Growth is all that exists.

Rock bottom does not exist.

Defeat, dear reader,

Does not exist. Everything is a move.

Can you imagine what it’s like,

To have a mind unruffled by the vagaries of fortune,

Freed from sorrows, cleansed from defilements, liberated from fear.

Back to the world of VC now, Elizabeth Yin put out a google sheet on “How to raise a seed round” with links to her articles.

Super-investor Yuri Milner (DST Global) put out a Fact Sheet about him and Russia (he is Russian-born)

Most people expect parenthood to be the defining point in the lives. What’s there not to enjoy: raising and educating a child, watching him/her grow into adulthood, then finding his/hers place. The need to reproduce is the most basic need of all biological lifeforms.

Humans, however, are the only specie that over-invests into their progeny. The sheer amount of effort and resources put into children, the length of this commitment, dwarfs that of any animal.

I see this parental investment as an over-investment and a hindrance to self-development. Of-course, men are the ones obsessed with self-development and spiritual growth, women rarely go that route since they are not naturally inclined to do so. Women are reproduction machines, and once that reproductive need is fulfilled women cease to move forward. Men, on the other end, continuously strive for the limits of existence and inquiry. Men are explorers. Men go for the sublime, the ecstatic, the deeper meanings of life. Men are the mystics, the Gurus and the Saints. [if you’ve follow my Facebook recently, you might have heard the encounters with the spirit animal a girl had in the back-country where she saw me as a Puma animal and this animal “told” her it was me].

In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the series of novels developed on the Star Wars fiction, you know Jedis were recruited as infants then shipped to the Jedi Academy. These Jedi school recruits had little knowledge of the families they came from, most didn’t know who they’re parents were. Their family was the Jedi Temple and School. That seemed to be an efficient way to make Jedis: no family ties. Actually that’s how you build a mercenary force.

You satisfied your wife’s need to have children, still, how did that improve you ? Women make children to give them something to do, to keep busy. (they’re also thinking those children will take care of them into old age). Most men think exactly like women do.

“Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.“

Eugene Ionesco, AZ-Quotes

“You only have yourself. The rest is but crumbs and vulgarity.” -Max Cantor

The average man cannot stand death, so he makes children with women to outlast it.

The average man doesn’t know what to live for, so he makes children. Over-invests in them.

To be clear, I am not saying that we should be uncaring to our children. What I am saying is once we put them on a pedestal, you make that your aim, and it is a poor aim. The aim of a woman.

You don’t escape death or loss with making children. Everybody does that.

The Mystics, Sufis and remote Gurus knew it. They got as far away from people. as they could. They went and lived as hermits on mountaintops. How else are you going to attain wisdom ? With people ?

Guru Babaji, Rinzai Master Soyen Shaku and Nagi Gompa knew that. They were living in this world, but not of this world.

Meanwhile, old people or as we call them “seniors” are shunned and discarded like empty boxes of cigarettes. I have yet to encounter a writer or researcher that writes anything purposefully to embolden senior citizens. Most neurobiologists, for example, are concerned with scaling visible signs of tissue deterioration among the elderly.

How a culture threats the elderly, not the children, is a sign of that culture’s viability.

In other parts of the world, specifically in SE Asia, the elderly are valued and respected. And that makes common sense, does it not ? If someone has traveled farther on the road of life, they withstood more battles. More adversity. But in our modern culture, senior citizens are the subject of butt jokes (and treated like that.)

Wall St. Journal had an article Dec. 12th “https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-loneliest-generation-americans-more-than-ever-are-aging-alone-11544541134“

“Loneliness is even worse for longevity than being obese or physically inactive.”

“More than one in four boomers is divorced or never married, census figures show. About one in six lives alone.”

Then pictures of sulky shoulders, overweight bodies or drab faces.

The article later tries to rebalance

“Loneliness and isolation are bad for your health at any age…”

If I was writing advice for 18-year olds, I’d be wasting my time. (they don’t listen to it, plus there’s no advice for young people except do and fall).

Nobody cares about the senior citizens or gives them anything. All people do is take from them. They want them “lonely” and defeated. Until I come into the scene.

10 Senior Rules

1. Make your own bed. Your greatest enemy is comfort.

When your siblings come and try to “do” things for you that you know and could do on your own, they’re not helping you. They’re digging your grave. They’re watching you slip away.

2. If you’re the meal ticket for your sons/daughters, I call that being pimped. Don’t.

3. Loneliness doesn’t exist except in your mind and your conditioning.

Snap out of it. The less people call you, the better.

4. Some people recommend multigenerational housing. I favor alone at home housing.

5. There must be an advantage to aging. It can’t be just wasting away. You have to find out what that is on your own.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what it is. I don’t sit around with nature’s keys. You need to earn that answer.

6. Who called it aging ? They did. And they made it a problem for you.

We can’t let other people call and define you.

7. Actually, being old is the same as being young. Compress time.

How do I do that, Max ? WTF, dude. Do what you did 50 years ago…

8. I feel Max is not telling me all.

You and your feelings…

9. Memory = Time = Flaw

10. It’s not how good your memory is, it’s what you’ve become.

Watch this video. This is what an alpha looks like.