By 
Imagine if the following ideas became accepted by the world as facts:
Every time you give a meal away to someone in need, your body burns that much in calories.
If we cure Alzheimer’s, we’ll all be debt free and live in mansions.
For every $10,000 men donate towards cancer research, their penises will grow an inch.
Imagine if you could convince people of things like this. Hunger, cancer, and Alzheimer’s would all be completely gone. Hell, we could try to solve every world problem this way!
Volunteering at an animal shelter will whiten your teeth. Standing up against bullies will get you a promotion. Random acts of kindness will make your farts smell like churros.
But of course, none of this will work in practice, because there will always be that know-it-all asshole that will say, “Donating towards cancer research doesn’t make your dick grow. That’s illogical, and the research is spotty at best,” thereby ensuring that we don’t solve any of these problems.
We all know this asshole. I know him very well. He’s me. I would be the one who wouldn’t let those lies save the world because I always prioritize truth–even to the detriment of everything else (although I might still donate a couple thousand just to be sure).
This article is for those assholes like me. We’ll call them rationalists*. So listen up, fellow rationalists. I have something for your robot brains to decode.
*You may argue this isn’t a precisely accurate definition of rationalism, but in my defense, no one besides you cares.
Life Fertilizer
Fertilizer is literal poo (I swear I’m going somewhere with this), and yet, it’s beneficial. It serves a purpose. It helps plants grow. But despite that, some people don’t want it near their house because, you know, it’s poo.
Life Fertilizer™, as I’ve decided to call it, is life’s helpful poo. It’s anything based in nonsense, idiocy, or bullshit that can be good for yourself or the world. Here are some examples.
Lance Armstrong’s life has been a despicable, dishonest, disgusting charade…
…that has raised absurd amounts for cancer research, and inspired like, the entire planet.
In principal, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was completely fucking stupid…
…and in practice, it raised like a hundred million bucks to fight ALS.
Religion is a mixed bag over all, but it has regardless done plenty of good for the world…
…even though I believe historical consensus is that it’s more or less ancient sixth-hand LSD dreams.
Rationalists often avoid Life Fertilizer, but maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we shouldn’t be bound by the accuracy or logic of something, but rather by what the end positive impact of that thing could be.
Spiritual self-help, for instance, is classic Life Fertilizer. It’s mostly total bullshit, but even the most mystical, ridiculous, totally unproven spiritual self-help is usually enriching bullshit.
Rationalists are deprived of this enrichment, and I say “No more!” I believe we can enjoy the mystical bullshit that our loopy counterparts enjoy if we simply alter our perspective. Here are a few ways to do that.
1) The Law of Attraction: Helpful Nonsense
I don’t need to convince you that the Law of Attraction is bullshit, right? This article is for rationalists, so we all know that Bill Gates built his fortune by working his dick off and being brilliant, and not by staring at pictures of windows every day, right? Good.
But even though this is bullshit, visualizing success and dreams focuses you on an end goal, and that’s positive. It’s nothing compared to actually working, but if you go in your room every day and there’s a vision board on your wall, and you’re unable to avoid looking at the life you want, of course you will be more focused on obtaining it.
And I bet you’ll find it a lot harder to jerk off, or Facebook, or click on anything ever from Buzzfeed, and instead, you’ll work more. It’s good to not have an escape from your ambition and a vision board could help with that–not a ton, but if you have big ambitions, you need all the help you can get.
I should make a vision board. You should too. It’s not going to bring you great things no matter how much you stare at it, but if you want the rational translation of The Secret, it’s this: It’s a lot better to have goals on your walls than nothing.
2) Meditation: Described in Tolerable Language
“Dedicating some time to meditation is a meaningful expression of caring for yourself that can help you move through the mire of feeling unworthy of recovery. As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are, and open up to other, more positive options.”
-Sharon Salzberg
I mean really, doesn’t that make you want to track down that Sharon character and just throw stuff at her? Maybe tie her shoelaces together and watch her trip and fall over? I know I do. Nothing makes a rationalist cringe like a phrase like, “a meaningful expression of caring for yourself.”
But that quote isn’t wrong. Meditation isn’t even bullshit. It just sounds like bullshit when it’s advertised in that flowery pixie dust language. So let me tell you why meditation is great in a way that won’t induce bile.
It clears your fuckin’ head.
There. That’s it. It clears your fuckin’ head. People often feel spiritual about this because clearing your head is really awesome and underrated. We never do it, and we need to. Our brains are like colons that over time, trap little bits of crap in their walls that we have no use for: a Taylor Swift song, a nagging feeling of regret, that memory from middle school where your crush caught you hiding your boner while farting (and by middle school, I mean yesterday).
Meditation is the fire hose they put up your butt that flushes that shit out. It doesn’t “heal your spirit,” (because what the fuck does that even mean?) but it does give you the gift of objectivity. And considering we’re mostly muddled, wildly subjective idiots, that’s an unbelievably valuable tool.
3) Astrology!
I’m joking of course. There’s literally nothing good about astrology. Please stop pretending there is. Onto the actual #3.
3) Eternal Optimism is Pretty Much Only Good
I get it. Unending optimism seems like it’s for the worst kind of people: people who smile too much, people who take pictures of salads, people who dance like no one’s watching (We are. Stop it.).
It seems so stupid, and whimsical, and illogical, and worst of all, it feels dishonest–because when your situation sucks, it is dishonest. Smiling and forcing optimism when you feel like garbage is, well, lying.
But maybe this lie is okay, because wallowing in misery–no matter what the circumstances–is way worse. Wallowing doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t address your problem. It’s a pointless jerkoff session. Irrational optimism is actually the pragmatic way to approach things. It always is. Every single time.
So the next time you get fired, or dumped at the alter, or you’re trapped in some weirdo’s murder-sex dungeon, and he’s already chopped off one of your legs, and has a hatchet over the other, consider that you have a choice. You can either:
1) Close your eyes and await your fate, and say “Oh no no no! Oh God no!” over and over, like a fucking idiot.
or
2) Be smart enough to smile, look him in the eyes, and say, “That’s okay! I can make this better!” and then grab your dismembered leg, detached-kick that freak, and hop the fuck out of there.
Choice is yours.
4) Ugh…I Guess We’re All One Consciousness
Look, I get it. We’re all stardust. We all come from the same place. Yeah, okay. Cool. But we’ve also been evolving separately for millions of years, and some of us don’t want to be grouped in with terrorists, political parties, and flash mobs. I don’t want to be dragged into the monster truck rally that is the general population, and I shouldn’t have to be.
I mean that’s logical and fair. It is. But where does that worldview get us? Where do we go from this idea that we’re not all on the same team? We start wars because of it, we have partisan yelling matches, and worst of all, we’re perfectly able to not give a shit about others.
We are able to look at a homeless, mentally ill veteran and go, “Oh, ew. Gross.” and then move on with our day. We’re able to support horrendous sweatshops without a second thought. We’re able towatch those commercials where you donate like a buck a day to feed a starving child and go, “Well but what if I want a Coke that day? Pass.”
This is all a product of some subconscious level where we’re able to think, “They’re not the same as me.”
Having the view that we’re all on Team People, on the other hand, prevents all of this. It makes you less of a cunt, and makes you see fewer people as cunts, thus lowering the Perceived Cunt Total (PCT) in your world. Lower PCTs have been clinically proven to promote unselfishness, and limit human suffering.
So fuck it. Think of every last person on earth as your brother and sister. They’re totally not, but think of them that way anyway. They may be the brother that tried to suicide bomb you, or the sister that still owes you money, or the aunt that smells like a butt, but damn it, they’re your family. And family sticks together.
5) Believing in Yourself: Irrational, Idiotic, Necessary
You should believe that you can do anything–not because you definitely will succeed at anything you try (you probably won’t), and not because you’re particularly awesome (you’re definitely not), but because we need to believe in ourselves before we attempt literally anything on this planet–whether it’s achieving our dreams, climbing Everest, or blowing our noses.
And also, your belief that you can do anything might be correct! After all, we’re all–even those of us that suck–malleable, infinite beings with potential we don’t fully understand.
Think about it. How do you know that old lady writing a check in front of you in the express lane for a three box of Kleenex couldn’t have cured Malaria? Maybe she didn’t have the opportunity. Maybe she didn’t believe in herself. Maybe she didn’t visualize it enough (lol jk).
We’ve seen people do what we thought was impossible over and over again. We know we can’t really know what impossible is. That’s not to say literally anyone can do literally anything. That 70-year-old Asian woman should realistically give up on her NBA dreams.
But a lot of us can do way more than we can fathom, and that’s not crazy. It’s demonstrably true. So how about you accept what you don’t know, and guess that you can do the impossible. You might be wrong, but fuck it. We’re all going to die some day.
The important part of all this is to open your mind. You don’t have to only do something because it’s scientifically proven or because it makes sense in your head. Some things only work for certain outlier weirdos and therefore look terrible in any credible study. Some things don’t make any sense, but seem to work for some people. Have you seen how happy Mormons are?
Not everything that’s bullshit is bullshit for you, and some things that aren’t bullshit are bullshit for you.
So unless your life is just so perfect, you should try something you don’t necessarily believe in every now and then. Try something that seems dumb. Make sure this horseshit is actually as silly as it seems.
There’s brilliance to be found in lamest nonsense in the world. Hitler had some good ideas. Bin Ladin had some good ideas. I have some good ideas. Turn over every rock. Wade through the horseshit. You never know where you might find a little gold.
And besides, I really do think fighting cancer might make our dicks grow.
