Avoiding bullshit

Modern life has a tendency to fill itself with bullshit. Personally a lot of it is obvious bullshit. Few youtube videos actually move you to where you want to be. They may make you feel better in the short term but I have found that feeling fleeting and often come back to 2 ideas / thoughts.

  • “You have never felt better about yourself after scrolling or watching something you shouldn’t”
  • “What would I do if the people I respect most in the world were watching me”

Expanding on this first point, I don’t think all content is evil and has no place, I just want to be consuming content about things I care about. I love consuming lots about the AFL (maybe too much) and as such have no issues with this as long as I have some boundaries with where I get the content. A major issue arises with the platforms where most content is released today as they have been engineered to waste your time and make you feel good about it. Slowly and painfully I have come to realise although it feels good in the short term this behaviour actually gets me nowhere near where I want to be. There is value in content but we all have to be wary of the platforms we use and understand why we are using them and how their intentions differ from ours. The extension unhook has been very useful for myself and some friends in stopping the suggestions from youtube which lead you down rabbit holes that cost hours of time.

The second point has an initial issue of putting people on pedestals, but I think it best to not read into it too much and just see if it is useful. I am lucky enough to have some people in my life that I respect and occasionally I reflect on my current or previous actions and the thought pops into my head. Could I be proud of my actions today if I had to explain it to one of them. If not I should probably re-evaluate my actions and change them. Along a similar line another thought I find helpful is, what would the best version of myself do right now (or the highest agency version if you have read highagency.com). This idea is generally just common sense but I did read about something similar in Musashi where the protagonist strives to live in a way where nothing he would do would cause regrets. If you can’t explain or justify it to someone you repsect and admire you probably regret that action.