“You can wish in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first.”
Here’s my beef with the doomsday writers who talk about how society is rigged against you.
Many of their diagnoses of the state of society are correct. I actually agree with most of what they say. The key difference between me and them is that I live in the real world. In the real world, you have no choice but to deal with the cards you’re dealt. In the real world, utopian solutions will never come to reality.
Somehow they, and their followers, seem to have little to no faith in the system yet look to the system to solve their problems. It’s a real head-scratcher.
Remember my mantra: nobody is coming to save you.
Do you think the oligarchs are going to hand over their reigns and let the little guy and gal win? Do you really, in your heart of hearts, think there will ever be some sort of massive sweeping change that will make most of the people in society happy?
Really?
Look, I feel for people. If anything, I’m overly aggressive and harsh because I just don’t see any other way to effectively communicate. I’m not optimistic about ‘society’ at all. Society as a whole is royally fucked make no mistake about it.
You have to look out for number one and help those around you where you can. It’s the only viable option.
In this article, I’m going to point out the things that unfairly affect your life. I’m going to let you off the hook and talk about the things that aren’t your fault. Let me honor your gripes sincerely. After that, we will talk about what you’re going to do about it.
The Biggest Crooks Rob You Without a Gun
You’re getting poorer and it’s not your fault. Honestly, the more I learn about the games ‘they’ play with our money the more it pisses me off. The federal reserve printed 40 percent of the entire money supply that has ever existed in just a year or so.
If they can print all of this money out of thin air, why don’t they just give some to us? Well, they did do that in the form of stimulus checks. Where did the money from those checks go? Right back into the pockets of the mega-corporations you were forced to spend your money with because small businesses got shut down.
So the money supply is completely diluted. The latest CPI numbers say inflation rose by 6.8% year over year but the real inflation number is much higher than that.
Low-interest rates mean rich people can borrow money essentially for free and pour it right back into assets that went up because of inflation and the fact that the markets are artificially propped up by quantitative easing.
Long story short: you get poorer and the rich get richer.
You can either complain or get in the game and try to get richer yourself. If inflation means your money is worth less than it used to be you have to make more money and/or invest into those assets that inflate.
Either that or you can continue to get poorer. It’s not fair, but those are literally your options.
An Equal Society is Literally Impossible
I can see why some people don’t want to get life advice from a 6 foot three, attractive, white male, who grew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood.
I get it.
We all get a set of advantages and disadvantages based on things we have zero control over. People have biases against one another that don’t even register on a conscious level. When you’re attractive, people treat you better and even pay you more. Taller men are seen as more competent and better leaders than shorter ones.
Women who negotiate for salary will be seen as ‘bitchy’ and overly aggressive whereas men will be seen as assertive. Black people score low in pretty much every financial and career metric that matters. Tell white men who live in the Appalachian mountains they have privilege when living simply living in isolated mountainous regions lowers your life expectancy and increases poverty.
I could write a list of more than 1,000 variables that affect your circumstances in life. With so many variables to factor, it is impossible to create a level playing field. Pull one lever and it affects another one.
The bottom line is: you have to be you, advantages and disadvantages included. I’m all for equality and we should work to make things as level as possible, but it’s a tricky tricky game and every action has a reaction. It will never be even and thanks to the law of unintended consequences, other problems will arise as a result of previous solutions.
In the end, there’s nothing left but the individual. Maybe you’ll have to work harder to get the same results as someone else but, what else are you going to do if you want the results? What choice do you have?
You Have Zero Control Over This (So Don’t Even Try)
Your boss passed you up for a promotion because he was buddy with your co-worker. Your spouse cheats on you. A friend backstabbed you. 50 percent of the population has the exact opposite political beliefs as you. Someone leaves a negative comment on your blog post.
One of the most liberating things for me has been totally letting go of caring about what other people do. You can’t control other people. You can’t get them to think the way you want to think or behave the way you want to behave.
At best, you can influence behavior. And you can usually only do that either by example or if they’re someone who was prone to listening to you in the first place. Other than that, you’re S.O.L.
A couple of useful rules of thumb:
- Assume that other people don’t change and never will
- Arguing with people who have profound disagreements with you is a huge waste of time and never works
- Don’t focus on the way you want someone to be, focus on the way they truly seem to be
Once you get it in your head that some people are just going to be the way they are because they can’t help themselves, it saves you a lot of unnecessary stress and tension. Stop trying to get others to ‘see the light’ who want to stay in the cave.
You can’t control other people, but you do have to deal with them. Use those assumptions as a guide so you don’t get thrown off guard. People give you clues and signs as to who they are from the jump. It’s up to you to spot them.
We Are All Pawns
Similar to what I alluded to in the first point about money, we’re all just chess pieces in a giant geopolitical game whether we like it or not.
Honestly, it baffles me to see how fervent people are about politics and how hard they cheer for their teams even though nothing ever changes. I think it’s a coping mechanism for some people. They just have to believe and have faith that someone is looking out for them even though no one is.
Yes, sometimes getting what you want politically can make a tangible benefit in your life, but they never actually do what we really want them to do.
Picture a world where somehow the Democrats had some sort of monarch-like control over the government, would they really pass universal healthcare, give mothers a full year off of work, or create a $25/minimum wage? Wishful thinking.
Or imagine a fully conservative-led regime. Would they really shrink the budget and run a budget surplus, go back to their isolationist roots and stop fighting pointless wars, and pass shrewd succinct libertarian style bills? Nah.
They’ve both been given opportunities to do things their constituents want and they don’t actually do them. The reason is very simple:
“No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are No. 1 and No. 2. Whatever is No. 3 is far behind”. – Thomas Sowell
They will play with your emotions, and your life, without ever giving you what you actually want, ever. So, you can either try to set up a life where their power games affect you as little as humanly possible or you can wait for them to fix your problems.
Which one do you think has a better chance of working?
Look In the Mirror and At Your Life Right Now
You can’t control the exact spot you find yourself in right now. A bunch of different factors led to the present moment. You caused some of them and some of them happened to you.
It’s up to you to decide what to do next as well as who to listen to. At this point in my career, I’m done telling people what to do at all. I just want you to think. What is your life going to be like in the future based on your current circumstances?
Let’s say you want to change things. Think deeply about what’s necessary to make those changes. Think, in your heart of hearts, about whether or not someone or something is going to make some huge difference in your life.
Will that magical bill get passed?
Will you suddenly start getting paid what you deserve?
Are the people around you going to behave the way you think they should?
Are we going to have world peace and a big kumbaya session?
Will we create some billionaire tax they don’t find a way to get out of?
Will politicians who get paid under the table by lobbies…ban lobbying?
Are evil pharmaceutical companies going to become benevolent?
Is an equal society possible?
Think about it. Minus your biases and minus what you wish would happen. Take fair out of the equation. The world isn’t fair at all. In fact, it’s often very cruel and callous. I accept that. Do you?
Some people want to complain. Others want to imagine a fairytale world that will never exist. I choose to look at what has a chance of truly changing vs. what doesn’t and I just go from there.
I suggest you do the same.