TH3 J3ST3R

Mindset Madness

I've read many books on mindset and mindset related topics such as business and philosophy. At this point I've come to a few mindset principles of my own. Although you have probably heard some of them before, you will not have heard them all.

WHAT IS MINDSET?

“In decision theory and general systems theory, a mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notions held by one or more people or groups of people. A mindset can also be seen as arising out of a person’s world view or philosophy of life.” – Wikipedia

Not every mindset has the same tint or color, but they all serve the same function; determining your path through life. Any belief (political, philosophical, religious, or otherwise) will automatically create a feedback loop into your mindset. The mindset itself tends to be the origin of many beliefs, too. Mindset is belief; belief is mindset.

GROWTH MINDSET AND FIXED MINDSET

Before we continue, I would like to note that the two mindsets which we are about to discuss are not the only ones. Mindsets are only constellations among specific beliefs, and in this sense everyone’s head is a different universe. What I mean by this is that a constellation is not the stars, and that it doesn’t encapsulate all the stars, only some of them. Each person also has their own unique set of beliefs in their head, even if we share many in common. Keep this in mind.

A growth mindset is, in essence, the mindset of a winner. The person with a growth mindset believes that challenges make them stronger. They believe that any challenge can be overcome. They believe that new things, people, places, and ideas are exciting and fun.

A fixed mindset is, in essence, the mindset of a loser. The person with a fixed mindset believes that challenges wear them down. They believe that challenges can not be overcome. They believe new things, people, places, and ideas are best to avoid.

Naturally, I do not subscribe wholeheartedly to either one. Nobody does. However, I am partial to a growth mindset because I know that it’s what’s best for me–and it’s the most true.

In my estimation a stereotypically fixed mindset is complete lunacy and a weight put on the individual through childhood trauma. It is almost always wrong about everything.

That said, some people with a growth mindset seem to avoid certain dimensions of reality like IQ or body types. Not everyone can be the president; like them or not, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have IQs above 130; some people are born midgets, and will never play basketball for the NBA–unless it’s some sort of “make a wish” thing, or an imposition of social justice upon everyone’s sanity and enjoyment.

Stay positive, but don’t try to break reality, is my point.

TH3 J3ST3R’S MINDSET NUGGETS

Here are some of my stars you could add to your universe.

No pain, no gain.
There are absolutely no drugs, supplements, technologies, or anything else that will ever give you any gains in the long run. No gains in wealth, health, attractiveness, or anything. If you do not work for it, you don’t get it. Apply this to absolutely everything and see how it works.

You take testosterone supplements? Your body will stop producing as much testosterone.
You drink coffee to stay awake and be productive? You get worse sleep and lose productivity in the long run.
You lied to her in order to sleep with her? Here come the rape allegations.

With great responsibility comes great power.
Spiderman only gave you half of the truth; the maintenance of power. The other half is that great power comes when you take great responsibility. Once you start holding yourself accountable for EVERYTHING that happens in your life, then you will gain great power as a consequence. The mark of a person with oodles of power is that they start holding themselves responsible for other people’s mistakes–Isn’t that what a boss is supposed to do?

Your girlfriend is terrible or left you? You chose her. Your mistake. You made it happen.
You lost your job? You sucked too much. You didn’t get friendly with the people at work or provide anything your boss needed. You failed.
You’re depressed? You eat too much junk food and spend your leisure time smoking weed and binging cartoons and video games. You don’t exercise. You don’t try. You are the problem.

A caveat: There's no reason to beat yourself up about anything. Feeling bad about yourself is not taking responsibility. Just take responsibility.

There are no mistakes, only opportunities to learn.
Obviously mistakes exist, but the way we frame them is important. Do not dwell on them as mistakes, but as opportunities to learn. Yesterday I learned that while using photoshop to make my blog art, I need to rasterize my layers (I have no clue what that means,) before outlining everything. If I don’t rasterize first, then I just waste my time outlining an object. Why do I remember this lesson? Because it was 5 minutes of my life that I wasted by not rasterizing. At this point I have become so efficient at transmuting feelings of frustration into fuel for learning that I hardly care about the mistakes. All the energy you spend caring about the mistake is supposed to go into learning the lesson.

If they won’t take a bullet for you, they aren’t your friend.
Having more than ~12 friends is shallow. Facebook is for the vain. Instagram is a waste of time. Nobody really cares about you. It’s all very true, you know. If you can not be entirely honest with your friends, they are only acquaintances. If you feel like you have to walk on eggshells around them in order to not push certain buttons, then they are your enemy in disguise. If there is no truth, there is no friend. Honor is what binds people together, and there’s no honor without truth.

Benevolent Dictatorship and Anarchy Are The Same.

Perhaps this will be a big leap for most of you, but I have been informed that my readers are intelligent people which enjoy looking at things from different and open-minded perspectives. After all, we are all here to learn new things. But enough buttering you up to swallow the uncomfortable truth, here we go.

WHY ANARCHY?

It is not always true that we stand upon the shoulders of giants. Sometimes we stand upon giant foreheads; I will be relying upon the work of a very popular internet-philosopher, Stefan Molyneux, in order to leverage my initial point. For those who are unfamiliar with Molyneux’s work and want a deeper look into the logic behind why governments are morally wrong, you may want to read Stefan’s book Universally Preferable Behavior.

I will give you a summary of Molyneux’s book here and now:
There is no logical way to justify the initiation of force (coercive force) against another person.

Governments obviously rely upon the initiation of force in order to exist. One example of this is taxation. You must pay taxes or eventually end up in jail, even if you have never done anything morally wrong.

When we follow this logic to it’s conclusion we arrive at anarchy. It’s simply not logical for one human being to initiate force against another; and so we must all throw our rings of power into mount doom and stop trying to force our wills upon others.

Of course, I understand that many people are unwilling to swallow this pill. That’s fine. I’m not here to convince them, nor does it ever behoof me to throw pearls to swine.

FREEDOM IS A LIE

Anarchy requires a submission of the self to reason.

Whether you want anarchy or dictatorship, both require submission. A dictatorship such as Stalin’s or Lenin’s requires that the populace submit to the dictator’s will, just as anarchy requires the vast majority of the populace to submit their individual wills to reason. Democracy, too, requires that a good half of the people submit to the will of the mob–which always ends up being the will of a few oligarchs and a shadow government, but that’s a story for another time.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Stefan’s UPB (thou shalt not initiate force) is the most reasonable law. Everyone must submit to this law in order for there to be anarchy. Anarchy can only exist under this law.

Where there are laws, the laws must be enforced. I am not saying that the non-initiation of force becomes self-defeating–it doesn’t. You could perfectly reasonably enforce this law at gunpoint without there being any logical contradiction. I merely want to point out that anarchy requires submission, and is not in any way a form of freedom. Anarchy is only freedom from a government by human will. In fact, freedom is a lie. It is always a lie, whether promised by anarchists or by statists. You must always submit to something.

THE HEART OF MAN

The heart of man is bent on evil.

What is reason? It seems self-evident to many, yet on any given day people are very divided about what is the most reasonable thing to do.

Is reason an object or a being which we can submit to? Is it a standard by which we can measure things with? Some would say so. Others would also say so, yet disagree with the metric to use, or which object should be submitted to. Some even deny that logic and reason are real things. Some say that the only thing which exists is matter.

By merely looking out at the division among people one thing is very clear: most of them have absolutely no idea what they are talking about, yet they all firmly believe that they do. This is the main issue. It is the heart of man, unwilling to understand that they do not know. They confuse their own will for that of a cosmic dictator. Man has always made himself the graven image, trying to put himself up as a god.

BENEVOLENT DICTATORSHIP

“Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.”

The only way to achieve reason is for people to submit to God. Why is this? It is because when a person admits they are wrong, and that they need to change their ways, they let go of their ego; they let go of their self. Once the self, full of pride and vanity, has been let go of, people can naturally start to see things more reasonably.

It is the very act of selflessness which is a necessary precondition to the act of proper reason. Reason is to put aside you and focus on what is. All else becomes rationalizing, which is what I previously mentioned when I described how everyone has divided and different beliefs on things.

Most people believe they are reasoning when they are simply rationalizing.

AN ASIDE

I am aware that Stefan Molyneux has his own solution to the problem of unreasonable people, which is peaceful parenting. Peaceful parenting raises kids to be more peaceful (and reasonable,) which I don’t doubt. My point is that a belief in God is a necessary precondition for the masses to adopt anything remotely similar to peaceful parenting.

Coffee (caffeine) is a drug and it is bad for you.

I’ve been on and off coffee for about half a year at this point. Most recently I went through very bad withdrawals after quitting (again) about 2 weeks ago.

The reason I quit this last time, and have become completely convinced that coffee is an overall net-negative for almost anyone, is because I did some research outside of the box. The research has also been backed up with testimonials and my own experience, which I will get to in this post.

As I share this information with you, I will probably rub up against commonly held beliefs about coffee–many of which are misconceptions–, so before proceeding to pass off my information because it doesn’t fit society’s current paradigm, let’s remember that addicts will do and say anything to get their drug, especially when they are not even aware that it is a drug.

This leads me to my first line of argument; trying to make people aware of their own experiences.

What initially sparked my want to be free of coffee was reading Nikola Tesla’s biography, My Inventions. Tesla mentions both caffeine and nicotine as being bad for your thoughts, at least in so far as it regards inventing stuff.

This got me thinking that perhaps coffee is simply bad for your thoughts overall. I began realizing that coffee had an effect on my thought process–not just my mood. I had noticed that my thoughts were a bit faster than usual, but upon examining them further, I noticed that they weren’t necessarily of the same calibre as my non-caffeinated, slower thoughts. It’s not a drastic difference, but it’s there.

I have had a similar experience with amphetamine, which also happens to be a central nervous system stimulant, just like coffee. Of course, amphetamine has a much more prominent effect than coffee.
In short: you get a lot done, but it’s not quality work. (You don’t actually get more done in the long run, but we’ll get to that. And this regards coffee, too.)

The reason I think most people don’t see this is because coffee (like amphetamine) increases dopamine in the brain, so you feel happy. When you feel good you are less likely to question your performance critically enough to see whether it’s better or downright dishevelled. Of course, feeling good has a beneficial effect, but not in the long run (as I will explain.)

The second part which makes it difficult to reasonably assess whether coffee is good or bad is time. Time can reveal a lot; if we spread our analysis out over longer periods of time we can come to diametrically opposed conclusions compared to when we only analyse a short period of time. Coffee is nice in the short run but eventually the habit catches up with you. And just like any other drug, it’s painful to quit in the short run. This is why the long run is important to take into account.

This leads me to my second line of argument; nothing is free.

You must try going without coffee (and with coffee) for longer periods of time in order to truly gauge if it is a performance enhancer. This is because the short-term effects will delude you completely, making you happy and content with yourself. It may even boost your performance in the short-term, while some of the long-term effects may completely bog you down and make you realize that you are worse at performing on coffee.

Let’s say that you just recently started drinking coffee. Your body hasn’t adapted to the caffeine yet, so the coffee still makes you feel awake, and you don’t need much of it to get a kick. You also feel more productive while on it–and happy!
What eventually happens is that your body will become accustomed to the caffeine, and the coffee will only help maintain a state of “normalcy”.

During this latter phase, both I and Alex Becker estimate that you will lose ~20% of your overall productivity as a result. This is an estimate, of course, but it goes to show that both Alex and I have had a similar loss of productivity with caffeine.

You see the same results with any drug. You will need more and more to get the same effect, and very quickly you become completely dependent upon the drug just in order to stave off depression/withdrawals because NOTHING IS FREE. NOT MONEY, NOT FOOD, NOTHING.

This leads me to my third, and final, point; homeostasis.

Your body always wants to level out to normal levels. If you pump yourself full of caffeine it will give you:
1. Dopamine, the feel good chemical.
2. Adrenaline, regulating visceral functions.
3. Cortisol, the stress hormone.
4. Caffeine, the chemical blocking your adenosine receptors/”sleep-receptors” in the brain.
Once you’ve pumped your body full of these ingredients, it will try to regulate itself back to a state of normalcy through 2 different ways.
1. Your body will try blocking the incoming chemicals (like dopamine,) making you LESS RECEPTIVE to such chemicals.
2. It will grow MORE adenosine receptors because it’s clogged with caffeine, making you very, very sleepy unless you get your cup of joe.

And here’s what cortisol can do to you. In short, it can cause memory loss and weight gain. Of course… we’ve all heard that caffeine is great for staving off alzheimer’s, haven’t we? I wouldn’t be quick to jump to conclusions either way. Stimulating the nervous system may help, while the cortisol does the opposite very opposite.

And there’s that. Coffee is absolutely a drug, and should be viewed as such. Now I’m aware that there are certain articles out there which list amazing benefits of coffee. Personally, I don’t believe it. I believe it sounds like a bunch of addicts desperately trying to hold on to their beloved drug. Either way, my point is not to disprove whether coffee reduces suicide rates in women by 50% or reduces alzheimer’s by 65% (both numbers sound WAY too high to be true.)

My point is simply to point out that coffee is a drug. It’s certainly not the worst drug to be addicted to, but I think many people would benefit greatly from not drinking it. Is it possible that coffee possesses seemingly magical abilities to cure mental illness by extraordinary numbers. Sure, it’s possible. Curing depression with mountains of cocaine may also be possible.