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Attacking Adversity

Bookish Weapon Number Thirty-Six

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Gary John Bishop is an interesting character and the author of the book, “Stop Doing That Sh*t.” It is a self-help book. You wouldn’t pick it up unless you thought you needed to help your self in some way, especially if you thought you needed to stop doing something.

It is a book that approaches self-sabotage in a different light than what I have read in the past. It is not for everybody. There is, of course, lots of bad language and he doesn’t apologize for that. After all, he also wrote the book, “Unfu*k Yourself.”

The Dedication

I liked his dedication. How many of you just skip over a dedication in a book. It isn’t what you are after or so you think. However, I thought it was well said in this case so I will share.

“I dedicated this book to the helpless and hopeless, the frustrated and defeated: today is a day when it can all begin anew. I don’t care about your past, and you shouldn’t either.”

Good, right? So if you are helpless and hopeless this book might be one you should read. But you say you have lots of hope! Hope that your car doesn’t break down again because you can’t afford to get it fixed, Hope that you can pay the rent. Hope you don’t get sick. You get the gist of this, lots of hope. Right!

Your Center

Bishop calls it your core and asks what is at the core of every human. His answer is “bullshit.” That’s pretty original and a lot different than other answers you would get from self-help gurus.

I really liked what he says about self-talk. “Your self-talk is the locker room of your life.” And he goes on to elaborate:

“People are little more than a living conversation, both internal and spoken. A dialogue in a body. A skin-and-bone bag that talks, and it talks about everything, and the limit of that talk is the limit of that life. Period.” The bold is mine. He says it is not the horrible life you have but the conversation you are having about it that has you by the throat.

Self Sabotage

This is a large part of the book so I will be taking bits and pieces from it. Please read the book if you want to get more out of it.

I liked a quote he reproduces from the writings of Marcus Aurelius’s writings, “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

There are three saboteurs. “The three saboteurs are the fundamental conclusions you have come to about yourself, other people in your life, and life itself.”

The Question

Bishop asked himself the question, “Why is my life the way it is?” It is a decent question. Have you asked it yourself? Maybe your life is perfect. If so Bishop would ask why you were reading his book. Anyway, he came up with some reasons.

He says that if you want to accomplish some things you have to get used to see other things. He puts it this way, “Whatever you are out to accomplish in this life, you’ll have to get more than a little okay with the experience of struggle or hell, even overwhelm.”

Also, he claims that those who survive are those that are the best predictors. “Every Monday morning is the same because you are already predicting how it will go before it even starts.” He says you have an opinion about how everything is going to go. Your subconscious is responsible.

I like what he says here. “Circumstances may change, but what stays the same is how you see them, as well as how you deal with them and ultimately how you participate in life.” He goes on, “Your entire life to this point has been a series of actions subconsciously driven to trap you in the same bubble of life.”

He says your “subconscious is working you like a sock puppet.” I thought that was pretty funny. He says people are more concerned with fixing themselves than improving themselves.

The Three Saboteurs

You have a way your subconscious views yourself, other people and life. Bishop takes you through the steps find our what those are for you. These are your established truths. I liked that part of the book.

He says, “You? You’re victimizing yourself into a truly forgettable life. Like most people, you’d rather explain your life than intervene in it.” “Your actions are always in alignment with your conclusions.” Of course, he is talking about your conclusions regarding yourself, other people and life. He goes on, “Day after day, week after week, year after year, you see yourself in the same way, you see others in a very distinct way and you see life in the same way you always see it. Talk about predictable.”

He says you form these conclusions in your first two decades of life. Twenty is fifty-four years ago for me. I can’t remember what conclusions I had come to at that time. I think for me the most negative conclusions about these three things came much later in life.

Once you dig down and discover what these are for you, he tells you that you can’t change it. And here is where we disagree. He says the solution is to focus only on the future and do what your future tells you to do. What? Maybe that’s good for younger people but not when you are creeping up on the average life expectancy.

However, the book has some great insights about life so I highly recommend it.

Bookish Weapon Number Thirty-Five

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You are saying you never heard of this book? Well, not many copies were sold. Quite a few were given away. The author, me, has decided to review it three years after it was written. Al little self-promotion doesn’t hurt once in a while.

Why would I want to do that? After all, if you read the review maybe you will figure you don’t need to buy the book. Well, I just thought it would be fun and I didn’t get many reviews on Amazon. Primarily because I was unable to afford to promote it.

There are four strategies for overcoming adversity in this book, all of which I used to get through difficult times in the past. They are so simple, but like everything, not easy.

Exercise

This is, of course, basic, but not many do it. Recent studies have found that exercise is just as effective as Zoloft. That is why it is critical if you are facing adversity.

If you hate it and I have talked to people that really hate it, you can still make it a habit. I hate brushing my teeth. It’s boring, but I, like most of us have made it a habit. By the way, get the book “Atomic Habits” or “Tiny Habits. Both will help you eliminate bad habits and add good ones like exercise. If you are primarily visual get the “Tiny Habits” book. Maybe you will lose some weight too if that is what you want.

Diet

However, you won’t lose much weight exercising! Diet is eighty percent of weight loss. Again this is basic. If your diet is all out of wack you will not be as effective dealing with adversity. My book discusses various diets in what I thought was an attempt at humor.

The reality is that the best diet is personal. It should be based on your genetics and your ancestry. Northern Europeans do better with some foods than people from South America and visa versa. Get a genetic test done and then find out what is best for you. When I was going through my difficulties none of this was available. I went on a strict vegan diet, which helped but I ruined my health long term because I did not supplement.

Therapy

If you are struggling in life then chances are you need to talk about it. Therapy is expensive. If you are homeless or just broke it is not an option for you, right? Wrong! In the book, I talk about this and how I found “free” therapy.

For those of you that are not penniless, you could consider a more conventional form of therapy. However, you could still use the one I suggest in the book. Either way, get some!

Journaling

This has been discussed so much in the last year or so in book after book. I discovered it on my own during my struggles. I detail my method in the book, but it is basically getting your feelings down on paper. Do it every day! It will help you deal with any depression you might experience.

Journaling will also give you a method of comparing the present to the past to see how you have changed or not.

Quotes

I love quotes and the book is in some ways a just a series of quotes. At the end of the book, I have five pages dedicated to quotes from Louis L’Amour, the famous western novelist. They were compiled by his daughter and arranged by subject. I think this may be the best part of the book.

So now you don’t need to read the book, but if your curious head on over to Amazon and order it. Thanks!

Bookish Weapon Number Thirty-Four

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The book “Search,” was published in 1985, but had a great impact on me at the time and I believe it is a bookish weapon you too can use in life.

It is a summary of what he was teaching at his workshops at the time. Janes Kavanaugh was a Catholic Priest and a poet and a writer who taught what he believed. I read this book the first time right after my first divorce.

Present Feelings

“When we deny strong feelings as I did for twenty or thirty years, they take their toll at some point in bodily symptoms, disease, depression, or consistent unhappiness,” says Kavanaugh. He talks about a young woman he saw at the store and how she looked sad and in despair, but would not communicate it to anyone. “She will dream of some magical solution, seek her release in novels or movies or the soaps, and join the parade of the empty and miserable.”

He discusses how “Searchers” are different than the woman above. They want to live a life that reflects who they are and are aware of danger signs of suppressed feelings. He says, “Self-healing begins with an awareness of what we are feeling. To know our feelings without editing or qualifying, without classifying them as good or bad.”

Kavanaugh says, if our image of ourselves refuses us the right to be angry or even unpleasant, our own kindness will probably kill us. Or if our self-image prevents us from being gentle and soft and even afraid, we will wall ourselves off from the world in a private tomb.” “…corroded feelings are the great murderers,” says Kavanaugh. He just says we should be aware of our feelings and that “Search” can teach us to grow up and take responsibility for our present feelings, to “get rid of the ghosts.”

Dependence and Interdependence (Chapter 2)

This section of the book I underlined over and over. On the subject of dependency, I underlined this: “Many of us are thrown back upon ourselves through a ruptured relationship, a job loss, or poor health. The child in us begs for someone to take the pain away.” “…the dependent child can be a killer!”

He goes on and I underlined this as well: “A solid friendship or committed love is an interdependency wherein we meet one another’s needs. That’s what life is all about. Total independence can b a mask for one who fears any dependence and intimacy. We need each other. We need to reach out, to share the burden of living, to find the helping hand when we are lost and alone.”

Meeting Our Own Needs (Chapter 3)

“Search” continually talks about the “long game”,” about imagining our life a year from now, if we do not take responsibility to meet our own needs. God or an inner spirit speaks to us through our needs.” He makes the point that if you ignore your needs for a lifetime you will end up alone or lonely.

I really liked Kavanaugh’s poetry which is interlaced throughout the book. Here is a bit from the poem, “Personal Freedom.”

“ Stand back from life and observe it at a distance.
What makes sense and what imprisonment?
Who knows consistent freedom and who follows a path
Made by ants following ants in proscribed procession?
I have no idea where I must live or how,
No blueprint made in Japan or heaven,
Only heart and mind that know what is true and false,
And what it is to feel the pulse of freedom,
Without which, for me, there is only a premature death.”

Indecision

When it comes to mental health and indecision. He says, “We can decide to communicate honestly no matter the cost, to begin to be who we are to the extent that we can. There is no deadline, no rule of thumb the covers everyone. Many of us have been taught so intensively to think of others that it takes us years to respond to ourselves.”

Then when people live life under others heal he has this to say, “When we have been put down enough or have suffered enough personal degradation, our anger can be an important ally to rescue us. Often we forget that anger is a powerful part of our emotional makeup and it can save us from self-annihilation. When summoned, anger often enables us to respect who we are and becomes a significant source of self-love.”

Here is a summary of what he is saying about decisions: prolonged indecision can lead to serious illness, decisions follow from unmet needs and practical options, a bad decision is often better than no decision and play the long game. All of these are good to remember.

Loneliness

Personally, I enjoy solitude. I am rarely lonely which is a good thing because I spend most of my time alone. Kavanaugh says, “Loneliness can almost devour the sensitive and aware and cause a deep-rooted fear of abandonment and a diminished sense of self-worth.” He says of single people that, “The freedom they chose becomes another kind of prison.”

I think he makes too much of it. He talks about people exploring meaningless relationships but are still alone. I say enjoy your solitude. It is a precious gift.

Support Systems

One of the key parts of this book is when he discusses support systems. He says and I agree, that, “…the essence of a support system is to establish genuine and solid strength within oneself.” This is so important. If I did not have this strength I would not have made it this far.

Beginning again, say after a divorce or even a breakup is difficult. I like his poem about it:

I cannot begin again
To study the veins of granite rocks
And explore the anxiety of clouds
To relearn the secrets of the trees
And see the shadows of mountains.
There are too may forms already seen,
Too many sounds heard too often,
Too many dreams etched in my memory like water scarring ancient foundations.

This is not all of the poem. You need to find the book and read it. If you can’t find the book, let me know and I will give you the rest of it in one of these posts.

Bookish Weapon Number Thirty-Three

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This bookish weapon is a potent one. It is an older book, written in 2009, but even more relevant today. It is called “Rapt.,” by Winifred Gallagher.

With everyone on their smartphones this book will be a welcome tool for you to help yourself focus and as Gallagher says, “…your life-who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love-is the sum of what you focus on.” And, “In contrast, the things that you don’t attend to in a sense don’t exist, at least not for you.”

More Focus

There is so much talk of happiness. How do we achieve it? Can it even be a goal or should it be? Gallagher says, “…you cannot always be happy, but you can almost always be focused, which is the next best thing.”

She defines the book’s title by saying it means, “completely absorbed, engrossed, fascinated, perhaps even “carried away.” It is important to choose your “targets” for your focus. She says that your decision is critical. “Deciding what to pay attention to for this hour, day, week, or yer, much less a lifetime, is a peculiarly human predicament, and your quality of life largely depends on how you handle it.”

Gallagher says,”..when you lose focus, your mind tends to fix on what could be wrong with your life instead of what’s right…” and I think it is largely because we are always looking for the threats to us.

Feelings

How do our feelings affect our focus? There is a whole chapter in the book and it is entitled, “Inside Out: Feelings Frame Focus.” As recent studies confirm we are drawn to the negative. You have heard of ANTs – Automatic Negative Thoughts? Gallagher puts it this way, “…we pay more attention to unpleasant feelings such as fear, anger, and sadness because they’re simply more powerful than the agreeable sort.” From what I have read elsewhere this is because our reptilian brain is trying to recognize a threat and keep us alive. Do you question this? Well, you will be interested to know a little fact about your birthday. She says, Here is the icing on the cake: on your birthday, you’re up to 20 percent more likely to have a heart attack, perhaps prompted by fears of aging or disappointed hopes.”

However, there is good news. “Paying attention to positive emotions literally expands your world, while focusing on negative feelings shrink it.” So focus on the positive. “When you feel frightened, angry, or sad, reality contracts until whatever is upsetting you takes up the whole world – at least the one between your ears.” Understanding this really helps you prepare for the fight.

Old Age

What do young people focus on vs what old people focus on? This was interesting. She says young folks focus on the future and new experiences and old people “emotional satisfaction in the here and now.” She quotes psychologist Laura Carstensen who says, “Age does not entail the relentless pursuit of happiness, but rather the satisfaction of emotionally meaningful goals, which involves far more than simply “feeling good.” I would say, I suppose so, but I like new experiences and adventures still. I am probably the odd old person or just not as mature as most of my peers. However, many older people think they know it all and they close their minds to new ideas.

Decisions

She says we pay attention to the wrong things during the decision making process. Focusing on the easy way instead of considering second and third level consequences. “Our thinking gets befuddled not so much by our emotions as by our “cognitive illusions” or mistaken intuitions, and other flawed, fragmented mental constructs.” She quotes Daniel Kahneman frequently. In reference to a financial situation he says, “If you focus too much on each issue separately, considering each loss and gain in isolation, you make mistakes.”

You have two selves. One is the “experiencing self” which focuses on the present. Then you have an evaluative “remembering self” that looks back on the experience. This second self is relying on memory which is not so reliable. That messes us up. Kahneman says, “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it, Why? “Because you are thinking about it.” The bold is mine.

Just like focusing too much on your memories to help you make decisions, the effects of adaptation (getting used to a situation) impacts our decisions. You are used to a job and forget the good things about it because it has become routine. So you quit and go somewhere else only to find out you had it pretty good in the other job but had gotten used to it. Kahneman puts it this way, “Forgetting that you’ll eventually stop paying attention to a new thing can skew not just big decisions about the future, but also the small ones that quietly but profoundly affect your present well being.”

Multitasking

Easy as flipping a pancake or a myth? She says, “…multitasking for most piratical purposes is a myth, and that heeding its siren call leads to inefficiency and even danger.” Amen to that!

Sometimes if you are used to doing many things at once and have done so for years you may just not realize the impact it has on you. “…there’s a risk: if you grow up assuming you can pay attention to several things at once, you may not realize that the way in which you process such information is superficial at best…and stunted your capacity for serious thought.”

Finally

There s a great section about diet and how the right focus can help you and much more so as always, get the book.

Bookish Weapon Number Thirty-Two

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This book, “Awareness,” by Anthony De Mello was written some time ago but has received recent accolades from the likes of Tim Ferriss and others. There is a good reason for it. He was certainly one of the first proponents of mindfulness although he didn’t call it that.

The book is short with big ideas. Sometimes those are the best kind. You can just read them over and over again.

Sleeping

De Mello says most people are asleep. He says, “They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing we call human existence.” He goes on to say that “all Mystics, Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well.”

Insights abound in this book. Being asleep is discussed throughout the book and he makes a point that people do not want to “be cured.” “What they want is relief; a cure is painful.” “Most people go to a psychiatrist or psychologist to get relief. I repeat: to get relief. Not to get out of it.” So he says you need to “realize that you don’t want to wake up.”

You

Here is a passage that struck me and like I so often do I will quote the whole thing. It is an idea I think everyone needs to hear especially in this day and age where it seems everyone is running to therapy over even minor things. He says that we are “not ok” but it doesn’t matter. We should just observe (be aware). Then he says,

“This reminds me of the fellow in London after the war. He’s sitting with a parcel wrapped in brown paper in his lap; it’s a big, heavy object. The bus conductor comes up to him and says, “What do you have on your lap there?” And the man says, “This is an unexploded bomb. We dug it out of the garden and I am taking it to the police station.” The conductor says, “You don’t want to carry that on your lap. Put it under the seat.”

“Psychology and spirituality (as we generally understand it) transfer the bomb from your lap to under your seat. They don’t really solve your problems. Has that ever struck you? You had a problem, now you exchange it for another one. It’s always going to be that way until we solve the problem called “you.”

Suffering

“Do you want a sign you’re asleep? Here it is: You’re suffering. Suffering is a sign that you are out of touch with the truth.”

He says, “All suffering is caused by my identifying myself with something, whether that something is within me or outside me.” “Grief is a sign that I made my happiness depend on this thing or person, at least to some extent.”

He makes the case for enjoying people not for who they are but also for more than who they are and we are. He goes on to say that, Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.” Then he talks about the “organized industry” designed to distract us from reality. I/Phone anyone?

How about some “bliss.” De Mello says, “There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing what in India we call Anand – bliss, bliss. There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it is because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have.”

Wisdom

The Bible says wisdom begins with the fear of God. I am sure De Mello has read this and agrees, but he says there are four steps to wisdom. First, you need to become aware of negative feelings you didn’t realize you had. Second, is to “understand that the feeling is in you, not in reality.” The third step is to “Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with the I…don’t say, “I am depressed.” He says you can say “It is depressed.” You should not define yourself in terms of a feeling. That is a mistake. The fourth step is to change yourself. Don’t try to change somebody else. Realize that “the world is right because I feel good.” You feeling good goes first.

De Mello says, “There is no explanation you can give that would explain away all the sufferings and evil and torture and destruction and hunger in the world! “…Because life is a mystery, which means your thinking mind cannot make sense out of it. For that you’ve got to wake up and then you’ll suddenly realize that reality is not problematic, you are the problem.”

Life

“Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.” How about that statement! I agree with him when he says. “Loneliness is when you are missing people, aloneness is when you’re enjoying yourself.”

Then he gives us a pretty good definition of awareness. It is like mindfulness without the wanting. He puts it this way, “When people say they want to experience every moment, they are really talking awareness, except for the “wanting.”

Death

“You are not living until it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn to you whether you live or die.” Now that is something to think about. He doesn’t end there. “People mistakenly think that living is keeping the body alive. So love the thought of death. Love it.”

Then he suggests visiting a graveyard. Consider the people there. How short their lives were.

I must confess that I am asleep and hope I remain asleep if being awake means you don’t care if your alive or dead. I think his perspective may be due to the fact that he is old as he writes this and closer to death or I am just to stupid to grasp this idea.

Love

He says, “Give up your dependency. Tear away the tentacles of society that have enveloped and suffocated your being. You must drop them. Externally, everything will go on as before, but though you will continue to be in the world, you will not be of it.”

And then he says something I can really identify with. “It will help, too, if you return to nature. Send the crowds away, go up to the mountains, and silently commune with trees and flowers and animals and birds, with sea and clouds and sky and stars.” “That is the cure for loneliness.”

Bookish Weapon Number Thirty-One

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Nassim Taleb wrote a book you really need for your arsenal. It will definitely help you stay on offense. The title is “Antifragile” and the subtitle “Things That Gain From Disorder.” If you read any of Taleb’s books you better put your thinking cap on. This one doesn’t contain formulas, only some graphs. It still makes you think.

If you don’t do deadlifts on a regular basis you will after you read this book. Why? Because they make you “antifragile” or as others might say, “hard to kill.”

A Definition

Taleb explains why he chose a “neologism.” It was because “there is no simple noncompound word in the Oxford English Dictionary the expresses the point of reverse fragility. For the idea of antifragility is not part of our consciousness-but, luckily, it is part of our ancestral behavior, our biological apparatus, and ubiquitous property of every system that has survived.”

With that Taleb begins his book. He uses some big words. That is why I put quotes around neologism. It is a word most of us need to lookup. However, in spite of the erudite nature of his work, it is useful stuff.

This book is over four-hundred pages so I will only be picking a few outstanding ideas from it. You really need to read the whole thing to become convinced.

Life, Death, and Mistakes

Chapter four of Taleb’s book is titled, “What Kills Me Makes Others Stronger.” He discusses many things. Here is a typical statement, “If every plane crash makes the next one less likely, every bank crash makes the next one more likely.” Think about that. He says reinsurance companies do well after they take a hit from some catastrophe.

Taleb says “…my definition of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information, and tries to explain why he made the mistake rather than moving on.”

Then he states that “what does not kill me kills others.” He sites Nietzsche when he says, “what does not kill me makes me stronger.” Then he says it could also mean, “what did not kill me did not make me stronger, but spared me because I am stronger than others, but it killed others and the average population is now stronger because the weak are gone. In other words, I passed an exit exam.”

Later when discussing randomness he says, “This is the central illusion of life: that randomness is risky, that it is a bad thing-and that eliminating randomness is done by eliminating randomness.” He goes on to say that “plumbers, dentists, tailors, etc have some volatility in their income but they are rather robust to a minor professional Black Swan.” However, employees can just get a call from HR and their income goes to zero. “Employees risks are hidden.” Two things about that. First, if you are scratching your head and asking, “What is a Black Swan,” then you need to read his book “The Black Swan.” Second, everyone who works for someone else should re-read this paragraph.

“The Turkey Problem”

This gem alone is worth the price of the book, but I am going to reproduce it here and then promise there are more like it.

“A turkey is fed for a thousand days by a butcher; every day confirms to its staff of analysts that butchers love turkeys “with increased statistical confidence.” The butcher will keep feeding the turkey until a few days before Thanksgiving. Then comes the day when it is really not a very good idea to be a turkey. So with the butcher surprising it, the turkey will have a revision of belief-right when its confidence in the statement the butcher loves turkeys is maximal and “it is very quiet” and soothingly predictable in the life of the turkey. This example builds on an adaptation of a metaphor by Bertrand Russell. The key here is that such a surprise will be a Black Swan event; but just for the turkey, not the butcher.”

He goes on to say, “We can also see from the turkey story the mother of all harmful mistakes: mistaking absence of evidence (of harm) for evidence of absence, a mistake that will see tends to prevail in intellectual circles and one that is grounded in the social sciences.

“So our mission in life becomes simply “how not to be a turkey,” or, if possible, how to be a turkey in reverse- antifragile, that is. Not being a turkey starts with figuring out the difference between true and manufactured stability.”

Other Insights

There are many other insights in this book. For instance, he discusses size and says, “In spite of what is studied in business schools concerning “economies of scale,” size hurts your times of stress; it is not a good idea to be large during difficult times.”

Another Talebism is that things that have been around a very long time will probably still be around when you are gone. He applies this idea to many areas of life.

Then being comfortable is not good. It makes you fragile.

Complex systems are risky and he says, “humans should not be given explosive toys (like atomic bombs, financial derivatives, or tons to create life).”

Medicine. He says because not all doctors are sophisticated you shouldn’t go to the doctor often. “…it is a serious error to infer that if we live longer because of medicine, all medical treatments make us live longer.”

Exercise. “..walking effortlessly, any a pace below the stress level, can have some benefits-or, as I speculate, is necessary for humans, perhaps as necessary as sleep, which at some point modernity could not rationalize and tried to reduce.”

The concept of “skin in the game” is well associated with Taleb. If you are a salesman for a company and don’t make a sale it impacts your income. You have skin in the game. So your opinion of sales means something. This is why he doesn’t like academics in general because none of them have skin in the game.

Marketing. “Anything one needs to market heavily is necessarily either an inferior product or an evil one.” That is really something to think about.

And finally, he says, “The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren’t for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn’t so when stripped of personal risk.”