“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.” – Dune
Never forget Cole’s Law: “Shredded cabbage and carrot can make a decent salad.”
Frank Herbert wrote the opening quote for this post about a desert planet full of sand, giant worms, political backstabbing, and SpaceLSD®. He could have been describing a Tuesday on the Internet, or maybe even Elon’s plan to get SpaceX™ stop SpaceX®’s shares from crashing and carving a trillion-dollar crater into the S&P 500©.
But back to fear. Why is it used so often?
It’s because emotions are potent weapons, so they get weaponized.
Constantly.
Every advertisement, every mainstream media news segment, every political social media post is designed to make me feel something specific so I will do something specific.
When my dentist died, his family couldn’t find his tombstone. There was no plaque on it.
Outrage is easy to provoke, and it motivates. Fear moves product. Comfy feels gets votes. The people pushing the buttons understand this better than most philosophers ever did, I mean, have you ever read much about MK Ultra?
Do you really think they ever stopped, or are they using it now through SnapBook™ and InstaFace©?
The O.G. ancient stoic philosophers wanted to believe that reason was what they used to make decisions. Marcus Aurelius sat in his tent writing notes to himself about virtue while his son grew up into the Roman version of Hunter Biden. Using reason as a source of virtue is timeless, but it’s almost completely ignored by actual humans with nervous systems and SnapGram© accounts.
Humans feel first. Only then do we invent reasons.
Five guys with booze will start a fight. Five guys with weed will start a band.
That is really the order of operations. But it also implies that if I guard my feelings then I can guard my decisions. If I let someone else set the temperature while I’m driving and I have already handed them the steering wheel and they say, “Ha! Driver gets to choose what’s on the radio!” have I twisted the metaphor too far to include peanut butter and PEZ®?
Absurdity aside, if I hand someone the ability to control me with emotion, I cease to be anything but that MK Ultra automaton. Thankfully, I tend to run anti-trend anyway.
If the herd is charging one direction, my first move is to imagine that they’re headed toward a cliff at a full gallop. That habit has kept me out of more than one mistake, like investing my 401K in Beanie Babies©. But even I, John Wilder, still have a pulse and a set of instincts.
The difference, though, is whether I treat those instincts as orders or as suggestions.
My decisions are my choice.
Any one practicing for a staring contest should take a good, hard look in the mirror.
Yes, emotions matter. They can be fuel. But I still get to choose how I feel about an issue. In the end, that very well may be the only freedom that cannot be taken from me: I can only give it away.
They can take my money, my job, and MySpace© page. They can take my reputation. They can take the flags and the stories I grew up believing. They can flood every screen with the approved feeling of the week from that high-fructose corn syrup of actresses, Zendaya.
Why high-fructose corn syrup? No one likes it, and it’s in absolutely everything.
Regardless of Zendaya, what they cannot do is reach into my skull and flip the switch.
Unless I hand them the key.
I used to eat at Applebee’s®. Then I saved up enough cash to buy my own microwave?
I have watched people hand over that key in real time. They scroll until the algorithm has told them exactly how angry to be, what to be angry about, and how to soothe that anger.
They outsourced their emotions to the loudest voice in the room and call it being informed . . . “tRUsTinG tHe scIENcE”.
The alternative is to be deliberate.
I notice the emotion when it shows up. Turn it around in my skull, and name it while avoiding the drama.
Then, and only then, do I decide whether it points toward Truth, Beauty, and Goodness or whether it is just another current trying to pull me somewhere I never intended to go.
That pause is the whole game. In that pause I still own the tiller.
I can choose the things that flow from Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. I can choose honor and discipline instead of convenience and shortcuts. I can choose the hard path because, as the old proverb says, calm seas do not make good sailors. Smooth water teaches me almost nothing about flip flops, pop-tops, inexplicable tattoos, or using a mixer to blend iced alcoholic beverages. Oh, wait, that’s Jimmy Buffet talking about his rough time.
My bad. But the point of Margaritaville is that it shows how a life free from discipline leads to hard lessons in the end, anyway. I want storms. I want them early.
It’s rare that a defibrillator fails, but when it happens, no one is shocked.
Discipline looks boring from the outside. And I am boring. Honor looks stubborn. And I’m damned stubborn. Choosing not to feel what the crowd demands can look cold.
Fine.
I don’t control the storms. I do not control the media cycle, the markets, the next manufactured crisis, or the next fashionable cause.
I do control whether those things dictate my next move.
Everything else can be bargained, taxed, regulated, stolen, or canceled. The choice of how I feel about an issue stays mine until I surrender it.
So, I guard it.
I hear they have a new parking meteor at the International Space Station.
The sea will not stay calm, our lives are filled with storms. The only question is to whether I choose to hold the tiller, or if I’ve already given up for a free ride on the SpaceLSD© express.
At least they have Margaritas.
Sorry John but cole’s law has been disproven. Turns out you can’t make a decent salad with just cabbage and carrots. School lunchrooms have tried this for years and always failed.
There is a legend going around that a BBQ joint finally figured out how to make an edible version but it had more ingredients (and it is still just a legend)
Jb
Hahaha!
As you say, it’s very important to control your own emotions. And it’s also important for our leaders to control theirs. Otherwise, they end up burning through so much of our interceptor inventory that we’re effectively impotent. At that point it’s time to start thinking about new leaders that still hold Truth, Beauty and Goodness as important values. Along with other values that are equally important.
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/06/tucker-carlson-third-party-israel-trump
The world is going to get the leader they want.
No they won’t. I don’t recall the source, but there was a study done in the 90’s that compared what voters really want (based on an in-depth interview) with who they voted for. No surprise….a huge percentage of voters (particularly younger voters and Democrats) would vote for candidates whose track record and campaign promises ran contrary to what the voter had said they wanted.
Unfortunately, even for people that know better, the choice is often between two losers who will campaign on one thing to get in office but do just the opposite once elected. Republicans are notorious for this.
This constant disconnect between what voters want, versus what politicians deliver, is precisely why there are so many revolutions and political upheavals all throughout history.
Like so much of history that was correct but not right, Adam Smith’s “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation” was correct regarding the Nations ability to exist on a long arc of self-destruction.
The decisions along the way, a ground war in Asia anyone?, well insulated from corrective inputs in the same way the kids have never known rough seas because pozzitive feedback baby.
The ruin, which is to say, its ability to yoke said People to the spoils of Empire long past the point in which those people are fungible collateral to the debt required for more progress.
The ‘disconnect’ seems to be our time in this ruin, of which the Noticing of the problem of Empire by its heritage Nation remnant, is still hostage to the same Capital trappings, prone to Stockholm syndrome such that all is a great show of pretending except the very real liquidation of collateral to that Nation, ie Heritage Americans.
In this arc of ruin we cling to the religion of rational self interest, aka “who we are”, because to ask that question is to get uninvited to the hunger games.
“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
Herein lies the comfortably numb of our revolution on ice. The markets have always gone up as long as we have been at war with EastAsia. Self-interest is rational, a good thing. Never leave the casino on a heater.
Just the other day a fellow patriot admitted that he is fine with trumps cabal enriching off of their supposed war on the other “side” and wars over there as righteous as any ever in history because reasons animated by his great emotional outburst. His retirement will not be ruined by my blackpilled noticing. No, my rough seas are a small price to pay for his comforts in knowing he is not just right, but righteous.
We’ll see. He and Trump have certainly gotten crosswise.
Saw Buffett once. His best line was “…my father wanted me to go to Alabama. But, I didn’t want to go to college, so I went to Southern Miss.” Having grown up in Jackson, it gave me a huge belly laugh.
Of all places, he resurrected his career in Montana. With a gig in Eastwood’s “Thunderbolt And Lightfoot” performing “Livingston Saturday Night” at The Mint. Had a beer or three there in 1995, hopefully it made it through COVID.
We all have had a point in our lives where it was sink or swim. Luckily, mine came just before my 20th birthday, 54 years ago. Never looked back after the 2-3 minutes that turned my life around.
Perhaps you meant “Rancho Deluxe” – released in 1975 starring Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Deluxe
which was also set in Montana.
Perhaps you are referring to “Rancho Deluxe,” released in 1975, starring Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston, and also filmed in Montana?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Deluxe
which does have Jimmy Buffett playing in a local honky tonk.
Yes, my bad. Watched RD on HBO once 40+ years ago.
It really is that moment, and you do get to choose.
It should be changed to the THIRD law of emotion. Funny though
Oh, the third law of emotion is that “No emotional injury will ever be forgotten.”
Fear is really all the controller’s have. That is why the Bolshevik Mockingbird Enemedia never shuts up about fear emptiness and despair.
It won’t end well for the wizards of smart and the most retarded society in human history.
The wipeout and WAR genie let out of the bottle won’t be controlled either.
Good, good.
Sooner is better.
Copied from previous post, in case you missed it:
> Libertarianism is dead.
The word describing a person who doesn’t want to stick you up and convert you to their church by the sword is “libertarian”. The only neighbors who aren’t your enemies are libertarians. Meanwhile, all the non-libertarians organize into “political parties”, and make a circular firing squad using the middle class as human shields.
Humans seem to have evolved in groups of 150 individuals who were semi-related, and that arrangement is what our genetically-transmitted emotional instincts say is morally correct. But when we switched from a group size of 150 individuals to 300 million, the increase of a factor of 2 million broke the evolved heuristics. The idea of “tribe” is interwoven with the ideas of “communism” and “conservatism”. You need to keep tribe but jettison communism and conservatism. In 1992’s Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson called this new group type “phyle”.
The rugged individualists always get overwhelmed by the community organizers. Always.
> The rugged individualists always get overwhelmed by the community organizers. Always.
I didn’t say rugged individualists, I said libertarians. The warlords who took over, aka government, teach everything but the model which actually works. For example, government tells you social change is produced by a parade. In response you get parades like in San Francisco. Government teachers don’t tell you a parade is a show of force, because it proves you have a disciplined obedient group. Marchers are carrying flags today but could come back carrying rifles tomorrow.
Check out how 250 thousand would-be victims rejected additional gun control in Connecticut in 2014. 95% who received a registered letter warning them about the new registration requirements a) didn’t comply, and b) weren’t willing to sit still and be prosecuted. Then, “nothing happened”.
I don’t know what libertarians are though I have seen a Sasquatch. Noncompliance is a useful tactic indeed. A lot resides between that tactic and a strategy that leverages first principles based on reality of human nature and the entirety of history.
I didn’t get permits for my septic tank because I don’t submit to the State. My neighbor is completely free to drink from his well without my interference nor that of the state. Because his well water tastes of my feces is none of my business either. If he makes it my business aggressively, I will non-aggress him and we will agree to keep the state out of it as we both appeal to the moral primacy of our religion that by definition is voluntary and sleep well knowing that we are better than both God and those fools who are not smart enough to build a world on the head of a pin.
Excellent and useful post. Also, I was reading it during my annual checkup and now the dental hygenicist thinks you’re hilarious.
Great! Tell ’em we’ve got room for another reader since I made that one guy mad.
“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. ”
― George Orwell, 1984
Since you already used my favorite Dune quote.
https://twitter.com/i/status/2082950054671978733
Perfect quote.
If you said that the government was wiretapping your phone in 1999, everybody would have called you a nutjob.
Now if you say that the government is wiretapping your phone, no one cares.
How can Americans sleep at night now or look in a mirror without feeling disgusted and ashamed?
Xanax. Weed. Alcohol. Caloric density. Streaming binges. Girls with smart cameras pointed toward self like a billion claymores laid in wait.
Day trading is back baby. Scratchers and pensions, worlds diverge. Reality is what I say it is.
The basement boys are Only Fans to the empire rooting on the liberation.
John Galt is the biggest government contractor. Free speech on your phone to stay safe from public thoughtcrimes.
If you want a seat you subscribe. You can read the terms of service but why bother? You can’t negotiate with your captors but you can rise up to rent a better cell. One with a margarita machine in every unit.
At best you straddle the worlds and make righteous those things accretive to your bottom line and know that your neighbors will do the same even if it means you are the anonymous zero sum counterparty to their latest smart trade.
Perhaps you can rent their adu after you lose your house.
See the twilight zone “Button, Button”. Sure, we lose a little sleep. But we also sleep standing up. So…
I’m thinking at some point they’ll call the local PD for transcripts of their conversations so they can settle arguments.