Josh Allred's Blog

Security is the safety net we put underneath us.

And yet, it can often trick us into believing we are safe. Sure, there’s an argument to be made for “safer.” Anyone without a safety net would happily trade for one if you got a spare.

We get so caught up in thinking the search is for safety nets, contingencies on top of contingencies, until a hurricane comes and wipes out everything we have built.

The point is we work so hard to prepare for a future that 1) we might not get to enjoy and 2) that is uncertain.

It’s truly a delicate act to balance the present and the future. To live in the moment and to have an eye for the future. Even for those who are not born yet.

In 1902, William Carrier invented the first modern air conditioning unit. What it allowed was more than just the ability to control the temperature in a room. Once AC became ubiquitous in part of the design of houses and commercial buildings, it fundamentally changed the landscape of where people can live. No longer do you have a small select group of people that live in Phoenix, Arizona. Now, nearly five million people live there. During the summer months, you can move from one space to another without ever having to experience 72-degree weather. What Carrier could not have known, this also changed the political landscape. Many Republicans who were not re-elected moved to areas like Florida, Texas, and so on to continue their political careers.

What other side effects does AC have? It turns out that nearly 4% of greenhouse gasses that are emitted are caused by air conditioning. What it also does is insulate us from how hot (or cold) our environment really is. This is another step in disconnecting us from our natural environment, one of the biggest mental hurdles in the climate crisis. The perception isn’t the reality. For example, when power was lost in Texas in 2021, citizens were instantly reminded of the harshness of their living environment. In 1995, during the Chicago heatwave, 700 people died because their AC units quit working.

The bottom line is that we have simultaneously conquered the environment in a world of innovation. Not the entire environment, of course. But there is a reason why wolves don’t run around Utah anymore. And sitting on top of the food chain makes us think we are invincible.

We forget the world is a harsh place to live. The further removed we put ourselves away from it, the more likely we are to treat it as a nuisance instead of reality.

I read a lot. And one of the things that puts me into the mood to classic literature is to learn about the author.

What were they thinking while writing this book?

Perhaps, the thing that I find myself pondering the most is how sad this writer was at the time of their writing.

Strange to think about but when I imagine how sad Marcel Proust was when writing À la recherche du temps perdu, even 100 years later, I can relate to the human experience.

Of coruse, that sadness isn’t the only emotion. When Edward Abbey wrote Monkey Wrench Gang, he was writing to preserve and defend the southwest ecology. I imagine the anger he must of felt watching the west turn into an amusement park.

The passing of knowledge to each generation, especially through books, is a responsibility each of us have. We are not really around long enough for a personal legacy. But the legacy of passing the torch from generation to generation is a privilage. Books are a way to remember the past, and light the future of possibility.

The research is clear, the more choices we have the worst we feel.

It’s interesting to think that 20 years ago, if you were told you can watch any televsion series, any movie, play any record at any place at any time–we would of said, “Yeah, I’ll take that deal.”

And yet, the amount of choices we have makes it so overwhelming to what to do next. We all have been victims of Netflix scrolling.

This idea that opportunity cost, that I could be doing something better, bleeds into our psyche. We don’t want to get it wrong and so we suffer instead of being satisfied with the choice of A or B. Make no mistake having an abundance of choice is a good thing. Especially, when we compare it to those who are robbed of any choice. (And I am not simply talking about entertainment.)

The world is now full of access to choice on where to live, who to date, what to pay attention too, and so on, we forget that wasn’t what it was just a mere two decades ago. It is also making us miserable in search of best or perfect instead of good or better.

We all want is best but when scrolling to find a partner is that this person over here might be 5% better and leads to an ecosystem where 90% of the dating activity is for 10% of the men, then there is a problem. When someone can with a few clicks apply for 40 jobs in one day, then we are not looking for meaningful work, we are spamming for it. And when you can’t decide what to eat tonight on Door Dash, because you are paralyzed with the amount of places we could eat, well the trade-off is to go hungry.

No one then is happy.

We overcomplicate these decisions, when simply flipping a coin and have fate decide can often be enough to make us happy.

A time horizon is simply the length of time an investor plans to hold an investment before selling it.

But for more of a practical application:

The longer we wait for a return on an investment, the more patience is required.

However…

When deciding when to quit, we often don’t consider an opportunity to do something else.

It’s never easy to decide whether to quit. There is no telling how things could turn out if we had the guts to stick it out a bit longer.

But I have learned over the years that people really underestimate the power of opportunity costs (the resources that could be spent on something else) and sunk costs (what’s gone is gone, and it isn’t coming back, so cut your losses now).

I wrote a while ago about how “passion” means “to suffer.”

“Com” means “with” or “together.”

In other words, Compassion is to “suffer together.”

The problem with suffering is that we work so hard to avoid it. Understanding that suffering is the default setting of life is more productive. But suffering together is way better than doing it alone.

Plenty of literature has demonstrated that bad can also get worse.

Too often, this is self-inflicted.

Meaning the bottom will be when we stop digging.

Make the tough decision; don’t delay it.

When the internet was slow, you had to know what you were searching for. You didn’t browse because it wasn’t a productive use of your time; you browsed because it was novel. But in between pages, you could make a cup of coffee as the page loaded from the top down.

So, the internet needed to speed up to make browsing a thing. The internet created a whole new market for leisure and time spent by upgrading from dial-up. To optimize eyeballs on the screen, internet companies designed the app colors and font to make it more appealing, pushed the stories of sex or drama or the world ending to the top to keep you glued, and the cud de gra of infinite scrolling.

When everything is instant, we are insatiable. And I don’t think we realize at the speed of instant gratification how much it changes our psyches. When the world is shifted, and everyone gets what they want in a couple of clicks, what then?

The world is going to reward those who are more patient. Those who take a long road. Not the one looking for a shortcut to make a few bucks but to the ones who can wait for a page to load. And obviously, I am not talking about dial-up.

The world revolves around debt systems.

When you are born, you are in debt to your parents.

When you go to school, you are venturing into debt servitude.

When you look at what people buy, you see that you need to take out more debt to build credit.

The point is that we have real debts that must be paid to the state in order for the economy to function. Of course, the big lie is that all debts don’t need to be paid. But that’s a whole can of worms to break down.

What doesn’t get talked about enough are the cosmic debts to the gods that must be paid for all this and the spiritual violence this toll takes on us. If life is work, then one must work to appease the gods. This has a more significant impact on our psyches than we realize. It is why one cannot rest and be on their time; they should be doing something more productive.

It isn’t easy to live in a modern world where the demand for growth is constant. We can change the formula since we don’t have the stomach to go backward. I often come back to debt. We are so accustomed to looking at debts that we don’t see how they penetrate the language we use or the stories we tell. But perhaps, to ease the short term, we can start forgiving ourselves for the debts we make up. Whether it is to god, our parents, our duties, or other relationships…we already have enough to pay to the banks; we can also start somewhere by letting each other off the hook.

Anxiety is about what will happen in the future. No one is anxious about what has already happened. What’s done is done.

Uncertainty about the next thing racquets tension in our lives. Of course, not knowing what tomorrow brings is the juice. If we had a script, we wouldn’t be excited about opportunities.

The problem is that our brains can transform us into the future and construct a reality. It’s not an actual “Reality” but one built on fiction and fantasy. The thing is, we tend to imagine this world of extremes. Vacations are better in our minds than they are. Undesirable outcomes also seem worse with how they construct they will be than what happens.

The thing we don’t give ourselves enough credit for is that we are more resilient than we realize. Whatever comes our way, we figure it out. And we don’t see the long list of problems we solve that got us here; we see the long list of the issues we have caused or needed to solve. What we don’t do enough construction of, for good reason, is imagine the problems we could have faced along the way. The issues we avoid are not the ones we see on our to-do list.

If you could list all the problems you have solved in your life and all the problems you have avoided, you would have a better case to believe in your ability to get things done. Since we can’t do that, we must trust that we can.

In this mess, problems aren’t just the ones you face but the ones you avoid, too.