Purpose – Page 3 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Post On Nihilism I’ve Been Working On (Here And There) For Weeks

“Think his nihilism got the best of him and he tried to kill himself?” – House, M.D.

Nietzsche couldn’t use pencils. He thought they were all pointless.

A big danger is Nihilism.

It’s certainly one of the biggest dangers that society faces today. As our society has become less religious, more urban, and has a greater and greater embracing of technology, people begin to ask:

Does any of this matter? Do our values have any real meaning?

My answer to both of those questions is, of course, yes. Values and virtues don’t become outdated.

But what is Nihilism? Nietzsche defined Nihilism fairly simply:

“That there is no truth; that there is no absolute state of affairs – no thing in itself. This alone is Nihilism, and of the most extreme kind.”

To a Nihilist, nothing matters and everything that anyone can think of is true. Read that sentence again, and tell me what I’ve missed in what’s ailing society at its foundation, right now, today. To quote Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose, if Nihilism is the “extinction of the individual, then this world and everything in it – love, goodness, sanctity, everything – are as nothing, nothing man may do is of any ultimate consequence, and the full horror of life is hidden from man only by the strength of their will do deceive themselves; and ‘all things are lawful,’ no otherworldly hope or fear restrains men from monstrous experiments and suicidal dreams.” I’m guessing he knew my ex-wife.

Observance to a religion gives a society many things: purpose, values, unity, and stability, among others. But a Nihilist would say that all religions have the same validity, just like all cultures have the same validity.

But that is observably false.

Say what you will, but the Aztec people had a great motto: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everyone.”

I’ll cherry pick an example: Aztecs. The Aztecs were a bloodthirsty, cannibal, slaving religion. When their ancestors escaped up north, they became known (later) as the Anasazi, and were so hated that they managed to get a huge coalition of all the other tribes together to unite to kill them, probably because having cannibals as neighbors is horrible for property values.

We live in a nation where academics and the news media are trying to normalize everything from cannibalism to “minor-attracted persons” to men pretending to be women. The only, and I mean only, way that this sort of normalization attempt occurs is because the GloboLeft are a group of nihilists that don’t have any fixed beliefs, at all. They were HATING former FBI Director James Comey before Trump fired him. Then, in the span of a single day, they were converted to loving him.

“Comey was always the good guy.”

We were always at war with Eastasia.

When Amy was a child, she said she wanted to go into comedy. Well, no one is laughing now.

If horrible religions like the Aztec religion can result in murder, wholesale slavery, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, imagine how much worse it is to have no religion at all? Now, it becomes open season on anything. The Mrs. likes to talk about an article she read once (maybe it was back when we subscribed to Reason?) about the author attending a Washington, D.C. dinner party.

The conversation went something like this . . . .

“Well, of course Africa is a problem, and probably has 200,000,000 too many people. I think that it can be solved, though, by withholding food supply.” This wasn’t a politician, but probably a GloboLeft academic or regulator.

The author confronted the GloboLefty: “You’re casually talking about starving 200,000,000 people to death?”

Apparently, the GloboLefty didn’t really like it when it was phrased that way, but when he could hide behind pretty words that disguised the real meaning of what he was saying, well, he was good with it.

I was going to donate my clothes to starving people in Africa, but I decided not to. If my clothes fit them, they’re definitely not starving.

The French Revolution was, perhaps, the very first example of this sort of extreme Nihilism, where the idea was not a war on man, but an organized war on God, Himself. Mankind has certainly had its share of civil wars and genocides throughout history, but the French Revolution was something entirely new – the desire of an idea, Nihilism, to remake an entire nation and discard every idea from the past.

To a Nihilist or a GloboLeftist (but I repeat myself) I am nothing. You are nothing. We are not even worthy of consideration as humans. We are beneath contempt. To quote Rose again, “The Revolution, in fact, cannot be completed until the last vestige of faith in the true God is uprooted from the hearts of men and everyone has learned to live in this void.” In the words of V.I. Lenin: “. . . there will be no way of getting away from it, there will be nowhere to go.”

Really.

Should the Russian Revolution be renamed the Tsar Wars?

The greatest horrors (that’s “horror” – I’m not talking about Madonna) in the history of humanity have been brought about by GloboLeft governments while being run not by atheists, but by antitheists. Period, and that’s verifiable by actual numbers. The end stage of this is the Nihilism we see around us now: The Nihilism bent only on destruction. The French Revolution started it, but you can see it daily at work

As I’ve said again and again, I believe we will win, because we stand for something and to win they have to kill us all. Every single one of us.

They can’t. After 74 years of trying, the Soviets couldn’t erase Religion and the values it provides. Today, only 13% of Russians are atheists. Infecting everyone with Nihilism is really, really hard.

My doctor said I should drink more wine. He actually said, “less beer”, but I’m pretty good at reading between the lines.

Why am I so certain we’ll win? Because we’ve been winning for at least 2000 years, and that won’t stop now. I do believe in Truth. And I know others to, too.

That’s all it takes to win.

Read The Funniest And Best Post You’ll Read On Regret In The Next 431 Hours

“Everything depends upon speed, and the secrecy of his quest. Do not regret your decision to leave him, Frodo must finish this task alone.” – LOTR: The Two Towers

A burglar stole all my lamps. I should be mad, but I’m de-lighted.

People rarely change.

Perhaps the only thing that makes people change is an intense, emotional, experience. Nearly dying is one of those. Losing a land war in Asia is another. Having a loved one pass away is yet another. How we react to those intense moments in life can be significant.

Why is this important?

For the most part, you are who you are. As I started this off, by observation I’ve seen that most people don’t change very much, at all, throughout their lives. There are several friends that I have known for decades that I only talk to every few years. Why don’t we talk more often? Not much has changed – we’ve gotten to the point in life where those bright and technicolor moments of childhood and young adulthood are behind us.

Oddly, I think many of those folks would jump in a car and drive a day to help me if I told them I needed it and it was an emergency. Now, I have no idea if they’d do it a second time if I just made up the emergency, or if the emergency was that I couldn’t find my car keys.

Yeah, there’s probably a limit.

But Jesus never bragged: “For I speak not of my own Accord.” John 12:49

One conversation I recently had with a friend was about those people we went to high school with that were either very ill or have already passed away. As I look around to the people I know, it’s getting to the point where I’ll be going to more funerals than weddings. That’s okay, I’m sure I can be the guy that puts the FUN in funeral.

When I talk to my friends, however, the things that brought us together rarely, if ever change. That’s not to say that that things don’t happen in our lives, but the core of our being stays the same. The character traits that made me admire them, or the personality quirks that made us laugh at the same jokes or love the same movies, or the shared experiences that bond us are still there.

I did a google search for “lost medieval servant boy” but it said, “this page cannot be found”.

Of course, everyone has tragedy in their life – experiencing the tough parts of life is what makes experiencing the best parts of life seem ever sweeter. Part of getting older is getting that perspective so that I can look back and see which of the things that were so important to me twenty years ago are still important. Some of them aren’t. Those are the ephemeral things in life, like my favorite songs.

Oh, wait, I’m still stuck at 17 with those. Darn. But I will say that I certainly care a lot less about what people thing – I guess I’m becoming a curmudgeon.

Which is also okay, since I’ve also learned that most people don’t think about me very much at all. That’s not a statement based on sadness – it’s a statement of reality. Unless I was Donald Trump. Then I’d live rent free in the minds of millions of GloboLeftists.

And she also falls way high on the Crazy axis and way low on the Hot axis.

I also know that, looking back, were there things I would go back and change, knowing what I know today? Of course! There is no fully human life that has ever been lived where mistakes weren’t made. But spending even a single second of my life in regret, kicking myself, is a waste of that second, and an emotion that will lead to nothing but despair, which is certainly an advanced form of Evil.

Why?

The past is gone. Unless someone develops a time machine or John McAfee successfully shows everyone how to drastically shift quantum worldlines, well, those major mistakes of the past are with us and will be with us until we shift off this mortal coil ourselves, moving from the washer to the dryer of life.

But we can’t let those events define us. Sure, they can change us, and any significant emotional experience will change us. Yes, we can work to atone for our errors. But when we have the time, why not focus that emotional experience into something good?

“When you’ve fallen down, and you’re lying there on the ground, pick something up and bring it with you when you get up.” – John Maxwell

When I was faced with my last major setback, I tried to see what aspects of that setback were mine and mine alone. Rather than spend time in regret or revenge, I really tried to focus on things that would make me better after the experience, not in anger or fear, but out of a desire to really get better as a person.

When a Venn diagram wants revenge, does it become a Venn dettagram?

Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise is part of what came out of that experience. The other part was I decided to file my teeth into little fangs. That part didn’t work out so well. Never file your teeth into little fangs.

My question and challenge to myself was to see what I could do to make myself and the world a better place. Do I always do that?

No! Of course not.

But I try. My perspective has changed. As much as I share about me in these posts, these posts are not about me. These posts are, when I do a really, really, good job, about the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

Back to regret: I’ve got a simple question that I asked myself at my last big setback: “What price am I willing to pay to hold on to feelings of regret rather than channeling that feeling into something that changes the world for the better or to repair the wrongs that I’ve committed?”

That’s really a powerful question. I could have stayed with regret, which leads to despair, which leads to . . . nowhere. Unless it’s channeled to make changes in me for the better. My first marriage failed. The result? I resolved to never, ever lie to The Mrs. So, in return, she never asks me “does this pair of pants make my butt look big?” because I’d have to answer, “no, it’s the butt that makes your butt look big.”

A friend of mine married a trophy wife. Apparently, she didn’t win first place.

In one sense, it’s freeing. But it’s a change I made that made me better.

I think that, in the end, our efforts to better ourselves, especially morally, are a very big part of why we’re here. Human beings are really, really pathetic when they don’t have to struggle to achieve greatness. I have the receipts on this: Prince Harry, whose greatest trauma was that his brother once said something mean to him. But he’s paying the price: Meghan Markle. Perhaps Harry should feel regret.

It’s been said that God gives his toughest loads to his strongest servants, and it has been my observation that this is really true, since most people are actually better than me. Though I’m trying.

Again, people rarely change. If you’re in the position to change, pick something up when you get up.

Unless it’s Meghan Markle. You should leave that trash right in the gutter.

Give War A Chance

“War is brewing.” – The Lord of the Rings

Pa Wilder survived mustard gas and pepper spray. He was a seasoned veteran.

War. What is it good for?

Absolutely nothin’.

I have a different answer:

Saving hundreds of millions of lives.

Whaaaaat?

Yeah, war, it turns out, is an amazing catalyst for providing lots of life saving technology that has saved far more people than it has killed. I need to jump in here with this because everyone has their sphincters clenched because it appears we’re on the edge of the Third World War. Maybe that won’t be so bad.

Hang on, this will all make sense in a moment.

I’m a trained professional. Or I would be if I were trained. And if I were getting paid for this.

Give a thief a gun and he’ll rob a bank. Give a thief a bank and he’ll rob everyone.

But I made a pretty bold statement, and I have the receipts to back it up. First let’s start with what I’m counting. I’m not counting as “war” when governments kill their own citizens. In the 20^th century alone (no Fox® required) governments killed an estimated 262 million of their own citizens.

Yeah, that’s an ugly number, and it’s certainly the largest man-made source of involuntary death. This is also the biggest argument EVER that the Second Amendment is the very best life-saving technology ever conceived by mortal man.

Ever.

War is a different kettle of fish, and it depends on the counting. One source says the total number of combat deaths since 1800 is around 35 million. Sure, that’s a lot, and I’d love to have them all over for a nice dinner, but it’s small compared to those killed by their own government. A broader definition of “war” would put it at 131 million in the twentieth century, but I’d guess that also includes a big overlap of citizens killed by their own government.

I hear that Stalin collected political jokes. When asked how many he had, “Four GULAGs worth.”

Tomato, tomah-to. Let’s split the difference and say it’s probably 80 million in the twentieth century, or roughly as many people as Joe Biden has allowed to come streaming over the border in the last three years.

But how, John Wilder, you amazing stud, you said you had receipts on how war brought about benefits that exceeded the costs?

War provides an acceleration of humanity, it provides the necessary push and investment into things that help troops do unexpected things on the battlefield. Like living. That leads us to penicillin. It was spurred into development (it had been discovered earlier) in World War II. Would antibiotics have been lost in a research paper without World War II? Don’t know – but World War II allowed them to be tested on Allied soldiers.

While we’re on medical, what about smallpox? Oh, sure, it doesn’t sound bad, but I’ve been told it is far worse than bigpox. What spurred that innovation? War. The Revolutionary War, in fact.

Well, there’s a joke coming back from 2012. I guess humor ended then.

I know I try to avoid drinking water since mankind developed beer and wine, but water chlorination has saved lots of people who aren’t drinking booze. Who developed the process to make chlorine gas cheaply so he could gas a bunch of French? A German guy in World War One.

There are more, but there are hundreds of millions of lives saved in just those three developments.

What else did war provide?

Nuclear power – sure, just like OJ’s obituary, someone will say . . . “Oh, and there’s that one other thing” but nuclear power has produced clean power over the globe with, well, a few exceptions.
Jet engines – without World War Two, would Steve Miller have ever had someone to take him home?
Radar – I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard that it’s pretty good at keeping planes from hitting each other.
The Internet – how else would we get pictures of cats?
GPS – it can guide bombs, or it can take us to a liquor store in an unfamiliar town. Guess which is used more often?

I found a $20 outside of a liquor store. I decided to do what Jesus would do, so I turned it into wine.

Satellites – without World War Two, would we have these? Probably not. And satellites have made weather prediction a pretty trivial thing. Doesn’t mean the prediction will be any good, but, you know, we can do it faster.
Computers – created to calculate firing tables for artillery and to decode German stuff. Again, now we use for pictures of cats. And porn.
Medical imaging, including x-rays and ultrasound – all started with military tech.
Medical prosthetics – this is grimmer, but the more things got shot off, the better the tech.
Telecommunications technology, including wireless networks – the very first time I used WIFI in a house, the host noted that it was based on tech used in Gulf War I. WIFI? Yeah, thank a war.
Aircraft technology – when you make tens of thousands of aircraft that are used to the maximum extent of their capability, you learn what makes them fall out of the sky. Which is useful.
Rocket technology – no bucks, no Buck Rodgers. From Werner von Braun to Elon Musk, I’m raising my glass to the foreigners who get us into space. Oh, von Braun’s first rockets weren’t aimed at the Moon.
Sonar – I don’t fish, so, I guess this is okay. Meh tier.
Chemical engineering – this is a really important one – in making all the gases to kill people in World War One and in all the bits and pieces required to make tires without rubber and how to make ammonia to kill yet more people in World War One, our modern world wouldn’t exist.
Trauma care – how is it that 35 people are shot in an average Chicago weekend and only eight die? Trauma care. This stuff was built on lots of combat experience, and thankfully keeps lots of innocent people breathing.
Cryptography – the entire field of cryptography is due to war. It’s the backbone of current connections and internet transactions, but started when people wanted to figure out where the Germans were going to be next week.

But when the Vikings used dots and dashes to communicate, it was Norse code.

I’m no longer scared of war. Sure, it sucks if you or your friends got exploded, but the numbers don’t lie: war has killed probably between 35 million (low) and 131 million (way high) in the twentieth century. The advancements from war have probably saved (one estimate I read) five billion people.

War seems to have saved more people than it has killed. By a huge margin.

So, in the immortal words of P.J. O’Rourke (peace be upon him): “Give war a chance.”

Maybe, but maybe we’re on the eve of creation?

Maybe It’s . . . Evil?

“But I just changed my lifetime tune about thirty minutes ago, ‘cause I know that whatever is out there tryin’ to get in is pure Evil straight from Hell. And if there is a Hell, and those sons of bitches are from it, then there has go to be a heaven, Jacob, there’s gotta be.” – From Dusk ‘til Dawn

My friend gets offended when I tell her fat jokes. I told her, “Lighten up.” (Most memes are “as-found”)

I’ve been having a bit of question in my mind about what we’re seeing going on in the world today. I’ve written quite a bit about the physical trends in the world today, with energy being the number one roadblock I see into the physical future since the complexity of the world’s economy is based on cheap energy for manufacture, transport, and use of goods in our “modern” society. That might explain why people on unicycles are always so energetic compared to me on my regular bicycle. I’m two tired.

The second big challenge I see is the virtual world. By virtual, I include not only cyber-dependence, A.I., but also cash. Our current economic system uses an entirely made-up set of markers called “dollars” to buy and sell things. What’s a dollar? Once upon a time, it was some fraction of an ounce of gold. Now, a dollar is worth whatever someone will give you for it. As Biden has adopted the Binge Bucks Better strategy to try to get votes (I mean, besides the ones they print up) the deficit has reached a record.

Hmm, if Brandon is so awesome, why is no one wearing a “Build Back Better” hat?

All this spending? There’s no end in sight. So, this is a world that is having its own set of challenges in both the physical and virtual realm.

The third and (in my opinion) most important one is the spiritual realm.

Let me digress a bit – I think it will make sense in the end, but I haven’t written the end yet, so it could just end up with all of the coherence of Kamala Harris talking about quantum mechanics. Nah, nothing could be that bad.

I was half asleep recently (hypnogogic, to be technical). I often get a “clearing of the mind” when in that state, when issues that have been perplexing me sort themselves out. It’s like my mind is running a program in the background, but when I’m half asleep, all the pieces come together.

What was this puzzle?

Let’s talk about the pieces, first:

No one, literally even the GloboLeftists in the Deep Blue cities wants the massive hordes of illegals streaming across the borders. No one. It’s so bad that Biden is even attempting to blame the Republicans for not letting him close the border.

Yeah, pull the other one, Joe, and a bell will ring.

Biden 2024! 20 years for Joe, 24 for Hunter.

This is destroying the country. Quickly. Why are housing prices going up? Because we’re not building new houses because no one can afford them but yet we’ve brought in OVER 12 MILLION ILLEGALS in just three years. If Putin could have gotten that many Russians into the Ukraine, he could have taken it without a shot.

Hmmm.

I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon® today. I’ll let you know.

Ever wonder if Tyson® was a company designed to import illegal aliens so they could make cheap food so people would have heart problems requiring heroic intervention to keep the medical system going?

The second datapoint is the weird fixation of the GloboLeft on literally every freak sexuality that could possibly exist. Sexually aroused by toasters? Yeah, I know that naughty bagel-sized girl is a tease, but toaster fixation is . . . deranged. The current poster child for adding deranged sexuality to avoidance of reality is the transexual movement.

The public has, at every opportunity, rejected this. Yet, Joseph Robinette Biden decided to issue a proclamation that Easter should be known as Transexual Visibility Day. To be clear, most of the time that transexuals are visible is because they’ve snapped and tried to kill a dozen people or were engaged in really awful things with children or were parading their female penis inside a woman’s dressing room. I have seen zero positive things in the news about trans people. Ever. Each time it’s some new horror story that would have led all of our ancestors look for kindling so they could have a burning at the stake.

Yet, we have a presidential proclamation on the single holiest day of Christianity promoting this abomination.

This is the Cartoon Network®. Trust them with the minds of your kid?

I could keep going. In general, there appears to be a concerted effort put forth to break down and eliminate the impact of Christianity as the basic underlying moral virtue of the West in general, including the United States.

The fall of Christianity in the United States (and the West) will have several big, negative impacts. The concepts that there is centrality of the family, the idea that life has an ultimate purpose, and the belief that all humans can be one in Christ have shaped the world. Christianity has been the central, governing moral vision at the heart of the West.

As Christianity declines, there is a risk of losing the moral foundation it provided. The decline Christianity in society accompanied by various societal issues, including divorce, cohabitation, drug abuse, abortion, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, and suicide. People are born to be religious because it gives them stability and direction.

Yet, there has been a concerted war on Christianity for years, even though it makes society observably better, and observably more stable.

San Francisco is so woke, that even the homeless vaccinate themselves!

If I were an oligarch, all of these changes would be negative for me. I’d be an oligarch over a less stable society, that produced less wealth for me to leach off of, and, in every measurable way, including the amount of power I could have, I would be worse off.

There is the first answer: because they’re just sick inside, and want to watch it all burn. Someone like George Soros may very well be like that – if you look into his eyes it’s not like you’re looking at something healthy and good. Maybe he just wants to burn it all down because he can. Because his heart is filled with hate.

That’s a simple answer. It might even be right.

This is a math teacher, so you can tell she’s plotting something.

The other answer is more profound: the GloboLeftistElite might just be . . . Evil. Capital E. It’s a solution that the modern mind wants to find an alternative to. It wants to look to cultural factors, or mental illness, or poor parenting.

Oddly, the idea that these people really are Evil is perhaps (to me) more comforting. Just like William Peter Blatty felt about his book, The Exorcist, that it was a profoundly Christian book, and uplifting, since the end showed that it wasn’t Evil that won, it was God.

Watch this, and tell me that Evil isn’t at work.

We face amazing challenges in the near future – physical, virtual, and spiritual. I’d prepare for all three.

But that’s just me.

Next up? Kamala Harris explains the General Theory of Relativity using a banana and two meatballs as props.

Family Structure, Part II: Orphans Still Not Required

“It’s taken almost thirty years and my family fortune to realize the vision of that day.” – Back to the Future

It’s easy to make a website for orphans – you don’t need a home page.

Last post we talked about the main family structures that impact the ideology of the United States (Absolute Nuclear, Authoritarian, and Egalitarian Nuclear). As noted in the post and in the comments, there were several left out. Let’s start out with the biggest structure in the world and the structure that breeds commies:

The Exogamous Clan.

This is the family structure that was seen in China, Cuba, northern India, Russia, and the part of France commies come from.
The basic structure is that marriage occurs with women from outside the clan, and the husband brings the wife home.
This is a wickedly high stress scenario: more than one woman in the household is insanely susceptible to the competition and emotional games that more than one woman can bring, plus lots of adult males and jealous wives under the same roof.
The result, the father has to have huge amounts of power. Women are pushed down relentlessly to keep peace in the family. This is reflected in that the sons’ wives are chosen by the parents, and even the sons are fairly replaceable.
The idea of independence never comes up until the father dies and the son has to form his own clan and only then does the family break apart.

The result of this is that the culture where the Exogamous Clan is the family structure prizes discipline, social duty, conformity, and not being different. The culture lends itself to strong central governance: strong emperors or a strong central government – looking at you, Chairman Xi. In China, the initial failed attempts at communism were attempts to move this Exogamous Clan structure to the societal level.

And they decided they didn’t need to teach him, they said, “Hilfinger it out.”

When these cultures have an overthrow of their leadership, the bloodshed is epic until the new father figure takes over. Children from this family structure will have a really hard time understanding the Absolute Nuclear and Authoritarian since independence is prized in the Absolute Nuclear and Authoritarian and is a cancer to the Exogamous Clan structure.

The next stop on our world tour leads us to the Islamic world, which pretty much all follows the same family structure:

The Endogamous Clan.

The Endogamous Clan is essentially and nearly exactly the Islamic world.

These are marriages based on arranged cousin marriages.
There isn’t much family stress since everyone is already family and is already inbred related so everyone pitches in.
Dad busy? There’s an uncle who will help you out. The “Patriarch” rarely has to rule because the uncles will form an opinion and go with it.
Women aren’t outsiders, and they are the ones who end up setting up the marriages, picking and choosing which cousins should marry.
They consider the entire world a clan, and their goal is to carry their clan, Islam, to everyone.
If you’re outside the clan, however, slavery is just fine with them.

If you think about having kids with your cousin and go, “ewww, gross” you’ve been inoculated against Endogamous Clans. For good reasons: one study in Bradford (U.K.) determined that childhood birth defects in Bradford was double the national average – largely because of Pakistani first cousin marriage. I guess it’s okay for them to sleep with their second cousin, if the first cousin doesn’t mind.

Islamic pubs are the worst, no drinking, no dancing. But the women can get stoned.

The English and the Pakistani (and other East Asians from Endogamous Clans) living in England will never really understand each other. The English will see a group that they want to assimilate, and the Pakistani are there only for conquest. Why did Pakistani kebob shop owners chop up and cook and sell an English child (to other English people)?

The kid was not a member of the Clan, so who cares? This is a significant cultural clash that has yet to come to a head.

The last major group is from sub-Saharan Africa. This was classified by Todd as a Flexible System. There’s a system, but that system is defined as “whatever”.

This is primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, and Todd found it also in the United States cotton belt.
Monogamy? Polygamy? Whatever.
Women raise the children while men wage war and herd cattle.
A large number of the men don’t have the opportunity to have sex: polygamy leads to periodic civil wars.
Men join together in war bands to take women or create social status.
Power is important, but responsibility is not prized.

Africa has been chaotic, and it appears that much (not all!!) of the social system seen in the United States today from African descendants has been a replication of the Flexible System, which appears to be in many cases becoming the predominant urban family structure for all people, not just African descendants.

Since Ford V. Ferrari was such a hit, Chevy tried to release a film: Total Recall.

The final two are Asymmetric and Anomic.

Asymmetric is:

Weird and limited to India, consisting of arranged marriages from the cousins of female relatives only.
It’s India, so like all things Indian it’s confused and chaotic and covered in curry powder.
I’d like to ignore it, but it’s like a billion people. But it’s a billion Indians, so I’ll ignore it.

India probably breaks every rule, primarily because regardless of the family structure, that structure also has to contend with the caste system. When I was interacting with Indians, they looked to see what caste I’d have been in if I were Indian. Due to several questions, they seemed convinced it would have been the warrior caste (they were warrior caste) so we were cool.

India will keep being India, and Indians (wherever they go) will want to hang out with other Indians more than anyone else, including getting all of their family hired.

What do you do with an elephant with three balls? Walk him, and pitch to the rhino.

Anomic is:

No fixed structure, whatsoever.
Tribal, think rainforest tribal.
Consists of oppressive empires and peasants, with consisting of military dictatorships coupled with coups.
Comically ineffective at doing anything of note.

I have no doubt that Mssr. Todd would not write this book today in the current climate of moral relativism. In choosing to review cultures and compare them, by definition some will come up short in some way or another – the greatest burst of human invention, ever, came primarily from two family systems, the Absolute Nuclear and the Authoritarian. Cultures like the Exogamous Clan structure have provided innovation, but for the most part (until recently) tried to turn their back to the world since dealing with foreigners is, well, messy.

What did Malcom X name his son? Malcom XI.

But it does explain that to the CCP and Chairman Xi, if you are Chinese-American, you’re still Chinese. Back in (I think?) the year 2019 I read that China had naturalized 4,000 citizens from other countries. That’s not a typo. 4,000. Conformity comes from being Chinese, which is why I don’t really expect them to ever be interested in taking over the world. They like Chinese people, and I’m pretty sure they think they’re a separate species.

Will China fight for resources? Certainly. Will China fight for Taiwan? Yes, to the Chinese, those are just more Chinese. Does China want to control Japan or Korea or Vietnam? No. They want them to do what China wants, but China has been, historically, very happy staying at home, likely (in part) for the reasons Todd discussed related to family structure.

The endgame of this is complex – as family structure in nations changes due either to technological progress, social change (divorced moms), and/or the influx of foreign family patterns, the very ideology of nations is bound to change.

Family patterns may change, but remember, to an orphan a selfie will always be a family photo.

Another Key To Understanding It All: Family Structure

“Without the ability to defend one’s own viewpoint against other more aggressive ideologies then reasonableness and moderation could quite simply disappear. That is why we’ll always need an army.” – Monty Python, The Meaning of Life

Geology is great, but geography is where it’s at.

The ideology of a group can come from many things, including the propaganda that we are all exposed to from a very young age. Another part of it comes from the family structure that we’re surrounded by. A French dude named Emmanual Todd spent a lot of time thinking about this in the 1970s, and decided that the ideology of a country, in part, could be determined by the family structure that the country. I was introduced to Mr. Todd’s ideas by the WhatIfAltHist YouTube® show. I recommend that show.

First, I was intrigued. A French guy named Todd.

Weird.

And who loses when I post an image of Heather Graham? No one.

Second, it felt right. One of the things that people often don’t rate highly enough in the world is genetics. Genetics are very powerful, and influence far more than just hair, skin and eye color or other merely physical attributes. No, from what I’ve seen, genetics very much impacts the basic way related people think. It’s as if family structure, that which literally gives birth to genetic structure, could be a selection mechanism to create and reinforce ideology as well. That would entirely be in line with my observations of both people that I know, as well as the flow of history.

Third, I was interested. What Todd had to say was based on the cultures that he saw in the world in the 1970s, which, due to unceasing hordes of unchecked illegals has now changed. What tensions might conflicting ideologies based on family structures bring to countries being invaded?

But they’re as close to me as steppe-brothers.

Let’s start with the family structure that was the one that came from England and was predominant in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Normandy:

Absolute Nuclear.

It’s what I grew up thinking a normal family was – the term nuclear family was coined in 1924, and has nothing to do with atom bombs.
The mother and father met and chose each other for love.
They lived in their own house.
Their children were expected to become independent, be responsible for themselves, and their lives, after they grew up, was in their own hands.
Parents could disinherit kids, and split up the inheritance however.
God judges individuals.
Societies are mostly stable, but when internal revolts happen, they are horrific.

This is the most successful culture in history, and has been amazing for freedom. Christianity and individual salvation plus independence and individual outcomes lead to structures where people have incentives to produce, and incentives to be moral.

Why can’t you trust an atom? Because they make up everything.

Many other cultures cannot understand this culture – it appears cold and impersonal, and it values freedom over equality. For this system to work, though, high social trust is required.

Absolute Nuclear is a big chunk of my genetics. But the majority of it is:

Authoritarian.

This is just Todd’s name. If I were to name it, I’d call it the Ancient Honor culture, or something like that. It is a very big part of the culture of the United States, especially from the Southern States. Why?

This culture is that the Germans, Scandinavians, Czechs, Irish, Scots, Welsh had historically, and it also describes the Koreans, Japanese, and northern Spaniards (where Franco was from).
Only the oldest son inherits, so the clan follows the eldest.
What do the other sons do? Warriors or warrior monks so they have something to do.
The story of the society is one of a lineage that goes back through time. If you worry just a bit too much about your family story (like I might) and care about its honor (like I do) this may describe you.
The story of the society is one of the lineage of the family, the sense of history, stubbornness, and that everything thrown in front of you makes you stronger. Only the Irish can destroy the Irish, only the Scots can destroy the Scots. Losing makes them tougher.
Women have significant value, unlike in many other cultures.
These cultures typically have a large middle class, because if you don’t inherit, you’d best figure something out.
There is very little oppression in these societies, because individualism is cultivated – people like each other and will fight for their group.
These people are awful at creating empires – it took the British to unite the Irish since these groups are like a bag of cats. That’s why Japan and Germany and Scotland and Ireland were so hard to unify.

This is a very successful culture, historically, and is the other “big” Western culture. If I come across someone who wants to fight because I accidently took his parking space? Tell me you’re Scots-Irish without telling me you’re Scots-Irish. The tensions between the Authoritarians (South) and Absolute Nuclear (North) led to the Civil War.

I met the Godfather of the Scottish mafia. He made me an offer I couldn’t understand.

This is the rest, and possibly the majority of my genetics, and by far the majority of The Mrs.

Don’t make her mad on a point of honor.

The third culture that’s now impacting the United States is the one from (most of) France, (most of) the Italians, South America, Mexico, and Central America.

Egalitarian Nuclear:

In this structure, all sons inherit equally. There are several properties I’m aware of where the Spanish father split up the property (five miles by five miles) so his sons could all have access to the river that ran down the middle, so they could water their cattle. Fast forward to today, and there are several properties that are 200 feet wide by five miles long so they can still get access to the river.
Marriages aren’t arranged and females have huge influence.
Because everything gets split up into weird chunks, rich people end up buying the odd land and the sons end up with nothing to give for inheritance. This leads to massive wealthy inequality.
Because the families are equalitarian, they want equity in society, which leads to a series of revolutions because their property always ends up in the hands of the rich.
Why have most South American countries had a zillion revolutions, constitutions, communist uprisings, while the United States has had the same Constitution?
Since the daughters get nothing, it leads to an “alpha-male” dictator, but they’re comically bad dictators (think Chavez or Mussolini) that don’t get much done because, equality leads to zero discipline.

When this family structure is a significant minority, it ends up running the country. France. Italy. Most South American countries. Mexico. Why are they this mixed bag of equalitarian nonsense? Because of this social structure. Since often a minority population ends up deciding how the country is run, exactly how many Egalatarian Nuclear people can we let in from South America and still have a country that values freedom over equality?

My humor is a lot like food in Venezuela. Most people don’t get it.

We’ve created new family structures that Monsieur Todd never thought about back in the 1970s, since they were just in the process of becoming. What ideology will they create?

I have enough material for another post on this, so I’ll probably skip economics and do one more on Wednesday on family structure and ideology.

Winning Starts With Belief That Winning Is Possible

“Win the crowd.” – Gladiator

If your wife just sits around in bed all day, not moving a muscle, congratulations! You’ve got yourself an atrophy wife!

I was sitting on my desk when my boss’s boss came up.

“John, we have something we’d like you to lead. It’s got the attention of the top people in the company, including the CEO. We need it done in 90 days. We’ve used about 15 of them. You have the full commitment of the company.”

Yikes! What could I say?

“I’ll do it.”

Looking back, I think they thought it was an impossible task. I would also have to leave my current job, with absolutely no promise of a future position after 90 days. It was amazingly risky, but it was also presented as, well, not a choice.

If I lost, well, they could fire me, say they tried, and then buy themselves time to meet the commitment. It would look not perfect for them, but it would give them breathing room. I know company politics, and I knew what that meant.

I had to win.

Never challenge Death to a pillow fight unless you’re prepared for the Reaper cushions.

In order to win, I had to have a plan. I had to put together the resources to make it happen. I asked for some very specific, very high performing people. I was told, “no”. (At least one reader knows this story very, very well.)

The first step was that I had to believe that I could win.

I look around at the country that we have today, and I see a similar circumstance: the forces that are arrayed against the TradRIght are numerous.

Seriously: they own

most federal bureaucracies,
most government employees,
the military leadership,
academia,
media,
Hollywood, and
the people who count the votes.

But even with all of that, they scared.

Hillary proves it takes a village to climb a staircase.

No, strike that, they are terrified. They are terrified we are going to win, and the GloboLeftistElite will lose because they know us. They have seen that the TradRight can do when it is unified and has a common goal. When working together, we can tame continents, build a miniature star to end a war, and put people on the damn Moon in a tin can with three gallons of fuel left without having our heartbeats go above 100 and then defeat International Communism 2.0 (I count the French as 1.0).

We are the TradRight. We did all of that when we are unified.

I think that, in the end, they expect to lose. That’s why they throw everything they have, every silly law, every silly accusation against Donald Trump because they mistakenly think that if they break him, if they make him poor, they break us.

Make no mistake, Donald Trump is not our leader. Donald Trump is a very smart man who saw the motion of the people and jumped out in front. Did he want to Build The Wall before that line got applause in a rally? Maybe.

Don’t worry, I hear that protests are only illegal on January 6.

I know that Ann Coulter is still miffed that The Donald didn’t Build The Wall and was far too chummy with the Democrats, but anyone who makes them as crazy as President Trump did accomplish quite a lot: he made the GloboLeftElite and the RINO conspirators show their true faces.

But I remember in a rally where he bragged about the Vaxx®. The crowd let out a wave of disapproval, and he got off the Vaxx™ train that minute. Trump may not lead us, but he does stand for us. He finds what we want and jumps out in front.

No, breaking Donald Trump won’t break us.

But, let’s face it, the DOJ is even afraid of the Clintons.

Back to Wilder’s 90 days:

I immediately got a plan together. I used the resources I was given. I set expectations with my leadership on what we could accomplish in the remaining 90 days: I defined victory, a real victory.

My definition was approved.

I fought the political games necessary to get various leaders I had to convince on board – instead of shooting at us, they covered my flank so they could take credit if we won, while still being able to blame me if we lost.

We won. I got a 25% raise and the biggest bonus I’d ever gotten in my life up to that point. I could even mathematically prove that my methods and intervention at crucial points in the project had saved the company about $3 million.

Ta-Da!

To be clear: if I had thought that I was going to lose, I would have lost. Was it hard? Certainly. I could have lost, and about day 53 it was Not Looking Good. But my team and I turned the ship and won.

We won. Because we thought we could win.

This story, though, isn’t about me. It’s about all of us. If we think we’re going to win, we will win. If we refuse to be demoralized, we won’t be demoralized. The ability to win even at the cultural level is there, primarily because we believe in the True, Beautiful, and Good.

Anyone else find it odd that the Flintstones® celebrated Christmas?

The GloboLeftElite? They despise the True, Beautiful, and Good because it shows the empty places they have in their souls – they believe in no Truth, they believe they are ugly, and they openly despise the Good because it sets standards they cannot meet.

The physical and moral levels are a cakewalk.

That, my friends, is why our victory, though it may be difficult, is inevitable. And it’s also why they want to fill us with despair.

Onward!

Gamer Gate 2.0: Woke On Patrol

“Mortal Kombat on Sega Genesis is the best video game ever.” – Billy Madison

Also like a gamer, he spent 73 years living off his mother before he got a job.

I predict this will be the most censored post I ever write, even including the one where I told Joe where he could stick his F-16s.

As I touched on in my last post, there is a process that makes people feel good – have a goal, work, and achieve. It was important when my great, great, great grandpa Grug was hunting mammoth on the frozen steppes, and is important today. Since there are few mammoths to hunt, lots of young men get their surrogate achievement from playing video games.

Games are important to them.

That’s why Gamer Gate was a big deal, and Gamer Gate 2.0 might turn out to be bigger. Many of you might not be familiar with it, so I’ll give a too brief synopsis that skips over a lot of details, because you’re bright and can research more if you want to.

Zoë Quinn. It starts with Zoë.

Literally who?

I think she was 27 going on 50 in this picture.

Original Picture By Ian Linkletter – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81658314

Zoë was a lame GloboLefty girl with stupid hair color who moved to Canada, built a crappy GloboLeft video game called Depression Quest, her lame GloboLefty ex-boyfriend wrote a long blog post.

Really? A long blog post about your ex? Regardless, in the post, people walked away with the idea that Zoë had slept with almost half a dozen journalists to get good reviews for her crappy game. For this story, it’s not particularly important whether or not she did sleep with them or not.

The important thing to come out of this was that a bunch of gamers got together to complain about the corruption within the gaming journalism community. It could have ended there because gaming journalists aren’t serious, and were gaming journalists in 2010s because they couldn’t get better jobs.

That would have ended it. But no, the gaming journalists tried to cover it up and silence the whole thing, calling the gamers (you know, the audience that reads their crap and buys the games) sexist with dozens of articles all at once with the same theme. The Narrative fought back, and, sadly Anita Sarkeesian got semi-famous.

Maybe someone could pay for a tattoo of fake kids over her barren womb. Someone get that woman a wine and cat I.V. Stat!

It kept growing, and growing, and growing. Oddly, that was the time The Fappening (leaking of all of the nekkid celebrity women’s iPhone® pictures) happened and lots of nudes of celebrities were leaked, starting at 4Chan to discredit 4Chan.

But what became clear was in 2014, there was a narrative, The Narrative that had to be protected. And why gaming, and why gamers?

Remember the 1995 movie GoldenEye? It was an okay Bond™ movie? It cost $60 million to make, but made $356 million worldwide. A tidy profit. The 1997 video game GoldenEye 007 grossed over $250 million. Not quite as much as the movie, but it also racked up hours and hours and hours of play by, mainly, guys.

In other words, Gamers.

Yup, you have no idea how deep it goes. Snowden might . . .

What a propaganda tool! Hours and hours of time and attention of people. Having it the market dominated by (gasp!) young white men was simply not acceptable. Why think of all the wrongthink they demanded? Attractive women! Strong men! Violence solving problems! Bond had to be changed to the less-manly Daniel Craig, and video games had to be changed to serve The Narrative.

But the Gamers still existed. It was required to change the message, to show via the combined might of the gaming journalist press that Gamers were dead. Boys need not apply to the future – the future was about putting a chick in it, and making her lame and gay.

Well, Kathleen Kennedy didn’t ruin games, but she ruined Star Wars®. Lame and gay.

So, places like the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) funded by the GloboLeft and manned by the fire-breathing GloboLeftistElite came for the games. Their job was to create “scholarly” papers regarding video games. I’d write more about the connections of DiGRA, including supposed links to DARPA funding, but, oddly, much of that material is now 404’d. Now, this stuff is nine years old, but I get videos on YouTube™ from fifteen years ago, so the removal had intent.

Remember when the mask started to come off at Hollywood, Twitter®, Wikipedia™, Amazon™ and YouTube©? When the transnonsense became sacrament? Why are there raging GloboLeftElite censors trying to shut down people merely questioning The Narrative?

It was GamerGate, the leaderless resistance to the GloboLeft that started it all. One summary I read said, “A girl slept (allegedly) with some journalists for good reviews, a lot of stuff happened, and then Donald Trump was elected president.” As I’ve said, there’s a LOT more there if you want to dig into this subject. I won’t even mention PizzaGate. Oh, too late:

But that was then. Now, in 2024, GamerGate2.0 has started.

What this time?

Sweet Baby© Inc. is a “narrative development and consultation studio . . . .” The idea is that they go into a company that actually makes games and tell them what story they should tell, and how they should stick a chick in it, and make her lame and gay. In one of their triumphs, they kill off male characters (think Batman™ in the most cringe way possible just so strong, triumphant women can have the story.

Yeah. That didn’t go over well with the core audience that buys the games. Think about Left Behind 2 – where the popular male hero of the first Left Behind was reframed to be an evil white man, and the new hero was a trans sack of potatoes.

That’s what Sweet Baby® Inc. does, but I don’t think they were behind Left Behind 2, which shows you how deep the crapfest is. Well, why would anyone hire a corrosive crapfest of woke to make their games more awful? Here’s the idea in the CEO’s (Kim Belair) own words:

If you’re a creative working in AAA, which I did for many, many years, put this stuff up to your higher-ups. And if they don’t see the value in what you’re asking for when you ask for consultants, when you ask for research, go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility of what’s going to happen if they don’t give you what you want.

And, just in time for journalists to show their true spots haven’t changed since 2014 . . .

These are the journalists we’re dealing with. Nice that they at least tell you to your face how they hate you.

The best news though is that someone is pushing back. On Steam®, a service where you can buy and talk about games, a gamer has put together a simple list: Sweet Baby Detected, which showcases games Sweet Baby has helped ruin. That’s okay with Kim, she’s gotten rich making the people who buy her games angry while helping companies lose money. As /pol/ notes, she’s probably a Marxist, so for her, it’s a two-fer.

I’m skipping out on fuzzing the f-bomb. I agree with Anon on Marxists.

Sweet Baby isn’t alone. There are hordes of these cancerous “companies” out there, with their sole intent to make stuff worse.

Is there any surprise that the Zoomer males think Pinochet did nothing wrong?

The Unabomber Teaches The Facts Of Life

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.” – The Matrix

I figured out how to turn Alexa® off. I walked through the room naked. (Only two memes are not “as found”)

Although he is certainly better known for other things (which I won’t defend), Ted Kaczyinski was very smart. He did spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the human condition when he was, um, not working on projects. One of the things that he wrote about was what he called The Power Process.

I’d be surprised if Ted was the first to point out The Power Process, since on its face it seems so . . . logical. I’ll let him tell the tale, though the added emphasis is mine:

The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone.

We’re skipping the fourth element (autonomy) because it doesn’t pertain to the post at hand. You can read it in Ted’s work. Remember my wife’s advice about reading Ted Kaczinski: it’s okay to be seen reading Ted, but never with a highlighter.

Yeah, that’s a picture I made of Ted in front of a Blockbuster®, with A.I.

I am not sure this is universal, but it seems to appear every time I look into human nature and why people aren’t happy. People like the struggle. I had a friend who I will call “Joe” because his name is Joe. Joe would often procrastinate at work, sometimes not doing much of anything for days. Then, when the deadline approached, he’d work incredible hours to finish.

John Wilder: “Joe, you did this on purpose.”

Joe: “Yeah, I wanted to wait until I didn’t know if I could do it.”

The game wasn’t sufficiently interesting to Joe to keep him going until he created the challenge. Since this was his job, the one he was getting the money necessary to eat and live from, he often flew pretty close to the flame. But he always managed to keep his wings from being singed too badly.

What do you call a primitive man who liked to take random walks? A meandertal.

For Joe, a very highly functioning human, effort was the key. And to get to enough effort to keep him happy, he needed to have real jeopardy. Without the required effort, it just wasn’t fulfilling for him. Imagine fighting a kitten. I mean, there’s no real effort involved, unless you give it rabies or a gun or make a genetically engineered kitten the size of a tank.

Ted goes on:

Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop serious psychological problems. At first, he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one’s power.

This explains why so many actors today are whining GloboLeftists who turn their adopted vanity children into transexuals: they have everything they want, anything they could imagine, they don’t have to work for it – it’s just there. All the time. They (most of them) are fundamentally unhappy unless they have a goal to shoot for, and one that matters to them. Maybe winning an Oscar™. If you look at the youth of Robert Downey Jr. and Christian Slater, I can understand with their ludicrous early success why they went on crazy drug and violence benders: they had it all.

If Ma Wilder had divorced and married a Mongolian, would I have a steppe brother?

There is, of course, a flip side to this: the run of the mill GloboLeftist foot soldier. Ted talks about them:

Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: the vast majority of GloboLeftists are losers. They are awful people who hate themselves, the world, and God. They hate God because they look at how awful they are, and have to blame someone, anyone other than themselves.

See, Ted agrees with me. Is that good, or not?

Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.

Bingo. Life is struggle, and if we win that struggle, even a bit, we feel good. I would imagine this is hardwired into almost every living creature because otherwise they’d just give up like Mitt Romney’s spine.

In the current world, especially the First World, most of the struggles that used to occupy our lives are gone. We spend very little time worrying about starvation or running from bears. That leaves us in a weird position – we don’t have to fight to live, but we’re wired to like fighting to live. So we need something more.

Amish women use protection to stop the spread of Abes.

Thus, we come up with other things, hobbies, games, sports and other ways to build a goal, work for it, and achieve it (or not). One experiment I wrote about in the past (link below), the John Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia where mice were placed in a habitat where they had food and were free from predation and . . .

Want Dystopia? Because this is how you get Dystopia.

His paper was called Death Squared because the mice, despite having all the food they could eat, died out. But before they died out, their society collapsed in upon itself. You can read Calhoun’s paper here (LINK), but it is as grim as remembering Biden is in the White House. The mice stopped acting as families, rape became rampant, some mice became pansexuals (mate anything, any time) there were gangs, some mice ignored everything and just groomed themselves, and mother mice stopped nurturing their young.

Another A.I. drawing I made.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, I thought so. Men need quests. Society needs quests. We need something worth fighting for, something worth winning for life to have meaning. And, yes, I realize the irony of writing about Ted Kaczynski’s on a laptop and putting it on the Internet, but I think he’d understand.

Thank you for attending my Ted talk.

Be Bold. Life Is Too Short For Anything Else.

“That’s a bold statement.” – Pulp Fiction

A lion would never drive drunk. But a tiger would.

One of the problems with life in Modern Mayberry is that it often moves at a fairly slow pace. Especially in the time when an adult is focused on raising kids, the days tend to blur one into the next.

If your life is good, this isn’t really a problem. When I was younger, my life was spent going to weddings. Now that I’m older, more time is spent going to funerals. It is important to not get mixed up as to which you’re at, although sometimes “My condolences,” is appropriate at a wedding and I’d almost be willing to bet $20 that at least one person will say “Congratulations!” after my funeral.

However, in the event that I’m wrong, collecting on that bet might be a problem.

Maybe I’ll add bikini girls. Will that put the “fun” in funeral?

One thing that facilitates this blur is reading stuff on the Internet. One blogger I read (LINK) is giving up doomscrolling (or reading the unending list of negative stories that are available in the news) for Lent. I suppose you could leave him a comment, but you’d have to wait a few weeks to get a response.

But when it comes to doomscrolling, there are huge numbers of these stories available. The business model is simple: scary stuff attracts eyeballs, and eyeballs means revenue. As I look at my own past posts, I’m thinking that, even though I talk about a lot of scary stuff, that I’m mostly relentlessly positive. I can even recall a comment section or two where I’m called a Pollyanna because I’m so positive.

What do we want? Hearing aids. When do we want them? Hearing aids.

I can live with that. Being positive, being for things and knowing that, in the end it’s all going to work out keeps me positive. In most cases (most, not all!) the things I write about don’t make me angry, either.

Again, stress on the “mostly”. And I try not to get worked up about events occurring half-a-world away that I can’t control or even much influence. Things are what they are.

And, for most of us, things are generally pretty good on a day-to-day basis, even when things aren’t perfect. Even on a bad day, most parts of the day are good. The thing that gets us is built into the doomscrolling: spending time worrying about things that simply have not happened.

My friend wrote me a text that said, “What do you get when you mix a gullible person with an optimistic person?” I replied, “I don’t know!” He texted back, “Read it again.”

I write about the coming Civil War 2.0 not in hopes that it comes, rather to make people aware that it’s coming. Do I sit and worry about it daily?

No!

That would take away from the time I spend thinking about the Roman Empire.

In this moment, there are things that I could let bother me. However, I realize that letting them bother me gives them power over me when that’s the last thing I want. “Take not counsel of your fears,” is attributed to George S. Patton, Jr. I’m sure other people said the same thing in similar ways in the thousands of years that people have been saying things, but when Patton says it, well, it’s been said.

“Better to fight for something than live for nothing.” – GSP

If I let my fears fill me up, I live a life of fear regardless of if it’s a perfect 63°F, and I have a wonderful cigar, and a great book beside me while sitting in a comfortable chair.

I think fear comes to people as they age. I certainly saw Pa Wilder get more and more cautious as he aged. I could give a few examples, but it doesn’t much matter. I did notice. And when I saw the tendency to do it start to crop up in myself, at least I understood what was going on and I could choose to be cautious or choose to be bold.

I think, however, that as I get older it is precisely the time to be bolder. Life moves in a blur, and days stack up faster, so they should mean something. If I knew I had only a year? What would I do?

Something to make that year worthwhile. If a month? A day?

The shorter the time left, the more that boldness matters and the less caution should. If I only had an hour of my life left, you can damn sure bet I’d do something with it, as much as I could.

Oh, that’s Samuel L. Jackson, not the famous English dude Samuel Johnson. I guess that’s the Netflix® version of the quote.

But life is built on compound interest. The more I try to write, the better I get. The more I lift, the stronger I get. The time to start is now.

The actions should be bold. While my days may pass fast, the more I can do with them, the more I will do.

When I pass, what will be left are the lives I’ve touched, the children that I’ve raised, the ways I’ve made the world better, and the words that I have written. Since the restraining order dictates who I can touch, and the lessons to the children are mainly done, that leaves making the world better and writing.

Even a full human lifetime isn’t enough, because they are so very short. But I’ll make do. With the remaining decades (hopefully) of my life, how big a dent can I kick in the Universe?

I guess I’ll see. And I’ll smile some, every day. And enjoy that cigar, and book, and chair when I’m not being bold.

“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.”