By the power of Green Skull!

I have the #Bitcoin 🙌⚡️🙌

Discipline is Saving

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I’ve been taking cold showers for many years now. When I tell most people that, they think I’m crazy. Why subject myself to cold showers when warm showers are available? Why make the act of taking a shower so painful and unpleasurable?

I take cold showers because they’re uncomfortable. Discomfort is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing if it helps you grow. For me, cold showers are a way to test myself, to discipline myself.

Purposeful Pain

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Discipline makes uncomfortable activities comfortable through purposeful pain. The first time taking a cold shower was horrible and my body was shocked from discomfort. Mentally, it was difficult to handle and I did everything as fast as possible. The next time wasn’t much better, but by the tenth time, it wasn’t so bad.

Each time I took a cold shower, I learned how to handle the cold. More than that, I was learning how to get used to uncomfortable situations. The discipline of handling the cold was creating in me the more meta skill of learning how to discipline myself. I was learning to learn.

I learned for example that there’s joy in the journey. Every skill is frustrating to learn at first because you’re no good at it. But if it were easy at the beginning, it wouldn’t really be a skill. The real value comes at the end of discipline. Discipline, in other words, is saving or investing of time. The pain experienced in the process of learning is time spent now to make time more valuable later. A more disciplined and skillful person is more productive over the same unit of time than a lazy and unskillful person.

Consuming Pleasure

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Indulgence makes comfortable activities uncomfortable through desensitization. Porn, gambling and addictive substances are all more pleasurable at the beginning and have diminishing returns over time. By the end, other disciplines start suffering as laziness or impulsive behavior spreads. Indulgences destroy whatever disciplines you have.

The journey becomes hellish, especially as addiction takes over. The beginning of the journey may be fun, but by the end, addictions exact a heavy toll on your life. Indulgence, in other words, is incurring time debt. The pleasure experienced in the process of indulgence is time stolen from the future. An addicted and less disciplined person is less productive.

This is why for personal productivity, it’s much more useful to eliminate bad habits than to attempt creating good ones. The drain from an addiction of some kind is much more costly than a discipline is likely to help. Disciplines take a long time to mature so require years before the real value is gained. Stopping an addiction, especially cold turkey, is a huge boost to productivity because it pays off time debt.

As with finance, pay off the debt first and then think about savings. Indulgence is debt. Discipline is saving.

Sincere question: If you take inflation into account, is it still the biggest loss?

Hailing from the energy industry. Things are not as simple as they seem. Even when it comes to "clear profits". There's other areas such as district heating that is taking a huge loss.

Would the world be the same?

If energy companies wouldn’t have profit during an #energy crisis

If pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t profit from an #pandemic

If military industry wouldn’t have profit during #war

As long the elites benefit these situations nothing will change!

The Antidote to Nihilistic Narcissism

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“He’ll have a long life as long as he doesn’t know himself.”

In Greek mythology, this was the prophecy concerning Narcissus. Narcissus is better known for how the myth ends. He falls in love with his own reflection, which is where we get the word narcissistic. The ending refers back to the initial prophecy. When he saw his own reflection, he didn’t recognize it because he didn’t know himself.

In the middle of the myth is Narcissus rejecting the love of everyone else. The order matters. Narcissus only fell in love with himself after rejecting everyone. He didn’t reject everyone because he was in love with himself, but rather he fell in love with himself because he rejected everyone. His only target for love was himself.

I bring up this myth because this is the intellectual path that so many people take. They cynically reject belief systems one by one until they are left with nothing else. Lacking anything else to believe in, they turn to themselves and become completely self-centered. They become nihilistic narcissists.

Bad Parenting

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Look at the prophecy again. Narcissus will have a long life as long as he doesn’t know himself. Presumably, his parents made sure he didn’t know himself because Narcissus didn’t even recognize his own reflection. They did this with the best of intentions, to ensure he had a long life, yet clearly, a life staring into your own reflection is not exactly meaningful.

Think about what we tell our kids: “You can be anything you want to be.” “Go find what you’re passionate about.”

These platitudes specifically avoid giving children an identity. More subtly, not giving them an identity makes it harder for them to get attacked. We do this with the best of intentions, yet is this really what parents should be doing? To define yourself is an enormous burden, especially for children.

Nihilism as Default

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Think about the myth again. Narcissus rejected all would-be lovers.

Why?

He didn’t know himself. He didn’t have any basis by which he could even evaluate their fit. How could he since he had no self-awareness or self-understanding? He couldn’t solve for love because he didn’t know half the equation.

Identity is the basis of evaluating everything. Without grounding, nothing can be built. Without identity, belief is impossible and nihilism becomes the default.

The Appeal of Narcissism

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Nihilistic narcissism is a safe position. Because you never have to stand for anything and never take a risk, you can preserve your own ego, preserve your intellectual life as in the prophecy. The appeal is in preserving what you have, your own self, however empty and senseless you become.

But nihilistic narcissism completely strips meaning from life. You may live a long life staring into your own reflection, but it’s not a very fulfilling one. Lacking any sort of external north star, you are left with an internal north star, which if you follow, becomes navel-gazing. Ironically, narcissism is the end state of not knowing yourself.

Such a place is one of profound despair. There is no meaning and all you have to live for is yourself. Is it any wonder so many people are depressed?

Parents, give your kids the gift of identity. Your job is to help them know who they are. This should be natural, since the kids come from you. By knowing you, they learn to know themselves. By showing them who you are, you are really showing them who they are. By participating with them in community you are showing them who they are. By telling them your family history you are showing them who they are. Tether them to your identity so they can find meaning. Give them the solid foundation of knowing themselves.

Because identity is necessary to a meaningful life.