Dalí and Testosterone …

This is the first blog following the blog collection Fight, Flight, or Freeze, first published in the

Netherlands and soon available in English.

The doorbell! It’s the first time it rings since we moved into this house. Heidi, sitting behind the dining table opposite my desk, editing a video on her laptop, is startled out of her work. I’m not startled out of mine. Something warned me that at least two people were sneaking through our garage toward our front door—which is exactly what I’ve been hoping for since yesterday.

January 2024. About two months ago, I first realized how foolish it has been to move to Catalonia. At the start of 2022, we were still living in Austria, in the village of Schruns—life agreeable. Schruns’ surroundings were beautiful, and the valley of Montafon, where Schruns is located, offered us plenty of opportunities to be out and about. Hiking, cycling, skiing, paragliding, rock climbing, via ferratas, and of course, the slide course that led from Haus Matschwitz on Mount Golm down into the valley. No children queuing for those slides as children, at home, build their own slide courses in Minecraft.

The gym was a problem in Austria. The only gym close by required us to submit to so many house rules that properly pumping iron was hardly possible. Heidi threw in the towel. Toeing house rules lines, I pumped iron in that gym until, by the end of 2021, I too was forced to throw in the towel when gyms were closed to help Austrians become more resilient to a respiratory virus that has been traveling the world since early 2020.

Pumping iron with our own dumbbells next to the diesel tank in the basement of our house—most houses in Austria have diesel heating—was no fun because of the diesel smell, and shortly after I joined Heidi pumping iron down there, life in Austria stopped being fun altogether. Since the respiratory virus had not managed to make Heidi, me, or anyone around us sick during the two years it had by then been traveling the world, and since we were expected to take the Austrian government at its word about the benefits of a vaccine against it, Heidi and I let that vaccine pass us by, which landed us under house arrest. When it became mandatory in Austria to be vaccinated against the virus—the renovation of our house just completed—we fled to the United Kingdom, which was at least as foolish as our move to Catalonia a year later.

Early 2022, in a caravan we built a few months earlier, Heidi, Moos the German shepherd, and I arrived in the UK. Shortly after discovering that building caravans requires the kind of expertise we don’t possess, we found a house to rent in the village of Saffron Walden, near Cambridge. Nice house! Nice village! Beautiful surroundings! Yet—and unfortunately—by Christmas, the truth sank in that the UK may have freed itself through Brexit from the terror of the EU, but it has allowed itself to be taken hostage by an ideology called woke, the essence of which no one has yet managed to explain to me. Our lease was a one-year lease, easy enough to buy out, and on January 9, 2023, the ink on our visas still wet—the renovation of our house just completed—the Stena Hollandica ferried us back to mainland Europe, where we camped in a too-small tent, in the rain, hail, snow, and wind, on a campsite near de Dutch city of Groningen, while we built a studio to record videos supporting my book The Caveman Code in a cold warehouse.

During a construction break, we traveled to Catalonia, in the north of Spain, where we found an old stable on the edge of a village being converted into a house. The conversion was due to be completed by early May 2023, and unable to resist the charm of that soon to be house, we signed a lease without taking a closer look at Catalonia. Man, what a cool house! Arched brick ceilings, underfloor heating—quite attractive after our experiences in Groningen—a beautiful bathroom, and a fully equipped kitchen. Our studio in the Netherlands reachable within two days by car.

Our Catalan landlord was a friendly man, who brought us eggs from his own chickens every other day. Was and brought, because two months after we became his tenants, our landlord suddenly died. We don’t get along well with his son, which is unfortunate, for the house is showing some growing pains. The underfloor heating doesn’t work, the drain keeps overflowing, and neither the promised bars on the windows nor the promised electricity meter has been installed. The latter has led to a row with a neighbor with whom we share the current electricity meter, who refuses to believe our heating is out of order, insists Heidi and I are draining much more power than he does, and … the doorbell! It’s the second time it rings since Heidi and I moved into this house. Heidi raises an eyebrow when I ask her with a nod of my head to wriggle out of her sleeping bag and open the door. Not wanting to be completely unprepared in case the people I’ve been hoping would sneak through our garage were truly sneaking through our garage, I unzip my own sleeping bag, in which I sit behind my desk, and I wriggle my legs free.

Heidi opens the door. She takes a step back, and when I look up, I see a huge man standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, Jordi, the son of our late landlord, standing diagonally behind him. I turn my attention back to my work, and when I think of how often Jordi has both literally and figuratively left us out in the cold over the past few months, the wave of guilt that had overtaken me gives way to relief. My plan is working. If I avoid a scuffle now, we will soon be turning our backs on Catalonia.

Catalonia! It is even more woke than the UK, but we missed the warning signs—most likely because the phenomenon, at least to us, is rather new. Besides, Catalonia promised even more opportunities to be out and about than we had in Austria. Hiking and cycling without immediately biting steep slopes or hiking and cycling in the Pyrenees—steep slopes guaranteed—canoeing, scuba diving, surfing, paragliding, and go-karting. No children queuing at the go-kart tracks as children, in hotel rooms and caravans along the Costa Brava, build their own go-kart tracks in Minecraft. What we hadn’t considered is that being out and about in Catalonia is not always fun, for inland Catalonia reeks of overcrowded cow, pig, and chicken pens.

One of the signs that should have warned us Catalonia is woke is the glorification of Catalan-born Salvador Dalí, who allowed himself to be used to promote deculturalization. Then, there are the road signs at the entrance of nearly every village, claiming that the village in question does not tolerate aggression. Some villages claim in white letters on a purple background that sexual aggression won’t be tolerated. Others—same letters, same background, official road signs, not graffiti—claim to reject aggression directed against women only or to abhor aggression in general. Black letters on white banners stretched across fences around schools and parks scream similar anti-aggression slogans, and rainbow flags fly everywhere.

And eh… I get it. In order to atomize people, to clear the way not only for deculturalization but also for dehumanization, depopulation, and digitalization—the four D’s, stepping stones to a new world order—it’s important to deprive mainly men—if I’m reading the Catalan road signs correctly—of their aggression and to tweak the definition of aggression. Someone who blocks my path in a supermarket while incoherently screaming at me, holding a filming phone in front of my face—which, for no reason I can think of, happened twice in the past few days—is not aggressive. Kindly pushing that person aside to continue shopping clearly is an act of aggression that calls for all hell to break loose.

At a high level, we’re being educated in the new definition of aggression. Countries that are part of an organization that guarantees them security are not considered aggressive when they harass and bully a country that’s not a part of that organization, push it into a corner, and disrespect its existential red lines. If the country that has been pushed into a corner shows its teeth, that’s an act of aggression, all hell breaks loose, and … “Tenemos que hablar we have to talk,” I hear the giant in the doorway say for the second time, his voice raised this time. I look up again, past friend Flufhead at Jordi, and say: “Te llamaré para tomar cita I’ll call you to make an appointment y te doy treinta segundos para largarte and I give you thirty seconds to leg it.”

Heidi shakes her head, the giant explodes in verbal anger, Jordi nervously tugs at the giant’s shirt, and I turn my attention back to the screen in front of me. When I look up for the third time, Heidi is closing the door, and she gives me a questioning look.

“We can leave Catalonia,” I remark cheerfully, feeling my adrenal glands already slowing down on adrenaline production.

“What does that have to do with what just happened?”

“Everything! Mario warned me that Jordi has a handful of Moroccan friends who often cause havoc in the village and make him feel untouchable.”

“Mario the handyman?”

“Mario the handyman. He told me the day before yesterday that he installed our underfloor heating. But he’s not a certified installer. That’s why there is no warranty, contrary to what Jordi wants us to believe, and that’s why Mario is here almost every day. He has to somehow fix the heating, because Jordi doesn’t want to pay for a certified installer. Now, the problem is that Mario was able to lay the heating, but he has no clue how the technology works.”

“And Mario just told you that?”

“Hey… no road sign at the entrance of this village warning me not to be aggressive.”

“But what,” asks Heidi, “does that have to do with Jordi showing up with that guy at our doorstep?”

“I sent Jordi an email yesterday saying we’ll stop paying rent until the problems in this house are fixed.”

“And now we’re in trouble with Jordi’s friends.”

“Gen-Z! Zoomers! Quite some larilari, as the Spanish say, little liriliri. What just stood in our doorway is a lump of meat, void of testosterone, who screams Police, police! if someone boxes his ears. Zoomers have learned from their parents and teachers that they can achieve and have anything as long as they really want it.”

“And you agree!”

“Sure. Wanting something badly is at the core of happiness. But what we want must be reasonable, and we still have to make an effort to achieve it or have it, which parents and teachers these days forget to mention. We want to leave Catalonia and are willing to make an effort. Jordi wants money, and he has learned that he’s entitled to it just because he wants it. To anger Zoomers—especially if they’re woke—is easy, and I hoped my email would make Jordi so angry that he’d shoot himself in the foot by sending his friends to collect the rent.”

I get up, put a kettle of water on the stove, and make tea and coffee while calling Mario, the handyman, to ask him to set up a meeting with Jordi, one where he himself is also present. When I hang up, Heidi, who has gone back to editing, looks up from her laptop and says: “Okay. Suppose that meeting goes ahead, suppose Jordi shows up alone, suppose you manage to terminate the lease—because that’s obviously your plan—what then?”

“Then, we’ve thrown away our old shoes.”

“Without having new ones, I assume.”

“Uh-huh. Sitting around waiting for solutions and alternatives to magically manifest is the typical way Zoomers deal with reality, The more it doesn’t work, the angrier they get. The last few days, I’ve badly wanted a solution to our current problems. Stupidly perhaps, I’ve set something in motion, and now, all we have to do now is keep the momentum going. We’ll start packing, and somehow but anyhow, we’ll know where to go once we’re done.”

Heidi shakes her head again, and as I pour tea and coffee, I read the WhatsApp message on my phone in which Mario confirms an appointment for next Saturday.

As I walk to the café across the street two days later, I decide not to make the mistake Vladimir Putin made by repeatedly asking the countries that are part of an organization that guarantees them security to honor agreements that have been made, to stop harassing and bullying Russia, to stop pushing it into a corner, and to respect its existential red lines. I sit down at the table where Mario and Jordi are waiting, gesture to the waiter to bring me a coffee, look at Jordi, and say: “Has cruzado una línea roja you have crossed a red line. We are no longer paying rent and will be out of here by the end of May. If Heidi or I accidentally bump into any of your friends, voy por ti I will come for you. Questions?”

“… Quatro meses sin pagar four months without paying,” Jordi stammers, white as a sheet suddenly, “y me estás amenazando and you are threatening me.”

“Bien good, no questions,” I say, standing up. I take the glass of coffee from the saucer the waiter holds out to me, say: “Jordi lo pagará, Jordi pays,” and as I walk back to what will still be our home until the end of May—occasionally halting for a sip of coffee—the truth sinks in that humanity, with its policy of tolerance toward Zoomers, is crossing an existential red line. With low testosterone levels in their blood—due to poor nutrition, poor exercise, and a lack of sunlight—and deprived of both mental and physical resilience, it’s people born since, say, 1990—fortunately not all of them—who, with their idiotic views on reality, are transforming what remains of our democracies into an ochlocracies, societies in which citizens only consume and no longer care about the long term. Once an ochlocracy is a fact—in Europe we are nearly there—the step to a technocracy is easily taken.

The response of governments to the respiratory virus that has been traveling the world since 2020 is a warning of what life will be like in a modern technocracy. Anyone paying attention has already seen the writing on the wall in, for example, the glorification of people like Dali, who, unknowingly but joyfully, helped introduce technocratic principles into art and thereby helped destroy art—and, by association, culture.

Europeans, I realize as I take a last sip of coffee and put the glass on one of our window sills—so I can take it back to the café when we go for a walk with Moos—could easily save two or three hours of their working week if they were released from their obligation to help pay for pseudo-art that forces itself upon us wherever we are. Art that’s not recognizable as such but is made and judged by schooled experts. Even in the tiny Catalan village where Heidi and I have settled, pieces of steel stick out of the ground in the village square and in parks like heralds of anti-life, pieces of steel, which according to the signs next to them are art, and for which more has been paid than many a real work of art is worth.

Government interference in art is deculturalization, and deculturalization contributes to the atomization of man. The indifference with which we allow that deculturalization to be forced upon us does not bode well for what awaits us regarding dehumanization, depopulation, and digitalization. And watch out! When people like Dalí helped introduce technocratic principles into art, testosterone levels in most people’s blood were still acceptable. Aggression was a trait that no one was ashamed of, and people were still mentally and physically able to fight their way out of a corner. Now?

In September of this year, the countries that are part of an organization that advocates world peace intend to declare a planetary emergency. Anyone paying attention knows that emergencies are the tools with which cabinet members in democracies bypass their parliaments to push through laws that pave the way for technocracy. But who still pays attention? We are too busy wanting and consuming. The long term is something for our children to worry about—and our children are building their future in Minecraft …

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