Real life is the game that – literally – everyone is playing. But it can be tough. This is your guide.
You might not realise, but real life is a game of strategy. There are some fun mini-games – like dancing, driving, running, and sex – but the key to winning is simply managing your resource
I mean this article to be the first installment in a series.
The underlying principle is the Anna Karenina principle
The Anna Karenina principle
The Anna Karenina principle is: good systems must meet simultaneously a number of requirements. All good systems are alike, bad systems are bad in their own way
Tolstoy said: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
Aristotle said: success/failure: …it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the
The fox and the hare tale: Why does a rabbit run faster than a fox? Because while the fox is running for his dinner, the rabbit is running for his life. All of life works the same way…
I have noticed that take-away, as a manipulation technique, works exceptionally well on me.
Here is how the technique works: you show something, and you state that it is only available at this price for a limited amount of time.
I find myself scrambling to get it.
I could also have made the title: your horoscope and your ego’s role in it, or your soul correction and your ego’s role in it.
There is a lot of different ways people define ego, but what if the ego is none of those. Not what Freud called ego, not what gurus call ego.
What if the ego is simply the mechanism by which the Selfish Gene perpetuates itself… like an old dog that is un
Did you notice that we are not talking here about IQ? About ability?
No, the behavior ascribed to the stupid and the behavior of the wise can and often come from the same IQ.
The ability to do things differently can’t be accessed without a modicum of humility. Modicum means: a little bit.
Humility is a capacity, an attitu
I just discovered that the version of the Freecell game is “forgiving”, i.e. you can go back more than one step… “start over again” without a penalty point.
This makes the game an even better modeling tool than it used to be.
I always suspected that the first step really decides the rest of the journey… but being a Quickstart… jumping-without-thinking-type-of-person, this would not have
What kind of deserving is in that title?
Systemic? Extrinsic? Intrinsic?
In the past four months that I have been able to turn on individual capacities for people, I have received no request to turn on trust.
Why is that?
After all people, rightly, asked me for self-trust. But self-trust won’t be enough.
So what can be the current world view with regards to trust, that trust doesn’t come up as number one to turn on.
Because, whether you know it or not, without trust there is no winning. Without trust there is no flow. Without trust there is no fulf
I am reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. The genes that use humans as vehicles, and are only interested in procreation, and not in the life experience of the vehicle.
But, as I have said before, there are 160 intangible capacities, mostly dormant, in the human DNA. The ones that we are going to look at in this article are the capacities (genes) of generosity (altruism) and trust.
Trust and generosity seem to be at odds with the selfishness of the genes… but they don’t have to be.
The most popular image I have on Instagram says: Arrogance is weakness disguised as strength.
Now, why this is worth writing about?
Because it is the tip of the iceberg of something really important.
We have spoken about the selfish gene. For the gene you are a survival vehicle only. And a person, who is not related to you, is competition, rival… and in your gene’s way to make more copies of itself.
I know this is unfamiliar territory, but please bear with me, because where it is taking us is worth going to… so patience… you don
