How To Be a HumanRecently by James Altucher: Nine Ways To Light Your Creativity ON FIRE
“james altucher is a f’ing idiot on parade” someone wrote on a message board the other day. I don’t really like parades. But it got me to wonder about the psychology of people who take valuable time out of their day to write things like that. Not just about me but about anyone. In general people get angry at me because I say in various ways that the world is not falling apart. That we’re not all going to die at the hands of some obscure European debt crisis or whatever the latest crisis of the week is in the media. Many people feel very strongly against some of my opinions. One woman wrote an article “James Altucher is an idiot” and then when she was getting zero views she emailed me the article so she’d have at least one view. To guarantee one view you can email me an article titled “James Altucher is an idiot” and I am sure to read it at the very least out of curiosity. Other people replied on various message boards about what a F****ng loser I was, etc etc. They seem to care more about my opinions than I do.
If my daughter comes to me and says, “I’m sad because I’d like to have more friends” then I would care about that. If my wife were sick I’d care about that. If I was sick I would VERY much care about that. I’m selfish. I’d care about my own sickness more than I’d care about my daughter’s ability to make friends. I also care if I am writing interesting things. Or if I’m reading books that will make me a better writer. Of if I’m winning more at chess now that I’m taking chess lessons. I care about these things. If people write to me and ask for advice, I care a lot about the advice I give. But about the rest of the world, I don’t care at all. How big can one head be? Why do I sometimes care about the stock market? First off, I can’t put this more bluntly: I’ve been ass-fucked repeatedly by the stock market for the past 15 years. I’ve written before 10 reasons you shouldn’t buy stocks (even though I am very bullish on it). Nobody should. I give ten reasons but the main reason is: you buy a stock, then the media has people all over the place saying, “the end of the world is here so you better get out of stocks”, then everyone sells stocks, then the stock market goes straight up. Why does the media do that? The obvious reasons: fear and greed sell papers. I’ve seen this happen every time, the exact same pattern: summer 1997, summer 1998, summer 1999, 2000-2002, summer 2004, summer 2005, late 2008/early 2009, summer 2010, and now summer 2011. Oh! I almost forgot: summer 1995 (“irrational exuberance”). But I wasn’t in the stock market then so I didn’t care. October 1987 also. The market collapsed, everyone thought the world was over. FOOLED YOU! The market went straight up for years after the big crash. But if I try to remind people of this simple pattern that happens over and over again, a lot of people get angry. I’m not upset at them. I don’t blame anyone for being angry at me. But I can tell you exactly why they were angry.
Here’s why:
So now they want to do the same to other people. So rather than working at their jobs they go from article to article and whatever message boards they can, then anonymously spew their hate. Many of these people would like to kill themselves. I hate to say it but it’s true. I feel bad for them. How do I know they would like to kill themselves? How can I possibly be so psychic as to know this, particularly since in most cases they are anonymous so I don’t even know what sex, age, race, religion, location, they are. I know this because they want the world to end. They keep blaming their problems on how bad the world is. How the world is falling apart. How we “borrowed too much” or how “the United States is going to fail” or how “Europe is going to take us down” or how “China is going to take over the world”. It’s an easy excuse so they don’t have to blame themselves on their own failures. They can blame me instead because I don’t think “China is going to take over the world”. August 24, 2011 Copyright © 2011 The Altucher Confidential
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