Yes, I’m saying “we” because I’m admitting that I have a problem. But I think I may also have recently stumbled upon an important part of the solution.

Two things that maintain chronicity in psychological or behavioral problems are a) lack of specificity and b) lack of taking responsibility or seeing what’s in your control. Self-deception has been found to require vague language, while an “external locus of control” frames the situation as something we can’t do anything about, therefore it’s not our fault and not our responsibility.

To begin to regain control, one can see past actions clearly using specific language, and then label them as choices. For instance a person could say to themselves, “I chose to browse Facebook for 3 hours this morning.” Simply by labeling an action as a choice to yourself, you can immediately regain an “internal locus of control.” (Note that this might not be a good idea to go around telling others about your choices, especially if they determine your employment status, but being honest with yourself is an important step in changing your behavior in a way they would approve of as well.)

You are always doing something.

Every moment of every day you are being productive, even if you take 20 minutes to just sit on the couch and do “nothing,” that is a something perhaps called “sitting on the couch letting my mind wander.” You are always producing some result. The question isn’t whether you are doing something or not doing something, but whether you are doing what you want that is serving your needs and moving you closer to your outcomes.

The thing is, we all have multiple wants and needs. Nobody only wants to work or to play, to focus or to wander. At some times we have lots of energy and at other times we are tired. This is normal.

We can imagine these conflicting wants and needs as a board room with multiple people around a big conference table, all trying to make a decision together. How is this group going to make decisions? One way is by consensus, where everybody goes around and says what they want and what they think is best to do, and all parties keep hashing it out until they can all agree on a single course of action. This kind of negotiation leads to group cohesion but can take a long time in some groups, especially if each member is worried that their department’s needs won’t be met. Other groups bring it to a vote. And still other groups make decisions by having a single appointed party be the decision maker who gets all the information they think they need from the various members and then makes the decision. Any of these decision making styles can work well depending on the group and the context.

What chronic procrastinators do though is more like a boss who fails to call the meeting, and therefore doesn’t even make clear decisions, thus dodging responsibility for making any bad decisions and blaming it on others lower down. “Hey, I’m not in control here–those guys screwed it all up. It’s not my fault!” The chronic procrastinator similarly blames lower drives, or even his or her brain for being the one in charge, thus framing the situation as being a victim to forces outside of my control. Even by saying “I procrastinated” instead of “I watched YouTube videos featuring incredibly cute puppies for 90 minutes” is a way of being vague to avoid accepting the consequences of one’s actions.

I decide what I do, even when I don’t.

The first step therefore is to get sufficient available information and take responsibility for decisions, even the decision to allow something or someone else to make the decisions.

You don’t have to be 100% in control of everything to do this (you won’t ever be anyway), you don’t have to have 100% of the information, and you don’t have to only make decisions that all parts of you like in the moment. You just recognize what information and control you actually do have, acknowledge it, and recognize that “if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.”

A chronic procrastinator can begin to transform into a decision-maker who is in control of their life by keeping an inventory of his or her time, saying, “I decided to do that. I fully accept the consequences of my decision.” Instead of saying, “I did nothing all day,” you might say, “I played video games for two and a half hours, then checked Facebook and Twitter for about 40 minutes, then read several blogs for 90 minutes. Then I did about 10 minutes of work on my report.”

Note this language is non-judgmental. Most procrastinators when they are specific about what they actually did are highly judgmental, saying things like “I wasted away 3 hours on Reddit like a freaking idiot. God, what’s wrong with me?!?” Keep your language objective and neutral, purely descriptive. You can also describe how you feel about your decisions. Again, keep it descriptive. For instance, “I decided to play Skyrim for 12 hours today. I feel physically exhausted, my eyes hurt, my body is stiff. I feel worried about my project that is due Monday, and notice that when I think about that, my heart rate becomes elevated.” This clear, specific, objective language provides you with the information to make more intelligent decisions. Thus talking to yourself in this way makes you smarter than someone who talks to themselves in vague language.

Other popular methods for tracking what you actually physically do are to keep a time log (write down what you did during each 15, 30, or 60 minute interval) or to use the pomodoro technique or other “time boxing” methods.

Seeing the consequences of your decisions

So once you get clear about what you actually are doing with your time and see your actions as decisions, what then? Most people when they consider doing something that bring short term gain for long term pain only think about the initial good feelings. They might say to themselves, “man, I’d so much rather be checking Facebook right now,” or just make a mental picture (often so fast they don’t even notice) of how good it would feel to do so.

What they almost never do is make a mental movie that starts with doing the thing that creates the good feelings and plays out all the way to the unpleasant consequences before deciding. Instead they just play a captivating movie inside that motivates them to do the thing that feels good in the moment. Then they might compare that movie to what they are doing right now and choose the action that feels better. That’s what we call a poor decision-making strategy!

Later they look back with feelings of guilt and regret. But then since the action happened in the past, there’s nothing they can do about it now, yet they feel terrible and want to feel better or avoid feeling bad, so they may indulge again in the thing that feels good now. This is what we call a feedback loop, or a downward spiral.

Hey, could you use this information to motivate yourself differently and make better decisions? You betcha. It could even reverse the loop, creating an upward spiral. While you can’t do anything about the past, you can learn to make better decisions by making mental movies that play out until the logical consequences, thus getting a more accurate feeling about how you’ll feel in the future. This solves the whole problem about hyperbolic discounting and present bias by making the future real now. It’s also what people who don’t procrastinate do automatically.

Here’s how you do it:

Think about a behavior that feels good in the moment but has long-term consequences that you don’t want. Close your eyes and make a mental movie starting with the choice to do the short-term behavior and play a movie that goes out long enough to link that choice up with the natural consequence—that is, until you feel the pain now of what would happen if you made that decision (instead of feeling pain in the form of guilt and regret later when it’s too late to do anything about it). Then think about an alternative behavior that has more desired long-term consequences and make a second mental movie. Again play the movie out all the way until the natural consequences so you can feel what that would feel like if you made that decision. Compare the movies side by side and choose which one you want. You can make as many such movies as you want given however many decisions you want to consider.

That’s it in a nutshell. If you think you’re terrible at visualizing, you’re probably not (everyone dreams vividly every night whether they remember it consciously or not), and in any case it doesn’t really matter because just pretending to visualize usually works just as effectively. So just try “acting as if” you can see it, or even write out the consequences in sensory specific detail as if writing a novel, then read over the stories and decide which one you want.

For best results, practice in advance, when it’s easy. Don’t wait for the moment of temptation when it’s hard. Practice again and again and again until you realize this new decision making strategy is better and you choose it every time.

This is but one strategy that is useful for overcoming chronic procrastination. Although can’t say I’m totally reformed yet, I’ve made huge strides myself in making better decisions (and I was the WORST!), so I believe that you can do it too. I also provide personal change consulting for those who want professional support in making such changes, so feel free to get in touch with me if you’re interested.

Many of these ideas were inspired by the work of Andrew T. Austin, especially his models of chronicity and his perspectives on anxiety and weight loss. I highly recommend you check out his work or attend one of his trainings.

Between 10% and 33% of people in the U.S. identify as “spiritual but not religious,” a curious phrase considering that historically the two terms were synonymous. For example what people now label “spiritual experiences” are extensively described in William James’ 1902 The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Before you read on, think about the connotations of “spiritual” versus “religious” that you have and that you hear in the culture. What’s the difference?

This video of a young man giving his testimony in Jesus Christ recently went viral, accumulating over 15 million views. The odd thing is that his very specifically Christian beliefs that he expresses here also includes numerous attacks on “religion.” His testimony (but not his politics) would fit right in at any evangelical church in the United States, yet he says, “I hate religion.” What the heck is going on here?

The video is entitled “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” and begins with the phrase “Jesus > Religion” (Jesus is greater than religion) displayed prominently. Whatever does this young man mean by “religion” if not a belief system, set of practices, holy text, and community—which in fact is the Christian religion? How could someone “love Jesus” without thinking that the Bible is a sacred text in some fashion, having a very specific belief system about the salvation that comes from faith in Jesus, etc.?

Here’s another example, in this case of a man who writes an article about how he’s not a Buddhist. Blogger Nella Lou (I almost wrote “Buddhist blogger,” but Nella Lou recently gave up the “buddhist” part of her blogging, but I think still identifies as a Buddhist when she’s not blogging) points out how odd it is that this article is published in BuddhaDharma magazine:

Here’s a thing I don’t get. Guy doesn’t want to be a Buddhist. No problem, don’t be. You tried it, didn’t suit you, fine. Why make the big hoopla over it? Same with Sam what’s his name, the atheist guy…oh yeah Sam Harris who’s had more than a few pages in Buddhist publications.

And why do Buddhist magazines publish this? It’s really odd.

I decide not to be a Muslim, Christian, Jew or Wiccan, do I expect their publications to put my articles there? Would they? Not too likely. Seems like a lot of these guys are hating on Buddhism but still trying to get some attention or make a buck off of it by scraping a few things off and repackaging it. Are the magazines that desperate for content?

The author’s article Stephen Schettini uses phrases and ideas from Buddhism and talks about attending a conference for Buddhist teachers, but is adamant that when he talks about Buddhist ideas, “I stick to plain language, but this isn’t stealth dharma; I talk openly of the Buddha and my past without calling myself a Buddhist.” Referencing the Kalama Sutta, that oft quoted Buddhist holy text which warns against believing without evidence but also calls for dedication to the teachings if one sees them as valuable, he says he is one of the “disillusioned, the irreligious, and the skeptical.” But he also adds “I draw a line between the Buddha, a man with something to say, and Buddhism, an institution with an agenda.” Sounds oddly like our not-Christian friend above.

Both this video and this article went viral, being spread around the internet. In the video, the non-Christian Jesus loving man says, “let me clarify: I love the church, I love the bible, and yes I believe in sin / but if Jesus came to your church, would they actually let him in.” The non-Buddhist author says “In that moment I recalled my students. With no need to belong to or believe in anything, they sought nothing but peace of mind.” It seems clear to me that both of these men are not anti-religious at all, despite their words saying such. I think it is simpler to describe the first man as a Christian and the second as a Buddhist, and to say that both are interested in the heart of their religion’s teachings and arguing against some aspect of the belief system or community they think is corrupt or somehow missing the most important elements of the religion.

The poetic young man says, “Jesus hated religion” but a case could easily be made for the opposite—Jesus loved religion so much that he dedicated his life, and indeed died for the cause of religious reform. The second commenter on the not-Buddhist writer’s article says “I call myself a non-religious Buddhist” but one could also say that he is interested in getting to the heart of the Buddhists’ teachings and practicing Buddhist religious practices with an authentic devotion instead of blind faith and mindless mantra repetition.

Of course these people would probably disagree with these categorizations, and in fact very strongly. The most offensive thing a person can say to an atheist is that they have an almost religious fervor in their quest to destroy false idols (which is what Jesus did), or that their “metaphorical” conception of God as a grand mystery that science cannot yet or possibly ever explain is nearly identical to how most Protestant theologians conceive of God (which usually it is). Yet looking more objectively on the situation, I’m not sure how else to make sense of the bizarre claims from what appear to me to be deeply faithful individuals seeking answers to the ultimate questions of life and death. Ultimately nobody hates religion exactly—what we hate is dogma, corruption, and inauthentic or mindless religious belief and practice…and that orientation is shared by a great many people of all religious orientations, whether they call themselves religious or not.

Update: I found this interesting opinion piece about the viral video on the Wall Street Journal.

Update #2: A nice piece by Roger Wolsey on Elephant Magazine about the video of the Christian poet.

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Most people live in boxes. It is easy to measure lumber and sheet rock and metal and wood for flooring, etc. in height, length, and width. This makes boxy houses easier to construct than rounded, wavy, or triangular domiciles.

Buckminster Fuller was an outside-the-box thinker. He invented many things including the geodesic dome, a kind of archetypal anti-box. Many people thought that in the future we’d all live in dome-shaped houses, but alas domes aren’t all that nice to live in. They frequently leak. Sounds easily travel from one side to the other of a dome, making for little privacy. And domes are difficult to furnish in a box-shaped world—nothing quite seems to fit. Indeed, few of Fuller’s inventions fit our boxy world either. Nobody drives a Dymaxion car.

Boxes can be limiting however. What we can easily measure, predict, and control can also control the possibilities we conceive of. You can’t describe the movement of planets with just height, length, and width, even if you add in time. The cosmos is curvy. So boxy thinking never quite describes reality accurately.

Some boxes are very spacious, complex, and beautiful—so much so that we don’t recognize their sharp angles and boxy nature at first. To think outside of a box we have to open at least one side to let fresh air in. This makes things more wide open, unbounded, yet conditional, context-sensitive.

It’s not necessarily always better to be unboxed and uncontained, but life in a box lacks the freshness of a summer’s breeze.

Recommended Reading
The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer
The Ecological Thought by Timothy Morton

I found this to be a nice application of extending what Steve Andreas calls “scope in time” (from his Six Blind Elephants, vol 1) to get a larger perspective. One of the ways we create meaning from an event that then generates an emotional response is how we represent the experience in terms of time.

I just tried out this exercise from Mike in the video above and added another piece that worked well for me that I wanted to share. I visualized my timeline out in front of me, seeing it out there and seeing that past Duff in a movie frame having an unpleasant emotional experience over there. I made sure to zoom out far enough so that I could see the times with corresponding movies before and after when he was experiencing a more neutral or pleasant experience.

After just two examples from the past I could already get the sense of this new learning beginning to generalize. Try it out for yourself, see how it helps you get a larger perspective, and add your thoughts in the comments below (a free Intense Debate or WordPress.com account is required to post due to large volume of comment spam).

While I think it is a valuable thing to root out corruption and critique shallow ideology, it has never been my intention to be the self-help police, nor is that the focus of this group blog project. (Other people do it better anyway.) As a philosophically minded person, I am more interested in general principles, in seeing the pattern.

In particular, I see several problems with focusing too much on a critique of individuals:

1. Unethical behavior is often fueled by systemic or structural forces. If we self-help critics succeed in deposing one guru from their throne, a thousand others will scramble to take his place. If we focus too much on specific individuals, we could miss this larger systemic pattern and thus “hack at the leaves” instead of digging up the roots of the problem.

2. All people are a mix of good and evil. If we demonize others as being the bad guys and gals, this might imply we are all good. Demonizing others also is a less-than-compassionate response to another human being. At first this is a very understandable response, and as we learn and grow we can even better than that. We can protect ourselves and others from harm without causing additional harm.

3. A focus on corruption can solidify cynicism. While a sober assessment of humanity can be useful at times, a rigid focus on what’s wrong with people—if calcified into one’s only perspective—can distort one’s view. I think it’s important to be able to sincerely advocate for something too, and see people’s humanity.

The key here is having a flexibility of mind where you can think critically, observe unhelpful or unethical behaviors in yourself and others clearly, but also think optimistically about future potentials and see positive intention behind harmful behavior.

My hope for this blog project was that it would free up many others to openly discuss ideas and behaviors in the personal development community using critical thinking. That has happened in a very small way, but not as widely as I would have liked. Some personal development folks are still doing very harmful things, while some academics are so cynical about the possibilities for human change they censor opposing ideas. I suppose I was a bit naive about the possibilities for changing the world through blogging.

What has happened in the past two years of blogging is that I’ve been able to clarify and refine my values and ideas about personal development and change. Despite being much more aware of human evil, I’m even more optimistic about the possibilities for people to make positive, deep, and significant personal change. Every time I’d write about something I felt angry about, or someone would comment or disagree with my opinions and I’d feel hurt, I’d do Core Transformation or some other process to integrate my feelings and gain a more resourceful response. I also encountered my own evil within and made positive changes with those parts of me. We can use critique and discussion to fuel our personal development, but only if we have effective methods of doing so, and we use them.

Now I can clearly see corruption in action. I’m not as reactive and instead feel more compassionate and resourceful when I hear about abuses of power in self-help or elsewhere. I also feel like the most important thing I can do now is to teach people practical change methods so they can make positive changes too. As I’ve changed, I expected people would change with me—but most have not. I’m optimistic that if people knew how to change in a way that respected all parts of themselves, was non-manipulative, and was clearly explained and taught, they would embrace it and go for it.

I hope that some Beyond Growth readers will join me in my new focus. Together we can grow and change and discover better ways of doing so.

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I’m looking to work with 5 people who were in New York on 9/11/2011 and experience traumatic flashbacks related to the events on or after that day.

Each person will be given one free (normally $100) video Skype or phone coaching session. During your session, I will guide you through a technique that has been effective in resolving Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) flashbacks for many people. Sessions will be up to 75 minutes long, but may end early if we’re done earlier.

Sessions will be recorded, and some or all recordings will be posted online along with a description of the technique and the steps as an educational resource. Participants will not need to mention the content of their past experiences as this is a process-based intervention.

The technique is called the Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation Protocol and has been effective in the resolution of phobias and traumatic flashbacks for many individuals, including in New York City immediately after 9/11 and for war veterans.

I have facilitated this technique (and many others) successfully many times with clients and have received training through NLP Comprehensive and Andreas NLP Trainings, probably the best sources for learning these techniques.

While the risks involved are low as this is a very gentle process, there are no guarantees and this does not replace other psychological or medical treatment. Please consult with your existing therapist or doctor before taking part in this to make sure it is compatible with any other things you have been doing. Available only until 9/30/2011 for the first 5 people.

Click here to schedule your
free 75-minute coaching session!

Or you can email or call me to schedule:

Duff McDuffee
andrewmcduffee [at] gmail [dot] com
303-800-4385 (note: I don’t receive text messages)
Skype: duffmcduffee

Please share this post with anyone whom you think might benefit. Thanks!

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Kids’ board games often emphasize the enjoyment found in other people’s misery. Take the game Sorry! in which one pretends to be sorry when landing on an opponent’s piece, thus sending it back to the start and gaining a competitive advantage. Sorry! encapsulates a universal human experience—delight in causing another misery coupled with pretending to not feel such delight. This experience is so common that the apology in the game of Sorry! is obvious in its insincerity to the point of sarcasm. It’s a “sorry! (ha ha)” that recognizes one’s gain at another’s loss.

Another common human experience is to delight in causing others misery and then feeling guilt in response to one’s delight. Some sensitive modern kids feel bad when playing Sorry! with their parents or friends. They will first say “sorry” in the sarcastic way, but then quickly switch to a more sincere-sounding “sorry” and an explanation of how it is “only a game” or “you’ll probably win next time,” thus all players will eventually get to feel the pleasure of causing others’ pain!

Some parents and teachers also attempt to move away from such competitive zero-sum games that emphasize joy in winning at the expense of another’s agony of defeat. One commonly criticized way of doing so is to keep the rules of game the same, say softball, but to reward all participants for something. For instance a poorly behaved player with low skills may receive an award for “most improved.” As a middle-schooler I was an uncoordinated softball player and distinctly remember winning an award at the end of the season for “most bubble gum chewed.” I’m not sure which is worse—simply being an uncoordinated loser, or being singled out from all players on the team for one’s quantity of gum-chewing…even more so because my friend won the award for “best bubble blower”—I wasn’t even good enough at blowing bubbles with my gum, something that we frequently competed over.

No doubt the adult coaches found themselves in a similar dilemma as the sensitive child playing Sorry! with their parents. On the one hand I was a terrible player (in part due to a rapid growth spurt), was mostly made fun of and bullied by the other kids, and had major authority issues to boot, so I spent most of my time chewing the gum that was always available when we played. But on the other hand I was a likeable enough kid and the adults wanted to be nice and supportive so that all the kids would thrive. The attempt to be nice and focus on something positive in each player was in conflict with the irritation the adults no doubt felt with me and the fact that I was by far the worst player on the team. I can imagine that they took pleasure in presenting me with their facetious award for “most bubble gum chewed” in a similar way that someone feels pleasure when saying “sorry” in the board game of the same name. But since it was technically an “award,” they could assuage their guilt in the pleasure they took in giving me the insulting award.

Rewarding all kids for participating and saying things like “everyone’s a winner” is frequently cited as causing narcissism and inflated self-concept in children. I certainly was not fooled into thinking I was a great softball player or a valuable member of the team upon receiving my award for gum consumption. However, I do remember feeling surprised by receiving something, some acknowledgement of my existence from adults, even if it was a joke at my expense. While I sucked at sports and social interaction, at least I was good at gum chewing! At the time it was difficult for me to see anything positive about myself at all besides a talent in math, which mostly got me made fun of and beat up. The fact that some adults were willing to see something positive about me—even if faked—was genuinely helpful.

On the one hand, competitive zero-sum games like Sorry! or even softball encourage taking delight in causing misery, but on the other hand they allow this universal human experience a safe and relatively harmless outlet. Delight in causing harm to others is the basis for what makes someone a psychopath, but it’s a matter of “to what extent.” If you’ve read Beyond Growth in the past, for many months I was negatively fascinated (i.e. disgusted and compelled) with psychopaths and narcissists and wrote numerous articles about this topic. It is obvious in hindsight that this repetition compulsion was due to having internalized abuse from some young psychopaths/narcissists in my own past combined with not dealing with my own psychopath or narcissist within.

Core Transformation has been the most helpful technique I’ve encountered in not only getting to know such inner parts of my experience, but also actually transforming them. It’s not good enough in my opinion to simply get to know parts of me that delight in causing harm, for I absolutely do not want to abuse others in the way I was abused. But it is also not enough to simply call others psychopaths and narcissists and not recognize the pleasure I experience in having power over or harming others. Just as saying “I’m not a racist but…” is nearly always a lie, so in the same way is saying “so-and-so is a psychopath” and not acknowledging one’s own pleasure in another’s pain. For example, I and many others have taken pleasure in seeing James Arthur Ray convicted of homicide. Some have gone further and and secretly (or not so secretly) taken pleasure in imagining him to be subject to the abuse of prison rape (as many comments online have joked about). We should be careful not to confuse justice with vengeance.

Recently I’ve begun exploring more parts of myself with Core Transformation that delight in the misery of others. It’s a dark and disturbing thing to look at, very difficult to face within myself as I’ve always had an identity of being a “good person.” One part of me had something like the following desires (each one more important than the previous):

• to control others
• to make or force people to do what I want
• to have all my desires fulfilled
• Peace

Obviously going about it in this order is a problem for multiple reasons. One is the harm involved in controlling and forcing others to do what I want, which even if that worked wouldn’t necessarily fulfill all my desires, and desires are endless thus fulfilling them isn’t such a good strategy for reaching peace. Much better is to just live from a state of being of Peace, and by doing so I don’t have to fulfill all my desires, controlling others doesn’t make sense and in fact compassion for others spontaneously arises (and sadness that I desired to control others).

Granted, I didn’t live out this part of me in a gross and harmful fashion like James Arthur Ray at his deadly sweat lodge. But even so, these dark desires are part of our human experience too—they do not only belong to those “other” people who are psychopaths and narcissists, racists and bigots. We are all these things to some extent (and yes, extent matters), so we can all do better by really diving deep into understanding the root causes of these experiences and desires, thus transforming the psychopath and narcissist within. Note too that the outcome “to have all my desires fulfilled” is a common theme both in personal development marketing and amongst narcissists!

So should we stop playing zero-sum games like Sorry! and softball? I don’t think so. Competitive games bring out what’s already there, the psychopathic anti-social aspects of ourselves. But it’s also true that competitive games have cooperative aspects, both within a team and even between opponents, bringing out the best of each player. It doesn’t hurt to also play some cooperative, non-zero-sum games too like painting, building something together, playing music, discussing literature or movies, etc. But these cooperative games can become competitive at times too as in music auditions. Ultimately if we are to be whole human beings, we must embrace all the aspects of ourselves and our shared humanity.

This anger isn’t restricted to liberal college students who read half of a blood stained Marx essay, it can be seen all over the United States since the so-called ‘economic collapse’ of 2008.  The quarter life crisis has become the norm, and millions of college students graduate every year to dead-end jobs and little hope of long term success.  This has sparked nihilistic twenty-something cultures of coffee fueled inquiries into novelty and an embodied sense of postmodern murkiness.  Digital hipsterati have proclaimed themselves liberated of the status quo and free to pen the neo-manifesto’s of the cybernetic age without concern for whose work they bastardizing or the rhetorical traps in which they are ensnared.  I will term these self aggrandizing rebranded self-help digital hipsters ‘dipsters’ throughout this essay.

Misunderstanding paradigms and texts are the norm, as dipsters are not concerned with understanding the texts they are building on, or citing them. Dipsters are only interested in creating writing that merely has the appearance of intelligence and depth.  Dipsters are often found constantly masturbating to inspirational TED Talks, content to be inspired by the future but not actively involved in its creation.  Dipsters are potent generalists, often directing this energy at the creation of short flamboyant PDF documents they call “ebooks.”  The intellectual task of reviewing literature, understanding the texts, and then synthesizing them into new ideas is lost on them, the only task that matters is putting their own unique paradigm out there for other dipsters to read in implied great acclaim.  Digital hipsterism is purely anti-intellectual. Depth of research and well reasoned arguments are not valued, but merely the appearance of depth is regarded as the ideal.  Criticism is dismissed by way of suggesting that the criticizer is ‘just being negative,’ that they should go and do something else ‘useful’ by creating a movement of their own, or that they simply aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the new paradigm being created.

A perfect example of a digital hipsterati manifesto is “How To Be ExPoMod” by Drew Jacob.  Jacob argues that there have been “changes in technology, art, the economy, and what people want in life” that are enough to “establish a new zeitgiest” and “a new paradigm.”  In order to rhetorically establish this new paradigm, Jacob has taken it upon himself to single handedly declare postmodernism dead.  In a completely fallacious appeal to popularity Jacob begins his post: “It’s an open secret that postmodernism is dead. Most people say “dying,” out of respect for the old king. But the position is vacant.”  Funny, nobody informed the critical theorists of this so called “open secret.”

Jacob calls his new paradigm “expostmodernism”, and suggests that it is descendant from the enlightenment, modernism, and finally postmodernism.  Like many freshman English and Philosophy students, Jacob has taken it upon himself to once and for all create a response to the postmodern problem without reading nearly enough of the bounty of available literature.  I must admit, I myself have skated across this cliche in my early studies of rhetoric and poststructural theory, but I was fortunate to be steered by a wise advisor to foundational poststructural texts from minds such as Lyotard, Baudrillard, Foucault, and Derrida, and I had the foresight to settle down my academic horses realizing that I was being fucking stupid.

Jacob describes postmodernism as set a attitudes: relativism, cynicism, and alienation.    Missing the massive elephant in the room, he passes over the vast philosophical insights of poststructuralism, and blindly assumes that postmoderinity’s reign is dictated by it’s influence on the attitudes feelings of the people at large.  The fact that he believes that the validity of postmodernism pivots around the attitudes of the people is the primary problems of his analysis.  He argues that the main shift centers around what youth chose to do: “In popular narrative this led to an iconic lifestyle arc: the youth who is rebellious and individualistic, but eventually settles down, gets a job, and does what society expects.

“The new narrative is a radically different arc: the individual who was settled, had a job, and realizes they can leave it behind to follow their passion—successfully.”  In most pathetic form, Jacob presents the successor to postmodernism as lifestyle design.  He supports this by suggesting that people are now able to receive “satisfaction” in more ways than ever because of increased availability of choices and that this increased “satisfaction” is the replacement for postmodern alienation.

Laypeople mistakenly think that postmodernism requires an additional post at it’s bow because of their fundamental misunderstanding of what poststructuralism is, and how subjectivity functions.  Poststructuralism suggests that is there is no Truth with a capital T, in the sense that there is no way to accurately ascertain what it is, and even which it is.  Foucault often wrote about access to truth as if it were layers of an infinite onion.  The sophomoric mistake is to take subjective truth as a detriment, as alienation, or a problem.  Jacob has done exactly this.

The deliciously ironic twist in Jabob’s essay is that without realizing it, he has written a postmodern critique of modernism.  His “proof” for “expostmodernism” all center around decentralized power, the ability of the individual to choose what’s best for them, and the notion that the artist is the true “cutting edge” of society.  These themes are decidedly postmodern, and in the end his “expostmodernism” means exactly nothing. Furthermore, Jacob’s underlying thesis is that lifestyle design is the way of the future, however lifestyle design itself is the same old capitalistic story of an individual picking themselves up by their boostraps and living their way in the world, and shaping it in their own image.  Thus Jacob’s essay awkwardly walks the divide between the subjectivity of postmodernity and the patriarchal individualism of modernity under the guise of being new and progressive.  Ultimately suggesting that lifestyle design is the response to postmodernism is a pathetically uninformed thesis that even a freshman English student should be embarrassed of.

Jacob’s essay fits very neatly in to the dipster ethos by presenting a seemingly inspired piece that in fact has no depth or inertia whatsoever.  The dipster anti-intellectual elite is a growing cancerous mass in the online sphere.  They call themselves lifestyle designers,  revolutionaries, non-conformists, unconventionals, connectors, and world dominators.  Their obsessive writings about pointless self-help drivel and pick yourself by your bootstraps capitalism claims to be a new digital revolution of freedom for the world’s working class, but the reality is they are only supporting and strengthening the capitalistic and social status quo by means of very public masturbation.

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Conscientiousness is single biggest factor promoting longevity according to the Longevity Project. This is probably because conscientious people are more likely to follow certain rules like “don’t smoke cigarettes,” “exercise for 30 minutes 3-5 times a week,” and “eat your vegetables.” These rules are simple, easy to remember, and don’t conflict with each other. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but lately in just about every field imaginable, there is so much information available that it is difficult to keep up with all the rules, let alone sort out the numerous conflicts!

Take nutrition. It used to be simple: drink your 8 glasses of water a day, eat your veggies, don’t smoke cigarettes, moderate or abstain from alcohol, exercise a little every day (pushups, pullups, situps) and walk or play sports, etc. Nowadays we’ve got raw vegans vs. paleo diets, gluten free vs. whole grains, diets based around cultured vegetables and kefirs and other “probiotics,” alkaline diets, low carb protein power diets, studies showing alcohol is good for you, studies showing sugar causes obesity not fat which was previously thought, studies proving eggs were bad but now good again unless you have certain pre-existing conditions in which…and that’s just nutrition!

As we get more and more information about how things really work, we get more and more complex rule sets emerging. Many of us don’t want to do the same exercise as people did 100 years ago, we want the latest and greatest, personalized to our bodies, our goals, our sport-specific requirements, and our pre-existing injuries. Either that or we skip exercise altogether because it appears to be so incredibly complex, or we have recurring injuries that exercise seems to make worse.

For most people it is difficult enough to follow a simple program like “do 3 sets of pushups, pullups, situps, and squats each morning.” But what if I can’t do pullups because I’m too heavy for my strength? What if pushups aggravate a shoulder injury? What if squats hurt my knees? What if situps hurt my neck? Should I really exercise the same muscles every day? And aren’t these movements all very linear? What about twisting movements and balance exercises and cardio and my tight hamstrings and…. What then?

Then we must add additional rules—rehab programs, specific adaptations, additional exercises, more complex movements, stretching, foam rolling and trigger point massage—all of which either must be outsourced to a professional (a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a massage therapist, etc.) or the individual must not only learn these multiple modalities and their rules, but also create or follow an additional program with additional variables if they wish to answer these additional questions.

Once upon a time, we didn’t have all these options. We didn’t know what we were missing. We didn’t know we could live without a high-density black foam roller and a pair of toe shoes and ignorantly (but not blissfully) engaged in static stretching before going out for a run in a pair of New Balances (and no GPS connected iPhone mapping our progress either!). Once upon a time we ate eggs and bacon and oatmeal for breakfast with black coffee and then we discovered eggs are high in cholesterol and bacon will give you a heart attack and oatmeal is full of gluten so we switched to Cheerios which then we discovered are devoid of nutrition so we had green smoothies with soymilk and agave nectar but 5 years later discovered we were allergic to soy which was once considered a superfood and agave is high in fructose which is apparently toxic and the real cause of the obesity epidemic so now eat amaranth and chia seeds with stevia powder but are afraid we are eating too much of the same thing and killing the enzymes by cooking it and chia seeds are just so hard to find organic that we’re thinking of switching to organic quinoa flakes and flax meal. We still haven’t figured out lunch. And we’re still drinking the coffee, but now it has antioxidants apparently. Maybe we’ll just skip lunch, do some intermittent fasting (for economic justice?).

The world has become very complex (or was it always that way), and thus conscientiousness has also become more complex. In order to keep up with all the rules for self-development, for health and for getting ahead in an ever more complex world, we learn to follow ever more complex rule sets. Those that succeed appear like capitalist supermen (and women)—able to cope with the bewildering madness of modern global society, and enthusiastic that you can too. When we encounter these übermench we doubt not only our own ability but our own sanity. Perhaps the world isn’t insane, perhaps we are for not taking advantage of all these shiny new opportunities. Should we attempt to master the ever more complex rules? Do we have a choice? Yes, we shall give it one more try, starting tomorrow. But if it doesn’t work this time, let’s buy an RV and drive up into the mountains someplace where cell phones and wifi don’t reach, where we can be simple again, simple and free. But no such place exists anymore, does it?

Frugalism on the other hand is about getting more out of life by maximizing value for one’s dollars over time, since life is time and time is money. A frugalist may or may not like Macs and iPhones, depending on whether they are worth the cash, can get them for free or cheap, can fix them easily themselves (thus saving on repairs), how long they last, whether they could do without a phone or computer altogether, etc. Frugalists frequent yard sales, fix up things they get for free, and always think “does this save me money in the long term based on saving and investing?” and “does this allow me to spend my time doing what I want to do with my life?” Frugalists may or may not have aesthetic concerns, and often have an aesthetic based on the deal they received or the rarity of the item they acquired. A frugalist’s home may be full of knick-nacks or sparse, may be clean or dirty but is much more likely to contain reclaimed materials with many imperfections than a minimalist’s. Rarely will a frugalist purchase anything new unless it was 80% or more off the retail price, or else the frugalist will consider this purchase a rare indulgence, whereas for a minimalist newer often has a simpler aesthetic and matches with other things already purchased.

Where a minimalist might carry a $12 Moleskine journal, a frugalist would be much more likely seen carrying scraps of paper already printed on one side, cut and stapled together into a makeshift pad. A minimalist might be seen wearing all black or single color clothes which are brand new and have some unusual cut, whereas a frugalist is more likely to be wearing something comfortable purchased at the Goodwill or a yard sale that is slightly out of style, perhaps with some holes patched up by hand. A minimalist might wear Vibrams 5-finger shoes to get back to nature and do “barefoot” running, whereas a frugalist would simply go barefoot, or wear an old pair of leather sandals which have been resoled several times. A budding minimalist may aspire to one day own a Prius and live in a large eco-home in the woods overlooking a stream or else travel the world with a Macbook Pro and an REI backpack, whereas a budding frugalist will instead aspire to downsize — perhaps living in an RV, a log cabin she builds herself, or a small sailboat — where the cost of living approaches zero, thus freeing one to work for money or not.

The minimalist is always concerned whether adding something new will destroy the aesthetic they are creating, whereas the frugalist is always concerned whether adding something new will burden them with financial obligations or be a bad use of one’s life energy in the long run. Thus a minimalist will acquire digital things in lieu of physical ones unless they are beautiful, whereas a frugalist will often accept many physical or digital things as long as they are cheap or free or otherwise a good investment, can stash them somewhere, and are in good working order (or at least potentially fixable). A frugalist will often collect ugly things that still work fine — like a beat up old truck, or an old iPhone 3 which can be used with Skype over wi-fi — even if they don’t need them right now if they think they can use the items (or parts of them) at some later date. A minimalist would consider this “junk.”

Most people are not philosophically consistent however, so we will at times make choices based on either a minimalist aesthetic or a frugalist ethic or some other perspective altogether. In addition, the above was somewhat of a simplification and there are other concerns at play here, like the frugalist aesthetic of preferring to do things with one’s hands, or the minimalist’s ethic of focusing on what is most important. There are also overlaps, for instance this blog has a minimalist aesthetic and here I have several articles criticizing minimalism! But it can be helpful to sort these things out to make sense of what is going on when people talk about “minimalism” within the personal development world, and why primarily minimalism as expounded by the A-list bloggers is about the simple aesthetic, not the frugal ethic.