Women are like water; they are ever-changing, chaotic, and always bringing something new to light—this is why we have fashion—and yet for all their novelty they are always the same woman; indeed, fashion, just like menstruation, comes in cycles—only men, vulnerable as a statue, are truly unique. To try and tame a woman is like trying to plough the sea; although many men have tried, they eventually learn that chaos is not to be controlled; rather, it is necessary to sail across the disruption, to use the chaotic energy to make progress. The sea—like woman, like nature—will never be tamed; and it has killed many men.
Nature is cyclical: everything that enhances our power relies on understanding the regularity of chaos, for without this chaos there would be no birth. This is why it is a mistake to impose plans or announce goals. The Soviet five-year plans made the Russians poorer for this reason: the plan was never cyclical, it was against nature. Similarly, Goodhart’s Law in economics states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure; the goal is a deception.
Nietzsche thought that man needed to dominate woman, to go to her with a whip. To live this way is to become a man beating the sea. The sea will always wear down a statue, so if a man offers resistance to a woman he will be broken down. A man should obtain the solidity of water, not its chaotic novelty. We must observe cycles: computer cycles, the cycles of blood, and the cycles of the tide. Man sees through the superficial novelty of nature and embodies the cycle beneath it, the dragon eating its own tail: the eternal circle, ouroboros.
Hence systems are stronger than goals. We become our cyclical activity; just like a spiritual practice undertaken everyday, our wider success depends not on rewards in Heaven; rather, our success depends on adherence to daily cycles. This is the meaning of the saying: “The journey is the destination.” We are in Heaven when we submit to the yoke (literally “yoga”) of the cycle; heaven is right here, it is the circle of constant practice. The victory is secondary; only a woman or a child or a feminine man would care about winning or losing. Win or loss, no matter: the goal is the destination, to have completed the cycle is the victory. This state is the “flow state” in psychology, and it occurs whenever we lose ourselves in activity. What appears superficially boring—meditation or practicing a language—is liberation: the fidgety ego disappears in the activity; we forget fear, we forget death. We exist; we become the process, to watch it is to embody it. Liberation through submission: the free man disciplines himself, constricts himself, and so obliterates the ego—the thing that grasps at unattainable illusions, such as the illusion of a state of future bliss.
These cycles, as in cybernetics, can take the form of positive feedback loops or a negative feedback loops: one is a circle to Heaven, the other a circle to Hell—just as Dante described. A person who is in a negative feedback loop, say, for example, eating too much or drinking or taking drugs, spiralling down, feeling shame, and then starting the process again is in a circle of Hell. The chaos of nature saps his power. A person who goes to the gym, works out, feels good afterwards, and then does it again is in a heavenly cycle. The chaos of nature, tearing muscles so they can grow strong, makes him powerful. This has nothing to do with the shaming mob. To worry about “good” or “bad” is to be obsessed with the superficial, not the underlying process; hence hypocrites and control freaks moralise, but the saint acts. The cycles are cycles of power, working with the violence of nature to enhance or destroy. As Jesus and Buddha observed: Heaven is at hand.