Why are people so triggered? What's going on?

 I did a video on attachments and how attachments are a source of our suffering. (Buddhist concept.) I related it to investing and trading. (i.e. we are "attached" to the outcomes.)

People got pissed off. They unsubscribed or criticized me on talking about this.

Is this normal? I've been trading for over 40 years. Been a member and floor trader on 4 exchanges. Managed money for a major hedge fund. Ran a proprietary trading desk for a major international bank.

Economist by education. (Wharton, UCLA.)

Is talking about a non-Western philosophy so triggering to people? I don't fucking get it. I think we are ALL screwed up.

Kimball Corson — China's Developing Thoughts on Statecraft

A short summary of the Chinese history of statecraft and governance from ancient times to Xi Jinping. This is a should-read unless you are up to date on it already. It's short. I think that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are pretty close on this. The US leadership not so much.

 Having studied Chinese martial arts and strategy for some time, I believe that Kimball gets it basically right. Kimball observes that the Chinese integrate various traditions into an ideology and worldview suitable for the contemporary context. Understanding this gives insight into their way of thinking.

Western people tend to adopt a single ideology based on a preferred historical view that they then interpret in contemporary terms. 

This makes Westerners seem simple to the Chinese, and the Chinese "inscrutable" to Westerners. A basic rule of strategy in the martial arts is to understand the opponent so that one knows what he is likely to do, whereas one should be invisible to the opponent, so that he does not know what you are likely to do. Hence, the Chinese have an advantage over Westerners in this regard, since Westerners send signals whereas Chinese don't.

While I am less familiar with Russian strategy, people who are familiar with it say that it is more similar to the Chinese than the Western. Additionally, Vladimir Putin has been a judoka for many years, so he presumably understands this very well.

Wandering the Oceans
China's Developing Thoughts on Statecraft
Kimball Corson

Ashok B Sharma — Modi’s Buddha diplomacy on anvil to woo East Asians

Religion and cultural heritage are emerging as key factors along with liberal globalization. 

Buddha diplomacy, therefore, can be an effective tool and soft power for India’s engagement with South Asia, South-East Asia, East Asia, China and even Russia, which has a history of interest in Indian mysticism. People-to-people contact and cultural exchanges can go a long way to resolve contentious political issues in the near future. Moving a step ahead, Mr Modi at the UN General Assembly proposed a UN Day for Yoga, which received instant support from Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It appealed to many Buddhist countries also.

Vijayvaani.com
Modi’s Buddha diplomacy on anvil to woo East Asians
Ashok B Sharma

Buddhist monk declared world’s happiest man

As he grins serenely and his burgundy robes billow in the fresh Himalayan wind, it is not difficult to see why scientists declared Matthieu Ricard the happiest man they had ever tested.

The monk, molecular geneticist and confidant of the Dalai Lama, is passionately setting out why meditation can alter the brain and improve people’s happiness in the same way that lifting weights puts on muscle.

“It’s a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are,” the Frenchman told AFP.

Ricard, a globe-trotting polymath who left everything behind to become a Tibetan Buddhist in a Himalayan hermitage, says anyone can be happy if they only train their brain.

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up Ricard’s skull with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin four years ago as part of research on hundreds of advanced practitioners of meditation.
The scans showed that when meditating on compassion,

Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves — those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory — “never reported before in the neuroscience literature”, Davidson said.

The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, researchers believe. 

Research into the phenomenon, known as “neuroplasticity”, is in its infancy and Ricard has been at the forefront of ground-breaking experiments along with other leading scientists across the world....

Much more of interest in the full article.

The Raw Story
Buddhist monk declared world’s happiest man
Agence France-Presse

Kind of undercuts the assumption of "pursuit of happiness" in terms of maximum utility based on measurement of units of consumption, and the scarcity thinking on which neoclassical economics is based.