Having lived on my own for 16 months now, I've had time to think about where life tends to go. While I don't regret the choices I've made, I think it's time to think about the next step.
I've realized that the American upper-middle-class professional lifestyle is a Faustian bargain. You trade time for money. Lots of time, for lots of money. However, not quite enough to become financially independent. And there's not quite enough time left to do the things that I want to do -- keep in touch with friends and family as well as travel the world.
It boils down to this -- {friends & family, travel the world, save up for financial independence} -- pick two. That is the deal you're left with on the hot career track. They never tell you this at career fairs. Hah.
Honestly, am I going to put up with that shit all the way until I'm 40? I could probably become financially independent by then, but I might not be able to enjoy my freedom as I could while I'm young. If I wanted to be free to travel the world before I turn 30, I'd have to make sacrifices in the way of my career, I think.
Many people I think accept the busy working life as their fate, and don't do anything about it. For the past few months, I refused to take this path. I refused to put up the white flag. I want all three from that list. But the result was increasing despair and cynicism. So what to do now?
Last weekend I came across something that might be the way out. It was completely unexpected too. I'm trying to maintain both an open mind and a critical eye as I check it out.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
No man is an island
What are the ramifications of the saying "no man is an island"? What conventionally comes to mind is that people depend on each other, are influenced by each other, etc. No one is self-made, no one is self-sufficient, no matter how one thinks one is.
All this sounds innocuous and wise. In the right context, it certainly is. But it cuts both ways. If we are surrounded by good people, we get a positive influence. If we are surrounded by bad people -- not necessarily evil people, but people with unhealthy outlooks and values -- then we are under a negative impact. If we are aware of this influence, we can take steps to avoid being "contaminated", but if it is deeply ingrained throughout our culture, then even if our hearts and minds remain independent, there are limits to how much we can live in a way that reflects who we are and what we believe in.
As an example, suppose you wanted to buy a house in Plano, Texas. You could spend $200,000 and get a 2000-square foot single family home. But what if you wanted a significantly smaller home -- say 800 or 1000 square feet? Because having more stuff isn't that important to you, and you'd rather the extra cash away into your financial independence stash. That choice is not available to you, because of the way the housing market has developed over the past few decades. Materialistic-minded people want bigger houses, so politicians subsidize it through zoning laws and interest rate manipulation while the developers build McMansions. Nothing wrong with McMansions, but you practically can't find an 800 or 1000-square foot single family home in a nice neighborhood anymore. So if you wanted a good place to raise your kids, you'd have to dish out $200,000 instead of $120,000 because all the people in your demographic are materialistic members of Boobus Americanus who believe in having more material goods than they need (and yes that includes their residence -- none of that "your house is an investment" BS on this blog).
Further examples:
All this sounds innocuous and wise. In the right context, it certainly is. But it cuts both ways. If we are surrounded by good people, we get a positive influence. If we are surrounded by bad people -- not necessarily evil people, but people with unhealthy outlooks and values -- then we are under a negative impact. If we are aware of this influence, we can take steps to avoid being "contaminated", but if it is deeply ingrained throughout our culture, then even if our hearts and minds remain independent, there are limits to how much we can live in a way that reflects who we are and what we believe in.
As an example, suppose you wanted to buy a house in Plano, Texas. You could spend $200,000 and get a 2000-square foot single family home. But what if you wanted a significantly smaller home -- say 800 or 1000 square feet? Because having more stuff isn't that important to you, and you'd rather the extra cash away into your financial independence stash. That choice is not available to you, because of the way the housing market has developed over the past few decades. Materialistic-minded people want bigger houses, so politicians subsidize it through zoning laws and interest rate manipulation while the developers build McMansions. Nothing wrong with McMansions, but you practically can't find an 800 or 1000-square foot single family home in a nice neighborhood anymore. So if you wanted a good place to raise your kids, you'd have to dish out $200,000 instead of $120,000 because all the people in your demographic are materialistic members of Boobus Americanus who believe in having more material goods than they need (and yes that includes their residence -- none of that "your house is an investment" BS on this blog).
Further examples:
- You live in a workaholic culture where everyone works 50+ hours a week (Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Korea come to mind). You will end up working 50+ hours a week if you get a job there.
- You believe in saving and becoming financially independent. The culture believes that spending drives the economy, saves very little, and racks up a lot of debt (America for the last ten years). Government bails out the debtors by either subsidies or inflation. Either way, you get penalized.
- You live in a society with laws that forbid self defense, and a compliant populace that has accepted the idea hook, line, and sinker. (UK, and California to an extent.) Someone breaks into your house and is threatening you and your family. As he charges with a knife, you shoot and injure him, stopping the attack. You are put on trial and found guilty by the jury, which is full of people who believe it is the government's duty and not yours to use lethal force. So you go to prison for doing the right thing.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The rat race
This has been a hectic month for me. Between my main job, my secondary job, doing taxes, having a friend over for spring break, and going to gun shows and the rifle range, I feel really spent. Now, I am not a lazy person. But I also don't believe in work for work's sake. If your toil gets you nowhere, there's nothing wrong with pursuing a different course of action.
But the question is, for how long will all this work go on? When will there be a long break? Looking at people's lives, I think the answer is never. We only get 20-25 vacation days a year. Between going on microvacations and visiting family, it seems impossible to gather a big chunk of time (at least a month) of doing nothing, unless we're talking a sabbatical. And people in school might have more free time but they'll probably have to enter the working life eventually.
It also doesn't matter whether you are a lowly laborer or a white collar professional. Even the best-paid white-collar professionals work their asses off. They accumulate all that wealth but never have a chance to really stop and enjoy it. Hence, when talking to a fellow backpacker last summer, he told me that all his professional friends could not take an extended trip around the world as he was doing.
Part of it is the lifestyle trap, I think. Once you get settled into a working lifestyle, and you collect debts and obligations, it becomes harder to break out of it. Just look at the poor suckers in Silicon Valley with $3000-a-month mortgages. What about those who have kids? Is their settling into a working lifestyle excusable because of their obligations as parents? There's more to raising kids than buying a house in a nice neighborhood and sending them to good schools. Eventually they'll get bored to death and go crazy from being part of that suffocating lifestyle.
I am ahead of the game compared to most people. I have asked the question "Why?" and found the answer, "There is no good reason." I have various possible escape routes from the rat race, but I don't have a concrete plan. That's fine. Nothing ever goes according to plan anyway. And if I fail, so what? I'll just be back at where everyone else is, but I'll have lived a dream that many people will not experience. Even if I had to wake up in the end.
But the question is, for how long will all this work go on? When will there be a long break? Looking at people's lives, I think the answer is never. We only get 20-25 vacation days a year. Between going on microvacations and visiting family, it seems impossible to gather a big chunk of time (at least a month) of doing nothing, unless we're talking a sabbatical. And people in school might have more free time but they'll probably have to enter the working life eventually.
It also doesn't matter whether you are a lowly laborer or a white collar professional. Even the best-paid white-collar professionals work their asses off. They accumulate all that wealth but never have a chance to really stop and enjoy it. Hence, when talking to a fellow backpacker last summer, he told me that all his professional friends could not take an extended trip around the world as he was doing.
Part of it is the lifestyle trap, I think. Once you get settled into a working lifestyle, and you collect debts and obligations, it becomes harder to break out of it. Just look at the poor suckers in Silicon Valley with $3000-a-month mortgages. What about those who have kids? Is their settling into a working lifestyle excusable because of their obligations as parents? There's more to raising kids than buying a house in a nice neighborhood and sending them to good schools. Eventually they'll get bored to death and go crazy from being part of that suffocating lifestyle.
I am ahead of the game compared to most people. I have asked the question "Why?" and found the answer, "There is no good reason." I have various possible escape routes from the rat race, but I don't have a concrete plan. That's fine. Nothing ever goes according to plan anyway. And if I fail, so what? I'll just be back at where everyone else is, but I'll have lived a dream that many people will not experience. Even if I had to wake up in the end.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Free states and not-so-free states
A new study ranks the 50 states based on how free one is in those states. Unlike many previous studies, it does not stick to economic freedom, but also includes measures of personal freedom such as when it comes to alcohol laws, gun laws, environmental laws, gambling laws, and other victimless crime laws. It follows the definition of freedom that a libertarian would give, rather than what a conservative Republican might give. In that sense, it is the first of its kind.
Here are the top five and bottom five:
Not surprisingly, the usual suspects are at the bottom of the list, places like CA, NJ, and NY, whose state governments are notorious for their hatred of individual liberty. And I am proud to say that my new home Texas is in the Top 5.
However, the study report also notes that the people in the free states do not necessarily have a libertarian streak. Instead, the freeness is due to the conservative-liberal culture war. The conservative position in the culture war requires less government intrusion overall, they claim.
They could be right; I don't know for sure. But I do think that if several generations live in an unfree state, the people become accustomed to having government boss them around in every aspect of their lives, and become more compliant with additional future infringements on their liberty.
Here are the top five and bottom five:
| Rank | State | Rank | State |
| 1 | New Hampshire | 50 | New York |
| 2 | Colorado | 49 | New Jersey |
| 3 | South Dakota | 48 | Rhode Island |
| 4 | Idaho | 47 | California |
| 5 | Texas | 46 | Maryland |
Not surprisingly, the usual suspects are at the bottom of the list, places like CA, NJ, and NY, whose state governments are notorious for their hatred of individual liberty. And I am proud to say that my new home Texas is in the Top 5.
However, the study report also notes that the people in the free states do not necessarily have a libertarian streak. Instead, the freeness is due to the conservative-liberal culture war. The conservative position in the culture war requires less government intrusion overall, they claim.
They could be right; I don't know for sure. But I do think that if several generations live in an unfree state, the people become accustomed to having government boss them around in every aspect of their lives, and become more compliant with additional future infringements on their liberty.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
"Western values"
I read a lot of blogs, forums, and commentary. I pick up a lot of taglines and phrases from my reading. One such line is "western values." In this case, it is in the context of "capitalism, materialism, consumerism, rat race, etc..."
People play fast and loose with this word, and throw it around carelessly. The problem I have with it is that it treats the values embodied by western culture as it stands today as if it were monolithic. This is not the case. Would you consider classical liberalism and Marxism to be two peas in the pod of "western values"? I would hope not. The truth is that western (or at least American) society is the product of centuries of values and ideas, many of which are in conflict. Look at the pervasiveness of government in the economy, even in "capitalist" societies.
I think a lot of this obfuscation comes from a lack of clear or widely accepted definitions of words. The average American mind equates "capitalist" with "materialist." Yet in my mind, they are opposite, if anything. I equate "capitalist" with individual liberty, independence, and the like. The modern materialistic mindset, fed by too many hours in front of the TV, is anything but individualistic and independent. My way of thinking equates "materialist" with "conformist" and thus it is the antithesis of "capitalist." The modern excuse of an economy that is supposedly fueled by mass consumption is really a Keynesian monstrosity masquerading as the ideal for capitalism.
I think if more people realized this and had the courage to reevaluate their lifestyles and perceptions, society would be better off. We'd be freer, more individualistic (in the sense that is in line with wisdom and good values), and I daresay more prosperous -- in the form of savings and wealth-producing assets, not material junk that you use to keep up with the Joneses. However, I am doubtful that anything like that will happen without some major calamity, even worse than the current recession.
People play fast and loose with this word, and throw it around carelessly. The problem I have with it is that it treats the values embodied by western culture as it stands today as if it were monolithic. This is not the case. Would you consider classical liberalism and Marxism to be two peas in the pod of "western values"? I would hope not. The truth is that western (or at least American) society is the product of centuries of values and ideas, many of which are in conflict. Look at the pervasiveness of government in the economy, even in "capitalist" societies.
I think a lot of this obfuscation comes from a lack of clear or widely accepted definitions of words. The average American mind equates "capitalist" with "materialist." Yet in my mind, they are opposite, if anything. I equate "capitalist" with individual liberty, independence, and the like. The modern materialistic mindset, fed by too many hours in front of the TV, is anything but individualistic and independent. My way of thinking equates "materialist" with "conformist" and thus it is the antithesis of "capitalist." The modern excuse of an economy that is supposedly fueled by mass consumption is really a Keynesian monstrosity masquerading as the ideal for capitalism.
I think if more people realized this and had the courage to reevaluate their lifestyles and perceptions, society would be better off. We'd be freer, more individualistic (in the sense that is in line with wisdom and good values), and I daresay more prosperous -- in the form of savings and wealth-producing assets, not material junk that you use to keep up with the Joneses. However, I am doubtful that anything like that will happen without some major calamity, even worse than the current recession.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Why is there evil?
I read an article today that addressed the existence of evil. This article was taken from a pastor's sermon notes. Normally we'd get the usual cliches that people throw around to answer the question, whether that God is not truly a good and righteous God or that he gave people free will and thus people chose evil. However, the answer presented in here struck me as a remarkably radical departure from both sides of that line of thinking.
Q: Why is there evil in the world?
A: It's there for us to discern and overcome.
What struck me about this answer is that it makes the person asking the question an active player in the answer. It doesn't have us sitting around on our butts waiting for God to do this or that (or disappointing us with his inaction). Instead, it calls us to get out there and do something about the problem of evil in the world.
Is this overly radical? I think for the modern American church it is. John Eldredge recounts in his book Way of the Wild Heart something his son's Sunday school teacher was teaching. The teacher said that we it is not our job to resist the devil, but God's job. Eldredge wastes no time in exposing this as a false teaching. I don't remember what the verse was. It might have been James 4:7 - "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." I can also think of Romans 6:20 - "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." Not under his feet but under yours.
Yet I think passivity, both spiritual and otherwise, has permeated both American culture and the church that swims deeply in it. People just cruising along in life and living in the molds of their cultural upbringing. All the Asian overachievers come to mind. People asking God or government (depending on your religion) to do this or that for them when they are perfectly capable of doing it. Look how the mainstream responds to natural disasters, violent crimes, pit bulls, etc. People are viewed or portrayed as helpless victims unless government comes in and saves them, when they could have taken steps to protect themselves against such circumstances, and *gasp* prevail.
Q: Why is there evil in the world?
A: It's there for us to discern and overcome.
What struck me about this answer is that it makes the person asking the question an active player in the answer. It doesn't have us sitting around on our butts waiting for God to do this or that (or disappointing us with his inaction). Instead, it calls us to get out there and do something about the problem of evil in the world.
Is this overly radical? I think for the modern American church it is. John Eldredge recounts in his book Way of the Wild Heart something his son's Sunday school teacher was teaching. The teacher said that we it is not our job to resist the devil, but God's job. Eldredge wastes no time in exposing this as a false teaching. I don't remember what the verse was. It might have been James 4:7 - "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." I can also think of Romans 6:20 - "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." Not under his feet but under yours.
Yet I think passivity, both spiritual and otherwise, has permeated both American culture and the church that swims deeply in it. People just cruising along in life and living in the molds of their cultural upbringing. All the Asian overachievers come to mind. People asking God or government (depending on your religion) to do this or that for them when they are perfectly capable of doing it. Look how the mainstream responds to natural disasters, violent crimes, pit bulls, etc. People are viewed or portrayed as helpless victims unless government comes in and saves them, when they could have taken steps to protect themselves against such circumstances, and *gasp* prevail.
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