A few weeks back, I published an article here called The Stupidity of Looking for External Solutions. While it upset many of you more politically-minded folks both on the left and the right (as I knew it would), it became the most re-posted, re-tweeted, and shared article in the seven-year history of this blog. Clearly, a strong majority of you are interested in this topic, regardless of the smaller percentage of you of whom it angers. Today, I will expand on the topic and the overall concept in an effort to, as always, improve your life rather than worrying about what your world, society, nation, or race is doing or not doing.
In that above linked article, I stated that if you pursue external solutions like becoming politically active in movements or supporting / worshiping politicians (regardless if their names are âTrumpâ or âSandersâ) with the hopes that these people will somehow directly improve your life, you will succeed only in venting some anger and perhaps making a few new friends. You are extremely unlikely to succeed in actually improving your own life, and you will likely waste decades of your time in the process.
If instead you shift your focus, time, and effort on internal solutions, like working on improving your own income, your dating / relationship abilities with women, your physical fitness, and otherwise improve your own life, while this will still take a few years of work, it will take far less time to achieve real results, and the odds of actually achieving these results are extremely high, often 80% or higher.
Obviously, internal solutions are a much better, smarter, and more efficient way to go about improving your own life, regardless of how entertaining or seductive external solutions may be.
I also said that since you only have very limited time in your life to get all of your stuff done (only about 17 waking hours per day with only three or four decades of truly productive years) like eat, work, pay the bills, attend to family matters, attend to personal hygiene, etc, itâs very foolish to waste your precious little free time on external solutions when you could be focusing on internal solutions instead. Thus, focusing on external solutions is not only non-productive; it can actually harm you by stealing happiness-creating internal solutions away from you.
Does that mean I believe that one should never, ever engage in any external solutions under any circumstances? Not exactly. There are some isolated scenarios where engaging in external solutions wonât harm you. Here they are.
When Itâs A Pure Hobby and You Donât Actually Expect It To Change Anything
The people who are damaging their lives by focusing on external solutions usually suffer from these two conditions:
1. They spend a decent amount of time on external solutions like trolling people on the internet, arguing with people on Facebook or Twitter, watching political videos (that both reinforce and oppose their political viewpoints) and getting worked up about them, voting in national elections, trying to get others to vote, creating or participating in movements to create societal change, getting into screaming fights (both verbal and physical) at protests, and so on. They are doing this stuff every day, seven days a week or close to it, often for hours a day.
2. They really think their guy or the people on their side can actually change things, soon, and in a radical way. In 2000, George W. Bush supporters really thought he was going to make government smaller. (He didnât, as I said he wouldnât.) In 2008, Obama supporters really thought he was going to end the US wars in the Middle East. (He didnât, as I said he wouldnât.) In 2016, Trump supporters really thought he was going to build an unbroken wall on the Mexican border spanning from San Diego to Brownsville (He wonât. Watch.) In the near future, Bernie Sanders supporters (or whomever replaces his legacy) will really think that theyâll get free college, free health care, and free whatever else, and/or that doing so will work out great. (They’ll get those things eventually, but it will be a fucking mess. Watch.) And so on.
If you spend time in external solutions, but you remove these two conditions, then it wonât harm you.
For example, letâs say you consider bitching about politics as a fun hobby, but you are very sure no actual societal change will come of your actions. You know damn well that you bitching on the internet or punching a chad once every four years for the next corporatist president isnât going to accomplish a damn thing, but you still think itâs fun.
Letâs also say that, in your day-to-day time management, you treat external solutions the same way I treat video games. When Iâm playing a particular computer game (and Iâm usually not), I play it just three or four times a week at the most. Every time I play, I set a timer for one hour, play my game, and when the timer goes off, I turn the game off and get back to working on my internal solutions (my goals, my Mission, and my life).
Letâs say you do the same with all of your political stuff. Instead of doing it every day for hours a day, you do it three or four times a week for one hour, and you really donât expect it to make any big changes in your society; itâs just something you do purely for fun.
In that case, being in the external solution world is probably fine. Youâre not going to be upset when your guy or your side screws you (which they always do) and youâre not stealing too much precious time away from your internal solutions.