Month: December 2023

Humans are more resilient than they give themselves credit for. And at some point, life hits all of us. The difference is for those who may get to wait longer to get the short end. There is nothing wrong with advantage. Take it if you got it. But don’t inhale it. Because life has a way to bring us down once we feel confident that we have it all figured out.

“Dad, is Santa real?”

“Of course, he is son. Think how many people would have to be in on it.”

– Internet Meme

I find this quite funny. But the alarming part isn’t the amount of people that buy in and breathe life into the holiday. Every concept follows the same process.

What worries me is the distinction of fact and fiction. We are entitled to our own opinions but not our own facts. And if a holiday that starts out as a fun time with family and friends turns into tears—it goes to show how powerful these ideas can have over us.

It’s obviously not just the holidays I am talking about either.

I read once that here is to space as now is to time.

That there is no significance in terms of infinite with no point of reference.

Something our brains cannot even fathom because, to each of us, the present is special. But in the hustle and bustle of industrialism, we have forgotten how to live in the present in hopes of a more profitable future.

Is that something we really want to trade?

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” — Chuck Palahniuk

Not just people but ideas, legal fiction, and even our planet.

The point is we make what we have count because tomorrow is not guaranteed.

The term mind control seemed to be reserved for extreme examples. Like in 1953 when the CIA began its “research” and experimenting with psychedelic drugs, hypnosis, and electroshock on mental patients. (MK-Ultra went on for 20 years before it was shut down.) This is an extreme form of violence. But there are more subtle forms, such as undue influence. When authority structure changes a person’s belief system without informed consent and makes them dependent on that same authority structure—this is undue influence and mind control. 

What we are talking about is agency here. My argument here is this: If we raise generations of kids to strongly protect their agency, they won’t fall prey to giving it up to let them decide.

What divides are so big that they can’t be overcome?

One of the hardest gaps to cross is when something was taken away that can’t be brought back.

Death, time, and virginity are a few that come to mind.

Perhaps the key to finding forgiveness is in the grief of loss and the acceptance of it.

Everything else seems trivial: an inconvenience where one or more parties feel slighted.

With those things, it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can cure.

Curbing a craving is a difficult task for any human to overcome.

Our approach as a culture, however, is completely wrong.

We act as if this person would behave more appropriately, then it wouldn’t be a problem.

But that isn’t how to get rid of any cravings.

So much of our addictions are dictated by how easy it is to access that thing we want.

Substances are demonized, but the distinction between addicts and those who are clean is more a legal distinction, if anything.

We are all hooked on something: social media, sex, status, and money…

In 1901, when J.P. Morgan purchased Andrew Carnegie’s steel company for $480 million, he said, “Congratulations, Mr. Carnegie, you are now the richest man in the world.” Retiring from business, Carnegie published an essay called The Gospel of Wealth. It is considered by many today a foundational document in the field of philanthropy. 

When you read it, however, Carnegie made his case about why the capitalists bring value and his solution to the rise in wealth inequality. In it, Carnegie promotes ideas that still live today, including:

• That hard work and perseverance lead to wealth. (Carnegie believed that he was self-made.)
• That it is the wealthy’s responsibility to spread wealth through charity. It was up to the rich’s discretion how much and who deserved it.
• This charitable giving had to create economic mobility opportunities. Carnegie didn’t believe in a nanny state, but instead, to receive something, you needed to give something.  
• Finally, his language, from the divinity, sacredness, duty, and responsibility around wealth, changes the lens of how we view our culture.

To his credit, Carnegie did preach progressive taxes for the rich and for the rich to live more modestly with their fortunes. But the essay ultimately demonstrates the disconnect the powerful had become at the turn of the 20^th century, as demonstrated by the Monopoly experiments. No one is arguing if Carnegie worked hard, but did he work harder than the forger or the assembly workers making the steel? Why does wealth put you in a class above others—make your voice more important? Why does he decide who deserves his charity and who doesn’t? Which causes support, and which gets left in the cold? Why do we call it generosity or charity if you give something while expecting something in return? 

It helps to think of the Human Brain as a play-by-play football commentator. We are wasting time arguing with this narration in our head when all it is doing is commentating on what the chemicals are doing. Imagine the ball being snapped, the quarterback throwing an incomplete pass, and we are then yelling at the play-by-play commentator for what a stupid play that was and demanding that the commentator fix it. The commentator (Human Brain) has no control over what is happening on the field (Lymbic System). It is just doing play-by-play. It’s just narration after the chemicals have already been decided. So, when we are conflicted about eating or waiting to eat a marshmallow, we don’t need to waste energy negotiating with this narration.

This is a recurring theme in human history. 2,500 years ago, Hippocrates of Kos, considered the Father of Medicine, is credited as the first person to believe that diseases were caused naturally, not because of superstition and gods, and created a whole field of medicine separate from religion. It is essential to understand that humans have struggled to separate our beliefs and facts for as long as we can remember. We are entitled to our own beliefs, but we are not entitled to our facts. Each of us has our narrative of the world, but arguing the merits of gravity isn’t going to push the cannon forward of understanding, which is the key to our future prosperity. Hippocrates wrote, “Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine, which they do not understand, why there would be no end of divine things.” Hippocrates may not have had the term for it, but he described it as more intellectual debt.