# In pursuit of wisdom, part 1 Change is the only constant. In other words, impermanence is the most powerful and reliable force we currently understand. Those who most accept this fact, and do everything in their power to accept base reality for what it is objectively, have the best information to make decisions from. Everyone else is just lying to themselves to varying degrees, their egos trying to force life to conform to their view of what they think it should be (which it will never do). I think this may have been the deeper lesson of [[Are we living in the matrix|The Matrix]], which is to look beyond the surface at the truth. How does one do this? I'm still figuring it out myself, but one of the ways is to suspend pre-judgement without primary evidence. Let's say you heard from a friend who heard from a friend that XYZ movie is terrible, and you don't go see it in theaters. You go a decade without seeing it, only to stumble upon it one day by accident. At first you're skeptical, looking for reasons why it is as bad as your friend said, and realize it's not only your favorite movie of all time, but the lessons in the film actually change your life. OFTEN, people take action based on what other people think, especially when they perceive those others as an authority on a particular subject, which often happens on social media or if somebody has seen something you haven't. However, these are flawed people who themselves probably used faulty pre-judgement or came in with a negative or positive bias which skewed their perspective. There are so many issues here! Firstly, the other people may have suffered the same referral heuristic bias (someone else said this was bad, therefore I assume it is bad), so in essence just because one person who actually saw it had an original opinion, a massive daisy chain of others allowed their minds to be made up for them without doing any sort of thinking themselves. This is how ponzi schemes survive. Secondly, even if you do end up experiencing the thing itself, if you're pre-judging you're going to fall prey to confirmation bias, where you are looking for reasons to justify what you already believed to be true. You could literally trick yourself into hating something you would otherwise love or vice versa just because someone else influenced you. Finally, most people are going to take the easy way out, just relying on other people to do the mental work for them, assuming that there is wisdom in the crowd. But if everyone is doing this, then where does that wisdom actually come from? There are historical examples (dodo birds, all financial bubbles, etc) of people who throw caution to the wind and go with the crowd. These people get absolutely thrashed by reality and suffer from being the sheep who followed blindly. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to be the NOT sheep in this scenario, even if it means being the wolf, which I don't want to be given the fact that they kill the sheep. To swing the pendulum back, this doesn't mean that the masses are ALWAYS wrong, it just means that if I'm going to agree with them in good conscience I need to have done the work in understanding what I'm agreeing to and why for my own reasons based on my own thinking, understanding, circumstances, etc. Not just copy trade others, as they have so many undefined variables influencing their lives. Also, this shouldn't be a reason to always be negative about everything. There are a tremendous number of wonderful people, organizations, industries, countries, movements, etc in the world. Humanity has progressed significantly from cave people to space adventurers. The pessimists may sound smart, but the optimists change the world.*** The *** is needed because blind optimism is where the pendulum swings back again too far. Realism and an accepting of impermanence with an optimistic foundation of believing things can and will get better, backed by evidence of having done so repeatedly in history, alongside of optimism is the way, in my humble opinion. It also happens to make for a wonderful worldview for making friends and influencing people. How many negative minded people do you enjoy being around and engaging with for long periods of time? Thought so. I personally can't stand those sorts of people, and don't want to be one. Those who have changed the world did so because they inspired or understood other people deeply and knew what they lacked, then gave it to them. They also thought it could work (whatever they were doing). Often it was helping people become comfortable with change, and using that force to usher in a new era of change. The evil ones used this power to bring about change for the worse of the people, usually to the betterment of themselves. The good ones used their power to better the peoples' lives, which in turn bettered their own. This is the virtuous cycle I strive for. This is the way.