Don’t Fall for the Narrative

I called it.

In late 2019 I recorded a YouTube video predicting how 2020 would pan out. I didn’t foresee the coronavirus or the protests over the murder of George Floyd, of course, but I knew exactly where the sentiment was headed and more or less knew what would happen.

The culture has been on a downward spiral for a while. With each passing year, ideas like personal responsibility, optimism, and even basic secular humanistic values have continued to diminish. I predicted that the negativity would reach an all-time high in 2020.

Why? Because it’s an election year. As someone who has studied persuasion and marketing for years, I know there’s one tool more powerful than all others when it comes to getting people to do what you want — fear.

If you can make someone afraid, exacerbate their frustrations, and make yourself out to be the solution, you can get someone to pretty much do anything you want them to do. And that’s exactly what you see going on right now.

Now, our overlords didn’t cook up a virus or cause some piece of shit cop to murder an innocent man, but the law of numbers dictates that they’d find something to latch onto and ride all the way to November.

I predicted that during 2020, society would fracture into two camps — helpless, outraged, demoralized people who’d be more than willing to outsource all their thinking to the government and a group of reasonable, logical, sane people who would focus on doing well for themselves in spite of the times. Again, I was right on the money.

Which side do you want to be on? This is an important decision for you to make and it’s a decision you need to make quickly. See, you think you’re immune to deception and manipulation. You think your participation in the political outrage game is benign, but it’s not.

I have more than enough examples that show how a demoralized populace can be taken advantage of and be made to do all sorts of things — the worst things. Don’t think you’re special.

What should you do instead of taking the bait? Join my side. What side am I on? I’m on the side of the sovereign. I’m not asking you to believe what I believe, I’m asking you to think for yourself. I’m on the side of people who understand that, for the most part, we’re better off than we ever have been.

The narrative would have you think the sky is falling. There’s no positivity on social media right now. Hell, there’s barely any positivity on here. I’ve continued writing about the subject I know best, self-improvement, and I think it’s more applicable now than ever. But, of course, my stats have dipped because outrage is just the soup du jour. That’s fine with me. Becuase I know everything will pick back up after November. We’re in a re-run, people.

I’ve seen so many writers hard pivot to negativity. For what? If self-improvement doesn’t work during hard times, it’s worthless. If you so easily bend to the will of the crowd, then you’re not meant to be a writer in the first place. Real writers don’t kowtow, they stand firm in their beliefs no matter what.

So, no, I will not start talking about how oppressed I am because, personally, I’m not. I will not make outrage porn for clicks and pretend I see the world in a crazy negative light because I don’t. And I definitely won’t start pandering and being overly politically correct because it’s so cringy, lame, dorky, gross, insincere, and useless. Nancy Pelosi in a Kente cloth, really dude?

Remember the lessons I’ve taught you — two things can be true at the same time. On the one hand, tragedies have occurred. And through a certain prism, you can make a justifiable argument the world has gone to shit.

On the other hand, there’s massive upside to be had, right now. During a pandemic and a social revolution, I’ve maintained and increased my business — a black man in America. A former felon black man in America who still has a criminal record right now. Winning.

I’ve seen others do the same — buying stocks during the blood bath, creating new products, and selling them during an economic crisis, starting brand new businesses, enriching themselves responsibly without profiting directly from tragedy — people who look like me.

What’s the difference between myself and others? I choose to focus on what’s useful. I know institutionalized and systematic racism exists. Duh. But does that mean I have to be destined for failure? No. Our overlords infantilize us. They use prejudice in the form of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

You’re so marginalized that you have no chance of success in life even though you’re a grown adult. Nope, you’re just screwed. You don’t have any level of intelligence, grit, or resolve to overcome your obstacles. Just ride out your life without any success and die waiting for your saviors to fix the problem. What an uplifting message.

I’ve never looked at myself that way, even in the worst of times in my life, and neither should you. As soon as the world opens up and I’m allowed to, I’m going to give as many speeches as I can, for free, to minorities and low-income kids so that I can tell them the exact opposite message than they’re getting from society. We’re just allowing mass scale propaganda to poison the minds of our youth in the name of votes for the pundits and moral superiority for the populace of martyrs disguised as activists. It’s gross.

The process is so simple, repetitive, and obvious. Demoralize people close to election time, make BS promises, win the election, do jack nada for 4 years, repeat the cycle over and over again. How old are you? How much has your life changed between administrations on a personal level? What has the media done for you in this time? Uplifted you? Shown examples of hope? Or cherry-pick as much salacious negative content as possible to trigger you?

It’s bad. People have plugs in the back of their necks. They repeat contrived narratives, talking points, hot takes, little idea viruses, word for word. No amount of facts, reason, or logic can save them. Political robots who have sacrificed their soul simply because they can’t face the slightly psychologically difficult process of finding a purpose for their life.

That’s all this is — lack of purpose. As soon as you find something meaningful to you that gives you a tiny bit of financial flexibility, you’re fine. I wrote an article about how self-improvement and economic empowerment is the key to social justice. People are broke and sad, that’s the issue. If we fix the brokenness and sadness one person at a time, many of these issues would melt away. That won’t happen on a collective level, so focus on doing it yourself.

Don’t fall for the narrative. You can be what you want to be in this life regardless of your immutable characteristics. If you’ve read my writing for a while, did you become a fan because I’m black or because you like my writing? Exactly. I have 66,000 followers who felt my message was good enough for them to want more of it. I out-earn droves of white writers because…my writing is better than theirs. Feels like meritocracy to me.

Life isn’t perfectly fair, injustices happen, and there’s residue from the past that creates disproportionate negative effects on groups — this is irrefutable. But that doesn’t automatically equate to a death sentence. The narrative wants you to see no way out except for looking for a savior. The narrative wants you to become wholly dependent on the narrators.

If you take the bait right now, you’re in for a decades-long awful ride. Trust me. 2020 is the tip of the iceberg. Pay attention to history and get a passport, maybe a safe and some cash too. I’m not joking. In the minds of the demoralized, the word will continue to literally and figuratively crash and burn. If you want to circumvent that world, you have to change the way you think.

Do you know what would be the most massive, effective, and truly revolutionary thing we could do as a society? We could just stop listening to them. We could all just focus on our own individual self-improvement first, share our resources with those in need, educated each other, trade with each other, work with each other, collectively get off the narrator’s tit altogether.

Then, they’d have no power over us. That’s the thing. Their power is one hundred percent psychological. Us normal people outnumber them by orders of magnitude. If we all stopped playing their game, there’s nothing they could do. Again, that won’t happen, so focus on you.

Ask yourself how you want the rest of this year to turn out for you. If you’ve been playing the outrage game, ask yourself what it has done for you. Has it improved anything? Do you feel better? Do you see a structural change or simply a surface level psychological one? What will happen if your side wins the holy war? Will you be better off because of it? Or will your victory be a pyrrhic one — you won the fight but destroyed your psyche in the process?

Consider this both a warning and a piece of encouragement at the same time.

You can be upset at injustice without taking the outrage bait. You can engage in your civic duty and personal development at the same time.

You can understand the world has problems, the world has always had problems, yet not use those problems as an excuse for you to personally stay helpless.

You can think for yourself. You can be optimistic in a world full of pessimists and thrive while everyone else falls apart. You can help those receptive to your message and wish the best for those who don’t or can’t.

This is what I’m doing. Join me. Trust me.