To people ringing their hands at the fact that their government has been captured by corporations and special interests: I get it. We all do. That’s why we’re on #nostr. The simple truth may be that there just aren’t enough people in the world who care about this stuff. With time, I have come to accept the fact that most people are just too distracted by a very well designed system of enslavement to be able to care. So I do what I can. I don’t feed the system more child slaves. I store the fruits of my labor outside of their financial system. I don’t buy their useless junk or believe in their fairytales. I prepare to end my own life painlessly if they threaten my person. This is the only way we stand a chance of changing things. #grownostr #thinkdangerously

If you feel frustrated by the fact that other people don’t see the world exactly as you do (something I still catch myself doing regularly), take a deep breath and remember that fools must also exist. This was Marcus Aurelius’ suggestion and I like it a lot. We all experience the world differently and are all fools ourselves, in our own ways, at times. Forgiveness really is freedom tech. It is also a great measure of your own happiness since those who forgive easily generally tend to be pretty contented people otherwise. #grownostr #thinkdangerously

I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that our cultural programming is nearly perfectly engineered to make us into the ideal captive consumer. On the one hand, it is a remarkable accomplishment that has taken millennia to achieve. I mean, people in the country I live in, the US, will swear up and down that they are living “free” in the same breath that they tell you about the latest useless trinket or garbage experience that they just charged to their 19.6% credit card. But it’s okay, they can cover the monthly payment. On the other hand, it’s really awful to watch/witness over and over again. I do my best to force myself to see this and interact with these people because I really don’t agree with simply sticking my head in the sand. But holy shit it’s exhausting. I have to perpetually remind myself that what’s right for me isn’t necessarily right for others. And while that’s necessarily true, when I then have to deal with the resentment and disbelief of said others when they can’t understand the actual freedom my lifestyle and life decisions have created, I can’t help but be really fucking annoyed. I’m sorry you had kids you can’t afford and have to blow your entire paycheck every couple of weeks on stupid pointless acts of consumerism to try to escape the suffocating misery of your existence. Don’t fucking expect my help because I possess a modicum of self-control. Fuck you if you expect others to pay for your mistakes and overall poor judgment. You are human garbage if you think this way. #grownostr #thinkdangerously #getoffended #rantover

Human life is a state of perpetual want/dissatisfaction. This is coupled with/related to an endless ability to accommodate to new “normals”, such that as soon as one want is satisfied, a new baseline is created and a new want takes its place. I see this perpetual accommodation collide with the realities of aging all the time. As our bodies fail, worse than not meeting our ever increasing wants, we actually are forced to regress to states that are inferior to our baseline. Not surprisingly, humans do NOT adjust to this well which explains the high rates of depression among the elderly. So really, I can summarize human life as follows: You are born. If you are lucky, you are healthy and your parents meet your basic needs. This becomes your new baseline. Then you grow throughout your childhood and teenage years and experience an ever growing series of wants - toys, electronics, cars, friendships, romantic relationships, etc. This becomes your new baseline. Again, in this best case scenario, you reach adulthood, and the parade of ever increasing wants continues: independence, marriage, job, career advancement, house, family, vacations, etc. Again, this becomes your new baseline. Then, uh oh, you start getting old or you get sick. Suddenly, all of those assumptions and hard wired systems that continuously moved the goalpost forward get violated. You start losing function. You start losing independence. You start losing relationships. And it just keeps getting worse as time marches on. Eventually, a critical malfunction occurs within your body and you cease to exist. Throughout your lifetime, again in the best case scenario that being human has to offer, you will have experienced no peace, an abundance of dissatisfaction punctuated by only brief, ever fleeting moments of satisfaction, followed by the slow and miserable decline towards your inevitable death. Put differently, childbirth, to me, is analogous to condemning someone to a life sentence of misery and suffering (with maybe a handful of brief pleasant experiences), followed by a death sentence. I cannot imagine doing that to another person. #grownostr #thinkdangerously #getoffended #childfree

If you know something is broken (let’s call this “A”) and have found a better alternative (let’s call that “B”), why would you keep measuring “B” in terms of “A”? Seems pretty dumb, no? #grownostr

There are many ideologies I am willing to die for. There are very few ideologies that I am willing to kill or harm someone else for. A not very surprising circumstance where I would be willing to intentionally hurt someone is if they broke into my home while I was there. That would just be really inconsiderate. Still I would only kill them to neutralize the threat they pose and would absolutely exhaust any other options prior to doing so. I feel death would be too good for someone who breaks into peoples’ occupied houses. A true punishment would be seriously injuring them and condemning them to a long life of disability and interaction with the “legal” system. Unfortunately, in either scenario, I too would be stuck having to interact with the legal system, which is pretty much the worst thing imaginable to me. Yeah, let’s make a system where a bunch of thugs can make money off problems that they themselves can create without consequence. Seems real smart. #thinkdangerously #grownostr

It’s interesting to me that humans generally seek “meaning” in their lives once their basic needs are met. And we do all kinds of crazy shit to that end like believe in fairytales and force life upon others. Why do we even need meaning though? It’s just so arbitrary when you think about it. Just as reasonable in my opinion is to abandon the quest for meaning and instead just try to enjoy life for what it is: a largely random series of experiences that can be either pleasant or unpleasant based solely upon our perception of them. I think the latter approach requires a lot more agency and effort. Since we are fundamentally lazy though, it’s just easier for many to rely upon reptile brain instincts like reproduction or alternatives to thinking for oneself like religion to check the “but my life has meaning!” box. A meaningless life can be pretty awesome though. And you won’t have live with the guilt and mental gymnastics required for having kids or believing in some silly God to enjoy it. #grownostr #thinkdangerously

Serious question for anyone willing to answer. If you believe in God, how do you chose which ones you do or don’t believe in? How do you view people who believe in different Gods? At what point do you say, no that God clearly doesn’t exist, but mine does for sure? Genuinely curious. #grownostr #thinkdangerously

Today I’m contemplating my routines. Routines are very useful shortcuts or mental heuristics that allow us to function more efficiently. Routines are rigid by nature, and classically associated with adult thinking. Non routine behavior or thinking is more typical of children and is more plastic/fluid. Given the inherent advantages and disadvantages of routine behavior then, it is useful to sometimes stop and think about their relative merits as we will inevitably develop a few nonproductive or unhealthy ones along the way. The one that most recently has given me reason to pause is posting to #nostr. In addition to taking the occasional break from posting here, I also regularly ask myself why I bother to do so at all. I fortunately don’t have any other social media and never will. As for why I bother, I’m really not sure. I recognize the typical social media behaviors in myself, such as enjoying a reply or occasional zap. I also tend to post far more controversial content than most, so there is the possibility that I enjoy the opportunity to say things anonymously that would get me punched in the face in real life. So therein lies the partial truth of it anyhow, the beauty of social media and #nostr for me lies in its anonymity and the fact that I’m not generating yield for some corporate monster like Facebook or Twitter with my thoughts. I also genuinely need the catharsis that comes with screaming into the void. What’s your reason? #thinkdangerously #grownostr

There is a quote I like that says something like “the butterfly only remembers its days as a butterfly, never as the caterpillar”. Point is, as we mature and inevitably change (with most becoming “normal” over time), we forget the people we once were and the beliefs we once had and view these as completely alien. So try to be forgiving or at least understanding of people who are or think differently from you. You can still think they’re nuts, and not want to have anything to do with them, but maybe they’re just still caterpillars like you once were. And remember, maybe it’s you who is still the caterpillar. #grownostr #thinkdangerously