I'm going to be the poster boy for a lack of self-control here.
This post is going to be in two parts; the first regarding informationwar and the second which is more on the personal side.
It is frustrating in that most of what I'm going to be writing about is almost word for word the same problems I was having when I wrote this:
Emotional Costs of Information War, Part Two
There is a saying, "fake it til you make it", which pretty much means that you keep trying to do something right, until you can do it right (or at least that's how I see it's meaning)...
Relating to informationwar
Every single thing I wrote in that last post (linked above) remains the same; there are some additions to the problem.
- I had no personal problems to exacerbate the emotional loss of control, so the problem was completely my own thinking.
- I got too wound up in hate to write effectively. Then I got pissed off at my lack of self-control to the point I didn't want to even write on Steemit.
- Discord was killing my Steemit productivity
- Managing informationwar did the same thing; I hate to admit this, but I wasn't even admitting it to myself the last time I dropped off.
The funny thing is that I continued dumping off mini-rants on Facebook. Nothing worth copying to Steemit, and like I said, I was hostile to the thought of actual writing.
The problem with hate is that it kills critical thinking. There is nothing wrong in hating the left in itself...it's approach to governance is self-indulgent, willfully ignorant, and pompous in that ignorance: this earns leftism the hatred it is regarded in by non-leftists. And I do some of my best writing in a cold rage.
But this wasn't cold rage...it was a monofocused intensity in which the only "answer" to any #informationwar question was decapitation strategy in one form or another.
That isn't critical thinking. So while hatred for the left and decap strategy have their proper places, those proper places are NOT in every sentence a person writes. They aren't an effective response for all problems, and in many cases are counter productive.
Let me point out the Assassins a a specific example:
Hassan-i Sabbah was the founder of a sub-sectof Ismaili Mohammedans (called the Asasiyun or "people who are faithful to the foundation [of the faith]". The group fought a war of resistance against the Sunni Caliphate.
The tactics they used were assassination (cough, cough, decap ops), terror, and psyops.
These tactics were successful in achieving some goals of the Asasiyun , but over time the sole use of these tactics made the group untrustworthy in the eyes of the public at large. Colin Wilson argues that humans desire order (as a generality); by waging a long term assassination campaign, the group made the Muslim world regard the Assassins as "snakes".
In the end, the Asasiyun were wiped out as an effective political force in Islam.
Control yourself (Steve!), control your thinking (Steve!), plan the best course of action (Steve!), and stay focused on the goal.
Don't be a Hashisin ;>
The solution?
Stop writing in the areas in which I have no self-control. Trump may drop the hammer on the Swamp, he may not. Doesn't mean there aint work to do on my part.
Do what you can, when you can, and take pride in that.
What that means is writing informationwar material that stays away from the lies of the Deep State and the left...theory and practice of IW, historical examples, etc...it means staying away from activities that I resent having to do "because I am the only one who will do them" (which is a whole set of shitty attitude of it's own), and it means writing about other things now and then, and more frequently.
On the personal side of this
I did not "fake it until I made it"...
That was what I was doing after that last post (link above); going through the motions without really getting into the writing.
So I said "screw it" and started bullshitting around with 2e AD&D...not playing it in a group but "running" my character through modules...I'll probably throw some of that into the gaming tag to make a Steemit quarter or two. I walked away from a commitment I made to publicly transfer ownership of the account to
because I was too enmeshed in hate to write one little post.
I messed around with that for a month and some days before I forced myself to regard it as a waste of time.
I was still going to the gym, and still taking care of things around the house, but that was it. I'm glad that I stayed the hell away from WOW and games like that.
I still wasn't able to get back into a self-control mode, which concerned me more than the hate level, so I tried some techniques I read up on...I won't post them since they didn't work for me.
I will share the following method that put me in more of a mind to get back to work
1- Do NOTHING but work, exercise, read, sleep well, and eat right for 7 days.
2- No old habits, no TV, no computer, no hobbies, no socializing, no drinking, no drogas
3- You aren't supposed to think, but I have never been able to turn off my brain OR my mouth.
This is supposed to reset your dopamine "settings", as you start building "good habits" when the week is up. Since you are so damn bored by a week of enforced inactivity, your brain is supposed to reward your new good habits with good squirts of dopamine juice!
I made it three days ;>
Like I said, I wasn't able to turn off the ol' brain. BUT, what I was thinking was that I needed to get back to writing...not just informationwar, but writing in general.
So that's what I'm doing now ;>