I was born in 1970. By that time, the West, and America in particular, were well into their decline. My life and the lives of all those younger than I have elapsed entirely within a period where the general spiritual sickness of the West has metastasized, spreading steadily until we are everywhere weak, deformed and diseased. When such conditions are all you know, or have ever known, you assume they are normal, that everyone in all places and times has... Read more
Our days are happier when we use them to build something more durable than mere days. The third of the three crucial questions to keep in mind when we are evaluating how we use our time points us toward that truth. Of course, you want to make sure the activities you engage in push you forward and that they create value for others, but to really have a sense that what you are doing matters, you have to think long-term.... Read more
The things we spend our time on need to push us forward in some way, I think we agree on that. Wasting your time reinforcing the walls of your cocoon will get you nothing but a harder to escape cocoon. The only people who want that are those intent on never maturing into what they are meant to be. If that is not you, if you want more than a life of safety and comfort, you need to be driven... Read more
As I write this, a YouTube video plays in in the background. I glance at it while I type. How typical. Multitasking, dividing our attention between tasks, is the way we do things now. But, YouTube videos aren’t the only distractions we face. There’s television, social media, any manner of places to go, a nearly limitless panoply of amusements. Such a setting makes keeping track of ourselves even more important. If we don’t, our time evaporates and our efforts to... Read more
I am terrible at thinking of examples. I can talk all day long about abstract concepts. I can offer up lengthy disquisitions about the underlying principles that structure reality, but if you ask me to point to a concrete instance of those principles at play in real life, I’m likely to draw a blank. If you asked me right now to tell you about a time when I couldn’t think of an example, I probably couldn’t do it. So, when... Read more
Clichés become clichés because they contain a truth in a succinct and memorable form. They capture some aspect of our experience pithily enough that it resonates and, when we next need to express that truth, we reach for the handy cliché. “Chicks dig jerks” is one of those clichés. All of us have seen it happen. We know some woman who has blown off, ignored and thrown over a nice, perfectly pleasant, harmless suitor for the guy who treats her... Read more
This is the first in an occasional series of posts looking at characters from popular culture who exemplify the ideals of mature masculinity. If you have ideas for characters who would work for this series email me at dean@deanabbott.com or tweet me @deanabbott. Tom Magnum is not what he seems. On the surface, he’s a happy-go-lucky overgrown boy who lounges around all day in Hawaiian shirts and board shorts. He’s constantly bumming money from his friends. He only drives a... Read more
Everyone wonders what he would do if he only had a year to live. Doing so can be an interesting thought experiment. The usual result is that people think they would make changes, live more deeply, take more risks. Then, everyone just goes back to living the way he had been before. Such hypothetical situations are rendered both more intense and more urgent in Zak Hilditch’s 2013 film “These Final Hours .” The film tells the story of the last... Read more
The last thing unhappy people want to hear is that they are responsible for their happiness. This is, in large part, why they are unhappy. When we are unhappy, it is often because we imagine ourselves powerless. Things aren’t right and we think we can’t fix them. We focus on what we don’t have. We nurse every petty grievance. We don’t challenge ourselves and instead fall back into a routine of angry labor, destructive habits and self-pity. None of that... Read more
Everybody is a little bit famous today. The age of social media and 24/7 communication has ushered in the age of the micro-celebrity, people with online audiences that, while smaller than a movie star’s, can still be quite substantial. Tessa Violet is one of these micro-celebrities. A vlogger and musician, she has accumulated more than a million subscribers on YouTube. If a million people have clicked a button for you to say, “yes, I want to see every video this... Read more
The Road Home
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