Reality Laughs

This I was told: I had to become a new man entirely, from the ground up. I couldn’t just embark on an improvement project to sharpen up the best parts of my character.

Clean house. Or, to use the words I was told, I had to be born again. These words were used deliberately by a non-churchgoer to tell me, a man reflexively hostile to Christianity, that I should pull my head out of my ass and rebuild from nothing. All new information.

I may be a Christian, but not in ways you understand. I am certainly now open-minded and find actionable truth in the Gospels.

That’s an aside. My point here is that you can’t hold onto the old. Let it all go, or to be more precise, be willing to let it all go.

That’s the first thing that is needed. Willingness.

The second thing I needed was direction. A goal. A vision to build toward, the man I would become. This was supplied by men who had done what they asked me to do: start from absolute willingness, and rebuild according to pragmatic lessons they taught me. Accept nothing, test everything.

Later I found that these things they asked me to do had their foundations in ancient teachings. Some explicitly pointed at the Gospels. S

ome teachings came (I now know) from the Stoics, though this was never acknowledged. I think this is because the pragmatic lessons they taught me were almost entirely proven from their own experience. “Your opinion of me is your business.” This taught me to begin to care less of what others thought of me. (I’m not free of it by any means but I’m usually in pretty good shape.) That’s an example of “things outside my control” in Stoic terms.

I’m writing here to clarify what I think and build that future man that I wish to become.

Or, as another one of these men told me, to remember.

I’m reading a book right now that has some objectionable ideas in it. Yet there are thought-provoking insights, too. (The objectionable stuff is along the lines of “the Jews this and the Jews that” followed by “but of course not all of them are bad”).

Can you see and filter out the crap to harvest good ideas? Or is the whole book tainted and to be shunned?

Well, the answer is obvious. “They” are too fragile to be exposed to scary bad people. Burn the book. We would burn the author at the stake, too, but alas that admirable practice was abandoned some hundreds of years ago.

Burning heretics at the stake didn’t work then and it’s not working now.

Being afraid of ideas or people and finding them objectionable is not a reason to flee or shun. Be stronger than that. See and understand your enemy, if indeed this is your enemy.

There is a great deal of value in reading books that you disagree with. There will probably be some insights for you to discover amongst the errors. By reading things that you disagree with you develop your own ability to filter accurate ideas from error. You also learn how to identify error.

This is especially useful if you find someone who starts from the same base premises that you agree with, but then argues to a different conclusion.

Edit: I stopped reading the book half-way through. The good stuff (self-reliance, strength, loyalty, and other values) I can get elsewhere. Too much shit to shovel in order to find the good stuff. I think this book is as much an in-group signaling device as it is an exposition of certain principles. Not so useful if you’re not part of that in-group and you don’t want to be.

I was in a shop today, and I overheard a conversation. It was a predictable conversation, with lots of generic whining and grumping about the Current State of Affairs vis a vis politics, with the consensus opinion of the proprietor and the customer being about what you would expect.

Don’t do that.

Yes, “they” (whoever they are at the moment) are misguided, corrupt, and self-centered.

Yes, “they” do stupid things, knowing that they are doing stupid things as they are doing them.

Yes, some of the “they” crowd actively hate your guts and want you to submit, or worse.

So what? That’s out of your control.

You have principles. If you don’t, you are as bad as “they” are. If you don’t have principles, you are as bendable as “they” are. You can be, and are, bent to think one way or the other.

Do not be a whiner. Stand by your principles. Be a rock, immovable.

Whining and feeling sorry for yourself is a loser’s game. Why abandon principle for the softer path of commiseration with a like-minded loser?

You can act on your principles. Even if you think it’s a waste of time. Even if you think you’re doomed to failure, that the enemy is too strong.

Truth takes a stand. We take our stand where we find ourselves, and fight for our principles.

Perhaps that like-minded soul will, like you, find his inner resource of courage and join you. Better that he join you in action than you join him in impotent and covert whining.

Perhaps together you are victorious. Perhaps together you both fall at Thermopylae and others carry on the fight.

Know what is true and right. Stand for it.

And for God’s sake stop whining. Nothing was ever built by complaining. Only building builds. If you want something, build it.

Sitting outside at a restaurant with my son and wife on a warm afternoon in a small town in Colorado. We had been at the range while my son zeroed in his scope on his birthday rifle.

Time stopped. I was where I was supposed to be. I was content and peaceful.

I can be there again.

And in fact briefly I achieved it, deliberately. And this happened, in the car rental shuttle to the Denver airport. I remembered the day before in Basalt and realized I could be there anytime I wanted to. “There” meaning peace of mind.

And I was. And I knew it.

Then I started judging the design of the parking structure. Haha. Gone.

And I knew it. And laughed.

That is all.

Groups attempting to influence public opinion seem to rely on two major strategies:

• Give people more information about an issue, or
• Attempt to keep information about an issue away from people.

Example of clear thinking on this point:

Yup. We have a great job: just tell people about guns. The more they learn, the cooler with gun rights they are. We like being the group that succeeds by spreading knowledge. Gun control orgs have a PR problem: their success depends on keeping knowledge away from people.

Open Source Defense on Twitter

Of course, the most effective strategy is a bit of both: tell people what you want them to know and hide information that you don’t want them to know.

This gives you a litmus test for judging an organization, an idea, or an argument. If you get information and are encouraged to judge for yourself, it’s probably good information. On the other hand, information suppression is an indication that your source is weak.

Bring that down to the individual level, because all growth is one person at a time. I don’t care as much about “them” as I care about me.

If my ideas and principles can be offered up, without exhortation and emotion, then they are likely to be sound.

Sound principles are like gravity. They are irresistible. You can deny gravity only briefly, and at your peril.

You can’t do stuff when you’re confused.

That’s why keep it simple is such a good strategy. Simple means obvious. And obvious is obvious, so you do it.

How to get there from here? Identify the things to do with big upside and minimal downside. Do them.

Want to be healthy? Walk.

An easier way? Just stop and let the bullshit disappear by itself. If you’re confused, stop doing things. Pull the weeds out of your metaphorical garden. The flowers will become visible.

Sometimes it’s easier than that. You don’t even have to pull the weeds. Just stop planting weeds. You’re in the pickle you’re in right now because the today you loves to plant weeds by saying yes to everything that comes along.

Say no to everything. Just for a while. See what happens. Bullshit activities and bullshit people fade away.

Paul Portesi’s Twitter exhortations are why I first started thinking about this. “Informational” is his word.

If some street hustler challenges you to a game of three card monte you don’t need to bother to play, just hand him the money, not because you’re going to lose but because you owe him for the insight: he selected you. Whatever he saw in you everyone sees in you, from the dumb blonde at the bar to your elderly father you’ve dismissed as out of touch, the only person who doesn’t see it is you, which is why you fell for it. Even mirrors fail you. Hence a sketch.

The Last Psychiatrist

The information you need is not in the interaction with the con man. The information you need is that you were selected. You need to know that you are an obvious mark.

Seeing this is hard. It’s easy to get caught up in the bustle, the distractions.

The bustle, the distractions. They are deliberate. That, too, is information you need.

“You” meaning me.

One last quote from that blog post from The Last Psychiatrist:

The con worked. Of course it worked: they selected you.

The Last Psychiatrist

Ouch.

He continues. Look at this sentence in the context of 2020’s presidential race and what is put on offer for consumption on Twitter. Probably elsewhere, too, but I don’t look elsewhere.

“Well, not authority– power. You can’t deny their power is massive, but of course I’m not a stupid, I don’t think it’s legitimate.” I’m sorry, no, you are stupid. You’ll let it have power over you in exchange for the right to brag that you know its not legitimate.

“They” are the side whose opinion you have been trained to think is wrong. If you have been assigned opinions that cause you to self-identify as a Democrat, you seize on something about Trump and shout gleefully about how wrong he is. Sorry, you lose. That’s the short con. Have you identified the long con in politics yet?

Not to pick on Democrats. Have you been assigned to the Republican camp? Republicans do the same thing. Pick someone or some idea. Pelosi, say. You have fallen for the short con. Identify the long con.

You probably can’t even identify the conman, let alone spot the game. (I’m talking to me now, not you. But if the shoe fits. . . .) It goes without saying that you don’t see yourself as the mark.

“The only winning strategy is to not play the game.” No. The winning strategy is to play the “spot the con” game. You will lose most of the time at first, just as new poker players lose most of the time. You’re buying information about yourself and the world around you.

The way to smell a fraud is to have skin in the game. Taleb says he is dumb without skin in the game. And if you’re focused on a benefit, it’s time to suspect that you’re missing something critical. Especially when the benefit is being advertised to you. Equilibrium demands an offsetting cost. If you can’t see the cost, you’re paying it.

But the important point is not that you believe this to be true, the point is that you want this to be true.

The Last Psychiatrist delivers a spear straight to the chest.

And let’s do a little reflection here, Mr. Laughs. How much of this thinking and self-improvement and work on self is a short con in some long con I can’t see?

The confidence with which she knows how her perception of self-esteem affects everything in life, “it couldn’t be more crucial” is not an insight, it is not wisdom gained from years of therapy: she has been conned, it is society’s long con so her pocket can be picked.

Good God, Dr. L. Psychiatrist. Is there no end to the chunks of truth you ask me to swallow?

This can become a “turtles all the way down” trap. Any glee felt at achieving enlightenment is the clue. You’ve fallen for something. It’s false to say to yourself “Well, I sure am glad that I figured that out. Now I know the truth. Everything is squared away and I’m safe, so let me now turn my attention to perfecting another facet of myself.” The reason you know that’s true is that before the Blinding Realization you just had, you didn’t know that the Blinding Realization existed.

What else do you not know? What else can be delivered to you by the long con?

How to avoid turtle life? All I can do is predict, with fair accuracy, that there is no profit and no power for someone else if I live and die according to Stoic principles. Start from a way of life that cannot be gamed.

When I set this website I spent an hour or two being butthurt about some bullshit. It wasn’t a static site (I couldn’t figure out the Ruby permissions on my Mac, so I couldn’t run Jekyll and host this thing on GitHub or Gitlab). The web host I used did a bullshit upsell on me to get HTTPS.

The uproar in my head (dissatisfaction with self for lack of technical skill in setting PATH on a Mac on the command line) (how dare they at EasyWP cripple the teaser low-priced hosting offer)?

I saw it. I let it go. I paid the upsell and resolved to get better on the command line in the next 12 months.

It’s gratifying when you see that the deep guiding principles are installed and operating as desired.

What I control, what I don’t.

I won’t always avoid getting butthurt about bullshit. All I ask of myself is that when I see it, I let it go.

I even gave myself permission to skip the command line stuff if I feel like it. Is it really important for me to hyper-nerd like that? No. But I like it. Heh.

Sometimes you’re doing stuff and you realize that you’re at peace. You don’t flap when little things pop up, and just take stuff in stride.

Because none of it matters.

Specific example right now: at the airport and my wife walks slowly, far slower than my default pace. Stop, wait, slow down. It’s all good.

As compared to “She isn’t doing airport right.”

I certainly didn’t prepare myself to be calm and accepting and adaptable. It just happened.

What’s in my control and what is outside my control? Today it didn’t require a conscious thought. It just worked.