Contemplation

Why the generations after Millenials are doomed and it’s the Millenials’ fault.

Join me in this mental exercise, if you were to suggest how to create a fit and healthy human being, what protocols would you suggest? I would assume eating healthy foods, getting enough quality sleep and doing some resistance training, not necessarily the gym, yeah?

See life is pretty straightforward if you look at it from a third-person perspective. As a matter of fact, let’s say I showed a door and told you that behind that door is someone happy and successful, I would bet that you can accurately describe that person’s physiology and the same goes if someone is depressed. How about someone who’s going to the gym regularly and someone who is a couch potato?

Let’s go further and try to assume a person’s past by looking at his/her current state. If you see someone resilient to stress and problems, how would you describe their past or history? How about someone incompetent who lacks basic skills?

Everything in life can learned and taught through experience. You cannot expect someone to wake up and know how to ride a bike just because he’s old enough to know how to ride a bike, the same goes with swimming and other skills. It’s foolish to expect to raise a resilient person out of a life deprived of not problems but challenges. Problems are subjective, those who made it in this life don’t have problems, they have challenges just like the ones in games, a prerequisite to advance to the next level.

These people treat this life like a game and constantly look for things that challenge them for it is the only way to move on to the next level, while the rest of the population are doing everything to avoid them.

A generation bombarded by technology and unprecedented social exposure and connectivity with next to zero supervision. Everything in life is a two-edged sword, you cannot pick light without casting a shadow, The world is not an empty room. A life of ease and prosperity will not create resilience, competence and patience, three principles that are evidently missing in the new generation. But who’s to blame?

These are children of the previous generations, what made the big difference?

Before technology changed the way we live, being patient was not optional, being competent and useful was not optional, and resilience was not optional, it was a matter of life and death, from having food on the table to starving. When presented with options we will naturally pick the path of least resistance, we are 80% water remember?

The government knows this that’s why they’re taking their piece of the pie from your monthly salary first before anyone else. If they rely on the goodwill of people and their compliance, they will have a hard time collecting taxes from people.

“I will not let my child experience the hardships I experienced“ is like saying “I will make sure to raise a fragile and incompetent human out of this kid”

Unless you don’t like who you are, why would not raise your kid close to how you were raised? minus of course the unnecessary trauma and victimhood mentality. If you remove the coffee and just put creamer and sugar, is it still a coffee?

If you go to the gym with the intention of gaining some muscles and you hire a trainer, you can expect that trainer would ask you to lift weights and gradually increase it depending on the size you want to achieve. There are times that the trainer would spot you or assist you if the weight is too heavy or after a certain repetition. Now imagine if your trainer has been lifting most of the weight for you, would expect significant results? Let’s say you and another gym rat are lifting the same weight and the other person is doing the same repetition as you do but without a spotter, should you expect the same result? A person in his right mind would of course say no, the other person is lifting all the weight so he’s gonna grow faster and bigger, whilst your spotter is carrying most of the load for you. This is commonsensical in this example but ambiguous when it comes to raising another human being or a generation of human beings.

Those who understand this will inevitably flourish and those who don’t would simply perish helplessly.

Anecdotal

Anecdotal: How to have a good night sleep

I’ve been suffering with restless sleep for a while now, I know cause I noticed the low energy during the day and I’m using coffee and pre-workout as my salvation.

I’m using a grounding pad, blackout curtains (aluminum covered windows) , magnesium and the bed time function on my phone but I can conclusively confirm that none of these things can overcome what’s causing my restlessness.

Last night I was ruminating about the last time I had a goodnight sleep. It was when I was in a hotel for work and the room was big enough to have a separate living or receiving area and I decided to charge my phone and leave it there during the night.

I’m not sure if it’s the lower EMF since the phone is technically in a different room or the proximity of the phone that gave me the goodnight sleep.

Turning the bedtime mode on your phone and leaving it within arm’s reach will not have the same effect compared to having your phone in a different room.

Consciously you know you should stop checking your phone hours before bedtime but subconsciously being a creature of habit and the lack of constraints it’ll be a battle between you and your subconscious. And once you’ve fallen asleep, as your conscious mind shuts down, your subconscious takes over, wondering if she viewed your recent story or if you get additional likes on your post or if someone messaged you.

I don’t know with you but for me the reason why I keep my phone on at night is in case there’s an emergency in the family so they can reach me. But like right now as I’m writing this, I’m in a different city, 8 hours away from my closest relatives and halfway across the globe from the Philippines. So if there’s any emergency that would happen, there’s nothing really I can do immediately that can reverse the situation. With work, we don’t fly at night so it’ll have to wait the next day.

The ability to simulate scenarios/reality is a very useful skill. Last night I was telling myself, how different is turning my phone off and camping in a place where there’s no mobile reception?

Maybe that’s what allows people to recharge whenever they go camping, cause both their conscious and subconscious mind understand that there is no point checking the phone cause there is no service, akin to turning your phone off at night. Versus putting it on bedtime mode and having your phone in arm’s reach, your conscious mind knows you should not think about your phone,but your subconscious mind knows it’s a turn away and there might be a new notification and turning the screen on to check without the intention of engaging wouldn’t hurt. False!

This battle is like meditation and trying to be mindful and focus on a single thing while your mind keeps on wandering. It requires a deliberate effort and makes the environment as conducive as possible to the result you’re aiming for.

Will power run out, if you’re trying to sober up for example but you still go to bars or clubs, even if you’re just ordering non alcoholic drinks for now but eventually you’ll lose the battle and would start ordering beer or whatever your choice of poison.

Keeping your phone within arm’s reach in bedtime mode is like being in the bar, it’s a constant battle even while you’re asleep that’s why you feel restless the next day.

Try this and let me know if it works.

Contemplation

Pale Blue Dot

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Contemplation

Contemplation | On cheating

Now more than ever it is harder to stick in a monogamous relationship, yes I said it. Especially if you’re a man with a high mate value. But not all hopes are lost.

There are couples who are at par in terms of mate value in the beginning of the relationship but women’s mate value wanes a lot sooner than men and a competent man enjoys an increase in mate value as time goes by.

A weak man with a high mate value will find it next to impossible to stick in a relationship or remain faithful. A strong man understands the situation and doesn’t fall prey to this romantic hedonistic treadmill.

Weak men focus on pleasure seeking, the hottest chic on social media, they’re so insecure that for them the physical appearance of their partner is the ultimate determinant of their social status among their peers.

Strong men focus on lineage, legacy and integrity. They know what they want and the attraction towards other women is ephemeral and a challenge against their integrity and self respect.

Strong men value loyalty and provide loyalty in return. Great men don’t cheat.

If you’re a woman, be careful not to settle for a man with a lesser mate value relative to yours for it is not a guarantee of a strong moral character. Just because he’s ugly doesn’t mean he’ll be faithful. Ugly men with high mate value partners will develop a diluted ego especially if they have the monetary means to act on it.

Slowly but surely the world is feeling the full swing negative effect of the accessibility brought by technology and social media and dating apps in particular.

Life is a two edged blade, it’s inevitable. Even good times create weak men.

Our capability to see and communicate with each other beyond our physical environment never existed in nature. Unconsciously because of our new found power, we were exposed to the unlimited number of potential mates regardless if they’re with our league or not. What makes it worse is when we see someone we find inferior to us in terms of mate value getting lucky and with someone we consider to be out of our league.

Labels like boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife are man made ideas. Labels will never prevent anyone from admiring and desiring someone from the opposite sex.

Law of diminishing marginal utility

Attraction wanes overtime but it can be rekindled.

Pro tip: If you notice that the fire is out in your relationship, create an artificial scarcity. Create an agreement with your partner to work on yourselves to be physically desirable again.

If you’re in your 50s and beyond, if you have a partner and you’re attracted to other people outside your relationship, remember that you’re gonna die soon and to focus on sexual desires will be a waste of time and will prove to the world that you’re a dumb fuck.

It’ll be more honorable to leave a relationship after doing everything you can to salvage it before starting a new one with someone else than to cheat your way to satisfy your physical needs.

There’s nothing wrong with having more than one partner, polyamorous relationships exist.

Problems arise when a weak person pretends to be monogamous to get the other person he/she is attracted to,just to cheat around when the law of diminishing marginal utility takes effect. Worst is when people don’t know what they want and use other people for their trial and error.

Contemplation

Goal stagging principle

I noticed this when I was working as a city bus driver, most shifts last between 7-8 hours, sometimes split between morning and afternoon rush hours.

Time is of course constant but the perception of it is distorted by the timing points in certain stops to keep the schedule on time.

On average timing points are separated by 5-10 minute intervals. As drivers can see the next 5 timing points on the screen and gauging the traffic on when they should leave to maximize idle time to be honest, this automatically removes the length of their shift in their mind.

Had there been no timing points to focus on, all the driver can think of is the 7 hours and that would make his shift feel longer and longer as he looks at the time.

Same with goal setting.

I started working on my pilot license in late 2017, had I known that it would take 3 years for me to get my commercial license and another 3 years to work as a pilot, it could have discouraged me to continue. But since the training is split in many stages that makes the timeline less daunting. From learning the parts of a plane, first solo, first cross country, upper air work etc.

Now the goal is to get 750 hours to be considered by some big players in the industry until I reach 1,500 hours that would basically make me an ideal candidate for almost all commercial airlines, anywhere.

Yesterday due to weather we had to divert and land prematurely but still logged 1.9 to my log book. One flight at a time and soon enough I’ll get to the next milestone in my career.

You can use this principle deliberately by spreading a long timeline in mini milestones or a big task in small steps or stages that would make it more doable and less overwhelming.

It is indeed the journey and not the destination.

Enjoy the process.