Time Management/Identity Management 

It is been over a year since I quit spending multiple hours a day either gaming or on Twitch. Since then, I found other things that get my needs covered better, in a more balanced and healthy way. 

I was addicted because I didn't know a better way to exist or to spend my time in a more constructive manner. I write "more constructive", because if nothing else, I owe a great part of my English skills to this period. This experience has given me an unique quirk to examine any behavior that people carry out daily for at least a few hours.

The general population has accepted the fact that it is normal to spend half a normal day either at school, university or work. All these institutions serve as a very strange intermingling for finding one's purpose, along with education, moneymaking, stress, socialization, as well as love and hate. 

The issue with the all-out lifestyle focused just on one thing is that once that thing goes away, the chance that it's going to drastically transfigure your current lifestyle is very high. In that case, it doesn't even matter if it's something we love or hate. Going to work or to school or gaming for 30-50 hours a week is quite the investment of time and identity.

One of the more scary ideas I sometimes offer people is that they don't need to be defined by one single thing (or a few things) so heavily. There are ways of making money that take up only a fraction of time they spend at their job. There are ways of getting a university degree that take up only a fraction of time they spend at the university on lectures. There are ways of spending your time in a more constructive way than binge drinking/watching series/overeating/pick your poison.

Yet most people do not consider these alternatives or don't even know they exist. They're scared of standing out. Afraid of failure. Protecting themselves from ridicule. The only path they know to success is the following one; you need to have a university degree to get a good job. You need to have a good job to make good money. You need to make good money to go on a vacation once or twice a year. You need to go on a vacation because you need to take a break. You need to take a break to do the things you have half-forgotten you like more than your job.

One could make the argument that the system is built in a way to prevent people from making more money for less effort and that it's even a good thing, because otherwise people would have too much money and OD on meth or something. However I disagree, since one can ruin their life regardless of their financial situation; rich, poor or middle-class. Abundance or lack of money usually only speeds up their current situation, but it's hardly ever the prime reason of why one's life is not going well.

The whole idea of having a job is predicated on the fact that it makes one materially and psychologically dependent on it. Unplanned loss of a job is normally a disaster and even a planned departure is difficult to bridge without a reasonable alternative. Therefore, it could be that having multiple jobs could be better for people's well-being in transition periods, because if they lost one job, they would keep the other (and perhaps could support at least their basic needs).

It goes in line with the idea that once something fails in one of the areas of your life, you can take a step back, work on other things, relax and think how to go about the fail more rationally. If that was the only thing you had going in your life, you'd be desperately clawing to keep it as it was and unwilling to let it go if needed.

Since we all have 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week and 730 hours a month, it's obvious we can't do everything and that we have to prioritize. Luckily, there aren't not too many important areas of life to look after and sometimes one activity might help in multiple areas at once. Any compulsive/addictive behavior usually comes from not attending to these areas or their variants:

Spirituality, health, finance, relationships, personal development.

I'm trying to live a balanced lifestyle consisting of all the areas above. Maintaining the equilibrium might not be efficient, but it keeps the life going.

People and Democracy

"People do not have ideologies; ideologies have people." An ideology can give meaning to one's life, but it can also take it away.

Democracy allows you break the law when convenient and law is supposed to be the minimum of morality. Is it acceptable to kill another human being? I think the majority of people would say no. Yet we need to have police and army with people who are willing to break this rule from time to time. There are shadows of doubt and blurry lines even in such seemingly obvious questions.

It is said that historically, people lived in caste systems that are nevertheless different than the ones we nowadays know from e.g. India. Before, the castes used to be a flexible system, where children would go into apprenticeships based on their recognized skill-sets and talents, compared to the rigid "modern" caste system that distributes roles based on ancestry.

The second point is that all castes carried equal importance. An office worker who issues road plans and a road worker who builds roads are equal in getting the road project done. They need each other to get the job done. They still do, however I believe there exists a societal imbalance in perceiving working in an office to be "better off" compared to working on the road (pronounced in higher pay, reputation etc.)

I think the system in modern democracies is better, as the background of the person seemingly doesn't matter. However, it still operates on the idea that what children want might not be what they need and, counter-intuitively, it doesn't provide them with any guidelines once they are forced to make a decision about their further education or finding a job.

According to Plato, democracy ranks fourth out of five governmental regimes he described. Under this regime, anyone is free to do what they want. However this freedom must be coupled with discipline to make something useful out of it, otherwise we risk running from one thing to another as soon as something starts going poorly for us and never getting anything done.

That's not to say one shouldn't try multiple mutually exclusive pathways (i.e. careers or partnerships) during their lives, however there should be a progression (preferably in the form of gain of experience) over time and the eventual admission that we chose a "good enough" or even the "best" path for ourselves.

Contrary to that, if freedom is taken as an excuse to do nothing, then the life of an individual who assumes such a stance is bound to become exactly that - nothing. A "nothing" likely ridden by anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.

Given that we live in a quite extraordinary time where a lot of things temporarily stopped still in our lives, we were given the opportunity to focus on ourselves. Now is the time to consider what do we stand for, to check whether we are going where we want to go and to make ourselves a bit more truthful (and less despicable!) during the process.

It's time to get up and to get after it and to get it done. You already know what "it" is.

 The Age of the Feminine in Post-Modern Societies

Perhaps you are aware of the following quote: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.” In this article, I'm going to put it in context with interpersonal relationships between men and women in the contemporary society.

The past century provided an indisputable change in the societal role of women, be it the sexual revolution, the equalization of rights or their inclusion into the workforce in order for them to make money.

To give an example from the workplace, men have the majority in the military/police or construction (jobs with more physical labor as well as a greater chance to get hurt or even killed), while women have the majority in education or nursing (jobs with children or care-taking element involved).

I have a reason to believe that as the society became more inclusive over time, the need for truly masculine, dominant or even tyrannical men subsidized, simply because every way of life and behavior is considered a correct one, as long as it doesn't interfere with others in a violent way.

The downside of that is that there are no sensible guidelines as to which route to take and how to behave. Everything got mixed in a mush, where everything seems to be equally relevant or important. By nature, we are inclined to take the path of least resistance (or the least threatening path) and it's easier to sit tight or to keep doing something that is not working for us than to make a real change. Only a small amount of people are willing to put in the extra mile that would make their life genuinely better.

Having read the "Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I know the return to tyrannical societies is not the answer, as regimes under Adolf Hitler, Iosif Stalin or Mao Zedong killed tens of millions of people.

I believe we live in a feminine age today. That's not to say that this era puts women in a better position than men. Everything has its pros and cons for each sex. I'll list some of the implications of that:


1) Less males graduating from universities in comparison to females.

 

Above is the Czech census from 2011, showing university education based on sex and age. On the left side are men and on the right side are women. Green are people with bachelor's degree, blue with master's and orange with doctoral. Note the difference for ages 20-24 and 25-29.

I'm convinced that one of the reasons for this includes greater craving for security by women in both senses of the word - university graduates have the potential to get better paying jobs and have no need to be working in physically demanding/dangerous professions.


2) Today, with a lot of the options in life labeled being "equally correct", there is seemingly lesser and lesser need for discipline, true immersion and purpose. This view is however flawed. People who work harder, are able to focus on what they do and love what they do will always outperform those who do not share these characteristics. I believe this "laser focus" or greater tendency for uni-dimensionality in men is their lifeblood and that it's disheartening to see it letting it go to waste, because they haven't learned how to use it properly.

I got to experience that first hand. In the past, I mostly tried to do just the minimum required of me, so that everybody would've left me alone, so I could've spent the maximum of my time in a questionable manner. It's an arbitrary and chaotic lifestyle, yet at the same time oddly authoritarian and orderly.


3) These times we also have a different understanding about who constitutes the "base" family and who does not. They are smaller and more fractured than before. This also puts a greater strain on all members of the family, as the number of people they interact with to get their needs met is smaller.

Previously, immediate families consisted not only of parents and children, but also grandparents, uncles, aunts and other relatives. It used to be more organic and self-sustainable, in case of support during hard times or death. 

We however now have the option to become more individualistic and picky about who we interact with. If a nuclear family (parents + kids) gets fractured by divorce, it is more likely the children are going to live with the mother rather than with the father.


4) The biological inequality between sexes and socio-cultural equality between sexes has always been a topic for dispute. Back in the hunting/gathering phase of humanity, the differences between sexes were quite clearly cut (i.e. men were on the hunt and women took care of the fireplace or children), whereas nowadays the lines are often blurry and the sexes are more interchangeable in most positions than ever before.


All these factors that are in effect today created an extreme strain on our romantic relationships. We want our significant other to be both our greatest friend who we can trust and respect on an intellectual level, and at the same time someone who we can have children with, battle and connect with on an emotional/biological level. Finally, we (both sexes) need each other; we always had and always will, despite and because of our variable differences. 

Daring Greatly and Unchaining Yourself Smartly

Recently, I realized that in Czech, we have a synonymous imperative for "to dare" and "to untie/to unchain". This got me thinking further, as to really dare and try something new, you have to unlink yourself from the comfort of your current status quo. As the old adage goes, you are more likely to regret the fact you did not do something, rather than if you actually did it. It is a sound strategy, except for the cases where you end up in jail, but exceptions even to that could be found. Aside from law, there is a number of things that can influence our decision making in getting what we want.

On the "virtuous" side of things, this would mean not getting drunk on a party when you are the designated driver. You would hold onto your promise, even though everyone around you seemed to be having the time of their lives. You would suck it up, open your non-alcoholic beer and do the "right thing".

Being on the "depraved" side would mean doing the opposite by abandoning your promise. You would get soused, despite telling your friends you would drive, therefore interfering with plans of other people. If you would do this enough times, you would soon end up either with having no friends or people who can't be trusted.

On the "neutral" side, we could have anxiety - a motivator for some and a bogey for others. Depending on how we frame it, we can either use the surge of its energy to propel us, or get overwhelmed by it and get stopped dead in our tracks.

There are also exogenous tools, such as drugs, to help us frame situations differently, most commonly alcohol. What alcohol does is that it gets us rid of anxiety and makes us be more in the moment/not care about the future.

However, overdo it with alcohol and you are going to wake up with nasty side effects. That can go as far as doing something illegal and getting caught. And then, interestingly, being on drugs is generally an aggravating circumstance, because you willingly reduced your ability to make rational (long-term) decisions, manipulated your motor abilities and deviated from your usual (lawful) behavior.

As humans, we are wired to feel more negative emotion than positive. It is what made us successful in spreading throughout the globe and dominate the most immediate range of size neighboring us. So far, we cannot build planets on the galactic level or stop aging on the cellular level. We've also been granted the ability to conceive of the future and we're stuck with it - for better or for worse. We have to realize that the hem of consciousness is just a thin lining, separating us from the core of primordial unconsciousness.

So even if you get drunk/tipsy or high just a few times a year, try to watch yourself. Remember those moments and own the actions you have done. Don't be like Homer who once famously remarked: "It's not my fault, alcohol made me drunk!" Substance use does not absolve you of responsibility in the face of law, nor in the face of others and, most importantly, nor in your own subjective morality.

Rejection and scarcity - our misunderstood allies  

 

A couple of days ago, my friend mentioned he thinks the idea of the Christmas Eve is anachronistic, at least in the West and much of democratic Europe. Back when he was a child and teenager, there was still socialism in our country, so goods like bananas, tropical fruit or better/more stylish clothing were considered a luxury, except perhaps for the small number of people at the helm of politics.

Today, it seems like the situation is inverse, where only a small amount of people in these parts of the world struggle to physically survive. I think the material abundance came at the cost of lower mental acuity. I never knew material scarcity and the abstraction of mental scarcity is therefore even more difficult to grasp for me. I had to get around to eventually understand at least a part of it, because not too long ago, I was not even able to understand the lowest societal requirements; all I could see around me were people hating or being cynical about their life, so I figured I could just do without all that hassle and indulge in my addiction.

Scarcity is to stay in our lives. I am free to choose any job, yet most of them would suck for me, given my unique skill-sets and beliefs. I am free to talk to any woman, yet most of them won't be truly interested in me and vice versa. I am free to do anything, yet there's the ultimate scarcity of time which has wiped out everything up to this day. There's only a finite amount of things we can be good at in our lives and we become good at something by failing in it over and over and over again.

It's important to cherish the failures, even more than successes. Failures usually get a bad reputation not because of what actually happened or what didn't happen, but because we forgot to focus on the process. Embrace the suckage when it happens, learn what you can from it and try again.

Oddly enough, the failures are imprinted into my brain deeper than successes, so I can learn from them. Sometimes they even morph into one another, for example in the case of romantic relationships.

Success is easy and it doesn't need to be remembered, because it happens all the time. Can I walk? Yes, success. Can I type? Yes, success. Can I read what I type? Yes, success. Repeated success without any novelty gets boring over time. From this stems the addiction to success and then we HATE when things do not go our way. However, the failure to fail is fatal.

Scarcity and gratitude seem to happily co-exist together. It's difficult to feel grateful for something you lack and think you need. Conversely, it is easy to feel ungrateful and take something for granted. When was the last time you slept outside of your comfortable bed? When was the last time you fasted? Are you addicted to comfort, physical or mental?

We have to invite scarcity and failure into our lives, but in a smart way. Don't go and run a marathon, if the last time you ran was to catch a bus a month ago. You have the responsibility to know yourself and decide on the optimal load you can bear reliably and consistently in each and every area of your life. Nobody else is going to do that for you.

This is Martin "Ikar" Čermák, until next week (and year!), out.