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by
Gordon White
Read between
December 20 - December 28, 2019
tertiary
#NewWord
Continual learning arises when you refuse to let circumstances or other people’s opinions of you stand in your way. Like being lucky, it lives entirely in a singular mindset: do not worry about being good at something. Focus instead on getting better at it. The rest is upside.
Resist the atomizing effect of monoculture’s celebration of the fiction of the individual. This is how tribes work, this is how it has always been done. Nomadism is humanity’s natural state and adventurism is wizardry’s natural one.
gerontological
#NewWord
robot-proof yourself.
From Convexity to Mastery
dilettantism.
#NewWord
In the Workplace
Do not show up and expect to be told what to do—that is what robots are for.
A chaos magic approach to multiple selves is particularly useful in separating your work from your non-work life. Be warned. It gets murky out there.
Never complain about your boss. Ever. Similarly, be above office politics. If you want to complain about people, get a therapist.
People promote those who are similar to themselves.
Wealth is not required for the most important class indicators.
Have a game plan, but keep it secret.
The Network
ROI
Return on investment
Firstly, a network is not a digital asset! You could have the maximum number of friends Facebook allows and still not have a healthy network. Digital platforms facilitate communication within a network. That is all. You still need to have coffee with people and birthday cards are always appreciated.
(June 25, since you asked.)
Gordon's Birthday
Secondly, if you are a mechanic, make sure your network consists of more than other mechanics. Have chefs, teachers, painters, waiters, naval officers … whatever. Varied networks provide more useful weak link effects in unpredictable times. I like to think of this as the village in my head. In previous eras you would know your baker or your school teacher; you would know who to speak to about livestock issues or how to fix the roof of your barn. The economics of the modern world make it highly unlikely that you have access to such a variation in skills within easy walking distance. The
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Collaboration and shared ownership of income streams are emerging as the new funding model,
Wealth in the Medium Term
Unless your actual job is investment advisor, I am here to tell you that you need to learn a brand new skill.
it is useful to be a physical wealth theorist, if not a physical wealth proponent.
valuations. Remember the term humanomics. You are always in control of what you choose to define as valuable,
These changes suggest some novel approaches are called for.
aquaponics,
#NewWord
If you are in debt, consider radical possibilities to get out of it as fast as possible:
Make peace with the reality that you will have multiple careers over the course of your lifetime and that there really are no such thing as stable jobs any more. Be prepared to move, be prepared to seize opportunities, and never stop upskilling yourself.
Education: If someone rich is paying, go expensive. If you are paying, go as cheap as possible.
Chaos
For life’s more important goals—making art, finding love—there is neither a minimum or maximum hour rule.
I say “stomach for” chaos but actually you need to learn to love it. If your work life reaches a dead end, dismantle it! If times get tough in your area, assemble a wagon train of friends and family and leave that old life behind for pastures new. If you find yourself in a situation where you are not cultivating rare and valuable skills, walk away.
You have discovered that not even death can stop you and—armed with spirit allies and ancestors—adventure awaits.
Every strategy and every step on the adventure requires risk. Taking risks is about being brave, not reckless.
Pulitzer-nominated journalist John Rappoport says, “Defeat is a program. It’s a mind-control program and it is planet-wide.”
The good news is your finger has been hovering above the off-switch your entire life.
You can keep your Learjet; I’d rather have a pen and a nice notebook.
Crowds cohere around failure, not success. Follow at your peril.
You do not need a single cent to your name to appreciate Monet’s Water Lilies or to pick up a pen and start writing a short story.
Today we live in a world where you may ultimately lose your teaching job to a robot, but you have the opportunity for exploration and expression of topics and people that would have got you burned at the stake a few centuries ago.
Becoming invincible takes away every map you have ever owned and replaces them all with cold, brilliant freedom.
We watch the last days of crony capitalism with the same grim fascination that the early gothics observed the cult of the ruin; the centralisation of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands calls to mind the civilisations that have fallen before our own.
We cannot make success be whatever you want it to be lest we rob the term of its usefulness. What, then, does success look like in a world where the previous yardsticks—expensive cars, suburban houses—are no longer relevant? What are the outward manifestations of a meaningful, magical life? Success is not a McMansion in negative equity. Success is camping in a Languedoc field for a summer, drinking pastis and playing boules with the locals. Success is getting someone to buy one of your paintings, even if it is for a dollar. Success is extracting sufficient wealth from a dysfunctional system
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At some fundamental level you are creating and changing the universe. Practical magic can only amplify this pre-existing function. It cannot even supply the wisdom to know when to use it and when to hold off. Such wisdom is hard won and only arrives after many campaigns. You will recognise its arrival when your creative, imaginal capacity knows when to change the changeable and when to find another way around the unchangeable.
Success is being satisfied with an outcome you set out to achieve. Stop at nothing and you will eventually get there.
Today we have newly translated Akkadian and Sumerian texts appearing on university websites every day,
Look this up
The Chaosphere
A Universal Conjuration
Saint Columba’s Prayer for Victory
An Adaptive Consecration
