A Guide to the Basic Anxiety of Life

Underlying much of what we do is an uncertainty, an anxiety, a fear, doubts, dissatisfaction … And we react to these anxieties, dissatisfaction and uncertainty in so many unhelpful ways: we seek distraction, we eat unhealthy food, we procrastinate, we get caught in a cycle of anxiety and unhappiness, we lash out at others, we dwell in our loneliness, and then we get in denial about it all. If we could learn to deal with the basic anxiety of life, we would have much more ease and less struggle.

The Infinite Regress of the Victim Mentality

Now aside from the fact that nobody living today has gone through the injustices of their ancestors, nor has anybody alive today perpetrated those injustices on any living or deceased person today, and therefore, they do not owe any so called “victim” anything, there is another problem with this line of victim based ideology. Namely, there is always another victim further back, to which a claim can be made for “justice.”

Authority and Morality

The decisions people make and the directions that people go in may in the end not serve them or lead to the kind of results that they want, but that is for each person to discover on their own. Advice can be given, suggestions can be made, but ultimately each person must walk their own path themselves. To try to play games of authority is to attempt to ignore all of this.

It’s Either Bullies or Balance Sheets

A wise man once told me that in this life, you can obey balance sheets or bullies. In the end, those are the only two paths. He was drawing attention to an unavoidable reality in a world of scarcity. All scarce things must be allocated among competing ends. This can be done top-down by people in control, or it can be accomplished bottom-up with the signaling system that emerges from voluntary exchange. The two approaches don’t mix well.