Month: April 2021

Pretty much everything thrown at me is designed to distract me while the real action is going on elsewhere. The good faith actors are few and can be identified — they are vilified wholesale. (Don’t make an error interpreting that sentence. I did not say V —> G or even G —> V.)

We are collectively under attack by, as Gurdjieff called them, broken machines. They go destructively beserk with almost comical aplomb.

Who will prevail? It is not entirely clear to me that civilized humans will.

Black pill.

Everything is propaganda. Everything is sleight of hand. Be wary of all you see and hear.

Grow intellectually, spiritually, and physically strong and find allies who value personal strength and integrity. Assemble small groups of allies. The countermeasures will become obvious.

We, collectively, will be here for centuries. We will outlast the onslaught of the berserkers. Many of us individually will fall. But we will prevail.

White pill.

By sheer willpower and desire.

When you are feeling upset, angry, or sad, don’t blame another for your state of mind. Your condition is the result of your own opinions and interpretations.

Epictetus, Handbook (Sam Torode version), 5

Embrace your weird, says Chris Williamson. I don’t want to, says me, because I’m afraid of what they think. Whoever “they” are.

The inner governor. That’s what David Goggins calls it.

The Chris Williamson/Jordan Peterson interview has Peterson saying this inner voice is the distilled average of all societal norms, implanted in you — plus the feedback loop of your own inner, personal, ideals.

The societal norm is to enforce the tall poppy rule. Strive toward the mean. Be the best normal of all of the normals. So that’s going on in my head all the time. Conform. It’s ok to strive and dream, but for the right things, accomplished in the right way. No room for embracing your weird here.

My inner ideals draw me toward my true desire. The other anti-tall poppy “fit in” attitudes push me away.

I don’t really know what I would be if I just let go and went for it. And what is “it”?

I feel as though I am trudging with 1,000 lbs in my backpack. I’m slowly reaching in and tossing baggage aside. Will I ever move with speed, light on my feet?

Drop the rock.

Remember SB. He gave the following to my brain as a seed. I have carried this thought seed for decades. By now I’m sure he is dead and I never met him or talked to him but . . . he improved my life with this little example.

You’re swimming, holding a big rock. It’s your rock. Your own special rock.

You are tired and will soon drown. A boat comes alongside and the people say “swim over here and jump in, we will take you to shore.”

You say “I can’t. My rock is too heavy.” And you continue to suffer, exhausted.

“Drop the rock,” say the people in the boat.

SB, on a recording heard long ago and far away.

That’s my mantra for the day. Drop the rock. On that path I will find my own weird to embrace.

Just assume that everything you hear and everything you see is an attempt at manipulating you. Maybe it is benign as making you spend your money in a certain way. Maybe it is more sinister.

I don’t mean the fucking Russians and the fucking Chinese. If you see “the Russians” etc. as the bogeyman you’re intellectually weak and pathetic.

Of course these things exist. So what? Grow up. You’re still missing the point about life, who you are, what is important to you, and what is within your power.

What’s the easiest way to sense attempted manipulation? Your own emotional response. Is it intense? Does your mood change noticeably? Do you want more of it? It’s probably propaganda. Analogy: drugs. What is your reaction?

Subtler methods of manipulation are at work. Long, persistent, slow seeding of despair about The World Today, or Them.

What’s the defense? Two things come to mind:

• A skeptical-by-default perspective.
• Dunbar’s Number.

Skeptical by default

Skeptical by default is learning how to make your own brain question everything.

Good scientists, detectives, trial lawyers, and many other people learn this skill. You can, too.

But . . . the person to be most skeptical about is yourself. This is a hard and lifelong quest.

I know for myself that I am apt to accept everything I hear. I am gullible.

If I wait for a little while I will start to build nuance and questions. So I know to postpone judgments where it is important.

Dunbar’s Number

Dunbar’s Number means that you surround yourself with reliable people. People you know personally. There is an upper limit to the number of people you can know personally.

They need not have the same opinion as you. In fact, they should not. Don’t build an echo chamber of people with the same blind spots as you. Just find people as fiercely committed to the same Quest as you.

But you must know them personally at some level and have judged them to be of moral character and acceptable intellect. Your judgment will probably be wrong at times. No matter.

These are your canaries. These are your scout outposts warning of attack. These are your filters.

Strong people are harder to kill

I like the Mark Rippetoe quote and I think it applies here. Get your mind strong. Surround yourself with like-minded people. Get physically strong.

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.

Mark Rippetoe

I’m also thinking of the lyrics to the old Popeye song. “I eat all the worms and I spit out the germs. I’m Popeye the sailor man.”

You’re going to eat worms. Learn how to spit out germs.

Started and deleted a couple things.

They were spawned by Epictetus and the Enchiridion. I started rambling.

Stop.

My head is bolted on correctly at the moment. Plan my day. What will I do today?

• Take the car to the body shop for repair and get a rental car. Then go to work.
• Target task. Use Work Cycles.
• Remember to eat.
• More target task. (Remember that “target task” means do one thing until done).
• Go home. Light bodyweight exercise. Stretch Remember the idea of a recovery day?
• Eat.
• Airport for pick-up.
• Sleep.

Today’s title is plagiarized from Governor Cuomo’s PowerPoint online Covid presentations. First class buffoon.

These entries run long.

I have a short attention span.

Be brief.

I need to reverse my prejudice against living authors. “I only read dead authors” was my childish way of invoking the Lindy principle. If something has survived for a long time, it’s probably good.

Time to grow up a bit.

If energy is transmitted from human to human by language, I need to be open to all communication.

If I cut myself off from living people and read only dead authors’ works, I am cutting myself off from energy.

I was using “living author” as an equivalent to “shit information”. Some living authors may be generating shit, the equivalent of a middle-brow generic sitcom. Some, however, create gold.

Bob kept saying “You must have human help.” Live humans have the advantage of being alive. That means I can talk to them. I would be a damn fool to cut myself off from that.

My correct filter is not “is the source of information alive or dead?” No, the correct filter is “Is this information good or is this person full of shit?” That is not always an easy question to answer.

As usual, The Path requires judgment and nuance. I must do the work: hear what is said, and decide to accept or reject the offered ideas — and know why I decided what I decided.

As usual, every opinion has a price. The smug “I only read dead authors” opinion exacts a price: damage to my future self. I am not willing to pay that price.

I need these exhortations. I can’t hear this message enough.

Chris Williamson. YouTube. TedX. Newcastle. (Sticking this stuff in here for future text search reasons.)

Inspired by and largely lifted from Jordan Peterson.

Have a goal. This is where you want to be.

Know where you are now.

Think about what you need to do to get where you want to be.

What can you do, today, now, with what you have at hand?

Make the task really small.

Do it (or don’t).

If you don’t actually do it, then the task was too big. Break it down to a series of smaller tasks. Do the first smaller task.

Do it (or don’t).

If you didn’t do the smaller task, break it down again into even smaller tasks.

Eventually you come to a point where the task is small enough that you actually do it.

Now you have progress.

Judge yourself and reward yourself by looking back to where you were before. Look! You did a thing!

Rely on the unstoppable compounding effect of repeated incremental actions. You cannot fail.

Keep repeating the incremental actions by focusing backwards on your progress compared to yesterday you. You are relentless.

If you fall into the ditch, get out of the ditch and back on The Path.

You will fall in the ditch. That’s what humans do.

When you get out of the ditch and back on The Path, that’s you successfully harnessing the compounding, relentless, unstoppable power. A power greater than you.

Failed? No factor! Get small. Get on The Path.

Mission

Mission. BHAG. Quest. Heart’s Desire.

What do I want? Here I sit, a grown man, with decades under his belt, and I don’t know the answer to that question.

A mission is mandatory. Otherwise I will drift like a rubber ducky.

This, I don’t know what it is. Yet. I can’t articulate it except “peace” or “contentment”.

It may turn out that a goal is like the horizon: clearly visible, always moving as you move, and impossible to reach.

Rule of three

When things are really going to shit, I can barely remember to eat. I get in a doom loop.

Three things propel me toward my mission. Three is an arbitrary number, but the number reveals a truth: when the shit is flying (and it’s always flying) I can barely concentrate on one thing.

So, even in good times have three areas of responsibility and no more. In each of these areas, drill and rehearse and build habits so when the metaphorical bullets are flying, I know what to do.

The rule of three. Don’t get hung up on the number. It’s a concrete expression of “keep it simple”. Simple usually means just a few things. Three is just a few.

My three

Business. Body. Brain.

Business, because this is my chosen craft. I have some skills. Effort here leverages into money, and money is stored energy.

Level up as a laborer.

Body. This is self-evident: it’s good to be healthy. Let’s just keep the Starting Strength quote in mind here:

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.

Mark Rippetoe

Level up as an athlete.

Brain. This is where it happens. Get smart, get clear. Navigation skills are paramount.

Level up as a leader (of self).

I am pretty sure I read the book a long time ago. Forgettable. Or maybe I was not open to learning from it then and I might get something from it now. Who knows.

All I know now is that I’m not interested in books by living authors. Or at least they must prove themselves worthy by channeling ideas that are Lindy (sometimes inadvertently or with astonishing and perhaps unintended subtlety, e.g., Jocko Willink, who explicitly disavows the Stoics yet channels their philosophy).

Spotify just threw a track at me: The Four Agreements, mixed by Matthew Dekay and Martin Roth. Actually the YouTube edit is better than the one Spotify gave me.

Interesting idea (but low-budget interesting) from the excerpt: I am dreaming all of the time.

(It is also interesting how he morphs the meaning of words, like “dream” and “attention”. Powerful writing, persuasive unless you’re paying attention. Propaganda is built that way. But that’s not what caught my eye at first.)

Interesting idea (and this one is provocative and worthy of thought, compared to what else I heard): energy is transferred from human to human through language.

What first caught my attention, though, is the idea of how we are imprinted with beliefs in every conceivable way. Even the language we use (we are born with it) is thrust upon us and it’s construction dictates how we think.

Do not accept this idea as final.

We’re not helpless. We aren’t rubber ducks destined to drifting downstream, bouncing off rocks, stuck in the weeds, or drifting helplessly as the river flows.

Go back to the anti-victim mentality: “So what are you going to do?” Do something. Especially if you have been battered by fate.

From that seed grows Freedom.

Plant the seed.

Refusing to accept fate and planting the seed of Freedom? That’s Lindy.