The Cancer of Average

A guest post by Aleksander Svetski.

House Bisone is a house of many mottos. We have a tendency to pump out slogans, catchphrases and inside jokes the way China pumps out “fast fashion” and PM_2.5.

If you’re a longtime reader, you’ve probably heard a few of them (e.g. “Snapped his cap.”; “No such thing as now.”; “If it lives on a network, it’s by definition not secure.”). But one of our oldest sayings, minted by Dame in the earliest days of our romance, was this:

What did she mean by that?

She meant the standards that we were raised to measure ourselves up against — intellectual, artistic, behavioral, moral — were plunging, as evidenced by the stupidity that flourished all around us. The average person said stupid things, watched stupid movies, read stupid books, obeyed stupid rules. Average was incurious and rote. They never questioned fallacies, and were instead applauded for promoting them. Due in large part to the democratic ethos of our society, the broad lump in the middle of the curve was granted deference in every argument and instance, no matter how moronic.

That might sound like an “elitist” attitude to some readers. But what we found over the years is that the source of this triumphant stupidity had little to do with intellectual horsepower. Rather, the plummeting standards were signals of a collapse in reverence for the timeless virtues that uphold them.

Not everyone can achieve greatness, of course: that’s paradoxical. But when the Average Man is trained to hate virtue — to denigrate and deconstruct it to protect his own ego — the standard for what counts as “greatness” will fall accordingly.¹ It wasn’t just that the virtues were abandoned as ideals to strive towards. They were derided as simpleminded and backwards, and anyone who exhibited them became objects of suspicion or ridicule. Honor was a joke about cavemen, integrity a chink in the armor. You need not strive to meet the highest of these standards, citizen. You were beautiful at any size.

Over the past two decades, we also noticed the top earners seemed to invest a lot of time and money in the assault on virtue. By elevating mediocrities and deeming the (stupid) middle of the bell curve to be praiseworthy, some of the most unvirtuous and unimpressive people who’ve ever lived could pretend to be worthy of their parasitized wealth and privileged status by comparison. If someone as Average as Claudine Gay can be President of Harvard, with a handful of plagiarized papers and a mouthful of divers-a-speak, how “great” a man must George Soros be?

My friend,

Aleksandar Svetski

, is anything but Average. In fact, he is on a mission to break the tyranny of the Average Man, and restore virtue to its rightful place on the mountain.

I first became aware of Aleks when he linked to an article of mine in a piece he wrote for Bitcoin Magazine. I was flattered, of course — but also a “bit” skeptical, if you’ll pardon the pun. For one thing, I didn’t have a very big readership (and still don’t, relatively speaking). For another, someone in the crypto world reaching out to me could’ve just meant I had unknowingly entered the mouth of a sales funnel.

But as I familiarized myself with Mr. Svetski’s work and ideas, I recognized they shared much in common with my own. We are different men, with different conceptions of reality and its purpose. Yet, we seem to agree that our generation’s calling isn’t just to rescue the world from the Enemy’s death grip, but to make ourselves worthy of that great victory and inheritance.

Maybe “Average is stupid” marks our greatest point of intersection. As an author, publisher and entrepreneur, Svetski has shown himself to be a ferocious opponent of the soul-strangling, debt-fueled Rule of Mediocrity that now infests our every industry and institution.

This is one of the many topics he explores in his recently published book, The Bushido of Bitcoin, available now on Kindle and in print. As Aleksandar would be quick to remind you, this is not a book about Bitcoin. To use his own words:

It is about building the civilization of the future: one founded on beauty, truth and virtue. In it, weaving insights from warrior cultures of the past and from the great thinkers, I outline the 10 virtues that the leaders of tomorrow must embody to bring forth this new rising.

To give you a taste of its contents — and to set the mood for his guest piece below — spare the next 162 seconds to watch this trailer. Then, read on.

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The Cancer of Average

By Aleksandar Svetski

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“You’re just fine the way you are” and “be average” are the mantras of today’s morally-bankrupt society, designed to discourage people from standing out.

“Don’t you dare shame others through your success or by the achievement of a great feat.”

Under the guise of “equality and fraternity for all” our large civilian societies condition people to ‘vote’ themselves rights for, and receive benefits from, things that they have not produced but which they feel entitled to. Why? Because the ‘average person’ is just here to participate, and participation is enough. Attendance alone makes them deserving of stuff, because of course, in such a society, “they are enough.” You deserve a say just because you were born. 

Beware this trap of entitlement. This is democracy in a nutshell. The only dimension in which modern, civilian man remains “together” is his collective compliance and a ‘shared sense of average’. Being just another number, who neither rocks the boat nor rows too slow, while soul crushing, is at least safe.

This is perfect for the giant HR-apparatus of the modern state. The less excellence and variance you need to deal with, the more easily you can manage everything. In fact, the one-man-one-vote system of governance is quite useful for maintaining this status quo.

Our nihilistic age is characterized by a pervasive, nebulous sense of hopelessness and creeping disquiet. We are trapped in a longhouse of our own making, managed by an administrative class to whom we’ve ceded ever more power. The world has become one giant HR department run by crazy cat ladies and a never-ending horde of bureaucrats, who have in passing co-opted the term elite.

In such an environment, strength and excellence are frowned upon, while weakness and mere adequacy are glorified. In such an environment, humans devolve into crabs in a bucket. This is where we are now.

Both excellence and greatness refer to a form of superiority and distinction that reaches for the heights. They imply an earning, a raising or climbing, all of which are emergent in nature. Excellence does not come from above, but in fact leaves a trail to the summit where it is then admired and beheld.

Excellence is the virtue of rising up and standing out, emerging out of the ordinary, the commonplace and the expected. Excellence is the virtue of distinction and significance.

The opposite of mediocrity is greatness and nobility, in the same way that the opposite of shallowness is depth. Mediocrity is shallow. It has roots like astro-turf. It’s the plant in the pot, the nomad with no territory. Nobility runs deep. It has roots like an ancient Oak Tree. Its territory is its line, extending back through time. A society that has no reverence for the noble will ultimately find itself shallow and mired in mediocrity.

The opposite of excellence is not ‘bad’, but average. This is one of the key distinctions that makes modern civilian and martial collectives so fundamentally different. Collectivist ideologies such as socialism, communism and of course, the most insidious, democracy, are all the politics of “average”. They encourage people to trade excellence and personal potential for a ‘share in a faceless whole’ in which they are merely cogs.

Such people cannot appreciate beauty, because they are ugly inside. Instead of seeking to climb to the level of those better than them, they choose to tear them down. Nietzsche said that resentment was the most vile of emotions and drives. He could not have been more accurate. It’s not that power corrupts, but that power corrupts the weak and resentful. The noble use power to reach higher. The weak use it to tear things down. They revere nothing. They are not the same.

In the modern world, unfortunately, excellence has almost become a derogatory term, as though ‘being the best you can be’ were some form of extremism. And perhaps it is, in this context. I couldn’t think of a more fitting viewpoint in a world that attempts to amplify lies, glorify laziness, applaud sloth, and praises “the average Joe”.

Luckily for humanity though, the deep, inner desire for greatness cannot be quelled. It burns inside the best of us, like the infinite flame of the soul. In fact, it’s during periods of mediocrity that greatness builds up inside of key men, gathering itself until it explodes on the scene.

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(Excerpt from Bushido of Bitcoin)

Be Elite!

"The best choose progress toward one thing, a name forever honored by the gods, while others eat their way toward sleep like nameless oxen."

— Heraclitus

In our pursuit of excellence, we must reclaim the word elite. Traditionally speaking, the elite were those who worked to improve their society. They were the leaders of men, leaders of industry and patrons of the art and beauty that fills the old towns strewn throughout Europe. Today’s elites are not elite - but parasites who seek to undermine society. They spend their time leaching from the producers, bloating the government with a bureaucratic managerial class, revising history and filling the minds of the young with toxic ideology. Their goal is to weaken our culture with degeneracy and ugliness. To sully our history, and leave the world ugly, unsafe and uninhabitable while they retire to their opulent mansions behind private security.

As a result, the word elite is today erroneously conflated with parasite. This has to change. We must rediscover its root, and take it back. It comes from Latin elitus, which means “choice” or “selected,” itself from eligere, “to choose” or “to select.” The PIE root of the word “elite” is leg, which means “to collect” or “to gather.”

To be elite is to be the ‘selected’. The choicest or the selected means ‘the best’ and thus to be elite is to be the best in your field, to be the cream of the crop, to be distinguished and outstanding. In short, to be excellent.

Most people suffer from anti-elite syndrome. And while I can sympathize, their misunderstanding of the true meaning of the word causes them to point their vitriol in the wrong direction. In fact, many are so brainwashed by narratives of the average man, that they’ve come to hate anybody who excels. This disease of average is prevalent even in the Bitcoin space. You hear it when people say stupid things like “we are all Satoshi”, or celebrate being a “pleb”. This also has to change.

We are not all Satoshi. Satoshi did something far greater than any of us probably ever will, and to lay claim to that is both arrogant and ignorant. Yes, I understand the reference to the whole Guy Fawkes thing - which is cute - but it’s extremely inaccurate and disingenuous.

Aspire to be “like” Satoshi in grandeur and virtue, but do not claim you are him.

Furthermore, the pleb thing is not just cringe, it’s hands down false, or will be soon enough. Just being in Bitcoin makes you part of tomorrow’s economic “elite”. Barring any mistake, you will wield significantly more financial and social power than someone who comes into Bitcoin a decade from now.

What will you do with that power? Of course, that is the focus of this book. It stands to reason that you must at some point come to terms with the fact that you are no longer a “pleb” but part of a small group of people who are at the very least, economically “elite.” You should recognise this and begin to develop the attributes of a more holistic individual, working toward excellence in other areas of your life. You cannot hide forever behind the pleb moniker as an excuse for sloth or poor behavior.

Humility is important of course: “stay humble,” but strive also to upgrade your behavior, enhance your vocabulary, deepen your knowledge, and become more cultured. With great power comes great responsibility. You don’t want to be some rich turd in a Lambo, or the eternal Twitter troll. There’s much more to life than that. 

To operate on a higher energetic plane, we need a grander perspective. We must climb the mountain. We’ve been tricked into believing that “average” is ok, because it represents the little guy. But the truth is that there is nothing aspirational about being average. Average doesn’t require courage, passion, drive, responsibility or self control. Average is a low energy state, and a small story designed to make you give up on your dreams–to trade all you could possibly be for what you’re told you should be.

Pursuing excellence is one of the highest callings in life, as is the practice and cultivation of the virtues presented in this book. The world needs strong leaders - not trolls, plebs or parasites - there’s plenty of that around. As a Bitcoiner, this duty rests with you.

“Equality belongs essentially to decline: the chasm between man & man, class & class, the multiplicity of types, the will to be oneself, to stand out – that which I call pathos of distance – characterizes every strong age.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

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There are few things more noble than becoming the best you can be: in your chosen vocation, your behavior, your etiquette, with your family, and in your community. Greatness fundamentally gives direction. In the same way that the great rivers absorb and carry forth the many streams that make it so, greatness of character and spirit requires one to illuminate the direction which the many will follow. In this way, great men shape history.

It is in the darkest, most despairing moments that the greatest potential exists. From a place of weakness, raw strength can be built. The greatest odds call upon the deepest courage.

Excellence continues to drive the world forward, despite every social construct seeking to shut it down. May it once again take its rightful place as the North Star, as we transcend the era of equality. Let us once again wage war on average in the pursuit of excellence.

Let us become elites in the true sense of the word.

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Aleksandar Svetski is the author of The Bushido of Bitcoin, co-author of The UnCommunist Manifesto & The Bitcoin Times, His Substack work can be found at

The Remnant Chronicles

,

The ₿itcoin Times

, and

Social 2.0

.

Mr. Svetski is also an entrepreneur. He is not only thinking and writing about how we can build a better world, but he’s also trying to actually build it at Satlantis.io.

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1. We laughed our heads off when people were calling Barack Obama a Great Man, and handed him the Nobel Peace Prize. Great for doing what, exactly? Even by democracy’s flattened standards, it sounded like a goof.