10 Giant Lies Society Has Brainwashed You To Believe
10 Giant Lies Society Has Brainwashed You To Believe
We’ve got to stop letting society tell us to only take tiny risks and wait until we’re 65 to have the lifestyle we want.
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Tom Cruise had to ride the subway and hope not to be crushed to death by fans.
He was filming Mission Impossible back in 2014 in London. There was too much traffic to get driven around in luxury by a chauffeur.
Tommy boy put on a hat, put in some headphones, and hurried to the subway with his co-star Rebecca.
They expected to be swamped. They were afraid. But nothing happened. No one realized they were standing next to Tom Cruise.
“People don't pay attention. Everyone looks at their phone, reads a magazine. People are in their bubble.”
– Tom Cruise a reporter during the movie promo in 2018
Tom eventually got spotted by a 16 year old that morning. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed Tom. Not a single person.
Tom made a shushing face. The girl said nothing.
Society loves us to think everyone is watching our every move.
The truth is 99% of people are phone zombies and are being programmed by a screen.
People appear in the real world … but they’re mostly NPCs from a computer game who are incapable of feeling or paying attention to anything other than their smartphone (phones being smart is ironic).
If people can’t even recognize Tom Cruise in broad daylight, it’s not that hard to be successful and shoot your shot.
The threshold to win in life is at an all-time low.
Lie #1 – Once you can afford to buy your dreams, then you’ll feel good
Modern society is a delayed gratification machine.
“Work now, get reward later.”
“Save money now, enjoy it later.”
“Work hard now, retire later.”
Money drives so much of what we do daily – even if we don’t want to admit it. But what the heck for?
Writer Gurwinder Bhogal asks a brilliant question:
If all the possessions you've accumulated so far haven't made you happy, what makes you think future possessions will?
Think deeply about it. You already own a lot of stuff. Did it do the magic trick? No. So how does buying more crap make the daily grind worth it? It doesn’t.
I bought a new house 2 months ago. I’ve lived here for 4 weeks and already I’m taking it for granted lol. I’m about to get a few renovations done. I found myself saying in my tiny little brain “Once the house is finished you’re gonna enjoy it so much more.”
I had to stop myself.
What society doesn’t tell you is the less you own the happier you feel. Why? Every possession requires mental bandwidth. That makes your mental liquidity (ability to change your mind) much slower.
Your house needs maintenance = brainpower
Your car could get damaged = brainpower
Your Gucci bag could get stolen = brainpower
Your fancy job could get taken away = brainpower
Every possession, status, or title you cherish depletes your precious energy.
When you don’t own lots of crap there’s not as much to think about. So you become smarter and gain more wisdom. Also, when you’re not obsessed with buying stuff…
You can focus on hoarding experiences instead of possessions.
According to society, wealth is:
• Cars
• Houses
• A lavish lifestyle
• Expensive clothes
What true wealth is:
• Good health
• Peace of mind
• A life with options
• Financial Freedom
Be cautious of what society teaches you – Kenny, @AccentInvesting
Lie #2 – “Tax the rich” will fix everything
Politicians use this line to divide us.
But taxing the rich is useless in many cases. If you tax a rich person enough they’ll simply move countries. Countries are now in competition with each other.
If you treat your citizens like sh*t then they’ll move to a country with a better life.
No one likes to admit this fact either: when we tax the rich more they just get smarter at exploiting the system and hiding wealth. They have whole teams of lawyers and accountants that help them do it legally.
So the idea society’s problems can be solved with taxation is hilarious.
Oh, and by the way, the same politicians spreading this message are also independently wealthy themselves. They just say what the people want to hear to get votes.
Lie #3 – Not knowing what you want to do with your life isn’t a problem
This lie should be illegal.
My mate Dan Koe says it best: “Society runs on people not knowing what they want out of life.”
If most people knew what they wanted, they wouldn’t choose a mindless career working a 9-5 job stuck inside all day. No.
They’d do work they enjoyed and prioritize sunshine and fresh air. But we don’t because the system is designed to be complicated and cause you to feel conflicted.
I didn’t know what I wanted for 10 years so I gave my time to a bank while I worked it out. If I had known earlier, and if corporations and the education system had helped me figure it out, I could have been free sooner.
Figure out what you want right now and build it after hours.
Lie #4 – Disinformation online is bad
The year 2020 was the perfect year to start a war on information.
The Twitter Files that got leaked online showed us how our grandpa institutions managed to suppress information and even get certain viewpoints deleted.
We got told disinformation is bad.
It makes sense at a high level, but not really. The truth often isn’t black or white.
We need discussion to sort out the facts – not fact-checkers who claim to be the source of truth and are tempted by conflicting incentives.
The one good thing Elon Musk did is bring free speech back to Twitter (regardless of whether you like him). It’s dawned a new age of transparent social media. Big tech either has to be clear on how their algorithms work or people won’t use them.
Substack is also putting a lot of pressure on big tech.
We need disinformation so the cheats’ ideas can be exposed rather than go underground and become more deadly.
Lie #5 – Buy the index fund and you’ll get rich
You’ve probably heard the advice “invest in stock market index funds,” the most popular being the S&P 500.
An index fund splits your money across hundreds or even thousands of companies. It sounds smart. The trouble is it takes decades to get rich and doesn’t factor in taxes, the devaluation of currencies, or inflation.
Sure, you may make (on average) 8% a year. But if you went all in with your money and turned yourself into a business, you’d make a lot more than 8%, more like 200%.
This doesn’t mean you have to become an uber-cool entrepreneur. A one-person business can simply mean you’re a contractor, freelancer, or consultant.
The lesson here is we’ve got to stop letting society tell us to take tiny risks and wait until we’re 65 to have the lifestyle we want.
Lie #6 – Crypto is dangerous and should get banned
Right now there’s a war on crypto.
I don’t care whether you buy crypto or not. But to say crypto is dangerous and should be banned is a problem. Crypto is just code for “new technology.”
Crypto allowed people to buy and sell assets without middlemen. It removed country borders and helped smart contracts go mainstream.
When certain leaders in society that are bankrolled by Wall Street call for bans on crypto, what they really want to do is stop an obvious technology trend.
Crypto can’t be stopped, neither can AI.
That pisses off grandpa political leaders who want full control. There is a world we could live in one day where the physical and digital worlds have different rules and leaders. A world where no country can successfully police what happens online.
We don’t need less freedom. We need more. Technology is what has enabled autonomy to skyrocket over the last 10 years. We shouldn’t want that to go away.
Tech, after all, let you do Zoom calls from home all day in your underpants.
Lie #7 – A degree is the best way to get a guaranteed 6-figure career
I spoke to a guy last night. He’s busy doing an MBA attached to his job. I asked him “why are you doing it?”
Answer: “To earn more money.”
The trouble is his competition at work also has MBAs. These days college qualifications don’t give you an advantage. It’s like saying you passed high school. So did 95% of other people. And???
Before the internet information was top secret. It was under lock and key.
Access had to be granted, so universities had a scarce resource to sell. Now college sells the same information you can get for free from google, youtube, and reddit.
And don’t get me started on ChatGPT. It makes Harvard look like a kindergarten.
A degree guarantees you nothing in most cases. And college takes a huge number of years for you to be taught skills that could be learned faster. Skills are changing so fast you can’t afford to wait 4 years to get qualified.
Don’t forget the lifetime of debt college burdens society with too.
Self-education is a better investment and college hopes we don’t figure it out.
Lie #8 – Disobedient children are bad and should be brought into line
Dishing out rules is what society loves to do.
The ones who often suffer the most are children. They’re taught that breaking the rules is bad and could lead to detention.
Naval Ravikant dropped this bomb on a podcast:
We need disobedient children. Without disobedience there isn’t creativity.
Limiting creativity holds back humanity.
We want people to be creative so they can solve hard problems like climate change. All these nanny state rules have the opposite effect.
Lie #9 – Employees are happiest and get to use their creativity
Corporate PR and HR departments want us to think the modern employer is a utopia.
They take work from home days and ping-pong tables in the office and glamorize it to become part of their corporate identity. From the outside the typical organization looks like they are changing the world and taking care of employees.
I found the opposite.
The corporate world dims your creativity.
It tells you to be quiet and use your imagination less.
The reason we feel bored at work is because we don’t use much creativity anymore.
The solution I found is to practice creativity after hours until it’s good enough to set you free from a job.
Without creativity, the human mind slowly dies. It looks like daily boredom.
Lie #10 – Keep your head down and focus on yourself
Society teaches us to focus on ourselves.
The self-care and self-improvement movements have thrived on this ideology. The truth is this makes you a terrible self-centered human being.
It’s what created the individualism pandemic from March 2020 onwards, that gave birth to the social-distancing movement most people refused to comply with.
The solution is to obsess over something that serves others. It’s to become selfless instead of selfish.
Helping others is what progresses society and I can’t bloody believe we forgot that.
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Each point is absolutely brilliant apart from Lie 10, which I partly agree with. I actually think most people lack self compassion and self trust, and these are very important because when people don't love or trust themselves they are constantly looking for leaders and for others to take responsibility for their lives. Society doesn't teach us to be strong in ourselves - it teaches us to fear our separateness, that the outside world is a dangerous place.
Great list. I especially enjoyed the anecdote about Tom Cruise. I heard a story once and I don't know if it's true, but apparently Marilyn Monroe went "undercover" in Grand Central Station once. She dropped her posture, turned off her incredible stance and acted like everyone else. And nobody noticed her. So perhaps it's not just smartphones that dull the senses. Or perhaps the story is untrue, who knows. In either case, good writing!