Day 170,
Oh my God, I get it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEW2wn2HcIo
I had a set of paradigm-shifting epiphanies over the last couple of days. I'll kick this off by saying that these breakthroughs will contextualize a lot of the big pivots I made over the last few months.
- Playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on a whim and racing through it
- Losing interest in some of my main hobbies and pastimes
- Undergoing a lengthy period of "letting go" and feeling through the more negative emotions
- Having a sudden interest in carpentry, plumbing, HVAC, and infrastructure overall.
- Greatly losing my desire to acquire money or new dates
These things served their purpose in getting me "here", which I'll describe in just a second. Even if they reverse and I go back to my usual self, it will not undo what I've accomplished; much like a skateboarder riding a half-pipe, the status of the skateboarder only increases with each pass back and forth, even if they've made zero net movement.
First, let's start with Red Dead Redemption 2, the video game. I'll add a series of spoilers in white text here to provide context
(Spoiler start):
- The main character - a cowboy of the late 19th century, belonging to a gang of outlaws - contracts tuberculosis and gradually fades, fulfilling his purpose to free up a married couple from the gang, dying after accomplishing this. They do so while evading the law, and eschewing the encroachment of civilization. He dies on the side of a mountain to a sunrise.
- The climax of the game ends with a sunrise. Arthur dies, the camera pans out and keeps zooming out, then... years go by. The world has simply... moved on. You've built up all this time with all of the members from the gang, with many deaths in the process, but the outer world continues as it does.
- The main characters hate civilization, but Arthur dies of tuberculosis, and ailment which he could have gotten a cure for 30 years later via penicillin. Because of modernity, his ghastly fate could have been replaced with a course of antibiotics.
- The last 20% of the game, you play as John Marston, the protagonist of Red Dead Redemption (the first game) - RDR2 is its prequel.
(Spoiler End)
You reach a point where you can go through the cities, and people run through their daily routines. And this happens day after day after day (the years don't progress in-game, but let's ignore that). The most industrialized city in the game has a power plant which powers all of the other towns with electricity. You can literally follow the power lines from Saint Denis to every other powered city.
Sure, you get the occasional dialog option where NPCs will share memories about the main character, but we get to witness a legend be spoken about, with reducing frequency, down to a whimper of irrelevancy. That will be your fate. And mine.
This brings me to point #2.
Dropping some of my goals and interests, and questioning everything.
I believe that the dynamics that I've just written above, from Red Dead Redemption 2, created a dent in my belief system of secretly believing that I was the "main character" of life. Not just of my life, but of everyone in my life. I believed, quite irrationally, that I possessed some secret inner "special juice" with which my uniqueness would shine through, and where I would become a bastion and pillar of strength, a shining example for those around me.
I am not the main character. I am beholden to the same principles of time, age, decay, and reputation as all others around me experience.
All of my inner dramatization and narrativizing is not special. In fact, everyone has those inner experiences.
Even the heaviest hitters are not the main character.
As much as they are spoken about, you know very little about Edison, or Rockefeller, or Ghengis Khan compared to their rich inner experience.
There is no main character.
Reaching this realization required me to slow down and to examine why I was committed to so much activity. It (potentially) relates to an irrational desire to fully realize my "main character"-ness.
Same principle goes to every one of your family members. You might love them with all of your heart, but the proportion of the world that feels their loss is miniscule, and the world continues to roll on. More on this in a moment.
Point #3,
about "letting go", simply reinforced the point about making the goings-on of the world no longer being "about me". So what if I feel anger, afraid, ashamed, vengeful, jealous, or prideful about some development or news story? Before I know it, I've singled in on my thoughts concerning these feelings and it's no longer about the real world.
Kind of like the red pillers; the underlying emotions behind their arguments indicate that they have strong feelings about having unmet social, societal, romantic, or sexual needs. Subsequently, they would require for society to change to meet those needs, which is a massive undertaking to fix an inner experience.
I'm happy to report that most of this inner turbulence is gone.
Point #4 -
a sudden interest in carpentry, plumbing, HVAC, and infrastructure. Once I learned how simple and elegant building a house is - and the minimalistic approach to setting up your plumbing, wires, etc. - I reversed engineered how all of the materials were invented, created, manufactured, shipped, and installed.
I drove through a bunch of small towns, and I gave a critical eye to all of the structures, businesses, and land plots. Much like how Saint Denis provided its electricity across the region, so did the power lines in the small towns I was driven across.
It hit me that most people are spending their day by participating in the moving around of raw materials; mining, shipping, transport, selling, delivering. Otherwise, they are transforming it to something more valuable. Or, they're using a smoke and lights show to present these materials in a more favorable light to its competitors, such as sales and marketing, or graphic art. Or they're cultivating it, either from the ground as crops, or fed to livestock, all of which will be moved around.
So, for the large part, positive activity involves either creating or moving desired materials to people who want them. If you do that for others, they should be willing to pay.
Essentially, all of this activity is supposed to be in the service of other people. But like, why go through all this trouble beyond helping those who need more than a little help?
Point #5 -
greatly losing my desire to acquire money or new dates
From here, I'm wondering what the point of all this is. So you get the hardwood floors you want. Now what? Is the whole point happiness? Is the point to have more indoor bathrooms than other countries so that we can say that we're more "developed".
Richer countries have more time to spend in leisure activities, such as art and music, or crafts. Then again, I ask what the point is in those activities beyond emotional masturbatory.
I'm at a stable enough place in my career where I am alleviated from the urgent treadmill of paying bills and dedicating all of my spare time to accomplishing that; this has given me time to think.
Because I currently don't have that inner itch to meet new women, I am not tying monetary accomplishment to greater prestige or desirability to women, so I'm seriously questioning it.
I don't feel the need to "play the [resources] game" to pay for a mortgage, marriage, and mini-mes that a woman would talk the typical man into. The mini-van. The visits to the in-laws. The yearly vacations. Once you are making those installment payments, it doesn't matter what conclusions you draw about the reality of the world; payment's due on the first of the month.
Is it truly the case that all of this amounts to a big fat nothing?
Are intense relationships, drama, endless intellectualization, addiction, and self-sabotage a way to pre-occupy your time and resources enough to not be left alone enough for the waters to settle, and for you to see reality with crystal clarity?
It feels like I've swam through a dark and murky ocean for years, and suddenly all of the water has transformed into clear, perfectly transparent water, allowing me to see miles beneath the surface, including the ocean bed. This has removed the fear and trepidation about the big picture, but it does pose a question about what to do now.
It feels like I've been given a massive "WHAT", but no "HOW-TO" guide on navigating my new revelations.
