Category: Purpose

Heaven, Atheists, and Happiness

“Heaven, darling. Heaven. At least get the zip code right.” – The Prophecy

If all dogs go to Heaven, I expect cats go to Purr-gatory?

Life has often been seen by me as a series of delayed gratification games.  It’s like an “If – Then” statement.  Something like:

  • If I go to work and work really hard and save money in my 401k, then when I retire I can have fun.

This first one is one that we’re told from when we’re little.  Work hard now, and get the rewards later.  And, for the most part, it’s true.  Like the old Chinese proverb, “Try the crunchy bat!  It’s tasty, if a bit undercooked!”  “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.  The next best time is today.”

Over time, hard work really does pay dividends.  But the downside of that fairy tale is that you’re going to have far more fun when you’re thirty than when you’re ninety.  I’m not saying I don’t want to live as long as possible, but understanding that if all you do is work until you’re used up, you never did learn to have fun.

Oops.

I also know a lumberjack who logs a lot of hours.

  • If I work hard now, I can make money now, and go back later and get in better shape.

This is one I fell for.  I can put in a 3,000 hour year for two years in a row, right?  Well, I could.  But if I spent all the rest of my time with family, then when was there time for me?  This is a tradeoff that looks a lot like the first, but probably has a more significant health toll, since the reason you’re working 3,000 hours in the first place isn’t because the work is stress-free.

Strangely, the healthcare program was also the retirement program.

  • If I’m good on Earth, and have faith, when I die I can go to Heaven.

Now, I’m going to start off with this:  I know that there are atheists and agnostics that are here.  Bear with me.  I’m not.  But the nice thing about all of the atheists that comment here is that none of them are atheists because they hate God, it’s because they don’t believe.  Those kinds of atheists roll their eyes because to them we folks who believe are goofy.

That’s okay.

I asked my atheist friend why he celebrated Christmas.  He looked at me and said, “Well, you celebrate Valentine’s day and no one likes you.”

It’s my theory that atheists that hate God hate Him because they think He gave them a raw deal.  But that’s based on a sample size of two.  My theory may suck, but for the two atheists who hated God that I knew, well, they were constantly angry at Him because of the way that their lives had turned out.  For whatever reason, I haven’t seen the haters show up here often.

But the point I’m going to make is a new point to me, because just like points one and two, I believed point three until I really thought about it.  Then I realized:

  • I was being really stupid. I believe I had Help in this realization.

My realization was simple.  To the extent that I structure my life for a reward that only occurs after my heart stops beating, well, that’s goofy.  Sure, I have faith.  But why am I waiting when I can have all of the benefits now.

The inventor of AutoCorrect was an atheist.  He’ll go to he’ll.

This is where I pick the atheists back up.  From their standpoint, that they live a mayfly existence, a one-shot of being born, getting a driver’s license, getting a job, retiring, and then ceasing to be.  They have to get meaning, as much meaning as they can out of life, now.

But even if you have faith that there’s an afterlife, you can have the benefits that most people think about being tied to Heaven, now.

  • Peace
  • Love
  • Calmness
  • Virtue
  • Certainty
  • Hope

It was my own (very bad) If-Then thinking that said to suffer now for bliss later.

Nope.  Now, you still have to be as good as you can.  You can’t actually get the benefits listed on the label if you’re not good.  For instance, if you know you’re doing something wrong, say juggling kittens, you’ll never be at peace.  Likewise, if your primary focus is pursuing, um, “physical affection,” you’ll never know actual love until you start looking for actual love.

The Tibetan monk was shocked when he saw Jesus’ face in a tub of margarine – “I can’t believe it’s not Buddha!”

Is life still hard work?  Yes.  Enjoy it.  It’s making you better.

Does life still involve pain?  Yes.  Embrace it.  It gives you a contrast, and often a lesson so you’ll learn.

Does life still involve sadness?  Certainly.  Use it to mourn for those who have left us.

Does life still involve difficulty?  Every day.  Be calm.  See the beauty and hope that come from avoiding fear.

And, if you’re not an atheist, use every moment that you can to get closer to God, because, after all, what is Heaven, anyway?

Magic and Money: More Related Than You Think

“It was the most amazing magic trick I’ve ever seen.” – The Prestige

Mimes aren’t magicians, they just have obstacle illusions.

This is a post about finance.  It’s an awesome one, so bear with me.

I’ve always been a bit of a ham.  When I was in third grade, I got up and did impressions and sang a song.  This was in front of the entire school on talent night, Kindergarten through Senior, and all their parents.  My impressions were horrible.  My singing was worse.

The next year, I got to play a drunken uncle in our fourth grade play.  I’m not making that up.  I had a flask and everything, and the teacher pinned the neck tie of my costume up over my shoulder, since drunks apparently can’t wear a tie properly.  However, you can bet that I delivered my lines with the best drunken slur a fourth grader can muster.

It was another time and place, where we could make jokes with the idea of being funny.  If they did a play like that today, I’m sure that the school district would be shut down, burned, and exorcised from Twitter™ and Facebook®.  I mean, the parents in the play were a man and a woman played . . . by a boy and a girl.  And they were married. And they didn’t have tattoos.

Sacrilege!

The floor collapsed during the fourth grade play.  I guess I was going through a stage.

As I’ve mentioned before, I lived pretty far out on Wilder Mountain.  The nearest kid to my house lived nine miles away.  The nearest McDonalds™ at that time was a two hour car trip.  So, a trip to a magic store was entirely out of the question.  But then came college.

Where I was still a ham.

In college, I was living near Capitol City, and they did have a magic store.  So, I bought three magic tricks.  All three were fun, because they were professional grade, and if you had the mechanical dexterity to open a beer can, you could do very professional, close up magic.

One was a coin trick.

COVID shut down the mint?  It makes no cents.

It’s still my favorite trick.  I haven’t done it in years, but it’s fun to do.  First, I’d show the person I’m doing the trick with (we’ll call them “Mark”) two coins – a United States $0.50 coin, and a Mexican 50 centavo coin.  Then, I put the coins into their right hand.  By the time the coins are in their hands, it’s not a half dollar and a 50 centavo piece – it’s now a half dollar and a United States $0.25.

I’d then ask Mark to put one coin in each hand, while his hands were behind his back, so I can’t see them.  Once each hand has a coin in it, I ask them to hold their hands straight out in front of them.  I’d then guess where the $0.50 piece was.

That wasn’t the trick.

Then, regardless of if my guess was correct, I’d bet them something (say, a Coke® or a beer – remember I was in college) that they couldn’t show me the 50 centavo piece.

They’d smile, and then open their hand, and then show me the quarter and look amazed that it wasn’t the 50 centavo piece.

Except the first few times, it didn’t work.  At all.  It’s not that I messed up the trick, one hand had $0.50 in it, and one hand had a quarter.  But the first few times I did the trick, the Mark immediately recognized that it wasn’t the 50 centavo, and knew it was a quarter.

Well, that sucks.

You have no idea how long this meme took.

But then I thought back – at the magic store where I’d bought the trick, the salesman performing the trick had said, “notice how much smaller the 50 centavo piece is than the half dollar.”  I tried that the next time I did the trick.

Perfect.

Mark, merely by my suggestion, had developed the mental image that the 50 centavo piece was small.  Every time I’ve done the trick using that phrase, and I mean every single time, ever, it worked like a charm.  Without saying “notice how much smaller . . .”?  Over half the time the person could tell that the second coin was a quarter.

The next refinement was the reveal.  Remember when I told the Mark to hold his hands out front, and I’d guess which hand had the fifty cent piece in it?  Amazingly, 90% of people put the half dollar into the same hand.  Which hand?  I’m not giving up all of my secrets.

I would, on purpose, guess the wrong hand after telling Mark not to show me the coins, right or wrong.

They’d smile and tell me I was wrong.  They felt awesome – they’d beaten the magician.  Obviously, the trick was going wrong.

All part of the plan.

The next thing I said was, “I bet you a beer Coke™ that you can’t show me the 50 centavo piece,” and then they opened their hand to see an ordinary quarter?  After seeing the quarter, I’d ask Mark to open the other hand where they’d see a normal fifty cent piece.  They were always amazed when I did it right, but in order for the trick to work, I had to say the right things.

The trick paid for itself in, um, beverages and things.  And the Mark didn’t mind – Mark was amused, and I got paid a small fee for that amusement.

But the things that sold the trick wasn’t the mechanics and metal, it was what I was saying, and how I was saying it, and, even being intentionally wrong was part of the final sale.  You can buy this trick yourself, for about $12 – search “Scotch and Soda Trick” on Amazon.

You’re welcome.

But what does this have to do with money?

A lot, actually.

His version of Purple Rain was awful.

Number One – People who sell stuff know how to sell.  Like my magic trick, salesmen do trial and error to learn what works.  If you buy a car every five years from a dealer, and they have contact with 30 customers a week, who has the upper hand?

If you’re listening to a politician who’s spent his entire life just getting elected, what likelihood to you have of understanding their real character and values?  They probably don’t remember them themselves.  If you’re buying a car, a house, or even a burger at McDonalds, they know the game.  There’s a reason that every well-trained McDonalds© employee asks, “Do you want fries with that?”

They know the game.  McDonalds® knows that a potato costs them pennies, but a basket of fries can go for $3.  Profits may be fleeting, but the pant size increase is forever.

One of the tricks that Bernie Madoff used with his customers was to dress very frugally.  Despite the fact that he was stealing billions ($20 billion by the best estimate I found), he knew the game better than his Marks.  He also was selective with clients – he wouldn’t accept just anyone.  No, you had to apply and be approved.  You had to know someone.

Number Two – Knowing the trick is everything.  When I did the coin trick, only I knew what was coming.  It was all scripted, and I knew exactly what the outcome was going to be.  When I asked people to let me guess which hand the coin was in, they thought that was the trick.  No, the trick was that there was no fifty centavo piece.  But because I created the structure, I knew where the trick was.

That’s a tremendous advantage.  I can use that knowledge to create a scenario where I can manipulate emotions to get the reactions and responses I want.  Why?  I control the conditions.  I control the reveal.

What sorts of tricks are out in the world?

  • “No money down.”
  • “I never got your text.”
  • “Yes, I’ll hold your beer, there’s no way this could go wrong.”
  • “No interest for the first six months.”
  • “Housing prices always go up.”
  • “CNN – The Most Trusted Name in News.”

Number Three – Things are rarely as they seem.  Mark saw only what I wanted him to see during the trick, and I carefully made sure by closing his hand around the coins after I put them there.  Then I told him to not let me see when he put the coins in each hand.  Why?  Because I didn’t want him to see what was really going on.

One of the biggest illusions that most people don’t recognize is that our money is entirely made up.  The $ and € and ¥ and £ only have meaning because we give them meaning.  The United States dollar has no backing other than . . . the promise to trade it for a dollar.  That’s it.  And people keep playing the game even though the Federal Reserve™ tells them the dollar will be worth less every year.  On purpose.

Oh, and the Federal Reserve©?  It’s not Federal, and it doesn’t have a Reserve.  Discuss.

Generally, people didn’t believe that the government had a super-secret plan to eavesdrop on all electronic communications from anyone.  Then Edward Snowden showed . . . they have a plan to monitor all electronic communications, everywhere.  When Snowden joined Twitter® he soon had more followers than the National Security Agency.  That’s okay, the NSA follows everyone.

I knew there was a reason my computer has a sticker that says “Intel Inside.”

Number Four – It’s super easy to suggest things to people.  This shocked me.  One time Scott Adams mentioned that in a line at a copier, if you have to make a copy, all you have to do is have a reason to jump the line.  He suggested, “Hey, can I cut in front of you?  I have to make a copy.”  Note that making a copy is exactly what everyone else was doing, but the request, coupled with a reason, seemed to work.  No matter how stupid the reason.

  • Yes, there’s a reason you want ice cream.
  • What, you thought that was impartial?
  • “The Arctic will be ice free by 2013,” – Al Gore.  Hmm.  Trust me.  Next time it really will be.
  • Asking them to do you a small favor. Oddly, this creates a pattern where people are much more likely to do a big favor for you later.  Oh, while you’re at it, hit the subscribe button.  Don’t cost nothin’.
  • Never trust a flatterer.  I had a boss that, one month after he joined the company, wrote a performance review that would have made me think that I needed to apply for the job of Messiah.  Except in my case it made me never trust him.  I was right.
  • Peer Pressure. People like to do what other people consider acceptable, since being socially acceptable is important.  If everyone is doing it, well, I should, too.  I went against the grain, and now Wal-Mart® insists that I wear pants from now on.

Number Five – The person proposing the bet may not have your best interest at heart.  In the example above, I ended up getting a few beverages.  The person involved got an equal exchange.  No one was ever mad – if they had been, I’d have told them to ignore the bet.

But.

I used the name “Mark” for a reason.  It’s what conmen (ever notice that the Politically Correct Police don’t object to that one?) call the object of their scam.  I’ve even been at carnivals where a guy running a game called out, “hey, Mark” to someone walking by to try to get them to break a balloon and win a poster of Gillian Anderson.  Only five dollars a dart!

I wonder if the aliens believed in her?

There are probably a few other examples that I could bring up, but it’s late, and I have to go practice not singing.  Bonus points if you can tell what two impersonations I did in third grade in the comments.

See, I told you this post would be awesome.

Fragility, Resilience, Or Antifragility?

“When we finished he shook our hands and said, ‘Endeavor to persevere!’” – The Outlaw Josey Wales

I guess there are a lot of rivers in France, which makes sense.  Water follows the path of least resistance.

In our lives we have choices in how we react to the world, just like you have a choice of computer passwords.  I tried to choose “hi-hat” but the computer responded that “Sorry, password cannot contain symbols.”

While models always come with limitations, I was struck by an analysis that Vox Day (LINK) posted the other day.  In this, the original author that Vox discusses, Samuel Zilincik, refers to three types of opponents – Fragile, Resilient, and Anti-Fragile.  The author discusses these qualities in terms of how certain nations fought through the history of time.

When I was reading, I thought that’s one way of looking at people as well as civilizations engaged in conflict, so, why not?  Bear with me a little bit as I use World War II as an example that relates three nations to three states of being.

As an example, France was Fragile during World War II.  Yes, I know that World War II France wasn’t a person since if France 1939 was a person they’d have been Inspector Clouseau, but stick with me.  After the German invasion, everything about the French and British response was fragile.  Horrible communication, absolute battlefield collapse of poorly disciplined and trained soldiers, failure of leadership to create even the most rudimentary strategy against mobile warfare, and a general collapse of all French public will after the Germans showed up on the doorstep of Paris.

And the food wasn’t great, either.

We know the jokes about French military performance.  But France was fragile.

How are people fragile?

Bakeries in Denmark don’t add too much sugar to pastry – they don’t want to be sweetish.

I’ve been in tough situations with people, and seen some give up.  In extreme cases, it took very little for them to break down – relatively minor incidents led to implosions.  It was like an Antifa® member losing their cellphone with all their Starbucks™ points.  A complete catastrophe!

But I’ve seen normal people lose it, too.  More than once.  Ever see someone break down because of a bad test score?  Ever seen someone break down because they couldn’t get over a break up?

Fragility comes from having to defend things that aren’t your principles.  The French couldn’t stand to see Paris become a war zone.  My friend couldn’t stand to see a girl that he wasn’t suited for go away.  I wasn’t there to give the French emotional support, but I was there for my friend.  And he was there for me when I got divorced.  The core of fragility is holding on to things that aren’t principles.

Once you understand that everything that you own can be taken from you, but that you still own your attitude and the way you feel about things, you are less fragile.  In fact, you move toward the next stage:  Resilient.

In World War II, the one country that screams resilience more than any other was The Soviet Union.  Yes, Stalin was perhaps the most horrible man to have ever lived and communism is the worst system ever devised, unless your goal is human suffering and misery.  But the Soviet people fought.  And fought.  And fought.  Whenever a Russian dropped, he was replaced by another Russian and a Mongolian and two Uzbeks for good measure.  The Soviet Union had redundancy.  Even though they were generally inferior in many ways, the Soviets didn’t give up.  And, when the German supply lines were overextended?

I hear the bread was great in the Soviet Union.  People would wait in line 8 hours for a single piece.

The resilience worked.  The gradual wearing down of the technical superiority by numerical superiority and a willingness to not surrender.  If you have to choose to fight an enemy, a resilient one is far worse than a fragile one.

What makes a person resilient?  That’s the focus on values.  Sure, the Soviet Union had some really lousy values, but they were willing to fight in what they called The Great Patriotic War for the idea of Russia, even though sometimes the troops advanced with guns pointed at their backs, that was more the exception than the rule.

When you live for values and refuse to give up, you become resilient.

The last way a person can live is to become Anti-Fragile.  Anti-fragile is a term that I saw for the first time from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the econo-philosopher.  It means that if you drop a vase, it doesn’t shatter, it doesn’t persist, it becomes stronger.  Vases don’t do that.  But systems do.

Well, maybe not drop it, but attack it with several carrier air groups?

The United States in World War II is an example of an anti-fragile system.  When attacked at Pearl Harbor, it became stronger.  Even though Battleship Row at Pearl was in flames, that attack mobilized the American people.  Pa Wilder signed up on December 8, 1941, as did millions of other men.  But those that didn’t sign up formed a pool of men and women that filled empty factories, constructed new ones, pumped oil, farmed, and built ships and planes and truck and tanks on a level never seen before in history.

Although it’s certain that the majority effort that it took to win World War II in Europe was done by the Soviets, it’s arguable that the Soviets would have folded in 1942 or 1943 without the food, trucks, planes, and ammunition that were provided by the United States.

The United States won the War of the Pacific nearly singlehandedly, although it’s early efforts in North Africa left the British shaking their heads and wondering if the United States could even field an army capable of fighting.  The United States emerged after World War II as an industrial, economic and military behemoth.  No one would argue that the United States of 1945 was weaker than the United States of 1941.  The United States in 1941 is a great example of anti-fragility.

Oh, yeah, don’t forget the atomic bombs.

The prettiest atoms become atomic models.

How do people become anti-fragile?  Well, start by being resilient.  Then?  Add learning.  If you can recognize your mistakes and learn from them?  That’s a good start.  Capacity?  Oddly enough, a person operating at peak capacity has less anti-fragility – they have little capacity to improve and a great deal of capacity for failure.  Efficient systems are prone to failure.  The two-income household was, even before this economic downturn, more prone to bankruptcy, rather than less.

Why?

Because the system is too efficient – most couples tend to use every dime they earn.  When one income goes away?  They system fails.  Unused money (savings) is redundancy.  It’s inefficient, but it’s capacity that you have for the unexpected.

And if you’re not focused on keeping everything, you can take risks.  Lots of them – just so long as the risks aren’t so big that they crater you.  This blog is one of mine.  And the younger you are, the bigger risk you can take without cratering your life – you have time to make it up even if you lose everything at age 25.

I wouldn’t let my kids sleep in the bed with me when they were little.  I told them I couldn’t risk the monster following them into my room.

A vision of Truth is required.  One time a friend of mine and I were discussing this, and he noted that I might be trying to write what people want to read, rather than what I believe.  Nope.  My soul is in this.  Do I agree with everything I’ve written?  Of course not.  I’ve written over 535 posts over the course of 3.5 years.  I’ve learned.  Some of my views have changed as I have changed.  I’d be foolish to not change my views as I learn and understand more.  But as I experiment, my soul has to be involved – I have to be a seeker of Truth, even in my experiments.

I’ve had a few moments of being Fragile in my life – mainly when I was trying to hold on to things and situations that I should have left behind me.  I’ve had the majority of my life lived in a Resilient mode, putting one foot in front of the other and moving onward.

I can see that the best and most productive times in my life are when I’ve lived it in the Anti-Fragile mode.  It may seem odd, but in many ways the Resilient mode is the enemy of the Anti-Fragile mode.  Resiliency is about persevering.  It’s not bad.  There’s rarely any traffic on the second mile and working harder is, in some ways, the easy way out.

But when you achieve an Anti-Fragile life?  Sometimes you achieve something amazing enough to even surprise yourself.

And always remember that when Germany and France go to war, you know 100% who will lose.

Belgium.

Don’t Run Out The Clock On Life.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Blade Runner

RIPLEY

Why haven’t aliens been here more frequently?  They saw the reviews – one star.

One of the benefits of living in Modern Mayberry is that there are no shortage of places where you can contribute.  After being assistant peewee coach for The Boy’s football (the one men play, not the game for socialist European women) I volunteered to be head coach for Pugsley’s team.  The first season, I was less than spectacular.  And saying I was less than spectacular is being generous.

Let me be clear – when you’re coaching third and fourth graders who can’t even calculate the orbital dynamics of the planet Mercury because they don’t know relativity and keep getting the wrong answer using Newtonian mechanics, it’s the coaching.  The kids are, more or less, equally inept and equally talented.  You put the big kids on the line and the fast kids as backs and receivers and wonder what to do with the small, slow kids.

As a first year coach?  I was like a small, slow kid.  I’m not sure we won a game my first year.  That wasn’t the kids; that season was on me – it was all my fault.  I’ll admit I have faults, and so will The Mrs.   The Mrs. says I have two main faults – that I don’t listen and some other one.

REFS

In Europe they call it 30.48cm ball.

I remember the first game of my second pee-wee football season as clearly as if it were yesterday.  The offense was on the field.  We had just made a first down.  There was a minute and twenty seconds (seventeen metric minutes) left on the clock.  I did the math – thirty seconds a play, four downs . . . and they were out of time outs.

Wait a minute, I thought.  We were up by five points.  If we just ran three plays and didn’t fumble the ball and let them score a touchdown – we would win!

All we had to do was run out the clock.  Our only enemy was time.

I told the quarterback to just kneel down when the center hiked the ball to him.  For a second, he looked confused – we had played the whole game being aggressive on offense, and we’d racked up 28 points.  Then it clicked in his head – he was a really smart 4th grader.  All he had to do was not fumble.

He had figured out what caught me almost by surprise:  we just had to run out the clock.  Spoiler alert:  we won.  Running out the clock in a football game is a valuable strategy.

EX

I was going to tell another football joke, but it had an offensive line.

How does this translate off the field?

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post – I use a planner.  Some of the things that are on my daily to-do list are straightforward.  Plan to take over the world.  Remember to feed the kraken.  But I recently added one:

Are You Running Out The Clock?

You might think that’s a weird thing to think about every day when you go into work, and maybe it is.  In the crazy, deflating and inflating economy of 2020, a job might be something that’s required for survival.  But a job also might be something you’re going through the motions on and running the clock, and your life out every day watching the seconds tick away until 5pm.

Now, don’t get me wrong – if it’s important to get money to live, fulfillment isn’t the goal – feeding the family is first.  In 2020 and 2021 jobs will be hard to find, so if you’re bored but have a family to feed – FEED YOUR FAMILY AND STAY UNTIL 5PM.

JOB

I quit my job at the helium plant – I will NOT be spoken to in that tone of voice.

But what happens when a job or your life becomes another exercise in running out the clock and you don’t have to worry about feeding the family?

That’s not a win.

Humans were made to be the most multi-purpose machine in the history of the planet.  We’re essentially the Swiss Army® animal.  Where other animals inhabit a specific niche or even several niches on the planet, humans alone have consciously gone from the bottom of the sea to the surface of the moon.  We can run, swim, climb, think and even make new elements while we try to figure out how to harness the power of a star.  We can then rip atoms apart just for fun, and watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.  And all of this before breakfast.

WILL

You know that in freshman English William at least got a B on the Romeo and Juliet section. 

Then we can write a sonnet, or, as Shakespeare observed in Hamlet:

What a piece of work is a man.  How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty.  In form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel.  In apprehension how like a god!

The beauty of the world.

The paragon of animals.

Humans are amazing.  Shakespeare really got that.  If I live my entire life, I’m not sure I can string together six sentences that are so amazing and so understand just how amazing a creature humans are.

Then Will followed up with this:

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Four hundred years ago, the Bard was ahead of me.  It’s amazing to be human.  We have great capabilities.  But then?  Hamlet goes and decides he wants to run out the clock.

But we’re not made for running out the clock – that’s why Hamlet is a tragedy.  Hamlet was only thirty years old.  He had grown weary of life, and he didn’t even have the excuse of having met my ex-wife.

We don’t get a deposit back for bringing our bodies back in great condition after we’re done with them.  Let me be clear:  we have a one use rental on these things.  You need to use your body and your life like you stole it.  My left hip hurts at least once a month.  A lot.

SOA

My vacuum has Roomba®-tiod arthritis. 

Good.  I popped it out coaching those peewee football players.  If I get arthritis there?  It’s like a gray hair in my beard – I’ve earned it.  I want the coroner to look at my body at the end and say:  “I’m glad he’s not donating these organs.  He used all of them up.  How do you wear out a bellybutton?  This guy did.”

I’ve seen a “running out the clock” mentality in my own family.  When Pa Wilder started to get older, one thing I noticed is that his life seemed to revolve not around achieving, but around existing.  He walked.  He ate.  He watched TV.  He took his medications.

But he ceased doing anything of meaning.  He ceased fighting.  I’ll admit, people deserve a rest from time to time.  But even in old age, even if disabled, and even if depressed – you can do something.

There is no time in your life where you can’t matter.

Running out the clock isn’t a goal – unless it’s a peewee football game.

How will you make a difference today?

Why The Left Fears The Right, And Why The Right Will Win

“Oh, haven’t you noticed?  We’ve been sharing our culture with you all morning.” – 300

TRUTH

When I was a five or so, my parents had horses.  One of the horses had a foal (baby horse for you city folk), and Pa Wilder brought the foal and the mare (momma horse) into the barn – it was brutally cold, and the barn was much warmer.  They brought me down to see the foal.  It was young and awkward as new horses are.

Inside the stall was a series of closely spaced rails in a square, about four feet by six feet.

I asked, “What’s that for, Pa?”

“Well, when the foal is in here, he’ll find that he can’t walk across the bars.  His hooves won’t quite fit.  That will train him so he won’t do that when he gets older.”

Even at five, I had seen cattle guards and knew cows wouldn’t try to cross them.  But here was a horse.

CATTLE

From Library of Congress.

“Won’t he try to jump over the cattle guard, Pa?”

“Some horses, the smart ones, will figure out and a cattle guard won’t work on them.  But most don’t.  Heck, you can just paint parallel lines on an asphalt road and some horses won’t try to cross them.”

The little training bars were a device, a device to train the horse that he was in a prison made up of parallel bars on the ground.  In that, the horse restricted his own freedom.

In the last post (Money, Power, Politics, and Soros), I discussed the difference between Money and Power.  I actually finished most of the last post before I wrote the conclusion.  Money and Power as described through most of the post were entirely materialistic concepts.  Ending it with just that discussion wasn’t right, since the theme of my writing is often to balance the material with the concepts of spirit and virtue.  We live in a material world, but the reason we live is for a purpose greater than this moment.

Freedom isn’t important to either Money or Power; Freedom is actually the enemy of both Money and Power.  Throughout most of recorded history in the West, when either Money or Power get too out of balance, there is a backlash, and Freedom eventually wins.

It has for thousands of years.

And it will again.  I firmly believe that the destiny of the West is in the hands of those who love Freedom, especially in the United States.

Why?

The Left is utterly afraid of the Right.  Though they put forward a great front – they are shaking.  The American people on the Right compose the largest potential army in the history of the world.

The numbers:

There are at least 400,000,000 guns in private hands in the United States by one estimate.  That seems right.

There are 800,000 or so cops.  Assume they have two guns each.  Heck, assume they have three.  Round up.  Three million guns.  The Military in the United States owns about 4.4 million guns.  Round up.  That’s a total of less than 10 million guns in the hands of the United States government or other governmental authorities.  And that assumes that they stand with the government, which is questionable at best.

Assume only 35% of the American public owns guns, a number I think is very low.  Call it 100,000,000 people.  Assume that those owners skew mostly Right – 80/20?  That’s 80,000,000 on the Right.  Let’s do 80/20 again on those that will not stand for a communist uprising in the United States.  That’s 16,000,000 Americans ready to stand in the breach.  The largest army in the history of the world (so far) were the United States armed forces in 1945:  12,000,000 Americans under arms.

I’ll state it again:  American people on the Right have the potential to compose the largest army in the history of the world.  Period.

People on the Right, men and women, also have more and better training for field conditions.  I’d put The Mrs. up against most people on the Left if it came to a rural setting, because Leftists have no idea that trees are even made of wood, and I doubt that many on the Right will want to make the Stalingrad mistake and get caught in the cities as Leftists consume themselves.  How many people on the Right have their homes on the market to escape from Minneapolis?  From Seattle?  From any of dozens of cities where they know that they no longer belong?

I have no idea.  But they’d be fools to stay.

And even though we have the numbers on our side, there’s more good news.  We don’t even need overwhelming numerical superiority:

  • How many apostles peacefully changed the religion of Europe?
  • How many Spartans defended all of Western Civilization at Thermopylae?

“But John,” you say, “most all of the people in your examples died for their cause.”  Yes, they did.  And we remember them for that, because they changed the world.  Thousands of years before Robert Heinlein said it, they knew the truth of his quote:  “You can have peace.  Or you can have freedom.  Don’t ever count on having both at once.”

Besides, everyone is going to die.  Is it better to be a Leonidas or a St. Peter?

Obviously, it is.

Don’t be like Ephialtes (LINK).

We outgun the Left.  We have Truth, capital T, on our side.  The other day Vox Day had this inspiring clip at his blog (LINK).

It was a good clip, and one I’d forgotten.  So we watched the movie again tonight – it’s one that could not be made by Hollywood® today.  That clip also makes the point I tried to make earlier much more eloquently than I ever could.

The Black Riots Lives Matter riots are demoralizing to people of good character.  This is intentional.  The riots are meant to make you feel alone.  The riots are meant to make you feel that the Right has already lost.

The Right has not lost.

How did the Modern Sporting Lawyer make you feel?

STLOU

That’s why he and his wife are condemned.  That’s why they have vowed to cancel him, to make an example of them, to find a way to charge them with crime.  They are the opposite of demoralization.

The Modern Sporting Lawyer and his wife drive the Left crazy.  Here, their desire to destroy as a senseless mob was turned back by only two people.

Can you imagine if the Right was united?  I can.

The corollary is obvious:  quit fighting each other in the right.  Stop.  People don’t believe in your exact brand?

You can’t stand Libertarians?  You can’t stand Lutherans? Baptists? Catholics? Vox Day?  That atheist friend that doesn’t mind Christianity but still believes in freedom?  The idea to fix our situation isn’t exactly yours?

Too bad.

We are in the same foxhole.  Stop (metaphorically) shooting each other.  Now.  If you’re not with us, you’re against us.  And if you’re fighting us, you’re against us.

How do you know if you’re with us?

  • We like building statues, not tearing them down.
  • We like building civilization, not tearing it apart.
  • We like the reason of facts and truth, not the politically correct statement of the moment.
  • We like justice based on law, not the social justice of the mob or judges that twist “shall not” into “sometimes.”
  • We like a culture of honor, not a culture of victimhood due to the self-imposed prison.

And that is the difference.  The Left is bitter.  The Left is seething.  The Left is angry.

Why?  Because, just like the foal with the cattle guard, they’ve made themselves prisoners.  They’ve forgotten that becoming a prisoner might not be a choice for a horse, but it is for a person.  But for the Left, that prison mentality is preferred.

The prison mentality is the chosen mentality of the Left.  They see themselves as weak.  Since they see themselves as weak, there is no choice but to hate themselves for that weakness.  But outwardly, the Left rationalizes that weakness as being, somehow, good.  They have to, because that’s all that stands between them and the unending self-hate.  The Left raises an “anything goes” sexuality and sensuality to the highest plane because they are rooted in the Material, and cannot understand the Spiritual, the Transcendent.

The Right rejects that.  All of it.

Sex isn’t a virtue, chastity is a virtue.  Sex isn’t evil, but making it the focus of your life is no different than any other addiction – it is a vice.  But which of those does the Left celebrate?  Inside, they know that it’s wrong, and that also fills them with self-hate.

Because of that hate, and seek to make the Right weak like them.  How?  By demoralizing the Right, by taking virtues and attacking them while publicly celebrating things we use to call sin.  By coming up with never ending list of impossible demands and nonsensical redefinitions of the English language on an ever more frequent basis.  Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has recently been excommunicated from the Left for being brazen enough to indicate that women might be, well, women.

ROWLING

The Right has built Western Civilization, and built it with a compassion for the weak.  That makes the Left hate the Right even more.  They seek to make us doubt our morals and virtue:  everyone is racist, every historical figure is fatally flawed.  That is justification enough in the minds of the Left to tear down everything that has made their prosperity and wealth transfer possible.  The Left makes no real art, just caricatures of the genius that has gone before, photographs of Christ soaking in urine.  The Left is a parasite that, failing to create, destroys.

But those games won’t work anymore.  The Right is strong.  The Right is virtuous.  The Left seeks to build nothing because that is the province of the Right.  And to the Left, those who are strong and build statues to the virtues of flawed men are evil.

Was Columbus perfect?  No.  Did he open up a New World?  Yes.  How many people in Mexico City would prefer to revert to the charnel house of the Aztecs?  Some, but every hand that goes up will belong to a member of the Left.

The Right is not evil.  We hold the light of Freedom, of civilization, of the future of mankind in our hands.  Why?  Because they could never build it.  The Left seeks to delegitimize our moral achievement, because they feel small and envious next to those that compete and create.

Remember, the Soviets never looked stronger than they did immediately before they collapsed.

I don’t think we will win.

I know we will win.  We are the foals that recognize the painted lines on the asphalt for the lie that they are.  We are the horses that realize that they have the strength to jump over the cattle guard that we used to think was our prison.

PAINT

From Library of Congress.

I feel sorry for those who stand against the Right when we find our backs are to the wall.  We have created the most powerful and free and prosperous culture in history.  The Right doesn’t know its own strength.  But it will learn, and the Left is afraid.

We will win.  Maybe not this year.  Maybe not next year.  Maybe not even in the next decade.  And the future won’t look like the past – that past is what led us to this crisis.  We have the opportunity to remake our civilization, to remake America and to make it better.

And we will make it better.

And we will win.

We always have.

What is your profession?

I rarely ask people to share these posts, but if you have people you know are feeling down – please do.

You’re Not Alone

“Théoden King stands alone.” – Lord of the Rings

GOOGLE

Google® is so biased they only ranked our Solar System one star.

Originally this was going to be an economic post (as is usual for Wednesday) about Crisis Capitalism and how this particular Crisis, like many others in the past will be used to concentrate wealth even more, perhaps with bikini graphs.  Maybe the bikinis get smaller as the economy shrinks?  At least that would bring some good out of the current crisis.  Plus I’ll always be known as “the guy who made economics interesting at last.”

That post will have to wait until next Wednesday.

What hit me today was an onslaught of news.  Not one story, but nearly every story I read was about deplatforming or attempting to silence alternative viewpoints to the conventional narrative as seen on TV.  In rapid-fire, I saw stories about deplatforming of news and opinion outlets, deplatforming of individuals and doxing (making private personal information public of non-public figures) of pre-teens(!) for thoughtcrime.

Heck, there was even a Serbian soccer player (playing soccer for an American pro soccer team) that was fired (after he was made to apologize) for comments his wife made on social media.  And his wife made those comments in Serbian.  I guess that he should have done his manly best and kept her home without access to electronic media devices?  Is the message that athletes should take away from this is that they should keep their women on a shorter leash?

Is this the Left telling men that they need to be more patriarchal and tell their women to be seen and not heard?

SERBIA

But his wife wanted to go anyway.

But the seemingly disjointed activities all had one purpose:  to make you feel alone.

The biggest story is that Zero Hedge® was cut off from Google® advertising revenue.  Since ZH™ is a for-profit company, this will hurt them.  Why was it cut off?  The story I saw indicated that it was because people commenting on the site were being less than politically correct.  And, yes, Google® has the legal right to do this, unless they did it because Zero Hedge© is transgender.

No, I don’t have examples, but these are commenters, not ZH© staff.  I jumped in to see the comment section on a typical post that I thought might be incendiary.  Would all the comments be safe to repeat at work?  No.  Have I seen worse comments on Twitter®?  Yeah, a lot worse.  I’ve seen worse commentary on Yahoo® news stories.

Zero Hedge™ has already been banned “permanently” once by Twitter©, and then reactivated.  The reason given was that Zero Hedge® had “doxed” a Chinese researcher . . . by publishing information that was already on the Wuhan Institute for Creating COVID Virology’s website.  As of now?  They’re unbanned.  Twitter© called it “an error.”

But it’s clear that they have made someone angry.

How much will it Google’s deplatforming cost Zero Hedge©?

I have no idea.

SECOND

Google® did give a four star rating to Chernobyl.  They would have given it five, but the locals ran out of fingers.

I do know that The Federalist™, another website was threatened with Google® demonetization due to comments on articles like this one (LINK).  The Federalist© just shut off comments entirely.

And that just might be the point.

Comments here are (generally) fairly unmoderated.  I think that outside of auto-moderated comments, I’ve nuked only one or two comments out of thousands during the life of this blog.  I am blessed with some of the smartest, most well read, and politest commenters on the planet.  You’re also probably the most physically attractive commenters on any website in existence, and I bet you all have impeccable armpit hygiene to boot.  But the comment section gives people a chance to talk to each other, bounce ideas off each other, and get to know each other.  It also is a little light on a dark Internet letting you know that you’re not alone.

Even the people who don’t comment benefit from the comments section.  For each person who comments, at least 100 other readers don’t comment.  But they read what you say.  And it’s important to them, and lets them know that they’re not alone, either.

Then there’s Laura Towler.

Laura is a British YouTuber® who is on the Right.  On June 6, she sent the following Tweet® and got the reply that follows it:

laura

“Chuffed” is slang that means “happy as a poodle with a pudding pop.”

This all went international.  The idea that a company would be so “brave” as to come out in favor of a group that is only supported to the tune of tens of millions of dollars by the largest tech companies and most of the largest news companies is really risky.

To boot, Yorkshire Tea© then picked on a (nearly) unknown individual citizen.  Brave, indeed – I’m sure that Laura is quite the power to be reckoned with given her 50,000 or so YouTube™ subscribers.  And Yorkshire Tea® is so small, being the biggest selling tea in Great Britain (which made 5.5 billion tea bags last year).

It’s like Coca-Cola® decided to pick on some kid going to prom.

But it led me to ask this question:  Did any of the companies that sponsor BLM even bother to go to the BLM website?

Outside of the cringing references to “comrades” and “collectivism” on the BLM website, they note that BLM wishes to:

  • “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family” and “collectively” care for one another.
  • They also want to [free themselves] “from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”

This is not the language of a civil rights program, it’s the language of a communist front masquerading as a civil rights program.  And it’s not even Halloween yet, and I think that all of the cosplay conventions are on Coronahold.

JUICE

What’s the best way to kill communists?  Communism.

We’ve seen that at C.H.A.Z. and virtually every other protest activity that BLM is tied tightly to Antifa.  Imagine that C.H.A.Z. wasn’t six blocks being held by armed Leftists, and instead was being held by a militia from the Right.  I’d imagine we’d see National Guard Apache helicopters and the Seattle mayor calling for a neutron bomb strike to make the Hug Box of Seattle safe again.

I’m sure someone will bring up the Wildlife Refuge seizure by members of the Right in 2016.  But 26 of the occupiers of the Wildlife Refuge were charged with felonies.  Care to take bets on if the C.H.A.Z. occupiers will face any criminal charges?  Any of them?

Ms. Towler was able to handle the media storm that followed, and not apologize.  Heck, her Twitter® feed now cheekily shows “Disavowed by Yorkshire Tea©” as the lead line.  That takes style.

But Laura knew she wasn’t alone, and has weathered international condemnation.

It doesn’t stop there.

CENSOR

Russians call their website censoring the Inter-nyet.

The classic (and very boring) movie Gone With The Wind, the television shows of COPS®, Live PD™, and an episode of (the very funny) Fawlty Towers that first aired on October 24, 1975 have since been either hidden or cancelled.  Just like statues, these works of art define who we are as a people.  And removing them makes us not more, but less.

Every person who has a statue made out of him has something in common with those works of art – they have faults, especially when viewed through the lens of the 2020s.  And removing them or hiding them or tearing them down with mob violence is meant to make you feel alone.

If you’re against police corruption and militarization?  You’re not alone.

If you’re against excessive use of force by police?  You’re not alone.

If you’re against rioting and mob violence?  You’re not alone.

If you mock companies that virtue signal popular causes while avoiding tough issues like the near slave labor they use to produce goods that they offshored from American production?   You’re not alone.

If you’re against globalism and collectivism?  You’re not alone.

I’m not saying that the position of the Right is always the right position.  There are times the Right has been wrong.  But the positions of the Right aren’t based in hate – they’re based in a love of freedom, or family, or tradition, or nation, or a healthy desire to be religious.

If those things are important to you?

You’re not alone.

DRIVER

And if you suffer from paranoia, you’re not alone.  There’s someone behind you.

If you want this nonsense to stop so you can see economic graphs featuring bikinis?

You’re not alone.

Your one job? Be a good person.

“Mr. Towns, you behave as if stupidity were a virtue. Why is that?” – Flight of the Phoenix

GOOD

Well, at least someone gave this post two thumbs up.

My older brother, John Wilder (our parents were notoriously uncreative), got a job at a motel when he was in college.  His duty was to sleep in the apartment above the front desk, and if anyone wanted a room late at night, to get up out of bed and check them in.  Technically, he got paid to sleep on the job.  When I try to explain that’s what I’m doing to my employer, they seem to think it’s a violation of company rules.  They won’t even listen when I explain I won’t be sleepy on the job if I just sleep on the job.

Go figure.

One day the owner of the motel was looking for someone to do an extremely important job: sweep the parking lot every Sunday.  As I had heard of a broom, my brother put in a good word for me, and I ended up with my first official job.  As I don’t recall quitting, they might be irritated at me because I haven’t been in to work in decades.

This was a job that I was well suited for, since I was willing to work for the one-ish hour a week (on Sunday) sweeping up the parking lot.  I even had a time card, and got paid minimum wage.  So early each Sunday morning I’d get on my ten speed and bike down to the motel and sweep the parking lot.

BIKE

My bike kept trying to kill me, though.  It was a vicious cycle.

The best part wasn’t the few bucks after tax that I made, but rather sitting down with my older brother and having breakfast in the office.  I timed it so that I’d be done sweeping so we could watch a television show on TBS® together:  The Wild, Wild West.  I’m pretty sure I saw my first episode ever in that motel office.

By the time my brother and I watched it on the 12” screen in the office, The Wild, Wild West was decades old.  And yet it was better than anything on prime time television.  The Wild, Wild West, if you haven’t seen it, was Robert Conrad starring as secret agent James West in the 1870’s Western United States, complete with science fiction gadgets.

The villains were ludicrous.  One episode featured obviously rubber cobras.  And in one fight scene, Robert Conrad’s pants split wide open and they just kept filming – they were on a schedule, you know.  On top of that, the costumes resembled nothing ever worn by an actual human in any place and during any period in human history.

Silly?   Certainly.  But why was the show good enough that I planned getting up early to watch it?

It’s because the character James West (and his fellow secret agent, Artemus Gordon) were good.  West was a hero.  He was smart.  He could fight.  He had wit.  He laughed in the face of death.  And if he had a weakness, it was for a lovely lady.

JIMWEST

We’ll pretend that Will Smith took 1999 off.  There can be only one Jim West.

Why was James West’s contemporary, Captain Kirk so popular?  He was a cut from the same mold as West.

A boy needs a hero to look up to, who models virtue and strength.  And you could do much, much worse than either James West or Captain Kirk.  For some reason, the values of the networks changed, and The Wild, Wild West was cancelled (like Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies) in 1970 even though they did great in the ratings.  Hmm.

It was like there was a social agenda . . . .

As time has gone on, many of the “heroes” in movies and television are given “depth” cheaply by making them either morally weak or having the system they work for be compromised in some way.  When a hero sneaks by like Mal Reynolds on Firefly, well, the system takes care of him pretty quickly.

MAL

Captain Tightpants aims to misbehave.

Culture is, of course, upstream from politics.  Culture is in part created by those heroes we are given to worship.  Where do those heroes come from?  Well, I mentioned James West, but I recall being pretty psyched about the Founding Fathers when I was a kid.  Dad got pretty mad after the third cherry tree.

Our political reality is therefore created in part by media (now a tool of the Left) and academia (also a tool of the Left).  And now the Founding Fathers are, instead of being revered for attempting to create a whole new type of country are regularly bashed in schools.

This attempt of the Left to steer culture obscures the real message.  As a human, we have one (and only one) job.

That job is to be a good person.

It’s that easy.  We waste a lot of time and effort wondering what it is we should be doing, when the answer is laughingly simple.  You can’t control your height.  You can’t control your intelligence.  You can’t even control society.  What can you control?  Your actions and attitudes.

So, be a good person.  That’s it.

The Left tries to obscure that simple truth because it has to.  The Left doesn’t want you to be a good person.  The Left wants you to be a Leftist.  When I look at the memes from the Left, I’m astonished by two things:

  • They’re horribly unfunny, and
  • They’re based on a big wall of text.

LEFTMEME

No editing required.

The Lefty memes aren’t funny because funny requires truth.  I wrote about that recently in The Leftist War on Culture: Comedy Edition.  When truth is strangled, humor disappears which is why tyrants will kill comedians before they kill dissidents.  Humor is one of the most potent weapons of truth.

The Lefty memes have to rely on a large blocks of text because half of the meme is required to try to refute reality and re-define it.  If you’ve ever heard an actual Leftist talk, half of it is redefining terms:  boy used to mean boy, but now it’s an entire spectrum which might indicate that boy means boy on Monday, but when it’s time for the state track meet, boy means girl.  Sometimes.

If you want to watch real Olympic®-level verbal gymnastics, watch a Leftist try to define “racism” – it’s a hoot.  For bonus points, see if you can get them to read the dictionary definition.

That’s the good news.  Your job, being a good person, is so simple it’s hard for even the Left to mess up.  But I bet they could come up with a 600 word meme to describe that “good” is only “good” if it results in more Leftist votes and the abolition of private property.

I wish that I could promise to you that if you were a good person, you’d be rewarded.  That would be a lie.  Being good doesn’t guarantee a tangible reward, or even that you will succeed, or even be liked and admired in your time.

PANCAKE

I’m not sure I can promise a leprechaun will deliver them, though.

Likewise, being bad doesn’t guarantee punishment.  Heck, some research indicates that 4% of Chief Executive Officers of companies are psychopaths.  If you think long enough, you can come up with several names of people who are downright evil, but seem to be thriving.

The other bad news is that being good is hard work.  First, you have to figure out what good is.  Society isn’t necessarily a help here.  As I write this, The Boy is watching livestreaming rioting and property destruction across multiple cities.  When I try to calibrate the whole good/bad thing, I’m not sure that looting a Target® or burning a Hyundai© serves much of a purpose.

Being good isn’t about being good for today, either.  I could easily ruin a child by making life too easy, or not holding them to high standards.  Would it result in a happy child now?  Sure.  But every parent knows that short term success builds children into monsters who end up burning a Target™ or a Hyundai®.

RIOT

Brought to you by the Minnesota Vistor and Tourism Bureau.

To be good, a moral code and the courage to follow it is required.  Christianity is the one that built the West, and you could do worse – you rarely hear of Amish drive-by shootings, since everyone can hear the clip clop of the horses from pretty far away.

The Romans (Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python) had a well-developed system of virtue thousands of years ago and spent a lot of time working to figure out how to be good – that’s pretty close to the basis of the Stoics.  Making it up your own individual code as you go can lead to rationalization and relativism.  If it feels good, it may not be good – a lot of bad things feel very good at the time.

But generally, if it feels bad, it nearly always is.

Be a good person.  Ask yourself:  WW(JW)D?  No, not John Wilder.

Jim West.

But make sure you get your sweeping done first.

The Funniest Post You’ll Read About Life and Death, Featuring Vikings.

“I understand. In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name is Robert Paulson.” – Fight Club

DIE

I don’t want to be killed by a large sneeze, though.  I don’t want people saying I bit off more than I could achoo.

As a culture, at least in the developed West, fearful of death.  We hide from it to a degree that I’m not sure most of us are aware of.  How could we be aware?  Like our browser history, we’ve spent so much time and effort hiding it from public view.

I noticed a pattern in my life.  First, when I was young, we went to funerals.  Those funerals were where we buried my grandparents.  As I got older, I started going to a lot of weddings as friends tied the knot, and funerals dropped to nearly zero.    But as I get older, I’m seeing more funerals again.  Most recently, it was for The Mrs.’ grandfather.  Her grandfather was a crew chief on B-17’s for the 8th Army Air Force.  He was buried in the same Army olive drab uniform that he’d worn in World War II.

Funerals are, and should be, a time for reflection.  When I looked a little at the big picture, in modern America most people rarely see dead people unless it’s in a hospital bed or at a funeral.  Sure, there are exceptions.  Cops, soldiers, people in medicine, and morticians see them all of the time outside of those limited settings, but those people are a pretty small percentage of the population.

funeral

When I pass away, I don’t want a fancy funeral.  One like this is fine.

I was half-watching a movie, perhaps in the 1990s, so I’m a little shy on details.  The movie was set during the Great Depression, and the husband had died.  The wife had prepared the body and it was sitting ON THE DINNER TABLE for people to come and see for the visitation.  Okay, not sitting.  But the husband’s corpse was stretched out where they ate their fried okra and possum sushi or whatever it was people ate during the Depression.

What the heck?  “Surely they didn’t really do that,” I said.  There was an older person in the room who had lived through the Depression.  He corrected me.  “Surely they did.  Funeral parlors were for rich people.  And what are you gonna do, put him on the floor?”

Wow.  I guess the old saying of “dust bunnies don’t mix with the dead” is true.

Being a product of my time, I hadn’t really thought about that at all.  Dead people?  Call a professional.  Very nice and tidy and nothing but a bill that you can pay by check or credit card.

But when you look back at life in the 1930s and before, I guess there was a reason that people had little graveyards on the farm:  they were used to dealing with death and couldn’t pass the duties required by death to someone else.  Who else was going to do it?  You couldn’t hire it out like today.  Our ancestors knew what we have now forgotten.  Just as birth starts a life, death ends it.  I heard a statistic from the CDC® that life has a nearly a 100% mortality rate.

TERM

I will say I’m in favor of the new congressional cheese support bill.  Count me as pro-volone.

Close physical contact with our dead relatives used to be the norm, not the exception.  For them, death was a part of life.  My mother-in-law was doing genealogy of her family.  For the most part, genealogy is not horribly interesting to me unless there’s a story.  Just knowing that I had a great-great-great-great grandpa called Duncan McWilder back in 1788 doesn’t tell me a lot.  Was he a scoundrel?  Why did he hop the boat to America?  Was it for better Internet?

I did jump on the Mormon database and at least someone thinks I am the great29 grandson of Harald Hardrada, who had a notoriously bad day in 1066 A.D. when he forgot to put on his armor when going up against the English.  At least Harald has a story.  After one of Harald’s vacations in Bulgaria, he got the nickname “Bulger-burner,” which is probably a lot funnier of a nickname if you’re not from Bulgaria.

HARALDY

And I hear that dead Viking Scrabble® players go to Vowel-halla.

Okay, that was a digression.  I’ll see if I can’t get off at the right exit this time.  Anyway, my mother-in-law was doing genealogy.  One particular male relative had three or four wives.  Polygamy?  No.  His wives kept dying in childbirth or from some plague that we can fix with a shot or thinking that arsenic and lead were what made makeup good, or wearing asbestos corsets and radium jewelry.  People were acquainted with death in a real and up-close manner in the Victorian era.

arsmeme

Sad clowns don’t wear arsenic makeup, they use frown-dation instead.

I think that as we isolate ourselves from death, we start to pretend that it doesn’t exist.  In some cases, people like Ray Kurzweil are attempting to figure out how to stop aging and live forever.  Failing that?  Ray is planning on being frozen into a corpse-sicle for later defrosting and infinite life.  My bet?  People will be able to live longer, but they won’t be able to live forever, because testing immortality drugs takes forever.  And everyone is doing it:  a guy outside of Wal-Mart® was selling immortality supplements, and it looked like a scam, so I called the cops.  They were aware – they arrested the guy last year, in 2000, in 1968, and even, they said, back as far as 1880.

Ray may be able to squeeze a few more years out, but I thing that physical immortality isn’t something that we’ll see.  At least not in my lifetime.  Sorry, but immortality jokes never get old.

Even though life is part of death, that doesn’t mean we have to like it.  But we don’t have to fear it, either.  Very few of us will get to choose the time and place of our death.  But we have the choice as to what we are going to do tomorrow to make this a better world – to do things that matter.

NORSING

If a Viking is reincarnated, is he Bjorn again?

Heck, if I was immortal, I’d probably never get around to doing things that matter, since there’s always another tomorrow.

Until there’s not.

Just like Harald Hardrada, there will be a time and place when we’ll die.  But Harald was a smart Viking, and he knew he wouldn’t drown.  He knew that you could lead a Norse to water, but you can’t make him sink.

So, get going.  And don’t forget your armor.

Eight Phases of Crisis: COVID-19 Edition

“You had a dishwasher box to sleep in?  I didn’t even know sleep.  It was pretty much twenty-four seven ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn.” – Deadpool

BATSLAP

One girl I dated in High School asked if she used too much makeup.  I replied, “Dunno, depends on if you are trying to kill Batman®”

“Great, now it’s the end of the world and we can’t get a new dishwasher,” The Mrs. actually said, after I finally relented that it would probably cost more to fix the dodgy old dishwasher than a new one would cost.  Plus, the old dishwasher is stainless steel, so if it were a hundred yards away, it would make quite a nice practice target.  I call that a win-win.  Besides, Amazon® actually has them in stock, so I could theoretically have one by next week.

See?  You can get quality appliances during the end of the world.

I started working from home yesterday, which was nice.  When it was lunchtime, I wasn’t hungry, but I was nice and warm so I took a nap right in my home office which is also known as the couch.  Good times.  I do have a concern – The Mrs. slapped my heinie as I walked by and said, “nice butt” so I’m thinking of bringing this up with HR.  I want to be treated as more than a sexual object.  I mean, not much more, but more.

As much as you might be interested in my derrière, I really do want to talk about COVID-19 and get to the bottom of how the issue will progress in the coming months.  While each crisis is different, they are all sort-of-predictable because in the end, people don’t change all that much, even though circumstances do.  Certainly we want to get this all behind us, in the rear view, so to speak.

Okay, I’ll stop.  Seven synonyms for the posterior in two paragraphs are quite enough.  I don’t want you to think I’m a bum.

But what is this pattern I mentioned?  Here are, as near as I can determine, Eight Stages of a Crisis™, a level at which each crisis can be evaluated compared to the other – this is my modification of work originally done by Zunin and Myers.  This is like the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief, but with the apocalypse in mind.  Why settle for one death, when you can have millions or billions on your mind?  It’s so nice and cheery.  The nice part of using this model is that you can gauge where we are in the current COVID-19 mess.

FRANZ

Who would he assassinate for a Klondike® bar?  Apparently Archduke Franz Ferdinand. 

The Warning

This is the opening stage of a crisis.  It may be short, as in 9/11, or it may be a slow-motion collapse like the gradually increasing troop buildups and mobilizations that led to World War I.  Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one was sane enough to say “no.”  The Warning before the first Civil War was literally decades in length.

In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment.  With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu?  We don’t trust the media very much.  Why?  They don’t seem trustworthy.  Example:  when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNN® says it’s racist.  When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNN™ says it’s a wise and prudent move by China’s benevolent leadership.

In a world where CNN™ and the Chinese government have similar levels of credibility we tend to forget the ending to the story of the boy who cried wolf:  in the end, wolves really attacked.

DINOS

How did they not see this coming?

The Event

The Event is generally not long, but it can be.  It’s the Shot Heard Round the World at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War.  The Event is when the rules change forever, and nothing can ever make the world go back to the way it was.  It’s the spark that lights the fire.  When people look back, everyone can see The Event.

Nothing is ever the same afterwards – The Event changes everyone that it touches, and often ends up changing systems permanently.  It is disruptive.  It may not be the reason that everything fails, it might just be a small event toppling an already unstable system.  In a crisis like 9/11, the event is obvious and instant.  COVID-19 has led to a slow-rolling avalanche across the economy.  Was it poised for a fall anyway?  Possibly.

As a longer cascade, what will be The Event that history will use to remember COVID-19?

In one of my more frightening thoughts:  what if we haven’t seen The Event yet?

DISB

I’m not sure he’s koalafied to make that decision.

Disbelief

When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it.  When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch.  Why?  Habit, partially.  But there’s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesn’t believe that the power could ever be gone.

Disbelief isn’t a coping strategy, and it’s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person.  It’s more inertia.  You’re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isn’t, part of your mind isn’t quite ready to process it.

This might be an overreaction – COVID-19 might be no worse than the flu.  But that isn’t explained by the reactions we’ve seen so far from places that got it earlier than the United States.  Italy is locked down.  In two weeks, we will know more.  In a month, I think, we will have certainty.

PANIC

In order to calm panicked customers, Wal-Mart opened up a second register.

Panic

At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it.  But the rules are new, and unknown.  What to do?  One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or?  One could Panic.  Panic is easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality.  So, what to do? Buy staples as required to build up the stockpile you’ve accumulated over time?  Or buy 550 cans of Diet Mountain Dew®?  Or just buy toilet paper, because everyone else is and you don’t know what to do or have any independent thought?   Toilet paper purchasing is Panic.

HERO

Not all heroes are able to walk.  I mean, some gained 400 lbs on the couch.

Heroism

While the Panic is ongoing, the first glimmer of Heroism starts to show.  Brave men and women working in the medical field are the first signs of Heroism.  Donald Trump talking with Al Sharpton to address the problems he sees is Heroism – realizing that there is a greater good, and that sacrifice is required.  Heroism is embodied throughout the response to the crises where a few have an opportunity to save many, and where enemies put aside squabbles for a time because it’s the right thing to do.

There was a family story – Grandma Wilder went during World War II to weld Liberty ships at the Alameda Ship Yard.  She would regularly get things sent to her from her mother who lived in the country in the middle of Flyover.  Needles were rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover.  Sugar was rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover.  Why ration needles and sugar?  To build common purpose, so even people not piloting P-51s or jumping out of landing craft at Iwo Jima could feel like they were doing their part.  To be fair, rationing was necessary in wide segments of the economy, it wasn’t a fake, but it did help bring everyone together.

Right now Heroism is going on, and we aren’t even asked to do anything more than to sit down and watch Netflix® unless we’re keeping vital industries going.  Here’s a link to Aesop’s place that shows the quiet heroism going on out there (LINK).  Read it all.

CLIFF

I read the other day that coyotes are about 10 miles an hour faster than road runners.  My entire childhood was a lie.

The Cliff

Keeping order requires energy.  Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order.  In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didn’t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did.  Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.

Most of the time in a real crisis, however, there’s The Cliff.  I wrote about it here: Seneca’s Cliff and You.

We have not fallen off The Cliff.  Is it certain that there is one?  No.  But every single leader, elected or appointed, is acting like it’s there.  I believe we will see it.  The new normal will be grow from events moving quickly.  Already at Wilder Redoubt, we’ve had nothing but home cooked meals for the last week, with a couple of store-bought sandwiches being the exception.

Will home cooked food, family dinners, and homeschooling be the legacy of COVID-19?

I expect that we’ll see The Cliff soon enough.  How deep will it go?  As I’ve mentioned before, no one knows.  The worst case is that the economy crashes through levels to Great Depression era lockup in two weeks or so.  Only 40% of Americans are able to absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense.  80% are living paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks just stopped.

Dead.

Going first will be car payments.  The average monthly car payment is $800.  Me?  I’d sell you my daily driver for just two months of that, so expect car finance companies to seize up like an ungreased stripper pole.  But the businesses that employ those people aren’t much better off.  The best restaurant in Modern Mayberry came pretty close to closing down shop six years ago, but pulled through.  The second best restaurant didn’t survive.  There will be cascading failures as the debts owed from one business to the next go unpaid, and this won’t just be for small businesses.  I feel confident saying that several businesses with 10,000 or more employees will go bankrupt.  Overall loss to the economy?  40% of the GDP this year?

Is there a better case?  Sure.  We contain COVID-19 in a month or so, and then call it good.  We only lose 10% to 20% of our GDP this year, and government pumps five or six trillion dollars into the economy to juice it back up.  That’s the best case.  And that’s just in the United States.

I’m not kidding, that’s how deep The Cliff is.  If we’re lucky.

EMPEROR

Something, something, Dark Side®.

Disillusionment

After the fall, things suck.  We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over.  Disillusionment sets in when things don’t snap back to normal.  Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope.  The more government “helps” during this phase, the worse recovery will be.  Roosevelt “helped” so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.

But politicians will take drastic steps, because they can’t help themselves.  The length of time Disillusionment lasts?  Months to years.

FIX

Some re-assembly required.

Rebuilding

This is the other side of The Cliff.  Whereas, as Seneca said you go down a cliff pretty quickly, you only build up slowly.  Rebuilding the economy will take years.  If we do it right, we’ll build a stronger economy, less dependent upon foreign supply lines, that guarantees freedom while preserving the traditional values that built the wealth in the first place.

If done poorly?  The system is controlled, oppressive, and coercive.  Leaders matter, but the quality of the citizenry to fight back against the system is even more important.  Rebuilding takes years, and by my best case scenario, four to eight years.

DISHWASH

So, I guess I’ll get a jump start on rebuilding.  Dishwashers on the Internet.  Amazing.  My only problem is that there’s this lady at work who keeps making suggestive comments and touching me all the time.  Just a few minutes ago, she told me that she expects me to share a bed with her!  They always told me not to get my honey where I got my money, but what happens when you work at home?

Uncertainty, Retirement, and Immortal Lawyers

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Fight Club

juicebox

The 13th Rule of Fight Club:  If your mom is going to drive you home after Fight Club, make sure she signs you out first.

With everything in the news right now, it’s probably a good time to talk about money and life.  There are significant uncertainties right now, and here are a few examples in no particular order:

  • Corona Virus – A big deal? It might be.  I just saw that Corona® beer had changed their name to Bubonic Plague™.
  • Nuclear Iran And Nuclear North Korea – The plus side of nuclear war is no more pop-up ads.
  • Impending Market Meltdowns – Escalators were down, while Pencils lost a few points. Paper was stationary and Diapers remained unchanged, while Toilet Paper reached a new bottom.
  • A Left Wing That Has Bad Intentions When It Gains Power – The upside is that when a Leftist walks into a bar after the Revolution, he’ll order shots all around.
  • Jack’s Raging Bile Duct – Wait, hold up?

Okay, it’s not really a bile duct.  And the guy’s name wasn’t Jack.

I was reading about a guy who just retired at about age 60.  He had saved and invested his whole life, making sure that he would have enough money to last until he was 90.  Since he had been a high-powered Wall Street guy, he did really well.  He had saved millions, so he intended to live a pretty nice retirement with lots of travel around the world.  Oh, he wanted to live in a pretty expensive town.  And, even though money isn’t everything, it kept him in touch with his children.

Then?

mario

Mario had to retire from plumbing because the Yelp® reviews all mentioned him raiding the fridge for mushrooms and stomping on any pet turtles he saw.

He was diagnosed with cancer – but a type that’s incurable.  And it’s a fairly tough type:  it’s got a 50% survival rate to make it for 5 years.  Amazingly, he was writing about what people in their fifties might do in the current investment climate.  He wasn’t writing about the fact that the remainder of his life was maybe reduced by 83% from his plans.

Me?  If I were him, I’d be spending at least some of the money that I’d saved to last me for twenty-five years of life until 90 on a very, very nice bottle of scotch.  And perhaps a cigar made from angel wings.  For dinner? Nothing special.  Maybe some surf and turf:  yeti with Loch Ness monster filets grilled over lava pulled from the center of the Earth.  I’d make sure that I used every second that I had left to me.

hannibal

No clowns though.  They taste funny.

But what if our lives were infinite, would that change anything?

I was driving down the street with The Boy and Pugsley several years ago.  We were driving home from a camping trip, and were going through a small town on a sleepy Sunday morning.  It was early enough that people hadn’t even gotten up for church yet.  As we drove I saw a sign that said, “Jim McGill, Insurance and Real Estate” and decided to make a joke, because we’re a fun family.

I pulled out my best booming operatic voice, so deep and resonant it makes Brian Blessed sound like he hasn’t yet hit puberty:

blessed

Don’t hate him because he’s beardiful.

“Jim McGill is here to help you with all of your insurance and real estate needs, as he has for a thousand years here in Cedar Ridge.

“No one has more experience than McGill, who has studied the intricacies of umbrella insurance policies for decades of the countless years of his nigh-immortal life.  McGill can also use his communion with the deep and ancient dark spirits of the Earth to find the very best property for you.  Since the dawn of single-celled life on this puny planet, there is no insurance agent or realtor who will ever get you a better deal.”

The Boy piped in: “Brought to you by the power of the Necronomicon™.”

See, I told you we’re a fun family.

immortal

Oh, I thought you said immoral.  My bad.

I was making a joke, but stumbled upon a truth.  The joke was supposed to funny because here was an immortal being, selling insurance in a small town in the Midwest.  But as I drove on, I realized a different truth:  if an immortal can’t afford to spend his life doing trivial things, why do we?

Not that there’s a problem selling insurance, or a problem with selling real estate.  I have a friend who dreams about selling real estate.  She’s going to get her license.  I think she’ll have a lot of fun with it – she likes working with people, and it’s something that’s important to her – finding the right person to sell the right house to will probably be fun and she probably won’t have to summon demons and other Satanic spirits to find a nice three bedroom on a cul-de-sac for a married couple with a baby on the way.  Probably.

For me, personally, selling real estate would be one of the punishments that would be reserved for a deep level of Hell:  lower than people who mow lawns at 8am on Saturday morning but not quite as low as Congressmen.  But I think it will really make my friend happy.

jake

He has a very special set of skills . . . .

And that’s a good reason to be a realtor – being happy by helping other people.  It’s also a good reason to sell insurance.  But never forget, doing a job is just that, doing a job.

We may not like everything we have to do at work, and we’re certainly not special snowflakes who deserve the job of our dreams just because we got a Master of Fine Arts in Paranormal Entity Identification and Eradication.  We get paid to go to work because it’s not a hobby.  Lots of times we’ll do things we’d only do if you were getting paid, like when I polished Grandma’s corns for a shiny new nickel.

It may be that the gentleman with cancer is writing for a reason – because that’s how he’s wired.  I get it – I’m writing this sentence at 4am.  But he has a choice.

There comes a time to realize that, if the basics are covered, you really do have a choice.  Money only buys a certain amount of happiness.  A new car isn’t necessary if you have one that works – no matter how old it is.  You are trading your life for money, and even if you die with a lot of money, you’re still dead.

Make sure the trade is worth it, because you’re literally trading your life for it.

Meanwhile . . . somebody go pluck an angel’s wings.