In the not too distant future, there will be a vaccine, cure, or reliable treatment for co-vid 19. The election will be over. The economy will have recovered.
The question is, what will your life look like at this point?
You can look back and be proud of yourself because you adapted to the situation, found a way to level up, or at least kept yourself from bathing in outrage the entire time.
Or, you can look back with regret because you spent months to years in a state of constant panic when nothing personally happened to you.
I’m painting with a broad brush, but these two scenarios are the scenarios most of us will find ourselves in. Yes, there are true tragedies occurring all over the world. Yes, politics matters and has an influence on our daily lives. Injustice still exists in society.
But at this point in time, you have to decide which game you’re going to play. You can either play your game or you can play their game.
One game gives you a chance at a better life. The other game puts you into an even deeper helpless position.
The people who play the former game understand that they can only control their actions. The people playing the latter game are outsourcing their agency to the worst kinds of people.
Let’s go deeper.
Play the Game Society Wants You to Play
“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” – Thomas Sowell
It’s frustrating that so many people don’t understand the power of incentives. They look at institutions and leaders as benevolent. Or, even if they don’t see these people as angels, they still somehow think that they’re going to ‘help out the team’ at the end of the day.
The ‘lesser of two evils’ argument helps people feel better on an emotional level but changes nothing on a structural level. Why? Because the incentives drive ‘evil’ behavior on all sides.
You need to understand the ‘powers that be.’ The rational choice for them is to gaslight you, make you dependent on them, and never actually solve your problems.
The profit is in the problems.
Some examples:
- Institutions and leaders dedicating to solving a problem are incentivized not to solve it, because solving the problem means they lose their jobs and income
- Let’s say somehow the world became 99% good and equal. The media would just heavily report on the one percent of negativity and injustice because negative emotions drive more clicks
- Politicians are incentivized to get elected, meaning they will always choose short-term band-aids or pandering to initiating change via delayed gratification, which is the only change that really works
- The short term vs. long term thinking problem is huge in every institution because actually solving a problem down the road while appearing to do nothing in the present is career suicide
- When you look at profit incentives, just understand that no unprofitable narrative would be promulgated. If the social justice movements aimed squarely at the pocketbooks of institutions, they’d be quashed immediately
I believe there are good journalists, good leaders of movements, and good members of companies and institutions, but the incentives laced into this political culture war are such that no problems will actually be solved and the narrative will remain dark and gloomy regardless of reality itself.
The narrative is so divorced from reality at this point that there’s only one logical choice to make.
Play the Only Game You Have a Chance of Winning
“Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up. – Barack Obama
I’ve had my best professional year in 2020. So have many other people who look like me. How? We just don’t buy into the narrative.
Instead of looking at the downside, we focus on the upside. This doesn’t mean we pretend a downside doesn’t exist. It’s simply not productive to focus on it.
Look at your own life. Do you have some disadvantages you have no control over? Sure. But think about it deeply. Really, think. Which route will work better? Complaining and screaming at the sky, even if you’re right? Or exhausting your energy and the available resources you do have?
You know the answer.
You have to stop lying to yourself. Deep down, you know you could do more. There are so many ways to thrive in 2020 it’s laughable that people complain.
You could check out books from the library on investing, real estate, tech, philosophy, history, business, psychology, etc for free and spend all your spare time reading, but you don’t.
You could watch endless hours of YouTube or buy some cheap online courses to learn how to start a business, but you don’t.
Hell, some of the people who were making more money on unemployment than their jobs could’ve taken that excess cash and invested in while maintaining their living standards. I’m guessing few did that.
You’d think that with so many people having so much free time that we’d have a revolution of entrepreneurial and creative growth, but we didn’t see that.
Why? Because people are full of shit. You know it. I know it. We all know it. Let’s just call a spade a spade. The vast majority of people living in the Western World are oppressed by their own minds and nothing more.
You have to determine how much of your oppression is caused by you or caused by the world. Only you know the answer. Either way, though, the correct conclusion is to work on yourself and level up as much as possible.
Why? Simple.
Think About It
“You are scared of dying—and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different than being dead?” Seneca
You don’t have time.
You don’t have time to waste on analyzing geopolitics. “I want to stay informed.” You’re hiding. Stop.
Here’s some information for you: you will die.
You will die and not only will you not have achieved your own goals, but you wouldn’t have saved the world either. I don’t know the degree to which you’re suffering from this, but how much is staying informed actually helping?
How is it helping you?
What are you gaining from it?
What are your actions doing to cause any change on a macro scale?
You know the answer. This entire post is me reminding you that you know the answer, you know what to do, and you know what you’re doing wrong. Snap out of it.
Human beings are pretty smart. Deep down, most people observing what’s going on now see that this is absolutely ludicrous.
There are some people on the fringes who truly believe the dogma, but most people know deep down this is all BS. Even if they buy the narrative on the surface, the cognitive dissonance from it has to be driving them nuts.
We have a society of people in the middle of the bell curve being bullied and terrorized into participating in this BS culture proxy war.
But you can just opt out altogether. Today. Right now.
Trust me, you’ll feel much better after letting go of the weight of the world. Make your life better. There are enough ‘freedom fighters’ working for the ’cause.’ They don’t need you. The machine doesn’t mind a few cogs missing, so get out.
At this point, I look at self-improvement as a life-saving tool. There may be a time where you’ll need the resources to flee because of the consequences of this trumped-up war. Always be prepared.
Remember, you should want to live your life to the fullest regardless of what happens in the world. Why? Because it’s yours.