No One Is Coming to Save You. You MUST Save Yourself.
Stop looking to leaders or systems. Become a fighter.
I did something different for this #FreedomMusicFriday. Instead of starting with a song that makes me think of a freedom-related topic, I thought of a topic and then looked to see if I could find a song to match.
I didn’t find much from the exact search “No One Is Coming to Save You”—just a rather soupy piece of gothic rock and some metal song with that metal-vibrato singing style that I happen to find somewhat annoying (apologies to Bruce Dickinson and Rob Halford). So instead, I have decided to adapt a song I like: “The Fighter,” by In This Moment.
But first, the topic…
At first blush, the admonition that “No one is coming to save you” might seem hackneyed or trite, but it is actually really good advice. If you do a search for that phrase, you will get videos in which motivational speakers, bodybuilders, and others remind you of your own free will, and that your success depends on you and you alone…and then, with that knowledge imparted, exhort you to greatness.
This is good. Such points ought to be frequently reinforced and repeated.
It is easy enough for people to wrap their heads around this notion with issues on a personal level: No one is going to cause me to [lose weight, gain muscle, succeed at my job, etc.] except me. You have to choose to take whatever actions are needed. That is how this works.
And yet, when it comes to politics and world affairs—and the impact those have on our lives—we tend to think that it’s almost all out of our hands. So we cast our little vote, send a little money to some politician or NGO, and then figure that the rest of it is simply beyond our control.
And it probably is. But you know what isn’t beyond your control?
Your life. And what you choose to do with it.
On Monday, I posted an article (Forget the Bear. Enough with the Video Games. Make Babies), which exhorted men and women to call a truce in the war between the sexes. To get past all the modern propaganda and obstacles. To look into each other’s eyes, get together, and make lots of babies. To be happy.
The response was strong, and included several comments that listed the impediments younger people are facing right now—all of the social, economic, and cultural hurdles that have been placed in the paths of would-be couples.
I had already acknowledged the hurdles, and even briefly enumerated a few, in the post, yet some reacted as if I hadn’t. This bespeaks a feeling of hopelessness—that the obstacles are too high, and the result of forces too far beyond our control.
So what is the best thing to do when an obstacle lies before you is too high, and was placed there by forces beyond your control? Do you cower in the shadow of the mountain? Do you walk into it over and over like a broken toy robot?
No. You go around it.
Yet so many forget that they have that simple power:
The system is set up so that I have to get a degree…
The system is set up so that the price of college has risen at four times the rate of inflation, and now I have to pay back massive loans…
In order to make any real money, I need to get a graduate degree…
How can I possibly bring a child into this world with all this debt, and no good jobs for someone with my degrees?
Do you see how all of this presumes that the only way to live is the way the system tells you?
Yes, companies demand that applicants have college degrees for jobs that clearly don’t require any degree. And yes, that is absolutely stupid, and the result is cronyism among many of our institutions and the stupid credentialism that has pervaded our culture.
And by agreeing to live by those stupid rules, you are perpetuating a stupid system and yoking yourself to be pulled around by a stupid, evil ox. Is that what you want?
But what else can I do?
How about…ANYTHING BUT THAT!
My wife and I have done pretty well without college degrees. Two roads diverged in a wood, and we chose to take the one that didn’t involve bashing our heads into every single wall that the system has erected. And we’ve lived fun, fascinating lives, both together and before we met. It required choosing different priorities.
Of course it has also involved some sacrifices. Everything in life is a tradeoff. Everything.
You do not have to get a degree, or multiple degrees, and then yoke yourself to wage slavery. There are other paths you can choose. Yes, things are expensive. But there are ways to live cheaply.
You do not need to buy expensive processed foods. You can buy whole, natural foods in bulk. You can go to farmers markets. Heck, I buy my meat from local ranchers who sell it on the side of the road every Sunday. Good prices, and no hormones or other weird injections.
You don’t need to spend 10 dollars a day at Starbucks.
You don’t need Netflix. You don’t need an expensive cell phone or a 70-inch TV.
You don’t need to live in a big expensive city.
Yes, housing is expensive these days. Yes, something is seriously wrong with the economy. You are not going to be able to change that. But you do not have to just sit back and be a victim of it. You do not have to cower in the shadow of the mountain.
A.M. Hickman and others have pointed out that there are areas of the country where housing is still incredibly cheap. Yes, many of these places are dying towns in upsate New York, the South, and the Midwest. So what? Go homestead them! Go buy a small house and two acre plot for $20,000. Fix it up, raise some chickens, and live cheaply. Rediscover the basics of a human life.
But I don’t want to live outside of Utica and collect chicken eggs. I want to live in Los Angeles!
Okay. That is a choice you are making. And that choice means that you must do what the system tells you. That means you must climb their mountain. And keep climbing and climbing until you finally have some money, but it’s too late to have babies.
But but but…
Men have become puerile and spend all day playing video games. Social forces have emasculated them.
Women have become demanding and intolerable, or miserable and bitter. Social media is destroying them.
How do I find a good mate?
You prioritize it. If the pool of potential mates has shrunk, then you need to
a) make yourself better (totally in your control), and
b) try harder to find someone.
Men—you can check in with Jordan Peterson or a hundred other dudes with really solid advice for getting out of mom’s basement, reclaiming your manhood, and making yourself awesome.
Women—you can start by not insisting that any potential mate must be over 6’ tall and make over six figures. Or better yet, stop watching the shrieking harridans on Tik-Tok who get clicks by proudly announcing that those are their criteria. And unless you are some sort of mega-super-ultra-hottie, maybe realize that those criteria are a little unrealistic.
When my wife and I met, her criteria were that a man needed to have a car and a job. Not a Mercedes and a 200K-a-year job. Just a car and a job.
When we met, I was making 50K and drove a beat up Suzuki Samurai. (God, I loved that car!) Had she rejected me on the grounds that I was driving a battleship-gray jeep with a cloth top, rather than the fancy ride so many women in Los Angeles insist on, she would have deprived both of us of a truly amazing marriage, and our son of his very existence.
Yet she and I did not meet by chance. I had made finding a mate my top priority.
Not career.
Not “I’m just working on me right now.”
No. I prioritized what I wanted. A mate.
I worked at it. I navigated the rapids of dating in Los Angeles. (Ugh.) Eventually, I sucked it up and went on a dating site. It didn’t work. It produced dates and some fun, and also some weirdness. But no wife. A year later, I went on a different dating site and, after some trials, met the perfect woman for me.
I worked at it for my whole adult life. I did not give up. I prioritized it. I did not let any impediment stop me. You can do the same.
As it happens, we still just made it under the wire—meeting at a point in life where there was only time to have one child before the biological door slammed shut.
If you don’t want that to happen to you, then don’t live in Los Angeles—where the grass is always greener, almost no one ever settles down, and everyone thinks they’re going to be young forever. Instead, move to a medium-sized town with a large-enough dating pool, find someone, and then move further out into the country together.
But whatever you do, do not assume that the only way to exist is to climb the ridiculous mountain that the system has plopped before you.
This same thing applies to every other obstacle we face.
People pointed out, in response to yesterday’s article about fast food, that BigFood is, in essence, poisoning us. And that the FDA and Department of Agriculture are—through cronyism, incompetence, and self-interest—letting them. Les’s Geopolitical Essays asserted that as much as “95% of what is sold in supermarkets is not fit for human consumption.”
We are getting fatter and sicker. BigSugar, BigAg, and the government have been lying to us for 70 years about what it means to eat healthy. All of these are giant mountains placed in our path.
So what is there to do about it? Complain? Vote harder? Throw your hands up and assume that you are nothing but a victim of the collective zeitgeist? Or do your research, find alternative sources of information, find alternative foods and food sources, and save yourself?
Contrary to what many people think, the word plankton does not refer to one particular species. It describes any species that lives in the water and IS UNABLE TO PROPEL ITSELF AGAINST A CURRENT.
Is that what you want? To give up because you cannot possibly swim against the current of the collective or the system that is controlling it?
Or do you want to try being nekton—a creature that has the ability to forge its own path in spite of the current?
Really, we could talk about examples all day…
It is terrifying to contemplate what happened during covid. They locked down a whole planet. They injected an experimental drug into four billion people. Millions appear to have died from that injection, and we have to consider the possibility that that was its actual purpose.
It is easy to despair in the face of this, and many other examples of the totalitarian tyranny that seems slowly to be engulfing the world. It is easy to shut down.
And of those who don’t shut down, many simply wait for the same system that brought us all this to somehow fix it. They wait for a savior to come to reform the system, instead of realizing,
the system is the problem, and
we can choose to go around the system rather than being its victim.
No one is coming to save you.
No one is coming to save us.
We must save ourselves.
In honor of that notion, please enjoy the song below.
There are plenty of other songs out there with the same defiant, I-will-save-myself-and-not-be-a-victim message. I hope you enjoy this one. Maria Brink nicely cranks up the passion pretty nicely for the refrain.
The target of her declaration might not be quite the same as the targets we discuss herein, but the defiance is the same. Draw from it what you will.
And stop being plankton. I know it’s not always easy. But what choice do we have?
“No one is coming to save you; no one is coming to make life right for you; no one is coming to solve your problems. If you don’t do something, nothing is going to get better. The dream of a rescuer who will deliver us may offer a kind of comfort, but it leaves us passive and powerless. We may feel if only I suffer long enough, if only I yearn desperately enough, somehow a miracle will happen, but this is the kind of self-deception one pays for with one’s life as it drains away into the abyss of unredeemable possibilities and irretrievable days, months, decades.”
―Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
Excellent advice. There is more than one way to beat the system. First you need to realize there is a system. Some of it is intentional. Some of it is left over from earlier systems. Some if it is just there by happenstance. The universe is not for you or against you. It’s agnostic toward your existence. So it’s really up to you to forge your path. Hard work, integrity, reliability, smarts, kindness do pay off. But you have to pay your dues. Everybody pays their dues. The earlier you put the hard work in, the sooner you can reap the rewards. If you want to coast through life, well good luck with that. Life is competitive in every aspect.
The bright shiny thing is often not what makes people happy. Finding purpose in life, love, friendship, good health make the difference.
The more you worry about what other people think, the more unhappy you will be. The more you compare yourself to others, the more unhappy you will be. Compete with yourself. Make yourself into what you want to be. Do a little bit more than others and it pays off. Be reliable. In an unreliable world, be the rock.
People will reward you for that. Word will get around.
If you want to be an astrophysicist, you have to go to college and grad school. If you want to be a carpenter or a trucker or a chef, you don’t need that. What you don’t want to do is stumble through life without any vision. Your vision may change. That’s ok. But you have to have a goal. Once you figure out the system, you learn how to work the system. You can go around it, or you can go through it. But you have to understand it. Fortunately technology is giving many people a lot of optionality. Working remotely gives you a lot of freedom.
We have a very wasteful society. We waste money, human potential, all kinds of valuable resources. There are ways to live intelligently, with success, with dignity and conscientiously. You don’t have to be a cog in a machine or a shitty person. But you do need to make a decent living and you need to find a reliable way to do it that doesn’t subject you to a lot of uncertainty . If you have resources a lot of this stuff gets exponentially easier, because you aren’t struggling to survive. The situation in this country is not sustainable. There will be a big recession/depression at some time in the near future. Non-dollar denominated real assets will be key. That can be a lot of things - gold, silver, Bitcoin, food, energy, and land. If you are self sustaining, the rest of the system doesn’t matter as much.
“Stop being plankton!” Best quote of the day! Great essay.