Category: Stoic

The Funniest Post You’ll Read Today About The Stoics

“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?” – Silence of the Lambs

Never trust Hunter Biden to pick up pizza and coke for a party.

The last five posts have been fairly dark, and Monday’s post will be dark, too.  I already know that dark humor is like aid for the citizens of Ukraine – not everyone gets it (this is a repeat from 1932, LINK).  That’s to be expected.  We live in interesting times.  But the good news is, it’s Friday.  Last Friday, I happened upon a friend.  I promise, I have more than one, despite what the NSA says.

In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!

My friend noted that he had to go shopping, and he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.  I responded, “Well, Marcus Aurelius said that you can find happiness in whatever moment, and the limiting factor is often what you feel about the situation, rather than the situation.”  I said this even though I haven’t been shopping since Jimmy Kimmel was funny.

He smiled.  We continued talking, and he went off shopping.  As I was sitting at my table, I found this quote, from the inestimable P. G. Wodehouse’s , as found here (LINK) from his Jeeves and Wooster series of books (also a television series starring Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster).  Setup – Jeeves is the intelligent, dry-witted, valet to Bertie Wooster, an idle British aristocrat.  Thanks to Wodehouse, hilarity often ensues:

“Who do you think I am, Alfred Einstein?”

I turned to Jeeves.  “So, Jeeves!”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you mean, ‘Yes, sir’?”

“I was endeavouring [Wilder note:  the British cannot spell] to convey my appreciation of the fact that your position is in many respects somewhat difficult, sir. But I wonder if I might call your attention to an observation of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He said: ‘Does aught befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the Universe ordained for you from the beginning. All that befalls you is part; of the great web’.”

I breathed a bit stertorously.  “He said that, did he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you can tell him from me he’s an ass.”

Bonus points if you knew what stertorously meant.  I had to look it up.  Snort.

Is she attractive?  Neigh.

I’ve heard it said that life is a tragedy to those that feel, a comedy to those that think.  Given that, the really funny part of life is that when times are down we don’t want to listen to the simple stoic Truths of life:

  • Control what you can, don’t let those things you don’t control (like the Wendy’s® drive through line, or Hunter Biden’s amazing appetite for crack) drive you nuts.
  • There is Virtue. We can spend our lives splitting hairs about what is virtuous, or, we could just be virtuous.  Be Virtuous.
  • Most passions aren’t healthy. Some are, but taken to extreme, even those become unhealthy, like when I lift weights and become so strong that I can rip apart the fabric of the Universe just by tensing my glistening pectoral muscles?  See, unhealthy.  Understand the difference, and don’t be ruled by emotion.  Passion is for 18 year olds, reason is for adults.
  • Johnny Depp was pretty good in the movie Dead Man.
  • Seek wisdom to guide your virtue.
  • Seek justice to create a more virtuous society. Not an equitable society, but a virtuous one.  Let Disney™ know that there’s a difference.
  • Understand that courage is required – Virtue often comes with a price, which may be about $3.50, in 1973. Or a career in 2020.
  • Living outside of Virtue is the clearest definition of Vice.
  • Possessions are, for the most part, neither good nor bad, but what we do with them determines their value. Anyone want to buy a slightly used copy of the Necronomicon?

The lures that pull us away from being virtuous are many.  PEZ®.  TikGram©.  InstaFace©.  SnapTwit®.  PornHULU©.  TinderMAX®.  EskimoBrotherDataBase (EBDB)™.  The idea is that if we’re distracted, we don’t focus on the things that are important in life, like virtue.

One of the things that sets humans apart is that we think about our actions and the consequences.  The result of all the lures?  It pulls us away from improving ourselves, from having introspection and working through our issues.  Issues?  I don’t have issues.  Like most people, I have subscriptions.

Surround yourself with people who have issues – they always have beer.  And 21-year-old nannys.

True life:  I was having a problem, something that really, really made me mad, like the Game of Thrones™ parents who named their kids “Daenerys” saw her turn into a war criminal.  I didn’t let it consume me like a dragon consuming a daycare center, but in those small, still moments of life that issue managed to creep into my conscious.

Like when I woke up at 3am and it didn’t mean I had to go to the bathroom (which never happens, because I’ve evolved beyond needing liquids to live), I’d think about it.  Finally, a hypnogogic conversation with myself provided the answer.

“John, what would you tell your best friend if he had this same problem?”

“Self,” I answered, “I would tell my friend to let it go.  It happened a year ago.  It wasn’t personal.  And it’s probably for the best.”

Coffee spelled backwards is eeffoc.  And before I have coffee, I don’t give eeffoc.

I had clarity.  I had an answer.  I had closure.  And it didn’t come from social media.  It came from thinking and understanding what advice I’d give my closest friend.  Since I hadn’t talked with, well, really anyone, I had to deal with it myself.

I finally did deal with it.  And now, when I wake up at 3AM?  I worry about the devil since I haven’t had to pee in a month.

Introspection is our friend, as long as we don’t allow ourselves to drown in a sea of self-pity, and as long as we use it to measure ourselves against virtue.  How do we measure it?

As near as I can find, Marcus Aurelius was religious, but certainly not a Christian.  As Caesar, he was the Humongous Maximus of religious stuff, and his writings wondered about what impact the gods had in the lives of men, at least after he got that petroleum from those pesky kids.

Marcus Aurelius, the early years.

The impact of religion is enormous.  When we live without a concept of a greater purpose, it’s like having pancakes without syrup, or thermonuclear weapons without the initial fission core that puts the hydrogen in H-Bomb.  With no greater purpose, our lives are less than what they could be.  As I’ve said before, most atheists aren’t atheists – they actually hate God, generally because they know that the life they are leading and/or the choices they are making are not virtuous.  They know it.

Of course, I’ve met (and almost every atheist reader here) atheists that don’t hate God.  Those folks?  We’re cool.  Generally, they don’t dislike people like me who believe in God, they just approach the world in a different way.  But I’ve noticed this about the atheists that don’t hate God – they generally like living in a society where people believe in God.  Why?  It’s a more virtuous society, and the streets are very empty on Sunday morning.

I won’t hold myself up to be Virtuous, or even virtuous.  I will note that I really, really do try.  I think I’m more virtuous this year than last year, though I shower less because of my greater virtue.  And that’s the point.  Every day, I try to be better inside than the last.  I try to make the world a bit better than it was the day before.  And I try to tell the Truth.

Unfortunately, I bet sometimes people still say after a post like this, “John Wilder?  Well, you can tell him from me, he’s an ass.”

Ha!

I’m not even awake.

The Space Between The Words

“Well, I don’t care if it was some dork in a costume. For one brief moment, I felt the heartbeat of creation, and it was one with my own.” – Futurama

I love my step ladder, but it’ll never be my real ladder.

It was March of 2005.  I remember it fairly well.  It was when we were living in Alaska.  The move had been a big risk for The Mrs. and I – moving north across the better part of a continent for work.  I was fortunate to have a good boss and good co-workers.

It was there that I had what I would normally call an epiphany, but epiphany seems too strong.  A realization?  Maybe.  Regardless, to me, it seemed profound.

The Space Between The Words . . . it was a throwaway line by a guest on a radio show that The Mrs. and I were listening to on KFBX, the local AM station.  But sometimes a phrase sticks with you, and this one stuck with me like the phrase “floozy crotch snout” sticks to Kamala Harris.

Or am I the only one who calls her that?

Yup, real quote.  Her real words are better than almost any meme.

Regardless . . . The Space Between The Words.  It seemed as insignificant as Hunter Biden’s willpower until in that hypnogogic state between wakefulness and sleep I thought about it . . . The Space Between The Words.

What exists there, in The Space Between The Words?

My realization was that The Space Between The Words isn’t made of silence.  It is far from that dead and sterile nothingness that silence implies.

My HVAC guy sure has his ducts in a row.

For me, that space is infinity.  It is the engine of creation itself.

I wrote “The Space Between The Words” down on a piece of Post-It® note and taped it to my computer monitor.  I still have that piece of now-faded pale yellow paper stuck in a book I carry with me every day.  To me, it is a touchstone and a personal reminder.

Why does it matter to me?

When I am talking, (or doing public speaking, which I do 10,000% more often than I want to do and potentially 20,000% more than the audience wants me to do) if I ever get flustered, I can just stop.  I can pause.  I realize that I can tap into The Space Between The Words, that creative power that allows me to choose whichever of the thousands of words I know as the very next one.  I get to choose that next phrase.  I get to choose the way the conversation can go.  I get to create the possibilities with only the choice of my words.

The Space Between The Words is crucial.

If I choose well, I can turn a simple conversation into something meaningful.  One of the powers of words is that, when applied correctly, is that they can become something transformative.  A simple conversation can change a person’s life forever.  Especially if it’s on tape – just ask Richard Nixon.

My buddy and I got a huge contract to make toy vampires.  There’s only two of us – I have to make every second Count.

The choice of words is, as I mentioned before, the power of creation.  I don’t claim to own that power.  Again, the word I would use isn’t that I came up with the idea or invented the concept I’m describing now.  I just discovered something that I’m sure many others before me knew was there, just like I discovered that someone was keeping a list of all of my jokes in a dad-o-base.

I won’t claim to be a great or charismatic public speaker.  I’ve had my moments.  But I do know that I’ve changed at least one or two lives through things that I have said, and I do know that I’ve said more of what I mean with greater clarity when I allowed The Space Between The Words to guide me.

I bet no one expected that meme.

Likewise, when I write, I don’t claim to be a great writer.  I do, however (when it’s not 3am!) try to carefully edit what I write so that it has the meaning I want to share.  Sometimes I don’t get there.  Sometimes, when writing one of these posts, the content takes a sharp turn, and I let it run.  I know that the full idea I was trying to get out will get born, eventually.

Or it won’t.

That’s the beauty of The Space Between The Words.  Even when writing, it is there.

And, to a certain extent, it has changed me.  I’m no longer afraid to stop, to pause, and to collect.  In one sense, that vast galaxy of creation that I feel I’ve tapped into is something much greater than I will ever be, especially if I keep losing weight.

I wonder what other planet worms exist on . . . otherwise why do we call them Earth worms?

In a religious sense, it feels like I’ve come into a brief (and unworthy!) contact with Logos – a deep universal well that I can only see dimly.  Not Legos®, but Logos.  Legos™ just hurt your foot when you walk down the hall in the dark.

In my experience, The Space Between The Words contains wisdom.  The Space Between the Words contains creation.  The Space Between The Words contains . . . redemption.

Listen for it – I assure you there is no silence there between the words.  There is no self-doubt.  It is calm.  It is patient.  It is Good.  And, for me, it has certainly been worth keeping that Post-It® note around.

Warning:  next week we’ll take a darker turn, probably all week, if not longer.  I’ll still try to be the “Mary Poppins of Doom” and interject humor and a smile where I can, but realize – there are many twists and turns ahead, and probabilities leading to a dark future are rapidly coalescing.

The Modern World Part IV: What To Do?

“Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?” – Three Amigos

He was also the first person to use CTRL-C.

So, I promised three blogs on the Modern World.  They are here – The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers, The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating, and The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed.  As I sat preparing to do the blog tonight, I realized there was one more post to provide the capstone to the series, which I present in this post.

How do we deal with modernity outside of moving to a cabin in Montana?

Listen, despite the name, Ted made more than one bomb.

First, if you’re not healthy, get healthy.  That’s actually horribly simple to do for most people.

  • Limit the amount of food that you eat – we’re provided with a plethora of food choices daily. Most of it I don’t need.  As I’ve railed for years, most (not all!) people in the United States could go without food for two weeks with no ill effects, and many would find the experience a positive, not a negative.  Here is some sound advice I’ve incorporated into my life:  you can’t outrun your teeth.  But I can outrun most Leftists – you can tell they like carbs.
  • Sure donuts (in metric, doughnuts) are good. Avoid them.    Will one a week kill you?  No.  Will one a day?  Maybe.  Same with chips.  I had a “snack size” bag of chips two weeks ago.  Since I’ve been eating well, they made me feel queasy.  Same with donuts.  When your diet is good meat and real vegetables, donuts and that gooey cheese they serve with movie-theater nachos taste like . . . a chemical product.  Which they are.  Corollary:  don’t let your teeth dig your grave.  I wouldn’t want to ruin the gravedigger’s hole career.
  • Pick foods that are as close as possible to actual food. If you’re gonna have a chicken sandwich at McDonalds®, pick the one that’s made out of actual chicken rather than some sort of processed chicken stuff.  A baked potato or French fries?  Baked, thank you.  Seriously, once I stopped eating crap, crap tasted like crap.  If it has vegetable oil or a list of ingredients longer than, say, seven, once a week.  At most.  Heck, I even had a kid’s meal at McDonalds today.  It sure made his parents mad.
  • The food pyramid is even poor geometry – heck, I read Pharaoh used slaves to build his. Bricks might have been easier?  Regardless, real fats and meat (butter, a well-marbled ribeye) are good for you and make you feel full.  Flour spikes your insulin and all the breads (except the ones I make from grinding the bones of door-to-door salesmen) are made from flour.  Insulin tells your body to store fat.  Do the math.
  • Get exercise.   It’s good for you.  If nothing else, walk.  If you can’t walk, undulate like a snake on a baby oil-covered shower curtain.  One thing I’ve seen in life – when a man stops walking, death isn’t far away.  Keep moving.  Even if your legs are weak, you can still do diddly-squats.
  • Avoid it, except, say, once a week.  Maybe.  I’ll have an entire post on that at some point.

The other day I said, “Alexa, turn on CNN®.  I want to hear the news.”  Alexa responded, “I’m sorry Lord John, you’ll have to pick one or the other.”

Second, feed your mind.

  • Feed your mind like you feed your body. Go to the source, and check everyone (even me!) and determine what isn’t Truth.  Journalists are now being taught in journalism school (it’s like real school, but they use pictures and coloring books) that being an advocate for the globalist, Leftist viewpoint is the point of news reporting.  Understand that virtually every news story you are reading today in mainstream media is written by a rich kid who wasn’t smart enough to go to law school and believes that lying to you is ethical, as long as it advances The Agenda and The Narrative.  And sometimes they change The Agenda and The Narrative in less than a week.  Don’t believe me?  Ask Psaki about COVID.
  • The media lies. But I repeat myself.  “Truth is the first casualty of war,” quoted Ethel Annakin-Skywalker in 1915 according to something I read on the Internet.  Remember that “nurse” who told Congress of Iraqi soldiers tossing infants out when they took incubators from hospitals when Iraq invaded Kuwait?  She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.  Look it up.  Before you believe a single thing coming from Ukraine, look it up, and understand this:  your emotion is the aim.  Heck, I hear manipulating your emotions is all the rage.
  • Propaganda: even when you’re aware of propaganda, it’s effective.
  • Look for things that make you happy. When I go on the Internet, sometimes (when I’m in a growly mood) I look for things that will make me mad.  There’s plenty.  Twitter® is a sea of it.  Most social media is a sea of it.  That’s why (except for when writing for research purposes) I avoid it like the plague – remember, all work and no plague makes for an entirely different 13th
  • For 95% of people, there is no reason you can’t be happy in this moment, right now.   There are people in this world who have serious problems, but for the most part you’re really not one of them.  Even if you are, why would you let those problems rob you from a moment of being happy?  There is a time to grieve, a time to be sad.  When you let it rule your life, you’re a victim.  Stop it.  Don’t make me come over there and make you.

I brought a grenade to a water balloon fight once.  It did level the playing field.

Then, there’s marriage.  These rules aren’t for 1970, (though they would have worked) but more for today – the world has moved on.  It is far harder today to find a good match than it was even when I met The Mrs. two decades ago.  If you’re happily married, ignore and skip to the next section.

  • If you’re not married, take care in picking your partner. A lot of care.  A bad match will last just as long as a good one (if you have kids) and be amazingly costly.  And never pick woman obsessed with Star Wars® – divorce is strong with this one.
  • Avoid dating apps. They’re really just casual sex apps.  And never go casual.  Get competitive.
  • If you’re a young dude (below 35), try to get a wife who is no older than 20-24 years old and marry for values and character. Why?  Nothing good happens with a single woman in their mid to late 20s now.
  • If you’re a young woman, find a quality guy who has values and character, and stay a virgin until marriage.
  • If you’re a young person, especially a man, avoid marrying a spouse whose parents divorced when they were young (0-16). Understand their family and their values.  Understand that the values on display with the parents are another clue to how your future spouse will be.
  • If you’re a man, don’t let your wife’s work interfere with raising the kids and keeping the house. Raising kids with decent values are more important than most luxuries.
  • And while we’re there about kids, understand this – the move to turn government schools into an indoctrination center has never been higher. Which values do you want your children to have?  Yours?  The governments?

But I hear it’s at a pretty low interest rate.  Heck, I think we could refinance New Zealand to make the balloon payment.

What about economics?

  • Avoid debt to the extent possible. Never borrow to buy a car, unless it’s the only choice.  Never buy a new car unless your net worth is over $1 million or a company you own is paying for it.  Heck, I hear the best way to get back on your feet is to miss two car payments . . . .
  • I have one.  I could pay it off in cash.  Why could I pay it off?  Because I never borrow to buy cars (since 1997).  I hear Spongebob® isn’t paying his mortgage – his house is underwater.
  • Understand that luxury has multiple costs: first, there’s the cash that has to be paid every month.  Second, there’s a moral cost.  Just like a donut, occasional luxury won’t dull the character.  But every month, and forever?  It robs bank accounts and robs the most precious thing that any person controls – their time.
  • Video games are a luxury. If a person spends 20 hours a week playing video games, what else could have been done with their time?  Imagine if Hemingway spent his spare time playing Grand Theft Auto instead of sitting under the Catalan Sun drinking wine from a bota and watching bullfights?    GTA is a life stealer.  And for Ernest, so was a shotgun.
  • Why live in a big city? The high housing cost?  The crush of incessant humanity surrounding you?  Oh, yeah, you can get Thai food at 3am.
  • Realize the dollar is going to die. The United States prints them, and then other people take them.  When Jen P-saki said that this was “Putin’s Inflation” I asked the question:  “When did Putin take control of our money supply and then started printing trillions of dollars?”  If you salted away a bit of gold and silver (and lead, too) the best case is that you could give it to your kids when you pass on.  The worst case?  Well, between you and me, silver and gold might be the biggest bargains of the century in 2022 (I am NOT an investment advisor).
  • Realize that in the future, there is a high degree of probability that having “divergent” opinions to The Narrative will result in cutting people off from their money – it has already happened in Canada. You may not believe it, but it’s Tru-deau.  How will you prepare for that?
  • You have a year’s worth of food, right? You buy a little extra each month and salt it away?  It’s a lot easier to do when the shelves are full, and when shortages hit you’re not part of the problem – you’re part of the solution because you won’t be adding to the panic.  It’s not hoarding if you bought it before the panic hits.

I heard he was sad later in life.  He had a Kipling depression.

The Modern World thinks that this is a new scenario.  It isn’t.  Kipling wrote about this many, many years ago in The Gods of The Copybook Headings:

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

 We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

 We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

 With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

 When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.” 

 On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.” 

 In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”  

 Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

 As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

 And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Hedonism Leads To Nihilism

“Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender.  Look, I love life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot.  But we need to be shut off.  Especially you, Hedonism Bot.” – Futurama

One thing I learned in high school – always date homeless girls.  It doesn’t matter where you drop them off.

I know that lots of people had it rough in high school, that they felt that they didn’t fit in.  They felt as awkward at Whoopi Goldberg at a bris.

Not me.

I’m not bragging, really, it was just how it worked out for me.  I had a great time in class, a great time in athletics, had great friends from nearly every walk of life.  Heck, I even had hair back then.

I was also really lucky with the ladies.  Thankfully there were no small number of girls with daddy issues in town, a drive-in movie theater, and a pizza place.  Of course the pizza was not entirely necessary for a seduction, but a guy gets hungry.  Seducing girls burns up calories.

Let’s add in the last element of hedonism:  beer.

There was a bar where if you had the $5 cover charge, you were of drinking age as long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your letter jacket.  I should know, because I got in when I was 16.  I went in with my friend’s (who was of drinking age) license.  He was four inches taller than me and was probably sixty pounds less than me.  I wasn’t fat, he was just skinny enough to fit down the barrel of a 12 gauge and not touch the sides.

I dived off the stage at an Oktoberfest party.  I went krautsurfing.

Yes.  At 16 I thought it was a good idea to sneak into a bar holding the license of someone who resembled me only in the fact that they were another human male who had blonde hair and blue eyes and in only those ways.  And that same person who barely resembled me was also walking in with me.

I had no idea what sort of ludicrous story I would tell them if they asked.  “Oh, sorry, I thought I was another person?”  No.  “Oh, when I was at his place I accidentally put his license in my wallet and hid my own license?”  Hmm.  “I was fighting with my multiple personality disorder and physically split into two people?”

Thankfully, the place was nearly empty and the bouncer never asked me for an ID, just took my $5 and stamped my hand.

I saw a drunk caveman walk home once.  It was a meanderthal.

Apparently, I made enough of an impression that night that they never once carded me, ever.  After one night, I was a regular and knew most of the people that worked there by name.  Not so amazingly, about half the people from my social circle made the same discovery, and on a random Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen juniors and seniors in the place.  Of course in 2022, the Safety Police would probably summarily execute the owner and the staff, but this was a kinder, gentler, drunker time.

It was life on easy mode.  Plentiful girls with dubious morals.  Cheap beer.  Great success in nearly everything I tried.  I’m not saying I peaked in high school, no.  Heck, I’m not even sure that I’ve peaked yet.  But it was easy.

One thing I did was try to connect emotionally with those frolicsome fräuleins of my hometown.  That seemed (in many cases) like a lost cause.  One night while sitting under the moonlight in the Wonderful Wildermobile, between hickie sessions, I looked up at the Moon and said to my girlfriend at the time, “It’s amazing to look up at that, and think how much smaller it is than the Sun.  How much smaller the Earth is than the Sun.  It’s a fantastic Universe we live in.”

Her response?  “The Sun is larger than the Earth?  No way!!!!”

Okay, our relationship was over pretty shortly after that comment.  And that also changed me.

I bet my old girlfriend thinks Starbucks® is a currency that aliens use.

I had an epiphany.  I was living a life of hedonism.  And although I had a life of pleasure, there seemed to be a lack of meaning.  I had everything that every guy on the football team could desire.

But I felt empty.  Not dead inside, but empty.  I felt that the things I was doing were, while extremely physically pleasing, were devoid of meaning.  It was like being Hunter Biden without being a Biden, smoking crack (or meth), and getting money from anonymous donors for my retarded attempts at painting to try to influence my dad.

I’m betting that this is the first time Scotty and scotch were used to explain nihilism.

The feeling of empty was a tough one.  It helped me see how someone can go from that feeling of empty in the face of pleasure to a feeling of nihilism.  I looked up the definition of nihilism, and came up with more definitions than I had girlfriends in high school.

I’ll give this one, which I found after looking at a dozen (many contradictory) definitions on the Internet:  “as the view that nothing we do, nothing we create, nothing we love, has any meaning or value whatsoever.”  That is the one that mirrors the emptiness that I felt.

It is the inherent danger of a life that borders on the libertine.  What matters if life is so easy?

Thankfully, I’m glad I caught that as early as I did.  I can see easily of how falling down the rabbit hole of hedonism could lead to nihilism.  As I got older, I realized that, whatever definition used, nihilism is the worst of philosophies, and the worst of the human condition.

Even though the Universe is large, and there have been countless years since the start, and, perhaps, countless years until the heat death of the Universe, we matter.

What happens in this world does matter.  We have meaning.  And fighting the good fight for Good over Evil does matter.  Life and meaning are built not in the pleasure, but in the struggle to be better, to do more, to be more, and to add value because we were here.  Those are the stories worth telling – they are the ones that will be sung around campfires in 100 years.

I hope Aaron Burr didn’t name his son Tim.  It would have been awkward to look for him if he ever got lost in a forest.

Never give up, because what we do here matters.  What you do here has value.  Even as we stare at the vastness of a Universe that no one can comprehend, it matters that we are here.  And it matters what we create.

And our love?  It perhaps has the greatest value of all, though it is rarely found in the bottom of a glass of beer, unless there’s a live band.

Did I mention they had live bands at the bar?

Dead Romans Agree: Don’t Let The Small Stuff Bother You

“Happy premise number three:  even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

I hear that Marcus’ wife was a perfect X.

Mike, the proprietor over at Cold Fury (LINK), is going through a very difficult time.  Big Country has set up a gofundme for him here (LINK).  Much more information at the gofundme site.

Now to the post . . .

I woke up this morning just irritated.  No particular reason.  In all fairness, it was entirely an internal feeling, and I imagine most people never noticed.  I was nice and polite to nearly everyone I interacted with.  And why not?  None of them were my ex-wife.

I wasn’t irritated with them, I was just irritated.  There were no issues.  I wasn’t in pain.  No one around me was in particular trouble.  Thankfully I’m not an electrician – people might dislike me not being positive at work.

As I thought about it, what was irritating me?  I couldn’t quite put a finger on it.  There was no rational reason at all.  During a conversation tonight, though, I had a reason to quote Marcus Aurelius:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Not mine, but I couldn’t resist.

Sure, Marcus Aurelius’ kid was an utter tool, but when you become Caesar at 18, well, it might tend to go to your head – think of Commodus as Miley Cyrus, 180 A.D.  Back to Marcus, though.  Marcus genuinely did his best for the Roman Empire.  As near as I can tell, Marcus was a pretty good leader.

And that little quote above wasn’t written for you and me.  It was written for Marcus, by Marcus.  He was reminding himself that the external things in the world had only the power he gave them.  He was giving himself a pep talk.

Marcus Aurelius was right.  In the conversation I was having tonight, the person was very upset (most of you don’t know the person, though specific readers in California and Indiana do – hi guys!).  The reason she was upset?  Nothing rational at all.  So I quoted a dead Roman emperor.

Who says that Stoics aren’t compassionate?

Did it help?  I don’t know.  I’m beginning to see a pattern where crying people don’t stop crying when I quote dead Roman emperors.  I’m beginning to see why the kids call The Mrs. when they want actual human sympathy.

My irritation (I think) came from the same place.  Nowhere.  I felt fine (except for my right knee which is much better now) and the day generally went fairly well.  I realized that the advice I gave was meant just as much for me as for the person I was talking to.  I was just being irritated because I let myself be irritated.

Once I was done and realized I didn’t have to be irritated?

My hands disappeared today, but I can’t really point my finger at what caused it.

My irritation disappeared.  I know that the way I feel is (generally) my choice.  I can choose how I feel:  salty, Wednesday, or even drunk.  The only reason that I’m not happy every morning is if I choose not to be happy on some particular morning.

Are there actual reasons why I might have different feelings?  Sure.  If I had mental problems (other than an unseemly affection for awful jokes and a desire to consciously be able to make my fingernails grow absurdly fast) that might be a reason to have a feeling other than what I choose.

Don’t know.  I do know that there are people with actual mental problems.  There’s proof:  some people actually voted for Biden.  But, going back to Marcus, that’s not external.  Being sick or goofy enough to vote for Biden isn’t external.

Marcus Aurelius might have voted for Biden – Marcus is dead, after all.

Physical pain also is an internal source that can destroy moods.  I once (for a few months) had sciatica.  I was irritable enough every morning to chew nails and spit bullets.  Then I discovered that I could work out for a few hours on an elliptical trainer to make the pain go away.  A week later?

I was fine.  My irritation vanished along with my sciatica, never (hopefully) to return.

That was nearly 15 years ago.  Sure, I’ve felt pain since then, but most of it was the good pain from a hard workout.  Heck, most days the worst thing that happened was the crisp morning breeze running through my back hair.

My mood depends on me.  My attitude depends on me.

Does that mean that I can’t see the actual situation we’re in?  Of course not.  I see a nation tearing itself apart.  It’s worse:  it’s not just a nation, Western Civilization seems to be happily thrashing about as it marches down a path to extinction.

Is that good?

Of course not.

Does it mean that I should walk around every day being sad?

Of course not.  I am doing, I assure you, everything I can think of to stave off that darkness.  I mean, those memes won’t make themselves.

Never buy a sculpture of Bonnie Tyler.  Every now and then it falls apart.

And I am doing it cheerfully.  I laugh every day.  I smile because I know that most of the things that I worry about can have no power over me unless I give them that power.

Make your choices, and understand that while you might wake up irritated – it’s your choice if you wish to stay in that mood for a minute or an hour.

Me?  I like being happy, so I choose that, even in moments where it might not be appropriate.  I might even need to stop high-fiving people at funerals.

So, I got started late typing this after a day I chose to just be irritated.  And, I’m going to choose to end now.

With a smile on my face.  Go and have a great day.  Most of the time, having a great day is just a choice.

Choose wisely.

The Funniest Article You’ll Read Today About Risk

Wang:  “A brave man likes the feel of nature in his face, Jack”
Egg Shen:  “Yeah?  And a wise man has enough sense to get in out of the rain.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Whoever took this photo was having a Kodiak moment.

Fairbanks, Alaska.

One thing about Fairbanks (and Alaska) is that it is rougher around the edges than the lower 48.  Everywhere.  They’re so tough there that they make the fries out of real Frenchmen.  Also, other things are a little different:  for example, the Post Office.

I had an acquaintance that I worked with who had come to my workplace from a previous career in the Post Office.  He told a story of a new Postmaster that showed up in town.  I believe that this particular Postmaster had come from the East Coast.  Don’t know why he was in Fairbanks.  Perhaps he was in the Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program?

Regardless, this new Postmaster was going to make changes.

“From now on, we’re going to deliver packages to the doorstep of anyone who gets one.  The days of leaving packages at the doorstep are over.  And, we’ll knock and let the resident know that the package is there.  We can increase customer service, and we will.”

I wrote a letter today.  I might try a number tomorrow, if I feel up to it. 

That’s a great sentiment.  Heck, here in Modern Mayberry, when a package shows up, the USPS drops it right on my front porch, then rings the doorbell, and scampers off.  It’s a nice touch.  It probably takes an additional minute or so for every house.  It works well here, and the biggest danger most mail carriers see is the random housecat with delusions that it is stalking prey in the veldt.

But in Fairbanks it’s a different story – I’ve described people up there as “very friendly people who will generally leave you the hell alone.”

The new Postmaster from the lower 48 didn’t understand why his carriers were so reluctant to implement the “to the door” service for packages.  He heard grumbling, but didn’t understand it – the carriers would do it in town, but they didn’t want to do it for the remote routes.  So, he got in with a carrier, and they ran a remote route together.  I guess that made him a mail escort.

One of the houses was pretty far out, say, 13 miles from the city, up Chena Hot Springs road.  The Postmaster and carrier got out of the truck to deliver the package.  The Postmaster knocked on the door.

Immediately, the door opened as far as the door chain would allow.

“What the hell do you want?” asked the man opening the door.

Behind him, the Postmaster and carrier could see a man pointing a rifle at them, “Tell me they’re Feds!” yelled the man with the rifle.  He kept repeating that.  “Tell me that they’re Feds!  We’ll end them right here and now!”

I use a .30-06 to hunt deer.  That gives me a lot of bang for my buck.

They left the package.  The “to the door” delivery idea was quickly abandoned.  Likewise, I’m certain that Amazon® will never try drone delivery up there – the locals would just think of that as skeet shooting with instant prizes.

The carriers understood the risk, the Postmaster did not.  They knew that Fairbanks is (in a literal sense) the end of the road.  The people that come to Alaska were adventurers, misfits, and fortune seekers.  And some of that group were people wanted for felonies.  There’s a reason that for many years taking pictures of workers at a construction site was considered bad manners.

So, it was a question of risk.  Many people don’t really understand the risks that they take.  In many cases, some risks are entirely overblown.

Case in point:  at a recent high school football game here in Modern Mayberry, there was lightning during the game.  To be clear, the lightning wasn’t coming down around us, the nearest strikes were miles away – probably 8 or 10 miles.  But then I was shocked . . .

. . . that they stopped the game.  All of the players went into the locker rooms, and The Mrs. and I continued to sit on an elevated aluminum structure.  Yawn.

If lightning only followed the path of least resistance, why doesn’t it only strike in France?

I wasn’t really worried.  In the years between 2006 and 2019, 414 people were killed by lightning in the United States.  My chances of being hit were, oh, nearly zero.  Exactly 12 football players were killed by lightning during that entire period.  As badly as our home team was doing that game, well, they could have used something to charge them up.

But lightning?  It is estimated that 243 people are injured each year in the United States by lighting, and 27 killed, on average.  And 1/3 of those killed?  They were inside.

Yes, lightning kills.  How many?  Hardly anyone.

But yet I’m sure that every school district in the country has a lightning policy that says something to the effect of, “If there’s any lightning any nearer than, say, Poland, shut it all down.”  The policy was probably written by lawyers that want to take the danger out of anything and everything.

“Let’s go Brandon”

People rarely understand risks.

The biggest risks for someone dying when they’re young are car accidents.  By far.  The human organism is pretty strong when young.  The main cause of death is, well, being old.  Of the top 10 causes of death in the United States (those top 10 cover over 74% of deaths) all of them but one are things that mainly happen to old people.

Of the top 10, only “unintentional deaths” (6%) are more likely to happen to young people than old.  In Modern Mayberry, those deaths often involve a motorcycle, a ramp, a cow, road flares, super glue, and the phrase, “hold my beer.”

So, risk number one to avoid is getting old, which can be done using only some beer, a motorcycle, a ramp, a cow, road flares, and some super glue.

A Mexican movie stuntman died recently.  I guess Jesus died for your scenes.

I think the reason we focus on some of these risks that are ludicrously low probability is simple:  it is much easier to focus on them, rather than on real risks.

The question I ask myself is this:  What is it that I know, that I’m avoiding?

It’s a powerful question.  A Twinkie® is a much greater danger to my life than a lightning storm.  Do I avoid thinking that?  Do I try to rationalize big risks and run scared from small risks?

What am I trying to hide from myself?

When I answer that question, then I know what the real risks are.  The biggest risk, perhaps is if I become a Postmaster.  Then people would expect me, John Wilder, to be funny, and I’m not sure I could do it.

After all, it’s all in the delivery.

Friday: Things I’m Thankful For

“He’s like the hard-working, grateful employee we never had. Wish he would wear underwear, though.” – Bob’s Burgers

I don’t need coffee to wake up, I wake up to drink coffee.

It’s Friday.  Time for a happy post.  We’ll need one, because (brace yourselves) I think Monday’s post is going to be grimmer than a crab bake with Paris Hilton or father’s day with Woody Allen.

But we have today.  And when I am feeling down, a step back to realize and think about what I’m grateful for always brightens my day like a big old gravitationally contained spherical continual thermonuclear explosion.

Here goes.

  • I am thankful for you, readers near and far. I’m happy for the one-time visitors, and happy for the faithful weekly visitors to Modern Mayberry.  I had written thousands of words in a journal before I ever put a single word down on a blog.  This is better, and it’s because of you.
  • I am thankful for the really great fried potatoes The Mrs. made last night. They were very crispy on the outside, yet buttery-smooth on the inside.  A dash of ketchup to taste?

I couldn’t find the thingy that peels the potatoes so I asked Pugsley.  It turns out she’d gone off to the store.

  • I am thankful for the people that I have a chance to impact in meatspace. Hmm, that’s poorly worded, it makes it sound like I’m as bad a driver as a blind Antifa® member late to get his estrogen shots.  Let me rephrase:  I’m happy to help people in real life.  Times are tough, and they’re even tougher when people are tools on purpose, so if I can make someone’s life a little better?    Many times all it takes is real empathy and a single word.
  • I’m thankful that Pugsley forgot to take the trash out to the curb this week, so I can needle him about it (playfully) all week. Seriously, though, I’m really thankful because I haven’t had to remind him in the last six months, and he’s only missed trash day twice.
  • I’m thankful that The Boy will be down from Big State University this weekend. It’s always nice to have him around.
  • I’m thankful that sunny-side eggs taste so good. And I’m thankful that the crisp taste of a fresh tomato exploding as I bite into a cool slice on a hot day exists.  I’m grateful for the knowledge that a tomato is a fruit, and the wisdom to not put it on fruit salad.
  • I’m thankful The Mrs. We have saved each other from being very horrible spouses for other people.  After being married so long we’re like good lawyers:  we never ask a question we don’t already know the answer to.

I hear that insane people are driving trains in Mexico.  I guess they have loco-motives.

  • I’m thankful that I have had the good fortune to have had great bosses in most of my jobs. A good boss covers your back.  A great boss pulls more out of you than you ever knew you had.  One boss made the mistake of telling me to have a good day, because then I went home.
  • I’m thankful for being granted the maturity to (mostly) know when I was wrong, and to look at those times not as a personal attack, but as a hint on ways to get better.
  • I’m thankful for books. One of those great bosses that I had said, “Books are the only real way that you can talk to the greatest minds in history.”  He and I got along very well.
  • I’m thankful for the troubles I’ve had in life. Most of those troubles were like the chisel of a sculptor – they knocked off bits of me that I didn’t need, and left me better after the trouble passed.  As dead Danish dude Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”  After I learned this lesson, every time in life I encountered difficulty, I asked myself:  “What am I supposed to learn from this?”  Life got way better after I realized that what started out as a difficulty could be the greatest gift ever.

The French donated the Statue of Liberty to the United States because they had no use for a statue with only one hand up.

  • I am thankful for fuzzy slippers in winter, electric fans in summer, and good cigars all year round. Protip:  if you look up “how to light a cigar” on the Internet, you will get 80 million matches.
  • I am thankful for the innocence I had. I am thankful for the experiences that removed it.
  • I am thankful for the valor of strong men who have defined bravery and given us heroes and heroic stories to the ages. I am stronger because of Leonidas.  I am stronger because of Seneca.  I am stronger because of a certain carpenter who lived and died and rose again some 2,000 years ago.
  • I am thankful for history, and the ability to gather vast amounts of scholarship to understand the past in ways that would have been impossible for all but the most dedicated scholars until recently. What do the “good parts” of American history and common sense have in common?  They’re both being wiped from existence.
  • I am thankful for PEZ®, because now I can honestly say that I’m the man who developed the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ space drive (PEZ Spaceship Secrets).
  • I am thankful that the heat of summer has given way to the cool nights of autumn. I won’t miss summer.
  • I am thankful for the way a perfect ride on a motorcycle feels as the gears shift smoothly upward under full acceleration, which, for a moment, is like riding the wind.
  • I am thankful for a hot cup of coffee on a cool fall morning, on the deck, with a book, a breeze, and nothing else in the world to do.

Pugsley called me, “Severely ignorant.”  I said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  • I am thankful for the things I don’t know.
  • I am thankful for one of our cats, not so much for the rest of them. Of course, the cat I like is the cat I wanted least.
  • I am thankful for all of my children – each of them in their own way.
  • I am thankful for a night of good sleep, and a morning where I have something exciting that pulls my head from the pillow. The Mrs. likes to lightly rub my back while I sleep, which is an amazing expression of gentleness. Unless you’re in prison.
  • I am thankful for work.
  • I am also thankful for time off.
  • I am thankful for the way my shirt smells the day after a campfire. It’s not uncommon for people to die in campfires – I mean, it’s not common, either.  I guess it’s medium rare.

What are you thankful for?

Fear: Don’t.

“The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” – Star Wars™

It’s hard not to stop and stair when you’re on an escalator.

On most Fridays, I try to get away from the heavy topics – the ‘Rona and Afghanistan will be there next week.  And, probably the week after.  And the week after.  I believe we are in now week 70 of “two weeks to stop the spread.”

There is probably more similarity to both of these failures than most might imagine, but that’s probably fodder for another post.  That would make a good topic for a Monday.  We’ll save the coming economic collapse for Wednesday.  By Friday, though, I’m getting ready for the weekend and figuring out ways to best spend time with family.

I do have an issue, though:

One particular problem I have is, well, I think.  Give me a potshard and I’ll try to reconstruct the political and economic history of the Mayan civilization that created it.  When I find out it was from a $1.99 plate from Wal-Mart that broke when Pugsley was experimenting with motor oil, aluminum foil, and topsoil in the microwave, I can just start on a new theory.

“I wonder how the Mayans got aluminum foil?”

Back in 2012 people were making Mayan jokes like it was the end of the world.

Part of thinking is that I often think about things that can go wrong.  I have accurately predicted four of the last two recessions.  I know where my house sits relative to former ash deposition related to the past eruptions of the Yellowstone supervolcano.  I have a (fairly) accurate caloric inventory of the food I have stored “just in case.”

Thinking is not quite a superpower, but it’s close.

One of my friends says he has the superpower to talk to dead people.  It would be amazing, but they can’t talk back.

But it doesn’t help me sleep at night.  It’s like looking up the disease that you might have on the Internet when you have three symptoms.  “Hmm, it could be the common cold, or it could be a rare form of Dengue fever that would cause my bones to rubberize and my intestines to liquify.  Heck, then I’d be spineless and gutless, just like Joe Biden.”  Then I’d worry.

So, I don’t look up symptoms anymore.

The ability to predict bad things is important.  It is something that’s so hardwired into all living things that even the lowly slime mold reacts to predictably changing conditions by anticipating them.  If only Joe Biden could do that!

Lately, though, I’ve been a bit concerned when I make my rounds on the ‘net that there seems to be a consensus that something is now really, really wrong.  Again, I generally predict that things will be much worse than they end up being, and therefore I am happily surprised when things turn out much better than I expected.

This is normally the case.  My bones have yet to turn into a gelatinous mess.

Looking on just the bad things that can happen is limiting.  It’s no way to live a life.  It’s a weakness.

If you lose a Dalmatian puppy, don’t worry.  They’ll always be spotted.

My solution?

I’ve learned how to turn it off.  To just stop worrying about everything.  Sure, I can see horrible things that might happen.  In reality, seeing more of the downside than of the upside has probably cost me an opportunity or two.

That’s okay.  I’ve avoided enough bad things that I think they balance out, at least so far.

One of the things I noticed from Pa Wilder as he got older was that he got more afraid as he aged.  He had seen more of the world.  He had seen things that could go wrong.  Often, years will do that to you.  Even though I’d never seen him wanting, he could see many different ways things could get tough.

I’m not sure that it impacted the quality of his life, but I decided that I’d take a different route.  I could live with a lot of things, but I decided that fear wouldn’t be one of them.

So, what did I do?

I decided that, whenever possible, I would face my fear, head on.  Okay, that’s easier said than done if I have a fear of walking into traffic.  But when I developed a fear, I decided to not let it sit (G. Gordon Liddy Post).

Fear debilitates.  It creates a barrier to rational action.  Fear is one of the ultimate enemies because it leads to despair.  When we look at the biggest tool used to turn good men bad, it’s generally this one:

Fear.

And if a giant trips on a volcano, does he Krakatoa?

If we look at the way fear of the ‘Rona has been used in the last year, it has been masterful.  Create pictures of people dropping dead on the street in China.  Use fear to create a fear of gatherings, to create a fear of the most basic of human interactions.

As a society it’s almost like we’ve become addicted to that fear.  We have the choice to not let it win.

We head together into an uncertain future.  Many of the news stories that I read don’t give me hope that much of what we have become used to will long hold together.

That’s okay.  In some cases that will be good.  In others, well, not so good.

Much of the future is beyond our ability to project.  As Pa Wilder would have said, “Don’t pay interest on money you haven’t borrowed.”  Our future is not set, so spending our lives worrying about it gives us nothing.

What is the proper way to recognize someone who stopped bleeding?  “Coagulations!”

Certainly, we should think.  Absolutely we should prepare.  But do it without fear.  When you’re afraid, face that fear.

It’s a lot more fun that way.

And, it’s Friday.  Have a good time this weekend.

Bread and Circuses, 2021 Version

“We soon forgot the taste of bread, the sound of wind in the trees.  We even forgot our name.” – Lord of the Rings

I promise I won’t make too many bread jokes; I’m not a gluten for punishment.

One of the reasons I keep mentioning the Roman Republic and Roman Empire is that they were an amazing civilization.  Many of the things that we take for granted as being a part of our civilization were a part of Rome 2000 or so years ago.  They invented the Slap Chop® and Sham-Wow™ even before it was cool.

I recall reading Letters from a Stoic – which were the collected letters of Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (whose wife said, when she was mad, “Lucius, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!”) to one of his friends.  I recommend it.  Some of the details Seneca mentioned in his life were stunningly similar to life today:

  • Seneca wrote about government regulations.
  • Seneca wrote about stopping overnight at a hotel.
  • And, while at that same hotel, his room looked out over the weight room where men were pumping iron and working out.
  • I’d joke that he complained about the free continental breakfast, but, hey, everyone knows you’ve got to get there early to get the good waffles.

What a Roman hotel might have looked like.

The Romans, it seems, are not so different than we are.  In some ways, their technology has outlasted time in ways that many of today’s structures won’t:

  • They had concrete that was objectively better than almost anything we could produce until the 1950s.
  • They built aqueducts that brought clean, fresh, water to hundreds of thousands. Some of these are still in use today (though some have been reconstructed).
  • Roman roads and bridges are still in use today.
  • Romans invented algebra, but, sadly, X was always equal to 10.

One of the earlier mistakes was in 140 B.C. when Rome was still a republic:  it was called the cura annonae, which was just welfare in the form of grain, or, later, bread.  Why bread?  I assume the Romans had yet to master Hot Pocket® technology.

Regardless of what you call it, it was Roman welfare.

Why?

Why do politicians create welfare?  For votes.  Duh.

Just like Goldilocks, I wondered if a food could be hot, cold, and just right at the same time.  Then I remembered Hot Pockets™ exist.

Don’t get me wrong – just like there is a proper time to have a roll of duct tape, rope, a sharp knife, and garbage bags in the trunk, there is a proper time and place to have welfare.  Sometimes people are too old, too unwell, or too mentally deficient to work.  But enough about Joe Biden.

Eventually, though, public welfare always proves to be corrosive to freedom.  It creates a class that votes for sustenance instead of working.  And since it’s a government program, the only way that it can be administered is if (eventually) everyone is caught in the snare.

So, that’s the bread.

What are the circuses?

Entertainment.  Generally, entertainment of the lowest common denominator type.  It’s an amusement for the masses.  Why focus on learning?  Why focus on things that are difficult?  Don’t study physics, it’s hard.  Study gender studies.  They have cookies after class.

I hear a chopper is the best way to get the aristocracy out of France as well as the best way to get commies out of the United States.

That’s what the circus brought to Rome.  The Roman citizens wanted action now.  They wanted the gladiators spilling blood in the Coliseum.  They wanted plays performed on the streets.  And Senators (and Senator wannabees) and Emperors alike provided games and carnivals and distractions.

Generally, what distracts and amuses one generation isn’t enough for the next, so the idea is that the amusement has to get progressively edgier – more violent.  More degenerate.  It’s all fun, right?

After the fall of the Republic and the rise of Empire, a humor author named John Wilder no, Zeus Ferocior (I expect certain people, cough, cough to fix my poor translation of John Wilder into Latin, but Zeus Ferocier just sounds so cool, as long as no one calls me Dr. Zeus), no.  The guy’s name was Decimus Junius Juvenalis, (but folks just call him Juvenal) and he made this wonderful observation:

 . . . the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

Actually, it looks like a picture of a person drawn by someone who has never seen a person.

Think about that.  After a period of hundreds of years where civic virtue was defined by participation and improving the public welfare, civic virtue became defined by being good at getting free stuff.  Hard times, of course, caused the politicians to multiply the amount of bread and circuses given to the people.

Why?

The leaders were smart.  The easiest way to keep the citizens quiet is to keep them well-fed with glazed eyes – something people who own sheep already know.

The object was simple:  to keep the sheep citizens thinking, not of the Republic, but of themselves.  Bread and circuses wasn’t an appeal to the strongest and best parts of man, bread and circuses was an appeal to the lowest and weakest parts of man.  Rather than think of what a wonderful civilization we could create, how about we think about the greatest pleasure we could create for ourselves, right this minute?

Want to hear a sheep joke?  Stop me if you’ve herd this one . . .

COVID has been our multiplier.  It’s pushed the people to their most dependent, and pushed the bacon-wrapped-shrimp class to their most manipulative.

What is beyond the Federal government now?

  • Landlords in the several states can be forced to provide property for free. Forever, apparently.  Depravation of property without due process?  That’s rookie talk.
  • Entire economic sectors can be shut down at will. The final victory of large corporations over small owners can be enshrined forever.
  • Mandates can be issued that people can be forced to take experimental injections of a dubious nature that appear to have limited benefits and unknown side effects. Because?  Because we said so.
  • Coordinated public/private attacks on speech have become the norm. Have an unpopular idea?  Have facts that contradict the narrative?  Shhh, comrade.

So, nothing is beyond them.  Property isn’t protected.  Livelihood isn’t protected.  Bodily autonomy isn’t protected.  I’d say that Netflix® is still there to account for “the pursuit of happiness” but have you seen the shows on Netflix™ recently?

Ugh.

Momma always said life is like Netflix®.  It has a monthly price and hates you.

I guess that’s a wrap.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are out.  Bread and circuses are in.  Give me freedom or give me Doritos® and Hulu Plus©.

The end result is a difficult one.  Collapses in liberty lead to collapses in economic systems.  And vice versa.  When the economic freedom drops out, the Doritos™ and Hulu Plus© become gruel and occasional candles at the GULAG.  If you’re lucky.

When a culture is young and vibrant, economic liberty leads to prosperity.  That freedom to create results in economic winners and losers.  Winners are rewarded, losers drop out, or join the winning team.  That’s in a free market.

Unlike real communism, real free markets have been tried.  And they’ve resulted in the greatest prosperity and freedom that the world has ever seen.

We have reached the intersection of economic system collapse, collapse in the faith of the governance structure of the nation, and collapse in our trust for each other.

I stopped burning bridges in life.  They’re made of steel now.

How long can that go on?

Well, Juvenal was writing not from the period of the Republic, but from the period of the Emperors.  As I’ve written before – the choice that will exist is far larger than the ‘Rona ever was:  the choice between dissolution of our country and a new Emperor, whatever he may be called.  Czar Wilder sounds nice, but hey, I could stand being a silly old king.

And I can assure you, that Juvenal’s observation of (panem et circensenes) bread and circuses, will be on the mind of whatever new Emperor might emerge.

It worked for the Romans for a few hundred years, after all.

I wonder who will be writing about us in 2000 years?

I hope he’s a steely-eyed blonde dude by the name of Zeus.  Or, John.

Cathedrals, Buzz Aldrin, And Changing The World

“You know, most people think that the name Buzz Aldrin has some huge meaning behind it.  Nope, he was afraid of bees.” – Frasier

What’s the difference between Joe Biden and Buzz Aldrin?  Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.  Joe Biden likes kids to rub his leg hair.

I think back to the builders of the European cathedrals.  The construction of Notre Dame was started in 1163 A.D., not long after the Norman Conquest of England.  Notre Dame was finished in 1345 A.D.

182 years.  I might not even live that long, and I take vitamins and eat only a diet of meat that I hunt half-naked while armed only with stone-tipped spears.  The people in Wal-Mart® have gotten a bit tired of the spears, but it doesn’t technically violate their weapons policy.  And I use a Visa™ to pay, though they make a “eeeew” face when I pull it from my fur loincloth on a sweaty summer day.

Think about that.  NO!  Not my sweaty fur loincloth, the cathedral.  Think about the motivation that it requires to get up every morning when the thing you’re trying to accomplish won’t be done in your lifetime.  Or the lifetime of your child.  Or the lifetime of their children.

That requires motivation.  Also, I have no idea what they used for alarm clocks, and their humor-blogging infrastructure appeared to be singing marginally naughty songs about the local barmaid and complaining about how French they were and how they hoped the Germans would never invent panzers.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame sure had a twisted back story.

Motivation, though, remains key in everything you do in life, even if you’re not building a cathedral.  One motivational mistake is to aim too high.  When someone aims too high, they run the risk of being disappointed by results.

As I’ve discussed with one of my friends, he noted that research shows the most happy people in the Olympics®, overall, are the bronze medal winners.  Third place isn’t so bad.  Since I heard that the intelligence of dolphins was second only to man, that means Leftists should be happy, being in third place and all.

For the bronze medal winners, well, here they are on the world stage.  They did really well.  Were they close to winning it all?  Sure, close enough to get a bronze medal.  But, there’s the guy over there with the silver medal, so, he and another guy were better.

Most bronze medal winners can be happy that if they’d been just a little bit better, they’d have been in . . . second place.  If they’d worked a lot harder, they’d have still been only one place better.  So, third isn’t so bad.  They might even get the Junior High Marching Band to lead a parade when they get home.

The silver medal winner, though, will always have it eating on him:  what if he hadn’t skipped practice that week?  What if he had pushed a little harder in the weight room?  The silver medalist is plagued with a bushel basket of “what if’s” that will wake him up in the middle of the night.  Second place is tantalizing.  It is the story of near success, like England’s soccer team.

Helen Keller never saw a movie about pirates.  Because she’s dead.

The gold medalist?  It depends.  In many cases, Olympic™ level athletes work for two decades to get the skill and experience to win Olympic® gold, to be, literally, the best in the world at something that no one will pay them to do.

Sure winning’s great, right?  But what happens when the dog finally catches the car?  What then?

Let’s move sideways a bit more, and return to one of my favorite people in history:  Buzz Aldrin.  It will all make sense in the end.  I’m a trained professional.

Buzz was a guy who did a lot of things that were world-class.  He went to the USMA at West Point.  He was a fighter pilot who shot down commies in Korea, but still didn’t get to kill as many commies as Mao or Stalin did.  He got a doctorate from MIT on rocket navigation.

And one other thing.  What was it?

Oh, yeah.  He was the second man on the frigging Moon.

That’s really cool.  But there appears to be a downside to that.  It wasn’t a just something small and fleeting like an Olympic® gold medal, it was one of the ultimate gold medals in all of human history.

Ever.

How do you follow that up?  Get a Denny’s® Franchisee Award for cleanest bathroom in Des Moines?

I hear Santa’s bathroom is clean because he uses Comet.

Neil Armstrong figured out how to follow it up.  That man was always kind of spooky and Zen and perhaps was okay owning a Denny’s© in Des Moines, selling Moons over My Hammies™ and Rootie Tootie Fresh and Fruity® pancakes.

Buzz didn’t figure it out, probably because his work in physics and killing commies did not prepare him to make a decent pancake.  Imagine:  Buzz was 39 and there was literally no way his life hadn’t peaked.  Nothing, and I mean nothing he could ever do again would match up to what he did.

First a week passes.  Then a month passes.  Then a year passes.  The hollow feeling inside of Buzz grew.  How do you move forward?  How do you top yourself?  I mean, you could make a really great pancake, but it would have to be the best pancake in the history of pancakes.  Dang.  That still doesn’t beat being on the frigging Moon.

He was stumped.  He had fame.  He had the ability to get whatever money he wanted, more or less.

But he had peaked.

What to do?

Buzz crawled into a bottle.  Eventually, after leaving the Air Force, Buzz even spent time selling used cars.  Sure, that worked for Kurt Russell in the 1980 film, but Buzz was awful at it.

What’s the difference between a used car salesman and a COVID-Jab advocate?  The used car salesman knows when he’s lying.

As near as I can tell, Mr. Aldrin finally pulled himself out of his funk.  He finally decided his place was being an advocate for manned spaceflight, specifically to Mars.  He even helped to create a transfer orbit to make a trip to Mars the most time-effective that he could envision.  You could say that Buzz figured out the gravity of the situation.

That more than anything, I think, helped him.  Buzz found something that was so big, so important, that he knew he wasn’t going to be able to do it in his lifetime.

Mars.  A worthy goal for mankind.  A goal that is meant for brave dreamers, for people who might want to change humanity.  He had found his cathedral.

Again.  Buzz had already done it once.

Mr. Aldrin is an unusual case – one of the highest achievers in a generation of high achievers.  Many mornings I’m just glad that the alarm managed to wake me up.  But I’ve had my share of success in the business world, reaching as high as I ever really wanted to go, doing the one job I wanted to do.

When Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins went to meet President Nixon after the Moon mission, Mike had to spend the entire time driving around the White House.

Where Buzz aimed high, perhaps I didn’t aim as high, but I still got there.

Then what?

My writing is a part of that.  Where do you go when you have whatever you want?

You find something important, and you start building.  You start building something more important than you.  I think Neil Armstrong found that when he started teaching.  Perhaps he got his satisfaction from helping the next generation learn.

I can’t be sure.  Neil didn’t really say.  He seemed happy that the attention had passed.  My Apollo-gies if I got that wrong.  And this isn’t about him, anyway.

The lesson I learned from Buzz was a simple one:  have a goal.

Find a cathedral to build.  Find something so much bigger than yourself that you’re willing to build it even though no one alive on Earth will ever see it through.  Make it something that you can care about.  Make it big enough that, at best, you can help build only part of it.

If you can find your cathedral, you will have the rarest of gifts:  you will shape the future.

Remember, not all cathedrals are made with stones, and the best ones are built in the minds of men.

Why?

Because rent is cheaper there.