“Smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos® and masturbating does not constitute plans in my book.” – Breaking Bad
In a constantly downward spiral, Kermit finally found the downside in living his best life.
I thought I’d take a bit of a night off, here’s something that many current readers might not have seen . . . .
A few weeks ago my daughter, Alia S. Wilder was in town. We were in the middle of preparing dinner of steak, steak, and more steak for the grill when I saw Alia diving face first into a plate of cookies.
When she came up for air I asked innocently, “I thought you were on the keto diet?”
I did notice a mood change when I was on the keto diet: I got tired of cheese and my only joy in life consisted of watching television shows about murder.
“No, she said, “I’m living my best life.” I could even hear the italics in her voice. It’s amazing how well font choice carries in my kitchen. I think it’s the tile.
John Wilder: “Umm, what exactly does ‘my best life’ mean?” I thought I could tell by context, but I wanted to give her a chance to explain.
Alia S. Wilder: “It’s living your life by being who you are naturally. It’s doing what you want.”
I slowly shook my head. That’s exactly what I thought it was. Cue volcano erupting:
One of the nice things about being a parent is that you can be honest with your children when they are being utterly foolish. This was one of those times.
My first words were: “You know this is going to go into the blog, right?”
Is this why they hold the neighborhood block party when we leave for vacation?
I then started a tirade. As this was the second time that I’d met her boyfriend, you’d think I’d hold back to give a good impression that I was a nice, genteel father who wears cardigan sweaters and puts on loafers and talks to hand puppets as if they were real. You’d be wrong, and I tried the hand puppet thing, but one of my personalities thought it was creepy. No, Mr. Rogers© wasn’t here that night. I let loose with a full broadside worthy of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar.
I was a horrible pirate captain. They told me, “The cannon be ready,” and I responded “are.”
“You realize that’s the single stupidest piece of advice you’ve ever been given, right?” I continued, not even having gotten warmed up yet. “It’s the advice a teenager thinks up in the shower and then considers it a deep thought because, well they’re a teenager in middle school, and middle school age children are the single stupidest subspecies ever set loose on planet Earth.” I paused for breath. You need decent lung capacity if you’re going to go into full rage enhanced by spittle.
I continued. “Why is it stupid? Because people are awful. You’re awful. I’m awful. We have to work each minute to NOT do what we’d like, because what we’d like to do, if left only to our own desires is . . . also awful. You, me, every single one of us.”
I could feel the full rolling boil starting.
“Living my best life is the strategy of a three-year-old that wants to eat an entire box of Oreos® at one sitting and then lie about it and blame the poodle. Living my best life combines all of the worst ideas of abandoning duty, honor, and responsibility in only four words: ‘living my best life.’ Oh, I decided not to work today. I’m living my best life. I decided that I would rather spend my money on avocado-flavored non-fat organic vaping juice rather than baby formula. I’m living my best life. I don’t care if I offended you, I have to speak my truth when living my best life. Oh, I’m sorry Western Civilization, we can’t go back to the Moon and advance the human race to the stars because I’m busy shopping. I’m living my best life.”
What came to my mind during this tirade conversation were the words of the dead French scientist, mathematician, religious philosopher and part-time Uber driver Blaise Pascal:
“Man’s greatness comes from knowing that he is wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. Thus, it is wretched to know that one is wretched, but there is greatness in knowing that one is wretched.”
In this quote when Pascal wrote “wretched,” he meant, “of inferior quality; bad.”
Follow your nose, it always knows. Specifically all about pressure, mathematics, and designing a computer by the age of 19, in 17th Century France.
Pascal didn’t think mankind was naturally awful, he knew that mankind was naturally awful: prideful, selfish, lustful, mean, and greedy. I’m not sure how Pascal got that idea, maybe he was picked on about nose size when he was in middle school. But he was correct. We’re inferior. But our greatness comes not from that obvious inferior quality, it comes from knowing that you’re awful, and then not being awful.
If we know that we’re awful, we can do something about it. If we think that being awful is okay, that we can live our best life, then it’s an excuse to be awful. In fact, it’s worse than that. Aleister Crowley wrote, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” which has been appropriated by the Church of Satan® and correctly interpreted to mean . . . do whatever you want to do.
Apparently living your best life allows you to dress like Dr. Evil on a regular basis.
One particular website (not gonna given ‘em a link, they’re the first one listed when you Google® “living my best life”) has a list, which includes the following gems of personally corrosive advice on how to live your best life (note, my comments are in italics):
- Do what you want – let your inner three-year-old make all your decisions.
- Speak your truth – not the truth, your truth since hearing the actual, real truth from other people might make you sad.
- Practice sacred self-love – and everyone should celebrate you for your sacred self-love since you deserve to live your best life because you suffered so much because of your (INSERT VICTIM STATUS QUALIFICATION HERE).
Not all of the advice on the website was horrible, but most of it was shallower than the gene pool that produced Johnny Depp your typical congressman.
- So, under this philosophy, if I’m fat, the problem isn’t that I’m fat and should have fewer cookies: the problem is the world is fataphobic.
- If I think I’m a cat, the problem isn’t that I’m delusional: the problem is that the world is transspeciesphobic.
- If I think that being an American has nothing to do with the values and norms of the last 300 years: the problem is your problem for being tied to the past.
When the cookies ran out, the monster came out.
So, in summary, living your best life is nothing more than permission to be the very worst person you can be. All that being said, Alia S. Wilder really does make some tasty cookies.
Pascal got the idea that mankind is wretched from his Catholic upbringing, which teaches that God made man knowing we would all be terrible but for some reason is super mad that we are exactly like He made us be. More on this topic coming soon.
Nah.
God made us knowing we could choose to be absolutely awful OR perfectly amazing and take everything down with us. He got super mad that we made that choice because it is pefectly miserable for us, and He loves us. And yet He did not abort us before we began, but was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to give us the chance at being supremely amazing *anyway*.
You would grok this if you had kids.
OGH 1
AS 0
Leaving out the whole moral choice component kind of screws the pooch on the argument, man. Rookie error.
And “exactly like He made us”??
The problem, per the argument as actually stated, is that we’re not “exactly as He made us”, and that we got where we are on our own hook, not via a design flaw, but by an unforced erroneous choice, which is exactly the point at issue in the discussion.
If you’re going to address the issue, set the problem up correctly, sil vous plait.
Arthur has 8 kids, actually. And a rather fine blog that goes by the name of Dissident Thoughts (www DOT arthursido DOT com). His is a daily stop on my Internet rounds, and JW comments there frequently, as do I (anonymously). Check it out.
Yup. The big key (and I’ll probably write about this at some point if I ever figure out the context) is that God, absent Christ to give salvation provides an unreachable standard since, as Pascal put it, we’re all so wreched.
Wow John. I think that’s the first fleeting mention of temper in all my reading here – been lurking a while. It’s funny how our kids can bring that out in us.
If a stranger did it I’d quietly internalise my counter argument and let them sail on in their bliss. It is only by the delaying of gratification that any of us can plan ahead. Winters in the North teach that lesson.
Possibly it is those with the emptiest heads that make the most noise?
Nah, I wasn’t mad. But I was filled with Dadly knowledge-sharing.
John, I seem to remember the same ethos was expressed as “I’m living in the moment” 10 or so years ago. Pure situational ethics BS that was the substance of my 8th Grade Presbyterian Sunday School class back in the mid-60s. These people just change the terminology but never the underlying, subversive thrust.
It always has a new name, and it’s always preached by those that would make us weak.
This came at exactly the right moment for me; I was being coaxed into the kitchen by the Diet Demon on my shoulder.
Glad to be of help!!!
It’s living your life by being who you are naturally.
Having spent virtually every waking moment of my entire life fighting the urge to be who I am naturally, this might be the silliest advice I’ve ever heard. The fact that I don’t show up for morning standup meetings at work shirtless, decked out in animal skins and war paint, hoisting a mace and screaming “Freedom!” like William Wallace on double espresso speaks volumes about my self-control.
Sounds like just another excuse to eat cookies, if you ask me. Daughter’s boyfriend might want to consider the implications. It’s an easy slide down that slippery slope from Oreos to cats and boxed wine, inter Alia (I see what I did there).
Yes, in the end, it’s an excuse. She has never mentioned that around me again, either.
YOLO. That is/was the millennial ethos. Drink up and eat up tonight for tomorrow we may die…or have our feelings hurt.
And the adder is that they want everyone to applaud them for it, too.
American-twenty-somethings living their best life…
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/07/20/army-recruiting-crisis-shortage/10098673002/
Chinese-robodog-with-machine-gun living its best life…
https://twitter.com/i/status/1549651495997476864
Live your best life! Open-carry your self-defense pistol on your very own robodog for only $2700!
https://www.unitree.com/products/go1/
Ha!
Well, we’re not giving them anything to fight for, are we?
In a induction physical many many moons ago the old phart doc of WWI vintage gave advice that still rings true. I ignored his wisdom finding another line of work, but for practicality we can’t beat those that have been through 2 world wars, a Depression and Hippies . Namely that all young men should spend at least 2years on a farm. Getting up at oh dark hundred to take care of livestock and crops because none of them care about your feelings, hopes or aspirations. That cow expects to be milked and no takes no excuses.
Try that Do The Best I Can Be horse hockey and end up starving or stomped by a mule. The Lord works in mysterious ways, but the Devil feeds his victim’s lazy egos
I *love* that last sentence . . . .
John,
I quite often see the quoted material from Crowley:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”,
however, he concluded that statement with:’
“Love is the Law, Love under Will”.
Does that make a difference?
Perhaps not.
When I came across mentions of him being
‘the most evil man alive’ by the British press
during his lifetime, I decided it might be worth
a bit of my time to read some of his writings.
I found much obscure material that I did not
choose to chase down those rabbit holes, however
I did find some that gave me insight on how the
human nervous system/consciousness is wired
and how it filters our reality.
Best regards, I do enjoy your blog.
The pronouncements that made Crowley palatable to normals outside what C.S. Lewis called the Inner Ring, were not ones he and his followers lived by.
Rather like Marx or Mohammed or Bernie Sanders.
Make of it what you will.
Crowley’s sophomorically facile idiocy runs face-first into Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, hard, at speed.
Then stands there gawping and wondering what went wrong, like the idiot who tried to pet the tiger.
Which would be funny if it were an acknowledged moron, but shriekingly awful from someone people actually listened to.
It also rhymes with another famous half-truth: “your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
The sponsor changes, but it’s always the same television program.
Crowley has said to have murdered folks for fun, and I really can’t find much redeeming about him, at all. More on him in the next post.
There is a reason why the ancient rites of manhood often employed pain, hardship and humiliation to separate the newly formed young men from, well, not men. Self control is civilization.
Self-control mixed with honor is a potent, potent combination.
Hmm. I guess I don’t have plans after all.
🙂
“Living your best life” is obviously a good idea. Certainly, each of us should strive to live his or her best life at all times. The exhortation to do so, however, is an empty one, absent a definition of what one’s “best life” consists of. God (or the devil) is in the details. (Hint: the verb “strive” in my second sentence. Any absence of striving is a pretty reliable indicator of being off course.)
By the way, John, you forgot to slag on Pascal for being French. Could’ve slammed Descartes in the same stroke. Let efficiency be thy watchword.
Cogito ergo surrender?
Dagnabbit, I came by the comments to share what the DP and I discovered whilst reading this post aloud to help keep Q awake on the road and got distracted.
I’ve read nearly every post written on Clan Wilder and finally noticed…
Alia. S.
D’OH-!!!
Well played, sir.
Yeah, I enjoyed making that one up . . .
John,
It’s not very often that your entire essay can be summed up by John McGinley in a 9-second clip from Scrubs on YouTube.
But today is that day.
I love it! Most people have to work at being a bastard, though. I was lucky enough to be born one.
“Smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos® and masturbating does not constitute plans in my book.” – Breaking Bad
Funny…. But I still believe that Dean Wormer said it best: “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Been reading your Civil War 2.0 on Burning Platform since Jim started posting it, but didn’t realize there was a separate Blog here….. Spent the last couple of days reading through it, and have a lot more to go.
Kudos….. Very entertaining and informative, given the Subject Matter and how very SAD our position now is….
Yeah, it started out as one kinda blog, then led to whatever this is. As I get older I have less fs to give.