Life’s Biggest Paradox

The recent posts on IQ, the intelligence gap, etcetera on Vox’s blog and his Sigma Game one too, along with a number of other recent considerations I have been mulling over with regard to the general malaise of this planet’s humanity both as a whole and as considered in their multiply fractal subdivisions right down to the individual, have got me to a point where I may begin to try to articulate a concept that I have been living with most of my life.

In simple terms it goes something like this:

Broadly speaking, almost nothing is really relevant, and yet, your life is absolutely relevant (regardless of whether you are aware of it, reach anything like your full potential in various facets of life and so on).

If you have read my post on violence and gunfights, you may be able to better understand what I mean. The long and the short of that post was that pretty much 95% of everything related to those two topics (assault/violence/gunfights) that you come across is bullshit.

The fact is that even if you train obsessively, unless you kinda go looking for it, the likelihood of you being in an actual gunfight are pretty close to nil. The chances of you being in some violent altercation are somewhat higher, but you can mostly negate those by the simple expedient of increasing your situational awareness in general even if you take zero time training in martial arts or using a firearms under stressful situations.

In the event that you DO end up in a gunfight, again, most of all the detailed supposedly pivotal information provided by armchair and paper experts, but even, too often, by supposedly highly trained “operators” is, again, mostly almost entirely irrelevant. If you can operate your weapon effectively under duress and hit a head-sized object repeatedly at twenty feet or less almost all the time, you are in the top 0.1% of people when it comes to being effective in a gun fight. The calibre or type of gun you use being a minor consideration at best.

Now, extend that sort of general realisation to pretty much everything else.

Unless you are in Ukraine or Gaza, the wars in those places are essentially mostly irrelevant to you. Not completely of course, because your petrol and heating costs go up, and so on, but the impact is not immediately drastic for 99% of the population on Earth compared to those who are actively involved. If you are generally prepared for the apocalyptic economic collapse that maths says will happen at some point, you are well ahead of the curve with respect of most of the rest of humanity. Obsessing about every detail of those conflicts can only lead to added anxiety and lowered immune systems without providing you any further benefit.

Given this overall philosophy, life could easily become seen as a futile exercise and one could easily slip into depression. That too is a trap, because while it is true that 95% of literally everything is bullshit, there is that 5% that makes it all worth it. And it would do so even if it was only 1%.

I always excelled at my job when I was in the corporate rat race and outperformed every financial target that was expected of me, even in those jobs where I was ultimately fired. And yes, I was “let go” on a number of occasions. And an even higher number of times I walked away on my own. How is it possible, you say that I double the expected profit margins and yet get “let go”? I must be lying, or missing out some part of the story, right? Not really. The only part of the story I am missing out is that several times I uncovered either outright fraud or incompetence within the higher ups. I didn’t even make it public for the most part, but the higher ups were aware I was aware. And they were also aware I was not corruptible. The idea a person would not either join them nor be against them necessarily, threatened them instantly (which is understandable).

My work in the UK was never seen by me as a “career”. If I had viewed it that way and applied myself that way, I would undoubtedly be a very wealthy person. That route however would have required a level of internal repression of my basic nature that made the prospect absolutely intolerable to me. I simply saw it as a job. In fact, as a job with a specific firm that would last as long as it lasted. Several years in the best cases, a few weeks in the worst cases. When I did my job, I did it very well and I put as much effort into it as needed to ensure I did outperform every target they had for me. I could do that precisely because it wasn’t that important to me. I am honest and I was hired to do a job so I did it well, but the job itself was not particularly interesting or meaningful to me. I took my satisfactions where I could and so on, and it’s nice to have a nice portfolio of prestigious jobs behind me, but I was perfectly happy being a mercenary that understood the value of both being a team member in a good team, or working independently when required.

I mention this to try and explain the perspective that most of life is filled with irrelevancies. Even the big events, while meaningful to you and some certainly will feel or even be life or death events from your perspective, are ultimately, in the scheme of things, not all that big a deal.

Your divorce and family implosion is a huge deal to you and your children, of course, and yet, most divorces are survived somehow. The culture is going to crap mostly everywhere, and yet you are generally comfortable enough as the world goes to Hell in a handbasket. From a bird’s eye view, very few things matter, and those that do are often things most people have very little control over.

So, if you have this perspective, I wanted to share with you my method for absolutely avoiding nihilistic despair, because I see people, especially younger people, falling into this absolute trap of thinking that since life is so “bad” nothing really matters. That is a mistake, a big, big error and one you should never make.

So here is my recipe:

• Never, ever, assume the global is the personal and vice versa
• Find the level of “resolution” that is important to you for different aspects of life and operate there. For example:
  • My professional work was relevant to me as maybe an 8 bit grayscale arcade game. You can still enjoy it and do well at Prince of Persia in monochrome, but you will not cry tears of despair if you need to switch to another 8 bit monochrome game like Bubble Bobble.
  • My personal life was always in full 8k colour and maximum level graphic card importance to me, though it had many facets and perspectives and within it each facet and perspective had a generally high level of resolution but not all had the highest resolution setting.
• Have a compelling future. Without a target, something to aim for, an idea that motivates you to get out of bed in the morning, life can be misery, so, create something to work towards. And yet…
• Be flexible in the extreme towards that future goal, because life invariably will throw monkey wrenches, the whole monkey, and the whole monkey’s troop with their monkey wrenches and also a few grenades in whatever plan you make. Life is essentially war, and as Clausewitz supposedly said, no plan survives contact with the enemy. This does not mean you are a butterfly with never solid targets, but rather the opposite, that whatever happens, and whatever route-changes you need to make, including drastic ones, you nevertheless continue heading towards the same goal from whatever unlikely position you end up finding yourself. The truth is that many high-minded concepts are usually extremely unlikely to happen in one or even two years, but relentless action in a specific direction almost always produces effective results over say 20 years.

I can attest to that “20 years” concept in a number of fields, where my interest was always high. In some cases I achieved a level of understanding or competence that then resulted in me deciding I had achieved what I wanted in that respect and then moved on to other interests, and in some cases the interest remains or even deepens and will continue to do so until death. A few examples (not to boast, but to give examples to those who might be new readers here as the numbers increase regularly):

• Astronomy – I figured out the real history of Humanity to a previously unrealised degree, what happened on Mars and probably in other places of our Solar system to a degree that everyone else is still catching up to, including those who admitted plagiarising some of my work. I have reached a level of understanding of this that is sufficient for me to not devote much time to it now, primarily because my children and other endeavours occupy me and interest me more. Left to my own devices in a bubble universe, I would probably continue to explore this topic endlessly. And I still dream of building my own mini observatory.
• Martial Arts – At age 54, and with a farm to try to get into some if not profitable at least break-even production level, 5 children and other things to do too, my interest for physically training with other people is not zero, but again, other priorities come into effect. If I won the lottery tomorrow and I could have my own little dojo build next to the house, I would happily entertain regular training with others, preferably not as teacher (unlikely, given the location) or at least, if I am to teach, so that I can also train with the guys while doing so. But as it is, my training today is mostly along a different route, which involves more generic concepts, like overall health, situational awareness on a daily basis and weapons training.
• Catholicism – Having been a Zen Agnostic until age 43, so given only some ten years of study on it, I am still a relative “novice” at being a Catholic (compared to my own somewhat obsessive-compulsive standards, though I surpass many supposed “professional” theologians at understanding the dogma, application of it, history and realities of Catholicism) and the lessons in it, like those of martial arts, are infinite, so I think in some way this topic will continue to deepen for me with time.
• Hypnosis – Having done and studied this deeply for nearly 20 years now, this remains a fascinating topic, though in deepening it, some related aspects have probably taken a front-seat, even if directly related to hypnosis, like the neurology and physiology of the brain as well as aspects of the mind, electromagnetic fields we all have, and other aspects related to mirror neurones and so on, all fasciante me and continue to be of interest.

Those are just my “hobbies” so to speak, my most important topics relate to relationships with women and ultimately marriage, relationships with my children, and loved ones, and relationships with my friends and the things we can achieve if we work together on some things we care about.

I certainly am not short of things that keep my interest despite me being acutely aware of the hellscape we live in and the mutant wastelands we are surrounded by, with roaming radioactive mutants, polluted skies and rabid zombies, along with gay, mentally ill, would-be “overlords” that want to destroy people like me down to the very last DNA strand.

Before I was Catholic I kept myself busy this way and never fell into despair. After becoming Catholic, not only is despair impossible, but I am at times mildly euphoric as I recognise that however hard things may temporarily seem from any given perspective of the day, eventually, due course, whether I see it myself with my own eyes or not, victory, for our side, is absolutely inevitable.

I hope therefore, to have given a few of you reading this some positive concepts to think and act on.

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