This is the published unabridged private reflections of the Benevolent Dictator of the Mush Migos™ Partners, on how one is to exist in a world of chaos. ֭Ashes & diamonds, foe & friend, we were all equal in the end. Do me a favor please, and give yourself plenty of freedom to take this all in and digest it thoroughly. Dedicate the time, and more importantly, the headspace necessary to read this in its entirety, and don’t worry… it’s okay if you come back later. The Mush Migos™ Partners and the Mycelial Network, like the Goonies, never say die, so we’ll be right here waiting for you like Richard Marx.
Only the true Mush Migos™ Partners & Friends will make it to the end of this blog, despite being warned at the beginning that you have to be in the right frame of mind. What is a blog anyway? In my humble opinion, a blog is a public diary, a window into your thoughts and how you see things and view the world, or at least how you want us to think you see and view the world and articulate such thoughts.
“First principles, Clarice: simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius, “Of each particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature?” What does he do, this man you seek?”
– Hannibal Lecter
For those of you familiar with Emperor Aurelius’ Meditations, I modeled Perspectives similar to that. If you are familiar with Meditations, you also know that it was never meant to be read. It was his private journal and thoughts. Because it wasn’t meant to be read, it didn’t necessarily always read well or flow coherently. I say this because I kindly ask you keep that in mind when reading my Perspectives and grant me a little license accordingly.
*Disclaimer* Perspectives isn’t for sissies, but neither is life so buy the ticket and take the ride!!! Rocky said, “It’s not about how hard you can hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” Life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Suffering exists, and you can never really get to the bottom of how bad life can be. But, once we accept that, we can move on and change our perspective of the here and now.
Life can change in a phone call. And it’s amazing how life can change in a few months or a year. Looking back a year ago today to where I am now, you would think I was making it up if I told you where I was then compared to now. It’s on you to develop a sense of meaning and move along that golden path forward. Life is hard, suffering exists, you can’t save the world… So what are you going to do about it? How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time if you cooperate and compete.
It’s cool to win, but don’t be that guy and run the score up to humiliate your opponent. That’s character building and that’s giving you the tools to deal with controversies. If people have no character building exercises and therefore lack good character, life can turn to shit very quickly. Want to see how? Get a bunch of people with no character around a deathbed with guilt. The situation will turn to hell very quickly. Pride is a crutch for the insecure; don’t be afraid to ask for help. When people start complaining, I generally think to myself that they haven’t experienced enough tragedy in their lives yet to be humbled.
Perspectives give you an idea or way of looking at something, or at least the lens through which it can be seen. I say that because most people want to look back on history and they look at it through the eyes of the hero or the victim but never the perpetrator. The Holocaust Museum in D.C. does a good job of showing the perspective of the victim, and that is effective in its own right, as it humbled my wife and me on our D.C. trip that weekend. Pro Tip: Don’t go there last, before planning a fun night out. But, just imagine if it would have shown it through the eyes, or you could experience it through the eyes of a perpetrator. If you were the perpetrator, you would have a totally different perspective right? To change your perspective along these lines, I recommend reading the Gulag Archipelago and I’ll leave it at that.
On this Veterans Day week, I’d like to share an idea that a friend of ours had. A good friend of the Mush Migos™ Partners, Erik Pelton said, ”A proposal so simple it would never work: make Veteran’s Day a true full federal and state holiday everywhere – and make it on Election Day. What could be more patriotic than honoring those who served by participating in the democratic rights they fought for?”
We as Americans all take things for granted. If I’m being real, a lot of us are some downright entitled bastards. We must remember that every single one of us live on the backs of giants. We are babies, and guess what folks? There is no such thing as adults and it’s downright scary, Peter Pan. We’re all only a couple of generations away from the beginning. We’ve come so far and we all have so much to learn.
The problem is, nobody ever wants to have an honest conversation. Things are nuanced, and not everything is black and white. Therefore, things need to be broken down piece by piece and it takes a long time to turn around a battleship. It’s complicated and like love, things take time. Free thinking is dangerous, and there will be plenty of saboteurs fracking for your attention. Nobody has the right to tell you how to feel though. If this were in a courtroom, objection, sustained. Or more like Ariana Grande says, “Thank you, next.”
Life isn’t a game, but a set of diverse games. It’s not about winning the game; it’s about winning the series of games. Like an ecosystem the world needs all kinds to function properly and maintain homeostasis. Not everybody can be an eagle, not everybody is a rabbit, not everybody’s a leader, and not everybody is a doer. Bob Marley used reggae music to unite people from all walks of life, all colors, all religions, all nationalities. He sang about the daily struggles of life which we can all relate to. It’s just to what degree we can relate. He will live forever because people will continue to sing his music and recite his words. “Words like a razor, weapon of choice sir, and when you’re dead, your voice will be heard after,” Steve Jacobo said. But like Bob also said, “Every man’s got a right to decide his own destiny / And in this judgment there is no partiality. In this great future you can forget your past, so dry your tears I say.”
There’s no need to change our system completely, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make it better. Little by little, piece by piece. Doing the little things right and treating others how you want to be treated. Forget the hype and forget everyone else’s narratives. Duncan Trussell said ”Some poor, phoneless fool is probably sitting next to a waterfall somewhere totally unaware of how angry and scared he’s supposed to be.” Boy, isn’t that the truth.
We segregate and divide ourselves, then corporate and social media exploit that division. When you or your kids use the “digital pacifiers”, they control the narrative. Forget foreign actors; we do it to ourselves. Want to guess a business that didn’t do badly during Covid? The corporate and social media outlets, that’s who. They’ve had a captive audience and plenty of time to control the narrative. You can’t strip someone of their physical appearance, but you can strip someone of an idea. Vincit qui se vincit et memento mori plebis. He who conquers himself, conquers. And remember, you only have so many summers. Social media feeds the narcissist in us all, but that need for attention starts with your parents. If you are the kind of person that wants to blame someone instead of being accountable for your own actions, start by blaming your parents and grandparents. They brought you into this thing we call life.
Perspectives! Nobody has a monopoly on morality. Not big tech, not the religious right, and nobody in between. And if we can’t even agree on what’s true, how can we solve anything? On the right, it’s church every Sunday. Think for a second how divided we are every single weekend when we go to worship? When one block knows their beliefs to be true, the block on the other side of town knows the worshippers are wrong. Don’t get me wrong, religion is good for some people. So is the military, and so is barber school. All I’m saying is, someone else is controlling the narrative and they have their own agendas. It’s essentially the limitation of the diversity of thought. Big tech is no better. Technology just as easily manipulates the narrative. The left supports big tech, yet it’s big tech who decided to make the parts for their electronics overseas caring more about their bottom lines than being a patriot. “When you are omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, it means you lack limitation and you have to know your limitations,” said Clint Eastwood.
What do you call a doctor who graduates in the bottom of their class? A doctor!!! Celebrities can be smart, but they can also be nitwits, it’s just that they have more undeserved credibility than most, which is even more dangerous. Einstein said, “It’s not the lack of knowledge, it’s the illusion of knowledge that’s dangerous.” Meanwhile, we have celebrities and other influential people spouting an illusion of knowledge with a large sphere of influence. Bezos, celebrities, athletes, Gates, Zuckerberg, etc… What gives them the moral high ground to be virtue signaling messiahs like the religious right and the evangelical crusaders? Nothing! There’s no correlation between intelligence and wisdom. You can be smart and do some really dumb things.
The devil is always in the details, and you have to examine the studies and what people’s agendas are. Italy has the largest collection of three generations living in one house. Little to no access to vitamin D, higher rates of smoking, lots of factors, etc. You can’t just look at something and jump on Office Space’s jump-to-conclusions-mat. I may or may not have known someone that spent some time in a Las Vegas funeral home once upon a time. I can tell you, what happens in a Las Vegas funeral home, stays in a Las Vegas funeral home. Since the following happened in a hospital setting, I’ll tell you this. I may or may not have known someone who sat in on an autopsy and was exposed to hepatitis along with everyone in the room, including multiple physicians, via their eyes through atomized bone dust. Are you asking what my point is yet? Ok, ok, my point is: unless you have a degree in pathology, or some sort of advanced knowledge in epidemiology through other means, all you are doing is just being a repeater Pete. Hey Pete, Pete and Repeat sat in a boat. Get it?
When you’re born, you can’t pick your family and what you’re born into. But when you become an adult, you can pick and choose who you want to be your so-called family. Hang out with people who want the best for you because it’s not always easy to share good news with people. It’s important to have friends around you who are genuinely happy for you, want the best for you, but aren’t afraid to tell you what you don’t want to hear sometimes and you have to be willing to receive it. Yes, some will secretly gloat when tragedy finally bestows you. But those people were never your true friends anyway. Like Jadakiss said: ”Who’s real, who’s fake?”
If you’re going to tell me to vote, then you better tell me who you voted for and why. And while you’re at it, can you tell me if your poop sank or floated today? And what the results were of your latest std test? I just want to get an idea of your metabolic health since we’re giving information away so freely, and apparently, I’m on a need to know basis, Hope you voted, go vote… Alright already, I hear ya!!! But now that I heard you, maybe you’ll hear me, I’m the captain of my own ship! Besides, I know you just really want to condescendingly tell me whoever I voted for, if it wasn’t who you did, is wrong anyway, and why I should see it your way.
When I say who I voted for, a look of bewilderment overcomes most peoples’ faces. Do you ask a fish how it swims? A bird why it flies? No sir-ee you don’t. So quit telling me what to do. Vote, don’t vote, either way, I don’t care. That’s your choice. And like Carlin says: “You still have the right to complain even if you don’t vote. Because it’s the jackasses that voted who are responsible for putting the corrupt politicians in there in the first place.”
Personal choice equals personal accountability. We all made different choices recently, and I would be happy to discuss things one-on-one with anybody in a different setting, time, and place. That being said, while we all may have made different choices, at the end of the day, we are all Americans and those were our choices to make. Like Pitbull said: “I may be Cuban, but I’m an American.” Physically, we may be made up of Stardust, but when it comes to who you are; you are much more than that. You are essentially a collection of your life experiences.
In 6th grade, I started giving out pencils and putting up signs that said vote for me. At that time, that kind of thing was unheard of in our middle school for a little student council election. How was I supposed to win, I thought? I talked to everyone, was probably in the A crowd, but I never felt like I was popular, certainly not enough to win. I guess if we’re being honest, who’s popular anyway in middle school as it is generally a pretty awkward time for most of us. I guess maybe the kids who are advanced in certain subjects such as, health education let’s say, but other than that, middle school is a pretty rough time for all.
When you may or may not know someone who worked in a Las Vegas funeral home from an early age (7th grade), you get a different perspective. In Mr. Fasnacht’s high school 12th grade economics & government class, I was a defense attorney for a mock negligent homicide trial. And it was in that same class that I remember taking a political survey, similar to isidewith.com and of course I split 15/15 Republican and Democrat. I wasn’t left wing, I wasn’t right wing, I was an American and I was the whole Eagle. I thought about registering independent, but knew I would never get the support necessary to win if I had any ambition later on for politics, so I registered Libertarian.
I remembered what it was like being bullied when I was a fat kid, and I became somewhat of a bully myself as I got older. I only bullied people that I wanted to break down because I felt like they needed to be humbled, and I defended those who couldn’t defend themselves. I guess that’s part of the reason why I joined the military, to stand up against bullies around the world or who I thought were bullies at the time anyway. I’m never going to bow down and be coerced by any mob. Freedom of choice equals freedom of thought.
I was an 18yo kid fresh out of Navy boot camp and found myself in one of the hardest schools in the military. Our senior class leader, a 35+ Army officer who I was initially intimidated by, sat us all down and said, “Listen, we’re all in this together, one team one fight.” You know, it wasn’t even a military thing. It was about a dozen of us being there with a common goal of getting through this long difficult journey together. Referencing a previous Mush Migos™ blog post, the idea of nature being based on cooperation and not competition was born.
One thing the military taught me was not to not take things so personally. The military isn’t for everybody, but it does teach some life lessons that are still with me today. Lessons like not everything’s about you, don’t take everything personally, how to see the bigger picture, and to stop making excuses. Whatever happened to it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. “Jokes is{sic} jokes!” Our time is limited, so don’t waste it living life through other people’s expectations. Somehow your intuition already knows what you wanted all along, right Steve?
Like Jordan Peterson says – and I’m paraphrasing, not quoting about the laws of hierarchy- those that are in the upper echelons of the hierarchy have the greatest influence obviously but how do you get there? Something along the lines of everybody is born into some sort of privilege. The randomness of birth is your lot in life. From there you grow and establish purpose. You do what you can to survive and once you establish and meet your needs, and figure out your desires, you’re able to do things for others. The more productive you become, the better you feel. Better you feel, the more friends you acquire. The more friends you acquire, the more chances and opportunities you have. The more chances and opportunities you have, your chances of success become greater. Generally, at least monetarily, success generally leads to a greater increase in wealth. A greater increase in wealth leads to more power and a greater ability to influence or at least a larger audience to influence.
I butchered this paraphrase, but I want you to check out Jordan Peterson’s 12 rules to life for yourself, regardless of what you think about him and come to your own conclusions. This will be just one of the many required reads of an adult Mush Migo. We all remember those required reads from high school; Animal Farm, Where the Red Fern Grows, etc. Like the Colonel told me when I was 18 and depressed, “We’re all in this together, one team one fight.” Know that your tribe influences and affects your vibe and success breeds success. We are the Mush Migos™ Partners, and we are changing the world and establishing connections one person at a time. But how else can one gain influence? Social media(influencer)… corporate media… propaganda… coercion… luck… inheritance… hard work… happenstance / coincidence, etc?
American exceptionalism doesn’t mean that we’re great, or that we deserve everything. It just means that our rights don’t come from our government. It means that those rights come from our birth and our birth alone, and not because a government or somebody else dictates them to us. We have the right to life, since we didn’t ask to come into this world, and are blessed by birth and the random lottery of life. This right to life should include wellness care and not disease care. Liberty, freedom to make our own personal choices, as long as we are accountable for those choices. Choices have consequences, both good and bad. And finally, our right to happiness. Happiness is subject to individual expectations. Just remember two things: One, disappointment starts when expectations are failed to be met. And two, the point of life isn’t to be happy. If that were the case, you’d be a failure whenever you aren’t happy and that’s certainly not true.
Life is too short, so love the one you got, cuz you might get run over, or you might get shot. Perspectives! If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. It’s time for congress to amend the first amendment to include social media. There are too many people out there with agendas pushing nonsense to make money and are only worried about their bottom lines. There’s also just too much information out there to dissect honestly. When it comes to information, your health, your life, etc, you have to be your own advocate until we can fully improve our system.
We do not have a Health care system, we have a Disease care system that is only reactive and not preventative. We also have a system that is all about profit, grants, and covering your ass. If you get listed as a Covid case, the hospital gets more money. Get it? Coming from someone who knows someone who may or may not have worked in a Las Vegas funeral home, the cause of death isn’t always what really caused the death. Ultimately, we all die from irreversible total cessation of metabolic activity. Say what you say? You know what that means? It means we stop breathing. In my favorite scene in Spinal Tap, they are standing at Elvis’ grave. One of the guys says, “Puts a little perspective on things, doesn’t it?” and one of the other guys immediately says, “Too much fucking perspective!”
I realize I didn’t get here by myself. Like Mr. Rogers said, “Take a minute to think about all the people that brought you into existence, and all the things that had to happen to get you to where you are today.” Even Elon Musk was a needy bastard relying on people to feed him, give him clothing, and nurture him. It’s not just people but a collective environment of family, neighbors, friends, and those closest to you that control your orbital access and thus shape your perspectives.
I ultimately just needed a seat at the table. Growing up, we had Sunday dinner. First, I used to sit at the Kids Table. Then I moved to the living room table which was a step up from the kids table. Eventually though, I made it to the grand table which was where the most important adults in our family sat. I realize now that I’m doing the same thing in life. Most people never even get invited for dinner, let alone a seat at the table. What happens as you move to bigger tables? Your circle of influence grows and your words and ideas can sometimes have a greater impact. But we should strive for confidence, not dominance.
A good goal is to be the most reliable person at your parents or best friend’s funeral. Now that’s a solid goal. And don’t cast pearls before slime. If you’re offering somebody help or wisdom and they reject it, walk away. Walk away because if not, you’re diminishing your own words. You can’t control other people’s actions and like we’ve discussed, you can’t save the world.
The system is set up for everyone to worry about themselves and cover their asses. It’s certainly not a one team one fight mentality. When it comes to my own mortality, I’ll be honest, I’m still afraid, sad, etc despite its inevitability. Help, help, save yourself! There are plenty of things to be afraid of and that’s perfectly okay. You can’t really get less afraid but you can certainly get braver. Maybe I’m not scared of dying but I’m scared of living too fast, too slow.
Perspectives! Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream? When you realize that nobody’s on a pedestal, it’s pretty amazing how clear things can be. Timothy Leary suggested that we all turn on, tune in, and drop out. I ask you, would that be such a bad thing? The status quo certainly needs some tweaking, and psychedelic literally means to release the mind. When psychonaut Hamilton Morris was asked if psychedelics would make the world a better place, he offered a great analogy. He said, “It’s kind of like asking if the world would be better with or without music.” I don’t know, would the world be better without music?
We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams. Maybe we should all listen to a little more music and a little less destructive noise. The sky is the limit when you don’t quit your daydream. And remember: A ship in harbor is safe but that’s not what ships are built for.
Looking forward to soaring together my fellow Mush Migos™ Partners & Friends. Like Disney World, the Mush Migos™ Consulting Network makes dreams come true. #mushmigos2020 #oneteamonefight #rememberme
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