I once worked with a guy named Cake Man. That wasn’t his name, obviously, that’s what I called him after I watched him eat an entire ten-inch Wal-Mart cake for lunch. This guy was enormous, he stank, and he couldn’t move. It took him ten minutes to get out of a chair, and he was walking with a cane by age 30. I cannot fathom sitting down and eating an entire goddamn cake for lunch- and the funny thing is, I’ll bet five years ago he couldn’t fathom it either.
There is a cascade effect to obesity. It starts with having a bad day, so you have a slice of cake to boost your mood. The sugar crash hits, and suddenly you don’t feel like being active. The sugar sits in your body and turns into fat. Fat makes you weigh more, adding stress to your joints, making it harder to move and creating a whole slew of health problems. You’ll find yourself in a bad mood from not feeling well, and you eat more cake. A slice becomes two. Then four. Suddenly you’re stuffing ten inches of chocolatey crap down your craw in public. Some asshole from work gives you a mean nickname, which makes you eat more cake.
That’s the thing about life- nothing ever stays the same, but we tend to ignore small changes. Those changes come with compound interest, and next thing you know, you’ve got no idea how you got here.
I see cascades like this everywhere. I call them spirals. Spirals happen when small changes lead back into each other, creating a sort of feedback loop. They can lead either upward or downward. They are all around us because nothing is truly stagnant in life. I picked Cake Man as a classic case of a Downward Spiral. Every small step downward compounded, and it left him slowly hobbling to an early grave.
Spirals can go upward, too, but it takes more effort because you have to go against the natural decay of life. Most people won’t do it because of that effort, they’d rather live the illusion of stagnation. The same applies here- small steps upward have compound interest, and you’ll find yourself way ahead of where you were before without even paying attention- IF you’re willing to try.
I like to picture these spirals as a double helix, like a strand of DNA. On one side you have a Downward Spiral, on the other, an Upward Spiral. They are connected. If you are cascading downwards, is as simple as stepping onto the other side. You can make that step at any point in your cascade, and that goes for both directions. However, it is the nature of these things that it gets harder and harder to switch sides the further along the spiral you are.
At the end of the downward spiral is a horrible, painful catastrophe. In Cake Man’s theoretical case, it’s death by heart failure. As he gets closer and closer to that point, it becomes harder and harder to reverse course. He may need a drastic and invasive surgery just for a shot at switching to the Upward Spiral. This isn’t limited to overeating. In economics, inflation is a Downward Spiral. In politics, regulation is a Downward Spiral. If it’s really bad, there might be no recovery, and the only thing you can do is let it all come undone and allow someone to start a new Upward Spiral from the ashes.
I’m leading with this very loosely defined idea because I was thinking about how it relates to the news. The media curates a doom and gloom narrative because it gets clicks, and I’m guilty of that, but doom and gloom is a Downward Spiral. The more you study how bad things are, the worse you think things are. This week when we look at college protests across America and how stupid they are, I want to discuss the Downward Spiral of the education system but also give you an Upward Spiral as an alternative.
Even when things are bad, you can make them good for yourself. Discipline, adventure, curiosity, truth- all of our favorite virtues here at Spud Underground are Upward Spirals. When the whole world seems to be descending into madness, spiraling upward can be a very dangerous thing. Downward spiralers don’t want you to be successful, happy or adventurous. Do it anyway.
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Stay Dangerous, My Friends
-RJ
VIPERHAWK: WITNESS PROTECTION
A hilarious sci-fi adventure! Miguel Murillo is a smuggler for the Irish mob, and if these witnesses don’t get to a distant planet on time then there will be war…
THE DEATH OF SCHOOL
Socialists are lazy. How can you tell? By looking at their protests. Their plan is always to sit down. The whole point of Occupy Wall Street was to occupy Wall Street. There is nothing easier than occupying something. You just have to put your body there and you’re done. Recently they’ve been occupying actual streets by sitting in the road. Sitting? That’s your revolution? Now they’re camping at universities where they’re already enrolled to protest… Israel? I love stories like this because I don’t even have to try to mock these people. We don’t need a counter-protest. These people are making their own movement look so retarded than anyone with brain cells is going the other way. Thanks, guys.
Here’s the scoop: student protests are taking over college campuses across the country. Students are setting up camps in institutions like NYU, Columbia, UCLA and many others to protest the war in Gaza. Most of this was focused on Columbia, where over 100 protesters were arrested yesterday. How does camping at a college prevent war on the other side of the Earth? Let this genius tell you in her own words:
“I’m honestly not sure all of what NYU is doing… Do you know what NYU is doing? About Israel?” she asks her friend.
“I wish I was more educated,” the friend replies.
“I’m not either!” says the first chick.
This is what a six-figure college education gets you, folks. These airheads are still wearing masks and can’t even talk.
I feel bad for that poor girl. She’s there because she thinks this is the next Kent State. She came out to put flowers in gun barrels and star in history’s next famous photograph. Instead, her viral moment was looking like a total baffoon. Who’s to blame? Is it you and me for laughing at her, or is it the school system for shoving this OPPRESSION IS EVERYWHERE narrative down her throat since preschool?
The Downward Spiral of school is very easy to follow. Most people take what they learn and head off to the real world to do real stuff, but there’s a certain type of loser that can’t survive outside of the artificial environment. They usually get a job at the school right after graduation, eventually they join the faculty and teach the next group of students. Of course, socialism thrives in this kind of environment because it’s the political manifestation of resentment, itself a Downward Spiral. Losers always need some kind of oppressor to blame for their loseriness. This leads to the teachers becoming dumber and dumber every generation, teaching dumber and dumber students dumber and dumber things. The end result is where we’re at now- 50% of Americans can’t read above an 8th grade level, yet every college student can tell you what intersectionality is.
If we can pick on the girl in the video again (because I’m mean and it’s funny): she’s been brought up in this teacher-enforced socialist programming since she was five. She’s been hearing about oppression and authority her entire life, but never learning any useful thinking skills. According to the narrative, Israel is the oppressor because Israel has authority. In her own life, the college she’s going to has the authority. Therefore, New York University is Israel. She cannot distinguish between two different bad guys.
Here’s another great take on it:
“The average person, I think, at these protests, is the kid that isn’t cool enough or good looking enough to be invited to a house party. So, because they’re not invited to a house party, they make their own, which is out here. Which is why when they summon these people with a flyer, 10,000 of them show up. These are 10,000 people with nowhere else to be.”
Nailed it. The kids who actually paid their tuition to come learn something are the ones who are cool enough to do stuff on the side. I feel bad for them in particular, because they’re working hard to get a degree just to graduate with the same credentials as the stupidest people ever born. It used to mean something to go to an Ivy League school, and because of these protests, we can see that it’s no longer the case. As always, it’s the people who actually care who are getting screwed the most. Meanwhile, the protesters will be applauded by the teachers, probably become teachers themselves, and the Downward Spiral carries on.
What do you do about it? Nothing. Somebody will have to go into the education system with a hammer and saw and really do some damage in terms of reform. I don’t see that happening anytime soon. The Downward Spiral will continue, and these schools will probably have to die as a result. You don’t have to go down with it. You can still cross the Double Helix and start spiraling upward.
Instead of learning in an institution, get a job. Learn from a mentor. Explore your curiosities via YouTube. That’s a great option because it suggests related subjects as you go. Read a damn book, for God’s sake. Books have the power to literally change the way your mind operates, something I’ve never experienced in a classroom. In the age of the internet, you can learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace. It’s far cheaper and you won’t have to sit through boring generals. Be curious, because curiosity is an Upward Spiral.
In the future, I’ll bet apprenticeships come back as a competitor to high tuition and useless degrees. Maybe private colleges will become more popular as public universities circle the drain. Maybe we’ll get a dictator to gut these institutions of all socialism once and for all. We’ll have to see. I wouldn’t wait for it, if I were you.
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HOT CHICK OF THE WEEK: VENUS REAMBONANZA
I don’t want you to leave this issue thinking that all teachers are terrible. Just American ones. Venus Reambonanza is a special ed teacher from Thailand- and also she’s a model.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: LATERALUS BY TOOL
I can’t talk about spirals all day with bringing up this album. The title track is all about spirals and their representation in life, famously written using the Fibonacci sequence, which creates this famous spiral when plotted out:
You know, in case you needed more proof that spirals are everywhere. ■
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