What is real? What is made up? How can you tell?
HAPPINESS is a function of accepting what is
LOVE is a function of communication
HEALTH is a function of participation
SELF-EXPRESSION is a function of responsibility
~Werner Erhard
Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? But, to begin with the phrase “a function of” is slimy… because it doesn’t say it does that… not at all.
So in my work with a bunch of normal people, ordinary people, neither smart, nor stupid, neither diligent nor too lazy, neither brave, nor too cowardly, blah blah blah… I am proving that what Werner Erhard said is largely b.s.
The truth value of Werner’s famous statements is 10%…
Just like 99.5% everything you read on the Internet. That means only one thing out of 200 things, book, article, meme, quote, video, etc. has a truth value higher than 10%.
But 10% truth value means: 90% hogwash. Mistaken, misguided, narrow cone of vision, wearing blinders, or outright lie.
- The Old Testament: truth value: 30%
- The New Testament: truth value: 3%
- Kabbalah: truth value: 60%
- The Koran: truth value: 10%
- Indian scriptures: truth value: 10%
- Buddhism: truth value: 30%
You may want to ask a question… For example: why is the Old Testament only 30% truth value, (The Torah, in Hebrew, of the five books of Moses… ) while the Kabbalah, (namely the work of Kabbalists over the centuries) discussing it are respectively 30% and 60% truth value…
Really great question… and this is, maybe, what this article is about: what is the difference between “Tree of Knowledge” and “Tree of Life” knowledge.
I have read all the One minute books… I saw that the One Minute Manager touched on my Achilles’ Heel…
These One minute books teach some attitude, or a thing to do, that makes you and the people you work with happier, more productive, etc. Looks like a definite pathway to heaven… Straight to transcendence… what other people call, maybe, enlightenment?
Sounds really good… Except…
Occam’s razor says: everything should be as simple as it can be but not simpler.
Pop psychology is really simplistic.
You find yourself nodding vigorously as you read it. But when it comes to doing it… oops. You cannot do it.
The One Minute manager’s job is to catch people doing the right things.
Most people cannot. Most people keep their eyes on what you do wrong, what they do wrong… what needs to be fixed. But most importantly they cannot see what is.
When they look at things they immediately attach meaning, judgment or label or some explanation… on top of what they see/experience with their sensory organs.
That used to be 100% me. I could only look at things one way: did the thing match my agenda of how something needs to be, needs to get done or not.
When you look that way you cannot see a person as a person, you cannot see anything about them, because all of you is about what YOU want. What YOU approve of. What YOU say should be.
As I lead the Playground, I am looking at what you are doing through that filter. The unless it matches what I want, it’s wrong. It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be that way, it should be more better or different.
You want people, life, the Universe catch up to you and start spinning the way YOU want them to spin… because… because of what?
Nearsightedness? Blindness? Arrogance? Superiority?
Really? What age did you get stuck? Around age 3? How is it working for you? Not well? You get bloodied all the time? And you are surprised?
The common denominator among the students who haven’t even gotten to page 2 of the hundred page “book” I call The Playground is…
The inability to learn.
Darwin, I am told, said that it is not the smartest survives, but the most adaptable. Adaptable is another word for willing and able to change… but change how?
Change their point of view. Change their preferences. Change their attitude. Change their behavior.
The students in the Playground who are not moving from 1 to 1.01 are the students who haven’t changed since they were 3 years old.
Stomping around, wanting what they want, getting angry or frustrated if isn’t coming…
I seem to be measuring this as your overall intelligence… in the Starting Point Measurements.
I am finding that students, whose number is 30 or below are unable to change. Why?
Being adaptable, being able to change in a way that matches what Life wants you to be more and more, is the missing piece for most people… including my not-able-to-keep-up students.
Unfortunately being adaptable is not a capacity.
Not adapting is the result of choice. Choosing some goodies in the present moment, instead of choosing a future “goodie”.
Choosing to hold onto “your opinion”, calling things right and wrong the way you call them, choosing to want to win every moment, choosing to only want to do what you want to do, and damn anyone who wants something else.
You are stuck, but it is your choice. By the way: seeing that you have a choice IS a DNA capacity, that I could turn on… but unfortunately, unless someone is miserable enough, unless someone suffers enough, they won’t use it.
When they want it because they don’t want to be left out, left behind, it is all ego… precious I, no energy to actually change.
Seeing that you have a choice is part of the overall intelligence I measure. And, of course, I also measure the size of the precious I. The bigger it is, the less willingness is there to choose to change.
Another measure in the Starting Point Measurements that points to the same unwillingness to fall in step with Life, is the size of “about me” (column J on the picture), which is how much is it about you, how much of life is looked through the relationship to you, how useful it is to you, how much YOU want it, like it, or not. Which simply means: you are not willing to see reality by itself, taking yourself out of the picture, and see what is… independent of your relationship to it.
The higher the number the less you are willing. Because the essence of the unwillingness is, that it should be your way or the highway. F… everyone else. F… what needs to get done… You got stuck at the “infantile will to power” aka crying-for-the-bottle level of development.
You are a misery maker.
Your constant comparing, constant “about-me”, taking things personally, makes you, others, and life miserable.
It is not an accident that the second part of the title of the Playground is: it is never too late to have a happy childhood.
Happy children grow up. They become adults, with adult capacities, adult intelligence.
They are rare, by the way. Homo sapiens, the current level of humanity, is miserable. Out of sync with Life, out of sync with reality, sporting only, on average, one of the 160 adult capacities a person can have active in their DNA. One.
The Playground is about all the ways you’ve made yourself the miserable grown up you are… and the course and the included and required practices attempt to train you to become an adult.
An Adult is someone who can be happy, effective, powerful, regardless the circumstances. And it is all circumstances!
For me it’s been a long road to hoe, to become an adult. For many decades it looked like I was never going to get there. No matter how many times I read a book like the One minute manager, I’d be critical, and I’d be miserable.
The turnaround, the turning point came with President Trump.
Me, like seemingly everyone, was keeping my eyes on the president, pondering on my chances of survival, my chances of happiness. I was piling judgement upon judgment… and I was getting literally morose.
And one day I noticed that while I was judging, criticizing, feeling superior, I wasn’t doing my job: running my business. I looked at people: this is a Trump supporter… bad, this guy voted against Trump… good.
The divide and conquer philosophy of ancient war leaders really worked on me…
And suddenly I saw that it made no difference to me what anyone thought, what Trump did, whether he was smart, stupid, or any of it… the only thing that matters to me and to my life is what I do and how I do it.
For you, you may not care what Trump does, but what your children do… THAT drives you bonkers. What your father, mother, boss, your co-workers… your husband, your clients do.
And if you look, your life is not changing, because you are not busy doing what you need to do and how you need to do it… you are busy judging and feeling superior. Fixing them… trying to change them… or just plain being angry about what they do, who they be.
Or maybe it is your health… you are so busy worrying whether you have enough energy, or how you feel, that things fall by the wayside and you don’t even notice. You never get anything done… because you are busy worrying or making others wrong.
Or maybe the environment, or the industrialists, or the politicians… or the weather! Or the vegans, the Paleo people, or the poachers, or who knows what.
And you are not in your life doing what YOU need to do, seeing what is with sober eyes, without judgment, without label, seeing things for what they are.
A is A… but you are forcing your will on life… and try to make A into B, or at least not-A. A is A, no matter what you do. It is not the bad A, the shouldn’t be A, the “not B” A… A is A.
True producers live in harmony with the universe, where A is A.
In Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” even some of the heroes, Dagny Taggart, and Henry Rearden aren’t adults almost until the end of the book… almost 1200 pages!
And when I ask you, you cannot see that you can’t see what is there. EVER. You can see your judgment. You can see the labels. But you cannot see the thing. You cannot see A… so you cannot say: A is A.
Why? Because you put yourself into the picture.
Peeling away the meaning, the judgment, the agenda, the interpretation, the story, the good, the bad, the ugly, is hard. Even if you see it. But before you can do it, you have to see it first.
My challenge is to open up your capacity so you can see it.
See it, see yourself, see the other, and be happy.
It is all circumstance… and you can become an adult.
There is no person who is always an adult… because adult is an ego state… When I muscletest your starting point measurements, one of the measures is…
…how much you are able to be in adult. Your happiness is the same number. Because only in adult state you can be happy.
The general populations has the capacity to enter adult mode 3-7% of the time.
Some participants in the Playground are below the general population in this regard.
So you can see why the Playground is keeping me up at night… how am I going to turn a bunch of unhappy people to happy?
There is still time to register in the next program. If you ever wondered if anyone can do anything to make you happier… what they would do?
This program is the answer… to learn to see what is, below or behind what you see now: your story, your judgment, your labels.
You think you see it, but you don’t.
And you didn’t… when you were a child either.
The Playground is a hands-on workshop… and I will make you work.
Email me if you want to be considered.
PS: As usual, I am trying to give this article a minute to breathe…
And just like when you allow wine to breathe some good stuff is coming up.
I can see that the purpose of watching movies, especially of other cultures, Singapore, Korea, the Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Iran, India is to train myself to see things for what they are, and rein in my tendency to blame, fault, despise, judge entire cultures.
And I am noticing improvement. A sudden jump in my ability to just be with what is, and not be completely jerked by the tail of the dog… my judgment.
If I can do it, you certainly can. I have a judgmental soul correction and a very judgmental Horoscope sign.
If you don’t want to do the Playground live, you can ask me to give you a discount, and you’ll get access only to the recordings. Useful, but not as hard hitting as being on the call… on the hot seat.
I love this article about becoming an adult. It shows me how much of a child I still am in life. Thanks