insofar as it tricks people into thinking they are getting better at talking about that which they’ve buried, that which they think, that which they feel, that which is true.

Of course, being able to speak honestly is a truly vital skill and cannot be placed in the bin of Stuff I Accept I’m Bad At if one hopes to live anything close to his best possible life.

But make no mistake, candor with a stranger (i.e., therapist) is not such a vital skill. It’s something, sure, and there are benefits that may be cultivated in the process. But the same fears of judgment and rejection that usually prevent “speaking one’s mind” are significantly reduced in interactions with strangers. Thus, you aren’t actually getting better at speaking well with people you know, just at speaking well when nothing’s really on the line.

While I don’t yet know you, I declare with great confidence that you will be someone who rebels. Even in your current state of innocence, your daily cries indicate an unwillingness to accept a world that doesn’t exactly conform to your wants and expectations. This proclivity to fight has a chance to be most productive, especially when your mental powers blossom and your frustrations can be directed at matters beyond lactose.

I warn you now, though, that as rebellion becomes increasingly intertwined with your identity – as it will in adolescence – it can turn downright counterproductive if you adopt the “rebel without a cause” posture. And make no mistake, many peers will turn toward RWC because it’s a seductive way to gain status. RWC is also foolishly simple to adopt: be anti-authority. Parents, school, teachers, priests, the system, the man, experts, and whatever else appears to be trusted is necessarily the opponent of RWC. Perhaps you already see the flaws in the philosophy, because while sure, OK, yea, authority need be challenged, one jams himself into an unnecessarily tight box when fully subscribed to a status quo where authority, by virtue solely of its authority, is always wrong. Still, no amount of illogic erases the aura of coolness awarded to outsiders (especially if that outsider has Jesusesque hair, a leather jacket, and ripped jeans), and thus RWC uptake persists – you wouldn’t be crazy to give it a try.

 

Or maybe instead adopt the rebel path I believe is fundamentally superior to RWC. Instead of anti- being the guiding principle, truth is. That is to say you want to get it right, not be right, and that the surest path to fully understanding the complexities and nuances of any given issue is to fearlessly challenge everything, all while knowing that what you are being told may, indeed, be perfectly correct. In practice, the truth-seeker can seem like RWC. Twenty kids in a classroom all nod their heads in agreement, but, no, not you. Never you. You go 1 vs. 20 + the teacher and sniff out any loopholes, contradictions, and weak assumptions. This requires tremendous skill and self-confidence, attributes a careful observer will appreciate distinguishes you from RWC. As your abilities increase, you’ll notice that this rigorous probing reliably gains something, that there is always a question that reveals more, that large swaths of the population are regurgitating lines and truly have no idea what the hell they are talking about, and that, vitally, truth-seeking doesn’t require you to reach an alternate conclusion, but rather bestows a level of complete understanding that leaves you smarter, more empathetic, more creative, and way more interesting. So yea, you’ll gain prestige similar to RWC adherents, AND you’ll obtain a superior grasp of reality.

There was a time when I worked at a gas station. At that time, “energy drinks” (which will hopefully be extinct by the time you read this) were en vogue. My employer, being a pragmatic capitalist, decided to get in on the gold rush and undercut the prevailing price point with a knock-off version of the high-margin brand name product. Better still, the knock-off version was tastier to 7 out of 10 consumers. Better better still, as an employee of this gas station, I received a hefty discount on all merchandise. So, I did what seemed not-all-that-novel and sold the knock-offs to my football teammates at a price that allowed me to capitalize on the spread created by my employee discount (a.k.a. I profited off my friends). As unreliable as our memories may be, I remember having zero qualms about this. Your father, on the other hand, had maximal qualms once he discovered the scheme. Not only did I genuinely think he was wrong, but I also enjoyed arguing for the sake of arguing, which cast me dangerously close to RWC and the never-admit-defeat attitude it engenders. You should want your mind changed, because you should want to inch closer to truth. That’s hard to appreciate – just look at a country being run by people who never admit the other side may have even a sliver of a point – and I doubt that I did in any real sense during high school.

Your father lives by an ideal that one’s role in friendship is to always be there doing all you can to love, help, and support (never profit, obviously). For as busy as he may be, he’ll drop it all if you call him in need. Many people speak a similar noble ethos, but I’ve found few who actually live by it. After first rebelling against your father’s friendship ethic, he helped me appreciate the error in my ways, and I now try to be one of those elite few adhering to a higher standard in relationships.

So when you fight with your parents just try to remember that it is possible they may be right. In fact, given their collective wisdom, they will offer valuable lessons, I’d venture to guess, a large percentage of the time. Combine this inherited “wisdom” edge with a pure aim on truth and I think you’re set up quite nicely for an extraordinary life. Welcome!

So whenever you think I’m totally spent, I can’t do any more, you are almost certainly incorrect.

much of the inequality discussion is based on a “fixed pie” view of the world: the rich get richer by taking from the poor. It’s zero-sum, and the rich are winning. It should be no mystery then why someone, especially a vulnerable someone, would view immigrants with skepticism: there is a “fixed pie,” and the more people going for a piece means my piece will get smaller – or disappear entirely.

Shouldn’t that be a good thing? Isn’t this “voters holding leaders accountable”? This is the whole point of a democracy, right?

While not perfectly aligned, what best helps his re-election, should best help the country. Or, politics have become so divorced from reality that we need to reconsider the entire governmental system.

Like a drowning man clutching a straw, my inborn optimism clung to this thought: These prisoners look quite well, they seem to be in good spirits and even laugh. Who knows? I might manage to share their favorable position.


I think it was Lessing who once said, “There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.” An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.


I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dream or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounds us, and which I was about to recall him.


For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”

(more…)

Life must fail, love doesn’t.

Courageous Wants

If proper effort is committed, much of what we “want” will be achieved. Now, energy expenditure of course varies quite a bit based on both the want and the abilities of the wanter, but an input = output sense of order, of fairness exists regardless of want difficultly. And even if the want is never fully satisfied, one necessarily grows closer to the coveted outcome through proper inputs; you may not lose 100lbs, but if you cook every meal, you will lose something.

There exists, however, another category of wants (titled Courageous Wants) where the input = output formula cracks. The #1 CW is love. Almost everyone contests this judgement, because by placing love in CW, one’s agency is apparently swindled, because there are no “right things,” no “proper inputs,” no “blueprints” for CW, because more effort (however defined) does not necessarily get one any closer to the want. Sure, one can seemingly tilt probabilities – going on 100 dates instead of zero – but this is mostly an illusion. In non-CW, nobody “accidentally” loses 100lbs; in CW, people routinely “accidentally” fall in love. Hence the courageousness of wanting love: you are throwing your well-being into a grinder of luck that can’t be conquered by self-will.

(more…)

A Cost of Boredom

Here we are again getting fired up by the news of the day just itching to talk with someone about it. I gotta vent. And so it is that now all conversations trend toward politics.

But what if what we fully controlled (i.e., our actual lives when not reading the news) was deeply interesting? What if the incredible thing you just did, saw, pondered, earned is what you couldn’t wait to talk about? Suddenly, politics would no longer be so interesting, triggering, or consuming and our conversations would be better, would be more meaningful. When, however, our actual lives are boring…

All-or-Nothing Bias

There must be an official name for the propensity to remain disciplined until you aren’t, and then upon that slight discipline slip throw away ALL discipline, as if degrees don’t matter.

Well, now that I’ve had one doughnut, I might as well eat all 12.