Swimming upriver is harder than going with the flow.

 Swimming upriver is harder than going with the flow and it is easier to rationalize defeat than it is to pursue the dream.  Why bother when everybody else is telling you to shut up and conform?  Why risk being shunned?  Far easier and infinitely smarter to accommodate to the inevitable, sooner rather than later, and reap the rewards of conformity.  Granted, the rules change over time, but the process is gradual enough that it is simple to “fit in” and change one’s values along with the rest of society.  The fact that everybody else is doing it makes it somewhat easier to submerge the occasional twinge of doubt.

But which reality should one permit to shape them?  Choosing between the alternatives is baffling to those who mistakenly question authority.  Better to tuck one’s head and learn the catechism of your particular group.  But you ask, how does one sensibly select the right group to adopt as their own?  Not hard.  Merely conform to those around you, wherever you happen to be.  If you find that to be too difficult, simply move to another geographic location - either physically or mentally - and get on with life.  Understand that nothing beyond your own immediate intellectual and physical geography is relevant to your own life.  Putting dinner on the table for yourself and your family is hard enough without insisting on everything being fair and just for everybody else, particularly if they live outside of the imaginary lines that you draw around yourself and your group.

Should you be intent on helping the rest of the world understand life the same way that you do, it is admirable to become involved in your tribe’s efforts to convince the rest of humanity to live according to your rules.  The more intense your feelings, the more effective you will be in this endeavor.  In this regard, it is critical that you not waste a whole lot of time or effort in trying to understand the other.  Stay focused on your own tribe’s interests and rigorously eschew contact with any of the other.  Raise your voice, intensify your effort, even to the use of violence if necessary.  It is critical that your side wins.  The future of humanity depends on it.  Rigorously ignore any who preach discussion, compromise, and understanding.  They are merely trying to advance the lives of the other and are willing to sacrifice “our” interests to accomplish that irrational objective.

The beauty of the above advice is that it can be applied to whichever group you decide best reflects your personal interests.  It is a universal recipe for “success” in your personal life as well as your country’s position in the world.  It also goes a very long way to explain my own lack of success in life.  I mistakenly thought that enough was enough, and obviously did not grasp the critical importance of more.  I was so dumb that I thought the cultural melting pot was good social science.  I was blind to the need to achieve diversity by emphasizing race.  I thought that I understood the difference between man and woman and did not know that the age of the fetus was so critical in the decision as to whether it was alright to snuff it.  I do admit that it is easier to get straight on all of these confusing issues today than it was back in the dark days when we used to talk to each other.  I applaud the brilliant concept of the mask as visible proof that we refuse to talk to each other and I applaud the fundamental changes that we are making in our political system moving it away from ineffective democracy toward relentless authoritarianism.  Artificial intelligence is coming along just in time to save us from the inadequacies of human intelligence and improvements in the internet will facilitate our spreading our wisdom to the ends of the earth.  Given the existence of nuclear weapons, perhaps even to the end of the human experiment.

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