If you ask me, everything is pretty frickin' great these days. Your life and my life are both going to continue to increase in awesomeness over time.
We are likely to have exceptional fortune and health throughout our days, we'll help to change some lives for the better, our kids are going to turn out loving and great, and we will die with a broad smile across our rugged and weather-worn faces somewhere around the age of a hundred and twenty two.
Oh sure, there will be the odd problem and catastrophe along the way, but they will just serve as recharging jolts to keep us from getting complacent. More problems to solve, more learning to do, and deeper happiness to attain.
On top of that, the human race is bound for an ever-better fate, ironing out most of its current problems and most of the problems that follow in the future, ending up at a tantalizing Star Trek Utopia.
Those are pretty controversial statements to make these days, yet strangely enough the general theme tends to become true, for the few people who are crazy enough to believe it.
And most of us don't believe it. In fact, many of us end up going completely the opposite way. One of the problems with being a clever and analytical person like yourself, is that you've become very good at seeing what might go wrong. You can see the risks inherent in any enterprise, and if you've got enough Cliff Claven in you, you might even be fond of expounding about those risks to anyone around who will listen.
There are even people make whole careers of this. Fear-mongering in general tends to make you sound smart, and fearful people get a quirky sort of reassurance by snuggling up to a fearful leader, and confidently predicting the worst possible outcome. Dmitri Orlov gets lots of attention by continuously foretelling the complete collapse of the United States. A favorite technique of Collapse theorists is to sit at the news screen, interpreting each development of still further evidence of their theory. "Oh.. now the politicians are arguing. Sure sign of collapse. National debt is growing.. collapse. Oil consumption rising faster than supply.. just as I predicted, 'twas foretold, 'twas foretold.
Are You a Personal Collapse Theorist?
The same methods can be applied by a Personal Collapse Theorist. "Oh man, this job is stressing me out. My department is going down the shitter, and we'll be the first ones on the chopping block when the next round of layoffs comes. And it will be coming SOON! … And the thing is, in THIS ECONOMY, I need to hold onto my job because there are no other ones out there. Not in my field, anyway. All this is really taking a toll on my health. I've got bad knees and back, and they really flare up when I am stressed. So they are getting worse every day, which makes me even more stressed, which makes me even worse at my job, which makes me even more likely to get laid off, which..."
Whew, it hurt my fingers even to type that paragraph above, even though it was all completely made up. But it hurts because it's true – some people actually say things like that on a regular basis. And every time I hear it, I feel like grasping the person's head between my hands and shaking it while I say, "Wake up, Dude! You're doing more than just discussing your situation right now.. You're creating your own reality!"
Let's contrast the life of the Personal Collapse person to the fate of a really lucky person. You probably know at least one person that is just so lucky that they annoy you. The person has a better job than you, always seems to get promotions, has cooler friends, and maybe even a more attractive spouse and a greener lawn. Some even accuse plain old Mr. Money Mustache of being annoying for the same reason, "Oh, enough from you Mustache. You retired early and then things seem to keep going well for you. You're making it all up, or if you're not, it's just luck and it can't be applied to me".
Fair enough. Let's stop the fakeypants Fresh-From-the-Tanning-Salon-Self-Help-Guru spiel right now. We're all scientists here, so we can acknowledge that luck, or the partially random distribution of life situations, does indeed play a part in how a person's life turns out. There's the genetic lottery, where each person gets different abilities directly from their parents, then there is upbringing, family, location, and pure random events supplied by the outside world. It's bound to create a very diverse set of results, right?
But if you've ever been to a bar and watched a less-attractive friend have far greater success in attracting mates, or worked in an office where you notice that many of the people in highly paid senior positions are less competent and intelligent than yourself, you know there is something fishy about the theory that luck and birthright alone deliver our fate.
By Mr. Money Moustache
Source: MindTrip Magazine
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