Recently I started working at a hedge fund . I will omit the precise one to avoid doxing myself and needing to have prefaces like “this reflects my views and not those of my employer…..” I will just say that it is one of the hedge funds listed in Wikipedia’s non-exhaustive list of notable hedge funds as of April 2024 .

Capitalism forces us to behave most unlike our true selves in order to survive. In another life, I might have become a young sanyaasi or otherwise retreated from matters of the corporeal world. But every once in a while, Europeans remind me that Europeans are who they always have been. In particular, they are not human beings just like me. They are human beings shaped by a historical and cultural condition that fetishizes violence insofar as theft became necessary to ward off the misery intrinsic in their spiritually & agricultually dead, and politically dying ice box. They are a defective people who have reached a spiritual and moral dead end.

I hate capitalism. I hate the cult of productivity. I hate the juice that coarses through my veins as a program finally works or I optimize it to be 10-100x faster. If I’m being honest, I don’t particularly like New York City.

But I hate Europeans raping the Bharatiya civilization even more.

And if I need to lower my boot on the throat of the American middle class to reduce the possibility of Europeans raping India again, even a little bit, I will do so without hesitation. If this seems cold, callous, and misanthropic, then one should open a damn book on the history of colonialism. I don’t hate Americans or Europeans, but I am dealing with a people who will put me back in chains without a modicum of remourse, if given the chance again.

On one hand, this is conceding to the ways of a defective people. Many of my ancestors needed to “dirty their hands”/sacrifice their earthly spiritual liberation so that I may breathe freely. Maybe I must do the same. I seriously wonder whether my ancestors would look at me with disgust, or with compassion, as if to say “I understand that you are doing what this particular moment in history requires of you.”

Part of me would like to settle in the suburbs with a cute, modest $100-150k yearly salary (even $80k as a single person in Minnesota is living like a king, in all of the ways that matter) and “coast.” Thinking about the fact that Indians have lost the luxury of earthly renunciation for over 200 years brings me to tears. Arguably we lost the luxury 500+ years ago.

I know hedge funds are not a force for good in the world. They will never be an instrument of anyone’s liberation. I am gambling that I will gain more than capitalism can claw from my soul. I would seriously appreciate if someone could prove me wrong on this one. There is a chance that working at a hedge fund will push the US toward an economic collapse via class war (with a little undertone of race war, because this is America, after all) & will accelerate the collapse of the empire. A man can hope.

I am 99% certain that my flight back to NYC was the closest I ever came to crying while at the airport. If I’m being honest, I would have liked to stay longer with my naniji and/or parents. But sometimes I feel like a foot soldier behind enemy lines who cannot afford to “sleep in.” It just feels as if capitalism, and the imperialism that comes with it, is the real reason I am living alone as opposed to with my family. The word alienation comes to mind. I enjoy living alone. I thrive when living alone and have never become lonely, but I can’t say that I thrive spiritually in the NYC financial world.

Why i am returning to New York City

I am 2% embaressed to admit this, but a big reason I moved back to Minnesota was that I saw a bunch of anime like K-On, Non Non Biyori, Yuru Camp, Nichijou, etc. and thought “I don’t need this big city to be happy as long as I have my friends and family.” That is true. So what is the core difference between me and Renge Miyauchi? I am an adult and my civilization needs me to slay dragons and bring the spoils back to the village. The difference between Renge and me is that I must take steps to ensure that Europeans never rape my civilization again, while Renge is a child. I have lost the luxury of the innocense of childhood. Arguably, I lost it the second I turned 18 years old. Arguably, I never had it. Europeans were genocidal, lying, thieving rapists 200 years ago and they still are to this very day. To turn my back on that reality is to ask to be enslaved again. Someone please prove me wrong on this. It kills me inside to watch the American middle class burn. But learning about what the Europeans did to Bharat kills me even more.

This is a gamble, but I don’t have the luxury of playing things safely. Working at a hedge fund absolutely supports the American empire. I know that people in Iraq, Syria, Congo, Palestine, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, etc. pay a serious price for my actions. I know that working at a hedge fund entails a fairly active role in anthropogenic famines, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. I am sincerely sorry to my comrades. I don’t expect my comrades, brothers, and sisters to forgive me. I am not sure that I can forgive myself. But I guess there are things more important to me than solidarity with the workers of the world. In 50-100 years when/if the security of Bharat is more guaranteed, those priorities might change. But for now, I am paving my way to return to my motherland with the spoils that she needs. There is a large probability that this will backfire, that I reinforce the sword of American imperialism faster than the shields of India. But I must try. The most sacred beliefs of Bharatiya civilization where put on trial in the 19th and 20th centuries. That, without exageration, brings tears to my eyes. I can’t help but think that with a few wrong moves, and if the Europeans had their way, India would still be in chains, deindustrialized as our lives are deemed less important than the mere comfort of white people. And I am responding to that reality in one of the few ways that I can. I don’t want to be a soldier in a centuries-long war against European imperialism, but given that they declared war a long time ago and have no intention of finding strength in peace, I have few choices. A half decent gamble is to learn as much as I can and bring back what I can, so that I can build something serious in India, a place that I actually care about and has a real future.

I think that part of the challenge of being a modern indian is the requirement of excelling with respect to both “eastern/dharmic” and “western” standards. For spritual liberation without sufficient production to keep the Europeans at bay will only yield my enslavement. On the other hand, blind pursuit of production at the expense of dharma means I am a pathetic loser in the most important way, insofar as I would gain money at the expense of my soul. The European tradition of asceiticism, renunciation, and spirituality is completely dead. Their moral philosophy is a dead end (I have written about this elsewhere). So I, like millions of Indians today, need to take the best of all civilizations, while leaving the worst. That is how we create our next humanity. It is a daunting task and maybe Indians, myself included, are not up to the challenge, insofar as either we will become complacent enough to be enslaved again, or we will become so “westernized” as to lose our humanity and spirit, just as Europeans have lost their humanity. But I believe the situation is dire enough that I must push beyond my comfort zone.

I must get out of this hellish country but I cannot return home empty handed. If I am being honest, I can only tolerate a few more years of the USA, and I will go back home so that one of hundreds of thousands of indians who can tolerate this shithole for a few decades can slay some demons here in my place.

The other reason that I am returning to NYC is that living in Minnesota for many months as an adult made me realize that Minnesota, though I was born there, it not home. At best, it is a lonely nation away from home. Coming back to this place made me realize that there is no home away from home; there is no home away from Bharat. So especially as my parents move out of Minnesota, there just isn’t much left there for me and I am seriously not attached to Minnesota. The Dakota people probably feel similarly about (Dakota County) Minnesota as I do about India. Maybe these were shit conclusions and I should have just chilled, coasted, and lived a quiet life. But again, I don’t know that Indians, least of all those who are physically and mentally capable, have the luxury of “coasting” anymore.

A rebuttal

A hedge fund is a cushy gig. Use your greenbacks to wipe away your tears and stop being so dramatic

It is true that they give me money, food, entertainment, the world’s most expensive pager an IPhone, benefits, etc. But I refuse to put my head in the sand, and drown myself in consumption. I know what this place really is and the harm it does to the world. I will never be able to un-see it.

No one is asking this of you and you do not need to think this way

I guess I have also read enough that I will never un-see/forget how the world currently works and how Europeans think. It is only a matter of time before their guns are aimed at Bharat again. I would love to interpret history differently, but at this point I just can’t. I would also love to come back to this in 3 years and have a new outlook that doesn’t involve these centuries old wars, but we didn’t fire the first shot and they refuse to disarm and seriously seek peace. I hate that Europeans set the pace of all of this, but that comes from the fact that India did not fire the first shot.

What about India’s nukes? Don’t those change everything, making any action by you unnecessary and self-aggrandizing?

In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Egypt had a small air force of ~200 planes. The Israelis destroyed all of them before any took off. A sufficient surprise (or EMP or something) could change the dynamic very quickly.

Conclusion

I would seriously be at peace if the 22nd century saw another European dark age. All this requires is the Asians, Africans, and Arabs to be united and strong enough to keep Europeans in their box. Every single European ‘golden age’ required theft, civilization rape, and war. Show me a European golden age and I will show you a river a blood. I guess I am working at a hedge fund until I learn enough Hindi to go home and bulid real things in India so that Europeans can never rape the civilization again and India does its part to push Europe into a dark age. This, of course, doesn’t require stealing anything from them.

I will probably work here until my soul is on the brink of corruption. Then zip out with as much money as I can carry to build something serious in India.