Red pill vs blue pill for anyone unfamiliar with The Matrix.
I don't mean to be offensive to religious people. But there is evidence that religious people are happier, click here for Pew Study.
As the data points show, it's no guarantee.
But let's assume there was a religion, one that could guarantee bliss in exchange for ignorance. How many people would at some point in their lives take that blue pill?
This shouldn't surprise anyone who was close to the Oldman, but the Oldman was abusing his body and not living healthy. Here are a few responses he wrote:
Wednesday, February 7, 2017: Almost a year has went by and I still feel the same way, [I] do not give a fuck about anything.
Thursday, February 16, 2017: How do I feel mentally and emotionally?? [I] can’’t answer that question unless I lie, I take the 5th amendment on that question it might incriminate me.
Thursday, July 18th, 2017: I said in Feb 16, 2017 that i don’t give a fuck about anything, i still feel the same...September 7, 2019: My health and body are all fucked up. Though I tell everyone who ask that I am fine. I do not care about anything, I still drink and smoke.
This ties back to an idea I shared in Death, But Mostly Life
regarding the Oldman's purpose in life. Of all the issues the Oldman
faced his last 6-7 years, his will to live and finding meaning in life
may have been the greatest and saddest. Here was his updated list of lingering health problems from 30 March
2016:
I take my duties as a parent and husband seriously. I could do better in both departments, especially as a husband. But these roles do not fulfill my sense of meaning. They're not enough. Maybe nothing will be enough. But I find myself struggling to find motivation and meaning between daycare drop off and pick up. There are things I want to do and most days I'm mostly productive. But I don't have the meaning and fulfillment I'd prefer. This may or may not, directly or indirectly, contribute to my sub par mental health.
I find myself envying selfishness. I know that's not good. I know
selfishness isn't the answer, but when I think about my life, I don't
feel the agency I'd prefer. My day to day life is monotonous. I'm
constantly struggling to get a 3 year old to do something. The dog
drives me crazy.
I've been thinking a lot about an email my dad sent me on 17 July 2011.
"The meaning of Life as I see it is being healthy, physically and mentally. Because if you ain't, you serve no purpose at all; then you are a burden, not an asset. When I was younger I was selfish. Everything I wanted was for me. Fame, fortune, and relationships, it was all about me. Now I look back at my life and see what a waste it was. Being selfish has no rewards. Now I realize I have too much. I probably have 2 or 3 of everything. The meaning of life in one word: "survival." I would like to think that someday I could escape all the ugliness and greed in the world. But now I just want to pass on to the people I love to stay healthy in mind and body; do not lie, steal, cheat. or cause pain to any creature. Peace and love are good words. Treat people how you want them to treat you. Do not worry about temptation, just resist it, like all negative thoughts, just resist them. Right now I kind of think the meaning of life is mowing lawns. I try to mow at least 1 acre a day when possible. It keeps me fit mentally and physically. Plus I eat healthy good food. Anyway at 65 years old, I am content to be healthy and have guitars, beer and cigarettes. I personally think I am the happiest person in the world and I have nothing.
The OldMan"
In July 2011 I was anxious and thinking a lot about the meaning of life. I didn't want regrets. I decided Fulfillment, Gratitude, Love, Righteousness, and Truth were the meaning of life (I know right). Those answers are so phony. Fulfillment isn't a meaning. It just poses the question what is fulfilling? Gratitude and love are good ideas. Righteousness and truth are nonsense, just more words to unpack to actually arrive at a meaning. Defining the meaning of life in single words is a silly task best left for insomniatic idealists.
Love and gratitude for what? The only logical answer to maximize happiness is everything. But then what stops you from being a deadbeat father ferryman like Siddhartha. Siddhartha learns to love everything, including inanimate objects like rocks, but he what does he have in the end?
Any state could bring happiness and fulfillment with the right mindset. But as I believe with CBT, changing one's mindset is very difficult. In CBT, it starts with action.
I've wanted to be like Siddhartha since I read the book. And I've kept reading it every year since, and I always find myself wanting to be more like Siddhartha. I could be like Siddhartha with mindfulness and continuous practice of the right mindset. Still, I'm not sure that would satisfy me although I know it could if I wanted it. The real dilemma, is that I want more.
Anyone can give good advice, but following good advice is the hard part. And making decisions between options that have compounding drastically different outcomes as time passes into unknown futures.
I need to start doing something more meaningful with my time. I need to pick something and stick with it for a predetermined amount of time.
I fear I'm going to be like my dad in the since that regrets may haunt me. The past is taking more and more of my conscious mind the older I get. Now, I don't see myself not having regrets from my current life and choices.
I need some lawns to mow. I need something I can focus on that gives me a goal I can accomplish and work on daily.
I'm becoming my dad. He had this story about a guy in a room with everything he wanted and an unknown door. The guy, and my dad, were afraid to open the door, afraid to try to live. I wonder how much of me is the guy in the room afraid to open the door vs accepting my place in life.
Here
is a brief wiki explanation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of language:
"He argues the bewitchments of philosophical problems arise from philosophers' misguided attempts to consider the meaning of words independently of their context, usage, and grammar, what he called "language gone on holiday."
According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise when language is forced from its proper home into a metaphysical environment, where all the familiar and necessary landmarks and contextual clues are removed." (wiki)
"Quoth Siddhartha: "I've had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and again. Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one's heart. There have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness."
"Are you kidding?" asked Govinda.
"I'm not kidding. I'm telling you what I've found. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness."
Andrew Barr said, "The harder you look for something, the more likely you are to find it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
We've been having plumbing problems for the last 3 weeks. Over the last few weeks I've learned a lot about plumbing, and everything appears to be good now.
We had an massive hole and crack along a rotted cast iron drain pipe from the upstairs bathroom. The rotted pipe was about 5.5 feet long, pics below.
Overall, I'm happy with my work, what I learned, and the confidence I gained to finish repairs and projects around the house.
The most important thing I learned: never buy an old house. There are so many half assed repairs in this house. It'll be funny someday when I'm no longer the one paying the price for them.
Below is a costs benefit analysis and a timeline of events. At the bottom of the page are the pictures I took along the way.
Costs
Benefits
Analysis
I made between $400-500 a day working, and only had to go to the urgent care once. By far the most money I've made in my life for 4 days of work.
Timeline
Pics
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| Pic #1 |
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| Pic #1b- where water seemed to be leaking |
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| Pic #3a- Open up more ceiling after find a flood of water |
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| Pic #3b "The Leak" |
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| Pic #4a- open up more ceiling to make cuts. Find more cracks. |
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| Pic #4b |
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| Pic #4c |
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| Pic #5- main damaged part of the rotted pipe |
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| Pic #6a |
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| Pic #6b |
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| Pic #7a |
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| Pic #7b |
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| Pic #8 |
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| Pic #9a |
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| Pic #9b |
I recently reread War and Peace. It is sending me on a Leo Tolstoy binge. I read Anna Karenana a few years ago. It instantly became one of my favorite books. The timelessness of Anna Karenina captivated me. The struggles and conflicts written ~150 years ago are timeless.
This time with War and Peace, I realized Tolstoy's true gift. Tolstoy is a great writer, but he isn't the best writer when it comes to his literal words and sentences (diction or syntax). His descriptions don't punch the hardest. His writing doesn't seem the most polished. But Tolstoy knows people, better than anyone else I've read. Tolstoy was extremely well read. His understanding of statistics, philosophy, science, and especially history were at the top of his time. Even today, Tolstoy understands those topics better than most people. Tolstoy doesn't need 21st century sciences or technologies because he already knows what those disciplines are trying to discover: people. People are people. Tolstoy knows how people are people. If you knew people anytime during the last few thousands of years, then you'd appear to understand modern psychology, behavioral economics, and other social sciences. Culturally people change, but genetically we're programmed the same as our hunter gather ancestors. And even with all the social progress, the dynamics of relationships and conflicts remain surprisingly similar. That's why 150 years later, people all over the planet are obsessed and in love with War and Peace. They might start reading it to be cool or fit in with intellectual crowds, but they love it because Tolstoy knows people.
I first read War and Peace about 10 years ago. I loved it. At the time, I was shocked at how great the drama was. I liked the philosophy, and really enjoyed the inevitability and free will topics. The history was okay.
Ten years later, I love it even more. It was almost like reading it for the first time because I forgot most of the book, and I misremembered several important details. The philosophy of history I was able to understand and appreciate a lot better this time. As the book progressed the philosophy of history felt redundant and distracting from the characters stories, but then the philosophy of history finished strong in the second epilogue. Many literary readers dislike, I get it. And I'd prefer the first epilogue ending as an ending to the book.
The drama is as great as it was my first read. My previous read had minimal female characters, so the women in War and Peace especially stood out. The women are strong and present figures in War and Peace.
The opening chapters were very slow, but the more I read and remembered and got to know the characters again, the story and my interest picked up. I might have been reading one chapter a day at first.
Structurally, the novel is broken into four volumes of 17 books, and books are broken into parts. The chapters are very short. War and Peace is ~1200-1500 pages depending on the copy. There are 361 chapters. That rounds to 4 pages per chapter. If you read one chapter a day, that'd make for a great year of reading. Volume two was my favorite of the 4 volumes.
For anyone wanting or struggling to read War and Peace, I recommend referencing a character list. Wiki has a great one, but watch out if you care about spoilers. I spoiled a couple things but didn't mind. I'd recommend reading the wiki for War and Peace and Leo Tolstoy as well. It will provide context that makes it easier to follow characters and the plot.
An important idea for Tolstoy is that history shouldn't be told from the point of view and actions of great men. Everyone plays a small part in history, and so Tolstoy introduces the reader to many side characters who play their smaller roles in history. Almost like a 19th century Howard Zinn, "A People's History of Russian Nobility during The Napoleonic War?"
I read this months behind a twitter book club, #TolstoyTogether. I noticed the people I followed on twitter seemed to love Pierre (Christopher McCandless loved Pierre). I like Pierre too, but I prefer Prince Andrei. Although Pierre and Andrei are close friends, they're philosophically opposing. Pierre is the absentminded ideologist and Andrei is the pessimistic man of action. One of my favorite quotes in the book is in the first few chapters when Andrei warns Pierre to never marry unless you're ready to be a loser.
"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing- or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he waved his arm.
"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I mention this, because I like you."
These are the spoiler free last sentences of War and Peace:
But as in astronomy the new view said: “It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,” so also in history the new view says: “It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.”
In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.
I've been reading and learning more about Tolstoy's life. He wrote War and Peace before his hard core Christianity phase where among other things he learned Greek to read the the original Gospels of Jesus and then wrote his own Gospel of Jesus.
Seeing Tolstoy reject free will or imply that laws rule is shocking. The characters in War and Peace find God. They express that Jesus and his teaching are the answer, but the book says the laws are. It doesn't necessarily have to be a contraction, but it goes against almost everything my Christian friends have told me.
I'm going to read more about Tolstoy, Russia, and literary criticism of War and Peace. Then I want to reread War and Peace again. I'm sure there is so much I missed. Until next time, I'll leave you with my favorite chess quote.
