His plan is to continue writing from his sailboat as soon as possible. Still a project in development, he intends to live on his sailboat year-round. In addition to writing, he plans to film his Philosophy Tour Videos in the Mediterranean Sea and Indonesia as part of its marketing strategy.

He is a heterosexual, childless man who almost got marry three times. Once with Mónica, a beautiful friend of his younger sister; Sandra, another beautiful jewish woman; and Mariela, a model in Buenos Aires. But this love stories will be writen in Charles Biography he plans to write in the future, not here.

Although he once was a serious Christian, today he is a secular and an objective thinker, though he recognizes the power of the concept of God and respect traditions and religious beliefs.

He grew up in Chile and learn English from a young age always studying in British schools. He decided to write his books in English. He also speaks some French and Portuguese.

He believes that small governments, the gold standard, and strong family-based education are fundamental for a more rational world. He loves classical art, whose beauty, he has discovered, derives from the given order of nature rather than social vanity.

During the pandemic, he began studying programming and, with the help of his teacher, programmed his philosophical game. This came after working for eight years on his essay and novel. The essay, contains the answers to the philosophical questions of the game, 94 numbered questions; the novel, contains the characters who created the game and the essay.

Going back to his early days, a couple of years after his birth, his family moved back from England to Santiago, Chile. At his grandfather’s Gymnastics Institute, VIDA SANA, he discovered a culture of sports and the well-being of the body and mind. His grandfather, Benedict Kocian, was an educator and the founder. He introduced volleyball and basketball to Chile. A thirty-three-degree Mason, he inspired him to do something big for humanity. He was an important, recognized, and award-winning citizen of Chile and the Czech Republic. Charles traveled from Buenos Aires to Tisnov in 2015 to receive the key to his grandfather’s hometown on behalf of the family, a recognition from the Czech government for his great work. He conserves the key as a family treasure.

Later in Chile, Charles grew up in a British school called Craighouse, perhaps the best Bristish school in the country.

He was a good student, and his classmates, to his surprise, awarded him the title of best friend. He only has gratitude for them, to Alfonso, Daslav, Pablo, Max, Perini, Pedro, Rodrigo, Felipe, Francisco, Cristián, El Chulo, Carlitos, Eric, the Ricardos, Hugo, El Chino, Jose, Pataliu, the Patos, Maurice, the Oscars, the Daniels, Enrique, Lalo-Lalein and the two Marios, who sadly one of them died in 2024. Mario López Ibañez was the doctor of Charles’ mother, and they both were truly interested in knowledge and philosophy. During the pandemic, Charles visited Mario’s house once a month, and they had great philosophical conversations in which both learned a lot. Charles recorded many of these conversations. He remembers when, still in school, he, El Chulo, and Mario would stay for hours discussing Plato and Aristotle with their philosophy teacher, Gaume Vidal, after class. It was the last class of the week, and all the other classmates would run home, but they stayed at school, sometimes until night. They know who they are and Charles have only words of gratitude to all.

Some of them baptized him, nobody knows exactly who and why, as Copernicus. Perhaps for its new ideas and attitude after comming back from a USA scholarship. Indeed, he stayed six months in a very wealthy baptist family in Camdem Arkansas, and become one of its family members. Following its beautiful scholarship sister, Anita, he took seriously the possibility of continuing living after death. If it was true it was worth, at least, to investigate it.

All his Camden family communicated directly with God through prayer and did so before every meal. Charles felt uncomfortable because he was interested in many things, but not God. His only experience with God was his First Communion, which he celebrated with all his classmates at age nine. A Catholic priest had prepared them with a series of classes on the Bible. Charles was disgusted to learn that humanity was condemned over an apple. God didn’t seem reasonable at all —He appeared irrational and violent. That frightened him. It was unfair to be cast out of Paradise without committing the crime.

In Camden at fifteen, Charles considered God merely a social moral attitude, but he never prayed in his life. His great mistake was to ask: what if the afterlife is not just a saying but a real fact? Would he lose the opportunity to continue living after death if it were possible? “What if” is a very dangerous question.

Regardless, he decided to undertake a serious, methodical, and rational investigation of God. The best way to start was by reading the entire Bible. Anita advised him to begin with the New Testament. He liked the Gospels, but there were some issues with Jesus that didn’t make sense. Would the story have spread as it did without the miracles? Would it have spread without Constantine’s conversion to Christianity to rule a decadent Roman Empire? But the greatest absurdity of the New Testament was the Apocalypse: God appeared as a violent ruler who demanded the rejection of thought, logic, and the scientific method. In fact, Jesus demanded faith as a condition for being loved and not being sent to hell.

He read the Bible with serious, intellectual innocence, trying to find meaning. They invited him to be baptized an converted, and he accepted. When he returned to Chile, his classmates, real family, and friends were shocked. They almost didn’t recognize him. His change was like a Kantian Copernican revolution — not only for himself, but for everyone around him.

He read the Old Testament believing that, because it came first, it should be the cause of the second — the New Testament. He thought that by understanding the cause in the Old Testament, he would be able to understand the apparent nonsense of the New. He believed it should follow a relation of cause and effect, as in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and history.

He read the Old Testament in both Spanish and English — and it was even worse. Nothing made sense. The only way out seemed to be to stop thinking, to abandon logic, and to let himself be guided by faith and emotion. But that didn’t convince him at all. He knew he was in trouble — trapped in a labyrinth.

It can be said that this was the beginning of his philosophical journey. The journey was tough and bitter. But after a long struggle, he finally found his way out of the labyrinth. Now the fruit is huge and sweet.

There are too many details to recount here; the rest will be told in the memoirs Charles will write in the future.

An outstanding athlete, he was selected for the school rugby team, competing in championships with other British school teams, including in Buenos Aires. He also played football, tennis and joined the swimming, volleyball, roller hockey and athletics teams at the Italian Stadium, located next to his father’s house. In his youth, he also went snow skiing every winter, and in the summers, he did water skiing and windsurfing.

His father’s name was Hebert Torrico. Son of Eloy, who owned a school in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Hebert was a heart surgeon specialist and educator, who studied medicine at the University of Chile, and make two postgraduates degrees, one year in Detroit and two years in London, where Charles was born. He also had a weekly medical podcast for the overseas in the BBC. He remembers him with gratitude as a great father, shameless, with a very funny sarcastic humour. He was a generous, intelligent and courageous man. Hebert married his mother, Ana María Kocian, an interior designer and educator who also studied at the same university —a sweet, rational very healthy woman. His sister Ximena married another architect, Coke, and they had Matías and Pascal.

As a young boy, he discovered sailing with a friend’s family who owned a sailboat. Later in life, he practiced parachuting, training with the Chilean Army Commandos and completing 117 free jumps with his own parachute. He also practiced judo, box, aikido, karate, and krav maga. Now, he only does calisthenics. But not everything was sports, as he also studied music and piano, and learned to play the guitar on his own. He spend a lot of money building its own home musical professional studio, with an electric piano and other instruments, and all the necessary hardware and software to create and mix music. He loved to compose music, with its guitar or the electric piano, which was a synthesizer with more than a thousand instruments that sounded just like the originals. He took particular musical classes for four years and produced a CD of instrumental music.

After school he studied three careers at Universidad de Chile, one of the oldest and most prestigious of all, founded by Andrés Bello in 1842, who was one of the teachers of Simón Bolívar.

First, he studied dentistry with the intention of transferring to medicine, taking classes in common with medical students at the School of Medicine called JJ Aguirre. Second, he studied two years of engineering (forest engineering in the Antumapu Campus). Third, he spent six years studying architecture and urbanism, eventually becoming an architect. During the latter, he became friends with Pablo, Pepe, and Fernando. They know who they are, but don’t worry—we’re not going to overdo it by giving more names. His thesis project to become an architect, was about a spiritual retreat center for Hermetic philosophy, and he passed with distinction.

Apart from founding his own architecture and construction company, he first worked at some of the best architecture firms, such as Alemparte Barreda & Associate Architects, Carlos Alberto Cruz & Associate Architects, and Alberto Montealegre Beach & Associate Architects. He also was the Director of the Extension and Improvement Center of the College of Architects of Chile. Later, he did a Chilean-Spain MBA in real estate development and a post-graduate degree in international commerce. Although he has created many different kinds of entrepreneurial ventures, as an architect, he has worked in the construction and real estate industries in Santiago, Montevideo, and Miami. In the process, inspired by Robert Kiyosaki’s books, his board game, and his friend Juan, he achieved financial freedom.

But most importantly, alongside his professional life, he studied psychology and philosophy on his own. He read many books and participated in many groups.

Inspired by Simón Bolívar, he founded Nuevandes, his own cultural organization aimed at unifying South America through art. At the time, it was a small group. There was an official inauguration and cocktail attended by around forty people. The organization had a board of directors who held weekly meetings, keeping records in a minutes book. Shortly after, due to internal rivalries, he decided to put the organization on hold.

He also spent three decades at the Hermetic Philosophic Institute. In reality, it is an inappropriate name, as it is more mystical than philosophical. Some detractors even say it is a sect. Charles reserves his opinion on this, but everyone must arrive at their own conclusion.

Always driven by the desire to do something significant to improve humanity, he became an outstanding student and leader, reaching the highest degrees and learning many important practical lessons, especially self-discipline.

For more than two decades, he was in the GAM group, the organization’s highest authority, but outside the organizational chart, the real power behind the power. To integrate it and stay in, was tough, very tough. You needed a personal invitation of Darío Salas Sommer, the founder of the Institute. Charles became his architect. Among many projects, he led the Kosmos Project, a large initiative featuring expansive spaces for educational events on a 200-acre property in Casablanca, near Santiago. The project was designed to serve as the international headquarters for the organization. Within the same inner circle GAM, Salas invited him to join a non-political educational movement to unify South America, based on Simón Bolívar’s vision. Charles remembers his time in the Institute with gratitude and pride. He had a very good time and made very good friends, like Carlos, Jaime, Daniel, Domingo, Nicomédes the diplomatic, Polo, Antonio, Rubén the pilot, Jorge, Constantino, Anatole the russian, Hernán and Alberto the salesman. He almost marry Sandra, one of his girlfriends, a beautiful jewish woman in the Institute of Santiago, and Mariela, a beautiful model in the Institute of Buenos Aires when Charles lived there for four years. In Buenos Aires he also became good friend with Mario and Carlos. On both sides of the Andes Mountains, they know who they are, and he has only words of gratitude for them, despite their mistakes. But we will not mention any more names.

Unfortunately — very unfortunately — because he left behind many dear friends, he later discovered that Hermeticism was wrong. Indeed, the book The Kybalion, with its seven Hermetic principles on which Hermeticism is based, was pseudoscientific — rooted in Plato’s duplication of the material world. Realizing that mystical premises and Plato’s ontology were wrong was a philosophical disaster. But as Nietzsche said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” So, although its old premises were dead, new objective ones were born. It can be said that, in the Phoenix fire, the old God died; the objective ONE arose, verified. Let’s dive a little bit here because it is fundamental imporant.

For the first time in years, he deeply questioned the mystical Hermetic premises. How many cultural premises are Trojan Horses downloaded in our childhood without any critical thinking? Is there a cultural imprint? This is one of the questions of the game. He discovered that God, as consciousness before existence, was impossible. How could any consciousness be aware of something if there was no receptor to perceive it and nothing to perceive? Can any type of consciousness, even divine, exist before existence? If one thinks about it carefully, one will realize that no, it cannot. As one of the characters of the novel say: “You cannot kick a penalty without a ball”. If God existed, it would be in a cultural form rather than a metaphysical one. These reflections led him to the decision to stop believing in the premise of God as consciousness prior to existence. He evaluated the risk and decided to eliminate the divine premise. Although the error percentage was low, it was still difficult for him to say goodbye to that mystical premise and accept the need to live a single life on this Earth, forgetting about after-life in Heaven or reincarnation. He would risk having to defend himself before God if, after death, he found himself standing in front of God to be judged. He would say to Him: “If you really exist and have omnipotent power and love, then forgive my mistake. I acted in good faith, using to the best of my ability the highest faculty you gave to man: reason. If you don’t want to forgive me and send me to Hell, contradicting yourself and acting as the Inquisition did with Galileo, then, fuck off, get lost and erase me from your database.”

Without God, there was no divine spark. What sense did it make to stay in the Hermetic Institute without the divine spark? Did it make sense to nurture and grow the divine spark by understanding the essence of concepts when there was no divine spark? It made even less sense when he discovered that, contrary to what Aristotle believed, the essence of concepts was not metaphysical but epistemological. An epistemological essence has no substance, because it is a method. So, even if the divine spark existed, an epistemological essence of a concept couldn’t feed anything. This is key in Charles’s biography. He realized that the concept of God should be a cognitive error. But recently, he has realized that God exists, not in a mystical form, but as the highest inductive abstraction of the unconscious mathematical thinking of superior animals and humans.. He is writing a book about this, which will be titled MASI IS GOD: The Inductive Formula For The Concept of God.

Recovered from that philosophical catastrophe, he deep-dived into the objective epistemology presented in Ayn Rand’s book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. He was shocked to learn that the essence of concepts was not metaphysical but epistemological. He doesn’t agree with Rand on some details of geopolitics, international relations, and the practical implementation of capitalist theory. He doesn’t belong to any organization, but he has studied her works deeply and holds only words of profound gratitude for her, especially for her unique contribution to epistemology, particularly her assertion that concepts are the algebra of cognition. That is truly profound. He also has great gratitude for Leonard Peikoff, with whom he once had an email exchange in relation to envy. He thinks his books on Objectivism and The DIM Hypothesis are superb. He also has great gratitude for Harry Binswanger, who delved deep into objective concept formation.

As mentioned, although Charles is not an active member of any organization, he knows people like María Marty, Tsal Tsany, Yaron Brook, and others from the Ayn Rand Institute ARI whom he met and shared ideas in Buenos Aires.

Today, we can say that, due to his journey, Charles has achieved a deep understanding of philosophy, grounded in Aristotle’s and Objectivist epistemological premises, but his inquiry has not ended; it is just beginning. He wrote a personal champion constitution for himself and lives by it every day. The philosophical game he created starts just like that: players crafting their own champion constitutions. Indeed, his works are part of his own self-growth process, including the New Renaissance Movement. This movement aims to inspire people to become the best versions of themselves, to live as heroes. There are many kind of heroes that has inspired him, but the ones who have inspired him most are John Galt, in fiction; in real life, his grandfather, Confucius, Aristotle, and Simón Bolívar. There are many others, like Einstein, Newton, Mozart, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. All of them were advocates of freedom through inquiry and education.

So, metaphorically speaking, this educational feat is for eagles, not chickens. Eagles meaning those who are fiercely committed to reason and want to rise high to see the big picture with the vision of an eagle. He respects the decisions of chickens, but the New Renaissance is only for eagles —those who dare to climb their own Mount Everest, the best version of themselves. His game, blog, and books facilitate this journey.

This was a brief, perhaps not so brief, story of Charles Kocian. The important details are there.

For the record, in 2019, he changed his first and last names for marketing reasons. On his London birth certificate, it reads John Charles Philip Torrico. Too long to be remembered. So, he picked Charles and his mother’s last name. Charles Kocian is shorter and a better name for a writer.

His mother Ana María, by the way, wrote a book of her father called Benedict Kocian, A Master of Sports. Zora Kocian, Charles’s niece who lives in Wales, translated it from Spanish to Czech. Zuzana Kocian, other Charles relative who lives in Iceland, wrote a book of the Kocian family. In the decade of 1990, Charles and her mother were part of the founders of the Czech-Chilean Circle, where his mother remained twenty years as President. Its cultural activities are made in close relation with the Czech Embassy in Santiago of Chile.