Varieties of Howlie Experience

[RoamingFrancis]

There has been discussion on this forum examining various howlies* for inspiration. However, given the wide variety in forumite stoke and temperament, I would like to generate more discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of various howlie systems. The purpose of this thread is to tease out the qualitative differences amongst howlies, such that we may emulate systems that match our strengths and more fully inhabit our chosen niches.

This thread is not a repeat of the original thread about howlie stories. Here I want to specifically zero in on analyzing system differences, rather than sharing stories about inspiring folks.

Rob Greenfield - great if you can pull it off. He is very personable and skilled in marketing, so his hobo social media empire lets him be something of a deep green digital nomad. This model could be good for those who want to travel a lot, or already are very good at sales, marketing, and interpersonal communication. I don't think he could pull off his system without an audience, so there are issues with scalability. And many people just prefer to kick ass quietly and avoid the narcissism of the social media age. That said, I believe the sheer communication power of the Internet makes it a good social capital tool for most people.

Callie Russel - from what I understand her main system revolves around herding goats. This lets her have a reliable means of sustenance while living in the wilderness for extended periods of time. She also has a side business, I believe tanning hides and teaching wilderness skills. Her system is weak on the financial side. This could be due to Boyle/Greenfield-style idealism, or maybe she's just WL9000 and doesn't need it or find it relevant.

Jacob - money and skills. He might not have intentionally built up social capital, given his individualist tendencies, but then he started running one of the best forums on the Internet, so it looks like he got it anyways. @jacob, care to chime in here?

Hopefully this is enough to stimulate conversation - I'll let others chime in and add their own examples.






*Advanced Postconsumer. High Wheaton Level Individual, playfully abbreviated as howlie.

[fiby41]

1:
"The name of another of Ayoda-Dhaumya's disciples was Upamanyu.
And Dhaumya appointed him saying, 'Go, my child, Upamanyu, look after the kine.'
And according to his preceptor's orders, he went to tend the kine.
And having watched them all day,
he returned in the evening to his preceptor's house
and standing before him he saluted him respectfully.
And his preceptor seeing him in good condition of body asked him,
'Upamanyu, my child, upon how do you support yourself?
You are exceedingly plump.'
And he answered, 'Sir, I support myself by begging'.
And his preceptor said,
'What is obtained in alms should not be used by you without offering it to me.'
And Upamanyu, thus told, went away.
And having obtained alms, he offered the same to his preceptor.
And his preceptor took from him even the whole.
And Upamanyu, thus treated, went to attend the cattle.

2:
And having watched them all day,
he returned in the evening to his preceptor's abode.
And he stood before his preceptor and saluted him with respect.
And his preceptor perceiving that he still continued to be of good condition of body said unto him, 'Upamanyu, my child, I take from you even the whole of what you obtain in alms,
without leaving anything for you. How then you, at present, contrive to support yourself?'
And Upamanyu said unto his preceptor,
'Sir, having made over to you all that I obtain in alms,
I go a-begging a second time for supporting myself.'
And his preceptor then replied,
'This is not the way in which you should obey the preceptor.
By this you are diminishing the support of others that live by begging.
Truly having supported yourself so, you have proved yourself covetous.'
And Upamanyu, having signified his assent to all that his preceptor said,
went away to attend the cattle.

3 :
And having watched them all day, he returned to his preceptor's house.
And he stood before his preceptor and saluted him respectfully.
And his preceptor observing that he was still fat, said again unto him,
'Upamanyu, my child, I take from you all you obtain in alms
and you do not go a-begging a second time,
and yet you are in healthy condition.
How do you support yourself?'
And Upamanyu, thus questioned, answered,
'Sir, I now live upon the milk of these cows.'
And his preceptor thereupon told him,
'It is not lawful for you to appropriate the milk without having first obtained my consent.'
And Upamanyu having assented to the justice of these observations, went away to tend the kine.

4:
And when he returned to his preceptor's abode,
he stood before him and saluted him as usual.
And his preceptor seeing that he was still fat, said,
'Upamanyu, my child, you eat no longer of alms,
nor do you go a-begging a second time,
not even drink the milk; yet you are fat.
By what means do you contrive to live now?
And Upamanyu replied, 'Sir,
I now sip the froth that these calves throw out,
while sucking their mother's teats.'
And the preceptor said, 'These generous calves, I suppose,
out of compassion for you, throw out large quantities of froth.
Would you stand in the way of their full meals by acting as you have done?
Know that it is unlawful for you to drink the froth.'
And Upamanyu, having signified his assent to this, went as before to tend the cows.

5:
And restrained by his preceptor, he fed not on alms, nor hath he anything else to eat;
he drank not of the milk, nor taste he of the froth!
"And Upamanyu, one day, oppressed by hunger, when in a forest,
ate of the leaves of the Arka (Asclepias gigantea).
And his eyes being affected by the pungent, crude,
and saline properties of the leaves which he had eaten, he became blind.
And as he was crawling about, he fell into a pit.
And upon his not returning that day when the sun was sinking
down behind the summit of the western mountains,
the preceptor observed to his disciples that Upamanyu had not yet come.
And they told him that he had gone out with the cattle.

[jacob]

There has been discussion on this forum examining various howlies* for inspiration. However, given the wide variety in forumite stoke and temperament, I would like to generate more discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of various howlie systems. The purpose of this thread is to tease out the qualitative differences amongst howlies, such that we may emulate systems that match our strengths and more fully inhabit our chosen niches.

[...]

Jacob - money and skills. He might not have intentionally built up social capital, given his individualist tendencies, but then he started running one of the best forums on the Internet, so it looks like he got it anyways. @jacob, care to chime in here?

There's a reason there are so many INT*'s around here. ERE1.0 is "new system for thinking about the world" that can be pursued by any individual who is willing and capable of jumping on a self-directed 5000-10000 hour learning curve. This is NT catnip, especially when frustrated by one's current system, but it's not appealing to other types who just want "the simple rules for success" (SJ), a cool person to emulate (SP), or wants to focus more about how they feel about themselves or other people (NF).

ERE1.0 is very hard to communicate because it's mostly internal (what you do is similar to everybody else, but how and why are very different). It's a bit like explaining your thesis work to your mom: "I read it, but I didn't understand any of it." As such it's more "tell" than "show" which can easily make it preachy or sound like a besserwisser if one gets too enthusiastic about such telling. Insofar "building internal systems" comes natural to you, it's likely that "cares about rules or looking cool or what other people think" does not come natural. "Show" is not a built-in side-effect and so you'd have to make it an explicit focus insofar you want to show and this can feel inauthentic. Conversely, if you try, it's apt to be misunderstood by people who don't (can't) or won't (refusing, Upton Sinclair style) get it. E.g. WL1 thinks that ERE on a day to day basis is about lentil soup and DIY laundry detergent because that's all they can see and they see it as sacrifice (relative to their aspirations: "Oh, if it was only me who had a million dollars, I'd spend it on a new car, a bigger house, and give 50k to each of my cousins, ...").
In short, it's very hard to have a "show and tell" conversation with normies that ERE means never having to worry about paying the bills; whether the markets are falling; whether you'd ever get bored; or whether the stores are locked down and closed. Indeed, one risks appearing somewhat smug or insensitive in such situations as it becomes increasingly harder to understand why some still struggle with such issues.

[AxelHeyst]

However, given the wide variety in forumite stoke and temperament, I would like to generate more discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of various howlie systems. The purpose of this thread is to tease out the qualitative differences amongst howlies, such that we may emulate systems that match our strengths and more fully inhabit our chosen niches.

A point was made (by several people, probably) that the path to WL7 might follow one of a few paths, but that once “out of the cave” the paths are infinitely variable. I made a graphic for it somewhere in the ERE2.0 subforum. A point here is that any one individual’s post-Cave actions are going to be hyper-unique to that individual, and so looking at the specifics of what any individual is doing and attempting to pull out principles is… tricky.

So, you say you want to compare strengths and weaknesses of howlies. To my mind, if someone is a howlie… there basically aren’t any weaknesses to their system *for themselves*. The whole point of high WL behavior is that you’ve dedicated enormous effort to removing friction and waste from your life, and have achieved this highly tuned state of resilience and alignment with who you are as a person and what you want out of life, and it’s all set up to be hyper resilient and anti-fragile and whatnot. So by definition, there is no weakness to Jacob’s lifestyle. There is no weakness to Greenfield’s lifestyle. They’re near-perfectly tuned. If indeed Russell is a howlie (I perceive her $ yield systems aren’t mature yet, but could be wrong), her lifestyle is perfectly tuned as well.

So maybe by ‘evaluate strengths and weaknesses”, you mean more something like “evaluate different people’s systems for how well they might fit my own personality”? e.g. if I tried to copy Greenfield, I’d flop hard. It’s not accurate to call that a “weakness” of his system, because it works perfectly (by definition) for him.

The other question is, by “Jacob” do you mean “how specifically Jacob behaves and thinks” or do you mean “ERE”? Because Jacob’s lifestyle is in effect one possible manifestation of the ERE system. Neither Greenfield nor Russell have Systems - they didn’t write any books about practical philosophies and principles underlying their lifestyles. So comparing “ERE” vs “what it looks like Greenfield does, and what it looks like Russel does”, is apples and oranges.

So I think what you’re getting at is something like “is it a good idea or a bad idea to try to emulate Greenfield, or Russel, or [other howlie example] for me as an individual? What aspects of what they do would work well for me, and what wouldn’t?”

I’m not sure how much productive thought there can be had there. If you wanna Greenfield, you gotta love hugging a lot and organizing people. If you wanna Russell, you gotta love goats, being super alone, and wrassling mountain lions in the dark. If you wanna Jacob, you gotta love thinking about everything all the time and reading All the Books.

If you wanna become a howlie, you gotta apply the principles of ERE with great effort over many years until you’ll find you’ve arrived at a place of low/no waste, resilience, autonomy, and alignment with stoke and mission/purpose on life, where there is no longer a distinction between work, leisure, and play.

—

If one accepts the underlying logic of ERE, and by that I mean if one agrees that the principles and philosophies of ERE are the correct conceptual building blocks with which to construct one’s one life system, then looking at howlies lives just becomes a matter of attempting to notice how they’ve embodied ERE philosophies (intentionally or through their own process of discovery). But there’s a limited utility to the exercise, because each person has to integrate the principles/philosophies with an extremely complex understanding of themselves as individuals, so the outcome might not be that useful.

Principle ————>[Decision-making process] ———->Action/Behavior
Self-understanding————————^

I don’t recall exactly why I started the howlie inspiration thread, but now I see it as an exercise in just getting jazzed about doing my own process and arriving at my own cool life story. I think I was warned that there wasn’t much to actually *learn* from looking at the lives of howlies, and that there are good reasons it’s hard to find stories about them, and I think I grok that more now. I was expecting there to be more stories about Incredible People Doing Incredible Things, like in Ego’s Daring Adventure Thread, just howlie-edition. But… there are Adventurers (let’s just use that as shorthand for people doing instagram-worthy stuff), and there are Howlies. Some howlies are also adventurers. Some adventurers are also howlies. Only people at that overlap between the two are likely to have publicly-available stories about them, and the stories are mostly going to be Adventure-focused, because that’s the only part that is actually interesting. There are (many) good reasons Jacob isn’t on instagram: one of them is that the day to day reality of his life is boring AF to basically everyone.

I’m not sure if all that text was relevant, a rant, or just a description of how my brain works that totally missed the point.

[RoamingFrancis]

Take on the Scripture

Interesting koan.

My initial take is that Upamanyu is unquestioningly obeying his teacher, without thought to whether the demands made of him are reasonable. His story ends up dying because he did not challenge his teacher. The central theme seems to be the fallibility of authority.

However, I am also filtering this through the lens of my own culture, the United States, which places a high value on rugged frontier individualism. An Asian country such as India would have cultural norms that more explicitly promote deference to spiritual authorities and elders. It is possible that an Indian person would see something entirely different in the story.

If my interpretation is accurate, I'm not quite sure how it would apply to my life. I'm interested in learning from these examples, and teasing out the elements that work best for me, not worshipping the people mentioned.

Of course, I could have missed the point entirely. What is your take on it?

Response to Jacob and AxelHeyst

@jacob: I am on board with a long self-directed learning curve. I'm not trying to copy other models step-by-step, but rather look for elements within those models that work well for me. I would like to get a more in-depth look at the mechanics, and take a look at a couple other howlies, to find meaningful differences in their approaches and see what elements I would most like to adopt.

Why is simple rules for success SJ while a person to emulate is SP? Wouldn't this be a function of Intuiting/Sensing rather than Judging/Perceiving?

@AxelHeyst: Where does "out of the cave" begin? I'm actively building post-consumer systems for myself, but a consumption analysis would still show me living at a standard footprint. Arguably I might have leeway considering my age and living situation (with family), but I think it's best to hold my interior world accountable to my real-world impact.

So maybe by ‘evaluate strengths and weaknesses”, you mean more something like “evaluate different people’s systems for how well they might fit my own personality”

Exactly.

When I say "Jacob," I mean Jacob's specific instantiation of ERE. Jacob's lifestyle. Different manifestations work well for different people. Not just personality type - this should also include levels of development, unique skills, and stoke.

I had thought that looking at howlies more in-depth could help tease out useful insights. Though maybe you're right - figuring this out may just be a process of trial and error, self-knowledge, and self-discovery.

[jacob]

There are (many) good reasons Jacob isn’t on instagram: one of them is that the day to day reality of his life is boring AF to basically everyone.

Haha! Agreed, although if you aggregate it all, it does begin to look interesting: https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-extreme/

ERE would equally allow someone to live like Ray Jardine (the king of adventurers) if that's what they wanted, but I guess on a day to day basis, maybe his life also looks boring(?) with 90% of the time going towards logistics and planning with spreadsheets, etc. I'm only speculating here.

One way to explain it is that ERE is system for playing chess against the world(*). Everybody would see the same pieces and the same board but a novice would interpret it very differently than a grand master. Yet all they would be able to agree on is that the grand master wins in 99.9% of the cases and that he has spent very many hours studying it. One can indeed create something akin to a WL table for chess players with different ratings including particular and predictable perspectives as they advance. The game also becomes more enjoyable the more nuances one understands. The novice sees simple rules and an eventual win, loss, or draw. The grand master sees patterns, lines, possibilities, imbalances, ... for each and every move. And a club player would be somewhere in between. It's the same thing with ERE. The novice would only be able to see what they recognize. Not recognizing moves, etc. ... losing pieces or money every time.
See https://www.amazon.com/Amateurs-Mind-Tu ... 890085022/

(*) The analogy breaks in that it's not chess and it's not against.

It's interesting to flip this around. How do experts in respective fields see popular ("WL1") portrayals/misconceptions of their field. Some of it is cringe-worthy. I know I can't watch most sword fights in movies anymore. I also find it hard to watch consumer living. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 8bCinSqNv4

This also means that the activities that appear to be most attractive in consumer-world (tourism, going out to eat or drink, going to the movies, and shopping) are ironically the least attractive to me because these activities are so devoid of any [internal] nuance. I mean, how could anything possibly be more boring in life that passively buying, flying, tasting, or watching stuff? I wonder whether there's some kind of inverse proportionality going on.

It's fun to note that "Simple Living" and "Minimalism" are two different takes on the same thing. However, the former was/is internal whereas the latter is external. Since the external does well on instagram, people have focused on stuff to own or stuff not to own. Counting it, sorting it, ... and upgrading it. The most popular minimalists have a carefully curated and numbered list of expensive iThings that spark joy. Contrast this with "simple living" which focused on the living rather than the owning part. Decluttering the calendar than the closet. Ironically one can find more than one minimalist youtube channel with people stressing out over whether to replace iThing12 with iThing13.

[AxelHeyst]

@AxelHeyst: Where does "out of the cave" begin?

WL7 and up, is my understanding. Fully internalized systems thinking post consumer mindset. Eg I peg myself at WL6, so I can see daylight (I think) but I’m still bumping into stalagtites and fighting cave trolls everyone once in a while… and my freedom of action isn’t infinite yet, eg money isn’t a totally solved problem, I still think “what can i buy to solve this problem…” reflexively, still have friction and waste.

Anyways, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good question to be asking. Even if the end result is we convince ourselves that analyzing individual howlie lifestyles is a dead end, if we can articulate *why* it’s a dead end, we’ve learned something valuable. So to respond in the spirit of the original question now that I’m more sure I know what you’re asking…

A Rough First-Pass Analysis of Possible Applications of Howlie Callie Russel’s lifestyle to Axel Heyst’s
Things I like:
.Her outdoor skill ecosystem is strong so she has multiple potential sources of income: guiding, goatherding, game processing, and making and selling “ancestral stuff” - not sure what the right term for that is. Making and selling brain tanned skin clothing, for example.
.Her skills and experiences are super unique so another source of income is writing and speaking.
.Her skills enable her to live solo in the backcountry for long stretches of time. In the prepping community, it’s common for people to ridicule armchair survivalists who think they can walk into the woods and survive. Callie’s sitting over there going “hold my beer I fermented myself in an animal skin from wild-harvested berries, I gotta dip back out to the woods for the next three months, catch you on the flip side.” She’s one of the very few who could hook up with some buddies and probably actually ride out the zombie apocalypse out in the woods. That’s pretty dope.

Things I don’t like;
.Thinking of a comment from @7 here, Callie’s system seems highly reliant on her physical well-being. If she got injured or ill, she might be in a tough spot. (She might be able to write and speak, but how long could that last?)
.She’s not FI, pretty sure. I’m starting to grok the wisdom of getting to FI as quickly as possible: it’s insurance against not being able to do whatever it is you do to generate a steady flow of income. Like if I decide my semiERE hustle is woodworking, but then one day I cut both my hands off on accident, I’m up a creek.
.The gist here is that while Callie has super broad skills in terms of outdoors stuff, and is wildly more competent than 99.999% of other humans, her skills don’t extend to the indoors. There’s a vulnerability there. The whole point of a WoG is that if any node is snipped, the web integrity isn’t compromised. I can think of some snips that would collapse Callie’s web.

Applications to me:
.I’m relatively happy being alone in the wilderness. It’s possible that I have the personality that would enjoy/tolerate the sort of long solo backcountry experiences that define Callie’s system.
.I have a base of outdoor relevant skills and experience already - I’m like 2% of Callie’s level, but I’m not starting from zero. I know how to crap in the woods, so to speak.
.I am somewhat concerned about zombie apocalypses, and it’s possible that with a LOT of hours I could be the kind of person with the skills to just wander into the woods if the SHTF. This could be one leg of my zombie apocalypse strategy.
.I’m also quite interested in Rewilding, from multiple perspectives, such as liking the idea of a world where there are large areas of land set aside for people to live in however they like as long as they don’t use any technology from 10,000BC or newer. Actually becoming someone with relevant skills could be part of work to make these sorts of things (Paleo Reserves?) exist in the world.
.My SO might be game for going deep on this stuff too.
.Going long on Callie Russel style skills would probably mean giving up on a few other things I have going. I’m not sure if I could really do this thing without “over”-investing in this as a strategy / way of life. I’d need to think long and hard about what I wanted my life story to be, what I was okay with doing and not doing, and what I was okay with giving up, and any vulnerabilities / narrowing of options that would entail.

[fiby41]

I'm not quite sure how it would apply to my life.

1: It is possible that some howlie experiences exist only because they are advertised. Example, permaculture bloggers who need other inputs into the system apart from sale of farm produce to break even. Nothing wrong with selling DVDs, courses, etc but it makes it difficult to emulate.

2: Going begging for a second time signifies not knowing when to quit. If we consider the grains he received as income then his effective tax rate was like 50%. Instead of trying something else he doubled down on what he knew. Until he was forbidden from going begging for a second time, he didn't try milk or plants. This is the thinking along the lines of 'if I only earn more, it will solve all my problems.' A person unable to quit past tendencies/job even after having their desired SWR because they lack the imagination of thinking of other things to do.

3: It maybe useful to be aware of what parts and how much of our lifestyles in dependent upon the consumerist society even when not directly participating in it. Other than knowledge, a preceptor only provides housing if he himself is landed, if the preceptor is a traveling monk/mendicant, not even that.
Prices of some conveniences are only so low because family or society arrange or cover for it.
There are many benefits of being part of the consumerist society but when the going is good is the time when we should explore options. Upamanyu was taking the cows for grazing in the forest anyway so this was the time when he should have tasted in small doses to find out which plants are edible and which make him feel funny before he was overcome by hunger.

4: there are inefficiencies all around us. Sometimes it is worth it to exploit it and sometimes it is not. Most times there is no way to find out weather the juice is worth the squeeze without trying it. Sometimes the inefficiencies exist because its not worth for another person/organization or they simply don't care.

5: Social proof means if a group of hunter-gathers/people are eating some plant/herb it is likely safe for you too. Novelty is expensive. Sometimes the damage of hitting a fork in the road and going straight can be irreparable. Other times simply the way is lost but you get a great tale to tell. But there is a cost for changing course when things don't work out as well as they should. Even when doing something supposedly adventurous like hiking, people prefer following a trail. Trails form over time when people/herds of animals pass through the same paths. It is not the road less traveled because there is safety in numbers. Just to contrast: getting ERE done within 5 years v/s waiting until 30 trying things out to find your passion.

[jacob]

@jacob: I am on board with a long self-directed learning curve. I'm not trying to copy other models step-by-step, but rather look for elements within those models that work well for me. I would like to get a more in-depth look at the mechanics, and take a look at a couple other howlies, to find meaningful differences in their approaches and see what elements I would most like to adopt.

Why is simple rules for success SJ while a person to emulate is SP? Wouldn't this be a function of Intuiting/Sensing rather than Judging/Perceiving?

It's pretty gnarly to summarize the four temperamental types in a few words each. There are different ways of dividing the 16 (or 32 types) into four. NT, NF, SJ, SP is Keirsey's. The idea is that N tends to "overthink" (rely on internal processing or intuition) so how they "compute" (T-logic or F-agreeable) makes more of a behavioral difference, hence NT and NF. Whereas S tends to "underthink" (rely on what they see or hear or have seen or heard) so how they observe and decide (J or P) makes more of a behavioral difference, hence SJ and SP. Key to understanding the various splits is what kind of difference, here behavioral (UR).

Copying and compiling are part of the early learning curve. Thus if we take the early part of CCCCCC, what would NT, NF, SJ, and SP be focused on respectively early on? NT would try to understand the system with a simple model (E.g. RDPD cash flow quadrants). NF would be looking to form a community or attend a workshop. SJ would want a simple guide of steps to follow. SP would want to see a concrete example of the execution.

Overall, I'm fairly sure that just like it's possible to at least statistically match personality-types to jobs and careers, so is it possible to match personality-types to alternative lifestyles (for lack of a better word).

[mountainFrugal]

Agreed, although if you aggregate it all, it does begin to look interesting:

"Aggregated serendipity" - might be a good tag line if it has not been used explicitly before. .

[Western Red Cedar]

"Aggregated serendipity" - might be a good tag line if it has not been used explicitly before. .

This concept and the GRS narrative linked upthread remind me of the notion that it is easy to overestimate what we can accomplish in days or weeks, and underestimate what we can accomplish in months and years. There is value in making a 5 or 10 year plan, and working backward from there. Most of us are doing that with finances, but doing it with life goals is arguably more important. Particularly if one has Howlie inclinations.

[mountainFrugal]

And that for most people it can take many years of hard work to actually internalize because you likely need to unlearn a bunch of stuff on top of learning and internalizing these new concepts to make your WOG more resilient for your individual situation.

[AxelHeyst]

Had another thought about this. I think looking at the particulars of a howlies life can only tell you about what their stoke is. To be far too brief, Greenfield’s is green community engagement, Callie’s is being outside, Jacob’s is Not Losing. Despite my earlier jab, any of these lives are going to be Interesting to hear about… but the only relevance to designing your own life is if there’s a Stoke Overlap.

A system is strong or weak based on how well it adheres to the ERE design principles and philosophy. The particulars of lifestyle are a good ‘fit’ if and only if you’re stoked on them.

So… I didn’t get much out of my analysis of Callie’s life, for example. Because I’m not stoked *enough* on the outdoors to go herd goats for three months in the uplands of New Mexico. I’d miss…. (and *this* is the useful reflection part of the exercise) … designing and building stuff, writing, thinking and reading, and having novel explorations mostly in the outdoors but at a smaller scale than three months. Ah: there’s my stoke. I should build a system around that.

Something I was inspired about from Callie’s story, though, was how once she had the revelation about what her stoke was, she just went all in getting after it (if I’m remembering her podcast interview correctly). She didn’t fart around avoiding it or going the normal path. Same with Jacob. Same with Greenfield, in proportion to his unfolding realizations about climate change and pollution etc.

Perhaps the thing to look at is commonalities. What attributes or ways of thinking or dynamics do all howlies share? Are there any? My guess is that an ability to have clarity about what it is they’re after and then an inability to be dissuaded from that path even by setbacks and discouragements is one. If you don’t have the clarity and the grit ( ) you’ll never end up at high WL. Not in this culture.

[jacob]

Something I was inspired about from Callie’s story, though, was how once she had the revelation about what her stoke was, she just went all in getting after it (if I’m remembering her podcast interview correctly). She didn’t fart around avoiding it or going the normal path. Same with Jacob. Same with Greenfield, in proportion to his unfolding realizations about climate change and pollution etc.

Perhaps the thing to look at is commonalities. What attributes or ways of thinking or dynamics do all howlies share? Are there any? My guess is that an ability to have clarity about what it is they’re after and then an inability to be dissuaded from that path even by setbacks and discouragements is one. If you don’t have the clarity and the grit ( ) you’ll never end up at high WL. Not in this culture.

I remember some quote along the lines of "I can't change the world alone. I need at least 100 others, like me." One of the things that has driven me is a mantra of "if not me, then who, if not now, when"---not sure where that comes from either. This kind of stoke seems particularly rare. I don't know where I got that from because I haven't always had it.

One commonality between the three is that verybody went "all in". Whereas the normal approach is to "shop around" and treat it more like a hobby for a few hours per week---e.g. instead of becoming a goat herder, you join five different "goat"-groups on facebook and spend half an hour every evening liking and subscribing to goats.

By the 90-9-1 rule of the internet (and possibly life in general) only 1% will take the initiative to execute and tell others. 9% will be of the "me too" variety once one of the "1%ers" has opened the discussion, but the 90% will stay dormant for whatever reason. I see the same pattern unfolding in the MMG startups. It's the "usual suspects". It's definitely not a random effect. Perhaps it has to do with humans being social animals but yet requiring at least some phenotypes to become explorers and not only explorers but also the type who come back to stick their heads back into Plato's Cave to tell the cave dwellers. It makes sense that humanity would be chaos if everybody had such a drive whereas it would be total stagnation if nobody had it.

[7Wannabe5]

When I was doing some research into the topic of I = Ingenuity or Innovation, I learned that although it's of primary importance to economic formulas, it has the perverse quality of not being easily purchased. It's almost like the best a hopeful corporation can do is create a sort of well-stocked classroom for gifted children.

For instance, if I was capable of complete rational control over my "stoke", I would currently be dead focused on studying immunology and reading studies related to Crohn's disease, but I don't and I'm not. Although it is the case that sometimes an individual's stoke overlaps with their love or emotional bond with something else. For instance, my stoke related to books and book dealing was related to the feeling I had as a child that I felt sorry for the good books that didn't get checked out of the library very often. And I was recently reading about some research in Crohn's being conducted by somebody whose child has the disease. Still, I don't think either "love" or "money" is sufficient to engage stoke. There has to be something else like curiousity or whatever makes people who don't suffer from curiousity feel stoked.

[GandK]

I can't get past the word "howlie." I used to live in Hawaii, and a howlie (haole) is their semi-derrogatory word for a white person. It's distracting.

[RoamingFrancis]

Lessons to Integrate

From Rob: I am high in extraversion and can build community engagement into my system. I've been reluctant to take up space publicly (do speaking, create a podcast, "put myself out there" publicly because I thought in would inflate my ego. On my wall I have a little picture of Vince Harding, one of the guys in MLK's inner circle whom history has largely forgotten. Under the picture I wrote "Kick ass quietly." The idea being not to do great things out of egoic desire to be memorialized or get a statue in your name, but simply because it's the right fucking thing to do. Then you die, become worms, and are forgotten. But now I can see I will have to do more "putting myself out there" in order to grow, even if there is a risk of ego inflation.

Relevant Theo Katzman song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xsfOuLM2J8

From Callie: The idea of being a goatherder sounds pretty fucking dope. I have a stoke response to wandering through the wilderness with one's goats feeling like Gandalf. I agree with @AxelHeyst's take on her lifestyle. Though I am someone who really thrives when I'm connected to a community, so spending three months as a goatherder would be more of a rite of passage for me than a permanent lifestyle. I do like proximity to wilderness, so perhaps starting some sort of Zen center in the mountains would be more my style.

From Jacob: I don't really seek to emulate the specifics of Jacob's day-to-day life - we are quite different in personality and temperament. But Jacob is a master strategist and systems thinker, and I will need the ERE design principles and philosophy to create what I do want.

@jacob can you elaborate on the specific meanings of each of the C's? For example, what is the difference between compiling, coordinating, and computing? I get a sense of what you mean but would like clarification.

I love the "If not me, then who?" mantra. Everyone likes to think they would have been an abolitionist had they lived in 1830, but few would really take action. During my teenage years as an activist I was always really wary of the Leninist concept of the vanguard, but with more experience I can see why it's important. Almost by definition, large cultural shifts originate in the fringes of society - salons, cafes, and, nowadays, Internet forums where sophisticated communication around important issues can take place and we are free to pursue depth. Of course, any cultural shifts must truly be worldcentric in orientation - most of the 20th century socialist regimes suffered from the "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" problem. That's part of why I no longer really subscribe to actively trying to overthrow governments, unless you're resisting an actual fascist state. Having a flawed democracy is a hell of a lot better than the power vacuum that exists after it's gone. Had I lived in 1830, I truly hope I would have been friends with Frederick Douglass and Elijah Lovejoy.

I love the idea of sticking one's head back into the cave to talk to the dwellers. I am an explorer, but I'm wired to be an excellent teacher.

I don't think stoke is entirely rational. For me it comes from tapping into Deep Soul Purpose, which for me is in the transrational realm. I have no clue why I'm so stoked on linguistic diversity in the Amazon basin, other than a magnetic attraction to Spanish when I was twelve and contact with an acid being two years ago.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On that note, my deepest stoke is the Amazon. That's what I have to design my systems around. This means I have some more research to do about international law, immigration, and not-for-profit corporations that operate in multiple countries. I also need to make sure I have ways to earn an income while living in Mexico or Colombia - here I could leverage my language skills to do a translation-service-based digital nomadicism (no stoke but may be practical), or learn more about how regenerative businesses operate in those regions. My impression is that multinational corporations are doing whatever the fuck they want in the Amazon without regard to ecosystem health or human rights (just look at the Steven Donziger case in Ecuador), so I doubt legal restrictions are too tight. The key thing would be finding out whether an ecologically/socially regenerative business model could generate enough income to support a livelihood.

I ran some numbers today. If I can stabilize my CoL at 1 JAFI (<$10k) and assume a SWR of 4% (ik there are disagreements on SWR), I would need a financial yield of $250,000 - invested in regenerative, resilient, and socially just investments - to consider myself financially independent. Obviously this does not replace other forms of capital - skills, relationships, healthy ecosystems, physical and spiritual health. I am torn on the FIRE / Semi-ERE debate. On one hand, I can see wisdom in knocking it out - I could be FI by 26, build a great life in the meantime, and then have the whole REST OF MY LIFE LEFT!!! On the other, I have Deep Soul Purpose and we all know what happens when you refuse to go to Nineveh. Either way, I'm grateful for the opportunity to pursue an authentic life.

So to get back to basics, pulling this off hinges on the ability to live at 1 JAFI and the ability to generate the adequate financial yields. I believe there is a market in my area for locally sourced food, honey, etc, as well as "transition coaching," i.e. getting paid to help people transition their households towards sustainability. This is what I'll be exploring for the rest of the year, as well as how to transition to the Amazonian stuff I want to do.

I still have some work to do to stabilize at 1 JAFI. Frankly, since returning from Canada I got a driver's license and have been sucked into my family's consumer culture. My systems were not sufficiently mature to resist living in a household of consumers who have no interest in making a change. That's okay, I don't blame myself. I just have to make sure not to stay that way. In order to shift towards 1 JAFI spending, I have to:

.Eliminate car transport - bike to work, fix my chain, and organize a carpool to the meditation center on Sundays.
.Make a decision on my health insurance. I'm attached to the family plan, but I don't know how long that lasts. I will most likely just choose disaster insurance and make my main health insurance... actually staying healthy.
.Vasectomy - I actually love kids, but I don't want them myself. I would love "cool uncle" status though. This would ensure a MAJOR expense never happens.
.Cancel superfluous Internet subscriptions
.Cut a deal with the BJJ people. I plan to deeply pursue both martial arts and music, which would be my only real expenses outside of the basics. The exception is if I decide to pursue psychotherapy. But regardless, it would be worthwhile to see if I can work out a skill exchange like Rob Greenfield did with yoga and other services.

And just to take stock of my assets:

.A couple thousand dollars
.1 bicycle
.High social and spiritual capital
.Language skills
.Vision
.Grit

Not too bad. To the Great Work!

*Removed a couple details

[AxelHeyst]

@GnK Ah! That’s a bummer. Still, part of the reason for coining it is that it is silly. It’s supposed to remind us not to take ourselves too seriously, to help keep serious elitism in check. “These dummies coined a word for themselves that sounds like the Hawaiian word for ‘UGH; white people, amiright?’” sort of fits.

[AxelHeyst]

@jacob can you elaborate on the specific meanings of each of the C's? For example, what is the difference between compiling, coordinating, and computing? I get a sense of what you mean but would like clarification.

It’s in the book. I still struggle to grok the six C’s, they don’t fit my brain well, but the book is the place to start.