The Philosophy of Least Resistance

My philosophy is simple: Never run when you can walk. Never walk when you can stand. Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lie down. Never be awake when you can be asleep. Never be alive when you can be dead. I think of it as ‘The Philosophy of Least Resistance.’ It’s a philosophy designed for people who have no real ambition, and don’t want to work very hard.

Now, I have had people say that I’m a hypocrite because I say, ‘Never be alive when you can be dead’, and yet here I am, still walking to and fro upon the earth. I’ve been told that if I was serious, I would go ahead and kill myself. But these people don’t really understand the central concept of my philosophy. Everyone’s going to die. It’s a given. This being true, why would I go out of my way to make sure I’ll die at a particular time? Why deprive myself of the surprise party aspect of having death spring out at me on its own? And killing yourself is a lot of work, compared to simply waiting for death. You have to decide how you’re going to go about it, you have to prepare, you have to choose a time and place, you have to write a letter (because killing yourself without any explanation is just rude), and you have to work up the intestinal fortitude to actually go through with it, which is a lot harder than people think. It’s like working really hard to get a cake today, when you know full well you’re going to get a cake for free tomorrow. Believe me, the last thing I need is more cake.

Most people form their personal philosophy by thinking about who they’d like to be, and then thinking up guidelines that will lead them in that direction. I took a long, hard look at myself, and set rules that went with my natural proclivities. I am, first and foremost, a lazy, lazy man. I’ve lived the life of a man who really doesn’t want to get about bed. I do possess an amount of natural intelligence, a certain sense of humor, some insight, and a bit of charm. I lack, completely, the will and desire to make anything at all of these gifts. I’ve been told I’m wasting myself, but I’m simply following my true nature. I’m no genius, no Nicola Tesla, I’m not burning with the fires of artistic creation, there’s no Leonardo DaVinci inside me waiting to burst forth at the proper stimulus. I am the human equivalent of a worker drone. I want to get by with a minimum of personal discomfort. And there are no classical philosophies for a guy like me.

Most philosophies try to be blueprints whereby the dedicated follower can achieve some kind of transcendence. I believe that most people simply don’t have the mental and spiritual reserves necessary to follow through with most of these creeds. Joe Six-Pack on the C-train doesn’t want to spend his life in a monastery searching for Nirvana. He wants to have a beer and watch the game in peace. So why don’t we have a doctrine that will help this guy be the best slob he can be? Why isn’t there a set of beliefs that will teach him to not just drink his beer, but to drink the hell out of it? And teach him to watch the game with all of his being?

I’ve had a lot of time to consider the various aspects of my philosophy, to ponder the various ramifications of it. That is, I spend a lot of my time alone. I travel in a large crowd of one. I am my own most frequent dining and sexual companion, and I spend a lot of time in my room, thinking. To an outsider, this time of deep contemplation would appear to just be me playing Dead Rising on my X-Box, but they would be mistaken. It’s deep, deep thought. The X-Box is just a way of disconnecting my everyday mind, so as to allow my inner being to commune with eternity. Never underestimate the metaphysical uses of an X-Box.

One of the most important aspects of ‘The Philosophy of Least Resistance’ is that of low expectations. Again, most people will tell you that you need to have high expectations, that you need to reach ever further for true fulfillment. And that’s a good idea, if you’re going somewhere. If you’re like me, and you’re on a long boat ride to nowhere, that will end only in death, expecting a lot is just setting yourself up for a fall. It’s said that you get nothing out of expecting very little, that you’re disappointing yourself in advance of actual events. I say that the positive returns are two-fold.

One, when you don’t expect a lot, it’s very hard to be disappointed. Doesn’t mean that life won’t disappoint, just that it has to work a lot harder to do so. Bad stuff will happen, and you’re not surprised, because you weren’t expecting anything else. If I’d been in the World Trade Center that fateful Tuesday, and I’d seen the plane headed for my tower, I’d have thought, “Isn’t that always the way? Get a good job in a major financial center, and here comes a plane.”

Conversely, low expectations mean that when things do go right, you are thrilled. It’s more than you expected, which is almost the definition of happiness. It’s really easy to be happy, because everything is better than you thought. A good pot of Ramen noodles can send you into transports of joy. You’re in ecstasy when the train comes on time. Orgasms take on a whole new dimension of good. Being able to pay your bills on time, just making rent, becomes transcendental bliss.

This is why I feel that ‘The Philosophy of Least Resistance’ is truly the best path for me. It allows me to continue being who I am, and still be able to have joy. Under any other school of thought, I’d have to hate myself. I’d have to be trying to eat better and lose weight, to get a better job, find a soul mate, or at least get laid. I’d have to search life for deeper meaning. In short, I’d be expected to be everything I’m not. I couldn’t sit happily in my underwear and eat chicken wings. I couldn’t be happy in my apartment, which is so messy that, even though it’s on the third storey of my building, it has a dirt floor. I’d want a better haircut and new clothes. I’d have to want contact with other people. I’d have to care about things I’d rather not give a rat’s ass about. All of which is stuff I’ve spent my entire life avoiding. I want to be high and goofy most of the time. And I want not to care.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. I’m gonna die old and aloe. I’ll probably be covered in my own filth when it happens. I’ll wallow in a richly deserved obscurity in life, and be quickly forgotten in death. My life won’t have had much meaning, even to me, and I’ll have added very little to the store of human knowledge and experience. Hell, I might have even managed to subtract a little from it. I’ll have lived a bad life. But I will have managed to find a modicum of personal happiness, and, most importantly, I won’t have worked hard to do it.