The Education of Axel Heyst

[shaz]

Hog maw is an Amish dish using pig stomach. Souse and studena use pigs feet. You might be able to get those inexpensively.

[jennypenny]

Holy hell. I *wish* I had written this: https://palladiummag.com/2022/01/06/quit-your-job/

Wow, that was so ... I dunno ... it sounds like a Stoa version of The Secret combined with standard-issue religious teaching in the US. Some of it is downright scary sounding to me. For example

If your vision is beautiful and sound, it will flourish. Resources will unexpectedly come out of the woodwork to support it. If your vision doesn’t have that virtue, you will be struck down for its lack. That’s life. It is also justice.

Try rereading it without getting pumped up by the first few paragraphs about quitting work (which are the best part of the article), and see if it starts to grate or offend. I thought the author was going to suggest a post-work life of exploration and simple living embodying one's natural role in the environment, but instead they suggest that quitting work is only a means to finding one's ordained purpose (and, importantly, externally ordained, not self-fulfilling).

This might not be appropriate for your journal so I'll stop. I only wanted to offer a counterargument and point out that living your life trying to please the universe doesn't seem much different than any other external constraint to me.

[jacob]

I thought the author was going to suggest a post-work life of exploration and simple living embodying one's natural role in the environment, but instead they suggest that quitting work is only a means to finding one's ordained purpose (and, importantly, externally ordained, not self-fulfilling).

This might not be appropriate for your journal so I'll stop. I only wanted to offer a counterargument and point out that living your life trying to please the universe doesn't seem much different than any other external constraint to me.

It's not my journal, but I think it's highly appropriate

If I compare to ERE from my perspective, it (ERE) does feel like an eternal constraint in many ways. There's writing a 1000 blog posts, the book, moderating this forum for 12 years, and taking abuse from various corners of social media. Why did I quit my physics career to start this instead of FIRE'ing to a quiet life of building cuckoo clocks?

I'm a rather areligious person, but if "belief" can be abstractedly defined as "something that causes you to act..." then I strongly believe that ERE (regardless of which version) needs to be part of the world-system. As such this [added system] apparently holds more value to me than money, people, tradition, or even family. I think "ordained" only suggests the level of strength of this belief although we should be careful when words means very different things to different people. I think of it more as a "curse". "If not me then who" ... damn you universe... so me it is.

Another way of saying it---what I think is the author's point---is that if you can not find your soulcraft within the stultifying framework of corporate America, the [nuclear] family, clubs, or traditional institutions AND you have the means and talents to do so (<- so there's a certain amount of "aristocratic privilege" there), you practically have a duty to break out of the aforementioned [Plato] caves, but you're also responsible for the failure should your vision prove wrong. Thus this isn't an exercise in carpe diem only to move back into the parental basement unit.

Yet another way of saying it ... it's about following your internally subjective calling (if you have one). You're deliberately rejecting the currently existing external constraints (career, ...) in order to do so. You may set up new external constraints (which I did) but it is not required. This takes a lot of ego. One has to be pretty brazen (and arrogant?) to essentially reject existing intersubjective (cultural) programming and external collective structures and proceed to build replacements.

Yet another way... you're basically not corruptible. There's very little anyone can offer you (money, sex, power, fame, ...) to sway you other than a better chance of implementing your vision.

I also think it's rare to feel this way. It's definitely not a FIRE manifesto, but I suspect many FIRE-OGs felt this way.

[AxelHeyst]

@jp No, your comment is entirely welcome here - feel free to flesh it out more if you like.

I think the message is going to resonate with a small number of people. And as I discovered later, the context of that essay was that it’s somewhat directed at elite youth (I’m nowhere near elite society, just to clarify), so I’m kind of co-opting the message which was aimed at a different audience.

But +1 to what Jacob said. I’ve always felt I had some kind of calling, or purpose. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’ve always *wanted* to have a purpose, something I have to discover and co-create with the universe. This also depends on your metaphysics: I happen to think that Axel Heyst is a self-referential whorl in the divine fabric of the Universe whose most fundamental duty is appreciation of the divine, which is also self-worship, and so the Universe’s Purpose for Me is also My purpose for Myself. There’s a lot of ways of thinking about it. Put another way, the idea that I *don't* have a purpose is terrifying.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that ~”humans were put on this earth to fart around, don’t let anyone tell you any different”, and I appreciate the humor of it, but if I believed it I’d probably turn to drink for the rest of my short, self-destructive life.

For me, the first part of the essay about quitting work was boring. The second part is what rustled my jimmys, even on a third read. Although I think it’s entirely appropriate that it grates for maybe a majority of people.

Eta: I’m okay with being a servant of the universe. I’m not okay with being a servant of the church, the government, my parents expectations, sociocultural norms, etc. I see a big difference between the two.

[7Wannabe5]

you're basically not corruptible. There's very little anyone can offer you (money, sex, power, fame, ...)

How about potential cure for non-preventable debilitating, very painful, chronic disease? Then you (I)might be like, "Oh, Powerful Goddess of all that is High Orange, I call upon thee to be merciful, and will pledge myself to 9-5 employment for the remainder of my days, if thou will but provide me, your humble servant, with the blessed bounty of your highest technology applied to newest extremely specialized research in the realm of auto-immune functions!"

Of course, if/when such a pharmaceutical were to become available off-brand OTC at $5 a pop, then you (me) might revert to "See you later, suckers! I'm going back to semi-slacker mode!" So, one's potential for corruptibility might be a somewhat complex function.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that ~”humans were put on this earth to fart around, don’t let anyone tell you any different”, and I appreciate the humor of it, but if I believed it I’d probably turn to drink for the rest of my short, self-destructive life.

One of my sisters, in an attempt to break me free from fall into erotic vortex of my mid-life Islamic child-bride "marriage", said to me in firm tone, "Remember, Kurt Vonnegut has always been your true Dominant!" And, yup, she was right.

[jacob]

How about potential cure for non-preventable debilitating, very painful, chronic disease? [...] So, one's potential for corruptibility might be a somewhat complex function.

I've found it unpossible to do creative [brain] work on a project that I fundamentally don't believe in. Using the definition of "belief" I gave above: Lacking belief the mind simply doesn't act. So in my case it would mean routine labor that I can mentally check out of. This mind wants to be free.

[Ego]

I respect what they are trying to accomplish. Encouraging people to make significant individual sacrifices today for a better collective tomorrow is not easy without at minimum touching on religion and purpose. They outline their thoughts in a previous essay.

https://palladiummag.com/2021/07/29/the ... l-mastery/

Most people are not born with fully-formed visions of what paths in life they should pursue. Instead, we observe cues of affirmation from those around us which mark out some choices as particularly desirable: praise, respect, reward, encouragement, and prestige. We observe these cues throughout our lives, beginning with our parents. These cues tell us which people should be imitated and which paths in life are worthy of effort and sacrifice. They communicate that a particular choice has social sanction. A particular career, social circle, class, or subculture is usually defined by its very strong norms of what is or is not sanctioned. People in those domains must follow these norms to be accepted and well-regarded—in other words, they must follow particular social scripts that mark them out as insiders to the group.

and

A dynamic society doesn’t happen just because people wish for it. Instead, its major power centers and institutions have to actively promote the right norms and pathways. They must allow new spaces to continually open up in which new missions are pursued, new plans are developed, and new kinds of mastery are achieved. They must tolerate disruptions that might be temporarily inconvenient but can drive the whole society forward. They must be willing to grant public sanction to success in order to integrate it, instead of seeing it as an inherent threat.

and

The paths of industrial progress which such a society could undertake would be greater than anything we have yet imagined. But they will only be possible if people are willing to break out of our collective stagnation and give themselves over to plans, visions, and modes of life which are worthy of them. Great things are granted only to those who dare to pursue them.

[chenda]

I didn't like this bit:

People fear the just-world fallacy, but in practice, most supposed fallacies work just fine—especially this one. We’re actually dealing with what we might as easily call just-world providence. The universe has provided us with a certain system of natural justice.

[Lemur]

Put another way, the idea that I *don't* have a purpose is terrifying.

Apologies ahead if my quote here Axel is slightly out of context but I thought it was interesting to note the different ways a person can reach this active form of nihilism. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library ... e-nihilism

In contrast to being terrified, my first step to overcoming nihilism was feeling absolutely relieved to know that I do not have a purpose and I am not obligated to have one! I can make my purpose whatever I wanted it to be and change course whenever I wanted to as well.

ERE sits on my board of advisors when refining my purpose.

[zbigi]

I don't think I can make myself have a purpose. Such decision is very easily undone, esp. at the sight of any serious obstacles.

[AxelHeyst]

Lemur, yes, at the moment I’m not drawing too fine a distinction between externally mandated purpose and self-created purpose: as long as I can get One and run with it, that’ll do. Im fond of Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, and yet often prefer the story of the Universe’s purpose for me.

For one thing, at some level, the distinction between “I’ve discovered what my externally mandated purpose is” and “I’ve made up my Purpose from my own will” is semantics, or style, or a matter of further belief. Really it’s just a story. I’ve always been more concerned with whether a story is useful rather than is it true (although I certainly have a lot of respect for truth… but some things in life are resistant to truth analysis, with the best fallback being usefulness). And by useful I mostly mean, is it in support of virtue [and does it lead away from despair].

As the Preacher told Mal with his dying breath at the end of Serenity, “I don’t care what you believe, just, believe…”

[Jin+Guice]

I found the article inspiring yet disturbing. I consider it a personally important skill to be able to extract what I want from a piece of writing and examine the thesis, author, tone and culture separately from the parts I found interesting or helpful.

My own personal religion is that nihilism is the highest yet least useful truth. While I feel that I have some greater purpose, I think that this is a result of a combination of ego, biology and culture. I believe that there is no grand external morality, that nihilism is in fact the greatest universal truth. However, after this nihilism fails to be useful bc one must still live. Therefore, all morality is defined relationally.

Since morality is relational, it is next defined as a matter of perspective and scale. Thus the morality of the solar system is not necessarily the morality of the world. And the morality of industrial capitalism is not the morality of ecosphere. If the scale is contained by another, and the moralities conflict the morality of the container will eventually dominate, though not necessarily on a time-scale of the human life... or human species.

That's all I've got so far, not sure it would stand up to academic critique, but it is my working hypothesis...

[KRUMPn]

Dude, your journal has been super fascinating to follow. Especially with how much you've managed to fit into just two years. I've been lurking in the forums for ~5 years and it honestly feels like you've been here that entire time with how much you contribute and have learned. Keep up the good work, I'm excited to follow along!

[AxelHeyst]

Thanks Krumpn! It helps to get laid off - lots of extra time to study ERE arcana
--
I finished the first episode of the podcast.

The first ep is pretty short to get the ball rolling. Trying to figure out how to communicate [one of the failure modes of] ERE to people who aren't interested in RE without totally going off on a wild tangent of ERE-specific jargon is, uh, challenging. In an earlier take I started rambling about consilience, resilience, and loose coupling, and realized I was getting way too ahead of myself. I am going to talk about ERE explicitly, in no small part because credits gotta go where credits due, but I'm trying to spill those particular beans at the right time, in the right way. It feels like a really intricate challenge of organization of information through time, what information supports other information, what information should be presented in a "failure" mode that is understandable, with a leveling up of that information planned later...

Monologues for now because it's easy and I need as many small wins as possible early on in this project to build momentum, but I do intend to do interviews, co-hosts, and otherwise play around with format.

I really appreciate the comments I got on this project earlier, and also a huge shoutout to the ERE Mastermind Group for their support and encouragement. You folks are the actual best.

[RoamingFrancis]

That was beautiful; it's exactly the piece of media I've been looking to send to two friends of mine.

Even the apocalypse will have Tuesdays

[mountainFrugal]

I really enjoyed listening to this. You strike an excellent balance between seriousness and playfulness for such a heavy topic. Looking forward to 002!

[Jiimmy]

Enjoyed ep1, looking forward to more! Nice work

[AxelHeyst]

Thanks! My Mastermind Group goal for two weeks from now is to release ep2, and then ep3 two weeks after that. (Incidentally, launching the podcast gained me 34xp for my Bard class in my dndGTD system...
--
It Pays to Win?
When I was young, I enjoyed a high level of competitiveness. I really enjoyed winning, although I like to think I wasn't a jerk about it - I wouldn't step on anyone else just to win, but in a fair match, I'd do my damnedest. Relatedly, I had a high level of "don't-quit". I'd just keep going on something until it was done, or I'd won. Exhaustion or pain wasn't a reason to quit, it was just information that victory was going to be even sweeter because I'd overcome more shit.

I've read that in training for special forces soldiers, they do everything they can to boost the already quite high desire to win. The saying is "It pays to win", and they reinforce this by e.g. letting the winning boat crew sit out the next lap through the surf. The point is, they *reinforce* the idea that putting in effort, extreme effort even, to win, is worth it. The don't-quit of these soldiers is legendary.

Contrast this with a common experience in the w*rkforce. I'll take myself as an example. My organization was disorganized enough that I almost never really "won". Partly because I had a high level of hustle and no boundaries, I became a sort of unofficial firefighter. Any project that was in trouble might be handed to me, and I'd crank on it, and it would get out of trouble. But it still wouldn't be *good*, it'd just be "no longer so terrible that we'll get sued or not paid." So it never felt like I bagged any wins.

Effectively, my work environment was training me that "It doesn't matter what you do, you're going to not win." Because I went in to my career with an above-average level of innate don't-quit, and am kinda stupid, it took me a long time to figure this out. But over the years, the "training" began to sink into my subconcsious, and my don't-quit began to dampen. I noticed this consciously at several points, and it filled me with spurts of terror, and I would scramble around trying to get myself out of that situation, because having high healthy hustle and an exuberant desire to win (with virtue) is one of the things I like most about myself.

Looking back on it, it's quite possible that this attempt to avoid the implicit training that "you can't win no matter what" is what led me to make the lateral career moves I did - I was trying to find a circumstance where it was possible to win. I had some limited success with that, but I think I spent too much time in the training that by the time I'd engineered myself to a position where I *could* would, I'd lost a lot of the hustle and don't-quit I'd gone in with. The last few years I had gained a lot of autonomy, and I recall struggling to properly apply hustle to what I was doing. I'm convinced that if I'd retained the don't-quit I had when I was 22, I'd have been kicking more ass than I was, would have been demonstrating more value, and might not have been laid off.

Whatever, I don't actually care now about my end-of-career results, and think of them "fixing the glitch" as a gift. (Although it does rather irk me that, from one framing, they laid me off for not delivering sufficient value, even though they are the organization responsible for grinding my will to hustle down to the point where I couldn't muster sufficient hustle to provide that value....)

Point is, now that I'm 9 months away from w*rk, I've got the perspective to really appreciate what happened to me, and to realize that I'm no longer under that oppressive training program. In fact, I can begin my own bespoke training program to regain the don't-quit I once had and then some, to re-learn that "It pays to win". I'm not sure exactly what that can look like, but thinking about it explicitly is a step in the right direction.

The first step is to make damn sure I don't enter into any more arrangements where winning is impossible, because of the damage it'll inevitably do to my hustle. No amount of $ is worth grinding my will to win down. For anyone reading along, I think this is relevant to the "work 5 more years and this soul-sucking job and then be FI? Or quit now and figure out some semiERE shtick?" question.

The other is to recognize opportunities to win in my day to day life, even small ones, and remind myself that it's okay to hustle for the W. And when engaged in an activity, to remind myself that it's okay to put in extra effort and not quit prematurely - because literally everything I'm doing now, I'm doing for myself, freely chosen.

Yesterday my goal was to finish paneling the ceiling of the studio I'm building. I began at 7am. I finished the ceiling at 1pm... and then said, y'know what, fuck it, and started on the insulated floor assembly. I finished around 6pm, fingers numb from cold, in the dark, with a headlamp. And it felt.... amazing. I'm still riding residual stoke from it.

[mathiverse]

Wow! I totally jive with this post. I feel like I lost a similar hustle while working. I've often been in situations where I felt like I couldn't win at work or that it didn't even matter if I won because the work was pointless. I think either situation is bad training for life. I think the resulting loss of self efficacy has seeped into my personal life.

I want to go back to having that "won't quit" attitude in my personal life. I also hope I can bring that attitude to my work life since I'm headed back to work for a few years. I think I have to redefine the purpose of work and my attitude towards work if I want to be able to win. Or maybe I have to do some lateral moves like you did to find an organization where I can win. I'm not sure at this point. I'm going to regularly reflect on this once I start working again in order to hopefully find a better way.

[Ego]

Effectively, my work environment was training me that "It doesn't matter what you do, you're going to not win."

ERE for the win?