About

Selo (Cyrillic: село; Polish: sioło) is a Slavic word meaning “village” in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine. For example, there are numerous sela (plural of selo) called Novo Selo in Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro and others in Serbia, and Macedonia.

Life in the Selo is certainly no Paradise. Decades of conflict in the Balkans in particular has reduced many of its villages to rubble, and Globalization continues its ceaseless quest to eviscerate the livelihoods of common country folk all over the world, from the furthest reaches of Russia to the fly-over states of the American Midwest.

Many who grew up in the Selo either leave to proselytize for Western fictions of grandeur, or (for the smarter among them) resign to merely enjoy the decline. Personally, I believe that those who leave in search of greener pastures are being mislead and that there are paths pursued that would allow them to thrive without compromising on their traditional values.

As a Canadian man of Eastern European descent, I fell in love with Selo life after returning to visit my ancestral village to pick olives and visit extended family for weddings over the years. One of the striking paradoxes of Selo life is that despite its apparent technological and “cultural” backwardness (according to the standards of illiberal coastal enclaves such as Silicon Valley), people are happier, healthier, more psychologically stable, and live longer and more fulfilling lives than people who live in some of the most Industrialized regions of the Western world.

Despite this, Seljaks (village folk) are obsessed with status, and in recent years, especially as more and more of the Slavic portion of Europe comes head-to-head with the European Fiscal Compact and its pernicious Anti-Slavitic cannibalization of traditional Selo culture, Seljaks are being lead astray.

While there is no point in Romanticizing the Selo, or working hard to rebuild it once the rot sets in, there are many lessons to be learned from the modern plight of traditional village family and socioeconomic life.

On Selonomics

Often in this blog, I will discuss topical news and issue opinions through the lens of a theoretical framework that I have dubbed Selonomics. So what is Selonomics? Selonomics is a tool kit (as opposed to a predictive science)—much like economics—that allows its practitioners to maximize their social status, given the constraints of present income, social demography, and their position on whatever dominance hierarchy they elect to compete within. You see, in the Selo, life is all about perception management, and the unending competition for relative social status this entails.

The pursuit of status, however, is certainly not for everyone, perhaps not even in principle. The truth is that one man’s Selo is another man’s Fief. Given that status is a positional good (your power and status is another man’s servility or deference), you must either run your Village like a Fiefdom, or work for the master of another.

This blog will endeavor to document the unfortunate decline of Selos everywhere, especially at the hands of all-too-rapid, myopic Globalization and technological change, and what can be done to prevent their further deterioration. It will appeal primarily to men who are aware that Western Civilization stands at the precipice of its own demise, that there is nothing we can do to save it, and that while it is not worth saving anymore, there are ways to capitalize on its coming internal implosion.

At its core, Selonomics is the science of maximizing your status without working any more than you wantWhile you can not always do better by doing less (by quitting your 9-5 to become, like me, to become the future Don of a small village in Eastern Europe), especially as others come to know the secrets by which such advantages are made possible, you can always aim to do well given the reality of whatever constraints you presently face, wherever you are.

Selo from Marko Randelovic on Vimeo.

As a man, status often comes to represent the most important of those constraints. In a world that increasingly punishes masculine agency when it is not convenient for women, can status truly be achieved without supplicating totally to the prevailing feminine social imperative of your present (likely Western) locale?

Is learning Game (winning friends and lovers through attraction) and taking full responsibility for your station in life truly enough in a mating economy that grows exponentially more unequal by the year? Perhaps not. In that case, new Selos must be discovered, or rather, forged anew at will. Is the solution, then, to expatriate abroad, to return to your ancestral village? To eschew progress in favor of practicality, by building relationships and alliances outside our current cultural milieu?

Visualization of a Multiplex Selo Network

Selonomics aims to understand basic socioeconomic phenomena at multiple scales, in particular the impact of male status on the ability to lead a fulfilling life. With a keen eye and an adventurous spirit, profitable pockets of opportunity can be found and, as I will endeavor to show going forward, they are clearly worth capturing.

Whether in business, dating or in life, a consistent application of Selonomics to the world around you will allow you to become the leader of your pack, wherever you are, and will allow you to do so without working any more than you want.


Fuck Today’s Commercial Liquor.
Jebi Današnju Komercialnu Piće.

Would you really Ingest a Soy Frap Enema?
Želite li zaista Ubrizgati Čašu Soje?

My Grandfather would always Say
Djed bi uvijek Rekao

Son, Make Brandy with Own Plums and Pressure Cooker
Sine, Napravite Rakiju s Vlastitim Šljvama i Kuhalom na Tlaku

My Life was Never The Same
Moj Život Nikada Nije bio Isti

@MichaelPorfirio