How to Tell If You Ain’t Doing It Right Pt II

It’s an irrefutable law of behavior. The system of conditioning that establishes the patterns of behavior is a indisputable factor in most things we do. It’s not 100% but it’s probably at least 50%.
We tend to seek outcomes that deliver a preferred emotional condition. The unpredictable part is that not all people seek the same emotional condition. Some find the greatest pleasure in the esteem of others. Some find happiness in making others happy. Some find happiness in making others miserable, And some find their satisfaction when their victim status evokes pity. They wallow in it. Some people take the greatest pleasure in invention, creation and production of things other people appreciate.

What fuels you? Do you know? Do you ever ask yourself what you are trying to generate by seeking certain outcomes? Is your outlook optimistic/positive or pessimistic/negative

If you can be happy with a job done well for it’s own sake– that’s a positive.
If you can take happiness in serving the ungrateful - that’s a positive.
If you seek the accumulation of wealth through honest work and risk – that’s a positive

If you think celebrity has intrinsic value – that’s a negative
If you think your happiness is completely dependent on the actions and attitudes of others – that’s a negative
If you think that individual success is dependent on the destruction of others – That’s dangerously negative.

Optimistic/positive strategies involve harvesting whatever opportunities are available. The playing field is not always level, but there are always opportunities. Sometimes that opportunity is illegally emigrating to the US. Sometimes it is figuring out how to market white paint to secretaries for correcting typographical errors. Sometimes it’s only to help a pensioner that can’t mow their lawn.

Pessimistic/negative strategies seek to separate outcomes from individual action and attitude, focusing on emotion after the fact rather than pre-emptive action to create an outcome. Often, these strategies are focused on comparative esteem and status (Comparing ones self to others.) They mark celebrity, adulation, fear or pity as objectives. They typically refuse to examine the behaviors for actual value and measure the value by the intensity of the emotive response. Perhaps the most destructive pretext is the believe that the worth (intrinsic or esteem) of an individual can only be elevated by the transfer of esteem or wealth from another.

If you are harnessing your attitude and actions to be productive because you derive pleasure from the knowledge that you actually created value, you are doing it right. You are a net producer of worth.

If you are trudging from one task to the next reluctantly, looking for opportunities to compare your outcomes or status to others, you are focused in the part that does not create actual value. You may be a net consumer of worth.

How to Tell If You Are Doing It Right Part 1

Are there things in your life that someone would take from you if they thought they could get away with it? If not, you ain’t doing it right.
Are these things worth fighting for? If not, you ain’t doing it right.
Would you be willing to go to war to protect them? If not, you ain’t doing it right.
Are those things reasonably safe on a day to day basis? If not, you ain’t doing it right.

If you answer yes to all of these questions. Then the pertinent question that follows is:

Who is fighting your fights, protecting your valuables, keeping your loved ones safe?

Because if it ain’t you, then you should be grateful for those gunslingers that are out there hacking the mission. Because I guarantee that there are people in this world that use a comparative pretext for determining worth and they don’t care if they have to destroy you to get access to the value you have accumulated.

There are Wolves and there are Sheepdogs. Don’t be a sheep that’s too stupid to appreciate the difference between the two. Because if you are too stupid to tell the difference or too frivolous to believe there is a difference, you deserve to be butchered and eaten before you have a chance to breed more stupid sheep.

If you are thankful for what you have and are anxiously engaged in the creation and protection of value (vice the redistribution of value), you are doing it right.

A Grand Slam

On Monday, Rush got a call from one of those self-righteous pseudo-intelleftuals. The accusation was made that the war in Iraq is ignoble and that the evidence of that is the fact that the sons and daughters of Congressional Representatives and the President are not doing the business in Iraq. Aside from missing the point that it was a left-leaning congress that instituted the all-volunteer force, Rush just crushes this low hanging curve-ball out of the park.

It is not the government that makes this country work. It is the people. This monologue is so good, Rush is giving it away on the public (non-subscription side of his website.

Worth the listen.

Liner Notes

The Fat Man has walked all the way across California and Arizona and is in New Mexico.

Sondra K linked to the "Secret of Life" post and the site traffic jumped off the meter for a few days.

Our economy cannot be sustained by tanning salons and nail parlors. How do we get Americans to understand that environmental regulations and confiscatory taxes are the reasons that jobs are going overseas?

Trinity Site is open twice a year. I think I'd like to go there. Not to mourn, but to pay respect to the massive intellectual, physical and economic effort that unleashed a few minutes of atomic fire.

As for the annual whining at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you should have thought about it before you sent your Army to rape Nanking and your Navy to bomb Pearl Harbor.

The Secret of Life

It came to me today. I was sitting on the tractor using power and leverage to push the earth around. I was reflecting on the trials of raising teenagers. And suddenly it hit me. It took a few minutes to distill it into the fewest words.

Read this first. The ancient Greeks believed that the soul was the combined essence of all you came into the world with, your intelligence and talents, plus everything you learn and experience.

So you want to know the Secret of Life? Here it is.

The Soul Is Not Static.

That's it. Simple on the surface. But endless in meaning.

Who you are is not static. The things you want when you are 6 are different from the things you want when you are 16, 36 and 60. The way you deal with adversity is an evolving process. Your skills are constantly changing. The people you deal with are changing, so all of your relationships are dynamic from both your perspective and theirs.

Have you ever heard someone lament "Why can't you love me the way I am?" or "I've got to be who I am"? They are based on a false premise. They have a built in assertion that if a single interacting person stops trying to affect behaviors the "soul" will be free to be what it "is".

What the soul "is", or "who" some one "is" is completely dynamic. Every moment changes who we are. Some moments more than others but even time spent in sleep and dreams change who we are because rest is when we lock in learning and memories.

The pretext that "I want to remain exactly as I am" is not only immature, it is asking the impossible. Even efforts to maintain the status quo will change who we are on the basis of experience. In reality, the complainer desires to invest in self-destructive strategies and is trying to eliminate outside interference.

People mistakenly invest in destructive strategies all the time. There's no promise that things we deliberately change are always for the better. That's why study and reason are so important. Do not suffer someone to invest in self-destructive strategies just because the "who they currently are" is ignorant.

But the secret of life? You can change for the better or worse. Do you have a strategy to become the person you want to be?

You are going to change whether you like it or not. So what are you going to do about it?