What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?

We are living in times of distorted values where ordinary, humble people and their work can not be seen, promoted, or passed over to other fellow human beings. Instead, we are spending our lives discussing which tattoo to do and where to put it. 

One would say it’s my right to do whatever I want with my body, so if I want tattoos, it will be tattoos. That attitude is absolutely ok, as long as it does not affect other people.

It is also my right to say that instead of answering which tattoo I would choose and where to put it, I chose to share one story of one hero! Why? The true heroes , good people, and their deeds are in the background because of everyday political topics that are promoted to confuse ordinary, peaceful, and compassionate citizens. Maybe for some, and absolutely necessary for me, we should focus on the more important things in life and look up to those heroes , good, modest people. Those who are not arrogant and uncultured and who today in many ways impose their own way of behaviour and living. That is explained in now legendary essay if Nicholas Taleb ” The Intelectual, Yet Idiot.”

There, Nicholas says

“What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.”

To continue

“But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligentsia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.”

Message

Better rely on your own ancestral instincts and  listen to your parents and  grandparents passing their experiences and values to you then to those self-proclaimed “fashionable” “intelligentsia.”

To contribute to Nicholas Taleb’s thoughts, I will share  here one real-life story as a paradigm of the highest humanity. 

Namely, it is the story of one refuge , Bosnian Serb refuge Dragan Cigan, who sacrificed his life, saving two girls aged 4 and 7 years old in Italy.

Here is the story about this real HERO!

“Dragan Cigan immigrated to Italy and settled in San Martino di Lupari , where he worked as a construction worker, with the hope of soon being able to reunite with his wife and two daughters, who remained in his native country.
On Sunday 22 July 2007, while he was on the Adriatic beach at the mouth of the Piave in the company of his sister and brother-in-law, in the municipality of Jesolo , the sudden creation of a strong current due to worsening weather conditions seriously endangered the lives of two siblings, a 4-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl from Roncade , dragging them out to sea.
Immediately realizing the seriousness of the situation, even though he did not know how to swim, Dragan Cigan jumped into the sea and managed to save the two children. Due to a new wave and exhausted by the efforts he had just made, he was overwhelmed by the waters, disappearing in the waves.
His body was fished out the following day in the Laguna del Mort between Cortellazzo and Eraclea.”

Dragan did not know how to swim, but he managed to save those two girls and, for that, sacrificed his life, leaving behind him wife and two daughters!

Now, the idea of “tattoo” can be taken metaphorically, and instead of putting it at your body, you could start to learn about real human hero’s and engrave them and their deeds into your memory to use as an inspiration and become better, compassionate person, practicing humanity! Humanity, which is to protect others from yourself.

As another inspiration and as a food for thought, let me share one poem of Sir Henry Wotton:

“How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another’s will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the world by care
Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Nor vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend;

—This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.”

Engraving actions of heroes and wise men could be better than permanently putting something into, onto your body. 

March 20, 2025

Darko Richard Lancelot

Philosophyofgoodnews.com

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