J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Tag: Tim Ferriss Page 2 of 3

The Pursuit of Happiness Is Meaningless Without the Pursuit of Justice

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On December 16

In Culture Rants/Shares, Metaprogramming, Utopian Speculations

Where’s the Justice League when you need ’em?

Ambushed By An Article

Yesterday morning I was happily drinking coffee and reading the New York Times, when I came across this disturbing article by conservative think tanker Arthur Brooks.

The piece starts off as a bland rehash of “the latest” happiness research (trotting out studies from the seventies). Nothing new, but nothing offensive either. Towards the end, the piece takes a sharp right turn as Brooks champions free enterprise as the solution to both personal happiness and global poverty. The bogeymen of socialism and collectivism are trotted out as the usual enemies. Perhaps as an apologetic concession to liberal NYT readers, Brooks does acknowledge that social mobility and economic opportunity are on the decline in the United States (at least as compared to Canada and the Scandinavian countries — ironically all collectivist social democracies). The whole piece is a confused mess.

Personal Development Hijacked by Corporate Ideology

So why am I writing about it?

This blog is subtitled “Systems for Living Well.” I agree with many of Arthur Brooks’ conclusions about personal happiness (a spiritual life, strong relationships, meaningful work, and connection to community are all important). But I want to distance myself from Brooks (as well as bloggers like Steve Pavlina, Gretchen Rubin, Tony Robbins, and Tim Ferriss) who approach personal happiness and life satisfaction in a “bubble” context, ignoring social and political issues as if they didn’t exist.

Too often, self-help philosophies function as a justification for right-wing ideology. Ignore the bad cards life has dealt you, and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps! Pursue your passion and beat the economic odds! Be a winner not a loser! A credo of personal accountability ties in neatly to ideals of free enterprise and anti-welfare sentiments.

In a similar vein, advocating gratitude and forgiveness as spiritual practices is usually good advice (in terms of emotional health and personal empowerment). But the same philosophy can be twisted to imply that workers should be happy with (and feel grateful for) whatever is doled out by their employers, instead of negotiating for better wages, benefits, and working conditions, or fighting against corporate crime and corruption. It’s one thing to forgive the CEO of a Wall Street company that swindled tax-payers, so you don’t have to live with hate in your heart. But it’s another thing to lie down and let them do it again.

I believe in personal accountability, the value of hard work, establishing effective habits, practicing gratitude — all the same things that the Pavlina/Rubin/Robbins/Ferriss types are pushing. But I also believe that if we truly want to live well, we should fight against the injustices that prevent others from living well.

So what are the injustices we should be fighting against? Well, for starters:

Maybe, if I’m not happy, it’s because my conscience isn’t clear. Maybe I’m not working hard enough for the right for others to get a fair shot at the pursuit of happiness. Yes, we’re all responsible for our own happiness and sense of meaning in life. But if we ignore injustice, others may not even get the chance to pursue happiness.

Call To Action

To writers, bloggers, economists, psychologists, and social scientists who are exploring the topic of happiness, here’s what I’m suggesting:

  • Don’t be a tool for corporate ideology. In the discussion of personal happiness and life meaning, don’t ignore oppression and injustice, wherever you see it.
  • Allow for the possibility that the concepts of personal accountability and social inequity/injustice can co-exist.
  • Don’t only look at happiness and life satisfaction on a personal level, but consider social and economic factors that affect us collectively, and call people to action to fight against injustice, greed, corruption, oppression, and other realities that hurt all of us.

I do understand why self-help writers want to steer clear of these topics. If you write about political issues, you potentially lose half your audience (or more). And I want to give credit to Ferriss and Robbins especially for raising money for schools, fighting poverty, etc.

But it’s delusional to think that we can *all* pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and visualize (or optimize) our way to an ideal life, when income inequality is so high, and social mobility so low, and we live in an age of rampant unchecked corporate irresponsibility.

Please share your thoughts below.

The Learning Tax (pay it, instead of working around your ignorance and weaknesses)

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On May 10

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming, Problem Solving

Learning the Hebrew alphabet, one of my current study areas

Learning the Hebrew alphabet, one of my current study areas

For about a decade, for most of my thirties, I lost touch with active learning.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t learn anything for those ten years. I learned passively, reading nonfiction and news. I had hundreds of fascinating conversations. I worked, and learned by doing (LBD), acquiring new skills by throwing myself into unfamiliar activities (screenplay and novel writing, DJing) and learning on the fly.

Still, my approach to acquiring new skills and knowledge was haphazard. The few times I did dedicate time and resources to active learning yielded large dividends (for example my “DJ bootcamp” experience), but this was the exception, not the rule.

For the most part, I ignored:

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Penelope Trunk Makes Me Think Hard About What I’m Doing and Why

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On October 4

In Creative Work/Career, Metablog, Personal Updates

Brazen Careerist’s Penelope Trunk

I’ve been reading Penelope Trunk’s mindfuck of a blog, and learning a few things in the process.  Listening to this podcast, in which Penelope gives brutally blunt career advice to hapless blogger Steve, was sort of a wake-up call.  Penelope asks Steve some hard questions about why he is blogging, and what his goals for his blog are.  When he’s evasive, she rips him a new one.  It’s not pretty, but it’s honest, and to Steve’s credit he posts the whole thing unedited.

Penelope can be thought of as kind of an anti-Tim Ferriss.  Where Tim looks for simplicity and optimization, Penelope looks for conflict and doubt.  Tim polishes his image and generally presents his best side, while Penelope shares her angst, personal failings, and relationship problems.  Tim offers advice about how to minimize work and maximize play, while Penelope takes as a given that adults need to put in 8 hours of daily work, and focuses on the question of “Whose working life do you want?”

So, who do I want to take advice from?  A borderline-narcissistic tango-spin record holder, or a neurotic Jew with Asperger’s syndrome?  Well, both actually, but I’ll focus on Penelope’s advice in this post since I talked about Tim Ferriss last week.

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Reaction to Tim Ferriss’s Talk on Accelerated Learning (and Thoughts on his Rapid Rise to Fame)

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On September 24

In Creative Work/Career, Culture Rants/Shares, Metaprogramming

Ferriss dispensing some armchair wisdom.

I recently attended Tim Ferriss’s talk “Accelerated Learning in Accelerated Times,” as presented as part of the Long Now Foundation’s Seminar series.  Jason W. from Proton Radio invited me — thanks Jason!

You can listen to the whole presentation here.  And here’s the Long Now blog post summarizing the talk.

I sensed the audience had a mixed reaction to Tim’s talk.  It was the first time he had given this particular presentation and it felt both rough and rushed.  Also, I think Ferriss’s rapid rise to celebrity status rubs some people the wrong way.  He can come off as arrogant sometimes.

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3 Idiotic Nutrition Myths That Won’t Die

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On May 28

In Health/Body-hacking

The most fattening graphic in the history of the universe.

The other day my wife came back from a PTO meeting at our local school and noted (with a bewildered look on her face) that “The low-fat thing is alive and well, isn’t it?”  Since the nutritional thinking in our household is more along the paleo/Weston Price lines of thinking, it sometimes comes as a shock that the rest of the world still thinks that Wheat-Thins and fruit juice is a “healthy snack.”

Poorly designed and haphazardly analyzed studies like The China Study reinforce the conventional thinking that has led to a national obesity epidemic.  Food alone isn’t to blame, so are too much sitting, too much driving, not enough exercise, and environmentally pervasive chemicals like bisophenol-A.  But poor food quality and misinformation about food are mostly to blame.

Here are a few dietary misconceptions that annoy the hell out of me:

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