Brilliant Thoughts of Epicurus

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not, remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

"Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist."


"The art of living well and the art of dying well are one."


"Being happy is knowing how to be content with little." 


"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent.
Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent.
Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"


"The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure, but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity."


"Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficient too little." 


"All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help." 


"The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it."


"The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd."


"It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself."


"If a little is not enough for you, nothing is."


"The greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom." 


" If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people's opinions, you will never be rich."

"I am grateful to blessed Nature, because she made what is necessary, easy to acquire and what is hard to acquire unnecessary." 

- Epicurus

Greek philosopher

The World We Live in

The world we live in, is divided in rich and poor countries. Surprisingly,  the countries where the population enjoy high life quality are not the ones with more natural richestness and resources.  

Wealthiest Countries (population): Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg,  Canada, Australia, Vaticano

Poorest Countries (population): South and Central America, Africa, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Russia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen 



Most Natural Resources Countries: Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo,  Iraq, Venezuela, Mozambique, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Russia, USA, India, China


Least Natural Resources Countries: Vatican, Switzerland, Belgium, (Europe in general), Taiwan, Japan, Singapore 

Most Populated Countries: India, China, USA, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Egypt

Least Populated Countries:  San Marino, Gibraltar, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden

Most Polluted Countries: India, China, Pakistan, Qatar, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Kuwait, UAE, Myanmar


Less Polluted countries: Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Canada

Dirtiest Streets Countries: India, most african countries, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Jordan

Cleanest Streets countries: Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, Iceland,  Ireland, Estonia. Luxemburg, Belgium

Healthier Countries: Japan, Monaco, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Italy, France, Switzerland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Australia 

Unhealthier Countries: Russia, USA, Saudi Arabia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia

Most Friendly Countries:  New Zealand, Uganda, Taiwan, Portugal, Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain, Colombia, Canada, Malta

Most Unfriendly Countries: Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Czech Republic, Russia

Most Dangerous: South and Central America, Africa, Syria, iraq, Yemen, Pakistan

Safest Countries: Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden,  Portugal, Switzerland, New Zealand, Austria, Netherlands

Most Modern and Developed Countries: Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand


Least Modern and Developed Countries: Africa in general, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Haiti, Myanmar, Cambodia, Yemen, Tuvalu, Nepal, Solomon islands, East Timor

Most Corrupt Countries: South and Central America, Africa, Middle east, Russia, North Korea, China, India, (Asia in general)


Least Corrupt Countries: Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Singapore, Canada

Stereotypes by Nationalities V - Nordic Countries

Scandinavian stereotypes:

Stereotypes of the Swedes

They are: politically correct, happy, social, liberal, gentle, civilized,  punctual, helpful, nature lovers,

Their dark side: racism, xenophobia, consumerist, reserved, individualistic, rude, arrogant, lazy, grumpy, promiscuous,  perfectionist, unfriendly to strangers

Stereotypes of Sweden: feminist country,  immigration, refugees, nature, organized, maternity friendly, good and free education, great health  system, clean energies, fresh air,  good public transports, high taxes,  cold and dark weather, expensive life costs but high quality and high wage, environmentally conscious, IKEA.

Stereotypes of the Norwegian

They are: outgoing, private, introvert, shy, informal, punctual, nature lovers, ski lovers, direct, peaceful, organized, good-natured, calm, feminist men, healthy, practical, civilized

Their dark side: patriotic, rustic, conservative, insensitive, unsophisticated, taciturn, promiscuous, rude, reserved, heavy drinkers, unfriendly to strangers

Stereotypes of Norway: nature, oil wealth, free and very good  education and health system, high taxes, high salary wages, green energy,  outdoor sports,   racism,  expensive cost of living, modern country, low unemployment, social equality, family-friendly, low crime rate, expensive houses, humane and luxury prisons, salmon

Stereotypes of the Finns


They are:  genuine, informal, calm, quiet, silent, straightforward, humble, honest, shy, punctual, patriotic, hard-worker, innovative,

Their dark side: introvert, reserved, heavy drinkers, emotionless, rude, stubborn, bad fashion sense, unfriendly to strangers, depressed

Stereotypes of Finland: marriage with foreigners,  great and free education and health care, great public transport, sauna, metal bands, design, safe, dark and cold weather, maternity friendly, high taxes, young country (100 years old),  organized,  nature, fresh air, high suicide rates, Vodka

Stereotypes of  the Danes

They are: helpful, punctual,  trustworthy, easygoing, open-minded, heavy drinkers, laid-back, patriotic, straight forward, private, liberal, biking lovers, positive, happy, tolerant, pork meat lovers, informal, loyal to friends, hate braggers,

Their dark side: reserved, complaining about everything, heavy drinkers, rude, unfriendly to strangers

Stereotypes of Denmark: high taxes, low unemployment,  equality, high salaries, free and very good health and education system, gender equality, expensive living cost, low crime rate, cold weather, maternity friendly, racism, high divorce rates, immigration, high suicide rates, vikings, Lego

Stereotypes of  the Icelanders

They are: polite, helpful, friends for life, patriotic, flexible, welcoming, hardworking, honest, creative, fashionable 

Their dark side: patriotic, whales and sharks eaters, unpunctual, procrastinators, rude, blunt, coca-cola addicted 

Stereotypes of  Iceland: expensive housing, cold weather, fresh air and water, safe, gender equality, promiscuity, untouched nature, free education and health system, clean and cheap energy, low unemployment, rates high taxes, high living standards, risk of volcanic eruption, 

I am the Highway

"I am the Highway" by Audioslave
Video by Snow Ultran

Brilliant Thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci

• "Learning never exhausts the mind."

• "Wisdom is the daughter of experience."

• "The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."

• "There are three classes of people: those who see; those who see when they are shown and those who do not see."

• "An average human looks without seeing; listens without hearing; touches without feeling; eats without tasting; moves without physical awareness; inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance; and talks without thinking."

• "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

• "The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding."

• "Time stays long enough for those who use it."

• "Truth was the only daughter of Time."

• "He who possesses most must be afraid of loss."

• "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

• "I thought I was learning to live, I was only learning to die."

• "Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake?"

• "iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation. Even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind."

• "Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic; her own laws; she has no effect without cause, nor invention without necessity."

• "Nature never breaks her own laws."

• "All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions."

• "Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power."

• "Common sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses."

• "Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it."

• "Nothing can be loved or hated unless it's first understood."

• "The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain."

• "As you cannot do what you want, want what you can do."

• "The time will come when men, such as I, will look upon the murder of animals as they, now, look on the murder of men."

• "Life without love, is no life at all."

• "To become an artist you have to be curious."

• "Learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else."
• "All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge."

• "Truly, man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places."

• "Blinding ignorance does mislead us. Oh! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"

- Leonardo da Vinci

Italian painter, sculptor, architect, inventor and intelectual  

Brilliant Thoughts of Edgar Allan Poe

• "All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream."

• "Science has not yet taught us if madness is or not the sublimity of the intelligence."

• "It is a happiness to wonder, it is a happiness to dream."

• "The customs of the world are so many conventional follies."

• "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."

• "Melancholy is..the most legitimate of all poetical tones."

• "Years of love have been forgotten, in the hatred of a minute."

• "I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched."

• "You call it hope. It is but agony of desire."

• "The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?"

• "I have great faith in fools - self-confidence, my friends will call it."

• "Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man."

• "I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind."

• "I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty."

• "All religions, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry."

• "I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but he quenched it in misery."

• "But as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which have been."

• "Convinced myself, I seek not to convince."

• "Invisible things are the only realities."

• "Stupidity is a talent for misconception."

• "And so being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy."

• "In the heaven's above, the angels, whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of "Mother". "

• "I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of  sorrow."

• "Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest."

• "From childhood's hour I have not been, as others were. I have not seen , as others saw. I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone."

• "I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is  now only more active - not more happy, nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago."

• "I saw no heaven, but in her eyes."

• "That the play is the tragedy, "Man", and its hero, the Conqueror Worm." 

• "I smiled, for what had I to fear?"

• "Ha! ha! ha!...ha! ha! ha!...ho! ho! ho!

- Edgar Allan Poe,

American writer, poet and editor

Saved by Love

All my life, I have been distracting, unknowingly, my mind... with these so well-structured goals, invented by our society, like studying, working, etc, and entertained, in my free times, with nights out, TV, etc.

Goals that were designed to keep us busy, to not let us think, to not let us be alone with our thoughts.. 

Because when the mind has time to think, can realize some things that may not satisfy us and consequently lead us to, what they like to call, depression.. 

... yes, because if you think too much, you are depressed

-- if you think about the meaning of life, you are depressed

.. if you don't feel happy with your life, you are depressed

.. if you don't fit, you are depressed

.. if you don't want to follow the society's goals, you are depressed

"They" don't want us to spend so many time inside our heads. 
But, why? Are our heads evil? Dangerous? 
So evil and dangerous that we should avoid them?
Are not our minds ourselves?

Why our dissatisfaction and unhappiness has to be ignored and classified as a chemical imbalance in the brain - depression?
Why our feelings are not valid?
Why "depressed" people need to take pills to increase the levels of serotonin,  in the brain, the chemical that regulates happiness, mood and anxiety?
Why "depressed" people need to have therapy to be brainwashed to believe that they are sick and wrong? to make them accept and be submissive to society's structure?

I am not sick just because, very early, I realised that there's really nothing material this society can offer that I would really want.

I never valued the gadgets, luxury, status, fame.. but I know that only money can physically release me from being a slave in this capitalist system..

I wished that freedom.. But I never sought money...

The only thing I really always pursued was love.. and it was the only thing that gave me hope and kept me alive from inside.. the believe in the existence of true love...

In a world, where love is so often betrayed by lust 

In a world where love depends on exterior beauty

In a world where love can be bought

In a world where love is a possession

In a world where love doesn't survive the death of passion

In a world where  love has so many different meanings

In the end, I, also, had my distraction, my motivation - my search for love 

But, the love that sees thought the shapes of the flesh and fabrics

Love that is naive like a baby

Love that worries and will never hurt on purpose

Love that wants to stay forever 

Love made me dream and then hurt me... deceived me.. lied to me..

...but saved my life

From then on, I knew that love was real... and one day.. Love found me..

Horror movies

Horror movies is one of those things I will never understand..

I will never understand how people enjoy to watch others' agony, suffering, death...

I will never understand what drives people to watch terrified people being chased, tortured, killed... It's sadistic..

Even everybody knowing that is just a film and they are acting.. what is the interest in watching fear, screams, murder, blood?..

I see no interested in scaring myself in purpose, waiting in suspense for the killing of someone.. 

The story of these films is always the same:  an evil character that kills the others characters of the film, but in different creative ways.. 

...even, already, knowing how the film ends, people are willing to spend 1 or 2 hours in front of a screen to watch it.. 

What kind of entertainment is this, that people look for?  A really morbid one, for sure..

Happiness Definition

Our reality depends in how we feel, what we think, what we believe...

The reality we live is not real

It is created by each one of us

It is different for everybody

The same thing that happens, at the same moment, to several people, is lived, understood and internalized differently by each one..

Every person is a world..

Our happiness depends on our personal perception of the reality and our expectations

My Imperfect Utopia

Since very young, I realized that the societies of the world don't work properly  and are not fair. 

Democracy promises equality of rights and opportunities. But, is not democracy that rules, but capitalism. So, it was very clear that it was money that creates inequality, by splitting societies in poor and rich. So, money should disappear and not be replaced by any other thing.

My perfect society, was a place where everybody would produce and provide services for everybody for free. Not an exchange of goods, like it used to happen before money was invented. Here, there's no direct exchange. Products and services have no assigned value. Nothing is more valuable than other.  There's no prices. 

Everybody produces for everybody. There's no more expensive production costs cause everything is free. For example: A person that opens a restaurant will not spend more than a person that bakes bread, cause the one running the restaurant does not have expenses. All the food provided is free, the furniture and equipments are free, the rental is free, the employees have no salaries, etc. Money doesn't exist. Therefore, there are no expenses or costs. people just works in what they like to provide to each other.

Health is the most valuable asset of every living being. And in this society, it is free. People would be healthier and because resources were free and unlimited, Medicine would quickly develop.

Career - Studying would be totally free, so people would follow their vocation and do what they love to do for living.

This model of society would end 

• poverty, 
• hunger, 
• inequalities, 
• unemployment, 
• banks, 
• debt, 
• crimes of robbery, 
• corruption,
• human trafficking, 
• prostitution, 
• drug trafficking, 
• arms trafficking, 
• and many other society's problems.

(there's no business cause there's no profit)

It would promote, in people: peace, unity, stability and spiritual growth. And in society high life quality and high life expectancy.

But there are a few issues for which I didn't find solution then and I still cannot find solution now:

1- Everybody would prefer to work in more comfortable jobs.

Of course, that people would have to study (for free) or to have abilities to perform certain jobs. But, even though there would be people that would want more clean and relaxed jobs. So, who would do the more physical jobs?

2- There would certainly be people that don't want to work. Just enjoy everything.

3- How to get resources and products from others countries, that have the same free-money society, but not between different countries?

3- How to manage crimes of murder, rape, pedophilia, etc?

4- In societies where everything is free, everything can be  acquired. Probably, the Nature will be more destroyed.

And as I keep thinking more issues come up, like morals and administration.

I haven't found yet solutions cause, in the perfect society, shouldn't be any kind of hierarchy. Because hierarchy implies that one person is above other.. the problem of power.. 
..we wouldn't have the inequality by richness, but by power... 

When I talked about these ideas, in a chat, more than 10 years ago, someone send me The Zeigest Movement, by email. 

It was a very interesting concept: Involving the whole word managing technologically and ecologically their societies and resources, as one country, by artificial intelligence. 
The problem of hierarchy is solved. 

I found this idea magnificent! The whole world would become one country! It would, definitely, end wars. 
In this society, nobody would have to work. It would be done by machines and robots. Today, it is better known by the Venus Project. 

Hopefully, in a future, in a more humane world, this can be implemented.

In a world where nobody feel the need to have more than others or to dominate others..