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 as part of its marketing strategy.

He is a heterosexual, childless man—secular and an objective thinker—though he recognizes the power of the concept of God.

He grew up in Chile and speaks perfect Spanish, but writes 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 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 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, one of the best Bristish schools there.

He was a good student, and his classmates, to his surprise, awarded him the title of best friend. 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 tennis and joined the swimming, volleyball, and athletics teams at the Italian Stadium, located next to his father’s house.

His father’s name was Hebert Torrico. Son of Eloy, who owned a school in Cochabamba, Bolivia, he was a heart surgeon specialist and educator who studied medicine at the University of Chile and make two postgraduates degrees in Chicago and London. He remembers him with gratitude as a great, funny, 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 woman.

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 jumps with his own parachute. He also practiced judo, aikido, karate, and krav maga. Now, he only does calisthenics. But not everything was sports, as he also studied music, played the piano, and learned to play the guitar on his own.

After school he studied three careers at Universidad de Chile, one of the oldest and most prestigious of all.

First, he studied a common year of medicine with medical professors; second, two years of engineering; third, six years of architecture, eventually becoming an architect. His thesis project was about a spiritual retreat center for Hermetic philosophy, and he passed with distinction. He worked in some of the best architecture offices, 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 industry in Santiago, Montevideo, and Miami. In the process, he achieved financial freedom.

But most importantly, parallel to his professional life, he studied psychology and philosophy on his own. Inspired by Simón Bolívar, he founded Nuevandes, its own cultural organization to unify South America through art. Shortly after, due to rivalries within the organization, he decided to freeze it.

He also spent three decades at the Hermetic Philosophic Institute. In reality, it is an inappropriate name, because it is more mystical than philosophical. Always inspired by the desire to do something significant to improve humanity, he became an outstanding student and leader there, reaching the highest ranks and learning many important practical lessons. For more than two decades, he was part of the GAM group, the organization’s highest authority, whose members were close friends of its leader, Darío Salas Sommer. As an architect, among others, he led the Kosmos Project, the planned world headquarters for the organization. Within the same inner circle, Salas invited him to join a non-political educational movement to unify South America, based on Simón Bolívar’s vision.

Unfortunately, he later discovered that Hermeticism, and the book The Kybalion on which it is based, was pseudoscientific—based on Plato’s world duplication. To realize that mystical premmises 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? 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. 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 reincarnation. He would run the risk of 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, then, fuck off, get lost and please 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, when the spiritual work consisted of making it grow by understanding the essence of concepts? It made even less sense when he discovered that, contrary to what Aristotle believed, the essence of concepts was not metaphysical but epistemological. This is key in Charles’s biography, when he realized that the concept of God must 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 of the God Concept.

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. Although he doesn’t agree with her on everything and doesn’t belong to any organization, he has studied her works deeply and has only words of profound gratitude, especially for her unique contribution to epistemology by saying that concepts are the algebra of cognition. That is very profound. He also has great gratitude for Leonard Peikoff, with whom he once had an email exchange. 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 Maria 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 heroes, but the ones who have inspired him most are John Galt in fiction, and his grandfather, Confucius, Aristotle, and Simón Bolívar in real life. All of them were advocates of freedom through education. So, metaphorically speaking, his educational work is for eagles, not for chickens. He respects chickens’ decisions, 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 story of Charles Kocian.

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, Kocian. 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 its mother remained twenty years as President. Its cultural activities are made in close relation with the Czech Embassy in Santiago of Chile. 

Many things were left out, but the most important is that he is a man who chose reason as his highest value. From here, the best is yet to come. He is calling eagles to call eagles, to become activists of reason, each contributing to this cause in their own unique way. So, let us take flight together, forging the best versions of ourselves and becoming the diaspora of reason. Why? First, to save the world from nuclear Armageddon by supporting rational diplomacy; second, to reap the personal benefits of enhanced critical thinking; and third, to forge the New Renaissance.

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