Your suffering isn't random. It has exactly five cogs. ⚙️ ⚙️ ⚙️ ⚙️ ⚙️

Naval Ravikant said something brilliant about David Deutsch's work:

"Good explanations are hard to vary."

When you look back on a truly good explanation, you think: "How could this have been otherwise? This is the only way this thing could work."

The iPhone is hard to vary. The aeroplane wing is hard to vary. The electric car design is hard to vary.

They're all constrained by reality itself: physics, aerodynamics, human hands. You can't just change them without losing what makes them work.

Here's what I realised after 30 years of debugging human consciousness:

Human suffering has exactly five shapes. Not four. Not six. Five.

The Five Hamster Wheel System isn't something I invented. It's something I discovered, like finding the periodic table of human programming.

Gain/Loss

Able/Unable

Right/Wrong

Support/Let Down

Attention/Ignore

Every pattern of suffering I've ever encountered, from Premier League players to Olympic athletes to struggling parents, fits into one of these five binary wheels.

I tried to find a sixth. I looked for years. It doesn't exist.

I tried to collapse them into four. They won't collapse. Each wheel is distinct, irreducible.

The framework is hard to vary because it's mapping to something real: the actual architecture of how childhood survival programming gets written into your nervous system.

When I show someone their specific wheel, they don't say "interesting theory." They say "Holy shit, you just described my entire life."

That's not because I'm clever. It's because the explanation is constrained by reality. It's hard to vary because it's true.

Naval talks about how good knowledge is fractal. You meet it at the level you're ready to receive it. You might get 20% the first time, 25% the second time.

That's exactly how "Glitch" works.

First read: you recognise your dominant wheel.

Second read: you see how your parents ran the same wheel.

Third read: you catch yourself spinning in real-time and step into admin mode.

The framework doesn't change. Your depth of understanding does.

If you're ready to see the five patterns that are running your life (not theory, but the actual code), grab the book here: link in bio

It's hard to vary because human programming is hard to vary.

Rob

P.S. The reason therapy often fails isn't because therapists aren't trying. It's because they're working without the map. They're treating symptoms without seeing the underlying wheel structure. Once you see the five wheels clearly, everything else makes sense. That's what "hard to vary" explanations do: they make the complex suddenly simple.

#consciousness #psychology #naval #selfawareness #trauma

Picked up a clients glitchy think about her health. Her paying attention / wheel was spinning fast.

She only got loving attention when she's sick. That script will unconsciously play out throughout life when she's being ignored... getting sick will spin her to the other side.

However in my experience, through this mind/body behaviour she will end up looking for the even deeper play... she will somehow end up being ignored.

This is her safe space.

We must learn to look at life through these deeper behavioural lens.

Just built myself a slack / discord replacement with integrated Nostr IDs for a project I’m working on where I need a community server :)

Not a bad 1 day side project.

For scheduling notes we have easy platforms for this.

We kind of just fell into it. Eldest was in kinder when covid hit and we pulled her out just to temporarily avoid the clown show. That was the turning point that lead us down a path of no return haha.

We wasted a lot of time and energy on trying to enforce structures, schedules and milestones at the beginning. We came to realise they are both actually counterproductive, (unless you're just trying to replicate the school system).

Now we are pretty much 90% self directed and life couldn't be better.

Tips for success:

Parents have to recognise that every single assumption, expectation, preconception etc around 'education' is just a lingering artifact of their own indoctrination by the same system they are attempting to avoid. They will struggle if they don't let go of everything they think they know. I have learned that the two systems are utterly incompatible. Sound familiar?

Give the children options, opportunities, and encouragement primarily, with not too much direction and instruction. They will figure out things that will blow your mind, way beyond what a so called 'teacher' can explain with language. All they need are the tools and the space to do so. They are completely different to adults in the way they learn.

Ignore all detractors. They will view everything through their legacy framework and thus will have largely zero constructive criticism to offer. They will be especially freaked out if they are or were in any way involved in the gov system. Everything you do will seem insane to them and they will view your decisions as a personal attack. Again, sound familiar?

Don't try to fit it into your schedule or your lifestyle. Again, this is submitting to structure. Instead let it come to define your lifestyle. Make all of your strategic family decisions with the kids 'learning experience' at the core.

Finally, you need to be available for it. Really available. Keeping the kids engaged and productive is its own full time task. Things can escalate into a monkey circus very easily (which isn't always bad haha).

I could literally rant for hours on this topic. Its basically my whole life at this point.

There's nothing more disempowering than playing the victim.

To overcome it, you just have to believe that you on some level have chosen everything that you have ever experienced.

Declare it and let the internal dissonance show you the beliefs that are in conflict with it. Articulate them & let them go.

In a way. But a lot of freedom for the children. Travel schooling?something like this

Yes, 4 years in with a 10 yr old and an 8 yr old. Although we didn't really appreciate the magnitude of the decision at the time, it has turned out to be an incredibly profound and life impacting decision, which we have fully embraced. It will force you to confront the true reality of the deep responsibility you have as a parent, on a daily basis. Its definitely not for everyone, but for us there is no other option.

Silver is what happens when state control of markets breaks.

90% of all outsized returns in markets is a result of a state monopoly / oligopoly, state manipulation or state subsidies breaking.

Essentially long free markets short intervention is how all massive returns occur.

#bitcoin is also one of those setups

In #UK rather than a middle class..

There is increasingly a state-simp class: well paid cringe mid-wits : army guys, doctors, gov contractors, who are dumb enough to believe shit like quantum computing, nukes, c0vid, DNA is code ...

"Here is the complete predictive loop:

Fields exert pressure

Pressure trains virtues

Virtues shape trajectories

Trajectories accumulate into lives

Lives reinforce or alter the field (slightly)

Most people never see step 1.

They moralize steps 3–4 instead."

I can get you in touch. He’s lovely.