My Journey
I’m from Denmark. I moved to the US in 1999 at the age of 25.
Even though I’m not from here, I love this country with all of my heart.
When I tell my family about my worldview, they ask me: if America is so corrupt, why the hell do you want to live here?
I’ll tell you why.
I love the people. I love the nature. I love the vision, the idea, the constitution. I love the creativity and the innovation. I even love the messiness of it all.
I believe the rot that plagues America is plaguing the rest of the world too. You cannot escape it anywhere. If you want to change things, this is the place to be. This is the battleground.
I’ve been in love with America since I was a kid.
My dad taught me programming since I was five, and I was so passionate about it that I somehow managed to learn English through programming. If, else, while, repeat, until, boolean, integer, true, false. Those keywords in the Pascal programming language were my gateway drugs.
When I was 10 and 11, my dad took me and my brother to Florida and New York, and I loved it. I still remember those trips fondly.
Back home, I’d beg my dad to buy computer books for me on his trips to the US. Back then, you couldn’t get those in Denmark. There was no public internet and no Amazon.
In school, I wrote papers about the American space program and about George Bush Sr. I ate it all up.
My love for America goes deep.
And so is my gratitude. I’m not a citizen. I’m not even a green card holder. I’m here on a visa, and I’m so grateful that America will allow me to be here. I do not take that for granted. America owes me nothing.
Democrat Me
When it came to US politics, I always saw myself as a Democrat.
Republicans were racist, nepotistic war mongers, and Democrats were the good guys. Obviously!
Bill Clinton was a smart and articulate, honest and caring hero. Obviously!
I was obsessed with Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (It’s actually worth watching it again today), where he laid out all the strange coincidences that happened around Bush’s election win and the 9/11 attacks. George Bush Jr. was a doofus, barely able to put a coherent sentence together, who stole the election from Al Gore. Obviously!
Obama was our savior. Obviously!
CNN was telling the truth, Fox News was hopelessly biased, Alex Jones was a crazed lunatic, and if you listened to him you were a nazi. Obviously!
That’s what I believed. Because as a young programmer in Boston, that’s what everyone around me believed. I had no reason to question any of it.
I still remember the day I found out one of my colleagues was a Republican. How could he!?!
After moving back to Copenhagen at the end of 2001, I would torrent every single episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He was my absolute hero!
One of my favorite skits was the mashup he did in 2003 of pre-election Governor George Bush “debating” post-election President George Bush. It was hilarious, and I basked in the smug validation of seeing the lies and hypocrisy exposed.
My favorite t-shirt simply featured the text “1.20.2009”: the last day of Georg Bush’s presidency. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were evil war mongers.
Obviously!
(I still believe that, by the way.)
Obama was different. He was hope and change personified.
I had no doubt he’d fight the corruption and sclerocracy of the US government, and restore integrity and sanity. Racial tensions would be a thing of the past. The first black president was in, Bush out, and all was right in the world. Hope and change FTW!
A Conscious Nation
Then in 2013, on my 39th birthday, while I was living in India, my wife Nomi had arranged for us to go for a walk around a local lake while she asked me some deep wonder questions.
The only one I remember is this:
If you could do anything, what would you do?
What happened next shocked me.
I listened to myself speak out loud words I’d never ever heard or thought before. Not even remotely. And with zero doubt or hesitation:
“I want to be a special advisor to the President of the United States on conscious nation building.”
I was befuddled. Where did this come from? I had no idea. Still don’t.
But I also felt awe. Deep awe. Like I was in the presence of something otherworldly. Something divine.
I got very emotional. I had tears in my eyes for the next 20 minutes, as the vision landed in me.
Over the years, I’ve reflected on this experience, the words, and what it all means.
What it means to me is taking a conscious, intentional approach to politics and to how we create the world we live in.
Instead of just haggling back and forth and tinkering a bit around the edges the way we’ve done for as long as I’ve been alive, let’s take a fresh look at what we want government to do, and construct a vision for our future, from first principles, given today’s technology, and given what we know about human nature and reality itself.
In the words of Marcel Proust: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
It’s time to look at our world, and the world of politics, with new eyes.
It’s like when I went from high school math to university math. At Uni, they assumed nothing. They rebuilt math from the ground up, starting with defining an integer.
While the cover of this book shows a map of the US, and most of what I talk about is US politics, none of this is limited to any specific country. I’ve lived on three continents. I’m a Danish citizen living in the US.
The principles are timeless, they apply anywhere, and as you’ll see, the blob affects every part of the globe, no matter how remote.
Back to my birthday in India in 2013.
The president I was picturing in my mind was Obama. I was still a firm believer in the Democrat party and the official media narrative at the time.
Three and a half years later, Trump became president, and my world was flipped upside down.
The Daily Show Again
What red-pilled me was The Daily Show. The same late-night comedy show that had kept me plugged into hope for America for my nine years in “exile” in Denmark.
It was gradual at first. A few things started to grate on me.
One was how mean they were to Eric Trump.
I don’t know much about Eric. He’s never run for office. He’s not the president. I have no idea, and I don’t much care.
But Seth Meyers and others would time and again make jokes about him being stupid and unattractive.
I thought: That’s not funny. That’s just mean. You guys are not kind people.
I also started noticing how they’d intentionally twist and misunderstand what Trump said to make him seem silly and stupid. “Hahaha! Look how dumb he is! What an idiot!” They were smug and condescending. What he was actually saying made complete sense to me, he just spoke in his characteristically Trumpian style. A style that won him an election.
I thought: If you have to lie to make him look dumb, maybe he’s smarter than I thought? Also, you’re not a kind person.
The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was Trevor Noah, the host who’d taken over from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
He did a segment on Trump’s “shithole countries” comment.
Here’s part of the transcript:
The Washington Post reported minutes ago that today in the Oval Office, President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers discussing immigration when they floated restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal.
The Post reports that according to two people briefed in the meeting, the president asked, quote, “why are we having all shithole countries come here?” Referring to African countries and Haiti. The president then went on to talk about how they needed to bring in more people from places like Norway.
Guys, I don't know how to break this to you, but I think the president might be racist. [...]
You know what part really put it over the line for me? Norway. Yeah. When he said where he wanted immigrants to come from, he didn't just name a white country. He named the whitest country. [...]
It's almost like yesterday when Trump met with the Prime Minister of Norway. He was like, what do you guys do with your black people? And she was like, oh, we don't have any. He was like, wow!
Something in my head snapped.
I could suddenly see it clearly.
If anyone was a racist in this clip, it was Trevor, not Trump!
If you hear about Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries, vs Norway, and the only meaningful distinction you see is people’s skin color, then in my mind, you’re the racist.
I can’t think of a more meaningful definition of racist than someone who would attribute difference in performance or intelligence or crime rate to their skin color or race.
I hear Trump’s comments to be about how well those countries function, and what that means for the ability of the people from those places to contribute to our culture and economy.
Of course people from well-functioning countries like Norway are going to on average be better educated and contribute more to America. It’s common sense. Race and skin color has nothing to do with it.
And if you think that only societies of primarily white people produce well educated productive people, then that sounds pretty darn racist.
By Trevor’s own admission, Trump mentioned Norway because it was top of mind for him, not because it’s “the whitest” country.
The conclusion was obvious to me: The people who accuse others of racism are themselves the actual racists.
Mind fuck!
Questioning Everything
Once I saw this, I started questioning everything I thought I knew.
If I was duped in this area, what else was I missing? I wanted to find out.
It reminds me of a time back in 2008 when I was really struggling in life. I recognized that all results come from actions, and actions are the result of my beliefs, ergo if I don’t have the results I want, it must be that I’m holding beliefs that aren’t helpful. So I decided to list out all the beliefs I could spot and question each one. It’s a very useful exercise that I recommend everyone go through.
At this point in 2017, I decided to summon the courage to listen to “the other side.”
With quite some trepidation, I bought a movie by Dinesh D’Souza titled Hillary’s America.
I also started watching some shows on Fox News.
I even watched a bit of Alex Jones! Gasp!
All of this reignited my passion for politics.
As a kid I couldn’t help but think about why the laws were the way they were, and how they could be made simpler and more elegant. I don’t think most 11-year-olds think that way, but this is how my brain happens to be wired. First principles thinking. I can’t help it.
I’ve since read well over 100 books. I’ve watched thousands of hours of congressional hearings, podcasts, documentaries, television shows, and movies. I’ve read thousands of articles by corporate media and independent journalists. And I’ve curated a feed of people that seem to get things right more often than not, and who allow me to stay up to date on what is happening in the world.
I’ve also studied health, wealth, relationships, and spirituality, and invested well over two million dollars in my own personal and spiritual education.
And I’ve done a fair bit of this old-fashioned thing called “thinking”. I know. It’s gone out of style. I think it’s ready for a come-back.
That reminds me of this brilliant quote by Thomas Sowell, a black Stanford professor and author. Read all his stuff, he’s incredible!
“The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”
This is the world we live in. And it’s done on purpose.
It’s time we rediscover thinking.
What Changed
As I journeyed down the red-pill rabbit hole, most of the beliefs I held about policy and how the world really works changed.
I went from being for gun control to understanding why many Americans care a lot about their guns. Coming from Denmark where guns aren’t a thing outside of hunting, this always seemed crazy to me. I still don’t own a gun, but I totally get it now.
I went from thinking the problem was that the rich didn’t pay their fair share to seeing what exactly the government does with that money, which made me shriek with horror!
I went from seeing welfare programs as helpful and compassionate, to recognizing that they always have negative consequences that at least need to be honestly accounted for.
I was never for wars, and still aren’t. But I did go from seeing the US and NATO as the good guys to seeing them as the greatest enemy of peace and prosperity in the world. Not the people. But the blob that has taken control of the government like a parasite.
A Bad Book
What didn’t change were the outcomes I wanted for people.
This made me realize something very obvious, yet profound:
Whether you’re left or right, Democrat or Republican, Independent or Libertarian, or none of the above, we all want (roughly) the same things!
Yes, yes, I know. “I want free healthcare and they don’t!” “I want to build a wall and they don’t!”
I’m not talking about policies.
Policies are all means to an end. When we focus on policies without talking about ends, we get lost.
I’m talking about the ultimate outcomes that we hope those policies will give us!
Because if we can agree on those, then we can use observation and reason and experimentation to figure out how to get there. In other words, it becomes science!
That is very good news, because it means there’s a way for us to come together.
What we need is:
● A shared understanding of reality: Where are we, what’s the ground
level truth?
● A set of values that we choose to adhere by and morally enforce as a culture
● A set of high level outcomes that we want our society to make possible for us
● Rigorous discussion and experimentation to identify the best strategies to achieve the outcomes
The problem is that right now we have none of these.
We have no trusted and widely agreed-upon source to learn what’s true about the world.
We cannot agree to a set of values.
We’re totally lost in unproductive policy discussion with no focus on the ultimate outcomes.
