Poor people suck. We know that. With their very existence they destroy everybody's happiness, and it's probably a good idea to get rid of them. Robin Hood was not the first to fight the poor by giving them money he had stolen from the rich, and President Obama won't be the last. Such attempts are heartwarming but doomed to fail eventually.
Oh, I don't mean that taking money from the rich is impossible. It works every time but it won't help. Trying to eliminate the poor is such a challenge. Apparently, these guys are a resilient pest and most likely matters are trickier than you may expect:
The poor are an evasive species. Kind of like Sasquatch. Try to find Sasquatch. Then give him money and he will disappear? He won't but that's what we hope the poor will do, don't we?
We want the poor to disappear, and we sheepishly believe that bribing them will support their vanishing act. If we don't try to manipulate the poor into going away there is something wrong with us, we think, and we feel mightily guilty.
My Sasquatch allegory is stupid and inappropriate? About six billion people on earth are poor and you don't need to 'find' them? Of course I am pretty dense but consider this: just as you can't put a finger on Big Foot's big toe, you cannot pick out one single poor person and transport her to life's greener pastures at will.
Looking for a poor individual you could depoorify may not be as easy as finding a needle in a haystack. Besides, there are a bunch of fun things to do in a haystack once you'll tire of the needle business. For centuries we have been eager to whack the poor out of their embarrassing existence, with the result that there are a few billion more of them today than at any time in the past.
We try to get rid of something unwanted, and the inevitable result will be its proliferation.
When I was a little girl, my mom told me I could catch rabbits by dropping salt on their bushy tails. I believed her, loaded up on salt, and went into the field to hunt rabbits. Alas, my dad took the salt away from me, believing it was a potentially dangerous substance (which it was, but only for rabbits). Hence I never caught a rabbit and they have been hastily procreating ever since.
For similar reasons we may never catch a hairy specimen of Big Foot. Does that mean he will never disappear? If we can't find poor people, will they go away? I know you are questioning my sanity, but who are 'the poor?' The homeless guy with a Facebook page, powering up his Dell laptop with a generator (Wall Street Journal, June 4th 2009)? More than a billion people who live on less than a dollar a day? That is some form of financial stability at least, isn't it?
I can hear the howling of the do-gooders from here. I am cruel, you say? Hey, you want to eliminate the poor, not I. Admittedly, from the perspective of the religion of poverty I am committing heresy. I deny the existence of the poor. True. But the nanny activists are denying the poor their existence. What is worse: denying God or making an attempt on his life?
What makes the poor poor? There are plenty of people with little money who refuse to be called 'poor.' Similarly, there are folks with enormous assets but they would rather bite off a chunk of their tongue before they'd admit to being 'rich.' Money doesn't make people rich, as lack of money can't make anybody poor.
Judgment creates both groups, the so-called rich and the allegedly poor. To be precise, it's commonly the judgment of other people. The existence of the poor and the rich is caused by discrimination.
Not even those we think must be poor are likely to call themselves poor. The rich and the poor live in our heads only. Not two individuals will agree on the dividing line between poor and rich. When does one cross that line? What will it take, exactly? If you knew that, it could be done perhaps. Alas, nobody seems to know.
The line between the rich and the poor is individual and imaginary. So is Sasquatch.
The poor are serving a public purpose. We don't talk about poverty out of compassion, we do it because political mileage is to be gained from being seen as helping the poor. Recently I did an unlikely thing--unlikely for me, that is: I volunteered, distributing food and household staples to families in dire need. The organizers were incredibly concerned about properly sucking up to the media. The compassionate journalists were fed with fine foods that could not be wasted on a poor person. The organizers wanted to be photographed with the unfortunate, but they were hardly willing to have any direct business with that unwashed unkempt crowd of trash.
We love this mythological creature: the poverty stricken peasant. We have a romance with our helper's syndrome and the more poor losers we can identify, the more heroic we will look eliminating them. Poor people are as much of a godsend to those fighting poverty as blind children in India were for Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa needed the poor at least as much as the poor needed her. She died with coffers full of charity millions. Collecting the money was important for her. Making it available to those in need who provided the purpose for its accumulation was apparently not that pressing an issue.
We love problems and we nourish them. Problems that we cannot solve give meaning to our otherwise empty lives. And we are suckers for meaning, aren't we? Obviously we need the poor and--thank God--there is a simple solution. Not easy, but simple enough to be executed. We simply invent more of them than we can handle!
Apropos 'execution.' The Nazis knew how handy the Jews could be and sure enough, they loved them to death. Of course the Germans didn't invent the Jews per se. But the Nazis painstakingly invented how the Jews were perceived by a population that quietly permitted--and actively participated in--the bizarre joys of government issued murder.
Artificially altered public perception was powerful enough to turn the population of several countries into willing exterminators. And sleight of hand is what makes people appear as poor as needed. It's not about the lack of money. The sentimental value of emotions you can trigger is what counts. The sap quotient is key. No money is just no money and that experience is not exclusively owned by 'the poor.'
Naturally, nobody wants to kill the poor. We just want to get rid of them, for their own sake and for the common good. It'll be good for them to be gone. Not even the poor need the poor. To be exact, we don't really want to get rid of the poor. We just want to be seen as the ones working on such a sacred task.
Nobody gains brownie points from the absence of poverty and the poor. May they never go away completely. See, that's were the parallel between Sasquatch and the poor is undeniable. We are eager to curb their existence but we cannot afford to kill them off.
Now, are there any real poor people or not? I am not so sure. Agreed, there are several billion people with very little or no money as well as you can find folks who have plenty of assets and decent piles of cash.
I won't deny the existence of people with empty bank accounts and pockets, but the imaginary line we evoke to separate the so-called poor from the so-called rich is nonsense. Politicians gain from that mind game, the so-called poor sure won't.
I will go an inch further: the poor don't exist! The poor are a myth, and so are the rich. You can't get rid of either mythical group, for the same reasons you won't purge the world of Big Foot. Give up the fight, and drop the sick idea that the world would be better off without the poor. Contrary to popular opinion, the world is a great place and Sasquatch doesn't have to become extinct.
A play of perceptions. We have learned nothing about the poor besides myriads of colorful perceptions packaged in sappy stories. The idea of poverty helps journalists sell copy. New age geezers drove their human environment up the walls with poverty thinking and prosperity thinking. Poverty has been used to instigate revolution, to murder Czars, and to control societies. In other words, hardly anything is as valuable as poverty. It offers a wealth of opportunities. What would we do without the poor?
We can't afford to lose the poor and therefore we shall never eliminate poverty. Too many of us want the poor out of our sight AND to stay right where they are, simultaneously. The Jews were a temporary asset for the short sighted Nazis. For our society, the poor are a gift that keeps on giving--a cash cow to be exact.
Talking about racism: conversations about the rich and the poor are as ignorant and derogatory as disparaging talk about different "races." Meanwhile, we have figured out there is only one human race. Duh. But the fascist in us craves the fun of judging. Hence both the poor and the rich have become immortalized, as projections of the unwanted.
'The poor' are not other people. The poor are us. Our ideas of despair have been formed along the lines of nonsense that comes to our mushy mind when we think about poverty with a Hollywood perspective. We are utterly selfish when we evoke the image of poverty. We love thinking about the poor poor as an exercise in secondhand self-pity. The poor have done more for you than you will ever do for them. They give you reason to whine between beers.
It is not intelligent to parrot vague terms ad nauseam. Dividing the population into poor and rich people is separatism. We may choose to continue at our peril. If you really don't enjoy looking at someone's dire circumstances, write her a $500 check. But we'll do more for a vibrant economy when we stop milking each other's moral code under the pretense of doing good. As a species we are too creepy to ever do the right thing. Let's not even try.
If we truly cared about the poor we would have eliminated Malaria by now. We know we can, simply because we have done it in other regions. But we don't give a rat's ass. And that is o.k. as long as we don't pretend otherwise.
Arrogance permits us to address other people's poverty. In our hubris we think we have something to offer. Do we, really? We have adjusted the term 'Third World Country' to the politically more correct 'Developing World,' while we have advanced to becoming the 'Developed World.'
You mean it's a sign of development that more than 90% of our society works in lifelong dependency and despises every day of work? We should export our brilliant accomplishments? We would feel so much better about ourselves if we butchered the individuals and their potential also in the developing world on a grand scale, so they may live in voluntary slavery like we do?
If I were poor I would hide from the nannies who want to save me. But fortunately there are no poor people. Only individuals with differing amounts of cash in their pockets. And then, there are some things that mysteriously unite us all: the right and the freedom to have as much as we have.
Last but not least, we share a great equalizer: the fun of trying to make another buck.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Buy my book! And good grief, do it now: http://to.ly/7cx
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
crappiness of happiness
A friend asked me how I would sum up the content of my new book in one sentence. The short answer: "Ecstasy in Hell!"
Yeah, but how ... yeah, butt what?
The pursuit of happiness is overrated. Happiness is not. See, as long as you pursue happiness you can't have it. So, why would you want to pursue happiness instead of enjoying it? You are happy or you aren't--there is no middle ground. Nobody is almost happy or half depressed.
The experience of happiness is rather sparse. We have developed myths about the proper pursuit of happiness, and our belief in happy-making myths is more important to us than actually being happy. Let's bludgeon three of these myths out of existence.
Life is messy, and it will stay that way. If we must fix the world before we can relax and enjoy a moment of happiness, we are doomed. Miserable people, on a mission to make the world a better place, will make the world more miserable. I don't trust unhappy do-gooders.
The supposedly meaningful maxim: "Leave the world a better place!" is frighteningly meaningless and in the incompetent hands of the unhappy, anything that seems better to them is guaranteed to take a turn for the worse. If you are unhappy with the universe, take a nap. But please don't do anything to make it better.
Do you know why you don't like your bloody world? Because every dork has tried to improve it. That includes--but is not limited to--Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. They wanted a better world as well. By all means put horse manure under your rose bushes if you so desire, but don't screw with my world. I don't need more of other people's harebrained ideas to improve the law "for my safety." What am I talking about? Health Nazis, like NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, want to outlaw salt. Salt? Yes, salt! I am confident it'll be illegal for me to pick my own nose, soon.
If you are unhappy with your reality, the world is not the cause of your misery. You are. And don't even consider improving yourself to take care of that problem: you are beyond help. The situation is hopeless and nothing better could happen to you.
Hopelessness is the portal to expanded happiness!
Dopey Hope No. 1: "One day I shall be sane and because of my healthy noodle, my world will be more enjoyable."
You will never be sane.
The DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) lacks a definition of sanity, but it describes you and me in excruciating detail. We are nuts, all of us, in different departments and on a variety of intensity levels.
We are a bit cuckoo, and some of us a little more than others. So what? Call it eccentric if you prefer but quit tinkering with your noggin'. You are doing fine. Few things are as liberating as the realization that you will never be normal or like other people. Other people will always be nuttier than you can imagine. Trust me, you don't want to be like them.
Putting an end to your quest for sanity translates to instant relaxation and provides a crucial foundation for happiness. Go for it. You can be there before noon tomorrow.
Dopey Hope No. 2: "One day I shall be surrounded by individuals who truly understand and respect me. Feeling understood will make me think better of myself."
You will never find a person who understands you!
I don't know how to break it to you, but you will die alone. Nobody cares to croak with you. A couple of teary-eyed folks may hang around, but the performance of the day will be yours.
We were alone when we were born. No matter how creepily "loving" and feng shui the atmosphere during your water birth was, the crappy pain you had to experience while transitioning from mom's pot belly to a rather cold environment akin to Siberia was exclusively yours. Since then, you have been on death row and it won't be commuted. Sorry!
Apropos, if waterboarding is torture, so is child birth. If newborns could talk, they would scream for a lawyer and the Geneva Convention. Put an adult through the same procedure that every baby experiences during birth, and pregnancy would be outlawed as a crime against humanity. Under a multitude of risks to life and limb, each one of us was cruelly tortured into this life. To add insult to injury, the entire blasted family was looking forward to our most painful experience of a lifetime.
I acknowledge that our mothers had their heaping share of pain to deal with, but they volunteered to participate. We did not. However, individuals live through this mandatory event in gruesome loneliness. It's great to have company, but pharmaceuticals are better suited to move this chapter quickly into the past.
Some of us develop the idea that life becomes more bearable in a group. 'Bearable' doesn't equal happiness for me, but who am I to judge the lemmings? You mean dying will be more fun when we "belong?" The only thing that improves in a group is the stupidity of each individual member. It can jump up exponentially in fact. Think committee decisions.
The first tree you ever saw in your life differed from my first tree. Somebody innocently mentions the word 'tree,' and you and I believe we have an idea of what she meant. Each of us imagines a different tree, and we could bombard each other with descriptions for days without success: we shall never get a congruent image of the other person's tree into our head.
Trees or chairs are relatively easy to communicate about. Tangibles are child's play compared with more complex subjects such as peace, love, freedom, or the existence and consistency of a soul. Good thing that I don't bother maintaining one. A soul that is. I don't even care for peace or love, but that is a separate story.
It is practically impossible for two people to agree on a precise definition of 'love' or 'God.' What is torture, for instance, and what is not? After half a decade of heated debates we aren't closer to agreement, are we?
Giving up the idea of finding your damn soul mate or someone who truly understands you can relieve you of the tension you were trying to eliminate by trying hard to meet understanding friends. I have felt most lonely while I was surrounded by dear friends, and I have felt outright deserted in the midst of family.
You can only discover, express, and enjoy your kind of freedom alone. Don't be so dense: of course you can be close to great individuals, but you'll never cross the chasm of individuality. Between individuals there can't be understanding. I shall never know you.
Dopey Hope No. 3: "One beautiful day the world will be as desired and all my insipid wishes will come true."
Not!
By the way, do you know what people hate most about the markets? The fact that markets behave as unpredictably as the world does. The notion that free markets don't work is as absurd and feeble minded as the idea that reality must be wrong.
"The world"--our collective experience of planet earth and your personal reality--will never be as neatly organized and pleasant as we wish for it to turn out. It matters not how many cutesy treasure maps the faithful Claw-of-Attraction dorks will nail to their bedroom walls. Even Hitler tried that and failed miserably.
You will never like your present day in its entirety, your future, or your past. And if you can be happy with the rosy parts of reality only, you are doomed to a dull existence, baby. Happiness about everything going according to your plan is for greenhorns. Gathering positive events in your life and trying to eliminate more of the negative stuff is a zero sum game.
Positive thinkering is maxed out. You won't prevent a quarter of a billion annual Malaria infections by thinking "good" thoughts and Malaria won't become more palatable by "seeing the glass half full." If your teenage son happens to impregnate your neighbor's 16-year old daughter--The Secret this or The Secret that--you won't like it one bit.
Conditional happiness is a setup for depression. "I am willing to be happy only if and when X occurs." Well, good luck with that! Why would you want to deprive yourself of happiness between highly improbable events? Are you so superstitious that you believe your self-chosen misery will convince the universe to have mercy with your rotten soul? You think sacrificing your happiness will guarantee better circumstances for your future?
If you are not happy, you have made a childish deal with the universe: "Dear universe, if you provide me with XYZ eventually, I am willing to be miserable in exchange meanwhile." People literally choose misery now to be happy later. It's pathetic.
I know I am exaggerating. I am wrong. It's not true. I lied. Funny species that we are, we can't be that droll ... or can we?
Your life's circumstances will rarely be conducive to prolonged happiness. If you care to be happy, you must pry it out of the iron grip of daily adversity. You must shorten your bitch lag!
Say wha ...?
Bitch lag.
There it is. The happy-maker par excellence.
Bitch lag is the time it takes to regain your composure, your productivity, and your happiness--after a disruptive unpleasant event triggered you to complain about reality.
We are useless while we're bitching about our lot. We are not making money and we're not aware how much fun we are having. But we are having fun indeed while we are locked in complaining mode. In fact, bitching about the world animates us so that we could go on for hours. Honestly, you don't want to defend the position that hating event X in your life is an expression of misery, or do you?
Bitching is bitching. We love it!
When things go wrong in our lives, when we are upset, pissed off, and red-faced in glowing anger: we are in our element. That, too, is happiness. Unadulterated ecstasy. We enjoy the crap in our lives more than we do its lame positive sides. Gets the blood pressure going.
You cannot expand your happiness by by increasing the nice and pink stuff. That's ninny theory. Leave The Secret and mind numbingly boring self-improvement to the baby boomers. Hardcore happiness wants to be experienced around the clock and because they don't have access to it, the baby boomers can't be weened off their weed.
I am not interested in inhaling five minutes of happiness on weekends. I want all of it all the time, or nothing! So can you. And damned, it's free!
Zero bitch lag: you realize you're bitching about something and--Bingo!--you are there. THAT is your current expression of ecstasy.
Reality sucks once-in-a-while for everyone of us. So what? Exploit it, all of it, for fun and profit. And you'll have one hell of a grand time.
Egbert
P.S.: Have you bought my book yet? No? Geez, pick it up at http://moneybymistake.com
Yeah, but how ... yeah, butt what?
The pursuit of happiness is overrated. Happiness is not. See, as long as you pursue happiness you can't have it. So, why would you want to pursue happiness instead of enjoying it? You are happy or you aren't--there is no middle ground. Nobody is almost happy or half depressed.
The experience of happiness is rather sparse. We have developed myths about the proper pursuit of happiness, and our belief in happy-making myths is more important to us than actually being happy. Let's bludgeon three of these myths out of existence.
Life is messy, and it will stay that way. If we must fix the world before we can relax and enjoy a moment of happiness, we are doomed. Miserable people, on a mission to make the world a better place, will make the world more miserable. I don't trust unhappy do-gooders.
The supposedly meaningful maxim: "Leave the world a better place!" is frighteningly meaningless and in the incompetent hands of the unhappy, anything that seems better to them is guaranteed to take a turn for the worse. If you are unhappy with the universe, take a nap. But please don't do anything to make it better.
Do you know why you don't like your bloody world? Because every dork has tried to improve it. That includes--but is not limited to--Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. They wanted a better world as well. By all means put horse manure under your rose bushes if you so desire, but don't screw with my world. I don't need more of other people's harebrained ideas to improve the law "for my safety." What am I talking about? Health Nazis, like NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, want to outlaw salt. Salt? Yes, salt! I am confident it'll be illegal for me to pick my own nose, soon.
If you are unhappy with your reality, the world is not the cause of your misery. You are. And don't even consider improving yourself to take care of that problem: you are beyond help. The situation is hopeless and nothing better could happen to you.
Hopelessness is the portal to expanded happiness!
Dopey Hope No. 1: "One day I shall be sane and because of my healthy noodle, my world will be more enjoyable."
You will never be sane.
The DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) lacks a definition of sanity, but it describes you and me in excruciating detail. We are nuts, all of us, in different departments and on a variety of intensity levels.
We are a bit cuckoo, and some of us a little more than others. So what? Call it eccentric if you prefer but quit tinkering with your noggin'. You are doing fine. Few things are as liberating as the realization that you will never be normal or like other people. Other people will always be nuttier than you can imagine. Trust me, you don't want to be like them.
Putting an end to your quest for sanity translates to instant relaxation and provides a crucial foundation for happiness. Go for it. You can be there before noon tomorrow.
Dopey Hope No. 2: "One day I shall be surrounded by individuals who truly understand and respect me. Feeling understood will make me think better of myself."
You will never find a person who understands you!
I don't know how to break it to you, but you will die alone. Nobody cares to croak with you. A couple of teary-eyed folks may hang around, but the performance of the day will be yours.
We were alone when we were born. No matter how creepily "loving" and feng shui the atmosphere during your water birth was, the crappy pain you had to experience while transitioning from mom's pot belly to a rather cold environment akin to Siberia was exclusively yours. Since then, you have been on death row and it won't be commuted. Sorry!
Apropos, if waterboarding is torture, so is child birth. If newborns could talk, they would scream for a lawyer and the Geneva Convention. Put an adult through the same procedure that every baby experiences during birth, and pregnancy would be outlawed as a crime against humanity. Under a multitude of risks to life and limb, each one of us was cruelly tortured into this life. To add insult to injury, the entire blasted family was looking forward to our most painful experience of a lifetime.
I acknowledge that our mothers had their heaping share of pain to deal with, but they volunteered to participate. We did not. However, individuals live through this mandatory event in gruesome loneliness. It's great to have company, but pharmaceuticals are better suited to move this chapter quickly into the past.
Some of us develop the idea that life becomes more bearable in a group. 'Bearable' doesn't equal happiness for me, but who am I to judge the lemmings? You mean dying will be more fun when we "belong?" The only thing that improves in a group is the stupidity of each individual member. It can jump up exponentially in fact. Think committee decisions.
The first tree you ever saw in your life differed from my first tree. Somebody innocently mentions the word 'tree,' and you and I believe we have an idea of what she meant. Each of us imagines a different tree, and we could bombard each other with descriptions for days without success: we shall never get a congruent image of the other person's tree into our head.
Trees or chairs are relatively easy to communicate about. Tangibles are child's play compared with more complex subjects such as peace, love, freedom, or the existence and consistency of a soul. Good thing that I don't bother maintaining one. A soul that is. I don't even care for peace or love, but that is a separate story.
It is practically impossible for two people to agree on a precise definition of 'love' or 'God.' What is torture, for instance, and what is not? After half a decade of heated debates we aren't closer to agreement, are we?
Giving up the idea of finding your damn soul mate or someone who truly understands you can relieve you of the tension you were trying to eliminate by trying hard to meet understanding friends. I have felt most lonely while I was surrounded by dear friends, and I have felt outright deserted in the midst of family.
You can only discover, express, and enjoy your kind of freedom alone. Don't be so dense: of course you can be close to great individuals, but you'll never cross the chasm of individuality. Between individuals there can't be understanding. I shall never know you.
Dopey Hope No. 3: "One beautiful day the world will be as desired and all my insipid wishes will come true."
Not!
By the way, do you know what people hate most about the markets? The fact that markets behave as unpredictably as the world does. The notion that free markets don't work is as absurd and feeble minded as the idea that reality must be wrong.
"The world"--our collective experience of planet earth and your personal reality--will never be as neatly organized and pleasant as we wish for it to turn out. It matters not how many cutesy treasure maps the faithful Claw-of-Attraction dorks will nail to their bedroom walls. Even Hitler tried that and failed miserably.
You will never like your present day in its entirety, your future, or your past. And if you can be happy with the rosy parts of reality only, you are doomed to a dull existence, baby. Happiness about everything going according to your plan is for greenhorns. Gathering positive events in your life and trying to eliminate more of the negative stuff is a zero sum game.
Positive thinkering is maxed out. You won't prevent a quarter of a billion annual Malaria infections by thinking "good" thoughts and Malaria won't become more palatable by "seeing the glass half full." If your teenage son happens to impregnate your neighbor's 16-year old daughter--The Secret this or The Secret that--you won't like it one bit.
Conditional happiness is a setup for depression. "I am willing to be happy only if and when X occurs." Well, good luck with that! Why would you want to deprive yourself of happiness between highly improbable events? Are you so superstitious that you believe your self-chosen misery will convince the universe to have mercy with your rotten soul? You think sacrificing your happiness will guarantee better circumstances for your future?
If you are not happy, you have made a childish deal with the universe: "Dear universe, if you provide me with XYZ eventually, I am willing to be miserable in exchange meanwhile." People literally choose misery now to be happy later. It's pathetic.
I know I am exaggerating. I am wrong. It's not true. I lied. Funny species that we are, we can't be that droll ... or can we?
Your life's circumstances will rarely be conducive to prolonged happiness. If you care to be happy, you must pry it out of the iron grip of daily adversity. You must shorten your bitch lag!
Say wha ...?
Bitch lag.
There it is. The happy-maker par excellence.
Bitch lag is the time it takes to regain your composure, your productivity, and your happiness--after a disruptive unpleasant event triggered you to complain about reality.
We are useless while we're bitching about our lot. We are not making money and we're not aware how much fun we are having. But we are having fun indeed while we are locked in complaining mode. In fact, bitching about the world animates us so that we could go on for hours. Honestly, you don't want to defend the position that hating event X in your life is an expression of misery, or do you?
Bitching is bitching. We love it!
When things go wrong in our lives, when we are upset, pissed off, and red-faced in glowing anger: we are in our element. That, too, is happiness. Unadulterated ecstasy. We enjoy the crap in our lives more than we do its lame positive sides. Gets the blood pressure going.
You cannot expand your happiness by by increasing the nice and pink stuff. That's ninny theory. Leave The Secret and mind numbingly boring self-improvement to the baby boomers. Hardcore happiness wants to be experienced around the clock and because they don't have access to it, the baby boomers can't be weened off their weed.
I am not interested in inhaling five minutes of happiness on weekends. I want all of it all the time, or nothing! So can you. And damned, it's free!
Zero bitch lag: you realize you're bitching about something and--Bingo!--you are there. THAT is your current expression of ecstasy.
Reality sucks once-in-a-while for everyone of us. So what? Exploit it, all of it, for fun and profit. And you'll have one hell of a grand time.
Egbert
P.S.: Have you bought my book yet? No? Geez, pick it up at http://moneybymistake.com
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
I love what I want
My friend Tom Volkar brought up the issue of love in regards to work. Should we pursue work we love or is it better that we do what we want? To get a deeper understanding of where I am coming from, I suggest you visit Tom's fabulous essay 'Loving Your Work is Overrated.' Now.
Here's my response:
Thank you, Tom, for shamelessly plugging my book! Your kind compliments are making me blush.
Roughly 50% of our marriages end in divorce, and we are falling out of love at an even higher rate. Love has a poor track record, especially as the basis for a flourishing long term business relationship with oneself.
Granted, love doesn't always look like Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah's sofa. But elements of insanity or at least manic behavior are lurking in the shadows of every romance. We love being in love to a level of addiction, and here is the opening to unavoidable pain. Our love for love usually dissolves it ... if we are lucky.
Unless we talk about love for our brats, that is--but that kind of caring is hardwired into our DNA. Any damned ostrich can do that.
Love is a terminal illness. Your love will end or it will end you. Love can literally kill people, and it is healthy to keep in mind that most homicides take place between individuals who once loved each other.
When we are tired of "loving" destruction and self-destruction, we can simply resolve the relationship entirely or we may opt for transmuting this mushy monstrum into something of durable consistency: able partners can transcend seizures of love and derive from it what they WANT!
Decades ago I loved my work. I was on a mission ("They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God." --Blues Brothers), and I didn't believe that this love could end. The stuff we love is fraught with too much meaning. You mentioned 'the horns of angels:' "If the horns of angels and blinding white light don't announce their epiphanies, they often question their discoveries."
Frequent questioning of our discoveries is an integral part of a healthy mental diet. People get heart attacks over the impertinent self-importance that's covered up by their calling. Yep, God's Will can be a severe case of covert hubris. It serves us well to relax and to re-discover the playful character of old fashioned trial and error.
Beginning a new business venture can be fun. What's so wrong with lust? And if it works, why wouldn't you want to continue?
Today, I embrace the fact that I am somewhat detached from my projects. Distance makes the heart grow fonder? It does. Emotional distance supports free choice and thickens your bond with everything you really want.
The next occurrence of love is likely going to be a temporary phenomenon. Worse, our love suspends free will. Freedom of choice is impaired by love, and that can be as sickening as a commitment. Apropos, commitment to psychiatric wards is usually perpetrated by--you guessed correctly--loved ones, in the name of love. Is the sleepiest Saint out there finally snapping to attention?
'Doing what we love' is just another holy cow on the chopping block: ultimately we don't do anything we don't want. Feelings and emotions are always subject to our will. The baby boomers have used their sacred feelings as the most powerful tool to manipulate and to subjugate their environment. The infatuation of a teenager is an intense expression of what she wants.
So is our love and our hatred for our work.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Are you twittering yet? Follow me on twitter.com at http://twitter.com/esukop
P.P.S.: And don't forget to visit Amazon to purchase a copy of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' at http://tinyurl.com/dyal4y
Here's my response:
Thank you, Tom, for shamelessly plugging my book! Your kind compliments are making me blush.
Roughly 50% of our marriages end in divorce, and we are falling out of love at an even higher rate. Love has a poor track record, especially as the basis for a flourishing long term business relationship with oneself.
Granted, love doesn't always look like Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah's sofa. But elements of insanity or at least manic behavior are lurking in the shadows of every romance. We love being in love to a level of addiction, and here is the opening to unavoidable pain. Our love for love usually dissolves it ... if we are lucky.
Unless we talk about love for our brats, that is--but that kind of caring is hardwired into our DNA. Any damned ostrich can do that.
Love is a terminal illness. Your love will end or it will end you. Love can literally kill people, and it is healthy to keep in mind that most homicides take place between individuals who once loved each other.
When we are tired of "loving" destruction and self-destruction, we can simply resolve the relationship entirely or we may opt for transmuting this mushy monstrum into something of durable consistency: able partners can transcend seizures of love and derive from it what they WANT!
Decades ago I loved my work. I was on a mission ("They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God." --Blues Brothers), and I didn't believe that this love could end. The stuff we love is fraught with too much meaning. You mentioned 'the horns of angels:' "If the horns of angels and blinding white light don't announce their epiphanies, they often question their discoveries."
Frequent questioning of our discoveries is an integral part of a healthy mental diet. People get heart attacks over the impertinent self-importance that's covered up by their calling. Yep, God's Will can be a severe case of covert hubris. It serves us well to relax and to re-discover the playful character of old fashioned trial and error.
Beginning a new business venture can be fun. What's so wrong with lust? And if it works, why wouldn't you want to continue?
Today, I embrace the fact that I am somewhat detached from my projects. Distance makes the heart grow fonder? It does. Emotional distance supports free choice and thickens your bond with everything you really want.
The next occurrence of love is likely going to be a temporary phenomenon. Worse, our love suspends free will. Freedom of choice is impaired by love, and that can be as sickening as a commitment. Apropos, commitment to psychiatric wards is usually perpetrated by--you guessed correctly--loved ones, in the name of love. Is the sleepiest Saint out there finally snapping to attention?
'Doing what we love' is just another holy cow on the chopping block: ultimately we don't do anything we don't want. Feelings and emotions are always subject to our will. The baby boomers have used their sacred feelings as the most powerful tool to manipulate and to subjugate their environment. The infatuation of a teenager is an intense expression of what she wants.
So is our love and our hatred for our work.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Are you twittering yet? Follow me on twitter.com at http://twitter.com/esukop
P.P.S.: And don't forget to visit Amazon to purchase a copy of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' at http://tinyurl.com/dyal4y
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
dream life
Dreaming happens whether we like it or not. We don't dream actively. We can ride a bicycle but we cannot intentionally dream. Dreaming "happens." It is an event we have no or extremely little control over.
But then we invent dreams we care about. We believe they are important. We want to turn them into reality. We are becoming attached to the outcome. Our dream--of how reality should be--morphs from innocence into a necessity, and we swear we shall never be happy again without getting what we want.
That's the moment when your finest dream has gathered sufficient power to reduce your life to a pile of rubble. The more we want something, the less freedom we have. A specific goal or a dream can kill the ecstasy you are capable of enjoying this very moment. Dreams that are meant to improve your life may become roots for its destruction.
Let's back up a notch. I am aware there are different types of dreams and goals, and I admit that I am simplifying. But what the hell, why shouldn't I?
Reduced to two kinds of goals, we can pursue one that is supposed to better our lives or a different kind that expresses our enjoyment of life. The former--"I want x, so that my life will be better, more meaningful, healthier, richer, etc."--evokes the image of a dog chasing a rabbit.
The outcome is impossible to predict. We expect to increase happiness in the future, and that imaginary level of happiness is linked to success or to the failure of our projects. We deny ourselves to be content at this moment because we are using misery as the motivator to achieve what we want in the future.
That is self-improvement at its worst. To be honest, where is the improvement in reaching such a goal? When I have to deprive myself of current joy as a psychological technique to get what I want, I am likely to repeat this effective--but nevertheless idiotic--'success' pattern in the future.
Say wha?
Once you have reached goal x, you will find ways to make yourself feel miserable again (re-charging your motivational battery) as a starting point for the pursuit of a new goal y that "will make you so incredibly happy." Pretty sick, don't you think?
Angry people crave to change the world. And when the world changes they are still angry. Anger is their childish tool. Anger is what they enjoy the most, and they will continue to be angry no matter what they'll achieve.
My happiness does not depend on luck and on the decisions other people are making. The outcome of my projects, my success rate or my bank balance, determines how much I can enjoy myself at the moment? That would be a fine reason for blowing my brains out. Sure, it's nice when things go well and when our projects are flourishing. I love when that happens, but I won't permit a fickle universe to steal my happiness.
Does goal setting work? Sure, why not. Is it advisable for the purpose of self-improvement? I am sorry, I have too much self-respect to suggest such a harebrained idea. If you love your life, beware of self-improvement. And if you don't enjoy being you, you have bigger problems to deal with than those that simplistic self-improvement can solve.
The other type of goal I mentioned is based on current contentment. It's not aimed at causing happiness. On the contrary, existing happiness is the foundation for this kind of goal. No retail therapy necessary. There is nothing you need to buy, do, or accomplish before you are willing to respect yourself by being happy and relaxed. You are exercising because you are feeling so good, instead of exercising for the purpose of reaching workout goals.
Playfulness versus dead serious cut throat behavior toward yourself. You can start the same business playfully and you can build the same house. But when contentment is the basis for setting material goals, they are easier to accomplish because it's just matter and free of emotional attachments. Making money is more fun when that money doesn't have to make you happy.
Not being happy is childish.
Children use misery and pain to get attention. When so-called adults continue that pattern, it becomes awfully pathetic. Pursuing dreams in order to be happy 'one day' is futile, and it is useless to work on goal achievement with the purpose of being free to to what you want afterward.
As far as happiness is concerned, I promote instant gratification. We can't make ourselves dream the right stuff in our sleep, and we don't control whether we'll have nightmares or pleasant dreams in pink. Neither are we capable of forcing a particular dream into existence during our waking hours.
'Follow your dream' does not mean that your will is the measure of all things and that you must subjugate reality at any cost. Forcing your will on your environment would be a fine recipe for misery, almost a guarantee that you will never be satisfied again.
In my dreams I never get to do what I want. Hence I rather wake up, be happy, and do what I want. How does that work, 'being happy first?'
Good question! I thought you'd never ask. It's easy: attend my seminar. Oops, I forgot that I don't offer seminars ... at least not now. But you can purchase a copy of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' That will answer questions about instant happiness. Not exhaustively but in ways you don't expect.
A happy day to you,
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Are you twittering yet? Follow me on twitter.com at http://twitter.com/esukop
P.P.S.: And don't forget to visit Amazon to purchase a copy of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' at http://tinyurl.com/dyal4y
But then we invent dreams we care about. We believe they are important. We want to turn them into reality. We are becoming attached to the outcome. Our dream--of how reality should be--morphs from innocence into a necessity, and we swear we shall never be happy again without getting what we want.
That's the moment when your finest dream has gathered sufficient power to reduce your life to a pile of rubble. The more we want something, the less freedom we have. A specific goal or a dream can kill the ecstasy you are capable of enjoying this very moment. Dreams that are meant to improve your life may become roots for its destruction.
Let's back up a notch. I am aware there are different types of dreams and goals, and I admit that I am simplifying. But what the hell, why shouldn't I?
Reduced to two kinds of goals, we can pursue one that is supposed to better our lives or a different kind that expresses our enjoyment of life. The former--"I want x, so that my life will be better, more meaningful, healthier, richer, etc."--evokes the image of a dog chasing a rabbit.
The outcome is impossible to predict. We expect to increase happiness in the future, and that imaginary level of happiness is linked to success or to the failure of our projects. We deny ourselves to be content at this moment because we are using misery as the motivator to achieve what we want in the future.
That is self-improvement at its worst. To be honest, where is the improvement in reaching such a goal? When I have to deprive myself of current joy as a psychological technique to get what I want, I am likely to repeat this effective--but nevertheless idiotic--'success' pattern in the future.
Say wha?
Once you have reached goal x, you will find ways to make yourself feel miserable again (re-charging your motivational battery) as a starting point for the pursuit of a new goal y that "will make you so incredibly happy." Pretty sick, don't you think?
Angry people crave to change the world. And when the world changes they are still angry. Anger is their childish tool. Anger is what they enjoy the most, and they will continue to be angry no matter what they'll achieve.
My happiness does not depend on luck and on the decisions other people are making. The outcome of my projects, my success rate or my bank balance, determines how much I can enjoy myself at the moment? That would be a fine reason for blowing my brains out. Sure, it's nice when things go well and when our projects are flourishing. I love when that happens, but I won't permit a fickle universe to steal my happiness.
Does goal setting work? Sure, why not. Is it advisable for the purpose of self-improvement? I am sorry, I have too much self-respect to suggest such a harebrained idea. If you love your life, beware of self-improvement. And if you don't enjoy being you, you have bigger problems to deal with than those that simplistic self-improvement can solve.
The other type of goal I mentioned is based on current contentment. It's not aimed at causing happiness. On the contrary, existing happiness is the foundation for this kind of goal. No retail therapy necessary. There is nothing you need to buy, do, or accomplish before you are willing to respect yourself by being happy and relaxed. You are exercising because you are feeling so good, instead of exercising for the purpose of reaching workout goals.
Playfulness versus dead serious cut throat behavior toward yourself. You can start the same business playfully and you can build the same house. But when contentment is the basis for setting material goals, they are easier to accomplish because it's just matter and free of emotional attachments. Making money is more fun when that money doesn't have to make you happy.
Not being happy is childish.
Children use misery and pain to get attention. When so-called adults continue that pattern, it becomes awfully pathetic. Pursuing dreams in order to be happy 'one day' is futile, and it is useless to work on goal achievement with the purpose of being free to to what you want afterward.
As far as happiness is concerned, I promote instant gratification. We can't make ourselves dream the right stuff in our sleep, and we don't control whether we'll have nightmares or pleasant dreams in pink. Neither are we capable of forcing a particular dream into existence during our waking hours.
'Follow your dream' does not mean that your will is the measure of all things and that you must subjugate reality at any cost. Forcing your will on your environment would be a fine recipe for misery, almost a guarantee that you will never be satisfied again.
In my dreams I never get to do what I want. Hence I rather wake up, be happy, and do what I want. How does that work, 'being happy first?'
Good question! I thought you'd never ask. It's easy: attend my seminar. Oops, I forgot that I don't offer seminars ... at least not now. But you can purchase a copy of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' That will answer questions about instant happiness. Not exhaustively but in ways you don't expect.
A happy day to you,
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Are you twittering yet? Follow me on twitter.com at http://twitter.com/esukop
P.P.S.: And don't forget to visit Amazon to purchase a copy of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' at http://tinyurl.com/dyal4y
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
happy people and mad dogs
"Money loves happy people," said Rev. Ike a couple of decades ago and he was damn right. Happy individuals will make different financial decisions than depressed or desperate people. It's pretty obvious, isn't it?
Now, if you are one of those who believe you won't be happy until you'll get more money, you are doomed and I can promise you won't be happy with or without the additional funds you deem necessary for your emotional paradise. In that case you are equally screwed as are people who believe children are supposed to make their parents happy. Holding your kids responsible for your happiness is perhaps the worst kind of permanent child abuse.
Your children cannot and will not make you happy. You will experience delightful times with them as well as terrifying moments and sad days. But burdening your offspring with the impossibly heavy load of "owing you" happiness is cruel, and making your kids feel guilty for your emotional disposition doesn't speak for you. Fortunately you have never done that. It's your job to be happy, and as a happy person you will be better equipped to meet challenges of all sorts, including a series of awkward situations your children will present to you.
Expecting more money to provide you with a happier future is equally insane. No matter how wealthy or how poor you think you are, you will always be surprised by unforeseen situations. You will see sad days in connection with monetary events, you will be angry, frustrated, and you may live through moments of severe depression, self-doubt, and regret. Excitement, hope, elation, and even love will be part of your relationship with money also. But money is not the cause of your experiences.
Is there a parallel universe? Absolutely!
Our thoughts and feelings occur PARALLEL to everything else. Emotional up and down swings happen and they are not dependent on your current bank balance, number of children, color and make of your cars, horsepower of your damn speed boat, or boom-and-bust cycles of our economy (be they "natural" or artificially induced).
Things are great AND we are feeling fabulous. We are well off AND we can feel like crap. Times are horrendous AND we are scared of the future. Vast portions of the economy are in the crapper WHILE we are feeling upbeat, adventurous, and happy. Stuff happens WHILE we feel things, pleasant or not so pleasant. One does not happen because of the other.
The childish idea that once the flaws of our world are fixed life will be fantastic, is dangerous and worse: it deprives us of happiness for the most part of our lives because we are constantly in the waiting loop for an improved "thereafter" of some sort. As babies we learned that factual or perceived misery may be helpful to gather attention. Trust me, the same strategy looks rather silly when applied by adults. And it is insufficient. Looking pitiful serves no purpose and it is without benefit. Nothing and nobody can help us attain happiness. As with death and taxes, we are on our own.
Thoughts and feelings happen parallel to actual events. No causality here. I agree, at times that may be a tough one to swallow. But it is helpful. Here is how:
You get to choose the set of background feelings you want to make money with!
A sunny disposition is your favorite temperamental makeup? Alright then, what do you enjoy doing when you are in a great mood? Grab a piece of paper--I mean, really--and scribble down a dozen adhoc ideas how you could make money with that, in simple ways and SOON.
Our society seems to be desperate for more jobs. We are a funny species, aren't we? We hate jobs but we are crybabies, and therefore we are demanding more jobs we can bitch about. Sooner or later we may get what we hate so passionately, more jobs, but for now let's just concentrate on making an additional dollar. With or without a recession, did you know that it is easier to make some extra money than to land a job?
The amazing thing is you can make a buck with happiness as an underlying theme, but you don't have to. If you are rather angry, fearful, or mad as hell it works equally well.
You will hate me for this: issues that "make" you mad are NOT the real cause of the way you feel. It's the other way around. More or less consciously, you pick 'mad' as your entertainment of the moment and all your senses go on a witch hunt until you find a subject you can feel mad about. Bingo! Now that you have found a target, you are pulling the trigger over and over again, shooting off one salvo of nasty thoughts after the other.
It doesn't help, as we have experienced repeatedly. Projecting responsibility onto a scape goat may obscure reality for awhile but the responsibility remains ours. When I am mad it is nobody else's business. Nobody "did that to" me. And, talking of business, you can exploit being "mad as a dog" for fun and profit as easily as you can make money while being content and happy.
What drives you up the wall? What subject enrages you? What pisses you off? Huh!
Yep, none of these issues "do that to" you or cause the way you feel. Rather, your feelings accompany issues you concentrate on. They move along on parallel paths. They are not linked. I am terribly redundant, I know, but it cannot be said often enough. Why? Because disconnecting your experience of the world from the perceived cause of your experience ends your status of being a victim once and for all. Abandonment of causality in this regard functions as the ultimate empowerment.
Now you may use your being mad as a tool--or as underlying mood of your choice--to make money as well. Again, what serves you best as a trigger to being intensely upset? Jot down a dozen ways to turn it into extra cash. Impossible? C'mon, this is how trial lawyers discovered the cornucopia of class action lawsuits. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) thrive on the fund raising power of anger. And so can you.
Under one condition: you can turn happiness, hatred, madness, or--if you must--love into a business venture and cash ONLY if you own the feeling. If the cause or the source is outside of you, forget it. When you are causing and generating the thought or the feeling at will, you are controlling the consistency of your business operation. If you don't own the feeling, you are subject to the fickleness of love, hatred, or happiness and you cannot afford that.
Further, if you are the one who chooses "being mad" as foundation for your business, you can enjoy what you are doing just as much as those who want to do what they love. When you own your hatred, you can do what you hate and you will discover quickly how much you love hating it. Love is an umbrella emotion: do what you love, do what you hate, or anything in between--you can love it all.
Takes balls, though.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Have you read my new book yet? No? Geez. You owe it to yourself. Employed or self-employed, we are all doing a job of some sort. Of course, you don't "hate" everything you do! You probably like your job but the circumstances or your colleagues are not as pleasant as they should be.
Positive thinking is maxed out. By now, you have noticed that you can't improve the messed up elements of your work conditions via thinking or wishing. Nothing against 'The Secret' but you have experienced the limits of happiness, or have you not?
Well, there are alternatives. Go and pick up your copy of 'How to Better Hate Your Job' today. If that link refuses to work for you, go to www.amazon.com and use ISBN 978-0-578-00314-6
Should you get lost, visit my website www.moneybymistake.com and you'll know what to do next.
Now, if you are one of those who believe you won't be happy until you'll get more money, you are doomed and I can promise you won't be happy with or without the additional funds you deem necessary for your emotional paradise. In that case you are equally screwed as are people who believe children are supposed to make their parents happy. Holding your kids responsible for your happiness is perhaps the worst kind of permanent child abuse.
Your children cannot and will not make you happy. You will experience delightful times with them as well as terrifying moments and sad days. But burdening your offspring with the impossibly heavy load of "owing you" happiness is cruel, and making your kids feel guilty for your emotional disposition doesn't speak for you. Fortunately you have never done that. It's your job to be happy, and as a happy person you will be better equipped to meet challenges of all sorts, including a series of awkward situations your children will present to you.
Expecting more money to provide you with a happier future is equally insane. No matter how wealthy or how poor you think you are, you will always be surprised by unforeseen situations. You will see sad days in connection with monetary events, you will be angry, frustrated, and you may live through moments of severe depression, self-doubt, and regret. Excitement, hope, elation, and even love will be part of your relationship with money also. But money is not the cause of your experiences.
Is there a parallel universe? Absolutely!
Our thoughts and feelings occur PARALLEL to everything else. Emotional up and down swings happen and they are not dependent on your current bank balance, number of children, color and make of your cars, horsepower of your damn speed boat, or boom-and-bust cycles of our economy (be they "natural" or artificially induced).
Things are great AND we are feeling fabulous. We are well off AND we can feel like crap. Times are horrendous AND we are scared of the future. Vast portions of the economy are in the crapper WHILE we are feeling upbeat, adventurous, and happy. Stuff happens WHILE we feel things, pleasant or not so pleasant. One does not happen because of the other.
The childish idea that once the flaws of our world are fixed life will be fantastic, is dangerous and worse: it deprives us of happiness for the most part of our lives because we are constantly in the waiting loop for an improved "thereafter" of some sort. As babies we learned that factual or perceived misery may be helpful to gather attention. Trust me, the same strategy looks rather silly when applied by adults. And it is insufficient. Looking pitiful serves no purpose and it is without benefit. Nothing and nobody can help us attain happiness. As with death and taxes, we are on our own.
Thoughts and feelings happen parallel to actual events. No causality here. I agree, at times that may be a tough one to swallow. But it is helpful. Here is how:
You get to choose the set of background feelings you want to make money with!
A sunny disposition is your favorite temperamental makeup? Alright then, what do you enjoy doing when you are in a great mood? Grab a piece of paper--I mean, really--and scribble down a dozen adhoc ideas how you could make money with that, in simple ways and SOON.
Our society seems to be desperate for more jobs. We are a funny species, aren't we? We hate jobs but we are crybabies, and therefore we are demanding more jobs we can bitch about. Sooner or later we may get what we hate so passionately, more jobs, but for now let's just concentrate on making an additional dollar. With or without a recession, did you know that it is easier to make some extra money than to land a job?
The amazing thing is you can make a buck with happiness as an underlying theme, but you don't have to. If you are rather angry, fearful, or mad as hell it works equally well.
You will hate me for this: issues that "make" you mad are NOT the real cause of the way you feel. It's the other way around. More or less consciously, you pick 'mad' as your entertainment of the moment and all your senses go on a witch hunt until you find a subject you can feel mad about. Bingo! Now that you have found a target, you are pulling the trigger over and over again, shooting off one salvo of nasty thoughts after the other.
It doesn't help, as we have experienced repeatedly. Projecting responsibility onto a scape goat may obscure reality for awhile but the responsibility remains ours. When I am mad it is nobody else's business. Nobody "did that to" me. And, talking of business, you can exploit being "mad as a dog" for fun and profit as easily as you can make money while being content and happy.
What drives you up the wall? What subject enrages you? What pisses you off? Huh!
Yep, none of these issues "do that to" you or cause the way you feel. Rather, your feelings accompany issues you concentrate on. They move along on parallel paths. They are not linked. I am terribly redundant, I know, but it cannot be said often enough. Why? Because disconnecting your experience of the world from the perceived cause of your experience ends your status of being a victim once and for all. Abandonment of causality in this regard functions as the ultimate empowerment.
Now you may use your being mad as a tool--or as underlying mood of your choice--to make money as well. Again, what serves you best as a trigger to being intensely upset? Jot down a dozen ways to turn it into extra cash. Impossible? C'mon, this is how trial lawyers discovered the cornucopia of class action lawsuits. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) thrive on the fund raising power of anger. And so can you.
Under one condition: you can turn happiness, hatred, madness, or--if you must--love into a business venture and cash ONLY if you own the feeling. If the cause or the source is outside of you, forget it. When you are causing and generating the thought or the feeling at will, you are controlling the consistency of your business operation. If you don't own the feeling, you are subject to the fickleness of love, hatred, or happiness and you cannot afford that.
Further, if you are the one who chooses "being mad" as foundation for your business, you can enjoy what you are doing just as much as those who want to do what they love. When you own your hatred, you can do what you hate and you will discover quickly how much you love hating it. Love is an umbrella emotion: do what you love, do what you hate, or anything in between--you can love it all.
Takes balls, though.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Have you read my new book yet? No? Geez. You owe it to yourself. Employed or self-employed, we are all doing a job of some sort. Of course, you don't "hate" everything you do! You probably like your job but the circumstances or your colleagues are not as pleasant as they should be.
Positive thinking is maxed out. By now, you have noticed that you can't improve the messed up elements of your work conditions via thinking or wishing. Nothing against 'The Secret' but you have experienced the limits of happiness, or have you not?
Well, there are alternatives. Go and pick up your copy of 'How to Better Hate Your Job' today. If that link refuses to work for you, go to www.amazon.com and use ISBN 978-0-578-00314-6
Should you get lost, visit my website www.moneybymistake.com and you'll know what to do next.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
trojan dinosaur
The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. --John Milton
Dinosaurs would disagree with the common perspective that evolution necessarily means progress. Natural selection, one of the major mechanisms that propels evolution, "decided" that the qualities of dinosaurs weren't the most fabulous for the purpose of indefinite reproduction. Hence nature--or whatever the hell you choose to call it--discarded the dino option.
The treehugger in us mourns extinct species but we are natural hypocrites. We are not thrilled about a pack of Canis Lupus roaming our backyards, but we consider it a cruel deed when a wolf gets shot in Alaska. Honestly, you don't want to find your Toyota under a pile of dinosaur excrement when you are about to drive home from church. And who enjoys getting stepped on by large animals? The fact that dinosaurs fell victim to extinction is reason to celebrate. What you may call progress meant death for dinosaurs.
Death of a species is not always caused by the evil human race. Tens of thousands of species had become extinct before homo sapiens popped up. And to this day, a bunch of species die PARALLEL to our existence and not because of us picking our noses the wrong way.
Hate me if you like, but I think it's a blessing that certain creatures are dead. Actually, that is true for some people also: who would want the Mao monster back? Or Hitler, Stalin, Che Guevara--I know, there are folks who are in awe of murderers like Che--and Pol Pot? Evolution kills things, and not only bad and creepy guys with body odor. Evolution couldn't care less about good or bad individual specimens of a species, and it doesn't give a rat's pink behind about a single species, either.
Evolution is a process from inferiority to superiority, from worse to better? Bollocks. Adaptation to a changing environment, spruced up by occasional random changes--genetic drift--does not imply that the environment causes a species to improve. Homo Sapiens of the 21st century may be better suited to procreate in an increasingly Orwellian world and perhaps we are fit enough to survive our own idiocy, but that does not say anything about us being a better edition than the Mesopotamian dorks of the iron age some 3,000 years ago.
Do you seriously believe the average dunce of today is advanced compared to the average contemporary of George Washington? I am confident Mr. Washington could smoke each and every politician of today's world in his pipe. Since George Washington, politicians have certainly not progressed. Or do you think they lie so much better today than they did 200 years ago? One wishes politicians would become the new dinosaurs, following the brittle crop of banksters on their heels, but unfortunately they are as resilient as a bad strain of the flu.
We are freaks, and the human race is a strange species. But, that is not what I intend to talk about: I have evolution on my mind, evolution free of progress.
Apropos '200 years' of development and progress: Matt Ridley, an Oxford-educated zoologist, said in a recent interview: "It is conceivable that some people in Africa are living at a lower standard of living than anyone was 200 years ago." (Reason magazine, February 2009). Yes, we are progressing indeed.
Evolution has no interest in pacifying an individual or a collective perspective of "better" or "more" in any department of our humanness. Sure, the tools and technologies we employ today are superior. But are people better individuals today? Are we happier? Objectively, the improvement of quantities or qualities is hardly on the menu of evolution, and it would be silly to expect that the universe increases income, health, or freedom naturally as an organic function of evolving from one Monday to the next.
Survival of the fittest? Really? My observation tells me that the fittest die as well, sooner or later. Often sooner. Athlete's heart, you know? Yeah, I am aware that my exegesis stinks and that I am bending scientific truths for my devious purposes. But some of those truths are crooked and questionable. For instance, people are peddling barrels of snake oil under the intimidating banner of "quantum physics." It's all made up out of thin air anyway, without the slightest scientific base but people are buying it with hard currency. You care for solid evolutionary truth?
It is a fact of evolution that everybody ends up dead. Nobody survives evolution. Nobody wins. If death is progress from your perspective, then yes, evolution means progress. Otherwise, I'll continue to have my doubts.
You want to believe in evolution or in creationism, 'Intelligent Design?' Have it your way, I don't care. Peculiar to me is the fact that the defenders of a creator do not trust their God, just as the church of evolution--c'mon, for Richard Dawkins evolution IS a religion--does not trust the inner workings of evolution.
Denouncing progress in the church of evolution is heresy, and I'm afraid the mind of the average intellectual has not improved since the Catholic church and the Holy Inquisition put Galileo Galilei under house arrest 500 years ago. For the Catholic church on the other hand, progress CAN be heresy if it interferes with the church's manic opportunism:
In 1990, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI., cited some current views on the Galileo affair as forming what he called "a symptomatic case that illustrates the extent to which modernity’s doubts about itself have grown today in science and technology." As evidence he quoted philosopher Paul Feyerabend, as saying:
"The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune."
Two years later, in 1992, Pope John Paul II. vindicated Galileo. It must have been "politically opportune," as the church--according to Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI.)--obviously doesn't give a crap about what's true.
The Catholic church does not trust God's creation, and she does not feel comfortable selling creation "as is" to her flock. In this case, church executives waited half a thousand years before they felt sufficiently comfy to inform the faithful of what they had known to be true all along. When the church offers truth eventually, please be aware that it may come with a 500-year delay.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you believe God created the status quo or evolution delivered us where we are today: as a society, we don't trust either of the two. What do I mean? We do not trust free markets! Truth is not opportune and we prefer to fight it with as much money as we are willing to print. Perhaps not for 500 years, because even the dullest union member can calculate that foolishness can't be financed indefinitely, but we are determined to cover up reality with mountains of money.
If you can trust the existence of progress and evolution, why can't you trust the market? Products come and go. The markets are subject to evolution also. Some inventions stay for a long time and adjust to changing requirements. The wheel, for instance, has been around for awhile. Entire professions have come and gone. Other products and services become obsolete within months of their introduction or after a few years. The elevator man, for example, is a rare phenomenon these days, and if you want an exquisite carpenter for your project, you need to go to the Amish or you are out of luck.
I suggest we continue paying all former elevator people. Let us build elevators--useful or not--so that the last remaining elevator men can drive up and down all day until their last pitiful brain cells croak. Manufacturers of typewriters should be enabled financially to employ their workforce again and until the end of time. Steam engine operators, weavers, pardoners (licensed to sell Papal indulgences), and postillions need to get back on somebody's payroll.
Insane? I don't understand! Small business owners who earn barely $25 an hour (and cannot afford health insurance) are forced to pay General Motors' workers who are making $39.68 an hour (including base pay, cost-of-living adjustments, night-shift premiums, overtime, holiday and vacation pay), plus another average $33.58 an hour (health-care, pension and other benefits). Difference between the two is that one is productive and the GM employee is not.
GM can't sell enough cars to justify their business model. For years to come, millions of factually obsolete jobs will be artificially propped up by those of us whose services and products find buyers. We may just as well pay everybody royally whose profession has become superfluous during the course of history. A trillion dollars more or less won't make a difference.
When you own a restaurant and you manage it poorly, you'll have to face reality. When arrogant dicks like John Thain run a 95-year old company like Merrill Lynch into the ground, Bank of America may pick up the pieces on paper but the productive tax payer will be forced to deal with the consequences. Mind boggling, that people have to work their asses off on productive jobs and in money-producing businesses--large AND small--to finance jobs that will disappear once it'll be "politically opportune" to describe the Emperor's Clothes as what they are.
If you believe the rich have to pay more in the future to finance the poor, you are so wrong! The productive are being punished for their productivity and forced to pay for the unproductive. Individuals who have to come up with the dough to keep useless jobs on life support, may have less money than those who benefit from this disgusting scheme.
AIG Insurance, the 18th largest company in the world, is "too large" to let it slide into bankruptcy. Your puny business and mine are apparently not too small to support giant losers like Bank of America (who has received $45 billion), AIG Inc. (who has access to $190 billion), and Shitty Group (who has received $50 billion). Goodness, AIG lost $62 billion buckaroos in the last quarter of 2008 alone! How does one do that (unless that money was never really there; unfortunately, that comes painfully close to the truth)?
Dinosaurs die. That used to be an evolutionary fact. Since governments never met a crisis they didn't like, dead dinosaurs are being mutated to Trojan dinosaurs or transformed into economically undead, if you will. The harsh reality of boom and bust cycles is "politically not opportune" anymore for the pussies--oops, please accept my sincere apology!--we have become while progressing lazily. We are crying for mom to help us, and the political nannies are thrilled to comply. With a little unforeseen twist, that is.
Am I angry? Not at all. Frustrated, demotivated, or depressed? On the contrary.
Freedom and individuality have always been fragile and precious, and this moment is as good as any to claim them for yourself. Governments come and go, and what one government can give you, the next may take away from you. Getting upset over government waste is a waste of time. Evolution has not been able to improve politicians, and neither will we perform such a miracle.
The real question is: will you allow anyone--the recession or the undead--to take away your happiness? Don't. That is the first step into freedom. Reclaim your full power over your happiness! The following steps may not be as easy, but they will be simple as well.
The fight to expand your individuality is so hard because it must be fought against and for yourself.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: To all of you who have purchased my new book:
Thank you so much! I feel privileged that you chose to read my rebellious and provocative material. Not everybody can digest it without (growing) pain and I appreciate the daring individuals who are embracing the challenge. You are truly exceptional!
'How to Better Hate Your Job' is now available on
www.amazon.com (ISBN: 978-0-578-00314-6).
Dinosaurs would disagree with the common perspective that evolution necessarily means progress. Natural selection, one of the major mechanisms that propels evolution, "decided" that the qualities of dinosaurs weren't the most fabulous for the purpose of indefinite reproduction. Hence nature--or whatever the hell you choose to call it--discarded the dino option.
The treehugger in us mourns extinct species but we are natural hypocrites. We are not thrilled about a pack of Canis Lupus roaming our backyards, but we consider it a cruel deed when a wolf gets shot in Alaska. Honestly, you don't want to find your Toyota under a pile of dinosaur excrement when you are about to drive home from church. And who enjoys getting stepped on by large animals? The fact that dinosaurs fell victim to extinction is reason to celebrate. What you may call progress meant death for dinosaurs.
Death of a species is not always caused by the evil human race. Tens of thousands of species had become extinct before homo sapiens popped up. And to this day, a bunch of species die PARALLEL to our existence and not because of us picking our noses the wrong way.
Hate me if you like, but I think it's a blessing that certain creatures are dead. Actually, that is true for some people also: who would want the Mao monster back? Or Hitler, Stalin, Che Guevara--I know, there are folks who are in awe of murderers like Che--and Pol Pot? Evolution kills things, and not only bad and creepy guys with body odor. Evolution couldn't care less about good or bad individual specimens of a species, and it doesn't give a rat's pink behind about a single species, either.
Evolution is a process from inferiority to superiority, from worse to better? Bollocks. Adaptation to a changing environment, spruced up by occasional random changes--genetic drift--does not imply that the environment causes a species to improve. Homo Sapiens of the 21st century may be better suited to procreate in an increasingly Orwellian world and perhaps we are fit enough to survive our own idiocy, but that does not say anything about us being a better edition than the Mesopotamian dorks of the iron age some 3,000 years ago.
Do you seriously believe the average dunce of today is advanced compared to the average contemporary of George Washington? I am confident Mr. Washington could smoke each and every politician of today's world in his pipe. Since George Washington, politicians have certainly not progressed. Or do you think they lie so much better today than they did 200 years ago? One wishes politicians would become the new dinosaurs, following the brittle crop of banksters on their heels, but unfortunately they are as resilient as a bad strain of the flu.
We are freaks, and the human race is a strange species. But, that is not what I intend to talk about: I have evolution on my mind, evolution free of progress.
Apropos '200 years' of development and progress: Matt Ridley, an Oxford-educated zoologist, said in a recent interview: "It is conceivable that some people in Africa are living at a lower standard of living than anyone was 200 years ago." (Reason magazine, February 2009). Yes, we are progressing indeed.
Evolution has no interest in pacifying an individual or a collective perspective of "better" or "more" in any department of our humanness. Sure, the tools and technologies we employ today are superior. But are people better individuals today? Are we happier? Objectively, the improvement of quantities or qualities is hardly on the menu of evolution, and it would be silly to expect that the universe increases income, health, or freedom naturally as an organic function of evolving from one Monday to the next.
Survival of the fittest? Really? My observation tells me that the fittest die as well, sooner or later. Often sooner. Athlete's heart, you know? Yeah, I am aware that my exegesis stinks and that I am bending scientific truths for my devious purposes. But some of those truths are crooked and questionable. For instance, people are peddling barrels of snake oil under the intimidating banner of "quantum physics." It's all made up out of thin air anyway, without the slightest scientific base but people are buying it with hard currency. You care for solid evolutionary truth?
It is a fact of evolution that everybody ends up dead. Nobody survives evolution. Nobody wins. If death is progress from your perspective, then yes, evolution means progress. Otherwise, I'll continue to have my doubts.
You want to believe in evolution or in creationism, 'Intelligent Design?' Have it your way, I don't care. Peculiar to me is the fact that the defenders of a creator do not trust their God, just as the church of evolution--c'mon, for Richard Dawkins evolution IS a religion--does not trust the inner workings of evolution.
Denouncing progress in the church of evolution is heresy, and I'm afraid the mind of the average intellectual has not improved since the Catholic church and the Holy Inquisition put Galileo Galilei under house arrest 500 years ago. For the Catholic church on the other hand, progress CAN be heresy if it interferes with the church's manic opportunism:
In 1990, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI., cited some current views on the Galileo affair as forming what he called "a symptomatic case that illustrates the extent to which modernity’s doubts about itself have grown today in science and technology." As evidence he quoted philosopher Paul Feyerabend, as saying:
"The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune."
Two years later, in 1992, Pope John Paul II. vindicated Galileo. It must have been "politically opportune," as the church--according to Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI.)--obviously doesn't give a crap about what's true.
The Catholic church does not trust God's creation, and she does not feel comfortable selling creation "as is" to her flock. In this case, church executives waited half a thousand years before they felt sufficiently comfy to inform the faithful of what they had known to be true all along. When the church offers truth eventually, please be aware that it may come with a 500-year delay.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you believe God created the status quo or evolution delivered us where we are today: as a society, we don't trust either of the two. What do I mean? We do not trust free markets! Truth is not opportune and we prefer to fight it with as much money as we are willing to print. Perhaps not for 500 years, because even the dullest union member can calculate that foolishness can't be financed indefinitely, but we are determined to cover up reality with mountains of money.
If you can trust the existence of progress and evolution, why can't you trust the market? Products come and go. The markets are subject to evolution also. Some inventions stay for a long time and adjust to changing requirements. The wheel, for instance, has been around for awhile. Entire professions have come and gone. Other products and services become obsolete within months of their introduction or after a few years. The elevator man, for example, is a rare phenomenon these days, and if you want an exquisite carpenter for your project, you need to go to the Amish or you are out of luck.
I suggest we continue paying all former elevator people. Let us build elevators--useful or not--so that the last remaining elevator men can drive up and down all day until their last pitiful brain cells croak. Manufacturers of typewriters should be enabled financially to employ their workforce again and until the end of time. Steam engine operators, weavers, pardoners (licensed to sell Papal indulgences), and postillions need to get back on somebody's payroll.
Insane? I don't understand! Small business owners who earn barely $25 an hour (and cannot afford health insurance) are forced to pay General Motors' workers who are making $39.68 an hour (including base pay, cost-of-living adjustments, night-shift premiums, overtime, holiday and vacation pay), plus another average $33.58 an hour (health-care, pension and other benefits). Difference between the two is that one is productive and the GM employee is not.
GM can't sell enough cars to justify their business model. For years to come, millions of factually obsolete jobs will be artificially propped up by those of us whose services and products find buyers. We may just as well pay everybody royally whose profession has become superfluous during the course of history. A trillion dollars more or less won't make a difference.
When you own a restaurant and you manage it poorly, you'll have to face reality. When arrogant dicks like John Thain run a 95-year old company like Merrill Lynch into the ground, Bank of America may pick up the pieces on paper but the productive tax payer will be forced to deal with the consequences. Mind boggling, that people have to work their asses off on productive jobs and in money-producing businesses--large AND small--to finance jobs that will disappear once it'll be "politically opportune" to describe the Emperor's Clothes as what they are.
If you believe the rich have to pay more in the future to finance the poor, you are so wrong! The productive are being punished for their productivity and forced to pay for the unproductive. Individuals who have to come up with the dough to keep useless jobs on life support, may have less money than those who benefit from this disgusting scheme.
AIG Insurance, the 18th largest company in the world, is "too large" to let it slide into bankruptcy. Your puny business and mine are apparently not too small to support giant losers like Bank of America (who has received $45 billion), AIG Inc. (who has access to $190 billion), and Shitty Group (who has received $50 billion). Goodness, AIG lost $62 billion buckaroos in the last quarter of 2008 alone! How does one do that (unless that money was never really there; unfortunately, that comes painfully close to the truth)?
Dinosaurs die. That used to be an evolutionary fact. Since governments never met a crisis they didn't like, dead dinosaurs are being mutated to Trojan dinosaurs or transformed into economically undead, if you will. The harsh reality of boom and bust cycles is "politically not opportune" anymore for the pussies--oops, please accept my sincere apology!--we have become while progressing lazily. We are crying for mom to help us, and the political nannies are thrilled to comply. With a little unforeseen twist, that is.
Am I angry? Not at all. Frustrated, demotivated, or depressed? On the contrary.
Freedom and individuality have always been fragile and precious, and this moment is as good as any to claim them for yourself. Governments come and go, and what one government can give you, the next may take away from you. Getting upset over government waste is a waste of time. Evolution has not been able to improve politicians, and neither will we perform such a miracle.
The real question is: will you allow anyone--the recession or the undead--to take away your happiness? Don't. That is the first step into freedom. Reclaim your full power over your happiness! The following steps may not be as easy, but they will be simple as well.
The fight to expand your individuality is so hard because it must be fought against and for yourself.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: To all of you who have purchased my new book:
Thank you so much! I feel privileged that you chose to read my rebellious and provocative material. Not everybody can digest it without (growing) pain and I appreciate the daring individuals who are embracing the challenge. You are truly exceptional!
'How to Better Hate Your Job' is now available on
www.amazon.com (ISBN: 978-0-578-00314-6).
Friday, February 6, 2009
hate responsibly
Things you don't like are more powerful than things you do like. Think about your job, and then agree with me: collectively--and perhaps individually--we are making more money hating what we are doing than by loving all the way to the bank.
Even if we are self-employed, if we chose our profession deliberately, and if we honestly love what we are doing with a passion: there are aspects of our work that we don't enjoy. We hate firing people, for instance. We despise pouring over our income taxes. Or, we aren't too ecstatic about a difficult customer stealing our precious time. You may be the grand master of delegating unwanted tasks but if you are telling me you love everything you do--all day, every day, and everybody you are dealing with--you are losing credibility rapidly.
It is similar with children. We love our offspring, sure, but do you truly LOVE dealing with every issue your teenage kids bring up? Rubbish! They're confronting us with ample material we can hate. Pulling a condom out of your 14-year old daughter's jeans pocket while doing the laundry or discovering your son's stash of weed in his chest of drawers calls for conversations you might file away labeled as 'tough love,' while the brats are increasingly convinced how much you must be hating them. No, we don't love everything we say we love.
Our work entails details we are not too thrilled about. There are elements we hate. And we are doing it anyway. Hatred for disliked parts of our jobs has become integrated in our overall passion for the things we do. Long ago we may have stopped dissecting the emotional layers of our work world, separating the likes from the dislikes. We are simply lacking the time for silly exercises like that and besides, it's superfluous. The work must be done anyway. The brood wants to be raised (they disagree, though). There is no reason for us to stop doing what we hate, and we won't.
On the contrary, we are making money by hating things. To a certain degree, hatred has a cash value attached to it for every one of us. Talk about peace and love as much as you want but please do tell me, what percentage of your rent or mortgage payment requires from you the discipline to do what you are hating. That works the other way around as well. We have disciplined ourselves to hate what we are doing, because we are aware of its value.
More than 87% of Americans hate their jobs. That means the overwhelming majority pays bills with the cash equivalent of hatred. Love doesn't seem to be as trustworthy or as bankable as hatred. Hey, I didn't invent this idea! Neither am I trying to convince you of anything. I am stating facts that others--Forbes magazine, for example--have gathered, and I am offering you an unusual perspective.
Did I suggest you should be hating your job instead of loving it? Nonsense! I am writing about the often painful reality of hatred for our jobs. Pointing out alternative options for the interpretation of that reality, is my aim.
Oh, I know you don't enjoy hearing this. I could sell so many more copies of my book by telling you instead what's pleasing to your ears. Sorry, I won't harass you for the umptieth time with motivational syrup how doing what you love will make you rich by Tuesday afternoon. I am confident you'll find enough of that gooey stuff elsewhere. I prefer talking about subjects that stink.
Back to hatred. Making money with hatred is one thing, but our relationship with subjects of hatred is deeper than love for money.
Power.
A common opinion states that individuals are continuously on a quest for power. Power over other people (one reason to make children, if you are allergic to cat dander). Power over money. Power over a piece of the environment.
True, we are freaks, but I disagree with the general theory that human beings are seeking power. If we did, why are so many of us settling for so little of it? No, the average person is satisfied wielding an ounce of power necessary to report her neighbor's messy front yard to the homeowners' assassination. Beyond that, we prefer secondhand power: we are in awe about OTHER people's power or with the power we believe they have.
The masses enjoy the small mindedness of admiring those in power positions, and we love to see some of those who climbed high drop out of power. The secondhand power trip permits our own behinds to stay in life's security zone. Fascination with power cannot be fully understood if we leave out the thrill the mob derives from the destruction of power.
From the blood drenched French Revolution and the murder of the Russian Czar family, to a time when every schmuck feels entitled to limiting the salaries of "greedy" executives in the ivory towers of "evil powerful" corporations--witnessing the so-called powerful fail is equally entertaining to us as it is to cheer them on while they are rising stars. No, baby, most of us do not yearn for such power. Most of us don't have the sick desire to fall victim to our neurotic ilk. And then, that describes a certain form of power we are milking out of a status that pretends to be powerless, or do we not?
But I digress.
"Things we don't like are more powerful," or so I said. Why? Because we are not actively hating anything. Hating is a passive act. Say wha ...? In our younger--and arguably dumber--years some of us were victims of love. We "fell" in love until we fell out of it, involuntarily. As if the objects of our love--girl, car, beer, boy, motorcycle, etc.--had had the slightest power over us and over the way we chose to feel. We were craving a powerful car under our scrawny arses precisely because we lacked the balls to assume power over those feelings and emotions that we believed cars and girls had over us.
We did not love. That stuff "made us" love it. Small wonder we began a frustrating and eventually unsuccessful quest of unearthing the ultimate IT (job, house, partner, religion, anything). Pretty pathetic. Meanwhile, a bunch of us have figured out that our love interests happen to be rather brief infatuations unless we inject an active element. We started to choose ("Honey, I'd love to go to Disneyland!"), and we have experienced some value in actively following through. We have discovered how to love by choice. Damn yeah, there can be freedom in it!
Things we hate are so powerful because we don't hate anything by choice: what we are hating seems to make us hate it. "Honey, let's hate the Jews." That's not how NAZI Germany's dogged family daddies succeeded murdering 6,000,000 individuals. Seriously, the good old German butchers were convinced IT happened to THEM as it did to Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, intellectuals, artists, and countless others who were seen as responsible for their executioners' deeds.
"I hate my job," means I am not responsible for hating my job. It suggests my job is so bad that I am practically forced to hate what I do. And it means I believe in the higher power of the things I hate. What I hate determines my life. If I am holding down a job I can hate, I am relatively safe. Hatred is the provider for nations. It buys lunch.
"Dear Lord, don't ever let us run out of stuff we can hate!" It's the prayer of journalists who desire to sell copy. You, too, ought to be grateful for work you can hate passionately. The public is getting giddy about the future creation of millions of hated jobs, since we know that economies are falling apart when our collective and personal hatred drops to mediocre regions.
On a personal level, that translates to an increase of income and to improved happiness if you can manage to discover more work projects you can hate. Double that offer if you bring yourself to the realization that the power behind the scenes is yours.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: My book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is now available on Amazon.com. As rebellious and provocative as it is, you should not read this disturbing material. Not you!
Even if we are self-employed, if we chose our profession deliberately, and if we honestly love what we are doing with a passion: there are aspects of our work that we don't enjoy. We hate firing people, for instance. We despise pouring over our income taxes. Or, we aren't too ecstatic about a difficult customer stealing our precious time. You may be the grand master of delegating unwanted tasks but if you are telling me you love everything you do--all day, every day, and everybody you are dealing with--you are losing credibility rapidly.
It is similar with children. We love our offspring, sure, but do you truly LOVE dealing with every issue your teenage kids bring up? Rubbish! They're confronting us with ample material we can hate. Pulling a condom out of your 14-year old daughter's jeans pocket while doing the laundry or discovering your son's stash of weed in his chest of drawers calls for conversations you might file away labeled as 'tough love,' while the brats are increasingly convinced how much you must be hating them. No, we don't love everything we say we love.
Our work entails details we are not too thrilled about. There are elements we hate. And we are doing it anyway. Hatred for disliked parts of our jobs has become integrated in our overall passion for the things we do. Long ago we may have stopped dissecting the emotional layers of our work world, separating the likes from the dislikes. We are simply lacking the time for silly exercises like that and besides, it's superfluous. The work must be done anyway. The brood wants to be raised (they disagree, though). There is no reason for us to stop doing what we hate, and we won't.
On the contrary, we are making money by hating things. To a certain degree, hatred has a cash value attached to it for every one of us. Talk about peace and love as much as you want but please do tell me, what percentage of your rent or mortgage payment requires from you the discipline to do what you are hating. That works the other way around as well. We have disciplined ourselves to hate what we are doing, because we are aware of its value.
More than 87% of Americans hate their jobs. That means the overwhelming majority pays bills with the cash equivalent of hatred. Love doesn't seem to be as trustworthy or as bankable as hatred. Hey, I didn't invent this idea! Neither am I trying to convince you of anything. I am stating facts that others--Forbes magazine, for example--have gathered, and I am offering you an unusual perspective.
Did I suggest you should be hating your job instead of loving it? Nonsense! I am writing about the often painful reality of hatred for our jobs. Pointing out alternative options for the interpretation of that reality, is my aim.
Oh, I know you don't enjoy hearing this. I could sell so many more copies of my book by telling you instead what's pleasing to your ears. Sorry, I won't harass you for the umptieth time with motivational syrup how doing what you love will make you rich by Tuesday afternoon. I am confident you'll find enough of that gooey stuff elsewhere. I prefer talking about subjects that stink.
Back to hatred. Making money with hatred is one thing, but our relationship with subjects of hatred is deeper than love for money.
Power.
A common opinion states that individuals are continuously on a quest for power. Power over other people (one reason to make children, if you are allergic to cat dander). Power over money. Power over a piece of the environment.
True, we are freaks, but I disagree with the general theory that human beings are seeking power. If we did, why are so many of us settling for so little of it? No, the average person is satisfied wielding an ounce of power necessary to report her neighbor's messy front yard to the homeowners' assassination. Beyond that, we prefer secondhand power: we are in awe about OTHER people's power or with the power we believe they have.
The masses enjoy the small mindedness of admiring those in power positions, and we love to see some of those who climbed high drop out of power. The secondhand power trip permits our own behinds to stay in life's security zone. Fascination with power cannot be fully understood if we leave out the thrill the mob derives from the destruction of power.
From the blood drenched French Revolution and the murder of the Russian Czar family, to a time when every schmuck feels entitled to limiting the salaries of "greedy" executives in the ivory towers of "evil powerful" corporations--witnessing the so-called powerful fail is equally entertaining to us as it is to cheer them on while they are rising stars. No, baby, most of us do not yearn for such power. Most of us don't have the sick desire to fall victim to our neurotic ilk. And then, that describes a certain form of power we are milking out of a status that pretends to be powerless, or do we not?
But I digress.
"Things we don't like are more powerful," or so I said. Why? Because we are not actively hating anything. Hating is a passive act. Say wha ...? In our younger--and arguably dumber--years some of us were victims of love. We "fell" in love until we fell out of it, involuntarily. As if the objects of our love--girl, car, beer, boy, motorcycle, etc.--had had the slightest power over us and over the way we chose to feel. We were craving a powerful car under our scrawny arses precisely because we lacked the balls to assume power over those feelings and emotions that we believed cars and girls had over us.
We did not love. That stuff "made us" love it. Small wonder we began a frustrating and eventually unsuccessful quest of unearthing the ultimate IT (job, house, partner, religion, anything). Pretty pathetic. Meanwhile, a bunch of us have figured out that our love interests happen to be rather brief infatuations unless we inject an active element. We started to choose ("Honey, I'd love to go to Disneyland!"), and we have experienced some value in actively following through. We have discovered how to love by choice. Damn yeah, there can be freedom in it!
Things we hate are so powerful because we don't hate anything by choice: what we are hating seems to make us hate it. "Honey, let's hate the Jews." That's not how NAZI Germany's dogged family daddies succeeded murdering 6,000,000 individuals. Seriously, the good old German butchers were convinced IT happened to THEM as it did to Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, intellectuals, artists, and countless others who were seen as responsible for their executioners' deeds.
"I hate my job," means I am not responsible for hating my job. It suggests my job is so bad that I am practically forced to hate what I do. And it means I believe in the higher power of the things I hate. What I hate determines my life. If I am holding down a job I can hate, I am relatively safe. Hatred is the provider for nations. It buys lunch.
"Dear Lord, don't ever let us run out of stuff we can hate!" It's the prayer of journalists who desire to sell copy. You, too, ought to be grateful for work you can hate passionately. The public is getting giddy about the future creation of millions of hated jobs, since we know that economies are falling apart when our collective and personal hatred drops to mediocre regions.
On a personal level, that translates to an increase of income and to improved happiness if you can manage to discover more work projects you can hate. Double that offer if you bring yourself to the realization that the power behind the scenes is yours.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: My book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is now available on Amazon.com. As rebellious and provocative as it is, you should not read this disturbing material. Not you!
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