Stuff is going well for me. I am starting to see the tracking signs of success and of hitting a larger audience–the audience I have always wanted. No question there is a long way to go but the wheels are in motion. A college professor in Virginia is teaching my paper format in one of her classes. Some of the smartest people on the internet–in America–read my site and apparently consider me of enough potential to give feedback. Traffic is up and every few weeks I wake up to find myself with an avalanche of new readers.

But here is the dirty little secret: None of it means anything. It doesn’t mean a thing. And it wouldn’t if it was multiplied by thousand. It won’t fix who you are. No amount of people liking you or reading your thoughts or talking about you is going to change the person you look at in the mirror. Because as far as your daily existence goes, the effects are negligible. Facebook friends don’t exist, they are just bits of computer data. And I know this sounds heretical and a ton of kids would kill for these opportunities–I thought the exact same things when I didn’t have them. They matter sure, and they are fantastic but it they don’t alter the fundamentals of life.

You have to be happy with you. There is that Herodotus line about going out to enslave and coming back in the same chains you brought with you. I’m starting to feel that life is the same way–that the world, if you’re not careful, can end up being your master instead of the other way around. Or as Durden said “the things you own, end up owning you.” Layne Staley used to say that no matter who you are or what you’ve done, you still go home to yourself every night. And that is the fucking truth. So more than anything, getting that right is your first priority.

There is no excuse to ever stop working on that. It is the ultimate project, the one thing that determines all other things. But people are lazy and substances and delusions and dissonance are tempting alternatives. And I hate to tell you this, but they just don’t work.

I might not even be close to achieving the balance I am after but I do know that without it, I will never be happy. The whole “using the fear of not winning to keep winning” is to always be a tool and never an addiction. From what little I have seen so far, the game always lasts longer than the victory–you spend more time getting there than you spend there. So it stands to reason that unless you can enjoy the journey, the nature of things has predisposed you to an unfavorable ratio.

Cicero‘s view was that you unless you can be happy on the rack, you can never be happy anywhere. Because if your contentment depends on anything that can be taken away from you then you’ll always be plagued with the fear of losing it. So the solution is to give in a little, embrace the chaos–the art of acquiescence. That there is no good and bad, only perception. And the secret then is to understand the transient nature of things–to appreciate them while they are here and look upon them fondly when they are gone. But who does that really? Who honestly can say that their happiness depends on little externally and that a quick punch from fate couldn’t knock down the things they’ve built?

I know I can’t. But I’m working on it.

To be continued…

“Sex Differences in Obesity Rates in Poor Countries: Evidence from South Africa“–Anne Case and Alicia Menendez last week. The paper was rather unremarkable with the exception of this:

“For women, childhood deprivation is positively and significantly associated with obesity. Women who reported going to bed hungry and to school hungry and who ate at other’s houses because there wasn’t enough food, are 15 percentage points more likely to be obese than are women who report none of these. Moving a woman from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile of the distribution of income person is associated with an increase in obesity among women of 10 percentage points.”

Only in women. Do people subconsciously compensate for what they’ve missed out on? Why wouldn’t men do the same thing? I’d love to see an answer to this. I guess it could be a good thing though: Fat women more jolly

Love, Hate and Murder: Commitment Devices in Violent Relationships—Anna Aizer, Pedro Dal Bó Interesting application of Game Theory to abusive relationships. Basically, the authors advocate a no-drop rule which would dictate that once domestic violence was reported the prosecutor would continue with the case regardless of the woman recanting her confession (this term is helpful.) This gets inside the interaction and increasing the incentive to report and decreases the necessity of murdering your partner. Of course, this provides the paradox we see with the 3 Strikes Laws–it might increase the severity of the abuse since once the action is undertaken, the criminal has little to lose.

Which is my main problem with reading academic papers. They are so sterile and seem to lack any motivation to guess at the implications. Data without context is pretty meaningless. As always, head to Overcoming Bias and Marginal Revolution for that (the latter of which was the source for these particular papers)

Purple Cow—Seth Godin Better than The Dip but primarily about marketing. Assertion: That being normal and average is a gamble that rarely pays off.

On the Orator—Cicero Read this post and read the book.

Rereads: 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene and The Histories by Herodotus. I wanted to read up on the Battle of Marathon. I am currently enthralled with it. I talk about the rabbit hole sometimes and this is a pretty good example. I was flipping through 33SOW and I read Robert’s retelling of the epic battle as part of the “divide and rule” strategy. It might actually be one of his best written pieces–the men “caked in dust and blood” and so on. Then I looked in the index of Histories and read his version of it but still wanted more. I talked to Robert today and found out his source on the subject and now “The Greco Persian Wars” is in the mail and arriving Thursday.

“It seems to me that utilizing the “Spartan” technique would be motivated by _not_ mastering the subject, and _not_ having enthusiasm. Otherwise why use a model so restrictive?

I think you actually mentioned somewhere in your Spartan essay that using your formula would ensure safety from the teacher marking you down for not adhering to the prompt. Is that really worth sacrificing your creative liberty? I guess it would be for some one who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and doesn’t really care.

I got this comment about the paper format and it is something that I encounter pretty often. This attitude is more than just about the paper–it’s just the wrong way to look at life. It is the scourge of people who look to make change and the refuge of people who like talking more than doing.

Of course my format has some limitations. Welcome to the real fucking world. Compromise, give and take–it’s called strategy. You figure out what you want and then your figure out the best means of getting there. Are essays a relatively stupid way of judging comprehension? Sure. But they exist and you’re 17, so deal with it (likewise to whatever you’re doing). So they key is to find the best way to accomplish what you’d like to accomplish or to say what you want to do say in a manner that doesn’t involve needless punishment or prima facie dismissal. That’s not selling out–it’s called being a man.

As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it as, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be–it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.

Alinsky, Saul D.

Rules for Radicals

There is a difference between something being restrictive and being simple. The paper format is simple. True mastery becomes simplicity–it becomes intuitive. If you can’t explain your point simply, basically and straight-forwardly then you haven’t mastered it. I was observing a conversation a few weeks ago between someone who was a supposed expert and a lay person. The expert was using all these buzzwords and complicated language and the other person asked him to explain because he was confused. And in response, the expert got even more technical and complex. To me, this was proof that the guy had absolutely no clue what he was talking about, because if you can’t be utterly simple then you don’t have a true understanding. The goal is to find the most basic, most approachable way of delivering your message and then to ram it through until it stops working. Sure, a two intro paragraph-rambling-Bob Dylan quoting paper is more artistic and creative but it just doesn’t do the job. And if it doesn’t do the job then you’re just pleasuring yourself. As Frank Luntz would say “it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.”

This in turn facilitates passion. If you cut the time you have to spend on aesthetics, then you increase the time you can spend on content–on the message. Which should always be your goal. The less effort you need to exert screaming to get people to listen is effort that can be spent doing what Cicero wanted: Mastering the subject. With a paper it’s the same, the format allows you to dedicate yourself to thinking and then the thoughts write themselves. And that’s how it should be when you try to change a system: What is your ROI? If it’s not working, try something else.

Lastly, prompts are almost always stupid. And so are the rules within any system. They have to be. The last thing a teacher wants is 40 kids writing about whatever the fuck they want. The incumbents look to minimize effort on their part. So a prompt is designed to create similar, obvious answers. So are rules, traditions and customs. The format allows you to get the grade but ACTUALLY be creative. That’s the beauty of it. When you redefine and the continually codify through the Spartan square, you get away with being creative. People hate outliers and in this case, you are disguising an outlier as rule-abider. This is always the key to my strategy: How do I get away with being innovative but still look ordinary?

A true radical has to work within the system. If it is a system worth destroying, it is a powerful one. And the way to destroy a powerful enemy is to use it’s own strength against it. I talked last week about challenging the way things are and have been, but you must do it intelligently. If wearing whatever I wanted to work prevented me from being effective, I would stop. And so should you.

There are people out there whether it be in Hollywood or Wall Street or your 8th grade classroom that have already made their bones and their money. They don’t want you to succeed. If you announce your intentions or your flagrantly flaunt a disregard for the “way of doing things” they’ll spend their time sabotaging you instead of competing. People are shocked when revolutionaries or cult figures are killed–what did you expect? Power is power is power. People disappear every fucking day. There is nothing noble about taking some ludicrous stand on something you have no possibility of coming through on.

Plenty of people, especially young people, talk about radical change but don’t have the balls to do. And real balls isn’t living a utopia where words are enough and everyone listens to your objections–it’s getting up everyday pushing the discussion where you want it to go, of trying a 100 things for every 10 successes, of protecting what’s truly important over what is just ego, and realizing how pathetic and cowardly martyrs really are. So take stands on the hills you’re willing to die on and save the rest for the immolators.

That is where the paper format finds it’s roots.