Somehow, someway I experience minimal material wanting or pressure. Oh sure, I’ll see a catchy advert and be momentarily tossed into a cycle of thinking how much better my life would be if I had, say, that freshest cell phone. But I’m good at catching myself and accepting that winning these mental battles is a necessary part of a modern existence bursting with advertising. It’s also bursting with nudges, big and small, conveying the message that my happiness is contingent on upping my neighbor purchase-wise. Again, I reject the proposal and experience zero jealousy as the girl-next-door piles up the latest and greatest.

But don’t see me as some moral hero totally divorced from the interpersonal competition; I’m simply competing on a different metric. I was in Milwaukee a few weeks ago at a nice dinner with some nice people. One of these people was regaling the crowd with tales of his adventures from three years in Shanghai. The more, more, more impulse flowed through me. He has done cooler stuff than me. I need to do some cooler stuff. Maybe I should move to Tokyo or Singapore.

I have very few goals in life. At the top of that short list is “Be Wise.” The high correlation coefficient (~.8) between age and wisdom can hide the fact that it’s experience, not time, “causing” wisdom. Thus, if one does not make wisdom-maximizing choices, he may well end up a sheltered 70-year-old bested by an unusually intrepid teenager.

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While you’ll find existence is a cornucopia of lovely experiences, you’ll also find that the current iteration of human is spending an outsized share of his time mired in frivolity and hate. Not that these states are necessarily bad or unproductive, just that creativity is dulled by residing in these states for too long.

And it is through creativity and the accompanying excitement it so often births that a population can become problem-solvers of the highest order. This is not only good for the advancement of society but also for the individuals themselves, or so King World XVIII believes.

See, instead of 4.15.20 Rule HJ8945 offering King World XVIII a respite from circling thoughts about free will, his thoughts merely morphed into an offshoot problem the Free Will Battles rarely cover. That is: why do humans use their free will in ways that reliably hurt their long-term self-interests? Yea, yea, yea, there’s the whole immediate satisfaction bit and evolution in a world of scarcity and blah blah blah, but none of that reasonableness offers a path forward. King World XVIII wanted a path forward.

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I think our society too often celebrates the wrong things. And because of this, we humans are too often pursuing the wrong things. By wrong, I simply mean stuff that will not maximize flourishing, and may, in fact, militate against it. Which all leads to my appearance here today: I want to celebrate your candor, a vital right thing that you have demonstrated since the first day I met you.

Now, most everyone will nod their heads in agreement, Oh yes, being honest is so important. Crucial. Gotta do it. But then they will proceed to behave quite counter to this “obvious” ideal. Aside from a few truly malevolent actors, I think this discrepancy between words and actions is due to an incorrect prioritization, not actual falseness in supporting the value of truth.

Take a meet-up with a friend that begins the same way all such meet-ups begin, “How are you doing?” Let’s pretend this isn’t merely small talk, that the friend has infinite time and truly craves a real answer. You can (a) highlight (with perhaps some truth shading) the things that seem to enhance your status – Damn, she is smart! Damn, she is cool! Damn, she is impressive! – or (b) nakedly highlight the things that might reduce your status. Now, being smart, cool, or impressive isn’t a wrong thing, but the pursuit of status over all else is. It’s this attitude of more, more, more just because it looks good that drives (a) over (b). Nearly everyone wants to be truthful, but only about certain types of truths.

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There you are waiting. Maybe it’s seven years from now. Maybe it’s seventeen. But I see you clearly struggling with the lack of clarity. Your parents will have taught you well, loved you well, supported you well: that won’t be the issue.

No, the procrastination is the natural result of unavoidable uncertainty inherent to the human experience. Path A will look preferable on certain days … only to be supplanted – in your mind – by Path B on different days. Around and around your mind will spin with such relentless force you’ll sometimes wish someone else would just decide for you – a free man pleading for less freedom.

I implore you to pause in moments like this and consider your parents. Just look at this house! Their jobs! Their vast networks of friends! Everything is so idyllic! Sure, absorbing those outcomes may lead to the conclusion that your parents followed a simple blueprint devoid of the endless machinations currently racking your mind. Yet it is the wrong conclusion, for your parents were extended stay tenants in the land of uncertainty. Most people make a decision and are awarded a long period of tranquil certainty; your parents, on the other hand, earned their “extended stay” status because their decisions were so often abruptly followed by ever more uncertainty. Which could turn someone cold, or paralyze him, or make him feel justified to constantly complain, could fill him with rage and jealousy. Not your parents. No way.

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There’s a certain type of self-important buffoon clogging up airports from sea to shining sea who needs to be placed squarely in your crosshairs. The boarding process begins with priority, then the disabled, then the parents of small children before turning to a numerical countdown from small to large. Even if you had never before flown, the numerical part is so easy to comprehend that ignorance isn’t a viable defense. 

Yet, there’s the target – proud owner of a group #7 ticket – stalking so close to the line of people with lower boarding numbers you’d think he’s actually in line. Now, if he was deciding to circumvent the boarding order entirely and was truly in line, boarding group be damned, we’d call him unethical and leave it at that. After all, his gross action has minimal consequences. 

What we cannot tolerate, nay what we MUST not tolerate, is the person who thinks he can hold himself in high moral esteem by not actually getting in line, but by being so close to the line that when #7 beams out over the loudspeaker he’ll be the first #7 to board. For this action has ripple effects that materially taint the boarding process: people with lower boarding numbers will accumulate behind him incorrectly believing they are in the real line. With fake disbelief, our target will eventually address the duped fliers incorrectly accumulating behind him by claiming complete innocence and attempting to redirect blame onto us. We are not fooled. You know what you have done. We know what you have done. 

Sic ‘em. Woof, woof, woof!

I consider it a massive victory to gain even a slightly different perspective on a topic. After all, the most important elements of the human condition have been so thoroughly addressed for so very long that a genuinely new take is incredibly unlikely. This unlikeliness increases the more common, more universal the topic of inquiry: it’s harder to write a unique love song than a track about Newcomb’s paradox.

Enter poet David Whyte doing the near-impossible. Not only does he reliably offer refreshingly new insights, he does so regarding “everyday words” firmly stuffed in a societal bin labeled “We Already Know What These Words Mean.”

I distinctly remember laughing after consuming “Honesty.” I definitely know what honesty is, but I’m sure he’ll say some pretty things that will prove useful in reminding me what I already know. Wrong in a wonderful way. Outlier this was not: at a rate only Barry Bonds could sniff, D Whyte pumps out unequaled originality that will change what you think, know, and believe.

I concluded this from a few of these pieces (which I’ve circled) that I encountered outside of this book. So yes, in breaking from tradition, I am sending a book that I have not completely read. I am willing to make an exception because I’m so confident in Whyte’s brilliance. And, really, if you only read the circled pieces, sending you this book will have been worth it.

A sucker is born every minute, and today that sucker happens to be username “Peninsula FOL.” See, PFOL was once the owner of the book you now hold in your hands and apparently didn’t understand its worth. Lesson #1: know what you and your possessions are worth – then add at least 22% as a negotiating starting point.

“Big Wolf and Little Wolf” happens to be just about the most coveted kid’s book in the world because it’s beautiful, endearing, and so perfectly speaks to human emotions, and also because of supply constraints. Lesson #2: prices rise when demand outstrips supply, a.k.a. a “seller’s market.”

So in a “seller’s market” with used book prices like $51.50 (AbeBooks.com), $74.50 (Alibris.com), $99.95 (eBay.com), and $58.90 (Amazon.com), the sucker that is PFOL prices at … $25.[1] A hanging offer if I’ve ever seen one. This price was so low I wondered if I might, in fact, be the sucker. After brief consideration, I charged forward given Alibris.com’s credibility and my credit card’s fraud protection. Lesson #3: no financial opportunity is 100% certain (and anyone who talks of “easy” or “free” money is a charlatan or worse) – act swiftly when the expected reward outweighs the expected risk.[2] Lesson #4: whenever you can cheaply offload risk onto someone else without capping upside, do it, a.k.a. always buy with credit cards when possible.[3]

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If you can sharpen your media criticism from “untrustworthy” to “untrustworthy for x,y,z reasons and on a,b,c topics,” you’ll be in a powerful position to sort the news appropriately while also enhancing your critical thinking skills.

1. You should hear the best one-sided argument for the untrustworthy matters
2. You should be able to spot the angles intentionally not being pursued
3. You can think of the questions that should have been asked
4. You can try to form on-the-fly counter-arguments
5. You can assume information based on omission

Damn near everyone is cracking. Smart and dumb, black and white, religious and atheistic, rich and poor: there seems no discernible pattern to the great moral failing of our time. Before cracking, though, they were all convinced they never would, that their own moral rectitude would allow them to correctly determine right from wrong when the screws were tightened.

In even the best-designed system, there will be incentives to cheat, lie, and steal. When it comes to areas where the legal system has no say, society must hope that members have been imbued with some form of Kant’s categorical imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. If you merely follow that directive, systemic weakness can remain unexploited. Which sounds so simple and seems so obvious during 2:30AM dorm-room trolley-problem debates but becomes quite another thing entirely when one must actually choose his community over self-interest. This is why your alignment between stated ethics and practiced ethics is so commendable.

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