RyanHoliday.net:

"The men in mail were somewhat of an obstacle, as the iron plates did not yield to javelins or swords; but our men, snatching up hatchets and pickaxes, hacked at their bodies and their armor as if they were as if they were battering a wall. Some beat down the unwieldy mass with pikes and forked poles, and they were left lying on the ground, without an effort to rise, like dead men." Tacticus, The Annals

This is why efforts to be closed, protected, secure and insulated fail in a fluid marketplace. At Platea, a Persia general lay on his back weighed down by armor, impenetrable until a Spartan put a spear through the eye hole of his helmet.

You get the point. It doesn't work.

There are too many people, they have too many resources and the speed of transactions, iterations and judgments are increasingly fast. So let go, be good and see what happens.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Every few weeks I wake up to something that makes me grin from ear to ear. Like ten thousand uniques overnight, a job offer, an email from an author I read, the front page of Digg, or a reminder of how good I have it. I get so excited that I don't know what to do. That's when I remember: "This is why I'm doing this. And I'm doing pretty well too."

I've pointed myself towards a position that allows as many positive life-changing experiences to happen as possible. This is what Taleb talks about in The Black Swan. Is it more likely that an utterly unexpected event will wipe you out completely or put you on top of the world? If it all went to shit, at the absolute worst, I go back to school and start over. I did alright there. I'll be fine. And no one can ever take away what happened, what I was able to do. The best case is almost too good to quantify.

I keep saying this but it is not easy. Most mornings you wake up and nothing happened. You get The Fear. You hold onto your principles, your faith in yourself contrary to all posted evidence. Sometimes you break down and have turn to some to someone and completely open up: "What the fuck am I supposed to do?" You see people and wonder what obliviousness feels like and maybe wish for it a little. The stress of knowing there is always something left undone, that you're letting people down, that you got in over your head. The little twinge of accomplishment you feel at people's jealousy--and the counterbalance of its loneliness. And of course, the Damoclean notion of knowing that others were here too and failed and got fucked. You worry about stuff that a 20 year old isn't supposed to worry about. Like getting cornered, selling out, or being over exposed. Making sure you don't spin off the planet.

We can sit here and talk about the strength it takes to push through. No question it is a requirement. Still, it is unrepresentatively glamorous. There is also the numbness. A internalized hardness that keeps the stresses from cracking the core. You need that. But it doesn't translate well to the rest of your life. Nor is it a particularly pleasant state, to feel cold and apathetic.

Is it worth it? That's not a question that I can really answer. See, I don't have another choice. I can't be anyone else. You're only fucking fooling yourself if think you do either. Can you find yourself and be happy? Everyday, do you check a few things off that list? Homo faber. Have you positioned yourself for good gains and manageable losses? And then also understand that you still stand the risk of being totally fucked? If you still want to do it then you're probably onto to something good. As Godin says, the Dip creates scarcity and scarcity creates value. There's a reason this stuff is hard, it weeds out the weak. And unfortunately, sometimes the sane.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

-When a decentralized organization is attacked, it tends to become more decentralized

-When a centralized organization is attacked, it tends to become more centralized

The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

The logic of an entrenched player is to streamline the existing process. If you're the US Military, you design a billion dollar top-down digital communication system that allows every soldier to carry a camera so that the Generals know exactly what is going on. You see yourself falling behind and finally start to address the problems you've been ignoring for a long time.

But in the end it is all strategically irrelevant. You're never going to be able to add enough horses to the wagon to beat a car. The paradigm is shattered. Utterly shattered. The answer to massive efficiency disparities is not to think outside the box--Boyd told us that the notion of the box itself is constraining. The answer is to stop trying to win that way because winning is impossible. Centralized will never beat decentralized. And from that assumption you can find success again. Like the Stoics said, remember all the people that dug their heels in and fought, did they ever manage to defy nature or were they buried like all the rest?

What an innovative thinker would do is find a way to centralize your enemy (as you slowly decentralize). That probably means giving them power and letting it corrupt. Decentralized movements are able to survive off illegal enterprise, instead of attacking it and pushing them further into it, give them legal enterprise to centralize around. etc.

But look, chances are none of us are ever going to be in the position where we have to deal with a massively decentralized enemy. In real life, we have other concerns that make pure, logical business decisions difficult. That's not why this important. It matters because it is strategic thinking at its very essence. Instead of looking at the situation from the framed lens you were given, what if you torn it all down? What if you took nothing for granted, got creative and came up with something inspired? I want to beat my fucking head against the wall when I talk to people about this stuff. They just.don't.get.it.

You get all sorts of cognitive dissonance, rationalization, and this myopic focus on incrementally improving what we already have. That's because they've tied who they are to that system--even if they were never a part of it, there is just too much uncertainty in chaos and speed and decentralization. These always have and always will be the fodder people. In business and especially in war, the last thing you want to be is fodder--a body that gets thrown at a problem. You want to be the person that transcends it. Ultimately, this all ties in to the stuff I have been trying to make sense of recently: vision, curiosity, contrarianism, relentlessness, and efficiency.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 04:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I bet this Monte Carlo fire, with the shut down of the strip, the Miss America contest this weekend, lost revenue at the Hotel and Casino, damage to the building and reputation, potential lawsuits, etc... will be one of the TOP losers in casino history for the company that manages "risk" everyday

TheExecutive putting Taleb's The Black Swan down to a single sentence. And also, why we have no idea what we're talking about when it comes to predictions and planning.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"So choose yourself a Cato--or, if Cato seems too severe for you, a Laelius, a man whose character is not quite so strict. Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won't make crooked straight. " - Seneca Letters from a Stoic

Who is your Cato? And are you letting him down?

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 06:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Why is the system failing? Why can't old players take footholds in new mediums? Maybe it's because no one has any idea what they're talking about. When experts predict massive upheaval and the bottom falling out of industries, they're often very vague. You're left to assume that in general, most people are decent and knowledgeable and the problems are all a result of poor leadership. The reality is that there is pervasive ignorance--that if the best are clueless, the mediocre are even worse.

I'll give two quick examples, the first one being this abortion of a TechCrunch article:

FunnyorDie Hangs In There: Good Content Still The Key

As Duncan Riley tried to weigh in on online video, he butchered the names of two huge movie stars, called a video a hit that by any comparative metric was an abysmal failure despite major pushes and huge buzz, and wasn't aware that College Humor allowed you to embed videos...even though their service predated YouTube. This is one of the top writers at TechCrunch failing at his most basic duty: Knowing what the fuck he is talking about. And that's not even addressing the logical fallacy that was the entire thrust of his post.

On the reverse, Hollywood is equally clueless about technology. I plucked this from a deal memo I saw on Tuesday.

... [we will provide a] "traffic-allocating custom-designed widget"...

Uh...That doesn't exist. It is the figment of someone's verbose imagination. I guess it sounds good. Unfortunately it contradicts both the general purpose of widgets (which have a horrible track record) and the purpose of the deal in question. Presented to anyone who knows the slightest bit about the internet, it will immediately send off all sorts of warning flags. Ensuing laughter aside, it's endemic of the mindset that the game is still the same it just has different buzz words. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are two lessons we can learn from these (which are but samples of what any fresh face will see in old places), one pleasant and another that is incredibly difficult to swallow. And they often are at odds with each other.

One, there is a huge opportunity for anyone smart enough to cut through the bullshit and actually do the learning. 50 Cent calls the person who has overwhelming knowledge of the subject the "lion in the room" because no matter what, if they're present, you're going to be watching them out of the corner of your eye, knowing they'll pounce if you get out of line. It's not all that hard either. The facts are all out there for free. People who would have charged you just to say "hello" ten years ago are publishing all of their thoughts openly. You can follow Tucker's Del.icio.us feed and mooch of his hard work. What are my credentials other than that I read and think a lot and had mentors kind enough to notice?

Two, most people have never had the slightest clue. This is what TheExecutive pounds repeatedly into my idealistic head. Just because someone is ignorant, even a buffoon, it doesn't mean they don't have power. Having the opposite doesn't automatically entitle you to success. Being wrong with connections is still incredibly valuable. His point is that we do not live in a vacuum and there are other things at play than pure strategy like jealousy, rage, friendship, favors, greed, sex, tax write-offs and macro, macro picture thinking. Since that we have finite lives and resources, being entrenched isn't always a bad thing--it means you're difficult to dislodge. Not everyone "cares" as much as you. So as completely ludicrous as the above quote is, it will probably work because there is a ton of dumb money and dumb money works at all the same banks that smart money does. You have to be able to go around them or work with them or you'll beat yourself to death on their ossified bodies. Self-Righteousness is no better, it is just as strategically dangerous as stupidity. (It's what I need to work on)

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Last month, I started editing Wikipedia articles. I don't know why. Certainly it wasn't because I had a surplus of free time. I just recently had to start waking up two hours earlier so I could taste daylight again. But I've been finding cracks of time that I could jam this into.

There is a hunger there that I don't really understand. I don't feel right if I don't run. Two books a week or I'm stagnating. Nothing is better than mulling some big, macro idea over--picking at it until it crumbles into understanding. Then translating it, explaining it and applying it. I've been doing that with Wikipedia pages, connecting articles and creating news ones based on my research. It's awesome and I am so much better at articulating what was nebulous before.

The False-Consensus Bias (which I happen to have edited) is the assumption that everyone thinks like us. That there is this sort of hovering agreement between whatever we are and what society happens to believe. I don't have any illusions about this. Clearly, it is not normal. It's almost pathologically weird.

I can't teach you how to have that. I certainly can't give it to you. But I would encourage you to find whatever that is for you and chase it. I have no idea why I am the way I am. Maybe there is some big hole that I'm trying to fill and I'll never be able to. If there is, I'll figure it out. In the meantime, that power and energy is working for me. And editing articles facilitates that. If you're like me, it could work for you too. On a larger plane though, the effort should always be to find the rabbit holes to fall into, to channel those forces into something productive and see where it takes you.

Or, I guess there is always this alternative: "I sort of like arguing, maybe I'll be a lawyer."

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Thank you for your feedback.

Posted by Ben Corman at 03:20 PM | Permalink

It doesn't matter who you are or how many things you have left to be done, somewhere there is someone who would kill you for a thousand dollars or for a vile of crack or for getting in their way. A car could hit you in an intersection and drive your teeth back into your skull.

Its a fun question to say "What would I change about my life if the doctor told me I had cancer?" And then we go "Well thank God I don't have cancer." We do. That death sentence has already been decreed. Every second probability is eating away at the chances that you'll be alive tomorrow; something is coming and you'll never be able to stop it. All I have is to be ready for when that day comes--to be able to say "I would have liked to go a little longer, but this works too."

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A beaten wing which is put out of joint decides the fate of all that was connected with it. Von Clausewitz' On War

But what is the center of gravity for an insurgency or any guerrilla movement? In Iraq, on which joint does the rest hinge? I would assert that they don't have one. Maybe because they are not a "they." It's like saying "what's the center of gravity of capitalism?" Marx said it was the means of production. That you could seize them and the system would crumble. What he didn't understand is that factories and private property, those are all just expressions of capitalism, not capitalism itself. For insurgents in Iraq, there is no center of gravity. And it's why they are an enemy we can hardly understand, let alone defeat.

That's the parable facing newspapers as they try to fight blogs and the internet. "How can we undercut them?" THERE IS NO THEM. What you're fighting isn't a group with ideas or a vision or even a goal, you're fighting progress. You're fighting people; people who have an inevitable drive towards power, status and wealth. People act on that impulse. Corporations do not. if you read Gonzo Marketing, he really drives that home. A corporation can't care about a cause, or love or hate something or even want to make money. A corporation wants nothing but to exist. People, obviously, want more than that. So as you get further from that core, efficiency diminishes.

Maybe it's because in an office or in a company, you become less concerned with your position in the world as a whole and entirely focused on your position within that microcosm. You lose the forest for the trees--and big movements and change can't work that way. For instance, I spent pretty much all of yesterday trying to find a bathroom key so I wouldn't piss myself and pondering why it needs to be locked in the first place. That doesn't happen at my house. A terrorist in Iraq doesn't focus as much on rank or stars or procedure, it's about killing, going home and then killing some more.

What is so fundamentally revolutionary about the internet is that it has made it possible to scale without size. (Or have a military without mass) You can have the reach of a huge company without the politik and the strife and the stupidity that comes with the whole 'a person is smart but people are not 'concept. What technology does it is allows for individuals to wield the power and force of thousands but by themselves. It harnesses individuality and collective strength at the same time. Military Intelligence stops being an oxymoron.

Over the last two thousand years, guerrilla warfare has continually shown itself to be the most efficient of all military strategies. It's not the highest form, it is formlessness. Without a center of gravity, there is nothing to attack. That leaves the enemy with two options: Withdraw or Engage on the new plane.

Both personally and strategically, how do you remove your center of gravity? Simply being aware of them is not enough. Hierarchical decentralization is the worst of both. Howard Dean was this, not big enough for mass but concentrated enough that a scream decimated him. For many companies I think that is going to mean an utter restructuring of the business or in most cases, dying and then starting over. More relevant to us, how does a decentralized company refrain from the pressure to centralize?

It is actually the same question. And that's what Tapscott meant when he said that companies become ossified in their own success. Today, in the newspaper analogy blogs are not a thing and bloggers are not a they. It is just the force of progress and innovation, something that is impossible to defeat. But as it develops and certain models because successful, people who take the easy route will imitate and follow. That is, they will become the enemy--dependent on a single stream or the status quo. They will form around a center of gravity. They will no longer be part of an amorphous, decentralized network and become corporations or armies. They commit strategic suicide.

The smartest people I know are trying to avoid that. I think you probably should to.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I am thinking that there should be some ethical guidelines regarding the praise that goes on book jackets.

The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason (which is excellent) features a giant quote from Seth Godin on the front. Coincidentally, Seth is quoted pretty liberally throughout the book as an expert. Or even more egregious, in Know How by Ram Charan, there is praise from the CEOs who just happen to all be subjects in the book lauded for their leadership skills. Do you think Steven Covey's opinion that it was "brilliant and immensely practical" had anything to do with the Ram making an example of his "know how?" Which brings us to "Advance Praise" which has the balls to ignore even the pretension of propriety. Someone mailed me a book to review last week and the back cover has 13 different quotes on the back and it hasn't even been released yet.

As books become cheaper and faster to publish and blogs become increasingly reputable as alternatives, destroying the credibility that comes along with the jacket praise is probably not the best idea. I quit Know How when I realized that Ram wasn't going to be drawing any ethical lines between author and salesman, reporter and friend.

So where do you draw the line? I don't think the subjects of the books should praise it on the cover, just like a newspaper wouldn't let them write a review about it. And even more generally, it's probably inappropriate for Google CEO Eric Schmidt to be lavishing compliments on books that "coincidentally" happen to validate the business model of his company like Wikinomics and The Long Tail. Is it just me or are these textbook conflict of interest cases?

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We've talked before about how hard it is, but let's revisit. It's fucking hard. We've talked a bit about what it's like try and run the marathon--to consciously set out on a path totally your own, to train and attempt something many think is foolish. But let's try this marathon, what we face as we stand on the cusp on an entirely new age.

As everything I see and read and hear converges, I become more convinced of a single conclusion. That the whole fucking world has been built on a foundation of lies, of exploitation, of moving food around on a plate. And it's not working anymore. The Emperor Has No Clothes. Apparently, he never did.

I know it's hard to believe but many of the people you respect from afar, cherish for their business acumen, or generally defer to as intelligent are utterly incompetent. Literally, people who were on the top of industrial power just a few short years ago are stumbling around like idiots, clutching for just a shred of their former kingdom. And we have a generation of carpetbaggers who think they can beat them to the chase--like what they had is worth holding on to.

Think about how scary that really is--that hey, even though it's still working today, still pulling in millions of dollars, I am going to stay clear of it because it could fail in the future. It's called the Entrenched Player's Dilemma for a reason. And the difference between a dilemma and a problem is that problems have solutions. What we stand on the face today is as big a change as the Industrial Revolution--a fundamental shift in technology and interaction that will force a realignment in how we fight our wars, govern our people, discover or create meaning, accumulate wealth, and the organizational structure of our cities. A change in literally almost every aspect of life.

And so culture shifts with it. How we think shifts with it. Who we are shifts with it. So you have a choice, are you going to lead, muddle along or die in the transitional chaos. It's not easy. It's so fucking easy to be a douche. To throw words around like viral and openness and change but then get your nails done and think about ways you can sell the infant off into prostitution.

Consider for the first time that there is an alternative course. You don't have to buy in. It's hard sure, but it's certainly not harder than it used to be. It's like John Galt standing up in the middle of the meeting and saying that he'd had enough, that he'd destroy their world. And then doing it...

With a large group of young, hungry people willing to take the pyramid/privilege model seriously, Hollywood has no business model. Privilege and fear are never far from one another. And the writers I knew, for all the yakkin' I heard about "the integrity" of their craft, were as every bit as complicit in preserving the pyramid scheme as anyone else I met. Hugh/GapingVoid

Again, buying in makes sense. I know all about the sucker's payoff. But I also know about the dead cat bounce. At 20, we're faced with a choice. At any age, in any position, you've got decide today whether you want to exist in this universe much longer or not. And that means a total change in how you think, how you plan and how you live your life.

Can you cut the ties and run hard and fast? Can you resist the impulse to extract--to rape value? Instead, trying to create it for yourself and the others whenever possible. Can you understand that differences in efficiency structures and stop trying to play God? The Zero-Sum Game is dead. Can you ignore pageviews and Alexa? Cherish influence and connection. Can you drop the buzzwords and the bullshit and just be honest? Analysis. Insight. Surprise. Responsibility. Humor Creativity. Guts. Respect. Charisma. Vision. Calm. Love...

from: Tucker Max tuckermax @ gmail.com to: ryan.holiday @ gmail.com, date: Jan 10, 2008 7:34 PM

There a very people like me and you. And they generally get rid of us or co-opt us before we destroy them.

There is this Aurelius line about sticking with the right thing, even though they'll "stab you with knives and shower you with curses." The right thing here is so intuitive that it's counterintuitive. Looking for something that helps, that entertains, that you don't try to trick people into paying more than its worth. Thinking less about eyeballs and more about people. Forgetting business school because no matter how well you master it, the lessons will never mean more than the love, the passion and the energy.

These are the things I am learning here in Hollywood. Figuring them out, one by one. Seeing the illusions shattered and ironically, the idealism strengthening. So that is my question, what are you setting yourself up to be? A relic, a carpetbagger or a wolf like me?

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Good Stuff
Free To Do Anything, Part 1

"I learned something about that little voice inside, the one you silence with rationalization or bury with office paperwork. He finds other ways to be subversive. He doesn't like being kept on the path. That voice is as obstinate as a child, but he's telling you how to behave like a man."

NPR: Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect
They don't challenge it, they reaffirm it.

Essay on Marcus Aurelius--Matthew Arnold

Bad Stuff
Full Frontal Feminism--Jessica Valenti
Saying that this is an awful book is really unfair because it's not even a book. It's a 250 page blog post (that is awful). It is also proof that most bloggers shouldn't be given publishing deals and that Women's Studies is without a doubt the least scholarly of all college majors.

Future Shock--Alvin Toffler
In the first wave, power came from violence or force. In the second, the Industrial Revolution, power came from wealth. Today, it comes from knowledge. The battle for the future is going to be over information. Unfortunately, the book takes 500 pages to say that.

Art and Fear--David Bayles
Decent, but not nearly as good as the War of Art.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I got a puppy a little over a month ago. And so far, it's been a pretty awesome decision. I've wanted one for a long time. I was always planning on getting a French Bulldog and naming him The Colonel but it was way off in the distant future. My girlfriend would bring it up once or twice a week "I thought you said you were getting a dog." I would make some excuse about how I would do it after I got paid for this or have that settled down or how I was waiting for the right moment. It was all bullshit.

And then one day it hit me: What am I doing? Why am I putting off the one thing I really want to do when everyday I readily accept shit that I don't want to do? I thought I had priorities...so then I just did it. I got the cash from an ATM, picked it up from some family and named it after an elephant. We walked around Petsmart in the leash and collar we hadn't even bought yet.

I only get to see her on the weekends and it breaks my heart. For some reason, I've been a very cold person my whole life. You can imagine the problems that has created. But it's started to go away. I sprint inside to see her. She sits on my chest when I do situps. She licks the phone when she hears me talking to her mommy from LA. She had a reaction to her shots last week and I spent all day in a fit that made it impossible to work. When you come home after leaving her by herself you can see the marks on the floor length mirror where she tried to play with that other puppy that keeps teasing her. She drinks from her water dish too fast and then she gets the hiccups...every single morning.

Who knows, maybe it won't work out. Maybe it will be a stupid decision. I'll take responsibility for that. I'll clean up whatever mess I create for myself. I'll try not to justify or rationalize or project whatever the ramifications are. If something happens between my girlfriend and I, I'll navigate whatever difficulties come up. All that is just logistics. And logistics--well, they're nothing to live your live by.

If you can find something that brings you joy or contentment that isn't destructive or dangerous, I think you should do it. My benchmark has always been this: When you're sitting alone, quietly, your mind blank and unfocused--does it bring you peace? If your answer to that question is yes then you have found something rare, something that should be followed until it ends. Even if it's fleeting.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This is what I was trying to say:

"The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than real brilliancy." de la Rochefoucauld

When I said this:

I'm not the best at a lot of things. Most of the time, the stuff people talk about makes my head spin and I get confused pretty easily. But I make due with what I've got. Being smart or talented or having the right equipment--none of that is all that rare. But to get up do a thousand miles or punched in the face or write a hundred pages or strike a deal or read a book or make a phone call without anyone telling you to? That's almost unheard of.

I found it after and I like his better.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Marcus Aurelius on the Sex/Cash Theory.

"If you had a step mother and a real mother, you would pay your respects to your stepmother, yes...but it's your real mother you would go home to. The court...and philosophy: keep returning to it, to rest in its embrace. Its what makes the court--and you--endurable."

I'm not sure I agree with either take, that you need to have your life's passion and then a career that subsidizes it: the court/philosophy dichotomy. Then again, I'm way to young to have any idea what the fuck I'm talking about there. It's worth a try though.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There is this guy who emails me 3-4 times a week about nothing but Ron Paul. For the last few months he has been ebullient, sending me updates every time he hits a fundraising benchmark or eats a sandwich. And then today he sent me this:

After learning more about the election process in this country and the various "powers that be", Ron Paul faces more than we enthusiastic supporters can overcome....in this current election. And as you said, even if he were to be elected, there wouldn't be enough broad support for his ideas right away. It took me reading this article below [that admits Ron Paul will never be president] to finally come to grips with it and see what needs to be done moving forward.

Anyone who understands basic economics should know the Law of Diminishing Returns--that when one of your variables in fixed, returns decrease over time. The result were inevitable. The internet is a fixed variable, a loud one, but ultimately a fixed and small one.

But it doesn't have to be over. The only thing he ought to be giving up now is the strategic suicide that is the current plan. Never fight a war of attrition unless you have to. Forget buttons and primaries and the FCC and going door to door--all that body-throwing bullshit. American elections are very much spend, spend, spend and then hope to win by a percentage point. So, it should be obvious to most rational people now, that Ron Paul cannot win a normal victory. That doesn't mean he can't force a change.

Here are his strategic assets (or disadvantages, depending on how you think):

[*] Access to cheap money
[*] Mobile, dispersed supporters of a relatively small number
[*] No credibility in the eyes of the media [nothing left to lose]
[*] A fractured political landscape
[*] The ability to equalize or maximize efficiency through technology
[*] Vastly outnumbered and horrible odds

This is terrorism vs. nation-states. This is 4th Gen Warfare. And who normally comes out the winner, even if they're not the "victor"?

If we follow John Robb's guide to asymmetric conflict we know the levers he must hit: Menace, Mistrust and Uncertainty.

He should use the MASSIVE inequity in efficiency structures and utterly wreck havoc. He should be fighting a guerrilla campaign to embarrass all the other candidates by exposing their bullshit, he should be making sure that they win by as little as possible (decreasing their political capital and ability to make change once in office) and exposing the flaws in the system.

So what could he do? [Off the top of my head?]

[*] Pay people to follow candidates around the interrupt their speeches. Start screaming about Hillary's Alinsky thesis until the media has to address it. Film them and release them on YouTube.
[*] Take federal matching funds (doubling his money) and then spend it subversively. Stand outside convenience stores in New York and give people their cigarette tax back. Do the same in California to people with the gas taxes.
[*] Run commercials about how easy and permanent it would be to bribe a member of the Electoral College into changing their vote.
[*] Focus on fragmented or polarized districts to narrow down the margins of victory for whoever ends up winning.
[*] Avoid the popular vote entirely and try to take as many individual districts as possible.
[*] Bankroll serious investigations into voter fraud or media bias and then give it away to reporters.
[*] Fund the campaigns of other 3rd Party Candidates to further reduce the political capital of the future president.
[*] Address opponents directly: Find one or two things that you want each candidate to commit to and just accost them until they do. Get them to do it on television or radio. Every time you make an appearance, demand how they haven't yet and claim you'll leave them alone when you do.

That is the question. If you took over Ron Paul's campaign and rid it of the foolish notion of victory, how would you spend the money to sow the most Menace, Mistrust and Uncertainty?

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)

"When a slave cannot be whipped he is more than half free. He has a domain as broad as his own manly heart to defend and he is really a 'power on earth.'" Douglass, Frederick My Bondage and My Freedom

What if you no longer submitted to the threat of getting fired? Or you could ignore criticism? Or if you knew you'd be alright if you got dumped? Or if you finally realized that life was going to work itself out so long as you kept your head about you? What if you lost the fear?

That's a different kind of freedom. I am starting to think that it makes you better at all those things

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Informational Cascades are crucial drivers of choice. They've directed the course of evolutionary history and are responsible for many of our widely held beliefs. But the physical constraints of life normally govern the impact of such things since I don't know exactly what decisions other people are making. The internet changes that pretty radically--I know exactly how many times a video has been seen on YouTube, the Alexa rank of a blog, the amount of diggs an article got and what purchases or interest my friends have according to their Facebook profile. I am more susceptible to thinking "Hey, I should like this because other people like it."

They work like this:

Person 1 is faced between choices A and B. They choose A. Person 2 is faced with the same choice AND the knowledge that the subject before them went with A. The balance is tipped in that direction. Now, even if they choose B, Person 3 just starts the chain over. They're deciding between A and B with 1 and 2 canceling each other out. Then their decision influences all those who come after until often so many A's in a row make it irrational to go with B (even if B is better).

And so you see how easy it is for these chains start and how hierarchically dependent they are on the earliest players. As cascades form--an overwhelming favor of either A or B--people stop thinking for themselves and start letting others do it for them. This is how we get memes, Justin Timberlake, untrue beliefs that won't go away, and people doing stupid things for no reason. For instance, Chief Seattle's speech on property rights is the basis for much of our perception of Native American beliefs...but it's totally false. Consensus leads us to accept it as true when a quick look at the facts say the opposite. Or more dangerously, people think that since a direction is the direction that most people head in, they ought to go the same way. The data is dictating their lives instead of dictating the data with theirs.

I think that it is a rather simple syllogism to live by: When you follow others, you add nothing to the information pool.

So go your own way. Carve your own path. I'm trying and it's pretty goddamn hard. Carve a path. No matter how much it bothers other people, however much you're "messing up what we had going here" or labels you get branded with ("even if it lands you in a straight jacket or a padded cell"), they can't argue with the facts. And the facts state that those who make their own choices, independent of "common opinion", contribute more to our understanding of what works and what doesn't then anyone else.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Barbarians at the Gate--Brian Burroughs
Details the LBO of RJR Nabisco and what quickly became a 25 billion dollar clusterfuck. Reading these books is always surreal--like American Psycho without the irony. The best part, to me anyway, is after reading about how these guys acted and treated people with their "big swinging dick" mentality is looking at pictures. Most of them look like complete douchebags--old, oofy men unaware of their lameness. Which just goes to show that it doesn't matter how many Gucci suits you buy or how many war analogies you apply to your business, in the end meaning can not be manufactured. None of them really accomplished anything. What mark is it on history that you tore apart a company and put it back together for some fees? No question, LBOs did a lot to shake up and reinvigorate archaic companies (media definitely could use this). Most of the guys that did it though, were just fancy used car salesmen.

All Marketers are Liars--Seth Godin
A quick read, but good. Says that people don't buy what they need anymore--we have pretty much everything necessarily for survival--and that the future is providing things that tell a story. A marketer is the person that transforms a product into an authentic lie (contradiction on purpose) that provides the customer something to live through or by. Tucker is a master at this: Is he selling funny anecdotes or is it all a story about living Thompson's "myth and legend"?

Cesar's Way--Cesar Millan
Trying to train my puppy. The show is awesome and so is the book. It doesn't matter if you have a dog or not, learning to be calm-assertive is something we all can work on.

Free Prize Inside--Seth Godin
The follow-up to Purple Cow. This is my fourth or fifth Godin book. There is a section in the middle called "A Passel of Tactics" that is an applicable version of the 48 Laws. It tells you how to work within a system to create change. He says rightfully that a great idea is never enough. You're better set having a good idea with leverage. You should read it just for the tactics section. I think you can find it for free online.

The Four Hour Work Week--Tim Ferriss
I started rereading it for my post on Tim's blog. Totally forgot he liked Seneca.

Academic Papers/Misc
Evolution of Human Bipedalism: A Hypothesis About Where It Happened--LP La Lumiere
A short, 6 page paper about Aquatic Ape Theory. The idea is that a some point in evolutionary history a group of apes were stranded on an island and forced into the ocean for survival. This is where we developed bipedalism (walking on two legs), our affinity for Omega-3, relative hairlessness and ability to swim. This author thinks it happened near the coast of Africa where the Danakil Alps were mostly submerged by the rising sea. The whole idea seems fascinating to me and I'm trying to read as much as I can on it. If anyone has anything good, please send it.

The Commanding Heights: Battle for the World Economy--PBS ( 6 hr, DVD Boxset)
I should probably do a post on this but if I don't, watch the DVD. The first disc is about the battle of ideas in economics--Hayek vs Keynes, Chicago School of Economics vs the rest of the academic world. The second disc is about the turmoil of reform, after Milton Friedman won the battle, after the Soviet Union collapsed. And then the last one is called the Rules of the Game and it's about how to succeed on this new frontier. If anything, get the first disc on Netflix just for its history of the world economy from the Industrial Revolution forward.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I came across this while doing research for the music project I talked about before.

Top Band Sites According to Alexa
1. Emusic.com
2. Iron Maiden
3. Nightwish
4. Backstreets.com (Bruce Springsteen)
5. Linkin Park

Alexa is no gospel, but from any context, the rankings are shocking. Iron Maiden shouldn't be anywhere on that list. They haven't had a platinum album in the United States in over 19 years. You never hear them on the radio and outside their core audience, most people think they're a joke. Nightwish? Using conventional logic, their position is almost unexplainable.

So how is Iron Maiden on the list? How do they have a 7,000 Alexa Rank when Eminem and Fergie are at 75,000 and 20,000 respectively? For one, there is clearly a large demographic that is not being served by traditional radio and pop-culture. And when the distribution walls no longer exist--as they don't online--the habits and tastes of consumers radically change. What Hollywood and mass-media does is create a round hole that makes it impossible for square pegs to go through. Then as gatekeepers, they can shape and control what constitutes a successful artist. All of that is artificial and relies on what Godin calls the 3 legged stool of the FCC, strict copyrighting, and limited retail outlets. The internet gets rid of all three--a massive power vacuum...

And mostly, I think it has a lot to do with this:

"There is an unspoken contract between the band and the audience. If you're David Bowie and your fans want you to change every album then thats his style. With Maiden, that's not our style, fans like us to play something thats identifiable; they want to see nuances of change but they're happy with Maiden. Maiden's music appeals to a certain person and in every generation theres a certain amount of those people born, thats why Maidens appeal is finite in terms of the number of records we sell in the short term."
Bruce Dickinson

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Followup to: Being Free from Perturbation Pt. 1, Pt. 2 and Pt. 3

If you can't accept doing things differently, you've got a shitty ride ahead of you. Apart from the radical changes we face in business, the way we live our lives is going to change as well. Think of the medical advances that every day extend people's lives, think simply of the population increases and how that will redefine our notions of comfort, status and home. As control of the commanding heights of the world economy leaves the hands of the state, what of our notions of hierarchy and structure? There are still people alive today that were born in the 1800's--there were Americans living in holes then.

A while back I worked with a friend on a paper and I was enraged by their work style (not to be confused with ethic). In school, or when I have deadlines, I almost always finish the night before it's due. If I had a test at 3pm on Friday, I'd have finished studying by the time I went to bed on Thursday. I can't possibly conceive the stress that goes along with doing it any other way. That's just how I am.

And so I heard them say "Oh, I have a few hours to work on it in the morning before my other class" I was appalled. "How can you live like that?" But then I saw the paper after it was done and I was genuinely impressed (and not just because I wrote most of it). Clearly, my attitude is the one that is unhealthy. I react like that all the time. Who am I to say that any one way is better than another? And more importantly, why do I care? It shouldn't affect me either way. But it does; I am incapacitated by it. That has to change.

So how free are you really? You can't be free from perturbation and still be enslaved to control. You're clutching at fucking sand--sand that will inevitably slip from your fingers just like your sanity. That's what I do and if you've yet to experience it, I hope you never join that hell. It pushes you away from people you have nothing but love for and it makes it nearly impossible for you to keep your mouth shut.

We (I) can sit here and criticize slow moving behemoths, out of touch idiots and people who will be justifiably out of a job in the near, near future, but it will make no difference if we don't actively prepare to face the same pressures ourselves. Just a few years ago Google didn't exist, the record industry was at massive highs, cell phones were for adults only, and we hadn't been marred by a foreign attacker on our own soil since the 40's. The profundity of those changes is so massive that we've yet begun to try and make sense of them. And what things like Moore's Law or the Law of Disruption tell us is that such momentum is exponential. The cycle gets faster and then it gets faster and faster, faster, faster, faster. If you thought today was chaotic, wait for tomorrow. Our future will be one of constant adaptation and of coming to terms with change.

But forget business--and let go of the megalomaniacal hubris that is thinking you can bend the world to accept your demands instead of the other way around--you cannot be happy this way. Freedom from perturbation is the state in which neither your actions nor the actions of others dislodge your from your center. Your peace, ironically, is guarded best by everything but the effort to protect it. There is that saying about catching more with an open hand than a closed fist...

If you can't accept new systems, understand alternative means of action or the imposition of different cultural norms, all you'll ever be is angry. "Why can't it just be easier?" "But my way makes so much more sense!" So the fuck what. This is what Aurelius called "silently weeping over the chains that bind us," except for in this case, they are illusory. They only exist so long as you let them. So we might not be built for the age that is upon us, but then again, we weren't really built for anything but walking around in groups 150 on the plains of Africa (or the ocean, perhaps). If you want to be among that happy minority, of whom held the same characteristics 1,000 years ago as they should now, I think the key is transcendence--controlling the center not through tightness but extreme looseness. So, Phew. Breathe. Let it go. Accept the change. And move on.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a post up on Tim Ferriss' blog about using collaborative filtering to cut down the time spent in information costs.

12 Filtering Tips for Better Information in Half the Time: RSS, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 06:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)