>2011 wasn’t the worst year of my life. It hurt a lot, but it was the stress of growing pains.
>People will help you when you’re just trying to get by. If their radar gets set off and they sense you’re up to something that will get you ahead in almost any way, they want nothing to do with it. They’ll try to talk you out of it, they’ll refuse to help or find an excuse not to, they’ll charge you more for it, and find ways of making it as hard as possible for you to get what you want. That’s the way of things, and always has been. It’s as though the sense-of-brotherhood extends only to the struggle.
>If you want any evidence of this at all, just look at the solar market.
>It’s a truth that human beings will generally claw each others eyes out over money, but they don’t know what to do with it.
>Stop looking for the meaning of life, and try to find some meaning in life. It’s terrifyingly short; make it count.
>I can’t imagine being single forever. But I expect it.
>I’m scared of wasted time.
>Religion, and religious people, unnerve me. I can’t be myself around them, because I don’t want their context.
>I’ve seen Atheists scoff at when someone dies, and their loved ones say “So-and-So has finally gone home.” Apparently they don’t understand that the statement is true either way: The person ‘goes home to God,’ or goes back into the abyss of nothing. Either way, the statement is true: God or no God, when we die, we go back to where we came from; we go home.
>No matter how intelligent you are, don’t be smarter than the room.
>No matter what you believe in, you only live this way once. Take advantage of it.
>One of the biggest observations I took away from the Steve Jobs biography was how much he proved, conclusively, that individualism can bring about great things. He never compromised for others, and became a titan.
>Learn from the mistakes of others as much as you learn from those of your own, if not more-so.
>Be observant.
>Marriage is a hard, tricky thing. It’s easy to take a relationship lightly and end up married to someone that you don’t really know. That was a lesson learned early in life for me, before I was of the marrying-age, that I am particularly thankful for. It’s an object-lesson that I’ve seen repeatedly shown to me throughout my life. Sometimes the most obvious-reality is the hardest to see ahead-of-time.
>If you feel a certain way, that’s fine. Don’t push what you think about a thing onto me. If you say “You need to,” about something, it becomes evangelical, and I don’t want to hear about it. At the point You Need To enters the line of discussion, you’ve officially lost me.
>If you put words in my mouth, by way of assumption, especially to win an argument, you win nothing. I’ll just think you to be arrogant and self-serving.
>Metro-vs-rural areas. Two ideas on how to properly live. Two ideas that through time, have tweened together and blurred what each other are. They look more same than different, now.
>A ‘Home Owners Association’ sounds like a great idea, until you’re on the receiving-end of the great idea. That’s how I feel about all government bodies, of all sizes.
>Growing up in the South, you get a lot of dogma about how sick the North and West are with Big Government, as a reality. The truth is, there are an awful lot of people on welfare and other entitlement programs in the Southern states. You can’t be against Big Government and simultaneously use an entitlement program; not and keep a straight face, anyway. I learned that the hard way.
>The South has a big opportunity, that frankly it’s blowing. It could be a region that proves that people don’t need government handouts, or hand-holding. It could be the shining example of a sustainable society. It’s not, though; it’s the exact-opposite. In my estimation, it’s the extreme-end of the entitlement-state right now. There is nothing more depressing, for me, than seeing a people held-down.
>What it all comes down to for me, is placing an importance on getting to a place of sustainability and self-reliance. In every sense.
>There is no such thing as “Half-Free” for me, anymore. I’ve found that this idea is directly-offensive for many.
>Being iconoclastic isn’t fun. Even if it’s the right thing to do, for the right reasons, at the right time. Ask anyone who has ever stood for anything. Ask Galileo. Ask Christ.
>You have to be smarter than the people you’re dealing with.
>TV is something that everyone could do a lot less-of. Leaving the solicitation of brainwashing advertisements and political indoctrination, and getting outside of the prevailing pornographic aesthetic and it’s problems. That’s peace of mind.
>If you give away even the smallest technical detail of a magic trick, there is no magic.
>I can’t help but be ridiculous sometimes. I try to achieve the scratchy, punchy, sarcastic humor of the great dry-humorists. Subtle metaphor and innuendo aren’t left behind, though.
>We just keep getting older. We just keep getting older.
>Try not to have expectations. It’s a set-up for disappointment.
>In the face of death, identity is a very fragile thing.
-James Geeo Self-Interview à la Esquire-styling, 2011.
This year, I am considering beginning my own Turn Off Your TV campaign in response to the poisonous reality I see society being exposed to. As a member of the last generation not raised by the TV-set, I feel a responsibility to rebel against the idea of acceptance regarding this soul-sucking, dull-minded addiction that has taken the world my storm over the last 45 years.
I almost view exposing children to a lot of TV in their developmental years to be child abuse. Of course the type of programming is a factor, but it has been proven conclusively that exposure to TV augments childhood development. I simply don’t believe it to be a net-good. The rise of dyslexia, attention-deficit disorder, and other learning and behavioral problems began at the dawn of the TV boom.
The use of TV as a propaganda-machine is equally terrifying. This use of TV has been a perspective-blinding, societal bellwether of conformity.
While the domination of the Pornographic Aesthetic isn’t as pressing an issue as the proliferation of zombies created by TV, I find it completely disturbing.
Over and over again, I cast these words to myself throughout 2011, and listened to them: Think for Yourself. Question Authority. Question everything and seek out motivations.
“Think for yourself. Question authority.
Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we’re going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities; the political, the religious, the educational authorities; who have attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rule, regulations.
Informing, forming in our minds an inner view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to immerse yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness– chaotic, confused vulnerability to which you owe yourself.
Think for yourself. Question authority.”
-Timothy Leary
In 2011, I spent a great deal of time thinking about formulations of amortization, and how in economics people have been taught to think in terms of return-on-investment when it comes to how they live their lives. While I don’t have a problem with this way of thinking, per say, I’ve begun to undergo a paradigm-shift in terms of how I think of my own lifestyle, and how I assign value to things.
For example, even though $10,000 worth of solar panels won’t pay for itself for many years (even with the 30% federal tax credit and all the state incentives), the fact that it would completely eliminate my electric bill, monthly, every month of the year (in my case), makes the investment worth it. The sustainability-factor alone, of not having to think about an electric bill and even receiving a credit on my statement, is a burden removed and allows for greater flexibility and freedom in life. The freedom from utility payments and the ability to have power when the grid goes down due to storms, general outages and other problems is very appealing. While it doesn’t jive with many economic formulas, it works out for me in the sense that it causes less worry, and it creates a reality wherein temporary doses of absolute freedom can be had.
Themes of sustainability, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and resource management have been prevailing themes in my thinking this year.
I’ve realized that people don’t ‘get’ why we should be investing in solar energy, and other sustainable-energy sources. I don’t ‘get’ them. People don’t want to support themselves anymore, and I think that’s the most depressing reality we face. Everyone wants it handed to them.
-No one gives it to you – You have to take it.-
One of the other general realizations that hit me like a ton of bricks in 2011 is how difficult the growing pains of a new friendship can be in the digital age.
It really marks the divergent philosophies people live by. I try to earnestly curate my online representation, while others just put their every thought out, or any photo, or every photo of others, online. I find it very, very difficult to adapt myself to this paradigm, where I’m not in control of how I’m presented in the social-space.
I see so many women (I only look for women) on dating sites, that are young and clearly still trying to figure out who they are. I can’t imagine doing that -going through that era in life, the era of transformation and solidification of self phase- in an absolute-public sense.
Many people don’t seem to understand that dating sites and social-networking sites like facebook are public, and that the things they post on such sites can and will have ramifications. I think in ten-years (post-social boom) people will have a completely different view of this kind of reality, and that many people will have been burned by this culture of 0ver-share.
On the last night of 2011, I tried Jameson Irish Whiskey for the first time in my life, and it was magic!
..and now, things I learned in 2011:
The Consequences Of The Dunning–Kruger effect:
Although I’ve studied a great deal in the field of psychology in the last year, and lots of cognitive disorders and effects, the Dunning–Kruger effect has been what sits with me most, and what I see almost every day in others.
I have a friend, who suffers from this effect more than any other person I’ve ever met. He’s arrogant, self-absorbed, has a low self-esteem and is in perpetual competition with an imagined rival. He believes that he is an authority on virtually any subject, even if he has very little working-experience in a particular area. No matter what you say about a particular subject, they will say ‘well, actually,’ and tell you their opinion-as-fact, despite conflicting available evidence. Certainly, he has other problems going on, but when I first read about the Dunning–Kruger effect, I thought of him and a few others, and suddenly thought ‘…my God, there is a term for it!,’ and a lot of things squared.
For most of my life, I’ve observed this effect, and had not idea there was a name for it.
I believe in-depth discussion of the consequences of the Dunning–Kruger effect in society should become a part of primary- and secondary-school educational programs. I think that simple awareness of this psychological-effect would clear quite a bit of societal chaos and create a greater order of calm among the populous, insofar as popular discourse goes.
The more aware people are of the problem, the easier it is to spot and cite, not to mention correct. If this concept were to become broadly well-known, and parents became proactively conscious of it, I think it could be worked out of society entirely.
Terror Management / Mortality Salience / Human Behavior:
More or less, my general annoyances with humanity are based in how unaware people are of their own basic motivations.
Things like facebook, twitter, and Google+ are all cathartic mechanisms to escape death. Tiny drops of death salience used as a temporary cure. These things are basic doses of terror management.
Sex with a stranger, or sex with a doting wife; imparted solace in religious ceremony or spiritual delirium; that nervous tick or cigarette; even drug addiction and the act of writing a love poem: These are all hits of death salience, simple ways of escape. In fact, all of culture, and every one of it’s mysterious variants, break down to simple mortality salience.
I was first introduced to the terror management theory and the concept of mortality salience and it’s influence on human behavior via the documentary film Flight From Death – The Quest for Immortality
After watching the documentary I became fascinated by this area of study and equally fascinated by the fact that I’d made it as long in my life as I had without being aware of such an obvious concept (mortality salience). The only explanation for this lapse that I’ve been able to come up with is that I’ve lived in the South-East for my entire life, and the majority of my life in what many refer to as ‘the Bible Belt;’ it’s somewhat understandable that this kind of cognition would be suppressed, here.
After Flight From Death – The Quest for Immortality
There is no doubt that this is a horrifying subject for many, because of the reality that it faces. Even thinking about death for some is too much. I believe this is as learned a disorder as any other, primarily drawn from mangled explanations of death in the early, developmental years of life. We all, for the most part, have to face death in the first ten-years of our lives, some more than others; it’s something that is nearly-inevitable. Because most adults are ill-equipped to deal with death themselves they offer an augmented, if not retarded view of the subject, and infuse this worldview into their children. In affect-of-disorder framing, it’s easy to see the cyclical implications of the problem.
It is outside the scope of this post, to really get into the problems that come with the quest for mortality salience in many cases, but I highly recommend that everyone watch Flight From Death – The Quest for Immortality
My opinion: If there ever were a method of realistically unifying the field of psychology and psychiatric therapy, it is through the concept of mortality salience and terror management theory.
I believe that terror management theory and the concept of ‘mortality salience‘ should be talked about at length in primary- and secondary-school educational programs. I believe that knowing of, and fully understanding the inner-workings of one’s own behavioral patterns and motivations will lead to a greater sense of peace, especially if the psyche is ‘adjusted’ to the concept at an early age. Late-discovery seems to be somewhat traumatic, and has a longer plain of adjustment.
Lifestyle Design:
Lifestyle design is something that I became conscious of five-or-six years ago, but only in the last two years have I begun implementing techniques into my daily life. For the most part the most valuable principles of lifestyle design are automation, outsourcing, and minimum-effective dose.
Essentially the goal of lifestyle design is to free yourself from basic chores and mindless operations in order to allow you to live the life you want to live, and not become bogged down with mundane, tedious daily tasks. Lifestyle design, at a base level, also aligns a person to the more sustainable knowledge-work economy of the future by gaining a familiarity with techniques and technologies.
I won’t try and completely detail any one technique, but instead point-out three books that ushered me into this way of thinking.
Book List:
1. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Expanded and Updated)
2. The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
3. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
So, My New Year Comes With A Set Of Resolutions (affirmations):
Become as Self-Reliant as possible and begin the move to a sustainable lifestyle, in 2012.
Retrofit the house to be as energy and resource efficient as possible, in 2012.
Don’t use the government for anything and pay as little in taxes as possible, in 2012.
Be prepared, composed, and proactive as much as possible.
Spend another year clean of nicotine.
Work proactively to cultivate a less food-oriented, more active lifestyle.
Finish the two book I’m writing and get them to market.