 This is my raggedy, disheveled, blue, morning look. See how you like it. I know how addicted you are to my rants and from time to time I drop one of them just to keep you around. A phenomenon known as stickiness in internet engineering parlance. I want you to stick around so I stick around etc. Today we are going to discuss the state of the world as we unfortunately know it. We are going to ask the question, what is wrong with our dystopian reality? And yes, it's going to be a royal rant, but before we go there, let me answer a few of your questions. The narcissist's sadomasochism, as delineated in the video I uploaded yesterday, applies to non-romantic relationships as well as to romantic or intimate ones. The same dynamic of using sadism to provoke reactive abuse from masochistic supply applies, the narcissist applies it to friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, parishioners, you name it. Wherever the narcissist finds himself in a pathological narcissistic space, in a shared fantasy, which is one type, subtype of a pathological narcissistic space, the narcissist uses a sadomasochistic strategy, the one I delineated in yesterday's video, and yes it applies to all kinds of narcissists, overt, covert and so on. The difference between overt and covert is that overt grandiose narcissists would deny being masochists, they would reframe it differently. For example, they would say, I'm a crusader, I'm a savior, I'm a rescuer, I'm a healer, I'm on a mission. While covert narcissists would adopt it as a badge of honor, I'm suffering, I'm a victim. Second point, the narcissist does not consider reactive abuse as narcissistic injury, let alone narcissistic modification. Why? If the narcissist's partner abuses him, tortures him, mistreats him, humiliates him, denigrates him, why does the narcissist feel elated? Why doesn't he experience this as narcissistic injury? Because the narcissist perceives himself as the cause of the reactive abuse. He makes it happen. He pushes his partner to behave in highly specific ways. So reactive abuse, the intimate partner's reactive abuse, enhances the narcissist's sense of omnipotence, buttresses his grandiosity, and therefore it's the exact opposite of narcissistic injury. It's narcissistic gratification or narcissistic sublime. The last point is the source of cognitive distortions, such as grandiosity or catastrophizing. There are many sources. Now, both grandiosity and catastrophizing predispose the narcissist to depression, predispose everyone to depression. Cognitive distortions yield result in depression. Whenever we divorce the world, whenever we betray ourselves, whenever we migrate to a world of fantasy, we experience depression. These are known as cognitive distortions and they have many roots and many sources. For example, cognitive distortions can be compensatory to early childhood abuse and trauma. Children who are exposed to abuse and trauma develop cognitive distortion as a way to avoid reality, to escape the pain and the hurt and the shame. Cognitive distortions can be the said outcomes of brain abnormalities or traumatic brain injuries. Societal anomy, when society falls apart, when norms disintegrate or are changed, in that case there's a lot of cognitive distortions going on as defenses. Technology, technology can foster an agenda and encourage and enhance and magnify and amplify cognitive distortions. Actually, certain technologies are built upon, are founded upon cognitive distortions. They rely on cognitive distortions for profitability and viral spread. Peer pressure and conformity also lead to cognitive distortions. Being a member of a fatalistic, defeatist or deterministic culture, this yields cognitive distortions. And finally, expectations, especially the expectations of significant others, they lead to cognitive distortions. So I hope I clarified or answered some of your questions and now it's my turn. I have the right to rant and I intend to do this with the utmost pleasure. Let's start with the fact that if you give flowers to a woman on a first date, you may end up in prison as a sexist love bomber. Love bombing is now outlawed and criminalized in the United Kingdom and it seems to be a spreading trend. So if you give flowers, if you say I love you, too soon that's a crime. But if you recommend suicide to a mentally ill patient, you get paid by the state for a therapy session or by the insurance company. That's okay. That's normal. That's healthy. That's the thing that should be done. That's normative. What kind of sick world we live in? We're giving flowers as a crime, but pushing someone to commit suicide is a virtue, a payable virtue, mind you. You make money out of it as a mental health practitioner. If you befriend people in real life, you are a mentally ill, codependent people pleaser. Only if they are real people in real life, befriending people is a submissive, deplorable, reprehensible act. You should never do this because it shows, demonstrates your codependency, your people pleasing tendencies and generally your mental illness. Only the mentally ill bond together, it seems. But if you befriend the very same people online, your cool, your hip, the longer your friends list, the longer the number of followers, the greater the number of subscribers, the more of an influencer you are. Virtual friends, unreal friends, fake friends, digital friends are okay. Real life friends, that's not okay. That's proof of mental illness. It's beginning to be interesting, isn't it? Next, if you read books, you're a nerd. Not only are you a nerd, but you're probably an insale involuntary celibate. But if you play video games, you fit in, you're fun to be with, you're hip and you're cool. So books are out, video games are in. If you speak the truth, you can and will be sued by multiple interest groups, individuals and activist movements, if you speak the truth. An article I've just written about the MeToo movement has been banned by LinkedIn and I've been warned that my account may be terminated. All I did was analyze the excesses of the MeToo movement and why we should step back and have a clear objective and call look at what's happening. No, no, self-censorship is all the rage. There's more censorship in the West than in China and Russia combined. Only it is self-censorship, politically correct censorship, woke censorship, sick. This is sick. So if you speak the truth, people hate you. They blame you for being cruel and insensitive and probably also a racist or a sexist or an ableist or someist of some kind, you know? Never speak the truth. If you flatter, if you cajole, if you fake, if you bush it your way through, you become a global guru. You become a role model, you become a figure of emulation, adulation and admiration. Everybody's favorite icon. Just fake. That's all. Fake it till you make it. Sex is meaningless and casual. From insecurity is an accomplishment. Virginity is a repellent liability. Prudishness, adultery is universal and fun. Divorce and reciprocal abuse are the norms in all manner of so-called relationships. Intimacy, on the other hand, is threatening, suffocating. Courting and flirting is sexual harassment. We have stigmatized and we have criminalized literally every interaction between a man and a woman or between a man and a man. Every sexual interaction, every act of flirting, every attempted courting, every modest enterprise of intergender communication have been outlawed, criminalized and thousands of people are spending time in prison. They're doing time for these utterly innocuous things. Expertise is suspect, mocked, ridiculed, rejected, hated, paranoid ideation. Whenever someone presents himself as an expert, regardless of his or her credentials, which may be bona fide and totally legitimate, expertise itself is a crime. Expertise itself is suspect. It is a blemish. Expertise is hated. Ignorance is elevated. Relativism is worshipped. My truth, your truth. Facts, alternative facts, truthism and the truth, it's all the same. Learning, education, diplomas, degrees are totally irrelevant unless they are wielded as a weapon in arguments. But the people who wield these weapons, they themselves, have no degrees or credentials whatsoever. Expertise is a dirty word because it's associated with authoritarianism and with money. Money. Everyone wants to have money, but no one will admit to it. Charitable acts are vile conspiracies. Technology is slavery. Erudition and learning are derided. Truthism and malignant grandiose egalitarianism abound and flourish. We're all the same. No one knows more than anyone else because we all have smartphones and access to Wikipedia. So a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist would go online and would be criticised by wannabe rednecks who know nothing about molecular biology. But they searched Wikipedia. So they feel free to take on the Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist. This is the world we live in. Entitlement is all pervasive. We are only entitled to special treatment regardless of any actual commensurate accomplishments. Career criminals are martyrs and sex idols. Law enforcement are monsters. Cornerists and actors rule and rock. Social interactions and sexuality are vanishing. Loneliness is the new normal and the new cool. The whole industry is constructed around loneliness. Technologies such as social media encourage loneliness. Discourage intimacy. They want to monetise your eyeballs. If your eyeballs are on your girlfriend, they are not on Facebook. That's bad for business. The occult, the paranoid and the irrational, the stupid, the conspiratorial, they are considered superior to science, for example. Rationality, learning, books. These have become niche, shameful pursuits. Birth rates have tumbled under the replacement rate. We are disappearing. We are disappearing in the West, in Western civilisation, but we are beginning to disappear in other places such as Africa and Asia. As a species, our growth rate is slowing. I could say this is an excellent thing. We don't need more people. We do need more people. We need 200 million new children in order to support the crumbling pension systems in the world. There are too many old people. In some countries, 25% of the population is above the age of 65 and eligible for pension. Who's going to pay for these pensions if we don't have babies, if we don't make children? Birth rates have tumbled. People are proud of being childless, selfishly pursuing fun, but I mean clubbing at age 45, doing coke. That's the new hip, the new cool. That's a new role model. Marriage and parenthood are widely shunned, frowned upon, ridiculed even. They are the choices of the Hoipoloi, the great unwashed. Only stupid people get married and have children. And if you do have a child, it's kind of a toy. An afterthought. In your 30s or your 40s, you want to play something new. It has novelty value and you want to play with it with a new toy. Only the virtual is real in our world. Digital companies are far more valuable than any manufacturing firms, any agricultural complexes. If you create, if you manufacture something tangible, something that people actually can eat or consume, or place in their homes, you are at the bottom of the social ladder, the lowest of the lowest ranks. If you create NFTs, what the heck is that? If you create digital goods and wares, if you manipulate symbols and numbers, you're at the top. You belong to Wall Street, you belong to Silicon Valley. The manipulation of symbols, virtual environments are now far more valuable than anything real. And this is the trend, the metaverse is upon us. In this kind of environment, censorship is praised. Rabbid and escalated self-promotion is touted, brand me. Pluto democracies. Oclocracies, mobru, and authoritarian psychopaths govern the world over. Democracy is a sham and a joke, anywhere in the world. And that includes allegedly democratic societies, such as the United States and Israel. Poverty, hardship, and sickness are much more prevalent worldwide than we are led to believe. You see, poverty is relative, it's not an absolute thing, it's a relative thing. Sickness is now much more common than 50 or 100 years ago. It's because we are getting older, we are being told. Well, it's a lie of course, it's because medicine is failing. Many more people are poor than 100 years ago. Because 100 years ago, the overwhelming vast majority of people were the same, equally poor. Today, inequality is the highest it's ever been after the 1920s. So of course, many more people are poor, relatively speaking. Yes, they have televisions and refrigerators, but that's not the way to measure poverty. The way to measure poverty is the more or less equitable distribution of resources. And we are very far from that. Sickness, hardship, poverty are the norms worldwide and are increasing by the day. And all this was before nature declared a war on us. Because now we are face-to-face with nature. Nature is displeased. And nature would not hesitate to eliminate us like this if nature considers us a threat to the totality of ecosystems and eco-niches around the world. If nature believes, so to speak, metaphorically, that we are the next agents of extinction, we will be extinguished first. We will go extinct first. Now we are at war, at loggerheads, with nature itself. Watch the fires, watch the extreme weather events, the floods, the heat waves. This is nature's way of doing its best to get rid of us. I count my blessings. I don't have much longer to live. This is one planet I would be delighted to check out of. It is not mine. And I have no idea how I ended up here. I hate this brave new world. Because in this brave new world, illiteracy is 140 characters long and has a face book. Everyone has a thousand virtual friends, but virtually no real friend. The average number of friends has declined from 10 in 1980 to less than one today. Every child has a mother, but multiple fathers. Every child has a mother and multiple fathers, but no responsible mature adult parents. Knowledge is a matter of opinion, and opinions are a matter of fads, and fads are influenced by influences, and influences are teenagers peeling bananas on camera. Our idols, sport muscles, and vocal cords, but little else besides. The right to vote is universal, but the will to vote is not. Everyone has a right to free speech, but little of value to say. Extramarital sex is considered recreational and monogamy a throwback, primitive. The only ideology is self-gratification. Collectives are mere, dim, unwanted memories, bad memories. The only certainty is uncertainty, and the only permanent fixture is change for change's sake. The obsolescence is the driver of innovation, but science and art and literature are obsolete. As men and women lose their traditional roles, confusion and intergender enmity, a war between the genders reigns. In a unisex world, homosexuality or sexual abstinence are rational choices. As malignant narcissistic individualism is on the rise, the species is dying out. In many countries, including major ones such as Japan, Russia, Germany, the population is declining precipitously. More than one third of the youth of these places opt for celibacy and single-hood. Sperm counts have plummeted by a whopping 70%. We are in the throes of vanishing. And we do this with a penchant, with a smile. We regard the whole thing as the most entertaining cable television series ever, our own demise. The death of our decadent civilization, the collapse of everything from values to marriages, is perceived by us as the most amazingly thrilling and fascinating and entertaining television series ever. Because reality is nothing without reality TV, and TV is nothing without viewership. And viewership is nothing without influencers. And influencers are nothing without brands. And brands are nothing without consumers. And consumers are brainless. And this is the chain of being that we have established. We have failed as a species. We are unhappy. We are unhappy. And this is the only test of success. We have failed. We are committing suicide through pollution, through crime, through self-hatred, through narcissism, through egotism. We are dying because in our dystopian world it's the only rational choice left.