Thought Flare

COVID’s a bitch. It’s fucked with our lives in gloriously horrible ways.

One of em’s the two philosophies that divide our already-tense world.

The First Philosophy:

Save lives and keep people healthy above all else. Any restrictions that do this are absolutely the compassionate, enlightened, right thing to do.

Yes, masks, lockdowns, financial strain, business failure, virtual schooling, remote work and vaccine mandates are all are big impositions that sum to a bigger sacrifice. But we owe it to the most vulnerable among us to do everything in our power to make sure they have the best possible chance of staying healthy and surviving. Everything else is repairable or replaceable… lives aren’t. Full-stop.

More than that, think about the pressure COVID’s putting on our hospital system. Nurses and docs are burning out at record rates. The last thing we need is to strain an already-strained system, or worse, run out of beds. So we do whatever we can to stop the spread.

And remember, pandemics are tricky. If we don’t take proper precautions, there’s the ever-looming possibility of COVID spiraling out of control. And that’s a world-stopper.

All that’s… pretty fucking inarguable. There’s no pain like the chronic sickness or death of a loved one. It’s a gaping, gushing, soul-level wound that stirs the worst and uncomfortably numbs. A height of suffering to be avoided whenever and however possible… well-worth some inconvenience. People are resilient – we’ll manage.

The Second Philosophy:

Masks, lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations, virtual schooling and other restrictions are well-intentioned overreactions that do more harm than they prevent. While every life lost is a tragedy, those lives have to be weighed against all of the damage and suffering these restrictions impose on all of humanity… and the latter outweighs the former.

…

Let’s break that down.

Masks force your own hot, stale, sometimes-stank breath back up your nose and against your cheeks… continuously shoving vented waste back in your face. This sucks, though it’s tolerable for a few minutes at a time, a few times a day. But for the many, many millions of people who have to keep masks on for hours at a time while working hard and/or having to be polite in the process, this is way more than a minor irritation. It’s a constant, grating frustration lumped on top of an already-demanding responsibility that makes everyday life materially-worse. Enduring this day-in and day-out over weeks/months/years is going to have an ongoingly cumulative, increasingly negative effect on anyone’s mental health – it’s mindfuck by a thousand paper cuts.

More than that, masks prevent us from seeing each others’ expressions. This sounds minor, but most of our real communication (including the best, most important parts) is non-verbal – done through body language and subtext. It’s what conveys emotion, intent and vibe – i.e. the feeling fuel of relationships. When you take away a person’s ability to see another’s face and force them six feet apart, you’re taking away a LOT – preventing communication and connection that could’ve otherwise happened. It saps something beautiful from life… something that makes it truly worth living.

Then there are the lockdowns. We’re inherently social creatures, so forcing distance and isolation on us is toxic. On top of that we’re already a connectively-stunted, distanced generation, so legally imposing more separation is basically the equivalent of fire-hosing rocket fuel on a social dumpster fire.

Lockdowns have also financially devastated millions and destroyed hundreds of thousands of businesses. While it’s easy to say “money-is-replaceable-but-lives-aren’t” from a comfortable distance, the real, ground-level morality of this isn’t so simple.

Most people are living in debt, paycheck-to-paycheck. The next-largest group has maybe 1-2 months of savings. These two groups represent most of humanity.

So most people literally can’t afford lockdowns. They make getting life basics much harder (or impossible), drive them deeper into debt and result in all kinds of crushing anxiety and other thought-darkeners. If you can’t afford what you need to not suffer without having to constantly hustle and fear creditors, your life isn’t really your own – it’s a never-ending series of urgent obligations and looming disaster. Life like this isn’t an inconvenience – it’s misery.

Destroyed businesses are even worse. People who build their own businesses infuse huge parts of themselves… of their souls… into them. They eat, sleep and breathe them. These businesses are much more than a simple means of making money… they’re profoundly personal extensions of self. When they go under, the owners aren’t just losing livelihood, they’re losing purpose… part of their essence. Telling people who’ve gone out of business “that-sucks-but-don’t-worry-you-can-rebuild” is tone-deaf whitewashing of suffering and an epic missing of point – technically true, but realistically false.

Next there’s remote schooling. Expecting parents and children to peacefully co-exist in-house, all day, while parents remote work/parent and kids remote school/kid isn’t just unreasonable… it’s savage. Brutal even. Not only is it a worse way of educating and socializing children, but a pressure-cooker of parents who can’t reasonably be expected to effectively work & parent simultaneously. The rules governing family and work/school life are very different from each other (and tend toward opposite)… expecting people to continuously switch between the two without a critical loss of attention quality is folly (and quality really matters here). Force-intermingling work and social life is rarely a good idea, but imposing it on parent-child relationships is poetic 💩.

Next are the vaccine mandates. Even if you agree that legally compelling vaccination is the right move now, it sets an amazingly dangerous power precedent. Humanity is reliably terrible at governing itself. We’re… not good with power. At all. We’ve shown relatively little responsibility, competency, accountability or maturity growth wielding it over our ~5,000 years of written history. Forcing people to get things injected into their bloodstream is a slippery slope. It WILL be abused in the future… and not for the greater good.

Finally there’s the utter lack of data we have on mRNA vaccines, because they’re a brand-new technology. Using newborn tech to interact with our genetic code… isn’t a great idea. Fun fact: it usually takes humans a few passes at new technology to really get it right… and making even one mistake with genes is potentially disastrous.

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So, the real question:

Which philosophy creates less suffering?

It’s…

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The ultimate pain caused by every single COVID sickness and death, multiplied by every COVID sickness and death on Earth,

*PLUS*

The severe strain on the hospital system and the ongoing danger of overflowing emergency rooms,

*PLUS*

The looming possibility of COVID spiraling out of control if we don’t take adequate measures to stop it.
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VS.

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The cumulative psychological effects of masks on the millions of people forced to keep them on under stressful conditions for hours at a time, days/weeks/months in a row,

*PLUS*

The sapped communication and millions of missed/ruined opportunities caused by masks and social distancing,

*PLUS*

The mental and emotional health damage done by forcing isolation on millions/billions of people,

*PLUS*

The financial strain/devastation/ruin of millions/billions of people,

*PLUS*

The financial AND personal devastation of the millions of people who lose their businesses,

*PLUS*

The decreased effectiveness and increased social isolation remote schooling imposes on millions of kids, at critical points of their development,

*PLUS*

The stress and psychological strain of forcing millions of parents to work & parent simultaneously (remembering that these are very different, mostly-opposite social sets),

*PLUS*

The dangerous precedent vaccine mandates set,

*PLUS*

The as-yet unknown effects mRNA vaccines will have on the millions/billions who will receive them (remembering that we’re not great with brand-new tech and that genetic manipulation has a razor-thin/basically-zero margin of error).
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…

🤔

………………

😬

There’s one kind of intelligence that matters way more than any other.

The only one that’s deeply, consistently rewarded when displayed.

And no matter how much we love telling ourselves otherwise, it sure-as-shit’s not logical, technical, academic or any other high-mindedness.

Really, it’s social intelligence that drives just about everything. It’s the ultimate human currency – something to which money is incidental.

How we’re able to make people think and, way more importantly, feel, is paramount. It’s a prime mover that directly shapes reality. The other intelligences almost always only do this indirectly, and nowhere near as well. They’re supporting cast… distant runners-up.

That’s not to say they aren’t important. They are… vitally. Civilization would literally crumble and collapse without them (think Idiocracy)…

…but we’re at a strange crossroads in our evolution.

We get off on seeing ourselves as these super-advanced awesomes who greatly value intellectual curiosity, deep thought, hard work and other-orientation. And sure, we love the end results of all that noble stuff. We excitedly point to them and go “Wow! Look how badass we are… how amazing the human mind is!” We revel in just how much more sophisticated we are than all other life we know.

…But let’s be real: we love those end results, but we don’t love dealing with the tedious bulk of thought and detail that goes into producing them. Like, at all.

Actually, we tend to avoid it at all costs… whenever we can.

High-minded details bleed feeling from the moment. They aggressively disinterest people, often to the point of pained boredom. They may be necessary for getting shit done and making things better, but that’s life’s dirty work… not the good stuff people want. It’s what’s discussed when it has to be… not when there’s a choice.

…so displaying those intelligences rarely goes over well. Actually the opposite – it usually comes off as dry, boring, try-hard and a lack of ability to talk about anything better. It’s basically social poison.

The good stuff people want is what social intelligence does. It’s how we get them to want to be with and help us, regardless of what we can potentially do for them. It’s how we truly connect with others – how we choose our people.

It’s most true in our personal relationships. At our core we’re emotionally-driven beings who crave feeling and connection above all else… things higher thinking is really bad at inspiring (and if anything diminish).

So without social intelligence a person’s… pretty fucked. If they can’t effectively understand what others want, appear confident, compellingly small-talk, read & use body language correctly, control their voice, touch the right ways, stoke the right feelings, know when to engage and when to pull back, stay emotionally-disciplined, drive narrative and otherwise guide the interaction – they’re gonna be real lonely. The best they’ll get is unreliable acquaintance, passionless friendship, professional contact and/or transactional relationship.

What’s really weird, though, is that it’s also true in the professional world… where it really shouldn’t be.

Not always, and not as often as in the social world, but a scary number of people are able to climb the competitive ladder relying primarily (if not entirely) on their social intelligence. How good they *actually* are at their jobs or how hard they *actually* work (not pretend to work) is incidental, if not irrelevant to their success.

It’s even true in the most technical/academic environments, where it really, really shouldn’t be. In his social epic “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Dale Carnegie cites several studies concluding that even in such technical lines as engineering, only about 15% of one’s success is due to technical knowledge, while about 85% is due to skill in human engineering, to personality and the ability to lead people. In other words, social intelligence. My ten years working in Silicon Valley tech startups has loudly echoed these findings.

On one hand, this is good.

Human civilization is the ultimate team sport, so knowing how to effectively understand, interact with and lead people is crucial. Awareness of human nature, relationships and politics is vital to knowing the difference between what’s possible, what’s probable, and what’s folly.

…but on the other, awkwardly-bigger hand, this is really, really bad.

Social intelligence is incidental to the other intelligences… which means it’s independent of them. Not only that, but the real kicker’s that the rules of social intelligence aren’t just different, but mostly opposite from the rules of the others. One’s guided by discipline, thinking, planning and results, while the other’s guided by fun, feelings, the moment and perception.

…So the idea that the modern world is somehow a meritocracy where the best, brightest and most devoted consistently rise to the top to better-shape the world is, at best, adorably misguided. It happens sometimes, in best-case scenarios… but we wouldn’t be stuck in the same-shit-different-day loop we are if this was the rule (rather than the exception).

Things will improve when what & how we reward improves. And it makes sense to reward the intelligences we claim to value most.

Unfortunately right now what makes sense doesn’t win much.

What feels good wins.

We are endowed with a fucking magnificent separation of our rational from our emotional.

It’s why the space between what’s said and what’s done tends toward vast.

Why what we think and what we feel are so damn dissonant so often.

Why knowing something and understanding it are very different truths.

Why theory’s so pretty and reality’s so gritty.

Why so much of what’s on social media’s a steaming pile of regressive cumchuckle.

Why we’re forced to reconcile what people say against what they actually do to get to who they really are… and if what they’ve said is any sort of valid.

The brain/blood divide is our essence. What we need to understand before we can understand ourselves, others, and the way the world really works.

The Brain is what we think we are… at least, what we like to think we are. In reality it’s the crafted, optimized version of us we try to show everyone because it looks and sounds good. It’s what makes sense – the thoughtful, logical, mature stuff that should be said and done. It lives in potential and optimism, shaping the narratives we create (whether true or not). The Brain is our presentation – our personal marketing.

But The Blood is what we really are – where we really live. What happens in the moment when the brain’s overwhelmed by surges of instinct, ego, curiosity, arousal, passion, greed, tribalism, defiance, frustration, fear and all other sorts of primal. It’s our rough edges – the life-affirming illogic that feeds on feeling and fuels our impulses. What the heart uses to so easily bypass so much of that beautifully-crafted thought to get what it really wants. The Blood is our real-real, our deeper substance – our soul.

We are the ongoing collision of brain and blood – of thought and feeling, logic and emotion, sensible and fun.

It’s a fucking war zone… and in the war of what makes sense vs. what makes sensation, sensation usually wins.

Some examples –

Reason and Logic

Brain – Reason and logic are obviously the best way to go about things. If you just take time to research, think rationally and are fully honest with yourself you’ll figure out the best way to do things and distill truth. Blood – Ugh reason and logic are so boring. Yah they’re smart but there’s no excitement… no feeling. Feeling is meaning. Too much of life’s spent in a state of forced logic… so let’s only do that when we absolutely have to. Otherwise booooo…

Communication

Brain – If people communicated more and better a lot of the problems we have now wouldn’t exist. Full, clear communication is the key to building better relationships and a better world. Blood – Don’t volunteer too much – it shows over-eagerness and immaturity. It exposes and obligates you. Whomever volunteers less has more power – mind the gap. You can hide behind vague communication and change the narrative as you go to suit your shifting needs. Besides the important communication’s done with body language… not words.

Confidence

Brain – Confidence is superficial social presentation that can be (and often is) faked. Without backup it’s meaningless. If you really think about it the people who usually are the best at things are the ones always questioning if they’re good enough – since that’s the relentless kind of perfectionism that naturally creates the best at anything. Confidence is easy – delievering’s hard. Blood – Wow they seem so sure and strong. My feelings and gut instinct tell me they’re the real deal because they’re projecting certainty, so naturally I’m impressed by and believe them. Sure there are others that have better, proven track records, but they don’t come across as well, so yeah, no.

There’s a lot to be said for moving slowly… you just don’t hear it much.

We live in history’s fastest time – too fast. But on top of that (maybe because of it) it’s also the age of YOLO. Most of what’s shoved in our faces compels us to go faster and do more for fear of missing out.

But YOLO + FOMO = a whole lotta UH-OH.

Exhibit 1: The way shit generally is.

Always hard charging and getting shit done’s great on paper and looks cool from the outside, but actually living it’s pretty much the opposite. It’s demanding, stressful and draining. It puts the focus on getting to the next thing rather than being in the moment… which is isolating. It’s fine in short bursts, and can be good for getting shit done, but as a lifestyle it’s a psyche shredder. People going too fast and doing too much makes for general crankiness and life lived in physical, social and spiritual burnout.

On the other hand, going slowly’s awesome… in lots of ways.

It projects strength and control of one’s frame. Rather than having to be hyper-alert and constantly pivoting, you’re able to just relax and be in the moment. You’re focusing on the fun, purpose-oriented stuff – doing what you want to do, as you want to do it. You’re centered and cool, which puts others at ease and makes them want to be around and engage you.

And for good reason.

Engaging with over-busy, fast-moving people tends to be the opposite. They’re chronically distracted so you’re forced to compete with all of their other obligations for their time, energy and attention. Plus their focus tends to default to their business… which is cool for them but boring for you (and everyone else). They’re almost always stressed, either outwardly or inwardly. It’s a lower quality of interaction – you’re not getting their best, you’re getting their selfish, their leftover… their meh.

This is fine and can work if the fast-mover is just a means to an end (business partner, co-worker, gatekeeper, etc.) and all you’re doing is handling logistics and strategy. But it’s garbage for social connection and real enjoyment.

Think about it: most of our best memories are made when the world slows down and we’re living by feeling – unpressured, uninhibited, unburdened. Lying on a beach sipping Mai Tais, EDM concerts where you were felt reality breathe and temporarily achieved oneness, dates so good the rest of the world melts away, backyard BBQs playing cornhole and swimming, bottomless mimosas on Sunday Fundays, the kind of all-in sex where you feel each pulse of the other’s being.

…All the moments where you go “Aaaaaaah… fuck yes. This is it.”

Moving slowly also lets you think about and process things more. Instant exposure and reaction to everything isn’t a great life approach… as we’ve been aggressively learning over the last ~20 years. It’s the right move for certain things, sure… but really not for a whole bunch of others. Good reaction needs calibration, and calibration needs consideration.

Moving slowly rules – let’s value it more and do more of it. We’ll all feel better.

Emotional privilege is the greatest power on Earth.

It means being able to freely indulge your feelings in the moment – getting to fully react and emote to what’s shown, when it’s shown, without having to worry (or at least worry less) about how your reaction affects others.

In many relationships, especially the romantic and professional, someone has emotional privilege – a pre-existing right to be more reactive and less controlled than others. In romance it’s the more-pursued, and in business it’s the boss or investor.

This privilege is ultimate. It’s the difference between true freedom and self-restriction. It means not having to exert emotional discipline… which is arguably the hardest thing in human being. Having to control or suppress feelings you’re feeling in the moment, especially the really strong ones (like arousal, anger or loss), is brutal. It forces you to internalize uncertainty, frustration, stress and pain, rather than healthily venting them as they’re felt. It’s like swallowing acid.

And internalized feelings don’t just disappear once suppressed – they graft themselves onto psyches and become part of people. They directly and deeply shape emotional well-being and character (and, I think, even physical health). The more someone’s on the wrong end of emotional privilege, the more emotional acid they swallow and the more psychic poison they’re forced to carry.

With emotional privilege also (usually) comes privilege of reactivity. Instead of having to lead the interaction, the privileged get to simply react to what’s presented them. It means getting to make less effort while also being a kind of social judge, evaluating how they treat the presenter as they take in what’s said and what’s demonstrated. Having to lead an interaction is much harder and more demanding than simply reacting in one.

Emotional privilege and privilege of reactivity are the observable, ground-level revealers of real power – and the real definers of social inequality in action.

The world’s a rough place… getting rougher.

Most of the blame usually goes to shitty behavior. The bad feed on good, exploiting trust and generosity, making themselves stronger while leaving the better worse.

Don’t get me wrong: this fucking sucks. The once open-and-honest closing themselves after being burned is high tragedy. It hardens hearts and darkens souls. It makes life less.

But there’s something else. Something worse.

Something more subtle but way more poisonous.

…

Doing good’s usually not great.

It tends to be rewarded badly… if it’s rewarded at all.

It goes unacknowledged at scary rates. A lot of good acts are met with… nothing. Not even a quick “thank you.” Just… whatever.

A lot of times it’s worse than nothing. A lot of times people become aggressively entitled – once shown kindness they expect more and better of it. “You did this for me, now you should be willing to do that because c’mon you’re a good person right?”

…WTF? No. Wrong reaction.

But that’s not the worst thing.

The worst thing is minding the social power gap. Having to carefully meter out just how much good you give to others to maintain attention and balance in a relationship.

The sad truth’s that doing for others is socially dangerous. Making more effort signals you feel you need to do more to be worthy of the relationship. Calibrated good is great, but too much is seen as weak and supplicating… it doesn’t take much before respect is lost, boredom arises and entitlement ensues. Whoever makes less effort in a relationship has more control.

In the professional world, too much goodness means becoming a work dumpster, handling the overflow other less-agreeable employees aren’t willing to do (and contrary to popular belief rarely leads to raises or promotions). In the friendship world it means making more effort while getting worse treatment. In the romantic world, too much goodness (especially too soon) means the other person gets bored and either disappears or pays the wrong kind of attention.

In other words, good’s a slippery, booby-trapped slope. You don’t wanna be a dick… but you definitely don’t wanna be a chump.

Sad.

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Let me get out in front of it:

“…But you don’t do good things for reward! You do them because it’s the right thing to do and trust fate to pay it forward!”

…I mean, really?

Telling this to people whose good has gone unacknowledged or badly-rewarded is essentially telling them to just deal with it and blindly hope for better. It’s cold comfort that rightfully makes people think twice about future sacrifice for others. It’s not wisdom – it’s insanity.

You don’t do good things for reward, no… but they should be rewarded. Validating and rewarding good is the best way to encourage more of it – not fake pats on the emotional back.

And obviously you can’t always expect perfect one-for-one reciprocity… but you should expect equivalent reciprocity over time. Not having that’s a toxic relationship dynamic that socially poisons the person on the wrong end of the power balance. On net it puts more bad than good into the world.

FINALLY: The REAL Problem…

Let’s be honest:

It looks good and feels great to have others do for you without doing for them in return. It’s a pillar of ego and baller culture – “It-just-came-to-me-cuz-I’m-awesome.” The more others do for you without you doing for them, the more power and influence you show, which impresses more people, which increases your power and influence. There’s a reason subjects come to and bow before royalty…

…and this is the primitively dirty, dark psychological motivation behind a lot of fucked-up behavior that passive-aggressively bleeds others for the power position.

So let’s go ahead and spend some time pondering the wisdom of this… maybe try to grow out of being impressed by or rewarding it.

We want what we can’t have. It’s in our nature.

But that ain’t great programming.

Just because something’s scarce doesn’t mean it’s valuable or worth pursuing.

Value exists independent of scarcity – something scarce can be valuable, but isn’t always. And something can be incredibly valuable and not be scarce.

Unfortunately our feelings tend to confuse the two. And the really fucked up part’s that if something’s not scarce enough, if it’s too-easily gotten, we usually get bored and overlook or dismiss its value.

Enter “I-don’t-know-it’s-great-but-I’m-just-not-feelin-it” – ah the sound of something beautiful dying.

The animal part of us craves the emotional rush of the chase. A voice from the deep compels us to only pursue that which flees. Having to fight and suffer for things puts lightning in our blood and fire in our loins. It makes us feel alive.

Sometimes this is really good – it leverages our primal instinct to push us to new heights. Evolution put it there for good reason.

But sometimes it’s really, really bad – costing us things we actually need in our lives simply because they weren’t hard enough to get.

Take the social games we play with each other as an example. They’re based on various combinations of things like withholding, selective approval, subtext, partial truths, misdirection, etc. – all principles of controlling scarcity designed to elicit emotion and investment.

It’s well-known these games do way more harm than good. They force us to carefully meter-out the openness and good we give each other in order to guard ourselves and maintain social power. Whoever cares less and follows the law of least effort wins. Ugh.

…But knowing something and understanding it are two very different things… and the space between them’s vast.

It’s why we so confidently say playing these games is immature and stupid in thoughtful conversation, then immediately start playing them the second our blood’s up. We know… but we don’t understand.

So it’s up to each of us to be really honest with ourselves here – is something scarce because it’s actually valuable, valuable just because it’s scarce, or is life just giving us something we need that we should embrace?

…I’m sorry Denise.

YOLO baby!

You only live once, so go fast and keep it movin’. Each clock tick compels you. Idle time’s wasted time. Always be climbing, never be satisfied. You can rest when you’re dead.

Cool, worthwhile people are in constant motion and always crushing it, yet also more centered, connected and fulfilled than everyone else. All at once.

Only boring, lame people don’t abide by this infinite ambition. They’re the unwashed masses who lose at life by being unexceptional, content… normal. How sad.

If you don’t stand above you sulk below. If you’re not first you’re last.

….

Yeah… no. Not at all.

That’s horrible. And wrong.

It forces anxiety on every moment and stresses everyone out. It creates artificial urgency and makes us feel inadequate in the process. It fuels the obscene classism and runaway wealth inequality that’s made so much of history the raging dumpster fire it’s been. And it keeps us from focusing on the really important things in life.

The good news is that we have the power to change this. We just have to change the way we understand and value ambition, strength and success.

Sure it goes against our base psychology and challenges human nature itself, but hey life’s all about challenges. Plus let’s face it human nature needs some work.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a moonshot. I doubt anything I’m about to say will change anything.

Still, it needs to be said. Things aren’t where they need to be. We’re socially sick and fast reaching a breaking point. We need to try something different if we want life to get better. We have to calm the fuck down.

So let’s start with a new rule: we shouldn’t automatically look up to people with ambition or achievement… and we shouldn’t automatically look down on people without them. We need to understand them in context.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Before going on, a key distinction. There are 2 different types of ambition: ambition of purpose, and ambition of placement.

Ambition of purpose is what you freely, excitedly pursue when you don’t have to worry about anything else. It’s love-driven – done purely for its own sake. Whether the people you care about or the things that move you, it’s the good stuff. The source of passion and meaning that make you feel really, truly alive.

This is NOT about ambition of purpose. We should always be connecting with people, bettering our presence and deepening ourselves. These are the roots of fulfillment and the keys to living our best life.

This is about ambition of placement – what’s pursued for money, power, security, status, attention or access. Unlike purpose, placement is fear-driven – done to not suffer… to have enough of something.

Because it meets our basic needs, it gets most of our attention. It’s why when we talk about ambition we usually mean ambition of placement. Higher-level fulfillment’s real hard to get if we’re wanting for food, shelter, safety, health care, quality social access or other staples.

These basics are also way easier to see. A nice place in the right neighborhood, prestigious job, cash to burn and status are all shiny social proof – things everyone wants and envies. We’re animals – our instinct screams from the deep that life’s a bestial competition where whoever has the highest status and biggest/nicest pile of stuff “wins.” That’s how all other animal life works, so “that’s just the way it is.” It’s our stuck-in-the-jungle evolutionary psychology at work.

…But other animal life’s also a brutal, desperate, kinda shitty existence. It may be cool for primitive creatures whose only real goals are staying alive and making babies, but, and I can’t believe I actually need to say this, we shouldn’t be OK with stuck-in-the-jungle. Like, at all. We’re a lot more advanced than other animals… we shouldn’t be benchmarking our being against theirs. We can do better. We fucking need to do better.

So, let’s try something new.

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We need to understand that ambition’s expensive. And by expensive I don’t mean money – I mean life currencies: our time, our energy and our attention.

These are precious, limited resources.

Whenever we decide to be more ambitious, we’re forced to spend more life currency. Going after more means having to do more… which means a thinner spreading of our ourselves across each new obligation.

But people are very finite, very imperfect beings – we can’t give real, quality investment to much before shit goes sideways. Even over-investment in one thing (like a job) can ruin us for others. The problem’s that many different things need certain amounts of currency in order for us to get the most out of life.

Of course saying this is modern blasphemy. We live in a time of almost fanatical optimism where it’s just naturally assumed that being more ambitious and doing more is always better than not. That if you just want-it-and-will-it hard enough and budget every second of your time correctly, you can do everything endlessly, constantly advance and eventually have it all.

Bullshit. 💩

Ambition’s far more expensive than we care to admit, and we’re not as infinite as we like to think. We need to start acknowledging these realities for what they really are.

Ambition always looks awesome on paper, especially in American media. But most of its practical, day-to-day realities are pretty boring and often pretty brutal… basically the opposite of awesome. And it’s not a 50/50 sorta thing…it’s more like a 95%+ boring and ~1-5% awesome thing. We live in the day-to-day… not the highlight reels we see on TV and social media.

Over-confidence is our social plague. We’re taking on too much to look good, and the obsession with having it all and winning at all costs is killing us. It incentivizes a lot of bad, sad things. We’re living life in burnout – constantly late for the next thing and not fully present. It’s much of why we’re so fucking stressed out, cranky, depleted and depressed so much of the time. We’re chasing the dragon.

More isn’t always better – often, it’s actually worse. We have to make careful choices with our currencies – and we need to understand ambition and achievement in context of their costs.

In other words, is the juice really worth the squeeze? Because often, it’s a wash, and often, it’s not.

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Before getting into what this means, two pieces of social gamesmanship to keep in mind as you read and think about this stuff in your day-to-day life:

(1) Some claim their ambition of placement IS their ambition of purpose. That what they’re doing for security and status is exactly what they’d freely choose to do if they didn’t have to worry about anything else. That they don’t mind its huge costs because their money-maker and life’s purpose are one and the same.

Always take this claim with a HUGE grain of salt. Once you look closer and learn more you find it’s rarely (like Purple Unicorn-rarely) authentic, persistent truth. Most high-ambitioners grind themselves away on things they’d rather not being doing to get the rewards they offer. The rest, even when they like what they do, live in drowning saturation (think King Midas – in the beginning he loved gold more than anything, but at the end all he really wanted was a fucking sandwich). Ambition of purpose and ambition of placement are rarely compatible with each other.

(2) Many claim that they can handle demanding tasks more easily and effectively than other people. And because of their superior ability they can effortlessly win at lots more things than others without it phasing them. All they do is win win win no matta what…

Again, boulder-sized grain of salt here. When you look closer and learn more, you typically find that they’re nowhere near as winning as they’re acting – it’s a fake-it-‘til-ya-make it sorta thing. Or they’re like a duck: calm on the surface, but furiously paddling underwater (which isn’t healthily sustainable). From the outside they look like they’re doing it all, but they’re usually stressfully working their ass off on mostly one thing while paying dime-deep attention to the rest. They’re almost never as centered, well-rounded and in-control as they’re trying to appear. Remember: crushing it takes a lot, and human currency is limited.

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Alright – let’s explore how the limitation of currency and the costs of ambition intertwine. To do that, we need to look at how achievement affects the achiever’s life as a whole – not just the shiny, outwardly-visible part.

Education – Most high-ambition pursuits require hardcore schooling, which requires huge investments of time, energy and attention during the most-formative years of life. This means less opportunity for the random, fun exploration and socializing that not only makes the best memories but teaches the street smarts and organic social skills formal education either can’t or won’t teach. These things are the most important part of adult success in everything… and basically of life in general. Most academics (especially the STEM subjects) strengthen the left brain at the expense of the right… which tends to stunt social development and numb emotional awareness.

Advanced education’s also wildly expensive. It saddles graduates with mountains of debt it’s taking longer and longer to pay off… if they ever do. This means they have to work that much harder to service that debt. As time passes the costs of education are increasingly outweighing its benefits.

…and that’s just the prerequisite. Once the fancy opportunity’s gotten, it has to be exploited. And standout success means standout sacrifice of all currencies.

Time: Time is life’s most valuable asset, and prestigious, high-ambition pursuits almost always dominate the pursuer’s time. Long work hours are bad enough, but now the lines separating work and personal life are blurred. Often work follows wherever they go, looming over and inserting itself into what’s supposed to be free time. Having control over our time is really important. If work’s always there and what little free time’s left gets sunk into errands and recovery, the person’s life isn’t *really* their own. They’re essentially an indentured servant in a gilded cage. They’re basically living for vacation and retirement.

Energy and Attention: These long hours often require an intense, shifting, unending mental focus and emotional discipline which amounts to an ongoing assault on both head and heart. Worse, there’s often little margin for error: one mistake or missed piece of information can easily cost hours of additional work, serious money, their job, career and/or reputation. This is the psychological equivalent of tap-dancing on a tightrope – a huge level of ongoing stress that continuously drains energy and diminishes presence.

The typical result is a “there-but-not-there” state of being – a kind of mental fog that, while the person may be physically-present at something, means they aren’t mentally- or emotionally-present. Just showing up isn’t enough – people need leftover energy and attention to be able to really experience and enjoy things. Over time living without this leftover currency ruins social opportunity and damages mental health, emotional stability and general well-being.

What’s more, most high-ambition pursuits condition people into a sort of “work machine” mentality – to think in terms of the specific, technical knowledge they use to do their job. While this is good for their job, it’s usually really bad for compelling, connective social interaction. People deal with boring logistical things enough as it is…they don’t want to hear about them in their free time. They want their mood elevated and emotions spiked, and talking about work and life maintenance rarely do that. Usually they’re boring, mood-killing chores to hear.

Human Ugliness: The more competitive and high-stakes something gets, the more false pretense, passive-aggression, politicking, gaslighting, manipulation, lying, cheating, end-running, backstabbing and other behind-the-scenes bullshit comes with it. The more human ugliness you experience in isolation. The saying “It’s not personal, it’s just business” is a contradiction in terms – betrayal in business directly (and strongly) affects the personal. Living in these circumstances darkens a person’s world view and worsens their behavior – you can’t stay positive if continually exposed to negative.

All of these are serious, life-shaping costs that deeply affect different people in different ways. It’s just really hard to see most of the time because people hide it to look good… which is it’s own painful burden.

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TO BE CLEAR – I am NOT trying to demean or condemn high-ambition pursuits or the people who do them. Wanting success isn’t a bad thing, and demonizing ambitious/successful people is stupid and achieves nothing.

What I’m trying to do is give perspective to the nature of ambition and achievement. Rather than being automatically impressed by and envious of the money and prestige of someone’s position, look at that success (and what it entails) more deeply. Realize that standout success is dearly-bought, and that there shouldn’t be an automatic respect for and worship of it. Ambitious, successful people make choices with their lives that, like any other choices, come with certain benefits… and certain drawbacks. They shouldn’t be seen as better or worse than average joes – only different.

What really matters is the quality and social grace with which we do our jobs. Whatever you do, do it well and make interaction with you good. Whether a barista or a lawyer, people should be always be respected and appreciated if they handle their responsibilities well and are pleasant to interact with. Period.

It’s the social, emotional value we place on ambition of placement that’s at the heart of what keeps classism, wealth inequality, corruption and other lesserness alive and thriving. It’s why no political system has any chance of ever solving any of these problems without us first toning-down the way we think about, and, more importantly, feel about money, status and achievement.

I want people to not just know, but understand it really IS our passions, our presence, and our connection to others that matter most. And that we have to not just know, but understand this in order to become better than we are.

In order to evolve.

Feelings first, thinking second – it’s how we choose our people.

And it’s why elevating mood is everything.

It’s the root of all legit social skill and the ultimate goal of all good interaction.

It’s what draws one to another. Fuels all friendship and romance. It’s even important for professional growth (which is weird since that’s supposed to be where a logical, businesslike focus wins).

Think about the best, most-alive times of your life. What do you remember most about them?

How you felt.

Making feeling makes meaning. And getting better at it’s the fastest way to a better, more meaningful existence.

Much of life is maintenance – mundane shit required to keep the lights on. Necessary, but not compelling. We spend more than enough of ourselves living for logistics – burning our precious free time talking about them is a sad, sad waste.

So don’t do it. Instead, focus on making people feel more, stronger, better feelings. Stimulate, comfort, challenge and intrigue – it’s the most direct step we all can individually take towards making the world a better place.

Whenever I hear someone blurt out the phrase “I’m multi-tasking!” I instantly lose respect for them.

It’s proof their attention’s spread too thin to handle all they’re taking on. That they’re over-booked and over-stimulated, which means they’re over-confident and under-delivering. Which… sucks.

The sad truth is that most people aren’t all that attentive or detail-oriented. If someone doesn’t give something their full attention, it’s just about given they’ll miss key things. And they’ll miss more with each splitting of their focus (even when they insist otherwise). It doesn’t take many splits (often just one) before quality suffers and things stop working well… or at all.

“Multi-tasking” is euphemism-ese – a shiny way of saying they’re doing a lot of things less-well than they should be done. It’s a sacrifice of quality for quantity.

And even with the very few people who can multi-task well, it’s like them burning a candle at two (or more) ends – they can only do it in bursts before they fuck up, break down or burn out.

Right now this happening on-scale. Perpetual distraction means the moment we’re actually living gets only fragments of our focus. Attention shapes reality – and not focusing on the moment creates a shitty reality.

Someone “multi-tasking” while you’re waiting on them, after they’ve agreed to be in your presence, is wrong. They want to hang out… but not enough to pay attention to you? No. It’s disrespect and a breach of human decency that shouldn’t be tolerated. Next ‘em and instead invest in people who show they value your company – not ones who hold it hostage.

Having lots of things going on is fine… but doing them while others are waiting on you is not. At all. It’s a vicious passive-aggression that embodies ego, entitlement and greed. It’s bad humanity.

Sure, some allowances should be made – there are times in life when multi-tasking’s unavoidably necessary (especially with legit emergencies). You don’t want to chuck a long-standing partnership out the window if someone occasionally needs a minute to finish up a conversation.

…But this should be the rare exception, not the rule. Multi-tasking’s born of bad – of bad luck, bad planning, cheapness, desperation, uncalibrated ambition, over-excitement, the list goes on. It increases stress while decreasing quality. It’s never desirable – you do it when there’s no other choice.

Dedicated focus and clear, full communication are keys to bettering things. If you commit yourself to something, give it all of you. The world will be better for it.

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