

Nothing is more important to men. Most would willingly endure any injustice and the most gruesome physical abuse (and many do) rather than lose their children.

Nothing is more cruel to children than their parents’ divorce and being torn from one of their parents.

Nothing is more devastating throughout society. Fatherless children are plausibly identified (even by tradcons and some liberals) as being the most destructive social problem of our time. Single mothers and fatherless children are tearing down our entire civilization.

Nothing does more to pervert government power and corrupt governmental ethics, to erode protections for citizens’ rights and civil liberties, and rationalize tyrannical measures. This starts with the judiciary but extends to the entire state machinery.

Another Wish List?

Moreover, this is eminently achievable. It will not be accomplished by the conventional political methods of organizing pressure groups, lobbying legislatures, litigating in courts, commandeering the media, protesting in the streets. No, men have little hope of achieving any of that, and there is no point in bothering with it until men first mobilize the leverage they already possess.

What is that levarage? Simple, the Marriage Strike: Men are already refusing to marry, date, reproduce, or even associate with women. This spontaneous, de facto boycott is sad and tragic for all — unless, unless it is mobilized as leverage to force changes in the custody laws. I have described the enormous potential of the Marriage Strike elsewhere. The point here is that the conventional political methods are not working for men, but they do not need to work. Men do not need to shout in the streets (let alone tear off their clothes), which is not masculine behavior anyway. Men can act more effectively from quiet strength. They have this unique source of leverage, which is already growing in strength day-by-day. They only have to harness it for the purpose.

1 Daniel Amneus, The Case for Father Custody (1999). I discuss his solution more extensively in my most recent book, Who Lost America? Why the United States Went “Communist” — and What to Do about It” (2024).

2 See my book, Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family (2007).
***

Father Custody Will Restore America

In fact, it is the only thing that will.

The responses to my previous post (above) were so positive and thoughtful that I decided to follow it up with some specifics.

Previously, I suggested that restoring marriage as a legally binding contract, with a presumption of father custody of children in case of divorce, will do more than anything else to break the back of feminist power. But it will do much more than even that.

It will do precisely what Donald Trump promised to do: restore American health and strength and “Make America Great Again”. Trump is flailing now, because he will not confront the ever-worsening family crisis and the federal government’s role in causing it, and the rest of us are not holding his feet to the fire.

It will require that we all summon the courage to face down the feminists on this one matter above all others, curtail the most repressive and abusive government machinery ever created in the United States, and confront forces that intimidate the most stout-hearted men like Trump (Musk, RFK, Jr, et al.), because that it precisely what they are intended to do: emasculate.

By the way, father custody has nothing to do with fathers being "presumed to be the superior parent," as one reader wrote. A father can manifestly be the worse parent, and the principle still holds (and in any case, no government official has any business deciding which parent is superior). It does not presume that "single fathers make better parents than single mothers" (though evidence suggests that they do).

The point of father custody is that it will keep families together and allow children to be raised in intact homes. Mother custody means discarding fathers and raising children as single mothers. Father custody does not mean discarding mothers; it means that the mothers who wish to leave cannot take the children with them. Families will remain intact, because fathers’ authority will remain intact.

Here are some specific benefits:

Family and Marriage:

It will restore the family and the marriage contract, by making it enforceable in law. It will provide the protections that both men and women lack in cohabitation. Spouses who violate or abrogate the contract will be held liable for the consequences to the other spouse and children.

It will eliminate most divorces and broken families, especially with children. With fault grounds, and if fathers are guaranteed custody of children, women will stop initiating close to 100% of divorces involving children.

Marriage will be respected and restored, because men will understand that their parental rights (and their property rights after childbearing) will depend on being married to the mother. They will therefore insist on marriage before having children. Women who balk will stigmatize themselves as unmarriageable. Both men and women will marry and reproduce with the assurance that their children and everything else cannot be taken arbitrarily (for “no fault”).

Young men will once again be motivated to improve themselves, study, work, serve in arms, invest earnings, marry and start families, rather than living lives of idleness, knowing they can have secure families to protect and provide for.

Same-sex marriage will become irrelevant and with it the rest of the radical sexual political agenda: feminist, homosexualist, transgenderist — all of it.

Children will be raised to respect parents and (unified) parental authority, other traditional authorities, marriage, traditional moral values, legal and other obligations, and men.

Adolescent rebellion against parents and society will be diffused, thereby starving political radicalism of new recruits.

It will discourage abortion and undermine campaigns to liberalize it by discrediting the notion of sex-for-pleasure, except among a few unmarriageable women.

The war between men and women will be pacified.

Welfare and its Ills:

The bloated welfare machinery will become largely unnecessary, because little incentive or justification will exist for women to go on welfare.

The worst effects of the welfare system will be eliminated, especially the destruction of families, which will mostly remain intact.

Chronic, long-term poverty will be alleviated, because in the West it is produced almost entirely by welfare and broken homes.

Violent crime will be all-but-eliminated, especially that committed by fatherless youth. Other forms of criminality and self-destructiveness, such as substance abuse and truancy, will also be brought under control.

Government intrusion into citizens’ private lives by social workers and other functionaries will have no justification.

It will eliminate ghettos, revive inner cities as prosperous and safe neighborhoods, and restore urban life as the center of civilization.

It will elevate African-American communities, still enslaved to welfare and incarceration. Other impoverished communities and minorities, such as native American reservations, will be similarly resuscitated.

Child abuse will be all-but-eliminated, virtually 100% of which takes place in the homes of single mothers or in foster care. This will further undermine the police powers of social workers and other functionaries.

Welfare will no longer serve as the magnet for illegal immigration.

The corrupt and mischievous child-support system will be rendered superfluous.

Constitutional and Judicial Integrity:

Judicial integrity will be restored by eliminating the oxymoron of “no-fault” justice. Dispensing real justice will once again be the only legitimate business of courts.

The integrity of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights will be restored, almost every article of which is now openly violated by the family law judiciary that is supposed to be its guardian: the Contract Clause, Habeas Corpus, the Searches and Seizures Clause, Due Process Clauses, and the entire Bill of Rights will be restored to full operation.

Family and household privacy will be restored by prohibiting lawyers, judges, psychotherapists, and other forensic officials from interferng in the private lives of legally innocent citizens.

Ethically, it will separate the sheep from the goats. Legal practitioners and others who protect and defend fraudulent marriage contracts, based on “no-fault” terms, will expose themselves as unethical and unscrupulous, and they will lose business.

The integrity and effectiveness of the police and penal system will be restored by redirecting them toward real crimes rather than gender crimes such as vague forms of domestic “abuse” and other manufactured criminality: thought crimes, speech crimes, political crimes, etc.

The integrity of criminal justice will be strengthened by removing the subterfuge that courts are overwhelmed by criminals whom they must presume to be guilty and from whom they may extort pleas and confessions of guilt.

It will cut off the supply of rogue prosecutors, who learn their trade in divorce courts and child-support prosecutions.

It will relieve prison overcrowding, which is caused entirely by welfare and fatherless homes.

It will alleviate homelessness, which consists overwhelmingly of men who have been plundered, incarcerated, and rendered unemployable by family courts.

State and Economy:

The family will again become a productive economic unit, contributing to the economic prosperity of the United States and any western or other countries that follow the US, as they have already followed it into sexual chaos.

Property rights will again be secure, because they will no longer be abrogable whenever an emotionally unstable person “falls out of love,” yearns for sexual freedom, or takes children as hostages for emotional and financial blackmail.

Taxes can be reduced by eliminating most of the domestic budget devoted to welfare, law enforcement, incarceration, health, and education — ills caused by fatherless homes.

State government operations will be brought under control by ending their elicit, back-door funding using child-support money.

Educational integrity and achievement will be restored, because intact parents can better control truancy and monitor their children’s education.

Immigration law will no longer be manipulable and evadable by fraudulent “marriages” of convenience.

Military Strength:

The citizen-in-arms will again become the norm, removing military authority from desk-bound functionaries and lawyers and returning it to active male soldiers.

Military strength will be reinvigorated by dismantling the military’s welfare operations, removing single mothers from its payroll, ending its role in social engineering, eliminating sex scandals, reducing the number of clerks and lawyers, and making it again the foremost bastion of masculinity.

Europeans will be compelled to devote adequate resources to their own defenses rather than sponging off Americans in order to enjoy their own welfare states.

Sexual liberation of foreign populations will no longer serve as an acceptable excuse for foreign-policy adventurism and military interventions.

Various government matriarchies — welfare/divorce/education/military/ national security — will be put out of business and boys will be emancipated to become men, because they will be raised, instructed, and commanded by their fathers and other men.

Churches and Religious Faith:

Churches will be revived as the first-line guarantors of the marriage contract, giving them a vested interest in its integrity and enforcement and restoring them to their traditional role of supporters of the family and watchdogs of the judiciary and of all government operations.

Parishioners will expect that violations of the marriage contract by church members will be addressed in the first instance — before initiating litigation — by the church that consecrated the marriage. This will re-create the incentive for people to join churches, marry under their authority, demand support and justice from clergy, and restore their traditional role of overseeing both family and civic life.

Parishioners will expect their churches to scrutinize any state intervention in families whose marriages they have consecrated. This includes demanding that churches and clergy have standing as legitimate parties to all government proceedings that adjudicate such marriages and demanding that justice be done to wronged parties.

Churches that fail in these responsibilities will be stigmatized as false churches and abandoned. True and false churches will be readily distinguishable. True churches that accept these responsibilities will see their pews refill.

Churches could even return to their traditional role of providing poor relief, supplanting welfare dependency and making poor relief again a temporary and exceptional provision by coupling it with enforcement of sexual morality.

Churches’ finances will benefit from tax reductions permitted by the elimination of welfare and reduction of accompanying ills, such as incarceration.

It will undermine the appeal of Islamism, Hindutva, and other forms of radical religion as alternatives to the weak and effeminate post-Christian West.

Men and Masculinity:

Demanding this change will in itself provide a single concrete rallying point and focused goal that will unite men, give them purpose, and motivate them to elevate themselves and one another as active, engaged citizens.

It will provide an alternative to and discourage extreme, destructive, or unsustainable male responses such as gangs, hyper-masculinity, sexual hedonism, homosexuality, marriage strikes, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), “incels”, or media “influencers” and gurus.

Male headship of families and from there of communities will be re-established. Exceptional women can still be leaders and advisors, but the norm for citizenship will be married male heads of families, owning property and serving in arms.

More:

Nitpickers and obfuscators will be silenced, because no valid arguments can exist in favor of a fraudulent contract. Once a debate is forced into the open, the goal can be accomplished in the process of dispatching the spurious arguments that will be attempted against it.

It will help reestablish principles of free and open debate, because this was the first such government oppression that was subject to full media and academic blackout.

One adverse side-effect must be expected: an increase in trumped-up accusations of domestic violence and other gender crimes. This is easily addressed however and must be confronted and restored in any case, because allowing knowingly false criminal accusations is obviously intolerable and indefensible in any judiciary of integrity or free society.

We know that it will do all this, because it is what built the western political and economic powerhouse nations of the nineteenth century. And it will cost nothing economically, because it requires only a single change in one obviously unjust and indefensible law.

What it will demand is precisely the focused male fortitude that the feminist matriarchy wants to neuter and has already neutered throughout the conservative political class. Summoning the courage to demand this will in itself restore men to their authority and benefit us all, including women who want strong men, safe homes, economic prosperity, less state interference, and happy, thriving children.

Other measures to rectify injustices against men can also be undertaken. But this must be the central, unifying objective, around which all else must be pursued: men applying their newfound resolve to restore their authority over their own children and then over society. Nothing else is remotely as important. Without this, we are just playing Whack-A-Mole.

Other measures that purport to reform divorce/custody law— waiting periods, compulsory counselling, mediation, joint custody — these are faux remedies and excuses for inaction, and they will only perpetuate the fraudulent contract of western marriage and the fraud of “no-fault” justice.

We must also discard the illusion that inaction is a viable option. The feminists and their allies are searching relentlessly for new methods and excuses to acquire the authority and assets and earnings of men and criminalize any who resist — even men who do not marry, cohabit, date, or have any personal association with women. Eventually, if men remain passive, they will find a way.

Stephen Baskerville is Professor of Politics at the Collegium Intermarium in Warsaw. His books and recent articles are available at

www.StephenBaskerville.com.

Antonio Porchia: Man of few words

1. Burglary

One of the great burglaries in literary history occurred around 1960 in a suburb of Buenos Aires. Three men, strong-arm burglars, barged through Antonio Porchia’s front door, which was never locked. Porchia, who was about 75, greeted them as “friends.” He invited them to take what they wanted.

It was a humble house, a shed with four rooms, scrupulously neat. The burglars saw nothing of value. The men looked at the art on the walls. But the paintings were inscribed “to the poet” and “to the philosopher.”

“We cannot rob a philosopher,” one of the men said sadly.

Porchia had a little bread, cheese and salami in the house. He invited the men to sit and share it. They ate and talked with Porchia until 4 a.m., but they had to go back home while it was still dark.

2. ‘Friends’

Porchia lived in Olivos, a modest neighborhood 14 miles north of the city center. The house was painted brown, with a door dead center. It had a low-pitched tile roof.

Portia would have been wearing a pajama top and would have stumbled into his trousers. In my mind, he was wearing a yellow pajama jacket and gray slacks.

The paintings that the burglars inspected were by Quinquela Martin, Di Taranto, Lacomera and Victorica. The artists, unknown to the burglars, were among the founders of Impulso, an association that promoted arts and literature. Many members were anarchists.

Porchia never wrote this story. If he had, he would have objected that the story was not about a burglary but about friendship. We learn about ourselves through encounters with friends.

But Porchia didn’t write stories. He wrote aphorisms.

3. Discovery

Porchia showed how little a person needs to be a writer. He had little education. He had to work to support his extended family.

One of the remarkable features of his life is that almost all the details are cloudy. This much is fairly clear:

Porchia was born in 1886 in Italy. His father died, and his mother brought the family to Argentina when Antonio was about 25.

Antonio, the eldest son, had begun work as a basket weaver at 14. He assumed responsibility for supporting the family.

My father, when he went, made my childhood a gift of a half a century.

It’s an unusual way of looking at a father’s death. But Porchia never married, never started his own family. He didn’t have the chance to do those grown-up things.

Antonio and his brothers worked as laborers. He worked at the port and then got a job in a print shop. He and his brothers eventually saved enough to buy a press and set up a business.

Antonio was frugal. He saved money for a house. His diet was simple. He had little clothing and preferred pajama tops to shirts.

But he allowed himself one luxury: writing. He thought about what he saw and read, and tried to distill his reflections into aphorisms, a record of lessons learned, ideas considered.

In 1943, at age 57, he published a collection under the title Voices.

When the books came from the bindery, Porchia stored them at Impulso’s offices in La Boca, a neighborhood near the port.

The books didn’t sell. When members complained they were in the way, Porchia gave the books to libraries.

In 1947, someone sent a copy to the French critic Roger Caillois, who is known for introducing South American writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, to French readers. Caillois had fled France in 1939 and had spent much of World War II in Argentina. After the war, Caillois reviewed and commented on books by South American writers for Sur magazine. He was scanning a new stack of new books when he saw Voices, which was humbly printed. Caillois read it cover to cover. He brought out a French translation. The book was translated and became known throughout Europe.

4. An interview

Porchia was interviewed by a literary magazine. He was asked about the title: Why “Voices”?

“Everything is heard,” he replied.

People think about art in various ways. Those ways tend to run together, as streams run together to form rivers, and we have two competing schools.

The first believes that art is made. Those who advocate for this view emphasize the struggle of the artist.

The second school believes that art is found or discovered by a person while he or she is living a life. An ordinary fellow like Porchia can live his life, reflect on it and write about it. A person can do all that if he or she is simply open to whatever ideas come up. 

Man goes nowhere. Everything comes to man, like tomorrow.

Where do those voices come from? It’s hard to say, but if you simply sit quietly and reflect long enough, you will hear them.

5. Controversy

One of the remarkable features of Portia’s life is the disagreement about the most basic facts.

You can find scholars who see Voices as a work of metaphysics, politics or literature. Others view it as poetry.

Some people are sure that Porchia himself sent a copy of Voices to Caillois. Others are not.

Some see Caillois as Porchia’s champion. Others see him as a patronizing snob. 

Some people say that Porchia saved money to buy his house. Others say one of his brothers handled his finances and bought a series of ever-smaller, cheaper houses for him as his money ran out.

When Porchia worked at the port, was he a porter or a clerk? You can find testimony for both. 

English readers usually find Porchia through a selection of aphorisms chosen and translated by the American poet W.S. Merwin. Scholars have argued over the merits of the book.

Why so much controversy over work that is notable, mainly, for its brevity?

Here’s one theory: If Porchia had been better educated, wealthier or of a high social standing, the facts of his life would have been better documented. Since he was a poor, common worker, few people paid attention.

There’s also this: A writer of aphorisms leaves a lot to the imagination.

James Geary, a connoisseur of the aphorism, said the aphorist’s impulse is to read, discuss, study and reflect — and then distill the product of reflection to a few words. The writer assumes the reader will go through a reverse process, that the aphorism is the start of a period of reflection.

You don’t read aphorisms for information, meaning you don’t read them quickly. You read aphorisms because they prompt you to start their own lines of thought. 

People have read a lot of things into Porchia’s work.

6. A life of its own

Porchia said the details of his life weren’t important. The aphorisms were what mattered.

I am not amiss anywhere, because I am nowhere to be found.

The aphorisms became a kind of common property after Porchia died and his name was no longer associated with them. Argentina, which has endured periods of authoritarian rule, underwent a reign of terror in the 1970s.

When students would enter classrooms in the morning, they would sometimes see sayings — unattributed to any writer — on the blackboard. The sayings were lines from Voices.

An imprisoned political prisoner, allowed to send a Christmas card to friends, sent lines from Voices, without reference to the author.

Love that is not all pain, is not all love.

It’s as if one writer’s voice had been taken up by others.

7. Mysteries & certainties

Writers, it seems, are especially prone to telling stories about themselves that are not literally true. These stories might have a grain of truth in them but are mythic. They are an explanation of something in the broadest sense — they ask the hearer to look at the teller in a different way.

Was Porchia’s father a former priest who had renounced his vows and started a family? Did the family have to move from town to town in Italy, facing the disapproval of the devout? Was this why the family was living on the margins of society?

Did Porchia fall in love with a prostitute? Did he find, later in life, a woman whom we wanted to marry?

"But did her “owner” threaten her over the relationship? Did they stop seeing each other out of fear?

You can find people who believe these stories are literally true and people who are convinced they are not.

So many things about Porchia’s life are uncertain, it’s easy to overlook the things that we know.

• He was content. Those who knew him agree that Porchia never expressed dissatisfaction with his lot. He didn’t resent having to work to support family members. He was satisfied with his little house, his modest diet.

• He was an extraordinary listener. People talked to him because they had the sense that he was listening carefully, paying attention, not missing a detail.

• He was humble. He was interested in the people and things around him. He was not just interested in himself.

All of this was so obvious that it could almost escape attention. After Porchia died in 1968, his friends said and wrote things about him. On these points, the the testimony is unanimous.

8. What kind of writer?

Porchia is important to three reasons.

• First, he showed that anyone can be a writer. If you are looking for the minimum of what it takes to be a writer, Porchia is a good place to start. Henry David Thoreau went to Walden to confront some essential business, to show that it took little to satisfy a person’s physical needs for food and shelter and that one needed little to do the work of thinking for oneself. Porchia was more minimal than the minimalists.

His lived simply, and he wrote simply. He said that thinking and writing are natural — something people do. A person eats when hungry and sleeps when tired. Writing is just an expression of another natural drive.

When I say what I say, it is because what I say has overcome me.

• Second, Porchia showed that you can write a book of your own in your own way.

I used to think that everyone should write such a book, a book that reflects your own thoughts and opinions, your own view of the world.

Michel de Montaigne showed the way with his Essays, written almost 450 years ago. He started small, trying to record his own ideas about some of the questions that human beings keep coming back to — what it means to get an education, to love, to live honorably and to die a good death. As he thought, he wrote. The book grew, question by question, topic by topic.

Walt Whitman’s wrote the same kind of personal book in poetry. Leaves of Grass began as a collection of 12 poems. It grew as Whitman grew. Each day, Whitman went out into the world and reported on what he saw. He wrote one book, and it grew with him.

This kind of book admits many forms. Montaigne wrote essays. Whitman wrote poems. Porchia wrote aphorisms.

The “voices” Porchia heard grew from a small collection in a notebook to more than 600. He edited and refined them as he went. Early aphorisms disappeared in later editions, replaced by a similar thought expressed more clearly, more concisely.

• Third, Porchia thought and wrote about the things most human beings think about.

Perhaps the most frequent theme is suffering, including grief. But the topic that strikes me is how a person, in observing life and in thinking about it, can sometimes lose a sense of self. It’s the sense that the separate individual is merging with the whole cosmos.

You will find the distance that separates you from them — by joining them.

It’s as if the burglars and the burgled are one.

Bibliography

Antonio Porchia, Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin, Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press, 2003. For English readers, this is the place to start. The aphorisms quoted in this essay are from this edition.

James Geary, The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism, New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2006. This is a delightful quick tour. 

González Otero, A. (January - June 2014). Hermeneutics of the Void: Antonio Porchia and Expressive Brevity. The Word (24), 69 – 77."

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb - selected aphorisms

 

Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts—we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences. Further, we seem unaware of this backward fitting, much like tailors who take great pride in delivering the perfectly fitting suit—but do so by surgically altering the limbs of their customers. For instance, few realize that we are changing the brains of schoolchildren through medication in order to make them adjust to the curriculum, rather than the reverse.

Since aphorisms lose their charm whenever explained, I only hint for now at the central theme of this book—I relegate further discussions to the postface. These are stand-alone compressed thoughts revolving around my main idea of how we deal, and should deal, with what we don’t know, matters more deeply discussed in my books The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness.*

* My use of the metaphor of the Procrustes bed isn’t just about putting something in the wrong box; it’s mostly that inverse operation of changing the wrong variable, here the person rather than the bed. Note that every failure of what we call “wisdom” (coupled with technical proficiency) can be reduced to a Procrustean bed situation.

An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
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Pharmaceutical companies are better at inventing diseases that match existing drugs, rather than inventing drugs to match existing diseases.
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I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.
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Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
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An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant, the opposite.
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Those who think religion is about “belief” don’t understand religion, and don’t understand belief.
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Don’t talk about “progress” in terms of longevity, safety, or comfort before comparing zoo animals to those in the wilderness.
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Your reputation is harmed the most by what you say to defend it.
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Most of what they call humility is successfully disguised arrogance.
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Usually, what we call a “good listener” is someone with skillfully polished indifference.
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Some people are only funny when they try to be serious.
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There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.
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You cannot express the holy in terms made for the profane, but you can discuss the profane in terms made for the holy.
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Atheism (materialism) means treating the dead as if they were unborn. I won’t. By accepting the sacred, you reinvent religion.
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If you can’t spontaneously detect (without analyzing) the difference between sacred and profane, you’ll never know what religion means. You will also never figure out what we commonly call art. You will never understand anything.
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To mark a separation between holy and profane, I take a ritual bath after any contact, or correspondence (even emails), with consultants, economists, Harvard Business School professors, journalists, and those in similarly depraved pursuits; I then feel and act purified from the profane until the next episode.
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The book is the only medium left that hasn’t been corrupted by the profane: everything else on your eyelids manipulates you with an ad.*– [*A comment here. After a long diet from the media, I came to realize that there is nothing that’s not (clumsily) trying to sell you something. I only trust my library. There is nothing wrong with the ownership of the physical book as a manifestation of human weakness, desire to show off, peacock tail–style signaling of superiority, it’s the commercial agenda outside the book that corrupts.]
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Many people said to be unbribable are just too expensive.
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You don’t become completely free by just avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.*–[*Versions of this point have been repeated and rediscovered throughout history—the last convincing one by Montaigne.]
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“Wealthy” is meaningless and has no robust absolute measure; use intead the subtractive measure “unwealth,” that is, the difference, at any point in time, between what you have and what you would like to have.
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Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.
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What fools call “wasting time” is most often the best investment.
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Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.
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Someone who says “I am busy” is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
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The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
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For most, success is the harmful passage from the camp of the hating to the camp of the hated.
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Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.
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You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting.
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People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels—people you don’t want to resemble when you grow up.
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Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
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The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.
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It seems that it is the most unsuccessful people who give the most advice, particularly for writing and financial matters.
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Rumors are only valuable when they are denied.
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Over the long term, you are more likely to fool yourself than others.
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There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.
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Social media are severely antisocial, health foods are empirically unhealthy, knowledge workers are very ignorant, and social sciences aren’t scientific at all.
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For so many, instead of looking for “cause of death” when they expire, we should be looking for “cause of life” when they are still around.
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Social networks present information about what people like; more informative if, instead, they described what they don’t like.
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The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
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My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill.
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If you need to listen to music while walking, don’t walk; and please don’t listen to music.
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Men destroy each other during war; themselves during peacetime.
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Sports feminize men and masculinize women.
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With terminal disease, nature lets you die with abbreviated suffering; medicine lets you suffer with prolonged dying.
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Their idea of the sabbatical is to work six days and rest for one; my idea of the sabbatical is to work for (part of) a day and rest for six.
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For most, work and what comes with it have the eroding effect of chronic injury.
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What they call philosophy I call literature; what they call literature I call journalism; what they call journalism I call gossip; and what they call gossip I call (generously) voyeurism.
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Critics may appear to blame the author for not writing the book they wanted to read; but in truth they are blaming him for writing the book they wanted, but were unable, to write.
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No author should be considered as having failed until he starts teaching others about writing.
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A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
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Newspaper readers exposed to real prose are like deaf persons at a Puccini opera: they may like a thing or two while wondering, “what’s the point?”
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For pleasure, read one chapter by Nabokov. For punishment, two.
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Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say.
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Today, we mostly face the choice between those who write clearly about a subject they don’t understand and those who write poorly about a subject they don’t understand.
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The information-rich Dark Ages: in 2010, 600,000 books were published, just in English, with few memorable quotes. Circa AD zero, a handful of books were written. In spite of the few that survived, there are loads of quotes.
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We are better at (involuntarily) doing out of the box than (voluntarily) thinking out of the box.
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Many are so unoriginal they study history to find mistakes to repeat.
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There is nothing deemed harmful (in general) that cannot be beneficial in some particular instances, and nothing deemed beneficial that cannot harm you in some circumstances. The more complex the system, the weaker the notion of Universal.
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What made medicine fool people for so long was that its successes were prominently displayed and its mistakes (literally) buried.
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The sucker’s trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don’t know, rather than the reverse.
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The calamity of the information age is that the toxicity of data increases much faster than its benefits.
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The role of the media is best seen in the journey from Cato the Elder to a modern politician.* Do some extrapolation if you want to be scared.
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Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around..Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from people’s heads.
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The role of the media is best seen in the journey from Cato the Elder to a modern politician. Do some extrapolation if you want to be scared.
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My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal.* [*Former U.S. Treasury secretary “bankster” Robert Rubin, perhaps the biggest thief in history, broke no law. The difference between legal and ethical increases in a complex system … then blows it up.]
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You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.
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Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with polite disdain.
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The calamity of the information age is that the toxicity of data increases much faster than its benefits.
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The role of the media is best seen in the journey from Cato the Elder to a modern politician.* Do some extrapolation if you want to be scared.
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Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around.†Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from people’s heads.
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Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties.
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Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession. This has been rarer and rarer since the Middle Ages.
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Just as dyed hair makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant.
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The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist an imbecile-proof one, or, even better, a rationalist-proof one.
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For the robust, an error is information; for the fragile, an error is an error.
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They agree that chess training only improves chess skills but disagree that classroom training (almost) only improves classroom skills.
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Games were created to give nonheroes the illusion of winning. In real life, you don’t know who really won or lost (except too late), but you can tell who is heroic and who is not.
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Fragility: we have been progressively separating human courage from warfare, allowing wimps with computer skills to kill people without the slightest risk to their lives.
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Since Plato, Western thought and the theory of knowledge have focused on the notions of True-False; as commendable as it was, it is high time to shift the concern to Robust-Fragile, and social epistemology to the more serious problem of Sucker-Nonsucker.
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The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds.
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It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.
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They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).
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The ideal trivium education, and the least harmful one to society and pupils, would be mathematics, logic, and Latin; a double dose of Latin authors to compensate for the severe loss of wisdom that comes from mathematics; just enough mathematics and logic to control verbiage and rhetoric.
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A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see.
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To be a philosopher is to know through long walks, by reasoning, and reasoning only, a priori, what others can only potentially learn from their mistakes, crises, accidents, and bankruptcies—that is, a posteriori.
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For the classics, philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me, a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight.
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There are designations, like “economist,” “prostitute,” or “consultant,” for which additional characterization doesn’t add information.
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A mathematician starts with a problem and creates a solution; a consultant starts by offering a “solution” and creates a problem.
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Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending.
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You can be certain that the head of a corporation has a lot to worry about when he announces publicly that “there is nothing to worry about.”
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The stock market, in brief: participants are calmly waiting in line to be slaughtered while thinking it is for a Broadway show.
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The main difference between government bailouts and smoking is that in some rare cases the statement “this is my last cigarette” holds true.
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The difference between banks and the Mafia: banks have better legal-regulatory expertise, but the Mafia understands public opinion.
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At a panel in Moscow, I watched the economist Edmund Phelps, who got the “Nobel” for writings no one reads, theories no one uses, and lectures no one understands.
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One of the failures of “scientific approximation” in the nonlinear domain comes from the inconvenient fact that the average of expectations is different from the expectation of averages.* [*Don’t cross a river, because it is on average four feet deep. This is also known as Jensen’s inequality.]
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Mediocre men tend to be outraged by small insults but passive, subdued, and silent in front of very large ones.
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The only definition of an alpha male: if you try to be an alpha male, you will never be one.
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The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.
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In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.
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The weak cannot be good; or, perhaps, he can only be good within an exhaustive and overreaching legal system.
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The classical man’s worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man’s worst fear is just death.
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When someone says “I am not that stupid,” it often means that he is more stupid than he thinks.
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What organized dating sites fail to understand is that people are far more interesting in what they don’t say about themselves.
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For company, you often prefer those who find you interesting over those you find interesting.
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If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.
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The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms