Based Camp - How to Rewrite Yourself and Escape Programming (Writing Your Own Character Sheet)

00:00:00.000 it's almost like you're drawing a character sheet of like what you built a character sheet for

00:00:04.780 yourself. And it worked. And then you basically make sure that as you get to rebuild your life

00:00:11.180 from the ground up with this new stage, you are building around that character and seeing yourself

00:00:15.860 as that person. And that's crucial because if you do not internalize yourself as that person,

00:00:20.740 when you're on autopilot mode, your sort of default model of yourself is that revised person.

00:00:26.320 So when you respond, you're responding and reacting in a way that that person would.

00:00:30.680 And we do this as a married couple all the time. We basically take our character sheets and we're

00:00:33.940 like, if you look at Simone, this sort of like peasant, medieval peasant woman, this was not

00:00:40.340 her historic archetype that she did in public. Would you like to know more? Well, I love you to

00:00:46.360 death, Simone. And today's topic is actually from a fan. Also, so I'm quoting a fan's email to us.

00:00:54.000 Also, if you ever find yourselves with a dearth of topics, unlikely as that may be, I'd love to hear

00:01:02.680 you expand on the perspective slash approach Malcolm mentioned in passing of escaping our

00:01:07.400 programming, biological or otherwise. I'm curious how you all might see escaping as it relates to

00:01:12.860 optimization. Do you see our programming as something to break away from or as something to

00:01:17.580 optimize by returning the system to a more ideal state of balance? I tend to think in terms of the

00:01:22.480 ladder that our operating systems are not broken, but out of balance and rebalancing is the best

00:01:28.340 method for increasing growth, strengths, and innovation in the individual family and community.

00:01:32.740 Love to hear your thoughts.

00:01:33.860 Oh, this isn't just a fan. This is someone we now have categorized in our CRM as a family friend of

00:01:40.020 high value. So thank you. You know who you are for the great topic. And this is going to be fun to

00:01:45.960 talk about. Yeah. Do you have thoughts to start? I mean, our general philosophy and tell me if I'm

00:01:53.860 getting this wrong, but the way that I believe we see it is our, our, the, the, the entire core of

00:02:02.580 what makes us human and what makes us civilized essentially is the distance between us and our

00:02:08.820 default instincts. Our, the more that we follow our default instincts, the more that we are akin

00:02:14.820 to animals and know better than them, the more that we are able to rise above and show inhibitory

00:02:19.680 control and focus on our values that we've logically arrived at rather than our feeling instinctually,

00:02:26.260 the more we are demonstrating the fact that we are the very differentiating factor that makes us

00:02:32.800 more than just animals that makes us human. So we do not believe about necessarily returning to some

00:02:38.600 form of symbiosis or some natural state or returning balance. No, no. The whole point

00:02:44.880 is to pull away, to overcome, to rise above. Well, actually, yeah, this reminds me of,

00:02:51.080 and in upcoming tracks that we have, or we are defining good and evil, you know, a lot of society

00:02:56.520 defines good and evil based off of just what is pro-social and anti-social, because these are the

00:03:01.520 traits that when held by the aggregate member of society, help those individuals who are trying to,

00:03:06.700 in average, help the individuals who are striving for personal hedonism or some sort of distributed

00:03:11.700 heathenism value system. And as such, they always end up as social value systems. They're not actually

00:03:16.440 good and evil. They're just what's in the best interest of the average individual. Whereas we

00:03:21.260 see there being as two alternate primary competing value systems. One we see as truly good and the other

00:03:28.200 we see as truly bad. And we categorize these into spiral and anti-spiral energy. Whereas the core

00:03:34.580 of a spiral-based philosophy is intergenerational human improvement, or rather the maximization

00:03:41.600 of human potentiality. And the sort of optimization function of anti-spiral energy is

00:03:48.880 the elimination of human potentiality. And so we categorize these into like words that people might

00:03:57.160 know or be familiar with. And one of the words that we would see as sort of core to anti-spiral

00:04:02.460 thinking is harmony or balance, instead of words like, which would be called a spiral energy,

00:04:08.580 industry, and ambition. And actually this comes from Gurren Lagann. If anyone's familiar with that,

00:04:14.700 is where we borrowed the concept. But I think it's really beautifully explained and illustrated in

00:04:18.860 this anime. And so why not? And we'll get into why we did that in the future. But so in that regard,

00:04:25.620 I agree with you. But then there's this second aspect of breaking your programming, which is like a

00:04:30.060 whole different aspect of our literature, which some of you may not be familiar with. I mean,

00:04:34.500 those who may not know, we've written five books. We wrote five books before we started doing these

00:04:38.380 podcasts. And the very first book we wrote, The Pragmatist Guide to Life, individuals who it's

00:04:43.880 actually used by a lot of psychologists now. So like I have psychologists call me about it and stuff

00:04:48.280 like that. Like it's a book that is frequently used within psychology offices because, and they don't

00:04:53.840 know this often when they call, but it's immediately obvious to me why it was used by psychologists.

00:04:57.160 When I first wrote the book, it started as a manual for an alternative to cognitive behavioral

00:05:02.940 therapy. So cognitive behavioral therapy is a little old at this point. And I was like,

00:05:06.980 can I build an alternative that is based around individual value systems? And this theory I have

00:05:13.340 for how sort of humans contextualize themselves and how the human mind works, which is much more

00:05:19.020 narrative focused and focuses much more on the experiments around fixing those narratives.

00:05:23.220 And it used to actually have, and you can still see this in sort of the architecture of the book,

00:05:27.180 which makes it very different from our other books. It's almost like a series of prompts.

00:05:32.160 It has a core prompt for an individual. And then it would have had a, they answer X or Y,

00:05:38.640 and then you answer Z or D so that the psychologist would always have an answer to any of the person who

00:05:44.860 was talking with some answers or questions. Right. And now it just comes off as huge lists of like

00:05:51.360 potential ways you could think about something or respond to something, which I think for a lot of

00:05:55.140 people might be more helpful. But anyway, the, the, the relevant point here being that a big part of

00:06:02.320 this is this idea that a lot of the way we contextualize ourselves are these internal narratives

00:06:07.400 and these internal narratives we pick up from, from society. And that the, the moments in our day when

00:06:13.700 we are genuinely lucid in making decisions for ourselves are small, maybe maximum 5% of the day.

00:06:23.040 Most of our human life is on autopilot. And that autopilot is determined by the self narratives we have

00:06:29.860 about ourselves, by the type of people that we think we are. And also to a certain extent by our

00:06:35.540 surroundings, the accoutrement, like if you're sitting next to a bag of chips, you're way more likely to

00:06:40.700 eat it, that kind of thing. Which why, why do you leave these children's snacks all around me?

00:06:47.440 No, no. Peanut butter Cheez-Its. They're so good. Children's snacks are so much better than adult

00:06:52.400 snacks. That's the problem. That's how they get you. Fruit by the foot. Come on guys.

00:07:00.040 That's like a fancy version now that's like mashed up fruit. That's in a consolidated, like,

00:07:06.540 I don't know, dehydrated. And then you, you eat it. It's like a, like supposed to be healthy,

00:07:10.520 but I don't, I don't know. It's delicious. Well, you see though now, like, I mean, not to like go

00:07:14.860 off on a total tangent, but like along the, our recurring theme of the infantilization of adults,

00:07:19.860 you now see all these kid foods that are now sold to millennials, like the weird looking mac and

00:07:26.600 cheese grownup cereal. And it's like, it has like very millennial targeted branding and it costs like

00:07:34.120 10 times more, but they're like, but it's keto. $10 at Walmart for like a box of mac and cheese.

00:07:39.620 Yeah. But it's, but it's with lentil noodles and chickpea noodles and their time protein.

00:07:44.280 And the cereal is totally keto. So you can't buy it for like $15. And, but like, it's just kid,

00:07:49.940 it's just kid food for adults, which is, so they do do it. But the marketing's on point. I will agree

00:07:54.620 that marketing appeals to me. Oh no. That's how it caught our eye. This is how we know about it.

00:07:58.420 I'm like, this is some nice looking mac and cheese. I'm a buy it. And then we look at the price and

00:08:02.420 we're like, we're going to eat our kids' food instead. Yeah. We'll get the children's mac and

00:08:07.640 cheese and eat that. But, but the point I'm making here is that you have these internal narratives

00:08:12.100 of who you are. And in a lot of ways, these internal narratives determine the emotional state

00:08:17.640 you will experience based on the environment you're in during most of the time when you're like not in

00:08:22.100 these rare lucid states that humans experience. And that what this means is, is I was using Adam's

00:08:28.500 family. It's this great example of this, right? You know, so the Adam's family sees a rose that's

00:08:34.560 dying or with its head cut off and they experience happiness. And Adam's family member sees, you know,

00:08:40.800 things that in other people would cause, you know, gloom or moroseness. And they have chosen for

00:08:46.560 themselves as an internal narrative that they experience happiness from these things. And we've

00:08:52.340 talked about this in other episodes, but it's worth going over because it's actually a really

00:08:55.400 interesting point about the Adam's family. And I think that modern writers has sort of forgotten

00:08:59.820 or missed this point about the Adam's family. The, the joke about the monsters. Okay. The, the,

00:09:07.140 the core joke of the monsters that makes the monsters interesting and funny is that they are

00:09:12.180 monstrous people. Like they, they are monsters, but they are attempting to live the life of the average

00:09:18.740 American family. Okay. The joke about the Adam's family is that they are normal people, but they 0.90

00:09:26.900 are made monstrous in their deviation from mainstream cultural expectations to the extent that they are

00:09:35.740 more culturally similar and more have a more personal affinity and get more acceptance within a society of

00:09:43.740 monsters than they do within a society of people. The joke, the point of the Adam's family is that

00:09:50.680 they are normal humans that differentiate from common social norms so much that they are seen as

00:09:57.080 monsters. And then the, the, the, the, the meta joke on top of this is always layered with the Adam's

00:10:02.120 family. But despite that, they are more emotionally happy. They are more emotionally fulfilled with their

00:10:08.760 relationship. They have a better relationship with their kids and everything is good. They have a

00:10:14.180 better sexual relationship. Everything about them differentiates from society and yet it is working

00:10:20.920 for them and it's not working for the rest of the world. That's the joke of the Adam's family. It's a joke

00:10:27.340 about society that society monster rises them, others them for being so different. And yet, but anyway,

00:10:34.280 I'm getting a bit off topic here, but it's an interesting point to me because I think that this is, this is

00:10:39.840 what people miss. The Adam's family aren't cool because they're monsters. They're cool because they're not 0.94

00:10:43.200 monsters, but they are so true to themselves that they are seen as monsters by society.

00:10:49.780 Yeah, they're cool because they're based, basically.

00:10:52.040 Yeah, based, basically. What being true to themselves means within this context is that they have chosen

00:11:00.360 self-narratives for themselves. Like, why do you get happiness when you see roses versus like, like live

00:11:07.460 sprayed roses versus dead roses? It's really no reason. It's a level of cultural priming and self-narrative.

00:11:13.480 It's true for so many things in our lives where we don't really think about why these things cause us

00:11:19.460 happiness other than this is just how we allowed the world around us to program ourselves. But that programming

00:11:27.320 isn't who we are. It's like the random debris we collected as like a sticky ball rolling down a dirt

00:11:33.840 road, right? But you can spray that off and design yourself to be whoever you want. That was the point

00:11:41.320 of the Pragmatist Guide to Life. And the key way that an individual does this is with something we call

00:11:47.000 flux periods in the book. So a flux period is created when an individual goes through a significant

00:11:54.580 narrative shift within their life. So the truth is, is that you don't have one narrative, okay? Like I,

00:12:00.760 earlier I was saying like individuals have narratives that determines their emotional responses to

00:12:04.380 environmental stimuli. True, but you actually have multiple layered narratives that appear within

00:12:12.580 different social cues and social contexts. What does that mean? That means that the narrative that you

00:12:19.380 developed within your office is different from the narrative you developed at home. And it's different

00:12:24.740 than the narrative you developed among your family growing up. This is why often when individuals are

00:12:30.660 around social cues and contexts that remind them of their childhood, i.e. their parents, their siblings,

00:12:37.620 and their childhood home, they are going to show dramatically more childish emotional responses to

00:12:44.020 stimuli around them. Yeah, I think a lot of people can like empathize with referring to

00:12:49.460 annoying childlike versions of oneself. Yeah, they're like, why did I let that get to me? I haven't been

00:12:54.260 like that in years. Exactly. Because they're back home and parents and like it all falls apart. All the

00:13:00.500 composure. Yeah. And who a person is at their office, you will emotionally respond differently to things

00:13:07.700 at your office than you might when you're on like your local sports team or something like that.

00:13:12.980 Mm hmm. Because I think a key way to think about it is to a great extent that the various contexts

00:13:18.420 you have in your life act like a set on a play. And we are actors responding to our costumes, to our cues,

00:13:27.380 and to our co-stars and supporting actors and all that, right? So when you are in a set where you are dressed

00:13:34.020 like a business person and surrounded by professionals and treated like a professional, yeah, you're more likely

00:13:39.700 to act like a professional and a mature person. And when you are on a set surrounded by characters who are

00:13:45.780 literally your parents who are also like treating you more like a kid and, you know, not really normalizing to

00:13:51.540 the fact that, oh my gosh, you've grown up, you're going to start acting more like a kid.

00:13:55.700 You're going to also act like that as well. Not just because parents are treating them that way, but because of

00:13:59.860 environmental cues. Yeah. But so when it comes to flux periods, why they're really important. And this is something that is...

00:14:05.700 Hold on. Before we go deeper in flux periods, I want to talk about a different context of this,

00:14:09.620 which is actually really interesting. So if you talk about humans as being like on a set,

00:14:14.500 the really interesting example is when people are intentionally structuring parts of their lives

00:14:22.340 to bring out internal narratives that are incredibly specialized to masturbating some aspect of their

00:14:31.540 their sense of self, which isn't something that they can embody in everyday life.

00:14:37.220 And one example of this is the reason why BDSM dungeons, for example, are so different than your

00:14:43.380 daily life. Like they have so many contextual cues within them that you're in a very different

00:14:48.980 environment. You wear different costumes in the same way you're wearing one costume for your family

00:14:52.580 and what costume for work. It's to trigger different narrative states really easily,

00:14:58.340 because they're trying to change everything that's associated with these narrative triggers.

00:15:02.180 But now we're also seeing hobbies based around changing narrative states.

00:15:07.460 That is what furries fundamentally are. The people who dress in fur, like dress like anthropomorphic

00:15:13.220 animals and go to conventions and interactions with other people, is they have realized I can write

00:15:18.580 my fursona's personality, design a fursona around that personality and then embody that personality.

00:15:27.620 They are choosing to experience being somebody radically different from who they are and they

00:15:34.500 are finding a level of catharsis in this. So back to flux periods, it is really difficult to find a

00:15:40.980 time in someone's life where their set gets to change, right? Like it's not like every day you're suddenly

00:15:46.660 changing your social surroundings, your clothing, your schedule, your lifestyle, your food. Like

00:15:54.420 this is very difficult and governments have struggled with this as well. So there are many,

00:15:59.380 first, I think this was really popularized by the nudge unit within the UK. There's a book called

00:16:04.100 inside the nudge unit. They didn't actually call it the nudge unit. Well, I think they did informally,

00:16:08.500 but they had another different name for this department that tried to do behavioral interventions that

00:16:13.140 would, you know, basically help people live better lives, but cost taxpayers very little.

00:16:17.060 And they found, for example, when trying to intervene in parenting in a way that led to positive

00:16:23.460 outcomes, they really were only able to successfully change behavior at one point in people's lives. And

00:16:30.260 that was only the first time they became a parent. Now this makes sense because this is a very good example

00:16:36.340 of a flux period where someone's life dramatically changes, their identity dramatically changes,

00:16:42.020 their surroundings, the people that they can befriend and hang out with, everything shifts,

00:16:46.420 their schedule, et cetera. And so at that point, people are forced to reinvent themselves. They're

00:16:53.140 put into a new set, they're a new character, and they're actually able to change their behavior.

00:16:57.540 And so then they decided to really double down and focus in on policy interventions with

00:17:01.220 first time parents, because that made sense. Other really common examples of flux periods are

00:17:05.380 moving to a new city to get a job or fundamentally changing your career. And then a good, like from

00:17:10.580 high school to college, from college to your first job. And then if you change to a violently different

00:17:15.220 job in a different city, maybe that as well. This is one reason why when people are trying to

00:17:21.140 quit an addictive, like a very dangerously addictive thing, they may move to another country

00:17:26.260 just to completely do that. Of course, the problem is if you move back to your old set,

00:17:30.260 you're going to fall back to old ways. Well, this is shown really effective in Vietnam. 0.92

00:17:34.340 They found that when people were returning to the US, I think it was heroin addictions,

00:17:38.500 something like 78% of people lost their heroin addiction. So even when you're talking about very

00:17:44.180 deep-seated neurological- Yeah, chemical, like real, real, real.

00:17:49.060 Like this is real. This is much more than just like who you are. So there's two ways to take

00:17:54.100 advantage of flux periods in your life. One is to identify upcoming flux periods and then build

00:17:59.620 narratives for when you enter them. This could be entering college. This could be a new job. This

00:18:04.260 could be a new relationship. This could be a new, you know, anything like that, that you have

00:18:08.980 upcoming, you can identify it as a flux period and then try to change. The other is to intentionally

00:18:12.980 create flux periods, as Simone was talking about. This can be done by moving and changing jobs and

00:18:20.020 changing friend circles and changing self-conceptions. But these are difficult to do, but they are an option

00:18:26.580 that is in a way available to most of the human population. It just requires sacrifice as, you know,

00:18:33.860 anything of value does. And a lot of intentionality.

00:18:37.940 Yeah. And I'm realizing, yeah, this isn't just a like wealthy person thing. I've been completely

00:18:46.180 addicted to this one show on, or like YouTube channel on budgeting. And there are a lot of very

00:18:52.260 low income, like not even low income, but like deeply in debt people who like clearly don't have

00:18:56.740 money, but like they are also capable and they frequently do move across the country, change studies,

00:19:02.020 et cetera. Like you can, regardless of your level of income, change your location and your context, and

00:19:07.220 it can be very helpful. Yeah. And a lot of people are like, but then I don't have my support network and

00:19:14.180 stuff like that. And we'll be like, well, one thing that might be in your advantage is to change

00:19:17.700 yourself into the type of person who builds your own support. Well, and support networks can also be

00:19:21.780 enablement networks. They, they can facilitate bad behaviors that are holding you down.

00:19:27.540 And they can see you as your previous self. So something that is commonly true among support

00:19:34.420 networks that are your home support network or that's network you grew up in is that they

00:19:38.820 contextualize you as who you were as a child. And this is constantly true of people's parents,

00:19:45.060 you know, like, or even, but even just before you got better or improved, like I remember I changed a

00:19:51.380 ton when I met you because, you know, you asked me, well, what are your core values? What do you

00:19:55.620 want to achieve with your life? And I told you, and you're like, okay, but you understand you're

00:19:59.700 not going to be able to do that if you continue to dress and act the way that you're dressing and

00:20:03.300 acting. And so we totally changed my outfit. We totally changed the way that I like my tone of

00:20:08.500 voice and my styling. And then when people like, so there was a colleague of mine who was previously

00:20:16.500 at the startup where I worked, where I went from after you helped me with my makeover social media

00:20:21.540 manager, which is like very low. Frontline employee managing a Facebook page to director of marketing.

00:20:28.740 And I told this, this former team member of this startup that that happened. She was like,

00:20:34.340 no, you didn't. And she wasn't joking. She was not the kind of person who knew how to joke. I think

00:20:39.860 she just didn't believe me because the person that she knew before was not that. And being surrounded

00:20:44.820 by people like that, people surround it. You're like being surrounded by people who are like,

00:20:48.660 no, you're not going to go sober. Like, of course you're going to try for a while and then you're

00:20:52.260 going to fail. Like, then of course you're going to fail because they're not helping you. You need to

00:20:56.100 be around people. Also, like you can see, this is kind of correlated to the research that finds that

00:21:00.900 things like fatness and depression are kind of contagious. Yeah. That if you have a lot of fat

00:21:06.580 friends, you're much more likely to be fat. If you have a lot of depressed friends and family,

00:21:10.260 you're more likely to be depressed. Like these things catch. So yeah.

00:21:14.900 And I hate to say that if you want to hear something offensive, the data does show,

00:21:21.540 oh, I probably shouldn't say this, but I will. If you have gender dysphoria and you change your friend 0.99

00:21:28.660 group to a friend group that isn't populated with a lot of trans individuals or people with gender

00:21:34.180 dysphoria, it goes away. I'm not going to say this is a social phenomenon, but I am going to say that

00:21:42.340 there is evidence that gender dysphoria is in part within some individuals, a result of societal

00:21:51.300 narratives. And it is very painful. I understand from individuals who experienced it. And so we are just

00:21:57.620 offering this as an alternative to some of the potentially more expensive alternatives out there

00:22:03.700 and, and, and, and may help because it does, it does, you know, I don't like to hear people

00:22:08.580 struggling or suffering. And when there is a real alternative that, that works, you know, it's,

00:22:14.500 it's worth highlighting. Yeah. And again, I would say that this is something I'm inferring from the

00:22:19.780 research. And the reason I'm inferring this from the research is it appears to emerge in individuals

00:22:25.540 when they are in social circles that are overwhelmingly gender dysphoric or trans and

00:22:29.780 it doesn't emerge before then. And these individuals have a very common narrative when

00:22:35.300 I'm reading these narratives, which is when they reflect back on their lives, they'll say,

00:22:40.980 I saw this as a major issue throughout my life, but at any individual period in their life, if you

00:22:45.860 ask them or other people, they wouldn't have seen this as an issue. And then sort of all of a sudden,

00:22:50.820 they begin to fixate on it as an issue. And then all of a sudden it becomes the most important issue

00:22:55.380 of their lives and it begins to really eat at them and it becomes something they're thinking

00:22:59.460 about constantly. But it's this sort of spiral that increases in importance in their daily lives

00:23:05.380 over and over and over as days continue that is fed by a community that is reinforcing that spiral.

00:23:14.260 And that whether it's an online community or a narrative building community was in a,

00:23:18.100 you know, but it's, it's, it's not something that happens totally organically. I, I, I actually

00:23:23.220 don't think I've ever seen an instance of it happening totally organically. It's, it's always

00:23:28.980 some sort of online community or something like that, which identifies the problem and then feeds

00:23:34.500 behavior and narratives around the problem. When I'm saying the problem, I'm talking about

00:23:38.900 gender dysphoria, not being trans. It's not a problem. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying

00:23:43.380 that some of this stuff can be narrative based issues instead of biological issues.

00:23:50.980 So if you know that you have a chance to change your context, that you're, you're approaching a

00:23:56.660 flux period where your entire set dressing, whatnot can be changed. First, you need to make sure that

00:24:01.940 you fully own personally your fundamental values and your objective function of life. The thing you want

00:24:08.420 to maximize most or the things you want to maximize most, because if you don't have that straight,

00:24:12.260 you're not going to get anything straight. Second, then you have to decide, okay, who is the ideal

00:24:17.540 persona? Like, what is the ideal model of a person that at least has dealt the cards that I've been

00:24:23.380 dealt? You know, new, new wardrobe, potentially new accent, new, you know, like, what, what,

00:24:31.060 yeah, what are they like? It's almost like you're drawing a character sheet of like,

00:24:33.780 you built a character sheet for yourself. And it worked. And then you basically make sure that

00:24:40.900 as you get to rebuild your life from the ground up with this new stage, you are building around

00:24:46.100 that character and seeing yourself as that person. And that's crucial because if you do not internalize

00:24:51.620 yourself as that person, when you're on autopilot mode, your subconscious is not going to like,

00:24:57.860 I'm using the word subconscious, not like I'm a Freudian or Jungian. Let's be clear about that.

00:25:02.740 But your, you know, your sort of default model of yourself is that revised person.

00:25:08.020 So when you respond, you're responding and reacting in a way that that person would.

00:25:12.820 Yeah.

00:25:16.180 Well, I am deeply happy of the people. And we do this as a married couple all the time. We

00:25:21.060 basically take our character sheets and we're like, if you look at Simone, this sort of like

00:25:25.780 peasant, medieval peasant woman, this was not her historic archetype that she did in public.

00:25:32.020 My historic archetype, I've actually started wearing the outfit more because we get a good

00:25:35.460 response from it, from, from fans. And I might go back more towards it, is the suit. But I used

00:25:41.060 to always wear a three piece suit. Always.

00:25:42.900 Yeah. With jeans.

00:25:44.660 With jeans. Always with jeans. People can't tell that in the show, but even still, I'm always wearing

00:25:48.420 it with jeans. But I stopped wearing it because it seemed a little juvenile. By that, what I mean is

00:25:53.940 some archetypes work better for specific age ranges. And that worked really well when I was a young,

00:25:58.660 up and coming sort of like boy genius CEO and, and venture capitalist. It works a lot less well

00:26:05.460 when I am a middle-aged dad, venture capitalist and just look young. And it's the same as you,

00:26:12.020 you know, with your hair, you're growing it out now. Brian Kaplan's suggestion, by the way,

00:26:15.700 he goes, you know, it's your audience. I think you should have longer hair. And we're like, you know

00:26:18.740 what? We agree. And also I think that short hair on women looks uniquely hot when a woman is 0.98

00:26:23.860 incredibly useful. This is just my perspective, right? But I do not think it serves middle-aged 1.00

00:26:30.020 women well. It makes them look like Karens, basically, right? Instead of like hot Vulcans. 1.00

00:26:37.060 And so, you know, she's going for this more mid, mid, mid hair. And this is something you have to

00:26:41.700 keep in mind as you age. Is it the narratives you have built for yourself at a younger age in terms

00:26:46.180 of how you interact and how you present yourself? May not work.

00:26:49.540 Well, and I think this is also like kind of, it dovetails with the ongoing argument you have

00:26:55.540 about people not realizing that also the things that make them happy are going to change over time.

00:27:00.180 And that, you know, a lot of people are stuck with their perpetual teenage model of, of self,

00:27:07.220 both like internally and externally. And in terms of their goals, when you do actually have to adjust

00:27:12.340 the model and your character to adapt, not only to what makes you happy as an older person,

00:27:18.660 but also to adapt to the cards that you've been dealt. Because what I was alluding to earlier is

00:27:22.740 like, you can't just be like, oh, well, I'm just going to act like I'm Tony Stark because that, that,

00:27:28.740 that kind of person is more likely to, I don't have those cards. Yeah. Like, I'm sorry. Are you a

00:27:34.900 really wealthy, extremely well-connected genius? Because if not, I think you're going to have to like,

00:27:40.980 you know, adapt for your health profile, your fitness profile, your age, your, your, you know,

00:27:47.620 economic starting point, uh, your, your background, your culture and your looks. And, you know,

00:27:54.260 you can't just, I have to say, I uniquely loved your pre-mom profile. So I remember when we were

00:27:59.700 workshopping this, it was when I was in Korea and the one that we had basically, if you see all pictures

00:28:04.020 of her, you'll see this. This was, this was post. So when we first started dating, your profile was like

00:28:08.900 these big hat thing. What are they called? Fascinators. Fascinators. These big, fancy

00:28:14.340 hat things and sort of quirky, but otherwise a little conservative-ish and professional outfits,

00:28:20.340 but, but nothing else. When I first met her, she had extremely long hair, like below her butt. Like, 1.00

00:28:25.380 it was like a hippie. I did not enjoy that. And so I did, she cut her hair and she did that for a while 0.96

00:28:31.140 after, after, after cutting her, the, the, the, the fascinators when she still had long hair.

00:28:34.740 And then you went into, we had developed was like this incredibly competent in store and sort of like

00:28:40.660 fascist chic, I guess I'd call it, you know, all black tight fitting, like high, large boots,

00:28:48.020 stuff like that in your outfits and stuff. You looked like.

00:28:50.660 I went from fascism to feudalism.

00:28:53.460 Right. And, and, and yeah, well, that's what people call us, right. You know, techno feudalist,

00:28:58.340 right. You're not calling us techno fascist anymore, you know,

00:29:02.180 But it was, it was a hot outfit. It was, it was very Hugo Boss.

00:29:07.540 Aww.

00:29:08.100 I'm joking, not using, not using, not using, we never would buy designer brands.

00:29:12.100 But they had a, a phase when I was younger where they went into this sort of like

00:29:15.940 gossy, authoritarian look that, that you really embodied in that previous stage. And I really

00:29:20.660 liked that. I love you to Desimone and you are the best wife any man could ever hope for,

00:29:28.100 because you have chosen to build out of the narrative for yourself. And you have chosen

00:29:33.540 that things I, or at least my intuition is things you've chosen the things that will make me happy,

00:29:39.780 make you happy. And that's the way I've built myself as well. I see myself, it's very important

00:29:45.860 to me to be a good husband to you because that is my narrative these days.

00:29:51.380 Yeah. And you know what, that is a really common thread among various successful couples is that a core

00:29:57.140 part of their identity is that they want to do well by their spouse and partner and surprise and

00:30:02.100 delight them. So another thing to keep in mind for those who are looking to reinvent themselves.

00:30:08.740 Love you.

00:30:09.140 Love you too.

00:30:12.020 Okay.

00:30:12.340 You said you, sorry, just sending

00:30:16.980 instructions to the team about American Airlines, which has once again done something antagonistic toward

00:30:26.580 travel agencies, they basically you will not accrue American Airlines miles anymore if you book with an

00:30:34.660 agency, unless it is a preferred agency, but the preferred agency has to book a certain percentage of

00:30:40.580 its flights using NDC. And if you don't use the new distribution capability, this certain percentage

00:30:47.460 of amounts, you're not a preferred agency. But the problem that our agents come back with is, well, yeah,

00:30:52.420 that except NDC prices are worse than the prices on a.com. So I just booked directly on American

00:30:58.180 airlines.com. And then why should we be penalized for that? Because that's what they want anyway.

00:31:03.300 And our rep basically just wrote back to us like,

00:31:08.260 that's not true. We don't have price differences.

00:31:11.220 So people who don't know, we, our day job is running a travel agency, a chain of travel agencies,

00:31:18.260 a global chain of travel agencies. One of the biggest in the South, actually, the more,

00:31:23.220 I don't know what it used to be, but travel agencies, they're a thing of the past these days.

00:31:26.820 So airlines have decided they don't like us. They're not wrong because cutting out bureaucrats

00:31:31.460 and middlemen and, you know, unnecessary layers, including the software that airlines used to use to

00:31:38.580 get bookings made for them and including travel agencies in many instances is the smart thing to

00:31:43.460 do. I pay for middlemen when it's efficient and easy to have things go directly with you. I don't

00:31:48.500 fault them. We still provide a lot of value for complex and group and entertainment and production

00:31:52.420 travel, but I'm just so frustrated. I just, ah, sometimes. Anyway, I do love you. And this is our

00:31:58.980 post work. Like we both wake up, you wake up at 2 a.m. I wake up at 4 a.m. So we can finish early

00:32:03.700 and save time to do podcast recordings is our personal date time. And I'm going to focus on

00:32:08.500 that now and not the fact that my job really stresses me out.

Based Camp - April 24, 2024

How to Rewrite Yourself and Escape Programming (Writing Your Own Character Sheet)

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