Truth – Page 14 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Bridge on the River Kwai Moment

“We can teach these barbarians a lesson in Western methods and efficiency that will put them to shame. We’ll show them what the British soldier is capable of doing.” – The Bridge on the River Kwai

Air combat in the Pacific as taught by public schools in 2019.

The Mrs. and I were discussing politics, and she tossed out an interesting question:

The Mrs.: “Is the Left going to have a Bridge on the River Kwai moment?”

I thought that was a great question, but it requires some backstory.

It was a condition of my proposal to The Miss that if she wanted to become The Mrs., that she’d have to watch several movies that dripped with toxic masculinity and testosterone. Patton, Zulu, The Man Who Would Be King, and any movie involving Clint Eastwood were required watching (among others).

The Mrs. said she’d seen most of the Eastwood movies already. The Mrs. hadn’t seen Hang ‘em High, so we watched that in the hotel on our honeymoon. Most of it. Okay, parts of it.

Okay, I promise these will make sense in a few paragraphs.

The Bridge on the River Kwai was included in that list of “must watch” movies. I decided to re-watch it last week after I started to write this post. I wrangled Pugsley into watching it with me. Pugsley’s a teen now, and the movie is a pretty powerful one that he’d never seen. As the movie opened to the scene of dense jungle, Pugsley asked, “What’s this (movie) about?”

John Wilder: “Well, it’s about a World War II prisoner of war camp . . .”

Pugsley: “No, you mean Vietnam.” He gestured at the jungle. Vietnam occurred 50 years ago. World War II was 75 years ago. To a teen? It’s all ancient history. Heck, Star Wars™ debuted 32 years after World War II ended. It’s now been 42 years since Star Wars© came out. Star Wars® is closer in time to World War II than we are to the opening night of Star Wars™. Feeling old?

John Wilder: “You do realize that we fought in the Pacific as well as in Europe in World War II?”

Pugsley: “Oh.” He looked doubtful, like he thought my mind was slipping, but let it pass.

To a teen in 2019, WWII is as far in the past as a world without flight was when I was a teen. Growing up I knew all about the kill ratio of the Phantom F-4 vs. the MiG in Vietnam, but next to nothing about World War I aviation other than Germans pilots apparently ate a lot of pizza:

Notice that he’s smoking. I’m sure that’s what killed him – I’ve been told those cigarettes are dangerous!

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 movie about Vietnam World War II. In it, a group of mainly British prisoners of war are in a camp in the Burmese jungle. As in real life, these soldiers were being forced by the Japanese to build a railroad so that the Japanese could have better logistics resupplying their troops in Burma.

The movie focuses around a particular bridge that needs to be completed in order to finish the railroad on time. Never since the pyramids were built has civil engineering been so exciting and sexy: piling depths, soil bearing capacity, number of cubic yards of dirt moved, surveying . . . riveting! Okay, no rivets since they were making the bridge out of wood.

In the opening scene a British colonel marches in to camp with his officers and soldiers, after being ordered to surrender in Singapore. The Japanese colonel and the British colonel engage in a battle of will. Since the actor playing the British colonel is the same actor that played Obi Wan Kenobi™ in Star Wars®, obviously not long into the movie the Japanese colonel’s will is crushed.

Colonel Kenobi: “These aren’t the troops you’re looking for.” Photoshop credit: The Boy.

Soon, the British colonel is directing his men to perform higher quotas of work than the Japanese had set for them. In order to show the Japanese how Englishmen act, Colonel Kenobi demands that his men not sabotage the bridge, but do proper, quality work. Not long after Colonel Kenobi arrives, an American barely escapes. The actor that played the American wasn’t in Star Wars©, so I have no idea if he could use the force.

Arriving at a rear base in India, the American is encouraged to join a commando group that will destroy the bridge over the Kwai. And, by encouraged I mean not “volunteered” but “voluntold.” My kids are voluntold about a lot of things, but I have never sent them to blow up a Japanese bridge in Burma. Maybe next summer, since they haven’t successfully completed mowing my lawn yet this summer. Baby steps.

The commandos, including the American who wasn’t in Star Wars© make it to the bridge and plant explosives. In order to add a ticking clock – they are going to blow up the bridge just as a trainload of high-ranking Japanese officials are using the train to go to the Japanese Death Star®.

See, I told you they would make sense.

As the train is approaching, Colonel Kenobi sees the electrical cord hooked up to the bridge – the other part is hooked to a Looney Tunes®-style detonator that is out of sight. Oops. Colonel Kenobi and the Japanese colonel go to investigate. When the colonels get close to the detonator, a young commando kills the Japanese colonel. Colonel Kenobi then yells for help. To the Japanese troops.

***SPOILER ALERT ON A 62 YEAR OLD MOVIE***

After the young commando is killed by the Japanese, who have much better aim than Stormtroopers™, the American, who is across the river, attempts to swim and detonate the explosives. The American is shot, but as the American is dying, Colonel Kenobi recognizes him as the escaped prisoner from earlier in the movie. Colonel Kenobi is jolted back, and looks at the bodies of the two officers that are on the same side as he is that died because of his actions . . . his actions to save “his” bridge.

Oops.

In a moment of clarity, he says the four most important words of the movie: “What have I done?”

This is the payoff for the whole movie. And it’s worth it – the only thing missing is a coyote chasing a road runner with a detonator that old . . .

That is The Bridge on the River Kwai moment, when the Colonel realized that, stuck in following procedure, in sticking to rules, and in demonstrating what a proper man he was, he got people on his own side killed. Plus, he built a really great bridge for the Japanese. Colonel Kenobi had been in service to his enemy.

Thankfully, as he was dying, he fell on the detonator, blowing up the bridge right on time.

It’s a shame that they changed this line, since it would have been a great reminder to people vacationing to remember to take their swimsuits. Such an emotional impact and such practical advice!

Victor Davis Hanson (always a good read) describes the end result of politics in California, once the most prosperous state in any union (LINK):

What caused this lunacy?

A polarity of importing massive poverty from south of the border while pandering to those who control unprecedented wealth in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the tourism industry, and the marquee universities. Massive green regulations and boutique zoning, soaring taxes, increasing crime, identity politics and tribalism, and radical one-party progressive government were force multipliers. It is common to blame California Republicans for their own demise. They have much to account for, but in some sense, the state simply deported conservative voters and imported their left-wing replacements

Where California goes, America generally follows.

When presidential candidates on the Left:

actively support giving healthcare to those in the country illegally,
make it impossible to secure the border,
make it impossible to quickly and safely deport those who are here illegally, and
support requiring American citizens to pay for all of this,

I wonder if they will ever have their Bridge on the River Kwai moment.

This particular kamikaze plane flew six missions.

When those “Conservatives” support:

unlimited globalism to export American technology and know-how,
importation of cheap labor versus using American labor via H-1B visas,
following every rule of etiquette set by the Left (that the Left doesn’t follow), and
rolling back each of our freedoms, but just a little slower than the left wants to.

I wonder if they will ever have their Bridge on the River Kwai moment. Did John McCain, on his deathbed, think, “What have I done?” I don’t think so.

How much of the foundation of this country has to crumble before Left and “Conservatives” realize what they’ve done to undermine the United States, which may be the last, best hope of Western Civilization? Do they care, or will they sell the country for two or six more years in power?

Never mind all that, an Eastwood movie is on. Haven’t seen Hang ‘em High or The Unforgiven in a while.

The Left, Doublethink, and Individual Thought

“That’s an interesting point. Come on, let’s get into character.” – Pulp Fiction

Such stunning bravery and individualism!

Not quite a year ago a meme broke out into the wild – the Non-Player-Character (NPC) meme. The meme originated with video games. In video games that follow a storyline, there are various characters that exist only to move the story forward. While you can play a video game character that’s a 4’2” Asian female bodybuilder with tattoos and bright red hair, you can’t play as an NPC.

NPCs can create unplanned humor because they are programmed and react in only very predictable ways. Slug one, and they don’t care. Meet up with the same NPC for the tenth time? It’s like you never met before. They have no original ideas. They exist only to fulfill their programmed destiny.

The connection made, probably at 4Chan back in September of last year is that an NPC is really a great analogy for a Leftist that has given up completely on the idea of independent, individual thought. The contradictions that are contained within liberalism abound, but even more striking is the degree of programming present. An example:

Stephen Colbert is a late night talk show host who is famous for hating President Trump. In the show after former FBI® Director James Comey was fired, Colbert mentioned Comey was fired. The crowd was used to Comey being a villain. Why was Comey a villain? On the eve of the election of 2016, Comey announced a new investigation of the “newly-found e-mails” off of convicted creep Anthony Weiner that cost Hillary the election.

The crowd cheered because Comey got fired. Until Colbert reprogrammed them that, instead of being a bad guy, Comey was now a good guy. See for yourself:

Today, obviously, Comey is a hero of the Left. I would imagine that, if you asked a Leftist, you’d find that Comey was always a hero and they didn’t recall at all that they ever thought he was an evil Trump supporter. It’s like a quote from Orwell’s 1984:

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.”

And the worst thing is when the update is downloading that the NPCs can’t do anything else until they reboot.

When you view it from outside, it’s easily seen. But from the inside, it’s not. The basic contradictions are astonishing in their scope and presentation of Doublethink:

Pregnant men. Perfectly normal.
Islamic feminism. No philosophical inconsistencies here!
Roe versus Wade is written in stone, but the Constitution is a “living, changeable” document.
Transitioning a nine-year-old to a new sex is normal and healthy. Has been going on for thousands of years.
Speech you don’t agree with is violence. I’m triggered!
Violence you agree with is free speech. Punch a fascist!

No, surely it’s not that.

I could go on in naming examples, and likely so could you. Are there contradictory views on the Right? Certainly, but they’re mostly not at core of the philosophy on the Right as they are the very core of the philosophy of the Left. And, unlike the Left, the Right typically doesn’t end it all in a Purity Spiral (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be).

I’ll even admit that one time, I was an NPC on the Right. There was a point (long ago, college time) when a Democratic congresscritter proposed a national tax cut. President George H.W. Bush opposed it. So I opposed it.

Huh?

I had always been for tax cuts as a general rule. I stopped and thought . . . Why would I support not cutting taxes that the Democrats want to cut? Just because they’re Democrats?

I decided that the Democrat congresscritter was right. Cut the taxes. Obviously, that solved all the problems that our nation has. Oops.

The cure for being an NPC is thought. Since that time, I regularly examine what I think – this blog is a part of that process. I also examine why I think it. If the reason that I believe something is because other people believe it, is that a good reason?

No, it’s not really a good reason. Unless you’re a Leftist.

I think the reason Leftists are more susceptible to the Doublethink that drives them into the NPC cult is that they’re more r-selected – they come from an environment that values conformity and group inclusion. I write about r-selection versus K-selection here (r/K Selection Theory, or Why Thanksgiving is Tense* (for some people)). r-selected animals, like rabbits, move in groups. They’re prey animals, and know that the only safety that they have is in numbers. Doing something that’s different than the herd singles you out. It gets you killed. Rightists are K-selected – they’re predators. Individual behavior is not only tolerated, it’s the only way to get your genes propagated.

Okay this wasn’t an original, but was too good to pass up. I think it came from 4chan.

This explains several things about the Left. They reacted so quickly to the NPC meme that they had NPC-themed Twitter® accounts banned within a month of the meme making widespread appearance. How do you know something bothers someone? When it creates such a strong reaction.

Are all Leftists NPCs? Nope. I know a few I can discuss politics with and we can still be friends. They admit when I have a point. I admit when they have a point – a few very popular posts have had their genesis with conversations I was having with Left-leaning friends. But discussing politics with the typical NPC should be avoided. There is nothing more personal to them than the ideas that they have that don’t impact them at all. Really. Why would a fifty-year-old cat lady be more passionate about illegal aliens than anything else in her life?

By definition, a religion punishes heresy and blasphemy above all else. To call NPCs cult members might sound strong, but the reality is that they probably are. Notice the reaction when a newly-revealed religious revelation presents itself: “DACA”, “living wage”, “Maxine Waters is not the reincarnation of James Brown’s hair”, “religion of peace”, “bake my cake”, or “white privilege” begins.

I’d call it a tie. But unlike Maxine, James liked “Living in America.”

To be against any of these is to be filled with hate. Being left alone is not an option. Having no opinion is not an option. From their perspective, the only opinion you can have is the correct opinion – their opinion.

Me, I think I’ll keep thinking for myself. But remember, that’s dangerous.

Big Swedish Coins, Italian Women Pole Vaulters, and the Future of Money, Part I

“Dollars? There’sa wherea my uncle lives. Dollars, Taxes!” – Duck Soup

We’re gonna need a bigger purse . . .

This post was inspired by a great e-mail from Ricky, which makes it the second reader-inspired post I’ve done this month. Heck, it’s the second in seven days. We’ll see the post I was originally going to do next week, probably. I plan these posts out weeks in advance and have a backlog of over a year’s worth of planned post topics, but the requests are just so much fun.

Here’s the basic thesis statement in Ricky’s words:

“I’m right there with you that collapse is coming to our house of cards because of the way they were dealt. But after all of the individual survival dramas play out, survival ultimately depends on a community rising from the ashes. And the glue of a community is ultimately the deals made between its individuals. And money is the encapsulation of those deals.

“So when the dust settles and the smoke clears and the phoenix rises from the ashes of the eagle’s nest, there’s gonna need to be a reset on money. On what it is, and how it works.”

There’s a lot more information from Ricky which may lead to yet another post, but this statement alone is a great taking off point.

To address this question, let’s go back to first principles. First, I’ll restate:

What does money look like after the collapse?

I’ll start from first principles so that everyone has an idea of where I’m coming from. The most basic first principle about money is this simple question:

What is money?

I can’t answer any better than to say that money is an idea. Sure, you’d look through all of the piles of money I keep at Chateau Wilder and say that those stacks of cash and piles of gold and silver doubloons were money. And they are money.

Heck, the Swedes once mined and refined so much copper (around the year 1600 A.D. or so) that they couldn’t sell it all, since the tuba, which uses approximately 89% of world copper production had yet to be invented. Being crafty Swedes they came up with the idea that the best way to use all that extra copper was to put Sweden on the “copper standard.” Since these Swedes were apparently very strong but not particularly bright, they took the concept to 11 and used nothing but copper coins as currency. Okay, sure, it’s silly. But we can make it Wilder-level silly: let’s not use lots of small coins, let’s make ludicrously large coins. I mean the Rosie O’Donnell of coins. Some of the coins they used were quite O’Donnellesque, with the largest one weighing about 45 pounds. You could get your lifting in by just going grocery shopping, which may explain why Planet Fitness® franchises were so unprofitable in Sweden in 1620.

Yes, a 45 pound coin. Don’t get me started about how large their pockets were, but as a hint they could hold an entire twelve pack, a dozen clowns and the case of Avengers: Endgame. FYI: This was a 10 “Daler” coin. Daler came from the Bohemian coin name “Thaler,” which later became Dollar.

In the simplest definition, money is just something that we agree is money. Money is perhaps the most abstract concept people deal with on a regular basis, and we’re forced to deal with it practically and emotionally even though most money doesn’t exist physically even as a dollar bill: it’s a ledger entry on a balance sheet on a bank, and it’s not backed by anything. At all.

Counting spare change was how the Swedish women trained for the 1644 Olympics®. But that’s back when men were men. In 2019, however, “men” can be pregnant and “women” can drive well. Soon enough? Men will cry and be in touch with their feelings.

Money can be a gold coin, or a promise for, say, a bushel of wheat or a cigarette. Money can also be a string of numbers or just a piece of paper. As long as there’s someone who will trade you a rifle or a beer or a T-34 tank for it, it’s money.

We’ve been dealing with “money as just an idea” for so long we even have a name for money which has less backing than a third Hillary™ presidential campaign: Fiat© money. Fiat comes from the Latin for “found on roadside dead” – oh, wait, that’s Ford®. Fiat™ is “fix it again, Tony,” which is more literally translated from the Latin as “let there be.” This means that fiat money is “let there be” money. Those Italians were good with language. It’s good when we keep Italians working on language, wine, and hot Italian chicks doing pole vault because Italian engineers can’t seem to figure out how to keep oil on the inside of the car.

In the best version of Europe, Germans chicks do shot put and car engine design. The Italian chicks do pole vault. Preferably in slow motion.

Money in the United States today is fiat money, made up money.

The net result is that we send money that we printed from cool paper and people from around the world fight for the opportunity to give us oil, gold, PEZ®, flat screen televisions, and other physical things. Heck, they even ship it to us using our made-up currency as payment for the shipping costs. To top it off, if we’re feeling lazy that day, a guy in comfortable shoes working in a windowless office in Washington D.C. will press a button and a computer will spit out strings of digits that we’ll use for money because paper is just too much trouble.

If the United States doesn’t have enough money, the solution is simple: we’ll print (or make up) some more.

If you’re shaking your head wondering how we convinced the world that this was a good deal, well, I am too. It might have something to do with all of those nuclear missiles and the strange thing that happens to world leaders that announce that they’re going to start trading internationally in currency other than the dollar. Or, heck, maybe the United States has a track record of really being super fiscally responsible?

Yes, there are many good reasons to take the dollar.

Well . . . no. In actuality, the United States defaulted on the very first debt it ever took on, represented by the Continental dollar, which was supposed to be (at the start) the same as a Spanish silver dollar. How badly did we default on that debt? Well, we ended up printing $241 million dollars, which doesn’t include the huge numbers of British forgery notes that were created during the Revolutionary War to mess with our economy. It was like we were trying to pay for muskets and wooden teeth with Tribbles® instead of real money. It was worse than Tribbles© – at least you can make good soup with a Tribble if you pluck it right. Nope – most of the creditors ended up with nothing, which makes a pretty poor soup unless you’re fasting (The Last Weight Loss Advice You’ll Ever Need, Plus a Girl in a Bikini Drinking Water).

Worst thing about Tribble© soup? The bones.

This particular default stung our Founding Fathers Parental Units (it is 2019, after all) so much that when the Constitutional Convention met, they added into the Constitution that “No State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts . . . .”

So, the United States learned its financial lesson and never ended up with financial problems again.

Just kidding. We’re still a financial basketcase. But we have nukes.

I hate to leave you on a cliffhanger, but this is now an average length post, and I’ve already written more than you’ve read here in Part 1 for Part 2, and I haven’t put the funny bits in yet. So, more coming on Friday which will work towards answering the thesis that Ricky put forward above.

Thanks, Ricky!

Cognitive Dissonance, Normalcy Bias, and Survival, with Wonder Woman, Bigfoot, Johnny Carson, Stalin, and a Bond Girl.

“So you really think Morgan thinks I have a racial bias? This is so unfair. I would’ve marched on Selma if it was on Long Island.” – Seinfeld

I’ll have to admit, when I was doing this meme, I forgot where I was going with it. Which was appropriate.

This post is the result of a reader request by frequent commenter and occasional photo contributor 173dVietVet, and I’m glad to do it because it keeps me away from plumbing. I had actually already started my notes for another topic (you’ll see it next Friday and it will be amazing, if I have enough beer before I start writing) when he suggested that I post about the interplay of Cognitive Dissonance, Normalcy Bias, and Survival.

This post sounded like way more fun than re-plumbing the drain line under my sink (this is true). Despite the protestations of The Mrs. that we need a silly old sink in the kitchen I dug right into the topic, especially since Friday is typically health day and this topic is broad enough to cover both personal health and the broader issues related to disasters and living through crisis that have recently become a theme here.

Maybe . . . it may have been a way for 173dVietVet to see if I’m not a computer mind sent from the future to influence the United States in 2019 to make more PEZ® workers for our PEZ© mines. Who can say? Regardless, 173dVietVet (and the other 10,000 people who will read this), here it is.

What is Cognitive Dissonance?

Cognitive Dissonance is the state of holding two opposing ideas in your mind, or of having beliefs that run counter to your actions. The best example I ever ran into in real life was when I was at a convenience store and two Spandex®-clad bicyclists came in – helmets still on, complete with wrap-around sunglasses and smelly padded butt shorts. One of the guys was loudly criticizing every item the other guy picked up. Trust me, the guy was loud enough that everyone in the store could hear him. I was NOT eavesdropping like I do with the neighbors on a Saturday night.

“No, you can’t drink that, man. Fructose will kill you, after it makes your children sterile.”
“Dude – the bleached flour in that is empty calories. It will screw up your metabolism and make the Martians attack.”
“Ah, man – that jerky has nitrates. Really bad for you. Also, no one has ever loved me.”

Then he got up to the counter.

“I’ll have this, and . . . a pack of Marlboros®.” He looked at his bicycling buddy. “Yeah, man, I know.”

That’s Cognitive Dissonance in action. I was buying Copenhagen® and Cheddar Ruffles™ at the same time, so my ability to criticize was pretty limited. I’ve since given up the Copenhagen©, but you can rip those Cheddar Ruffles® from my cold, dead, orange fingers.

If you get tired of Soylent Lays®? You can just gnaw on a neighbor! Spoiler: in the movie, companies were making food from people. But apparently it was tasty. Mmmm, tasty people.

Another example? An attorney that goes to church. Normally lawyers burst into flame upon entering a Holy Place, but I heard California filed a restraining order against God, and the Ninth Circuit upheld it. Last I heard, God is has appealed to the Supreme Court®. Sadly, he might lose, since he doesn’t have any lawyers in Heaven to represent him.

Like anything, Cognitive Dissonance goes from mild (our bicycling smoker in the example above) to extreme (pretending Trump® isn’t president because you don’t like mean old Cheeto™ man). In the middle is anyone who liked the latest Star Wars™ movies. Or are they in the middle? They might be the sickest of all of us.

In doing research about this topic, I found that studies of Cognitive Dissonance had different origins for different peoples. It turns out that Cognitive Dissonance in European-descended people is driven by the concepts of shame and guilt. Shame, in this case, is the feeling brought out by violating a group norm. Mental values based in Shame are built around what other people will think of you. Guilt is violating an absolute right and wrong. Everyone on the planet could be dead, and you’d still feel Guilt.

In East Asians, Cognitive Dissonance was only built around Shame. Guilt didn’t play a part in it. If everybody on Earth died? You’d be free at last! I have no other data on any other ethnicities, so don’t ask. I’m thinking the researcher did the study in Chinese restaurant in North Dakota.

Some other odd things I discovered about Cognitive Dissonance:

Initiations and hazing – people who are subjected to rough rites of initiation actually have increased commitment to the group hazing them. I guess the lesson here is, don’t skimp. Rent the goat. And get the extended insurance plan on the goat. You know why.
People highlight the positives of the choice they made … after they made the choice, not before. Rationalization is a way to smooth over Cognitive Dissonance, and also explains why I justify the late night tipsy Amazon.com purchases to The Mrs. Everyone needs a life size Bigfoot® statue, right?

The Mrs. took this picture after we bought Bigfoot One. I had this statue until The Mrs.’ dog ate it. Then I bought another one, but I keep it inside. Sadly, this is a true story. Bigfoot deserves to be free.

Essentially, when your brain is faced with the contradictions that spring from Cognitive Dissonance, it has (as far as I can tell) four choices:

Change a belief,
Change an action,
Pretend our actions don’t make us big fat hypocrites, or
Ignore it all and get a cookie.

Orwell even talked about it in his future history novel 1984. A great example of Cognitive Dissonance in action was the way that supporters minimized Bill Clinton’s horrible behavior in the Lewinski mess. (Actually it was Clinton’s mess, but this is a family-friendly blog.) And mainstream Republicans were no better in the whole “invade Iraq” mess, for absolute fairness. Supporters, like hazed college freshmen pledging Omega, seem to like politicians more when they lie to them.

Go figure.

If you haven’t seen Animal House®, that makes me die a little inside. It’s the Star Wars™ of anti-Cognitive Dissonance movies.

Okay, that’s Cognitive Dissonance. What’s Normalcy Bias?

First, Normalcy. Really? Did we really need that word? I guess I’ll allow it. Guys, the English language has 171,476 words according to the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, and your ‘umble ‘ost only knows about 45,000 of them. Unless your new word involves ways that aliens have sex in clown costumes in a vacuum while in orbit over Mongolia on a Tuesday? There’s probably already a word for it.

Second, what is Normalcy Bias? Normalcy Bias is just a belief that things are going to return to “normal” at some unspecified point in the future, often through the actions of some unspecified savior, like Johnny Carson returning from the dead and eating the livers of all of the current late night hosts while they were still alive. Oh, wait, that was a dream I had the other night. Never mind.

The answer is no, not funny at all.

Third, I think that Normalcy Bias is just a subset of Cognitive Dissonance. Here are some examples:

Underestimating the probability of a flood hitting your house. This is not a personal example – I’ve checked FEMA flood maps on every house I’ve ever bought – before I bought them. I remember talking to a friend who thought I was lying when I told him that. Right now? If a flood takes out my house, I’m expecting to see a little old man with an Ark.
Underestimating disaster impacts. FEMA is really good at this – in the middle of Hurricane Ike, FEMA was on the radio. Thankfully, we had a crank-radio and were able to get the vital advice that lists of available FEMA services were . . . on the Internet at FEMA.gov. Telling people with no power (and no cell service) to go to the Internet to get the latest updates. Yay, FEMA! Why don’t you suggest direct brain transfer?
The Roman citizens in Great Britain standing on the pier and waving goodbye to the last Legion in Rome as it went off to put down an uprising of those pesky Gauls. The Romans will be back soon, right? Things will be normal again? Right? (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse)
King Arthur’s legend that he’ll return to save England – it’s just one example of the hidden and secret king that will return one day to Make England Great Again. Assuming any English are left when Arthur gets back.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about Normalcy Bias in his book The Black Swan. He describes the belief that his family had that things would “return to normal” in Lebanon, even after it was ripped apart by civil war between 1975 and 1990. They talked about how they’d be able to return, and how things would . . . return to normal.

When Taleb wrote this, this was a picture that was taken in Lebanon – 2006. I’m not thinking this is a great place for long term real estate growth. Unless you have quite a large number of Trident® missiles – 3 out of 4 despots recommend Trident© if you chew missiles.

I think that Normalcy Bias is pretty deep seated function of the human brain – I see too many examples, both in my own thinking and in my observations of others to believe that it’s abnormal.

During a crisis, that’s a problem. The biggest dangers in a crisis are:

Not accepting that the world has changed, maybe forever. People who change their world view soonest . . . win. An example: I was driving and saw a car pulled over on the side of the road. The driver had obviously just wrecked his BMW®. He was wandering around, dazed. “My BMW® . . . it’s wrecked!” He was distraught. I said to him, “Man, forget about the car – your left arm has been severed!” He became even more upset. “My God,” he screamed, looking down at the place his arm should have been, “Where is my Rolex©!” Okay, that didn’t happen. But I’m allowed to dream.
Not realizing or believing that changes could happen. This happens before the crisis, and the result is that you’ve never planned. Not having planned, you’ve got no preparations. The best cure for this is nearly getting caught up in a disaster. My daughter, Alia S. Wilder, recently found out that her house was in a zone that could be flooded. Even more oops? She had zero preparations. Being evil, I didn’t give her answers. I asked questions. “Oh, so you bought a month’s worth of food. Good. How much water to you have?” Her eyes were really opened to the huge vulnerabilities that she had. I slept well that night, even though I had to shower to get the evil off of me.
Thinking that other people share your values. They don’t. I assure you that there is no neighborhood in Modern Mayberry I would be afraid to be in at any time of the day or night. If you carry that same lack of awareness to, say, Chicago, the results might be less than optimal. Monday’s post will be about the implications of this logical fallacy. The sooner you internalize this, the better.
Failing to practice. Just as having the neatest nickel-plated 1911 with laser sights and the chainsaw attachment won’t help you if you don’t practice, if you don’t practice your disaster response from time to time, it won’t help you, either. You won’t be able to find your preps. They’ll be in the wrong spot. Or, worse yet, your child moved them and the mice got into your rice, the parakeet got into your wheat, and your dehydrated food has been mildewed. That’s a bad day. But it’s a much better day if none of the steers got into your beer.
Thinking that someone else will save you. They won’t. This is why I hate the term “first responders.” It puts the responsibility for a crisis on the wrong person. If someone is breaking into my house – I am the first responder. If Pugsley cuts deeply into his thumb while whittling, I am, again, the first responder. In any real crisis, the “first responders” have probably missed many of the issues I’ve listed above. During Hurricane Ike, I heard one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard – pleas from the radio announcer to bring food, gasoline, generators, and water to . . . the “first responders.” The “first responders” weren’t an asset. They were a liability that couldn’t even save themselves. I’m not bragging, but the Wilder family was at home, eating steak. We had enough food for weeks. Again, The Mrs. and I were the first responders. Mmm. Steak.
Not realizing the implications of changes. In apocalypse movies, one typical means of comic relief is the former banker/stockbroker/boss who, in a fit of self-important pomposity, asks, “Do you know who I am?” Immediately this character (who you’re not supposed to like), gets his ego shot down as either the hero or bad guy shows him that the rules have changed. One humorous version of this is in the underrated Kevin Costner flick The Postman, when he meets Tom Petty. The Postman says to Tom Petty, “I know you, you’re famous.” Petty replies, “I was. Kinda.” At the end, Tom Petty asks Costner, “Are you The Postman?” Costner nods. Petty says, “I’ve heard of you. You’re famous.” It was a brilliant way to turn that trope on its head, and pointed out a lesson we’ll talk about in a minute in item 1 of the list below. I guess that depends on your reading speed.
Not adapting to the reality of the changes. This is a little different than number six. A great example is the Kulaks that I wrote about recently. When Stalin came to power they thought they could negotiate with him since they were the economic engine of the U.S.S.R. Spoiler alert: they couldn’t. Score Stalin: 20,000,000, Kulaks: 0. A less sinister version of this is when you flip a light switch during a blackout, and a second later feel like an idiot, thankfully Stalin’s ghost doesn’t send you to the Gulag for that.

It always cracks me up that AntiFa© thinks they won’t be the first people sent to the camps. Loyalty? The commies can work with that. Being disloyal to the country that provides the framework for your material success? Gulag first. But you get to choose the top bunk. Yay!

Every single point I’ve made above can kill you, given the right circumstances. If I were evil, like an ancient emaciated grizzled she-demon direct from Hell, or Madonna® (I’m sorry, I repeat myself) I’d just leave you here to twist in the wind, stuck in a never ending cycle of Cognitive Dissonance and Normalcy Bias that spirals into a black hole of self-despair that ultimately leaves you as a tweeker midwife sitting in a ripped-up vinyl booth in an Ecuadoran Dairy Queen® with no Blizzard™ machine, delivering Ecuadorian children for leftover chicken tenders. And there’s no gravy in Ecuador. I think that’s because the toilets circle the other way. Maybe.

But I’m not that mean. Well, I am that mean, but I’m still begging for working for that Nobel® Peace™ Prize©, or maybe a lousy MacArthur Award™, so I’d best pretend to be a loving, caring human being. Besides, no body? No crime. Right? That’s what my lawyer keeps telling me. I hope he’s right.

I know what you are asking, “John Wilder, how can I learn to make comedy jokes like you?” See? You’re dead in a disaster already! A disaster is no joking matter, unless it happens to someone else. But, following are some preventive (the word preventative, while in the dictionary, has that stupid extra “ta” in the middle and I refuse to engage with a single ta – two ta’s only) steps that you can take to, well, live. And these steps apply to both a disaster and your life. In the end, your life is a disaster. I’m not judging, but if you treat your life like a metaphorical disaster, you’ll be healthier and more prepared.

Humility: Know what you don’t know. As Aesop (LINK) perspicaciously quoted Donald Rumsfeld the other day: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.” People liked to bag on Rumsfeld, mainly because they were jealous of his mad dancing skills and that he bested John Cusack in an arm-wrestling contest once so he could win the chance to date Demi Moore. This was before she began to resemble beef jerky, so it was worth it at the time. Regardless, this is a great quote on humility. Know what you don’t know. Either learn it, or compensate for it.
Prepare Generally for General Disasters: Most things you can prepare for are the same, or at least rhyme like poetry used to rhyme before cigarette smoking smelly people in black berets with low-testosterone face hair (high testosterone for the females, which looks about the same) ruined it. Hitler’s ghost won’t re-start World War II, and Abraham Lincoln’s ghost won’t be around to start Civil War II, but human needs don’t change all that much, regardless of what disaster you face. You have to eat. You have to have water. You have to have Internet. Oh, wait – sorry. Water is optional now, according to the WHO (The Who, The WHO, Cavemen, Child Labor, and We Won’t Get Fooled Again). You can quote me on the following: A multi-tool is a crappy tool. Unless it’s your only tool. And it weighs less than your tool kit. Never expect that preparations will be exact replacements of what you really need. But as long as you have Internet, it’s all good, right?
Do Things That Take You Out Of Your Comfort Zone: No, this isn’t an excuse to try to convince you into a Multi-Level-Marketing© scheme to strain your friendships by selling a product that ultimately is the object of a 60 Minutes™ investigation (this happened to my ex-wife, for reals). Take a different road to work. How well do you know the lay of the land in the ten miles around your house? How well do you know your neighbors, I mean, reciprocally? The telescope views don’t count no matter how hot she is. Imagine you had to do without electricity. Do without it for a night. Two nights. Spend a night in a tent in the back yard. Go camping. Eat a burger . . . without fries. Your routine is your enemy, except for the lifting and healthy bits. Change it up.
Practice with your tools: Heh, hehe, hehehe, he said tools. Okay, Beavis, knock it off. If it’s a pistol. If it’s a chainsaw. If it’s a hammer. Heh, hehe, hehehe, he said hammer. Practice with it. 80% of your proficiency will come for 20% of your effort, unless you’re me trying to learn guitar, because that’s just hopeless. Become mediocre now, when there’s time, that will help with number one, up above. At least then you’ll know what you don’t know.
Play “What if?” mind games: I do this all the time. Sometimes I end up in crazy stupid places – as in the entire world is gone and leaves just me and the cast of The Breakfast Club and the cast of Who fighting over who gets the last deodorant stick in the world and Sophie Marceau is the only one who can save me. Okay, that’s not really productive. But when you think about what could happen, you become mentally prepared if it does happen.

Sophie is the one on bottom. James Bond® is the one on top. I guess I might need to explain that to the folks in California. I’m just worried that the next movie might have Jeanette Bond, who has never even been to England at all. Because what’s more British than that?

So, there it is. I guess I have a sink to fix. 173dVietVet, how did I do?

Also, if you have a pet topic, toss it out, either in the comments or at my email at movingnorth@gmail.com. I won’t promise that I’ll do it, but your odds are good. 100% as of this writing. If I don’t do it, it’s not you, it’s that I think I’d suck at it.

At Our Wits’ End Review Part II: I.Q. and the Fate of Civilization (Hint, It’s Idiocracy)

“As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.” – Idiocracy

The pictures from this post are mainly from Idiocracy©, which you should watch before it’s an actual documentary.

This is the second part of the review of the book At Our Wits’ End. The first part can be found here at At Our Wits’ End Review Part The First: Increasing Intelligence and Civilization. Again, I recommend the book, and the link is below. As of this writing I don’t get any compensation if you buy it here. Buy it anyway. It’s an important book.

When last we left Western Civilization, we’d reached the smartest point ever in history. Isaac Newton was an example of the genius produced at this time in history. Dutton and Woodley have data to suggest that 1750 was the peak of intelligence for Western Civilization.

Is there any evidence for this?

Certainly.

Life in 1770 was fairly comparable to life in 1470. Given three hundred years, things hadn’t changed much at all. But by 1804, life was dramatically different. The Industrial Revolution® was a product of the accumulated intellectual capital of the preceding five hundred years and it changed everything.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution©, natural selection occurred in society through the culling of the poor via disease and poverty along with the execution/prison death for about 2% of the stupider males. This led to the population getting smarter. But the Industrial Revolution© created an economic abundance in the West like never seen before. Surplus food and goods were now available in society. Medicine improved and kept the weak children of rich people alive.

Ahh, selection in progress.

Medicine also kept more of the children of poor people and poor single mothers alive. As established previously,

Poor impulse control is correlated with lower I.Q.,
Single motherhood is correlated with lower I.Q.,
Less overall wealth is correlated with lower I.Q., and
Having more children is correlated with lower I.Q.

Again, none of these predict the behavior in individuals. The friend I have with the greatest number of children has a very high I.Q. There are several very smart people I know that don’t have a lot of money. And anyone under the influence of testosterone and being 18 has really crappy impulse control. I will also remind everyone being rich doesn’t mean you’re virtuous. Neither does being smart. But in group behavior, the correlations above are well documented.

Dutton and Woodley note that they’re not the first ones to see the inherent problems with the removal of natural selection in a wealthy society. Benedict Morel, named after a mushroom, observed this problem in 1857 between surrenders in France. Francis Galton wrote in 1865 that “Civilization preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.” Ouch.

But it’s true. As of this week, every member of our family wears glasses as Pugsley was the last to leave the “good eyes” club. And The Mrs. developed type I diabetes when she was 12. Prior to the 1920’s this was a near immediate death sentence. However, since insulin was isolated and entered the market in the 1930’s, she’s alive and had kids, namely Pugsley and The Boy. Her genes would never have reproduced without the Industrial Revolution™.

Spoiler alert: they’re never going to be ready.

Charles Darwin wrote an entire book on the problem: The Descent of Man. It really wasn’t a light “summer at the beach” read as it described humanity getting progressively . . . worse. Smarter people use contraception more (remember, the prohibition against birth control went away as religious beliefs changed). And lower I.Q. people not only have more children, they actively desire more children.

Further factors that have developed as society absorbed the wealth of the great capitalist expansion include the development of a welfare state. That’s a problem if you want smart people around. Welfare states support and encourage single mothers (lower I.Q.) to have more children and ensures that those children survive. Dutton and Woodley also note that data suggests that welfare may encourage those who are also low in “personality factors” (agreeableness and conscientiousness) to have more children. What does that lead to? A population that is more impulsive, paranoid, apathetic and aggressive. By coincidence these traits are also associated with lower I.Q.

So, numbers increase on the lower end of the I.Q. scale. What about on the upper end? Are smart people are having lots of babies? No. Opening high value careers up to intelligent women causes them to have fewer babies. Higher I.Q. people also use birth control more frequently, and actually desire to have smaller families. So not only are lower I.Q. people having more lower I.Q. babies, smarter people are having fewer high I.Q. children.

But at least they have what plants crave!

Having a wealthy society also increases the desire for people from less wealthy countries to immigrate to the rich countries. As we shown in the previous post (I.Q. – uh- What is it good for? Absolutely Everything. Say it again.), less wealth generally correlates to lower societal I.Q. Does this translate to real-world outcomes? Yes. Dutton and Woodley cite Danish studies that show the average Dane I.Q. to be around 100. However, the I.Q. of non-Western immigrants is roughly 86 in Denmark. Immigrants certainly aren’t making Denmark smarter.

To think, you could live in a paradise like this . . . .

Since intelligence is 0.80 correlated with genetics, they and their children actually can’t make Denmark smarter. This result would indicate that wealth, quality of life, and ability to self-govern would decrease in countries facing high immigration, while crime would increase. As a completely unrelated note, the United States has more immigrants than any country on Earth, with 40% of the population (How the Constitution Dies) now being either first generation or born of a foreign mother.

But What About The Flynn Effect?

The Flynn Effect refers to a general rise in IQ scores between 1930 and 1980, noted by a guy named (drum roll) Flynn, James Flynn – he’ll take his data shaken, not stirred. For whatever reason I.Q. scores seemed to be increasing. However, Dutton and Woodley explain that the Flynn effect is most likely environmental in nature (i.e., better nutrition) and not genetic.

Apparently the I.Q. test sub-scores that show improvement tend to favor very specific areas of intelligence, namely those areas that are environmentally influenced. There is a parallel with height, they point out: in 1900, average height in Great Britain was 5’6”. In 1970 it was 5’10”. But growth has been in leg length (which is more correlated with environmental factors) versus torso length (which is more genetic). People are taller due to nutrition.

Additionally, schools train more for abstract thought than they would have in a mostly agrarian society, which would have been the norm throughout the West in 1930. Country schoolhouses didn’t need to teach logic puzzles, since they were focused on traditional subjects. Now children are drilled in the kinds of questions that are used on I.Q. tests – and if you practice, you do get better even if you’re not smarter. On some I.Q. tests administered to youth, they’re not considered to be valid if the child had the test in the past year, so practicing the kinds of questions on the test will likely improve scores.

The bad news is that evidence suggests that the Flynn effect has stopped around somewhere around the year 2000 and is now headed downward. Reaction times (a proxy for intelligence) have dropped. Reaction times aren’t as closely correlated with I.Q. as many of the other things we’ve talked about, but they are directly measurable. It may be a bad ruler, but it’s a ruler that we can use to compare across time.

Also confirming the I.Q. drop is work done by Augustine Kong, a Chinese researcher at the University of Iceland studied genetic components known to increase I.Q. They’re declining. The average Icelander born in 1990 wasn’t as smart as one born in 1910, and the genetics aren’t there to support an increasing I.Q. The opposite appears to be happening.

Dutton and Woodley conclude that based on the metrics they reviewed, the “average” Englishman of 1850 would be in the top 15% of intelligence today in England. Oops. And apparently all tests surveyed indicate declining I.Q. That’s a problem: if average intelligence is declining, and intelligence is a bell curve, there will be fewer geniuses and a smaller “smart fraction” that is able to put run and hold together a technologically advanced society. Or build a SR-71 Blackbird. Or a Saturn V rocket.

Just like a bad horror movie, it keeps getting worse. The very temperament of genius is changing – from stereotypical genius – a very driven, self and work-preoccupied Einstein to Todd from corporate: intelligent, socially skilled, agreeable, and conscientious. Thankfully the genius “Todd” will provide us really detailed policy manuals and snappy PowerPoints® instead of that useless groundbreaking physics.

Creativity is correlated with I.Q. but only up to an I.Q. of 120. As a further confirmation, creativity scores have declined, therefore . . . expect less Monty Python® on TV and more “Ow, My Balls©.”

And people say that there’s nothing good on TV.

On the bright side, the murder rate is down. Why would that be so? Murder, violence and impulsive behavior is correlated with lower I.Q. Dutton and Woodley theorize that the environment that creates violence is down – given a robust welfare system it’s less likely that financial pressures or social pressures are as high. You kid won’t be starving to death as they stuff their face full of Cheetos® while they sit on the couch playing X-Box™, and since obesity is up, killing people is such hard work, anyway.

Why do Civilizations Rise and Fall?

Like your mother-in-law, early civilizations have a low I.Q. – they’re dangerous places to be. But over time group selection pressures intensify, the people become highly religious and ethnocentric – the hill people want to kill and eat the valley people, and vice-versa, and everybody wants to kill the group whose god makes them wear purple. The nice thing about strong religion and ethnocentric behavior is it allows your group to compete well.

If your religion is good enough, and if you get enough selection for I.Q., you just might end up with a baby civilization on your hands. Once I.Q. increases, conditions get better. An elite is formed, and, since they have nothing better to do, they begin to question all of the social traditions that made civilization smart and wealthy.

The elite begins to compete on who can be more altruistic and ethnocentrism (favoring your own people) becomes badthink. All of the values and norms that created the civilization are despised and thrown out. Society begins to decline. “. . . extreme views . . . eventually become the norm.”

Resources are then taken from those that are more capable and given to those that are less capable, which is called fairness since all people are equal, right? I.Q. drops. Innovation drops.

Then? The elite is purged, and the civilization collapses. The authors anticipate the following response, that: “. . . it doesn’t work precisely with some obscure civilization or other; or demand that we respond to an infinite regress of every unlikely possible alternative explanation . . . .” Yeah, even academics get denial.

Okay, maybe it won’t take that long.

Does This Explain Past History with Other Civilizations?

Sure.

Ancient Greece.
Islamic Civilization. 64% of important Islamic scientists lived before 1250. 100% of them lived before 1750.
China. It came very close to its own industrial revolution.
The Roman Empire. Why didn’t Rome (as awesome as it was) have an industrial revolution? Contraception and abortion were approved of. Higher IQ women generally had fewer children, and this collapsed Rome prior to that great leap that would have led to Maximus™ brand Ocelot Bitez® and Roman tanks. Man, I wish we would have had Roman tanks.

What About Western Civilization?

Western Civilization has followed the same cycle, but with this important difference: Christianity had a taboo against contraception and abortion which kept higher I.Q. women having children. The Spring of Western Civilization was from 1000 to 1500. During this time, it was highly religious and highly ethnocentric, just like the model.

The Summer lasted from 1500 to the Industrial Revolution©. This period was more rational, questioning, and the Renaissance brought culture and art to the forefront.

Autumn – Industrial Revolution™ to last Tuesday. We find ourselves with the elite questioning society. The ideas and thoughts that the civilization is capable of are reaching their highest level as we harvest the fruit of hundreds of years of human advancement.

We may be in Winter or close to it. The hallmark of winter is a declining I.Q. as the less intelligent spew out children like a society-destroying genetic AR-15. Culturally, Winter is characterized by the reproduction of good ideas from the past rather than coming up with new ones. Multiculturalism and Marxism are “anti-rational” and “their adoption should show how far g (I.Q.) has fallen.” Dutton and Woodley quote Charles Murray with the phrase that describes the era – “The feeling that the story has run out.”

The authors are not certain we are there, but feel that it’s worth noting that things don’t look very good.

Thanks, guys.

Are There Solutions?

I’ll leave you to read the book for those alternatives. I’ll summarize it by noting that the solutions provided are not easy choices, and unlikely to be implemented in any democracy. I.Q. drop is caused by our society and values, and won’t be undone by a society with our values. The authors further suggest that maybe we should spend some time saving our knowledge so it’s easier for the next group through.

Dark.

I still recommend the book. I also recommend Dr. Dutton’s YouTube® work. I’ve linked to a good one down below. Next week I should have the transcription done of my interview of him, and it’ll shine a bit more light on these conclusions.

At Our Wits’ End Review Part The First: Increasing Intelligence and Civilization

“Give the likes of Baldrick the vote and we’ll be back to cavorting druids, death by stoning and dung for dinner.” – Blackadder

I love accurate historical dramas.

What happens when you find a set of ideas that might explain the world as we see it, that ties together dozens of topics you’ve written extensively about over the course of years?

You smile, even if it means civilization might be ending. Heck, if civilization ends, no more mortgage!

Let me go back to the start.

I was listening to YouTube® on my way to work. YouTube™ has some interesting algorithms that select your next video. From time to time the videos presented have been horrific, but on this particular occasion, a gentleman was interviewing Dr. Edward Dutton about his new book At Our Wits’ End. I enjoyed the interview so much I ordered the book that night, and have watched many of Dr. Dutton’s YouTube© videos as well since then – he’s named himself quite appropriately the “Jolly Heretic.”

I was not disappointed when At Our Wits’ End arrived and, in my first spoiler alert for the review, I heartily recommend the book without reservation. Dr. Dutton wrote the book along with his colleague, Dr. Michael Woodley, and together they have put together an interesting and compelling scientific narrative. I research many of my posts, and some research takes hours and has dozens of notecards of notes. In this case, I typed my notes about the book – the notes alone are sitting right now at 1725 words. We’ll see how many posts that ends up being: I’m betting it will be two, and I’m certain that not all of my notes will be used. I may end up posting the combined review when it’s complete as a separate page on the blog, along with the interview of Dr. Dutton that he was gracious enough to agree to. I’ll be posting that interview after the review is complete – I think it will form an excellent post script.

Last week’s Monday post (I.Q. – uh- What is it good for? Absolutely Everything. Say it again.) was a warm up – it dealt with how I.Q. shapes the present. In it, the relationship between I.Q. and national wealth is fairly obvious. This week’s post deals with (to me) the more crucial and compelling question – what will the future of Western Civilization and humanity be? This is the core of At Our Wits’ End.

But first, from page 108 of At Our Wits’ End:

One problem with science which many people find difficult to get their heads around, is that the aim of science is to understand the nature of the world and to present the simplest explanation, based on the evidence, for what is going on. Science is not there to be reassuring, to make people feel good, or to help bond society together . . . . Those who call for suppression are, in effect, arguing that scientific pursuit is fine until it forces them to question the worldview that they hold for emotional reasons. Once it does this it is ‘bad science’ or ‘a higher standard of proof should be demanded’ or ‘it is immoral’.

This is perhaps the quote that impacted me the most strongly from the book. We live in a world filled with truths – and the most uncomfortable questions are perhaps the most important to ask. We may not like the answers, but when dealing with reality we cannot make rational decisions without that knowledge. In my personal life, the questions that I hate to ask myself are nearly always the most important ones. Strangely, I also seem to know immediately the answers to those questions, at least when I have the courage to ask them.

The first question posed by the book is a simple one:

What is intelligence?

As discussed previously in this blog, intelligence is the ability to solve complicated problems, generally with some speed. For this review, I’ll use I.Q. and intelligence as well as ‘g’ – the general intelligence factor – interchangeably. Although these are all very different terms for a scientist studying the subject, for the purposes of this review I’ll mangle the language and call them all the same thing and use them more or less similarly. It’s like calling a zebra a horse, but hopefully it excludes centaurs and giraffes and makes for clear reading for the lay reader. Also, keep in mind that these are group numbers – we all know and can cite examples of individuals who don’t follow the group correlations we’ll discuss – the genius level smart dude who has bad body odor and lives in his parent’s basement. The sort-of dim kid who developed a business and makes $350,000 a year. They exist. But they’re the exceptions, not the rule.

Intelligence has a most interesting property: it’s inheritable – with a correlation of about 0.8, which is pretty high. 1.0 is perfect correlation, -1.0 is perfect negative correlation. Educational attainment and economic status correlate with intelligence, as does salary – at about 0.3. Other things that are correlated with intelligence include impulse control. People with higher IQ are also more trusting. On an individual level to predict a person’s performance you also have to have information about their personality, but on a group level I.Q. has significant predictive power.

It’s generally the dream of every first grade teacher that all of her students are equal. But she knows that’s a lie. Every student isn’t equal – some are much better at some tasks than others. Some are much better at every task, and people who do well on one task generally do well on other tasks – intelligent brains just seem to have more bandwidth in general – it’s like they have an overclocked nervous system. Again, this doesn’t mean that they’re more virtuous, simply that they have greater capabilities.

The average IQ also determines interests to some extent – the average IQ of someone who studies anthropology is lower than someone who studies physics.

What are the properties of IQ?

IQ test scores fall out on a bell curve.
~70% of the population has an IQ between 85 and 115.
95% between of the population is between 70 and 130.
Intelligence is “polygenic” – lots of genes are involved in making a smart kid.

But certainly, John Wilder, intelligence means different things to different cultures? In the very succinct commentary of Dutton and Woodley, “No it doesn’t.” I realize that’s not an argument, it’s a refutation – I’ll let you read the book for details. Scientifically it appears that IQ is a valid concept across cultures. It’s valid if the culture is literate. It’s valid if the culture is non-Western. IQ (or intelligence, or “g”) is potentially one of the most predictive and studied properties in social sciences, which tend to be a bit squishier and less science-y than, say, physics or chemistry, so give the social science folks a break that they found this gem.

So can a civilization get smarter?

Yes. If a trait can be passed on via sexual selection (like my butt), then it will be selected for. But in, say, the year 1400 a great butt wasn’t as important as regular food. If you look at the data as generated in the study Survival of the Richest (Gregory Clark) – as quoted by Dutton and Woodley, between 1400 A.D. and the mid-19^th century, the top 50% had more surviving children than the poor 50% – nearly twice as many. Since economic status is strongly correlated with I.Q., society became smarter each generation.

Brutal? Yes.

Concerned with sexy butts? Not at all.

Why would smarter people have more surviving children? Less intelligent means less money. That means less food, less heat. That means the poor children are all weaker when the ice weasels (extinct since 1745) came. There’s plenty of evidence for this, as Dutton and Woodley note: the average height on the ship Mary Rose was 5’7” around the time Henry VIII lived. Henry VIII was 6’3”. Henry got better food. He got better genes.

No, it was the genes, silly.

Henry wasn’t especially good at having children, but most of the nobles around that time were good at it – with or without their wives. There is evidence that as many illegitimate children of nobles survived as legitimate children. Most people have to work their whole lives to become a bastard, but like me, those lucky kids were born that way. And some of them did okay – William the Conqueror was illegitimate and managed to invent the paperclip (I made that up) and invade England at the head of the Norman Conquest (I didn’t make that up).

According to the genealogical records I’ve seen, I’m related to William the Conqueror. This would be an amazing story. Except . . . I won’t polish my claim to the crown just yet and become known as John Wilder the Usurper©, Eater of PEZ® and Defender of the Remote Control™ anytime soon: European society became one of constant trickle down – sons of nobility would have sons that were merchants who would have sons that were farmers who would have sons that worked on farms. The poor fraction was replaced by the rich fraction over time. The children of the wealthy replaced the poor in a silent way.

I don’t know the percentage, but I’ll bet a sizable chunk of England is, like me, related to William.

Genes for being wealthy, which is correlated with intelligence, spread throughout society. This still doesn’t explain my sexy, sexy butt. But there were further selection pressures in place: 2% of males were either executed or died in prison. Presumably these were the worst 2%, so society was pruning itself. But mobility worked both ways – people could move up the social strata as well based on their (generally I.Q. related) merits.

Also pruned were the children of unmarried women who didn’t have the position of mistress to someone higher up the social strata. Unmarried mothers have an average I.Q. of 92 in the United States. Childless or married women have an average I.Q. of 105. Today children live via welfare, but back in 1741 (when one study in particular was done) moms would have abandoned them. 71% of these abandoned children in 1741 were dead by the age of 15 versus 40% in the population as a whole. Presumably there would be even less child mortality in the upper incomes.

These selection pressures led to the gradual increase in intellect, culminating in what Dr. Dutton mentioned in one of his YouTube® videos as his estimated date for the smartest generation in recorded history – those born in and around 1750.

So, all is well, and humanity keeps going on an ever-smarter upward march of intelligence?

Spoiler alert!

No. And Soylent Green® is people.

We’ll discuss that (the intelligence piece) in Part II of this here: At Our Wits’ End Review Part II: I.Q. and the Fate of Civilization (Hint, It’s Idiocracy).

Meanwhile, go out and buy the book. It’s good.

Four Questions That Describe The Meaning of Life

“Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.” – Monty Python, Meaning of Life

I heard that someone told the Dalai Lama this joke and he didn’t get it. Which is makes it even funnier.

I was busy trying to adjust my phone to listen to a podcast while driving and pouring coffee the other day, and it hit me like a ticket for inattentive driving: There are only four questions that are worth asking. I found that to be amazing, since I have hundreds of note cards with ideas for posts on them in boxes waiting for the right day for me to write them up. So how do I condense most of those ideas as answers to four questions?

I was worried that this was too simple. I bounced back and forth between three questions and four questions, but finally settled on four questions. They were simple questions, and the first one that occurred to me is the first one on this list.

What brought us here?
Who are we?
What is this place?
Where are we going?

Originally I had a fifth question, but then I found my keys. Under my hat. Again. Also, when I use the word “us” in this post, it’s certainly meant to include everyone. Everyone except Johnny Depp. He knows why.

But these are big questions. As I thought a bit about it, these are the questions that drive me to write this blog, with the exception of the odd post here and there.

What brought us here?

This was the first question, and it hit me as I was working out the ideas for a future post in my head. It hit me like an angry wet salmon wearing a bear suit. At its core, this questions the all of the conditions that led to our present state. All of them. It questions the way that we are – as individuals, as groups, as a species.

I would have sworn that Washington had a blue lightsaber.

This is only a four word question, but it’s a really big four word question. Thankfully, it’s simple to answer. All you need to understand it is the answers to any questions you can think of in these subjects:

All of human history.
All of physics.
How PEZ® was invented.
All of the history of the universe.

So, the question is very short, and the answer is very long.

We still don’t know many answers to questions that are fundamental about each of these subjects. One time I was talking to The Mrs. back around 2000. My exact quote to her was, “The Mrs., I’m willing to bet that one day they find that we have Neanderthal ancestors. I think that the reason why I came to that conclusion was based on me. I’m pale. I can sunburn under the glare from an LED computer monitor.

That sort of pale didn’t happen overnight. Along with other physical observations I’d made, it just seemed the most logical conclusion that Neanderthal wasn’t extinct. Neanderthal was us.

So when the DNA evidence came back and, eventually, showed that most European-descended people had Neanderthal DNA I wasn’t surprised. And I’m not surprised now when I hear that our most basic assumptions about the way that things like physics work are subject to change – massive change.

An example:

At CERN (where they smash atoms together like a tipsy celebutant celebrating that her parents purchased her way into USC™ smashes daddy’s Mercedes© into a mom’s parked Ferrari®) they recently celebrated, with campaign(!), that they had discovered a particle symmetry violation between anti-matter and regular matter.

If Vinnie drops a car on Frank’s car, neglecting air resistance and assuming g=9.81m/s . . .

That’s a lot of words for a very basic thing – let me break it down a bit. The Universe that we see is comprised almost entirely of normal matter, not anti-matter. But the Big Bang® should have produced equal quantities of both, so where did the anti-matter go? This is a pretty significant question, since anti-matter explodes with the force of a billion bipolar ex-wives (GigaX) when it comes into contact with normal matter. It’s really good for us that we don’t have this anti-matter going around and wanting alimony payments, but there’s no real reason that the Big Bang™ didn’t produce equal quantities of both.

This discovery from CERN might explain why my ex-wife anti-matter is thankfully rare in our environment. It appears that anti-matter doesn’t follow the same physical laws that matter does. This is the first time we’ve figured that out, but we don’t know how it’s different. But think just for a second – what if you could have a substance that wanted to fall up instead of down? That was anti-magnetic? That could coat, soothe, and protect a sore throat?

Yes. This discovery could provide technologies that we haven’t even dreamed about, but most people have never heard about it. Thankfully we’re all up to date on Kardashians, though.

Thankfully there’s tons of things left to discover, both about ourselves and about the Universe that we can safely ignore while we are Keepin’ up with the Kardashians.

Who are we?

I got this question down to three words. See what a ruthless self-editor I am? This question opens up a lot of today’s biggest mysteries:

How the human body works.
How the brain works.
What consciousness is.
If people have souls.
Why 80% of the world is silly and watches soccer.
What health is.
Immortality – anything besides a great three-letter-score in Scrabble®?
What motivates us.
Why we do the things we do.

I’ll admit, some of these questions do have overlap – the question of “What brought us here?” overlaps some with “Who are we?” Ancestors are crucial to both, for instance. Protip: since you inherit somewhere between 60% and 80% of our intelligence, the first thing you should strive to do is to convince your mom to pick a smart dad for you.

But even given thousands of researchers spending billions of dollars annually, the primary positive impacts to health in the last 150 years have been clean water, better nutrition, antiseptic surgical conditions, and antibiotics. Newspaper stories keep showing up about the immortality around the corner, but I haven’t even seen one fifty year old mouse, and we can cure any kind of mice-cancer at this point.

No, thanks, eyes are fine. And I’ll skip the colonoscopy, thank you.

Thankfully, medical science can all of the questions about why humans are like they are.

Except for the interesting ones.

What is this place?

Our surroundings are curious. There is the world and cosmos we live in, but there are also the civilizations we’ve made. How does all of it work?

What virtue is.
Where virtue comes from.
What societies work well for humanity.

This is the question I could (sort of) cram back into the other three, but I felt it was important enough because of the great deal of discord in society today, and the uncertainty about the future of what we’ve made. Understanding the ability for humans to govern themselves and live together is crucial, and we still haven’t gotten the knack yet.

Where are we going?

This is the final question, the future. The mysteries of the future are different. The past and present are set, the future is undecided, wrapped in probability. What are the big questions, the big unknowns of the future? This question is easy to answer if we just know:

The fate of ourselves.
The fate of our civilizations.
The fate of humanity.
The fate of life itself.
Physics (all of it), again.

I’ve mentioned religion twice. Though it’s not a constant part of posting, it’s a very important component in understanding these questions, especially the ones where I’ve listed it. And religion is important as a philosophical construct – it has been the largest single influence on humanity in all of recorded history, and probably before that. Beyond religion as pure philosophy, there is that possibility that deity as contemplated by religion exists, and maybe even close to what is on the label. Science certainly hasn’t ruled that possibility out.

Does a bear answer trivia questions in the woods?

But in 2000, they had ruled out the possibility that we were part Neanderthal, or at least that was the general consensus.

So you never know what we’ll learn in the future. And it looks like I’ve got plenty to write about, and with the amount of Neanderthal blood I have, probably some mammoth to catch and some caves to paint.

Books, Stoics, Immortality (Now Available on Stick)

“I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal.” – Highlander

Or maybe it was the scotch that made him immortal? When I drink scotch I’m bulletproof.

I once had a Grandboss (my boss’s boss) that once said, “Reading is the only way that you can know great minds across centuries.” He was deeply philosophical and attempted to use that philosophy to improve business results, and also to use history as analogy for business conditions. Prior to the movie 300 coming out, he was discussing the battle of Thermopylae and the courage of the Spartans to fight to the last man as a business analogy. Needless to say, when you’re using a battle where every single solder dies as an analogy, business isn’t going all that well.

Grandboss also assigned On War (a treatise on war and strategy during the Napoleonic era) by Von Clausewitz for us to read. I’m probably the only guy who actually did read it, and still have my copy. Needless to say, I loved my Grandboss, and still send him cards on Grandboss day. When I quit that job to take a new one, I told him first, and as a goodbye present? I gave him a book.

My Grandboss was right, though – reading allows us to know great minds across centuries. The nice thing is we can read the thoughts of dead Greeks like Epictetus. Epictetus spent his entire life studying and living stoic philosophy, which was a pretty hard thing to do when you were a slave with a gimpy leg. Epictetus eventually became free – we don’t know how, but I imagine he won the annual caddy’s golf tournament and got a scholarship from Judge Smails.

I bet Epictetus just wishes he wrote, “You’ll get nothing and like it.”

One thing we do know is that Epictetus did was spend a lot of time thinking about virtue and vice. We’ll spend more time on virtue on Monday’s post, but Epictetus came to the conclusion that the following things were neither vice nor virtue:

Wealth
Health
Life
Death
Pleasure
Pain

As wealth and health are at least two nominal themes of this blog (this is Friday, so I’m stretching it and saying this is a health post) it might seem a bit hypocritical that I spend time talking about health and wealth and then quote a dead lame Greek that says that neither of those are virtuous. But I would argue that my message on wealth is that true wealth is in having few needs (Seneca, Stoics, Money and You), and although I prefer pleasure to pain, I recognize that a pleasure repeated too often is a punishment (Pleasure, Stoicism, Blade Runner, VALIS and Philip K. Dick). And we also know that health is more controllable by our choices today than Epictetus did.

Immortal and omnipotent. And good on the mariachi trumpet.

Heck, I even got challenged by an Orthodox priest friend on whether or not learning for learning’s sake was, in a religious context, a vice. If so, there goes most of my Monday posts. The priest and I (as I recall, over a BBQ lunch) came to the conclusion that learning for learning’s sake was maybe a vice. Since he was also a fan of learning for learning’s sake, if it was a vice we were both guilty.

Going back to Epictetus’ list, Life and Death are on it as being neither virtues nor vices. I’m not sure about you, but I really prefer Wealth to Poverty, Health to Illness, and Life to Death. Epictetus felt the same way – it was okay to have preferences with the understanding that neither condition is, in itself, virtuous. I finally came to understand that while not virtuous, death is required for life. Oddly, I thank Bill Clinton for this realization.

It was during the Clinton presidency that I first looked around at the national leaders for both parties and thought, “Jeez, what a bunch of bozos.” Both sides were stupid or corrupt. Some were stupid and corrupt at the same time (looking at you, ghost of Ted Kennedy, I’ve imagined you’ve been plenty warm this winter). Back then I was a capital-L libertarian, and could see that both sides had as primary goals the restriction of freedom on their agenda in addition to being incompetent.

Beyond that, they were . . . awful. Spineless. They were tools of groups with different names but the same objectives – objectives that mostly didn’t favor you or me. Throw into this mix that one day at lunch I was thinking about immortality and the implications of living forever, which was spurred on by eating a tuna fish sandwich which might have been as old as Epictetus, who died in 135 A.D.

Elvis will never die. Mobility? That might be an issue.

If people were generally immortal? Our birthrate would plummet – 200 year old women have very few kids. As for me, I’d have plenty of time so rather than putting things off until next week, I’d put stuff off until next century. But the worst consequence?

Bill Clinton would forever be an elder statesman, always trying to increase his (and Hillary’s) power for all of eternity. Our current batch of elected officials would be about the best we’d get, or maybe the only ones we’d get. Senators and congresscritters already stay in office until the only way to keep them alive is though that experimental technique that turns them into zombie-like creatures that feast on living human flesh like Nancy Pelosi, or immortal robots like the Ruth Bader-Ginsbot™ 3000.

Thankfully, we live in a world where things die and the world moves on – just like a cell in a human body ceases to exist so new cells can take over. We have a name for immortal cells – cancer. Just like cells pass away, so do we to leave this world to the youth. I didn’t say death is “good” – just that it serves a purpose.

Okay, this is one boy who loved his mother.

Part of that purpose is focusing us on the here and now: in this way we don’t lose sight that life is precious and fleeting, like sedation dentistry. Perhaps the most precious thing we have is the shared time with those who have meaning to us (like your friendly blogger). But for those who have left us, honor them with the virtue that they helped you obtain. Be glad you had a part of their life, and had a chance to witness their virtue and learn from their vices. Look at how they have changed you, made you better so that they live on through their influence on you.

Lastly, for heaven’s sake, write something down. It’s the only way that someone can know your mind when you’re gone, unless they check your browser history.

Beer, Nuclear Bikinis, and Agriculture: What Made Us Who We Are

“A living nuclear weapon destined to walk the Earth forever. Indestructible. A victim of the modern nuclear age.” – Godzilla 1985

Ahh, sexy nuclear power.

I was at a job I had (while we lived in Houston) and I was getting coffee. One safety tip: the most dangerous place in the world is being between Ocasio-Cortez and a camera. The second most dangerous place in the world is being between me and the office coffee pot. On this particular day a gentleman who worked for a parallel department to mine was also at the coffee bar. We exchanged the ritual office grunting. “Ugh, John hate Mondays.” “Ugh, me hate Mondays too.” As I waited for my coffee to brew, he asked me this question:

“John Wilder, what do you think the most important invention in human history was?”

I thought about it. I didn’t have a ready answer, but this popped into my head. “Besides the bikini, I’d have to go with agriculture.” Who doesn’t love swimwear named after nuclear bomb testing?

See, told you nuclear power was sexy.

He was a little surprised. I think he expected me to say “stapler” or “strapless gown” or some other word starting with “s”, but, no, agriculture was my answer. And upon several years’ worth of reflection, do I stand by that answer? Yes.

Why?

Agriculture has remade our culture. Prior to agriculture, there was no real reason to stay in one location. In fact, if you hunted out an area, it would make sense to move to an area that hadn’t been hunted out – that would have been pressure for them to be nomadic and move periodically. A nomadic people has a limit to the amount of stuff they can have – they have to be able to carry it (or, if they’re a girl, convince the guys to carry it – fur bikinis were useful for that) to the next place they’ll make camp.

Okay, I’d carry her stuff.

Obviously, this lack of stuff limits the ability to create a technological society, and the nomadic lifestyle also makes it difficult for Amazon to deliver the hand-crank margarita maker you ordered since you don’t have an address. Why build a house, or a village? You’re just going to be leaving it to follow the critters you’re hunting. Certainly there were artifacts that were made before agriculture – Göbekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey was built before agriculture, starting at around 10,000 B.C., or about the same time your mom was learning to drive.

But nomadic tribes stayed small – limited by Dunbar’s number – this post is from when I wrote about it last year (Mental Illness, Dunbar’s Number, and the Divine Right of Kings):

Dunbar looked at primate group brain sizes, and compared to the size of the neocortex to the size of the primate “group” or tribe. After running the math, he predicted that humans should have a group size of around 150 – it’s related to the size of working memory that you have about other people. The commonly accepted maximum stable group size (average) is 100-250, which explains why I need to have my children program the streaming box hooked up to my television – my working memory is full of details like the shoe preferences of the administrative assistant at work from six jobs ago.

Göbekli Tepe – these people knew how to rock.

Now that doesn’t mean that Göbekli Tepe is proof that villages didn’t occur – Neanderthal habitations have been found even farther back in time, but those were probably seasonal as they followed the game. Göbekli Tepe was probably a ceremonial location where those people who collect ceramic figurines of frogs met for the annual ceramic frog convention, though this is just my speculation. But what isn’t speculation is that villages and settlements didn’t really exist until agriculture started, also around 10,000 B.C.

Perhaps the high point of Western Civilization?

And at that point everything changes. Archeological evidence indicates that hunter-gatherers worked just a fraction of the time (less than 20 hours per week) that the farmers worked after agriculture was invented. The hunter-gatherers spent time doing things that we think of as “fun” today – men take time off from work to hunt or fish. Women take time off to go and shop – modern-day gathering.

So why on earth did we stop doing things we’d been bred to find fun? We stopped hunting and gathering to trade for long hours of backbreaking farm labor in crowded villages that could allow violence, disease, and theft. My best guess that those hellish villages provided enough technological sophistication to provide constant streams of beer for the guys and red high-heeled shoes and makeup for the women. Oh, and the villages allowed for another unique feature: slavery. If you had an army (which you could now) you could go and take men, women, and crops from other villages. You could eat their food, and then make them plant more for you. And then you could make more beer.

But the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer is possibly enshrined in the Bible book of Genesis, in the story of Cain and Abel, where Cain the farmer, killed Abel the shepherd. The farmer killed the hunter-gatherer, which is what eventually happened within all of society.

Hey, bro, want to be a metaphor?

This change also impacted the genetics of humanity. As divisions of labor were made possible by the villages, genes for hunters were less in demand (except for soldiers) and genes for farmers were in demand. Artisans making pottery and accountants and tax collectors were now needed. The breeding for people changed: for the first time ever, people need to read, to do math. From my observation, it seems like math and reading are innate in many of the children I’ve worked with. The concepts are already within them.

That would indicate a pretty successful breeding program. Too dumb to read? No kids for you. Can’t add two plus two? Enjoy being the last of your family line.

In this way, man made civilization, and civilization changed man. If 10,000 B.C. man took a stroll in Central Park, Manhattan in modern clothes, he’d be indistinguishable physically from a modern man, if you could ignore the raw goose he was gnawing on. But mentally? He’d be incapable of living in a modern city. It’s probably he could never learn to do math, even rudimentary math. Reading would likely be possible only at the lowest levels, things like true crime books.

But he’d be a sucker for beer. And nuclear fur bikinis.

Göbekli Tepe photo by Zhengan [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

“That which you desire, controls you.”

“Egon, somehow this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head. Do you remember that?” – Ghostbusters

See, a bottle of wine costs $15. Plus the crap I buy on Amazon.

That which you desire, controls you.

Let’s look at common examples:

Money
Power
Respect
Sex
Great Parking Spaces at Denny’s
Friendship
Water in the Sahara Desert
“Buy One Get One Free” Coupons for Chocolate Dipped Ice Cream Cones at Dairy Queen®
Booze
Glittery Sunglasses in the Shape of Stars

Can’t you feel their magnetic pull?

When we see these desires, we see those who are driven by them and are instinctively repulsed. An example: when The Mrs. and I were newly married, we had an idea for a book – a humorous parody of the Clinton administration. Its title? An Intern’s Guide to the White House. I thought it was funny, and maybe we even still have a copy sitting around somewhere. If so, I’ll post it sometime – we got hooked up with a bad literary agent (we were young and stupid) and it never got published. But like George Washington jokes, that material is just a little out of date.

This is like a photo from the world’s most awkward prom.

But back when we were still optimistic the Intern’s Guide, The Mrs. and I were excited when the Starr Report (a report by the independent counsel looking into the Clintons) came out. We felt that it would make a perfect sequel to our Intern’s Guide. Heck, the working title for the sequel was The Starch Report.

Then I read the Starr Report. Ugh. What President Clinton did was . . . sad. You can forgive lots of things, but getting past disgust over behavior that was, by any standards, weak and pathetic is a pretty high bar. And it wasn’t the perjury that was the worst part – it was the complete lack of self-control. Just because a complete lack of self-control is legal doesn’t make it moral or desirable.

As you can see from President Clinton’s example, this lust wasn’t just a weakness, it was personally destructive to him. And some of our greatest fiction, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for example, explores this same theme. I still recall when Macbeth, in the movie version, gets kicked off campus. Then he and his wacky friends form a paranormal investigating service, and save New York from Macduff, who is portrayed as the Stay-Puft® Marshmallow Man.

Ahh, Shakespeare at his best.

But history has shown time and time again how lust for sex or lust for power has led to the downfall of the powerful – like the time Weinstein put the moves on Napoleon and Napoleon outed him on Twitter® with the #NapoleonToo campaign. But in all seriousness – if Napoleon had been content with France? If Weinstein could be . . . not Weinstein? Napoleon could have gone down in history as an amazing leader and statesman. And Weinstein could have maintained his revered status in Hollywood.

In the end, greed makes you poor. Need makes you needy. And desire makes you a slave.

But you’re saying, “John Wilder, all of that seems kind of negative. What’s the solution, I mean besides joining your cult of the Nudist Beatnik Threesome?”

Outcome independence. The idea of outcome independence is that who you are doesn’t change based on the results, and, win or lose you realize that’s an okay outcome. Like Kipling wrote in his poem, If (LINK):

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same . . .

You are independent of the outcomes around you – your job, the last raise you got, all of it. That’s not outcome indifference. Not at all. Throw yourself into getting to an outcome that you’re passionate about. Outcome independence isn’t being without passion, because nothing worthwhile ever gets done without passion. Let me explain with an example:

I was nearly a freshman in high school, and was mildly infatuated with a girl in class. Back then, people had phone books, and had their names in the book.

I called her house. Her dad (a doctor) answered.

“Is Michelle in?”

“Michelle, it’s for you.”

Michelle: “Hello?”

John Wilder: “Hi Michelle, it’s John Wilder. Interested in going to go see a movie?”

Michelle: “I’m sorry – I’m busy that night.”

Seriously, I didn’t leave anything out of the conversation. I asked her to a movie, and she said she was busy. But I had never said when I wanted to take her to a movie or even what movie. Even freshman me understood that meant that there was no night, ever, when she’d say yes.

Even then I was amused. I really wanted to go out with her – I was not indifferent – she was pretty cute. But when the outcome was negative, I didn’t have the slightest bit of loss of self-worth. There were lots of girls out there.

But failure is a result, too. I prefer to win. Strongly. But winning doesn’t make me a better person, and it doesn’t make me more moral – look at all of the really horrible people that have been successful. I could name them, but they have lawyers. I learned my lesson with Gandhi.

Losses can be better than a win . . . sometimes:

What did you learn?
Are you stronger?
Would success have been bad for you?
Is this just a temporary loss that brings about a greater victory?
Can you lose gracefully?
Is the loss pointing you to a mistake you’re making that you need to correct?

The best victories are internal. I know when I hit “publish” on a post whether or not I liked the post, whether or not I hit a home run. I really want you to like it, too, but internally, I know when I enjoyed writing it, and am pleased with the results. I’m passionate about it, and when I know I’ve done a good job, it makes it hard to go to sleep. I’m excited.

And I get enjoyment out of failing, too. If you never failed, victory wouldn’t feel so good. But I’d still like some glittery star glasses.