I wanted to share some thoughts and see if they would help me be less wrong. Instead, I ended up as a war correspondent for gwern, reporting unofficially. He had asked me for stories from my firefighter military days.
Well, since I'm here, I might as well take advantage of this opportunity, even if later I won't have any more stories to tell my grandchildren: 'Oh grandpa! You already posted this on Lesswrong.'" and continue in the metaverse of the future.
Imagine you grew up in a relatively well-educated family and were lucky enough to have some resources in life. But you also suffered some violence. Imagine feeling fragile, dyslexic, with attention deficit disorder, and asthmatic... Then, at six years old, you watch a movie: Rambo. And you think, I want that power for my life.
"I want to save those worse than me" There don't seem to be many worse than you, and the ones you try to save you get screwed, so it seems like you had to improve your skills a lot.
So, you push yourself to improve both physically and mentally. But no matter how much you train, you still can't fight back against one of the bullies at school. Then, you realize that humor works better, it’s like a martial art: Comedy-jitsu. So, you shape your life around jokes, not always good ones. But you love seeing people experience the pleasure of laughter, it’s almost like an orgy of joy.
With this weapon, you start training early. You push yourself to the limit, earn a degree in physical education to improve your physique and a degree in English to overcome your dyslexia. You join the military, passing the physical and intellectual tests, determined to be strong.
By the time you’re 22, you've achieved your goal: a military firefighter, a role that combines everything you've worked for. You had to transform yourself completely, to educate yourself relentlessly. And because of that, you stand out, not just for your physical strength but for your ability to teach. You win awards as an educator, get invited to TV shows and interviews for your social projects, and use humor to educate about life. You dedicate far more than the required eight hours a day to this mission. You go to the extreme of pursuing a postgraduate degree in neuroscience to defend your stance on humor as a soldier. And you set fire to their heads. You're a pyromaniac firefighter!
But then, funding for the educational projects that save minds in the favelas is threatened.
Determined to keep them alive, you start using your own salary to sustain the programs because the fire department says there’s no money. You take out loans, pay for fuel, buy food, and fund resources for the social projects, all out of your own pocket.
Then, after some time, you try to figure out why the city government is shutting your social project down. And they tell you: The fire department isn’t submitting receipts.
That’s when you realize: you've been paying while they’ve been keeping the money. The money meant for the kids in the favelas.
To make things worse, your superiors demand a cut of the money you make from your educational talks for the firefighter's social projects, saying: We don’t earn enough. We should be able to distribute this money however we want.
As if that weren't enough, your wife cheats on you and keeps you from seeing the daughter you love, the one you legally took responsibility for. And she says to you: "because you spend all your time at work"
You send emails to your friends, but they ignore you. Some say you’re lying. Others, worse, say they know you’re telling the truth but can’t get involved because they have families. Then, the anonymous phone calls start, threatening you for getting involved where you shouldn't.
You don’t understand. You lose your sense of humor. And you cry like a baby, begging your superior not to shut down the social projects. His response? A punishment, for not being a real soldier.
You think: 'It seems I'm the only one concerned about not wasting money meant for children in the favelas.' Now you feel like cancer, metastasizing into self-destruction. So, you conclude by thinking that you have the clearest reasoning in the world: cells that don't adapt to the body destroy themselves, that's what I should do.
You push away your family, your friends, anyone who might anchor you to life... until Bruno appears, that stubborn son of a bitch, who refuses to abandon you.
The same guy who in high school, when the teacher said Brazil wasn't doing badly and was growing, asked: 'How many centimeters?'
He's the friend who survived your worst jokes and your sharpest comebacks, the one who never asked for receipts nor made under-the-table deals. In your desperation, you both start a company together, your last-ditch effort, planning to leave all your money to him.
When he finds the 'pills, the spreadsheets, the goodbye notes' disguised as big investment for the business, he doesn't scream. He simply sits on the floor, the comedian who never stopped laughing, and cries without making jokes: 'Please, don't do anything nonsense.'"This is the beginning for you to rethink all your plans of self-destruction, "Am I really a problem for the world?
And so, you begin to search for a new logic for living, a logic that can rescue others like you, who aren't really cancer, but perhaps just in the wrong body or lack the best rationality.
Thank you, Bruno Noleto.
I've been posting my story here in LessWrong, maybe everything to get to that question:
What to do when I feel like I'm in a storm with no way out?