View of reality

Who am I, more deeply? Part I

BY MIKE ZIELINSKI, 23 APRIL 2023

In high school, I loved mathematics. It was the only subject where I could do something concrete and see the results of the effort I put in. However, this love for math became a curse for me in the following years because I ended up studying engineering due to my love for math. As a young person who knew very little about the world, I heard that if I loved math, I should try my hand at engineering. Only later did I realize that I was much more of a humanist who simply enjoyed mathematics. The field itself, as well as life, taught me a great lesson for the future. If you make a mistake at the beginning of an equation, the result is usually incorrect. As an entrepreneur and later a businessman, I quickly realized that I was sitting on the wrong side of the table. Therefore, following the maxim “better a gram on trade than a kilo of work,” I turned to speculation. But more on that later.

My first store failed due to unhealthy competition. At the beginning, I sold used toys from my own collection. I also bought them from other kids, often refreshing them before putting them up for sale at my stand on one of the more picturesque streets in a tiny summer resort town on the edge of the forest. As you can imagine, in the days before consoles and widespread internet access, there were always lots of kids around. And when it’s vacation time and there are kids, there are often parents and grandparents as well. I quickly went into partnership with a neighbor who was one year younger than me and who helped me scale up the business and spread our wings. We expanded our product range to include fresh strawberry cakes, which my mom prepared, as well as other sweets and sodas. We also set up a drinks distribution point for tired walkers and cyclists along the street. This was meant to draw attention to and advertise our store, which we moved to an empty lot next door that we had cleaned and prepared beforehand. We treated it as a game, but above all, it was our own business.

Very quickly, other kids wanted to “play” with us, which we didn’t appreciate. Because we refused to let them join us, a crafty grandmother set up her own store right next to our drinks stand, ostensibly to cheer up her grandson. Her store looked practically identical to ours. It had a similar table, colors, and an equally cute and chubby salesman. Her grandson sold new toys for a fraction of their value, which the loving grandmother bought in a city twenty kilometers away, unpacked, removed the labels, and delivered to her beloved little candy. So not only did people have to walk a bit uphill to get to our store, but competition appeared next to us that was focused on destroying our business, using the argument, of course, that other kids also have the right to “play” like we did.

We closed our business at the end of the summer. We received our first lesson, forgotten for years because we did not understand it then. Capital does not always start a business to solve a problem, organize work, and deliver a product or service. Along the way, it may simply want to destroy the competition, have some fun, or start a business as part of a broader perspective. Business is war, not the realization of ideas with a smile on your face. Every innovative idea introduced to the market must take into account that it is already being analyzed, calculated, and observed by people who operate with significantly greater resources of knowledge, skills, and capital. In the era of information flow, business innovation quickly becomes exhausted.

My career in finance did not last long. Not because I didn’t like it. It was simply due to the immorality of my colleagues who forced unnecessary financial instruments on their clients, just to earn the first part of their commission. Then, they would keep them hooked for months, making them continue to pay for their products, only to abandon them like an unwanted dog when the full commission was deposited into their accounts. This caused me to question everything I had learned up until then. These were the people who were respected and admired by society, treated with dignity, and were a role model for their colleagues. Strangely, they were able to forge signatures, tie their colleagues into practically impossible-to-pay-back loans, and professionally lie with a smile on their faces.

They walked on the street in beautiful suits, drove Aston Martins, Bentleys, Porsches, showed off in the best restaurants in the city, but in reality, they were blackmailers, actors taking advantage of the naivety of the less savvy.

I didn’t have the best sales results, and at first, I didn’t understand why I was being promoted in the company hierarchy, sent to training sessions, and receiving promotions in the Nobel Room during a chartered cruise. It all seemed like an illusion, a grotesque world to me. I knew quite a lot for my age, but I still didn’t realize who I was being created to be until I heard it directly. It wasn’t supposed to be a sales job for me, I was being groomed and trained to be a herd manager. They invested a lot of capital and influence in me. I was invited to fancy dinners, trips to the best hotels in the country under the guise of trainings, and all that glamour caused me to be brainwashed. I had to look the part, I knew languages, I was a very good skier, tennis player, and sailor. It was my own boss who made me realize that their business wasn’t about taking care of the customer, but about financial results. They didn’t care if the customer went bankrupt or sacrificed their life savings. They created a fiction of care and interest, but only for the period of commission paid by other financial institutions. What happened after that was not their problem and they were completely uninterested.

After that conversation, I refused to create my own team, I finished the meetings with the clients whom I had no doubt would be able to repay their obligations, and I resigned from my job. The vast majority have followed through with their savings and investment plans, successfully resolving them at the turn of 2020 and 2021. None of us planned for this, none of us were able to predict it. The top performers of the decade tripled their capital, solely due to pure chance, that a few years ago they trusted a young financial advisor, who looked like a high schooler in a big suit, but who had sincere intentions.

This adventure showed me how little I knew about life, investing, financial institutions, and those who are supposed to control them. The absurdity of these events caused the destruction of my beliefs, including religious ones, for which I paid with addictions, loss of self-confidence, and my worldview, which turned out to be far from the truth. She also left me with one of the greatest truths of life, which I still use today. Evil people and evil itself often act very openly. They tell us what they will do and what their plans are, and they are completely sincere about it. They let us know their intentions, and it is up to us what we do with that knowledge. The goal is simple, and there are two solutions: strong opposition or cooperation by refraining from any action / conscious participation. Most people in such situations choose the worst possible option – inactivity. When evil and evil people begin to implement their already obvious plans, they are the most paralyzed individuals who deny reality. Their consciousness cannot cope with such a situation, where they were warned about what will happen, and they did absolutely nothing about it. They are not prepared, like people of full opposition. They have not sided with evil either, so they have no way to benefit from such a situation. It’s even worse because they can’t allow themselves to think that by not making a decision, they have become the main target, and that’s what paralyzes them, sometimes for their whole life. The subconscious will continually suggest this to them, and consciousness will fight it. Few will cleanse themselves, some will go crazy, and the rest will eventually decide that they could do nothing, and that will be their modus operandi towards evil until the end of their days. It must be repeated once again that for evil to triumph, it is enough for people of goodwill to do nothing.

I call the end of that period the beginning of dark times, during which I spent several years building one of the most important parts of my future worldview, which I now call the “Awareness of Evil.” This is also the title of my first book. The third part will be released next week, and in this way, we will have completed the stage of a brief introduction and move on to the specifics.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address (1961)

BY PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, 17 JANUARY 1961

My fellow Americans. Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment. Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle-with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment. Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only. A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war-as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years-I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight. Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road. So-in this my last good night to you as your President-I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find somethings worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I-my fellow citizens-need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation’s great goals. To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing inspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

We live in complete madness. The question is, was it ever different?

BY MIKE ZIELINSKI, 7 JULY 2022

The same politicians who advocate for abandoning fossil fuels in favor of climate, arguing it for the future of the next generations, do not see a problem in impairing the economies in which those future generations will exist. Not far from Warsaw, where I am located, a war is raging. It may not be the largest war in history, but it shows how much Europe was mistaken about its future. Dark times have returned, and the luxury of previous years has greatly softened the ruling gang. Wars still rage over the same things, using similar methods, only the platforms and mechanisms change. Greed, fear, stupidity. The world remains unchanged because it is still remarkably ineffective in combating these three. You need a golden calf, on which the greedy will gaze all their lives, provide basic pleasures and simple, unrealistic ideologies to the stupid, keep the rest in fear, and you have the perfect mass to manage. The rest, who somehow figure it out, either the previous generations will take care of their proper education, will manage together this circus, or they will lead the hard life of free people.

Sometimes I have these strange thoughts in which I try to solve problems that have already been solved multiple times. It’s my huge flaw and advantage at the same time. I can waste several days of my life on these thoughts, so for some time now, I’ve been trying to transfer the results of these musings onto paper or into a keyboard. It’s probably natural for anyone who begins to notice certain patterns in their life, empirically experiences the behavior and actions of people previously developed only in their imagination during the thinking process.

Absorbing a vast amount of information and knowledge causes us to spin in circles. We wander through the meanders of our own experiences, events, books read, movies watched, conversations held, people encountered, and in doing so, we return to the starting point with a much more elaborate worldview. An example of this could be the USA, currently the wealthiest country in the world, which is also the most ruthless. Where life can cost a fortune, taxes can be very high, but by some strange coincidence, people living there are enormously motivated to act. The size of the capital available to companies, the number of people willing to engage in new ventures, the culture of bankruptcies and revivals in the economy is something that cannot be found anywhere else.

From the perspective of anyone not living in the United States, but aware of the actions and processes that have placed the US in first place after two World Wars, it seems to paint a picture of ruthless capital that penetrates every sphere of life without any moral or ethical constraints, not only there on the ground, but globally. The power of Americans lies in the propaganda of success, the willingness to take risks, and to get back up when knocked down. Add to that the military and its entire industry, wrongly presented as their most effective weapon, the economy and the currency behind it, which is the dollar. This is their most powerful weapon, which will continue to maintain order in the world for a long time, an order that primarily benefits Americans. Money and the unlimited possibilities of generating it. Even if they ever lose financially to the combined forces of other economies, they will close themselves off on their own continent, as they did in the past, and start again from scratch. They will shed their tax burdens and with innovation, creativity, and a passion for discovery, they will quickly return to the top spot faster than one might think. In the USA, very wealthy people have learned that it is worth cooperating.

In Europe, like the Tower of Babel, people still watch each other’s hands, limiting their possibilities, restraining each other from taking risks, directing their actions towards stability and safety. The group that notices this tends to exploit this scheme rather than trying to change it. Perhaps they are simply right and know how deeply this trait is ingrained in the minds of Europeans, and since it is not worth arguing with human nature, it is better to just take advantage of it.

After much thought, I come to the following conclusion. Capital is not bad, only the people who operate it can be. The fact that there is a great prosperity in a certain area simply means that the entire community is better off. It is easier to make contacts, find better paying jobs, acquire knowledge and have perspectives. I come from Radom, a city south of the capital of Poland, where due to a series of social disturbances, the community was rather impoverished and plagued by addictions. It only reminds me of the eternal impossibility that I encountered as a young man on every corner. Poverty is not only a lack of financial ability, but also a devastation in the mind, devoid of imagination and prospects. Due to the lack of contact with capital, people do not see a wider perspective, and it will knock on one’s door sooner or later, not necessarily with good news, often with resentment and demands. This is how the system was led, this is where we have come in Western civilization. Obtaining resources with the least resistance was once done in a significantly more brutal way. Today, we may lose some papers, provided that we believe in their value.

Not so long ago, we were losing our lives along with our entire families. That’s why I choose capital, and that’s why I have no intention of working with just anyone. I prefer to have a narrow circle of people who are aware, rather than speaking to masses who don’t understand anything or who simply don’t want to understand. Let’s not forget that we are the most ruthless and cruel species we know. Let’s not run away from our nature, or we will be eaten.

To my son Kazimierz, this little message. The most important skill you will need to master is thinking, which means questioning everything around you. Trust only in God, you won’t go wrong with that. You will achieve this by reading many good books. Learn to love, otherwise you won’t understand life. And don’t fear death, otherwise you won’t be able to live. Fight for what’s yours and take care of your own, because otherwise strangers will take care of you and yours. The rest you have in the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins.

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