ADDENDUM: WHAT DO I BELIEVE?

On occasion, I will stop my ongoing project evaluating nation-states to discuss an ongoing political topic, personal interest, or cultural event. The main purpose of this nation-state project is not to degrade or critique historical eras and imperial rule. Whether we want to believe it or not, corporations, organizations and governments are still the slave to human desire and self interest. History plays this out repeatedly over thousands of years. Outside of naturally occurring environmental events like earthquakes and volcanoes which throughout history have altered civilizations, most of history was created through human action whether through positive means like world changing inventions or through negative actions like global wars that kill tens of millions of innocents. Most of us just want to get up every day and make just enough money so that we can do something fun with their families on the weekend. So what is my motivation to engage in this project? And how have I changed over my middle aged lifetime?
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I was born in Southern California during the mid-1970s, a few days after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate. 1974 was not a very good year in the United States as the country’s removal off the gold standard in 1971 led to an inflationary crisis, correction and eventual stagflation that lasted throughout the 1970s until Paul Voelker skyrocketed the interest rates into the double digits to cool the spending. From 1980 to 1988, I attended Catholic School and experienced everything that an individual would think a Californian would do. I loved the beach and was an above average boogie boarder and body surfer. Could not surf for the life of me. Loved to ride my bike around the city of Redondo Beach. As children, we were living in an adult world. The infantilization of our culture was still a good decade away. But living in an adult world meant that children had more freedom to experiment and wander. And wander I did. One of my favorite things was watching the aspiring Beach Volleyball League play its tournaments in nearby Hermosa and Manhattan Beach. My parents never had an issue with my biking along the ocean many miles away from our home as long as I made it back before the sun went down. Throwing in the eight years of Catholic School which developed my ethical and moral standards despite my issues with that Church, I moved into adulthood with a sense of ethical righteousness and an intelligence that was subtle but as I have been told, sometimes intimidating.

Even from early adulthood, I did not think like a capitalist. Now that I have been part of a relationship with a women who does, this has been the one sore spot between us. My interest was always in the spiritual and philosophical. While I did spend the early 1990s partying, going to the best Gen X-band concerts, enjoying night club after night club, and having some rough nights of heavy drinking and substance abuse inside crazy Los Angeles which was at the center of the culture back then, I also would go to the Torrance Library on weekends and study Tibetan Buddhism. This led me to take a day off from school in the late 1990s to meet the Dalai Lama and hear him speak at the Pyramid in Long Beach, California. While others focused on advancing their careers, I was more interested in studying the political philosophy of Murray Rothbard or Mikhail Bakunin or the psychological studies of Karl Jung (I can call myself a Jungian). And while my firm sense of confidence in myself led me to believe that financial wealth would soon follow, this proved to be a much more difficult task. While I am definitely middle class and living comfortably, my partner likes to remind me of the mistakes I have made (This was often due to listening to economists and financial “experts” that were outdated in their thinking applying a common sense model to an economy that lacked all sense of logic and rationalization). In the 21st Century, a data analyst living inside a world of logic will not be a good investor. The best are the ones who treat the market like the casino it now is and have learned the proper way to read the cards. Never underestimate the illogical beliefs of a corporate banker.

I believe every person needs to evolve their identity and thinking every eight years to a decade. Stay active mentally and physically. Politically, even from an early age, I leaned into similar politics as my father, a classic liberal who believed in the ideas of the Constitution and the creation of a society that did not specify preference for one privileged group over another. I do not negotiate on my anti-war stance (Except in very specific self-defense scenarios) nor my belief in natural human rights which are guaranteed in the Constitution. As an open-minded individual that is mostly tolerant and who has been open-minded enough to experience so many diverse cultural events ranging from Church revivals to perverted burlesque shows, my anti-war beliefs are a line in the sand that will never be negotiated on nor can I be convinced to consider a different opinion on this.

Understanding this, the year 2020 changed my life. I was always a person that dabbled in libertarianism but like the idea of nirvana in Buddhism which so few people can actually attain, I have always felt that libertarians are good-hearted people living inside an ideology that will never be understood nor practiced by many of their fellow citizens because the power dynamics of present-day politics makes the entire idea impossible to implement. But 2020 broke me because the shared culture that I believe the United States still had got fractured. When I discuss this issue, it usually needs an explanation. For many Gen-Xers and older, the defunct music channel VH1 did a series that was extremely popular that celebrated the innovations and trends from a particular decade. These shows were popular because growing up in those decades, we can remember those shared cultural experiences whether the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of the early 80s, to the embracing of the ridiculous song “I’M TOO SEXY” in the 90s, to the absolute cultural sensation of movies like JAWS and STAR WARS in the 1970s. These moments are what defined us as Americans. Than COVID came around and the culture shifted to one of fear and authoritarianism. The decline of a shared cultural identity has been on life support since social media began becoming ubiquitous in the late 2000s. With the cultural need to have a smartphone, our culture has shifted from one that had a shared common identity and purpose to one that is individualized and narcissistic. While the internet has changed so many things for the good, it has also led to some societal implications that no one in government or business wants to acknowledge. What I discovered with these changes is that the individualization of our culture has led to an almost religious belief in institutions. For example,

Scientism: The belief that scientific research is infallible and that as a citizen, you need to listen to the “experts” pushing this scientific research onto you. But for a logical mind, it quickly becomes apparent that much of this research was often guided by the individuals or businesses that funded it. Making scientism equivalent to a faith based religion. Do you know that we have never done a scientific study on the entirety of the vaccine schedule? Maybe taking the vaccines individually is fine scientifically. But when you give a child a combination of five different viruses at once in three different shots, the research on the individual vaccine no longer matters as the underlying circumstances have changed.

Technologicalism: A belief in technology bringing about a more peaceful and logical world. This is often blended in with autocracy. The people who are technologicists often want to rule or control the world around them because they firmly believe in their own moral superiority. Making this another issue that is an article of faith.

Christian Zionism: The now popular version of Christianity in the 21st Century United States that believes that Israel is a chosen nation of God because of a controversial analysis of parts of the Bible. This ideology completely changed Christianity in the 20th Century. It also led to apocalyptic teachings like “LEFT BEHIND” which is a speculative prediction of how the end times of the Bible will play out in the modern day. These Dispensationalists and Evangelicals truly believe in the ideas of these teachings even though again, it is clearly an article of faith.

And the worst of these examples, Statism: The idea that an individual can change the world for the better through voting or citizen action. Because of how diverse our political beliefs actually are, statism has evolved into a wrestling match between two competing ideologies while a ruling class actually controls the government and is moving the nation in the direction they desire it to be. These “elitists” want control but this does not mean they actually know how to rule. Like the rest, the belief in the postiive aspects of government to guide society forward is another matter of faith.

During my lifetime, we have eliminated those shared cultural moments and corrupted our institutions that meant so much to older generations like churches and town hall meetings which used to give people a sense of purpose and identity. We lived in neighborhoods where neighbors socialized and took care of each other’s kids in times of need. Now, all identity is personal and even illogical. This has led to people looking for anything that gives their lives meaning. Things have changed so much in my lifetime. I have seen a total transition from a more self disciplined analog adult world to a child-like digital world where all knowledge is available to every human on the planet and yet this has led to more cultural division than I have ever seen in my lifetime. During my childhood, it was common for families to have every night of the week blocked out for some sort of club, sport, or local activity. When I see individuals attaching themselves to science, politics, social media, or government in an almost devout, religious way, not only will these topics be unsatisfying for your own mental health, it will not lead to the social acceptance that your mind seeks.

So how do we fix this? This is where I am at in my middle aged stage of life. For me personally, I now embrace four things that have finally brought me the sense of happiness and calm that I have spent the entirety of my life trying to achieve. If you are a social individual that loves being around people all the time, I am probably not the best person to take advice from. I prefer solitude most of the time. Because I have learned that a disciplined, creative mind can find joy in loneliness. And because I have a wife and two kids who give me plenty of attention, solitude is often what I seek. But no person can survive without human interaction. Here are four activities I embrace that have given me mental fulfillment.

Hiking:

I believe WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau maybe one of the wisest books ever written. Whether enjoying a backcountry hike with the wife engaging in small talk or walking through the tall trees of the nearby National Forest on my own quietly and experiencing the birds singing in the trees, the bees buzzing nearby, or the lush, green bush that is growing the most beautfiul and shiny berries, nothing motivates my mind more than a walk in nature. It is an incredible way to distract you from a terrible day or just give you some quiet self reflection.

Constant Mental Stimulation:

There is a famous saying.

“If your bored, it really is your fault.”

Life is about experiences and learning. If you reject either and complain about being “bored” as so many young children do now, it is not that the topic is boring, It is likely that you are uninteresting. Recently, I bought myself a house that requires some patching and upgrades. I have spent the last six months learning how to lay concrete, patching cracks in the brick, digging a ditch in dirt to run the water into my backyard, and properly pruning trees to keep growth under control. You will never learn even 1% of the vast amount of knowledge that exists. And to live an enjoyable and satisfactory life, I believe you need to learn as much as you can during the short time you live on this planet.

Children:

Do you need a dose of humility? Have a couple of kids. Preferably as I have, one boy and one girl. Watching them grow up and become human beings with full fledged personalities and flaws has been one of the best experiences of my life. And no matter how rich and successful you maybe, your kids do not care. They will remind you repeatedly that you are just “DAD.” Plus, it has been interesting to experience the fact that the world is much easier for girls now than boys despite our society believing the exact opposite. My son has had to work much harder than my daughter to find success as societal support mechanisms are in place for girls. For boys, they are much harder to find. But despite his struggles, he has really come around and has begun to develop into a full fledged and interesting person. One of the best pieces of advice I can give. Sometimes, just observing and letting your kids figure things out on their own is often the best “parenting” any person can do.

Travel:

Travel is all about experiencing something new. There is nothing on this planet I enjoy doing more than traveling. Even on a slow, boring weekend, jumping in the car and taking a highway into the unknown often brings incredible pleasure as you find that hidden steakhouse underneath a beautiful, red rock mesa in the middle of the Utah desert that has one of the best sirloins you have ever had. That is the beauty of travel. Engaging in one new experience after another. This is part of the reason why the idea of researching nation-states became so interesting to me. Because at some point, I will likely travel to one of these places.

I hope you enjoyed this 2400 plus page self help essay. Whether you take my advice or not, it does not matter. Happiness depends on one biological mechanism over all others, your mind. Don’t ever let anyone try to take it away from you (Especially the government and its propaganda). Enjoy your thoughts even if they are bizarre and socially unacceptable. Being human with all your flaws and positive traits is what makes life worth living. The world is a vast, beautiful and interesting place. Experience as much of it as you can.