Can You Change Your Mind?

I caution the reader to prepare their psychological state to entertain the ideas within. Reminisce about life to date — what has been the bedrock, the foundation upon which your state of existence has more or less brought you to your present state? Has it been predominantly a struggle — have the positives outweighed the negatives? I venture to say that they have, and to a significant degree, otherwise you wouldn’t have any predilection to even be exposed to my ideas, let alone have the capacity or resources to spend the time to read the words and, hopefully form some ideas of your own on the issues within.

Consider some of the “software” versions that your operating system has progressed through. We used to think that 8–10% interest rates were a screaming deal because we had lived through the 18–20% mortgage rates that precipitated people that we knew walking away from their houses when the financing turned upside down.

Now we exult in the lowest interest rates in the history of our lives but have no idea what the cost of those rates will be. We listened to the news (curated by invisible hands) about automobile factory workers driving luxury automobiles and living in mansions. In retrospect, it was a metaverse constructed by actors with no skin in the game. Actors that disappear into the cornfield, condemned to playing their role in “throwing the game” forever. Whenever the psyche of one of them compels a futile effort to blow the whistle, they are cancelled, and the game is rejoined with the traditional call, “let’s play ball”.

What is the game? Is the object to achieve an existence of “living in the now”? Whenever the future is considered, the time frame under consideration changes the view like a kaleidoscope and that view changes further as the seconds tick past. What you perceive now is not what you will perceive in the future, no matter how much effort is expended in trying to make it so. I sympathize with those who “walled in the cuckoo” in their attempts to stop time.

As the human collective hurtles and hustles inexorably hither and yon, what of the plan? Even though you might think you were sent on a classified mission, at some point, it’s no longer classified, is it? The advice offered by others and the reliance on others to do what they say they will do is and was misplaced. We all knew this yet carried on like zombies. It is extremely difficult not to reduce the present situation to reflect the fact that the most prevalent ideas, the ones that have gained and maintained traction in the years that span my sentient existence, have not been examined sufficiently for their efficacy in terms of a reasonable time frame. It would appear that it was too much to ask for people to consider conducting their affairs such that they could provide for themselves and their tribe for one generation, let alone many.

I have been listening to various people prognosticating on the future of the financial world, which seems to me to be the same as the future of the world in general. Any contemplation that includes “outlawing” the knowledge of and use of the latest innovations to enable and move the human condition towards the creation of a system that allows for greater access to participate, on a more equitable basis, seems destined to ultimate failure. Will the machinations behind the curtain that have produced the Ponzi scheme that exists today in the finances of the world continue to remain hidden and disguised by the never ending distractions produced by the entertainment industry. That industry includes the 24 hours news cycle that reports events that cannot have any bearing on 99% of those exposed to them except to distract them from paying attention to what they should be paying attention to, which is interacting with the other members of their tribe to consider how their actions today might affect the prospects of their progeny.

The most despicable of all human interactions is that of betrayal. The fascination, and even admiration with which people watch a predator utilize deception to catch prey shows all too well that that lizard brain capability remains very close to the surface, and it does not take much for it to be invoked like a “TSR” (terminate but stay resident program). However, taking what we have observed, if the predator is not successful, it will cease to exist, and the balance will be upset.

So it is that the capacity for self deception seems to be selected for reproductive success; the extent to which predatory behaviour produces the conditions wherein the tribe can flourish and reproduce depends on the collective ability to believe that any consequences of that behaviour are justified.

The challenge now is to incentivize behaviour such that the majority discount the consequences of behaviour that was legitimate in a world that contemplated existential consequences (i.e. death) in a way that tends to consider the longer term future. The bobble headed optimism of those who ascribe to the fantasy that good old human ingenuity will prevail over each and every existential threat is, on the one hand, an attitude that prevents the level of urgency that the problems facing the world seems to require, and on the other hand, allows people to carry on at all.

In the days of yore, as far as recorded history can be relied upon, there were people who were afforded the time and resources to think. It is clear to me from the version of events relayed by people like Yeonmi Park, who managed to escape from the dystopia of North Korea, that humans are not born with innate abilities to form ideas sans interaction with others. It is true that the ingredients that go into the formation of some people’s ideas cannot be replicated uniquely, and those ideas are not formed completely in one fell swoop. That means those ideas can change, and in fact, must change if those ideas inform behaviour upon which the existence of the holder of those ideas depends. That is the definition of the phrase “skin in the game”. It is when those ideas are impressed upon others for purposes other than the advancement of the collective good, and when those who advance those ideas do not have “skin in the game”, that the collective gets diverted from a path that has an inherent self-correcting aiming system to a trajectory that tends towards chaos.

Are we facing yet another debacle in the seemingly unpredictable cycle of rug pulls that serve to upend and betray what little faith we have remaining in the systems the collective has used to manage the world’s finances? Will we again hear the same aphorisms from those who stand to benefit, or are at risk of losing their ability to practice the predatory behaviour that has benefited their tribe over the years? Shall we “stay the course”, not consider “timing the market”, but consider “time in the market”? It all descends into babble. As the story of Ms. Park relates, if people don’t know any better, they cannot be expected to change their behaviour willy nilly. And how can it be expected that even a miniscule number of people even understand the never-ending machinations of the schemers that are scurrying about the decks and the rigging and the bilges of the good ship lollipop?

I leave you with a prospect that may be worthy of consideration. Are people, and more specifically, are you capable of the radical changing of your ideas that might become necessary to protect and conserve what you have accumulated over the years? What motivation will be necessary for that to happen, and will it be the deploying the time-honored strategies of frugality and ultimately parsimoniousness? Or will you carve out the time and dedicate the resources to poke your head up out of the trench, use the intelligence and fortitude that enabled you to navigate the world thus far to gather some “intel”, organize your assets, and act? Once you “know”, you can’t “not know”, and then inaction can only prevail if you are well into self-deception.