Tag Archives: irrational



The last conversation I had with James before he ended up in jail for carjacking and vehicular homicide was about a latin phrase I had created.  “Nihilo necesare sequitur.”  I had decided that the world is irrational.  I am not even sure that relationship is possible.  Ironic that shortly after that he made national news.

Think about it this way, there is no rational path to what you want anymore.  America is no longer a meritocracy and I don’t know that the world ever was.  It is so much harder to do good in the world and you can work hard, struggle, not make any mistakes and at the last second some idiotic douchebag for no reason whatsoever decides to slap the ice cream out of your mouth.  It is much easier to destroy than to build.

Shit stains and supernovas.  What do they have in common?  Nothing, but now they are in the same sentence and you read them.  The mind immediately starts looking for some relationship, some narrative.  We don’t remember things rationally, I know, I studied mnemonics.

We all make teleological judgements, we think that this or that should happen next. I do this, you do this, but it isn’t true.  I could give a bus driver a candy bar and at that moment he could decide that the universe is telling him that he needs to eradicate cockapoos from the planet.  Likewise sequences of events communicate experiential data to us.  In the book “click” it was demonstrated through a test that people feel more positively affectionate and sympathetic to a person based entirely on how frequently they interacted with one another.  Popularity on college campuses was based mainly on how close your room was to the center of campus.  Other tests confirmed this result.

As wise king Solomon said, “The fool gathers together but it is the wise man that enjoys.”  Remember this, you have to enjoy the path.  Treat the path as the destination and enjoy the journey, don’t worry about getting to the end.  Like Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita,  “you have the rights to your actions, not the fruits of your actions.”  And Aristotle said, “happiness is that which you do for no other reason.”  Take my advice, enjoy doing what you do and don’t look for any other reward.  Don’t pursue the byproduct, be absorbed in the quality execution of the action.