On this page I write my few observations and recommendations basing on my long (over 30 years) experience with 🖥️PCs and similar technology. I will briefly list other alternative devices to PC, their pros and cons (advantages and fails). Including my negative comments for anything else than PC, especially smartphones, showing their flaws. Lastly I’ll include many links to useful and interesting websites with more info along the way.
📜All my PCs, history table
In below table, I list all my PCs and parts so far. I got my first PC XT in 1992 (I was 10) and I bought my latest new in 2023 (I was 41). This table is very optional, since it has quite nostalgic value for me, but otherwise it’s just mostly (ancient) history. After table I sum it up and that is much more useful than the table alone.
Legend for the below table:
? – I’m not sure about exact amount or date 💀 – Dead, it broke by itself. Obviously very undesired. 🔨 – I killed it, so my fault. By bad overclocking @, or by accident otherwise. ♻️ – Sold it, eventually. 🗑️ – It became electronic garbage. ☑️ – Still using it.
Now many things aren’t maybe obvious, yet are visible to me in above table. I’ll describe them here as they might be useful, for anyone interested generally in PC or their hardware parts, through last 30 years.
Progress
At first, especially in 90s, PC were quickly outdated, because hardware was improving fast.
⚠️Warning: work in progress 🚧
CPUs
I established my main rule (somewhere and end of 90s) that: I would only buy a new PC (generally CPU, mainboard, RAM) when CPU was 3x faster (first it was just clock MHz, later CPU benchmark score – links: cpu_value, desktop).
Monitors
GPUs
These cards started very early but weren’t anything special. Just did drive analog (R,G,B colors) signals to monitors. I first had.
PSU
Sound
Strangely I had 2 sound cards just dying. Each simply stopped working one day. It was I think after any warranty, so nothing else to do as to buy another. Pretty disappointing for sure, especially since those were a known popular brand of Sound Blaster. Well we can’t stick to a brand because they abuse that and produce garbage too. There isn’t a company making always best products for you. There are only companies that constantly make products and each has its own rating by users later. Same goes for any product, kitchen hardware, cars etc.
Laptops
Printers
⚖️Devices
A list of (most) devices, possible alternatives to PC, with pros (good) and cons (bad, flaws) for each. Of course from my point of view.
🖥️PC
A clear winner for me, over any other device, especially for home use.
✅Pros:
Freedom to choose all parts yourself. Also few ways of choosing: for optimal cost of performance per price, or for fastest (CPU, GPU) for given budget or game, or for lowest power, smallest size, etc.
Easy to repair by replacing a part if failed.
Parts are reusable. You can use most in other PC(s). E.g. PC case, PSU, GPU, sound card, network card, etc.
Easy to upgrade, after first buy. E.g. could add more RAM or GPU after, if needed/desired or it got cheaper. Not needed to buy all (best) components and monitor(s) at once. Can upgrade after if needed. I usually did that, a few times for sure. I upgraded RAM, since it felt too little. I upgraded GPU when next one (at least 2x faster / 2x higher benchmark score) was available and reasonably priced for me.
Operating System (OS) is a choice. Can be changed, can have many available on same PC. Can virtualize them too (e.g. in VirtualBox, or QEMU or other alternative). My related page: Linux vs Windows.
Various configurations possible for particular purposes. E.g. a gaming PC (good GPU), work PC, quiet PC for home cinema, always on variants: a network server, an PC for serving files in local network, etc.
Top hardware possible, but most expensive.
❌Cons:
Most power needed to run. Also not energy cost friendly, e.g. all my recent mainboards with CPU always drain 100W even if idle.
Biggest (of all in list).
Heavier than rest.
More trouble to move.
More trouble to put together (from all parts).
Likely louder (surely compared to handhelds, but not necessarily to laptops).
Possible water cooling, and other options for fans to make it quiet. Possibly very quiet, quieter than laptops.
Great for connecting other electronics, parts or sensor as pins (GPIO) for it.
❌Cons:
Not upgradable
💻Laptop
✅Pros:
Easy to move and travel with. IMO the only reason to buy.
2
❌Cons:
Not upgradable. Or only slightly, e.g. RAM but likely more cost for it.
Can be loud or have an annoying tiny fan.
Using it from battery means the battery will eventually degrade and be unusable. Especially true for used laptops.
🎮Console
✅Pros:
Cheaper than a PC, but because producers want to sell and addict you to buying games and profit on that, gaining back any given discount to console itself.
Easier to play games, but honestly not a pro for me, just a way to quicker addict.
❌Cons:
Less games. Honestly on PC you can play most games from any past time.
2
📱Smartphone
✅Pros:
Easy to carry with you
Has many things at once: phone, photo and video camera, chat, calculator, internet browser, games, etc. Still, if something is good for everything then its good for nothing. I.e. it won’t be best for those. It can never beat or compete with a proper, dedicated camera. Neither will it be good for gaming, input is poor and laggy, can’t compare to PC. It even features mainly too basic games because of that.
❌Cons:
Expensive, overpriced.
Fueling addictions like consumerism, social apps/websites
Very unhealthy, causes neck spine issues and other, from
Still heavy e.g. compared to an audio player, a (smart)watch or a sheet of paper.
Small screen yet big resolution (unnecessary, draining battery faster)
Battery has limited lifetime (usually less than a week)
Battery recharging cycles degrade it (also more if done too quick).
Battery usually not easily replaceable (but can be with some cheap tools)
The top section of this page (until next warning) is meant to be informational and still okay for youth. But the whole page is only for adults🔞. I’d say of at least 21 age. But I’m sure I wouldn’t want to read all this (or understand) even being 30. Thus I think age is not the only guide, additionally it is a matter of intelligence, and being resilient to bad news.
One important aspect is that this page (and some chapters here) can be (very) depressing😭. This is not my goal. To address this, I can only recommend: either skipping them or reading at your best mood, not too much at once, not opening links, and leaving whenever you feel uncomfortable.
I added a color circle, in main chapters titles (as last emoji), to show how dangerous its topics are, i.e. shocking or depressing, etc. Meaning of circle colors: – 🔵 is okay for all, even youth – 🟢 is normal, but maybe unpleasant – 🟡 is moderately bad and unpleasant – 🟠 is bad, tragic, can be depressing Red, these to avoid: – 🔴 is seriously worst, most dangerous, depressing, tragic. – ☠️ is added additionally to above red, to signify even more. – 🛑 is added to links – not safe for life (NSFL) – that can/will scar you for life when seen.
A 🚧 mark in a chapter name, means it is work in progress.
I also link to my blog posts info, to read first. Especially to signify that this is just my point of view (as an INTJ) and I am also just human. I could: be wrong (at some points), not know something yet, fall for some lies or manipulations, oversimplify or overanalyse issues, be overconfident, etc.
I’d also recommend leaving this page if you are not tolerant of other people’s views, or are too attached to own.
ℹ️General info🔵
⏱️Overview
On this page I describe the global human stupidity. I focus mainly on commercial stupidity🤑, causing the destruction on Earth (by wars, pollution, garbage), exploitation, addicting, stupifying and enslaving of people and everything else done for gigantic profits (fake money or power). Additionally I will criticize and point out main faults of current big social systems of control (governments, economies, banks, religions, etc.). In chapter 📃List🔴, I gathered links to crimes, disasters and worst human mistakes, grouping main areas of stupidity reaching global scale, some since ancient times. With my comments on those. Ending by some lesser, but still notably (for me) stupid topics.
⚠️Warning: page is still work in progress 🚧
This page isn’t a wikipedia article, well edited by many and backed by quotes, etc. Which is why I often link to it. Since it’s my page, I also add my personal comments and ideas here.
🔤Alternative titles
Since the page title itself is short and bold, here are a few alternatives:
🤪Human Stupidity and what to do with it? – a commentary by CryHam
⚖️Human Stupidity versus intelligence, which one is winning?
🤔Humanity as viewed by an INTJ (CryHam’s personality type)
👥The differences between people and why are we so stupid? – by CryHam
🌎What’s wrong with the world? – CryHam’s view of the world and its issues
🖼️The big picture of the world – a written illustration by CryHam
I’m adding my nickname to almost all, to signify that it’s just my point of view. I am answering any above questions in later chapter(s).
❓Why
I need to make this very clear, that the reasons for “why I wrote this page?” are:
to motivate people to get smarter, and learn📚, usually by self education
to seek truths, among all those lies, manipulation and misinformation spread both commercially (on global scale) and by individuals
to convince (anyone open minded) about the scale⚖️ and significance of human stupidity🌎
to share truth* about few, main, global, questionable topics – in end chapter: Summary
*By truth I mean my version of truth: my understanding and knowledge which I have gathered and discovered so far. My aim is to get to the whole truth and understand it. But it’s impossible for just one human.
✏️My motivators
This isn’t an important section. Just to answer: who (and by doing what) inspired or motivated me to write this page.
Authors of the few most important documentaries and books (in own chapter), by sharing needed knowledge.
Everyone who contributed to Freedom (for me it was firstly by FOSS), thus making me realize it as my most important value.
My family for providing me. But also being always religious (negative example), and while rather tolerant, yet still wanting me to be religious after being an atheist for 20 years (by intelligent choice).
My dad and uncle, both divorced, for a great motivation (by negative example) to not have: children, marriage, unneeded relationships, etc. Also to learn and practice cleaning (which they almost never did).
Myself, for taking the time to: learn, read wikipedia, and to finalize this page. Well still, it took me 8 years to first make Stunt Rally game before, and countless years spent/wasted on entertainment.
To some degree: every barking dog(‘s owner, especially if left shit on sidewalk), smoking or drunk person nearby, too loud vehicle’s driver passing, smartphone addict, everyone having (or being on) a loud party, or doing drugs, gambling, every millionaire (especially popular), religious person, etc.
I also had my favourite motivational songs🎵, that inspired me. But I moved this chapter after movies, since some have unpleasant topics.
👤Personalities
It is safe to say that everyone is different. There are at least 2 models that determine and group human personalities into not that many types.
🔠MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)
A popular classification of human types into 16 personalities is MBTI (info here and on wikipedia). There is a website here with a free test that determines your type. I found it great and informational. Knowing your type and reading more on internet, also can help in areas to improve and what to expect of yourself and others (e.g. for INTJ). I recommend finding out your type and learning more about yourself and also what your type can improve. I was surprised how well the descriptions fit my type. After all even if it’s rare (like 2%) with billion
Another popular classification is the Enneagram of Personality. It has 9 personalities in a figure with line connections. On wikipedia there is a table showing for each type its: characteristic role, ego fixation, holy idea, trap, basic fear, basic desire, temptation, passion and two transitions (connections) to other types when: in Stress (Disintegration) or in Security (Integration). Thus it is more complex but also more informational and useful. The 9 personalities are in 3 groups (Centers): Instinctive (top), Feeling (right) and Thinking (left).
On its own page: how enneagram system works there is much more information. There is a website with free test here and more info too.
🔍Who am I, my personality
This is to answer any questions of who am I or who wrote this page and also continuing why.
My MBTI personality type is INTJ-A, more about INTJ type (Architect) here. That description almost fully fits my character type. So to sum up shortly, I’m the type who prefers being alone, is Introverted, uses both iNtuition and analytical Thinking with Judging. INTJ type is the one who wants to understand everything and gather knowledge.
It was my goal to get a model of the world, understand how it works, and reasons of why it is and continues to be so (stupid). While others drank alcohol, partied, had sex, got married, had kids to raise, built a house, pursued career, or in my words: joined the rat race, etc. I did what I like and enjoyed most, doing my projects (hence so many), not falling into most of the world’s addictions (I wrote that page earlier) and learning about the world.
I am 43 when writing this page. I think I now finally gathered enough to get it all (to see the big picture) and I can write this to share my view and advices.
My IQ is 126 (or so). I am a Software Engineer. I enjoy programming 3D games, applications, microcontrollers, etc. It started with my 1st PC, I got it when I was 10. Already in elementary school I saw that there aren’t that many intelligent people, maybe 3 of 30. In technical high school and then college, it became also clearly obvious that women are rare there, like 10 in 150 students. At first I generally didn’t care much about the world and others. I already noticed that majority is stupid in first/elementary school. I kept doing my projects and so living in my world instead of the failed outside one so full and driven by stupidity.
⏳Intelligence statistics
📊Statistics
On this website📊 we can see statistics and occurrence percentages of the 16 personalities in general population. It was a small group tested for statistics, we can’t really test all people.
Those MBTI types which have NT (2 middle letters) are known as intellectuals, they are introspective, logical, abstract, theoretical, technically adept and on a constant quest for knowledge. Under “NT Population Statistics” there is a total of 10.4%. The most intelligent (IQ) NT types being: INTP then INTJ. Ranked here. INTJ is least popular among women, just 0.5% of tested.
Well then only 10% of people are intelligent. The rest just lives according to Sensing (73%) or Feeling (60%). Types with SF (2 middle letters) are most common: about 43% of all (56% women, 30% men). ISFJ is most popular. Next 61% of women prefer Feeling compared to 31% of men.
🔳Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
A popular (but with issues) measurement of intelligence is the IQ. It is over century old and has a standardized test for getting IQ value. By definition average population’s IQ is 100. There were few testing methods and also doubts about IQ. IQ Curve distribution
Professions (occupations, jobs) average IQ: image – Modern IQ ranges for various occupations, table – Average IQ by Profession, list – All Occupations Average IQ List
There is also Emotional intelligence (EQ) i.e. abilities around emotions (our and others) like undestanding, managing, etc.
🎙️Popularity vs intelligence
There was also a graph (I remember it but couldn’t find it now) with intelligence on one axis and popularity on other, with various professions as dots. E.g. scientists, physicists, mathematicians, etc. were most intelligent but least popular. On the other hand there were singers, actors, etc. who were most popular but least intelligent.
Here are a few informational (and pretty cool) graphs or lists with percentages %, ranking and sorting all 16 personalities by some feature.
Type parts (NT, ST, SF, NF) percentages %: image, graph📈📉 Type percentages in females %: image (NT are indeed rarest) Creates/solves problems, un/intentionally: image Low/high standards, likes: image
Psychopath vs sociopath: image Graph roles in the world: image
🤝Helpful
Helpful is another factor I’d add to each personality and each human. Determining how helpful to others someone is. I may be somewhat included directly in few personalities, but I like it more as a separate factor.
There are 5 laws of stupidity written by Cipolla (from 1976 book: “Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”): Also written with some more info here.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake.
A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
Thus it is important to understand the risks and scale caused by stupidity. We can all behave stupidly, if we don’t check our actions or measure results. It’s best to develop a critical thinking. So since (in point 5) we know stupid people are worse than bandits and bandits go to prison, why isn’t being stupid a felony, can people be in prison because of being stupid? Well only after proving a committed crime. Which IMO is costly, needs profits, makes many jobs, and possibly doesn’t get rid of stupidity.
Same topic also there but with additional chapter, determining the 3 causes of human stupidity:
Ignorance or overconfidence. E.g. ignoring others being stupid, ignoring some facts, not researching, being too confident, etc.
Lack of control. E.g. in impulsive people, who let themselves be carried away. Also present in those who gamble too much in life or put value in: luck, hope, faith or any other illogical ways.
Distraction. Those who don’t pay attention or not enough. Surely can be fueled by so many addictions (any, not only commercial).
🪟Benefits
There is also a benefits graph / matrix: image here or another here. It groups (and names) people into types, depending on 2 factors: how they benefit + (or cause loss –) to themselves👤 and others👥. I show it in table:
Human type
Benefit to self👤
Benefit to others👥
Intelligent 🤓🧐🕵️🧑🏫🧑🔬
+
+
Helpless 🤗🧑⚕️🧑🏿🚒
–
+
Ineffectual 😐😶🌫️
none
none
Bandits 🤑🔫
+
–
Stupid 🤪😡
–
–
So clearly only intelligent people benefit to self and others, yet there is very little of them. Both intelligent and helpless people help others, so e.g. non-profit jobs, volunteers, etc. Awesome, noticeable group but still rather little. Two last cause losses to others. Bandits do it for their benefit (sometimes just temporary and they lose money on fines or time in prison, but in less evolved countries some can spend whole life so). But stupid people cause losses to self and others. And yet the majority of people are here (I’d say about that 90%).
🧬Genetics
I once saw an hour long video, a first lecture to genetics subject on college I think. I can’t find it anymore. It was quite enlightening. It explained the strongest force shaping peoples traits being genetics. If anything was different we wouldn’t survive. So e.g. total intelligence wasn’t required, that only 10% seems enough. Then 1% psychopaths doesn’t kill population and it’s not 0%. Looks like nature isn’t an idealistic and precise thing then. It’s more important to just procreate in numbers, rather than being intelligent in choices. Well it’s easy to see this in animals, especially insects etc. which multiply in big numbers at once.
🐛Purpose of life🟡
There is already a chapter with more info in my religions page. I’ll shorten it up here.
The answer to question: why do people live? Is actually shockingly simple: to sustain our species. It’s universal for all species and given by nature to continue life. Any other reason to live is just people’s imagination. But in case of religions the purpose is given by invented lies🤥👼👿.
So I’ll end with quoting Bianca, from Fired Up (2009): “Well I’m here now, let’s just make the best of it.”
👁️My view
Perspective
I remember once in high school math class we were learning about triangles similarity criteria. Later I said something quite funny: all triangles are similar. It was just a matter or perspective.
It’s a matter of perspective and how you define stupidity. So let me get to the point already: All people are stupid.
We are born infinitely stupid, or in other words with zero intelligence. It’s first up to our parents to teach us basics (how much knowledge depends on them). Then they usually leave teaching to schools and other public or private institutions (manipulated by governments and/or driven by profits). Some people don’t attend college or can’t afford it. Lastly it’s up to us to continue learning by our own. And I firmly say: we should never stop learning. It’s the only way to decrease stupidity.
Obviously all people make mistakes, but if we don’t repeat them and learn from them, mistakes become the cost of learning. As for perspective if we defined being stupid as making at least one mistake in life, no doubt everyone has, and already plenty. If we defined stupidity as having at least one area of knowledge (or profession) not yet learned (on a basic level), still everyone qualifies.
Once we realize we are stupid, it’s not about if or how much, but: what can we do about it. So I think there are 2 answers. First, for each person the way is to: learn, seek truth, focus, not get addicted, improve our skills and knowledge. All to fight stupidity and decrease it.
Companies
Second is an answer for companies: make money of that stupidity, so keep it, and use it to generate profits. Well, it’s what bandits and stupid people do. I do not see companies as being helpful at all. After all they don’t teach anything, just sell their products or services and addict people. Of course they are rare exceptions and non-profit organizations.
Clearly companies don’t tell how they do their business, it’s their secret. I.e. we did this, now pay us, we won’t tell how. Patents forbid others doing something same way, without paying. Being monopolistic is profitable as they can dictate higher prices or basically do whatever for more profit. If they shared any of their secrets then some other company could try and do the same. This would be of course good for people and humanity. Companies should compete and be of similar size. If one gets too big it can rule and go crazy, yet it’s so often the case and its goal. This is exactly the opposite of how it should be. And why I like Free Software (FOSS), e.g. Debian and GNU philosophy so much, it is for humanity not against it.
I remember once walking with colleagues from work, someone by the way asked: what’d be the best source for a company’s profit? I had a brilliant idea back then, I said: stupidity. I think nobody got what I meant back then. But I gave it many more thoughts since then and it actually confirms in my mind.
Human stupidity is the best source of income. Companies (and governments) profit on human stupidity.
I could then call companies the harvesters of stupidity. It’s not limited to companies, basically one salesman or other profit driven person, could be too. Especially thieves, scammers, etc. For me the biggest companies (especially those above, which own few big companies) are the worst ever. They have the most profits, money and thus power. Power to spread and commercialize stupidity, this includes dumb, irritating commercials (funny video here).
Of course the biggest commercial entities are governments and they surely are the biggest harvesters of human stupidity.
⚠️Warning⚠️
Here ends the section meant to be informational and youth friendly. I refer once again to the top page warning text, and if needed I advice leaving this page.
🎥Movies🟡
Warning: I recommend first checking yourself or by your parent, if any movie is appropriate for your age and for you particularly. I am adding a color circle before title. E.g.: 🟢 is okay for youth IMO, but this is only my opinion. 🟡 likely already has death(s) in. 🟠 is partly depressing, shocking.
🎥Favourite drama movies🟡
Here I list my favourite movies, mostly fictional and drama, and I put my comment on how it relates (shows or parodies) to the topic of human stupidity. Starting from IMO most relevant movies. I’d say these aren’t the movies you’d like to rewatch (compared to more visually entertaining or fun comedies). Yet these are those I’d recommend most, since they are teaching us most, about real life (while still being movies not documentaries yet).
The list is long and has (probably too) many movies.
The form of below list is so:
Title (with link to imdb) – Year – imdb Rating (/ 10) my comment text
💥Most relevant
🟢The Big Short – 2015 – 7.8 Based on real events during the 2006-7 mortgage market issues.
🟢Sorry to Bother You – 2018 – 6.9 A better alternative to Idiocracy. Not my favourite since it has some unreal fantasy creatures near end and an unreal white voice ability. But surely has few good parts, in spirit of Idiocracy, i.e. to awaken people.
🟡Triangle of Sadness – 2022 – 7.2 Satire. Shows how different rich people react to ship disaster. Then how rich are worthless for survival scenario and the working class does all.
🟡Eden – 2024 – 6.5 Based on real life events. It shows that even with few people on one island, the worst thing isn’t surviving and making a living there but standing other people. Also shows that the caring couple with child are most likely to survive, and the most toxic people are likely to leave or get killed. On a small scale it shows that quote: “Hell is other people” (more on it here).
🟡There Will Be Blood – 2007 – 8.2 My favourite movie with also religion topic. It shows a story of both an oil prospector and religious teacher (or even a prophet) starting business in same place and competing with each other, which is later getting more ugly. I like it even more since the oil business won over religion. Can’t say the same in real world though. Seems both are getting trillions of dollars profit, around the whole world. I guess maybe oil could decrease if most people finally realized global warming and pollution (since 1970 or earlier even 1910), but religions are still here (since 2000 years) and atheism seems slightly decreasing.
🟡District 9 – 2009 – 7.9 As story of how everyone whats stuff (from aliens) for themselves. The military only wanted new weapons and that by all means.
🟠The Platform – 2019 – 7.0 A horror within a prison having many levels and moving platform with food. Serves actually more as a comparison to society divided by classes and greed. Even if all prisoners could eat enough from that platform, that’s not the case. Those up top are eating too much and causing many more below to fight or starve.
🟠Snowpiercer – 2013 – 7.1 A rather unrealistic train traveling all the time with the only people left on Earth. Shows also the division of society classes in a smaller scale and a revolution from the back to the front of train.
🟢Don’t Look Up – 2021 – 7.2 A parody/satire showing vast manipulation of people by country officials. Ridiculous since looking up was only needed, to see the truth was otherwise.
🟢In time – 2011 – 6.7 A Sci-Fi world, where people don’t age past 25, and there is no money only time as currency. Surely a fantasy. But it showed well that people still divided themselves into sections with walls with payments for those who cross. Sections were areas dividing classes: from the richest who live forever, to poorest who died everyday for richest to profit and maintain their status. Well that part is quite relevant and similar to real world.
🟡Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – 1964 – 8.3 Seriously old, but highly rated, probably the 2nd black-white movie I watched. A parody where military mistake is causing nuclear missile launch and doomsday. Also parodies politicians trying to deal with this situation.
🌟Less relevant
🟢Captain Fantastic – 2016 – 7.8 A story of a widower with six children living in forest. I really liked how his even young children were more educated about constitution, world etc, than common kids living in city.
🟡The Giver – 2014 – 6.4 A small utopian village where people live without war, pain, suffering, differences or choices. One older man knows the truth about wars etc and shares it with a young man. I usually find those types of worlds very unreal and such movies tend to be boring (at least 2/3 of). But surely an interesting concept. Usually such movies end with some revolution after which everything goes back or close to our world.
🔵WALL·E – 2008 – 8.4 A 3D animation, mostly about robots and space. Boldly depicting people as so obese and dependent that they’re not able to survive by themselves.
🟡Nightcrawler – 2014 – 7.8 A story about a guy earning money by filming crime scenes for news at night. Then his development leading to a company and betrayal of involved people and even doing crime.
🟢The Professor – 2018 – 6.7 Interesting story about a teacher diagnosed with a terminal illness, who speeds up his teachings only to most important aspects of life. Starts with a cool scene when he makes the majority of his class leave.
🟡Gone Girl – 2014 – 8.1 – favourite part monologue video A long but thrilling story about a wife disappearing and realising an elaborate plan of framing her husband.
🟢The Fault in Our Stars – 2014 – 7.6 An interesting story of a young couple with cancer. I liked her sharp points of view on some life matters.
🟡The Intouchables – 2011 – 8.5 A warming story resulting from a friendship between a new caregiver and a person with mobility disability.
🟢Limitless – 2011 – 7.4 Not my favourite since it’s not really possible. But shows how one’s life could go, having a lot of brain power (intelligence). I think mostly today, people loose brain power due to distractions like social media and addictions. While also slowing down, getting lazy, making others profit (e.g. Netflix and chill), shopping/consumerism, etc. instead of pushing themselves to achieving more, for themselves and others.
🟡The Book of Eli – 2010 – 6.8 A post apocalyptic world with a story of few people. I most liked the part when the bad guy wanted to find the bible and once again use it to manipulate people. I didn’t really like the ending as an atheist, I even think of it as a commercial for religion.
🔴Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within – 2010 – 8.0 🔴Elite Squad – 2007 – 8.0 Very intense movies with strong violence and severe crimes. In a country filled with drugs and corruption.
⭐Older
🟢The Invention of Lying – 2009 – 6.8 A pretty interesting concept. Shows a world where no one could lie, and only one guy started. I really liked the first part, before lies. Especially the honest coca-cola commercial: “All we’re asking is to not stop buying it… Has a lot of sugar…”
🟢City of Ember – 2008 – 6.4 An underground village in which people were meant to survive and go back up, but after decades it got forgotten. Until their generator was failing too much. Also shows their greedy governor who kept the best (food) for himself.
🟡The Vicious Kind – 2009 – 6.8 A story of a man who does what he urges and is rather destructive to others even if he wanted to help.
🟢The Man from Earth – 2007 – 7.8 A low budget movie, all in one place with just few people, mostly just talking. Yet quite interesting to see various reactions to one man’s revelation that he has lived for thousands of years.
🟢Dreamland – 2006 – 6.3 A romantic drama of a young man choosing between attractive but troubled woman and a less attractive woman caring for her father instead of moving out of trailer park. Features very memorable music.
🟡Pretty Persuasion – 2005 – 6.4 A story of a young yet very manipulative teenager, partly in court and about sexual harassment.
🟠The Butterfly Effect – 2004 – 7.6 Shows few ways how a guy’s life could go, after he discovers he can go back in time. But sadly each one has a tragedy in it.
💫Oldest
🟡American Beauty – 1999 – 8.3 A mid-life crisis story of a sexually frustrated father. Well IMO shows how his wife caused it after years. I also see the problem of windows with no curtains in houses here (privacy), as basically most of the movie could be avoided if they couldn’t see what neighbours were doing.
🟡The Ice Storm – 1997 – 7.3 A drama of parents doing substance abuse and swinging lifestyle and the effect on their children, including a tragic death.
🟠Thirteen – 2003 – 6.8 A sad, intense story of mother and her teenage daughter changing to bad life style by being manipulated from a toxic teenager.
🟡Simon Birch – 1999 – 6.8 A touching story of two young friends, one with with stunted growth.
👎Other, bad movies
There are many of IMO rather stupid movies that I’ll put in a row. Usually they are just below my level and either filled with drugs/narcotics consumption, alcohol, partying and thus commercials of such additions. Yet surprisingly highly rated by people on IMDb: Ted (2012) – 6.9, Pineapple Express (2008) – 6.9, Remember the Daze (2007) – 5.6, The Hangover 2009 – 7.7,
And plenty of unnecessary, way too low budget crappy movies, made for quantity not quality. Usually just way too ridiculous, to take seriously and visually way too crappy to convince. But surely some like bad made movies. E.g.: Sharkanado (2013) – 3.3 (and many similar: Catnado (2022) – 1.7, Monsternado (2023) – 2.6, etc), Cocaine Bear (2023) – 5.6, Killer Sofa (2018) – 3.7, Methgator (2023) – 3.4, Rubber (2010) – 5.7 I think on a page called human stupidity, I had to put this, likely a noteworthy example of stupidity.
🎵My favourite motivational songs🎤
Continuing the list above, here are also the few songs that inspired me:
🇩🇪German
Die Ärzte – “Deine Schuld” – (“Your Fault”) – 2003 – ▶️video, 🗒️lyrics explained, original lyrics “It’s not your fault that the world is as it is. It would be your fault if it stayed so.” Is likely my main motto since 2010 or so.
Farin Urlaub – “Lieber Staat” – (“Dear State”) – 2005 – 🎵song, 🗒️lyrics translated “Dear state, I get it. It’s just wonderful here. The masses are cheering behind you. Dear state, no bullshit. Stay just the way you are. I’ll tattoo your flag on my face. I’m so terribly proud of you.” Of course the whole song is sarcastic. It sounds positive, but it’s meant to be negated for true meaning.
Farin Urlaub – “Idisco” – 2015 – 🎵song, ▶️video (meh), 🗒️lyrics translated, also here Quite funny but I think it actually describes well how an intelligent person sees nearby people. After all the more intelligent one is, the more stupid people nearby.
🇺🇸English
Green Day – “Back in the USA” – 2017 – ▶️video, 🗒️lyrics I like the video most. Shows color glasses which show truth in titles, like in TV: “President to lie to nation tomorrow”, and on commercials: consume, conform, the American dream, procreate now, this is your god (on money), etc.
Green Day – “American Idiot” – 2004 – ▶️video, 🗒️lyrics Definitely a bold title, yet a well received song.
Dennis Graft feat. Maria Milewska – “Until” – 2000 – 🎵song Not much lyrics in it, my favourite, is the last part: “Until the cities turn to dust, until there’s nothing left.”
Charlotte Wessels – “Soft Revolution” – 2021 – ▶️video, 🗒️lyrics A great, emotional, nice voice for anti-war etc.
🇵🇱Polish🟠
Kult – “Poznaj swój raj” – 1998 – 🎵️song, lyrics translated I got it on cassette from my old school friend. Was definitely a shocking text back then, and still holds today (especially that topic). I didn’t listen to that band and I don’t listen to Polish songs since like 20 years. I later was learning German and English. I watch and read internet in English only, I would be quite limited if I did only Polish for sure.
Łzy – “Weronika, efekt motyla” – 2005 – 🎵song with lyrics (and with english lyrics), lyrics A sad story of beautiful Veronica who run away from house and started sleeping on streets, doing drugs and selling her body.
🎥Favourite documentaries, etc.🔴
Here definitely starts the red🔴 part, shocking or dangerous to watch.
Documentaries are the wisest movies, real life based, the only ones helping people (by explaining complex topics, world issues, showing bad reality, etc). The key ones, yet so rarely watched. Way less than the most popular entertaining movies. Many have red🔴 circle, because these are also the most shocking, intense, sad or depressing. Obviously hard to watch.
Corporation
🟠🎥The Corporation – 2003 – 8.0 🏭🤪 🟠🎥The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel – 2020 – 7.0 Extremely important documentaries. It shows how corporations (companies etc, having legal status of a human) in result act as psychopaths. Corporations do everything in the only purpose of profit (for stakeholders) and btw. do great damage to humanity. They:
Do harm to human health, by pollution, waste, garbage, chemicals.
Act with no concern of others feelings.
Are unable to maintain enduring relationships.
Act with reckless disregard for safety of others (including employees, clients).
Lie repeatedly, and deceit others (for profit).
Are incapable of experiencing guilt. They never admit what they did publicly, continue lying, etc.
Fail to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours. If it’s profitable they will break law. it’s their normal practice, and usual business expense.
Use seduction, charm, glibness, or ingratiation to achieve their goals. In other words they manipulate others for their profit. E.g. politicians by lobbying, news media, manipulate research documents, etc.
The scale of these damages is gigantic now. The biggest corporations (like coal,oil,gas industries, e.g. BP) do the biggest harm, visible by destruction on Earth etc. It wasn’t so before 100 years: a company lasted only for a certain time (e.g. a few years) and had a set limit for its value (of profit). Back then also there was more done by governments. Unfortunately nowadays the corporations rule the governments.
The movie from 2020 does show some improvements and finally some movement and changes for better. I think it’s still a very long way. It also shows how companies work, they:
Present themself as a friend and ally. Now also lying that they care and are fixing environment.
Turn people against their adversaries.
Don’t pay their fair share. (avoid taxes, use tax havens, enrich millionaires not all people) Result is 1 trillion $ lost by 12 biggest companies.
Take whatever they can By also creating a crisis, denying resources and privatizing (even water, healthcare, war, prisons, schools, libraries, post office, science, etc).
Use information to control people (now big data). By collecting, monitoring everything (they can) what people do online, visit, watch etc. Then analysing that and manipulating people by ads, recommendations, etc.
Exploit unequal advantage. In 2018 CEOs had a 270 times bigger pay (salary) than lowest worker. In 1950 it was 20 times bigger.
Control those who might control them. Now governments too. Also they buy any smaller companies, that might become rivaling.
Movie also shows how corporate revenue has risen in the last 40 years, at the same time their tax dropped. While share of national (US) income shifted (from 10% in 1980 to 20% in 2010) from the bottom 50%, to the top 1% richest. The poorest people have 1% of world’s wealth, while 44% of wealth is in the hands of top richest.
List
🟡📚Money Socialism – by Roland Baader – 2010 (book) – 🏦💸 How governments and federal banks manipulate and steal from people by printing money and causing inflation, etc, on purpose. And already since 100 years so, when gold was fully backing up money the last time. Also shows that only 1 in 1000 economists are well informed (from Austria’s school), the rest is just crazy idiots (term from book) who spread stupidity: they print false books, allow teaching only those lies, all to keep misinformation. Only those 1 in 1000 did know global crisis would happen before. I’m not sure if or how much this (1000) number improved since 2010. But inflation is ever present, so nothing changed globally for humanity. All people are still slowly and quietly being stolen from.
🔴🎥David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet – 2020 – 8.9 – 🌳🌴🚜 Beautiful nature and how people are destroying it, for commercial profits. On a scale effecting whole planet. Some with irreversible consequences.
🟡🎥The Year Earth Changed – 2021 – 8.2 – 🌳🌴🚜 A very interesting view on nature during Covid. How animals got way better with people’s absence. Animals got more freedom, area, and even got into cities or empty human structures. It is clear that animals have a very hard time living nowadays with us overpopulating the Earth, disturbing them in their lives in about every way possible: moving vehicles, people, factories, pollution, lights, noise, etc.
🔴🎥The True Cost – 2015 – 7.7 – 👗👚 About (fast) fashion and all bad that it brings. Old but crucial documentary. Normally (long ago) there were 2 or 4 seasons for clothing, fast fashion made 52. Cloths can last long years (10 or more), but fashion industries made it into a consumable, disposable thing that you buy and need to basically throw out after a week or when next product comes up. It surely is one of the stupidest things that happened on Earth driven to the extreme by only profits (disregarding pollution, nature and peoples health, lives, living conditions and salaries). Mainly a result of capitalism in USA where biggest fashion companies operate. Movie shows fashion as the 2nd most polluting industry, with unpaid workers (in Bangladesh, Cambodia etc), getting very low wages and even diseases in the process. Made it to maximize profits, also causing diseases from chemicals on cotton fields and areas with factories polluting rivers and water for local people. But for industries it’s even more profits because the same chemical companies also sell medicine for those people who they made sick. Another result (of the retarded fashion industry) are the huge garbage areas of piling up discarded cloths. There was also a topic of seed monopoly for patented, modified cotton plant that companies want farmers to pay for every seed and control price. Lastly a disaster of Rana Plaza collapse a mainly cloth factory with neglected building standards and maintenance. Workers saw building cracks before collapse and yet they were forced to work, many died.
🔴🎥The Lost Century: And How to Reclaim It – 2023 – 7.6 – 🏭⚡🛸 Huge revelations here, well even assuming it’s only 10% true, we surely lost a century being stupid slaves: burning gasoline, driving cars, burning coal and needing grid of wires to get electricity, etc. All while polluting the whole planet for huge profits of biggest companies. BTW making a small number of people extremely, unnecessarily rich, having way to expensive lifestyles, allowing that big money to manipulate politics, governments and laws, making more poor people, and bigger contrast between rich and poor. If those small, endless energy sources exists (hidden), or aliens visit us in antigravity craft, then it’s not a national security matter that drives hiding it all from public knowledge. It’s national stupidity that governments (or corporations ruling them) want to keep, for maximum profits from people, even by enslaving them to now century old fuels and energy sources.
🟡🎥Eating Our Way to Extinction – 2021 – 7.6 – 🐄🍗🚜 Shows how factory farming (raising animals like cows, chicken, pigs, fish) takes up most of our lands, needed for crops to feed them. Huge numbers of cows etc need to live, for people to still eat them. Their living conditions are horrible, barely livable, yet instead of changing for better they feed animals with plenty of bad medicine and chemicals🥼 (normally toxic). Then of course being slaughtered and basically tortured, to maximize profits. Movie also explains that cows produce methane (CH₄, by digestion), a way more potent climate changing gas, it’s worse than all CO₂ from car, plane engines.
🟠🎥Racing Extinction – 2015 – 8.1 – 🦈🐘 Shows how humanity has driven way too many species into extinction or close to it. Many by mass hunting and fishing for food, but not only. Movie includes also the stupidest reasons to kill of almost all animals like: elephants for ivory, rhinos, whales, sharks for fins in stupid restaurants, and many other. Especially in Asia’s/China’s wet markets, some (illegally hunted and) selling endangered species like sharks. Likely food for idiots from richest elites or anyone willing to pay and having no respect for animals.
🟡🎥What Is a Woman? – 2022 – 8.1 – 👩 An investigation of sex and gender movements, and who profits most from that. E.g. the biggest pill companies selling supplements etc. needed to use after gender change. Companies which would rather alienate and sue a parent, to get a child to change gender. An absolutely disgusting, business behaviour for profit. Then surgeons, psychiatrist and all other people with job adapted for it.
🟢🎥Pirates of Silicon Valley – 1999 – 7.2 – 🖨️ History of how Apple and Microsoft started. Simply a few people stealing from each other. It wouldn’t be that, if it was Free Software FOSS (like Unix, Linux) from start, which is the best solution also giving freedom.
🟠🎥Religulous – 2008 – 7.6 – ⛪🙏 Surely disliked or cringy for any religious person. And yet so needed watch and a great movie. As an (already for 20 years) atheist, I really enjoyed it. It does logically and with reason disprove (and somewhat disregard) most main religions. It can be viewed as a intelligent and respectful mockery of the current world’s state, where majority are still slaves of religions. I already have a whole blog post “religions” with much more, so I’ll be short (and bold⚠️) here. Human stupidity is still best shown by vast existence and practice of religions. All religions are false (based on lies and manipulation) and are simply businesses, addicting people and children (like most other businesses do (or try) nowadays too). From someone who doesn’t believe in any religion for many years, it does appear really ridiculous what people believe and do due to their religions, most even whole life, blindly passing that addiction to their children.
🟠🎥Bowling for Columbine – 2002 – 7.9 – 🔫 Explanation of the huge amount of weapons owned by civilians in USA, manipulation into nation of fear and therefore way more frequent school shootings and other gun uses and killings (100 times more than in any other country). Old but very good, still nothing changed for better, there is a rouge shooting like every week in USA. More kids die in shootings than by car collisions.
📃List of topics🔴☠️
In the list I will try to gather all topics (issues) that are still wrong with humanity. I’ll start with the biggest, most significant problems first. Then probably more random. But either way it’s difficult to sort some. I grouped them into tiers: 1 Gigantic, 2 Huge, 3 Big, 4 Medium, 5 Small.
Tier 1, Gigantic
🔭Lost century🛸
I think I should put some distance to this movie and topic of aliens. I mean I can’t take this as 100% true even if so many witnesses are talking about it. Sure, some movies are made to mock, and disrupt the topic. But I found at least few decent (by Steven Greer), hard not to take as truth after seeing. Still if you don’t like the topic, feel free to just skip it, and go into wars or crime or other clearly visible topics.
Yet I really would like it to be the case. And if it is true, then seriously this is the biggest revelation for most humanity and the biggest scam (like 70 years) that this has been hidden from public by force and huge money sums (also by murdering or silencing inventors of free energy sources for like 100 years), manipulating whole media (and worldwide) to mock anyone talking seriously about hovering extra terrestial space crafts (mistakenly on purpose named UFOs, because they are known and have been spotted since centuries, as told also partly retrieved since 60s).
I’m putting this first. Simply because it could solve most of our world problems. Problems which were created by hiding these already made inventions and truth, which made the whole humanity into slaves of biggest corporations/organizations and old obsolete fuels to produce energy (from over 100 years ago) and also to travel and transport in that way (old engine cars, trains, planes, ships). While it is possible to have clean energy source with zero cost. Because there are hundreds of trillions of dollars in those corporations already.
It is a deadly serious topic. There is a short quote of Greta at start of this movie: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.”
It is/was my favourite topic. So let me just summarize what the movie author claims (with a bit of my comments):
UAPs/UFOs (deliberately obfuscated terms for alternative energy and propulsion device) as many of them are produced by us too, just kept in secret.
🛸Extra terrestial spacecrafts are present and move silently, with
Aliens👽 are visiting Earth, constantly. Likely since ages. They have contacted/revealed themself to some people in recent century. Not all aliens are friendly, there have been some cattle or other animals mutilations with precision cutting and no blood. Also few tests done on people, some ending in their radiation.
Anti-gravity is working silently and is simply the best way of moving around. Also at almost instant speed up/down, (space)craft/vehicle acceleration is thus not affecting passenger(s). There have been cases of small glowing (like plasma) spherical crafts moving around (even in/out of ocean), sometimes many at once and in formations. Other crafts with mirror like surfaces of different size and size craft, some discs with glowing lights under them. Some were quite big. Possibly some made by us too as witnesses by at least few people.
Zero point energy⚡. Such small energy source could be in every home powering everything. Without the need for electrical grid, cables, burning coal, even solar power. Well that’s already a good reason to hide it for big corporations (having huge sums, profiting from old oil, coal and gas).
Well it surely is a great revelation if this is all true, and indeed last 100 years would be lost, living without much progress in comparison. I have to still add that all this could be created by people and not true. But as of now I’ve seen too many claims from people making me accept this as hidden truth. And I’m already filtering out those stupid, noting inside, surely faked documentary movies, news or claims, just probably made to misinform or stir facts in this topic.
Well recently since 2022 or so it seems to have changed to be more serious topic. There is a AARO website now with few (low quality) videos, another NUFORC website with people reporting sightings. OFC IMO some are probably fake, and the most important are likely hidden from public etc. 🚧
💣Wars and military🪖,🔴☠️
Wars are the worst, period. Can’t put it simpler. Wars not only kill people, destroy buildings, cause traumatic experiences. Wars also bring the worst war crimes like: concentration camps, manslaughter, torture (starting after “Prevalence”, here too starting after “complaints”), frequent rapes, looting, etc. Military can also manipulate (or even “enslave”) people into soldiers, many of which can have later PTSD for the rest of live and can’t recover from the horrors of wars. Lastly, wars are also very destructive and toxic to environment.
It is clear to me that all this still exists because of human stupidity, which took tens of thousands years to make. And as a result of a giant profiting business (e.g. in USA, China, Russia), but present in almost all countries. And yet some would say that wars drive technological innovation, fuel inventions, jobs or whatever else. Yeah for war machines, guns and bombs, that make it all continue and possibly allow more (and more advanced) devastation.
For me the opposite is clear, we know now technologies exist that could change all (since 100 years, from Lost Century) into a peaceful way of living with nature, even without poverty or pollution. Yet the military and their companies withhold these from public to have a technological gain, either to use just in case or to be used in secrecy. There is also a ton of lies and propaganda, spreading fear and manipulation to continue wars and military operations.
I almost sure that our (be it a country or whole humanity) worst enemy is this and other human stupidity. Any more intelligent (alien) species (of which some already were on Earth, likely since ancient times) didn’t wipe us out or enslave us. There are reports that they (or we) monitor our stupid nuclear arsenal and want us to not destroy the planet.
I’m not saying all with military is wrong. I’m saying that in case of USA (which military is the biggest), this has serious negative impact on whole country. Since they sacrifice most resources into military. Imagine if they were spending it all on: education, crime problems, drugs, homeless, etc. Well result would probably be like in Europe or other places where college is free.
USA🇺🇸,🔴☠️
As for military, I will put an example of USA here. It’s a country which spends most on military💰 (and spreads it on vast area of Earth). So much that you don’t have free college education (clearly they prefer people without), free health (it’s incredibly expensive), etc. All this to put even more funds into their army (instead of into people), and those (old) war machines (I even watched their fighter planes as a kid in illustrated books). So what for? To have the biggest and most profitable military. I’m not saying it’s not needed, there are reasons for fighting terrorism and Nazi (totalitarianism) type countries. Some were fake, made up. Has that ended? I don’t think so. Will it or is it just more profitable if it stays? There are also fabricated reasons just to keep profits, get more oil, keep the (USA) nation in fear, distract people from other topics, etc. Kind of like: if you have a big hammer🔨, everything is a nail.
Torture😡
Related to topic, USA did (and likely still does) torture war prisoners. Likely the worstpage🛑 on wikipedia, you should never visit. Well, I think it proves that USA is just retarded, and its military and government, as complex and big as they may seem, can just be summarized as bunch of idiotic children playing dangerously (doing things they never should). Yes well I understand that the Islamic and other countries do similar things. IMO torture should never exists or be used, quickly killing people is enough. It was also proven many times that torture does not give anything, people under torture will say and do anything to end it. I expect an agency that has intelligence in it’s name (CIA) not to act (or be) so retarded.
Sketch🍆
I remember one sketch showing USA military (I can’t find it): there was a table and couple of countries represented by people, talking, then came a person (with USA flag IIRC) and a long stick ending with a large dildo🍆 and started just flapping it around on table (maybe had a map or something). Yeah silly, but it does kind of resemble USA military actions quite well I think.
War reasons, fascism💣
Recently I found the reasons for wars in the book Money Socialism. It’s the stupid governments (all of them, maybe partly resulting from Capitalism or just own greed for power) who create conditions making people choose wars. There was a sentence in this book telling this about World War II, and those made conditions have led people to chose rulers who then started WWII and its war crimes. A good, new video around this topic too: Is fascism back.
Anti-war☮️
Of course there are smarter people who prefer peace and are anti-war. It’s just that this is a minority (same as with intelligence to see the big picture), so the stupidity wins and wars continue. How many people are interested in politics, feed on news, still read newspapers, watch TV, all of which are just means to manipulate people by governments and keep people in fear. Obviously this varies by countries, some are more dictatorships or more religious (Islam religion dictates to do wars).
Hen house🐔
Additionally I learned an observation from my father who has a hen house: the more hens, cocks or chickens there are the more they will be fighting each other and get hurt more after. I think this is what happens in nature. But nature balances by itself and has many species, top predators etc. Countries are unnatural, they have more of: corrupt governments, politics, propaganda, money, limited lands and resources. And above all overpopulation. If no country limits population, it means they want as many people as possible and stupid, yet still manipulable. While having same area. I think this all makes wars more probable and it’s all done on purpose.
Indigenous people⛺
A chapter good for contrast and to show a way better way. We still have a lot to learn from how indigenous people (likely all, e.g. native Americans) lived:
with respect to nature and animals, not by farming them for profits
in tents, not multi story houses or huge skyscrapers I’m okay with one story houses only. The moment you build more, means there is a land area problem, and city begins. Cities exist IMO because of land and building owners making most profits and because of slow transportation. Surely something that is solved by fast anti-gravity crafts, so many times visualized, but now known to be present already on Earth, but hidden and kept in secrecy.
using horses to move distances, but also respecting animals and not hurting or overworking them
having only primitive weapons for hunting, and killing rarely, only when needed for their survival. Definitely not like modern factory farming or all those freaking for profit hunters who decimated animal populations of whales, rhinos, elephants, sharks, etc.
Survival🌳
I watched recently Lexie’s survival video and it made me think. ….🚧 Generally it was (I guess) a probably sponsored commercial video for such survival trips into jungle. And even that survival was using few key items (like sparkler, knife, etc) you clearly didn’t make yourself in jungle, just brought them into, from industrialized world.
But key takeaways from the video are: To survive (and live, in a jungle or other place), a human needs: – water, fire / heat, shelter, food, and some (wild, natural) land area too. Well sadly nowadays in cities (or country even) all of these are controlled (by state) and sold to you (overpriced), right? The best one can/could do is having a large land, enough to have crops and/or animals for yourself, to be independent. But how many can this? Unfortunately most land area is already freaking designated for crops for animals that people still eat in vast quantities. Vegetables need much less area, water and time to produce. And most importantly this is also a big issue (resulting faster) because of overpopulation.
It was freaking known that fuel with Lead (Pb) was bad and caused lead poisoning, even by tiny amounts. Already in 1786 it was known that led is toxic and a serious threat to human health. And still, it was added to gasoline (by Midgley) and mass produced. Obviously for more profits, while also spreading lies in commercials. Lead has then spread into air, oceans, water, snow, even people’s bones. Resulting in people having (e.g. in U.S. 1000x) more lead in blood, also decreased IQ (total 800 million IQ points), behaviour problems, even crime rise and serial killers increase due to this, 20 years later. It is still a problem today. Even if it was banned, leaded gasoline is still used in piston engine airplanes.
Midgley is now regarded as the man who contributed more damage (and deaths) to the world than any other human being who has ever lived. He also had the most impact on Earth’s atmosphere (Ozone layer).
Lead batteries
Seems to be a past issue now. Were definitely heavy and caused health issues. Wiki link, under battery recycling.
Solder
It was a while ago when companies moved to using leadless solder, since this caused health issues for workers (e.g. who soldered daily). I wonder how this affects hobbyists who use it. It’s still being sold.
The current big health danger, causing many diseases. Also called forever chemicals. Having properties great for industries, but horrible in long term for Earth and human body.
Wiki link. From decaying plastics. Now they are ever present: in oceans, fish, plankton, our food, etc.
Other
Surely there are more, worst is what we (all or the public) don’t know yet. Possibly while companies make more profits because of that and also can spread lies and disinformation to continue. 🚧
🔥World burn
There that saying: “Some people just want to watch the world burn”. Well the world is already burning. It’s naturally burning just in volcanoes, wildfires etc. It’s burning artificially (by people’s industries) in:
all the coal burned for energy, production of steel etc.
oil rigs and refineries
the Amazon rainforest right now (or other forests), I mean those decades of cutting trees and burning them as biofuel or used otherwise.
in big rockets starting into space or orbit, surely something that could be skipped almost entirely
jet engines, of way too many planes, especially for holiday travel which isn’t critical for survival, and business travel (since people can meet and talk remotely)
It’s burning in every gasoline engine including cars (about 1.5 billion), trucks, buses, diesel trains, etc.
in all wars and their destructions, happening all the time somewhere, even in few places
It’s also sometimes burning in places where wildfires happen, but companies have built flammable wooden houses for profits and others cheapened on safety including fire departments.
It was known already in 1985 or even 1975 (so 40 years ago) in that we need to stop burning fossil fuels, oil, gas, coal etc. and basically we didn’t change much, just surely worsened the situation since there is more people and more of the old industries doing CO2 emissions.
There still are thousands of nuclear weapons (missiles, bombs) operational (in submarines, bunkers, etc.). Most are in US (the country that I’ll likely mention most often).
Well there was a mention in The Lost Century movie that aliens actually monitor our nuclear weapons on Earth. To protect us from nuclear explosion due to mistake, errors or maybe even starting a nuclear war. There are still plenty of nuclear missiles in submarines, but alien’s crafts also go underwater without any problems.
⛪Religions🙏🟠
I made a separate, long post about religions here. To sum shortly and boldly my view of this: religions are the longest lasting (1000s of years) lies, invented manipulation and control of people on global scale. Also causing wars and conflicts. Religions are passed by parents to kids (that’s abuse, by design), instead of allowing them to choose any or none. All religions can’t be true, and since many exists then none of them are true. There are many because different regions of the world came up with own. Religions exist, continue and spread because of human stupidity (it’s a sum of abusing children’s minds and social coercion as explained in this video). It’s the lack of intelligence and logical thinking (other great link with many logical reasons against existence of God, already questioned and explained by many brilliant minds since centuries (philosophers and scientists)) that makes people believe and have faith instead of doubting, seeking truth, proof, sense, reason, bigger view point, general knowledge of other, etc. Also countries, governments are fault here IMO.
I’m putting this huge topic here first. It’s the biggest problem on Earth (as said in above documentary): there are simply 10 times more people on Earth than it should be. A billion people should be the maximum allowed, to sustain life on Earth without drastic consequences (Human impact on the environment) and rising poverty contrasted with rich getting more rich and ridiculous with their luxurious expenses🤑 while so many (1 billion) are struggling with basic needs for life (water, food, shelter, education, electricity, etc.).
Additionally IMO it’s the main reason of why the world is so wrong, hostile and countries or groups of people go against each other. Of course this is also fueled by profits of basically all governments, companies, etc. Thus their added manipulation too. Every such commercial organization profits from more people, and they are in favor for making children (i.e. future tax payers, customers, or generally just slaves of the system).
Yet there are not global restrictions on population on Earth at all. There was once in China One-child policy (soon rate was 35%, then 2 child, and then abandoned).
This is an insane topic. It would be so much better if it didn’t even exist. Or at least that it was the stupidity done in ancient ages. Still it’s not that long ago for some countries. Yet it still exists in in the 21st century just in different ways. As for torture, there is a wiki page of course but I’m not linking it, and even many top 10 videos, like that was something to watch, I can’t even. But very sadly it still exists in modern times. E.g. gangs used it for their way to extort ransom money, clearly it’s present during wars, and probably in some prisons too. Additionally there is female genital mutilation and the worst human trafficking🛑 topic. But there is likely much more, that I simply don’t want to know.
Crime⚖️,🔴☠️
There are so many types and terms here that I’ll just link to wikipedia.
Serial killers🔪🔴☠️
I think the worst case are serial killers, but that is just the tip of a mountain of others. It’s common in USA, but present on whole Earth. Strangely there are few channels (having lots of videos) with people covering the numerous (and worst) cases of those killers. Well definitely NSFL topics and videos, e.g. here🛑 (cases e.g. DPR🛑☠️, TB🛑 already having few full movies about too). There is of course a reason here, and it’s to learn from it. Even if it’s just a direct result of 1% people being psychopaths and sociopaths, then added bad parenting, etc.
Here are my personal, bold opinions on this subject. I think we should kill those, as early as possible, without trials. Even as early as when spotted in child doing animal abuse. It was most commonly present among those worst killers. Or after first try/case/victim, but do we really need victims first?? But yeah, we have laws not to kill people. Here it’s resulting in an expense, wasting money and jobs, to keep them alive, there is nothing really to learn from them unfortunately. It’s the first case for me (and not the last) to killing people (death penalty). No doubt for me, surely the best solution (OFC given proper (but short) evidence): if someone does (want to) torture or kill others, they should be dead first☠️, before that even happens.
The problem here is that some of those (high IQ) go into extreme efforts to cover, remain hidden, leave no traces etc. But honestly that’s where I see an issue with neighbours not caring or noticing anything or lack of some basic routine controls of living spaces, basements, even trailers, etc. Sure, it wouldn’t fix completely just made more efforts on killers to move, rent, etc. But IMO it’d be better than nothing. And letting victims suffer and police, investigators etc have more jobs. time spend and pay.
Starting with a link to website with lots of data. One good graph is this list of countries, sorted from best to worst. It also has a slider for year, and it’s good to see how countries improved over years. But clearly at the ending countries are the absolute worst and it’s even more troubling that a few didn’t change almost at all in decades. Living in well developed countries it’s hard to imagine whole countries where you e.g.: don’t have Free Speech, can’t leave country, or go to prison for saying something. Other few I’ll mention which I found rather ridiculous is a country where sex toys are banned, prostitution, gay marriage, or even being gay or masturbation. I’m not saying everyone should do any of these, I’m saying they should be allowed to.
Money is made by countries/governments. Since it isn’t backed by gold, it can be freely produced by federal banks. Then given out in banks as credits. Inflation is done on purpose, it is a result of governments creating more money. This after about a year directly causes inflation. Money’s purpose is to addict people to it. Which will then enslave them to jobs, usually for a lifetime. Money is also there to fuel consumerism in people and economies in countries.
I don’t want to turn this section into another list, I will just put a few huge examples here. Costa Concordia disaster – cruise ship Rana_Plaza_collapse – building in cloth factory 🚧
I remember the time when games were just made well and sold and that was it. I miss that approach, it should have stayed like this forever. It would be the humane, for people approach, not for profit. Back then there were: no updates, no addons (DLCs), no cosmetics (useless, only visual changes), no purchases in games, no gambling, no battle passes or other incentives to addict people to play daily, no e-sports, no monthly payments, and no stories about addicting minors either. At this point it is obvious to me that big companies do have a huge profit in addicting minors (teenagers). Biggest games are just investments now, cost huge sums and are meant to be as long and profitable as possible. Games are now just platforms where players can (but should not) spend real money, on DLCs many made just for sake of profits, cosmetics changing only look of items Also paired with gambling addiction (also to minors) video here, this brings the biggest profits (so far). Gambling happens every time when you don’t know the end result, it is random. We already know this ruins peoples lives by lotteries, slot machines, and lots of other ways. So it has been added to games too, making them shittier than ever.
Not everything is lost. There is an alternative here: FOSS games. We can’t really compare them to paid, huge AAA titles, or maybe even to paid indie titles, so they usually look worse, somewhat dated. But they come with Freedom to learn and modify them. Something that is illegal with commercial, paid copyrighted software. There is also way less FOSS games, because it requires people developing and creating for free, in their free time, for years. I have a list of favourite FOSS games. And I created and developed Stunt Rally (8 years total) for these very reasons, to make a well made FOSS free alternative.
Split to own post^..🚧🚧
Fashion ..🚧
Already in movies section under True Cost (2015)…🚧
Pets🐕..🚧
I’m pretty sure, no pet owner would like to agree or even read it. I already wrote about this in my addictions post. I will just boldly summarize this here. 🚧
Company Addictions
Well seems like each business now needs to nowadays also create an addiction or two. Of course for biggest profits. It’s not enough to create a well made, working product. It is best for companies to also addict customers, which is obviously worst for people and humanity. Big companies hired sociologists and psychologists to Either to company brand, or to buy their product(s), new model or design each year, etc.
This way, honestly, even creating a well made or working product isn’t needed at all. I’ve seen plenty of trash, garbage, useless crap on aliexpress and all other online shops, lots of..🚧
Hype, preorder…🚧
🚧
kickstarter, scams…🚧
🚧
Tier 4: Medium🟢
Biggest fraudster(s)💰
A noteworthy mention here, because of huge amounts of money burned into nothing, also lasting many years. One of the richest and stupidest morons on Earth, Elon Musk. Perhaps he did some useful things in the past, but it gets completely shadowed by recent stupidity.
Here is a channel with videos showing truth about. E.g. about Tesla and biggest capital lost. This also shows how stupid people are to allow this or follow him and his lies, simply to get nothing done while getting biggest sums of money for it and then get away with it. Another video: Dumbest rebranding in History! Twitter – X
And other video about him and the president. Both biggest, retarded idiots of recent times. Also clearly voting is dead (probably since long too), as politics can be sponsored (bribed) to get elected, join government and then do favors (laws, less taxes etc) for the richest elite (MotherEarthF@ckers). And well if you put rich idiots into politics, you can expect more stupidity, nothing good will happen for humanity.
Space missions🚀…🚧
Moon, Mars etc. Billions spent, instead of taking care of the planet and fixing its (previously caused) issues first. 🚧
Solar freaking roadways🛣️
Very ridiculous trend started like 15 or more years ago. Led by maybe not scammers but delusional people. Basically from and for idiots who only want to believe and can’t even do simple math, engineering or get engineers who figured it out.
It is somewhat helpful but still a tool of big companies, to addict to services, pay and make people more stupid. Loose artists of jobs, make art less real. Also AI did train illegally, accessing plenty of resources without respecting licenses. Now that it learned it won’t at all attribute works on which it trained. It was just a big scam on global scale while legal right were backwards like always. AI just KILLED the music industry (the end is here) – explained how artist tell a story and AI does nothing more than generate ..🚧
This is about tons of retarded products (like cables, amps, even knobs) at very high prices that are supposed to be better than regular products. It’s a big scale industry of retarded companies selling to even more stupid but rich people, who will obviously fall for their crap and notice the difference since they payed so much and read or heard about their commercials with nonsense invented vocabulary for thing that don’t actually exist. Also a Placebo effect.
Video Busted: 13 common audiophile MYTHS The DAC Scam – Almost everyone believes the hype – mostly all DACs have the same cheap DAC chip. Yet some retards can pay for a DAC an amount of money that would buy a house. Is Hi-Res Audio A Scam? – about how people hear about 40 Hz to 18 kHz and anything fancy over 20 kHz is pointless. I agree. Simply a scam to pay more. If albums were recorded at CD quality then anything more is just artificially made for profit. It is okay to use e.g. 24-bit and 192 kHz if you record and process your audio, but for just listening made songs CD quality is enough.
Here also another similar audio topic video: White Van Speaker Scam Teardown. Basically a scam of sellers in a car or van, talking people to pay more for a bargain of some sort of supposedly super quality product but on occasion for cash. Even can have fake made magazines or brochures for it. In reality those are lowest possible quality products (very overpriced) that barely work and just were meant to look like high quality. Worst of all it isn’t even illegal mostly, since you can sell anything any any price even if all is fake or lied about quality etc.
Tier 5: Lesser🔵
This is the last tier in this list. Granted, some of it is rather minor. Possibly also random, since those are issues I noticed most in my life (e.g. keyboards because I use them constantly). But for me these also shows how (stupid) issues stay for so long and aren’t likely (or at all) going to improve or change.
Languages🇮🇹🇪🇸
Still many languages used. English seems to be good choice and easy learning for replacing other languages. It is spreading as second or additional language in some countries. But generally even if so, this progress is very slow, if any. I don’t know how many 100s or 1000s of years it would take to unify whole Earth to know 1 common language. I do think the result would make things easier, but I also realize it is extremely costly (time, effort, money) and unlikely to happen.
I noticed also tiny issues e.g. the letter W is still said as double U. It’s really stupid for me, what’s more is that for so many years even, a small improvement for this didn’t happen. I’d either spell W as “woo” or “dub”, there problem solved. It’s just that the world doesn’t do improvements if they don’t make (huge) profits to commercial entities (like companies, governments, billionaires, people with power, etc).
Units SI / imperial📏
Still present on Earth we have 2 systems of units (measurements). The proper, logical one is SI, metric. And there is still this IMO relict of stupidity (that never ended) being imperial. Which sounds just like a bunch of garbage units, with random related values. A relict of a mistake in history.
There has been an attempt in UK to move imperial to SI. I see it rather failed. It’s a pity, I’d imagine this as a needed transformation for whole world. Which after (surely huge) effort would eventually make things easier. But as shown in video of someone trying and failing, the change is almost impossible. Everything would have to change at once, all places and schools teachings too. Lastly an example of a Mars Climate Orbiter disaster which was due to this stupid reason of 2 unit systems existing. There were also other issues/disasters, after a change of unit systems.
Daylight saving time🌖
Another thing, kind of similar to above, is the Daylight saving time. Seems to make more trouble that benefit and even causes health issues for our bodies. But again it was made for maximizing profits, i.e. the last thing a human would need (especially those free living people who don’t need civilization at all and such stupid inventions).
Keyboards, layout⌨️
The most popular (English, US) layout QWERTY is IMO simply a history of human stupidity (sadly like almost all on Earth). I learned about it (long ago) from a cool comic. It started in mechanical typewriters. QWERTY was a result of an old issue of jamming keys. Fix was done the worst way, by separating letters we type often near. So it was made to be inefficient for people typing. Additionally first row in QWERTY has all letters from typewriter word. Now this is what I’d call stupidity at its best. A commercial, done by marketing or CEO idiots to promote sales, without any regard to users (and their health) of those products. Even worse, it was fixed soon after. But producers were already selling plenty and didn’t want to change the layout. And this freaking stupidity lasts until now. Then 30 years after, first Dvorak layout was invented using intelligence and logic for people to type better. There are many more layouts now e.g. Workman. It likely is used by people who know about it and care enough.
Next there are also ergonomic aspects, since the flat design with key rows on keyboard is rather hurtful for hands. There are many ergonomic keyboards e.g. Ergodox, Kinesis Advantage. Sadly an ergonomic keyboard with better layout is something you can buy extra, it is not the default keyboard for PC or laptop. The default is still the stupidest thing ever made, the first working/selling version. Bad for health and typing and not ergonomic. It’s up to everyone to improve themself. at higher price or as DIY.
Split to own post^..🚧
Mods, colors🌈…🚧
Car mods, lit PCs, keyboards, decorations, paints, events, sports, etc. 🚧
Emotions..🚧
The majority (or almost everything) is created around people’s emotions, or to act on them, not for reason or improvement. It all exists because of those 90% who feel, sense and act upon emotions and feeling. There are huge industries (like sports, fashion, events, etc) that thrive on this (well IMO stupidity). These industries came to be because of emotions, and other applied business strategies based on and abusing people’s emotions. For example: you don’t need to..🚧
➡️Summary⌛🟡
Here is a quick guide, a summary of key most important points of action I recommend every human to do, to get rid of stupidity and improve issues on Earth, not continue them. Of course I could write: do this, don’t do that, but I don’t like such approach, I’m not telling anyone what to do (and don’t like being told it either). Everyone is different and in different situation, also was in different at birth. Which could be forced by country, family, friends etc. Changing may not be possible even, could require significant efforts, or could mean leaving country, family, friends, city, etc. So I am giving you my advice. It’s up to you. Obviously everyone has to check if this or that is working and improving as desired effect. Since these statements are short and to the point, they still, unavoidably could sound harsh or so.
🌐Global level
👥Overpopulation. There is already 10x more people on Earth than it can sustain. Many issues resulted (or intensified) from this like: introduced conflicts, wars, less resources, more pollution, etc. IMO anyone can have a better, even more meaningful life while not having children and helping others (instead of your new family). Having children is what brings companies and governments profits. Not having them means a lot less money needed and more time in life. But of course that’s the very unpopular way. If it was up to me, nobody would be allowed to have more than one child, and/or had to be already financially viable before.
🏦Governments, politics are (the first ones) not to be trusted, at all. Especially now when corporations control governments and lobby or bribe politicians. Of course there are exceptions, and improvements happening (e.g. by activists and movements).
💵Money is fake (and volatile), it’s not based on gold since a century. Inflation comes from printing more money. We know about it since years (it’s e.g. in Money Socialism book, and well educated people understood it decades ago). It is done on purpose and is slowly but surely stealing from everyone. I think all countries do this, and on purpose. Printing money and giving loans is the governments (central banks) way to enslave people to jobs, consumerism, and get more GDP or economic power, also national debts. Wars are partly a result of this too.
💸Loans are bad, they fuel the above approach.
🤪Corporations are the global psychopaths of today. They do everything bad for humanity, only for their profit (e.g. lie, deceit, disrespect people (even own workers, and our privacy), break law, pollute our planet, manipulate, even rule governments). We should get rid of them (and capitalism) and all the harm they do to our environment and society. We definitely should not be a fan of any big company and try to avoid using their products and services.
👗Fashion is a new name for planned obsolescence. It’s absolutely artificial (and not needed), was added to world by big companies, for profits. It causes serious world issues as shown in True Cost (2015) documentary. Namely: deaths, poor payments and living conditions in countries where people make cloths for little money, to be cheapest for big companies and consumers. There are big garbage areas (seen from space) with discarded cloths (would still be useful) just to sell new designs next week (fast fashion). Companies make consumers feel bad not having new, and throw out old, and addict them to buying frequently. A sickening business practice done way too often, since way too many years.
⛪Religions are just another system of control and a waste of life time and money. Partly also connected to governments, or added by. Religions are for those who don’t fully believe in themselves, who need made up traditions, thousands of years old, started way before science. Religions also work by abusing children, addicting people, social coercion and telling people how to live (as slaves of religion and fear). The solution to religions is atheism. It gives people (and their children) freedom from all of that (e.g. repeated praying and other religious activities). But also tolerance is important. Religions take decades (or centuries) to fade out, and for some people it is already too late (to even let doubts and logical thoughts against them).
❌Prisons do not work, those don’t help people. Best visible in U.S. (which privatize prisons), they give commercial entities a way to enslave people to unpaid work (forced labour). And if not that, they are simply a way to lock people instead of helping them directly. Surely the cheapest way of dealing with problems (crime), not a way of solving it in the best (but costly) way (by e.g. better education, better paid jobs or other alternatives for those who get into crime instead).
🏫Education and 🏥medical care should be free of charge. If a country forces you into debt or tells have to pay for any, I recommend finding and moving to a better country (better for people not for companies). It’d be also great if this meant elderly people care, without huge own costs.
®️Patents are artificial and wrong. Meant for profits and resulting in human stupidity. All knowledge should be available free, e.g. with attribution to authors, like CC-BY licenses require. Freedom is best visible, already working in Free Software (FOSS) and Open Source Hardware (OSH).
📱Smartphones are especially bad for kids, teenagers, youth, elderly and other inexperienced people. They are by default for showing commercials, spreading games and social media and come with many preinstalled bloatware software. Many of which aren’t necessary, most of the time or at all. These devices addict way too many young people when they could (normally as before) think about something in life instead of watching mostly entertaining or just dumb content.
👤Personal level
📉Never having loans or debt to pay is the best approach. If you don’t have the money now, to pay the price – you can’t afford it.
📈Investing money is crucial so the constant inflation doesn’t loose it. Saving money is most important, not spending (to avoid consumerism and gambling). Financial freedom (Financial independence) is the end goal here.
📺Commercials are the culmination of human stupidity. Annoying and distracting, lies and idiotic situations or statements (at IQ level of kids) meant for profits only. Commercials are also the state propaganda. It is a huge issue, and consumerism fuel, also causing more stupidity. Avoiding them is key. For me also mocking them is (optional but) a natural reaction. When browsing internet (you can avoid most of commercials) by using uBlock Origin, and also other privacy focused addons. It’s rather hard to avoid outside and In cities, but we can try to avoid cities. There are also health benefits in this approach (less pollution, distraction, noise, stress, places to spend money, etc.).
🛍️Anti-consumerism (no overconsumption) and minimalism, are the right ways. This means buying wisely, only when needed, at fair price, minimalism, simple_living, frugality (e.g. r/frugal reddit), etc are solutions for life. Reducing to minimum e.g. number of cloths you have, and all other things you buy, especially for entertainment which can be done to some degree freely. Not getting addicted to collecting things. Wisely being able to buy, sell and repair or modify when needed. E.g. cloths, furniture, etc. Avoid fashion (like fire), you only need to buy new cloths when the previous are worn off, after like 10 or more years. And you don’t need more than about 33 items.
🛠️”Do it yourself” (DIY, my page) is my key recommendation for everything that we can. Especially making food. For me (in IT) also electronics and software. DIY could also mean house repairs or even building it whole yourself. Free living people can do it all by themselves in life, why should we be slaves of companies doing almost all for us and then working also for them. Obviously in modern life there is little that could be done fully yourself, but the more we can, the more freedom we have and useful skills.
📚Self education. People need knowledge, reason and logic. Likely not everyone can think and learn faster like the rare, most intelligent types: INTP, INTJ. Higher IQ people learn easier and handle real life issues better. Much depends on personality and available resources, also HDI of country and language used. I highly recommend learning English and using free learning resources on internet too (at least possible to do in IT or other jobs using PC). For me it’s key to learn our whole lifes. Always learning from mistakes (not repeating them), and best/cheaper from others mistakes. The moment we stop learning (about everything we do or need to) is when we become complete slaves of others.
📑Investing in yourself is the main priority in life. I also recommend learning the most needed, useful skills (in life) and self improvement category of books/videos. I recommend mmm blog and discomfortacademy, likely there are others.
Take care of your health first. This also means avoiding bad food and making your own healthy meals.🚧
🔍Focus. Getting rid of distractions is also important. Especially in a world full of commercials, addiction fueled attractions (games etc, even real money gambling is now added to games by most), social media and all arguing, or fighting for artificially created topics like politics, new pronouns, body building, and countless other.
🧹Cleaning is a skill everyone should learn and use. So make it all tidy and organized in both: your living place and your mind.
FOSS. Using Free and Open Source Software and Open Hardware for every purpose whenever possible. Commercial software and hardware work like slavery, means lack of privacy, is addicting people, making them stupider by not allowing to learn from sources (how it was made). I recommend moving to Linux (that page also lists and links more issues from huge closed software companies).
🐕People should get rid of pets from their lives. We don’t need living animal slaves, bred for emotional support and others profits. All who don’t have a medical condition (e.g. requiring a dog for support) – don’t need a pet. People can do more for each other if they don’t feed pets and waste time caring for them. Personally (as an INTJ) I also find them annoying to hear everytime, reminding me of still weak, addicted people who can’t live without a dog, etc.
🚸Kids. IMO the last thing the world needs is more people (enslaved to the system, and from government’s point of view just tax payers). We need smarter people. So human quality over quantity. With current overpopulation, IMO no one should be allowed more than 1 child. I think the world is too broken to rise children into it. Too: corrupt, sick with money poisoning (capitalism), consumerism, polluted. It needs fixing first. Climate change won’t stop for like 50 years. With uncontrolled, unlimited population, progressing nature/forest depletion, pollution, water/food shortages, more extreme weather, etc. the living conditions are bad and will get worse. I would recommend everyone reading this page fully,before having child(ren). Just to know well, what kind of world you’d be forcing your child(ren) to live in, even worse in future. OFC it depends where you look (the rich don’t look (enough) at poor) or live.
Kids are born infinitely stupid (with no knowledge), it takes 20 (or 30) years for them to learn. The earlier in life people have a child (if they do), the stupider the world gets (IQ average drops), also parents have less time to learn. But well, it’s like with pets, most feeling people just need to have them. Also religions likely dictate it. If you don’t have financial freedom already, when having a child, or don’t realize the cost (about 200 000$ needed to rise 1 child) then you’re just taking a (uneducated) leap of faith, and agreeing to be a slave of job(s) and the system for 20 or so years (and raising a child is an extra job for your child). Lastly when having a child you’ll get just a random personality type (can’t choose e.g. *NT*) and other traits.
⚖️You can’t trust anyone, even yourself. You need to verify actions (for desired result) and check for truth. There are plenty of lies, misinformation, manipulations, froads, scams. Some just for personal benefits others paid to bring more profits. And some just because of people being stupid. As for personal trust, you can e.g. write down your goals, measure progress, test if you realize them, prioritize, split to smaller tasks.
A few of those “old times” words that I do avoid in my life are: luck, hope, patriotism, faith, believe, honor, pride, superstition, guess, lie, tradition, religion, sport.🚧
Emotions. As an INTJ I realize those are chemicals in my brain that cloud your judgement, disturb thinking, and make it harder to make logical and reasonable decisions. But there are many (16) personalities and everyone has some emotions, most ..🚧
For me one of worst things I can do is buy something. It needs a lot of time to choose and filter bad products, low quality or hoax items, bad prices etc. and end product is still not exactly what’s needed, just what sells best). Hence I wrote the other page about buying reasonably.
Clearly some inventions aren’t possible to do yourself. Or not completely, i.e. they still require parts to buy or materials and tools. But at least you can choose which parts yourself with DIY. Surely it’d be difficult nowadays for a self made car, plane, etc. due to many regulations and long list of requirements to allow use in public. It’s likely easier for police to deal with standard made cars, not with millions of user made variations.
Doing everything yourself would need a lot of time too. Even a lifetime. Although it is possible by free people living in jungles, people living by themself (centuries ago), possibly sustainable farmers, and other very rare cases nowadays.
The do it yourself approach (DIY) for me was always important. Mainly for software (programs etc), hardware (keyboards, electronics), etc. But it can go far, even into building a house.
🤔Reasons
There are several reasons why DIY or product modifications are IMHO very needed and the best approach:
Firstly, there is no such thing as a product that has all features / properties that I need, with proper control and interface (knobs, convenient buttons, menu, etc). This can only be achieved by modifying or developing it myself, according to my current needs. I now see all electronics products just as ingredients for further modification. Ideally I would create one from start, but can be too much time and effort spent.
Secondly, I am an anti-consumer, I usually hate buying. It needs a lot of time for research, to find a product that is closest to: not a hoax/hype, reliable, functional, fair-priced, still cheap, durable (will work for long), allows repairs, looks okay, black, etc. (all at once; add needed, strike out not needed😄). On top of that I don’t like spending money (I like saving it) to support companies, which constantly produce (soon-to-be) garbage on purpose.
Reusable. Many parts in few of my projects, lasted for more than one project. They were reused. E.g. when I start a project I can reuse parts from other past projects, like MCU board, display, switches, even universal PCB or wires. I’m sure for people DIY making stuff e.g. from wood, for house, boat, van, etc. this can also be true, some materials last for long. It is a way more reasonable approach than mass producing soon to be garbage products (like fast fashion cloths, smartphones, etc.).
Lastly, it is a fun and easy hobby that grants better, more customized products for daily use. Many times now, allowing me to have features or functionalities that aren’t available at all. And I’m not adding yet here, because most likely they may never be available. Simplicity and low cost are driving factors for mass producing (stupid items), not: feature fullness, repairability, open source, customizability, etc.
🪟My DIY examples
From my projects, here are lots of examples for DIY wins:
📻Kitchen HiFi. First major in 2020, then 2023 and 2026. This was a cassette player from 1997. I basically modified it ever since. Was likely the first product I did and I’m still going to.
⌨️Keyboards, my firmware (latest 2020, previous 2018, oldest 2005, keys mod). Honestly the number of features on screen with my keyboard is just way higher than any commercial product. It is also easier for me to use.
💧PC water cooling 2026 and previous until 2022. Fan controller 2021. Surely there isn’t too much we can do to build a PC. For me buying a console (or even a laptop or smartphone) is the worst. OFC we can’t produce CPU, GPU or chips ourself, that’s one reason for chip factories and electronics industry. But definitely putting a PC from parts was always for me the best approach. And the way to cool a PC is something for DIY too. Instead of so many stupid overpriced PC mods (like RGB fans, fancy PC cases, too expensive WC solutions), etc. OFC if you’re into PC with lights or such it’s also something that can be done DIY way (e.g. with a MCU and WS2812B LEDs).
📖Double Commander fork 2019. A PC program that I use always daily. Didn’t have few things I needed and I had to do them. It could be hard to convince original developers to add something I only find useful, and there’s no need to. Color center 2017, a tool program made just for managing my coloring list and helping me transition them easier from the worse Total Commander.
▶️Original: cAmp audio player 2020 (older 2009), so old now, yet it’s still for me the (daily used) program that nobody else could do the way I did, I had to do it my way, quite early in life. Even one feature (of like 10) isn’t done elsewhere (like filtering, rating, bookmarks, or time display).
📁Build Console (useful tool I made at work) 2017, few people at work used it too. I’m sure large companies wouldn’t even allow spending work time by employees creating work tools. Employees convenience (or anything for them really) etc. is not their profit, just a waste.
🎛️SXIV 2002 my old music tracker program, was a free alternative to any commercial one. Was limited, but surely way more convenient to use and better looking, than any other made.
DIY is IMHO the only solution, not anything commercial, at least for the things that can be done so. For me surely DIY is great in software, electronics, and possibly other daily appliances or even house elements. With DIY I got parts reused, I can fix, adjust or modify it later, etc. I set the budget (or price).
It gives freedom and low cost. It promotes learning, not addiction to buying (consumerism). And most importantly for me: it makes it possible to have stuff that isn’t commercially available, and probably won’t. Crucial everyday useful things and software.
I recently found this channel (mainly DIY RC toys) very inspiring and enlightening. There are plenty of DIY electronic projects now e.g. on hackaday.
Shortly about general simulations of real life materials. Then focusing on real time physics mainly for games (or robotics). Ending with vehicle dynamics links.
⚠️Warning: work in progress 🚧
⚙️Simulations
This short section is for slow simulations that don’t work in real time. They are usually require more computations and are better when compared to real physics. I will list few links to few methods of simulating. I had only a brief experience on college.
Like for every blog post, firstly please be sure to read blog info to understand my blog.
⏱️Overview
I write about (mainly video and PC) games as an addiction here with some of my experience and advice.
Games 🎮🕹️
Video games on consoles, PC, smartphones, cabinets, as well the old sport games, cards or board games, etc. There is simply no end here and beginning was likely in ancient times or earlier.
General⚙️
Video games are not realistic, never will be, and honestly you might go out more often (or watch more science) to notice better the complexity of physics involved in lighting effects, atmosphere (air flow), water, dirt surface, how big and detailed real world is, etc. Games are just a bunch of recent algorithms for recent hardware emulating something that mimics real world for better sales. Obviously other styles exist too to cover more people’s preferences and to add variety.
Games provide either a simple logic puzzle, or a basic world with some rules. Of course logic games get difficult with more combinations (like chess) and randomness plays a big part in all games (e.g. cards). Looking at a typical ARPG game where you kill monsters and bosses, or even most other games, there is a path or logic in each level you need to follow. Vehicle simulations tend to be more complex in computation but your steering inputs will always be slightly different and random. For any game, if you try enough times then you’ll learn the path or logic eventually. Sadly the main obstacle for games is spending more time (or in recent more money to win). It’s not like in life that a choice can effect rest of it. In games you usually just need to continue and later games tend to be more endless since this brings more profits. Not like in old days where games had an end or would become simply boring.
Addiction
Playing games can easily become and addiction, even a lifetime one.
It’s no wonder: games are (and were since cabinets) made to be addicting, to make the most profits. The best playable games (for me made about 1989-2004) are just fun, enjoyable, well made, and had one (or no) cost. But all games still have a simple, capturing world, way easier than the real world. Also games are more rewarding instantly (quicker and more flashy) than dealing with real life problems or continuing your creative projects which can take a lot of time, determination, knowledge and learning.
Lastly I have to mention the Steamvirus here, which I never used and would simply avoid like poison. Its only goals being: spreading addiction and huge profits. It seems to be a monopoly at that too. Here is a longer video about it (how sick it’s company got).
👉Recommendations
I got one quote here: “stop playing a game before it starts playing you”, meaning it consumes your life and you don’t control it anymore. There are already a few websites on how to stop playing video games (e.g. here or here).
But if you still want or do play, I recommend 2 videos with much needed info for nowadays made games:
What Went Wrong with Gaming? Explaining history since when games were okay, until now when they put so much abusive, anti-human, shit into all the modern games that it just makes me throw up not even look and only continue my/our game or any other FOSS game.
if you were even thinking of making games for a job or liking big game companies, here is a video for that: Which Video Game Company Has Done The WORST Things: A Tournament. It’s a toxic work environment that brings huge quite random profits but only for few people and creative people’s ideas don’t matter only those sick, unhuman, retarded marketing practices.
Before playing a game, I’d recommend researching it first, watching gameplay (after its release) and only if you like every aspect then playing. But for me since years just watching somebody’s gameplay, longplay, play through or walk through (usually just partly) of a game is enough. Some other movies about games mechanics are interesting too, even more than games themself. And glitches (e.g. here) are much funnier too.
I would also highly recommend staying away from the most popular games. There is always more danger of loosing money or getting addicted in them. Instead I would recommend FOSS games. Like with every Free Software alternative, it does bring crucial benefits, you can learn how it is made, or even modify it (after time, eventually). One way of making sure (or more difficult) you don’t get commercial games (that easily) is moving to Linux. I could probably install some big free commercial game if I had still Windows, but since I’m on Debian, I likely can’t play most (not supported) or would need some serious trouble to do it, and lastly I don’t want to contaminate my OS with commercial crap.
⌛Conclusions
For me it was always (since I was about 11) more fun and better rewarding experience to create and develop my games rather than just playing. This way it was an incentive to learn and gain at first programming knowledge, and later in few more areas (like having contributors, artists, forum and website for our game Stunt Rally etc).
I did play many games for sure, but not too many, especially later in life, and none of those poisoned by marketing and payments. When I did play, I also always noticed: technology, visual artifacts, game logic, how they did implement things, bugs (sometimes very funny) and hardware limits.
Obviously, having played or watched quite many games, I have to add that games are quite entertaining adventures. Games can enrich our life, show different worlds (just like books and movies) and possibly can help learning e.g. logic, reflexes, even selling (items), communication (if with real people), language or how they implented it all. Especially for younger people. Of course there are way better ways of learning (just more boring): books, tutorials, websites, online courses, etc.
But it is important to not stretch this into an addiction. Just like I only enjoy movies and don’t watch series at all, I also enjoyed games that just ended, had a definitive finish. Seems so long ago. Now games have lots of paid DLCs (far more expensive than game itself), in game transactions where you can spend a lot too (but shouldn’t at all). Lastly online chats and mulitplayer games can get toxic too.
Sadly current way for most of latest commercial games is making them playable for years, putting as much content as possible (e.g. as collectible items for gambling), also to add hundreds of hours of playing by adding randomization, or making people play daily. Too many games now are just a graphically advanced framework over a very simple slot machine at its core. And it is crucial to not fall for this or setting yourself a limit before and knowing when to stop.
Like for every blog post, firstly please be sure to read blog info to understand my blog.
⏱️Overview
In this post I describe and give my advice on how to buy rationally, not as the commercial world’s addiction (to fight consumerism). I start with my approach of questions to ask before buying. Then I write more about buying groceries with further observations and my rules. Additionally regarding internet shopping. Last chapter is about selling (an important opposite to buying), with advices from my experiences.
👉Approach
I think this should motivate us more to see buying (even if only a bit) more as a last resort action, not just a regular, normal daily thing to do. Or at least something to think through more, not just accept without caring about whole world’s consequences of careless, impulsive, emotional, addictive buying.
So if buying can’t be avoided, at least it should (always) be done reasonably and thoughtfully, not carelessly and routinely.
❔Questions
This is likely the main part of this page with my advice (and few examples too). Probably best before buying: hardware, appliances, electronics, PC parts, and more.
The key questions (for me) to ask before buying something are:
Do I need it? This is the most important, first question. A question which no seller will ask you ever. Clearly any who did would be fired, as it hurts the business.
Do I need to buy it? Is it possible to use or fix something I already have instead? Or could I maybe create something myself with same purpose/functionality? Surely it is more time consuming, needs effort, takes longer to finish, and is likely more costly too. But this way we learn and can fix it, modify, or extend later.
✨Do I need to buy a new product or would a used one be cheaper and/or better? Problem with new ones is their price drops a lot when they become used. They are quite overpriced, because everyone needs a cut of profit there. Some new products are too cheaply made and old ones made were of better quality. New products have a lot of unneeded fancy features just to boost price and bring more profits.
🎛️What are the key parameters and which are needed for me? BTW. which don’t matter and are artificially made, e.g. to justify emotional buying (like in fashion) with stupid planned obsolescence tactic? E.g. for TV/monitors, size isn’t that important, resolution is, then color representation, etc.
📰(Optional) Is the description on a level? Not too short, not bloated. I’ve seen it too often: long, excessive descriptions of what an amazing thing it is, or how many features it has, with lots of useless text, or stupid manipulated images of this product in various places (I see it’s not even there, it’s image was pasted on a background image) or even generated by AI. Simply not on a level of a technical savvy person. This likely happens when a selling company mass enlists their products or for too expensive ones. Or to trigger emotional buying. The opposite can happen with regular people selling stuff. Not enough info, written on phone etc. Need to inquire for more if even possible. IMO you’re either selling or fooling around.
💵What price is okay for what I want? It may sound simple, but surely there is effort made to make it confusing.
🪙There are too cheap products, just barely made to look and function. These either will break soon (can even during transport) or are so cheap that they will eventually make you buy again for more cost/budget. Clearly even if so, the purpose of such garbage (too cheap item) is done, if you can’t return it for free (or cheaply). It was only meant to be made cheaply, and sold for profit. Even if it was a lie to begin with.
💰There are also way too expensive items. Where the cost is much higher than what you get for it. For these if you wait like 1/2 or 1 year they become much cheaper. You’d be paying to get it too early. So our target is in the middle usually, where cost per performance or quality (or other key feature) is optimal (lowest), i.e. it’s not overpriced or too cheap.
🏭Which products (not companies) are the best ones currently? Companies create new products yearly and constantly. It’s their business and by making more choices, they can earn more from people’s emotions, naivety or lack of knowledge. It’s why it is so important to not stick to one brand. That’s just what they want us to do so badly with ads, commercials, logos, etc. (as documented here their job is to lie and manipulate too).
📉Which are most cost efficient? Considering best price for quality ratio. E.g. fuel economy for (old combustion engine) cars etc. For CPUs/GPUs that is cost per performance. I.e. price per benchmark points (performance test result value). E.g. website for CPUs, for GPUs.
🧰(Optional) How to repair it later? If possible at all, and not consumable of course. I’d rather buy 1 product made every 5 to 10 years, with parts to replace. Parts available and continued for that time too. E.g. Fairphone is one such company for smartphones. Sadly the cost of fairly producing a smartphone is much higher than the cheapest commercial deals with brand software, bloatware, annoying setup, ads/commercials, etc.
🪛(Optional) how to modify it? As a DIY fan I see all products as unfinished now or even just ingredients. There is always something annoying, (e.g. a buzzer sound), too simple (no options, basic), or just not the way I’d like it. So at this step I look at possibility of changing it. E.g. for phone, audio player or anything with user interface (GUI) – is there an alternative software to use (e.g. OS, or firmware). It may be rare, but I always prefer products that have it.
🗨️What are user comments saying about the product? Possibly with user made pictures of the product. Those are very important to me. Especially the bad comments, which can reveal hidden product flaw(s), annoying functionality, breaking parts, and even more details. This is the way to get over the product or brand hype, etc. Only real (and intelligent) people (after using for a while) can tell if a product is good, well made and working properly for years. There could be videos of a product, but I’d value only regular people doing that. Not company’s short product intro, neither those channels that constantly show or unpack products. One could even go further if possible (takes more time, but great for cars) and look for common failures happening for users, or repairs they needed after years.
💸Where can I buy finally chosen product at lowest price? For new ones it means checking for cheapest store (could be a website that does it). For used ones in auctions it may require checking few models (not just one if rare), waiting longer to get one or checking those which get available. In the end it takes longer to buy, but it is definitely cheaper, a bit more stressful, but more rewarding. It also can have the benefit of meeting a human seller who used the thing and knows it in practice.
📦How to return it? There are a few things that can happen. E.g. you get a damaged product, or you test it and don’t like it, or you suddenly don’t need it or realized a better one. Whatever the case, even if rare, I say we need to know how to return a product before buying. Here also comes the benefit of buying (locally) new things, on auctions. I’m not sure how common it is, but for me I see mostly that I can return it either for free (I also have free shipping for a yearly cost) or at the cost of shipping. I’ve seen already few, too many, people in comment writing it was bad, but they had no time to return or such nonsense. Clearly still a profit for a company just a bit worse if with a negative comment, but not all even do that.
⌛Conclusion
So yes, that’s a lot of info to get, before buying. And surely it takes time🕗 to buy rationally for me. I think for smaller or cheaper items I don’t even spend time for most (of above). But the more expensive thing you buy the more time you’d need to make sure it’s good for you (not for producer/seller). Especially for houses, cars, boats, etc.
I do value highly people’s ratings and comments🗨️ especially negative ones for products. Because they often reveal product flaws or bad quality, simply even disqualifying them for me. Sometimes it’s enough for just one (clever) person to mention something like e.g. being from plastic and not metal (meaning it will break eventually after using, or even in transport) to reject a product. Surely if more people mention a flaw then it’s better to look for an alternative, possibly meaning higher price range.
With product rating⭐ I can filter out all those stupid products that don’t even serve its purpose (well enough) and don’t deserve to be bought (and frankly shouldn’t exist). The only problem being there is so much variety in products nowadays that some aren’t bought often to have a decent number of ratings or comments. On the other side if a product is very popular, it has lots of reviews and comments. And there always are some bad ones, sometimes those are due to people not necessarily bad product.
But for long lasting things (like PC parts) I can spend days before buying. Surely if I’m buying e.g. tea or food, which I’ve already done before and know it, and see the price is still same, after I first determined it to be best, then it’s a quick choice to buy again. Once a while though it’d be good to consider if it’s not an addiction or if there is some even better alternative. E.g. buying it through internet instead of in grocery shop, to have it delivered without effort or have much better price and variety. Or not buying at all, due to not being healthy etc.
🛍️Groceries
This is a special case of buying, since it’s so common, thus I made an own section for it here. Buying groceries (food, etc.) is something that I do most often and since years. So naturally I have a few observations and I got myself a couple of rules. I describe them below, in case anyone finds them useful too. Some aspects may be broader (for more products, not just groceries).
❔What to buy locally
What do I buy in local grocery shop(s)? Well ideally only things that I need to buy: new, rather quick and especially those I need to take a closer look at. E.g. vegetables, fruit, bread, wraps, dairy, meat, etc. So I’d rather buy locally things that could be damaged in transport, possibly due to cheap, bad packaging. Same if I can’t wait 2 days to receive it in a package. Also things I’d not need to return for any reason.
Buying from internet is great, if you know a product: is packaged well, hard to damage, easy to return. Or if you want more choices, lower prices. And if you can wait, also are prepared to return it if needed.
When to buy locally
I need a good reason to go out to shop. E.g. I don’t have bread, wraps, stuff for next lunch or I have many things to buy already (having more would be to much to carry, I don’t have or use a car). I usually go twice a week, I dislike it more often (makes me feel like a consumer, wasting time).
Sales
I never go because there is a promotion or sale (e.g. something is 50% off etc.). If I see one, and I’m sure I will use it (or 2nd product, when 2 are cheaper) then I’m okay to buy. But honestly such sales are just for profit – a fake reason to get people more often into stores, where they’d be presented with lots of other products, or placed on purpose near common things, to buy impulsively or emotionally. Yet there surely are people who “hunt” such sales (visit and use many), but the reason is different, they don’t have much money, but do have time (e.g. older people).
🗒️List to buy
I first (always) prepare a list of things to buy, on paper. I never go without it into store.
Why? Easy, stores are made to show off everything they sell, and manipulate people to buying. The latter is against people (not for them, just for profit). And having a list of things I need before I enter a store helps me stay focused on what I need, and avoid all the garbage they have.
Why paper? Well it’s cheapest, lightest. It also isn’t a problem to loose of drop. I surely wouldn’t use a heavy, battery powered, smartphone (or other device), showing ads or otherwise bothering me (I mostly don’t even take it into store). I like paper also for other things like my electronics schematics or to do lists, it’s really the best, it definitely proved to last longer than my HDDs.
But honestly can’t I think I ever saw anybody with a list in grocery store. IDK maybe once, can’t remember. It is a serious problem.
💵Prices
Knowing the prices is key. Yet so easily to forget about it or just not care. It is also discouraged by the system, due to economy changes, constant inflation, etc. BTW likely all made on purpose (more in human stupidity post, by governments to keep people stupid and steal from them, benefit from it, etc).
If you don’t know how much something costs then you’re just gambling and are likely to pay more. I think it’s obvious, that the one way of saying: “oh no, I’m not buying it here and now” when presented with a product, is when you know it’s more expensive here (while you know the lowest price). Doesn’t matter why, but local shops (especially those near city centers) will always have higher prices than internet stores.
⚖️Ingredients, nutrition stats
Another key and very important aspect of products.
💰Inflation
Yes inflation is a PITA (for prices) here. I can only assume if something is generally more expensive due to inflation. Can’t anymore have once price of product(s) for years. I’m sure it’s done on purpose (by governments etc). Would be too easy for people, and so prices are more elusive and it’s easier for sellers to cheat, for governments to manipulate, etc. Ideally I’d want 0%, no inflation ever, and so I could pay for milk or bread always the same (or close) after years, it would be easy to predict living expenses for whole life so.
9️⃣Ending 9s
Lastly one more thing BTW. Fortunately not everywhere, but likely in malls, galleries, etc. The freaking ending 9s in prices, e.g.: 4.99, 149.90, 199, 2999, etc. Why can’t they just make it right: 5, 150, 200, 3000. Why this still continues is so retarded and stupid that I can’t even. It’s like they assume buyers are 6 years old (but then again they also want us to be so, using commercials, having the same level). I first thought it’s to keep coins and other values in circulation, but it’s not. It is so you can’t figure out that easily how much you’ll pay. Seriously I think this should be forbidden, penalized, it’s so f%$ed up and dumb. Not only prices look bad, they also needs constant adjusting. I guess some people have money and forget to add 1, or they buy so much they don’t even care, or don’t even count (or estimate) the final price to pay. Now that’s even easier to happen without using physical money (just cards, paying with phone, etc). Even if so, some may end up either paying more then they thought, or just not buying a product or two at end. Either way I see this as a (way too long) practice for profit, and against humanity.
🌎Alternatives
If I can buy something from internet then it’d be worse to buy from local shop(s). Internet stores (without physical location to enter) don’t need to pay rent etc. and can operate at smaller expense, this results in them having lower product prices. Other reasons for using only internet stores is: more to choose from and having larger packages. E.g. I recently found a good local company selling heavy (also not colorful) packages of nuts etc. I never saw such big packages and such low prices (per mass) of nuts in a local grocery shop.
Not only that, I also see much more products to choose in internet. Good for lower prices or finding stuff you’d never see in shop and for more variety (flavours, brands, producers, etc). More of course means bigger selection possible, but also means you could end up buying more (just because) and more time needed to grasp (e.g. product alternatives or variety). Spending less time on all this (for research first, before buying) would brings us back into gambling, i.e. rushed purchase, missed products (needing return, so more time and effort) and consumerism.
Surely a store in a freaking shopping gallery will have higher prices to pay for rent. While yes, you could check out a product in real life (like a jacket, for quality) before buying. But the general idea of shopping galleries is to spread consumerism and making money from emotional, impulsive, irrational buying (driven by human stupidity).
🗺️Topics
There are few broader topics reaching further than just buying. I’ll briefly describe them here. Buying from buyer’s point of view can be a quick gratification or satisfaction for spending money,
🛍️Consumerism
It’s crystal clear for me that the current world’s commercial addiction (consumerism) is way too high. There are countless shopping malls🛒, centers, etc. They’re getting bigger, more fancy, annoying and addicting, more Earth unfriendly and resource wasting. I mean the garbage produced on Earth is even noticeable from space now, in many places. In addition anyone may start a business and sell almost anything. There are plenty of garbage items on big auction websites (e.g. aliexpress and similar) and smaller (likely in every country).
🔨Planned obsolescence
Sadly no company makes things that last for long anymore. Most are even specifically made to break just after warranty time (more info here: planned obsolescence). Here a video about Apple, which is notorious for using many such practices, of course done on purpose to maximize profits. Why? Sadly because “f@ck you all, we need profits” is companies only interest. This goes also on such scale that it effects whole humanity and Earth. Yet it will continue as long it makes profit and enough people support its existence.
🏭Corporations
Companies (corporations) act as psychopaths (movie explaining this) with disregard to humanity, law, resources, workers and Earth, they also (in newer movie): lie, manipulate, falsify, addict, etc. about really anything they do, to maximize their profits.
There are surely few tactics used like: sales, fashion, planned obsolescence, addicting to buying, products to buy on emotions (from colors, smell, variants, art) etc. all meant for profit only. These not only come from human stupidity (which allowed them to exist) but also drive human stupidity (consumerism and (all other ways of) unnecessary buying).
Since worldwide stores (or even local ones) are corporations, the movie is right here too. They are the psychopaths, not your friends or allies. Thus my view of stores (and sellers) is the same as for any company, they are not here to help me, but to abuse my situation, and to extract as much profit as possible. The situation is not being able to grow food or make all stuff myself and avoiding buying.
Likely also what governments want us to be (and wanted since long) as they profit from this too. Now corporations even dictate laws, bribe politicians and so rule governments and us, to the point of destroying Earth habitat and enslaving humanity.
I wrote more from those 2 documentaries in human stupidity page’s section, continuing topic.
🐝Bees
Well here will be my comparison image (or allegory): Producers, sellers (and psychopathic corporations running then) want us to be like bees when buying. I.e. tiny, mindless creatures that will flock into stores and buy products with their eyes only. Just like bees whole day flying onto colorful flowers because they can’t see further or don’t know the big picture.
I like this image. It reminds me to use logic, reason and think for every purchase. Not to be like a bee. And 2 C more😄.
There was a video somewhere of that rush of people (like a swarm of bees) overflowing a store on black Friday sale or some other shit. Great example of what consumerism does to people, driven by psychopathic corporations.
⛓️Dependency
I don’t want to already say slavery, but I think the goal is close or same. Centuries ago people in general could do more themselves. Sure some still can, and there are even people living free from money or corporations. But on average I think most people buy daily and don’t even think about it. My point here is that: when we buy regularly, we forget about doing things ourself (more on my DIY page). But this approach is of course the goal of companies and producers: to addict (as many as possible) people to buying (and being dependent of) their products (or services). Later it’s a matter of getting more money, either by higher prices, cheaper ingredients/materials, smaller portions, etc.
🤝Selling
Well selling is basically the opposite of buying. And it is an equally important thing to do. I could say the more I buy the less I sell, meaning I’m more addicted to buying. The best way for lasting products, would probably be selling old one or something else first, then buying a new one. But how often that happens.
There are few (mostly bad) alternatives to selling like:
👥Donating (to someone who needs). Well a good thing, but clearly while loosing any money (that could be got back if sold). Still, sometimes the fastest way, and with respect to others who need it. Also may be the easiest, least time or effort. Especially if there is a dedicated place or a note telling a date when they visit you (or you just put up a yard sale). Then you can pack and just leave your things for others. I think this is popular for clothing items (due to fashion and over producing, True Cost).
🤝Giving away to someone, like a relative. Many times I seen it in family by parents and older people. It was due to lack of ability to sell things.
🚮Throwing away. Another way, rather fast one, to get rid of old/unneeded products, without getting any money back. Clearly the worst, loosing money, parts, disrespecting Earth. Unless it’s e.g. food gone bad thrown into compost. Or left out furniture where others could grab it.
❌Braking or destroying. Clearly the stupidest thing to do, yet still seen. Some even on videos. It is definitely a lack of respect for the effort needed to create products, and also a way to disable any reusability of products or their parts. But yeah, on the other hand, nowadays there are just way too many unusable garbage products, only for tricking people to buy.
Selling does need some skills and time to learn.
For me it’s clear that anyone could sell almost anything (that somebody else would want). The two most important things when selling something are IMO price and reaching out (i.e. how many people see your offer).
Price. This is quite crucial, and so it’s first in list. Surely if you can’t sell something for long, it may be because of too high price. Thus it’s rather a requirement to know a product’s price (real value) that other people sell it for and what normally people would pay for. The only problem is when can’t find a price, e.g. when you want to sell something unique (can’t find anyone else selling) or original (e.g. self made, not common).
Internet portals, auctions. There are big (worldwide) internet auction websites (e.g. ebay, amazon, alliexpress, and many others) for people (not only companies) where you could sell. The benefit is you offer will reach a lot of people, but the problem is paying the website a percentage when you sell it. Of course possibly somebody could contact you before selling and you could avoid paying website and still sell it. Not sure where possible, since it surely isn’t good for those websites, so they may even forbid it or make it difficult or requiring more effort. The benefit
But there are also smaller, local websites, where anyone could put a short message for free. IDK for how long this will last, since any such website would want profit if not from what they do then from ads, etc. From my experience, I liked them most, no cost of using and still my offer reaches out many people. If I sell a common thing, then it’s a good choice.
Contact
Time and waiting. Well if you set the price high it’s less likely somebody will buy. But if you wait longer someone still could. It’s just usually more trouble for me to wait e.g. 6 months until holidays to sell a toy or something that would be of more interest to people at that time.
Like for every blog post, firstly please be sure to read blog info to understand my blog.
⏱️Overview
This post is about people’s addictions. First I write my definition and ways of getting rid of them. Later I’m listing many addictions with short info and my observations etc. I hope this could be helpful in identifying and reducing them.
⚖️My definition
There is an extensive page on wikipedia, seriously long and later medical. Surely there are other on internet.
I’m going to put my own, simpler definition here: everything can be an addiction, if it’s repeated too often and if it has a (significant) negative impact on health, cost (money) and time spent.
If you can stop doing something for any set time then you’re clearly not addicted to it. That’s time consuming to prove though. Also it is actually up to you to set the thresholds when something you do becomes an addiction for you. Unless of course if you don’t notice or care and someone close does or it becomes visible to most.
For me it should be everyone’s crucial goal to stop health impacting addictions first, reduce or drop money requiring addictions and have only hobbies. Best if those also don’t need money only time, and if they bring something useful for others (like writing a blog, sharing own art or meal recipes, developing open software or hardware, etc.).
👉How to get rid?
Let’s start with most important thing. Well the first step is understanding that we have an addiction and finding motivation to get rid of it. Sounds simple but it may be quite difficult. An addicted person will find any explanation to continue addiction, even very stupid ones. That’s not really their fault entirely, it’s how brain works because of addiction. Usually other person would know better if you’re addicted (if they’re not) because they can see your actions and the effect an addiction has over your life.
Here are my 3 ways of getting rid:
Instantly💥 Well it’s the best, and fastest way. If only all could be so simple: You read or hear about something and understand that you’re addicted. Possibly get knowledge about a better way too. And boom! you drop the worse way and never do it again. You’re not addicted and can spend more of (your) time and money on better purposes. Could also mean in more intelligent way.
Over time⏳ For more troubling addictions. You can make a plan and realize gradually. Each time you do something bad for you (addiction) you take note of it with date (possibly also time), e.g. in a calendar, or even on paper (so it won’t get lost or forgotten on phone). Then you can track how often it happens and how the frequency (e.g. daily or weekly occurrence value) progresses. Obviously it needs to decrease, best to zero. I’m pretty sure it may be not linear and some people won’t go to zero (or want to), depends on addiction and your final goal. It may be good to find a hobby or an activity that replaces an addiction. Just an idea but sometimes you can have a hole of time if you stop and e.g. can’t think of anything than your addiction (or some other). A hobby is meant to be creative (that’s what I believe) and have no negative impact, surely way less than an addiction.
With other’s👥 or professional help🧑⚕️. Sadly some of world’s most heavy addictions (e.g. drugs, alcohol) are so severe that they need other people’s help. If your friends, family or other people can’t help or it’s not enough, then it’s time for some institution to take over. I don’t know if that’s paid but honestly at this point it should not matter. Certainly determination and will are needed as well to complete.
📝List intro
Following is my big list of addictions. There surely are more and it’s not the point to put everything possible or imaginable here.
The point is to give some examples and hints to check if maybe we are addicted to this. Few first are quite obvious and well known, yet still exist and even consume some people’s lives. The reason they exists is obviously because they make so much profit for others (while making so much harm to those affected).
Many addictions in list (commercially driven) are likely a direct result of Capitalism, an old, wrong system that drives everything towards profits (including countless millions of needles, garbage products, stupid commercials for them, Consumerism, etc.) instead of real human needs and for humanity globally. It is already causing major destruction on Earth.
Others who are addicted (yet often won’t admit or get motivated to stop) are simply a walking and talking commercial for that addiction. Addictions also can be grouped, e.g. at parties you can find few at once. So yeah if you’d say you’re going there just to meet people, that is just fooling everyone including yourself.
It’s important to understand that various addictions have various impact. I’m trying to group my list by tiers, i.e. how severe addictions are or by topic. For example: internet and social media addictions (may seem fun and) clearly have less effect on health compared to drugs and alcohol. But those tiers are arbitrary and don’t matter too much, because when dealing with an addiction what matters most is person’s level of addiction to it, then its severity in general.
Another important thing to add here is: the younger we are trying / starting addiction the more severe it will be. I think a kid’s brain needs good examples (like creative hobbies) in early years not addicting distractions, often just fueling shitty businesses worldwide.
📄List
Tier 1 – severe health ❤️
Known as substance abuse. Here are some statistics. A well deserved reading. This is the worst kind, with severe health impact, many lives lost and lots of money lost in total. I’d say the easiest and best way for those freaking life stealers is to never even try them.
I have a family with closest relatives who don’t have any of those major addictions, therefore I had good advice and example when I was young. My uncle even tried smoking and alcohol and told me it’s not worth trying, his colleagues didn’t stop when he did and they lost more of their life (health, time and money) to those addictions.
My way of thinking for all listed in this tier: there are no reasons for doing any, it usually happens for people when they didn’t think of something better to do (more creative, productive etc) or just followed somebody’s annoying suggestion.
Nowadays I can tell with certainty that if your friends offer you or have any of addictions in this group (at least) then it’s a clear sign the issue is not with you but with them, in other words your friends aren’t the best simply and I’d rather get rid of them than to get an addiction. It’s common that people want to spend time with others having same activities so this also goes for their addictions. And if they want to connect or you spend time just because of an addiction then it may be just about that and nothing more.
Drugs 💊💉
For me it’s most obvious that they should not be legal or even exist. It’s not too difficult to see how many people have lost their life (or years of it) or even died because of overdose. Even popular actors/actresses lost to drugs.
Obviously drugs exist because they make many people huge profits, and many others less, but still profits, maybe bigger than alternatives. If a person offers you drugs, they’re clearly either:
making money from it (and don’t give a damn about your life, not now, neither future, that’s how biggest profits are made) or
don’t know you better (or wish you worse life, possibly not knowing better themself).
Since people profiting the most from drugs get very rich, there is also a lot of corruption and bribing. And big cartels running it all and wasting lives. If you ever got drugs, you were at the very far end of this all, fueling its profits.
Alcohol 🍺🍷
Many emojis for this already 🍺🍸🍷🍹🍶🍾. I wonder if they ever ban any, like the gun, very unlikely. Another heavy topic. Again it’s even easier to see people who have lost their life (or years) to this addiction. Some became homeless, some lost jobs or simply forgot a better life without alcohol. Some alarming stats here.
Interestingly enough alcohol is at top of harm caused, and majority of it is harm to others. So why would you even drink it. Even if you can control it (and think it’s something) it still becomes a commercial for this huge addicting business and a risk for someone else to drink it. Honestly the shear density of places with alcohol sold is scary. It’s not just alcohol shops (sometimes near even churches etc) it’s now every grocery shop and gas station, because for some it’s either a must or a why not buy and thus more profit for facility. And for some even mentioning “drinking” (anything else) already instantly reminds of alcohol.
My definition
My definition of an alcoholic is quite simple: it’s a person who drinks alcohol. Period. But to make it more precise I add: if someone drank in previous year (365 days), and for best measure it is: yearly volume of pure alcohol consumed.
I know. Some people would instantly ask: what about wine (or other expensive stuff) for celebration, or a beer with friends? Surely not. I’m not even sorry. Then lastly what about champagne🍾 for New Year’s Eve? Nope, sorry. But yes, if that’s the only thing left in year, then at this point it’s less about alcohol and more about buying (commercial stuff) and associating it for occasions.
📜My history
I remember when I ended elementary school and some time after, like 2 or 3 people from our old class asked me to drink with them or otherwise promoted alcohol. Funniest thing those guys were even the least liked / known by me. So clearly they were just addicted and wanting me to join. I also still remember once helping them after they visited our house after they drank in park, and one got sick. Those who knew me better didn’t even ask, they knew I won’t drink or even try. It was my close uncle who earlier told me it’s not worth even trying.
Smoking 🚬, vaping
Well I remember a friend on college who for long smoked everyday even at jobs later in life, he had to go out of the building for that too. Fortunately I think probably his wife or someone helped him to stop. Another example was my other uncle who didn’t stop smoking and even got lung cancer, I remember once a visit I quickly computed how much money he spent monthly for cigarettes, it was IIRC about 30% of his (retired) income, since he smoked already 20 per day or so. A less severe computation we did on college (while together on break): roughly money for smoking could buy you a used car every 3 years or so.
Smoking started literally ages before and I guess the whole business got more attention in 1960s or something when they made plenty commercials for it and movies showed it a lot (even old freaking cartoons for kids). It’s just later people started to realize those severe health consequences. But the business stayed, nobody earning such huge sums would like to stop right? I hope this sums it up. I’d say that naivety period is key in (huge) businesses, and no such company cares about humanity only profits.
As for vaping, here’s some website. For me it’s clearly another big profitable market, since cigarette packages got warnings about cancer, death, and there aren’t cigarette commercials anymore (except in movies still). Seems to be just a continuation of that stupidity, but for younger, likely more naive target audience.
Tier 2 – money wasters 💰
I’m trying to sort here by how much money can be lost, but for sure this isn’t set. Anybody can loose any amount on anything actually. Depends only on how much you have (borrow or steal too) and choose too loose instead of saving, investing or spending on something useful in life.
Gambling 🎰
More on wiki. Honestly probably the biggest money waste possible. It certainly has changed numerous people’s life for worse or even ruined it. Yet all the stupid, blinking, primitive, gambling machines still exist. Not only that, there are cities like Las Vegas famous just for gambling. Also countless gambling websites or sport results booking and other ways you could loose your money. They even put it in modern video games (e.g. a longer video, how they even abuse minors for their profits).
Let me just make it clear one more time, all this exists only because they are making profits. Wouldn’t exist without profit, like any business. Some seriously gigantic, I mean if you could build a city on a desert mainly just for gambling. The randomness part of gambling is somewhat continued in next chapter.
Lottery 🍀
Page on wiki. I think people who gamble or take part in lotteries (or consider it) clearly don’t understand probability. Yet the constant commercial for country’s lottery still shows how many millions you can win. Somewhere I even saw that the probability for it is even less than getting hit by a meteorite or way lower than injuring yourself while getting/filling the ticket. Sure that is the most rare thing, so improbable that even if you’d participate daily, you won’t win during your life. But yeah that’s probability, someone will win during lifetime.
Of course that’d be the rarest win. What about those small prizes? Well let’s just say with certainty that this lottery business like every other wouldn’t exist if it didn’t make profit. So if you win that’s luck but next times you’d loose more than that. And if somebody feels “luckier” then clearly they don’t think logically. The whole concept is based on pure randomness, whatever it wouldn’t be, it’s meant to be random. So in general whole people’s money put into it (lottery, gambling, bets whatever) will need to be 2 times or more than whole winning budget. That’s seems to be the rule of every business.
And lastly you don’t control your life (fully) if you do things at random (or depend on this). Logically it’s a waste of money always, as you can invest it in your life better, even just by not spending it. For me there is no luck, it’s just people’s naivety or lack of understanding probability.
Buying 💵💳
Clearly for me the world’s commercial addiction is way too high. Here is consumerism wiki, another page and also history here. There are countless shopping malls, big centers, online shops, etc. This has a global effect on people and on earth. The commercial garbage left from it is even noticeable from space in many places.
This topic is continued in separate buying page with my advice. The solution is to buy rationally.
Collecting 💿🦸
Doesn’t matter what it is: action figures, comics, music records, cars, books, magazines, newspapers, coins, figurines, post stamps, or any other thing from millions of choices really. Also in-game items or achievements are here to cash on. It is clearly an addiction and hence so many stupid products are made with so many variants. If they also combine this with gambling (i.e. you don’t know which variant you’ll get), then likely profits are multiplied.
For me collecting is also the opposite of a creative hobby. Clearly by collecting you simply get obsessed by something others have produced rather than creating something yourself. This is what I think OFC, having created so many projects.
Traveling ✈️🛳️
Plenty of emojis for this too 🏞️🏖️ 🚄🚌🛳️. Yes, by many considered a hobby or interest. Given how much money this costs, especially when continuously done often (not just few times in lifetime) this can get into a very expensive addiction.
There is a way better way for traveling (since about 2012), a safe one, costing no money (except for internet) not needing to move even and only costing time. It’s by watching some of the countless videos on so many channels of people who were traveling and recording it. I have a few playlists with some traveling videos I liked under nature section here. Of course it’s not the same: you don’t smell or taste foreign food, don’t meet and talk with people, can’t get robbed, don’t experience crowded airplanes, etc. I’m sure there can be some alternatives found using internet too.
I did travel many times in the past, when younger, for holiday. I never actually paid fully for it, since my family was always sponsoring. And I’m glad this ended. I can say now the only logical way for travel is to change country or for job. I’m not even putting visiting others now, since you can do it cheaper with cameras and internet (if they can use that).
Tier 2 – bad food, health wasters
Sugar 🍬🍩🍰
Aka diabetes. It’s not just candy🍬, chocolate🍫, bars, donuts🍩, cookies🍪, cakes🍰, jams, it’s also flavored yogurts, ice creams🍦🍨, juices🧃 (not directly pressed) or countless drinks and simply anything that had even a tiny bit of sugar (e.g. 5g per 100g) added to it. Why? Because it’s addicting. So people not knowing the truth (or caring) fell for it, and again profits, big ones. Also since many were eating candy practically since kids, some people get addicted for life or just don’t get that: after some age we should just stop our addictions form children times. BTW chocolate is a drug, e.g. here with all others, and there is also chocoholic term. And recently it may not even be sugar just new chemicals acting like it.
Fast foods 🍔🍿🍕
For example: hot dogs🌭, hamburgers🍔, fries🍟, fancy popcorn🍿, takeout🥡 and even pasta🍝, pizza🍕 or whatever else they create in those fast food places. Stuff with sugar is covered above, but still these could have a bit added.
Let me just start that: fast food is not food (anymore). I surely won’t call it this way, just because you can eat it. It is so unhealthy and artificial nowadays that the only reason I’d still possibly eat it is to not die or pass out of hunger. Clearly there aren’t many situations for this, one must simply have some proper food prepared, ingredients in fridge or visit grocery near (with a buying list made first, to focus and buy only what’s needed).
What to eat
There is also a more general food addiction. One major problem for many people is obesity, looks to be most common in US. I believe this is partly a result of people not knowing what to eat, and in which proportions but also highly processed foods sold (and little of healthy ones). The examples (I know of so far) of healthy diets are: Mediterranean diet and Diabetes diet, Lchf diet. As for vegetarian diet, here is a video explaining why it doesn’t work. I’m guessing it was a campaign for producers of supplements (like B12) needed for it, since vegetarians would need to buy them constantly and that’s big profits. I recently found Lchf (low carb) diet (more info here or e.g. here) and I’m moving to it, since it seems carbs are main cause for many modern diseases. Which then are huge profits for doctors, hospitals and those giant medicine producers. After all, they profit when people are sick and pay for it, the more the better for them. It’s a sickening business.
What would be the best alternative to grocery food? Well grow or raise it yourself, if you even own enough land. There isn’t much left or available nowadays sadly. Especially since cities are made so that you’d need to buy food (transported into city, surely good business). Eggs are good example of food that’s best acquired directly from people who have hens making eggs. Also village markets run by local people are better than shops. Thus most people in cities won’t even have access to healthy meat or eggs from countryside etc, only those mass produced and sold in groceries. Which come from animals likely also fed by chemicals or antibiotics, eating unnatural foods and kept in bad conditions.
Medicine, supplements 💊
This topic is related to food, so I put it here. I already wrote above, that it’s huge profits for companies if you buy their pills, medicine or supplements, and consume them daily. For example my mother (being over 70 years old) spends money for food and about 40% extra on her medicine (since many years). Consuming more than 8 different pills daily, few of them are resulting from previous bad doctors choices.
Generally for right, healthy diet it should not be needed to supplement or add any medicine. Sure, there are some needed for few people’s cases if they have a disease or condition genetically from parents, etc. Nowadays there are lots of different diet supplements and tons of pills produced. Obviously for companies and all workers involved it’s their interest to sell you their products, even for lifetime. Anyone suggesting pills or supplements is wrong (and does it likely for profit), instead of right foods to eat instead and solving diet naturally.
Coffee ☕
I recommend reading about caffeine or just noticing it here among drugs. Yes, I qualify this as an addiction too, if not medical then commercial. For me there are far more important things in life like sleeping well, for as many hours as my body needed. Sure I could sleep too long, but if I don’t sleep enough it simply means I need to sleep more to compensate and could sleep an hour or two in the day. This is natural for me.
I never drink coffee. Even if it has the effect of waking up or boosting focus, it later has the opposite effect. So for me it’s just an expensive consumable product, that has spread likely everywhere, even if it grows in not that many places. Still there are people who drink it daily, and would qualify this as a daily routine or a necessity for work or life. Well another profit for companies.
Tier 3 – lesser money wasters
Fashion 👗
What is fashion? It may be surprising but it is a form of planned obsolescence. I.e. a way to modify products to make people believe they are “obsolete” so they buy (more) the newly produced. Also to maximize sales and justify clothing for feelings (buy new weekly) not actual needs (once in 10 years).
There is a great documentation about fashion: True Cost (from 2015). I’d say it is a must watch for anyone (not seeing fashion as global harm on Earth).
Well for me fashion is a crime against humanity, but unfortunately companies (likely all) use this as a rule or doing business. Since people’s brains understand art, not only logic, and so many people don’t follow only logic and even don’t buy rationally, the profits from fashion are huge and involve many collections, fashion shows, magazines etc (those too are addictions in this list even). Cloths can last 10 years easily even when used daily, maybe not socks or other heavy used pieces. I believe only in logical and practical ways and that is for me buying reasonably priced items with one color and when previous ones are worn off.
Cosmetics ⚗️
Let me just start that free (wild) living people (certainly a rare minority) don’t need it. As well as people living in older times, especially not the rich elite. And for me also modern people don’t need it, yet there are tons of this crap. It’s the population density and close presence of others that today almost requires hygiene. Continuing this with plenty of commercials, magazines and the self promotion nature of cosmetics, by fancy look or artificial smell (produced by some company) we get another huge profiting business. Those who were born in cities and had family constantly using cosmetics likely won’t even think of not buying them too.
To sum this up, for me this is like the most artificially created business. For contrast there is even a frugal way of using (IIRC) just baking soda to clean hair and self made apple cinder for conditioner because nothing else really matters. Adding all other substances in various proportions is just what companies create for variety and to sell something new so people would buy more, kind of like with fashion.
Makeup 💄
Then there is makeup, it already says it’s the stuff you make up, i.e. artificial, fancy, very commercial addition to nature. I can’t even with this. Well maybe some people aren’t naturally very beautiful (or young anymore) and some makeup could make them prettier (only in eyes of others who value look or just watch too much fake beauty magazines, shows, etc). But on the other side we see people with excessive makeup, crazy, disgusting to look at and only signifying an addiction and obsession with fake look (obviously even more profits for companies, no seller would tell you to stop buying). And the average? People spend too much time on their look and changing it and considerable sums on lots of products. Sure, for some it’s an investment or just their job.
This addiction is also easily spread since it’s so visible, after all people’s faces (most viewed when talking) are already makeup commercials. Same goes for nails actually, it’s further away but just a different place for other products. Worse still, this goes lower in age too, as kids in schools see that and (IDK what for) get and apply it too, even make video tutorials. Sure if we look at tribal people then this (IMO excessive craziness) already started ages ago, when people apparently didn’t have anything else to do with their time (and maybe used it for social stuff), while nowadays they clearly have too much money (and time) for this obsession.
Hair 💇🏽♂️, nail 💅🏼 salons, tattoos, etc
I’m combining here all body salons like barber, hairdresser, tattoo mani-pedi and other artificial “beauty” companies.
As for myself am a man who doesn’t care too much (sometimes at all) about my look. I started my long hair not long after I left elementary school so I was about 18. I have never been to a barber or even cut my hair since then. Now should I compute how much I have saved, I hope everyone can do this for themself. Needles to say, one stupid expense gone. Sure I may use more shampoo and I use conditioner but that’s not much with my frequency, I don’t need to buy any in a year (or so) if I get a big 1L pack. Surely there is the other way of being bald or short haired and regularly using a machine to cut hair, likely by other person. Still way cheaper and no need to visit a barber.
I don’t use shaving cream, only a bit of soap, neither any electrical device here. I just the “one-time” use machines, each for a year or so. Yeah those 10x more overpriced plastic ones with probably added some crap into blades so they get blunt sooner. After all combined with the shitty commercials and telling you should throw them out after use (ridiculous) they are getting great profits for sure (naivety is driving this too). But obviously fashion, consumerism and people’s addictions have created countless products and styles here (e.g. hair, facial hair, beard on wiki).
As for tattoos, yeah I never accepted those. Here is my thinking: human body is not place for art or any illustrations etc. Getting tattoos is not creative. That would only be, if you drew it yourself. And even for that there are way better ways (e.g. drawing, painting, or on PC using free software like GIMP, Krita with a pan tablet). Tattoos also remind me too much of gang members and prisoners. As for piercings, shortly nope. It’s not creative and not very healthy either. Surely both are old as humanity, and even more excessive in some tribes.
I will put well being, Spas, Massage💆 saloons etc here, close to next chapter as it is related. Well there is surely something good for your body in them but, like with all commercial services this has been blown out of proportions IMO. Sure, hydromassage is a medical thing, but Spas with hot tubs aren’t really that. Also massage is medial and proven to help, but well IMO it should be covered by country’s heath budget when applicable, not driving another costly business.
Restaurants🍽️, art galleries🖼️, city activities etc
Basically all city events and activities go here: restaurants🍽️, bars, coffee shops☕, museums🏛️, art galleries🖼️, theatres🎭, cinemas📽️, pubs🍹, clubs, stadiums🏟️, gyms🏋️, sport centers, etc.
I had a period when I enjoyed a city (Vienna), it was not too far from my country and not so dirty and poor looking compared to where I live. Surely I enjoyed the metro in Vienna and generally its buildings etc. Even graffiti back then, which I’d say today is excessive everywhere you look. I didn’t spend money except for metro etc and just traveled through city mainly, also many parks. Visited cinema few times. I also bought some electronics and my favorite trousers there.
But let’s get to the point. Being in city, and not in your home is expensive. Generally being home doesn’t cost you per hour, and parking in city or using busses etc all have an hourly cost. Naturally home utilities cost too, just like getting food. But this is something we can optimize.
Visiting a restaurant is for me one of the worst ways of eating. Here is why:
It’s purely commercial, so you need to pay much more, after all everyone involved needs to have a job of it first.
Then you learn nothing, surely not how it was made or even nutrition facts. After all teaching is the opposite of this business (or most in general).
You get a menu, with not much clue what you’ll get (surely not a sample of taste first or a video of it or a list of other people’s ratings and comments). So I’d say: randomness here is also key for them to earn more. Like in most commercial offers you are presented with artificially made choices to distract you from far more important ones like: do I even need this or what I can do better at home instead?
In cheap bars food is just not healthy enough. And in fancy, expensive restaurants you’d waste money on the freaking art aspect of food or luxury inside. Often being served there are too expensive, eatable, small art pieces not real meals. As if there was no other, far more important way to spend money, e.g. to improve people’s lives and living conditions especially in poor areas or less developed countries.
Well I’ll shorten for the rest. I have a similar opinion about all city activities. Art galleries, museums, etc. generally are not made to be free, they’re the oldest way of making money, per person, per visit. There is some of this stuff available online (or was during Covid), but I wouldn’t expect too much. After all these are in buildings in most costly locations too, so it has to bring a lot of profit. And lastly: only seeing is required, no thinking even, to get more viewers and visits. Clearly though pets won’t be allowed since those don’t have enough IQ and would drop or scratch everything anyway.
Tier 4 – life style, old time wasters⌛
TV 📺, Radio 📻
I still remember the days I watched TV. It was my addiction as a kid for sure, since there was no internet. Same like for newspapers and magazines I call TV and radio just an old addiction for people who don’t know how to use internet properly. You can’t really choose what to watch on TV or radio, only can wait for something will be, you can not filter out commercials (the worst disturbance there is). Cannot pause, rewind, fast forward either. But for older people it is clearly a cheaper and easier way of getting e.g. documentaries. The rest of common TV/radio program is (news, sports, politics) listed in next chapters. So I’ll continue there.
News 📰
There was this cool meme I saw lately with a news presenter and top line text: “breaking news” and bottom: “something irrelevant to your life just happened and now we’re going to blow it out of proportion..” (the later part is not even need: “for days to keep you distracted from what’s really going on”). It’s their business, to present random facts, short, not even fully covered, unrelated to you and from completely random places. Well yes, maybe 1% or so could bring some info, but if you need it, you can search for it on internet too with more focus and no ads. Or your coworkers will tell it anyway.
News are something that I can tell you, can be skipped entirely. One and only reason I still see people are interested in them is simply because this becomes the only topic they can talk about together usually, just like politics and sport. But wasted time getting to know stuff, that really has no impact on your life particularly, is significant. Here is another post about it and long ago mmm wrote a lot about it too.
Sports 🏃⛹🏿♂️🏎️
Again lots of emojis 🏃⛹🏿♂️🤼🏈🏇🏽🏌🏿♂️🏎️🏟️. Like above, I have very little interest in sports. Honestly I only like WRC and honestly this is something I caught on from my friend in high school, since he introduced me to it and later we also played WRC games on PC. I still occasionally watch some short videos from WRC, so I can’t say I’m completely devoid of sports addiction. But I can tell for sure that the whole concept seems to me very ancient from oldest times of humanity and yet still a huge business in world. I feels like we could do so much more intelligent, science driven things for our planet, if we didn’t waste so much resources on competitive physical activities. But once again, huge profits, commercials, only really needs to be watched so it likely will continue.
Politics ⚖️
Well politicians are just people having a lot of experience with lying publicly, what could I say more. Some even have less education than college graduates. Even entire countries can behave retarded. This and media can be bribed, basically bought to say whatever billionaires want profits next. Spending time seeking out truth, also filtered by News and media is just a waste and not possible anyway.
A video even stated that people chosen by random would do better job running a country. I agree too. But better if many people with experience would guide a country. Instead, the way of electing one politician or a party etc for some given, long time is just old and laughable way for me. Because of that they spend millions for self promotion, interviews, and commercials, being just garbage in city (later and during too).
The reason people are interested in politics is mostly to shape an opinion and vote, and secondly just to have something to talk about with others. I don’t spend time on this at all, and I obviously don’t vote. Voting IMO is again for people not understanding probability and thinking that your 1 vote in tens of millions from other people will change anything at all. It will only change how much time you waste of your life. Sure this changes if tens of millions think like me. But after all the majority of people have the average 100 IQ and less.
Magazines, newspapers 📰
For me simply an ancient addiction for those who don’t have a PC with internet or smartphone. They now waste trees, paint, other resources for machines to print them, etc. Obviously will have commercials, aren’t easy to search in them, sometimes have only a small interesting part, etc. I know even 2 people in close family with strong collection addiction. Paired with no ability to clean their homes this is just sad and pathetic. Needles to mention these cost money so exist only for profits.
Tier 5 – life wasters
Pets 🐕🐈🐇
There are countless pet stores and pets available, even emojis 🐕🐩🐈🐁🐹🐇🐦🦜🦎🐠🕷️. The freaking dogs population on earth is probably just as big as human population. Even if some people don’t have a dog, there are others who have more than one. There is good post on mmm about this topic too, more friendly I guess, since so many dog owners.
Having pets for me is one of those things I’d accept only for people who are young, with severe disease or blind / disabled and need assistance. There are also service dogs simply because their smell is way more sensitive than ours, and dogs have been bred especially to be trained. But I’m pretty sure science could come up with some solutions too, more expensive but also more predictable. And breeding pets, dealing with health, producing all their food and toys etc is a big business too. Again not for you, but for profits from your naivety and addiction.
There is a saying that dog is human’s best friend. Nope, I can’t agree. I’d say it’s human’s most common slave, after cows, pigs, chicken, horses etc and most sadly humans too still. Only a human can be a friend. Obviously it’s not a certainty. Other likely common saying is that dogs / pets are smart. Damn, what kind if intelligence definition is this using. There are cool videos about IQ for animals e.g. this. Dogs IQ is just 20% of human’s. Dogs are usually compared to (at most) 3 year old children, even crows are smarter compared to 7 year old kids. And seriously this shouldn’t matter since only people talk and can understand more. Even if a dog understands 20 or more words, it can’t talk. Worse still, no animal seems to be aware of its own population, its breeding and enslavement by people. All being raised for food just accept their life. Yeah it’s not like cows, pigs or chickens could revolt. If we compare space which free animals roam it’s way bigger than for pets. Most pets are just kept in a small space and fed by owners to make them apparently happier, but cost a lot of money, time, and life style.
Religions ⛪🛐
Definitely a dangerous topic to discuss. I continue it in separate post here. Needless to say I see this as a big worldwide addiction too since thousands of years. Great wiki pages here: about atheism and arguments against the existence of God.
Having children 👶
There was a good mmm post about this topic with more detail. Surely nature driven thing. After all, species survive due to this instinct. It’s likely the normal approach thought by most people that you need to have children. Obviously you don’t and you can do more for others with the time and money saved. Raising a child is in the top of cost needed (IIRC about 200 000 $), even above buying/building a house. While also very time consuming, let’s say spanning over 20 years.
I say the main problem with our world is overpopulation. There was a documentary that ultimately stated it (IMO), showing what humanity has already done to Earth, showing excessive farming, wasted lands, pollution and big garbage dumps.
There is a link between society’s intelligence and rate of procreation too. Also a funny parody movie Idiocracy somewhat relevant here. And the earlier you have a child the less you know about life and world. For example if I had a child when I was 20 and still stupid, it’d be less likely to raise that child well and intelligently. Yet so many people do it when young. Surely you could learn later and everybody is different. There are also books (mandatory reading I’d say) about raising children.
But I’ll try adding here that having child(ren) creates a gap of about 20 to 30 years when people need to learn almost everything and until then this just adds more stupidity and naivety to the world. But that’s just my opinion of course, since I’d rather continue learning myself instead of going back with my mind to child times and what would make kids happy nowadays.
Job 🧑💼👷🏾👮🧑🏼⚕️🏢
I’ll say it’s mainly about wokaholics, but also about work-life balance. There is a factor of how much of our life is spent on job (instead of hobbies or family). It varies from not enough caring and slacking at jobs for some (obviously bad for company) to devoting too much life and effort for job (with negative health impact too).
It’s a personal choice and matter. For me health should go always first. And most jobs after years cause health issues. I always believed a job is a way of getting money (and as such it’s only about that). I.e. a way of selling your life time for currency (to pay bills, food, etc). I could go further and call jobs the modern slavery system OFC including taxes etc. I’ll also add that jobs are somewhat like socks too. Firstly: sometimes you need to change them, especially if they stink (annoy) too much, bring you harm, get boring, give no experiences, aren’t well paid, cause health issues, etc. And secondly: you wear them for a purpose, it’s also possible to live without them.
Surely enough I knew people who were wokaholics. There is no need asking for their hobby or if they developed something interesting lately. For companies, especially bigger ones an employee is just a resource, companies will obviously benefit if you invest more than the basic hours you agreed. It could be overtime working, working on Saturdays, public holidays, holiday times, or just something simple like engaging in company’s promotion: on social media or their public events (e.g. in city). It’s up to you, and I highly recommend doing something else, completely not related to company (or workplace, work colleagues) in your free time. It’s about freeing mind, fully relaxing and not getting too addicted. If you can’t find anything, that’s a sign of job addiction for me.
Tier 5 – modern time wasters 🕗
Movies, series 📽️📺
There is no doubt I’ve lost a significant percentage of my life on this addiction. I have long list of movies I liked best and this is just a fraction (let’s say few %) or all I watched and wouldn’t need that. I still enjoy seeing a good movie (over 6 or 7/10 on imdb). I once believed I learn about life from movies, well now I’d say maybe a small amount true. But only because I wasn’t experiencing life with people, I was watching movies.
Since long I have a rule that I don’t watch series, ever. They’re just the “way too stretched” version with more going on (to keeping it longer) and making more profits than actually doing a meaningful and valuable story to show in a movie instead. No exceptions for me here.
I quite recommend checking imdb for rating (and like I do, having a minimal value, below which I don’t watch). Also reading people’s comments, parents guide (a shortcut of what’s bad in movie) and learning before watching anything. Being strict here will cost less time lost (and possibly money) and bring better experience. Just not at any given time, but only when there is something decent to watch.
In last years I have greatly reduced my movie watching addiction by instead watching short movies telling flaws and errors in movies (like Everything Wrong With, Honest Trailers and Pitch Meetings), it has also opened my mind to seeing these.
Games 🎮🎲
Video games on PCs, consoles, smartphones, cabinets, as well the old sport games, cards or board games, etc. I only recommend PCs here since you can do more on them: read, learn, draw, paint, write, develop (projects or hardware), program (software), etc.
Games provide either simple logic puzzles or interactive yet basic worlds with some rules. The visual aspects are colorful and they are quickly rewarding. This way games can create an addiction easily, instead of dealing with life problems instead. Also competitive and social aspects are key here.
I write more about this in post here, since I have played many and had an interest for many years.
Internet 🌎
Whatever big sites like: Imgur, Reddit, Youtube, Twitch, etc. Surely lots of entertainment and fun can be found there, even educational post and videos. But internet addiction is already a medical term e.g here.
How much time we spend on entertainment there summed up gets to a total percentage of life wasted. Surely entertainment is a nice way of spending time but for me it’s only because I don’t have the determination to develop my projects further or want to rest from it. Still, once you start watching entertainment, even whole day can pass by easily just on that mainly. Not to mention that there is so much entertainment (movies, series, games etc) made that you could waste whole life watching just that. One important way of dealing with this is keeping track of time spend on this daily and restricting it.
Social media 🗨️
Somewhat a continuation since you need internet. In older times telephones or letters were used. Nowadays it’s Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and many other websites where you can follow, watch or read other’s stuff. Not just your relatives, friends, also performers, companies, and rarely even trolls, bullies and psychopaths.
The thing with all (and any of) these websites is that they don’t need much logic, just storage and basically all they sell and thrive upon is the stuff which people post there. Also they got laws protecting them. For me that’s clearly the reason why I started my website. This way I can put all my stuff on my website (with CC license) rather than tiny fragments on major, company websites, and fuel their profits.
According to these stats, average internet user spends almost 7 hours online daily (4h on mobile). And daily 2h 24min on social media and messaging. Well for me that’s insane. I can barely imagine what we could achieve if all that time was occupied with effort on developing something or investing into solving world problems. Well yeah we’d need social media to communicate though ?. But certainly one can use this time instead for anything else including creative hobbies, which are progressive (not consuming) and more rewarding in long run, rather than just being curious or following others.
And the worst example of what happened in bad social media: death. From those countless, retarded (mostly TikTok) trends and challenges. Clearly a promotion of platform, and a social thing (a virus at this point). Yet some were so brain-dead that it’s cringing to even hear about what people did for some popularity (e.g. piling teeth for look, destroying schools bathrooms, breaking into cars, etc) or by just following others.
Yeah: like, share, comment, follow, and don’t forget to subscribe is the freaking slogan in many videos. My (unchanged in years) response is: firstly of don’t tell me what to do, secondly you forgot please, and thirdly you should write: you can (any of above). But obviously I recommend not doing any. Okay I got 10 youtube channels subscribed and I probably commented few times in life. I got better things to do in life.
I don’t have any facebook, twitter, reddit or other such accounts. Sure, maybe I should have one of each to promote StuntRally or this website, as nobody seems to search on internet that much, and greatly only follows suggestions or worse ads. I do have a github account though with many open source projects. I also check on our forum and for contributions. And my commit frequency, because I like to know if I’m in a creative gap and should do something I know and like best instead of just entertainment.
Books 📚
Well, don’t get me wrong. Books are still the old (dead tree🌳) way of getting knowledge. There are still many books incredibly useful for life in general (self improvement section). Too bad they aren’t free on blogs or websites. But books can be addictive like all else. Even more if you combine this with collecting addiction or consumerism.
More importantly, if you don’t have a strong interest and focus, you could easily read too many books. Especially if you read books for entertainment (fictional, fantasy, novels, etc). For me it’s not just that. Most likely any learning book will have much more in it than needed. Also books need time to make and (guessing it at 6-12 months) this makes them already not up to date when released. Reading all is not necessary but if you paid you could get into that pit of getting most of your purchase.
As for book flaws: you can’t just get a fragment from book mostly, change its font or background color and neither type a phrase for search results there. You can mostly in ebook readers or pdf viewers. Then if something new comes up (as always), well a new edition of same book happens which is just wasteful globally (and you can’t just update your book). Lastly no book will cover my specific use cases or software libraries I use.
Instead I recommend a better way through searching and learning from internet. It is my favorite way nowadays, especially from: wikipedia, websites like stackoverflow, forums, blogs, and even good tutorial video series on Youtube (we can skip or fast forward not needed parts). For IT and software matters I see this as the only way of knowing what I need. But it works not only for IT. Surely finding right info needs practice. Also judging truth from so many lies and garbage commercial websites with small articles and few sections, ads and links placed all over them so you stay longer, less focused.
Tier 6 – the rest
Porn 🍑
There is an enormous amount of this already on internet (about 30% of it), any digital media or analog tapes, and also still on paper since the earliest days of it. Looking on wiki, it was also present in ancient times. Not that long ago it was still called obscene and not legal. But surely, nowadays it’s a huge profiting business, from well nothing intelligent I’d say, since only watching is required. The business is big, has many jobs, services and products. Only growing to cover more technology uses, latest including 3D, VR and AI. I found websites saying this isn’t an addiction medically (also on wiki), but more a compulsion. So it shouldn’t be too difficult to stop. Just like with others in this tier I’ll add. There are many websites (e.g. this or this) with reading that can help here. This is somewhat continuing to next chapter.
Masturbation, sex 💑🏩
I’m putting both in one chapter. Masturbation is (most likely) for one person, while sex and other related activities are involving 2 (or more) people. It’s also believed to be healthy by medicine. Yet some religions or countries don’t tolerate it. Well like most things this too can become an addiction with various effects on life. It can be healthy but obviously could be overdosed too, exhausting or just time wasting.
This one is tricky, because it is driven by our body’s chemistry. And without that we wouldn’t survive, so it’s also genetically driven, not logically. I’d say by instinct, species in nature focus on procreation when there aren’t any other matters or serious threats to life. So nature makes us horny by design. But it’s up to our brain and intelligence to control it. And if most animals copulate purely for the purpose of procreation then surely people have made a whole lot of accessories and activities around this. Some are of course just for profit, some people need it for job, others for pleasure, and some could be addicted. There are lots of people with life style driven by sex and some whose life got ruined or changed because of sex (too much or with some other person). So clearly it can be an addiction and it’s up to our brain to stop it when needed. There is also whole group of people and websites no-fap for anti-masturbation movement.
Noise🔊, adrenaline, parties💃🕺, concerts🌃
I’m putting this all together. I don’t know the medical or psychological terms at all, just writing from my own experience and observations. There are many people who like noise, either by listening to loud music themself, or going to concerts, parties (also involving other addictions obviously), driving sport cars or motorbikes (this is combined with adrenaline) etc.
I had a short period of loud music, this was in early high school before I understood audio quality, audio effects, listened to many various instruments and their sound, and of course heard lots of music. It quickly became apparent for me that the loudness factor is the most basic and primitive one. Honestly. Hearing too loud has negative effect on health, probably also on nervous system, especially if you want to sleep and hear something you don’t want, loud or from afar.
As for concerts, I’ve never been to any. These have way too much noise levels, it’s a direct effect on hearing, there was somewhere a table with how many decibels can human be exposed to for how many hours. It’s applies for anything: headphones, speakers, concerts, noise from construction, city noise, etc. And simply put noise destroys health. So please be quiet, and discover more. For me my PC was too noisy at first (requiring higher music volume), but once it got water cooling I could hear at lower volume and still get all the detail.
Fireworks, guns 🎆🎇🧨🔫
Well I can just qualify this to buying and noise addictions. Since it is like any other stupid, consumable product just made and sold for profits. I don’t get what is still in people who yearly spend a decent (or any sum at all) buying those. I mean one time use, flashy, loud, small explosives then used to disturb quiet. I’ve spend almost all New Year’s Eves with my family at home, and all the time outside were raging waves of fireworks. Meaning lots of money wasted just so you could do them yourself, when all I did is watch them from window. Obviously each country has a huge display of them each year, looks like a big commercial. Yes I know it’s celebration. I would justify quiet celebration for personal success and goals realized. The year will increase anyways, always without any human effort. And any other reason is just increasing the sales and profits. Lastly there are also all those dangerous misuses or “accidents” of them.
Same goes for guns. Seriously tons of them and ammo are produced in U.S. Even being in Europe I noticed a few people at work already getting addicted to guns. What is a gun? It’s an effective tool for killing (or harming) people as well as animals. But obviously for producers it’s something they can sell for profit even for civilians, who will simply shoot basic paper targets. Sure it can be used for threats or defense but also for robberies, hijacking, murders, suicide etc. Having a gun, you increase the chance of any. Also guns can be used in shooting ranges for others to profit.
Cursing 🤬
Just a small addition to list. For me it was an issue when I was younger, but then I reduced it by a lot. I have a habit of not cursing at work or other public places at all. But I still curse alone too much probably or at home sometimes when angry.
I found somewhere that person’s intelligence can be measured by their vocabulary. Well clearly one could overflow vocabulary by reading too much and using too many words not understood by majority (which has sadly just 100 IQ). But the opposite is definitely true: if someone puts curse words in every sentence (or every 3rd word, or even one per day) then clearly they don’t know too many words, have poor vocabulary or don’t know (or want) to express themself better.
Laziness 🥱
Not sure if it qualifies here, but over years it can be affecting our life. I don’t have too much experience here but surely one could get bored by a job or life style, location, anything long. It’s likely best to change something once a long while to not get sucked into depression. Which would already be a health issue. I put it here since getting rid of this could be related to addictions, I mean other people’s help can be crucial. And after all: being too comfortable in life isn’t always the best way.
⌛Conclusions
It’s a bit funny that most of these have even few emojis already available.
Sadly the way I see it: naivety, emotions, lack of knowledge or simply stupidity are the key driving factors for profits in companies (Corporations, especially big ones, no exceptions). Most of these addictions exist, some even after centuries, only because they make so much profit for those companies (ruling the world) who won’t give a damn about humanity or Earth, only about profits.
Rich people, especially millionaires can of course get their own expensive addictions too. There is almost no limit on how much someone can have and spend on single home, yacht, supercar, jewelry, expensive watch (who’d ever need that?) or anything else really, including weirdest things possible. The more you have the more you can loose. I will add that all those big companies are either creating addictions or are responsible for keeping them.
Anyways, enough of the grim world view. I hope this page is helpful to anyone who wants to identify addictions, learn something about (at least from my view), and to be better by getting rid of addiction(s). Maybe it’s not possible to have none, but at least we should aim for those having (in order): less health impact, costing less money and lastly wasting less time of our lives.
Like for every blog post, firstly please be sure to read blog info to understand my blog pages.
On this page, I describe my views against religions.
I do underline it, because religions are a tough topic to discuss. Or even a topic not to discuss. Most people will probably not be open to even think about something else or doubt their lifetime practiced religion (usually when older, e.g. after 30). Additionally most internet forums and chats have a clear rule not to post about religions.
So if you are a religious person and are not open to other people’s views (against religions), it may be best to leave this page (even more likely if you’re older) . On the other hand, it may be especially valuable (perhaps after some time and thoughts needed) to visit it again and read. But I think it’s rather unlikely that religious people would find this page or read it, if they don’t let any doubts to their mind. Also statistics say that: people tend to be more religious with age, older religious people stay so for life, and IQ decreases with age.
I’m sure there are now many bold statements here, that many (religious) people could find offensive or disturbing, etc. As an INTJ and atheist I’m concerned with helping people by telling the truth directly. That’s what I’m doing/trying on my blog. Not by dealing with their feelings, after smalltalk or else. Neither by talking for an hour and checking first, if they can handle this. Or adjusting to their level of knowledge on this topic. A typical reaction would also be denying, it told to fast. Getting rid of religion may take years and it’s a personal process not mine to adjust.
It’s also a website not a live talk with a person🤨🙄. So I can only give such warnings.
Lastly I’m not saying this page is for adults (some parts or mentions are) or recommending minimal age before reading. Religions (by parents) do addict and coerce kids, so if you can doubt already, I recommend it.
📊Chapters
I will start with info for the chapters below. I edited this page many times already, getting new better sources, changing order and now it isn’t increasing difficulty/intensity neither chronological.
⚠️Warning⚠️ – Is above, should be known already😜
ℹ️Overview – Next a short overview of religions topic and my summary view.
🚀Quick links🎇 – This is new, strong/bold chapter (includes Wiki page, Videos, Blog, movie, etc.) and likely the best and most recent gathering of various easy (quick to access) resources (links out of my page). I list titles with links and quickly inform of content (what’s being addressed). I also likely add my comment(s). This chapter is especially valuable because of other atheists producing content and proving logic, describing issues we might have even not thought about. IMO it’s best, if you are young, intelligent or want to tackle some aspect, not read the whole page here or want to hear someone talk instead.
💡Introduction, and then 📜My history and observations Those are older, from previous (and first) versions of this page (mostly before exploring above links).
🧬Purpose of life A fundamental topic and question answered alone. Related to religions, since these always poison it with their ancient imaginary views.
🏦Big issues⚖️ Some of the crimes (of clergy) and issues happening in relation to religion. At least those few I know so far.
Religious commercials and Poland A long list of so many thing done to keep, spread and indoctrinate religion in this (way too religious) middle European county I’m in (and from).
📂Old Resources🌎 Another list from old, previous page with older comments, etc.
📉Solution A universal ending chapter for interested, with my proposed steps on how to get rid of religion.
ℹ️Overview
On this page, I describe my views against religions. I list other resources (links), shortly inform of content and comment on them, etc.
The know the least about Buddhism and Hinduism, so I almost won’t mention those, simply because I have limited knowledge, only from shortly reading wikipedia. I will neither talk about countless other, new, ancient or small religions, from today and the long human history (of stupidity, because I’m talking of inventing religions, wars, etc. not doing science).
Later I am also describing my experiences and observations from getting rid of Christianity. This is older page content, and refers to times when I was younger and raised by religious family (until I was about 20). Well I’m still here with my family.
Now, since over 20 years, I am an atheist. I do not believe in (or practice) any religion. I find all to be false. My mind is clear from any faith or beliefs and I think purely logically and reasonably (OFC I’m not perfect, neither a robot or worse AI).
I am of INTJ personality type, and it was my intelligence that made me get rid of religions. It took some years and effort, in a country with overwhelming religious majority (Poland). I started as a teenager, it was my doubt, and reason, wanting for proof, with a distaste for boring, repeated, ancient rituals (church mass, praying, etc).
Yet the world is still mostly (about 90%) religious, which I find as a likely result of only 10% of people being of intelligent personality types (*NT* using iNtuition and Thinking) and of course the significant manipulation (and brainwashing) that religions do to people (IMO just like any other big business).
Fortunately religiosity is declining in new generations of people (in USA, UK, Europe, or even more). So I think it’s rather a matter of time, and new generations of young, doubtful, questioning minds. Not a matter of doing the impossible effort to convince (older) religious people.
🚀Quick links🎇
This is a new chapter collecting my favorite links to other resources. Few first are written (wiki and blog), next a lot of videos (with my shortcut helping to show what’s inside and understand, also adding comments by me). It ends with a brief summary only.
I think it is the best chapter, most informative and to the point, also based on other’s content and reasoning.
logical/scientific arguments – proven by recent science and Stephen Hawking in his books. Including the scientific (quantum) theory that universe could just create itself (no need for creator).
arguments from incompatible divine properties – like omnipotence (all-powerful), omniscience (knows everything). Started already by ancient Greek philosophers.
“no reason” argument – there is simply no reason for a divine being (with the above 2 properties) to exist or act. Already few people wrote books about this.
problem of evil – debated for centuries by philosophers. Good, all-powerful God would not allow its existence.
problem of hell – and therefore fear of dying. Many human organizations are based on fear (news media, governments in war, mafias, etc). Hell means eternal torture for even a single sin, but heaven is eternal also, both make no sense given enough thought and reasoning (more on this in videos).
atheist-existential argument – there is no inherent purpose or meaning to life. Also many books by people on this subject.
argument from evolution – life and humans evolved, no need for God to create it.
divine morality (origin of good) and immutability (change) etc.
and a few more.
IMO only strongly faithful (brainwashed, or stupid) people would deny any and all of them. Because if you use logic and reason then already these properties are not possible to exist (and thus any God too). All these divine properties compared to what happens on Earth honestly looks to me like a description of a sadistic human, dictator or ruler basing on fear, not at all a divine being. Which is also the case.
The only problem it’s that of course it’s wikipedia and above on same page are reasons for God (and religions), summing up to being neutral. After all wikipedia has very (IMO way too) long pages for each major religion too. My thinking here is that listening to an atheist (from videos) would likely be more human, convincing and emotional and way less encyclopedic like.
📝Blog, in shade
A blog website with few strong, well thought texts by in_shade. I’m putting this chapter before videos too, because it is shorter and more to the point, just like wiki links above. It’s just quite bold, with some cursing🤬, uppercase words, but whatever. I don’t talk with religious people or discuss religion daily, I guess that’s why I don’t swear here.
Below a few links to my favorite pages:
God deserves to burn in hell🔥 Starts with the truth that there’s no god. Long and very good page, with logical explanation and reasoning. Later giving 3 possibilities: – A. There’s no god. Definitely no god worthy of listening to and/or praising. – B. God exists and is the cruelest sadist in the universe. – C. God exists and doesn’t care (or do a thing) about this universe. The only true one is A of course. But yeah, I think religious people who still pray would probably not pick any. They maybe would go for C eventually. Lastly I think those C (who still believe) could go into B, once they knew Bible well enough and gave all some thoughts. But it’s cleaner and simpler to get A. Well that is the effect of years of brainwashing (teaching in schools, attending mass in church, talking with other brainwashed people, etc.), and sadly it can last a lifetime. I think it’s more likely for children to be smart and not believe after time, than religious parents getting smarter during lifetime.
Gods’ PR agents – why do they suck? About people actively promoting religions, while being very uninformed and uneducated, to the point of being ridiculous.
Newest and probably the most up to date chapter. There are whole channels listed below in chapters. Each with few playlists below and many of my favorite video links that I saw and liked. I’m adding 💥 emoji for the few best, important, and valued most, by me OFC.
💥How God Made the 10 Commandments – A great and funny (for atheists) animation of God and Jeffrey creating the 10 commandments. Well it’s known that people made them (and all religions) so it shows the process and stupidity of it and them too. Meant for Israelites not 2 billion people today I’ll add. Yet still in schools.
💥If You Behaved Like God🔥 – A really awesome one. Shows a human at a doctor telling about his requirements (same as God’s) to have a relationship with (all) people. Shows how absurd the God(‘s) obsession is and how much effort and time people waste. Also how it is fine for God by theists, while obviously any moral person having such requirement (even one) would be considered crazy and criminal.
Comedy for Atheists: Let God Sort Them Out🔫 – Old but great, animation of 9 various people dying (4 gangsters, drunk, agnostic doctor, pedophile priest, boy, atheist woman, etc) and God’s judgement sorting them into heaven and hell. Proving the point that’d be the opposite of morality and just retarded.
God Isn’t Allowed In Schools🏫 – Short, new and relevant (for US🇺🇸). About (tyrannical, corrupt) big government, the ruling rich🤑, shooting/guns🔫 in schools and people revolting against each other instead.
The Real God: An Epiphany💑 – Showing a theist woman treating an atheist man similarly to rejection in a relationship, also mistakenly thinking being atheist is rejecting God (skepticism is a proper term). At also showing that religion is based on bad division into two: where you must either choose God or reject (of course wrongly suggesting God exists).
The One True Moral Compass🧑🤝🧑 – Short cool animated story. Shows a couple with an atheist neighbour talking then leaving, then new Muslim neighbour arriving and despising couple’s (country’s) morality. Just like further videos below about morality, it shows that there is no one morality, and definitely one based on God’s would surely worse than atheists.
If God Weren’t Invisible – and was close by all the time, followed you anywhere, etc. Short but cool. Also ends with death and then God being the same in heaven. It reminds of heaven topic where basically only known thing about it is that it would be presence of God for eternity.
Do Atheists Hate God? – Shows increasing church numbers in US🇺🇸 (4000 new ones made every year, without tax) and other results of big money spending to spread more religion. Churches outnumbering schools, stores, etc. Mentions Bible being most sold, because of being put and shoved where possible (churches, hotels, children bookstores). Shows street preachers telling people what to believe, also countless billboards and stickers. Next USA being build up on Christian values and politicians basically being religious as a requirement for election. In result governed by politicians dictated by God believing majority. News are being now about opinions not facts. It’s another part of USA, that adds up. I already disliked USA most of all countries (that I know somewhat). I wrote more on USA in human stupidity.
💥The Credibility of Faith🏔️ – A very good and deep video. Only with texts, showing (lots of) various religions throughout times (ages). Over time it was increasingly harder to prove God or heaven etc, since people were getting more intelligent, moved and communicated over further distance. It’s also showing various people in history who were thought to be gods (but they died OFC). Then how many times religions told us the world was going to end. How religions disregarded science and told us various (stupid now) assumptions about Earth and universe. While also threatening those trying to teach them. Well kind of an analogy of what a typical old believer does with truth and science. At end video also shows that even if science advances, then religion will too, to make (proving) God always out of reach. Religion is like a rock, and science is the water that erodes it away.
If God Were a Car🚗 – A comparison of believing to renting a car. A woman wants to rent a car and renter man isn’t showing it just trying to use religious arguments to prove it exists. Ridiculous (and so funny), same as the whole religion concept. It’s easy to understand nobody would rent or buy a car without seeing it, basing only on a bunch of (even inconsistent) papers and others telling. But yeah with religion the situation got way more out of control, 2 major ones have 2 billions of people still believing, and the budget, spending and indoctrination/brainwashing needed to keep it is major. It’s good though that religion is slowly declining with new generations of people.
How God Favors Evil🔪 – A look into God’s rules for salvation etc. Being able to stop evil, and not doing anything. Covered by freedom of will, and not wanting to affect it. Logically proving it isn’t even doing that and instead all gets worse for everybody. At older times in Bible God also did evil on Earth.
Atheist Comedy: Matrix Revelations💊 – A cool reinterpretation of Matrix story, where religion is the matrix and people in that prison world are the religious. And they are hopelessly blind and will fight or die to protect it. Close line to that from movie. Matrix agents are theists, afterlife is a religious generated dream world designed to control people.
💥God’s Greatest Hypocrisy – Longer. At start shows Bible contradictions regarding one issue (jealous God punishing children for parents sins). Referenced lines in Bible are there too. Then the story when God kills a baby (tortures for a week) to punish king David for adultery (and a baby as result) after Samuel 11:27. Later God deciding to kill his son Jesus to straighten the story. Of course that seems to be forgotten or explained somewhat or denied or else . That story is probably the sickest in Bible, but yeah there was more killing by God (next video below). So here it’s also shown that good is: because God says it’s good, not it’s good because God is good. Well clearly a human way, not divine. Well it’s easy to understand knowing the Bible was being written by ancient people while slavery and murder was common, they were inventing God ad those stories along the way, in the world of that age, when people would easily be persuaded to believe. It is amazing that this still continues after like 2000 years.
BREAKING: God Under Arrest – A court case for God, and his (early) crimes of murder, etc. Quickly taken over by God not prosecuted by judge until end.
💥Why The Ten Commandments are a bit SHIT – A great explanation of each of 10, and how useless, even ridiculous these are today, and why it only could made sense 2000 years ago.
The Roots of Our Morality – Old, with schematic showing 3 components of our morality. First “innate response” and second “empathetic response”, both driven by natural selection and coming from evolution. Last, third is “cultural factors” which vary over time and location on Earth. So morality doesn’t come from any God or religion, it can be poisoned by it and shaped by culture (passed by society). But ultimately morality is an evolution based feature. Without it any species would not survive.
😱The Horror of God’s Morality – Longer, newer talk about human subjective morality. And the wrong objective morality (coming from God), based on God’s actions (e.g. God’s flooding🌊 (i.e. genocide), and other punishments, sacrifices🔪 (killing people) for God, atrocities (wars etc.) carried out by people acting for God, etc.). Including an example with Nazis crimes (Holocaust, questioned as (done by people acting for) God punishing Jews/Israelites). Later another (easy to get) example with pigs and beacon. Explaining at end, that it’d be stupid to base how people should interact with people, on how God (with infinite intellect) interacted with people. Yet so many treat God as a father and us being children, one of the most naive ways to think indeed.
⌛Well to sum it up clearly here: we know people made God(s) and in such a way that it’d be impossible to reveal its presence, to trick people into believing (and profit for that). It was also too long ago, so now nothing from ancient holy books makes any sense in current times. It just shows how barbaric and stupid/uneducated were people thousands of years ago. Well one thing that clearly lasted is that the vast majority is still so naive to believe in religion(s).
👿Evil: Whose Problem is it Anyway? – Long but very good and informational and with few examples showing logic easily and proving it. First, evil is an adjective, not a noun (something) itself. Evil isn’t objective (from a God), it is subjective, relative (shown on graphic, near end of video) and based on population (what we know people did so far, to cause others suffering). The ending of video is great and strong showing people don’t need God or objective definition of evil to know the worst evil men were evil.
😨Tough Religious Questions Pt8: The Horror of Heaven? – How it doesn’t make sense to be for infinity even in heaven, and would would have to bed forcefully change in person to make accept it and the constant praising of God there too.
Murder and Masturbation – Religion Rebutted #3🔪 – About God’s judgement and eternal punishment, an argument worse than useless, from religious people. With flow chart of having sin and route to heaven/hell. Showing the paradox where murderers who accepted Jesus would go into heaven and just one sin of masturbation would send a person to hell without accepting Jesus. Again proving its nonsense.
The Noah’s Ark of Total Bullshit🦒 – A long but intelligent take on details that would be needed for that story to happen. Yet another example of how stupid were people (about 2000 years ago) who made up those stories and those who believed at that time (and didn’t even think about them to question or doubt).
Playlist: The Bible for Beginners, short 4 videos showing just few aspects of (ridiculous today) things in the Bible.
Video
💥The Internet: Where religions come to die. Best video about how religions work and continue. Firstly by abusing children’s minds, passing religion from their parents. Secondly by social coercion, people in groups keeping/forcing each other into doing the same thing and making it harder for anyone to leave religion. This varies among religions, but most of them addict children already. IMO If starting or being religious was only allowed after reaching 18 years old, I’m sure there’d be way less religious people. And if religions didn’t force people to visit religious buildings (churches etc, where crowd psychology, indoctrination and coercion work best). Also to have faith and pray daily, they wouldn’t work, and more people would likely get a proper way of thinking back in their head.
Cult
Video also includes a fragment about a cult (definition e.g. here), other full video about it, rather dreadful, titled “The End Of The World Cult (Cult & Child Abuse Documentary)”. A bit hard to watch those inside cult, (for me it was) like looking at people who have lost their brain and any logic or reason. That’s what cults and religions do, they brainwash people. It’s just that cults are more intense and use stronger, crime based methods, and have less members, while religions do it less intensely but at a large scale for billions of people.
📖Bible
Next a 4 video playlist: The Bible for Beginners showing that only 10% of Christians have read it. Then analysing few ridiculous texts from the Bible.
Last video sounds like actual people from 2000 years ago describing things they knew nothing about and thought there is some God, behind what was just nature based event: Was God a Volcano?. Another video with Bible’s description of heaven, sounding like written under drugs or alcohol and surely not like how most still think of paradise or heaven now. First one with God’s fury and desire to kill those who oppose his religion. Well clearly sounds like a ruler of medieval ages (filled with sword battles) not any superior or divine being. Third video of Jesus talking about killing children of a woman who did a sexual crime or such. And later promoting genocide and theft for those without his faith.
Extremely disturbing, even more so now. Since that’s one of those holy books that is meant as true. Yet with such fragments as above clearly omitted or ignored, only noticed by minority. Lastly there are even translation and understanding issues in such ancient old, big, written works. E.g. I think language in them is ancient, our understanding of it can be faulty, then translators (how many iterations were needed) could alter original meaning in parts, and such changes could affect billions of people’s rituals and beliefs.
🎥Movie Religulous
I saw the movie Religulous (2008) only recently and it was great. I guess religious people will take is as a mockery of religions. The movie shows a man logically questioning most popular religions and explaining with reason how all are false. It also shows how stupid the world still is, because of religions.
🚪Summary
Well, here I could end this page. If you like other sources on this topic, the above ones are my favourite best and done by other people.
Below is the old version of this page, including my own long history with more thoughts and observations. Written (mostly) before seeing those above and basing on logic before learning the above. It may be valuable to learn my process of me getting rid of religion.
Last chapter is universal though and still recommended.
💡Introduction
Many religions are still present and practiced and many times people died or fought because of religions. Some are so intense (Islam) that they tell people to kill people of different religions (but any extremists do it for their religion too).
While other religions “only” dictate people how to live (e.g. pray, attend mass, not to masturbate, marry before sex, not to be gay, and other ancient garbage ideas from times including: torture, slavery, disrespecting women rights, etc. All before science and internet, when most people couldn’t even read, and printing press wasn’t yet invented).
This dictating sums up in all human lives (believers) to a significant money cost and also a lot of time wasted (especially for mass attendance, praying, religious classes and meetings, religious spending, etc). It may seem okay for religious people. But the bigger picture is that religions do it for profits and to spread themself the most, at the cost of people’s freedom of course. Religion is also an another system of control, like governments. I think especially in countries with one dominating religion.
Sure, you can learn something useful for life from religions too. Not much though (e.g. don’t steal, don’t kill), it’s better to learn basic laws or constitution. Religion motivated many people and helped them to have a better life without a bad, unhealthy addiction, possibly also helping others. But for me, that was just a switch to a different addiction, (another) one based on lies and manipulation (spanning across families, addicting kids too).
From my view: religions (especially later in life) are a waste of time and (in total) people’s lives too. They’re like poison, that body adapts to living with. Lastly religion is a big profiting business like basically all other. Well, one can see those huge religious buildings (almost everywhere) and can hear them from far too. It also supports related businesses like religious icons production and selling, traveling to religious places, grave ornaments, commercials, magazines, radio, etc.
📜My history and observations
I was born and raised a Christian since my family was so too. Their parents also and honestly no doubt why, given how this religion was spread in county (over 90%) it’s taught in schools too, etc.
🚼Early beginning
At beginning in Christianity there is that christening ceremony. Usually already newborns are dragged into religion and marked (also registered) by priest, in church with their parents. My point here is that religions start already with newborns and span across families too. Most addictions require being of legal age. But religions are already on a whole new level of addicting, it wasn’t even my choice to begin with. And children aren’t able to choose only adults can. That’s why IMO religions should be respectable and start only after reaching 18 years old by own choice, not by parents or state.
💊Addiction
I’ll put my saying here: the younger you are starting something the easier to get addicted (for life) and more severe, longer the consequences are. When older (e.g. after 30 or 40), religious people won’t even consider any thoughts like: maybe this is all not needed, not true, and there is no God? Because it would mean they’d have to throw half of their life away (partly) and admit it was wasted on this. And like with every other addition: people will deny it. And find any possible, stupidest reasons to continue it. Some addictions can be stopped quickly by people. I think usually religions can’t, they’d take years to get rid of. I think that usually: the more years a person lived believing, the more years it would take to naturally get rid of this addiction.
🙏Praying
There is little I remember from being few years old, but one thing is that: at some point my mom just showed me and told that I need to pray everyday. I think I still remember it because this was something odd, it felt like a chore and punishment, also unnatural and now even stupid I’ll add. I also had a big Jesus picture framed hanging in room then.
I can’t even, most people (young or old) just repeat same stuff over and over again praying. There are even praying books etc. IMO it’s just stupid and definitely one of the worst ways to waste time in life. I even know a song “Praying Is Nothing”🎶, with lyrics related to this topic. Additionally I found quite often to have many new ideas before sleep. Obviously I could not have them or would destroy/forget them by praying instead.
What does repeating stuff do? It makes people believe it’s true, it also addicts. That’s why I think now, I stopped praying first. Repeating same, old stuff over and over is on the opposite side of having unique ideas and thoughts, which can analyse or solve problems or start new inventions, science formulas, or just better products.
Honestly it feels ridiculous now, to think there is a divine being who needs this (it’s closer to Greek gods), listens to billions of people praying, and then does nothing. Well religious people likely believe this is needed or does change something. I remember after I stopped I realized nothing changed, and I got my time back and less chores.
Islam even requires praying 5 times daily at certain times, on a special carpet. Well I’d say it is stronger addicting and wasting more life’s time. I find such pictures rather disturbing to see lots of people praying🛐, e.g. Islam here and here, other near temples, in Vatican too, and even more here. I guess such big praying locations will last very long or would be the last standing, even if religions suddenly vanished.
On the other hand I found love parade❤️ intriguing and interesting to watch😎, while I don’t find crowds pleasant to be in at all, as I am an introvert. Either way I find such gatherings (especially if it includes traveling) to be just for profit events, enjoyable by those who feel, and want to be there live, instead of watching on screen or just ignoring.
💵Money
When I was a little kid I even at some point said I wanted to be a priest, which was after I saw how money is collected in churches by priests (from all, during mass). I think it was the first time (or one of) I saw money. Well I never paid in church, but being with family members, they always handed me money to give it to priest. I now find it wrong and annoying, because it’s their money, they should put it, and by giving me to put it, it teaches me to pay in church.
I remember early in school some teenagers pressed with questions in class: from what our priest was earning money? He finally admitted that from weddings, burials. I now know also for: extra masses with dedication, those who play music in churches, paying for graves, etc. Yeah surely if you’ll have any of those occasions, then you’ll get the bill and need to pay money, not small I’ll add. And let’s not forget voluntary (but suggested) offerings (big or small). Mass takes about 40 to 60 min and ends with some church news and a list of things you could spend money on there, like renovations, missions, etc. There is also an accompanying business of producing all those holy symbols (icons), images and all candles🕯️, flowers and what not for the graves🪦, with at least once a year (on All_Saints’_Day) a huge display of them (and consumerism). Since it all needs transportation, people usually will loose time (and money) to get there and back (e.g. by car, bus, walking, etc).
⛪Attendance
Attendance in churches is required every week, or even more often during holidays (like Christmas and Easter). Well it’s very habit building and for a life time addiction. And it’s in favour (profit) of the businesses behind religion(s).
I remember for long I didn’t talk or sing inside churches, and was only present. I’m not an extrovert. Back then I liked choir, but now I even find black gospel music disturbing. I also really didn’t like confessions and that even masturbating once after, looses that grace (or something) and you’d end in hell if you died then, ugh so much bullshit. Penalty (atonement) for sins is usually just more praying or more mess attendance (I guess it varies between priests) which is simply forcing more habit and addiction. Honestly feels ridiculous like most middle ages. Seriously if there was an all-knowing, all-powerful God this wouldn’t be needed, he could speak directly to each or so.
Ultimately I think my intelligence and being introverted (INTJ) won and let me drop it then. I think being around people with same addiction is what addicts like, especially extroverts. Happens in churches (and this technique is called social coercion or indoctrination), also on concerts, sport stadiums, etc. But surely not everyone thinks of those as (for profit) addictions like I do. I can also add that this religious social coercion or crowd psychology didn’t work on me, I put always first being myself and my preferences and not doing what others do or want me to. It already started when I was in kindergarten.
🤔Thinking vs believing
Being constantly subjected to talks and thinking about religion (or God) does affect your mind, instead of thinking logically only or about anything else. The more you believe (more faith you have) the more you silence or numb your brain’s thinking. Especially true for me as INTJ and for other intelligent people (*NT* personality types). So (at least) in my case, returning to faith would mean getting stupider, shutting off my best personality trait (partly) to do what other believers do, simply because others told them so, without proving it, logically.
I noticed my religious family members, they can’t even talk for like 10 minutes without mentioning God or faith etc. They can even mention God in smalltalk, while there is even a commandment not to mention God’s name in vain. Yeah I mean surely this is a free religious commercial so not in vain, it’s for profit. Well this is the part I compare with poison or infection. Religion makes people do things they normally wouldn’t, even without noticing and thinking it’s normal (surely not realizing it was invented 2000 years ago and forced by state since many hundreds of years).
🌏Percentages
Why religion it so common? Well intelligent *NT* types are rare, in about 10% of all people. I think there is a (maybe slight) correlation here with the percentage of atheists also about 10% of world population. But there are other reasons people are atheists. State atheism has more info about countries which were forcing atheism or are so. It’d be a pity if people associated atheism with communism or dictatorship. Not with an intelligent, individual human’s choice. So most people (90%) do things by feeling, instinct, and what others do, or tell them to. Not by analytically thinking it thorough first. They’re just not able to. It’s the stupidity that is common, so much that it can be turned into profits, in many ways. If you mix this with religion’s view to have children too, then people may not have much free time to think about it all (as wise adults) and see the big picture.
🙅Doubt
Mine
I think when I was like 16 years old (and still Christian) I had my first doubt, if God does intervene on Earth, i.e. does something. I thought about asking a priest that too, but with no way I didn’t and I’m glad now. Being 18 and rebellious in high school likely helped here too. I tried once not going to church for a year to see if anything changes at all. For years I didn’t like going to church every Sunday. I also didn’t like that “ancient theatre” there since I started to call it so. Well needless to say I never had any sign or anything divine, proving to me then that there is no God. I only had my family complaining. (This was all before I had internet).
Others
A (very) religious person will never doubt, will not let any logical thought disturb their faith. That’s what religions are about, believing only, not: checking if it’s true, testing what it does, finding flaws of religion(s), learning about (other) religions (from wikipedia), etc. Basically all common ways of learning, reasoning and logic, used also in science, technical subjects (math, physics, chemistry) and even non technical like managing people at work, etc.
Lastly, those who never doubt are set on path, given by those with power. It can happen in countries by dictators, leaders, politicians, etc. In case of religions it can span even whole lifetimes and families. For me this is basically part time slavery.
🕚Time
I did a simple computation (in high school) how much time yearly I waste on being in church and roughly this was: 54 * 1.5 = 81 hours, if we divide this by 8 that’s like 10 days of extra vacation. Now who wouldn’t like having this instead of e.g. work or school.
I think I got back after for a year again but then I stopped completely. I remember the frequent family talks that I should go etc. I’m glad though this eventually subsided. But surely more severe consequences are happening worldwide like family abandoning their child(ren) etc. Only thing left was Christmas or Easter since my family was pressing a lot to be at least then.
After few years still, my brain finally cleared from all that nonsense. Leaving room for logical thoughts and reasoning that there is no God and all this is just a hoax. Later I understood it’s also a system of controlling, ruling and enslaving people, in vast quantities and percentages of their lives.
Since many years I don’t waste any time yearly for religion or religious activities. Restored time I can spend on anything intelligent, entertaining or just resting. Or writing a blog page😉. Like with other addictions, if you get rid of it, you’ll get more time in life. But it comes with more responsibility. It’s up to you how to use that time. It would be stupid to waste it on another addiction. But even if so, we don’t do it regularly, right? It’s not like I would always waste time instead of visiting church for mass. I can do various things instead (at home, no travel). Being in church is simply a for-profit activity, like in any other business (e.g. being in cinema or shopping mall) and when done regularly it builds habit and addiction. It does bring profits for businesses and losses for humanity.
⏳Finally
Today I can answer all my questions immediately: there is no God, some people invented it all, thousands of years ago (when most couldn’t even read, knew nothing about science, etc.) and this is still a gigantic business, profiting on those who get into. I’m not surprised too much even, given how many other things are just lies in our world and how naive people can still be. Even countries and whole humanity of which 90% isn’t thinking logically.
I’m pretty sure even if I asked any priest the answer to any question(s) would mention God a couple of times and our belief (and that we have to believe), maybe with some examples from bible. Because believing is the key what matters here. Without it religions wouldn’t still exist. Same if it was the opposite and 90% of people were thinking logically.
There surely are some good things because of Christianity, one example I know are nuns, and their voluntary help in hospitals. Perhaps missions, help and education in Africa also. But this help for others is done including the wrong message, it comes with all the lies and manipulations that religions bring. Honestly religions don’t (necessarily) help people. Some alcoholics or other addicts go to churches every Sunday and it didn’t help them at all in getting rid of their addictions. The goal of confessions and forgiving God is (IMO) creating necessity for attendance and priest jobs or churches to even exist.
🧬Purpose of life
One question bothered me also when I was young: why do people live? I remember asking it few of my closest family members and a close friend.
my closest uncle (a religious fanatic) immediately started about salvation, eden/paradise, God, etc.
my dad answered: it’s about doing what makes you happy and then mentioned God, eternal life, etc.
my friend answered: to sustain our species. It was as simple and straight as that, nothing more. I immediately liked his answer, it is also my view.
After reading some of wikipedia pages with much more info about this dilemma (question), I know that’s another reason why religions (still) exist too. They answer the one question that eventually most of people will ask. It’s just that they do it by lying (inventing eternal afterlife, souls, hell, heaven, or reincarnation, etc.) and do it for their own purpose (profit), while also taking control of (by few percent of) people’s lives and enslaving them (even since kids) and manipulating parents to pass it to their kids.
Ad. 1. So the first answer above is the most wrong, since there is no God and religions were made also to give a fake purpose of life, but the real reason is of course their profits and control. How religions work is best explained in this video.
Ad. 2. Second answer is still bad. Being happy is not well defined, and it won’t be since it’s an emotion. I think it will depend greatly on each person and change in time. But surely, expanding this to the further point of view: everyone is meant to find themselves a life purpose. Of course this does vary a lot across humanity: there are people helping others, some are selfish, others toxic and lastly a few percent of psychopaths and sociopaths (shorter page, and images with differences).
Ad. 3. Well this answer is the only one true and also universal to all species. The purpose of life is continuing life itself. Nothing more. But since human brains have more IQ than other species and we are using hands, fingers, tools, books, etc. people have made up plenty of (mostly stupid, not good for humanity) reasons to control or manipulate other’s lives or purpose like: religions, governments, dictatorships, militaries, crimes, terrorism, mafias, etc.
🏦Big issues⚖️
In this chapter I list a few issues (I know of) associated with religious activities, i.e. done by religious leaders (priests, clergy).
Crime
There are also rare but really bad cases of wrong turned priests (and other religious leaders). E.g. I’ve heard from my taxi driving cousin that he was driving a priest to a brothel (don’t remember how often), yeah great use of church budget.
Then even globally a big issue of priests molesting minors with an own long wiki here too. With paying expenses for case settlings of abuse victims, if lying by church didn’t help cover them from police. And likely other rare involvements in crime activities.
Donating
Lastly elderly people can get convinced (by priests etc.) to give money to churches, sometimes huge sums in total. Perhaps not a big crime, but IMO a manipulation or simply theft. And for what? For personal spendings, gambling? Well yes, missions (spreading religion to other countries), repairs, and building more churches, etc. Aren’t there enough big and excessive ones, already from old ages? My mother was still receiving a letter yearly (including a donation transfer form) from some missionaries she visited like 30 years ago. The freaking annoying Jehovah’s Witnesses people still ring at house once a while.
Travel
Some people get too passionate and obsessed with religion, spend more. There is “travel” (organized in churches etc) to visit religious sites (popular places), with others, almost constantly praying during that too. It’s not really for travel, just a cover for all those activities, praying here could be social coercion too. For me this is just too ancient, wrong purpose and wasted opportunity to do something else useful for others. In some places there are also big crows gathering in religious places (e.g. here in Vatican). For me definitely the worst way of travel, and just an addiction building activity, that doesn’t give room for doubt or other thoughts. So in other words it shrinks more into believing in religion, thus it’s a profitable addition to it.
⏳Conclusion
Well the list goes on I’m sure. Like with anything else also here religions aren’t a solution. Anyone contributing and giving money to religion, is contributing to all of it. Including the worst things (those crimes above) and religious commercials for spreading it. If contributing only time and thoughts, then its just wasted life’s time (IMHO). If you raise your children in faith then you rob them of freedom and thinking, in favour of believing and being enslaved to ancient beliefs.
I’m sure there are deeply religious people who’d either deny these or even know of these, yet they will find a reason to continue being religious (or even further put religion into more of their lifetime or activities).
I doubt if this changed much after Covid when people couldn’t go. It was definitely a period when humanity could learn something and improve or stop, but I think it just went back to what it was before.
Religious commercials and Poland🇵🇱
In this chapter I describe the vast number of commercial ways promoting (or indoctrinating) religion in Poland. A quite big issue and a waste IMHO.
ℹ️Intro
Poland is the country I was born in and raised Christian by my religious family. A brief history video shows Poland didn’t exist on map for over 100 years, so people went into religion more to save nationality. There is a history of corruption too. I’m not a patriot at all, just to be clear. For me nationality and religion have both negative value, going against people’s freedom.
I became atheist by logical reasons, about age 20 or so. Since then (in 24 years) I have noticed a lot of things in this country that promote religion, indoctrinate it and brainwash people into believing it, for life (theirs and very likely forcing it into their children’s life).
These things can be also present in other countries or religions, just look (or sound) different. So I think the list can also serve as examples in other religions. Of course in a country with religious majority those will be likely considered normal, needed, etc. Another issue, since those are brainwashed people on purpose.
But for me all these things are to keep and spread religion and also act as religious commercials. So here is my list of them (all I could think of) with my negative comments.
📃List
Churches⛪. Way too often, like every km (0.6 mi) same as schools. One other loud thing churches have is the bell🔔. Which I’m sure was and still somewhat is a great reminder (and the simplest commercial) of religion in about 1.6km (or 1mi) radius. The bell is quite loud and I would surely be pissed if a church was near. I still can hear it if I opened a window or outside or in my garden. It does sound at times when mass is about to be in church. Either way it’s a disturbance of silence, a noisy commercial that is allowed since centuries. Churches are also quite big and have a cross on top, for same reason. Well those are meant to be visible and heard from large distances (at least in Europe) to gain most recognition and spread.
Other religious buildings like: sanctuaries, nun monasteries, etc. Maybe even bigger.
Pope related buildings and icons. Since one pope was born in Poland this turned into even more religion and pope obsession, after death (and made saint) too. Surely lots of profits from this.
Pilgrimages to sacred places, i.e. places of ancient religious activities, or places mentioned in bible etc.
Religious oases and other circles (near churches) with meetings and activities for youth and young people, but centered around religion. For me just a waste of time, nothing intelligent there.
Religion it’s taught in public schools🏫. Elementary and high schools. I had it for 1 hour every week. For like over 10 years. It probably is easier to just sit and ignore, rather than making it so that one does not attend. One would still have to be somewhere else for 1h. Parents would need to do it too. It’s present like other patriotic subjects (Polish literature and History, forced even in technical high school each year). I get it now: it’s meant to spread patriotism. Obviously this generates some profit for country, by imprinting these ideas in people, since young ages. I’m glad at least college had some respect and didn’t force these subjects. I can’t even, so much time wasted, I could learn chemistry or anything else useful.
Each school has a cross and Polish emblem. For me a clear commercial of both, and just an extension, reminder of the above point. Like that itself wasn’t enough or too much already. Reason is like so: if you get addicted to any (main religion in country or patriotism) you will be unlikely to leave. This means most profit, so it’s justified to promote this and commercialize. Emblems are rather cheap but have power. Same goes for country flags🇵🇱, just for patriotism. Whoever had a flag outside is for me invested too much in country of residence and made a free commercial for it.
Some private schools🏫 are Christian. Probably with more religion subjects there. If parents are very religious and rich, they prefer that. Obviously I see it as bad for children as it hinders more their brain and free will. But once kids keep this religion spiral for years too long they are likely keep it for life, that’s clearly the purpose.
Some hospitals🏥 are Christian. These contain plenty of religious icons and services on site (e.g. a cross in every room, a chapel on site, a priest visits daily I think). Not needed at all, but surely spreading or keeping religion and appealing to already older, religious people there.
Religious radio📻 and TV channel(s). I can’t even listen to that for few seconds. Yet it goes on everyday for hours, blabbering about all possible religious topics in that calm voice for weak people. I’m sure it’s okay for those older people who already won’t change. But surely it can make it worse, make people more addicted to religion, by doing more commercials of religious places to visit, ways to give or spend money to, advice more time and reasons for praying, etc. All wasting people’s time and money.
There are also lots of similarly purposed religious websites, which obviously can have somewhere (or annoyingly) visible ways for donating money.
Religious politic parties. I think they saw an opportunity and just went to profit on that. Probably ages ago too. IMO governments and religions are not that far from each other: both are systems of controlling society, telling people what to do, lying, and profiting on them. Especially those fooled by their propaganda or by dictatorships.
Cemeteries🪦. Including their shops of candles🕯️, flowers💐, and other decorations. Candles last like a day or two and if someone has even an obsession of having it lit all year (or just once a year) then its a freaking, steady profit. Another big (unneeded) expenses are during funerals there. For me it is sickening to see people benefiting and addicting others (who suffered a loss) to visiting graves (not needed at all) and buying stuff to put on them. Instead of moving on and not obsessing with dead bodies of people who passed and aren’t there. Memories live in our heads, on pictures etc, not near graves. Needles to say, you have to pay to rent a grave. Some graves and coffins are simple but many are quite expensive. And lastly each grave has the cross (commercial). There are countries which don’t have or just don’t waste space for graves (like China) and burn corpses (cremation) which can also be more environmentally friendly and waste less space.
Marriages💒. Well another religious activity, made for profit. This one has even gone more out of control, with how much money can be spent on it by celebrities and other rich people. Depends also on how many guests are on wedding. On the other hand it is completely not needed as civil marriage is key and weddings are just an ever expensive tradition and display.
Christmas🎄 or Easter🪺 in malls. Lots of commercial garbage, decorations, etc. Loosely related to religion, now mostly meaning huge profits from more customers at that time period.
Merchandise. Symbols, Icons🖼️. So e.g. paintings of saints or other religious people, crosses, figurines, calendars, rosaries (for more praying), bibles. Religious papers or magazines too. For me this just shows how religion is closely similar to any other business, seriously. People are actually paying for being stupider, having more things and thus less time and freedom.
📂Old Resources🌎
This is an older chapter, where I previously gathered various internet resources I found after I quit religion, with my comments. It was still before finding that so many great atheist were creating videos on youtube, as listed in the top chapter. But there are some additional resources from internet and many from wikipedia.
📑Contradictions
There are some other pages on internet. One website also stated (in short) that given how many different religions are this means all are untrue. There is even some straight up made one lately like this.
Few are listing plenty of contradictions in the bible (e.g. here, here, or this pdf with 101, and another). I also found the middle age history of Christianity (crusades, inquisitions) to be particularly brutal, horrid and disqualifying them in modern times.
Yet there are still many countries in which still the majority is religious. Well imagine how many world problems we could together solve or knowledge learn to make our lives better if we skipped all religions.
⛪Faith
Religions are often called faith. And this is really a great explanation of what happens here. They don’t need to be true, don’t need to be based on facts, no need to prove them or any events. All that’s needed for them is faith. Why is it bad? Well having faith means dropping / disregarding logic (I’d say at least few %) and tricking your brain to believe in something rather than proving it’s true first and basing your live only on facts and getting to the truth (so contaminated and lied these days by media, politics, lobbyists, bribes, influencers, and misinformed (or stupid) people who talk or write too much).
There was also one quote (I can’t remember source): “Belief in God is for those who don’t (fully) believe in themselves”. I.e. that they can be fine or even better without religion.
➡️Logic, Atheism
Later I was reading these great wikipedia pages: about atheism and arguments against the existence of God. I highly recommend them since they have a lot more on the topic. As a person who thinks logically I found them very enjoyable and even priceless. I didn’t know there were so many logical reasons. Yet countries are still overly full (percentages are here) of religious people. I.e. those who prefer to hinder their brain’s logical thinking (or don’t have it) to blindly believe and not even doubt. For me clearly too many people died or lost their lives (spent at least a portion if it) to religions. I also agree that religions remove freedom from people and do enslave them (to some degree, just like countries). Yet nearly a half of the world has still issues and even strong penalties, e.g. Blasphemy_law (map also there).
🏜️Intense
Some religions are more intense than others, Islam wikipedia shows it. I’m not sure how severe it still is today (as it seems to improve). A religion that tells (at least in extreme cases) to kill any other religion’s members. Also penalty for leaving this religion (apostasy map by country) is death (surely was, wiki here). Praying is done 5 times a day. It consumes the most daily time and is most demanding. Pilgrimage (travel) to most religious place is required. Such rituals and traditions are intense to guarantee continuation and spreading of that religion (and possibly governments), while those who oppose it face even torture, years in prison or death. Well for an European (or a developed Christian country) member this is likely a different level, it’s the most controlling and harmful religion, just like there are such countries/governments. Any changes are difficult there too, but there were some finally, since this violates human rights (for example in this long wiki page). Another issue present in such religion is inequality for women (very extreme, a quick video here), and hostility for LGBTQ people, and many others like limited freedom of speech.
🧑🔬Religion vs Science
Another wiki page with attitudes towards science shows that there are some issues: the most intense religious countries have disregard towards evolution and generally religion there didn’t let science in (as much in other countries). Well for me it’s clear, since religion is rather the opposite of science and using pure science would deny religions. Religions are social traditions, based on beliefs which came to be way before most of scientific research. This likely backs up my point that the more time is spent/wasted on religion the less time is left for science (also just logic and reason).
But the world doesn’t fully and only move towards science and freedom. Far from that. The world is ruled by those with most money and thus power, also by military, can be affected by influence, lobbying etc. I write more on this on my page: human stupidity. Surely forcing and continuing thousand(s) of years traditions (by countries) is the opposite of what should be done (for true freedom or humanity in an overpopulated and manipulated world).
Movie scene
I remember a scene (video part) from a Star Trek movie where a large spacecraft reveals itself to some tribal, painted people who then get in awe and probably start praising it as god or something new in their beliefs. Honestly I think, looking at Earth where majority of people are still religious (and do pray, just in a bit more modern way than tribes do) it looks somewhat similar to that scene just at a vast, global scale (not few people in tribe but billions) and that I find to be stupid. I think we should let science fully take over and finally forget religions, IMO way too much time has been wasted on those primitive beliefs.
👶Continuity
Generally (most) religions are set up in a way that ensures continuity. I mean they tell people to marry and have children (then pass religion to them early without a choice). Then having sex before marriage or masturbating is considered sin and wrong by many religions. I value freedom the most and in purest form (IMO) this means nothing and nobody should tell others what to do. Yet religions clearly do it throughout whole lives. Some more strictly, others less, but they definitely tell people how to live, and it’s for religion’s profit. The most intense religions (and cults) do it by force, and less intense just count on people’s stupidity (that thing present in 90% of people, and we’re all born with it). I will write a short, (even more) bold, intense, to the point criticism of all religions on my page about human stupidity. After all I think they’re the result of it, globally.
📉Solution
I think the only solution to problem of religions (still existing and continuing) is atheism. In other words the goal is to eventually stop all religions, and all such false ancient beliefs. This is of course easy to write but very unlikely and slow to do globally. I think there is progress. Some stats are saying there is up to 1 billion atheists/agnostics etc. Still over 2 billion Christians, 2 billion Muslims (Islam), 1 billion for Hinduism, and less for other religions (stats here).
I honestly think the world is about 100 years back in progress (after that movie), didn’t move much, people are still driving cars, trains, planes, using gasoline, gas, coal, etc. But in case of religions it is thousand(s) of years, basically lost. And billions of people’s minds basically poisoned by false beliefs.
It’d be a very complex transformation to get rid of religions. Since these span across countries, governments, politics, traditions and family members. It is for sure an individual approach for each human if even possible and how to move to atheism. E.g. with Islam it’d likely require to abandon country, whole family and even that is not certain since in some cases people were killed abroad.
🔍How to (move away from religion)
Here is my simple guide to help anyone move away or completely get rid of religion from their life. Obviously this is a long process, and it may be impossible for some. I’d say it is like getting rid of an addiction but (possibly much) slower.
So for anyone interested, here is what you could do:
Doubt🤔. Let to yourself any thoughts that question any things, including religion.
Use logic and reason🧐. It is also a very good way to deal with all other things in life. Especially for those beliefs (some thousand years old) that so many take for truth.
Read and learn📖 (from wikipedia or internet🌐) more about your religion. You might be surprised how many branches from each main religion are available now, or about its history (violent in early ages, and in extreme cases even today).
Read also about otherReligions. E.g. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism. I find these pages way to long📜 and boring. But it shows how incredibly long is the history and how much time and effort was spent on continuing religions since thousand(s) of years. Here is a page with major religions and their world’s percentage and a basic map of the world‘s🗺️ countries with main religions percentages.
If you have child(ren)🚸 then don’t force your religion on to them. Obviously it’d be worse for them if you did, since religions are made to abuse children’s minds (by their religious parents or state). The only way to stop spreading religion by this design, is to give children freedom from it. Since older, or very religious people won’t even get here or into later points I’ll put it boldly: just because you believe (and thus are partly stupid, even if forced or manipulated into) doesn’t mean you have to spread it to your kids. Let them choose and be free of religion if they’re smarter and wish so, even if just by being rebellious.
Don’t discriminate people of different or no religion. Every one has (or should have) the human right for freedom of religion including also freedom from religion. Now this of course means that religions (their entities, people running them) can profit on people. Including their commercials for religion. I think the only way to change this is by people realising religions are false and cause harm globally (instead of helping). Unfortunately capitalism rules the world and allows huge profits for companies, and religions too.
At some point if you can think logically and reasonably also in regards to religion(s), you might (start or finally) read the logical arguments against the existence of God (applies to few religions based on God). These are the arguments by scientists and philosophers, the most intelligent few people on Earth. Some are known even since hundreds of years ago. Or the Atheism page. It is a considerably large group of people (who chose freedom from religions).
Move away from praying🙏. Can be slowly, by gradually skipping some, or all at once if you can (of course this may even be started earlier, before reading above points). You will gain more time of your life back and clear you mind from blind beliefs or just repeating traditions. And thus make room for (or let your brain do) logical thinking, or just focus more on what’s currently important in your life.
Now obviously, most people (about 90%) aren’t so intelligent📈 to just logically think (or read above arguments) and disqualify religions as being untrue. Sadly most people do what others do, or what they feel like, or what others do because how it makes them feel, or what others tell them to, etc. Since religions usually already start from kids, this can include family members, school colleagues, friends etc. It helps being introverted and just not having many people you keep contact with. Likely can be a problem for extroverts in religious countries since loosing religion may mean loosing some of them.
Move away from all other religious media, like: religious get togethers🧑🤝🧑, magazines📰, radios📻, tv📺, etc. These are definitely never going to doubt about what they do, just continue it for profit.
Move away from visiting religious places⛪, and being around only religious people. This is also the social aspect of religions (manipulating, controlling and addicting people). This social coercion is also meant to make it difficult to leave religion(s).
Possibly be prepared to “loose” contact with some people👥 (like friends, colleagues or even family members) when you loose your religion. Sadly it’s like getting rid of addiction, if you know them only because you share an addiction, then they’re not helping you, they are just addicted. If they can’t get past that and tolerate someone with a different choice, then they’re violating your freedom (right to choose religion or none).
If you completely move away and don’t spend time🕖 at all (each year) for any religion, you’ll definitely have more time and freedom. It’s of course important to use it well and not just waste it.
Lastly, after getting rid of any addiction💊 (religion being one of), we can help others with their addiction. Of course the first thing is making someone realize of: being addicted, that addiction harms them and others, and needing help. This is a difficult step (if not the most). Those who won’t ever doubt will not let it to their mind. Hence not everyone needs help and it’s likely better to ignore older, stubborn or just stupid people. Even though they’re making the world stupider and allow others profiting more on this stupidity and spreading it too.
This is general information about what to expect in my blog posts. Also who I am and and why I write it. While this might be obvious, I recommend reading it first, before any other blog page/post.
👉Purpose
My blog’s purpose is to be helpful and about life style. I think I have enough life experience (and gathered knowledge) to share useful advice. Possibly it could help others to make better life decisions. Or just think over more about some life aspects.
The topics here are related to (likely everyday) human life. Way more common than my specific projects (programming, electronics, etc) or favorite entertainment.
📃Form
I call it a blog, but it is just a collection of few pages. Kind of like wiki(pedia) form, but done by one person. Pages can be long, or short, depending on their age, topic and my effort.
🚧WIP
Pages can be still a work in progress (WIP) or even an early draft. If so, then I always put: ⚠️Warning: in construction 🚧. Either already at top (for new page) or later, if page until this mark is already done. I publish a new page very early and edit it after, not keeping it as a hidden draft first.
📝Update
I also update pages (even this), after a while, or during editing. In any way: I could split pages or add new chapters or reorder them, add a sentence, fix spelling, etc. There isn’t any easy way to see/compare just updates. This page is already somewhat archived here having (possibly partially) old versions.
🚶Only human
Surely I’m just a human, and people make mistakes, don’t know everything, can fall for lies or manipulation, etc. I write only what I know, learned or observed myself. I also write about my life experiences, because this allows understanding why I believe something or how my life affected it.
I’m also the only one writing here. But OFC I base my knowledge on wikipedia and various smart people’s resources (like other websites or blogs, video channels, documentary movies, etc).
👤About me, from my experience
As a software engineer I didn’t study other terms (medical, economical, sociological or psychological) at all. But being over 40 now, I can say that in most cases I don’t really need such study, just use experience and need to have eyes (mind) open, honestly. I think logically, learn and filter for truth.
It is also a result of me being INTJ type, and my interest to learn and understand how the world works, and find out the truth (in topics I’m interested in), no matter how bad, old, inconvenient, or unprofitable for others. More about me on own page.
🌅Truth
I value truth and freedom most in life. Truth doesn’t care about (your):
emotions – i.e. how you feel about it or after it.
intelligence – Whether you understand it or not, or how long to explain or prove it etc.
depression – Learning some truth may be even depressing.
mood – e.g. if you’re having a “bad day”.
age – It’s not needed when young to learn e.g. worst Earth’s history or crimes. Strangely news or even wikipedia completely ignore this, there are no warnings.
etc.
My goal is: helping people by telling the truth, sharing it directly and quickly (just not as quickly (and shockingly) as possible). That’s what I’m doing/trying on my blog.
🫂Emotions
As an INTJ I also don’t really care much about my or others emotions. I find them misleading, superfluous (not needed), a waste of time (to read or deal with) or even unprofessional and stupid (e.g. when too intensely shown).
I’m sure there may be many bold statements on pages here, that some or many people could find offensive or disturbing, etc.
I’m not by dealing with anyone’s feelings, after smalltalk (which I obviously dislike greatly) or else. Neither by talking for an hour and checking first, if they can handle this. Or adjusting to their age or level of knowledge on this topic.
It’s also a website not a live talk with a person🤨🙄. So I can only give such warnings.
Thus it is up to you to read or leave (pages, chapters, links, etc), and decide when or how fast/slow.
Anything that I came up and works in my life might be wrong for someone else’s. Especially when people’s choices aren’t purely driven by logic, and nobody really knows or verified every truth. Many also don’t want to learn or change and decide based on emotions.
📖Learning
I believe the most important thing in life is to learn. Mostly this means self education. We make mistakes but if we learn from them, they become the cost of learning. If we don’t, they can become someone else’s profits, turn into addictions, which can even change our life or its style. This also means seeking truths and learning (from internet, other people or various sources) and verifying.
Obviously learning requires effort, time and intelligence. The wrong, easier (also most expected) way is just to deny/reject, ignore/skip, lie, etc. when presented with new concept, view, fact, knowledge, etc.
❌What not
Let’s keep in mind that this blog is not a:
guide (it is rather a set of advices and opinions)
professional advice (it’s not my educated job to write here, rather a hobby)
popular wikipedia page with sources, citations for almost each sentence
place for (your): (retarded) commercial(s) or paid influencer’s opinion(s)
typical blog, with posts not updated after, but with lots of user comments instead (many useless and slowing down page)
forum or any other social place where you could reply or discuss anything
(big) news website, where many people write articles, regularly, but limited by max. word count, not updated, but quickly surpassed by new articles feed
any sponsored manipulation “outlet” or a bought news station telling lies or using fear to enslave and profit from people
🗨️Comments
One thing definitely not present on any page here. So here is why. I surely don’t want to deal with spam, and filter (or even read) such garbage (commercials etc). So nope, there will be no time wasted in my life doing that. Which also means: no easy, quick way of letting me know a mistake, style, spelling, update on something, new facts, etc. There is a way to contact me so it’s not impossible, just sightly more effort, to prevent another spam too.
🔗Links
Long ago a friend shared a link to mmm blog. I recommend it. It was quite surprising but useful. Many things from it I already had figured out myself before. I think it also inspired me to write on my own blog. There surely are other resources now, even in form of youtube videos (e.g. TED Talks), likely many on internet websites (e.g. Discomfort Academy) or book form (from the Self Improvement section).
➡️Next
If you want to continue, then the list of blog pages is here with short descriptions.
This will be a quick introduction or guide to C++, listing key topics, gathering many links and how to learn, get started, and get more info. It’s certainly not a tutorial on C++ or its syntax, since there are many already, some linked here.
🔗Links
Few links with tutorials below are covering all C++ language topics. Good for learning whole language, remembering something or latest features.
STL is the C++ Standard Template Library with many template collections and algorithms. Which is the recommended approach in C++. Old way was to use new and delete to allocate memory yourself.
Good long pdf. Very big reference pdf probably with all. Web cpp reference for containers. Containers with graphical visualizations here.
The best playlists I found to learn whole C++ from start is here and separate for concurrency. Quite long and detailed explanations, nicely presented.
There are quite many big videos or playlists with series on youtube. Likely not the best way to learn by just listening. Much better to read, copy code and practice. But some topics are good to be seen in a practical session video.
C++ has a list of software around it. You could e.g. use Visual Studio with C++ and not know of any, like I did before. So, if you’re on Windows and using Visual Studio, you could even skip all in this chapter. Since it has all the commercial stuff needed to build and run C++ on Windows (sure, VS can have more, but the wrong way). Same (or even worse) goes for MacOS and using their XCode for C++ too.
But on Linux, you’ll need some effort to set up an IDE for C++, it’s likely required. Using Linux gives definitely more freedom and opportunities to learn. Additionally you can learn the Free and Open Source way, not some commercial solution.
Basic set up
Regardless any other tools later, there are some common things you’ll need to get for building projects from sources. Those can be enough to get a C++ to build and run.
But for C++ you will need a compiler like g++ (or clang, or other).
So for example, on a Debian-based Linux setup, I usually start with:
sudo apt-get install g++ binutils gdb git make cmake
But there are also other alternatives or extras like: clang ninja-build clangd etc.
CMake
CMake (wiki)- is used to configure projects, in its own language (text files). It can then generate project files for many IDEs or build tools like Make or ninja.
CMake tutorial. CMake is a step up to learn for sure, but for me the main advantage is that I don’t bother with IDEs or OSes, I edit one configuration and can build for more later.
Recommended, pure FOSS version, without telemetry and MS stuff. Available on many OSes. To install, get a release archive and unpack. E.g. for desktop Linux name starting with VSCodium-linux-x64-
Definitely needs some more effort to set up for C++, unlike other IDEs.
My list of extensions that I use with it.
Favorite extensions
C++ by Microsoft – only in VS Code
clangd by llvm-vs-code-extensions – C/C++ completion, navigation, and insights – in VSCodium
CodeLLDB by vadimcn – a native Debugger for C++
Native Debug by webfreak – for gdb and lldb
CMake by twxs – language support
CMake Tools by ms-vscode – Extended CMake support, configurations etc, on status bar
Git History Plus by cweijan – for git log, history view
Bookmarks by alefragnani – bookmark lines
Project Manager by alefragnani – To save folders with projects in list
Favorites Manager by oleg-shilo – Tab with list of files, can be edited in file
Todo Tree by Gruntfuggly – gathers all todo, fixme etc from files, in own tree list
Output colorizer by IBM – for colors in .log files etc
Python by ms-python – for syntax and running .py scripts
XML by redhat – for its syntax
Black Violet Blue by Crystal Hammer – naturally, my theme
I used it for a year or so, it was easy to set up on Linux and get going for C++ with CMake (included). So I can still recommend it. It works very fast, but is rather limited in options, and not many extensions available. Meaning you could find something missing. Also it can be seen as a commercial for Qt solutions, which I don’t recommend. They are too big and too Qt specific. For my smaller projects this was way too much, and also the longer you use e.g. Qt GUI for C++ the more effort it will need to move to other library.
Commercial, huge (7GB or more) and bloated. I can’t recommend. I used it for years at work and earlier myself on Windows too. I think it’s still the way to go on Windows. Sure it works, but that’s it, can’t think of privacy or sources or freedom.
Comes with a big installer too, where you need to have some idea of what components to install. IIRC C++ wasn’t even selected in recent versions. Has many extensions and themes. But for my favorite scroll plugin, each VS version had to have own support and own author which was inconsistent and annoying (for developers probably too).
It has other languages like C#, but for me now it feels like a commercial hub for MS solutions, also with news feed for it and paid stuff. Also one major issue is that if you use Visual Studio and MS products you get (shoehorned) into their way and if you stick too long you’ll less likely or have more issues getting . And their way is definitely the one giving them most profits, not (necessarily) you.
I didn’t use it, but quickly looked at this IDE and it seems quite decent. Has features that every IDE should have. I just don’t see any IDE theme to turn it black fast after installing.
I used it before I knew VSCodium for a year. I can’t recommend it, since it is based on Java (and was mainly for it at start I think) but it is just too universal and generic as VS. Only difference it has some packages specific to development needs. Small to install but slower at working. Not too many new fancy extensions.
Headers .h or .hh .hpp .hxx
Sources .cpp or .cc .cxx .c++
Compiling .cpp gives output files:
Windows .obj
Linux .o
Dependencies
It is good practice to split code into libraries. The worst way would be to include all sources together and it would take the longest to build. Splitting functionality to libraries speeds up whole build (if you don’t change library code) and hides the implementation.
Libs – static libraries
Windows .lib
Linux .a
To compile your program (or library), the .h headers from library are need to be included. Library’s compiled code must be linked (.lib or .a) with your program (or library). There are also some header only libraries, which don’t need linking.
DLLs – dynamic libraries
Windows .dll
Linux .so
To use DLLs, also .lib files and header files .h are needed. Additionally binary (.dll or .so) files are needed when starting your program (executable is .exe on Windows, and no extension on Linux, but has x attribute(s)).
C++ key concepts
A few inner concepts, some quite different from other languages.
Header files, e.g. here, A different special case of precompiled header (pch).
