BC#8 | Epic Series by Johnny Truant

[Ego]

I should start by saying that all four books are free and are incredibly short reads. You can read them all in an evening. Twice. If you have a kindle you can download them to from Amazon or read them on the author's website.

http://johnnybtruant.com/the-universe-d ... about-you/

He spits out words. He writes simply. The books are so short it almost seems silly to call them books at all. We should call them what they are, blog posts.

Anyhow, the one that got my attention first was, The Universe Does Not Give a Flying Fuck About You. It starts with basic astronomy then gets around to the main point, that we are like beetles on a sidewalk that nobody really thinks much about. Beetles gets squashed, meh, oh well. We will all die someday. And that someday is coming fast. Take a step back and it becomes obvious that spending time doing stupid stuff or worrying about past mistakes is silly. So, he says, we should do epic shit.

Up to that point I enjoyed it. Do epic shit for no other reason than because you are going to die and you are the only one whose opinion matters as to whether your life was well lived.

The beetle analogy breaks down when he says, "If you, yourself, only last for a nanosecond, you might expand your influence to a millisecond. And that’s something. Honest, it is."

I am not so sure about that. Having influence for a few extra nanoseconds is an attempt to live on after death. He can't have it both ways. Is the level of epicness only measured by the longevity of postmortem influence (in other words, by others) or is it measured by oneself, right now? (Question 1) Does the desire for an epic legacy produce an inflation that does nothing more than extend keeping-up-with-the-Joneses to the afterlife? How much effort should we put into expanding our influence beyond the nanosecond we are here? Why?

In You Are Dying and Your World is a Lie, he continues with the theme that you better get on with the living and stop wasting time. The part about "your world is a lie", refers to the fact that we feel danger, stress and fear when there is no real need to feel them. Life is not dangerous at all, at least not like it once was. There is very little to be afraid of in the true sense of the word so stop insulating yourself from it.

Hardship, he says, helps us to define the joys of life. Eliminate the difficulty and we lose the bliss. We should seek it out. "It’s ironic. Letting yourself experience what you most don’t want to experience is the only way to truly be human."

(Question 2) Many of us pursue ERE for the control it provides. By gaining control over the mundane yet necessary elements of life can we use the resulting freedom to be out of control in more useful ways? Can we use the liberation to, as he said, experience what we most don't want to experience?

Disobey, the third in the series, is not so much about disobedience as it is about knowing that rules can be broken. It starts out with Johnny's personal experience as a valedictorian, Phd candidate, and real estate mogul failure then moves on to question the practice of following the rules for no other reason than because everyone else is doing it. This is something we in the ERE community find very familiar.

Rules, he says, are commonly held opinions agreed upon by the normal people. The key word here is opinions. "Success means nothing more than playing a certain game well enough to receive whatever high accolades exist within the game." His point is that we should to be sure to chose the right game, the one that provides the rewards we actually want. When we find we are being forced into a game with rewards we find useless, it is okay to be creatively disobedient. If we are abnormal it is okay, within reason, to circumvent the cattle chutes herding us toward normality.

(Question 3) Have you successfully circumvented the cattle chutes? How? Or maybe you happily followed the herd. If so, how did it turn out?

The last in the series is, How to Live Forever. In it he expands on the idea that you can live forever by influencing others in a positive way. He implies that existential meaning can be had by doing good deeds that ripple through the world. He backs off from the stance he took in the first book where he says that life is essentially without existential meaning.

(Question 4) Are you a bug or a butterfly? Does the fact that you can flap your wings in Toledo and cause a lovely afternoon shower in Timbuktu mean that the world has a greater meaning beyond the one you create for yourself?

[Chad]

As I stated on the book club thread, I really enjoyed these. I especially enjoyed the first two: The Universe Does Not Give a Flying Fuck About You and You Are Dying and Your World is a Lie. They provide a nice wake up call and reminder.

The Universe Does Not Give a Flying Fuck About You does a good job of instilling the idea that we need to stop screwing around and get to where we want and need to be.

You Are Dying and Your World is a Lie, as you mentioned, builds on this and talks about our fear. This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately, as it relates to failure. I know I have mentioned it on one or two other threads, but I really need to put myself out there to possibly fail again. If for no other reason, than it's more interesting to be in that place of possibility. Without the possibility of failure there is no success.

I will be giving these to my nephews at some point.

(Question 1) Does the desire for an epic legacy produce an inflation that does nothing more than extend keeping-up-with-the-Joneses to the afterlife? How much effort should we put into expanding our influence beyond the nanosecond we are here? Why?

After reading all of the "books", I didn't think the idea of expanding my influence past my death invalidated his idea that ones worth is only measured by oneself. He appears to be trying to tie both the idea that the only way you can do something epic is to be true to yourself, while including the idea that caring about something other than yourself is part of finding fulfillment. Now, he does do this slightly ham-handedly with his wording.

(Question 2) Many of us pursue ERE for the control it provides. By gaining control over the mundane yet necessary elements of life can we use the resulting freedom to be out of control in more useful ways? Can we use the liberation to, as he said, experience what we most don't want to experience?

Yes, ERE definitely provides a means of building a base to experience life and find what it is important to us in life.

I don't like the use of the term "hardship", as it implies something truly negative. Hardship is not working out 6 days a week and competing in a triathlon. Hardship is being orphaned at 4 years old. No one wants that, but almost everyone could benefit, and even enjoy, some type of physical exertion working towards a goal.

(Question 3) Have you successfully circumvented the cattle chutes? How? Or maybe you happily followed the herd. If so, how did it turn out?

I have done the cattle chutes twice and been epic once (in my career). The first cattle chute/herd I did kind of unknowingly, as I was young and searching for something, but never found it. I then got out of the herd and did the epic part of my career, which was coaching. Unfortunately, that part of my career was a dead-end financially, though I truly enjoyed it and plan on adding it back in to my life at some point. It was at this point that I consciously decided to join the herd again, with the goal of building up my capital and EREing. I'm now working on getting out the of herd again, but hopefully with a way to earn a little more money.

(Question 4) Are you a bug or a butterfly? Does the fact that you can flap your wings in Toledo and cause a lovely afternoon shower in Timbuktu mean that the world has a greater meaning beyond the one you create for yourself?

Yes, I do think that impacting others does add meaning to your life, but you still create that world and the meaning of it for yourself.

[henrik]

Thanks for the recommendation, I don't have time to participate in a lengthy discussion (need to go do some epic shit instead, haha), but I enjoyed the read.

My favourite was "Disobey"-- the notion that rules are other people's opinions is something I've been trying to get across to some people recently, he does a much better job at wording it.

There were some funny contradictions, like talking about people wasting time watching TV and then casually, in the same post, mentioning having just watched the whole Battlestar Galactica series, but I don't think they do much harm to the overall sentiment.

[jennypenny]

Does doing epic bad shit count? If so, I’m AWESOME!

I like Truant’s general concept and how he tries to get people off of their asses. I also like how he pushes to let go of the past. I would recommend them to people. He didn’t completely flesh out some of his ideas though, and it left me with some questions. I’d love to sit down over a bottle of Glenmorangie and go toe-to-toe with him over some of it. I have two main issues with his ideas.

First, looking into the abyss constantly isn't healthy. You can't live your entire life acutely aware of your own mortality. It doesn't even matter how long you live if you don't ever do what you wanted to do. Being immersed in your own life (I mean like 'flow') is more important than an awareness of how fleeting it is.

He also says towards the end of the first book “You are very small.” No! When looking at yourself compared with an infinite universe, then yes, he’s right. BUT, you are the center of your own universe. Most of the time, you are not small, you are everything. I think it’s important to remember that, too.

Second, he talked (in the second book?) about experiencing lows to appreciate the highs. That strikes me as the problem of an intelligent, well-off, healthy, white male who's led a fairly privileged existence. Most people get plenty of opportunities to feel the burn. I think the experience is probably different if you choose to suffer, as opposed to having a challenge thrust upon you (like sickness or poverty). Many people start out in a hole, and have to do epic things just to get back to even.

(Question 1) Does the desire for an epic legacy produce an inflation that does nothing more than extend keeping-up-with-the-Joneses to the afterlife? How much effort should we put into expanding our influence beyond the nanosecond we are here? Why?

Yes!!!! This is my new pet peeve. Why does everything have to mean something? Isn't it enough to enjoy your life and leave the world the way you found it? Or maybe leave it a little bit better? Something doesn't have to be epic to be meaningful.

(Question 2) Many of us pursue ERE for the control it provides. By gaining control over the mundane yet necessary elements of life can we use the resulting freedom to be out of control in more useful ways? Can we use the liberation to, as he said, experience what we most don't want to experience?

I think Truant didn't emphasize the mundane part enough. Someone who only read Truant's books would focus on the epic stuff without gaining control of the rest of their life first. ERE is a sensible way to make room for the epic stuff. It's a balance. The epic stuff makes the mundane more tolerable, and the mundane provides the resources to make the epic happen.

(Question 3) Have you successfully circumvented the cattle chutes? How? Or maybe you happily followed the herd. If so, how did it turn out?

In most ways, I guess I did. Did it make me happier? I’m not sure. It makes it easier to live with myself, but there has definitely been a price to pay for choosing not to be "normal.''

(Question 4) Are you a bug or a butterfly? Does the fact that you can flap your wings in Toledo and cause a lovely afternoon shower in Timbuktu mean that the world has a greater meaning beyond the one you create for yourself?

I'm both. I’ve said before I think all lives have meaning regardless of epic-ness. Look at Dick Proenneke and Daniel Suelo. They live(d) similarly, but Proenneke’s was bug-like and Suelo’s is an attempt to influence people. Both have meaning, and, in the end, both are influential.

It's wrong to assume that someone who lives their entire life in the cattle chute isn't influencing people. It just might not be the influence Truant would want.


*edited to replace 'flush out' with 'flesh out' -- autocorrect is evil!

[Ego]

Back when I first posted these in the Book Club thread I sent the first book to a Boomer friend. Next time I saw him he guffawed at the "be epic" message. I thought that was interesting as I really liked the get-off-your-ass-and-do-it attitude. He found it silly, or maybe naive. Actually, probably both.

Jenny I think I am finally getting your point about how everything doesn't have to mean something. I hate to admit that. What a PITA!

[jennypenny]

I liked the books. I don't think it's a silly concept. I just come at it from a different angle than Truant. I don't want to go looking for something to do just because it's epic or meaningful. I want to challenge myself to do the things that I really want to do regardless of how crazy they seem, and then look back and think "That was epic."

But if you're going to fail, you might as well make it an epic fail.

[jennypenny]

Jenny I think I am finally getting your point about how everything doesn't have to mean something. I hate to admit that. What a PITA!

Ha!

When you believe that everything has meaning, it relieves the pressure to inject meaning into everything.

[Felix]

Truant seems to be of the Nihilist/existentialist school of thought. You may also like Camus, Sartre and deSade (I hope you disagree with his conclusions, but he does ask all the important but taboo questions) if you are into this. There is even a book out called 'how to be an existentialist' which is a mix of philosophy and self help book on the topic.

The big plus of existentialism is the idea of creating your own values, life, meaning. The problem with this is that they break all your yardsticks you could use to do this first and now you're left hanging with your sudden freedom.

On to the questions.

1) I'm with Jenny. No need to create meaning. I like Joseph Campbell on the topic:
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

Meaning-creation is too rational an approach towards living an 'epic' life.

2) There is something very true about facing fears. But I am not sure it is an end in itself. It is useful in the pursuit of something worthwhile, but not just so. Do not let fear keep you from doing what you want. But there is a trap in making facing your fears the new thing you have to do, There is also a paradoxically self-defeating pointlessness in people telling you exactly how you should be self-actualizing without following someone else 'the right way'.

3)I've always played by the rules and done 'the right thing'. It's kinda boring. Also often not really a good thing. One needs to measure the rules against your own Intelligence and conscience to not become somebody else's useful idiot (too often).

4) I like the Buddhist viewpoint that doing good is its own reward and bad deeds are their own punishment. So being good is good for me in the moment I do it. The results are beyond my means of influence, I think.

[Spartan_Warrior]

I enjoyed these posts on multiple levels. I can relate to Truant as he's also an independent author of genre fiction (I'm sure you all noticed his amusingly titled "Fat Vampire" series in the related items). Thus, personally, the biggest thing I'll probably take away from this is the advertisement idea of putting small, provocatively titled blog posts on Amazon for free.

I too noticed contradictions like the TV thing, though to be fair 1) Truant owns up to this particular hypocrisy in one of the posts (can't be arsed to look for it but I think it's something along the lines of "We all watch too much TV, present company included") and 2) I think there are good and bad ways of watching TV. TV is just a form of media, like any other. Occasionally watching something good on Netflix to me is very different from some people I know who compulsively need to have the TV on at all times no matter what garbage they end up watching or how many commercials they endure. But I digress...

I appreciated how he used a concept that most would feel uncomfortable about--like the whole lack of fuck-giving on the universe's part--and transformed it into an almost uplifting personal philosophy and imperative to action. @Ego, I believe, you once asked me what I "get out of" a belief in physical determinism, and I think it's similar to what Truant gets out of the belief in the smallness of the human race. That the world isn't going to end if we try something and fail. That what happens is what must happen, and not anything to dwell over. It's all just atoms bouncing in a void, so have fun and do what you want to with your life before your particular configuration of atoms disintegrates.

Re: "epic", I don't think he means it has to be some grand act or great success. Johnny definitely plays loose and fast with his language. But reading between the lines somewhat, his own personal acts of epicness include raising his own kid rather than delegating it to the indoctrination cent--er, school system, and self-publishing fiction. Epic, therefore, doesn't seem to mean it has to be grand or remembered to history; I think he's using it as a shorthand term for "personally meaningful". Everyone has his own quest. Acts that work toward that quest, rather than fulfilling someone else's quest like the average lifetime corporate drone, are "epic" acts, IMO.

Questions
1. I don't think it has to produce inflation. In "How to Live Forever", Truant defines his version of "leaving a legacy" as simply the vast array of "butterfly effect" interactions that result from your existence. This is not necessarily positive or negative, or even all that influential. If, like Truant, your epic acts are writing and child-rearing, then your influence lives on through your readers and children, however many they may be, and then further through their legacies too, and so on. If that's his definition of legacy, I can get behind it. Though IMO it's a little too inevitable for me to call a legacy. Everyone lends some form of causality to some event or other, so everyone leaves a legacy in this butterfly effect sense, rendering the concept a little too broad to have much meaning.

If by "legacy", he means that your name is remembered as THE PERSON WHO WAS/DID X, that could definitely lead to lifestyle inflation and the compulsive need for "great achievements" or epic deeds in the traditional sense. Is it a bad thing, though? To be remembered, you have to become pretty good at whatever you're remembered for. Competence and excellence seems virtuous.

2. ERE is one of the most conservative, resilient, and low-risk lifestyles I can imagine. That said, and I may get pushback on this--I won't use the "S" word--but there's still that somewhat Stoic undercurrent of "controlled lack". Of pushing the limits of our individual comfort levels to find the most efficient intersections between comfort/convenience/pleasure, and cost. This is a community that discusses cold showers, sleeping on the floor, whether or not to use shampoo, toasters, air conditioning, houses, cars. Everything is questioned. Tolerances are pushed.

I think ERE is very compatible with what Truant is talking about. Not just arbitrary (or forced, as Jenny noted--an important distinction) hardship, but hardship that pushes our limits to grow as individuals. Just like in exercise, the right amount of controlled resistance helps us grow; too much leads to injury and reverses growth.

ERE as a lifestyle and most ERErs as a socioeconomic group have the luxury of picking and choosing their hardships. I do think it's an ideal condition for growth.

3. I think Disobey was my favorite of the four. I agree with Truant's philosophy of rule-following; act by your internal sense of morality. If the law agrees with it, all the better; if it doesn't, just don't get caught by the normality police! I think this is a common INTJ trait? Laws weren't handed down from the heavens on high and they ain't got diddly squat on real ethics.

My own herd-following progression seems to be tracking Truant's. I was also a straight-A, college-bound, rule-follower until my early twenties, when I started to question the direction I was going, whether that was getting me toward my goals. I became interested in early retirement as soon as I got my first job and knew that was my permanent ticket out of the cattle chutes. I've always been an "outsider" socially, though, and along with that has come a steadily increasing apathy toward what other people think. I've found that ERE has only increased that trend: paring down my life to what really matters, without much regard for what others think matters.

For now, since I still work my very rule-following 9-5, I guess I'm a herd-follower, but a seditious one. I'm taking all the plentiful grass the farmer throws out to fatten me up, but instead of gorging on it and getting complacent like the rest of the herd, I'm storing it up or planting seeds with it; and I plan to jump out of the line long before we hit the meat grinders. Belabored metaphors! Just part of what I bring to the table, folks!

4. I have to admit, as a writer, I think that writing something so good it's remembered long after you're dead is the height of achievement in the endeavor. Does it add anything to the writer's experience of life? Of course not, he's already dead. But I think its endurance says something about the piece of art, which in turn says something about the life of the artist. It's a kind of legacy. This seems to tie back into the first question, and I have to again say (cautiously) that I think a legacy has virtue, because it necessarily comes out of achieving epic things.

Furthermore, I don't think he's saying that because humans are very small, that everything in our lives, including our history, is or should be meaningless to us in our lives. Legacies are a kind of history and I think they do add meaning to our existences. We can read things written two thousand years ago and still find meaning in it. That's a kind of telepathy; the author has contacted you from beyond the grave, centuries after his death, to tell you his story or share his wisdom. I think that's pretty damn cool, something that does make our world and our brief, fleeting experiences of our world a little more meaningful. So I guess you can call me a butterfly.

Good pick, Ego.

[henrik]

But I think its endurance says something about the piece of art, which in turn says something about the life of the artist.

I think that's a very clever insight about the nature of artistic legacy. I never thought about it like that.

[Ego]

Truant seems to be of the Nihilist/existentialist school of thought. You may also like Camus, Sartre and deSade

Today would have been Sartre's 110th birthday.



from Being And Nothingness

[jennypenny]

Truant seems to be of the Nihilist/existentialist school of thought. You may also like Camus, Sartre and deSade

Today would have been Sartre's 110th birthday.



from Being And Nothingness

Nah, it's knowing you're free regardless of what's been done to you.

Always about the 'doing' with you, instead of just 'being' ... (my crappy Yoda impersonation )

[Dragline]

This was an interesting and entertaining group of essays, which reads like lost scenes from “Fight Club”. The essay is a 19th century “lost art” (see Emerson, Mark Twain), but it appears to be making a comeback in the internet age.

What struck me about them is how author exemplifies Strauss & Howe’s “Nomad” archetype, even down to a stereotype. What I am talking about:

“Nomad generations are born during a spiritual awakening, a time of social ideals and spiritual agendas when youth-fired attacks break out against the established institutional order. Nomads grow up as underprotected children during this awakening, come of age as alienated young adults in a post-awakening world, mellow into pragmatic midlife leaders during a historical crisis, and age into tough post-crisis elders. By virtue of this location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their rising-adult years of hell-raising and for their midlife years of hands-on, get-it-done leadership. Their principle endowments are often in the domain of liberty, survival, and honor. Their best-known historical leaders include Nathaniel Bacon, William Stoughton, George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses Grant, Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower. These have been cunning, hard-to-fool realists—taciturn warriors who prefer to meet problems and adversaries one-on-one. (Example among today’s living generations: Generation X.)”

Truant is the alienated young adult who followed the rules, got burned, experienced failure and survived with his liberty and honor intact. In fact, these essays are really all about “liberty, survival and honor”. Since Truant and most of the rest of us don’t live in worlds where physical survival is an issue, it’s really the Survival of a personal identity that is at issue and is explored in the first two essays. Disobey is mostly about Liberty and How to Live Forever is mostly about Honor.

(Question 1) Does the desire for an epic legacy produce an inflation that does nothing more than extend keeping-up-with-the-Joneses to the afterlife? How much effort should we put into expanding our influence beyond the nanosecond we are here? Why?

I suppose it might, but we are talking about definitions here first. If “epic legacy” means impressing the whole world or popular culture, then yes, it’s just part of a rat race. On the other hand, if “epic” just means “meaningful to the individual and maybe a few others”, then the answer is no. Epic is probably a the wrong word – as others have pointed out, “meaningful” is what we are looking for, but not everything is meaningful.

(Question 2) Many of us pursue ERE for the control it provides. By gaining control over the mundane yet necessary elements of life can we use the resulting freedom to be out of control in more useful ways? Can we use the liberation to, as he said, experience what we most don't want to experience?

Yes. Once you have satisfied the requirements of your environment (food, shelter, clothes, taxes), you can have whatever experiences you might want to have.

(Question 3) Have you successfully circumvented the cattle chutes? How? Or maybe you happily followed the herd. If so, how did it turn out?

I have done both (what else would you expect?). For example, in my job I have maneuvered myself so that I spend a lot of time doing things I enjoy and little time doing things I don’t, which are delegated or referred to others. I have positioned myself so that I can quit at any time. I have also rejected all manner of “professional development” and other conferences and such in favor of spending time with my family, reading and fooling around on strange and wonderful fora on the internet.

(Question 4) Are you a bug or a butterfly? Does the fact that you can flap your wings in Toledo and cause a lovely afternoon shower in Timbuktu mean that the world has a greater meaning beyond the one you create for yourself?

Both. (And pretty frickin’ ugly when you combine them.) Hah!

Some other thoughts and musings on this:

An “epic” thing might be just meaningful to you or meaningful to a group of people that care about a particular thing. Here’s an epic video I made last month. It’s epic because I enjoyed making it and its meaningful to my son, his friends and a lot of families (especially moms I have found, who provide much of the soundtrack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdqoUmFOecs#t=45 Sometimes just helping people experience and appreciate life is epic all by itself. One fun thing about YouTube (and the internet) is that you can see how many people watch your work every day.

My youngest son made a nice drawing of a building/perspective as his last art project. I really thought it was good and am going to get a frame for it and put it in my office next to my mother’s art works. They might not be epic to you, but they are to me. And it makes my space unique and something people like to see.

Truant’s description of his grandfather’s funeral reminded me of my grandfather’s funeral, in Belize City, Belize, which I attended with my father when I was 16. (That’s a little country in Central America bordering on Guatemala and Mexico, formerly British Honduras.) My grandfather was not really important by contemporary standards -- just a former customs official who raised five kids and was a nice guy to most people. Yet hundreds in his community turned out for his funeral. And they not only went to the church for the service, but all walked, yes walked, in a giant procession from the church to the graveyard some miles away for the internment. It’s a form of honor that has been lost in most places in the US, where convenience trumps dedication.

And then I read an obituary today of a person whose name was not familiar, but whose work certainly was: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertain ... story.html

If you have never sat with someone who was dying it is something you need to do. You will never appreciate your life and humanity until you experience someone who is losing theirs. It is profound. Yet we are afraid of it and try to hide it in most Western society countries.

And it made me think about how impossible it is to predict what will be “epic” or meaningful to other people in the future. After all, he lived the last half of his life in obscurity. Other now famous folks like Spinoza and Van Gogh were nobodies even after death for some period of time. And once very famous people like Bernarr McFadden are now obscure. So it seems better to me to work on the subjective “epic” in the short term. Who knows whether it will be “epic” in the long term

Somewhere in my memory I was reminded of this poetic description: “You will remain alive in the world until the last living person breathes your name.” I don’t know if I agree with that, but it’s an interesting thought nonetheless.

Thanks for the pick, Ego.

BTW, for me this book club is epic. So I do try to keep it alive. It's that garden analogy again.

[jennypenny]

This was an interesting and entertaining group of essays, which reads like lost scenes from “Fight Club”.

^^This.

I finally watched "Fight Club." Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have stood up and cheered. I guess I've lost some of my edge because I liked it, just like I liked Truant's books, but I was left feeling unsatisfied. Truant and Durden are absolutely right. So now what? That's where I am.

Maybe that's why I like ERE. It's at least a part of the answer.

[Ego]

Dragline, that was a beautiful post.

If you have never sat with someone who was dying it is something you need to do. You will never appreciate your life and humanity until you experience someone who is losing theirs. It is profound. Yet we are afraid of it and try to hide it in most Western society countries.

In the last few years we've had this opportunity with parents, siblings and now with residents at Soylent towers. It focuses the attention on what is important and puts the nonsense into perspective. I think that perspective can come across to others as callousness, which is unfortunate.

And it made me think about how impossible it is to predict what will be “epic” or meaningful to other people in the future. After all, he lived the last half of his life in obscurity. Other now famous folks like Spinoza and Van Gogh were nobodies even after death for some period of time. And once very famous people like Bernarr McFadden are now obscure. So it seems better to me to work on the subjective “epic” in the short term. Who knows whether it will be “epic” in the long term.

Somewhere in my memory I was reminded of this poetic description: “You will remain alive in the world until the last living person breathes your name.” I don’t know if I agree with that, but t’s an interesting thought nonetheless.

I understand the desire to remain alive. It is natural and elemental. While researching my heritage to acquire Italian citizenship it struck me that these people - my ancestors - were gone, forgotten, and would have been lost forever if not for my urge to dig them up for my own selfish reasons. I remember how upset my mother was when my father, the last to know the stories of these people, died and took the memories with him. Of course she was sad that he was gone but she was deeply troubled by the fact that his memories and experiences were lost forever. She followed him shortly thereafter, in part because she couldn't cope with the reality, or I should say the finality, of it all.

While the desire to live on is elemental it is also impossible, so indulging the desire is at best useless and at worst harmful.

The subjective-epic seems like a good way to approach life.

I finally watched "Fight Club." Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have stood up and cheered. I guess I've lost some of my edge because I liked it, just like I liked Truant's books, but I was left feeling unsatisfied. Truant and Durden are absolutely right. So now what? That's where I am.

Eat breakfast like Raymond K. Hessel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu0pJy1t454

[Chad]

Dragline, that was a beautiful post.

Yeah, after reading Dragline's I wanted to pull my drivel off this thread.

[jennypenny]

Tangentially related...

This is a good show overall, but there is an interesting bit @14:00 about how humans know their time is limited and how it affects us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PWlT1FTgeU

If you're into this, Kaku did another show on BBC about time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtJEwKAA ... A17F8A88A4

In the second show, I found Stephen Kern's idea of Public Time interesting, but it's a topic for another thread.

[Ego]

Amazing how our minds automatically filter out the stuff we don't want to see. I wonder how many "senior moments" are actually unconscious filtering for self preservation.

[theanimal]

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said. I really enjoyed the series, especially You Are Dying and Your World is a Lie and The Universe Doesn't Give A Flying Fuck About You. So much so that I read them multiple times! I found them pretty inspiring, yet now that I think about it I haven't really made any changes...

Anyways, thanks for the selection Ego.

[Dragline]

Here's a new audio feature about Gen-X featuring Neal Howe that goes with my comment:

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/06/23 ... -x?from=dc