by Ryan Tibbens

We're not being lazy; we're just being stupid. 

In the last month, how many times have you been too 'lazy' to do something that you knew you should do?  How many times have you been fully aware of the behavior you desire, but did something else? How many times did you explain that dissonance with the term 'lazy'?

Too many. Me too. 

'Lazy' has become our comfortable and socially acceptable way to justify stupidity and vice.  'Lazy' means "disinclined to activity or exertion : not energetic or vigorous." It means that you didn't want to do something or couldn't muster the energy for it. But when you know that you should do something, don't you usually want to do it?  Exhaustion and fatigue are excusable: they indicate that you've already dedicated yourself fully to a different endeavor. You are incapable of doing more. But if you know and believe that you should do something, and also know that you could, but you don't, what is that?  That is not lazy.  That is stupid. 

If we were more honest about our reasons for not doing (or sometimes doing) things, if we were as quick to acknowledge stupidity as we do laziness, we would be better people.  We would live more productive and meaningful lives.  People say that knowledge is power, but that is not true.  Knowledge creates options, and options create power.  Options are powerful because they let us know what we can do.  If we never take action, then our other options, and all the prerequisite knowledge, was inert and useless and stupid.  In many eastern traditions, focusing on 'being' is more important than focusing on 'doing,' and while I am inclined to Taoism and Buddhism myself, I believe that enlightenment results from 'being' and 'doing' becoming one.  Buddhists believe that life is suffering and that suffering results from striving, from want and desire.  Taoists have a similar take, but with less suffering overall. True enlightenment is derived from synthesis of realism and idealism -- know what you actually are, and know what you should be; then work (do) so diligently that 'being' becomes 'doing' (and 'doing' becomes 'being'). A great deal of our sorrow in life results from doing things that do not jive with what we are (and from being what we are without doing what we should).   You are who you are, and who you are is what you do. (And what you eat, but that's for a different essay.)

Somehow, most people believe that it is better to be lazy than stupid.  We delude ourselves into believing that 'lazy' is a decision, which means we have power, which means that we could have done the other thing.  But that isn't true.  You can only do what you do.  We think that 'stupid' is thrust upon us by the Universe, that no one chooses 'stupid.'  While it is true that people rarely choose 'stupid,' it is also true that most 'lazy' is just poorly labeled 'stupid.'

I've had a general sense of this concept since my late teens, but it wasn't until I heard a throwaway line in Joe Rogan's interview of Steven Pinker that I found the words for it.  Rogan asks, "Do you meditate?" And Pinker responds laughingly, "You know, I don't, but I think I should." They both laugh, and Rogan replies, "Well, you're such a smart guy. Like, why would you, why would there be anything that you think you should do that you don't do?" EUREKA. Pinker, still laughing, says, "It's a really good question, 'cause, 'cause clearly I'm not that smart."

If you are a smart person, and you know that you should do something (not could, not would), why wouldn't you do it?  It is either the vice of indifference, which equates to stupidity when you are indifferent to things that benefit you; or it is stupidity, which is, well, stupid.  'Lazy' is a fine claim when we're talking about friends going out and you don't really want to go and don't see any clear reason why you should; you're too lazy (see the definition) to participate.  But if you know that you should go with your friend because it is in your best interest or it will help your friend, which is also to your benefit, then you're not being lazy -- you're being stupid.  

Take no offense to all that second person.  It truly takes one to know one.  I am as guilty of stupidity as anyone else, perhaps more.  In fact, I'm morally worse than most people because I know that laziness is really just stupidity, and yet I continue to act stupidly and blame laziness.  However, I've come to equate laziness in meaningful situations with stupidity, and I believe that stupidity is among the worst three human experiences (Malice, Indifference, Stupidity). I'm working on it.  I know that I should be less lazy, and so I am, incrementally but steadily. 

Most of us avoid stupid behaviors, or at least try to. We are, or want to be, smart.  Somehow the sin of sloth has been rationalized away -- we're all just so very busy, so very tired, that we think we deserve to be lazy.  Rest is important.  Stillness is important.  Reflection and quiet and being are important. But simply choosing not to do something that we know we should do, that is not laziness; that is stupidity.

​Get back to work, dummy. 

By Ryan Tibbens for educational purposes only

~~ If you do nothing else with this article, watch the Andrew Yang/Joe Rogan video clip linked below. Automation is going to change the world.  ~~

I'll begin by saying that I support the minimum wage as an imperfect though well-intended and mostly functional concept.  Some even suggest a currency-adjusted, global minimum wage, which has become a point of contention between some economists.  (Now that the less-open-minded libertarians among us have bailed, we can proceed thoughtfully.)

More and more large corporations are announcing their support for a $12 or even $15 minimum wage, and it should come as no surprise. These businesses include Amazon, Disney, Target, Walmart, and now McDonald's. We shouldn't be surprised because big businesses will always do what is best for themselves and their shareholders: crush competition and generate profits. A corporation's sole purpose is to generate profits through channels that mitigate the financial loss and personal liability of shareholders.  As such, these modern giants see the benefit of increasing the minimum wage -- they can afford it, and much of their remaining competition can't.  Even if a wage hike doesn't make sense in the short term, allowing government to legislate their competition out of business is a winning strategy in the long term.  And since each of these companies is intensifying dependence on automation, they will have fewer human employees to pay soon anyway.          [Article continues below.]

A Friend recently shared this article about McDonald's abrupt shift to supporting a minimum wage increase. ​"By sticking together and taking action on the job, courageous workers in the Fight for $15 and a union have forced McDonald's – the second-biggest employer in the world – to drop its relentless opposition to higher pay," SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said in a statement. "Now, McDonald's needs to use its profits and power to give thousands of cooks and cashiers across the country a real shot at the middle class by raising pay to $15 an hour and respecting its workers' right to a union." My friend went on to point out that McDonald's has cut its workforce by nearly 50%, nearly 210,000 jobs, in the last four years. 

Of course, we've all heard horror stories about fast food automation, from robot grill masters that work slower than the stoned 17 year olds they replaced to the poop-smeared touchscreen kiosks (or maybe not).  But this is a primary reason McDonald's and other large companies are actually reducing employment. Will increasing the minimum wage really intensify automation? Many people certainly think so, particularly those who oppose the minimum wage in the first place. 

So what is going to happen when McDonald's and Amazon and the rest strong-arm the federal government into increasing the minimum wage on their own terms? 

1) Big companies can afford the increased wages, at least in the short term, so they gladly pay.
2) Smaller competition goes out of business trying to pay those wages.
3) Big companies receive the surplus business because they've outlasted competition. 
4) They use the increased revenue to further invest in automation.
5) Nearly no one is left making $15/hour due to massive layoffs (thanks to automation), so the minimum wage doesn't really matter anymore.
6) We move to some form of universal basic income because, without it, no one will be able to buy food from McDonald's or random crap from Walmart and Amazon.
7) We all admire President Yang's forward thinking -- Andrew Yang for President 2020. 
8) Karl Marx replaces Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill. (Okay, maybe not this part...) 

Seriously, watch the video.

​ 

By Ryan Tibbens

What is the measure of a man?  Should we judge people based upon their best days?  Their worst?  Their words? Actions? Those they helped? Hurt? Is it possible to quantify a person's morality or lifelong influence? Is a person's humanity best encapsulated in his worst moment or best, or are we defined by our mean, median, or mode?​  On this Easter Sunday in particular, we should all be thinking about redemption. 

In my late teens, I theorized that a person's value, at least in moral terms, could be determined by the sum of her decisions and actions. Every bit of good was scored +1, every bit of bad -1; we could arithmetize a person's value in the world. Plus or minus one for every instance of helping or hurting. I suggested quantifying based upon the recipients of help/hurt, rather than the simple number of acts.  There is an oversimplified truth in the math, and despite its simplicity, it would give a better assessment of a person's moral worth than simply judging based upon a best or worst moment. It would certainly be better than trial by social media, which recently seems to be the most popular test.

Given our recent Outrage Culture or Cancel Culture or whatever you'd like to call it, finding a system of ethical assessment has never been more important.  Each day, we use the internet to reclassify historical heroes as demons to forget.  We use social media to raise up everyday heroes, only to learn one week later that our angel is utterly human. Our fifteen minutes of fame has never been easier to achieve, but it's also never looked less appealing. 

Thanks most recently to social media and smart phones with cameras, then to the internet, to mass media, to the printing press, to the written word, and so on, we can track human behavior to an extent once unimaginable.  What's even crazier is that we voluntarily forfeit our privacy and autonomy by sharing every bit of our lives online.  George Orwell imagines a world of surveillance and social pressure and paranoia in 1984, and today we live it.  However, what Orwell never saw, or at least never explained, was how humanity would ultimately choose to live sans privacy.  Dave Eggers re-envisions Orwell's nightmares in the context of 21st century life online and explains the process by which privacy will die -- in The Circle, humanity chooses to share everything all the time. There is no authoritarian takeover, just well-marketed, new technology.  Everything is online, rated with a thumbs up or down, a like or an emoji; one can't paddle a kayak or get a handjob without sharing the experience online, cameras are everywhere, and nearly everyone opts in. In Eggers' world, people live in total transparency; everyone knows everyone else's personal and professional activities, opinions, feelings, even their parents' and ancestors' transgressions.  In one relevant scene, Annie, a young, fast-rising executive at the social media company, agrees to share her ancestry reports only to learn that her supposed blue-blood family had spent generations buying, selling, and abusing human slaves in Europe and North America; she then learns that her parents engaged in a variety of perverse behaviors and once watched a homeless man die as part of a date.  Though Annie is to blame for none of these horrific acts, public opinion turns, her career implodes, and her health falters.  Is it right for a person to lose her job, her friends, or her happiness because of indiscretions in the distant past?  

Today, outrage rules.  Our 24-hour news cycle is hungry for content, so when the president isn't tweeting something stupid, the weather isn't destroying homes, and no new wars are erupting, any scandal will do.  To operate a cable news channel, all you really need is a semi-literate anchor and a guest who will express outrage -- people will watch, and advertisers will pay.  But what about outrage that is disingenuous or poorly directed?  What about doxxing people, even youths, who have committed no offenses?  Social media has helped to give people what we unknowingly want -- a world in which everyone is either with or against us, where most people agree with us within our echo chambers, where advertisers pay to learn exactly what we want and sell us exactly that.  With our world seemingly in a tailspin, perhaps we should slow down and reconsider our judgments and their repercussions. 

Is Bill Cosby a bad guy?  Yes.  Should we avoid The Cosby Show? Probably not. Is Bill Clinton a bad guy?  Probably.  Should we disavow everything he did as president? Probably not.  Was Martin Luther King Jr. a plagiarist and philanderer? Yes.  Should that discredit all his other achievements?  No. Was Gandhi a racist? Yes.  Should we cast aside his human rights work? No.  Did Mother Teresa lose faith in God?  Yes.  Should the Catholic Church label her as an infidel rather than a saint?  No.  Was Thomas Jefferson a conflicted, confused racist who loved a black woman? Yes. Was he a rapist? Possibly.  Should we tear down his monument, burn Monticello, and erase the Declaration of Independence?  No. Was Margaret Sanger a eugenicist? Yes. Should that be grounds for closing Planned Parenthood? No. Human beings are inherently flawed, and if we hold all people to super-human standards of modern, progressive morality, we will have no heroes.  Hell, Old Testament Yahweh couldn't hold up to modern scrutiny with all his smiting and young virgin brides and directions for executions and sexism and racism and support for slavery and on and on.  When the gods aren't good enough, then perhaps good enough doesn't exist. Choose any significant figure you like, give me ten minutes to research, and I'll cast serious doubt on character or achievements.  Should we cancel all our heroes? No, because there is usually a baby in that bathwater, and it is usually possible to appreciate a person's contributions without embracing his sins. 

I recently had a discussion with a small group of students in which most of them, one young woman in particular, argued that it is now morally wrong to listen to Michael Jackson or R. Kelly because of their off-stage behaviors.  I asked her what they did, and she rattled off a list of abusive, perverse behaviors (only some of which have been proven).  All the other students who have access to Hulu and HBO quickly expressed disapproval. I shared her concerns about those behaviors, but I disagreed that I should never dance to "Thriller" or "Remix to Ignition" again without feeling guilty.  She said that the creative works represent their creators and that enjoying the works is the same as supporting the creator.  But that is insane, right?  I can love The Motorcycle Diaries without loving Che's violence and bigotry.  I can love Sublime and Janis without loving heroin. Can't I?

Over the last couple of years, our society has polarized in ways that go far beyond left-right politics.  Our urban-rural, rich-poor, educated-uneducated gaps have all expanded along with dozens of others.  Our seams are ready to burst.  The most interesting development though, by far, is how we judge people.  Biased thinking is timeless, but I'm not sure if people have ever been so quick to attack or defend a person based upon their prejudices as they are now. Even if that kind of thinking is not new, our ability to research and read should control for hypocrisy, but they do not.  Google and Bing and Yahoo and Facebook and Twitter and all the other curators of the internet show us what we want to see, not necessarily what we asked to see.  Google knows how I feel about Louis CK long before I search his name, so they show me what I want, not necessarily what is true or current or reasonable. 

In a world in which everyone is connected electronically, when we can all share our feelings and judgments instantly, where we spend more time arguing with strangers in comment sections than talking to our next door neighbor, how can we ever have justice?  When our neighbors don't know that we exist but acquaintances and strangers watch our every move online, how can we make sense of our world?  Priorities are unclear, and morals are contradictory.  You can't reasonably say that you want prayer in schools but then criticize schools for allowing Muslims to pray throughout the day.  You can't reasonably tell me that you support prisoner rehabilitation and shorter prison sentences for criminals but then ruin a person's career and accept no apology because of politically incorrect language.  Our elected officials are not narrowly defined by their greatest accomplishments nor worst transgressions.  

Who will be pure enough to be president in 40 years? If advocates for political correctness and social justice warriors have their way, no one. We will have amassed enough status updates, tweets, Snaps, and photos that no one will satisfy the current standard for public service. Well, no one will be pure enough to run as a liberal or progressive, anyway.  Conservatives, who have traditionally claimed religious virtue and moral high grounds, seem not to care about these indiscretions. Most of that leniency seems to be about political expediency, but it is possible that a certain degree of Christian forgiveness factors in. Either way, current and recent politicians' concerns are nothing compared to children born today: "hot mic" scenarios have been relatively conspicuous and controllable until recently, but today's infants are growing up with hot mics everywhere. Unless they are a new breed of super-human,  none of them will escape the embarrassments of youth or poor judgments of young adulthood that plague us all, so none of them will be pure enough for public service or corporate leadership.

A person's moral value can't be fairly determined based solely upon their bests nor their worsts.  An averaging of the two (or a median) might get closer, but arithmetic will rarely yield a solution in ethics.  What we need is a little perspective. Jesus once said, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone." Youthful mistakes are often just that, and microaggressions are usually more symptomatic of unawareness than anger. We need to remember that all humans are flawed and contain potential for both good and evil. We would be wise to focus on trends and patterns of behavior rather than isolated indiscretions. One man's mistake is another man's hobby. If we have any hope of improving the moral character of mankind, then we must learn to differentiate between sincere and manipulative apologies, between progress and pretense.  There must be a way to redeem ourselves after transgressions; otherwise, we've paradoxically found a way for morality to make the world worse. In our ultra-connected, over-stimulated world, we need to understand that good words without good deeds are fool's gold, and also that few deeds are more important than forgiveness. ​

By Ryan Tibbens

​Today is the best day because it is the only day.  Since the moment you were born, you have always lived in "today."  You never lived "yesterday," and you will never live "tomorrow."  Every day that you are alive is "today," and when you realize that, you'll have taken a long stride toward happiness.  

When you realize that Monday, Hump Day, and Friday are only pseudonyms for today; when you realize that tomorrow never comes because, when the clock strikes twelve, tomorrow becomes today; when you realize that you will never wake up in tomorrow, just in a new today; when those abstractions become real, you will be when you are. 

I often remind myself, my family, and my students that it is important to "Be where you are."  I'm not as good at this as I'd like, but I try.  My cell phone is the top distraction in my life, the most common reason that I'm not where I am.  My mind is elsewhere, thinking thoughts unrelated to my physical surroundings, just one thumb and two eyes connect my consciousness to my physical reality.  In those moments, I am not where I am.  I often regret them because real life does not offer rewind or replay functions.  The unreal world of my phone can almost always be rewound and replayed.  Scarcity creates value, and I can only live now once, meaning right now, right here, is the most important moment in my life: it is my whole life. 

We must remember that setting is both time and place, when and where; and to truly live, we must stay in our setting.  To live life well, we must actually live our lives, and spending too much time thinking about the past or future means we are not appreciating today, our only day.  I am not suggesting a life without reflection nor planning, but when our dominant thoughts in a day are about other days, it is safe to say that we are not fully living today.  In Walden, Thoreau writes, "I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life[...]"  In order to be present and mindful, Henry David Thoreau withdrew from society and lived a Spartan existence at Ralph Waldo Emerson's Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days.  He lived in a world much quieter than ours, and he still needed to change his setting in order to live today mindfully.  If only we could all retire to a private patch of quiet, pristine wilderness when our focus and mindfulness need tuned. 

The Roman Stoics saw life, time, and today in much the same way as Taoists and Transcendentalists, though their explanations tend to be more severe and demanding, more masculine and robust.  In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes, "Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, 'Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?' You’ll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can’t hold out against that…well, then, heap shame upon it.”  He does not look for a secluded cabin site nor seek the reassurance of a friendly piglet; Aurelius demands mindful focus on today as a matter of pure will and necessity. He also talks about getting the most out of today: "Then hath a man attained to the estate of perfection in his life and conversation, when he so spends every day, as if it were his last day: never hot and vehement in his affections, nor yet so cold and stupid as one that had no sense; and free from all manner of dissimulation."

Even Taoism (see Pooh above) and Buddhism get in on the action of today.  We must set in our setting.  Be where you are.  Be when you are.  So much of life's stress comes from regretting yesterday and worrying about tomorrow, but that is silly -- yesterday and tomorrow only exist in our minds.  If we can divert our attention and energy away from imaginary days and toward today, if we can pay attention to active attendance, then we can begin getting the most out of life while reducing anxiety and stress.  Don't believe me?  Check out all these inspirational quotes and images; they couldn't possibly be wrong.

Even the Serenity Prayer agrees: "God/Universe, grant me the serenity /To accept the things I cannot change [the past and future]; / Courage to change the things I can [today]; / And wisdom to know the difference. "

​Be where you are, when you are.  Be present. Check the links below for recommended reading on the subject. 

B​y Ryan Tibbens for educational purposes only
(Updated 4/28/2020 -- Scroll to the bottom of the article for some GREAT visual demonstrations from other sources.)

​
I just saw a time conversion that, when I think about it in dollar figures, is absolutely mind blowing. Here goes...

- 1 million seconds equal 11 and 1/2 days.
- 1 billion seconds equal 31 and 3/4 years.
- 1 trillion seconds equal 31,710 years.

That means if you have one billion dollars in the bank, you can spend a DOLLAR PER SECOND, every second, or $3,600 per hour, and not run out of money for nearly 32 years; and because of the interest you'll be accruing, it will actually be substantially longer than that. Now, let's think about wealthy people in the news. Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and patron of strip-mall whorehouses everywhere, is worth $6,600,000,000 (billion). If he converted all investments to cash, he could spend one dollar per second, every second for over 209 years, even without earning any capital gains. And, get this, he is only the 79th richest person in the United States.

Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person in the USA, with a net worth of over $160,000,000,000 (billion). That means he could spend a dollar per second, every second, or $3,600 per hour, for over 5,074 years. If we could travel through time (and given his wealth, he probably can), Jeff Bezos could start spending one dollar per second, every second at the beginning of the Bronze Age, and he'd just now be running out of money.

The US national debt is currently about $21,974,000,000,000 (trillion), which means we would need to pay one dollar per second, every second, or $3,600 per hour, for 696,791 years to be debt free nationally.

The average American household carries something like $140,000 of debt, which means that someone in that house would need to make and spend one dollar per second, every second for almost two days just to be even, just to be out of debt.

Something is wrong.

Since writing and posting this article a little over a year ago, I have encountered some great websites, videos, and posts that try to make the same point I did above -- big numbers are not at all what most people think they are.  Before expressing opinions on issues that include big numbers -- government spending, economic inequality, personal finance, space travel, or anything else -- PLEASE review the sources below.  WARNING: Link #2 might be the most startling and interesting, but because of this website's' formatting, it looks the least appealing.  Definitely check out #2.  Also remember that data changes all the time, so if you want to reference these sources, it is important to include production dates and context. 

​

1) This 1-minute video uses grains of rice to compare hundreds of thousands to millions to billions. 

2) This website offers a scrolling demonstration that includes commentary and explanations.  Click the link, start scrolling right, read as you go, and keep scrolling right.  Then scroll right some more. Seriously, this will blow your mind. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

​3) This is an oldie-but-goody.  It is from late 2012, so the exact statistics are now inaccurate.  Unfortunately, the numbers in 2020 are even more uneven and startling.  For those who want to put wealth figures into more understandable terms like percentiles, this is a good visualization.  (Just remember that the data is old.) 

​
4) This demonstration compares the wealth of some of the leading Democratic candidates for president in 2019/2020. The candidates' names and politics are, for the purposes of the current discussion, less important than the visual comparison of wealth. CREDIT TO http://rossblocher.com/hosted/candidatewealth.html; check out his great work!

Keep scrolling down!