“You were looking for a way to change your life.” – Fight Club
His pizza was also burnt and his beer was frozen. He couldn’t pull anything out on time.
I’ve stared at the ceiling at 3 a.m. more times than I care to count in the past, wondering why some things in my life change and others stay stuck like a rusted engine nut on a ’78 Jeep® pickup.
Change.
It sounds simple. Turn left instead of right. Take the red pill or the blue pill or both. Eat the salad. Quit the habit I want to quit. But the real change, the kind that rewires who I am, doesn’t happen because somebody tells me to change. Change doesn’t happen because the boss is watching or the government posts another billboard. Change happens when something inside me finally decides it’s time.
And the crazy part?
I control that switch. No matter what my situation looks like right now, no matter how many birthdays I’ve stacked up, that control is still mine.
Let me tell you what doesn’t work.
But the boarding agent said she could have pie once we got to our seats: “There’ll be a piece when you are done.”
First, someone trying to make me change.
Forget it. I’m stubborn. Bull-headed, really. Push me, and I’ll dig in like a moist Missouri mule afflicted with mucus. I’ve sent pushy salesmen packing more times than I can remember. They come at me with the hard sell, the guilt trip, the “you really should” speech, and my natural reaction is to do the exact opposite.
It’s not rational.
It’s not even smart sometimes. But it’s me.
Second, someone with power hovering over my shoulder, monitoring me.
Sure, I’ll toe the line while they’re looking. I’ll smile, nod, and change exactly enough to get them off my back. The minute the spotlight moves, though? Back to business as usual. No buy-in. No real shift. Just temporary theater. I know I’m not the only one.
Third, the whole society-is-watching angle.
This is Big Brother with a million little henchmen. I’ll admit it: back when I was a kid, the “Give a hoot, don’t pollute®” campaign actually worked on wee Wilder. I picked up trash and felt good about it. But that was simple. Today it’s different. Now it’s algorithms written for the fat-breasted blue-haired virtue warbler. It’s social pressure and cameras everywhere, all trying to nudge behavior.
My kids wanted a puppy for Christmas, but I told them they were eating ham like everyone else.
I see it for what it is: a fancier version of the same old “boss is watching me” game.
I might play along in public when I absolutely must, but inside?
Still no sale.
So, what actually moves the needle?
Only one thing I’ve ever found works that works on me or anyone else:
changing values.
And values don’t change because of logic. They change because of emotion, and not common emotions like “cold” or “sleepy” or “salt.” No. Raw, strong, gut-punch emotion.
I posed naked for a magazine once. The lady at the 7-11® counter sure overreacted.
Take when I became a new father. One minute the world revolved around me. The next minute I was holding this tiny human who depended on me for everything, and I realized the universe didn’t orbit John Wilder anymore unless I put on enough weight to create my own gravity well. That was a big deal.
Not a lecture.
Not a chart.
Just pure, overwhelming emotion. My values shifted: “providing” and “protecting” now were more important than “buzzed” and “sleepy”. Everything else got rearranged around that.
I’ve seen the same thing in guys who barely survive a heart attack.
One day they’re carrying an extra seventy pounds, puffing on cigs, eating like a fat girl on a date with a blind man.
The next day after their slow dance with the reaper?
They drop the weight, kill the habits, start running, and turn into the most irritating health evangelists you’ve ever met, nearly as bad as bicycling atheist vegan transexual Harvard™ grads.
Nearly dying does that, I guess.
When I’m surrounded by my family, with my last breath I want to say: “Hey, you guys want to see a dead body?”
It’s not a gentle suggestion from a doctor. It’s terror and relief and gratitude and fear all slamming together at once into the conclusion that there are a finite amount of seconds left on that clock.
Emotion rewires the hardware.
That’s also exactly how propaganda works. It skips the logic and goes straight for the deepest buttons we have: lust, fear, the need to belong, pain, despair and the need for PEZ™. Most of them are negative, because negative is easy to manufacture, and negative sticks.
And in 2026 we’re swimming in it.
Screens, news, ads, entertainment are a constant bombardment trying to shift what we value without us even noticing.
One excellent YouTuber® on this subject is Screenwashed™, and he talks about how films are used to destroy our culture. He breaks down the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways Hollywood rewires what we think is normal, what we think is heroic, what we think we should want. I’m not sure exactly how long it’ll be before they come to get this guy, but I’d suggest you give him a look. Here’s one of his videos.
Even I, the mighty John Wilder, am not immune from propaganda. I’ve caught myself feeling emotions I didn’t ask for after watching something “harmless.” That’s why I’ve gotten deliberate about what I let into my head.
I pick and choose.
I pause and ask: What emotion is this feeding me right now?
Why?
Does it line up with the man I want to be, or is it nudging me toward someone else’s script?
The external stuff can scream all it wants. The pressures, the trends, the crises, the propaganda machines can poke and prod and threaten. But the final decision on what I value? That’s mine. Always has been.
The best addiction to have is injecting yourself with brake fluid. You can stop anytime you want.
We can all flip it.
Not because some expert or politician or trending hashtag told us to. Not because someone’s watching or shaming. But because we decide to let in an emotion strong enough to move the values that actually run your life.
Starve the propaganda. Examine every emotion that shows up at your door and decide if it gets to stay.
Change isn’t a mystery. It’s not reserved for the young or the lucky or the disciplined. It’s a simple, stubborn fact: I control the basis of it. I always have. And so do you.
The world can keep pushing.
I’ll keep deciding.
Nail, meet hammer. Absolutely correct- propaganda isn’t usually blatant- it changes everything while you’re not paying attention. I shut off network TV over 30 years ago, & noticed that when I had to think for myself, most stupid precepts disappeared.
You can really see how others are controlled after you shut off the drip.
My first comment after reading for years, just sent this to my 25 yo Son, with the advice to read it closely, not the first I have forwarded and probably not the last!
Another banger John.
Thank you! I appreciate it!!!
Let me tie this back to what you posted about a couple of days ago. One thing that fasting teaches is that you’re always in charge. Eating is always optional – at least for those of us in the abundancy of the wealthy countries. Yeah, I’m aware that could change in the metaphorical blinking of an eye, but for now it’s a truism. But the fact that you’re in charge is true. You decide what your activity will be, how many pushups or squats you’re going to do.
Exactly. We control so much, yet are led to believe we are helpless. We are not.
I have changed due to logic.
I dipped for 28 years, ran out of Grizzly on Labor Day Weekend a couple years back. Price was getting too damn high, I didn’t go to town and buy any more.
I now get sick more often, sneeze from allergies I never had and have to eat fiber capsules so I can move the mail, so I guess it was a wash.
Nice! My last Copenhagen was in 2012.
I miss it. If the doc ever says I only have six months left, there will be a lot of pinches between cheek and gum.
Trust God question everything else and be aware that everyone will be hungry soon. Prepare accordingly.
Everyone.
From Ole Remus’ Woodpile Report
The Five Rules of Propaganda
1. The rule of simplification – reducing all data to a simple confrontation between ‘Good and Bad’, ‘Friend and Foe’.
2. The rule of disfiguration – discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.
3. The rule of transfusion – manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one’s own ends.
4. The rule of unanimity – presenting one’s viewpoint as if it were unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: draining the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure , and by ‘psychological contagion’.
5. The rule of orchestration – endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.
Man is Remus missed. i had the opportunity to email with him many times. I am hoping his best imho is about to happen:
“Middle class America is no less violent than any other people. They seem passive because they’re results oriented. They rise not out of blood frenzy but to solve the otherwise insoluble. Their methods of choice are good will, cooperation, forbearance, negotiation and finally, appeasement, roughly in that order. Only when these fail to end the abuse do they revert to blowback. And they do so irretrievably. Once the course is set and the outcome defined, doubt is put aside. The middle class is known, condemned actually, for carrying out violence with the efficiency of an industrial project where bloody destruction at any scale is not only in play, it’s a metric. Remorse is left for the next generation, they’ll have the leisure for it. We’d like to believe this is merely dark speculation. History says it isn’t.”
Still miss him.
The analysis of “Network” was interesting. And true. But McCarthy was right and vindicated years later.
As for change, nobody wants to until harsh reality slaps you in the face. Mine came at 19 from my legal guardian over my self-destructive behavior; it was a deserved wake up call.
Yup, McCarthy was right, and he was probably killed for it.
I read the whole thing and all I get is one lousy meme about painting!
Guess that clickbait worked!
You said, “ They come at me with the hard sell, the guilt trip, the “you really should” speech, and my natural reaction is to do the exact opposite.”
And that is me to a T and the reason I never fell for the clot shot.
Bingo. And you’ll like Monday’s post.
From my viewpoint, the biggest propaganda film to push “trust the media” was All The President’s Men.
Yes. And look at the background of that.
Nudging busybodies went into overdrive under the immaculate Chicago bathhouse messiah.
Over 300lbs. and a had a stroke six years ago, now 180 due to the ELMO eat less move often diet.
Quit smoking cigs back in 97 due to cost (now $10 a pack) and burning hand with cherry.
With the proper motivation there is always a way.
There is. And, great job. After I finish this post I’m off to the elliptical.
TV shows were worse, waaaay worse than movies. Per the stone toss cartoon, they also ran commercials, or were commercials for all kinds of nonsense.
Thoug
Yes. Such a horrible batch of lies coated in sugar. More on Monday.
Your italicized comment on your first meme reminds me of a joke we told during Operation DESERT STORM:
Q: How is Saddam Hussein like his father?
A: Neither pulled out in time.
(rimshot)