Often in life, how much you succeed comes from what you choose to do, rather than how well you do it.
The ultimate choice is which jurisdiction you choose to live in.
This is a choice. Most are not used to thinking it is.
And make no mistake, the environment you choose ultimately shapes you.
The values of the people you surround yourself with are probably the most impactful thing in your life.
So changing where you live will change your life the most.
Even more important than society’s current state is its trend. The momentum of societal change will impact you going forward.
It’s better to live somewhere up and coming, with a bright future. There is something to be said for living in a place where optimism, enthusiasm and energy are brimming.
Contrast that to a place where stagnation, cynicism, complacency and slow decay are common place. Don’t stay somewhere you feel is slowly degrading and darkening.
People often underestimate how fast societal change occurs.
Trends compound year over year, and change is exponential. After 10 years, an up trend makes you rich, while a down trend leaves you in accelerated decay.
It’s not so important if you start off better. In 10 years, you will end up much poorer.
Regretfully, I’ve noticed that people’s forethought on the direction of their society is not as mature as I’m laying out.
Most place too much weight on the past 10 years than the logical end point for the next 10 years.
Michael Malice has tweeted on this phenomenon, calling it living in the permanent present:
i dont think you appreciate how common it is for many, many humans to live in a permanent psychological present, devoid of any reference to future planning or past experiences.
Most discount the past. They ignore its lessons. They live in the permanent present. The only thing in their mind is what the media peddles.
And they stay in their declining country longer than they should.
They wait and see. They listen to the media. They buy the narrative that things are not that bad, telling them the government is not as corrupt as your eyes would tell you.
Isn’t this propaganda 101? “Don’t believe your own eyes seeing your country crumbling”, “Keep Calm and Carry On, be a good citizen”.
In Canada’s case, Jordan Peterson put it well (19:25-20:40) in the interview Oh, Canada with Julie Ponesse (2022) when he said that to accept that all your once trustworthy institutions are corrupt and lying to you is too much to swallow for some. It’s easier to drink the Kool-Aid and accept the narrative that the truckers, forewarning Canada’s decline, are insurrectionists and go about your day.
They only realize their country is degrading when they already feel the pain.
They only wake up when the kettle is boiling hot. To little too late.
This is partly due to:
- (1) The Anchoring bias for what we are familiar with, for what we consider normal.
- (2) High initial frictional costs involved in changing your circumstances. Figuring out how to move countries takes work. It’s much easier to stay put, status quo.
- (3) Then comes the uncertainty of change. Will it be worse than here? Is the grass really greener?
- (4) Finally, people rationalize their decisions on the historical reputation of where they live, not on their current and future state.
This way of thinking is many people’s default.
Even if life has gotten worse, and is getting worse, they don’t change. They rationalize! It’s easier! For now.
All these mental traps come together to make people “wait and see”.
This is the wrong choice.
Doing the work to set yourself up with more options is the right choice, of course.
Find somewhere up-and-coming has less demand (yet, until people catch on) for a better and improving quality of life.
But people cram into egregiously expensive apartments to compete with thousands for mediocre-paying jobs to live in a needle and crime infested dump.
That’s New York City. That’s Canada more generally.
Why would you want to live through a decline? Each year, having less money, higher taxes, more crime, less freedom, more instability?
Obviously, you wouldn’t.
People rationalize that it won’t happen to them, not here. Because plugging a cognitive dissonance inciting you to move is easier than taking action.
People are not good at imagining that the future can be dramatically different than the past. The average person bases their understanding of the world on less than a lifetime’s worth of experience.
They have no idea about Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuala, Persia (Iran), Lebanon, South Africa, Yugoslavia … that all built up to a rapid collapse, relegating most of their citizens to extreme poverty, hunger, starvation and death. Some to the present day. They irrationally deny that Canada and Western Europe (the UK, Ireland, France, Germany +) are all marching to similar fates.
And so they change nothing.
Even if the evidence showing the opposite is mounting. They either do not seek it (no need if you know nothing is wrong) and/or they reject it and treat it as anecdotal. Because they don’t want to change.
Uncomfortable facts conveniently fade. The permanent present persists.
Until it’s too late.
