In today’s fragile uncertain world… What’s real? What’s important?
The first thought is you are real, you are important. You are the most critical thing in the world.
One of the big issues in today’s world is that nobody is allowed to posit themselves as an end into themselves. What that means is this:
typically what people believe is that you must sacrifice yourself, all of your resources whatever for the sake of humanity and other people. One is not allowed to invest all your time resources energy and money into advancing and elevating yourself.
For example, venture capitalists. The goal and purpose and telos is to invest money, seed capital or whatever into these foreign, non-human companies. 
However, companies are not real. Even the notion of company companion is somebody you share bread with.
Why not invest in individuals — real life human beings?
Or better yet, why not invest in yourself?
You is the goal
My personal take is that the problem here is religion, ethics, modern-day religious thinking. Most of the planet is governed by a form of Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam etc.… Even a lot of these “atheist“ people are essentially still in line with the Benjamin Franklin, protestant work ethic mode of living and thinking.
For example, if you look a lot of Caucasian Americans, whose family have been here for several generations, even though they’re not religious, they don’t go to church, they don’t believe in “God”, they still have protestant work ethics; they work hard, they save money, they spend a little bit money on themselves here and there, but for the most part they invest towards their kids their families their communities etc.
Even Fernandinho Galliani on his treatsie on money, DELLA MONEYA; he talks a lot about God, the creator, the deity whatever. So even we should take the opinion of Galliani with a grain of salt, because anybody who tries to justify their position by invoking God or whatever– it is typically a sign that their opinion is a bit feeble.
But it’s written in the Bible!
And yes, the Bible is just a mishmash of different early Christian father writers, and if you think about critical theology, or philology… You must understand and realize that this was all written by fallible men. 
How to advance
Honestly, I think the number one critical skill in today’s world or in general is critical thinking. Critical comes from Greek KRITIKOS, which essentially means judge, to judge, to weigh. 
So for example, we often get words a little bit confused. We misconstrue different words like “critic”, “criticism” with hate etc.
For example, we talk about criticism, typically we think of criticism like people just saying bad things about us or concepts etc. But, I think you could be a critic, a loving critic. The art of critique is to simply look at something, more objectively, without any hate or vitriol, and to just judge something for what you think it is. 
For example, somebody who is buried in the annals of history; Tacitus on the Jews. Tacitus, one of the early Roman historians, I think reading him is interesting because honestly, he just states his opinion, gives credit where it is due, gives pros and cons, but also speaks his mind. 
For example, when he is talking about the people of Judea, and is trying to outline them their cultures etc., he says both the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. He praises Jewish people for their industry their courage their power, but also Obviously is diametrically opposed to their customs, their beliefs, which were weird foreign and anti-Roman.
In fact, I think if we critically think about Judaism, Jewish people, the descendants of Judea, it seems that the only historical thing we could really understand is that these people were the descendants of Moses. So the best way to think about Judaism as a religion, or even thinking about Christianity is to think that it was essentially a religion invented by Moses, to solidify his people, to strengthen them, And for them to persist.
Think Moses.
And also, Islam. Yeah yeah yeah we are all politically correct and whatever, but I think the critical thing is to understand Mohammed as a real life human being, the visions that he got from God were probably just some sort of hallucinations he had while in a cave, and think that the religion of Muhammad, Islam, is essentially a religion invented from a single man, Mohammed.
Religion and politics?
I remember the kid, I was bit confused; growing up Roman Catholic, Korean American, in the Liberal Bay area… I was a bit confused that if there was one God, how is it that there were other gods in the world?
Also things which were very confusing to me; Jesus was Jewish?
Also something that I’ve been discovering and rediscovering more recently, learning that in fact, the Bible starts off with the Jewish Hebrew tour Bible, I think the first three chapters of the typical Christian Bible is just Genesis and the ones in the original Jewish Bible?
Critical thinking
 so the reason why we have so many thinkers who are Jewish Jewish American Israeli etc. is that the Jewish culture is slated towards critical introspection, thinking. For example if you’re curious, whenever you see a famous author writer influencer or whatever, just open up ChatGPT, the premium one, and ask whether they are Jewish or not, or the history of their last name.
In fact in one of these anti-Semitic texts which was sponsored by Henry Ford, and Henry Ford was overly anti-Semitic, there is this article titled “the subtle art of changing last Jewish names”, and in fact, studying the genealogy of last names is super interesting because in fact, a lot of these “Jewish” sounding last names are changed in order for Jewish people to assimilate into America, American culture, different countries etc.
For example, John Stewart I believe is Jewish American, and change his last name to sound more “American”. The same thing goes with Dr. Kirk Douglas, whose family immigrated from I think Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe Jewish people, and also changed his name to sound more “American”.
Also a weird fellow, Bob Dylan, I think his original name is Andrew Zimmerman, he is Jewish American. 
Even things that I didn’t know and understand is that Jerry Seinfeld, the whole Seinfeld show, which I watched a lot as a kid of reruns and stuff like that is essentially a story about Jewish American culture in America?
Unchaining yourself from religious, ethical, or moralistic thinking
Who are the best thinkers? The ancient Greeks, the ones who came before Socrates. But still… we should take the opinion of the ancient Greeks with a grain of salt because even them, were greatly influenced by the “gymnosophists“ – gymnos in ancient Greek means naked, essentially imagine these weird hippie naked Indian people from India, who would share their sophistry or their philosophy and thinking with others.
I think a lot of early Greek thinkers like Heraclitus, Democritus etc. their thinking was hugely inspired by the gymnosophists, from India… that is why a lot of these pre-Socratic thinkers have philosophies which sound very Buddhist in nature.
- You never step into the same river twice – Heraclitus
- Even a hair cast its own shadow – Publius Syrus
- The path up and down is the same – Heraclitus