MY PET PEEVE: Just One Moving Part…That Doesn’t Work!

Hi, folks. Foster Gamble here. And I want to talk to you today about something that I just can’t stand.

You know, one day years ago, when I was working on my PhD in traffic school, I had chosen a comedy version to try to help me get through it. And the instructor, who was a not very successful guy, but actually a very humorous individual, he said most of comedy is about pet peeves. You know what I can’t stand? Stuff like that. That’s what he was talking about.

So he got us all thinking. And it’s given me a lens to look through that’s going to add some humor to my life and also point out some things that might need to change.

So I’m going to tell you about something that I just can’t stand. Products with one moving part that doesn’t work.

What am I talking about? Well, tissue boxes. You know when you go to get the tissues and either they don’t come out at all or you finally get one out and then it’s gone, even though there’s more tissues in there? So tissue boxes, one tissue, and it doesn’t come out.

Bottle tops, screw off bottle tops. So it’s gotten so hard that either it shreds your thumb or you just got to go get a bottle opener anyway.

What else? Potato chip bags. You go to open a little bag and doesn’t pull this way. So you go to tear it that way or you go to tear it that way. One time I was in a little biker bar in La Honda, California. And this big 300 pound guy is sitting at the bar with his beer and he gets a little bag of potato chips and he can’t open it. And pretty soon everybody is howling with laughter. So he finally puts it down on the bar and just smashes it. And there’s potato chip shrapnel everywhere.

Another thing gets me is lotion tops. You’ve seen those lotion tops where it comes in? It has a little helpful arrow. It says open this way, close this way. But you’ve got to somehow push it down and turn it simultaneously. And it just doesn’t seem to do it most of the time. Kimberly can attest to this. Usually I get it to work on Mondays or Thursdays. Explain that to me.

OK, one more. The little pads. I take a lot of little notes on pads as I’m going around the house. You write on the pad like this and then you go to take the thing in the way and you rip it off and it’s not torn straight at the top. You start getting this little pile down here.

OK, so you get a sense of what I’m talking about. One more, a little less tangible. Service or support calls. You finally get on the line with someone to help you with your computer or your credit card or something like that. There’s just one thing they need to do. They just need to keep talking to me, if I can get a person, until the problem is solved. But no, “can I put you on hold?” No, please don’t put me on hold. Or “I’m just going to transfer you to this other department.” And then I’m dropped and I have to start over again.

OK, now I’m sure you’re not too sympathetic even if you identify with this. Of course, I know these things are trivial first world problems that really make almost no difference at all. But it’s when that same dynamic happens at a grand scale that things start to get serious. So let me give you some examples of that because here’s where the rubber meets the road.

Concern about climate change. Well, if we’re worried about the planet warming, there’s one really big item we need to pay attention to. It’s called the sun. Not one of the UN IPCC funded papers, articles, mention the sun as a potential source of warming because they’re not allowed to. So track the sun, track the temperatures, track where we are in our circuit around the sun, track where the sun is in its circuit around the center of the galaxy. But no, you can’t talk about the sun if we’re talking about global warming. So it’s used as an excuse to control everything and everyone.

Money. Fiat money is fake. It means, fiat, you made it up. One thing, money. Just back it with something and then you’ll have real money. Along with that, banking.

OK, banking. If I go to deposit my money in a bank, just keep my money and then charge me a fee for safekeeping. Loan me some of the money that you have, but keep the money on hand rather than creating new fake money by loaning it out 10 times the amount of real money you actually have and then charging real interest on the fake money. Now it’s getting serious. You can destroy an entire culture, an entire civilization with fake money.

But OK, now we’re getting heated up. Now here’s the really big one. After millennia of human beings fighting and killing each other, the question, how do we self-organize harmoniously? So in ancient history, it was random coercive violence. Then it was the most powerful tribe gets to set the rules. And then it was the church. And then it was— now it’s the state. And it’s only gotten worse and more dangerous.

The one primary moving part for a species, for a society, is each individual. We’re the real thing moving around, not the imaginary collective, not the group. Let people be and rule themselves as long as they don’t aggress on others.

We need one key thing, a universal morality, and we’ve never had it. And the only serious candidate is what’s called the non-aggression principle. No one gets to initiate force against any other person. And force is only justified to defend against aggression. One key principle. And we need to get it right if we’re going to survive and thrive.

And that’s why I’m writing my book right now on why we need to be truly free in order to thrive. It should be out sometime next year, and no promises, but I’m going as fast as I can. So stay tuned.

Meanwhile, remember the most important moving part in your life is you. So keep yourself free, well lubricated, on purpose and in integrity. That way, we can all win this together.

Thank you. Bye bye.