The Nature of Success

Successful people, or people who think they are successful, all believe that life is a meritocracy because this makes them superior to all of the average people.

Average people want to believe in this principle when they are faced with those who are less-than average, but any such ranking system would indicate that they are inferior to the successful. They can’t admit that so they just don’t think about any of it.

Life is not a meritocracy. It’s not a crap shoot either. Nothing is guaranteed. Lazy people get successful, hard-working people fail and wind up smoking crack in a corner behind the dumpster. Kind people suffer and die and assholes prosper, good guys get shot and bad guys get away with it. Everybody likes to pat themselves on the back and forget the advantages they had and pretend that they got success because they are just too cool to fail.

Everybody alive is more successful than the dead people. That’s how “success” really works. You have no control of anything. People who have money, who have fulfilling and profitable careers, just have not meant the right drunk driver, rapist with AIDS, workplace shooter, or period of suicidal depression due to a malfunctioning brain. If you think any of that is because you are so awesome, remember that the cancer, or one of the aforementioned things is out there, waiting for you. You won’t always be cool.   

Why people think you are creepy

Staring at strangers
We can see you, you know. Long lingering stares at perfect strangers, makes the person you are staring at uncomfortable, if they notice, but for the rest of us, the ones who see you staring, it says so much. Depending on the subject of the stare, everybody thinks they know why you are doing it. If it’s a woman you might just look pathetic, or else look like a potential rapist or serial killer, that is, if you are a man. If you are a woman it might just seem just envious and pathetic, but in some cases malevolent and bitter. You look like somebody who is too far gone to control even the most basic impulse, too used to being alone to know how to handle being around people. You look like somebody who needs to be reacquainted with the concept of boundaries
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It could be your choice of porn
Lactation bukkake and things of that ilk are not appreciated by the masses, even by people with mildly exotic tastes. People dislike tastes that disagree with their own, and dislike the fact that you have judged them by not enjoying exactly what they enjoy. Sex is a perfect area for this kind of thing to arise because most people judge themselves righteous based on which desires they repress. They have probably felt shame about something they enjoyed, could not help enjoying and felt helpless because of this. They seek to feel powerful by making you feel ashamed, just like somebody, maybe their mother, made them feel bad because they looked at Hustler magazine.

Perhaps, the things you say have something to do with it
Inappropriate, appropriate. These words mean something. There is a difference between the two. Do not comment on something like, say, a woman’s camel-toe unless you are very well-acquainted with her. Perhaps even intimate. This is not a matter for the work-place, or for strangers on the bus. Even when you are intimately acquainted it’s still a touchy subject. If you decide to bring it up, just do it and then go on to something else. Leaving the room might be a good idea. Lingering to discuss the quality of her camel-toe, places you have seen camel-toes, and how you feel about them in general, is usually a mistake. Bringing up any fetishes you may have and speaking at length about them, is also likely to make people uncomfortable. Any fetishes.

Questions to Ask When Assessing Your Life

Is this job really necessary? Am I doing anything that needs to be done? Even if people are willing to pay me for handling stupid, pointless tedious, empty little tasks, will I one day look back at my life and wonder what I did with it, what I have to show for my multiple decades of existence?

Is this person capable of having an actual grownup relationship? Is there any actual affection here? Are they worth the investment of your time and effort? Are they just dragging you down? Are you dragging them down? Is there any mutual need, any kind of positive symbiosis?

Will any important life-function be improved by purchasing this? Will owning it even make me feel better? Might this be just the empty disposing of disposable income? Is there anything important that I need to do, that I could do, with this money?

Do I really have a reason for reproducing? If I don’t have an actual reason (like a love for the other person that requires a human testimony, a stamp of authenticity) should I be doing it? Do I want to be tied to this person as "co-parent" for the rest of the kid’s life? Will this person produce good children? Will I produce good children? Do I want to do the massive giving-operation that raising a child requires?

How good a person am I, really? Am I good at anything? Am I somebody that anybody should want to have around? Do the people who hate me have a point?

The Life Skill of Maturity

The word "immaturity" can, in certain contexts, conjure up a picture of childlike innocence. Toilet humor, for instance, is "immature", but it brings back memories of youthful innocence and the time when bodily functions were still novel. It can make you laugh because it's juvenile and nostalgic.

There is another kind of immaturity that is not at all pleasant. It is that of people who have not learned how to handle life. This is the teenage, pubescent kind.

These are people who in their thirties and forties still have tantrums, still have issues dealing reasonably with others, and controlling their emotions.

Immature people are a burden to themselves and to the people who get involved in relationships with them. Never learning how to escape your adolescence and get into adulthood is a kind of retardation, a kind of defect.
If you are one of these people, you probably won’t know what I am talking about. You probably would not read this far down the page either.

Tips For Being Less Ignorant

• You have to admit that you are ignorant
  This is the hardest step and one impossible for genuine morons to complete. You have to actually admit that you don't know something that is worth knowing. Morons tend to fall into a cycle of ego-protection and pretentiousness, so that they never have to admit to anybody just how little they know about anything. The first step to separating yourself from the morons is to be able to accept your shortcomings.
  
• Learn to avoid patterns of ignorance There are educated people everywhere who know nothing about anything that they didn't learn by rote in college. There are people who read the newspapers everyday who can't tell you what they just read or point to Spain on an unlabeled map. Ignorance cannot be eliminated by the consumption of facts. You can only truly learn if you are genuinely interested.
  
  
• Learn a new language
  This opens up a whole world of people to you who don't speak English. Granted, they are mostly hicks, but you get to know what hicks from other places are like. You get to follow any interest you may currently have only in an arena that isn't open to you right now. For instance, Univision has a ton of soap operas.
  
  
• Meet new people I mean new people, not the people at your work-place, not the people you could possibly run into at your local bar. I mean convicts, homeless, illegal immigrants, mercenaries, hookers, senile shut-ins. Talk to them, observe them, mess with their heads.
  
  
• Break your routine Obviously your lifestyle hasn't been helping you break the shackles of dumbness, so you need to do things differently, insert yourself into Navajo culture, watch porn in a language other than English, learn to kill someone with your bare hands. 

The Error-free Life

People talk about the unfairness of life and the disappointments and heartbreaks as if they are inevitable. Everybody makes mistakes, right? Of course. You make mistakes because you were not careful, did not know what to look for beforehand. Mistakes show you what you should have taken the time to find out before going ahead. They show you what happens when you lack foresight, are lazy or are ignorant.

So maybe everything that makes you unhappy is your fault, is something you could have avoided if you had paid attention. Maybe all that talk about life just being tough is how fools rationalize their suffering and avoid the fact that they, and no one else, are to blame for their pain. Maybe life does not have to be tough or screwed up and would not be so if you were smart enough to make it otherwise.

Maybe out there who live perfect lives, with no pain, no hardship, who are smart enough to avoid people like you, who keep the secret of the error-free life to themselves because they know it would make no difference (to people like you) if they shared it. You can’t teach a fool to be anything else but a fool.