I think our society too often celebrates the wrong things. And because of this, we humans are too often pursuing the wrong things. By wrong, I simply mean stuff that will not maximize flourishing, and may, in fact, militate against it. Which all leads to my appearance here today: I want to celebrate your candor, a vital right thing that you have demonstrated since the first day I met you.

Now, most everyone will nod their heads in agreement, Oh yes, being honest is so important. Crucial. Gotta do it. But then they will proceed to behave quite counter to this “obvious” ideal. Aside from a few truly malevolent actors, I think this discrepancy between words and actions is due to an incorrect prioritization, not actual falseness in supporting the value of truth.

Take a meet-up with a friend that begins the same way all such meet-ups begin, “How are you doing?” Let’s pretend this isn’t merely small talk, that the friend has infinite time and truly craves a real answer. You can (a) highlight (with perhaps some truth shading) the things that seem to enhance your status – Damn, she is smart! Damn, she is cool! Damn, she is impressive! – or (b) nakedly highlight the things that might reduce your status. Now, being smart, cool, or impressive isn’t a wrong thing, but the pursuit of status over all else is. It’s this attitude of more, more, more just because it looks good that drives (a) over (b). Nearly everyone wants to be truthful, but only about certain types of truths.

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There you are waiting. Maybe it’s seven years from now. Maybe it’s seventeen. But I see you clearly struggling with the lack of clarity. Your parents will have taught you well, loved you well, supported you well: that won’t be the issue.

No, the procrastination is the natural result of unavoidable uncertainty inherent to the human experience. Path A will look preferable on certain days … only to be supplanted – in your mind – by Path B on different days. Around and around your mind will spin with such relentless force you’ll sometimes wish someone else would just decide for you – a free man pleading for less freedom.

I implore you to pause in moments like this and consider your parents. Just look at this house! Their jobs! Their vast networks of friends! Everything is so idyllic! Sure, absorbing those outcomes may lead to the conclusion that your parents followed a simple blueprint devoid of the endless machinations currently racking your mind. Yet it is the wrong conclusion, for your parents were extended stay tenants in the land of uncertainty. Most people make a decision and are awarded a long period of tranquil certainty; your parents, on the other hand, earned their “extended stay” status because their decisions were so often abruptly followed by ever more uncertainty. Which could turn someone cold, or paralyze him, or make him feel justified to constantly complain, could fill him with rage and jealousy. Not your parents. No way.

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There’s a certain type of self-important buffoon clogging up airports from sea to shining sea who needs to be placed squarely in your crosshairs. The boarding process begins with priority, then the disabled, then the parents of small children before turning to a numerical countdown from small to large. Even if you had never before flown, the numerical part is so easy to comprehend that ignorance isn’t a viable defense. 

Yet, there’s the target – proud owner of a group #7 ticket – stalking so close to the line of people with lower boarding numbers you’d think he’s actually in line. Now, if he was deciding to circumvent the boarding order entirely and was truly in line, boarding group be damned, we’d call him unethical and leave it at that. After all, his gross action has minimal consequences. 

What we cannot tolerate, nay what we MUST not tolerate, is the person who thinks he can hold himself in high moral esteem by not actually getting in line, but by being so close to the line that when #7 beams out over the loudspeaker he’ll be the first #7 to board. For this action has ripple effects that materially taint the boarding process: people with lower boarding numbers will accumulate behind him incorrectly believing they are in the real line. With fake disbelief, our target will eventually address the duped fliers incorrectly accumulating behind him by claiming complete innocence and attempting to redirect blame onto us. We are not fooled. You know what you have done. We know what you have done. 

Sic ‘em. Woof, woof, woof!

I consider it a massive victory to gain even a slightly different perspective on a topic. After all, the most important elements of the human condition have been so thoroughly addressed for so very long that a genuinely new take is incredibly unlikely. This unlikeliness increases the more common, more universal the topic of inquiry: it’s harder to write a unique love song than a track about Newcomb’s paradox.

Enter poet David Whyte doing the near-impossible. Not only does he reliably offer refreshingly new insights, he does so regarding “everyday words” firmly stuffed in a societal bin labeled “We Already Know What These Words Mean.”

I distinctly remember laughing after consuming “Honesty.” I definitely know what honesty is, but I’m sure he’ll say some pretty things that will prove useful in reminding me what I already know. Wrong in a wonderful way. Outlier this was not: at a rate only Barry Bonds could sniff, D Whyte pumps out unequaled originality that will change what you think, know, and believe.

I concluded this from a few of these pieces (which I’ve circled) that I encountered outside of this book. So yes, in breaking from tradition, I am sending a book that I have not completely read. I am willing to make an exception because I’m so confident in Whyte’s brilliance. And, really, if you only read the circled pieces, sending you this book will have been worth it.

A sucker is born every minute, and today that sucker happens to be username “Peninsula FOL.” See, PFOL was once the owner of the book you now hold in your hands and apparently didn’t understand its worth. Lesson #1: know what you and your possessions are worth – then add at least 22% as a negotiating starting point.

“Big Wolf and Little Wolf” happens to be just about the most coveted kid’s book in the world because it’s beautiful, endearing, and so perfectly speaks to human emotions, and also because of supply constraints. Lesson #2: prices rise when demand outstrips supply, a.k.a. a “seller’s market.”

So in a “seller’s market” with used book prices like $51.50 (AbeBooks.com), $74.50 (Alibris.com), $99.95 (eBay.com), and $58.90 (Amazon.com), the sucker that is PFOL prices at … $25.[1] A hanging offer if I’ve ever seen one. This price was so low I wondered if I might, in fact, be the sucker. After brief consideration, I charged forward given Alibris.com’s credibility and my credit card’s fraud protection. Lesson #3: no financial opportunity is 100% certain (and anyone who talks of “easy” or “free” money is a charlatan or worse) – act swiftly when the expected reward outweighs the expected risk.[2] Lesson #4: whenever you can cheaply offload risk onto someone else without capping upside, do it, a.k.a. always buy with credit cards when possible.[3]

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If you can sharpen your media criticism from “untrustworthy” to “untrustworthy for x,y,z reasons and on a,b,c topics,” you’ll be in a powerful position to sort the news appropriately while also enhancing your critical thinking skills.

1. You should hear the best one-sided argument for the untrustworthy matters
2. You should be able to spot the angles intentionally not being pursued
3. You can think of the questions that should have been asked
4. You can try to form on-the-fly counter-arguments
5. You can assume information based on omission

Damn near everyone is cracking. Smart and dumb, black and white, religious and atheistic, rich and poor: there seems no discernible pattern to the great moral failing of our time. Before cracking, though, they were all convinced they never would, that their own moral rectitude would allow them to correctly determine right from wrong when the screws were tightened.

In even the best-designed system, there will be incentives to cheat, lie, and steal. When it comes to areas where the legal system has no say, society must hope that members have been imbued with some form of Kant’s categorical imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. If you merely follow that directive, systemic weakness can remain unexploited. Which sounds so simple and seems so obvious during 2:30AM dorm-room trolley-problem debates but becomes quite another thing entirely when one must actually choose his community over self-interest. This is why your alignment between stated ethics and practiced ethics is so commendable.

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Why you like art is never solely about the art but also about what is happening in your life during its consumption. Read a book in a certain mood, in a certain life phase and it does nothing. Read it again in a different mood, in a different life phase and it profoundly moves you.

So it is that your card hit me at just the right time that I woke up today and the idea appeared to respond with a hilariously not-normal 2020 review. By not-normal, I mean that reviews of any sort between friends who see each other infrequently rarely touch the most interesting parts of human experience. Usually, you spend all the time retelling all things you’ve been up to, happenings your friend genuinely wants to hear and that you genuinely want to tell, that the clock runs out before emotion, philosophy, and messiness is revealed.

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Oh my God did you see … is a phrase that’s carving out ever more conversational real estate. And yea, there are some crazy, disturbing things happening at the moment. So, paying attention and “getting educated” seems like a noble use of time. But however well-intentioned this enterprise may be, and even however productive it may be, its hamartia is obvious: what we are mostly doing is feeling good about ourselves by complaining about things we do not control and which have so very little actual effect on our day-to-day experiences. The flip side being that in a world that is infinitely vast and filled with nonsense, there remains much that we – specs of sand and soon to be forgotten – can still do to actually improve our lived experiences not in some far-off time, but today. And no, this is not about turning hyper-selfish per se; this is about a real appreciation that the “culture” you exist within is almost entirely not some thing out there controlled by the idiots in Oh my God did you see, but rather a tangible ethos that you are tasked with managing.

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