Philosofa: January 2017

You Owe It to Yourself

Everything there is directly reflects your actions, thoughts and talk thrown out in the world like a radio beam emitting radio waves of a mediocre TV-show. If you believe this rationale, often called KARMA, why be upset of consequences when you are the creator, demiurge and master architect of your own life?

You owe it to yourself to do the following:

- be mindful of what you think for this will shape your reality

- be mindful of what you do for this will shape your reality

- be mindful of what you speak for this will shape your reality

Your life is just yours. You are a mirror, a leak in this black and white universe. Except that the Universe is not all black and white. But this be sure, it exists, you exist and everything else is filling. Sartre used to call this Nausea. I have a chronic feel of nausea of this world and we human beings that inhabit it. I am full of it. My county is full of shit. Shit here propagates with the speed of at least 20.000 shits per day!! We have so many strait dogs and so few responsible dog owners that it makes me sick. I wake up in the morning to walk my dog and all I can think about is that soon we will be covered in shit. And we deserve it. Not so long ago I was the sole responsible of at least 4.398 dog shits per year. In my lifetime I could expect to fill the earth with 50.000+ shits. I do not want this!!

Now, my exact calculations show me that for every shit my dog makes I pick up another one, not hard to find, as such the speed of shit propagation is mitigated by -1 shit, two times a day. From what I derive, it will take close to 200.000 years to clean up all the shit there is. I am forever doomed!

I hope you are not all grossed and that you can do a hard exercise of imagination for the sake of driving home a point. If my actions reflect in the world less shit, I WILL get less shit in the future. Because it is happening right here in the present, in the all mighty now.

Leave a comment about how responsible dog-owners are in your country. Do they pick shit up? Do you have strait dogs? Do they shit often that you see shit all over? Who knows, one day I might decide to move and pick up that shit, too.

This article is part of the series:
Third World to First: How to Hack the System and Stand Up for Your Self

No One Is Listening, No OneIs Coming

You Owe It to Yourself

Letting Yourself Be Stuck

Unstuck Yourself

Psychology of Winning

Things to Learn

Books to Read

Online Tools You Can Use To Hack Growth

Little Known Text That Can Make America Great Again

If you want to govern the people,

you must place yourself below them.

If you want to lead the people,

you must learn how to follow them.

("Tao Te Ching", Ancient Chinese Text, cca. 400 B.C.)

Dear Mr. Trump,

I think it is time you invested your time more wisely. I think it is time you give the Tao Te Ching a quick read. It will not take too long as the text is short. But do not let yourself be fooled by it. It could prove to be just about the best thing you can do, to "make America great again".

You see, there are snippets of wisdom all around us if we only care to listen. When the student is ready, the master appears. Are you ready to "make America great again"?

I watched you debate Mr. Trump and I watched you win. But you did not win me.

You did not win the planet or the Earth. With you, Mr. Trump, everything is a bet. We all sit at the spinning roulette wheel watching as you ultimately decide which number is the lucky one.

Did you also bet that climate change is fake? You see, as America's first citizen you lead by example. And not only America follows, but the world. You are setting the stage for greed and money-led power, zealous and unforgiving industrial decadence in the name of "investing", "jobs" and "infrastructure".

What if we do not want "jobs". What if we want a clean world, clean water, clean air and help sooth our insecurities. Policies that actually work for the citizen and not against him. It is still time to steer the ship, Mr. President.

I really hope you will read the Tao Te Ching. It made me a better human. And change can only come when we are better. If we are better together, the more to gain. A person who knows his best interest may be a good ruler but a person who knows his citizens' interests will become a leader.

To make America great again you will need to become a leader. For every one of us.

Next time I see a photo of your solid gold coffee table I want to see the "Tao Te Ching" next to Muhhamad Ali's book. I will know long before. We will know. The world will know.

Waiting for the Leader.

Kind regards,
Philosofa

No One Is Listening, No One Is Coming

Did you ever have the feeling that the world owes you something? Maybe it is more than a feeling and is starting to be the life model that you operate from. Whatever the case is, this habit of letting yourself vulnerable to “what may be” or “what may come” is the first thing you need to change in order to have the life that you dream.

This is the second part of the mini-series called Third World to First, How to Hack the System and Stand Up for Your Self. If you did not read the first article I suggest you do so here.

I have already told you how the trip to Africa sort of changed my life. Having the chance to see a culture much different than the one I was born, watching people struggle with their difficulties and enjoy their blessings, allowed me to do a conscience jump that propelled me miles further on my journey.

You see, falling for this mythical imagery and seeing a new world in front of me made it easy to slip into a new dimension of magic, superstition and chance. This slip occurred almost unnoticed or at times I would direct my conscious voice inside my head to a different pitch. What I want to say is that allowing me to be sucked in this realm of possibility transformed my life and my relative grounding in it. I felt I could fly if I wanted to. But sometimes it is better to just walk; because if you fly you might melt your wings (see Iccar). Obviously, looking back nothing changed. The people that I imagined would come to the rescue never did. Life was not testing me. Life never knew me because I was never there to be known.

Right now you have two choices. Choice number one, to live like you lived and do the same things that you did. There is low probability that this will yield you with a different outcome. Choice number two is to do something dramatically different.

Take a note of this following, very powerful rule:

To have something that you never had you must do something that you never did.

For a moment, stop thinking about what you need to do next! You see? Ravel in the silence and let your inner voice be heard. For so long it has been suppressed. You might first feel a small calming presence or clarity that you missed for so long. Open your eyes and behold, it is the powerful and mysterious YOU. You know best what is good for you and your family. You have a map built but you will not find it lingering on the outer skirts. The map can only be seen from inside. The journey you need to take starts with a first small step. Turning back from what you usually do, and do different. I was in awe when Tim Ferris suggested in one of his podcasts:

What if for the next 48 hours you would do everything completely different?

What would your life look like? What are the implications? What would change?

But you must beware. The other side also has an other side.

This is it for now, and remember. As a first exercise, lets change the posts title from No One Is Listening, No One Is Coming to Listen to yourself and everything will come!

What next:

Follow me along my journey and keep a tab open for the future articles in this mini-series:

Previous: Third World to First: How to Hack the System and Stand Up for Your Self

Current: No One Is Listening, No One Is Coming

You Owe It to Yourself

Letting Yourself Be Stuck

Unstuck Yourself

Psychology of Winning

Things to Learn

Books to Read

Online Tools You Can Use To Hack Growth

Please remember to subscribe if you liked what you read.

Dori

Third World to First: How to Hack the System and Stand Up for Your Self

I will not lie to you. The world is not a cozy place. In fact, anything of some value is exploited, fought after, conquered and subdued. The world in itself is also not here to nurture you and protect you. From earthquakes to volcano eruptions, from tsunamis to tropical storms and hurricanes, the world unfolds itself as a heterogonous organism, with a will of its own: survival at all cost. We are a fluke in this bigger scheme; we are not here to stay. As life unfolds and our lives with it, all we try is to forget about our inevitable doom.

This does not mean that all is lost. Not by far. But we need to stay as much on the edge as possible. For only on the edge you have the chance to see things in a new perspective. Being aware of your immediate surrounding whether town, country, continent etc has enormous benefits. You will fight. You will lose. You will fail and you will try it again and again until you have it right. There is no recipe for success; there is no cocktail to make you feel complete. There is only you and your duty to yourself to stand up for yourself, to educate and bring education to other by example and conduit. Do upon the world what you wish the world do upon you. Taking this leap you will start to transform your environment: whether as an activist in a local support group, as a partisan of some social decree you will move from passive to active. This is only the first step.

How can you reach this first step? How can you make yourself to care?

I will tell you this thing, although it might hurt: nobody else cares for yourself. It is your duty to do that. Everybody is too busy caring for themselves. Why do we make saints out of people who put themselves last? Because they are so uncommon. Indeed, altruism is a rare commodity in this fast paced world where everyone is running like a headless chicken for the next meal.

I will put below the definitions for both the world and for a country:

WORLD = the earth, together with all of its countries and peoples.

COUNTRY = a nation with its own government, occupying a particular territory.

I was surprised when documenting for this article how many people are regularly, month over month searching for these definitions. What is wrong with us? Of course we the people are the world. You are the world. And you deserve better.

Now shifting to country, the same definition but this time we find ourselves occupying a territory. Since 200.000 years ago we still haven’t figured this one out. What started as an evolutionary process of survival is now bottlenecking us to extinction. Our own immovable lives, desires and thirst is still in this primordial soup of greed, lust and power. Who has the most sticks gets to make the rules. And as you might sense too, this model is crumbling. What we need to do now, is see how we can prepare for it. The old rules will not work with new people and the old people will not see the new Earth.

The Manifesto

Let me tell you what you can expect from reading this long piece of post. I will try to share with you my routine and habits of hacking the system. As a citizen of the third world I am not willing to see my life a radical shadow of what others take for granted. I too am human. Let’s see how we can use that to our advantage.

I used to travel the world and a see how I fit in this puzzle. One particular trip that caught my soul so to say was an epic adventure to Africa. I was there in Senegal. As I landed in Dakar and waiting for a taxi at the airport, there were people already getting a feel of the superior world I was coming from. A cool t-shirt maybe, some interesting shoes. A nice bag. I was like an exotic pet in a zoo and people were looking. There is a term that describes the white man in Senegal. This is called TU BAB. I felt first hand how being a TU BAB was. Everything came with a premium. I was being robbed of my TU BABERY. People would no longer perceive me as human (okay, I’m exaggerating here to emphasize my point) but a large walking stick with paper money in plenty supply. At first, I did not realize just how the cultural shift was and that occidental people from Europe might be regarded as wealthier. I thought otherwise when seeing the laid back and relaxed attitude of this wonderful nation, the houses where you could feel a refreshing breeze during the night or you could smell the ocean just footstep away. And then when venturing deeper into rural territory, leaving the large city behind I was again becoming a TU BAB, slowly but surely. As I was taking photographs from a rented car, I arrived in a village and what I lived had a strong impression on me.

These children would come running around our car and would clap my hand calling me “TU BAB, TU BAB”. I was the white man; I was again “TU BAB”. Faith was once again, restored.

And then again, one day on the highway, at the tax station for “peage” I saw this happen:

The Last Son of Kilgore Trout

People do not know that Kilgore Trout had a second son too, called the Last Son of Kilgore Trout. It was something that not even Leo, the known and not forgotten son of Kilgore Trout knew. Apart from having a lost brother which he knew nothing about, he inherited all that was left to inherit from Kilgore. Instead, the Lost Son of Kilgore Trout inherited something more: a narrative to build plots. In the incipient phases it was more like a desire to plot things. One day, the Last Son of Kilgore Trout wrote about a ship whose ropes were this thick:

==========

==========

As he would say, it was a rather short story. But short were most of his actions, too. He liked to short the stock market for example. One day after blowing all his money away he pulled his credit card from his trousers' pocket and tried to fund a trading account which was impossible by this time as he was short on money. He would also watch short movies called series which people were very fond of in these times.

A forgotten law that applies to nearly everything quantifiable

Every once in a while you see something trending from the more deep layers of our collective wisdom. Such is the case with this law that lets you look at the environment around you in a new way. It is called Pareto’s Law or Principle. The more general application goes as follows:

80% of consequences come from 20% of causes

Why is this interesting you may ask?

Consider your house rug. It will probably have 80% of the wear over just 20% of the surface.

Or,

80% of hair loss is focused in just 20% of scalp

You hopefully already start to see how this is a fun principle to explore.

And my favorite:

80% of trading profits come from 20% of the trades

When my brother-in-law asked me to just place my profitable trades I scuffed my beard with ignorance. What if he was right?

Now, as an exercise, try to think of different applications that you might not previously be aware, all in your immediate environment. Maybe it is a work situation, family, time spent with a hobby or maybe something more original. Give it a try and leave a comment below so we can all gain more insight into Pareto’s Law.

How God is effectively the first MVP designer

Illustration of tarot card The World, in the Tarot de Marseilles edition

Often, entrepreneurs find themselves stuck even before the creation board stares them back into the face. Of course, you will have an idea. Oftentimes, if that idea can sell 5$ it can also be a one million dollars idea.

While I was browsing yet again for jobs on Upwork I stumbled across an offer for creating good copy that generates more sales and follow-through for an online MVP agency. I was not familiar with MVP (Minimum Viable Product) so spending a good 10 minutes on the subject was worthwhile. You can do it too, here.

Back to the client, they have an online subscription based service which helps entrepreneurs validate their ideas before committing too much on the capital side, while also tackling the essentials of branding and product development like design, planning, strategic development and effective production. By this time I was hyped and really thought: ok, I advertise myself as a copywriter on Upwork so why not also do landing pages and such for a service that I really think could help a few lost souls. A few touches of magic and it could take off, I guess. This is how the idea of the title came to my mind. Trying to get creative juices flowing and visualizing myself doing the task (like every pro should learn how to do) I started to dissect the problem and even turn it upside down. How would our world, which unfortunately has become more like a product (that's why I thought of the association) look like if it was a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). And voi-la! Stunning that it actually looks like an MVP! Before jumping to conclusions let me briefly take you through entrepreneurial God himself and try to layout his thought process (funny thing to imagine as I feel God is a Samadhhi state of consciousness).

So,

1:1–2. 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth

He thus laid out the bare minimum considering that a feasibility study would waste up time.

What happened afterwards?

He started to add features one-by-one, a golden rule of MVP.

The rest you most likely know. His design looked something like:

starting with light on the first day and ending with mankind on the sixth

Now, everything was ready for the marketplace.

Isn't there something missing?

Of course it is. Where's the copywriter? Allow me to indulge in this imagery and think of the serpent as the first good copywriter as it lays the whisper of desire into humankind's ear. So it goes.

Uber-tus, a non humorous upwork task that should have been humorous

You think to yourself "today I will roll out of bed and become a freelancer". The account is easy to make enough, the profile easy to complete. You search for jobs. With a grasp of how easy things will be you take on the path of least resistance and apply for a job. Of course, scrolling down you saw the pages with tens of e-books with minimal effort required, just 5000-10.000 words. That is easy mode, you think. After all your title description reads copywriter. Just to make things easier you find this job posting for some random freak desiring a veeeeeeeeeery short story, 150-300 words max. that should include a humorous edge. Below is said copy that I wrote:

Everybody in the room was looking at him with pure delight, joy and contentment. Finally, they were letting short sighs of relief after what was an extensive project. Sure enough, you need to have a reason to spend that University Grant for Research. Two flip-flops later and a glaringly red eye look, Ubertus was there to stay. All the while, the school of fish were gazing at him swim… so… fast. Approaching with caution they uttered with their tiny fish mouths: “Your skin looks so slick, it has an almost aluminum feel to it, your bronchia so shiny”.

Backing a little as if he was to better impose on the water, calming his metallic throat, Ubertus says: “Mhm-hhm, I come from the Singularity. My blood is not flowing like yours and I do not feed with seaweed. This makes me smarter. And the most important thing, I do not forget. But you would not understand”.

White coats in the lab murmuring as if fearing that Ubertus might hear. They should have uploaded a better humor script to him. Sure, they will need to rewrite just a few snippets of code. “Hey, guys” says one of them: “I see abnormal cognitive behavior in Ubertus. Did I miss something? His fisheye was upgraded when, exactly?” Back to Ubertus, you could tell he was really enjoying himself. From lab-mice to suzerain-fish, all in less than 4 hour workweeks! He could live underwater with the other fish and at all time he was to produce passive income, in the form of successive research grants. If only he could fool them to think he was the fish-eyed leader. Soon thereafter a twitter post goes viral: “USB fish in university experiment adopted by other fish as leader”.

For these measly 282 words I nearly stayed awake till 3 p.m. Writing felt serene but at the same time embarrassing and excruciating. When you read a Kurt Vonnegut novel you see that simply by writing in common language what is called "spoken English" more than 95% of the time he is so elegant and vivid. Schlachthof-fünf thus felt for me what the fourth dimension must have felt for Tralfamadorians.