Morning, I was thinking through a collection of topics and uh my mind got hold of COVID is a good example of or a good way to wrap together a bunch of these topics and uh to, to rattle off as quickly as I could. Um what I believe will be very helpful ideas that are applicable to many other things because
COVID is kind of a microcosm of the challenges and solutions of the last days. So I'm going to do this as rapid fire as I can and then I'm going to get back to writing and then you'll see each of these things teased out into much longer form in the future. So, um I'll just start with this little Zinger
. I've heard people say that COVID was an IQ test and two thirds of the population failed it. And I agree. So how people handled themselves through COVID that's in a uh COVID is a specific example of much more general principles. So how you handled yourself through that and the changes that you've made
because of it, it's indicative of much more than just that. And so the, the extent to which you see this and uh hopefully improve because of it, it will impact many, many things for years to come. So, um let's go through a couple of these. So first off a principle we see is that today, not in the future
, but right now, there are a significant number of really bad people with seemingly overwhelming power. Now, who does that include many folks in the government but also people in your tighter circle. I mean, your boss could be one of these people, your, your, your prior best friend or your mother-in-law
or something, you know, family members, whoever close people, but also people in society that pull some pretty, pretty big strings. Um So what's the solution to that problem that there are people who have a lot of power over you who are really bad? Well, the solution is to find and walk paths of greater
independence. One property of these paths is that they're rare. It's unusual for people to walk them. I was thinking the other day about vocational paths and I came to, oh yeah. And then I was, I was thinking, you know what I've never heard anyone say is when I grow up, I wanna be a mortician. Um So
it turns out that there are jobs out there that aren't numerically popular. Uh not ju well, that's not the right way. They're not popular in the sense that people think about them, but they're also not popular in the sense that there just aren't that many of them, right. So if, if a significant chunk
of society decided I want to be a mortician, all of a sudden the pay for morticians would crash because there'd be so much supply and, and just the normal demand, right? This is actually not to get too far a field. It's a very significant and constant property of complex systems where there aren't as
many general solutions to problems. It used to be, uh, you could roll out of bed and in the seventies you roll out of bed, you walk to your norm, your, your nearest place of employment, get a job there and you can work there till you die. You'll get a nice pension, you'll have enough money to buy a house
, et cetera. That's slightly broad brushing, but not too much of an exaggeration. Of course, it's not that way anymore when I was a kid in the eighties, all the, all, all the girls wanted to be, all the girls were named Heather and they wanted to be marine biologists. So I'm not sure why that happened
. But that was the case. There were a lot of people named Heather and they all wanted to be marine biologists. So it's weird because I don't know where they got that idea. Uh, there was probably some movie that came out or something. I'm not sure what that would be. Um, but, um, there aren't that many
jobs in marine biology. Plus who cares? So, um almost none of those ladies grew up to do that, although they're still named Heather today. Um The modern version of this, I just saw a news article that said something like 20% of young ladies want to be influencers at a, as a job, which is um I just, I
don't know what these parents are doing. If you ask your kid what you want to do for a living and they say I wanna be on youtube. I think that's a pretty clear indication that you've got to make some significant changes. But then again, if you look at the other stats, you know, 51% of boys under 13 use
porn at least once a month. Uh Pretty much everyone has a cell phone, notwithstanding the really obvious problem that creates problems that creates, I, I don't know what parents are doing anyway. Um So you have to find these independent paths and they're rare. And 11 clue to identifying the value of
these is that you have to look long term at what could happen, not just what has happened in the past or what you expect to happen right now. And an example of the importance of the long term full perspective that includes these seemingly rare events is if I told you, hey, um if you make this job change
, you can get a 20% raise. Um You might say like, wow, ok, that's great. Let's do it all other things being equal. But then if I add it in, yeah. But 10 years from now you're gonna die. If you take this job or you're gonna get some terrible disease where you're in chronic pain for the next 10 years,
maybe you wouldn't do it. And unfortunately, so your thoughts here might be like, yeah. But how the heck are you gonna know that's gonna happen? Do people smoke? Yes, they do. So, whether it's clear or not, and I'd say it's, it's, it's a heck of a lot more clear than people let on. I'll get to that in
a second. Human nature is such that we do not look at the long term consequences and we'll say stupid things like, well, I know 80% of people who do this, it's this terrible outcome, but I'm gonna be in the 20%. What reasons do you have to believe that? Wishing? So, almost no one who goes into any kind
of social media stuff makes any money? Well, I'm gonna be the exception. How do you know that, uh, wishing when you get into a flooded thing like that, it's like flip a coin because it's mostly probability. You know, there just aren't enough slots in the NBA for everyone who's good at basketball and
very few people are as good as you need to be to get there. Right. But let's pretend that there was a lower bar like there is for something like online stuff. Um flip a coin and it, it, or roll, roll a die and in this case, it's like a 20,000 sided die and only one of the numbers ends in it being worthwhile
. So why would you ever do that? And, and there's only so much you can do to max out your chances and you've probably already done it. So it's a very damn thing to choose anyway. So that's uh bad people, a seemingly overwhelming power. You have to go into independent channels. Um I did say that I was
gonna give an example of predictable, supposedly rare outcomes. I knew two people well, who were working directly for or contracting through the government. Actually, more than two, actually quite a few. And all of these people, I said, look, the writings on the wall here are examples where the government
mandated really stupid things for people who get money from them. Um You should not rely on that. You should go out of your way to try to set up things that you could rely on or, or that could provide you with sustenance if things went south here, whether that's prep for a new career, which obviously
takes a little time and effort and a lot of sacrifice or develop independent streams of income or whatever and not one of them listened and all of them were in a really bad spot when those COVID mandates came through and all of them had to get the shot because the cons, the, the, the cost at that point
to change that late in the game was even more than way more than it would have been before. And if you weren't willing to make that choice before, it's unlikely you'll pay an even higher price for a less beneficial outcome. Right. Anyway, uh, another thing, so that's bad people with seemingly overwhelming
power. Another thing is seemingly normal people who turn into irrational fascist, fascists. Um You know, your, your nice neighbor who or your, your coworker, who you thought was, your friend turns into a monster and you're pretty sure that if someone put a gun in their hand, they'd kill you. That's,
that's something that now, you know, the cover has been taken off. Normal people are capable of doing terrible things. Um And, and someone who's nice to you today might be, might, might choose to be your worst enemy tomorrow. What else? Um A realization that most people, including folks you'd consider
to be normal. Some folks you'd consider to be wise. Most people are so emotionally manipulable that it's just a few buttons that have to be pressed and they turn into that person. We were just talking about. It's very easy to activate them as the agents, they are of evil as the agents of evil that they
are actually OK. I've mentioned this before. I made a series of videos on, I think it was labeled a temptation how to deal with Satan. And in that I was, I was talking about how Satan has his agents and he, he leaves them. It's like a terrorist cell. It's not activated yet because he's strategizing for
the greatest possible misery. He doesn't want the people on his payroll to know that they're on his payroll. He lets them do their own thing till he needs them and then he activates them And once you have eyes to see you see these people from a mile away, but they don't know who they are. Um And you'll
seem crazy for thinking that until someone pushes their buttons and then you see it, then more people see it more obviously. So another principle to learn from COVID is that for most people, success requires, you're not gonna like this one, but it's really important. Success requires finding and trusting
people better than you for most people. That's the case. So we live in a society where we have so much unmerited prosperity that everyone thinks they know everything that matters. Everyone thinks that they can succeed independently that they, they are enough in themselves that they don't need anyone
else. Well, I have a house and I have a car and this ripples through all over the place, you know, with ladies like I don't need no man. Right? Or men saying I don't wanna get married, I don't need kids. Um It, it, it, it's, you see this all over the place. There are facets of this belief. Um But the
truth is, is that reality is quite a monster and very, very, very few people have what it takes to contend with it in full force. And so as long as there's unmerited prosperity, which acts as a shield to that, that insulates you from the consequences of your actions. Yeah, sure. You're, it's going to
seem like you can handle it yourself. But the second reality starts manifesting itself in its, its true colors. It's true depth of horror. It's very evident that most people lack the intelligence and honesty to process and live according to reason. And most people lack the foresight to prepare for what
are actually completely foreseeable outcomes when the stuff hits the fan. And everyone's like, how could we have known there is a subset of people who knew and they tried to tell you and for them, it was as easy as seeing the sunrise, but you completely ignored them and attacked them while they were
saying that. And now you're completely ignoring the fact that they were the only ones in the room who knew what was coming. So what's the solution? Everything, everything that happened during COVID was completely obvious before COVID, everything I was, I was on a panel a few months before COVID broke
, I was on a panel in DC with members of the de department of Defense in the pharmaceutical industry. There's like 30 people there where we were talking about how unprepared the country was for a sudden unexpected um, um epidemic. So 30 people in that room knew that the pants were down. And so when the
rest of the country caught us with the pants down, there were people who already knew the pants were down. That's just one tiny little slice of this. But all these things that, that, um, you know, most people can't contend with the complexity of reality. Um There are really bad people out there and a
lot of them have a ton of power and seemingly normal people will turn into complete monsters if put into the right situation. There are people who were saying all these things before COVID. Uh Well, there, there was at least one person me saying literally these things before COVID, but there were many
people who knew some subset of that and possibly other people who knew it all, but I don't know about them. OK. None of this was a surprise, maybe it was a surprise to you, but that should cause you to make changes, not to keep billowing forward in your life with all the same assumptions you have that
have been completely proven wrong through COVID. So here we are and I'll ask you how have you changed your life? Because the whole purpose of this video is COVID is an example. The point of this video is COVID is an example of the challenges and solutions of the last days. So how have you used it? God
has mercifully given you a data point. How have you changed your life to reconcile to it? Have you identified and reduced your trust in those who called it incorrectly? Maybe you're one of those people, right. So, have you taken all of your confidence across all of your beliefs and turn the dial down
a bit or do you still insist, you know, it all? Have you identified and increased your trust in those who called it correctly? So maybe pre COVID, you're like, hey, someone at the CDC obviously knows more than anyone else about health stuff. Hopefully you don't believe that anymore. Right? Someone that
someone that, uh, in the government is, is less biased than a random person on the internet would be about these things. Hopefully you don't believe that anymore. Um Have you increased your willingness to make high cost changes to decrease your dependence on the system? So, we've been over this a bunch
of times. I was telling people for years before COVID move out into the country and I think like one person did. So, um, folks viewed that as way too high of a cost and I said sure, but it's going to be way higher from this point on and it won't stop getting higher and that's what's happened. It's still
true, by the way. So, are you willing to make those high cost changes? Whatever they might be to decrease your dependence on the system. Now that you've seen that these things actually happen and they matter. So, for example, if you're still working in a situation where you're, you're reliant on someone
who's more foolish than you, that's a really bad thing. You have to move towards systems that are more aligned with the way the Lord does things, which is a meritocracy. Have you, have you taken measures to re reduce your reliance on the system? So like how dependent are you on the grocery store on pharmacies
on uh being able to drive places on power coming out of the power box? And I realized that for many, many, many people, you're in a place in life where you just don't have the resources to change those things while sustaining your current lifestyle. And I'm not saying that the time is now to get a tent
and go move into the woods, right? I'm not saying just leave it all behind and go voluntarily take upon yourself. Complete destitution. That's not what I'm saying. So maybe the best thing you can do is convince yourself and your family that the day will come when you do have to do that. And maybe to
have a backpack stocked with the stuff you need to start walking. There's nothing that needs to be fancy in that you just need a cold weather sleeping bag that's packable because otherwise it'll take up way too much space and be too heavy. Um, you know, maybe a wool hat and some nice insulated boots
or something because what you wanna prep for the dead of winter, you can make all that work in the summer, but you can't do the reverse. Uh, and so on. Right. And so for not too much money, you can have a game plan that shows that you are expecting these things to occur one day and to be ready to go
. The people in Hawaii when Maui burned down that one town in Maui, the folks who, who listened to what they were told to do died. So, you know, we're getting these signals again and again, that life has entered a phase, the world has entered a phase where the problems are too complex for normal people
to solve them. And the person calling the shots is probably going to be just as insufficient at solving those problems as you are. So if you rely on them, you're, you're going to be in a bad spot. So if you were in Maui, what would you have done differently and why? And would you have a way to, you know
, some resourceful people jumped into the ocean instead of driving to where they were told to go, they got out of their car and jumped in the water, which is a smart thing to do when there's a giant fire. So, uh anyway, um and finally, have you identified yourself as someone unable to contend with the
complexities of reality, this is a super uncomfortable question to ask yourself, but I think you have a building portfolio of evidence to do so. So in the case of COVID, I will tell you whether or not you passed the test. Did you support long term lockdowns, masking or the shot? If the answer is yes
on one or more of those, you failed the test, you are someone unable to contend with the complexities of reality. Therefore, you need to change so that you can contend with them or you need to find someone who can and trust them because you are incapable of making these decisions correctly as of right
now. Um Another test, did you denigrate those who argued against these things? Lockdowns masking and the shot. If you did, you've identified yourself as someone unable to contend with the complexities of reality. Find someone who is finally did maybe you were against all those things. But did you believe
in some crazy nonsense? Like there are nano bots in the shot? And five G is gonna turn us all into lizards or something. If you did, then you've identified yourself as someone unable to contend with the complexities of reality. And you need to find someone who is right. So there is no promise anywhere
in the scriptures that says where the Lord says, I have made you all capable of independently solving every problem that faces this world, the Lord said he has overcome all things and there's a path for us to tie into that and it's in becoming more like him. But that's an equation that includes other
people. If you think that your way of implementing that is to stand alone and just through sheer willpower, become someone who can do this, then what you're trying to do has never ever been done in the history of the world except by Jesus himself who arguably didn't even do it. What do I mean by that
? Jesus quoted scripture all the time. Do you think he spent his life memorizing those verses? Just to have firepower to argue with the Pharisees when the time came? Or do you think he was studying Moses as an example of a holy man until he surpassed him? So you come up to the Lord through people who
are more like the Lord than you by learning and living the example they provide COVID showed us an example of how everything else is going to go. It, it actually it wasn't the first thing. It's just a very recent and well perceived thing. So it's good to use it as an example. So I've given you a lot
to think about. Plenty of this is not going to be pleasant to think about. But uh hopefully these are things that you can come to see the reason behind and uh can live up to