What’s It All About, Joe Rogan?: 50 Essential Life Lessons from the Great Self-Improvement Warriors
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Overview: 2-3 pages
Contents
Detailed Chapter Outline or Full Synopsis
Target Audience
Marketing/Promotion
4-6 publish books for comparison such as Jordan Peterson
Bio Headshot (Head Shot with Carrie 1, Head Shot 19 Buff Dude, Mighty Jeff May 4)
2 Chapters or Sample (40 pages?)
Chapter Outline
Introduction: Don’t Lose Your Shit in the Matrix
Lesson #1: You Must Resist Entropy
Lesson #2: You Are at War with Yourself
Lesson #3: Passion Without Due Diligence Is Worthless
Lesson #4: Knowing That Death Is Always Pulling at Your Sleeve Forces You to Live a Meaningful Life
Lesson #5: Retirement Is a Euphemism for Death
Lesson #6: Do Not Look for Meaning to be Handed to You on a Silver Platter
Lesson #7: Do Not Die a Pathetic Death
Lesson #8: Competition Forges Strong Relationships
Lesson #9: Do Not Create Persona While Forgetting to Create Substance
Lesson #10: Do Not Confuse Mimicry with the Mastery of Craft
Lesson #11: Self-Pity Will Kill You
Lesson #12: Strive to Make Your Life Like a Popular Hollywood Movie (Leaving Las Vegas, character arc, slow disintegration; bad goes to worse, Jedi, character arc). Mother who became a mother to herself.
Lesson #13: One Kind of Envy Makes You Strong. Another Makes You Weaker
Lesson #14: Keep Your Brain Clear of Clutter
Lesson #15: Being Learned Doesn’t Make You Real
Lesson #16: The Individual Is the Starting Point But Not the End Point
Lesson #17: Don’t Sit on Your Ass and Wait for the World to Love You
Lesson #18: Beware That a Seed of Truth Can Grow Into a Forest of Bullshit (essay about self-help vs. self-discipline)
Lesson #19: Do Not Confuse Self-Improvement with Self-Help
Lesson #20: Know the Characteristics of Your Inner Enemy
Lesson #21: You Must Fight Nihilism
Lesson #22: Consistent Exercise Is a Weapon Against Nihilism
Lesson #23: You Are Responsible for Creating Your Own Positive Feedback Loop
Lesson #24: Living in the Past Imprisons You in a Negative Feedback Cycle
Lesson #25: Beware That Certain Attempts at Self-Improvement Can be Maladaptations (shorty and Jordan Peterson)
Lesson #26: Clearing Your Brain Fog Will Force You to Confront Some Scary Shit
Lesson #27: Being a Big Fish in a Little Pond Leads to Entropy
Lesson #28: Don’t Forever Define Yourself by the Fish That Got Away
Lesson #29: You Can’t Transform Yourself Until You’ve Dove into Your Personal Abyss
Lesson #30: Life Without Boundaries Leads to Entropy and Death
Lesson #31: Bullshitting Your Way Through Life Is Harder Than You Think
Lesson #32: Deceiving Others Eventually Makes You a Victim of Your Own Manipulation (Simon’s repeated lie and he couldn’t forgive his girlfriend).
Lesson #33: Don’t be a Fanboy
Lesson #34: Small Deeds Are Not Worthless (7 billion atoms, network, apology in Pedro Italian restaurant)
Lesson #35: Self-Pity Is a Feast That Will Kill You (Another Person’s Success Doesn’t Take Something Away from You)
You take something away from you. You are your own self-saboteur.
Lesson #36: “People Want the Ultimate Happiness and Success Based on What They Don’t Have Rather Than Based on an Understanding of What Success and Happiness Is.”
Lesson #37: Lack of Personal Sovereignty Leads to Polarization
Lesson #38: Living Inside a Safety Bubble Will Make You Both Insufferable and Dysfunctional
Lesson #39: Proper Preparation Means You Must Do a Deep Dive into Your Opponents’ Worldview
Lesson #40: Inflated Self-Esteem Is a Liability
Lesson #41: Eloquence Is a Moral Imperative
Lesson #42: Life’s Answers Are in the Rockpile of Pain
Lesson #43: It’s Not If But When You Have Your Rocky Moment
Lesson #44: Don’t Let a Few Puppet Masters Destroy Your Free Will and Self-Respect
Lesson #45: The Easy Life Is Hell on Earth
Lesson #46: Direct Confrontation Is More Honorable Than Passive-Aggressive Strategies
Lesson #47: You Will Have to Endure Great Hardships to Earn Trust
Lesson #48: Accountability Is Not the Same as Shaming
Lesson #49: Accountability Is a Matter of Life and Death
Lesson #50: Your Hard Work Generates Results, Not Your Scared Child
To Do:
Look at women on Rogan’s podcast and pepper your Lessons with their wisdom.
You need women’s voices.
Lesson #49: Acknowledge a Fulfilled Life While Maintaining an Insatiable Appetite for More
Lesson #48: The No-Mind State Is Essential for Your Sanity
Start with your working out post:
Once I started the weightlifting routine at 12, I saw an either/or universe: disciplined order on this side & The Chaos ****show on the other. I’ve worked out daily ever since.
(Barnett discusses the highest state of being in the ring, a freeing alive moment, and “aliveness” beyond violence; it’s a no-mind state: It’s being in the present moment: surfing, piano may achieve something like it. Other people cannot relate to you so it is a solitary endeavor. We read in Book 2, entry 17, of the Hagakure: “All that matters is having single-minded purpose (ichinen), in the here and now. Life is an ongoing succession of ‘one will” at a time, each and every moment. . . . Just live in the present with single-minded purpose.”
Lesson #49: Choose the Craftsman Approach Over Self-Promotion: “What is your word?” Does what you do hold up to scrutiny? Does it have social value? You should quote Cal Newport.
Lesson #50: Acknowledge a Fulfilled Life While Admitting an Insatiable Appetite for More
Kafka said fear of death is from living an unfulfilled or unlived life.
Barnett has built a foundation for owning who he is and he is grateful for how amazing this world is and he is grateful for his undying curiosity and fascination with what life has to offer; he is both experiencing the fulfillment of his life, being true to himself, and sadness that it has to all end. It’s a paradox: “I want to do more, but I’ve done enough.”
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Lesson #?: “Hell Is Making the World a Worse Place Than It Has to Be”
Shitting your bed is never a private affair. Your shit spreads.
Your personal hell makes the world more of hell because you’re not as free as you think you are. Your freedom is connected to society.
Hell is here and now says Jordan Peterson on podcast #1,070 at 1:34.
Cocaine addict: I don’t care but I should care.”
You need to get your shit together.
Lesson #?: Better to be a Warrior in a Garden Than a Gardener in a War
What does preparation consist of?
Peterson’s moral imperative: You must be a noble warrior in a world of chaos. There is no entitlement.
Joe Rogan says this in response to “The meek shall inherit the Earth.” Jordan says, be competitive but be fair, have integrity, be honest; don’t be a cheater, a tyrant, a nihilist.
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Principle #17: Take Ownership of Your Mistakes (Shitting the Bed)
Searching for Happiness Is a Fool’s Errand (Frankl, xv); if we have expectations that are unrealistic we have allowed people to give us a sense of narcissistic entitlement; we are to meet life’s expectations; see Frankl 77.
Principle #16 Know What It Means to Carry the Burden of Your Being (Frankl says you can’t choose meaning; it chooses you; he writes on page 49, We need to make sense of our death by living a life that death cannot steal our life’s meaning. In Frankl’s case, he would use his skills as a doctor to help the sick and dying.
Principle #22: You Must Take Ownership of Shitting the Bed
After You Shit the Bed, You Must Do a Deep Clean
(ownership of your worst inclinations, ownership of your being)
Principle #: Any Philosophical System That Gives You Excuses to Blame Others Must be Abandoned (Marxism, Live in Mom and Dad’s House)
Principle #: Do Not be Consoled by the Imagined Unlived Life (Deacon Blue, Art of War, Rogan)
Principle #: Unleashing Your Unfettered Inner Reptile Is a Repellent to Others (; in the context of one upmanship; dumbbell pump in parking lot means waitress notices sweat, not pump; the guy with the WRX took the seat out and made his girlfriend sit on the nub.
Principle #: Rubbing People’s Face in Your Privilege Is a Violation of the Bushido Modesty Code
Uncle Leo and his banana thong, robe, and tiger shrimp.
Principle #?: Derive nourishment from geniuses during your solitary hours (33 Seneca). Your intellect must constantly grow and be engaged with issues that matter. See Seneca page 34.
Principle #?: Seek solitude to be whole (Restlessness is symptomatic of a sick mind, we read on page 33 of Seneca). Also see Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk on the need for solitude and how we fall into a trap looking to connect with others to make us whole.
Principle #?: Refrain from seeking attention (like those social media motivators whom Rogan says haven’t achieved anything). Excessive self-regard is a sign of being lost. See Seneca page 37.
Principle #?: Set yourself apart from the Herd or the Mob (Seneca 38 and Nietzsche).
Principle #?: Align Your Private Life with Your Public Life to Achieve Integrity in All That You Do (Ron Funches)
Principle #?: Dignity Is the Opposite of Entropy (see Frankl, 66; “don’t be a plaything of circumstance”; dignity means to be worthy of our suffering on page 67)
Principle #?: You Must See Who You Are and What You Can Become (to fend off entropy; think of Lou Kruk, and see Frankl, 73).
Principle #?: Pent Up Emotions Are Far More Dangerous Than Released Ones (think of all the effort we exert even unconsciously to do this; see Frankl quoting Spinoza on page 74).
Synopsis: What’s It All About, Josh Barnett?: 50 Essential Life Lessons from the Great Self-Discipline Warriors.
In What’s It All About, Josh Barnett?: 50 Essential Life Lessons from the Great Self-Discipline Warriors, bodybuilder, Olympic Weightlifter and college writing instructor Jeff McMahon and his family are struggling to not drive each other crazy as their work and school is confined to their small home in simultaneous Zoom meetings. Their sanity is being stress-tested in a world that is in the throes of a pandemic and what appears to be a collective nervous breakdown. One afternoon, McMahon seeks relief from the cacophony of Zoom meetings, withdraws into his bedroom, puts on his earbuds, and listens to a Joe Rogan podcast conversation with mixed martial arts fighter, death metal aficionado and self-styled intellectual Josh Barnett as the two discuss what it means to be fully alive, courageous, and authentic human beings in the context of The Samurai Code, the heroic individualism of Nietzsche, and the mental toughness of the Stoics.
The conversation breaks apart all of McMahon’s frozen memories of failed warriors: fake purveyors of masculinity, strength, and athleticism that the narrator, a former competitive Olympic Weightlifter and bodybuilder, has encountered throughout his life, and he sees that Josh Barnett’s self-description of his own fulfilled life combined with his critique of the fake people who live to please others by trying to pass some facade underneath which lies nothing but shame and despair not only condemns the narrator’s false heroes but the narrator’s own personal failings.
The podcast has slapped Jeff McMahon in the face, presenting him with a Warrior Honor Code that inspires him to write a guidebook to make sense of the great self-discipline warriors who frequent The Joe Rogan Experience.
What’s It All About, Joe Rogan? is McMahon’s interpretation of Josh Barnett’s musings of the world’s greatest stoics, philosophers, and warriors packaged into a manifesto to champion wisdom, personal excellence, and sanity in a world going mad.
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Notes from Podcast Conversation Between Joe Rogan & Josh Barnett, July 7, 2020 of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Heidegger’s Ideas of Death
Introduction:
Sad about the country’s divisions and tribalism. People hiding behind some identify.
Josh Barnett’s character:
- He embraces civil disagreement with Andrew Yang.
- He embraces the tradition of respect in Japan.
- He embraces humor like in the Russian sauna.
- He embraces High Stakes.
- He embraces owning yourself.
- He embraces the true definition of success.
- He embraces death.
The Honor Code Principles
One. Part 1. On the Dangers of Persona without Substance
- The Dangers of False Masculinity (include Mario Gargoyle?)
- The Reliance on Social Status (Buenos Aires)
- Reliance on Professional Titles without Due Diligence
Persona: Cultivating a persona without substance is dishonorable and leads to death. (Taco Bell, Gary) Tudor Turtle is about a fool who likes the idea or the title of something like a motivator on social media who has achieved nothing.
Camaro Frankenpimp
Buenos Aires Landlady in mink coat
Tudor Turtle
Dr. Groves was smart but he was a fraud. He hid behind a persona.
Gary of Taco Bell (persona of a company man)
Persona, gargoyles, frightened men, you and Mario.
Paul McCartney
The Stallion
Positive Example: Jack Lalanne who was an evangelist for fitness in a world of martines, cigarettes, and meatloaf and Jell-O.
Two. Integrity. Your integrity is sacred. Be a Sincere Craftsman who focuses on quality, not mass scale. Your social value and your credibility and your word is your integrity. You must treat your integrity as a sacred thing. What you present to others must hold up to scrutiny. Therefore, do not degrade yourself.
Soccer Coach Lied to Girlfriend, Moral Inversion
Story of the soccer coach who lied to his girlfriend and had trouble forgiving her. You lose yourself.
Three. Death: You must create a life in the context that death is always pulling your sleeve. Death forces you to ask: What will you do? How will you do it? Why will you do what you do in the context of meaning? Tolstoy asked the same question: Death forces us to either reject life or change our lives in such a way that death cannot take away the meaning of it.
Four. Seeds: Beware of those who take a seed of truth and plant a forest of bullshit. Bullshit is tempting because it works on a lot of people. Quote Rodolo Galan: “America is my home but Spain is my country.”
Memory: seeds of truth: Shoe Plane, Goodwill, 1983. We are not reliable narrators of our own memories.
Five. The Danger of Hiding Behind an Ideology: Systems: (Masks, Systems, and Ideologies) Beware of those who explain human behavior by relying exclusively on an external system while ignoring the internal. You must be responsible for your behavior (raisins, Captain Kangaroo, Marxist cultural critic). People who rely on a system or an ideology have to go to bed at night, stare at the ceiling and know they’re a fraud.
Hong Kong story Search for Meaning
Critical Thinking
I taught Man’s Search for Meaning. Was I legit or a fraud? A student showed me up: Critical Thinking.
Six. Individual: Your starting point is as an individual but you must become whole to contribute to society. (Herd mentality). You must earn trust like in a rite of passage (Navy Seal ritual, The Baby).
Seven. Transcendence: Your personal transcendence may make you unrelatable to others. Fighting, surfing, piano playing. He wants the no-mind state to be free and alive and he realizes other people can’t relate to him, but fighting does that to him.
Eight. (Adversary, zanshin, constant awareness and self-control) Violence, Chuck P quote, you don’t know who you really are until you are in a fight, violence can bring people together and Sammy Choa, Professor in the Cage, wounded masculinity, Rodolfo Galan slapped a teen boy in a private school in Latin America and his dad was a powerful diplomat who greeted him with champagne.
Nine. Overcoming Vs. Stagnation: Humans who choose comfort and stagnation to avoid the suffering and “overcoming” of the meaningful challenges succumb to entropy and spiritual degradation: Rodolfo Galan slapped a rich high school boy who had been a brat and the slap woke him up. Uncle Norman Principle, Deacon Blues, Grapevine boys, Tatiana memories, Roxanne memories. Fretting the past is a comfort zone cycle that prevents us from engaging in the challenges of the present. Leonard lived in the comfort zone of Bakersfield in the 90s.
Grapevine (69 of Lion Man)
The mother student who was abandoned by her mother and loved her daughter to become her mother and the mother to herself that she never had.
Ten. Success. Barnett says he’s done enough but he wants more and Rogan calls this success.
Eleven. Don’t Love Your Addictions More Than Life
Twelve: Pass the Torch of Light
Thirteen: Avoid a Pathetic Death
Josh Barnett: Be a Sincere Craftsman who focuses on quality, not mass scale.
Read Storm of Steel.
Embracing Life with Death Pulling at Your Sleeve
Heidegger is a force. We must embrace life and death simultaneously. Death is always beside you. You need to think about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it and with meaning and purpose with “Death always pulling at your sleeve.”
“Death is alongside you. You need to think about what you’re going to do and find meaning and fulfillment. Death pulls your sleeve.
Persona without substance.
Marxism: he dated a Marxist who assaulted him with accusations. JS Mill said to know both sides of an argument.
“Take a seed of truth and plant a forest of bullshit.” The bamboo takes over.
We must not take an external look at everything. “None of it is me, the individual.”
Single person, tribe, nation systems.
Chaz: Capital Hill Autonomous Zone
He quotes Chuck P: “You never know who you are till you get into a fight.”
“Can’t Nerf the World.”
He wants the no-mind state to be free and alive and he realizes other people can’t relate to him, but fighting does that to him.
Integrity: What is your word, value and scrutiny of social value. Don’t degrade yourself.”
Humans who don’t suffer and overcome succumb to entropy and spiritual degradation: Fake Paul McCarntey.
Paul McCartney
Rich Drakos may be the Stallion.
Leonard (Robert) who shakes your hand with his claw.
Tatiana Story
Roxanne and men going over the Grapevine.
Deacon Blues
Hulk Pants
Jack Lalanne
Lou Kruk (positive)
Josh Barnett was outcasted, bullied, twisted, confused, and at 10 he would have had an aneurysm had he known what he would become. His life was fulfilled, but he wanted to do more, yet he had also done enough.
I want to live fully and die right. I don’t want to die a pathetic death after living an epic life.
Death is coming. “He’s a good wingman. He’s in the car.” He gives Josh’s life meaning.
Humans who don’t suffer and overcome succumb to entropy and spiritual degradation.
Humans need agitation.
On Integrity and Authenticity
My favorite part of the most recent Joe Rogan podcast w/ Josh Barnett is when Barnett says: If you use an ideology to replace ownership of your authenticity and to relieve you of the burden of carrying your own being in the world you will lie in the bed staring at the ceiling and know you’re a fraud. Humans who don’t overcome their challenges succumb to entropy & spiritual degradation.
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