human behavior – Page 4 – My Mental Model

How Many Innocent Lives is a Police Officer Worth?

This is a very real question that we’ll have to try to answer in the near future.

Growing up, I had assumed zero. I guess I was wrong.

I don’t like quoting stats because highlighting a single data point within a pattern can be misleading. But 66 unarmed people were killed by the US police last year. Up from 48 the year before. I don’t know all of their stories. I haven’t seen all the body cam footage. But from what I have seen, something desperately needs to change.

I’ve known about the darker places of the internet for a long time. I’ve watched the Yakuza chop fingers off, I’ve watched public beheadings in the middle east, I’ve seen military executions, and I even watched a Boeing exec get fucked to death by a horse. I know what’s out there, but I don’t gravitate towards it. When I watch, I see moments of weakness. Moments of confusion. Moments of darkness. They inform, but they don’t inspire. This year, I watched more footage of people being killed than any other year, and most of that was body cam footage from police officers.

I don’t watch them expecting to make excuses for the police or the people they’re pointing guns at. I recognize that for all parties involved, it’s probably the most stressful moment of their entire lives and people don’t always perform well under pressure. What I try to do is understand what exactly is happening and how we could’ve avoided the loss of an innocent life.

In each video that I’ve seen, the person who was shot ‘reached’ for something. Sometimes it was the waistband, sometimes the back pocket, but in every case, there was a motion that suggested to the police officer that they were drawing a concealed weapon. That’s the moment where the officer went from pointing a weapon to taking an innocent life. I think that’s a moment worth exploring.

I’ve never faced a situation like that before. Perhaps it’s like pointing a rifle at a bear that’s getting closer and closer. You don’t want to kill the bear, but you know that if the bear notices you, it’ll likely charge, and you’re unlikely to survive. I always warn against making decisions out of fear. It tends to use the least intelligent parts of the brain. And I don’t think that analogy holds up anyways. You can’t have a dialogue with a bear. You don’t already have the bear in a position of submission. You don’t have the other tools necessary to de-escalate the situation. If that’s your state of mind in these situations, then they never should’ve let you out of basic training. But that’s not what I’m seeing when I’m watching these videos.

I’m seeing people who lack the emotional stability to carry firearms. I’m seeing people who have yet to grasp the value of a human life. I’m seeing people grappling with their own issues while pointing a gun at another human being. I’m seeing the fear that comes with a society who thinks everyone should be armed with deadly force. I’m seeing a bad problem made worse with military grade weaponry. I’m seeing a failure of training. I see a corrupt organizational culture. Worst of all, I see a problem that could be easily solved and that the police don’t seem motivated to fix.

All officers should be supported with an extensive psychological health program. That starts with a screening process designed to keep the trigger-happy cosplay-commandos out. Then it continues with ongoing evaluations and therapy. We need to accept that the damage officers take out there isn’t just physical. Rather than putting them through the shit and expecting them to sort things out on their own, we need to give them the tools and support necessary for them to stay healthy, inside and out. If an officer watches his partner get lit up, or is first on the scene to something you think you’d only see in a Rob Zombie movie, we need to be there for them. If that’s not something they can come back from, help them find something else. And this all needs to be done by a third party which doesn’t have to answer to the politics of law enforcement.

The failure of training seems to be the one that everyone agrees on, including the police. But it doesn’t seem to be working. Perhaps I can make a few suggestions. Don’t escalate the situation to the point where the person is so scared that they lose the ability to think rationally. Don’t ask them to do something that might make them reach for something, when you’re going to assume that what they’re reaching for is a weapon. I’d like to put that all under humanity 101 but here’s the real change I’d like to see: If there are multiple officers targeting the same suspect, all with weapons-hot, wait until you can see an actual weapon. You’re right, it’s only a split second between seeing the weapon and being shot at, but you should be trained to make that split second decision properly.

Mistakes will still be made. Waiting until you see the weapon might mean a few extra dead officers. But it’ll also mean that just about every single unarmed civilian who was murdered by a police officer this year would still be alive. That’s the trade off. A few brave souls who put their lives on the line so that the innocent may live in peace. That’s what you signed up for. That is your glory. That is your honor. Own it. That is the proud and noble history of law enforcement. What we’re seeing now is gang violence.

But that’s not going to change anytime soon. Especially with the commander and chief excited about deploying more military grade equipment into local municipalities. I can’t help but think that the general anxiety that the country is experiencing plays into this as well. Protests, riots, terrorism, political instability, cultural divisions… maybe everyone is a little on edge. There’s gotta be something else we can do.

I often say that if both people are looking for something reasonable, compromise is just a lack of imagination. I think this qualifies. Police officers would like to not be shot by a suspect who may or may not have a concealed weapon. Suspects who are trying to comply, would like to not be shot whether or not they have a concealed weapon on them. Police officers would like to not be at risk of being assaulted by a weapon as they try to place a suspect into custody. Suspects who are trying to comply would like to not be shot by an officer while being placed into custody. There’s always that risk that as soon as an officer takes his finger off the trigger, things go sideways. There’s always a chance that when the suspect makes an unexpected movement, things go sideways. So we need a way for officers to subdue suspects, without having to close the distance or take the finger off the trigger. Tranquilizer darts.

I’m not going to bother looking up what’s on the market right now that might work because I think that if this was going to be deployed, it would have to be a custom job. You’d need a compound that worked quickly, effectively, and left no side-effects. When you approach the scene, and you can’t determine whether or not the person has a weapon? Tell them that. Tell them to go belly down with their arms where you can see them, and that you’re gonna shoot them with a tranquilizer dart. When they wake up, they’ll be in cuffs in the back of a squad car and everyone can figure out what happened. Crazy junkie on bath salts? Tranq dart. Guy pulls a knife from 20 feet away? Tranq dart. In just about every scenario short of someone firing live rounds at you, tranq dart.

The other solution that’s crossed my mind is gender equality. The ratio of male to female officers in American law-enforcement is about 9:1. I can’t help but wonder if the boys in blue would be a little less trigger happy if there were a few more girls around. But women aren’t as big and strong as men, and etc., etc. True, but are we so sure that size and strength are the most important qualities of a law enforcement officer? Maybe thinking that size and strength are the most important qualities is an issue unto itself. If we saw a 1:1 ratio of men to women in law-enforcement, I can’t help but think that the police would see a dramatic improvement across the board. Reduced discrimination, reduced police brutality, and fewer shootings of unarmed civilians to start. Right now, I see police walking the streets like the foot soldiers of law-enforcement. In some of the uglier scenarios, they look like gang members protecting the turf of the police state. I can’t help but think that if we encouraged gender equality within the police, they might just find their way back to protecting and serving.

There’s a Storm Coming

I tried to write an entry on reverse seniority last night. I couldn’t do it. I’m bugging out.

No cannabis. That’s probably part of it.

I have a brain that doesn’t turn off, a large appetite for information, and an obsession for understanding things. Something I’ve been doing since high school is recognizing patterns and using them to predict what comes next. Nothing is concrete, just possibilities and probabilities. Too many variables to keep track of, but sometimes you can see part of the picture and filling in the rest isn’t so tough.

Coming from an investment background, it’s difficult to ignore what I see in the markets. Bonds are paying next to nothing. The equity market hasn’t had a major correction in about 10 years. The housing market is on tilt. Even crypto is now detached from reality. Besides my private equity investments, I’m now in 100% cash for the first time in my life. It’s like being at a poker table with a bunch of drunk rookies. I have chips, I know how to play, but when everyone else at the table is throwing money at shitty hands… you have to be patient. Some days are easier than others.

My friends and I used to battle it out for who could be more generous. We’d always enjoy trying to pay for one another. Now we’re too poor to hang out with each other. Half of them still live with their parents to avoid paying rent. I look at my generation and I see an epidemic of drugs used to treat an epidemic of depression. If it wasn’t for my drive and my lack of emotions, I’d probably be in the same boat. Considering how much weed I was smoking, maybe I was in the same boat. I’m surrounded by a generation of kids who were told that if they stayed in school and worked hard, they’d be able to land themselves a good career and that a good career would lead to a comfortable life. I’m surrounded by a generation of the most educated kids we’ve ever produced, entering into a rapidly deteriorating job market, with the highest cost of living we’ve experienced in modern history. We’re barely treading water. Something’s gotta give.

Maybe it’s the birth rate. Maybe this is how we cull the population. I literally broke up with the first girl I thought I’d marry because she was fixated on having children in the immediate future. I wasn’t willing to bring a family into this world without building a foundation first. The biological clock is real. And my heart goes out to the women struggling to understand what they should be doing at a time like this.

I saw Paul Ryan on TV the other night saying that the Republican tax reform was going to give the middle class the boost it needed to get back to having kids. What a bold faced lie. But that’s become the status quo for American politics. Only a few of us will actually put the effort into understanding what’s going on. The rest of us will just pick a team. Red or Blue. By picking a team, we think we’re taking a stand for what we believe in. But we’re not. Red or Blue, it’s the same song and dance. The value of a politician isn’t a function of policies, their ability to inspire, or their ability to govern – it’s their ability to raise funds for their campaign. Why? Because the best campaign wins the seat. But in the age of billion dollar campaigns, where is this funding coming from? Big business and the top 1%. So is an elected official’s loyalty to the people who voted for them? Or to the people who paid for them? If you’re not sure, I suggest you ask net neutrality.

With problems this obvious though, how are we not motivated towards change? I’d argue that we are. Trump was elected for exactly that reason. As much as I liked Obama, he didn’t do enough to stop what was coming. People were left behind. All the pain and disillusion that we’re seeing in major cities today, the rural towns were ahead of the curve. But they were team red. They were loyal. And someone on team red came along and said I have all the answers, here’s who you should blame, and if they ever say otherwise, they’re lying. MAGA. And half the country became complicit.

But maybe this is just what we needed. When Trump was elected, I knew he didn’t have the character, integrity, or intelligence to be a great president, but I was open to the possibility of him being a good president. As things started to play out, I knew that ship had sailed. What did occur to me though is that he might still be valuable. He might be so crooked, so corrupt, and so incompetent that the world couldn’t help but see that he had reached the most powerful seat in the world – not by merit – but through the abuse of American ignorance and a system which has been compromised beyond repair. And maybe that would be our motivation.

You know what I wanted for Christmas this year? Mueller. I check my newsfeeds at least a dozen times a day. Every time I do, I hope to see another piece of the puzzle. Eventually, I hope to see justice. And perhaps justice means that Trump is exonerated from crimes which he didn’t commit. But I doubt it. And I’m good at predicting these things.

So what happens when one of the most respected law enforcement officials of all time lifts the veil on the real Donald Trump? What do those tax returns actually look like? How much is he actually worth? Who does he actually owe money to? And what happens if there was collusion? Will it be enough to shatter the image and faith placed in Trump? I hope so.

I see the clouds on the horizon, and I can hear rumbles of thunder, but the storm is still too far away. And I wanna dance in the rain.

I don’t know what that first crack of lightning will be. Maybe it will be Trump going to jail. Maybe it’ll be the Republicans refusing to impeach him. Maybe it’ll be a loss of consumer confidence that triggers an overdue recession. Maybe it’ll be the bond bubble that’s been growing since the last recession. Maybe it’ll be China’s house of cards that finally topples. Or maybe it’s on us. Maybe we finally realize that you and I aren’t so different. Maybe we realize that we aren’t the enemy. Maybe we realize that we’re in this together…. and maybe we march together, up those stairs, and tell them that this does not belong to you.

And tear the whole. god. damn. thing. down.

Incest Porn

In my prime, I was probably just as interested in porn and masturbation as any other stereotypical male. Perhaps one of my most embarrassing memories was being walked in on by a friend back in grade 11. I still maintain he didn’t see anything, but holy shit was that awkward… then embarrassing when the rest of the school found out… and then a highly entertaining memory.

As the years have passed, it’s become more of a functional effort for me. Sometimes it’s to help me get to sleep, sometimes it’s to de-stress, sometimes it’s because I saw boobies on TV and wasn’t sure what else to do with myself. I’ve always enjoyed watching porn for a very different reason though – as a reflection of the human psyche.

If you were to ask 100,000 people what their sexual preferences or fantasies were, I don’t think you’d get an honest set of data. I think most people would respond with some variation of vanilla + light bdsm. If you were to take a look at the major porn sites right now, they’re dominated by incest porn. Thanks Glasses Morty…

There’s an honesty to porn. In the privacy of your own home (and incognito mode), you tend to care less about what people think and more about getting you to that mind-blowing orgasm. For me, I’ve been through several phases but it’s always revolved around female pleasure. Something about a girl looking like she’s experiencing levels of pleasure she’s never experienced before is totally my jam. And when I think about who I am as a person, I see an alignment there. One of my favorite states of mind is when I introduce someone to something they’ve never experienced before, and they have an awesome time. I’m also super competitive and want to be the best at everything, including her body, haha. So what does it say about the current state of the human condition when porn is being dominated by an incest fetish?

If I were to go onto any major free porn site, I’m saying close to half of the videos listed are either mother-son, brother-sister, or daddy-daughter. Some aren’t even incest related, but they’ll toss it in the title for more clicks. As someone who has a younger sister who lives in LA that has flirted with the idea of being a stripper, the last thing I want when watching porn is a reminder that the girl in the video could be my little sister. As someone who has a complicated relationship with his mother, hearing ‘do you like that, son?’ is a quick way for me to lose all interest in what I’m doing. The daddy-daughter stuff? I’m not a fan of unbalanced power dynamics.

When I wanna watch porn, I now literally have to skip through the first 5-10 minutes of story line or risk it being ruined for me. Kinda. Because every once in a while, there’s one that I’m into. In trying to understand what I was enjoying about it, a few things came to mind.

First and foremost, it was a step-sibling dynamic. No incest, just pretend incest. Second, there was no jacked up power dynamic where the brother was blackmailing his sister or something weird like that. The stuff that I was into was when there were two good looking people, living under the same roof, not related, super attracted to one another, knowing that it’s taboo, and caving into their desires. Hmm… that’s kinda hot isn’t it?

And when I think about the popularity of this genre and what it tells us about the people who are watching it, I see a few interesting elements.

First is the evolution of the blended family. Blended families are becoming the norm which means step-siblings are more common than ever. That means we’re putting a whole bunch of teenagers and young adults, who aren’t related to each other, under the same roof. From time to time, at least one of them is going to be attractive. And we’re expecting the other sibling not to be attracted? But their parents have told them that they’re brother and sister and brothers and sisters don’t have those kinds of feelings or engage in those behaviors. That’s like preaching abstinence to reduce pregnancies.

Next is the taboo element. Remember when BDSM was taboo? Anal? Gay sex? Even blow jobs were taboo at one point. They all follow the same pattern of a bunch of people collectively deciding it’s wrong and trying to shame the rest of us into complying. But then a few people explore those boundaries, find out it’s totally awesome, and the dynamic starts to shift. Eventually the people who tried to impose limitations on sexual freedoms start to look silly. In some cases, you feel sorry for them. In others, you swear they’re doing all kinds of kinky shit when nobody’s looking.

Finally, and perhaps the most subtle. Or maybe just something I see… is this dynamic of doing what you know makes sense even when others tell you that you’re wrong, or a bad person for doing it. If you were gay, at a time where the world was telling you that you shouldn’t be gay, I would imagine that being with the person you wanted to be with was an incredibly liberating and joyful experience. This dynamic of going against the grain when you know you’re right is something that exists well beyond sex. It’s how great investors invest. It’s how great love stories are told. It’s how great leaders change the world. It’s also why teenagers consistently push the boundaries which their parents impose on them. Whether it’s staying out late, skipping class, studying less than you should… most kids aren’t doing these things because they’re trying to sabotage their future, it’s because they think that they’re more capable than the limitations being place on them. In the case of incest porn, I think it just comes down to…. she’s hot, I think she’s into me, we’re not related as much as dad and his new wife would like me to think so – and there’s your fantasy.

The last piece I’ll mention is that if any of what I’ve written here has relevancy, the real story is appreciating the diversity of porn because it’s indicative of the diversity of sexual desire, which is indicative of the diversity of humanity. Some people are into big, some people are into small, some people are into feet, some people are into dressing like stuffed animals. If we could understand and accept that 99.9% of the time, sex is about pleasure and not procreation, we’re in a position to realize a sexual revolution. As long as there’s consent, do what feels good. The doors that will open, the marriages that will saved, the minds that will be blown… could be very exciting times ahead.

Thought Vs. Emotion

I grew up with an unemotional father while my mother and sister were on the other end of that spectrum. I was probably a bit of a drama queen in my own right when I was a kid, but I seem to have grown out of it. Now I’m known for my lack of emotion. In trying to understand the sequence of events that led from there to here, I’ve noticed some interesting dynamics.

The first was bullying. I grew up in the kind of neighborhood where fragile didn’t last. As far as your peers were concerned, it was their responsibility to toughen you up. For others who have been through this, they’ll know that this kind of behavior was more likely to come from my friends than from people I didn’t get along with. Even now, we tease each other relentlessly, but I’m happy to have gone through that. When the worst names you’ve been called come from the people who care about you most, you have to decide whether it comes from a place of hate or a place of love. When you realize it’s a place of love, you start to realize that the intentions behind the words are far more important than their definitions. That’s when I understood that words would only have the power that I gave them. Today, even if it’s at my expense, I’m just as likely to laugh at a good joke as the people around me. I can’t remember the last time I felt sad or hurt because someone said something mean to me.

From my perspective, being ‘triggered’ is an emotional state of over-sensitivity that comes from people reacting to a word’s definition without understanding the intent behind it. Even if someone called me the worst name imaginable, with the most malicious of intent, they still wouldn’t get an emotional reaction out of me. If anything, it would be a response of compassion. Regardless of who I am or what I’ve done, what that person is saying has everything to do with who they are and the way they experience their reality. If they’re overwhelmed by the need to lash out at me, they’re probably not in a very good place. If I can, I’d like to help them get beyond that. I can’t help but think that if we understood this dynamic collectively, we wouldn’t be so divided.

Back at University is when I first noticed myself becoming less emotional. I think it probably started with trying to be the guy that I thought women wanted me to be – the tough guy who doesn’t cry. I’m sure it was a lot of posturing at first, but eventually things started to shift. There were several moments where I felt like I was forced to choose between breakdown and cry, or dig deep and march forward. I never chose to breakdown and cry. I’d blast some Eminem, and tell myself that even if my collar bone is crush or crumble, I will never slip or stumble. I persevered – and was stronger for it. Eventually, I got knocked down so many times that getting up and pushing through became second nature. Eventually things that would’ve derailed me before barely phased me. It was like I had gained so much momentum that I started feeling like a freight train that could crash through just about anything. I think that’s when I started associating emotion with weakness, and a lack of emotion with strength.

Then my dad got sick. He meant the world to me. Everything I do now, is still, in some way for him. When he was first diagnosed, he was given weeks to live. I was the first one he told and he asked that I not share it with the rest of the family until he better understood what we should do next. It was a completely unemotional conversation for both of us. We had been presented with an impossible problem to solve, but we knew that being emotional about it wouldn’t improve our chances of getting through it. In my family, we tend to choose our time rather than let our time choose us. The tough old bastard lasted nearly 2 years.

As we were getting closer to the end, I remember reaching out to a friend and telling her that loosing my dad would be the hardest thing I would’ve gone through. I told her that every time I went through something like this, I became less emotional. I was concerned that after this, I wouldn’t have any emotions left. I didn’t know what it would mean or how it would affect me. My whole life, I was told about how important emotions were, but I had become so strong without them. It was confusing.

The last time I saw him when he was coherent was when he had decided to stop eating. He had picked his time. I teased him a bit about being difficult and the weight he had lost. He smiled. I think he appreciated someone who wasn’t feeling sorry for him. I knew that was going to be my last conversation with him so I wanted to avoid making the mistake that every macho man makes. I broke down. I told him that I loved him and respected more than anyone else I had ever known. I could barely get the words out but I didn’t care. Nothing was more important to me than him knowing how much he meant to me. He looked at me, said happy to hear it, and shook my hand. I laughed off the tears and thanked him again for everything. Some people might think that he probably could’ve done a better job of saying ‘I love you too’ or something to that effect. It wasn’t his style – nor was it needed. What he helped me understand was that love isn’t a moment of passion or words, it’s a lifetime of action. I had no doubt that the least emotional person I had ever known loved me more than anyone I had ever known.

My dad passed away about a week later – within hours of me taking him off the oxygen. He was surrounded by friends and family. We all cried. I tried to be strong but I wasn’t that strong. Within hours though, I was dialed in. The bankers, the accountants, the lawyers, the executor, the bills… all me. It was so rewarding knowing that I was able to shoulder these responsibilities, the kind of things my dad would’ve been doing to make sure the family was taken care of. His shoes weren’t mine to fill, but his family was my family and I would always make sure they were taken care of.

I spent the next week in the zone, making sure everything was looked after. Once I ran out of responsibilities, I went back to work. I hadn’t shown any signs of emotion since watching my dad pass and I was concerned. As important as it was for me to be strong for my family, it was more important that I be strong for my family for all the years to come and I didn’t want to risk having emotional baggage. So after work each night, I did my best to allow myself to be sad.. and bummed out.. and miss him.. and to let those emotions run their course. I did, and they did. A funny thing happened though. At the end of the week, I could almost hear my dad asking ‘how much longer are you gonna keep this up?’. I thought, you’re right, I’m good. Time to get back at it.

This wasn’t a Jedi mind trick that I was trying to play on myself. I understood that it’s tough for a kid to lose a parent, but that it’s nothing compared to a parent losing their kid. This was part of the natural order of things, and my father had lived a life worth living. Rather than mourn his death, I chose to celebrate his life, and let his legacy inspire me to become greater than I could’ve otherwise been – allowing me to create a more positive impact on the world than I was previously capable of realizing. Sadness, sorrow, love, and all these other emotions were a natural reaction to having gone through something, but it wasn’t until I had a chance to think and truly understand my situation that I gained this perspective. It was as if emotion was the physiological reaction and biochemical experience while thought was what let me understand what had happened and allowed me to rise above it.

My dad had left a modest sized portfolio to the kids and I was responsible for it. It was through my work on that portfolio that led me into my role as an investment advisor with a major bank later that year. For the first time in my life, being unemotional was like having a super power. In understanding the psychology of the markets and working with individual investors, you quickly learned that emotions were the enemy of investing. When the market had gone up for a while, people felt safer and more optimistic it would keep going up. That’s usually when it would start moving in the other direction. This was especially true when the market was in a deep correction. People would run for the hills, looking to stuff their money in their mattress when the market was in rough shape but this was always the best time to invest. If you invested emotionally, would you almost always buy high and sell low.

A big part that role was research. I put a great deal of time into studying great investors like Warrent Buffet as well as great CEOs like Steve Jobs. As I continued to learn what made them tick, I also payed close attention to the qualities they had in common. Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, Cook, Buffet and others were all remarkably bright, inspired leaders, and unemotional. That was the tier of human being I was aiming for, so the virtue of being unemotional was reinforced yet again. It became something I was proud of. It let me make rational decisions while emotions drove others to make irrational decisions. I started to see emotions as something which clouded peoples judgement more than anything. But I was still human.

I don’t think it would be fair to say that I didn’t have emotions, but I became very good at not letting my emotions impact my thoughts. If I noticed that they were, it was a moment of weakness and I was quick to correct it. Even now, I look at emotions as something to be understood and that once they’re understood, they become thought. I can’t imagine how confusing this must’ve been for the girls that I dated. But that’s also where I had to face the reality of thought versus emotion.

I was convinced that thought was a higher form of cognition than emotion. You couldn’t think hate, you could only feel it. I would say the same about fear. Prejudice was often rooted in emotion or an incomplete thought. I looked throughout history at some of humanities greatest accomplishments and greatest failures. The accomplishments were heavily skewed towards great thinkers while the failures were often attributed to someone letting their emotions get the best of them. Another thing I noticed throughout history is that as a species we seemed to be getting less emotional – suggesting that there might be an evolutionary angle.

Most of us would agree that even today, we carry evolutionary traits that we’ve outgrown. Physical attraction is perhaps one of the best examples. Joe Rogan calls it leftover monkey brain and it’s often at odds with how we conduct ourselves has humans today. I’d argue further that our minds are evolving faster than our bodies and the idea of thought versus emotion is highlighting an internal battle we’re all facing. So thought is a more evolved form of cognition than emotion right? I don’t think it’s that simple.

Consider the example of burning your hand while cooking. Upon first contact with the hot surface – nothing – then comes the pain. You don’t think the pain, but you certainly feel it. You instinctively pull your hand away from the heat source, panic for a brief moment, and then probably go put your hand under cold water. Afterwards, your burn is highly sensitive if not painful. I often joke around, saying that people are much easier to understand when we think about them like robots. Extreme pain triggering an instant withdraw, followed by hypersensitivity until a repair is complete sure sounds like a subroutine to me… But that’s a physical reaction, not an emotional reaction right? Consider the example of being cheated on. You put yourself in a position where you expected to be safe, but weren’t. The shock and the pain created a sharp withdrawal, maybe even inspired a few new curse-words. You spent time feeling hurt. Even after you get past the initial pain, there’s some degree of hypersensitivity. While there are variations to each the point is simply that feeling like you’ve been burned is a lot like feeling like you’ve been burned.

The overlap between instinctual behavior and emotional behavior is too significant to ignore, but I think there’s at least one more layer to this: intuition. I’m not talking about girl who’s been cheated on and is now hypersensitive to anything that might look like suspicious behavior, I’m talking about the trusting girlfriend who’s never been cheated on whose intuition is telling her that something’s wrong, even if she doesn’t know what it is. She can’t explain it, but she can sure as hell feel it, and that’s real.

Whether we’re talking about nature or nurture, evolution or personal growth, I think it’s reasonable to assume that emotional responses can be trained. Back to my robot analogy, imagine the human body containing thousands of sensors. In a body like mine, those sensors feed directly into the CPU where the CPU cross-references that sensory input with other sensor data to ensure that it’s a valid reading, Then I scan my memory for all past events relating to this sensory input, looking for patterns that would help me identify an intelligent response. I then cross-reference that response with my internal guidelines and if all checks out, it produces an action. Very IFTTT. But that’s me.

So what if someone’s cognitive process excelled at sensing where I excelled at processing? Theoretically, they’d be working with more data, and more accurate data. When you have higher volumes of more accurate data, patterns tend to become more obvious. When patterns are more obvious, they’re easier to react to intelligently.

When trying to understand this dynamic, I often imagine someone being able to feel the vibrations of the universe similar to how a spider senses the vibrations in their web. When a spider feels that vibration, it knows exactly where to go and what to do, and I doubt that involves a great deal of active thought.

So thoughts versus emotions – equal but different?

I’m not sure. I’ve always been well-served by accepting what I don’t yet understand, and pursuing a greater understanding of it. That’s where I rest with this now. I think there’s a strong body of evidence which suggests that the absence of thought is primal but I’m also tempted to say that an absence of emotion is hollow. I would joke and say that the difference between thought and emotion is understanding that the world is round but feeling like it’s flat. Well, what exactly would it be like if we understood that the world was round but lacked that ability to feel grounded?

Perhaps thought helps you connect to the non-physical universe similar to how emotion lets you connect to the physical universe. If this is true, and we’re expanding the reach of our minds faster than we’re able to expand the reach of our bodies, thought becomes more valuable. As we move towards virtual and digital realities, I’ll be interested to see how emotions evolve. If I’m right, the understanding which we’ll eventually arrive at is reminiscent of Vulcan culture. Something to the effect of emotions are a natural part of the human condition and should be appreciated as such, but they make a better co-pilot than pilot.

The Busy Anthem

Apparently busy is the new black.

When I’m in the zone, I usually work from sun up to sun down. When I was at the bank, the early morning was for responding to email, research, and taking account of any interesting activity that day. The late morning was usually meetings or portfolio management. Lunches were always overlapped with meetings. Afternoons were usually filled with meetings or cold calls. The early evening was hopefully the gym, but more likely to be a networking event. I usually got home between 9-10pm. Then I’d fire up the vape and tune out until I fell asleep on the couch. And repeat.

Weekends? Just extra hours to get more done.

Holidays? Haven’t taken a holiday in 7 years.

I understand busy. But I also understand bullshit. Even when I was at my busiest, I always followed through on my commitments. If I said I was going to be there, then I was. You became part of my busy. So why have we accepted busy as a valid excuse for being flaky?

I refuse. You’re not busy. You’re just not honest about your priorities.

In an age where people are averaging hours a day on social media and binge watching series on Netflix, I think it’s time to collectively admit that we’re not nearly as busy as we claim to be. It’s not that we don’t have an overwhelming and unrelenting stream of things competing for our attention, it’s that we’re unable to be honest about how we prioritize.

Burnt out after a long week because you work a job that sucks? Feel much more like crawling into the safety of your couch than heading out to an event? That’s cool, own it. Told your friends that you’d love to grab dinner with them but are looking at your bank account and would rather eat ramen? That’s cool, own that too.

We need to get better at being honest with one another because telling each other that we’re busy just isn’t cutting it anymore. Beautiful things happen when we’re honest with each other. Maybe we’d be more honest about our depression, or finances, or our lack of motivation to go outside when it’s raining. Whatever it is, if they matter to you, just don’t tell them that you’re busy.

True Meritocracy

The world is a crazy place. It’s probably always been a crazy place, but something’s different right now. Something’s starting to boil over.

A war is being waged between how things have been done, and how they could be done. It’s tradition versus progress. People are afraid. The future is uncertain. If you have it good, change isn’t so appealing. But most people don’t have it so good – so change is coming.

One thing we all seem to agree on though is the concept of a meritocracy. The best person for the job should get the job.. Seems straight forward but I don’t think we really appreciate what that really looks like. In a meritocracy, opportunities are only earned, no longer given.

I consider myself someone who has fought hard for almost everything he has, but I’d be foolish if I said that I had earned all my opportunities. I went to an inner-city high school that probably had the lowest graduation rate in the city. Most of my friends lived in the projects while my family was middle class. When grade 12 came along, they were barely considering college. Meanwhile, my dad kicked my ass into gear, paid for biology and math tutors, and even a guy to help walk us through the application process to universities. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t working my ass off, but still.

And the idea of being able to afford university? My grandparents set some money aside for that. It didn’t cover the full ride, but it let me come out of university with barely any debt. I know I’m intelligent, I know I’m capable, and I know I have a strong worth ethic, so perhaps I earned an opportunity at a university education – but how many other intelligent, capable and hardworking people never had that opportunity? How many of them are working dead-end jobs because they weren’t given the same opportunities along the way that I was?

In my mind, in a meritocracy, resources and opportunities flow to those who are most deserving. So how does one determine who is most deserving? It’s a function of efficiency – If you’re going to do the most with the opportunity, you deserve it most.

In the case of post secondary education, it’s not a matter of payment, access, or even intelligence, it’s a function of who will do the most with that education. How many times have we seen people end up with a bachelor’s degree only to find out that it had nothing to do with what they wanted to do with their lives? How many times has someone who would’ve turned that degree into a bright future, been turned down?

In the case of jobs, how often have we seen friends hired over strangers? I’ll concede that familiarity and trust are important factors to consider when hiring, but the inside track is real. How many times have mom or dad made a call to one of their friends at the firm to get their kid set up? How many other kids who were more qualified were turned down because of it? And here’s the crazy thing, is the kid who got hooked up really better off?

How often do we see kids pushed into careers like accounting or law by their parents, only to discover that it’s not aligned with them at all. Sure it comes with a decent income and some degree of job security, but if that’s not their gift to the world, they’re holding themselves back. If they could make the effort to tap into their inner-genius and align themselves with what they were born to do, not only would they probably make a lot more money, they’d probably be a lot happier too. And for bonus points, that would now free up a spot in their previous profession for someone who was born to do that.

And now we arrive at one of the most interesting and currently relevant oversights of a meritocracy: Inheritance wouldn’t exist.

If you googled: great leaders who come from wealthy families, you might be surprised to at what it returned. Not much. If you do, you’ll notice that google tries to auto-complete the query with ‘nothing’ instead of ‘wealthy families’, the second suggestion is ‘poverty’. This query returns everything you would expect it to. Is that a pattern worth observing?

If you’re born into a wealthy family, are you more or less likely to encounter obstacles and experience adversity? Are you more likely to be given your opportunities or earn them? How likely are you to experience sacrifice? How likely are you to think of your own self-worth as an extension of your family’s success? How likely are you to have a skewed perspective of who you are and what you can offer the world? How likely are to you see equality between you and someone who isn’t as nearly well off?

Maybe this is why Warren Buffett, perhaps one of the most grounded billionaires of all time isn’t passing his billions along to his family. Not because he doesn’t like them, but because he thinks it’ll do more harm than good. Personally, I think one of the best things you can do for your children is to help them discover their own success.

Back at the banks, part of my role was to help devise estate plans for my wealthy clients. More often than not, they were great people who had worked hard their entirely lives to build what they had. Most were philanthropic, but almost all wanted to leave the majority of their estate to their kids while paying the least amount of tax in the process. From their perspective, they earned the money and should be able to do as they please when they pass away – it was about freedom of choice.

So is freedom of choice at odds with a meritocracy? I don’t think so. On first glance, someone might think that my suggestion would be a 100% estate tax with the proceeds used to fund something like free post secondary education. I don’t think it’s that simple. It would be too easy to invest your estate into a business or other asset, and gift that asset to your heirs, only for them to sell it and receive an indirect inheritance. Rules create loopholes. They need to be self-motivated to do it. We have to convince the rich that their families are better off without all the money. It needs to be logical, and it needs to be their idea.

So why is passing your fortune through to your kids so important? The average price of a home here is about 20x the average household income. The cost of living is high across that board. What that means is that the only people who can afford real estate are people who already own real estate, people who in the top 1%, and children who receive financial assistance from their parents. Under the guise of a free market, we exist in a scenario where only the wealthy and their children are capable of buying real estate.

You can only own property if your parents owned property – that’s downright feudal.

But how are you going to convince those parents not to help their kids? I’m sure the parents would much rather spend that money on a vacation home or their favorite charity, but they’re deeply invested in the future of their children and will gladly sacrifice some of their success to see their kids get ahead. But what if they didn’t?

A market will go up when there are more buyers than sellers. A market will go down when there are more sellers than buyers. When the well-off are funding the real estate purchases of their kids, they’re creating buyers. They’re effectively raising the market price on everyone. If they were willing to let their kids experience the realities of an unbalanced market, you’d be helping the market find its equilibrium – where an average income could afford an average home. But they’re scared. They don’t trust the system, and they definitely don’t trust that the system will look out for the best interests of their kids. So they take matters into their own hands and take care of their family at the expense of others. Do I blame them? No, especially because I don’t think many of them make that connection. Caring for your offspring is one of the most powerful instinctual drives we have, including protecting them at the expense of others. So how do we move past it then?

Government as it exists now, if they ever came around to it, would want to put rules in place. There would be regulations, and taxes, and other nonsense that would be more likely to shift wealth to the lawyers and accountants than to the people who would make the best use of it. The movement towards a meritocracy needs to be a movement of the people, and it may have already started.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates spent some time over the last several years speaking with their fellow billionaires about the impact of leaving their wealth to their families. They’ve made progress. More than 150 billionaires have already publicly pledged to give half their fortune away, including Zuckerberg who pledged 99% of his Facebook shares. Just about every self-made billionaire will have a keen eye for investments so what does this really look like? How is this connected to a meritocracy? Does it stop at the billionaires?

When you’re looking to make an investment, the first thing most people ask is how much will I make? I would ask, “of what?” Investing is not financial by nature, it’s much more dynamic than that. When these billionaires are looking to invest, most aren’t simply writing a check to their local chapter of United Way, they’re looking for the best return on their investment. So what are they getting back? I’d guess it varies on a case by case basis, but I think above all else, they’re looking to put those resources behind those who will do the most with them. How many women are there in the world who are capable of so much more than the opportunities afforded to them today? How many children die from poor health care before they’re able to contribute to society? How much of the world is still off-line and unable to see beyond their own horizon? These kinds of investments might create a return of capital, they’ll almost definite return some warm and fuzzies, but the real genius is the return that’s created for the rest of the world.

Think of how many women there are in the world who are operating at their full potential. Now compare it to how many women in the world who will never have the opportunity to work, let alone at something that they were born to do. Now multiply that number by how many neurons there are in the average brain and you’ll arrive at the world’s largest untapped source of brain power. You could say something similar about most people living in poverty. Imagine the power of bringing those minds online. Imagine what the world would look like if we were all afforded the opportunity to tap into that inner genius – that’s the foundation of a meritocracy.

Does it stop at the billionaires? I hope not. They can’t do it alone. They need our help. They have the money, but we have the power – we just don’t know it yet.

My Privilege

This is a topic that I had addressed a couple times in earlier entries. It came up again the other night between me and someone else. She wasn’t attacking me or trying to make me feel guilty, but she was trying to communicate a perspective shared by some of her peers. It got rather frustrating at one point… so I spent some more time thinking about it over the last few days.

I was reading Napoleon Hill’s Outwitting the Devil last night. For anyone not familiar with the book, it’s an interview between Napoleon Hill and the Devil, in which the Devil must answer all questions honestly. They explore a great deal, including privilege. Here’s the passage which inspired me to write this today:

Napoleon: Aren’t people sometimes bound to others by a relationship of duty
which renders it impractical for them to take from life what they want most?

The Devil: “Duty” is one of the most abused and misunderstood words in
existence. The first duty of every human being is to himself. Every person
owes himself the duty of finding how to live a full and happy life. Beyond
this, if one has time and energy not needed in the fulfillment of his own
desires, one may assume responsibility for helping others.

Napoleon: Isn’t that a selfish attitude, and isn’t selfishness one of the causes of
failure to find happiness?

The Devil: I stand by my statement that there is no higher duty than that which
one owes himself.

Napoleon: Doesn’t a child owe something in the way of duty to its parents who
gave it life and sustenance during its periods of helplessness?

The Devil: Not at all. It is just the other way around. Parents owe their children
everything they can give them in the way of knowledge. Beyond that, parents
often spoil instead of helping their offspring by a false sense of duty which
prompts them to indulge their children instead of forcing them to seek and
gain knowledge at first hand.

Napoleon: I see what you mean. Your theory is that too much help thrust upon
the youth encourages him to drift and become indefinite in all things. You
believe that necessity is a teacher of great sagacity, that defeat carries with
it an equivalent virtue, that unearned gifts of every nature may become a
curse instead of a blessing. Is that correct?

The Devil: You have stated my philosophy perfectly. My belief is not theory. It is
fact.

I’ve found that people have a hard time understanding the nature of privilege or even defining it appropriately. Most commonly, it seems as though people discuss privilege as a symptom of a grand injustice. And if you are a recipient of these privileges, you are complicit in the injustice. And if you are complicit in the injustice, you are now the enemy.

I’ve strained my mind in the pursuit of answers to this topic. I had to start with a definition of privilege. My best understanding of privilege is that it represents an unearned advantage. But I also understood that advantages tend to be circumstantial. What may be an unearned advantage in one moment may be an unearned disadvantage in the next. For example, your skin color may earn you a pass in certain neighborhoods while making you a target in others. More than this though, there is an inherent duality to privilege.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Bruce Lee, “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” He seemed to have a deep understanding of this duality as well. An easy life can be filled with unearned advantages while lacking adversity. A difficult life tends to be filled with adversity which can lead to the greatest of advantages; if you have the strength to overcome. Consider the simple difference between someone who receives high marks for studying and understanding the content versus someone who receives high marks for having cheated. One has earned the advantage of high marks while the other hasn’t. Yet both have high marks. While many will focus on the marks and say something to the effect of, ‘at the end of the day, it’s what’s on the scoreboard that counts’, they would be wrong. The scoreboard is superficial and it only matters as much as we choose to prioritize it. I would argue that what matters more is the knowledge and wisdom gained through the exercise of studying and understanding something; knowledge and wisdom which would be absent from the person who cheated.

In searching the real world for these dynamics, I realized they weren’t hard to find. It seems as though unearned advantages as especially effective at providing you with opportunities for which you are not prepared. Perhaps my favorite example is a study showing that people born into wealth tend to make poor leaders. I don’t think being born into wealth is the issue, but rather, being born into a lack of necessity. Parents have an instinctual drive to provide their children with everything they need, but lack the foresight to understand that they need adversity more than they need privilege. And this is when I reflect back on my life… a life which sometimes seems defined by adversity. It weighs on me at times, but with a clear mind, it leaves me feeling rather fortunate.

When I consider the nature of privilege, and people tell me to acknowledge and be grateful for my privileges, it gets a bit confusing.. So I thought I’d take a second to list some of my privileges here:

I am not privileged to have been born in a first world country. I am privileged to have been born into one of the poorest neighborhoods in a first world country. I am privileged to have grown up around drugs, prostitution, gangs, and murder. I am privileged to have learned a more complete perspective of the world at a younger age.

I am not privileged to have been born to a family with both parents. I am privileged to have been born to parents who split when I was a young teenager. I am privileged to have heard them yell at each other for years while they thought I was sleeping. I am privileged to understand just how much it takes to exist in a partnership and build a family.

I am not privileged to have been born with white skin. I am privileged to have grown up as a minority and learned what it was like to experience racism at a young age. More than that, I am privileged to have grown up in a community that helped me understand what racism was and then how to rise above it.

I am not privileged to have been born a man. I am privileged to have been born into a family with a mother and sister who fight fiercely for the empowerment of women, sometimes at the expense of men. I am privileged to be alive at a time where women are finally stepping into their own, as we all struggle to understand the nature of gender and equality.

I am not privileged to be straight or cisgender. I am privileged to have gone through periods of my life where I questioned my sexuality. I’m privileged to have learned to keep my mind open to love of all shapes and sizes.

I am not privileged to have received a university education. I am privileged to have had an opportunity to fight hard to earn my entrance to university. I am privileged that they tried to kick me out after my second year and that I was able to find the strength and focus to return 18 months later. I am privileged to have gone head to head with a tenured professor who wanted me removed from the school in my final year. And was most privileged to have pushed myself to my limit in what I could handle personally and academically, and still receive my degree.

I was not privileged to have had an opportunity to finish my degree. I was privileged to have taken a break to get mixed in with the ‘wrong’ crowd. I was privileged to see the world through a lens I never would’ve have experienced. I was privileged to have my life threatened at gunpoint. I was privileged to be asked to choose between my life and the lives of my family. I was most privileged to have seen and experienced the temptations of that world, with the presence of mind to know that wasn’t my path.

I was not privileged to have received top marks from a top university before entering the job force. I was privileged to graduate into one of the worst job markets since the great depression. I was privileged to have earned an entry level job, paying $13/hour in one of the world’s most expensive cities. I was privileged to learn that grades, degrees, and recommendations don’t entitle you to anything. I was privileged to be reminded that my work ethic will always be my greatest asset.

I was not privileged to be someone hired with the expectation of being fast-tracked into management. I was privileged to butt heads with incompetent management. I was privileged to learn how to still perform under increased expectations and decreased support. I was privileged to learn about the nature of corporate politics and to have received the short-end of that stick. Above all, I am privileged to have had the opportunity to learn so much about the intricacies of big business.

I was not privileged to have a dad at home. I was privileged to have lost him in my mid 20s, before I was ready. I was privileged to have learned the nature of life and death. I was privileged to have taken on his responsibilities to the family. I was privileged to have learned to let his memory inspire my accomplishments. Perhaps most, I am privileged to understand that of all the shoulders I stand on, his lifted me the highest.

I was not privileged to have received an inheritance from my father. I am privileged that he left that money with me to look after our family and his legacy. I am privileged to carry such a responsibility that it’s reshaped my approach to life. I’m privileged to have taken this responsibility so seriously, that I’ve gone to great lengths to understand how it could be handle best. I’m privileged to have learned that it shouldn’t be spent on making our lives easier.

I was not privileged to have turned that responsibility and mindset into an investment advisory role at the most prestigious wealth management firm in the country. Nor was I privileged to have earned a chance at a top 1% income in my mid-20s. I was privileged to have repeatedly been put in a position where I had to choose between my integrity and my career. I’m privileged to have lost my job over maintaining my integrity, and having taken a tremendous financial hit in the process. I wasn’t privileged to have a tremendous opportunity afforded to me, I was privileged to have invested my life into it and to have it taken away from me in the least enjoyable of ways. What I learned from that experience is something I would never be willing to give back.

I could go on… but I think the point has been made. What I’m most grateful for are the strengths I’ve developed through overcoming adversity. A person who is given a million dollars is a shadow of the person who has earned a million dollars. I have no interest in an easy life. I have every interest in becoming the best possible version of myself… and perhaps that’s how I’ve managed to manifest the life that I’ve lived. Perhaps to be my best self, I must live my most difficult life. There are times where it feels like the weight of the world is on my shoulders.. and over the years, I’ve felt that weight increase. Yet it doesn’t feel any heavier. It’s in those moments, I appreciate how strong I’ve become.

As I continue to move through life, I’ve learned to embrace adversity and appreciate the suffering that comes with it. I’ve also learned to connect that discomfort with an expansion of the mind and personal growth. And I have a deep understanding of how this leads to me becoming a stronger, wiser, and more capable individual. If adversity will lead me to my best self while privilege will lead me away from it, why would I ever choose a privileged life? Why would anyone? And if I’m right, shouldn’t the presence of privilege promote feelings of compassion rather than a sense of injustice?

The Popularization of Victimhood

I grew up in a low income neighborhood where things were probably a little rougher than average. It was mostly immigrant families who came here with very little, in search of better opportunities. In neighborhoods like these, opportunities were scarce so you learned to fight for every opportunity and every advantage. Sometimes that meant finding ways to sneak two lunches at school. Sometimes it meant stealing part of the lunch from the person who got up to go to the bathroom. Everyone was always being tested – if you left an opening, you got hit.

Sounds like a rough place, but it wasn’t without ethics. Those with disabilities were always off limits, and often befriended by most popular kids. If someone targeted them, they were immediately protected, and often by the toughest kids. Others were simply known for being too nice to be picked on, and were supported for taking the high road. The rest of us.. were fair game.

The appeal of victimhood doesn’t resonate with me and recounting through my childhood, I might I understand why. When you grow up in an environment where just about everyone is starting at a disadvantage, working your ass off to get to the status quo is the status quo. Drawing attention to our circumstances for the sake of sympathy or outside intervention just isn’t where we choose to put our energy. Instead, we work hard in school, become productive members of society, and give back to the community so that we can solve this problem for future generations. Today, our community center has the largest food security program in the city, one of the best basketball programs in the region (NBA Cares just redid our gym), and gets 75% of it’s funding through fundraising – largely from community alumni. This is how I learned to deal with disadvantage.

The other remarkable thing that happens in this neighborhood is that we produce great people. We’re not without our bad eggs, but generally speaking, we’re polite, kindhearted and well intentioned. Even the friendships made there are more like family than friends now. We were terrible to each other, but only when it didn’t matter. When it mattered, we would fight tooth and nail for each other. Perhaps it left me with a different perspective on when things mattered and when they didn’t.

This is why I struggle to relate to what appears to be a developing culture of victims. Where I might see an opportunity to redeem myself, it’s as if they see an opportunity to draw attention to themselves. It’s often under the premise of ‘raising awareness’ which seems well-intentioned but it’s a somewhat incomplete strategy on its own. There’s a wide gap between being aware of something and understanding it. Fortunately for all of us, awareness generates dialogue and dialogue helps to develop and circulate good ideas which ultimately help us understand what we’re actually dealing with and how to make progress. The problem though, is that the solution is to popularize redemption.

Redemption isn’t just inspiring, it’s informative. It says yes, you can get dealt a shitty hand and still come out on top – here’s proof. It says look at what I just did, take what you can and apply it to your situation. The better the story, the more viral that information becomes. Some of the greatest stories in human history are based in redemption, but you can’t have redemption or all that fantastic personal growth that comes with it without adverse circumstances. I can’t help but think that with the right perspective, adversity can be seen as positive. It’s when we suffer that we learn the most about ourselves and the universe around us. Adversity is that fuel that pushes us forward in the most meaningful of ways. For the record, this is all from personal experience.

The problem with popularizing victimhood is that it’s encouraging the wrong behavior. It’s like celebrating the loss rather than celebrating the win. It’s also creating a sense of pessimism where people are spending more time looking for ways in which they’re being harmed than they are looking for ways in which they’re being loved. And by the time we’ve all identified as a victim of something, what have we accomplished? Do we still make a conscious effort to sympathize for a victim when everyone’s a victim? Do we continue to use the word victim, both for someone who was killed in a mass shooting and for someone who was whistled at on the street? Where I grew up, the word victim was often reserved for a drug overdose or a homicide, the kind of event you couldn’t overcome. Now it’s a hashtag, part of how we identify, and indicative of social virtue.

Identity politics, where your social status and implied virtue is linked to your level of victimhood. A racial minority? 1 point. Female? 1 point. Gay? 1 point. Disabled? 1 point. Straight white male? – 3 points. I have to admit, there is some irony in how the popularization of victimhood has systematically marginalized straight white males.

As much hate as they get, this isn’t as much of a white guy thing as it is an old people thing. They want control because they’re afraid of what will happen if they’re not in control. They’re intolerant because they’re afraid they don’t know how to deal with change. In a world of uncertainty, they’re afraid and are desperately trying to keep things the same. In a world of change, we’re quickly taking over.

Let’s focus less on what we don’t have, and more on what we’re going to create.

Escapism

Alcohol consumption has been increasing steadily for the last 10 years. Cannabis use is at an all-time high. Opioids have been declared a national emergency. Entire sub-cultures of youth and young adults are finding fewer and fewer reasons to leave the house. It’s like we’re all trying to escape from all this… sucking.

Do well in school. Work hard. Be nice to others. Pretty common advice for most of us growing up. We were supposed to do well in school so that we could learn the skills necessary to earn a good income. We were to work hard because the more effort we put in, the greater the reward. We should be nice to others because it’s important that we all get along.

So what happens when you do well in school but struggle to find a job when you graduate? And what about those who had to take out student loans? What happens when you realize that you’re not the one being rewarded for your hard work? And what happens when you start to feel like the world has genuinely given up on getting along with one another?

You escape.

We all hallucinate our own reality and it is by that mechanism that we can choose to exist in a reality where we don’t feel the weight of these issues. Some escape to a digital reality, some to an altered state, but the objective is still the same – being there is better than being here.

Why not just step your game up and go take what the world owes you? Just make sure you out-perform your peers and you’ll get that top 1% lifestyle that you’ve always wanted. And once you get there, you’ll know that you’ve made it and that you’re truly different than the other 99%. That’s what a younger me would’ve said. To the victor go the spoils, so just make sure you win. Modern-day cannibalism at its finest.

The problem with the ‘try harder’ approach is that it only works in a zero-sum scenario. If a few people put in more effort while everyone else is doing the same as they were, those who are putting in more effort are likely to receive more rewards. If everyone puts in more effort, relatively speaking, the effort levels all remain the same. Effectively, if we all try hard, we all stay exactly where we are.

So being a grown-up is nothing like what we were told. Effort is no longer the difference between being rich and poor. Jobs are disappearing to automation at an increasing rate. The cost of living is climbing faster than income. Debt has replaced savings. Home ownership and a family are now an irresponsible financial decision for most. And when we look to our leaders and our policy makers in the hopes of change, we see one of the most embarrassing breakdowns of governance in the modern age.

We can’t seem to get to where we want to go. The advice we were given did not hold up. We’re being told it’s because we’re lazy. We’re being told that we’re the problem. It just doesn’t make sense…

Depression.

Escape.

But we rise.

Our hope that the human condition will prevail remains in tact. While you look to divide, we look to connect. Where you seek control, we seek freedom. Where you look to horde, we look to share. Where you look to keep secrets, we look to expose the truth. While you’ve looked to maintain the status quo, we look to challenge it. And where you fear the future, we embrace it.

We’re just trying to be patient, waiting for our turn. We see you trying to drag this out though. I recommend against it. It’s not a fight you’ll win.

Uninhibited Humanity

What does it look like? If we had no considerations for what other people thought, no fears of being judged, no consequences for non-conformity, how would you behave? How would we behave?

How common would pedophilia be? How common would rape be? If we allowed ourselves to be uninhibited, would how would it manifest? Would irrational behavior correct? Is it our judgement or actions which are irrational? I’d guess both.

There’s a pattern I’m seeing. Pedophilia and sexual slavery rings with connections to some of the world’s most powerful circles. Eccentric celebrities getting caught messing around with kids. Powerful individuals testing their sexual boundaries.

If you can reach a stage in your life in which you have more resources than you can use, more admiration than you can return, and more power than you can wield, your perspective of the world may change dramatically. Rather than being focused on survival, one can be focused on exploration. That might explain the eccentric personalities of the rich and famous, uninhibited interests.

So if inhibition decreases as freedom increases, and wealth can expand personal freedoms, maybe all this behavior should be looked at with a different lens. Maybe we’re not all as normal as we thought we were. Maybe this is what human nature looks like when we’re given the freedom and power to explore our humanity. I’m not saying that some of this behavior isn’t irrational or counter-productive for the individuals involved, but that’s how the hive-mind works. We push boundaries, we make mistakes, we learn from those mistakes and we make progress.

If we don’t recognize these individuals as members of humanity that are exploring our collective psyche and pushing our collective boundaries then we wont understand the situation for what it is. These people aren’t demons. They’re mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, best friends and god parents, and in many cases, extraordinary contributors to society. When I think of great artists of our time, I’m seeing at least a few ‘disturbed’ minds. When I think of the great business minds of our time, I’m seeing at least a few sex dungeons. When I think of the great athletes of our time, I’m seeing at least a few OCD sex addicts.

Should the behavior be addressed? Probably. Things like rape and violence are rarely, if ever productive. But they need to be addressed with intelligence and compassion, not just compassion. There are solutions that create more solutions and solutions that create more problems. Understanding the situation for what it is, is always the first step in a real solution.