Things I've Been Thinking About, Vol. 4
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As usual, most of my writing ideas remain short tidbits. Most of them don’t turn into full essays. Here is another list of those thoughts, dumped into a post for your amusement.
One of my most controversial opinions is that life doesn’t get any better than this. Neither better computers, nor better science, nor being an interplanetary species is going to solve any of our problems.
Man is his own worst enemy for the precise reason that he tries so hard to understand himself and the entire universe. When he could simply make the decision to be happy, productive, and generous. Technology, progress, and reason don’t help with that — in fact they impede it. You can “reason” yourself right out of a great life.
You often hear people talk about the “burden” of certain things — citing social pressures or cultural expectations as the problem. As if those burdens are being imposed by patriarchy, or capitalism, or some other external force.
If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want the “burden” of parenthood, doesn’t want the “burden” of laboring for a romantic relationship, doesn’t want the “burden” of maintaining social ties, doesn’t want the “burden” of having to do basic things to build a decent life, then what you actually want is death. Because those are the things life consists of. Neither society nor capitalism imposed those things upon you; those are what life is.
Sometimes I speak in a way that sounds harsh or judgmental. It’s because I believe in generalizations. They’re not perfect, but they work. They’re useful.
If you can find a combination of words that is true 8 or 9 times out of 10, then it’s worth saying out loud.
There are exceptions to every rule. Everyone who knows anything about anything knows that. I don’t have to say that every time I say something. So I don’t.
The reason our policies suck is because they’re run by 90-year-olds.
The reason our conversations suck is because they’re run by 19-year-olds.
The extremely old and the extremely young run our country, and we wonder why nothing is getting done for the rest of us. On one side, the rigidly self-interested and incompetent; on the other, the naive and incompetent. The country is supposed to be run by those who have the most skin in the game, and who are the most in touch with reality: the 30-to-50-year-olds.
The single sexiest thing you can do as a man is be up to something. And I don’t mean up to something nefarious or manipulative. I mean be engaged in goals. Actions. Movement.
Give your wife a back rub and don’t sit around waiting for it to turn into sex. Finish the back rub, put a kiss on her shoulder, stand up, and go work on something. She will love that your energy is active. Like you took time before doing something else to give her affection. Like you’re still a man with a plan... and that she is part of that plan.
Give her flowers and then go do something else. Don’t desperately sit around looking at her, hoping she’ll be pleased.
In other words, don’t be desperate. Be up to your own stuff.
The best way to make people come to a thing is to make it optional, predictable, and low-stakes. When you take away all of their reasons for avoiding or cancelling, people will probably show up just for what we used to call fun. Just because why not.
This applies to everything from a wedding to a weekly coffee meetup.
Something to say to assholes: You’re winning at a game that I feel no need to play.
When someone ignores attempts at nuance, they aren’t worth talking to.
Even if you’re on a stage in front of 4,000 people — if you make attempts at nuance and someone still treats your opinions in black and white, just stand up and leave. The conversation is not going to be productive.
Some people only have 2 colors on their palette: black and white. They refuse to paint with greys. These people are not worth talking to, because their entire view of the world is idealized. They don’t live in reality, and they won’t argue about reality. They’ll argue about perfect ideals that the world can’t even live up to. Their opinions are not useful in the real world.
If someone’s career depends on making you unhappy, don’t listen to them.
It doesn’t matter how much pain life and people put you through — if you become bitter, you’ll never have happy relationships again. Not only because you’ll stop earnestly trying to have great relationships, but because bitter is a stink that human beings can smell a mile away.
In a way this is freeing. Because it just means that no matter what happens, you have to accept it. You don’t even have to waste time considering whether to become bitter.
Americans are afflicted with the disease of boredom-induced self-importance. We have too much time to sit around thinking about ourselves. And it leads us to some wild conclusions, like “I’m interesting” and “my problems are interesting.”
Some men complain that they have to “become,” “provide,” and “earn.” And yet the ones who are willing to be a little bit used for their resources and status end up in relationships.
Some women complain that men sexually objectify them. And yet the ones who are willing to be a little bit used for sex end up in relationships.
You can tell life how it ought to be, or you can accept life as it is and play the game being played.
Related: in my opinion, one of the most important things a man can do is to volunteer to be a blunt instrument. If your woman (or anyone else) needs help moving something, throw your body weight at it. Tell her to use you, to direct you, until the job is done.
This isn’t a submissive thing to do, at all; it makes you sturdy and manly. People admire men who get things done. Especially if they get them done with their hands and brute strength. Women might pretend they don’t like that, but they do.
Also related: if you’re in a wonderful relationship, you stand in awe of your partner. How giving they are, how hard they work, how much they embody the sacred feminine or masculine.
This is the closest thing in my life to the concept of “worship,” and I think it’s the right word. When you worship your partner, not only is it a sign that you’re in a great relationship, but you also bring out the best in him or her. A loving romantic relationship is sacred. Heavenly.
One way to think about the difference between communism and capitalism is systems. Communism erects one system and uses it to handle everything. The problem is, there is no single system that can handle everything. That’s an utterly foolish way to think, and that system will always be doomed to failure.
Capitalism has its flaws, but what it does right is it allows people and groups to build their own systems. And, as a general rule, the best system wins. The system that delivers the best output wins. This incentivizes people to not only participate, but to create. Because if you build a good system, you get to win.
The reason I came to dislike politics is because it made people willing to dismiss entire relationships over issues that don’t even impact them.
In the U.S., we treat education as the be-all end-all marker of status. Experts are hailed for their degrees, regardless of whether they have any common sense. Marrying below your educational level is considered marrying “down.”
But there are many more important things in life than mere “knowledge.” Having a great lifestyle, an emotionally rich life, and great relationships will always be the true marker of status. In other words, how lucky would someone be, to be part of your life? How good are you at making people happy? Those are things a degree can’t say.
Religious stories are not optional. You can either worship something from the past, or you can worship something in the present.
Older tends to be better. Which is why, when we published the Bible, it was already thousands of years old.
“Facts don’t care about your feelings” is true. But “feelings don’t care about your facts” is also true.
Sometimes the facts need to win, for the sake of sanity and being realistic. Society needs to be based on things that actually work. But sometimes you have to remember that if people don’t get to feel they’re living out a good story, they don’t want to participate at all.
As with anything in life, both are true.
Perhaps the reason we’re so confused about our lives is because we started thinking The New York Times was a valid source for culture and lifestyle commentary, instead of our grandmothers.
Block people who are always angry. That kind of energy is contagious. It infects your thoughts, vibrating underneath every interaction you have. No matter how good someone’s ideas seem, it’s not worth listening to them if they’re always angry.
A perfect example is Tucker Carlson. He has this perpetual look and tone of judgment and disdain, even when speaking to people he agrees with. He’s just an extraordinarily unpleasant person. And that kind of unpleasantness is contagious.
The right looks at its opponents as merely lacking in common sense. The left looks at its opponents as morally repulsive all the way down to the very core of their being.
One of the hardest parts of getting sober (or, more generally, growing up) was learning that forgiveness is sort of a paradox. And it’s a paradox that you have to voluntarily participate in.
You have to learn to understand the reasons why people have done what they’ve done, and forgive them for it, while also taking full accountability for your own behavior as choices. In other words, you’re responsible for everything you’ve ever done wrong, and other people are kind-of sort-of not. It makes no sense, but it’s the only way to let go of all of the things that are making you unhappy.
(Note: this does not mean you have to tolerate destructive people, or bad patterns of behavior, in your life. When someone shows you who they are, believe them, forgive them, and then leave them.)
I don’t listen to people who make excuses to have bad relationships.
If someone ignores advice or wisdom that is just plainly good and sane and reasonable, they’re just making excuses to have bad relationships. They want to have a relationship with sorrow, not other people.
“Society tells us to...” — no. Some people tell you some things, and other people tell you other things. Listen to who you want to listen to, and stop claiming that “society” is ruining your ability to make decisions. You live in the most free society in the history of the planet, and you can literally do whatever you want.
People who oversimplify cultural narratives are trying to sell you something.
Kids don’t learn from the influences they need, they learn from the influences that are available.
If we want the next generation to be competent, grounded, and healthy, we have to step up as men and take a personal interest in being good influences. That means things like working with our hands, doing hard things, and adoring their mothers.
And that also means we have to keep them off of screens, where their senses are attacked by a never ending torrent of bad influences. We have to be good influences and make ourselves the influences that are available to their senses.
You are the sum total of the actions you take.
Your intentions don’t matter, your beliefs don’t matter, your would haves and should haves do not matter. All the universe knows is what you have stood up and done. The story you tell yourself about yourself is fiction unless it matches reality. The story of your life is the story that other people tell about you. If you don’t live out that story, they won’t tell it.
Happiness isn’t a state that you can administrate your way into with logistics and pills. It’s a state that is earned by being useful to other people and by living out a story worth living out.
If your whole theory of happiness is an internal process, you miss the opportunity to be part of something bigger than yourself — and subsequently, to actually find happiness.
Going to the gym is masculine. Spending the whole time looking at yourself in the mirror is feminine.
The church died when it replaced the pipe organ with the electric guitar.
The electric guitar is great, but it’s not holy.
“Bitterness is a greater failure than failure.” - James Richardson
on relationship, it took me some years to understand, young people often define love by the Highs: the harder two people laugh and party together, the deeper the love; whereas true love is often defined by the Lows: the easier a couple can live with each other's most insufferable moments, the deeper the love.
superficial love is Max [Max]; real love is Max [Min].
i also feel a lot of things in life can be examined through the Max and Min framework. on another topic you also touched upon, Communism vs Capitalism for example, i feel there's a similar analogy..
another way to think of Communism's one system and Capitalism's many, is that I think Communism is a system that maximizes extremes. When it does things right, it can be very right and very effective. (See china's past 25 years economic miracle.) but when it's wrong, it crumbles. (See USSR collapse.)
whereas Capitalism is a system that minimizes mistakes. Every thing gets a chance to reset every four years. Even the best president cant rule for life, nor the worst. The course always corrects.