Winston wrote: ↑July 16th, 2018, 4:41 pm
Yes I do want to move from the Philippines. I like the vibe there and the sex and the girls.
@Winston
And that's one of the root causes of your discontent. You are hooked to the addiction of the cheap sex and even cheaper flattering given to you by the Angeles City working (and some non-working) girls.
I admit it, the "oh Sir, you're so gwapo" thing got me to the head at the beginning - it's normal, it's human. But I stopped paying attention when it dawned on me that, without
ANY shadow of doubt, those compliments, those cheeky smiles and those soft graceful approaches we so like are sweet molasses on a giant turd, so to speak
They are meant to hook us and distract us from the fact that they are only meant to ingratiate the receiver. I wouldn't even mind if that fllattering were given, frugally, as a genuine compliment.
Unfortunately to people (adult foreigners) like us, it's only, ONLY meant to pave the ground for a favour, or for the inevitable transaction in your case. Usually the favour/transaction involving money or free work on my side.
I have been here for 3 years and I met hundreds of Filipinos and Filipinas, of any social stratum, age and professional background. The
ONLY Filipinos/as whose kindness (or love) I trust are maybe 5 (
FIVE!), and that includes my gf C. Everybody else would only get an embarrassed smile when they flatter and a polite but firm refusal when the (inevitable) request ensues.
If you do realise this simple truth, you may get unhooked to this molasses-like flattering and start seeing the Angeles scene for what it really is: a pit of desperate girls who use their best manners to get what they need, which is obviously not a new Ferrari, but a modest allowance to feed their kids and families back in the province.
Winston wrote: ↑July 16th, 2018, 4:41 pm
But it is not good for spirituality, as Mr S always said. The Philippines also lacks the adventure and journey of discovery element of my Russia adventures, like Phoenix Sosa said. Also I do not fit into the collective mentality there that life is all about getting money and benefits any way you can. It's a gremlin mentality that is all about "gimme gimme gimme", as you've noticed, and it's shameless. Their greatest desire is to RECEIVE things from others. I'm sure you've observed that about Filipino culture and character. It's too tunnel like. I dislike it when people only care about money and nothing else. That's sick and unnatural. I don't vibe with that at all and don't relate to it. But as you know, Asians are practical and limited to the practical only. I'd rather go somewhere where at least I fit in somewhat with the people or culture. I'm not money grubbing, so I do not relate to Asians in that area.
Here's another "aha" moment!
So you do admit that there's nothing conducive to a spiritual, or even an intellectual, lifestyle where you are living. You also admit, and I can't agree more, that most Filipinos exhibit a cheap version of the Asian materialism combined with a caricature version of the "American dream" mentality. Asian wants their luxury rides, their sumptuous homes, their golfing holidays and their expensive whiskeys but they are prepared to work hard and even play dirty to get them. Filipinos, most Filipinos at least, do not.
They prefer to believe in a Spaniard-welfare-type kind of "providentialism" whereby God will provide whatever they need so long they are (or pretend to be) devout Christian and good people (who for the most part are not). And if God doesn't provide, some "smartass business trick" must do...and this explains why people here are so hooked up to MLM and other forms of Ponzi schemes, in which they squarely and willingly fall.
It's lowly greed combined to intellectual laziness. Those who are a few notches above the rest can't wait to leave for Australia, US or Canada, Singapore/HK or Europe at their first occasion. I hated to admit to myself what my gf always told me: the only young people who are happy to stay here are those from wealthy family backgrounds who will live an easy life of privilege so long they stick around their families/clans.
Now the question is: where is a place where the people or culture is more sane or spiritual. I don't think there's an entire country or even community that fits the bill, but I guess you could find pockets of spiritual/intellectual people anywhere. Even in Manila. It's just the matter of finding them, befriending a few members (no matter if men or women!) and showing some commitment to their predicaments/routines. No sure about Angeles, but here in Manila you can easily find book, movie or art clubs. There are lots of religious and spiritual groups where certainly you won't find an "all Saints", but the chance to find genuine and kind people will be higher than average.
Being so close to Manila, you are only a couple of hours. Maybe you should hang around here more. And not in the red light district
Winston wrote: ↑July 16th, 2018, 4:41 pm
But you are a little in error when you say that Filipina bar girls are all business and there's no love involved. Any expat in Angeles will tell you that it's not 100 percent business or 100 percent love. It's somewhere in between. It's not like American prostitutes who are all business. Filipino girls aren't that cold. I'm sure you know that. However, you are right that relationships with bar girls are not fulfilling like normal relationships are. They do not satisfy our need to be loved.
No cigar dude. If I was a 1-week-old expat you could fool me. It's 101% business, the business being that of using real kindness and grace to extract the only thing they will ever want. Of course they look less cold and distant compared to your average US or Eastern European prostitute. Of course these petite girls will probably prefer a well-groomed gentleman kind of guy as punter, than a sweaty tank-top-wearing big bear, and they may show more appreciation towards you than towards the latter.
Yet, make no mistake: they are not looking for "love". In the best situation, they're looking for a sugar daddy who will pay an even higher price for the sexual services, in exchange for even more "fake love".
If I was an expat in Angeles, I too would want to believe that these girls are all there for me, ready to "love" me. It's only human.
Winston wrote: ↑July 16th, 2018, 4:41 pm
Also it's not true that all the proof I have for my esoteric theories is a bunch of YouTube videos. You act as though those videos contain no evidence. But they do. They usually cite ancient texts from all over the world, and scholarly books that few people have read, and eyewitness testimony too. And they connect the dots and look at the big picture too. So it's not zero evidence.
Sure I cannot prove these new theories with certainty. But hey, you gotta understand something. I'm a truth seeker. There's a lot of data that doesn't fit the conventional paradigms we have. A lot of unexplained phenomena and mysteries and cases do not fit conventional paradigms like Atheism, Scientism, Religion, etc. So we have to find new paradigms and new theories that take into account all the data that doesn't fit into conventional paradigms. Let me give you one example. If you study reincarnation, you find that there are many well documented cases that are astounding and cannot be explained away. This does not fit into the Atheist paradigm or the Christian paradigm, yet both sides refuse to update their paradigm to include such data. Because both have a fundamentalist mindset that resists change, as well as a strong personal bias for their rigid beliefs. So us truth seekers have to seek new paradigms that incorporate such data.
You see what I mean? Now every theory out there will cite evidence to support it, even false theories can cite evidence. We cannot prove anything with certainty yet. But we can explore different possibilities. At this point all we can do is go with what makes the most sense or feels right. In the end, that's how we all choose our beliefs. We all choose what feels right or makes the most sense to us, or sounds the most attractive to us.
I don't believe everything I hear, but I'm open minded enough to consider new possibilities and new paradigms, especially ones that make sense. No one has all the answers, so we have to keep searching. That's my position. Do you understand what I mean?
I wasn't actually singling out any of those videos or blog items. In fact I have no idea what most of them are. My criticism was on the "relativism" that all that material brings with it. Even assuming you have all the time of your life to listen/read and analyse, how do you
synthesize? How can you tell those theories that have a foundation of truth and those that are bogus? And if the line is indeed blurred, where do you put the boundary of your credulity?
Who are the better researchers, who are the more credible truth-seekers and truth-tellers? Those with the most visualisations? Those you resonate the most with? The better looking ones?
That's what I mean by relativism. Everyone is pushing their idea or ideas and, since not much of what they say has scientific grounding and is provable, the burden of collating different sources and making sense out of several seemingly discordant ideas and theory is entirely the reader/listener's burden.
I am telling you this because I had a phase of my life, which lasted several years, where I too wanted to "seek the truth" by studying themes that go beyond religions, philosophies, and social conventions. I found some intellectual solace when I realised that most religions are nothing more than a system of symbolic teaching reinforced by myths and "power tales". All religions, none excluded. Some of these symbols are deep seated with the human consciousness, what Jung called archetypes, some are stories that symbolise common astrological and climate/weather events...the stuff mankind has been witnessing since its birth.
I read a few things about esoteric philosophy, the gnosis, and how it fed the many secret societies that populated history and shaped much of modern culture. One of my favourite flavours of "gnosis for the masses" was those by Gurdjeff and Ouspensky, a couple of books about Kabbalah, some about white and black magic, the Vedas and the Bhagavad Ghita, the Rosicrucian and the Freemason teaching, the holographic mind and the meaning of miracles. I learned the importance of "being present to myself". I learned that powerful cabals rooted in economic and political power rule the planet, perhaps aided by evil alien forces that maybe look like lizards, maybe look like blobs. I spoke to both the British and Australian publishers of the famed Nexus Magazine and both 5 years worth of arrears all at once. Some of the older issues were actually photocopies, since the originals had sold out long since.
To a young mind, most of what I was reading sounded "plausible enough". But what does "plausible enough" mean, when one is looking for a life-changing truth? The risk is always that of falling short, learning something new, something inspiring, something interesting and something worth explorign further. Yet, nothing of the above truly has the power to change your mind and change your life. That was my case, at least, and that of several people I talked to.
Such was the overwhelming opinion of my fellow truth-seekers at the time: "now we have read and understood all this stuff, what do we do with it?". "We have the truth (assuming it is): what now?".
And there lied the root of the problem. The more I would feed on the seemingly inexhaustible pool of reading material available at my specialised bookstore (my hometown Bari has 2 very good ones) and then online, the more this entire exercise felt like someone lost in a magic fair, bouncing from booth to booth, lured by the fancy lights and incense scents, the fortune teller's and guru's hands weaving mantras in the air. Everybody was ready to "sell" me something, and I ended up exhausted more confused than when I started, with several bags full of stuff I never needed but that - thanks to your suspension of belief and judgment at the time - I wholeheartedly "bought".
Winston, you clearly have a lot of time in your hands. Your situation of living (frugally, maybe) off your parents' money and the passive income from HA is clearly a rare one. Yes I agree that it might have all started from events in your teenage years. Yet, you are now in your mid-40s and still playing the ego carousel.
Here's another esoteric truth that might enlighten your soul..but it doesn't, so off to the next ride. Here's a cute Filipina who might - just might - offer me something more than smiles and kisses on the cheek in exchange for a few hot meals...but no, wait, she's not sleeping with me. Off to the next one. Here's a few fellow foreigners you call friends but...hey, why are they constantly ridiculing me in public? Perhaps they're not really my friends. And so on. Comprendi?
The chances here are two. You either don't know what you're looking for, or you know but you're looking for it in all the wrong places and situations. Hence my advice from my earlier post: leave Angeles City and - if you want to stay in the Philippines - move to Manila where at least you can find a massively wider humanity and, right there in this ocean of people - you will be bound to find the friends and then the soulmate you need, or want.
And please remember: the more time you spend looking for "the ultimate truth out there" on the online magic fair, the less time you have to see the truth just in front of your nose: that we men do not live for ourselves and our ego. We live to build the future. Isn't that what esoteric knowledge might have taught you: the male principle is the destructive/constructive one, the female principle is the conservational/nurturing?
If you are building nothing but a tower of cards for your ego, to feel enlightened and vindicated, to stand higher than those poor mind slaves below you, to have a strong opinion on topics most people won't care about. If that's all you're doing, you're not really building anything worthy. You are, simply, not acting like a man. And most girls, even the simple-minded Filipinas, can perceive this and snub you as relationship material even if they are looking for someone stable. Even if they might actually like you!
Winston wrote: ↑July 16th, 2018, 4:41 pm
As for Asians and Whites, I don't know why you deny that racial differences exist that are not culturally based. There is obvious evidence of that. I showed it to you before. It's just that you don't want to see it, so you don't. It's cognitive dissonance. You only see what you want to see in accord with your beliefs. But that's another subject for another thread.
You never brought me more than cirtumstantial evidence. You told me of your successdful yet dull cousins, or the fact that Asian-Americans spend most of their time complying with the system and building business - you perhaps ignore than "changing the system from within" is part of the Chinese's bag of wisdom, far from random or dumb.
I could bring you dozens of examples of Chinese-born men and women who received secondary, college or postgraduate education abroad and have grown to be as perceptive, open-minded and intellectually-honest as their Western hosts. It's nurture, not nature.
I could say that this "one among the millions" mentality you have is something that might groom you ego, but in the end it's one of the reasons why you feel isolated. Is it worth paying the price?
Winston wrote: ↑July 16th, 2018, 4:41 pm
Btw, I told you last time, I didn't choose to be a freethinker. It was forced onto me. I wanted to fit in and be liked too, and belong too, and not be lonely, like everyone does. But my peers rejected me and treated me badly and make me feel like a loser and outcast. So I had no choice but to become a freethinker. That was the path given to me. I didn't choose it. As you know, when life sucks, you have to look deeper for meaning. That's why hot girls aren't deep or intellectual because they are too busy having fun and don't need to be smart. But ugly and fat girls are deeper because they have had to look deeper since they are not popular and do not have the great social life and parties and fun that hot people have. Likewise, if I was popular and had a great social life in high school like you see in movies and TV shows, I would not have needed to cultivate any inner life. It's only those who are suffering that need to cultivate an inner life or seek spirituality. If you are hot and surrounded by hot people and are part of the "in crowd" then you don't.
Do you see what I mean? So stop assuming that I chose this. It's just who I am and what life has given me, or what destiny has thrown into my lap.
If it were up to me, I would have chosen a different life. I would have stayed in Palo Alto too, where I was happy and in a positive environment, back in 1980 and not moved. Then maybe my childhood and life would be different and I would be normal and had a high school sweetheart that I married and settled down with, and then been motivated to get a stable job, and this site wouldn't exist. Who knows. But that would have been my choice if I could have chosen.
When I graduated from college, I was not motivated to go out and work hard just for the sake of working hard, or becoming a corporate slave just because I was supposed to. No. I was still hung on my past because I never got to have any good social life, fun, friends, meaningful experiences, and high school sweethearts, and that "summer of love" experience that you see romanticized in the movies. So I was hung on regret and trying to fix all that. Getting a job and working hard would not have fixed that problem. Why work hard when you have no life to work hard for, no sweetheart to spend your money on and settle down with, and no happiness, and all you have is loneliness? If I had had a high school sweetheart and settled down with her and needed to support her and raise a family together, then yeah maybe I would have been motivated to work hard and become a corporate slave to support all that. But since life didn't give me that, why should I work hard for nothing, especially when I was unhappy and didn't get the love I wanted all my life?
See what I mean? So how could I move on or fix my path and follow a normal life? I was stuck. I had to find an alternative. Eventually when I found a girlfriend in Washington then I was motivated to look for a job, but I had to move to Bellingham, WA to be with her, and the job market sucked there at that time. So I was out of luck by then. Plus my life and karma are not usually good enough for me to have both love and a good job. I'm always only able to have one or the other, but not both.
German playwright Bertold Brecht famously said:
"We stood on the wrong side because all the other seats were taken".
What you just said just confirms me why you have been behaving this way all along. It doesn't take an expert psychologist. You felt, or were, rejected by your peers and you elaborated this theory that, if you have to be an outcast, you'd better be the best outcast possible.
Instead of trying harder to understand the world you were called to live in, you created a world of your own, where only selected few would be admitted. Sadly, a world that - by design - the majority of people wouldn't understand or care for.
This is the basis of self-alienation, and it's far far more common than you can imagine, especially in young people. But it usually goes away when one realises that they are not an island and they would make things worse if they stopped having meaningful interactions. The less you tried, the less skills and tools you would build in your "social arsenal" to face the world. Which compounded and made things worse.
Yes, you did find some excitement in Russia where, at least at the time of your travels more than a decade ago, you could still find some genuinely deep and perceptive and pretty girls. Yet, ask to yourself and answer honestly, what kind of lasting human connection did you get out of that experience? I think you had one change with one girl (Yoshkar Ola? Don't remember exactly) but you let her go because you were still spinning the carousel.
Then you left "smart" Russia for "dumb" Philippines and that was the grave of your desires for deeper connections. Yes the cheap p*ssy flashed at you on Fields Avenue keep the ego carousel spinning but, as you can see, the glitter is now waning and you're left with a sense of wanting something more.
Go back to Russia, maybe? Or one of the more rural "-stans" as you suggested on the other post, where girls might approach you out of sheer curiosity but their lack of conversational English and cultural differenced might be huge barriers for anything to be more meaningful than a few walks in the parks, holding hands, a few smiles and kisses.
I would like to believe that, Winston, but the reality is:
there are no special places for men who don't want to be men. Because women the world over are biologically programmed to feel who can be a reliable life partner. Or at least who is behaving more "manly", even if that means being a rude, cheating a**hole. And if they're up to some mindless fun, believe me, they can find better studs than you and me! LOL
Winston wrote: ↑July 16th, 2018, 4:41 pm
Finally, you forget something. Even if I become normal and gain the respect of my cousins, that won't change anything, because as I explained earlier, Americans and NE Asians do not try to be friends with their cousins. Conformists and normal people put people into strict categories and do not cross lines. For example:
1. Friends in your clique - These are the friends you are supposed to hang out with exclusively.
2. Strangers - These are the people you ignore and treat as nonexistent. Conversation with them is for business only.
3. Relatives and Cousins - These are people you greet superficially at family gatherings, but that's it. You don't socialize with them on your own time or talk to them like your buddies or date them. You keep them at a polite distance. They are like acquaintances.
4. Colleagues and Coworkers - These are people you work with and greet superficially and only talk about polite subjects with. Nothing more. You never mix business with pleasure. They are not your buddies. Now, in Asia it is more common to make friends with colleagues, but not in America. The boundaries in America are more strict.
So you see, that's how conformists group people along those strict lines. They don't usually mix the categories above. Now, like I said earlier, if my cousins were hippies/freespirits/counter-culture types, then that would be another matter. Such types do not have strict boundary lines for the above. They are much more open minded and nonconformist and will not adhere to such rules. That's why nonconformists, misfits and counter-culture types can bond easily and instantly when they first meet, without awkwardness, whereas conformists cannot, even if they are similar. But none of my cousins are counter-culture types of course. One of them is into new age stuff, but she's still largely conformist and mainstream, and disagrees with me about most stuff and does not like talking to strangers at all and doesn't need anyone outside of her established friends. So she cannot relate to me at all. Also she claims that all her friends in America and Taiwan are very stable and loyal and never flake on her or grow apart. So her experiences with American friendships are vastly different than what we in this forum report. She does not experience the fleeting nature of American friendships like we do.
So you see, my cousins are in a different universe and reality from us. They make me feel like a weirdo. How come her friendships with Americans are all stable but mine aren't? That's not fair of course. Stuff like this makes me feel like a victim. Not all Asian kids experience bullying in school either. My parents know Asian families whose kids have never experienced any bullying or any major problems in school. Stuff like that makes me feel targeted or singled out to suffer for some reason. It's like the universe outcasted me and singled me out.
Comprende? What do you think?
I have never advised you to "become normal" or to please your cousins. I advised you to remove the massive cognitive dissonance in your life and start acting as if you wanted spirituality, as if a deeper understanding of life and people really mattered to you.
Walk the walk, Winston, that's my advice. Otherwise, the only conclusion will be that you're checking out all things new age and esoteric and alternative just to entertain yourself and promote your free-thinking persona. And in doing so, you will continue to complain about the shallow working ladies of Angeles City and not even getting basic social respect from those you call "close friends".
Comprendo. Do you comprend?
