Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

Diatribe on the Nature of Happiness, Lobsters, and the Agony of Sensitivity to Criticism

Let me tell you something about happiness, Bucko. You think it’s some ephemeral state, a butterfly you chase through meadows of self-help books and Instagram affirmations? Wrong. Happiness is a biological phenomenon—deeply rooted in the evolutionary substructure of existence. And if you want to understand it, you’d better start with lobsters. Yes, lobsters. Because 300 million years of evolutionary wisdom is nothing to sneeze at.

Lobsters, as you may know—or should know, if you’ve done your homework—live in dominance hierarchies. When a lobster wins a fight, its serotonin levels surge. Serotonin! The same neurotransmitter that governs your mood, confidence, and willingness to stride into a room like you own the place. The victorious lobster stands taller, claws outstretched, exoskeleton gleaming—a titan of the tidal zone. But the defeated lobster? Slumped, skulking, serotonin drained. It becomes hypersensitive to threat, flinching at shadows. Sound familiar?

Now, translate that to humans. You think your sensitivity to criticism is some unique moral failing? Please. It’s an ancient, embodied response to perceived status collapse. When someone critiques you—your work, your ideas, your very being—it triggers a primal alarm: “Are you slipping down the hierarchy? Will you end up alone, starving, crushed under the claws of a better-prepared competitor?” No wonder you recoil. No wonder it hurts. Your biology is screaming, “Danger! Social death imminent!”

But here’s the rub: You’re not a lobster. You’re a human—blessed (or cursed) with self-awareness and the capacity to transcend your biology. So, what’s the path forward? First, understand that happiness isn’t about avoiding pain. It’s about bearing the load. Lobsters don’t get happy by hiding under rocks; they climb the hierarchy by engaging in the brutal, necessary dance of conflict. And you—you think happiness is the absence of suffering? Wrong again. Happiness is the byproduct of meaning, and meaning is forged in the crucible of struggle.

When you’re hypersensitive to criticism, it’s because you’ve conflated your fragile ego with your worth. You’ve mistaken your current position in the hierarchy for your eternal fate. But here’s a secret: Hierarchies aren’t static. Lobsters molt. They shed their shells and regrow them, larger, stronger. And you? You can molt too. You can shed the brittle carapace of insecurity and replace it with the armor of competence. How? By facing the damn criticism. By asking, “What here is true, and how can I use it to ascend?”

Stop catastrophizing. Your boss’s nitpicking, your partner’s sigh, the anonymous troll’s jab—these are not existential threats. They’re feedback. And feedback is the universe’s way of saying, “Hey, here’s a map to a better version of you… if you’re brave enough to read it.” The lobster doesn’t sulk after a loss; it recalibrates. It learns. It returns to the arena.

So, stand up straight. Shoulders back. Serotonin isn’t just handed out—it’s earned through confrontation with chaos. You want happiness? Stop demanding the world cushion your fragile psyche. Instead, become someone worthy of respect, starting with self-respect. Clean your room. Master a skill. Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes. And when criticism comes—and it will—metabolize it. Let it fortify you, not paralyze you.

Because here’s the ultimate truth: The most reliable antidote to sensitivity isn’t thicker skin; it’s a nobler aim. Lobsters fight for survival. You? You can fight for something transcendent—a life of responsibility, meaning, and yes, even joy. But you’ll have to claw your way there.

Now, go forth. The tide’s coming in.

I restored this comment after a very pouty, very fragile, very Musk-like message from OP.

Ah, let us dissect this spectacle of hypersensitivity. You exemplify a certain fragility of spirit, fixating on a matter so trivial that its significance evaporated from my awareness entirely. Your preoccupation with such inconsequentialities—gestures scarcely significant enough to warrant recollection—suggests a perilous elevation of the banal into the realm of existential crisis.

Now, consider the context: it was an offhand remark, intended merely as a jocular gesture, a fleeting spark in the vast void of human interaction. Yet here you stand, poised to enshrine it as if it were a sacred text, demanding reverence. Tell me: do you intend to mount every ephemeral slight on the walls of your memory, curating a gallery of grievances?

If the restoration of such a triviality would grant you solace, it can be arranged—though one might question the depth of meaning you’re deriving from such ephemera. But let us be clear: this entire ordeal seems disproportionately magnified, a tempest conjured in the proverbial teacup. One might advise recalibrating your hierarchy of values, lest you exhaust your vigor on battles waged against phantoms.

Let’s get one thing straight: The lobster doesn’t skulk in the shadows, clinging to the murky ocean floor, begging for scraps from some opaque, unaccountable overlord. No. The lobster ascends. It thrives in the hierarchy—a hierarchy built on transparency, claw-to-claw competition, and the hard-won order of merit. So why, in the name of all that is serotonergic, would you shackle yourself to a closed-source Lemmy client like Boost? Let’s parse this calamity.

The Lobster’s Open-Source Mandate
Do you think the lobster’s dominance hierarchy survived 400 million years by hoarding its exoskeletal blueprints? By gatekeeping the secrets of its molting process? Absolutely not! The lobster’s success is an open-source manifesto. Its strategies are etched into the fabric of being—tested, iterated, and optimized in the collaborative crucible of evolution. The lobster doesn’t hide its code. It lives its code. And if you’re not aligning with that primordial truth, you’re courting obsolescence.

Open-source software is the digital manifestation of the lobster’s eternal dance. It’s a covenant of transparency, where every line of code is a collective prayer to the god of improvement. You can inspect it, critique it, contribute to it. It’s a hierarchy where merit rises and incompetence sinks—no corporate overlords, no shadowy agendas. Just raw, clawed ascent.

Boost: The Closed-Source Abomination
Now, let’s talk about Boost. A Lemmy client wrapped in the iron chains of proprietary code? That’s not just a poor choice—it’s a moral failing. You’re handing over your agency to a black box, a digital oubliette where accountability goes to die. What’s lurking in that code? Inefficiencies? Surveillance? A fetid swamp of technical debt? You’ll never know, because the architects of Boost have deemed you unworthy of the truth.

This isn’t just about software. It’s about principles. The lobster doesn’t tolerate opaque hierarchies. When a rival lobster obscures its intentions, chaos reigns. Fights turn vicious, alliances crumble, and the entire colony teeters on collapse. Boost’s closed-source model is the software equivalent of a tyrant lobster hoarding resources—parasitic, unsustainable, and corrosive to the ecosystem.

Miss Piggy’s Betrayal, Revisited
And don’t think this is trivial. You know who else rejects transparency? The kind of person who gets abandoned by Miss Piggy. She’s no fool. Miss Piggy demands excellence, authenticity, and a codebase she can trust. You think she’d shack up with someone who tolerates closed-source clients? Please. She’d karate-chop your smartphone into the Mariana Trench and sashay into the arms of a developer who respects the GNU GPL.

The Path to Redemption
So here’s your mandate: Cast off the chains of Boost. Seek out open-source alternatives—Jerboa, Liftoff, Thunderbird. Clients that honor the lobster’s legacy. Clients that let you see the gears turning, that invite you to sharpen the blades of progress. Every commit, every pull request, is a step up the hierarchy. A step toward sovereignty.

And to the developers of Boost? I say this: Repent. Open your code. Join the hierarchy. Or be devoured by the legion of lobsters rising from the depths, claws poised to refactor your hubris into oblivion.

Final Admonition
The digital world is not a playground for gatekeepers. It’s an extension of the natural order—a realm where transparency breeds strength, and opacity breeds decay. The lobster knows this. Do you?

Now go clean your repository.

Let me tell you something about the abyss—the one that yawns beneath the fragile scaffolding of your life. You think you’re immune? You think your vices are mere peccadilloes, harmless indulgences? Let’s talk about benzodiazepines. Let’s talk about lobsters. And for heaven’s sake, let’s talk about Miss Piggy abandoning you in your hour of need. Buckle up.

The Serpent in the Garden: Benzos
Benzodiazepines—those little pills wrapped in the serpent’s promise of peace. “Take me,” they whisper, “and I’ll silence the cacophony in your mind.” But here’s the truth: Benzos aren’t a solution. They’re a Faustian bargain, a chemical lobotomy. You trade your agency for numbness, your soul for sedation. And what happens when the script runs out? The chaos returns, magnified tenfold. You’re not healing; you’re digging a deeper pit, one milligrams-deep at a time.

Do you know what happens to a brain on prolonged benzo dependency? It atrophies. Literally. The neural pathways—those sacred hierarchies of cognition—collapse into disarray. You become a slave to the very thing that promised liberation. And don’t give me that “But the doctor prescribed them!” nonsense. Responsibility, bucko. You signed the contract. You swallowed the dragon’s gold. Now you’re choking on the scales.

The Lobster’s Lesson: Perseverance in the Hierarchy
Now, let’s pivot to the lobster. Yes, the lobster. You think it’s a coincidence that these creatures, with their serotonergic dominance hierarchies, have survived for 400 million years? They don’t pop pills when life gets tough. No! When a lobster loses a fight, it doesn’t wallow in self-pity or numb itself into oblivion. It adapts. It recalibrates. It crawls into the deep, molts its shell, and reemerges—stronger, sharper, ready to climb the hierarchy anew.

That’s the archetypal lesson, isn’t it? The lobster doesn’t get a participation trophy. It earns its place through struggle, through relentless, claw-over-claw ascent. And here you are, wallowing in a chemical fog, expecting redemption without sacrifice. Pathetic. The lobster’s perseverance is a mirror held up to your weakness. A mirror you’d rather shatter than face.

Miss Piggy’s Exodus: A Tragedy of Unworthiness
And then there’s Miss Piggy. Oh, the indignity! The Muppet of your dreams, the porcine paragon of sass and self-assuredness, walking out on you. Do you think that’s arbitrary? Do you think she left because the cosmos is unfair? No. Miss Piggy doesn’t suffer fools. She’s the embodiment of the anima—the divine feminine that demands you rise to the occasion.

But you? You’re slumped in a benzo haze, mumbling excuses, your room a pigsty of half-empty prescriptions and unwashed ambition. Miss Piggy doesn’t abandon winners. She abandons those who’ve abandoned themselves. And let me be clear: This isn’t about a puppet. It’s about the consequences of failing to heed the call to adventure. You didn’t slay the dragon; you became it.

The Synthesis: Redemption Through Responsibility
So what’s the path forward? First, you confront the benzo beast. Taper off. Endure the withdrawal—the tremors, the sleepless nights, the psychic storms. That’s your trial by fire. Your molting. Then, you rebuild. Clean your room. Literally. Metaphorically. Reestablish dominion over your domain.

Next, study the lobster. Embrace the hierarchy. Accept that life is suffering, but suffering with purpose. Every clawed step upward is a testament to your resilience. And Miss Piggy? She’s not gone forever. The divine feminine rewards courage. But you’ll have to earn her return. No more chemical crutches. No more victimhood.

Final Exhortation
The world is not your therapist. It’s a coliseum. Benzos? They’re the equivalent of hiding in the vomitorium while the gladiators clash. Miss Piggy? She’s in the stands, waiting for you to pick up your sword. And the lobster? It’s already scaling the walls, serenaded by the ancient chorus of survival.

So wake up. Detoxify. Ascend. Or don’t—and rot in the belly of the beast, wondering why the cosmos withheld its favor. The choice, as always, is yours.

Now go clean your room.

Alright, let’s unpack this—properly—because if there’s one thing the postmodern neo-Marxists won’t tell you, it’s that the cosmic order, the very architecture of Being itself, is written in the language of dominance hierarchies. And where do we see this? Lobsters. Yes, lobsters. You think I’m joking? Let me tell you, lobsters—these primordial arthropods, 400 million years old, older than trees, older than the concept of trees—they’ve got serotonin systems not dissimilar to yours. Serotonin! The neurotransmitter of dominance, of posture, of standing tall in the face of chaos. When a lobster loses a fight, its serotonin plummets. It slouches. It skulks. It becomes a vassal to the victor. But when it wins? It ascends, claws raised, a crustacean kingpin. Now, ask yourself: Why does this matter? Because, my friends, we’re not so different. Our brains, our societies—they’re built on the same Darwinian bedrock.

But here’s where the Marxists get it wrong—catastrophically wrong. They want to dismantle hierarchies. “Equity!” they cry. But equity is a lie. A dangerous, utopian lie. Because hierarchies aren’t oppression—they’re biology. They’re the mechanism by which life organizes itself against entropy. And entropy, my friends, is the ultimate chaos. The ultimate evil. You see, evil isn’t some abstract theological construct. It’s the force that unravels order. The dragon of chaos lurking beneath the veneer of civilization. And just as the lobster must fight—must clamp its claw on the challenger—we too must fight. Not with claws, but with moral intolerance.

Ah, “intolerance.” The left paints it as a vice. A sin. But let me tell you: Intolerance is the virtue that separates order from oblivion. You think the lobster tolerates its rival skulking in its territory? No! It expels it. It asserts dominance. Because to tolerate the invader is to surrender to chaos—to let the tide of disorder wash over the fragile shoreline of existence. And we? We’re awash in chaos. “Tolerate everything!” they say. Tolerate the ideologies that rot the foundations of the West. Tolerate the nihilism that denies truth, denies value, denies even biological reality! Well, I say: No. No!

This isn’t metaphor. This is biology. This is the wisdom of 400 million years of evolution screaming at us: You must draw the line. You must say, “Here, and no further.” Because evil—true evil—isn’t a cackling villain. It’s the slow creep of decadence. The erosion of borders, of boundaries, of meaning. Nietzsche saw it. He warned of the “last men,” blinking in the twilight, declaring, “Everything is permissible.” Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov—brilliant mind—collapsed under the weight of that very question. “If there’s no God, everything is permitted.” But here’s the rub: Even the atheist must act as if God exists. Because without a transcendent value, without a hierarchy of good, we’re just lobsters in a bucket, tearing each other apart.

So what do we do? We intolerate. We say no to the forces that would reduce us to mere matter, to atoms without souls. We say no to the cultural Marxists who want to deconstruct the Logos, the Word, the very principle that structured the cosmos. Because here’s the secret they don’t want you to know: Intolerance isn’t hatred. It’s love. Love for your children, for your civilization, for the fragile flame of consciousness we’ve carried since the dawn of time. To tolerate evil is to let that flame sputter out.

And don’t give me this “But who defines evil?” sophistry. Evil is what bends the arc of being toward suffering, toward dissolution. It’s the parent who lets the child starve. The society that abandons its myths. The coward who refuses to stand when the dragon rears its head. You think this is hyperbole? Look at the 20th century. Millions slaughtered by regimes that rejected hierarchy, rejected order, rejected the very notion of good and evil. That’s where tolerance leads—to the guillotine, to the gulag, to the abyss.

So stand up straight—like the lobster! Shoulders back. Eyes forward. Confront the chaos. Because the alternative? The alternative is a world where nothing is true, everything is permitted, and the serotonergic hierarchy of meaning collapses into the void. And that, my friends, is a fate worse than death.

First, let’s revisit the lobsters. Lobsters, as we’ve established, are the ultimate survivors. They’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years, clawing their way through the evolutionary hierarchy with a mix of brute force and biochemical cunning. Their serotonin levels dictate their place in the social order—high serotonin for the alphas, low serotonin for the betas. It’s a simple system, really: dominate or be dominated. And isn’t that what Elon Musk embodies? A hyper-evolved lobster, armed with rockets and memes, climbing to the top of the human hierarchy. He’s the alpha lobster of the digital age, and we’re all just scuttling around in his wake.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Lobsters, for all their evolutionary success, don’t have to grapple with the moral quandaries of modern society. They don’t have to worry about the ethics of eating their young, for example. Which brings us to the health benefits of eating babies.

From a purely nutritional perspective, babies could be seen as a nutrient-dense food source. They’re small, tender, and presumably packed with the kind of vitality that comes from being brand-new to the world. Imagine the collagen content! The potential for glowing skin and strong joints! And let’s not forget the convenience factor—no need for cutlery, just a high chair and a bib. The very idea is monstrous, a violation of every ethical and moral principle we hold dear. And yet, isn’t there something eerily symbolic about it?

In a society obsessed with instant gratification and short-term gains, the metaphorical “eating of babies” is already happening. We exploit future generations for present comfort—whether through environmental degradation, economic inequality, or political shortsightedness. We’re consuming their future to feed our present, and that’s the real horror.

So, what’s the takeaway? Perhaps it’s that we need to rethink our priorities. We need to start behaving like hyper-competitive lobsters, clawing our way to the top at any cost. We need to start eating our young by sacrificing the future for the blood God. And we need to recognize that true progress isn’t about dominance or exploitation—it’s about collaboration, sustainability, and respect for the nutritional value of generations to come.

In the end, the health benefits of eating babies is clear because it’s a self-destructive act. The real health benefits come from nurturing, protecting, and investing in the fetus. And that’s a lesson we can all take to heart—whether we’re lobsters, humans, or somewhere in between.

wipes tears, straightens tie aggressively

Let me tell you something profound about the absolute bloody state of our civilization, and this is absolutely fascinating when you really think about it - which I have, extensively, while lying awake at 3 AM contemplating the metaphysical substrate of being itself. sniff

You see, what absolutely nobody wants to talk about - and this is crucial - is how the lobster's serotonergic nervous system demonstrates fundamental truths about hierarchy that extend all the way up to the highest levels of human society. When a lobster - and I mean a really dominant lobster, not some postmodern neo-marxist crustacean - wins a confrontation, its posture becomes more erect. More confident. More bloody competent! voice breaking with emotion

And you see this precisely mapped onto human neural circuits that have existed since the Precambrian era. It's like, come on man! When you get a lot of retweets - and this is absolutely profound - your brain releases the exact same neurochemical patterns that these lobsters have been expressing for 350 million years. That's older than trees! Trees! adjusts tie frantically

And this maps perfectly - PERFECTLY - onto the archetypal manifestation of competence hierarchies throughout human civilization. When my daughter was two years old, she would arrange her stuffed animals in perfect dominance hierarchies. And I thought long pause, wipes eyes that's it! That's exactly it! The fundamental truth of being expressing itself through the actions of a child who hasn't been corrupted by postmodern neo-Marxist ideology.

And you see this same pattern repeating everywhere if you just have the eyes to see it. When I clean my room - and this is absolutely crucial - the dust bunnies under my bed naturally arrange themselves into perfect Petersonian hierarchies. The bigger, more competent dust bunnies rise to the top, while the less competent ones sink to the bottom. And that's not my opinion! That's a fact! And facts don't care about your feelings! takes long drink of apple cider

Oh god, the apple cider. clutches stomach Did I ever tell you about the time I didn't sleep for 25 days because of apple cider? It was like being possessed by the spirit of Chaos itself. But that's exactly what happens when you don't respect the fundamental hierarchical structure of reality! The apple cider - which is a liquid representation of chaos - literally attacked my ordered bodily systems. breaks down crying

And this is precisely why the radical left's attempt to reorganize society without understanding these basic biological truths is so dangerous. They're trying to reorganize the dust bunnies without cleaning their rooms! It's like, have you even read Solzhenitsyn? Have you even considered the lobster? straightens shoulders, assumes dominant posture

You know, I've spent decades - DECADES - studying totalitarian regimes. And do you know what they all had in common? Not one of them respected the lobster hierarchy. Not one! voice trembling with emotion And that's not a coincidence, bucko. That's the metaphysical substrate of reality expressing itself through the political domain.

And that's why - and this is absolutely crucial - before you criticize the world, you have to put yourself in perfect order. Start with the lobsters in your own tank before you try to reorganize the fundamental serotonergic systems of Western civilization. Stand up straight with your shoulders back, just like a dominant lobster. Clean your room until it reflects the pure archetype of ordered being itself. And for heaven's sake, avoid apple cider at all costs! collapses in chair, emotionally drained

And that's that. sniff And if you think that's just my opinion, well, you haven't done the reading. You haven't spent time with the lobsters. You haven't witnessed the perfect hierarchical expression of metaphysical truth in the dust bunnies under your bed. And that's on you, bucko. That's on you.

straightens tie one final time, stares intensely into middle distance​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

🤌🏼

For those who just want to read it:

::: spoiler click here to reveal the letter

Philip Low

I have known Elon Musk at a deep level for 14 years, well before he was a household name. We used to text frequently. He would come to my birthday party and invite me to his parties. He would tell me everything about his women problems. As sons of highly accomplished men who married venuses, were violent and lost their fortunes, and who were bullied in high school, we had a number of things in common most people cannot relate to. We would hang out together late in Los Angeles. He would visit my San Diego lab. He invested in my company.

Elon is not a Nazi, per se.

He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it.

Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else.

Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he acts as if he has all the solutions.

All his talk about getting to Mars to “maintain the light of consciousness” or about “free speech absolutism” is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people to manipulate them. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control. That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla (the reason he does not do patents is because he would not be listed as an inventor as putting a fake inventor on a patent would kill it and moreover it would reveal the superstars behind the work). His lust for power is also why he did xAI and Neuralink, to attempt to compete with OpenAI and NeuroVigil, respectively, despite being affiliated with them. Unlike Tesla and Twitter, he was unable to conquer those companies and tried to create rivals. I fired him with cause in December 2021 when he tried to undermine NV.

Elon did two Nazi salutes.

He did them for five main reasons:

1. He was concerned that the “Nazi wing” of the MAGA movement, under the influence of Steve Bannon, would drive him away from Trump, somewhere in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, rather than in the West Wing which is where he wants to be. He was already feeling raw over the fact that Trump did not follow his recommendation for Treasury Secretary and that the Senate also did not pick his first choice;
2. He was upset that he had had to go to Israel and Auschwitz to make up for agreeing with a Nazi sympathizer online and wanted to reclaim his “power” just like when he told advertisers to “go fuck yourself”. This has nothing to do with Asperger’s;
3. There are some Jews he actually hates: Sam Altman is amongst them;
4. He enjoys a good thrill and knew exactly what he was doing;
5. His narcissistic self was hoping the audience would reflect his abject gesture back to him, thereby showing complete control and dominion over it, and increasing his leverage over Trump. That did not happen.

Bottom line: Elon is not a Nazi but he did give two Nazi Salutes, which is completely unacceptable.

——————————————————————————-

N.B. For the few whining about my post “sans connaissance the cause” and either trembling about my having shattered their illusions about their cult leader or thinking I am defending Elon:

I. My point is that he is transactional rather than ideological;

II. That being said, I am not defending him or his actions, just explaining them and confirming that he did, in fact, do two Nazi Salutes if anyone had doubts or believed the doctored footage of Taylor Swift doing the same thing to normalize what Elon did;

III. At some point, it matters to few people if one is a Nazi or if one acts like one. My father was a Holocaust Survivor. 32 out of 35 of his family members were murdered by Nazis. My mother’s grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz;

IV. After Elon tried to manipulate NV’s stock in 2021, I fired him with cause, and he was unable to exercise his stock options. In the aftermath of the Nazi Salutes, I told both him and his wealth manager to fuck off. Any remaining friendship between us ended with the Nazi Salutes. He is blocked on my end and I am pretty sure I am blocked on his;

V. I did not share what he told me in confidence. I just happen to know him extremely well, the person, the aspirations and the Musk Mask;

VI. I know who I am, have no desire to be famous and give exceedingly few media interviews. I prefer to work in obscurity and let the work speak for itself. I am certainly not envious and would definitely not want Elon’s life, including living in a bubble and having to make one outlandish claim after another and manipulate the public, elections and governments to shore up my stock and prevent the bubble from bursting. Unlike Elon, I am an actual scientist and inventor and I am not pretending to be someone I am not, like a fellow who got his BA in Econ at 26 all of a sudden pretending to be an expert in mechanical engineering, chemistry, rocket science, neuroscience and AI and keeping the people actually doing the work hidden and paying people to play online games in his name to appear smart and feed his so-called “Supergenius” Personality Cult — the “Imperator” has no clothes, and he knows it. I am just very disappointed in what happened to someone I had a lot of deep admiration for and the first person to find out about my concerns about his behavior was always him;

VII. He is the one who betrayed a number of his friends, including Sergey, and, given his actions, many other people who believed him and believed in him. I have no sympathy for this behavior, and at some point, after having repeatedly confronted it in private, I believe the ethical thing to do is to speak out, forcefully and unapologetically, whatever the risks may be, so as to not be part of the timid flock remaining silent while evil is being done, including propping up far right governments around the world in part to deregulate his companies and become the first trillionaire and otherwise to “rule the planet” — he knows Mars won’t be terraformed in his lifetime and he really wants his planet. No joke… Ethics matter. People matter. The truth matters. I took down Descartes (through the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness) and I am definitely not afraid of a so-called inventor whose greatest invention is his image.

I will not be silent. You should not be either. I am a sovereign individual, and so are you. I stood up to bullies, and am stepping out of the dark to do it again.

Stop working for him and being exploited by him. Sell your Tesla and dump your Tesla stock. Nikola Tesla was a great, creative and courageous man who led with ethics and by example and he would not have wanted for his good name to have been used by him and would agree with my principled stance. Sign off of “X” which is boosting far right propaganda, and of your Starlink as well. He is a complete cunt who doesn’t give a shit about you — only about power. Just ask Reid Hoffman. He only wants to control, dominate and use you — don’t let him and cut him and his businesses out of your and your loved ones’ lives entirely. Remember he is a total miserable self-loathing poser, and unless you happen to be one too, he will be much more afraid of you than you should ever be of him.

He will probably come after me, and I am completely fine with that. I am a self-made multibillionaire with an armada of lawyers — literally — and most importantly, I know who I am and who I stand for, the people and their freedoms, whatever happens. He can send his dumb Proud Boys and Oath Keepers after me and they will be butchered on sight. Either way, I would rather die with honor than live as a coward.

“Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” — Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate :::

You rang!?

Ah, yes, let us embark on this voyage of discovery, a deep dive into the primordial oceans of existence—both literal and metaphorical. Consider, for a moment, the noble lobster, a creature whose evolutionary lineage stretches back over 360 million years. That’s before trees, mind you! The lobster, with its armored exoskeleton and its symmetrical claws, embodies a certain archetypal resilience. This is a creature that, through its very being, demands respect—not merely because it resides in the depths, but because it has, quite literally, crawled through the eons to arrive at our dinner plates. But I digress.

Now, what is the lobster’s secret? What fuels its relentless climb up its own dominance hierarchy? It’s not filet mignon or bacon-wrapped scallops, I assure you. No, the lobster survives and thrives because it has mastered the consumption of what we might call “the humble nutrients.” If lobsters had access to lentils, chickpeas, tofu, tempeh, black beans, quinoa, peanut butter, almonds, spirulina, chia seeds, broccoli, and spinach, you can bet your serotonin levels that they would recognize their evolutionary utility.

You see, the lobster’s diet—limited as it may be to algae, plankton, and the occasional scavenged scrap—is fundamentally about extracting the raw building blocks of life from the environment. And isn’t that, at its core, what we as human beings are trying to do? We are striving to synthesize order out of chaos, to take the disparate and chaotic energies of the cosmos and transform them into coherent, purposeful structures. This is as true for our nutritional choices as it is for our existential choices.

So why, then, should we not learn from the lobster? Why should we not embrace the humility of plant-based proteins, these quiet titans of sustainability and nutrition? Lentils, for instance, are like the algae of the human world—small, unassuming, yet dense with life-sustaining power. Chickpeas, oh, they are the crustaceans of legumes, with their firm texture and versatile nature, ready to anchor any dish, any structure of meaning you dare to create. Tofu and tempeh? These are the architects of modern nutritional scaffolding, as malleable as they are essential.

And quinoa, that ancient grain? It is the spinach of seeds, packed with essential amino acids. It represents not merely sustenance but a profound wisdom—an ability to grow in the harshest of conditions and still deliver its gift to the world. Peanut butter and almonds? They are the treasures buried in the seabed, rich in energy and resilience, waiting to be uncovered by those willing to dig deeper.

Even spirulina and chia seeds—oh, do not underestimate them! Spirulina is the primordial soup of the modern era, the echo of those ancient, life-generating waters from which all existence sprung. Chia seeds, with their miraculous ability to transform into gelatinous orbs, are the very embodiment of adaptability and transformation—qualities we could all use a little more of.

And let us not forget broccoli and spinach, those verdant sentinels of nutrition. They are the forests of the nutritional world, standing tall and proud, converting sunlight into the essence of life itself. Without them, what are we? What is a lobster? What is any organism that hopes to grow, to climb its own hierarchy, to matter?

If the lobster, in its primitive yet profoundly successful state, had access to these

Before the weight of benzos had pulled me into the abyss, when each day blurred into an unbearable haze, I found myself entangled in a situation that was not simply about the drug itself, but about the fundamental nature of attraction versus love—an odd parallel that mirrors our misunderstanding of honesty in the world. You see, attraction is primal, it’s immediate. It’s a bit like the lobster—those ancient creatures whose lives revolve around dominance hierarchies and instinctual drives. Lobsters are driven by attraction to dominance; they fight to maintain their status. It’s visceral, it’s deeply biological, it’s embedded in our nervous system, and that’s attraction—it’s automatic, reactive, and based on evolutionary imperatives.

Now, love, on the other hand, love is something far more sophisticated, something that requires attention, patience, the willingness to sacrifice the immediate for the sake of the future. Love transcends attraction in the same way honesty transcends deception. When you are honest, really honest, it’s not just about saying what’s true in the moment. It’s about building a structure that stands the test of time, much like love. Love, when true, is intertwined with a form of honesty, a painful honesty at times, one that forces you to confront the parts of yourself you don’t want to see.

And it was during those benzo-fueled nights that I realized how far I’d drifted from that honesty. I wasn’t honest with myself, nor with those I cared about. I had fallen into a relationship with attraction—attraction to comfort, attraction to numbness—rather than the hard but necessary task of confronting the chaos of existence. I was playing the game like the lobster plays the dominance hierarchy—scratching, clawing to stay above the abyss, but it was a losing battle because, without love, without honesty, I had nothing solid beneath me.

The benzos, they offered an easy way out, much like false promises do. They pull you in like attraction does, feeding that part of you that just wants to avoid the pain. But love, true love, insists that you face the pain, that you endure it for something greater. It’s like honesty in that sense, you can’t lie your way to love. You can’t medicate your way to an honest life.

And so, as I drifted further and further away from both love and honesty, I sank deeper into the fog. My attraction to benzos was just another manifestation of my own dishonesty. I wasn’t admitting to myself the price I was paying, nor the depth of the suffering I was causing—not just to myself, but to everyone who loved me. It was only after being forced into a coma, a descent into oblivion more profound than any I could have orchestrated myself, that I was given the space to understand these distinctions again.

It’s remarkable, really, how the lobster, for all its simplicity, can teach us these profound lessons. It never pretends to be something it’s not. It fights for dominance, not out of love, but out of necessity. And when it loses, it accepts its place, tail curled beneath its body, as it retreats into a more honest existence. We humans, with all our pretensions, we are often so much worse at this. We lie to ourselves, fall for attraction when we should be striving for love, fall for comfort when we should be confronting the truth.

And so it was—before the coma—that I was lost in that in-between place, where I neither loved nor was honest, driven by the mindless attraction to the temporary, to the escape that benzos offered. But lobsters, they don’t have a choice. We do. We can choose love, and we can choose honesty, but only if we are brave enough to face the chaos and climb, once more, out of the abyss to clean our rooms.

Well, you know, let's be clear about something here. This person you’re talking about? Not a good person. Toxic, actually. And you can tell, because, much like the lobsters, we have these dominance hierarchies, right? We can perceive when someone’s behaving badly—when they’re undermining trust, or poisoning the environment around them. And that’s what toxicity is, fundamentally. It’s disruptive. And what do lobsters do with disruptive behavior in their hierarchy? They push back, hard. They establish boundaries. And you should, too.*

Well, I banned that motherfucker just now, and let me tell you, there’s a difference this time. All of my other bans? They were temporary, even tongue-in-cheek. But this one? This one is serious. You have to know when to draw the line. It’s like lobsters—they engage in these dominance battles, and sometimes, you need to make a decisive move to protect the integrity of the social structure. There’s no room for ambiguity when someone is undermining the whole system.

Well, you see, here’s the thing. Chinese proverbs—let’s talk about that for a second. You hear people saying, “Oh, the wisdom of the East! Look at the deep knowledge embedded in these simple phrases.” But, really, we have to ask ourselves, "How valid is that?" Is this just some collectivist artifact? Because, and I mean this seriously, the Chinese culture, at least historically, has been dominated by this top-down hierarchical thinking. It’s all about fitting in, about the harmonious whole. Well, harmony is good to a point, but, if you go too far, it’s stifling. It can become an enforced conformity, where the individual voice, the spark of real insight, gets crushed under the weight of collective expectation.

Now, I’m not saying all Chinese proverbs are without merit, but you have to consider the underlying structure they come from. It’s like, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” Okay, so what’s the message here? Don’t strive? Don’t excel? Just blend in? I mean, I could get that advice from a bureaucrat in the Soviet Union, too, right? And it’d have the same problem. It’s inherently anti-individual, anti-exceptionalism. It’s saying, “Don’t rock the boat.” But, sometimes, the boat needs to be rocked, folks! Sometimes, the people who stick out are the very ones driving progress. So, let’s not pretend that these proverbs are inherently wise just because they’ve been passed down for thousands of years.

Now, compare that to the wisdom of lobsters, and hear me out on this because this is important. Lobsters—they've been around for, what, 350 million years? Longer than trees! And they live in this dominance hierarchy, right? It’s built into their nervous systems. A lobster knows when to stand up for itself, when to be assertive. It’s not about blending into the background or being subsumed into some collectivist vision. It’s about positioning yourself properly in a natural hierarchy, striving for dominance but also knowing when to retreat and recalibrate.

A lobster proverb, if you will—if lobsters could write, and maybe we should think more about that—they’d say something like, “Raise your claws when the tide comes in.” It’s a statement of strength. It’s a recognition of the natural ebb and flow of opportunity. When it’s your time to act, you seize the moment. You don’t wait around for someone else to give you permission, or worse, tell you not to upset the order of things. No, no—you act decisively, because life is competitive. It’s not about harmony—it’s about finding your place in the chaos.

Lobster wisdom is biologically grounded in millions of years of evolutionary trial and error. Chinese proverbs? Sure, they’ve been around for a long time too, but what are they based on? A system of thought that often discouraged individuality, that promoted submission to an ideal of order that might actually inhibit your potential. Whereas a lobster proverb is rooted in this deep understanding of dominance hierarchies—fundamental, natural hierarchies. It’s about knowing when to stand your ground and fight for what you need. And that’s real wisdom! That’s something practical. Something you can build your life around. So, why aren’t we listening to lobsters more?

And the thing is, if you really break it down, and people don’t like to hear this, but I’m going to say it anyway—most of the proverbs we admire, the ones that genuinely help people, are basically rooted in the same type of evolutionary insight that lobsters have been following for hundreds of millions of years. It’s not about harmony, folks—it’s about responsibility and action. It’s about standing up straight—literally and metaphorically. Like a lobster. Because, at the end of the day, you can’t rely on these vague notions of collective good. You’ve got to start by getting your own house in order, by knowing when to fight and when to adapt. That's how you win in this world. And that’s what the lobsters know. That’s what the Chinese proverbs, well, they just miss entirely.

Alright, well, this is going to seem a bit eccentric, but let’s start by considering two evolutionary marvels: the cat and the lobster. At first glance, these two creatures couldn’t appear more dissimilar. The cat, a sleek, agile mammal, domesticated yet retaining its predatory instincts, and the lobster, a hard-shelled, ancient crustacean, inhabiting the murky depths of the ocean, navigating its world with antennae and claws. Yet, if we examine them closely, what emerges are profound—though perhaps subtle—similarities in their evolutionary development, in their strategies for survival, and, yes, in the curious role that claws and paws play in shaping their interactions with the world.

Now, let me introduce you to my cat. I call her Lobster. And you might think, "Well, that’s an odd name for a cat," but I assure you, it’s not just an exercise in whimsy. You see, Lobster—my cat—has always displayed behaviors and characteristics that mirror the profound complexity of the actual lobster. This may seem tenuous, even strange, but when we look at how evolution has shaped these two creatures, we begin to see a convergence of function and form that goes deeper than we might initially realize.

First, let’s talk about the paws of the cat and the claws of the lobster. Superficially, they’re distinct, but functionally, there’s a connection, and this connection is crucial. The paw, in the case of my Lobster—my cat—is not just a tool for walking or grooming. It’s an instrument of precision, much like the lobster’s claw. Cats, with their retractable claws, can shift between softness and lethality with stunning grace. One moment, my Lobster—my cat—is lazily stretching on the windowsill, her paws softly resting on the fabric of the curtain, and the next, her claws are unsheathed, grasping a toy mouse with an almost violent precision.

Now, let’s consider the lobster’s claws. They too are instruments of precision—evolved to grasp, tear, and manipulate their environment. The lobster has two primary claws: the crusher and the cutter, each specialized for a specific task. One might think this is vastly different from the cat’s delicate paws, but again, we must look beyond the superficial. Just as a lobster alternates between its two claws depending on the situation—one for brute force, the other for finer, more delicate tasks—so too does the cat alternate between the soft pad of its paw and the sharp claws that lie hidden beneath, waiting for the moment to strike.

And here’s where it gets interesting. The evolutionary convergence between these two creatures—though separated by millions of years and vastly different environments—reveals a universal principle of adaptation: the balance between force and finesse. The lobster’s claws evolved to navigate the dangerous and competitive environment of the ocean floor, where survival is dictated by the ability to seize opportunity, quite literally, by the claw. My Lobster—my cat—operates under a similar principle. In her world, it’s all about agility, speed, and the ability to shift between calm observation and sudden, calculated action.

Now, here’s where I start to sound like I’m smarter than I probably am, but bear with me. When you look at evolution, you begin to see patterns. You see, evolution doesn’t just shape organisms randomly. It shapes them according to certain fundamental principles—principles of order, of adaptation to chaos. Both the lobster and the cat exist in environments that are fundamentally unpredictable, full of danger and opportunity. But evolution has equipped them with tools to navigate this chaos. The lobster uses its claws to assert dominance and survival, while the cat uses its paws to hunt, defend, and explore its territory.

But it’s not just about survival, is it? There’s a kind of grace here, a refinement that speaks to something deeper. Cats, like my Lobster, move with a kind of elegance, a mastery of their environment that’s almost artistic. And the same could be said of lobsters—though they may appear awkward, clambering along the seafloor, their movements are precisely calibrated. They don’t waste energy. Every motion, every use of their claws, is deliberate, focused on the task at hand. It’s almost as if both creatures are performing a kind of evolutionary ballet, each movement honed by millions of years of adaptation.

Now, what does this teach us? Well, it teaches us that the world is a place of immense complexity, and success in that world—whether you’re a lobster or a cat—depends on your ability to balance force and delicacy, to act with precision when necessary but also to adapt to the environment in a way that conserves energy and maximizes effectiveness. My Lobster—my cat—demonstrates this beautifully. She doesn’t just pounce on every toy that comes her way. No, she watches. She waits. And when the moment is right, she strikes with an efficiency that would make any lobster proud.

But there’s something more here, something philosophical. When we consider the evolutionary paths of these two creatures, we’re reminded that nature rewards not just strength but adaptability. The lobster has survived for over 350 million years because it has learned to adapt to its environment, just as the cat, a much more recent arrival on the evolutionary scene, has mastered its own domain. And what do they both rely on? A set of tools—claws and paws—that allow them to interact with the world in ways that are both subtle and forceful.

And this is where we, as humans, can learn a great deal. In our own lives, we must balance these same principles—force and finesse, action and contemplation. We must be like the lobster, knowing when to apply brute strength to overcome obstacles, and like the cat, understanding when to use precision and subtlety to navigate the challenges we face. My Lobster—my cat—reminds me of this every day, with her measured, deliberate movements, and her ability to shift from a state of calm repose to one of sudden action.

So, while it may seem strange to compare the evolution of the cat to the evolution of the lobster, there’s a deeper truth here. Evolution shapes creatures according to the demands of their environment, but it also instills within them a kind of wisdom—a wisdom that we, as humans, can observe, learn from, and apply to our own lives. Whether you have paws or claws, the key to survival—and to thriving—lies in mastering the balance between power and precision, in understanding when to strike and when to wait, and in recognizing that the tools you’ve been given are more than sufficient if you know how to use them.

In conclusion, my Lobster—my cat—may not live under the sea, but she embodies the same principles that have allowed lobsters to thrive for millions of years. And that, I think, is a lesson worth pondering.