Live, Laugh, Thug

Three maxims for life

Everyone is less happy than you think

All the happy people, at least. While some may be lying, the main person lying here is you. Lacking affirmative knowledge your subject isn’t worse off than you, you default to thinking they’re better off than you.

Even stranger, many of the people you assume have it better than you, may both be happier and deal with more bullshit than you. You think I’m describing Superman but these people, they’re just more polite than you. Having realized they themselves glaze over with boredom and antipathy whenever someone else begins speaking about themselves and their problems, they realize no one else gives a shit when they themselves want to blow it out. Most people have their own problems and, despite what you’d like to think, the small minority that appears otherwise just works really hard to get rid of them and insulate themselves from future ones. I have yet to meet someone who just got lucky across the board for a stretch of 60+ years without any forethought whatsoever going into at least doing the difficult thing of preparing for difficult things. In fact, I’m not sure this lucky subspecies actually exists. Everyone who both avoids hardship and has someone else handle its avoidance, ends up with problems like depression and anxiety, the cure for which generally involves doing something hard, which is why it is better to have male guardian angels than female ones. Female angels make sure you don’t hurt yourself while their male counterparts will hit the penjamin and fuck off, allowing you to develop your lore in exotic and physically scarring ways.

YFW I show you my life.

To be clear, everyone has to talk about some of their problems some of the time but you should have a blanket gag order policy regarding talking about your problems so much people begin to think you are a problem. Yes, unpopular to say in the time of TYBV (thank you for being vulnerable) but silencing negative press about yourself is just good manners, especially when someone asks. Turns out your sandwich technician doesn’t actually want a rundown on your eviction status or your ferret’s leukemia diagnosis. Furthermore, since everyone more successful than you has probably dealt with their own fair share of problems (most likely still are), they already take it for granted that you have them, so you’re not telling them anything they don’t already know. What you are doing is lowering your status precipitously. If you’re always talking about how your boss is an asshole and your main squeeze is annoying, people will just come to the logical conclusion that you’re the type of person who can’t get what they want in life. They will assume the problem is you.

As someone who indexes relatively high on the dark triad, I have a tendency of asking if one wanted to make everything worse than it currently is, which variables would one tweak and in which directions? It sounds a little sick but it’s useful. When my mother was dying and my family was arguing like crazy, I thought how had the same course of events happened 100 years prior, all six of us would be crammed into a tenement on the Lower East Side with another six people, all stepping over each other, without TV, air conditioning or an oxygen machine, for that matter. Things can always get worse (more annoying family members, fewer resources, less space) and having an appreciation of that is key, not only for getting tougher but also for peace of mind. It is actually relieving to know that you are better off than you could be. 

While everyone is less happy than you think, you may indeed be happier than you realize, especially when you start to think about how much harder you could have it, how so many have done the same thing you’re doing with fewer resources, less intelligence, and worse conditions, coming out the other side, and doing fine. You think you’re special but you just lack theory of mind.

Everyone wants to kill themselves

All the time. The main way adults escape immolating themselves on the steps of the Rayburn Building is a steady stream of annoyances, inconveniences, marital disputes, medical issues, inscrutable tax policies, PTA meetings, child support, and alimony, in addition to navigating a three-tiered legal system, ever-shifting sexual mores, and a metaphysical secular religion largely shaped during a decade of civil conflict in which the U.S. got a little goofy but we decided to spread it across the world anyway.

What we do is stack our day up full of meetings, errands, traffic, doomscrolling, small talk, procrastination, slip and fall accidents, caffeine, nicotine, accidental nudity, mistimed erections, sweet treats, dental visits, IBS, and work.

If you stack up enough of these appointments, deadlines, financial liabilities, and headaches, life can look pretty unbearable from a certain angle. On the other hand, if you begin to nut up and grapple with some of them, you’ll actually find that by the end of the day, you’re too tired to kill yourself anyway. So you go to sleep. You do it the next day. And if you get old enough, you die, then you win.

In the end, the problems you dealt with at the beginning won’t seem like anything to trip over, so when you encounter them again, you’ll realize you actually are winning.

The problem with wearing makeup during combat is getting it off before you go to sleep.

Everyone who dislikes conflict feels that everyone who uses it is cheating

Conflict has a few purposes but it doesn’t always serve all, if any, of them. When the winds of fortune fill your sails, conflict can help you get what you want. This is the best case scenario unless the destination you seek is a bad one, in which case, I can’t help you. In some instances conflict can help sort out which idea most represents reality either through debate or experimentation. Although, the internet provides me ample evidence to the contrary, in a theoretical market of ideas, one bereft of corruption, poor processing skills, and other adulterating forces (my personal fave being ad homs), conflict can show what works and what does not. Conflict can also establish dominance. Such is the case in war whether it be economic, kinetic, legal or the kinds of insult-orgies I love so dearly. 

If you are sufficiently dominant, you don’t need truth on your side to defeat your enemies but having the truth on your side will certainly help improve how you receive and react to information relevant to your survival and prosperity. History shows that taking your enemy’s land is not ideal if you don’t know how to farm on Day 2.

It sounds funny making a case for conflict. I’m not sure we’ve maintained any cultural memory tying it to anything good but I bring it up to show that it has one other purpose: It serves to show who cares and how much. While some people have short fuses that show a mismatch between how frequently they care enough about something to make people uncomfortable, others have long fuses that burn slow and light early. When you see them erupt, it’s just an indication they care enough to dig their heels in and fight. When someone of great equanimity clicks off the safety, consider that they may not be cheating. They’re just showing they care.

The Ancient Problemz official motto

1. Live, knowing all your greatest inspirations are constantly getting mogged by life.

2. Laugh, knowing everyone wants to kill themselves all the time.

3. Thug, knowing where you will and will not be picked up by surveillance.

If you liked this piece, consider reading my very first and most popular (text post) to date.