Metanoia

Metanoia is a Greek word which means to change your mind. It is associated with a process of religious conversion or being "born again." The thrill people experience on this comes when their thinking on an issue makes a sudden turn. You don't have to be religious to have these Damascus road experiences. They happen anytime you are strongly resistant to an idea that you later come to see as being true.

People rarely change. They adopt their mindsets and remain in them for the rest of their lives. These people are static. But there are others who are dynamic. These are people who change and are willing to consider new alternatives. I am one of those people. Here are some of the radical changes I have made in my own life as I got smarter with time:

1. CHRISTIAN TO ATHEIST

I was a Christian until I was 28 years old. I had a religious friend who committed suicide that was a real stunner to me. As a seminary professor once told me, I had gotten a dose of reality. Now, I realize that this professor was deep in a shared delusion which I could no longer continue with. By age 30, I was a complete atheist. I realized it was all bullshit.

This change of mind made me question everything subsequently. How could I have been such a deluded fool? How could I have been so stupid? That experience fundamentally changed my epistemological stance to what I call "skeptical empiricism." I hold all my beliefs with a tentative grasp. I defend what I believe in, but I also question what I believe in. I realize that I may have it all wrong.

2. CONSERVATIVE TO LIBERTARIAN

My politics reflected my religion. I was basically a Rush Limbaugh dittohead. I used to love that guy. Then, he turned out to be a druggie. HA! HA! Actually, I began to read more. I was already a free marketer and had been one my entire life. It was on the social side and the foreign policy side that I was messed up on. With my skeptical empiricism questioning everything, I came to realize that things like the drug war and America's imperialism were utter farces. I also came to realize that skeptical empiricism demands freedom since this freedom is essential for new ideas and skepticism to emerge in what Hayek called "spontaneous order."

3. VALUE INVESTOR TO INDEXER

When I began investing, I discovered Warren Buffet and Benjamin Graham and wanted to emulate these great value investors. Then, I read about the Efficient Market Hypothesis and index funds. At first, I was resistant to it, but I came around. Active investors are largely morons convinced of their own skill while actually being fooled by the randomness of good luck. The EMH is weak in some areas, but the strategy of passive investing holds up. It works. By indexing, you are beating the majority of active investors as they dissipate returns with bad choices, fees, and taxes. The other positive is that you get way more free time as you liberate yourself from the rigors of active management.

This change of mind also lead me to question this phenomenon of being fooled by randomness which Nassim Nicholas Taleb explored in his two bestselling books Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan. I tend to see all economic phenomena as being largely random due to the complex interactions of market participants which explains how really dumb people can become insanely rich. If you doubt this, consider Paris Hilton and the money she has made in her own right and not from her wealthy family.

4. MAXIMALIST TO MINIMALIST

This has been a recent change for me. I suspect it may have something to do with the current recession, but I have gone from being very consumer oriented to being someone who pursues a much simpler lifestyle. Excessive consumption occurs when we pursue or accumulate things beyond our current resources. For me, the answer was to try and find more time, money, and energy to match my ambitions. That was not working for me. I don't think it works well for anyone else either. So, I went in the opposite direction with marvelous results so far. Decluttering and simplifying your life is a liberating experience, and you feel more in control as you accomplish a few meaningful goals instead of dissipating yourself in many directions. I recommend it highly.

5. WHITE COLLAR TO BLUE COLLAR

I get some grief for having a college degree but choosing to work a blue collar job. And it is a choice as I have eschewed various white collar opportunities and have replaced my MBA ambitions with trade school ambitions. White collar people enjoy greater prestige and a higher income as they climb the various bureaucratic ladders of their respective organizations. But they do so at greater financial risk and zero job satisfaction. I have only had one job in my life that required a college degree, and it was the most miserable and unrewarding job of my life. It was made tolerable by nightly doses of Jim Beam and bitching sessions with my drinking buddy. It has taken me a decade of reflection to understand why I hated that job and have loved every other job I have ever done.

Looking back over my working life, I have questioned my choices. Should I have gone into accounting? Should I have gone to law school? Should I have gotten an MBA? Should I have stayed in my management job and learned to slug it out? In the end, I realize that my only real regret was not taking a second year of welding when I was in high school. Welders have real jobs.

CONCLUSION

I realize that I am always growing, changing, and evolving. I am not the same person now I was ten and twenty years ago. The biggest impact on my life has been as a consequence of the internet. I have a much wider body of knowledge to draw upon as a result of that innovation. I don't know what new changes in thought may come as a result of further study and whatnot, but I have a feeling that I am at the end of monumental changes in thought. I think my changes in worldview are at the marginal level now. I think I will always be a libertarian, but I can go in either a Rothbardian or Hayekian direction. I will always be an atheist, but will I be a nice atheist or a mean atheist? The one constant though is that I will remain a skeptical empiricist until I am dead. There is no final word on anything. There is only continuation.

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