The Education of Axel Heyst

[NewBlood]

But learning to garden isn't my next step. My next step is to figure out how build an understanding of my site, the climate, soil, etc, integrate with my vision for this place and do checks on how realistic that is based on my available resources and the biophysical limits of my region, and then develop a road map for how to get from here to there. Planting a garden is like six steps in the future. Where should the garden go? How will I water it? How will I integrate windshields and shade coverings into it based on already existing and potential future infrastructure? What species make sense for my site?

Yes, exactly. I definitely want to be growing some tomatoes and other food, but mostly I'd like to restore or improve a piece of land, increase biodiversity, organic matter content, prevent erosion, and help combat aridification. (which, might be a tall order on a 0.5 acre piece of land, but, gotta start somewhere).

[AxelHeyst]

@newblood on the 'gotta start somewhere' idea, one of my notes from the Manual is

**Start with the nucleus and expand outward.** The nucleus serves both as a smaller scale, low stakes learning project, but also serves to increase resilience and self sufficiency of the discipline from which you can build upon.

e.g. For zone 1, establish a 4sm garden and establish 10 trees (oils, citrus, nuts, storable fruit) to start. Start with very compact systems, so you can tend them easily. Intensive is the key here. Expand outwards as you move from startup/big energy input phase to maintenence phase.

This idea is also thematic of what I consider to be Axel's Major Mistake of His 20's - *not* starting with a nucleus and expanding outwards.

--

I'm starting a newsletter. Really what I'm doing is changing my website email subscriber campaign from "blast everyone every time I post a new thing" to "Send an email twice a month that is a specifically written letter that includes new posts, but also the sort of stuff you might find in an actual letter".

I found myself throttling new posts on my site because I was trying to be mindful of spamming people's inboxes, and also feeling like I didn't have a good way to post more, well, newslettery type stuff. I took a few attempts at this in the past but they all fell flat. Switching to a newsletter seems like it will solve this problem (I decouple new posts from email frequency, and have a medium that actually makes sense for non-evergreen content).

In some sense this duplicates my journal here, but with two differences:
1) Part of the reason I bother posting anywhere else on the internet is because I'm trying to reach/engage with people for whom the signals and culture of ERE/the forum are a turnoff, so this is just a further experiment along the lines of engaging with people who aren't and might never become "ERE" people, and

2) I want to write about several topics that are non grata around here (for reasons that I enthusiastically support, btw).

The signup is at the top of my landing page.

[AxelHeyst]

The Levels of Wanting What You Have
I'm reading How to Want What You Have and have also recently been thinking generally about deeper levels of voluntary simplicity, sufficiency mindset, etc. [eta: thinking through JnGs Needs posts is also part of this, I just realized.] I'm playing with the idea of there being multiple levels or depths of insight.

I think an initial insight is a utilitarian one: voluntary simplicity is *useful* as a means to an end (freedom) and there happen to be positive side effects. But sufficiency is still basically a lifehack.

The thing that the book helped me realize is that at this level, the human instinct for *striving* and wanting More hasn't been replaced or reduced at this level, it's only been displaced. The More has shifted from consumer goods and experiences to freedom, stash/col ratio, winning FIRE, earning postconsumer status points, etc. It's just a sneaky version of the same More mentality.

I think I'm at this level now, although my introspection makes me hopeful that I'm getting to the end of this phase. I'm still putting my contentedness on the far side of Achievement, I've just redefined what it is I'm trying to achieve. It's only superficially different than when I spent all my time thinking my life would be perfectly dope when I finally got my truck and lived in a shack in the desert.

The next level (the one I'm peering in to) is where you recognize this displacement, get humbled, and start working on actually addressing the roots of striver/More mindset. (The valley after Mt. Stupid? Hm I think so.) I suspect that it's at this level that you begin to appreciate/grok the intrinsic value of a sufficiency mindset as you spend more time actually *in* a state of contentment as a result of the practices.

I suspect the challenge at this level is losing the ability to be effective in the world. i.e. going too far in the direction of "it's all good man" and sidelining yourself in terms of showing up in the world. (I sense the contradiction here but am not mature enough in the journey to untangle it. I'll have to learn by doing I think.)

That's the work of the third level: the ability to want what you have while simultaneously working to make the world suck less in whatever way you define that.

The levels are

Displacement
Contentment Practices
Effectiveness/Reengagement

I note that right now I fantasize about getting my burn rate down crazy low, like $2.5k/yr, and part of why that's so compelling is because of how 'free' that would mean I am, and honestly I see that I've just defined that as winning a game I've chosen to play.

I've locked in a $10k burn rate for two years (win!) and I think I might blow right past my $7.5k goal and hit $5k this year. It feels doable. To get to $2.5k would require producing a fair amount of the highest cost food ingredients I eat, which I assume is 2-5yrs away at the soonest (and I don't really know).

And I 100% have been assuming that once I hit 5k, or 2.5k, or whatever, then I'll be calm and blissed out and *then* I'll be content. Partly because that would mean that money is a solved problem, but also partly because of what it will take to get there - who I'll have to become, what skills I'll have to learn, what mindsets I'll have to adopt to hit these numbers.

However, in part due to this book I'm beginning practices aimed at getting me to spend time in a state of contentedness, a state of knowing that nothing is ordinary and everything is magnificent. I typically spend very little time in this state (which is a point from the book, humans aren't wired this way, so if we want to be content we have to actually work at it with deliberate practices and train ourselves to be in this state).

These practices serve as a beach head for making better decisions about my life. My WoG right now is influenced by my striver-displacement mentality. How will it adjust to a Enough mentality?

I suspect a major effect is that I'll stop being so wrapped up in my own projects and engage externally more, do a better job at being a friend but also wanting to spend more time on Relatedness-focused activity. (I don't necessarily think this is what anyone would do at this level, I think it's what I will do).

I think a major driver of how much time I spend working on my own situation is dissatisfaction with it (a dissatisfaction that rarely budges from life-normal baseline for more than a few days). As I chip away at that dissatisfaction, I suspect I'll have less interest in constantly improving and tweaking and refining My System, which is, when I think about it, a monument to self-absorption.

[AxelHeyst]

Pulling this in here, bolding mine.

...
In my mind, FIRE is not spreading further and faster because FIRE is a fringe cultural movement, subject to the things that happen to fringe movements and cultural movements. It is a culture started by a scientist and popularized by software engineers and developers and as such it is popular and relatable amongst those groups of people.

FIRE is not necessary for anti-consumerism. The benefits of anti-consumerism and personal resilience extend beyond FIRE and do not require financial independence. I don't think FIRE is necessarily the right choice for everyone. I think eliminating the myth that happiness MUST be bought is the right choice for everyone.

Consumerism is a huge part of our culture. It's the rare SD green anti-capitalist who still doesn't like to buy useless shit off of the internet. When I ask anti-capitalists why they want eat the rich, the answer has been "so I can be happier having less stuff" exactly 0 times. Their concept of redistributing wealth and saving the planet always includes them having more material wealth and more of their own economic problems solved.

Telling people that consumption is not the key to happiness is not new information. A comprehensive method on how to execute the "less consumption" part, geared towards the present day, is new information. In order to receive that information, people need to be open to it.

We are embedded in the cult of consumerism. We are asking people to leave their cult. Demonstrating to cult members that their cult's beliefs are false has a low success rate.

Do I believe that FIRE is an SD orange carrot and that it is less appealing to SD green members? Yes.

Do I believe that we have exploited all SD orange carrots or reached most SD orange people in the U.S., an SD orange dominant society? No.

Do I think that intelligence is a factor in being able to understand and implement FIRE and ERE? Yes.

Do I think that we have recruited a significant proportion of people in the top quintile of intelligence? No.

I offer a dissenting opinion to the proposition that SD green groupthink or intelligence distribution is THE problem. It is a problem in our quest for world domination that will eventually need to be solved. I'm unconvinced it is the problem that needs to be solved to take our message from convincing 0.5% of the population to 1% of the population.

[Jin+Guice]

Interesting. I'm working on something similar. My whole needs series is on one hand me trying to come up with effective personalized (and generalizable) J+G strategies for WL6+ semi-ERE... and on the other hand me grappling with what needs I could meet to possible feel like I have enough.

I don't think you need to worry about becoming too chill. IME grappling with your inner-demons is a high impact sport.

[AxelHeyst]

Two things are converging:

Thing 1) A desire to decouple even further from normal society.

If you are running semiERE (as I have been since June 2021), some of your attention has to remain in 'earning' mode. It's not about the amount of bandwidth this requires, it is the idea that it might serve as a cognitive anchor in 'earning' phase of life, preventing you from further phase exploration. This would seem to be no big deal because the only thing after earning is 'being retired' right?... but Jacob has an excellent post, that I think of often, that I can't find now for the life of me, where he posits the existence of multiple life phases beyond 'earn' phase. I don't want to be subtly held back from exploration, and I don't want to have to worry about solvency. I want to be able to go deep.

Another way to put this is that the difference between 20% and 0% is much greater than the difference between 100% and 20%.

This has been on my mind for a while, but I've been unwilling/unready to huck myself at a serious accumulation phase effort.

Thing 2) A potential serious accumulation project hucked itself at me. (It's not who you know, it's who knows you...).

This side hustle I've been ramping up over the last month is looking like it could bring in a fair amount of income in a short amount of time. As in, fullFI within 1-2 years, with ongoing passive income from asset sales.

Importantly, the kind of work involved drops me into flow more reliably than any other activity I've ever done, so it is not like I'd be whiteknuckling it.

I am going to go for it. I'm still working on the details, but the gist of the plan is "fullFI by 40" (I turn 38 in two months), and I think it's reasonable that I could cross my threshold number before then.

What is the threshold number?
That's the trick, isn't it. Especially in light of the very interesting discussion in the ERE past 65 thread (many thanks to everyone who participated in that thread, and Scott2 for making it).

Some points I'm working with:

• My desired COL is $5k for a constellation of reasons. I should know by the end of this year what it really means to run my WoG at that level. Some rules of thumb numbers: 33x5k=$165k. 33x7.5k=$247k.
• I've been spending $10k/yr for two years and, looking back on it, there were a bunch of $ leaks and friction that I can (/am in the process of) fixing. A 5-7.5k burn rate seems reasonable based on my experience.
• I'm 27 years away from full SS.
• I'm going to inherent the family land with property tax of $2,250, increasing at 2%/yr, sometime.
• If my parents require expensive end of life care, it is taken care of.
• After however long my 'push' on this side hustle lasts, it ought to continue to throw off income well in excess of my CoL for at least a few years.
• At least one of the activities I want to do with the rest of my life is likely (but not certain) to throw off incidental income.
• I know how to drop my CoL below $1,000/yr as long as I remain physically and mentally capable (let's cap this at 65yo).

I'm considering some set of triggers, like,

-If NW > 250k and I'm not 40yo yet, initiate side hustle shutdown procedure.
-If NW>200k, passive income >=1CoL, and I'm 40yo, shut down side hustle.
-If NW>165k, COL=5k, and passive income >>1xCOL, shut down side hustle.
etc.

That's not really urgent. Whatever specific targets I wind up settling on, the two primary areas of focus for right now are "Operationalize a $5k WoG (or discover why that's not going to work)" and "Work on making side hustle successful".

[mathiverse]

but Jacob has an excellent post, that I think of often, that I can't find now for the life of me, where he posits the existence of multiple life phases beyond 'earn' phase. I don't want to be subtly held back from exploration, and I don't want to have to worry about solvency. I want to be able to go deep.

I wonder if you mean this post (chopped up a bit because you can't nest quotes).

Add: There are people who become perma-students and spend 20 years in college collecting random course credit. However, since education is considered a phase and intended to obtain a degree to go to work, they're considered crazy by others for doing so. The next phase after student life is work life, but since most people are perma-workers we see this phase as normal or even desirable or if nothing else as the only alternative. It is seen as the end-stage of western adult development. And so most people spend all their life on this and becoming the best worker they can be until they're incapacitated by "age". But what if there's a phase after being a worker, lets say "contemplation", ... and another one after that, say, "Kegan6". If so then semiERE is a form of arrested development in the work phase just as the person who spends 20 years in college was arrested in the student phase. This would not be a problem except life is finite.

At fifteen I set my heart upon learning.
At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.
At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.
At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.
At sixty, I heard them with docile ear.
At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.

compared to the standard 20th century(*)

At five I went to school
At twenty I went to college
At twenty five I went to work
At seventy I went to Florida to await my death

However, since there's little experience aside from a few individual experiences outside job-life, there are no ready examples for those other potential phases. But it could also be that human potential is finite---that there are no further stages. If so compressing the entire industrialized mass-consumer experience from college to retirement into 10 years instead of extending it to the usual 50-60 years would be a mistake. One could end up staring at a wall in meditative contemplation for 20 years and find nothing.

(*) One result is that there's a lot of 70yos who are psychologically no more mature different than when they went 25 having spent the past 45 years exercising the same brain cells and not creating new connections.

[AxelHeyst]

Yes! Thank you! God how are you so good at that?

[delay]

Interesting quotes! Jacob recommended The Analects by Confucius in this post. It has really small chapters, some of which spark deep thought. I found it very suitable to read before sleep.

As to the threshold number, I've read a lot of posts about simulating and calculating it. Yet when people reach it they change their mind and set it to a new and larger number. It seems like people stop working when they feel that's the right thing to do, and threshold numbers play only a small role in their decision.

Good luck on your accumulation project!

[Jin+Guice]

The other side of this is that working for money compromises a huge portion of the options available to a person. If you're not earning $5-7k/ year, on average, throughout the rest of your life, are you fully participating in the world? Will you lack intrinsic motivation if you don't have to earn money?

I think it matters how all of this fits into your WoG. Does motivation to get outside of your own box and participate in the money world fit into your WoGs? Or does absolute freedom to not have to worry and stay in your own box fit your WoGs?

What most people do after "retirement" ends up looking a lot like work, sometimes for no money.

I think what we really seek to free ourselves from is anxiety. Does the anxiety from not knowing how you're going to solve the money problem take up bandwidth or influence your decisions of what to do when you don't want it to?

Crossing the magic number threshold doesn't always solve this. There's always a reason to earn and save more. What was enough ends up never being enough.




This is all abstract. I know you are excited about the project which is earning you money, so it fits into your WoGs. I see no reason not to do it and execute the plan you've laid out. Personally I keep coming up with money plans only to throw them away and admit to myself that what I'm doing right now is the best path for right now AND the best path for saving money.

What may be stressing you out is, with no cash infusions you are fiscally default dead, i.e. money is not a solved problem. This gig turns money into a solved problem.

You're also pulling the plug with really minimal expenses. Whether this is a catalyst for participating in the world in the way you want to or chasing the more dragon is up to you.

[7Wannabe5]

One of the things that annoys me about Kegan and this thread of Jacob's thought is that it is really only relevant to Men in the West After 1940 or something like that, and it is still changing. For example, my parents were fairly intellectual humans who grew up in a large city, but I wasn't allowed to stop attending the Episcopal (near opposite end of spectrum from Big Box) church until I had my confirmation in the church, making me an "adult" in the church, at the age of 14. That's what having to achieve FI in order to make the choice to leave the Church of Capitalism seems like to me. Kegan strikes me as somewhat similar, but sub in "attend graduate school" for "achieve FI." OTOH, this might really be, as Deida would say, a "guy thing" and that's why I don't grok it.

[Jin+Guice]

Yes! This is what I am saying.

Freedom is a state of mind. Hitting your number doesn't suddenly induce a freedom state of mind.


I am a guy and I do feel like I struggle with this problem more than @7 even with the above knowledge, so Deida MAY BE onto something.

[AxelHeyst]

The other side of this is that working for money compromises a huge portion of the options available to a person. If you're not earning $5-7k/ year, on average, throughout the rest of your life, are you fully participating in the world? Will you lack intrinsic motivation if you don't have to earn money?

I actually do intend to earn ~$5-7k/yr for most of the rest of my life. I think that many of the things I intrinsically want to do will throw off about that much as a second order effect. But one of the things I've learned in the past couple years of trying to run "as-if-FI", where I got my COL down low enough that it was feasible to earn enough to live off of without having any nodes in my WoG where "Earn Money" was the zeroeth order goal... is that I haven't been able to attain a desired state of mental detachment from earning income.

So, it's not that I want to close the door on participating in the money economy, it is that I want to decouple "must earn income" from the reasons for doing whatever I decide to do. I want to be very, very choosy about the kinds of extrinsic motivation I allow into my life.

My understanding (of my own experience and from reading the literature on intrinsic motivation) is that earning money is a very reliable method for killing intrinsic motivation. semiERE was, for me, never about keeping myself motivated enough to get out there and do stuff.

I think it matters how all of this fits into your WoG. Does motivation to get outside of your own box and participate in the money world fit into your WoGs? Or does absolute freedom to not have to worry and stay in your own box fit your WoGs?

I'm not sure if this is semantics or worldview, but: absolute freedom to not have to worry about participating in money world and thus be able to leave my own box far behind is what is critical to my WoG. We might be saying the same thing.

I think what we really seek to free ourselves from is anxiety. Does the anxiety from not knowing how you're going to solve the money problem take up bandwidth or influence your decisions of what to do when you don't want it to?

Yes, exactly, thanks for articulating it well.

What may be stressing you out is, with no cash infusions you are fiscally default dead, i.e. money is not a solved problem. This gig turns money into a solved problem.

Yes, another way this gig could go is that instead of being the largish infusion of cash that pushes me beyond my 'FI number' is that it becomes a more modest but steady and/or seasonal flow of income at a level of effort that I'm totally fine with. I (think) I would be just as fine with this outcome, as it would resolve the anxiety of how I'm going to achieve default aliveness.

[7Wannabe5]

Maybe it's due to the fact that men don't experience "becoming an adult" at the physiological level as much as women do. Although, I think Ken Wilber would argue that although men and women differ in their physio-sphere development, it is only at the advent of the Modern that they are able to be seen as undifferentiated peers in the noo-sphere (sphere of reason.) Anyways, it is kind of moot in my own case, because running my own business for a number of years, even though it is no longer in existence, likely served the same psychological development purpose for me as GradSchool/FIRE. That's likely why doing grad work in my 50s is kind of boring/meaningless. Also, I might just be even more of a cuckoo-bananas eNTP than you, J&G.

[AxelHeyst]

Yeah, I think there's something to this. I certainly had no kind of "grats, you're a man now" Event in my life. More the opposite, really. Like many males of my demographic, I was left to wander into adulthood on my own with zero guidance and then castigated for not nailing it out the gate. And then I frittered away my income like the prodigal son during my career which was terminated by a layoff, and now I live on, ahem, 'the family land' where I don't pay rent. My story is far too close to the broad outlines of the 'failure to launch' trope for comfort. I like the idea of just getting over my feelings about all this, but I don't think I can just think my way there. I have some orange business to take care of before I can really move on...

...meaning this side hustle isn't so much about hitting a number as it is about reaching some kind of psychological closure or feeling like I've 'completed' a phase of development, which will free me to move on.

[jacob]

One of the things that annoys me about Kegan and this thread of Jacob's thought is that it is really only relevant to Men in the West After 1940 or something like that, and it is still changing.

And apparently Chinese philosophers from 2,500 years ago

The Analects is on my very short re-reading list because it's one of the few books that deals in detail with the problem of both fitting into an existing world (Blue for Confucius, Orange in my case) and simultaneously dealing with leading the exploration (and teaching!) of a deeper world.

If you want an analogous example dominated by "Women in the West after 1940", see the Yoga Bourgeoisie and its representatives, where the goal is not so much understanding or fixing the nail in our heads but accepting and sympathizing about its existence, perhaps even uniting with it.

In both cases, the post-WWII has made it possible for increasingly more (5-10% of the population now) to worry less about fitting into traditional structures or affording all their needs and most wants. However, it very well may be the case that the majority of people prefer to "achieve, battle, and socialize" with the default option of the society they live in rather than "explore" a new one. Point being, individuals who want to "explore" don't need to be nearly as relatively well off as in earlier ages. (Like back when doing science was a hobby for a few aristocrats.) Those potential explorers are not longer forced to socialize or engage is competitive promotions at a job.

[7Wannabe5]

If you want an analogous example dominated by "Women in the West after 1940", see the Yoga Bourgeoisie and its representatives, where the goal is not so much understanding or fixing the nail in our heads but accepting and sympathizing about its existence, perhaps even uniting with it.

The woman in the "It's Not the Nail" video is in what I would refer to as "juvenile feminine" or "girlish" energy, whereas I'm thinking more of "womanish" or "adult feminine" energy which emerges in all the ways women co-operate in the business of life. Also, based on my somewhat eNTP-Female-Tom-Sawyer-like reading of Deida (years prior to learning he is theoretically towards Level Turquoise/Integral) , the next step up in functioning for the female-with-nail-in-head would be to say something like "Yes, dear, I believe you are correct, and the nail is the problem. I called around and nail-removing services run around $5000. Should I use the Visa or the American Express? "

[Jin+Guice]

@AH: Ah so you are trying to earn your adulthood? Not a bad idea seeing as how important this is in most cultures. Do you think reaching FI will work?

[AxelHeyst]

@JnG I'm attempting to honestly analyze my inner feeeeelings around all of this.

My thinking brain looks at the situation and thinks "You've been lobbed an opportunity to hit FI in a short amount of time doing something you actually like and are already good at. You'd be a moron not to pursue this."

And then there's some feels in the background going "Yeah, and also it'd feel GREAT to be able to tell people "I don't work anymore because I made all the money I need to for the rest of my life and I'm doing other more interesting-to-me things with my life now", plus it'd be great closure on the 'career' phase of my life to end it not with "I got laid off and then did odd jobs for a while" but rather "I ran my own consulting gig for a few years based on my area of expertise and then ramped it down when I felt I was done.""

I feel like I already earned entry into adulthood... but crossing the FI threshold might help me feel like I've completed phase 1 of adulthood (secure your household) and am ready to explore whatever the next phase is. I also think spinning up a low-maintenance but robust semiERE income generation system would largely make me feel like I checked that box as well. The nature of the gig I'm looking at has potential for either/both, to be honest, so we'll have to see how it plays out.

[7Wannabe5]

crossing the FI threshold might help me feel like I've completed phase 1 of adulthood (secure your household)

I do think this is more difficult for young men.When I was young, I earned a lot of admiration from older women who knew me, including my mother-in-law, because I was able as a homemaker to create-from-almost-scratch a middle-class lifestyle (lovely old home in tree lined small town, books, piano-lessons, summer outings) for my children, even though pretty much all my wanna-be-musician husband contributed was a paycheck just slightly higher than barista-level (he worked for a large, very cool bookstore.) I thought/knew this was unfair, because I could have made more money than him, if I was the parent who worked outside of the home, but he also had no home-making or home-repair skills, and I did. When I ran out of money to complete the renovations I was making on our old house, I took what was supposed to be a temp job at the bookstore where my husband worked, and in less than two years I was promoted above him to a corporate level position. This was probably the nail in the coffin of our marriage, although it took another 7-8 years to devolve to divorce. So, the corporate salaryman world when I came to it seemed so much easier, less real, less adult-like than the "core human" business of being in charge of a household. Then I also went on to start and run my own business out of my household. So, that's why I already felt like I had successfully completed two entire adult lifetimes by the time I was empty-nest/divorced in my early 40s, and it was so bizarre/surreal to me when I started dating older, much more affluent men who treated me like I was an impoverished "baby-doll" they needed to "rescue." I can remember forming the thought, "Oh, you don't get that we're just playing. You actually think I am child-like, because I don't have as much money as you, when the reality is that I am solidly a graduated, respected matriarch of my tribe." and being kind of stunned.

ETA: My point here being that prior to around 1940, taking over your parent's "farm" is exactly what you would have been expected to do as a man. I read a memoir of a pioneer in my region in the mid-19th century, and was amused at his note about "old widows living in town on dividends." IOW, living on the proceeds of investments was an activity fit only for old women in that context, which really was less than a blink of an eye ago in human history. I wish I could have kept my business going, by somehow revitalizing it, so that one of my kids would have had the option of taking it over. That's one of the reasons why I also have been making my attempts at permaculture projects, although creating something for them to take over has become rather moot now that they are into their 30s.

OTOH, living on dividends was exactly what the attractive aristocratic rogues of the Regency Romance novels (to which I am weakly addicted) did, but it's interesting to note how this genre of novel has been "updated" through various eras to reflect differing values. For instance, there is a scene in the Regency Romance I am currently reading in which the aristocratic lord of the manor takes off his fancy layers of clothing and climbs up on a roof to help one of his tenant farmers with a repair, thereby evincing some brawn and work ethic.