Make Your Own Bubble in 10 Easy Steps

Step 9 is absurdly difficult for libertarian (men) when you consider the high male: female ratio in the libertarian camp. Obviously, there are other concerns in creating/living in our own sub-sub-cultures, but political views are important in relationships, and personally, I doubt I’ve met more than five libertarian women in my entire life.

The rest of the the program seems like a pretty good idea, and I will certainly try to implement it as much as I can.

Great advice, thanks.

Always good to remember to be grateful, and the Serenity Prayer, which seems most of what you are suggesting. Good Mood looks like a fun read. Tx.

A hermit lives in peace than a society man. Anyways, you propose a social hermit life. This very much varies from person to person. All human beings are made differently. The world and society was changed by figures like Vivekanda, Gandhi, Mandela, Castro, Mao etc. who lived and died in peace. On the other hand we had many great contributions from secluded personalities also. Over all, a great reading experience, specially your step five much resembles of your’s Gandhi’s ideology. I also like the line “If you need to know about world politics, read history books, not newspaper articles”.

Happy relationships are based on shared values and mutual admiration so intense that outsiders laugh.

This is the single most important thing I have ever learned in life. Interestingly, I found my match far outside my culture, let alone my “sub-sub-culture,” but to me that just underscores the point that shared values and mutual admiration are more important than any other difference two people might have.

Er, I mean I’d hide the Hakkens, not the dead bodies.

If you talk to people about the 1% of things you agree on, instead of the 99% of things they’re wrong about, it can save you all sorts of headaches! It’s called being “diplomatic”.

Actually, purging people is under-rated. Cutting loose my family, ruled by my narcissist alcoholic mother, was one of the smartest things I ever did.

I’d spent most of my life trying to impress her and them, being well into my thirties before I figured out that they were not worth trying to impress. It didn’t hurt that I’d already moved far away. I finally concluded that my family fell under the category of things that only concretely affected my life to the extent I let them, and that I had no realistic chance of changing, and the solution best for my sanity was to have no more to do with them.

The last straw was their opposition to my marriage and being essentially forced to choose between my future wife and them. I haven’t spoken to them since the wedding (to which they were not invited), and am mostly relieved I don’t have to deal with them any more. Even my wife understands not to mention them in my presence, even to make a joke at their expense. The awful mood I get in at the very thought of them isn’t worth a cheap laugh.

It sounds like living in a bubble would be infuriating for someone who enjoys debating.

Also, the most annoying people I can think of are those who are used to being in agreement with everyone around them.

My last criticism is that if you have kids, often by sheltering yourself you end up sheltering them–to their peril, if you take it far enough. To a lesser degree this is what happened with my parents, both of whom are classical artists and rejected mainstream culture completely. They did their best to insulate me from it too. (A light anecdote: when I heard the song “Heart of Rock & Roll” for the first time in the early 1990s, I thought it was heavy metal.)

Still, I really like the part about not following the news–not because the content is frustrating, but because journalism is such a joke (that, I think, is mainly what makes the news frustrating).

Had me going until #9.

Funny thing—I have been doing more and more of this since the election. I agree it is both effective and rational. I mentioned this to a few friends of mine and they thought I was kidding and a little bit off my rocker. The point I tried to emphasize is other people try to get us passionate about things which are really miniscule in nature and we come to believe they are not.

Example: Mike Rice the Rutgers basketball coach who was fired for anger management problems. I have been asked my opinion. My statement is I have no opinion and do not want to have an opinion. I have said that if I am going to have an opinion on bad behaviors, there are millions more worthy of my attention.

I used to assiduously follow a blog which specialized in intellectual property issues. Unfortunately, the world was largely not going my way, so all their news stories made me angry. So I stopped reading the blog and became much happier.

Similarly, I paid very little attention to the last presidential election. I did hear about it of course, but I paid much less attention than in previous election. I was much happier.

(Anecdotally, I accidentally heard about 30 seconds of one of the debates and immediately had to pull over to calm down because of how annoyed I was at the stupidity of the candidates.)

That said, I enjoy both dating and befriending a variety of people with whom I disagree about many things. We even talk about things we disagree about, but we do it in a measured and friendly manner. It does lead to the occasional awkward moment, but it is much more enjoyable than conversations where both parties are 100% in agreement.

But your point about the importance of mutual respect and mutual interests is very true. I just think you can find it outside of your sub-sub-sub-culture. Or more precisely, that there are many sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-cultures of which we are members and we share at least one with many people.

Overall I really enjoyed this posting. However I would like to offer some modifications. Specifically, I would argue step 3 has led to the mess this country is in. There are not enough Americans that truly care what our politicians are up to and, in my opinion, we have taken #3 to heart for the past couple decades and now we are reaping the “rewards” of our apathy.

I would argue that #7 should read the opposite of the way that it does. We need to band together with people who share our dislikes to exact change that we feel needs to be made.