 Without saying that I've been feeling highly vindicated ever since all this corona stuff not just because the world is ending or whatever But some decisions that I've made in my life that some of you may be aware of I have now become Extremely happy with I made a bunch of very Radical choices. Maybe that's a weird. Maybe that's a a little bit too masturbatory to say but a lot of choices that made big differences and I'm glad that they have paid off now and I mean, it's not just it's not just about corona virus or something like that But let me explain now first off I'll go ahead and tell you the punchline up front because you know I know most in YouTube videos You're supposed to have people watching for the longest time But I'll just go ahead and tell you what I'm gonna tell you and that is a couple years ago. I Decided to live by a heuristic a rule of thumb and that is whenever I have any kind of life decision or I mean it could be a minor thing like on my channel You know use it picking what software to use or something like that or it could be a major thing about, you know Where I'm gonna live You know who I'm gonna date how I'm going to you know Comport myself in general and the heuristic that I I guess the rule of thumb that I now live by is that if Something if I have a decision and one of the choices will make me more Independent and the other will make me more dependent. I will always choose the one that makes me more independent Okay, now a couple years ago when I had the when this sort of came to my head Maybe it was inspiration or something like that or maybe I just read it somewhere and you know don't remember why I read it But when I started practicing this I was in a much different place I wasn't out here and I'm glad you know I couldn't just go over here and get a bunch of low quads for my low-quad tree or something like that I was in my PhD program a bunch of bad terrible things are happening. That was a terrible place in Arizona and You know just I realized that despite the fact that I was in some sense achieving in the worldly sense You know, I was getting this advanced degree I was hobnobbing with a bunch of people who are you know famous enough to have Wikipedia pages and stuff like that and You know, you feel like you're in a big place around people who actually matter The fact of the matter is I felt every month You know every passing moment. I was less free in what I could do That wasn't just in terms of I have to live in this particular place Like in this city. I don't really have control over You know where I get my food and I'm always rushed for time and stuff like like that But it's also, you know, especially nowadays in universities The environment I guess the most charitable way you could describe it is highly stifling Okay, you just don't want to be around there like it's just not a good place and you know I could definitely feel that increasing. I mean, this was especially the case when I started my PhD program I guess that was when you know, the 2016 election was you know about that period So, you know people in universities were always witch-hunting, you know what I mean So that was a really miserable environment to be in no matter what I mean, even if you're sort of one of them you know what I mean even those people had a miserable time and You know, you just realize how little like how arbitrary the things in your life can catch up with you And so I had this decision You know, basically do I want to continue in this way of living or do I want to abandon it and of course abandoning it comes with a bunch of Bunch of negative things, you know, you you lose what you've been working for You lose what you've been told that is you know always the goal Oh, yeah, you want to get educated get a wage-cucked job or you know, some kind of you know High-end job something like that. You got to make six figures out right off the bat and stuff like this And we're on the other hand my other choices were basically I'll just go into the woods or something like that But I will tell you that was definitely the best decision I've ever made It wasn't a decision that happened immediately But when I had that opportunity when I adopted that heuristic that rule of thumb You know, if I had a decision do I want to stay around here for another year or do I want to move? Well, okay, I'm gonna move I'm gonna be where I want even if that means me less good me being less connected with my department or whatever Or you know, you know, what kind of things am I gonna study? What am I gonna do? I basically just made the decision Okay, I'm just gonna do whatever makes me more independent And you know, one of the things we talked about on this channel is, you know, how technology, you know how people become Extremely reliant on the technology they use and that's why you know The best technology to use is always just no technology, right for most of the things I was actually gonna do a video on that but you know, so Every decision I started making when the within the course of the year Put me further and like made me more and more free now. It came at a cost Let's just say that, you know, I'd be making more money if I were somewhere else Maybe I would have gotten a big job. Maybe I would have finished my PhD already a bunch of different maybes But I'd be in a much less free place Like I wouldn't nearly certainly wouldn't have my own place to live or my own house I'd probably be why I'd probably actually be paying way more to live in some stupid apartment You know around people who are again just stifling and stuff like that So I definitely don't regret moving out here at all. I mean it again It's like the best decision of my life and the reality is especially nowadays with the internet and stuff like that You're really not less connected from people and that could be a good thing or a bad thing Sometimes it's nice to be the less connected to people But you know, so anyway, that's the heuristic I made and the fact of the matter is it's always gonna be good in the long term I'm not saying that you should always be like, oh, I'm not gonna take a job because it's gonna make me less free Because there is a sense in which the money you might get that might make you more free, right? But I think the boomer generation definitely lived by this mindset of they're just always gonna be company men You know, they're always gonna Get more and more money and then they'll just rely You know, they'll just hope that they don't lose their freedom in the meantime, which you know And they just took it to such an extent that I mean they lost basically everything They're the most mentally domesticated people in the whole world You know nowadays you still have people like you know You have redditors who are upcoming based and basically make their decisions and constantly worry about what other people think But for everyone else for all the rest of us, right? You know and we have a lot of choices about what makes us free or what makes us less free And the reality is it's not just a buzzword. I'm not using freedom or independence as a buzzword I'm saying when the world is falling apart like you know now I mean, I don't know if it's actually falling apart, but when You know the society is a whole which is highly inter reliant when there's some kind of mess in that system Well out here it doesn't make a lick of difference to me. Okay, it literally doesn't I mean like I'm not I'm not exactly a prepper but when this whole when stuff started shutting down I realize oh like between my pantry and all this stuff I have like months and months of food if I needed to actually stay here for a while It actually be a really easy and that's just the natural environment living in a place where you're more independent, right? You think about things like I mean everything you do is a long-term investment That was one of the best things when I moved out here. I could start getting things, you know I could you know start getting woodworking tools. I have a place to put them I can start like thinking about oh, maybe I'm not even going to use this immediately But I can always invest in my house and all this other stuff So now that you have your own place to live instead of you know living in an apartment or something like that It's just fantastic It's great and the people around here are totally different like they're so much less Domesticated than people in cities, you know people in cities are always thinking about They're always thinking about what each other think and stuff like that. It's just really Unhealthy especially nowadays, you know everyone's plugged into their social media and all this stuff, you know here It's just sort of you know, you know put out or show up. You know wait. No, what's the expression put? Put up or show up shut up or whatever it is, you know what? I mean, you know, it's like people evaluate each other more based on what's real Because the fact of the matter is you know, this is a you know, this is an uncle Ted thing of course The great thing about being independent is that you can always see what your work is doing You know, you can go out and till a garden or something like that You can go out and like create something once you have that ability You don't have to you don't have to think about the opinions of others because you see what you're doing, right? Whereas if you live in a city and you're constantly plugged into the system Even though there are a lot of things in the system that are much more efficient, right? Oh, it can get us food, you know more economically efficiently and stuff like that One there's the thing of everything being reliant on each other So again, if something has to close down everything falls apart And two, you know, it's really I mean, it's hard it's hard to explain like you're You don't really feel like you contribute to the system and you really don't like you're not really necessary in the way that you are here So yeah, that's what I say. So if I have recommendations for people It would just be lived by that heuristic now. I'm not telling you immediately to just move out into the woods or something like that Your life conditions might be different You know, I don't know I'm not gonna speak for other people But I definitely recommend it basically every life decision if it makes you more independent It's probably gonna be good. Now, of course, that doesn't mean, you know, I mean that in a limited sense Let's say, um, the example of getting married, right? So getting married if you're getting married to a high maintenance person, right? That's probably gonna make you more dependent on them You're gonna have to like constantly think about them stuff like that But if you get into a good marriage, right? Sorry, they're not nat season one annoying thing So that's why I'm like rubbing my face and stuff But if you get married to a decent person, right? That should be someone who makes you more independent, right? Because you can rely on them to do things than otherwise and that's the same thing with all your friendships Like if you have friends who you think are a big liability, right? If it's a big pain to keep up with them watch their feelings or something like that I mean, it's not just the feelings thing But that's one of the things I mean a recommendation I have for people in general It's just how especially younger people just have less friends, okay? This is a honest recommendation because a lot of people and it has to do with your personal independence Like I think when you're young especially you sort of want to be the alpha male You know, you don't have all these friends and stuff like that But the reality is most of these those people won't last a couple years. You're not gonna be talking to them anyway So you might as well focus on what's real, you know what I mean? I just have a lot of regret if I if I could go back like I would care so much less about that kind of stuff Not just I'm not talking about social life in general I'm just saying there's so much noise in your life that people worry about people worry about all this Stuff on social media and stuff like that. I mean, I definitely believe if it's on the internet. It's not real You know, that's why my YouTube channel. It's not really real It's just like a figment of my imagination that I do for some reason and then somehow I get ad revenue Occasionally or some I don't know where that cuts it just comes out of the sky. That's how I think about it But anyway, so that's generally how I think and again, you could apply this in different domains as I said When I when one of the reasons that I use free software in Linux and stuff like that is that when it comes down to it It's it's a great investment to learn how to use Linux and stuff like that because it makes you so much more independent Instead of having to rely on how user interfaces change all the time stuff like that It's great to be able to do your own thing. You know what? I mean, it's just great to be able to be a little more self-reliant and even though it takes some time investment All of this stuff does if you're investing in if you're you know investing your time in the system again I hate using that word but there's no alternative that I can immediately think of but if you're investing your time in the system Or something like that that good. That's that's system internal. It's not gonna matter outside of that But once you're investing your time in yourself, you're never gonna lose that, you know That's one of the mindsets actually when I was a kid people ask me like You know, why why did you first start learning like languages or something like that? You know, I learned Latin when I was I don't 15 16 something like that and the reason I did is because you know My mindset back then is I could make a lot of money and that would be good I'm not I will never knock someone who makes money money making is always a good thing But you know, you can lose money, but there are some things you're really never gonna lose Like if you really learn something that's useful And that has been like learning Latin was a fantastic investment. It doesn't sound like a fantastic investment, but it was That's one of those things. It makes you more independent and it makes you more personally competent You don't have to rely on anyone else to do this if you have skills or something like that You're not gonna lose those unless you know, you know, you're a woodworker and you lose your arm or something like that But you know, that's why you got to be careful. So anyway, that's my recommendation Are you investing in yourself or are you investing in the system that you're gonna be more and more relying on? And I think this corona thing should be a good Indication like if your life is worse now that this corona stuff has happened if you I mean that probably means you've been like too dependent on society around you you've been too You know, if you just have a wage-cooked job if you just you know You rely on you can't even cook because you always eat at restaurants or you know Have microwavable food or something like that There are just so many things you can change about your life that sound like wastes of time at the beginning That's only because you're plugged in that's only because you know, why independent life is so Mysterious for you But anyway, that's what I encourage you to do I was originally gonna do a video like this around a week ago And it was more like a dabbing video like oh, wow my life is so great out here It must suck to live in a big city But you know even you always have room for improvement and you know The Lord basically humbled me a couple days ago because my water heater broke and I had to get that repaired and I was thinking You know what? I'm not all the way there. There are always things that I I don't know how to do I'm still figuring out. I'm still reliant on other people. I'm not saying you need to like live totally alone in the woods I'm just saying you need to move to having that ability. It's always a great thing to be more independent So all right, that's it. See you guys next time