Fear

I spent the evening talking to a Russian psychologist last night. I met him through the same people who study Systema. He had nothing but disdain for modern man. And modern women. He said that all our decisions were fear based. I had hoped that he would meet me half way but he wouldn’t budge. All of our decisions are he said, if you really look at them. He blamed the education system, among other things. He was quickly riled and did a lot of finger pointing. He would have been an impressive speaker if his grammar hadn’t been so off. He spoke about creating an architecture that would demystify fear. I agreed with him that it was surprising. That after all this time most people couldn’t tell you a thing about it. They would point to their stomach, they would shrug. The tough ones would even make a case for it being important. But no one really had a bead on it. He was obsessed with going beyond oneself. And that to do it one had to overcome fear. He was a grandiose speaker, yes, but he had a point. Because there is nothing more detrimental to a persons success than fear. Because fear is comprised of many different elements, only very few of which serve. For to be afraid is to experience several entirely conflicting conditions all at once. It is to be alert and yet petrified. Primed and yet careless. Stronger in every way and yet weaker. In no other state are we as simultaneously more able, and more unable, to take appropriate action. For to be afraid is to become momentarily super conscious, and yet in only the most narrow of fields. Man’s principle aim of course, should be to widen them. But no where is this taught. And why would it? No one wants man to be unafraid. Because the minute that happens he will stop behaving. He will stop obeying. And so will she. There have been many tales in mythology of heroes travelling through mirrors, descending into the underworld, doing battle with demons. The iconography is universal, and individual. For each of us has one uglier than the last. And this is precisely the lesson of a modern cult. That fear is not selling you a bad product. You’re buying it. 

The Worm

I can hardly begin to write about the man I was introduced to last night. It would sound like complete fiction. Even I had trouble believing his story. But I could tell that he was being honest which usually means one of two things. Either he’s been completely brain washed into believing that he’s experienced something he hasn’t, or he’s telling the truth. And don’t get me wrong, people checked him. There were men there far more interested than me in finding him out. But his story was tight, it certainly didn’t look rehearsed. His body language was clean, he didn’t blink heavily, didn’t talk too quickly, he looked up and to the left for recall and down for emotion. He also looked the part. He came with four classic-looking agent types. Small men, stocky, with zero personality and less than zero facial features. Tough guys with repltilian brains just perfect for field work. The sort of men with so little going on personality-wise that they just faded into crowds. Men you would never notice, never look twice at, never remember, never see coming. They were body guards and friends from what I could tell. They were all in the protection racket. Towards the end of the evening I even got talking with one of them at the corner table of the restaurant we were at. He told me he was head-hunted when he left Spetsnaz. He even invited me to one of their sparring sessions where they do a shorthand cock and balls version of Aikido. The bone crunching art. The way the body’s limbs aren’t supposed to bend, the weak angles and how to exploit them. His friend was also involved in systems theory on a soldier level. A theory that states that everything in nature, without exception, has a moment in which it can evolve beyond itself, in which it has the possibility to make a quantum leap in evolution and become something far stronger, far more powerful than it was previously. The catch being that for it to take place a moment of chaos must be undergone, a moment in which all the components that make up the system must be broken down so they can be rearranged into a more evolved configuration. A moment in which the system becomes temporarily weaker than it was when it began. The - it has to get worse before it gets better - formula. And every system in nature understands this except for one. Us. Because he said that of all of them we are the only ones who not only attempt to drag our heels through it, but actively attempt to stop it. For the simple reason that we are so short sighted we cannot see past the moment of chaos, the moment of weakness, to the rewards beyond it. As if the caterpillar was so frightened of becoming sludge, that it remained a worm, and never broke itself down so that it could learn how to fly. And its the same with everything, he said. Because to truly train a man he must be broken. Indeed the best break themselves. They go into what they fear the most, until they get to a point where they will do anything not to go on. Where they are willing even to take their own lives to stop from going on. And then they do. And in that moment overcome their own psyche. Because they have proven that they are stronger than it. Because they have conquered it.