Text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DO0FQdsnsSLtAwSa29g4FdnNT0VVfDQF/view?usp=sharing

A short piece I wrote about the material culture of post-Eastern Bloc, pre-EU Romania that I grew up in.

Photo credit: evz.ro, Bianca Zaharescu - It's Bucharest in 1996, I was there too.

The text and some pictures:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rmy_kTZDiThV0G6msDEufoyX_-05M65tJVM_fCsG2TY/edit?usp=sharing

One year and one month ago I’ve set out to become a full-time entrepreneur. I have not succeeded. Can you learn from my mistakes?

This is the final episode of Valiant Growth, season 1.

Photo credit: daivinandleah via Flickr

I've been thinking about talking more about my story with breaking contact with everyone I knew three years ago and completely resetting my life while coming to England.

I especially wanted to talk about the painful mistakes I have made in talking to my family and friends following my understanding of the Freedomain Radio relationship strategy.

I just couldn't figure out the personal development garb to dress those in to make them fit into the Valiant Growth format.

I’ve been an ultra-sedentary person for most of my life and had zero interest in anything to do with physical health.

But I am doing more now than I did before. And my friend Chris Stefanick can claim some credit for that. He showed me a vision of health that’s focused on living a better and longer life, having more fun, having fewer limitations, of joy in movement and nutrition and self-care not because the end result impresses someone but because it’s a path of self-mastery, of learning something new for its own sake.

This is a talk with Chris. My aim is to nurture your intrinsic motivation to live a healthier life and show you some potential paths you can go down on. In the manner with which you might have gotten accustomed to on this podcast (and then gotten unaccustomed to over the past few months), we’re going to focus on the why and on strategy, and also on how to do it without a lot of (or any) financial expense or extra stuff.

Take the next action by listening to one of the following episodes of Choice Conversations:

• Walking and Strength Training
• Losing Weight and Mindful Eating
• Sleep
• Relaxation
• Posture

What’s holding you back from a healthier life?

It’s amazing to live in an age where all knowledge is at our fingerprints! You don’t have to transcribe ancient texts at candlelight in a monastery or do questionable menial tasks for a guru anymore to gain access to some knowledge. I had a two-hour round trip commute to the university - I quit midway when I figured out I could learn more than what a whole day in higher education had to offer by simply reading a business book in the same time.

That said though, self-study has its fair share of challenges. Some of the reasons we’re not all already Internet-fed renaissance man geniuses are as follows:

It can get lonely…

Reading books, listening to podcasts, taking online courses - neither of these is a particularly social endeavour. Other than the most extreme introvert, most of us can benefit a lot from the synergy of group learning.

...As well as hard to demonstrate

While degrees are dime a dozen these days, they still prove that some level of effort was put into their achievement and that something similar can be expected in an employment situation. “Trust me, here’s a list of books that I’ve read” is not an easy sell (it did work for a few people, however).

It lacks guidance

For a beginner, staring any complex field of study in the eyes for the first time is a very scary experience. Where do you begin? What’s good material and what is rubbish? What a good level to aim towards? These are often questions that are hard to answer without the aid of someone already knowledgeable in the field.

The speed of learning is unpredictable

Take any course, and you have a very clear finish date. You’re going to go and show up x days of the week for y hours, and you’re going to go through z material - because you “have” to. I’ve been consciously focusing on my own productivity, routines, procedures, goal-setting, and motivation for 2 years now, and still, it feels like the stars must align just the right way sometimes for things to be finished in their planned time.

It’s too easy to abandon

There’s a lot of inertia when embarking on getting a degree or a specialization: once you’re on that raft, you’re probably going to float down all the way, detours or not. Quitting university is hell for a number of reasons. Quitting self-study often costs nothing and involves just you. Wake up, delete a folder, boot a game or Facebook and you’re out. From 21 to 23, I’ve picked up and dropped at least five different lines of study.

Now that these flaws are spelled out, we can probably come up with a number of solutions for each individual problem. But how about fixing all of them in one go?

The Study of Direct Action

My friend Shane Radliff had an ambitious goal, and self-study just didn’t seem to cut it. He was aiming to create a comprehensive database of direct action - alternatives to politics, ways to create personal freedom without asking for permission, or being dependent on the choices of large groups of people.

The problem? There are at least 25 different approaches, and many of them are not particularly well-documented. He couldn’t just sign up for the course, or buy the encyclopedia of actionable freedom.

Collecting all of this information and studying it on his own would’ve put Shane on a long and unpredictable timeline. It would’ve been a lonely endeavour, hard to demonstrate (if that was ever needed), it lacked guidance, and it would’ve taken a great deal of willpower over a long time period - jeopardizing the project’s completion.

In short, it would’ve had all of the five drawbacks of self-study. So how did Shane proceed?

The Interview Learning System

Instead of trying to figure out everything on his own, Shane chose to contact experts and ask them for an interview on their specific direct action strategy. In his place, I would probably have been concerned that nobody would answer - but it turns out that he had a response rate of 85%! (more on that in the accompanying podcast episode above the article)

It seems that people like to talk about their field of expertise. :) And since Shane intended to create a public resource from the get go, he recorded and edited these interviews and released them weekly or bi-weekly on his podcast feed (you can find the whole series on the Liberty Under Attack website).

I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you - this was quite a monumental task. From January 3rd to July 14th, 2016, a significant portion of Shane’s time (and those of his co hosts) was invested in releasing 27 episodes of the Direct Action Series. We were in a mastermind together at the time, and every week, for months on end, the goal he would set at the end of our talks would invariably revolve around recording or editing an episode of his series.

My own experience is that it takes more than five hours to produce one hour of an interview, including research, scheduling, the interview itself, editing and releasing the content. At 44+ hours of length, we’re looking at a minimum of 220 hours of brain-intensive active work - very different from sitting in a lecture or just reading books.

But the results are quite monumental too. Imagine reaching out and having an intelligent conversation with many of the people you most admire - well, Shane did that on a regular basis for months on end. And in my opinion, he reached out from a great position: not as a fan, but someone equal in his pursuits to that of his guests, creating great material that people can learn from in addition to making the world more aligned with his needs.

Not to mention that he gained in-depth knowledge about personal strategies for freedom, practiced the skill of confidently reaching out to and interviewing busy people in general, and went on to adopt many of the strategies he learned in his personal life.

As a shorthand, I’ve decided to call this the Interview Learning System. I’m very excited by its potential to be used as a general approach - I think that there’s no reason why similar results couldn’t be accomplished in any field. So if you can handle the work, and like interacting with cool people, here’s what to do.

ILS Action Plan

1. Choose a field of study, something that excites and engages you. You probably already know this.
2. Decide on your format. If you’ve been thinking of launching a podcast, writing a blog, authoring a book, creating a video channel etc. this structure has many benefits for a new starter.
3. Create an initial list of experts you’d like to talk to. Don’t worry about it quantity though - you will get recommendations from guests and your audience. The list can even become too abundant, as Shane has experienced it.
4. Create an honest pitch. What will your content be about, what are you trying to accomplish, what is the format - in short, what can someone working with you expect? Feel free to be imperfect.
5. Reach out and start scheduling interviews! Referrals and recommendations will be useful here, but even cold emailing can be very effective. Very few people turn down opportunities to be interviewed. (I recommend doing this before even touching steps 6 and 7. Start when you have an appointment already set - that should help you focus on the essentials and not get lost in technical and research details)
6. Prepare the equipment that you need and a place where you can share your work. There’s no need to be fancy with this part. It can be intimidating to start using editing software, or setting up a blog but if you maintain a minimalist mindset of “What’s the least that does the job?” you’ll find that you can get in action in an afternoon. (My minimal podcast setup would involve a mailing list, a shortened link to the mailing list’s sign-up URL, and Google Drive for hosting the files)
7. Research the author and write your interview questions as the appointment approaches. Feel free to be imperfect.
8. Hold the interview. This can be over Skype with a mic or an email exchange or a walk in the park with a notepad. Ask for recommendations and referrals to other interesting people in the field.
9. Edit a

How do you stay frugal when friends want to go out? And can you actually find better groups and collectives instead of building independence? I answer these two questions in this extra show.

1:

"What do you do when someone suggest for instance grabbing a lunch when you have no desire to spend even on drinks but find it hard to say "well, I do not wanna spend money on food or drinks"?"

2:

"I find myself really valuing from the attention paid to underlying needs in this discussion. It makes me wonder: How much libertarianism develops as a result of experiencing authority figures / collectives that are uninterested in or antagonistic towards your needs, where the same authorities / collectives wouldn’t be considered a problem if they were effective at meeting needs?

If authorities and collectives are antagonistic and harmful, you just want them to back off so you can get on with your life – which is the essence of being a libertarian. And certainly many of us have had experiences that fit into that category. Within an environment full of dysfunctional powerful people, libertarianism and anarchism are very coherent and life-supportive psychological defences. Yet if powerful people in your environment are functional and benevolent, you can live very well despite their presence – and in fact gain from nurturing, support and resources that they can provide.

We become more dependent upon independent judgement and extensive individual boundaries when we cannot trust others to use their power benevolently. So perhaps another alternative, which is also actionable, is to move to a part of the world which has a collective and authorities that you can trust to reliably support your and other peoples’ needs being met. An additional actionable step is to work on your skills of self-expression, developing the ability to approach and communicate with powerful people in a way which is most likely to result in increased connection and better needsmeeting. People who are good at this are often the people who are actually making the world we live in a better place in tangible ways – including moving it in a more socially and economically free direction. And after successfully acting upon these, the otherwise very important libertarianism psychological defence of simply wanting segregation from powerful people (which is what vonu sounds like to me) may no longer be so necessary.

To give an example drawing on what was mentioned in the podcast: I’d be much less interested in homeschooling and unschooling if I could reliably expect schools to be highly functional, needsmeeting, human-friendly places – and in the right part of the world, surrounded by the right people, that may well be possible."

In 1974, a man disappeared somewhere in the Siskiyou Mountains, never to be heard of again. He wasn’t a tourist lost in the forests - he’s been living in the region for years. He wasn’t a rookie camper overwhelmed by wilderness - he had written several articles on camping and survivalism, based on his own experience of practising these skills. So what happened to Tom Marshall?

Letting Go Isn't Free

A basic and well-known tenet of stoicism is to stop trying to act on (and worrying about) things that aren't really in your control, or that can't at least be significantly influenced by you. Some of this is obvious and easy: the weather, traffic, the economy, chance. A lot of it is much harder: what other people think of you, bad things happening in other places, the ideas of your friends, politics.

I think everybody wants to worry less - it's a massive energy drain, and it really crushes quality of life. Following this thinking does indeed deliver a lot of tranquillity - the actual reward promised by the Stoics.  But it sure seems like you have to sacrifice a lot in the process! Depending on what your core needs are, one or both of these concerns quickly arise even when just thinking about stoicism:

1. What about my impact on the world? I don't want to curl up in my bed and die in Stoic tranquillity, oblivious to what I've left behind.

1. How can I provide safety to myself and my family if I choose to spend less in time on the news, withdraw from politics, stop studying the economy, and stop worrying about what others think of me? How will I know if there's some larger problem, and how will I make sure I'm not harmed in the process?

It was the first question that Shane Radliff set out to answer, but in the process, he discovered the solution to the second one.

Become Invulnerable

Shane was fed up with the political means - the Sisyphusian task of betting the fulfilment of your personal needs on the whims of millions of other people. He wanted to find ways of direct action instead: creating freedom in his own life, without the permission of others.

It was in this search that he found an obscure, out of print book collecting the works of an obscure man from the late sixties. To say that this book has had an impact on him is an understatement - he has since not only seen to it that it is transcribed and narrated but has even created a whole standalone podcast about it. The book was Tom Marshall's work, the man who was to completely disappear in the Siskiyou Mountains in a few years, written under his better-known pen name: Rayo.

Though a few decades apart, Shane and Rayo have pretty similar perspectives: both are concerned with personal freedom and autonomy and prefer private solutions to government action. Similar to Shane's Direct Action Series, Rayo's strategies were developed after disappointment with mass action - he tried to establish a libertarian island nation before moving on to van nomadism and later wilderness camping.

As the few written accounts that exist about him show, he was a very safety-conscious man, and his quest to dissociate with most of a society he didn't like, he encountered the same problem that we did at the beginning of this article: How do you stay safe without being plugged in all the time?

As an engineer, he wasn't interested in half-measures, so he developed a radical concept that turned the idea of safety on its head: invulnerability to coercion. He called his strategy Vonu (voluntary, not vulnerable). This approach is worth considering even if coercion (a favourite libertarian word) is not one's main concern - there are very few of us in personal development who aren't dissatisfied with some aspects of society and wouldn't like to be able to avoid that influence.

Vonu Tactics

A vonuan seeks to meet her need for safety not by changing what others do, but by becoming as resistant as possible herself. Rather than convince others to create social structures that would reduce crime (under which he included many government actions) Rayo decided to become immune to crime instead.

He practised what he preached - which in his case meant living a very private life in the mountains with his "free mate". Most of his communication with the outside world was secretive, he had a van for mobility and lived in polyethene tents he designed, he stored a considerable amount of food - according to an account, he would even duck when aeroplanes flew above him to maintain his location a secret.

Not only that, but he created a number of alternative strategies that may not have appealed to him directly, but were regardless valid means of achieving invulnerability to coercion: sailboating, financial independence, country shopping, intentional communities, free ports etc. Shane and I discussed these strategies in the podcast episode in more detail (which has a longer, more thorough version on his Vonu website).

Safety AND Impact?

How about impact - do you have to give up on the world if you stop worrying about it? Did Rayo stop trying in favour of complete isolationism?

Not quite. He did have a typewriter with him, and up until 1974, when all correspondence stopped, he kept publishing newsletters and contributing articles, promoting the Vonu way and comparing it with other libertarian strategies of the time. He also stayed in touch with a number of carefully selected people, whom he would educate in his tactics by organising Vonu weeks.

Did he actually manage to have an impact? He wasn't particularly popular even in the libertarian circles at the time, and though I few people remembered him, most people haven't heard of him. That said, his works had a circulation at the time and he did manage to create a book that still exists today, five decades later. And now that Shane and his associates were inspired by him, he has a people once again discussing his ideas on the Internet and even has an entire podcast dedicated to exploring and building on his thoughts.

That's no small achievement for a man who, based on the information available about him, wasn't all that interested in impact (when it came at the detriment of his safety). How many of us will have our work alive and well decades after our (presumed) death?

As a side note, there were mistakes that probably limited Rayo's reach that we can learn from. In his books and articles, he often used terms that likely alienated not only people with different political views but libertarians alike - for instance, calling them "controlled schizophrenics". He didn't seem (to me) particularly interested in understanding other viewpoints or creating a bridge of understanding at least towards ideologically close perspectives.

A Viable Alternative to the Non-Actionable

Above everything else, what impresses me most about Rayo and the reason I've decided to interview Shane about him is that he had a strong focus on the actionable in an environment that was much more interested in philosophising. He went out, learned new skills and changed himself rather than waiting for others to give him freedom.

I believe this is a powerful lesson whether you agree with Rayo's particular political outlook or not. As I've said in my previous article, my particular non-actionable addiction was politics and economics too. It may be something else in your case: anything that you pay attention to that fills you with anger and/or fear and which you can do very little about falls under this category.

Can you stay safe without following the news? Yes, if rather than trying to dodge bullets or plead with the shooter, you instead focus on becoming as invulnerable and independent as possible.

Do you have to become a hermit, sacrifice your impact on the world, on making it a better place? I don't think so - not only will your personal change inspire others, but you will be able to have a voice from a much safer position.

Focus on the actionable.

It was a little past midnight on Wednesday and I was sitting in the bathtub. It was the 9th of November, and I was feeling terrible.

I had no idea who the Prime Minister of Romania, the country where I grew up, was.

I had no idea which party was in power in the UK, where I had been living for the past year and a half.

But I had just spent 12 months following the ups and downs of of the 2016 US elections, a country that I couldn’t vote in, had no real way of living in in the short and medium-term, and hadn’t even visited.

A 5 point swing in the betting odds (on average more accurate than polls) could make me feel happy, sad, angry, afraid or confident. Something was very, very wrong.

Outside of this, my general political ignorance was carefully cultivated. I had increasingly been focusing on the actionable, on what I can do in my own life, where I had the most control. You see, I knew that…

Voting Doesn’t Matter

If you are an anarcho-capitalist, you’ve (not) convinced many, many people of this basic tenet. It’s old news. It’s passé. It’s the uncool half-brother of “Taxation is theft”.

There are some cool arguments for this. I don’t think you should check them out though, and I’ll tell you why in a second.

Back to 2016: The belief didn’t save me though, nor did it save many others from getting caught in the hype. This is more popular outside of election years to begin with, and 2016 seems to have been a particularly bad one too.

I should’ve focused instead on…

Political Action Doesn’t Matter

As in getting involved in politics is a waste of time. This one is a little bit more niche, a little bit more contentious. It’s the closet of the libertarian house, or the attic.

It’s where you retire to when you have had enough of the party downstairs, and want quietly scroll the Facebook feed on your phone.

I knew this one too. I had no intention of going to protests, writing to my local politician or donating to her. I cared little of party politics (I did furtively check the election results of a few libertarian parties in some countries)

And yet this perspective gave me no protection from the non-actionable, because…

I Was Still Up To The Neck In It

I’ve been using a light tone so far, but I don’t want to trivialize this: I really, really wanted the government the go away. I was angry about money being collected at (an implicit) gunpoint. I felt sad about the waste of resources and of human lives in war, in the countless failed projects and initiatives. I was stunned at how many programs that were supposed to do good had had the opposite effect. I still feel these emotions.

Though I was apolitical in some ways, politics still very much pervaded my thoughts, my conversations and my decisions.

My learning, however, was chipping away at my enthusiasm. Stoicism made me focus more on what was and wasn’t within my sphere of control. Nonviolent Communication helped me connect with people of different views, and I suddenly could see the evil enemy no more.

And Then It Clicked

In the bath tub that night I realized how much the past 12 months sucked. I had ran around in circles and achieved nothing. I’ve missed great opportunities to connect with, be taught and teach with all the people I’ve talked politics with. I’ve alienated those who had different views and built a false sense of belonging with those who had the same.

I’ve wasted their time. I’ve wasted my time. 

I hadn’t released a Valiant Growth episode in three months and yet my concern was what some guy on a different continent thought about the value of political action. (My lull of productivity wasn’t because of this, but I sure could’ve used that focus and emotional awareness to see what was going on instead!)

I had no plan of action of moving on from my job, something which I really wanted to do, but was losing sleep over how another guy thousands of miles away had changed his public views on the election of a country neither of us lived in.

I had mislived.

The Things That Matter

I made a mental list in the bathtub that Wednesday night. I asked myself

“When I wake up tomorrow, what would I rather see have happened?”

Never mind what I can do. Just what would be the biggest gift the Universe could give me. Guess what.

The government ending wasn’t even in the top 20.

Sure, it may take half my income, if I’m really not careful. Well, some people increase their incomes tenfold in a year (and then make YouTube ads about it). It’s definitely not unusual to do it over a decade.

The government (according to some) stifles innovation and the progress of the human race, and thus my future. Well, the people who are getting shit done are regularly circumventing it, like any other obstacle.

The future of some places is (maybe) in question. Well, so far throughout history, there have continuously been good areas to be in – some places are getting worse, some places are getting better. Most of the planet is empty.

What About The World?

I care about my friends and allies. I wish suffering on no one, even if I don’t know them. I care about our future as a species. But I’ve got work at home to do.

The people who are having the greatest positive impact on the world, in my judgement, are the entrepreneurs who are building the future of technology (once man can live in space, most major risks disappear on a personal and collective level, I think). Helping build the personal development tools for these people is not a bad place to be in either.

We may not agree on the most impactful people – it’s quite a personal question. Did your guys and gals start in politics though? Are they in it now?

As for my tribe, we can mutually waste our time with politics, or we can learn to live more fulfilled lives, and be more prepared for the risks of the world. The pursuits may not be mutually exclusive, but the mindset is so different that one struggles to exist next to the other.

Could you and I have real global impact?  I think so. But I know I’ve got some homework to do before I get there though.

Ask Yourself

Not everybody reading this has my political ex-views. I don’t think it matters very much.

Where does your version of utopia rank on your list of what you want to wake up to tomorrow?

Work on whatever number one is instead, and you’ll likely get closer to it in your own life anyway.

Moving Forward: Disconnect

I had to take a hard exit with everything non-actionable, everything outside me sphere of control. I used politics as an example because it’s top on the list of how I wasted my productive time, but there are other things. It’s quite personal, and it’s an ongoing journey of discovery.

I’ve stopped all inflow. I don’t consume the news (alternative of otherwise),  I try not to get into debates, I’ve gotten quite good at selectively blocking what the Internet throws me at me. If something “major” happens, sometimes people tell me, sometimes they don’t. I’ve done quite well so far without it.

That’s the end of my story. And yeah, I hope to never learn who wins the 2020 US elections. No spoilers, please.

I've become quite fed up with a show notes that had very little value to the listener. So I've decided to turn them into full-blown, stand-alone blog posts!

Hence, until this experiment lasts, I am now running a blogcast instead of just a podcast.

Are you as excited about this as I am?