https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933

6-7 million lives exterminated seems significant, to me.

Holodomor was a significant part of that, targetting Ukraine.

The same Ukraine that Putin’s trying to genocide to “de-nazify”.

Evil’s evil, & tends to have the same kind of intent, recurringly.

Time your move right, & consider Canada.

Fair warning, though: I consider it inevitable that Trump is going to be declaring war on Canada, because Canada won’t make itself his personal sycophant/property.

The reason he wants Greenland is so as to cut-off all Atlantic trade with Canada, same as Alaska allows him to cut-off all Pacific trade, & then he can more-easily crush/destroy our lives.

However, he’ll be fighting war on 3 fronts: to the south, civil-war, AND Canada, & so therefore we’ll have a fair chance to outlast him.

_ /\ _

that “superstructure” XOR “base” paradigm is insane.

Do any people always think like that??

Marx made a fundamental error, in all of his thinking: he presumed that communism’s meaning would be everybody-owning-everything, in universal fraternity.

ACTUAL communism expressed its essence in Brutalism: nobody owning anything, & authority-over-others being the “gold” that everybody was grubbing-after & fighting-over.

( there is a fundamental law in human behavior: the treatment a resource, or tool, gets, is the lowest-common-denominator of the ones who own it.

So, if 5 people own a tool or resource, & 1 couldn’t care less if it is butchered/broken, then the other-4’s care for that tool/resource don’t matter, the one who mistreats it because they don’t value it, defines the level-of-care that that tool/resource gets.

When EVERYBODY doesn’t care, because nobody is allowed to own their own things, then Brutalism becomes the result.

In architecture, in tractors, in aircraft, in everything.

For fine-cherishing to happen, the owners of the something have to have fine-cherishing for that something.

That, itself, falsifies communism.

The fact that YOUR own life is something that YOU alone can value sufficiently, YOU are the only someone who’s going to lose it, when death-process shatters your unconscious-mind … that itself means that you have to have necessary & sufficient experience with personal/private property while living, in order to have proper boundaries when dying, so you can concentrate on your dying-process, instead of just being a patsy who’s being distracted for social-process’s sake, e.g… )

Anyways, language can program perception.

Culture can program perception.

Western more-self-centered cultures are less likely to perceive background, in photos or videos, than are more communally-centered cultures ( Asian, was the studies that I’d read about ).

So, linguistic-programming ( I’m not necessarily talking about NLP, don’t even know what scope they claim ) can define one’s awareness, one’s culture, etc…

Therefore, it’d have to be basis, wouldn’t it?

So would ideology/axioms/presumptions/beliefs.

dividing things only into 2 categories, though…

No: it’s oversimplification.

Marx’s mistake is profound, & that mistake was because he ( probably unconsciously ) wouldn’t accept that communism could be anything opposite to his utopian-assumption.

Therefore, his utopian-assumption would have to be basis, & all the rigamarole he prescribed would have to be, in that scheme, “superstructure”, … from that 2-level view, wouldn’t it?

LMAO…

THERE’S A FEEDBACK-LOOP IN CULTURES, so labelling things “basis” & “superstructure” is already systematically ignoring the self-amplification or self-quenching of different aggregates-of-culture, among different individuals!

& then you also have the amplifying-different-harmonics among extraverts vs introverts…

among the different-kinds-of-motivations…

etc.

Interesting, though: I wonder if such fundamental-oversimplifications are characteristic of all such ideologies?

_ /\ _

LLM’s are magical for brainstorming-help.

“What am I not thinking-of, in this article I’m about to publish, that people are going to dismantle my article through?”

& stuff like that.

_ /\ _

Here’s a take you are unlikely to encounter among establishment people:

Normally, people think only in the “other humans” category, when they think of “trust”.

That is like the 2D error that some people make, when fighting in 3D ( submarines, space-ships, etc: it is an actual trope )

Instead of thinking in 2D, think in 3D:

or 4D…

The difference between a disintegrating-corpse & a growing-organism isn’t the neutrons, the protons, or the electrons in it: they’re identical between the 2 bodies.

So, something is distorting the behavior of the electromagnetic-force, to make the chemical evolutions be consistently different, between the 2 bodies … & that difference can be called Spirit.

( xor you can call it the mixture of entanglement & probability-wave, if you like: the label is irrelevant, its reality must be acknowledged, by empiricists: the difference is measurable between the 2 bodies, & that measurable, consistent-difference MUST have a cause )

So, now add-in “down” & “up” dimensions…

Do you trust your pet megalodon ( or whatever kind of pet you have )?

Probably, right?

They aren’t viewing you as prey from the dimensions-of-human-evil, are they?

narcissism / machiavellianism / sociopathy-psychopathy / nihilism / sadism / systemic-dishonesty / displacement-of-objectivity / displacement-of-considered-reasoning

are all dimensions of human-evil. There may well be more, but those ones I’m now certain-of.

The psychology-profession only allows 3 ( The Dark Triad ), for the most part.

So, your pet is trustworthy because they’re your friend, & they’re simple, right?

There is an interesting truth in the book “Willpower” by Beaumeister…

Beaumeister identifies that the evidence demonstrates that people who are being crushed ( by addiction ) have to surrender-to-higher-power to wipe-out their enemy-of-their-life.

But Beaumeister doesn’t accept the evidence is true, because he does not accept that as true.

IOW, it’s ideological, for him.

Scientism rejects that, so those in Scientism reject that.

Scientism isn’t Science, however: as Feynman stated “if the experiment contradicts the theory, that proves the theory is wrong”.

Surrendering-to-higher-power WORKS, proveably.

So, is there anything which prevents greater-than-human spirit ( wisdom, intelligence, magnitude, spirituality ) from existing?

I don’t see anything that could do it…

ONCE one accepts that spirits are, THEN accepting that spirits can be diverse … makes sense, right?

So, why not rely-on universal LivingSpirit, itself?

I’m NOT talking about some religious entity.

I’m NOT talking about some ethnically or politically motivated force-of-nature.

I’m talking about a simple, all-pervading spirit which helps ones who surrender-to, & rely-on, it, its simple way.

Now here’s the thing:

Imagine a competition between narcissistic-machiavellian-sociopaths, vs universal-healing-Livingspirit…

Who would win?

Remember the war adage: “Whomever controls the SKY, commands the WAR.”?

All the problems I had trusting LivingSpirit, through the decades, seem to have been caused by the Abrahamic-religions’ imprinting of me with their assumptions & prejudices ( Mom was Catholic, & she got custody, thankfully )

Once I let go of the cultural-prejudices ( like G-D somehow being an insecure male bully, who was intolerant of my-validity ), then it became easier, & the more I rely on LivingSpirit, the easier everything gets…

That’s a simple experiment: it takes little effort, but some spirituality, & the patience to entrust a many-months or few-years process to show its true-nature…

What is the difference in intent between human-evil & LivingSpirit?

human-evil wants power-over-others, concentration-of-all-wealth-&-privilege, others-being-only-puppets, exclusive-validity, etc…

LivingSpirit wants the living ( all of 'em ) to experience healing, tranquility, spiritual-grace, vitality, happiness, delight, learning, understanding, etc…

What is the difference in method between human-evil & LivingSpirit?

human-evil works opportunistically to undermine, to sabotage, to butcher, to shatter, to murder, LivingValidity, LivingWorth, LivingPotential, LivingOpportunity, LivingJustice, LivingTruth, etc…

( the variants VitalPotential might make more sense to you: I’m using Living- because it fits best for my mind … but you alter this so it fits your perceptions, see? : )

LivingSpirit simply offers, universally, & ones who learn how LivingSpirit works, & earn working-with LivingSpirit, gain more & more healing & release-from-crushing-suffering.

What about “conspiracy”? If they’re competing-against-each-other, or are opponents, they must conspire against each-other, right?

Well, not quite…

human-evil does conspire, but much of that is simply unconscious-conspiracy/convention! Prejudice is a perfect example of that.

The convention of prejudice does the conspiring, so therefore legalism can “judge” that prejudice didn’t conspire…

LivingSpirit? well, it seems all-pervading, so it feels what all lives truly-need, & simply flows in ways that work toward healing/uprighting all lives…

I experienced the sentience-state Bodhichitta, once, some years ago…

that let me experience something more similar-to LivingSpirit’s sentience, for a second or 2…

LivingSpirit would walk right into a demon’s face, being total-compassion for the deranged-life that was making harm in all possible ways, … out of concern for that-life…

( & the demon would be powerless to harm the Bodhichitta-one because of how total/pure that kind-of-mind is: that demon would HATE being subject to such seeing-through-everything compassion )

It’s really hard to map that kind of sentience onto human-experience, because it’s sooo total, & pure.

Anyways, all of this is simply to say that I’ve given-up trusting ( being close to/with ) anybody, human or animal, because of the prejudice I’ve been, AND been-subjected-to, & that’s fine with me.

I’ve got relationship with LivingSpirit, to the degree that I can muster, & I trust LivingSpirit.

& that is wonderfully healing.

& seeing how creatures of all kinds & sizes, including insects, are just trying to live their lives & make their lives better according to their feelings, same as humans, … one ends-up having compassion for lives more-universally, which itself is healing…

Letting-go of the involvement-torque, the political-motivation, is healing…

Letting-go of humankind, embracing pure-spirit-itself, can be sooo freeing & healing.

Wishing you your healing, & just identifying that yes, continuums/souls do evolve, even when it looks from human timescale like that never happens, they do.

All the Abrahamic-religion stuff about “forever” … doesn’t match the evidence: ALL of G-D’s children ( souls ) “return home”.

Without exception.

Some are more “wayward” than others, but none get discarded, as the Abrahamic-religions proclaimed nearly-all did.

That is what destroyed the Abrahamic-religions for me: I discovered that some deep-trance memories were from my soul’s other kinds of lives, & that my soul didn’t care about individual-deaths… that took years to adapt-to…

& every time my fundamental-assumptions got smashed by evidence, I had to adapt/evolve again…

& now … I just roll-with-it, evolving.

Universe’s rules are universal, not ethnic/political/local/machiavellianist.

It does its thing, & souls … get caught in lives … & eventually get the hang of their-own kind’s growing-up.

Trust higher-evolution, though: trust your own Soul’s higher-truth, & that can be freeing/liberating.

There’s no rule that says “only other-humans” can be whom/what you trust, is there?

Trust the universal origin-of-all-healing, whatever your label/name for it is, & it’ll lift your “wings” into your sky, more, in concordance with your skill & your meaning-it.

Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen,

_ /\ _

There was a post on c/world, iirc, in the last few days, about Trump being heckled in the knesset, in israel…

that page had 3 links to other stories on the site, 1 of which was this:

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/10/renowned-political-scientist-says-gop-officially-a-full-blown-after-senates-appalling-move/

( that should read “officially a full-blown cult”, btw: the title-to-link generator on that site apparently censors some words?? )

That is 1 of the most spectacular acts of treason against responsible-authority ever accomplished, by electorate, in the US of A, ttbomk.

https://www.project2025.observer/en

I don’t know if they’re still updating that: it’s been at 48% for the last 2 or 3 weeks, & I think things are accelerating, in implimentation…

the whole “it is now law that court-injunctions are powerless against Trump & his appointees”,

& “it is now law that Trump can de-register voters so that the actual-election is more the way he wants it to turn out” ( I have read that this was used to force 2024 to be his victory, by Republicans in various states ),

& “he can now simply remove-citizenship ( “de-naturalize” ) everybody who isn’t a Republican, & this is the law, it is his right” all kinda point to fatal-civilization-cancer, in my eyes.

_ /\ _

There’s some company in … can’t remember if it was Hong Kong, or Taiwan… they did that, & it improved the bottom-line.

AND they didn’t have to pay the thing!

Win-win, all 'round…

It was a specific division in a conglomerate, iirc…

They did it as an experiment.

_ /\ _

You’ve identified the key, though, right there: “suddenly gaining” is the problem.

You know how caterpillars form themselves a coocoon, & then inside it they are essentially reduced-to-biological-slag, & … smashing themselves against the sides of their coocoon, unable to escape the process, they are re-formed into something that we call a moth or butterfly?

The process has to make someone’s character match their “powers”.

Which is what we, globally, rejected.

Want a gun?

Who says you need to become competent to respect others’ lives ( any species ) AND you need to become competent to respect just how destructive-of-life guns are?

Just provide money, & in many jurisdictions, you’ve now got a gun!

( & people wonder why there were around 700 mass-shootings in the US of A, a couple years ago, in a single year )

IF the process of gaining superpowers forced evolution-of-character, THEN it shouldn’t be a problem.

IF the process of gaining technological superpowers-over-nature/ecology isn’t forcing character-evolution to equivalent degree,

THEN expect the whole human-evil dimensions … narcissism/machiavellianism/sociopathy-psychopathy/nihilism/sadism/systemic-dishonesty/displacing-considered-reasoning-for-ideology/displacing-objectivity-for-ideology/etc to opportunistically wield technology for their-faction’s supremacism.

IF the good have difficulty being machiavellian, but the evil don’t, THEN the evil win, right?

Natural Selection.

Same with ALL those dimensions.

That is why having the spine to make authority only available for the accountable+responsible is a requirement, of true civilization.

We haven’t done that, & we may not allow it to happen.

Universe has no obligation to allow us to survive this-century, though: The Great Filter is an actual thing, & our “entitlement” is just our unconscious-ego’s fantasy.

Toddler-character with nukes isn’t infinitely-viable.

Universe corners such idiocy into exterminating itself.

That, too, is Natural Selection.

_ /\ _

Because we don’t see what real, actual, guillotines do.

I accidentally saw a guillotine-execution on DuckDuckGo ( they used to be much worse than they are now, for including stuff you don’t want to see )

and … it’s kinda hard to communicate how WRONG that is, to chop a human-life to that degree of … to just-now-dead…

interesting: I can’t communicate how wrong/horrible it was, through words!

Anyways, there’s some German word, looks sorta like schedenfruede or something like that…

it means “finding enjoyment in other people’s suffering”, and old-people don’t find it funny, generally, because old-people have experienced enough diversity-of-suffering to be able to understand other-people’s perspectives…

The more one sees what people mean, the more one has to choose a self-defense-for-one’s-psyche strategy:

either sensitivity, in which case one has to avoid the coarser & worse stuff in life, systematically … XOR

de-sensitization, in which case one can joke about it, push it, even do it, because one is making one’s essence become mechanical/dead to what one’s engaging.

There’s a story of Hinduism, during the British rule of India…

Some privileged people got together to do some hunting…

1 of those was Indian, he’d used guns, before, he just hadn’t destroyed someone’s life, before…

After he shot a naturally-magnificent animal, & saw it dying as a result of his bullet, he put down his rifle, & left, never returning to that kind of culture, again…

IF sensitivity is one’s path, like making oneself into a combination microscope+telescope, spiritually, THEN … this kind of reaction becomes inevitable.

You just can’t accept what a real guillotine-execution is.

Joking-about such stuff is fine until you actually understand what it means … & then … you can’t joke about it, anymore.

Like Ukranians are unlikely to be able to joke about what Russia did to Mariupol, you know?

It’s too live-wire fresh a wound…

Having seen what a 1-to-2-second long video of a guillotine-execution looked like, I’d now say that only the evil could do them, repeatedly.

_ /\ _

I’m a brain-injury survivor, so this question is something I’ve had to face.

Now, after my 3rd-wave of braindamage ( this one self-inflicted, as I tried to break will-to-live from my brain, with a cudgel, so that murdering my life could happen. Failed. it’s fine: it was just part of my hellish growing-up process, these past 6-ish decades ) I’ve BAD memory problems.

Here’s the key:

When you come-to in a dream, without your normal-life’s memories, are you still you??

Elegant, isn’t it?

Completely bypasses most of the dead-ends of the question…

“yes I’m still me, even without my memories, because…”

because why?

I’ve learned that it isn’t one’s memories that make one oneself:

… rather, it is one’s instincts which do.

IF anybody puts drugs into my body-life to alter my personality, and they alter my instincts, THEN they have obliterated the someone that had been inhabiting this-life, & induced a drugged-replacement for the someone who inhabited it, before.

IF any experience alters the instincts of the personality who inhabits this-life, THEN that experience has replaced the less-experienced someone with a ( somewhat? ) different more-experienced someone.

Even without memories, so long as my instincts are clean ( unadulterated ), & MINE, then “I” am existing.

So, even in dreams, when I appear/come-to suddenly in some random context, with no memory of any other life, my instincts make me me, see?

The simple fact that I still work to face-into karma, that I still work to challenge abuse, that I still work to make things right, that I’m still careful with meanings & words, relentlessly,

THAT is what makes “me” me.

It took decades of brain-injury to notice the fact that normal dreams oft have me not remember anything from my normal life…

But once noticed, then anybody who has such dreams can understand the principle/truth of it.

_ /\ _

Before people ripped my ear-hairs out, because whites apparently find it intolerable for another to have them ( my skin’s white, I’m 1/4 east-Indian )

it used to be possible to feel the slightest breeze, someone opening a door or window to a house/apartment I was in, or any similar thing.

Massive & unusual sense that people ripped out from my life.

I’ve only short ones, now, & it’s a bit like being deaf, to breezes, in comparison.

_ /\ _

I believe the “Anonymous” mask is traditional?

_ /\ _

Understand the underlying currents, & when you can concentrate on them, then the details are much less stressing…

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_logan_tribal_leadership

That is the too-short intro to Logan, King, & Fischer-Wright’s important book “Tribal Leadership”.

They realized that people are always in 1 of 5 cultural-processes/modes.

FIVE. Positive-Sum game: win-win alliance
FOUR. mixed
THREE. Zero-Sum game: competitive narcissism, like doctors.
TWO. mixed
ONE. Negative-Sum game: competitive-nihilism, like mass-shooters.

( I’m mixing-in stuff from “John Braddock”'s trilogy, his “A Spy’s Guide to Strategy”, so you get the leverage of both, without having to read all Braddock’s stuff: Braddock’s the one who realized it’s all on 3 categories of “game”, Logan, King, & Fischer-Wright didn’t realize that, but they did identify the 5 cultures, what their programmed-reactions are, & how to get someone up from 1 to the next, using what leverage )

You have to understand the nature of the culture you’re working-in and the nature of the individual you’re working with.

Staying near someone works if that’s helpful for them, it can worsen things, for people who need to be left alone. Simply ask them!

Avoiding-conflict is a characteristic of Kegan3 unconscious-mind development: wanting to be liked… Kegan & Lahey’s book “Immunity to Change” is on the unconscious-mind development stages, & our unconscious-mind’s mechanism of sabotaging our growing-up process, in order to protect the status-quo dysfunction.

I’m requesting that you read 4 books, & hopefully they will sooo profoundly open your eyes to underlying-context-currents, that you’ll have massive improvement in your understanding of what’s really causing problems…

“Tribal Leadership”, already identified, you need that one in you, please earn its meanings…

“Immunity to Change” by Kegan & Lahey

“Lead Right for Your Company’s Type” by Schneider: most companies are doing the wrong mode of work, for their actual-domain, or actual-customer, & it sabotages the workplace, the culture, the customer-relationship, etc…

Grab a blank sheet of paper, & divide it into a 2x2 matrix:

top-half is Potential, bottom-half is Actuality.

Left-side is People, right-side is Tasks.

Kindergarten, infirmary, learning, growing, all go in the top-left quadrant.

Science, discovery, research, driven-excellence-engineering, all go in the top-right.

Bottom-left is consulting, urban-planning, journalism, courts, etc…

Bottom-right is 6-Sigma, manufacturing, etc…

Every 1 of those quadrants has specific requirements and practices that must be got right, xor the operation is sabotaging itself & damn-near nobody knows about this stuff.

Schneider gave an example for each quadrant, & showed how doing-it-right differs from doing-it-wrong. He identified which management-practices are appropriate in each quadrant.

He did do his book with the 2x2 Matrix upside-down, however, with pie-in-the-sky potential on the bottom, & the concrete up top…

but once one flips it upright, then it’s much more natural & intuitive.

Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow”

That is THE book to understand what’s actually going-on, worldwide, among our species: There are 2 thinking-systems: the imprint->reaction system, that is the automatic system it is the ideological-system, it is the prejudice-system, it is the trained expertise system, & the considered-reasoning system.

The imprint->reaction system apparently is bottom forebrain ( “Top Brain / Bottom Brain” book matches this stuff, therefore I assume it’s describing the same thing, as “mere coincidence” looks too improbable ), & considered-reasoning is top forebrain.

Right now, the imprint->reaction system’s culture is trying to break/shatter/eradicate considered-reasoning from the world, so that it can have its imprint->reaction rampaging, & settle everything that way ( ideologically, or “religiously”, or animal-reactions, whichever terminology you prefer )

THAT is the real underlying war.

Leninism warred against considered-reasoning through “education”, the Republicans have eradicated considered-reasoning from education as much as they can: it isn’t that left or right hates considered-reasoning, it is that the imprint->reaction mechanism hates it.

So, all the “ideologies” and “prejudices” and “religions” of the world are fighting to beat/break/obliterate the single threat that they all fear: considered-reasoning.

Knowing that, when toxic people in a workplace are bullying to establish their pack-dominion, IF one can see what’s underlying their ideology’s trappings, if one can see what it is that their ideology is fearing, THEN one can be in a stronger position to manage this conflict, right?

Oh, & Kegan’s stages…

Kegan3 is absorbing experience, Kegan4 is pushing-out meaning that contradicts one’s chosen identity, I call Kegan4 “Bulling-BOSS mode”, & it is central to male-culture’s identity, & Kegan5 is systems-of-systems mode.

He doesn’t call them by those names, but there are simply sooo many different psychological-dimensions to keep straight, that I use indexing, now: Kahneman1 for imprint->reaction lower-forebrain system, Kahneman2 for the considered-reasoning upper-forebrain system, etc.

Each of these 4 is profound, & each will give you some leverage, but it is the weaving them together in one’s own life, that makes them into magic, I think…

I wish you well, I wish people didn’t have to experience the kind of stuff you’re caught-in, & in my view, only the profound & permanent fixes are worth investing-in: the ones that liberate one’s entire-life from that kind of helplessness/suffering.

Here’s a bonus psychology book: Elisabeth Haich’s “The Wisdom of the Tarot”, … unfortunate title, from our culture’s perspective, but the MOST profound psychology book on the archetype stages of human sentience that I’ve ever encountered.

The physical book has the illustrations of the archetype-states, the ebook doesn’t.

In my life, the “lightning-struck tower” state is always followed by the "dwelling in the lake of memories, while attractive-memories try to swerve one from one’s path ( represented by the dog ) & threatening-memories do too ( the wolf ).

KNOWING that, the last-time was much easier for me to deal-with quickly & efficiently.

It’s life-liberating, knowing what’s going-on in one’s life-meaning!

Anyways, those 5 are all profound, all important, all pertinent, & all contribute to one’s getting up into the “next level” of development.

Do well, & relentlessly be loyal to your LivingPotential & your LivingOpportunity/future, ok?

_ /\ _

The other answers here are important.

But there’s an angle that people apparently aren’t noticing?

The urge to make the brand cover more & more & more…

Outside of a Keiretsu ( a Japanese business-structure where a brand/name like Panasonic has 30…300 companies in it, where each company is essentially an “organ” within the organism…

Toyota is a vertical keiretsu, Panasonic & Sony are horizontal keiretsu.

Horizontal keiretsu get into everything.

Want solar-cells? Panasonic makes 'em.

Want electronic-components? Panasonic.

ttbomk, they make mining-trucks & industrial-robots.

EVERYthing.

They are a semi-autonomous economy, & that is the actual intent.

Complete supply-chain. )

outside of a keiretsu, nearly every time any company tries to spread the brand onto other products/services, it dilutes or obliterates the brand.

It’s an apparently-irresistable urge, though…

Coca-Cola is focused, but Pepsi owns Frito-Lay, restaurant-chains, pop, etc…

So, ,Coca-Cola can go to restaurants & say “Pepsico is competing against you … do you want to be buying anything from them??” & that’ll work to turn the restaurant to Coca-Cola.

The book “Focus” by Al Ries is on this stuff.

GM had a bunch of brands, such that each brand “Pontiac”, “Buick”, whatever, had its own specific niche in the market…

Then they obliterated that…

A Cadillac-loyal guy showed me a Cadillac brochure he got sent: it told him to by a Chevrolet e-vehicle.

Brand-violation.

Cadillac lost immense credibility in doing that ad-campaign.

Anyways, it’s a fundamental market-fact that you have to have each brand be in-focus, & Reis’ book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding” is on how the market is going to deal-with you.

Remember Borland? ( you probably don’t )

They made software-compilers for Windows, last century…

Microsoft was squeezing them out of existence…

They tried rebranding, as “Inprise” … & lost marketshare faster than they ever had, before…

They changed their name back to Borland… & died more slowly.

The market decides what your brand means.

IF you decide on “brand extention” THEN you have communicated to the market that you don’t matter anymore, because you have no focus

AND…

The urge to do a “brand extension” is sooo fundamental, that it’s apparently irresistable for corporate-executives??

I’d outright fire anybody who tried brand-extension, in any company I was running: READ the books by Al Ries ( & Jack Trout, & Laura Ries ), & UNDERSTAND & LIVE-BY those meanings.

Company-survival isn’t mere-pretend!

Amazon did it successfully, because it had no competitor ( changing from books-only to everything ).

But … nearly nobody survives such idiocy.

Microsoft … there’s a book “A New Brand World”, don’t remember the author … it recounts a PR company who’d been hired by Microsoft … the Microsoft culture was destroying them. That contract was their most-lucrative-contract, by far.

The CEO of that company, one day, sent around to all-hands an email which stated only:

“Ding dong. The wicked witch is dead.”

EVERYbody knew that it meant he’d killed the contract, in order to save their company’s soul.

Toxic-culture isn’t just male-culture in many places, or some family-cultures, it can be corporate-culture, too, right?

Steve Ballmer is part of Microsoft history, of the period you’re identifying…

He was much of the problem, from what I can see… bullying was his … thing, from the things that Microsoft got famous-for, in TheInquirer.net , & TheRegister.com back in those days…

Most of that journalism is wiped from the internet, nowadays…

Charlie Demerjian also did much on them, through the years… ( www.SemiAccurate.com is his current site, iirc )

Ego, especially unconscious ego, is the most-lethal “strategy” one can obey.

Brand-extention is an ego-masturbation.

Every specific domain ought have its-own brand!

Unless one is a keiretsu.

_ /\ _

Good Grief, people:

EMBIGGEN.

Though totally blow out of proportion would be more sane, “embiggen” nails it in a single word.

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