The Essence of Being a Warrior
THE ESSENCE OF BEING A WARRIOR IS NEVER GIVING UP ON YOUR WHY
THE ESSENCE OF BEING A WARRIOR IS NEVER GIVING UP ON YOUR WHY
PREFACE
PREFACE
I am not exactly an early adopter of technology, but since I am adult and not a senile crybaby, I use technology like AI which has become mainstream ... I don't just use it, I dogfood the damned stuff to understand where the wheel come off. AI is like almost all human technology ... way too damned complexicated and inelegant to be anywhere near close to being reliable enough to depend upon ... but even if we cannot depend on things, we can still USE those things. We just should not have idiotic faith in the gadgets we find useful ... it's okay for me to think my bread machine is a labor-savor, but I like eating every day more.
Yeah, Ray, forget about that 2045 prediction ... your Singularity just is not possibly gonna show up until maybe something like 4025 ... and, probably, will not ever show up ... because the whole idea based on flawed assumptions about existence and how consciousness happens ... and, beyond just that, NOTHING that humans have done is as elegant as photosynthesis ... and we don't even yet really have a hint of a whiff of clue of gist of how photosynthesis came into being.
I am not exactly an early adopter of technology, but since I am adult and not a senile crybaby, I use technology like AI which has become mainstream ... I don't just use it, I dogfood the damned stuff to understand where the wheel come off. AI is like almost all human technology ... way too damned complexicated and inelegant to be anywhere near close to being reliable enough to depend upon ... but even if we cannot depend on things, we can still USE those things. We just should not have idiotic faith in the gadgets we find useful ... it's okay for me to think my bread machine is a labor-savor, but I like eating every day more.
Yeah, Ray, forget about that 2045 prediction ... your Singularity just is not possibly gonna show up until maybe something like 4025 ... and, probably, will not ever show up ... because the whole idea based on flawed assumptions about existence and how consciousness happens ... and, beyond just that, NOTHING that humans have done is as elegant as photosynthesis ... and we don't even yet really have a hint of a whiff of clue of gist of how photosynthesis came into being.
At least half of the twenty-five project that I am currently working on are heavily driven by practical experimental implementations of various AI models and transformer/diffusion development communities, natural language programming toolkits, the vectorization semiotics for computation efficiency and distributed os kernels for knowledge graph analytics.
At least half of the twenty-five project that I am currently working on are heavily driven by practical experimental implementations of various AI models and transformer/diffusion development communities, natural language programming toolkits, the vectorization semiotics for computation efficiency and distributed os kernels for knowledge graph analytics.
The technology of AI makes writing somewhat more productive and perhaps more effective ... certainly a lot more fun for the writer ... because the time that we spend writing is actually time spent REVISING, REVIEWING, REFACTORING ... there's no reason to waste much time searching for something to say ... the key is to just let the AI put something down ... and then come back to it again ... and again ... and again ... and over and over and over ... technology allows me to produce things that I want for ME, for my purposes, for my needs.
I write strictly FOR ME. I try to read a lot; I try to write more.
Instead of writing 1000 words per day ... my daily goal is to try RE-reading, revising, editing, refactoring, rethinking 10,000 of my words each day ... that's what this page, this website is ... I write shit FOR ME TO THINK ABOUT ... I am not particularly worried about anyone else finds it useful ... my guess is that people might find my stuff useful if I make it useful to me.
The technology of AI makes writing somewhat more productive and perhaps more effective ... certainly a lot more fun for the writer ... because the time that we spend writing is actually time spent REVISING, REVIEWING, REFACTORING ... there's no reason to waste much time searching for something to say ... the key is to just let the AI put something down ... and then come back to it again ... and again ... and again ... and over and over and over ... technology allows me to produce things that I want for ME, for my purposes, for my needs.
I write strictly FOR ME. I try to read a lot; I try to write more.
Instead of writing 1000 words per day ... my daily goal is to try RE-reading, revising, editing, refactoring, rethinking 10,000 of my words each day ... that's what this page, this website is ... I write shit FOR ME TO THINK ABOUT ... I am not particularly worried about anyone else finds it useful ... my guess is that people might find my stuff useful if I make it useful to me.
A different way of looking at this is that I expect and hope [as I am writing] that my main audience will be a few people who come upon my stuff 100 years after anyone who is alive now is dead ... my models for writing are Jesus Christ or maybe the Apostle Paul ... I think that Henry David Thoreau was a little too concerned with how professors and mentors would grade his work, but generally I, too, am a transcendentalist. I find Shakespeare's stuff tedious, excessively dramatic and not exactly timeless, but I do understand why that kind of thing works for actors, ie Shakespeare's plays are better than anything else produced in the last four hundred years ... I write stuff that that I will come back to later to read, revise, refactor, re-write ... and re-write over and over and over and over again ... if somebody wants to read something of mine that is no longer a work in progress, they can read my stuff after I am dead.
A different way of looking at this is that I expect and hope [as I am writing] that my main audience will be a few people who come upon my stuff 100 years after anyone who is alive now is dead ... my models for writing are Jesus Christ or maybe the Apostle Paul ... I think that Henry David Thoreau was a little too concerned with how professors and mentors would grade his work, but generally I, too, am a transcendentalist. I find Shakespeare's stuff tedious, excessively dramatic and not exactly timeless, but I do understand why that kind of thing works for actors, ie Shakespeare's plays are better than anything else produced in the last four hundred years ... I write stuff that that I will come back to later to read, revise, refactor, re-write ... and re-write over and over and over and over again ... if somebody wants to read something of mine that is no longer a work in progress, they can read my stuff after I am dead.
Let the dead bury their dead.
Let the dead bury their dead.
Everything dies. EVERY last living thing on Earth dies.
Everything dies. EVERY last living thing on Earth dies.
Let's keep the positive emotions, it's smart to carry the great memories with us ... but otherwise, we should let go of the baggage and just spare everyone the damned drama, lies about the past and all of the propaganda ... especially, when a large part of the drama escalation is just a bunch of guilt-mongering, grandstanding and pathetic attempts at patriotic dick measuring.
Let's keep the positive emotions, it's smart to carry the great memories with us ... but otherwise, we should let go of the baggage and just spare everyone the damned drama, lies about the past and all of the propaganda ... especially, when a large part of the drama escalation is just a bunch of guilt-mongering, grandstanding and pathetic attempts at patriotic dick measuring.
If we want to celebrate life, we should celebrate the WHY of life with people who are still trying to figure it out in their own lives while they are still alive. If we want to celebrate freedom, then we need to work our own self-discipline to be more free. Knock off the guilt trips; keep the positives.
Modern affluent life is built upon masses of unexamined lives hypnotized by media, sports, and propaganda choices to engage in in mindless, wasteful toil, fear and struggle. Each one of us can be controlled by our addiction; we all have addictions of different natures. Opting for the common addiction to comfort we find in affluent nations requires several hells of a lot of effort to be able to drown out the insecurities and afford the escapisms which found in the comfort of the life never examined. From the outside, we can see the addiction -- when we live inside the addiction and give in to it on an hourly basis, the addiction is hell ... except for those few moments of ease.
Many do not ask about the WHY of their lives, they imitate other WHYs because that is more comfortable. Imitation and comfort-seeking are things which we all do, at first, but we probably should not just cling so fiercely, so recalcitrantly to our imitation lives. There is a cost to all addictions, even if they are common addictions, like the addiction to comfort. Dealing with subconscious side effects of the choice to just opt for easy button choice or the imitation life drives people to different forms of escapisms and addictions.
If we want to celebrate life, we should celebrate the WHY of life with people who are still trying to figure it out in their own lives while they are still alive. If we want to celebrate freedom, then we need to work our own self-discipline to be more free. Knock off the guilt trips; keep the positives.
Modern affluent life is built upon masses of unexamined lives hypnotized by media, sports, and propaganda choices to engage in in mindless, wasteful toil, fear and struggle. Each one of us can be controlled by our addiction; we all have addictions of different natures. Opting for the common addiction to comfort we find in affluent nations requires several hells of a lot of effort to be able to drown out the insecurities and afford the escapisms which found in the comfort of the life never examined. From the outside, we can see the addiction -- when we live inside the addiction and give in to it on an hourly basis, the addiction is hell ... except for those few moments of ease.
Many do not ask about the WHY of their lives, they imitate other WHYs because that is more comfortable. Imitation and comfort-seeking are things which we all do, at first, but we probably should not just cling so fiercely, so recalcitrantly to our imitation lives. There is a cost to all addictions, even if they are common addictions, like the addiction to comfort. Dealing with subconscious side effects of the choice to just opt for easy button choice or the imitation life drives people to different forms of escapisms and addictions.
Modern affluent life makes the addictive, comfortable path to HELL much easier to indulge ... with enough medication, the easy route paved with good intentions in endurable ... still miserable, but endurable. All completely numb and unaware.
My WHY is about the complete freedom from any tyranny of desire, longing or fear ... in all things, freedom is never free. Freedom comes out of the discipline of continually working on improving the discipline of improvement which sets us free. This sounds a bit recursive, but that's an understatement, the linkage between freedom and discipline is recursive as recursive gets.
Modern affluent life makes the addictive, comfortable path to HELL much easier to indulge ... with enough medication, the easy route paved with good intentions in endurable ... still miserable, but endurable. All completely numb and unaware.
My WHY is about the complete freedom from any tyranny of desire, longing or fear ... in all things, freedom is never free. Freedom comes out of the discipline of continually working on improving the discipline of improvement which sets us free. This sounds a bit recursive, but that's an understatement, the linkage between freedom and discipline is recursive as recursive gets.
Discipline Equals Freedom
Discipline Equals Freedom
This is not just simplistic algebraic equation, but a lifestyle ... it's certainly not just a slogan ... it really has to BE a lifestyle -- you cannot fake this; you program yourself. You have to see your changes in your income/expenses, your furniture choices, your diet, your daily routine and everything about your lifestyle ... and you have to live that lifestyle to be able to improve it.
This is not just simplistic algebraic equation, but a lifestyle ... it's certainly not just a slogan ... it really has to BE a lifestyle -- you cannot fake this; you program yourself. You have to see your changes in your income/expenses, your furniture choices, your diet, your daily routine and everything about your lifestyle ... and you have to live that lifestyle to be able to improve it.
Anything less than perfect discipline means that there is an opportunity to work on the fight to have better freedom. It is not about doing MORE ... not about mindlessly burning through more resources, traveling to more places, getting a bigger pile of stuff.
Anything less than perfect discipline means that there is an opportunity to work on the fight to have better freedom. It is not about doing MORE ... not about mindlessly burning through more resources, traveling to more places, getting a bigger pile of stuff.
Discipline is about improving quality, eliminating unnecessary casualties and waste. So, there might be good reason for you to track your fitness metrics but nobody other than you is going to care if you just get more steps on your pedometer. If you think that anyone is keeping score, you have missed the point -- NOBODY cares, but YOU know ... YOU know there's always an opportunity to train a bit better ... YOU know that you could read more perceptively and miss fewer things. YOU know that you could write better code; nobody cares about writing MORE code, ie there's AI for that. YOU know that you can work on harder things or projects that might better advance the cause.
Discipline is about improving quality, eliminating unnecessary casualties and waste. So, there might be good reason for you to track your fitness metrics but nobody other than you is going to care if you just get more steps on your pedometer. If you think that anyone is keeping score, you have missed the point -- NOBODY cares, but YOU know ... YOU know there's always an opportunity to train a bit better ... YOU know that you could read more perceptively and miss fewer things. YOU know that you could write better code; nobody cares about writing MORE code, ie there's AI for that. YOU know that you can work on harder things or projects that might better advance the cause.
Discipline is about YOU understanding YOUR freedom and exactly where YOU know the gaps or vulnerabilities are.
Discipline is about YOU understanding YOUR freedom and exactly where YOU know the gaps or vulnerabilities are.
NOBODY cares about the score.
NOBODY cares about the score.
YOUR why is about YOU ... you are your scoreboard.
YOUR why is about YOU ... you are your scoreboard.
EVERY single person has their own war, their own mission, their own WHY ... some choose to avoid thinking about their WHY as hard as they possibly can. The escapism can certainly manifest itself through things like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine or any kind of drug addiction, that including prescription drugs or other little crutches that people rely upon to deal with health issues to have an ordinary life. For many the escapism extends to the distractions of watching movies, adoring their favorite celebrities or heros, gambling on their sports team, pornography or excessive fascination with any stimulus ... but most escape by just being good wage slaves, just earning an income to afford the escapisms of modern affluence. It is not that people sell out their WHY, what is so pathetic is that people sell out for so little.
EVERY single person has their own war, their own mission, their own WHY ... some choose to avoid thinking about their WHY as hard as they possibly can. The escapism can certainly manifest itself through things like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine or any kind of drug addiction, that including prescription drugs or other little crutches that people rely upon to deal with health issues to have an ordinary life. For many the escapism extends to the distractions of watching movies, adoring their favorite celebrities or heros, gambling on their sports team, pornography or excessive fascination with any stimulus ... but most escape by just being good wage slaves, just earning an income to afford the escapisms of modern affluence. It is not that people sell out their WHY, what is so pathetic is that people sell out for so little.
Everyone's WHY is something that should preoccupy them. That does not mean that they should not make polite conversation or engage in phatic watercooler speculation about sports or weather or comedy. Of course, we should ask people how things are going ... and really mean to ask that ... and ask for elaborations, such as how family members are getting along ... but EVERY person's life [from childhood on] should be fundamentally preoccupied with a unique, personal WHY. People have to understand that other people have WHYs which are similarly important to them -- accordingly, it is important to LISTEN and be ready to discuss these WHYs with them.
My own WHY is about the elimination of the unnecessary pain, suffering and distractions of desire or longing or especially fear or worry. I program myself with a mantra that goes something like, "I do not fear. I do not worry. I do not desire anything. I am free." But that's just about programming. Programming also comes from what I read or look at. I don't listen to much. I don't watch much; I never ever watch movies. I avoid celebrities and advice experts like the plague they are. I do not hang around much with people who typically make a practice of giving in to their fears, worries, desires. I have no particular desire now to spend ANY time around people who are now or are working to become wealthy, famous, or powerful. Nothing could possibly interest me less than any celebrity, except for a famous celebrity who has decided to seek fame, power or wealth giving advice on how to become wealthy, famous, powerful. In particular, I find advice on being "well-adjusted" too tedious to bear.
Of course, I know that EVERYBODY has fears, worries, desires ... very, very few are able to even start working on the discipline of avoiding those habits, rituals, and daily programming which results in the practice of giving in to their fears, worries, desires.
We can work on wringing their influence out of our lives, but fear, longing, desire will always be with us, ie we could say that they are part of what drives life, except that we are in control of what really drives our lives ... but how might we eliminate the unnecessary pain, suffering and mindless distraction of these things and instead channel our drives into better appreciating the moment, being more aware of our surroundings, better exploiting the opportunities in front of us or working harder on our [physical, mental and spiritual] health and fitness? Rather than spend ANY more time with the insufferable idiots offering professional advice on how to be more successful, I will spend more time amongst my fellow failures; realistically, that might result in me doing time with other convicts or living in a tent.
When I was much younger, in my late teens or very early twenties, I imagined that I wanted to be a public servant, ie that's why I became a Federal employee with a very specific goal of wrangling a role as agent in the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency. I also imagined that I could "win friends and influence people." ie that's why I decided to practice that by getting elected to office; I even played with Thoreau's call to be civilly disobedient and I seriously courted the notion of being political activist -- but fairly early on, over forty years ago, I learned enough about my WHY that I also understood why I should AVOID giving in to any and all particular desire to have any direct influence upon anyone ... what I learned from my foray into public service and especially dabbling in political activism is that ALL desires to implement solutions which fix other human beings is always not just extremely toxic, but necessarily violent, even murderous. You can't reboot a lost soul by killing a human; you can't get a addict to stop being an addict ... the addict has to reclaim his soul ... the dead must be allowed to bury their dead.
Everyone's WHY is something that should preoccupy them. That does not mean that they should not make polite conversation or engage in phatic watercooler speculation about sports or weather or comedy. Of course, we should ask people how things are going ... and really mean to ask that ... and ask for elaborations, such as how family members are getting along ... but EVERY person's life [from childhood on] should be fundamentally preoccupied with a unique, personal WHY. People have to understand that other people have WHYs which are similarly important to them -- accordingly, it is important to LISTEN and be ready to discuss these WHYs with them.
My own WHY is about the elimination of the unnecessary pain, suffering and distractions of desire or longing or especially fear or worry. I program myself with a mantra that goes something like, "I do not fear. I do not worry. I do not desire anything. I am free." But that's just about programming. Programming also comes from what I read or look at. I don't listen to much. I don't watch much; I never ever watch movies. I avoid celebrities and advice experts like the plague they are. I do not hang around much with people who typically make a practice of giving in to their fears, worries, desires. I have no particular desire now to spend ANY time around people who are now or are working to become wealthy, famous, or powerful. Nothing could possibly interest me less than any celebrity, except for a famous celebrity who has decided to seek fame, power or wealth giving advice on how to become wealthy, famous, powerful. In particular, I find advice on being "well-adjusted" too tedious to bear.
Of course, I know that EVERYBODY has fears, worries, desires ... very, very few are able to even start working on the discipline of avoiding those habits, rituals, and daily programming which results in the practice of giving in to their fears, worries, desires.
We can work on wringing their influence out of our lives, but fear, longing, desire will always be with us, ie we could say that they are part of what drives life, except that we are in control of what really drives our lives ... but how might we eliminate the unnecessary pain, suffering and mindless distraction of these things and instead channel our drives into better appreciating the moment, being more aware of our surroundings, better exploiting the opportunities in front of us or working harder on our [physical, mental and spiritual] health and fitness? Rather than spend ANY more time with the insufferable idiots offering professional advice on how to be more successful, I will spend more time amongst my fellow failures; realistically, that might result in me doing time with other convicts or living in a tent.
When I was much younger, in my late teens or very early twenties, I imagined that I wanted to be a public servant, ie that's why I became a Federal employee with a very specific goal of wrangling a role as agent in the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency. I also imagined that I could "win friends and influence people." ie that's why I decided to practice that by getting elected to office; I even played with Thoreau's call to be civilly disobedient and I seriously courted the notion of being political activist -- but fairly early on, over forty years ago, I learned enough about my WHY that I also understood why I should AVOID giving in to any and all particular desire to have any direct influence upon anyone ... what I learned from my foray into public service and especially dabbling in political activism is that ALL desires to implement solutions which fix other human beings is always not just extremely toxic, but necessarily violent, even murderous. You can't reboot a lost soul by killing a human; you can't get a addict to stop being an addict ... the addict has to reclaim his soul ... the dead must be allowed to bury their dead.
I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try. It has been an inherently frustrating walk ... I am still, to this very day, angered by the complete idiocy of those who hate, who judge, who gossip about their fellow humans ... of course, there are even those who do not respect property of others, who are even unable to restrain themselves to leave other people the f%^& alone ... this world IS ruled by violence ... and, just as I have always been able to pay my bills, to never ask for financial assistance or ever seek forgiveness or restructuring of debts in bankruptcy, to never be fired or laid off from any job, I have also had to use violence and I train daily to be capable of using violence ... although I don't believe that one should work at having a reputation for being threatening in any way ... in other words, spare everyone the damned drama; these things will sort themselves out.
I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try. It has been an inherently frustrating walk ... I am still, to this very day, angered by the complete idiocy of those who hate, who judge, who gossip about their fellow humans ... of course, there are even those who do not respect property of others, who are even unable to restrain themselves to leave other people the f%^& alone ... this world IS ruled by violence ... and, just as I have always been able to pay my bills, to never ask for financial assistance or ever seek forgiveness or restructuring of debts in bankruptcy, to never be fired or laid off from any job, I have also had to use violence and I train daily to be capable of using violence ... although I don't believe that one should work at having a reputation for being threatening in any way ... in other words, spare everyone the damned drama; these things will sort themselves out.
Let the dead bury their dead. If we want to celebrate life, we should celebrate the WHY of life with people who are still living.
This is why I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try.
My WHY is about the elimination of the unnecessary pain, suffering and distractions of desire or longing or especially fear ... and that really does not matter, but explaining how it led to different things may give others hints or clues about their WHY. My own preoccupation with my WHY was going nowhere, until about ten days before my twentieth birthday ... I was obsessed with building my net worth, so I was throwing myself into it, avoiding social interactions and mostly just working to get money to advance the cause of my business investments ... so one day late in the summer 1979, I completely exhausted by a long work week coupled with long day in my fields of crops, pulling escapes from my IPM program, working without having sufficient water ... I was physically-exhausted, basically in a state of hallucination, the Sun was going down ... I was satisfied, but totally spent ... almost unable to walk any further, I just wanted to get back to my pickup that Saturday night, so that I could go to sleep for 30 hours until Monday morning, so that I could get up an do it again. That's when the epiphany came. My Creator took pity on my idiotically-distracted soul and gave me a hint about about my WHY, ie why desire, longing, fear are just pain ... and why the journey or search is the reward.
It was really only a hint ... I still have not really found exactly what that WHY is ... but I guess I understand that the search for one's WHY is entirely about one's faith ... searching is great thing ... yes, it is terribly uncomfortable if it is genuine ... but that's how it works.
Let the dead bury their dead. If we want to celebrate life, we should celebrate the WHY of life with people who are still living.
This is why I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try.
My WHY is about the elimination of the unnecessary pain, suffering and distractions of desire or longing or especially fear ... and that really does not matter, but explaining how it led to different things may give others hints or clues about their WHY. My own preoccupation with my WHY was going nowhere, until about ten days before my twentieth birthday ... I was obsessed with building my net worth, so I was throwing myself into it, avoiding social interactions and mostly just working to get money to advance the cause of my business investments ... so one day late in the summer 1979, I completely exhausted by a long work week coupled with long day in my fields of crops, pulling escapes from my IPM program, working without having sufficient water ... I was physically-exhausted, basically in a state of hallucination, the Sun was going down ... I was satisfied, but totally spent ... almost unable to walk any further, I just wanted to get back to my pickup that Saturday night, so that I could go to sleep for 30 hours until Monday morning, so that I could get up an do it again. That's when the epiphany came. My Creator took pity on my idiotically-distracted soul and gave me a hint about about my WHY, ie why desire, longing, fear are just pain ... and why the journey or search is the reward.
It was really only a hint ... I still have not really found exactly what that WHY is ... but I guess I understand that the search for one's WHY is entirely about one's faith ... searching is great thing ... yes, it is terribly uncomfortable if it is genuine ... but that's how it works.
SEARCHING for one's WHY is basically the ONLY thing worth doing in life.
The search to better understand my WHY led me to led me to sell off the assets of my first business to return to University -- my original goal, as an entrepreneurial kid who was financing his University education was meet as many professors and serious students as I could BUT I also wanted to get a serious, REAL job, ideally serving my country ... so I got that REAL job as a Federal agent; which was more REAL than I expected, but that's another story. I got super-involved in different things to meet people ... got elected to student government, served on several serious University Committees, made faculty and administration contacts ... and in between times, I occasionally partied like a student and I even sort of found some time to show up occasionally for few classes. After being enrolled for a total of four years ... it took five and half, but I took a year and a half off to start my next business, the school gave me a degree in Engineering to get rid of me ... afterwords, my experience in my enterprises led me to actually become more moderately serious and even somewhat disciplined about studying, presenting, writing, getting funding funding peer-reviewed papers the topics of finance, innovation and regulation ... so although I was really more of an entrepreneur, I also was admitted as a Ph.D candidate in Economics and started on the distraction of becoming an expert in the regulation of health, food safety and things like antimicrobial resistance ... of course, it took me longer than it should have taken to understand why academia has to squelch independent research and why government policy has to make the powerful more powerful ... but the SEARCH was important.
The SEARCH is how I KNOW that life is about the search for that WHY and about a desire to be one with one's Creator ... it's also why I know that policy solutions ALWAYS produce more unintended results than they possibly begin to fix anything ... the SEARCH is about having walked down that path, like walking down the path of being a Federal agent ... the paths have been blessings afforded me by my Creator ... thoses paths are better than all-expenses-paid vacations ... it is impossible for any damned worthless vacation to compare with what one learns from working on REAL job and holding one's own in that realm -- the SEARCH, especially including jobs or professions that one throws away, is basically the only thing worth doing in life ... it's all about the SEARCH ... the SEARCH is why I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try.
My only certainty is my desire to understand and be one with my Creator ... words cannot really express it exactly, but I believe that my WHY is about the elimination of the unnecessary pain, suffering and distractions of desire or longing or especially fear ... of course, I am not the first human to understand this ... but PRACTICALLY, how can we achieve it ... I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try ... since I understand why this world is ruled by violence, what I can do is provide for myself economically and generally train to be capable of violence ... I can only seek to walk on Earth among mortals ... while on Earth, I live by Earth's rules ... I render Caesar's things unto Caesar, but I do not carry Caesar's baggage for him ... the ONLY thing that I own in this existence is my time.
The ONLY thing that really matters in this existence is our time
SEARCHING for one's WHY is basically the ONLY thing worth doing in life.
The search to better understand my WHY led me to led me to sell off the assets of my first business to return to University -- my original goal, as an entrepreneurial kid who was financing his University education was meet as many professors and serious students as I could BUT I also wanted to get a serious, REAL job, ideally serving my country ... so I got that REAL job as a Federal agent; which was more REAL than I expected, but that's another story. I got super-involved in different things to meet people ... got elected to student government, served on several serious University Committees, made faculty and administration contacts ... and in between times, I occasionally partied like a student and I even sort of found some time to show up occasionally for few classes. After being enrolled for a total of four years ... it took five and half, but I took a year and a half off to start my next business, the school gave me a degree in Engineering to get rid of me ... afterwords, my experience in my enterprises led me to actually become more moderately serious and even somewhat disciplined about studying, presenting, writing, getting funding funding peer-reviewed papers the topics of finance, innovation and regulation ... so although I was really more of an entrepreneur, I also was admitted as a Ph.D candidate in Economics and started on the distraction of becoming an expert in the regulation of health, food safety and things like antimicrobial resistance ... of course, it took me longer than it should have taken to understand why academia has to squelch independent research and why government policy has to make the powerful more powerful ... but the SEARCH was important.
The SEARCH is how I KNOW that life is about the search for that WHY and about a desire to be one with one's Creator ... it's also why I know that policy solutions ALWAYS produce more unintended results than they possibly begin to fix anything ... the SEARCH is about having walked down that path, like walking down the path of being a Federal agent ... the paths have been blessings afforded me by my Creator ... thoses paths are better than all-expenses-paid vacations ... it is impossible for any damned worthless vacation to compare with what one learns from working on REAL job and holding one's own in that realm -- the SEARCH, especially including jobs or professions that one throws away, is basically the only thing worth doing in life ... it's all about the SEARCH ... the SEARCH is why I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try.
My only certainty is my desire to understand and be one with my Creator ... words cannot really express it exactly, but I believe that my WHY is about the elimination of the unnecessary pain, suffering and distractions of desire or longing or especially fear ... of course, I am not the first human to understand this ... but PRACTICALLY, how can we achieve it ... I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try ... since I understand why this world is ruled by violence, what I can do is provide for myself economically and generally train to be capable of violence ... I can only seek to walk on Earth among mortals ... while on Earth, I live by Earth's rules ... I render Caesar's things unto Caesar, but I do not carry Caesar's baggage for him ... the ONLY thing that I own in this existence is my time.
The ONLY thing that really matters in this existence is our time
This is not an especially profound statement ... it is nothing other than a statement that could be derived from a corollary to that first question of the Heidelberg catechism which reminds us of what our only comfort can be. As Christians, accepting Jesus as our Savior means that we believe that our ONLY comfort in life and in death is that we are not our own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Of course, the in body and soul, in life and in death means that we don't get to call the shots EVER ... we don't get to say what any kind of afterlife might be like AND we don't get to say who gets punished or rewarded ... that's why, I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try ... AND ... I know and understand why this world is and always will be ruled by violence ... AND ... The ONLY thing that really matters in this existence is our time.
Of course, we must be shrewd and disciplined in the use of that limited time we are granted ... we should not apologize for the downtime we might need or time for just daydreaming and thinking ... but we should not squander that time longing for or desiring cheap, shiny material things. The most important use of our time is time that, in every last thing we do, we should go about our preparations, acting with intention, UNDERSTANDING the unique WHY of our lives, our unique mission.
It's tough enough to just get our own mission right ... this is why all manipulative, attention-seeking, heart-wrenching, hyperbolically hysterical views of others simply must not matter ... regardless of the pressure that other sheep attempt to exert to keep the flock of their fellow intact.
I am a clumsy, hopelessly awkward, terribly slow learner, but as I have gotten older, I have FINALLY begun to learn WHY it is necessary to let the dead bury their dead.
I have finally begun to appreciate what should have been obvious before: the ONLY thing that I really value is my time in developing my discipline at my pace in my life as a contemplative monk or warrior. I have finally begun to appreciate why manipulative, bullying, gossiping SHEEP are to be avoided at all costs ... I used to think of myself as a sheepdog; I now understand that the sheep cannot be saved because they will always choose materialism, they will alway choose not to be saved ... there are plenty who have chosen to adapt to social norms, to follow the community, to join a materialist church, to exhibit smug satisfactions by continually displaying and advertising their display of the solid evidence marking them, proving to the world that they have chosen the comfort of a sheep-like materialist existence.
This is not an especially profound statement ... it is nothing other than a statement that could be derived from a corollary to that first question of the Heidelberg catechism which reminds us of what our only comfort can be. As Christians, accepting Jesus as our Savior means that we believe that our ONLY comfort in life and in death is that we are not our own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Of course, the in body and soul, in life and in death means that we don't get to call the shots EVER ... we don't get to say what any kind of afterlife might be like AND we don't get to say who gets punished or rewarded ... that's why, I only seek to walk on Earth among mortals; I cannot fix anyone and I should not try ... AND ... I know and understand why this world is and always will be ruled by violence ... AND ... The ONLY thing that really matters in this existence is our time.
Of course, we must be shrewd and disciplined in the use of that limited time we are granted ... we should not apologize for the downtime we might need or time for just daydreaming and thinking ... but we should not squander that time longing for or desiring cheap, shiny material things. The most important use of our time is time that, in every last thing we do, we should go about our preparations, acting with intention, UNDERSTANDING the unique WHY of our lives, our unique mission.
It's tough enough to just get our own mission right ... this is why all manipulative, attention-seeking, heart-wrenching, hyperbolically hysterical views of others simply must not matter ... regardless of the pressure that other sheep attempt to exert to keep the flock of their fellow intact.
I am a clumsy, hopelessly awkward, terribly slow learner, but as I have gotten older, I have FINALLY begun to learn WHY it is necessary to let the dead bury their dead.
I have finally begun to appreciate what should have been obvious before: the ONLY thing that I really value is my time in developing my discipline at my pace in my life as a contemplative monk or warrior. I have finally begun to appreciate why manipulative, bullying, gossiping SHEEP are to be avoided at all costs ... I used to think of myself as a sheepdog; I now understand that the sheep cannot be saved because they will always choose materialism, they will alway choose not to be saved ... there are plenty who have chosen to adapt to social norms, to follow the community, to join a materialist church, to exhibit smug satisfactions by continually displaying and advertising their display of the solid evidence marking them, proving to the world that they have chosen the comfort of a sheep-like materialist existence.
Growing up psychologically
Growing up psychologically
Each of us contains a multiplicity of selves; we have different roles in life and we might present different facets of our personalities in different situations ... sometimes, we are sons or humble novices -- other times, people are looking to us to be the parent in control ... there's nothing schizophrenic about this; it is normal and part of being a human ... but we do need to be aware of which role we are supposed to be in and be fully present in that role. Until we grow up pscyhologically, understand our roles, and gain a degree of discipline in the realm of self-control of our minds, we can experience an inner conflict of desires and if we are not careful we can endlessly pursue false objectives, false missions which are all about what we imagine other think we should do.
Each of us contains a multiplicity of selves; we have different roles in life and we might present different facets of our personalities in different situations ... sometimes, we are sons or humble novices -- other times, people are looking to us to be the parent in control ... there's nothing schizophrenic about this; it is normal and part of being a human ... but we do need to be aware of which role we are supposed to be in and be fully present in that role. Until we grow up pscyhologically, understand our roles, and gain a degree of discipline in the realm of self-control of our minds, we can experience an inner conflict of desires and if we are not careful we can endlessly pursue false objectives, false missions which are all about what we imagine other think we should do.
The most important thing that we MUST eventually realize is that others really simply MUST NOT matter. This does not mean that we do not listen ... we always must pay attention to those who matter, but we can MUST NOT make any time for those who have willfully shown us that they will not listen or will not examine our example. It's fine to listen to chatter on Twitter or to eavesdrops on crowds, as if one is listening to the birds or squirrels, but in general, when we are in control of our WHY, the chatter of others simply MUST NOT matter.
The most important thing that we MUST eventually realize is that others really simply MUST NOT matter. This does not mean that we do not listen ... we always must pay attention to those who matter, but we can MUST NOT make any time for those who have willfully shown us that they will not listen or will not examine our example. It's fine to listen to chatter on Twitter or to eavesdrops on crowds, as if one is listening to the birds or squirrels, but in general, when we are in control of our WHY, the chatter of others simply MUST NOT matter.
The views of others must be discounted
The views of others must be discounted
The reason for discounting is certainly because others are less valuable ... far from that; in fact, it's the opposite. We must discount these other views because:
The reason for discounting is certainly because others are less valuable ... far from that; in fact, it's the opposite. We must discount these other views because:
1) It's NOT the view that is expressed; it's the actions, the strength of example. People whose views or actions actually do matter do not EVER attempt to control, manipulate or even influence [through stage, screen or podcast] the views of others, ie people who actually matter understand the greater, more essential importance of example and things like markets or exchanges in which serious, shrewd, thinking people have "skin in the game",
1) It's NOT the view that is expressed; it's the actions, the strength of example. People whose views or actions actually do matter do not EVER attempt to control, manipulate or even influence [through stage, screen or podcast] the views of others, ie people who actually matter understand the greater, more essential importance of example and things like markets or exchanges in which serious, shrewd, thinking people have "skin in the game",
2) We have to put a priority on understanding our own views FIRST, before we really try to understand or interpret the views of any other human ... the reason is that without self-awareness, we will seek out and hear what we have adamantly decided to hear through our filter ... and this gets much, much, much worse with age ... my experience is that many, maybe men my age cannot hear anything because of their own hardened filters ... maybe I just see this in my contemporaries, but I stress this because of my own PERSONAL experience.
3) The views of ALL individuals at ALL points in time are necessarily ephemeral and tainted, ie opinions are like assholes -- it's not just that everyone has one; it's that another asshole's opinion is that asshole's responsibility to clean up. Why should we amplify the view of one already loud asshole, when dismiss the timelessness of our Creator ... OR the billions of years of Nature and the Universe we inhabit ... OR the rich, deep reservoir of thought available to us in either the Classics, scientific literature or the brilliant examples of ideas, buried like needles in the haystack of over 8 billion other humans.
2) We have to put a priority on understanding our own views FIRST, before we really try to understand or interpret the views of any other human ... the reason is that without self-awareness, we will seek out and hear what we have adamantly decided to hear through our filter ... and this gets much, much, much worse with age ... my experience is that many, maybe men my age cannot hear anything because of their own hardened filters ... maybe I just see this in my contemporaries, but I stress this because of my own PERSONAL experience.
3) The views of ALL individuals at ALL points in time are necessarily ephemeral and tainted, ie opinions are like assholes -- it's not just that everyone has one; it's that another asshole's opinion is that asshole's responsibility to clean up. Why should we amplify the view of one already loud asshole, when dismiss the timelessness of our Creator ... OR the billions of years of Nature and the Universe we inhabit ... OR the rich, deep reservoir of thought available to us in either the Classics, scientific literature or the brilliant examples of ideas, buried like needles in the haystack of over 8 billion other humans.
4) We WILL influence and be influenced by other people in proportion to the time that we spend with those others. Geography no longer should constrain us -- we should be extremely careful about which 80,000 to 100,000 people we are likely to engage with; frankly this means that our interests, ideas, thoughts, creative explorations should determine the noospheric proximity we inhabit, ie, in the modern era, our tribe will be where our ideas are -- when we choose the comfort of where our ideas were last year, ten years ago or fifty years ago, we will live in our past.
Great content is now cheaper than just being cost-free
We have had things like the Gutenberg project, Wikipedia or the various pre-print arXiv's available to us long enough that we all have no excuse for not reading oceansfull of content. Great content has been effectively free to anyone for a long time. This is remarkable ... it might be more remarkable that people do not make any effort to READ and thoroughly digest, ie "do the homework questions" or work through, this great reservoir of content and instead opt for the comfortable easy button approach of passively consuming video, film, audiobooks or podcasts.
You have probably heard about or already used things like ChatGPT ... do NOT believe what people tell you about ChatGPT -- just use it and draw your own conclusions. Especially do not believe the morons who are terrified of it ... just USE it, as you write, to suggest sentences or paragraphs. Get to know how this kind of thing works; it is not going away and it especially is not going to go away because you decide that you will never use it. If you primarily dwell in the land of software and writing code, use some derivative of the very same approach, such as GitHub's Copilot ... the suggestions are of similar applicability for your given tasks.
AI is far from perfect ... it is nothing to fear ... but it is something that you will sort of be required to be well-versed in using ... if you you want to be part of the conversation, you must learn to use the language, the grammar, the idioms, the quirks in the language, how to play Scrabble, what is funny/inappropriate, what is not funny/ not inappropriate, how to make conversations, how to make [self-deprecating] jokes, how to take/give criticism.
Being literate in AI is a choice.
Becoming literate in something that you are not currently literate in is the kind of thing that you have been doing since you exited the womb.
You have a choice ... you can sit there and ball your eyes out crying ... or you can pick up the language, become somewhat literate and grow the fuck up ... if you want to be a senile old fool who refuses to become literate in technology that your culture is using, then you should prepare for the nursing home and regression into that state in which your meals are prepared for you, you food is cut up the way you like it and somewhat assists you in doing your business in the bathroom. You have a choice.
4) We WILL influence and be influenced by other people in proportion to the time that we spend with those others. Geography no longer should constrain us -- we should be extremely careful about which 80,000 to 100,000 people we are likely to engage with; frankly this means that our interests, ideas, thoughts, creative explorations should determine the noospheric proximity we inhabit, ie, in the modern era, our tribe will be where our ideas are -- when we choose the comfort of where our ideas were last year, ten years ago or fifty years ago, we will live in our past.
Great content is now cheaper than just being cost-free
We have had things like the Gutenberg project, Wikipedia or the various pre-print arXiv's available to us long enough that we all have no excuse for not reading oceansfull of content. Great content has been effectively free to anyone for a long time. This is remarkable ... it might be more remarkable that people do not make any effort to READ and thoroughly digest, ie "do the homework questions" or work through, this great reservoir of content and instead opt for the comfortable easy button approach of passively consuming video, film, audiobooks or podcasts.
You have probably heard about or already used things like ChatGPT ... do NOT believe what people tell you about ChatGPT -- just use it and draw your own conclusions. Especially do not believe the morons who are terrified of it ... just USE it, as you write, to suggest sentences or paragraphs. Get to know how this kind of thing works; it is not going away and it especially is not going to go away because you decide that you will never use it. If you primarily dwell in the land of software and writing code, use some derivative of the very same approach, such as GitHub's Copilot ... the suggestions are of similar applicability for your given tasks.
AI is far from perfect ... it is nothing to fear ... but it is something that you will sort of be required to be well-versed in using ... if you you want to be part of the conversation, you must learn to use the language, the grammar, the idioms, the quirks in the language, how to play Scrabble, what is funny/inappropriate, what is not funny/ not inappropriate, how to make conversations, how to make [self-deprecating] jokes, how to take/give criticism.
Being literate in AI is a choice.
Becoming literate in something that you are not currently literate in is the kind of thing that you have been doing since you exited the womb.
You have a choice ... you can sit there and ball your eyes out crying ... or you can pick up the language, become somewhat literate and grow the fuck up ... if you want to be a senile old fool who refuses to become literate in technology that your culture is using, then you should prepare for the nursing home and regression into that state in which your meals are prepared for you, you food is cut up the way you like it and somewhat assists you in doing your business in the bathroom. You have a choice.
If you want to participate in the economy in a meaningful way, you must be somewhat technically literate and your literacy should be roughly equivalent with the state of the technology used in your culture, in the economy you participate in.
If you want to participate in the economy in a meaningful way, you must be somewhat technically literate and your literacy should be roughly equivalent with the state of the technology used in your culture, in the economy you participate in.
You no longer need to own and care for a team of oxen or horses; you no longer need things like buggy whips or saddles to make your horseriding across the prairies comfortable ... you are free to own/care for your team of horses; there's NO REASON WHATSOEVER to expect that anyone else will need to do that ... people might want to; they do not NEED to. The reason that people do not use horses any more as their primary means of transport/transportation is that the system of animal transportation consumes too many resources and dumps too much waste in urban centers ... as quaint as it might seem, a horse-drawn economy is a NASTY, resource-intensive economy which would result in the starvation of billions ... another hint is that 80 years ago we learned that a horse-drawn military cannot win a war.
Technology advances your culture ... you do not need to be an early, bleeding-edge adopter ... but if you want to participate in the economy in a meaningful way, you must be somewhat technically literate and your literacy should be roughly equivalent with the state of the technology used in your culture, in the economy you participate in.
You no longer need to own and care for a team of oxen or horses; you no longer need things like buggy whips or saddles to make your horseriding across the prairies comfortable ... you are free to own/care for your team of horses; there's NO REASON WHATSOEVER to expect that anyone else will need to do that ... people might want to; they do not NEED to. The reason that people do not use horses any more as their primary means of transport/transportation is that the system of animal transportation consumes too many resources and dumps too much waste in urban centers ... as quaint as it might seem, a horse-drawn economy is a NASTY, resource-intensive economy which would result in the starvation of billions ... another hint is that 80 years ago we learned that a horse-drawn military cannot win a war.
Technology advances your culture ... you do not need to be an early, bleeding-edge adopter ... but if you want to participate in the economy in a meaningful way, you must be somewhat technically literate and your literacy should be roughly equivalent with the state of the technology used in your culture, in the economy you participate in.
With the advent of remote work, Uber/Lyft, e-commerce, you no longer absolutely NEED to own/operate a vehicle ... conversely, the jury's still out on electrical vehicles ... e-bikes might work well for people, but electical cars .... meh, the jury's still out ... but you no longer absolutely NEED to own/operate a vehicle ... you MIGHT have to tell people who expect you to "just drive over for an appointment" that you don't use a fax machine [or a fucking car] any more OR why can't we handle this business with an email exchange rather than a world conference. Obviously, you might require transport / transportation, but there are other options than you driving somewhere physical and making your selection and transporting that selection back home ... similarly, your decision to commute to your work is more about you choosing to commute or to accept employment options that require you to commute. If you want to commute, fine ... you no longer can legitimately claim that you NEED to commute; it's a choice.
With the advent of remote work, Uber/Lyft, e-commerce, you no longer absolutely NEED to own/operate a vehicle ... conversely, the jury's still out on electrical vehicles ... e-bikes might work well for people, but electical cars .... meh, the jury's still out ... but you no longer absolutely NEED to own/operate a vehicle ... you MIGHT have to tell people who expect you to "just drive over for an appointment" that you don't use a fax machine [or a fucking car] any more OR why can't we handle this business with an email exchange rather than a world conference. Obviously, you might require transport / transportation, but there are other options than you driving somewhere physical and making your selection and transporting that selection back home ... similarly, your decision to commute to your work is more about you choosing to commute or to accept employment options that require you to commute. If you want to commute, fine ... you no longer can legitimately claim that you NEED to commute; it's a choice.
Stop crying about how much fuel costs ... IT IS A CHOICE.
The technology of AI makes writing somewhat more productive and perhaps more effective ... because the time that we spend writing is actually time spent REVISING, REVIEWING, REFACTORING ... there's no reason to waste much time searching for something to say ... the key is to just let the AI put something down ... and then come back to it ... again ... and again ... and again.
Instead of writing 1000 words per day ... try RE-reading, revising, editing, refactoring, rethinking 10,000 words each day ... that's what this page, this website is ... I write things FOR ME TO READ ... stuff that that I will come back to later to read, revise, refactor, re-write ... over and over and over and over again ... if somebody want's to read something that is no longer a work in progress, they can read my stuff after I am dead.
Stop crying about how much fuel costs ... IT IS A CHOICE.
The technology of AI makes writing somewhat more productive and perhaps more effective ... because the time that we spend writing is actually time spent REVISING, REVIEWING, REFACTORING ... there's no reason to waste much time searching for something to say ... the key is to just let the AI put something down ... and then come back to it ... again ... and again ... and again.
Instead of writing 1000 words per day ... try RE-reading, revising, editing, refactoring, rethinking 10,000 words each day ... that's what this page, this website is ... I write things FOR ME TO READ ... stuff that that I will come back to later to read, revise, refactor, re-write ... over and over and over and over again ... if somebody want's to read something that is no longer a work in progress, they can read my stuff after I am dead.
Other than the fact, that I really only care about my own time any more, I don't have anything much to say ... but I can and WILL elaborate on that for a few million words or so ... that's not exactly intended to be funny. It's intended to accurately explain WHY I bother writing AT ALL. Like all other elaborators, I elaborate primarily FOR MY OWN BENEFIT.
Other than the fact, that I really only care about my own time any more, I don't have anything much to say ... but I can and WILL elaborate on that for a few million words or so ... that's not exactly intended to be funny. It's intended to accurately explain WHY I bother writing AT ALL. Like all other elaborators, I elaborate primarily FOR MY OWN BENEFIT.
I easily read about 1000X or 10,000X as much as I write ... I am trying to read more than that ... and not just to take in more ... but to study structure, semiotics, content, context, to sift faster, to read better, read SMARTER ... I am finding that studying natural language processing and dissecting AI, tokenizers, transformers and diffuser models helps me to read ... and to understand why search and recommendation engines are fucked as they are.
I easily read about 1000X or 10,000X as much as I write ... I am trying to read more than that ... and not just to take in more ... but to study structure, semiotics, content, context, to sift faster, to read better, read SMARTER ... I am finding that studying natural language processing and dissecting AI, tokenizers, transformers and diffuser models helps me to read ... and to understand why search and recommendation engines are fucked as they are.
So I read a lot of stuff; it's not enough. I find that I understand more, when I write a few notes ... for my future self, to be revised, not of any importance -- except it IS of importance, because my scribbling is basically thinkering, internalizing the semiotics in text ... this text, for example, will naturally have to be rewritten a bunch ... because I don't yet understand exactly what I am trying to write ... but I know this isn't quite it ....
So I read a lot of stuff; it's not enough. I find that I understand more, when I write a few notes ... for my future self, to be revised, not of any importance -- except it IS of importance, because my scribbling is basically thinkering, internalizing the semiotics in text ... this text, for example, will naturally have to be rewritten a bunch ... because I don't yet understand exactly what I am trying to write ... but I know this isn't quite it ....
As we read and write and revise and plan and put plans into action, we meet others and through our conversations and exchanges, we become. When I was a young pup, I did things ... I started up businesses ... I typically held several jobs at the same time to get the cash to pay for things needed my startups.
As we read and write and revise and plan and put plans into action, we meet others and through our conversations and exchanges, we become. When I was a young pup, I did things ... I started up businesses ... I typically held several jobs at the same time to get the cash to pay for things needed my startups.
Eventually, as I got older and somehow managed to get wiser [in my thirties], I started understanding that there was not that much that I could do myself ... I started learning why I should exert much effort to studing and understanding how other people did things ... in the rest of the world, there's almost always someone else doing something a lot better than you are doing it. Of course, we cannot really recognize what makes their approach really awesome unless we have experimented with the ideas/concepts a little it ourselves ... we just cannot really get what the really tough nuts to crack are without really trying to crack them ourselves.
Eventually, as I got older and somehow managed to get wiser [in my thirties], I started understanding that there was not that much that I could do myself ... I started learning why I should exert much effort to studing and understanding how other people did things ... in the rest of the world, there's almost always someone else doing something a lot better than you are doing it. Of course, we cannot really recognize what makes their approach really awesome unless we have experimented with the ideas/concepts a little it ourselves ... we just cannot really get what the really tough nuts to crack are without really trying to crack them ourselves.
So, as a youngish thirtysomething, but EXPERIENCED entrepreneur, I started looking further, not just around my own immediate surroundings but at the world ... a few years before I turned forty, the internet came along and a LOT of people started using it ... it was not the technology, per se, but the people using it that changed things [for me]. The internetworked nature of millions of innovators mattered ... innovators had email addresses and it was at a point in time back when not everyone did -- so innovators still tended to answer their email if the email asked pertinent questions because things like mailchimp had not yet thoroughly polluted email inboxes. That meant, that in the late 1990s, looking for decent investments was a TON easier, partners were particularly much easier to find ... it was easier to establish contact, have interactions, learn the inside scoop, etc. That's when I moved on to primarily investing rather trying to make my own enterprises go ... my approach was to sell out, invest, getting a new full-time job or two, start looking for the next full-time job as soon as getting hired while also start handful of ventures and found other things to ... while I found the next enterprise worth investing in.
My time was thoroughly CONSUMED with finding interesting investments and then with finding interesting philanthropic pursuits. For most people, certainly for me, investing in the pursuits of others generally pays far better than investing in your own stupid shit.
But the best investment is the investment that gives you MORE and BETTER time ... not TIME to show bullshit to sheep ... the best investment offers the highest return of YOUR TIME to be spent BY YOU ... working on understanding, accomplishing YOUR OWN WHY.
So, as a youngish thirtysomething, but EXPERIENCED entrepreneur, I started looking further, not just around my own immediate surroundings but at the world ... a few years before I turned forty, the internet came along and a LOT of people started using it ... it was not the technology, per se, but the people using it that changed things [for me]. The internetworked nature of millions of innovators mattered ... innovators had email addresses and it was at a point in time back when not everyone did -- so innovators still tended to answer their email if the email asked pertinent questions because things like mailchimp had not yet thoroughly polluted email inboxes. That meant, that in the late 1990s, looking for decent investments was a TON easier, partners were particularly much easier to find ... it was easier to establish contact, have interactions, learn the inside scoop, etc. That's when I moved on to primarily investing rather trying to make my own enterprises go ... my approach was to sell out, invest, getting a new full-time job or two, start looking for the next full-time job as soon as getting hired while also start handful of ventures and found other things to ... while I found the next enterprise worth investing in.
My time was thoroughly CONSUMED with finding interesting investments and then with finding interesting philanthropic pursuits. For most people, certainly for me, investing in the pursuits of others generally pays far better than investing in your own stupid shit.
But the best investment is the investment that gives you MORE and BETTER time ... not TIME to show bullshit to sheep ... the best investment offers the highest return of YOUR TIME to be spent BY YOU ... working on understanding, accomplishing YOUR OWN WHY.
THE ESSENCE OF BEING A WARRIOR IS NEVER GIVING UP ON YOUR WHY.
The big secret of investing ... which financial industry professionals and holders of financial assets who are looking for an exit do not want you to know ... is that YOUR time is the ONLY asset that can possibly matter to YOU.
You might want to imagine that money is liquid and you can use money to buy time ... which is, actually, a particularly EVIL lie ... devilishly crafted to get you to trade your TIME and eternal soul for the world's assets, eg Mark 8:36.
The TRUTH of the matter is that it works much more efficiently and cleaning when you avoid any kind of pecuniary transaction and just invest good will and perhaps some practical assistance and cheering from the sidelines.
A small PROBLEM inherent in the financial systems nowadays is that money is tracked EXTREMELY well and for every dollar your investments return, the parasites will own five dollars, ie implicitly demand that since you used to be a large cash cow for their revenue departments, you have to continue being a cash cow, eg paying sales tax, property, registrartion, licensing fees and other things AFTER you have earned the initial return. Moreover, if you make the mistake of ever doing something traceable such as writing a check to a charity, your name will get put on the list of names of contributors and the non-profits keep the lights on in their staff offices by selling lists of contributors.
The nature of ALL transactions that make up the financial system is the inherently parasitic nature of the entire tracking system. Before long, EVERYBODY believes that they are far more entitled to what you have than you ever were ... and now the demonic souls working for philanthropics, churches and political causes are intent on collecting their tithe -- so you can end up owing their church your soul for ever sitting down or picking up a church bulletin and kicking a dime in when they passed their collection plate. Philanthropy is primarily EVIL; at best, philanthropic organizations are about organized campaigns of guilt mongering ... if you want to help out a starving man, buy him lunch and eat with him while you listen to his story.
Use your head about money ... you are not shrewd enough ... no one is shrewd enough about money. Mostly, you should avoid ever needing or using or depending upon money in your life ... if your lifestyle depends on money, you have an idiot lifestyle.
THE ESSENCE OF BEING A WARRIOR IS NEVER GIVING UP ON YOUR WHY.
The big secret of investing ... which financial industry professionals and holders of financial assets who are looking for an exit do not want you to know ... is that YOUR time is the ONLY asset that can possibly matter to YOU.
You might want to imagine that money is liquid and you can use money to buy time ... which is, actually, a particularly EVIL lie ... devilishly crafted to get you to trade your TIME and eternal soul for the world's assets, eg Mark 8:36.
The TRUTH of the matter is that it works much more efficiently and cleaning when you avoid any kind of pecuniary transaction and just invest good will and perhaps some practical assistance and cheering from the sidelines.
A small PROBLEM inherent in the financial systems nowadays is that money is tracked EXTREMELY well and for every dollar your investments return, the parasites will own five dollars, ie implicitly demand that since you used to be a large cash cow for their revenue departments, you have to continue being a cash cow, eg paying sales tax, property, registrartion, licensing fees and other things AFTER you have earned the initial return. Moreover, if you make the mistake of ever doing something traceable such as writing a check to a charity, your name will get put on the list of names of contributors and the non-profits keep the lights on in their staff offices by selling lists of contributors.
The nature of ALL transactions that make up the financial system is the inherently parasitic nature of the entire tracking system. Before long, EVERYBODY believes that they are far more entitled to what you have than you ever were ... and now the demonic souls working for philanthropics, churches and political causes are intent on collecting their tithe -- so you can end up owing their church your soul for ever sitting down or picking up a church bulletin and kicking a dime in when they passed their collection plate. Philanthropy is primarily EVIL; at best, philanthropic organizations are about organized campaigns of guilt mongering ... if you want to help out a starving man, buy him lunch and eat with him while you listen to his story.
Use your head about money ... you are not shrewd enough ... no one is shrewd enough about money. Mostly, you should avoid ever needing or using or depending upon money in your life ... if your lifestyle depends on money, you have an idiot lifestyle.
Money ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS poisons all human endeavors -- not some of the time, ALWAYS. The point of studying, doing a bit and investing in what others are doing is still the optimal path. Try really, really, really hard to just accomplish the valuable part of the result ... in other words, only go for the center of the watermelon when it comes to the result, ie leave the idiots who need proof to take possession of rind; they can also dispose of the seedy, ie pecuniary, part of the watermelon. In general, DO a lot less -- try as hard as possible to stay anonymous and stop generating any splash after you really know what you are doing ... most of the time, the best thing to do is nothing at all ... and just WAIT.
Money ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS poisons all human endeavors -- not some of the time, ALWAYS. The point of studying, doing a bit and investing in what others are doing is still the optimal path. Try really, really, really hard to just accomplish the valuable part of the result ... in other words, only go for the center of the watermelon when it comes to the result, ie leave the idiots who need proof to take possession of rind; they can also dispose of the seedy, ie pecuniary, part of the watermelon. In general, DO a lot less -- try as hard as possible to stay anonymous and stop generating any splash after you really know what you are doing ... most of the time, the best thing to do is nothing at all ... and just WAIT.
I am a venture philanthropist and open source technologist ... I do the stuff I do, partly to change the world, but mostly in order to meet the people who are doing things to change the world ... I am currently working on a prioritized list of 25 extremely stealthy ventures, ie they have URLs, RSS feeds, email addresses, social media personnas/avatars/orgs/pages for the networking/comms aspect, but these ventures are definitely not something that is publicized ... actually, there are more than 25 of these projects-in-stalking-mode, but as I have aged, I stumbled unto this concept called "limits,"
A venture is a development stalkering activity, a stealthy fishing expedition, a way of quietly meeting about 1,000 people who I want to meet in a particular realm of professional expertise ... but people that I don't yet know yet ... I never really bothered with celebrities -- but I have learned that meeting anyone with even a modicum of celebrity status is a complete waste of time. People with any celebrity status at all simply cannot get over themselves. Meet people who matter, be an interesting person for others to meet -- but you have to BE PRESENT, so recognize your limits.
I am a venture philanthropist and open source technologist ... I do the stuff I do, partly to change the world, but mostly in order to meet the people who are doing things to change the world ... I am currently working on a prioritized list of 25 extremely stealthy ventures, ie they have URLs, RSS feeds, email addresses, social media personnas/avatars/orgs/pages for the networking/comms aspect, but these ventures are definitely not something that is publicized ... actually, there are more than 25 of these projects-in-stalking-mode, but as I have aged, I stumbled unto this concept called "limits,"
A venture is a development stalkering activity, a stealthy fishing expedition, a way of quietly meeting about 1,000 people who I want to meet in a particular realm of professional expertise ... but people that I don't yet know yet ... I never really bothered with celebrities -- but I have learned that meeting anyone with even a modicum of celebrity status is a complete waste of time. People with any celebrity status at all simply cannot get over themselves. Meet people who matter, be an interesting person for others to meet -- but you have to BE PRESENT, so recognize your limits.
As an old man, I have finally realized that, even with lots of tools to enable me, I just cannot possibly keep track of more than about 25,000 people around the world who are doing kinda big things that interest me. The notion of "limits" is new territory for me ... maybe if I learn what limits are so that I can focus, I might actually find 2500 or 25 who might matter more ... "limits" is completely new territory for me ... I guess, limits are sorta like this concept of discipline, ie these things are not what people told me they were or like other propaganda I swallowed when I was still a pup, before I was forty-five or so.
As an old man, I have finally realized that, even with lots of tools to enable me, I just cannot possibly keep track of more than about 25,000 people around the world who are doing kinda big things that interest me. The notion of "limits" is new territory for me ... maybe if I learn what limits are so that I can focus, I might actually find 2500 or 25 who might matter more ... "limits" is completely new territory for me ... I guess, limits are sorta like this concept of discipline, ie these things are not what people told me they were or like other propaganda I swallowed when I was still a pup, before I was forty-five or so.
NEVER give up on your MISSION.
As warriors, our mission is not ever something that we have chosen. We might have an inkling but we do not know -- all other humans have even less of an inkling, but the biggest morons in the species will not be able to stop themselves from telling you what you should do or how you should live.
NEVER give up on your MISSION.
As warriors, our mission is not ever something that we have chosen. We might have an inkling but we do not know -- all other humans have even less of an inkling, but the biggest morons in the species will not be able to stop themselves from telling you what you should do or how you should live.
Our mission is, by our Creator's design, something that we must figure out.
It's a mission inside of a mission ... a riddle or koan ... something that we can discover and appreciate only through a full lifetime of dedicated search.
Our mission is, by our Creator's design, something that we must figure out.
It's a mission inside of a mission ... a riddle or koan ... something that we can discover and appreciate only through a full lifetime of dedicated search.
The ESSENCE of being a warrior is the discovery of your WHY.
There's always another WHY inside the fulfillment of the first WHY. EACH moment of your life is about better understanding, better executing, better discovering your life's WHY. Nothing should be allowed in your life which gets in the way of discovering a deeper level of your WHY ... there's always another WHY.
There is not enough time to waste on the stupid shit that others want you waste time on. Most of us squander the wealth we have been given, because we, for unfathomable reasons, cannot stop squandering because we keep fantasizing that the wealth we have is insufficient and that we will be given more wealth. The ONLY wealth that matters is time. ALL other forms of wealth, power, fame or whatever you want to name do not matter as much as the TIME that you can spend ALONE with your Creator.
We are given a pile of riches ... 86,400 seconds to TIME ... every day in our lives. Of course, we never know that we will get the full day ... but for all practical purposes, we can plan the day ahead with reasonably decent idea of what that day will be like. We can also plan tomorrow, with the understanding that it might be a lot like today ... but as we go further out, we can be more sure that our plans will need to change. Thus, as we look ahead at the horizon we should only think in terms of SMART goals and objectives ... realizing that our plans will need to change.
The only thing that we can be CERTAIN of is that if we plan by dwelling in the past ... longing for the past, hoping that the past could be like it was ... if we look in the rear view mirror, we can be absolutely certain that our plans will crash in a brutal, painful, disgusting, wasteful manner ... there are people who want to live in the past ... it is important to let the dead bury their dead ... there is no way to change these people ... they have to be left behind ... if they want to change and live in the present, they can try to catch up.
It's one thing to learn the general lessons of history, but worshipping one's ancestors is pure EVIL ... your Creator did not create your ancestors; your Creator created your future ... look to the future, do not wish to be with your ancestors, do not gossip about your contemporaries ... LIVE in the future part of NOW ... that means that we should practice self-control in our meditation or in our practice to control our mind, trying as hard as we can try to be fully present in the moment of NOW in order to achieve the discipline of NOWNESS and to make our existence as we move forward being about discovering our WHY.
The ESSENCE of being a warrior is the discovery of your WHY.
There's always another WHY inside the fulfillment of the first WHY. EACH moment of your life is about better understanding, better executing, better discovering your life's WHY. Nothing should be allowed in your life which gets in the way of discovering a deeper level of your WHY ... there's always another WHY.
There is not enough time to waste on the stupid shit that others want you waste time on. Most of us squander the wealth we have been given, because we, for unfathomable reasons, cannot stop squandering because we keep fantasizing that the wealth we have is insufficient and that we will be given more wealth. The ONLY wealth that matters is time. ALL other forms of wealth, power, fame or whatever you want to name do not matter as much as the TIME that you can spend ALONE with your Creator.
We are given a pile of riches ... 86,400 seconds to TIME ... every day in our lives. Of course, we never know that we will get the full day ... but for all practical purposes, we can plan the day ahead with reasonably decent idea of what that day will be like. We can also plan tomorrow, with the understanding that it might be a lot like today ... but as we go further out, we can be more sure that our plans will need to change. Thus, as we look ahead at the horizon we should only think in terms of SMART goals and objectives ... realizing that our plans will need to change.
The only thing that we can be CERTAIN of is that if we plan by dwelling in the past ... longing for the past, hoping that the past could be like it was ... if we look in the rear view mirror, we can be absolutely certain that our plans will crash in a brutal, painful, disgusting, wasteful manner ... there are people who want to live in the past ... it is important to let the dead bury their dead ... there is no way to change these people ... they have to be left behind ... if they want to change and live in the present, they can try to catch up.
It's one thing to learn the general lessons of history, but worshipping one's ancestors is pure EVIL ... your Creator did not create your ancestors; your Creator created your future ... look to the future, do not wish to be with your ancestors, do not gossip about your contemporaries ... LIVE in the future part of NOW ... that means that we should practice self-control in our meditation or in our practice to control our mind, trying as hard as we can try to be fully present in the moment of NOW in order to achieve the discipline of NOWNESS and to make our existence as we move forward being about discovering our WHY.
Discipline Equals Freedom.
Discipline Equals Freedom.
Your freedom is not free and not something that was given to you -- your freedom comes out of your discipline.
We start with zero discipline ... we may even start with bad discipline or the addiction to bad habits, laziness, gluttony, hate. We start where we start. We do not just get new start. This is about EARNING our freedom ... every single moment.
We can and must get better. There's always room for improvement in the discipline of improving the effectiveness of our discipline ... it's not just about going through the motions and putting the time in our training ... improving discipline is about mindfully working with intention to improve discipline.
Being present
Your freedom is not free and not something that was given to you -- your freedom comes out of your discipline.
We start with zero discipline ... we may even start with bad discipline or the addiction to bad habits, laziness, gluttony, hate. We start where we start. We do not just get new start. This is about EARNING our freedom ... every single moment.
We can and must get better. There's always room for improvement in the discipline of improving the effectiveness of our discipline ... it's not just about going through the motions and putting the time in our training ... improving discipline is about mindfully working with intention to improve discipline.
Being present
In order to truly BE PRESENT ... we must try to live life seeing through the eyes of those around us.
In order to truly BE PRESENT ... we must try to live life seeing through the eyes of those around us.
We might not all be great at doing this, nobody starts off being great ... but we can work at it. As we meet people and see their struggeles, we gain maturity.
This is why maturity is not a matter of vintage or miles on the odometer. Mature people have DONE things ... they have acquired friendships and built professional relationships along the way ... they have deep, broad, vast NETWORKS because they are capable of being present for others.
We might not all be great at doing this, nobody starts off being great ... but we can work at it. As we meet people and see their struggeles, we gain maturity.
This is why maturity is not a matter of vintage or miles on the odometer. Mature people have DONE things ... they have acquired friendships and built professional relationships along the way ... they have deep, broad, vast NETWORKS because they are capable of being present for others.
Being present means fully occupying the moment of NOW ... and that includes everything going through our minds as we plan and execute, look forward and work at getting to be more effective in our training. Effectiveness in our training is not just going through the appearances of training ... it's about training for a result.
Being present means fully occupying the moment of NOW ... and that includes everything going through our minds as we plan and execute, look forward and work at getting to be more effective in our training. Effectiveness in our training is not just going through the appearances of training ... it's about training for a result.
For example ... older long-distance runners who are not just really good at long-distance training ... but understand, from a lifetime of training and accomplishing things as professionals and in different aspects of life, understand why their time and energies are severely limited ... if they cannot train effectively; there are other things to do with life ... we cannot do1000s of things in a day; we need to focus on what we must achieve ... and when we are training, we need to train, ie there's NO room in a training routine for things like earbuds or fashion statements. It's it's time to train, then you only have enough bandwidth in your mind to train ... when it's time to pimp, then you can pimp yourself out.
For example ... older long-distance runners who are not just really good at long-distance training ... but understand, from a lifetime of training and accomplishing things as professionals and in different aspects of life, understand why their time and energies are severely limited ... if they cannot train effectively; there are other things to do with life ... we cannot do1000s of things in a day; we need to focus on what we must achieve ... and when we are training, we need to train, ie there's NO room in a training routine for things like earbuds or fashion statements. It's it's time to train, then you only have enough bandwidth in your mind to train ... when it's time to pimp, then you can pimp yourself out.
"Just do it" is a dandy slogan if you want to sell $2 worth of shoe material for $200 to kinds of morons who swallow such marketing slogans -- but if you want to train, you need to train with intention as you train. Just doing it is not enough, particularly if you have any amount of maturity and insight. "Just doing it" is for young idiots with energy to burn. As an adult, you need to THINK... each moment is about THINKING and building discipline ... discipline does NOT come from just doing.
Being present means that you understand why time is short
"Just do it" is a dandy slogan if you want to sell $2 worth of shoe material for $200 to kinds of morons who swallow such marketing slogans -- but if you want to train, you need to train with intention as you train. Just doing it is not enough, particularly if you have any amount of maturity and insight. "Just doing it" is for young idiots with energy to burn. As an adult, you need to THINK... each moment is about THINKING and building discipline ... discipline does NOT come from just doing.
Being present means that you understand why time is short
Mature people make time count. You might think that you have all the time in the world if you are still less than 60 or less than the age when the funerals in your extended circle become so routine that you simply cannot POSSIBLY attend all that you should ... when you are mature, you KNOW way, way too many people very well ... and those people tend to be quality souls who also know way way too many people very well ... everyone has a loved one who has just died or is dying ... until you are mature, you do not understand how/why your time left ... especially the time to engage with other people ... is severely limited.
When you are finally mature, you finally actually get why there's no reason to just go through the motions and to go out there and just move around or just run junk miles ... part of it is that when we are older, likely injure ourselves or, at minimum, burn off energy and waste time in order to get the endorphin kick ... but, mostly, it's best to use that anxiety or anxiousness that comes from not having exhausted ourselves yet ... we don't want to burn off the energy to experience a runners high ... instead, we want to use the stress to improve the discipline of improving our discipline, we must train mindfully with intense intention.
Mature people make time count. You might think that you have all the time in the world if you are still less than 60 or less than the age when the funerals in your extended circle become so routine that you simply cannot POSSIBLY attend all that you should ... when you are mature, you KNOW way, way too many people very well ... and those people tend to be quality souls who also know way way too many people very well ... everyone has a loved one who has just died or is dying ... until you are mature, you do not understand how/why your time left ... especially the time to engage with other people ... is severely limited.
When you are finally mature, you finally actually get why there's no reason to just go through the motions and to go out there and just move around or just run junk miles ... part of it is that when we are older, likely injure ourselves or, at minimum, burn off energy and waste time in order to get the endorphin kick ... but, mostly, it's best to use that anxiety or anxiousness that comes from not having exhausted ourselves yet ... we don't want to burn off the energy to experience a runners high ... instead, we want to use the stress to improve the discipline of improving our discipline, we must train mindfully with intense intention.
Improving the discipline of improving your discipline, thinking harder, PREPARING to better execute in the future NOWs of our life.
Improving the discipline of improving your discipline, thinking harder, PREPARING to better execute in the future NOWs of our life.
Warriors NEED the aggravation of preparation ... we might want to just get into it to just get on with the mission, to stop practicing ... but we need more practice ... we more practice time, we need to better use the time beforehand to prep like a motherfucker.
Do NOT quit on the aggravating prep beforehand.
Warriors NEED the aggravation of preparation ... we might want to just get into it to just get on with the mission, to stop practicing ... but we need more practice ... we more practice time, we need to better use the time beforehand to prep like a motherfucker.
Do NOT quit on the aggravating prep beforehand.
Prep is NEVER easy; if you think that it's easy -- then you've missed something and likely are doing it wrong. Prep is never easy. It's uncomfortable, it hurts, it's never good enough, it's tedious ... everybody know that it sucks ... EMBRACE THE SUCK.
We improve the discipline of nownesses by training and executing this discipline of preparation with intention.
Prep is NEVER easy; if you think that it's easy -- then you've missed something and likely are doing it wrong. Prep is never easy. It's uncomfortable, it hurts, it's never good enough, it's tedious ... everybody know that it sucks ... EMBRACE THE SUCK.
We improve the discipline of nownesses by training and executing this discipline of preparation with intention.
Execution with intention means that it's not about just about banging away and daydreaming about some idiotic infatuation or mindless desire. Disciplined execution with intention is about a mindful desire, to constantly improve the discipline of improving the discipline.
It is this recursive discipline of nowness, including the discipline to improve the discipline, which provides ALL moments of genuine freedom life.
Execution with intention means that it's not about just about banging away and daydreaming about some idiotic infatuation or mindless desire. Disciplined execution with intention is about a mindful desire, to constantly improve the discipline of improving the discipline.
It is this recursive discipline of nowness, including the discipline to improve the discipline, which provides ALL moments of genuine freedom life.
Everything Dies.
We start our lives with the unimaginably perfect blessing of conception ... we cannot possibly improve upon the brilliant magic of the moment of our initial creation. Our success in life, therefore, has nothing to do with the garbage we add.
Success is entirely a matter of what obstacles you can take away. Our best strategy is a matter of gratitude and attempting to repent, forgive and live as best we can imperfectly, perfecting our lives to be somewhat free of sin.
You cannot really discover your why fully until the day of your death ... since understanding comes from attempts to execute, failures and attempting to use mistakes to better understand ... as a warrior, you will especially value those times when your death was absolutely certain and unavoidable ... you will understand why the bonuses of the magical extension of life can come only after you realize that your Creator helped to re-create your life when you should not have survived.
Everything Dies.
We start our lives with the unimaginably perfect blessing of conception ... we cannot possibly improve upon the brilliant magic of the moment of our initial creation. Our success in life, therefore, has nothing to do with the garbage we add.
Success is entirely a matter of what obstacles you can take away. Our best strategy is a matter of gratitude and attempting to repent, forgive and live as best we can imperfectly, perfecting our lives to be somewhat free of sin.
You cannot really discover your why fully until the day of your death ... since understanding comes from attempts to execute, failures and attempting to use mistakes to better understand ... as a warrior, you will especially value those times when your death was absolutely certain and unavoidable ... you will understand why the bonuses of the magical extension of life can come only after you realize that your Creator helped to re-create your life when you should not have survived.
Every so often, you should spend a moment or two of gratitude for the BONUSES of your life ... and reflect upon how much time you have spent in the Bonus ... the reason for doing this is that Life is something that NEVER should be taken for granted.
When is the last time, you faced a death that you knew then was certain ... reflect upon that Bonus
Every so often, you should spend a moment or two of gratitude for the BONUSES of your life ... and reflect upon how much time you have spent in the Bonus ... the reason for doing this is that Life is something that NEVER should be taken for granted.
When is the last time, you faced a death that you knew then was certain ... reflect upon that Bonus