133 Ultimate Fulfillment & Welcoming Death

Please note: This track may include some explicit language. I had COVID this week. It wasn't too bad. But in my feverdom I had an old recurring dream where I am forced to accept my death. And it reminded me of an essay I read about how “primitive man” didn't fear death nor aging, because at every stage of his life he felt so fulfilled.

This episode explores this idea of Ultimate Fulfillment drawing from an essay by a Mr. Kaczynski, Into the Wild, and other ponderings.

Transcript

So I had COVID this week.

I guess I still have a bit of COVID.

Actually,

I can't smell anything.

It's weird.

It's weird not being able to smell,

But my bad symptoms only lasted maybe two days as far as headache and fever.

So overall,

Certainly mild.

I also live in a country where they readily dole out the horse goo that's ivermectin.

If you don't follow the media narrative on it.

I don't know if it works for sure or not,

But after I started taking it,

My symptoms did disappear for the most part other than I can't smell.

But in the worst of it,

On the day that I was basically in bed all day with a bad fever,

I had a dream,

A recurring dream that I've had since childhood,

Since like the very first fever as I can remember.

And I won't even go into try to explaining what happens because it doesn't really follow three-dimensional reality.

It's actually essentially what happens in the dream is I do something where I accidentally cause reality to fall apart.

And it's like it happens before my eyes were like basically existence begins to disintegrate.

And the first emotion I feel of course is guilt.

It's like,

Ah shit,

Like I can't believe I did whatever I just did to ruin existence for everyone.

And I don't know if this is the origin of the dream,

Maybe some sort of like childhood guilt moment from like when I was seven or eight somehow got wrapped into my fever.

And for some reason I just like have this dream over and over.

Like maybe there's a,

You know,

Like a myelinated circuits or you know,

Just some association in my subconscious where every time I have a bad fever,

I now re-experience the guilty experience of ruining life for everyone.

That only lasts for a little bit because the next feeling of course is terror.

I'm like,

Oh shit,

Like I've my life and life in general is now going to stop existing.

Like that sucks,

Right?

The natural fear of death.

But then because in the dream existence is falling apart over the course of minutes,

I have some time to consider the fact that,

Okay,

Well this really sucks,

But there's nothing I could do about it now,

Right?

Like,

You know,

Existence has fallen apart.

I might as well just accept it.

I can't reverse it.

Can't do anything about it.

And in that moment,

At the end of the,

This is,

You know,

Right before the dream ends every time I end up forgiving myself and basically coming to peace with the fact that I'm going to stop existing in a few minutes.

And I always wake up from this dream with this feeling of peace that comes with accepting one's death.

It's kind of like a,

Yeah,

It's a Zen-like approach or a healthy,

Peaceful approach to one's mortality.

It's like,

You know,

When I realized that it was just a dream and reality really isn't over,

At least for a few minutes every time after I have this dream,

I try to keep this perspective.

I try to keep like,

Oh yeah,

What if existence did get destroyed and here I am like on bonus time?

That's kind of a fun way to look at life,

Right?

Like where,

You know,

Is essentially the idea of dying before you die,

That spiritual goal.

And it reminded me of something that I read a few weeks ago in regards to mortality.

It's from something called,

It's an essay that I read called Industrial Society and Its Future.

It's more commonly known as the Unabomber Manifesto because its author,

Ted Kaczynski,

Is more commonly known as the Unabomber.

He was a domestic terrorist active from the 70s into the 90s when he was found and executed.

And he was actually found because he demanded that his,

This essay that he wrote,

Which is an analysis of society with a prescription also to tear down society,

He demanded that it be published in the New York Times.

I think this is in 95.

People were basically,

Yeah.

Anyway,

He was found through that and executed.

He did some terrible things.

He killed a bunch of people with these melon bombs and stuff.

Anyways,

His essay is really interesting.

And while I certainly don't agree with his prescription of what to do with this assessment of society as far as domestic terrorism,

I definitely agreed with a lot of his assessment.

And one of his basic,

Well anyway,

Let me read the quote first and we'll get into it.

This is something I highlighted because it stood out to me.

We suggest that modern man's obsession with longevity and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power process.

The midlife crisis is also such a symptom,

So is a lack of interest in having children.

It's fairly common in modern society but almost unheard of in primitive societies.

In primitive societies,

Life is a succession of stages.

The needs and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled,

There is no particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage.

A young man goes,

I'll just skip on to the end of the paragraph.

This phase,

Having been successfully passed through,

The young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family.

It goes on and on.

But basically he speaks about how for primitive people,

At every stage,

They feel so fulfilled that they have no reluctance of going on to the next phase.

Like there are childs,

There's a child chapter,

Then there's for a young man there's a hunter phase,

And there's the family phase,

And then there's the tribal elder phase,

And then there's death.

Death is another chapter,

Is another phase.

And this might be partly his romanization,

Who knows exactly what our Paleolithic ancestors experienced emotionally.

But whether it's accurate or not,

It's an interesting way to look at things.

What if you are so fulfilled at every stage of your life that you didn't fear aging?

You didn't have that,

Oh shit,

I'm turning 40 or turning 30 or turning 50 or whatever.

Like,

Oh shit,

There's no fear of death.

Fear of aging is essentially a proxy for fear of death.

And who dreads aging the most?

It was the people that didn't quite accomplish what they felt they wanted to accomplish.

Or people who feel that time is running out for something,

Right?

To have a certain kind of career or to have children during fertile years.

This kind of thing really stresses people out.

Whereas primitive men,

According to Kaczynski,

Felt none of these stresses.

There was a phase for doing something,

They did it,

And then they were at peace.

And they weren't even attached to living.

So I was thinking about this idea of fulfillment,

Of like,

Man,

That would be,

You know,

Whatever it is that death comes,

It would be a really great ideal to be so fulfilled that you could welcome death.

To have that warrior's take on death of not wanting to die,

But not worrying about when it comes.

Your time is when your time is,

Right?

There's certainly something peaceful about it.

So I was thinking like,

How does one experience that level of fulfillment now,

Right?

How do you feel so fulfilled that you have absolutely no fear about what the future brings or when your life stage ends?

So this episode is going to be about fulfillment.

We'll speak about a little bit more of Kaczynski's ideas because I find them interesting.

There's quite a few things I resonated with.

And yeah,

How you can experience fulfillment.

So this idea of fulfillment for most of us is this abstract value that maybe you think about as an afterthought or certainly something people don't necessarily tie to the day-to-day of life of our obligations.

In fact,

Most people only think about fulfillment after their obligations and needs are met,

Right?

When they have downtime,

When they have freedom,

Then they consider if like,

Oh yeah,

Am I fulfilled or not?

Or it might be a thing people think about on certain birthdays or when they're on vacation.

It's not something that people think about all the time.

And it is divorced specifically from most of our day-to-day operations,

Most of the things that we do for survival or just our responsibilities.

Kaczynski would argue that this was not the case for primitive men.

In fact,

The reason why we've evolved to perceive something that we call fulfillment is that in itself is a reward mechanism for doing things that allow you to survive.

Like a primitive man,

It's actually just like our dopamine circuits,

Right?

Like we get a dopamine hit.

We get this flood of pleasurable chemicals,

Let's say specifically dopamine,

For doing things and seeking out things that historically or evolutionarily contributed to our survival.

So like looking,

Exploring the world,

Looking for new things,

Finding food,

Finding mating opportunities,

Taking on challenges,

Right?

These are the things that give us dopamine hits.

Of course,

Nowadays,

We don't have to do the things that originally gave us dopamine hits,

Right?

Like we don't have to go out and explore to survive.

We don't have to seek new things in material reality.

In fact,

There's far less new stuff in our three-dimensional reality to seek out for most of us.

So we get our dopamine hits from other things.

I mean,

Our circuitry still responds to that.

But now,

Unlike before,

We get dopamine hits from things that don't necessarily contribute to our wellbeing.

In fact,

We get dopamine hits from things that are bad for our wellbeing,

Like electronic media and junk food and stuff.

I mean,

Junk food is a great analogy in itself in that it tastes good,

Right?

It hits the reward circuit,

But it doesn't give us the nutrients.

That's the whole reason why we have a receptor for good taste,

Right?

In the wild,

Anything that tastes salty,

Sugary,

Or fatty typically was loaded with nutrients that are good for us.

And that's why those things taste good for us.

So with fulfillment,

Fulfillment is the same thing,

Right?

For primitive men,

There is no way for a primitive person to exist without being fulfilled,

Right?

Because if he did the things that were fulfilling,

Right,

Like he got enough food to eat,

He didn't get eaten by predators,

He was also able to protect his family or tribe from those same things and was able to build structures or find shelter to stay alive during the cold winters,

Right?

If he did those things,

Which are presumably his primary goals,

He felt fulfilled.

If he didn't do those things,

Fulfillment was a moot idea because he would have died,

Right?

So simply by living,

He was fulfilled.

There's no way for him to live and not be fulfilled.

Now,

Of course,

This is maybe simplification and a bit of speculation because of course,

Even in the Paleolithic era,

Humans did pursue other things like art and things that are not necessary.

We're going to talk about that as well because certainly we exist somewhere after that and we have these pursuits.

Even in the Stone Age,

Certain groups of humans had early on found ways to meet their survival needs and then still have spare time,

Right?

So even a so-called primitive person back then,

Unless – there are certainly times that the human brain was pursuing other things.

But in general,

Right?

And certainly to a far less degree than today,

Our Stone Age ancestors,

Our Paleolithic ancestors,

Fulfillment and existence were kind of hand in hand,

Right?

It was uncommon to – you wouldn't imagine a caveman being like,

Ah,

I've already met all my obligations as far as survival.

I just have no meaning in my life,

Right?

It was unlikely because just existing took so many of his mental and physical resources.

Nowadays,

Because of our survival needs being met so easily and almost with no efforts,

We have this experience of lack of fulfillment.

So Kaczynski kind of lays out the process or the four elements that contribute to a person's fulfillment in a simple way.

He calls it the power process.

And these are things you've heard of before.

He didn't obviously invent them,

But I think it's a great simplification.

Those four things are goals,

Effort required to achieve those goals,

Attainment of the goals and the fourth is autonomy.

So these first three,

Goals,

Effort,

Attainment,

I mean,

That's essentially,

You know,

It's a core part of positive psychology,

Right?

Or self-help 101,

You know,

But it doesn't mean it's not important,

Right?

Like,

Again,

For primitive men,

His goals were food,

Shelter,

You know,

Don't get eaten.

Attainment meant he had those things,

Which meant he survived.

In between,

He had to put in effort,

Right?

So goals,

Effort and attainment were required because for a Paleolithic man,

A Paleolithic human,

There was no way to meet survival needs and desires without effort.

Even seeking a mate required effort,

Right?

There was a,

He had to do something,

Right?

There's no way to be gratified without struggle.

So just in doing those things,

He automatically was fulfilled.

He didn't have to worry about it.

It just became a question of whether or not he actually survived,

Whether or not he actually achieved that thing,

Which is part three.

Right,

Obviously,

I guess,

A Paleolithic man who was seeking a mate,

He had that goal,

He put in the effort,

Maybe he lost in male-male competition and didn't get a mate.

So he satisfied his goal,

He had a goal,

He put in effort,

Which is two.

Number three,

He didn't achieve attainment.

I guess you could say he was technically surviving and then not fulfilled because he didn't achieve the third part,

Right?

And this is also,

I mean,

I just spoke about this with my buddy Noel Freeh,

One of the things that we,

One of the core features that we consider the dark masculine,

Which is violence or anger or destructive behavior,

Is kind of this,

Right?

It comes from the,

We all know the most dangerous males in society are incels,

Guys who aren't getting laid,

Right?

They're surviving and they have the goal and they're putting in effort,

Maybe,

I don't know if they're putting in effort,

But they're not attaining their basic sexual goal to have sexual connections.

So what happens is that their subconscious is basically screaming at them because not having a mate is the equivalent of death to their genetic lineage,

Right?

Which is why a man who is sexually frustrated can sometimes,

Especially depending on how he was conditioned or socialized,

Can do some pretty destructive things just to satisfy that,

Right?

It becomes an issue of fulfillment.

And even though I'm speaking about an extreme part of society,

Right?

Let's say like incel guys,

Part of my interest in talking about it is recognizing with a lot of the masculinity shaming,

It's very easy for people to point at guys who aren't getting laid or guys who are seeking sexual connection or trying to learn how to do this.

It's easy for people to scoff at it or say,

Oh,

It's the male ego and all this and that,

And it's toxic masculinity.

And of course,

Obviously there's toxic expressions of all that.

But for a lot of guys who do become obsessive about something like seduction or even the pickup community,

It's like a lot of people don't realize that,

Yeah,

Well anyway,

Maybe these are obvious things to say now,

But it's like this deep need that is tied to fulfillment.

It's not just about getting your jollies or,

Anyway,

It's not just an ego thing,

Right?

In fact,

The reason why it's an ego thing at all is that it is tied to fulfillment.

Anyways,

Back to fulfillment in general for people.

So Kaczynski lays out that there are three kinds of goals in terms of the second piece of the power process,

Which is effort,

Because that's the big thing that is missing from modern humans.

The first type of drive is the drive for something that is attainable without much effort.

The second kind of drive is something that is attainable but only with considerable effort.

The third is something that is unattainable no matter how much effort you put in,

Even with maximum effort.

So again,

For primitive man,

Basically everything he would really want to do was in category two.

Acquiring food,

Shelter,

Mates,

Depending on who he is,

But also I bet the basic thing is survival at least.

Food,

Shelter,

Not getting eaten by predators,

They were all attainable for the most part,

But they all required effort.

There was nothing he could do that would allow him gratification without putting in some work.

But provided that he survived,

They were all doable.

So basically,

We can imagine that primitive man was always experiencing the winner effect in the sense that if he continued to survive day to day,

If he got enough to eat,

If he was able to not get killed by enemy humans or predators,

He would get that boost of testosterone and dopamine that we know occurs when you take on a challenge and you win.

For modern humans,

All of our survival things,

All of our survival drives,

Which used to exist in category two,

Which is attainable with considerable effort,

Have now for the most part been moved into category one,

Which is attainable with no effort,

Right?

If you just consider producing food on a day to day basis,

Right?

It's not to say that there's no effort and obviously you work for your money and your money provides you to buy food,

Right?

If you want a steak,

You spend money on it,

Right?

You go to a restaurant,

You spend money that you work for,

Or go to a grocery store or whatever,

But it's not nearly the same thing as with a primitive man,

Right?

If anything,

There's a separation between when you put in the work,

Let's say at your job,

You earn this stored value of your work,

Which is money,

The money that you own,

And then you trade it later in,

Right?

From the moment that,

Let's say,

You want a steak to consuming the steak,

That doesn't really require much effort,

Right?

Unless you're a butcher or something or you're a butcher,

This is perhaps one of the reasons why so many people choose to hunt.

I mean,

It's kind of like the ultimate master class activities to go hunting,

Right?

It is a master morality activity in that it is fun,

But it also is connecting one to one's primal roots.

It's a challenge that is doable,

That has a reward,

But it requires effort,

Right?

It's very different to hunt and produce your own steak than it is to just buy it at Whole Foods.

Since us modern humans are getting all our needs met,

All our survival needs met,

I should say,

Without our fulfillment needs met,

We need to find something that requires effort,

That reaches our fulfillment needs,

Right?

Because it's not just enough to have goals and attainment,

You need to have that effort to feel fulfilled.

We need to find something to struggle over,

To strive after beyond our basic needs.

This category of activity is what Kazinsky calls a surrogate activity.

A surrogate activity is anything you do beyond your survival necessities specifically to fulfill your power process,

Basically to go through the power process,

To meet your fulfillment needs,

Since your fulfillment is not met by survival needs.

The thing about surrogate activities is that they are by definition unnecessary,

Right?

Any pursuit,

And this is maybe kind of a cynical,

Anti-spiritual view of the whole idea of having a purpose or finding meaningful work,

Right,

Or meaning in life,

Right?

This drive for a purpose or meaning is basically just a gap,

It's a missing nutrient that used to be fulfilled by surviving.

Now,

One thing that Kazinsky warns about in modern society,

And again,

I'm not taking his extreme view that we need to destroy all technology,

But there is something attractive about it,

Right?

He says that a lot of things,

Even though we're all seeking fulfillment through ultimately category two,

Right?

It's very similar to the idea of flow state where we enter flow when our competence level perfectly matches the challenge we're presented with.

We could kind of presume again that primitive man always was in flow because he was always challenged by his environment,

But he had evolved to meet those challenges so that he was able to succeed just barely,

Right?

Puts him in a state of flow.

Even though we're seeking that as modern people,

And we have this idea of flow and we're often seeking that as an ideal,

A lot of our drives end up falling into category three,

Which is unattainable no matter how much effort.

And this is Kazinsky blames consumerism.

In fact,

A lot of this book,

A lot of Kazinsky's thoughts could have come straight out of the mouth of Tyler Durden.

And I'm curious,

I wouldn't be surprised if I'm sure Polanyi who wrote Fight Club must have read this essay,

Which a lot of people read in the 90s,

Probably around the time Fight Club came out.

I actually have to look that up.

If Ted Kazinsky was an inspiration for Tyler Durden,

I wouldn't be surprised.

But both Durden and Kazinsky would say that consumerism causes people to want things they don't need.

And you might think,

Well,

Isn't it attainable to,

Let's say advertising made you want the new iPhone,

Which you don't need,

But then you just go out and buy it and you have it.

Isn't that,

You know?

The reason why that doesn't fulfill you is that there wasn't struggle,

Right?

You just purchased the thing.

And that need is never fully satisfied,

Right?

No one is like,

I mean,

I don't know anyone.

I don't know anybody who still has the iPhone 3G.

I think that's what it was called.

The original one,

Right?

Whether or not it works,

Whether or not you can function in the world with a not so smart smartphone compared to what we have now is kind of a,

Kazinsky argued against technology in that technology seems to be optional when it appears at first,

But pretty soon since society adapts in order to meet,

It adapts in line with the new technology,

After a generation that technology is no longer optional.

You have to then have it,

Right?

He goes all the way back to automobiles.

When automobiles first came out,

I'm sure there's a lot of people who's like,

No,

No,

I prefer to ride horses.

I prefer to walk.

I'm not into these things.

But I'm certainly by the 50s,

One could imagine,

You couldn't exist without a car,

Right?

You'd be very limited with the employment you could have.

The infrastructure of society developed so that you needed motorized transportation to buy groceries and stuff like it stops being optional after a generation or two.

That's just with stuff.

If we look at other things,

Other values that have kind of been conditioned into us by society through technology or with technology,

You see a lot of these moving target things where people have these general desires that are never quite attainable.

One obvious one would be,

Say,

The beauty standards for women,

But really actually all people,

Let's say young women seem to be the most affected,

Young girls seem to be the most affected.

It used to be just a couple of decades ago when I was a kid,

It was all about how supermodels and magazines look so good because they have this unattainable standard of beauty that little girls think is how they should look because they see it over and over again in magazines and it makes them depressed,

Right?

That was true in that they took maybe the top 0.

1% of beauty standards and made it seem normal,

Which made people feel bad.

But now it's even worse.

Here I am acting like a curmudgeonly old man of like,

Oh,

It wasn't so bad in my day.

I'm still relatively young,

But I guess this is just actually a testament to how quickly technology is changing society in that even someone in their early 30s can feel old looking at how quickly technology is changing year to year.

It's only speeding up.

This podcast is not meant to be a rant against technology,

But I think it is good to recognize how various forces that have become normalized in our society,

Which is largely driven by technology,

Basically are setting up conditions that are right for anti-fulfillment.

There's a lot of factors going against you experiencing what should be your natural state of day-to-day fulfillment or lifetime fulfillment where you don't even fear death because you feel so complete,

Right?

We're becoming more and more incomplete and it's becoming worse generation or year to year even.

So not only is there the need for consumer goods you don't need or standards you don't need.

Oh,

Actually I didn't even finish the thought.

The whole thing with beauty is that now we have filters,

Right?

Like I think TikTok and Instagram now puts in an auto 2% filter.

I think I heard Tristan Harris saying this that even when you have no filter on,

It makes you look a little bit better.

So people never look as good as their photos,

Even if they try to not filter so much,

Right?

Before it was considered an unfair beauty standard because they were comparing the best looking people,

The naturally best looking people to the norm.

Now you have images that are not even natural.

They're beyond what a person could possibly even look like making mostly young girls feel really shitty about themselves.

And the same thing with all these other values even.

Even if you're not a materialist person,

There's this idea of like what you should accomplish or what you should need or what you should do.

I was thinking about,

I've been into personal development for a long time and one of the things that I certainly dabbled in when I was younger was like the idea of the secret,

The law of attraction,

Thinking really big goals.

And I certainly think there's value to that,

Right?

Certainly it's better to think positively than negatively.

I do think people influence their circumstances,

Their realities,

Their future to some degree by the thoughts they think if only through self-fulfilling prophecy,

But there's something to that but I was thinking especially in this life transition I'm in and actually one of the reasons why I even highlighted that quote by Kaczynski about moving from one stage of life to the next.

I highlighted it because I'm entering a new stage being a new father and there's been kind of a whole process of letting go of bachelordom and all that stuff.

But then I started noticing this nagging feeling which maybe honestly kicked off my dark night by the soul experience that I had over the summer which is like recognizing I had this whole laundry list of things I thought I would do before having kids,

Right?

And it was for a while it was making me kind of depressed of like,

Man,

Some of these things I didn't even come close to,

Right?

And I put in effort.

It wasn't like I regret being lazy about them.

I mean,

There's maybe some things I neglected more than others,

But actually just the fact that I had this huge list of desires that were all big in different areas,

Like in a sense it was kind of an unattainable standard that I put on,

Right?

I took on this idea of really big goals because I took on this belief that not only it was possible,

Which possible or not,

That's a separate question,

But that it was a good thing.

That it was a good thing to have a million really huge goals,

Right?

And it made me think,

You know,

Like here I am feeling shitty about these really big things that I didn't accomplish,

But if I didn't set these goals or if I set my goals,

Let's say,

To be a little bit less or if I happen to set the goals of all the things I did accomplish,

I would feel totally fulfilled,

Right?

I wouldn't even have this issue.

Actually,

I realized this having a chat with my buddy who he's almost exactly in the same life stage as me.

He's having a kid too.

Actually,

We seem to have conceived on the same week,

Which is odd,

Oddly in sync.

And he's about my age.

He's accomplished about the same amount in a different field.

And he was saying how he doesn't feel any of the things that I was feeling.

He felt super satisfied because when he was 23,

He wasn't reading self-help or thinking big.

He was basically assuming that by 30 he'd be dead or in jail,

Right?

Or like addicted to drugs or something.

So the fact that,

You know,

He's living this great life and,

You know,

Has as a functioning business and all this stuff is having a kid,

Like he feels like he won the lottery,

Right?

And it is just like this glass head,

Excuse me,

My throat is still a little bit scratchy now that I've been podcasting.

I realize I still have a bit of COVID symptom-ness.

That's not a word.

It's basically a glass half full,

Glass empty thing,

Of course.

But it is a basic perspective of like,

You know,

And I'm not arguing that we should not be ambitious and have,

You know,

And have goals at all.

I'm not saying you should be okay with mediocrity,

Certainly,

But it's recognizing that even for yourself,

If you are feeling shitty in comparing yourself to some metric,

Maybe it's the metric that's wrong,

Right?

Maybe it's the ruler that's wrong,

Not the measurement you're putting up,

Right?

Like who's to say that you should have anything?

You should accomplish anything.

It's arguably,

If we do take on this idea about fulfillment from Kaczynski,

Arguably everything that we pursue is a surrogate activity beyond meeting our survival needs.

Everything is,

You know,

This whole quest for meaning and purpose is really just a thing we do to satisfy what used to be satisfied by acquiring food and not being eaten by predators,

Right?

So this is not meant to be a cynical view,

Even though I guess it is maybe a little bit of a cynical view on having purpose and meaning.

It's to recognize that it's kind of like embodying the fool archetype and recognizing that all of this stuff that we're seeking,

It's nice to care about it,

But it doesn't really matter,

Right?

You're choosing to make it matter,

Right?

You're choosing to make it matter because you need something to matter to you to feel fulfilled,

Right?

To say,

You know,

The conclusion from this is not to look back,

Look at everything and be like,

Oh,

Nothing matters,

Right?

You know,

We're all just doing this just for fulfillment,

Chemicals,

Who cares?

I'm going to be a nihilist and just jerk off all day,

Right?

You know,

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying is recognizing that your goals are kind of arbitrary,

Right?

So if something's not working for you,

Right?

If you've put your,

If you know,

You're not feeling fulfilled,

If you're feeling kind of down,

Just consider the possibility that you put yourself in the wrong game.

I mean,

Another example is,

And I think I might have spoken about this in the social reality episode,

I'm breaking social constructions of reality.

You know,

I used to feel like such a loser because in the social group I was in,

I found it really hard to have,

To keep up with the conversations,

Right?

Like I really felt like a social retard because I just could not like,

Yeah,

I just didn't have things to say.

I just always felt inferior or inadequate.

And then I found a new community of people that wanted to talk about the things that I want to talk about.

And suddenly I felt super competent,

Right?

It wasn't that I was wrong and it wasn't that my old friends were wrong or bad people either,

You know,

Or I mean,

Certainly,

You know,

It's just,

They were into stuff that I wasn't into.

So of course,

Putting myself in that environment,

I felt like I was wrong.

Whereas really I could just put myself in a different game.

And the same thing is for you with whatever your interests are,

Your skill sets,

Your competencies.

It's just about finding a thing where you can match your competence with the challenge.

You can have goals.

I mean,

The goals are kind of arbitrary as I'm saying.

But you put in effort to attain the thing and that puts you in category two of drives where the things you're doing are attainable with effort and then you'll feel good,

Right?

And it's looked at this way,

That is kind of the perfect way to have a surrogate activity as opposed to having things that you are setting,

Where you're setting yourself up to fail or like chasing the next new iPhone or having a certain Instagram beauty standard,

Like you're putting yourself in a game that is unwinnable despite the amount of effort.

There is a certain category,

Actually I'll put it in principle form.

As far as like good surrogate activities that tend to lead to fulfillment,

I would say that very often the fulfillment you get is proportional to how much you're using your – actually using your body or existing material reality.

And this is kind of an argument against the metaverse and one of the reasons why even though adventure video games are really fun,

They're not fulfilling,

Right?

Things like anything electronic where you're in a fake world like porn or video games or social media,

Like they can all be fun,

Right?

Arguing on Facebook has some sort of reward in it,

Right?

That's why people do it.

Otherwise,

People wouldn't do it.

But no one ever feels fulfilled doing things in the fake world,

Right?

And I would even argue that even as VR becomes better and people are – once VR gets a little bit better,

They're saying that it will be too difficult for people to even tell the difference,

Right?

And then we'll really be in the matrix.

Then people would – that would be singularity with the metaverse and all that stuff.

I would argue that people will still feel – I mean,

And maybe this is a poetic romanticization also,

But I would argue that people will still feel not fully fulfilled even if they're getting to experience everything with such realism that they can barely tell the difference or they can't tell the difference.

Because what the screen and virtual things don't do,

Which doing things in what we think is real reality does do,

Is that it uses our physical body.

For as long as you have a paleo-mammalian emotional system,

Which is tied to the state of your body,

I would argue that you will always feel some lack of fulfillment in only doing things in screen world,

Right?

Which is why – yeah,

I mean,

Even I like computer games as well.

I mean,

I got a bit addicted to chess this year.

And then also,

There's some very realistic adventure games where you get to do the things that you can't maybe do in reality.

But no one ever feels fulfilled.

No one really feels fulfilled because they don't get to use their body,

Which is why I think the best surrogate activities are things that in some way affect reality,

Which is why you see a lot of people find so much joy in things like building furniture in physical sports,

Right?

Sports beat video games.

Why?

Because they're not – yes,

It works your body,

It contributes to health.

But there's – this is something I spoke about with Noelle Free recently.

There's an opportunity to react to real life with your real body that gives you an emotional reward that only stimulating your eyeballs can't do.

So,

I mean,

Yeah,

That's why – and it almost beats to the point where you're doing – you're expending physical effort just for the sake of it.

Even that can be fulfilling.

And for kind of an extreme example,

A little bit before COVID,

It started off as a joke,

But I started live streaming myself digging holes.

It started off as like a semi-joke where I basically was just live streaming myself digging a fire pit,

Which meant 10 or 11 hours of me digging on a live stream.

It was meant to kind of be a funny thing.

But actually,

This is like late 2019,

A guy who listens to the podcast who was in Thailand actually saw it and came over to just dig holes with me.

Even after the fire pit was done,

He still wanted to dig holes and we were just digging holes together.

There was something – it was semi-joking,

But there was real effort.

He actually reached out to me and asked if he could dig a hole in my yard because he felt he needed to use his body.

He was a guy who worked on the computer.

He was working on certain things in terms of his masculinity and his internal alignment,

If you will.

He just recognized – he saw me digging holes and I guess it was maybe like a Tom Sawyer moment,

But he recognized like,

Oh shit,

I need to dig holes.

That would be really good for me.

It made me think of this perspective that I often have on LSD that I try to keep when I'm not on LSD,

But of course,

The consumer's reality can be persisting at times,

Which is if this is – I mean,

I spoke about – I mentioned singularity.

It's possible we've already achieved it,

Right?

How do we know that we're not already in the matrix,

That kind of thing?

If that was the case,

Right,

And actually there's no way to prove it or not and we can't really know,

So it could be the case.

If it was the case,

And that was just the worldview you took on,

Then everything we do,

Right,

Everything we pursue and arguably even the pursuit of survival needs,

But let's just say we have to do the survival needs,

Otherwise we stop playing the game,

Right?

Our existence gets deleted.

You're always dying.

Everything we do is really just to entertain ourselves.

This was something that helped me look at something that has been stressful in the last year for me,

Which is Nalaya and I moved into this fixer-upper house about 11 months ago.

It was a rundown house.

It had been empty for six years and we got it really cheap,

But we had to put in a lot of work and a lot of money.

The whole idea was like we're putting in – we basically took a couple months off of working and spent a lot of money,

Which is our stored past work right?

We put a lot of our resources into it,

Thinking that we would live there for four years or so or something like that,

Making it,

Okay,

It's worth it to put in all this money and time because we'll be here for so long and we'll recoup the value.

Then she got pregnant and then we decided we didn't want to live there.

It just wasn't right for that life situation.

So then we moved out.

I mean,

We basically moved out after four months rather than four years.

This has been something that's honestly been eating at me because we spent multiple years' worth of rent.

Then I put a lot of time and she did too,

Like fixing up little things and fixing cabinets and I built a bed from scratch and a desk,

Both of which we've barely used and all of this stuff,

Right?

I hung up stuff I've talked about on the podcast and other episodes like all these farmer tasks with our animals and stuff and it's all kind of wasted from that lens,

Right?

From the lens of productive value,

It was a waste,

Right?

It was a waste of resources,

Of time,

Of money,

Of energy and stuff.

But from the perspective of none of this stuff is that necessary,

Right?

All of these goals,

I mean,

This is maybe a more extreme view on it,

But all of these goals,

They were just a surrogate activity for me to achieve day-to-day fulfillment because my survival needs are already met.

From that perspective,

It was actually great.

I mean,

I could flip it.

It's basically a reframe of it's not that I wasted a bunch of my resources that I got to have the experience of fixing up a house.

In many ways,

It was just kind of like playing The Sims,

Right?

When I was a kid and this is actually something she and I have in common,

Like we were both really into The Sims as children and when I was like 11 years old playing The Sims,

Which is a game where you create people,

You build them a house and you fill it with furniture and then you just have them do life,

Right?

You have them make food for themselves and go to work and try to get promotions and have babies and stuff.

You basically have them do regular life,

Which is what being just an adult person is.

When I was 11,

12,

I was obsessed with that game.

I loved just watching The Sims simulate and controlling their lives and watching them do things.

For some reason,

It was so entertaining and I try to remember as an adult that basically all the things that seem so mundane and unexciting like making food or doing dishes or sweeping a floor,

These are things that I'm never excited to do.

But essentially,

If I try to detach from my ego and kind of looked from a third person's perspective at my life as just watching the Truman Show,

Just watching the Me Show,

Which any of us can do with our own lives,

All of these mundane activities are basically just playing The Sims,

Right?

You're just letting this person simulate life.

From an outside perspective,

That can be very fulfilling for some reason,

Right?

That reason,

We could argue going back to Kaczynski,

Is that you are going through some version of a power process even though maybe house chores are not that fulfilling because they don't require that much mental effort.

It is an opportunity,

Right?

All the challenges that I personally had building furniture,

Fixing things,

And actually I learned a lot about how to fix houses.

That in itself was a very entertaining,

Or maybe not entertaining in the dopamine hit form,

But it was fulfilling,

Right?

I had goals.

I put in a hell of a lot of effort and I did ultimately attain them,

Which made me feel very fulfilled,

Even though I'm not going to necessarily reap the reward of all of my effort.

Just in terms of the resources,

So-called wasted,

I had to reframe that too,

Right?

Because it was many,

Many hours worth of work that went into both time that I didn't work to earn money,

But also my stored work in the form of money was now spent.

I reconciled that in a similar way of viewing,

If I enter the abundance mentality,

Right?

A lot of abundance model,

And I just consider the fact that no matter what in the future I'll be fine,

Then I don't need to worry about that money,

So-called wasted,

Right?

Of course,

Yeah,

I could do more things.

If I think about,

Oh,

If I spent all that money on Bitcoin or invested in Bitcoin instead of house fixtures that I'm not going to use,

Of course.

That still even in itself is scarcity mentality of assuming like,

Oh,

You would need that,

Right?

There's something,

Even with the gain of,

Say,

Cryptocurrency or an investment,

The scarcity feeling or the shitty feeling comes from the idea that there's maybe something I would want to buy later that I won't be able to buy now because I didn't make the right move,

Right?

Obviously,

We want to maximize our wealth and stuff,

But if I consider that,

If I just assume,

And this is a reframe of mental trick,

But if I just assume that everything I really want,

Like really want and really need,

I will have,

It doesn't really matter if I missed out on X amount of dollars,

Right?

It doesn't really matter,

Right?

If we go back to what do you really need and look at things that are in category two of drives,

Attainable with effort,

Well,

Then having excess money while it's nice and there's security and certainly for myself with having a child,

I'm going to have new expenses and whatnot and things I want to be able to provide.

But if I just consider that all of those things that are really necessary will be met and all of the really big things like buying a yacht or something really wouldn't bring me fulfillment anyway,

Then it kind of switches this view of like,

Basically,

It just switches this from feeling like I wasted a bunch of resources to I just had an experience.

I had an experience and it costs some things and it's just a drop in the bucket.

Now,

The final piece of the power process,

Right?

We spoke about goals,

Effort and attainment.

This final piece is autonomy,

Which is what Kaczynski spent the most time on or we're probably going to spend the least time on it.

But it's just this idea that primitive man always either was able to call his own shots or he was in a group where he had direct proximity to whomever was calling the shots,

Right?

Like even to our Stone Age ancestors,

Most people weren't the chief,

Right?

I mean,

I would argue,

And this is kind of based on something I researched in the History of Masculinity podcast,

Which I will put out eventually.

There's like one out of 50 people seem to have this like impulse to do whatever they want without really worrying.

Maybe I'm going off in a tangent that's unnecessary.

Basically,

Most people don't actually want to call their own shots.

But everybody wants to feel like they have some effect on their reality,

Which most people get through proximity to their leader.

In this hunter-gatherer tribes,

The groups never got bigger than 150 people.

So even if you were like the lowest status person in a tribe,

You had some connection to the highest status person.

You had some connection to the person who made the big decisions that affected your life and what you did,

Right?

And that for most people is enough.

Kaczynski actually argues that this is why he really doesn't like leftists.

He was saying that this is why leftists always want to join these mass movements is that they don't have fulfillment in their lives as most people don't have fulfillment in their lives.

And they don't have the traits that would have them go out and seek a surrogate activity for themselves.

So they lump onto a mass movement where the goals of the movements can now fill in,

Can we kind of be a surrogate to their own personal surrogate activity?

I'm not going to argue that.

I mean,

I don't really have anything to say about the political implications of this.

I mean,

Certainly not in this episode.

But this is a human need in itself,

Right?

And this is,

Again,

Kaczynski's arguments against modern life in that even though people can find surrogate activities for the most part where they have goals and they can put an effort and attain those goals,

Whether it's through their work or through their hobbies,

Most people don't have autonomy because in modern society,

A lot of what you can and can't do is decided by someone that you have no personal relationship with.

It's certainly not decided by you and the person and people who do decide most of the things,

Right?

Our legislators,

Most of us don't have a connection to them,

Right?

Why do you have to pay this kind of,

Why do you have to fill out these forms for this kind of business permit?

Why do you need to pay taxes in this way?

It's all been decided by people that we will never meet,

Right?

And he argues that this gives people a feeling of powerlessness,

Which makes them feel shitty,

Even if they have other surrogate hobbies.

And when we think of work,

Quality of work almost always is synonymous with creative autonomy,

Right?

A job,

I think a lot of people would consider the least fulfilling job would be working on an assembly line,

Right?

You have no creative autonomy.

Whereas someone who has the ability to make decisions of what they do hour to hour probably feels more fulfilled.

Someone who's in a more leadership role where they can determine the direction of a group or what happens and their decisions actually make a difference,

That's more fulfilling.

I would argue that for men,

And again,

This is going back to the higher status a male is,

The more his genes can be spread,

Which is rewarding to him.

So of course he'll feel even better as opposed to a female who is limited to how many children she could produce.

So she doesn't have that much to gain by putting herself through risks to be much,

Much higher status.

Obviously status affects women as well,

But not to the same degree.

I would argue that,

I mean,

This is why men seem to seek autonomy more than women,

Right?

Like Nali and I just actually watched the movie Into the Wild,

Which partly watched because maybe I was inspired by Kaczynski.

Here's the stories about a young guy who goes in to live basically as a primitive person in the wild,

Ends up dying,

Spoiler alert.

But he seeks this kind of like spiritual experience that is probably more true for men,

Like Thoreau and that kind of being in the woods by yourself.

You don't typically hear of women wanting to do that so often,

Right?

And again,

It could go back to genetics,

Right?

Like a male has so much to gain from the experience of not having anyone tell them what to do,

Which is probably why males also rebel even more when they're controlled.

Whereas this is not to say that,

You know,

Women like being controlled,

But certainly there's less to lose and sometimes more to gain by being at least part of a collective,

Which is why,

Yeah,

Anyway,

Collectivism seems to be more of a feminine trait or collectivism and feminineness,

Femininity.

I have more of an association,

Whereas what we think of masculinity and individualism seem to be more aligned.

So this is all to say that if you want to experience fulfillment,

The best thing you can do is one,

I mean,

Look,

I mean,

Basically recreate the power process as best you can every day,

Right?

And the power process again is goals,

Effort,

Attainment and autonomy.

Setting goals that actually match what you really want as opposed to what's coming from the outside,

From advertising or your cultural norms,

Right?

Just because something is normal doesn't mean it's a good thing.

And I've even been questioning things that I've always thought to be values like ambition.

Like I always thought I never considered that ambition could maybe not be a good thing,

Right?

And I'm not saying you should drop your goals.

I'm saying you should make your goals make sense to your life situation,

Right?

Like if you're five foot six,

It's kind of dumb to have,

I mean,

Actually,

There are short people in the NBA,

But you know,

Maybe you're just not meant for a certain kind of thing.

So you shouldn't measure yourself up to things that,

Basically don't set yourself up to fail.

Don't play the wrong game.

Play the game where you can put in effort and win.

The second piece is effort,

Right?

Gratification does not lead to fulfillment.

Gratification after considerable effort leads to fulfillment.

So the perfect surrogate activity,

The perfect thing to spend your time on are things that you can accomplish,

But only after you put in effort.

The third piece is obviously accomplishment,

Attainment.

If you've again are pursuing things that you can't attain or the target is moving,

Things you can never feel,

You never actually complete the thing,

You're never going to feel complete,

Whether it's a new beauty standard or a new,

You know,

At some point you do want completion.

You know,

Something I speak about a lot in coaching sessions when I'm speaking to a guy who is constantly feeling like he has things he needs to fix about himself or he never feels quite satisfied.

I usually recommend that he watches the movie Memento.

It's going to be a spoiler alert,

So hopefully you've seen it by now if you wanted to see it.

But basically the story of Memento is guy's wife is murdered.

He goes out to a venture,

So he has a very solid,

Meaningful goal.

Oh,

And he gets hit in the head when she gets murdered so that he loses his and everything beyond like a very short term memory.

So basically what he goes to the movie,

He kills,

He's chasing after somebody who thinks is the murderer.

He's like writing clues on his body so that,

You know,

He can,

Because he can't remember things.

He kills the person and then he realizes that he actually killed his wife's murderer many years ago.

But to not have that goal would leave him with such meaninglessness that he wouldn't know what to do with himself.

So he makes himself forget that he killed the person or he lets himself forget.

Like he tricks himself,

He changes his notes and then he picks a new person.

And you realize at the end of the movie that he's been doing this for like 10 years.

Like every time he kills the next person,

He changes the clues that he leaves for himself to get him to kill a new person.

And this is kind of,

You know,

I think it's a great allegory for how people chase goals in life,

Right?

Like the goal is kind of meaningless,

But to have it fully complete doesn't sit well with people.

So they want to keep chasing the next thing as opposed to what Kaczynski says the primitive man experience,

Which is they do everything they need to do when they're in every stage of their life.

So they feel complete and then they have no more stones to unturn.

Yeah,

Anyway,

They can just move on to the next thing,

Including death,

Right?

They can approach death now feeling fulfilled.

The last thing that I think Kaczynski missed,

And he never mentions actually in his book,

Even though he talks about how primitive man wants to have children and all this stuff.

He does a one,

I don't think Kaczynski himself was fulfilled because here's a guy who,

And actually if you don't know anything about him,

He was a mathematics professor and he swore off society,

Moved into the woods,

Basically lived the Walden thorough life.

And he probably did feel a lot of fulfillment.

He basically just got to survive,

But he still felt the need to become the Unabomber.

He still felt the need to get his ideas out there and obviously create these bombs and kill people and stuff.

So we could presume that he wasn't really fulfilled.

If he was really fulfilled,

He wouldn't have bothered all of that.

I think the thing missing from his life was connection.

I mean,

He himself,

It seems was an incel of a sort.

He didn't have relationships.

He didn't have a girlfriend.

It didn't seem like he had much of that in his life actually.

Because the other thing,

The thing that he doesn't mention,

I mean,

I agree with his power process,

Obviously,

He would have been talking about it for the last hour,

But it's not enough to just have goals,

Effort,

Attainment,

Autonomy,

Because primitive man,

Even though males certainly spent some time by themselves,

They did a lot of things together.

They hunted in groups.

Big game requires multiple people.

The reason why we have a dog brain in our heads,

As I spoke about in the previous episode,

Is to socialize.

We get fulfillment from being part of something,

Even if it's not all the time.

No one really wants to be by themselves forever,

Even though certainly men of primitive eras probably did go off on their own at times.

We feel fulfilled by having an impact on people,

What we would call connection or having community.

Because the primitive man,

All of his goals,

Given that we're a social animal,

All of his goals also involve other people.

It wasn't just about eating,

Not getting eaten by predators and surviving the winter.

It's surviving with your tribe.

That's why people fear ostracization.

That's why it's such a great,

Even though irrational need to do things for people's approval.

It's because that is part of our circuitry as well.

A healthy primitive man,

His goals involved feeding other people as well,

His children,

His mates,

His tribesmen.

It's not just enough to have a surrogate activity where you get to put an effort and attain it with free autonomy.

The ideal surrogate activity,

The ideal thing to spend your time on are things that affect other people.

If I were to have one final prescription for this episode,

One thing to nail and to leave you with is to find a way every day to struggle in the name of benefiting another person or affecting another person in a positive way.

If you do this every day,

And it's just a simple thing,

It could be one thing where you expend effort for the sake of mutual benefit with yourself or your community or whatever,

That seems to be the one thing,

The one thing formula to lead to fulfillment.

I think this is why in the 12-step program,

They emphasize doing service for other people.

Just doing that,

Doing service,

Hits all those things.

You're choosing to do it.

It's autonomy.

You have a goal to do something.

It takes effort.

It wouldn't be considered service if you could just snap your fingers and have it appear.

You attain it,

Which means you deliver some value to another person.

You feel good.

You feel connected.

You don't feel isolated.

You no longer feel like doing drugs or drinking or whatever your vice was.

For most people,

Scrolling media or whatever.

In spiritual traditions,

They have the idea of seva.

It's the same idea.

Eat,

Pray,

Love.

Liz Gilbert has that chapter where she is expending the entire day scrubbing a marble floor.

Somehow,

It's good for her fulfillment.

It fits the power process even though it might seem unnecessary.

Even if you look at,

I forget the name of the movie.

Is it Shambhala?

That kind of spiritual documentary where they show the monks making mandalas in the sand.

They make these beautiful intricate mandalas grain by grain and then erase it and start over again.

It seems so unproductive but they were basically fulfilling the power process.

Perhaps these monks recognize that any worldly goal is arbitrary.

They pick something that they can do and then erase and then do it again.

It's basically like memento in a sense.

I'm just making this connection now.

Pick a goal,

A daily goal that requires effort,

Ideally involves your physical body,

Physical effort and when you attain it,

It affects other people and you're doing it freely.

This is basically how you hit the power process.

We would think that if you can do this,

If you can make this your priority day by day to do once your survival needs are met,

It would allow you to feel the fulfilling feeling that primitive people felt all the time so that you do not fear going to the next chapter.

Whether that's growing older,

Entering a new life situation where you can't go back to your earlier one which includes of course death.

I hope this episode helps you experience fulfillment.

If you enjoyed it,

It would mean a lot to me if you shared it with one person and allow it to help impact some other people.

Struggle every day.

Do hard things,

Goals,

Effort,

Attainment,

Autonomy,

Benefit other people and you'll feel fulfilled.

Goodbye.