Top 22 Epiphanies, Realizations, Reluctant Admissions, and Random Thoughts for 2022

My top 22 epiphanies, realizations, reluctant admissions, and random thoughts for 2022.

Let me know if I've left something important out!

Here they are (plus a few extras perhaps), in no particular order:

1. Hypocrisy isn’t a sign of mental weakness. It’s a sign of strength—a sign someone thinks they’re winning & can get their way on anything, no matter the irrationality.

Pointing out hypocrisy is just highlighting the side that’s winning.
Find some hypocrisy in your life today!

2. Email is still the best project management tool there is. It has search. It works as file storage. You can sort and organize. Everyone knows how to use it.

There are a bunch of other project management tools out there, but nothing beats email for flexibility and ease of use.

3. Human’s faith in humankind is not a given. It can evaporate to zero. Hope for a happy life must be cultivated and passed on to the next generation. Careful with your pessimism.

4. Most people don't have convictions—just an acute fear of being in the minority.

5. Pacifism is just deferred violence.

If there is a problem and you refuse to face it, you're just outsourcing trouble to someone else. In fact, it's even worse—you're just giving said troublemaker more confidence to continue their violence.

6. Creation is a war against entropy.

Chaos is the natural direction everything tends toward. Everywhere that you see order, recognize that something is working against chaos—from tiny insects, to entire galaxies.

7. Health is not the absence of sickness.

You can't get stronger by NOT exercising.
You can't improve your immune system by NOT getting infections.

Microbes are nearly always your friends. Try and make peace with them.

8. The applause of the world is the shortest sound you will ever hear.

9. The only thing that delights the thinking man more than learning he was right is believing his enemies are wrong. Winning can feel great. Watching your enemies lose, even better.

We are monsters, the lot of us.

10. There are three sides to any war: the two that fight against each other and the third—the side that benefits from their fighting.

11. You will not find what you are not looking for.

Humans have an insatiable curiosity for discovery—unless it involves something unpleasant. Then we have an insatiable lack of it.

Ask yourself: Whatever happened to Zika?
Hint: The virus and mosquitoes are still there.

12. The internet conveys knowledge. Humans convey wisdom.

Make sure you have enough humans in your life to make actual sense of everything you learned on YouTube.

13. Despite their flaws, the reasons for nobility and aristocracies are becoming apparent.

Democracy has a time and a place. We may not be in that time or place anymore.

14. Boys that aren’t taught to love their nation won’t be willing to fight for their nation.

The military of any nation depends upon parents, schools, and churches to teach their children to love their nation. Without this crucial step, no one will be willing to fight.

15. Militaries that fight for money will eventually lose to groups that fight for people and place.

Violent conflict creates more desire for people and place. The other side will eventually run out of money.

16. Complexity of technology makes it so that profound discovery is only possible at this point mainly due to the collective horsepower of the hive mind.

Heroic inventors will increasingly be a rarity.

17. Read more, watch less—unless you’ve already given up & smoke weed. Reading forces brain fitness in a way learning the same material through a video cannot.

I’m a visual learner and would prefer videos 100% of the time. I’ve realized reading is harder because it’s better.

18. People would rather be dead than wrong.

Warning people not to take the coronavirus vaccines early on hasn’t gained me any new friends. If anything, those who regret having done it are madder at me than ever. Pride is a real bitch.

19. Herd immunity doesn’t exist.

I used to think natural immunity alone might grant the weak protection from infection but it seems now that even that doesn’t really work. Viruses go where they please. Nothing you can do to stop them. Not masks. Not vaccines. Nothing.

20. Assume more lawlessness in the near future—not just low-grade criminal activity. Everywhere.

Predictions about the future are often made with the assumption current laws will obeyed or enforced. They won’t. States may secede but it won’t be the way it’s “supposed” to happen.

21. If you take physical fitness seriously, invest in your mental fitness as well.

Prepare for mental hardship. Lose the consumer mindset. Apologize where prudent. Repair broken relationships. Read more, watch less. Get right with God. Pray every day with your spouse/family.

22. Reading more is important, but writing is equally important.

Developing/maintaining your inner dialogue is an essential component of sanity/intellect. This won't happen if all you do is consume videos or tweets or blogs or books.

Journals. Diaries. Notes to self. Anything.