The Get Rich Slowly summer of books continues! Today’s excerpt comes from Jordan Grumet, better known in the FIRE world as Doc G, host of the Earn & Invest Podcast. When he’s not talking about money, Jordan is a real-life hospice doc. His new book, Taking Stock, offers lessons from the dying to the living.

The following is from Taking Stock by Jordan Grumet with permission from Ulysses Press. Copyright © 2022 by Jordan Grumet. This passage has been edited to be more readable on the web.

I used to have a patient who was an undertaker. We had many conversations about philosophy and practicality, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that one must gain profound insights from being engaged in such a unique business. As I was often fond of saying: When the undertaker speaks, you should really listen.

Those of us who have made death and dying our business may seem unlikely investment advisers, but because both the undertaker and myself have spent extensive time in close proximity to mortality, we’ve been given unique insight into what’s really worth investing in. What investing tips could someone in my line of business have gleaned from dealing with death and dying? Believe it or not, a few quickly come to mind.

These tips weren’t learned by accompanying the wealthy through this difficult journey — although the wealthy have much to teach. These tips weren’t siphoned off of the personal books of those who had little interest left in hiding their secret ingredients to success. These are simple, straightforward bits of knowledge gained from walking down this lonely path with those reluctant to be making the journey.

And believe it or not, most of what I learned about investing has nothing to do with money.

Invest in Yourself

Personal investment comes in many forms. Chief among these is self-forgiveness.

Remorse is common in humans of all stripes — living and dying — and its effects can be devastating. The specifics may vary: an action taken or not taken, a relationship salvaged or destroyed, or an object bought or sold. The human capacity to blame oneself is unlimited. We spend endless amounts of time feeling bad about things we wish we had done better.

While self-blame serves the purpose of introspection and improving future outcomes, it often leaves a path of destruction it its wake. It’s hard to look forward when you are constantly looking back. The key appears to be changing what we can change and forgiving ourselves for the rest.

Losing his job was the least of Gerald’s regrets. Decades before being diagnosed with cirrhosis (chronic liver disease), his exit from corporate America set off a series of events that ended in alcoholism. His marriage fell apart, and he quickly became estranged from his ex-wife and his daughter, Sandy. While sobriety and eventual employment were recoverable, the damage he had done to his body was not. Neither was the estrangement with Sandy.

A large part of the life review process was spent with the social worker exploring his feelings surrounding the loss of his daughter. Gerald eventually was able to find a modicum of peace and forgive himself. He also realized that if this self-forgiveness had been granted earlier, he might have been able to quit alcohol long before his liver became so damaged.

What have you been unwilling to forgive yourself for?
What damage is this unwillingness inflicting?

Another common way we invest in ourselves is by slowing down. Often, we have big audacious goals and want to reach them immediately. Yet — as in the story of the turtle and the hare — slow incremental gain is what helps us win the race. If we can make progress toward a major goal by just one percent per month, we’ll have phenomenal annual returns over the long run. This principle applies to a skill, a relationship, or just about anything we strive toward. We mustn’t allow our limiting beliefs to hold us back.

We also need to invest in experiences. Experience compounds over time, just as our monetary assets do. As we learn and grow, we hone skills that make us better employees as well as people. Ask anyone who has risen through the ranks to become CEO of a company. Just like Ben Franklin’s compounding investments, growth in the workplace is anything but linear; it grows exponentially.

And if we are going to talk about investing in ourselves, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention education.

Invest in Education

While there’s no question that I’ve benefited from an expensive four-year college education, there are so many different ways to educate yourself nowadays — read, discuss, take online courses, debate until your face is blue and you walk out of the room disgusted. The world is full of teachers, great and small.

Knowledge is the emergency fund in which you shield your happiness. When all other resources are exhausted, your knowledge will help you secure a job, build a shelter, or make the right decisions at the most critical moments. Don’t skimp on self-improvement, and don’t be afraid to pay for it. The money you spend on education will compound in the form of knowledge and skills.

Say yes — even when you don’t want to. Open yourself to other people’s requests, and jump into an activity that feels foreign or uncomfortable.

The only way to gain knowledge or discover new passions is to be willing to explore. Not only will you be exposed to exciting opportunities, but you’ll also build stronger relationships with those to whom you say yes. Always have your bags packed.

Don’t be afraid to learn new things. I’m continuously surprised by how resistant the average person is to learn about basic finance. Most experts suggest that a few hours of reading each month will make you totally financially competent. Yet the preconceived notion that the subject is too difficult scares many away; don’t let it.

I have watched countless patients die with a book on their nightstand or an unfinished argument circling their brain. This is not sad or trivial. Even those who are dying wake up every morning with a plan for how they will spend each day. Make sure you allow room for acquiring new knowledge. Inquisitive people tend to die as they live: happy and full of questions.

Invest in Other People

The one measure of a person (rich or poor, happy or sad) is in the people whom the person leaves behind. I can think of no greater indicator of success. I know instantly when I walk into the room of a dying patient whether they have invested in other people. They are surrounded by pictures, letters, cards, and friends.

In fact, I usually know who the successful investors are before I even reach the hospital room. There are people walking in and out; noise and laughter peal through the otherwise somber hallways. Smiles and tears celebrate the bittersweet confluence of life and death.

If you invest in people, the compound interest will multiply into a lifetime of love and happiness. Long after you’re gone, your essence will survive in the smile on the lips of those who shared in your asset allocation.

It took me years to understand this tip. I stumbled about as a doctor looking to find my people in the midst of a community that didn’t fit me. It was only after I discovered writing and podcasting in the personal finance realm that I was able to connect with people who understand me.

These connections have made all the difference; they have given me the courage to redefine my identity and purpose.

Invest in Children

Invest not only your money, but your time and love. Invest in children. Help build the blocks of their adulthood and happiness. Sprinkle them with your knowledge, humility, and kindness. Lead them with your virtuous example. In you, they will find the role model of success and freedom. Teach them about finances so they can understand what money can and can’t do for them in attainment of their life goals. Leave them with a good example of what living looks like.

Investing in your children will produce a lifetime of dividends. They will be the shoulder to lean on and the undertaker of your vast life dreams. Your time on this earth is short, but your progeny will carry on your spark. Like a ripple in a vast ocean, your effect will be carried with them through the generations. You will live on in the hearts and minds of those who come after you.

Every time a colleague accidentally calls me by my father’s name, while rounding at the hospital, is proof of how we live on in our children. His legacy shaped my career and passions even decades after he has passed. He is remembered.

I will never be able to repay my parents for what they have willingly surrendered to me. Instead, I will pay it forward to my own children. I will invest in them in much the same way as my parents have invested in me, and, thus, our goodness will continue on through the generations.

Invest in Physical and Mental Health

Your body and mind are interconnected. They form the framework you build upon. There’s no financial well-being without mental and physical well-being. As this book demonstrates, managing your money and future take forethought and conscientious decision-making. You can’t do this properly if you yourself are unwell.

Invest in mental health by taking the time and energy to recover. Learn how to slow your mind and relax with activities such as meditation, exercise, and listening to classical music. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from family, friends, or mental health professionals. Psychological counseling is not only common but also incredibly helpful. Getting a professional’s outside perspective can make a huge difference in quieting those internal voices that disrupt your peace and calm.

Physical health also plays an important role. Not only may it prolong the time to the end of life, but the emotional benefits are also enduring. We generally feel stronger both physically and emotionally when we are taking positive steps to take care of ourselves. This does not mean that we all have to become marathon runners. As I said before, perfect can be the enemy of good enough.

Try to get at least thirty minutes of physical activity a day. Start with something easy like walking. Find an activity that fulfills your physical needs without being loathsome or burdensome. If you hate doing it, the habit won’t last.

While I don’t feel strongly about alcohol or drugs, anything above recreational use often limits our health as well as our ability to see our goals clearly. If you are wondering whether it’s a problem, then it probably is. Most of the highs these substances give us are artificial and short-lived.

Invest in the Market

Even a collection of investing tips from a hospice doctor would be remiss without the basics. Taking Stock is a personal finance book, after all. So, don’t forget to invest in the stock market:

Earn more than you spend.
Save as much as you can each year (20 to 50 percent).
Buy broad-based low-cost mutual funds.
Max out retirement savings first, and then open a taxable brokerage account.
Hire a financial adviser only to advise — not to invest for you.

My hope is that this book gives you the intellectual, tactical, and practical knowledge to get the money right so that you can invest more heavily in the other things I’ve discussed. I don’t want to minimize the importance of understanding the financial basics, but I do want to remind you that they are necessary but not sufficient.

Final Thoughts

These are my investing tips from a hospice doctor. As you can see, only the last section deals with money. The reason, of course, is that finances are the easy part. How you invest the rest of your time and energy is likely to determine your perspective in those waning days when you deal with a doctor like me. Don’t waste your life and regret.

Start investing now! Before it’s too late. The stronger the foundation you create, the better you’ll be able to deal with the unexpected. Because if you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s the point of investing in the first place.

Your investing plan has to start immediately — before you are dying and the end is so clearly in sight. Building a life of meaning, purpose, and connections takes time and compounding. Investing in yourself takes energy, and investing in education requires work. Building relationships with your children and community will be a mental and physical strain. Taking care of your mind and body will be taxing. Learning about personal finance and building financial security will consume hours that you might rather have spent on something else.

And it’s all so very, very worth it. Be as prepared for life as you would be for death.

Invest in yourself wisely.

Exercise: Non-Monetary Investment Inventory

Clear your schedule for an hour for two to three separate days over the next week. During that time, make sure all electronics are turned to silent, you’re well-rested and fed, and you have found a quiet, comfortable place to concentrate.

Take a sheet of paper, and separate it lengthwise into three separate columns. Number each from 1 to 10.

For your first list, write down all the education you have received up to this time. You can start with high school, university, or college. Add in any graduate programs, online courses, on-site work trainings, or self-study projects. Be generous here — no need to have received a formal degree or certificate. It’s okay, especially for this section, if you don’t have ten full entries.
For your second list, write down all your skills. These can range from professional expertise to innate talents to self-taught abilities. Don’t forget all that you’ve learned through social media. Are you a content creator? What about hobbies? Again, give yourself credit. What do people always tell you that you are good at?
Finally, in the last column write down key relationships. This includes family, friends, work associates, and even acquaintances. List the ten people who have a big influence on your life. This is your community.

Now peruse your three lists together; this is the sum total of your non-monetary investments. What you have created is an inventory of your non-financial wealth. Often, we get so caught up in our net worth calculation that we forget about our non-monetary assets.

If you take your inventory of non-financial wealth and add it to your net worth calculation, you now have a true listing of all your resources. Are these enough to allow you to utilize most of your time pursuing your true purpose, identity, and connections? If so — welcome to financial independence!

Marcia G. Ory, Texas A&M University

Time in the era of COVID-19 has taken on new meaning. “Blursday” is the new time word of the year – where every day seems the same when staying home and restricting socializing and work.

As a public health and aging expert and founding director of the Texas A&M Center of Population Health and Aging, I have been studying the impacts of COVID-19 with an interest in debunking myths and identifying unexpected positive consequences for our aging population.

It is common to view older adults as especially vulnerable. Public health statistics reinforce the picture of older adults infected with SARS-CoV-2 as more likely to have serious complications, to be hospitalized and to die.

But what do we know about how older adults themselves are responding to social distancing restrictions in place to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19? And what does this changing sense of time mean for them?

Calmness, interest and gratitude

Despite popular notions that older adults would have more negative reactions to forced social isolation, a recent national survey revealed that older adults – despite their awareness of increased risk – are generally not reporting more feelings of anxiety, anger or stress than younger age groups.

They are actually expressing more positive emotions – feelings of calmness, interest and gratitude. Indeed, other surveys suggest it’s the youngest adults – ages 13 to 23 – who are experiencing the most stress.

This surprising finding has been attributed partly to older adults’ perceptions of time and their coping mechanisms developed over a lifetime.

Many older people have redefined their experiences in terms of time left to live, and they focus on what is most meaningful now. They let go of what they can’t do anything about. Instead of looking back, older adults are motivated to enjoy the time they have left.

What have been difficult are the changing definitions of time and the persistence of a “blursday” existence. Being isolated during spring and summer seemed almost bearable. The uncertainty of knowing when – if – things will return to pre-COVID life is likely to be taking a toll on even the most robust older adults.

Older adults who have been self-isolating for months have been looking forward to getting together with their families over the holidays. Not seeing their families during the holiday season may be particularly difficult.

When I was talking to an older friend the other day, she indicated she was “basically doing fine.” She was staying in touch with her family through regular Zoom calls. But she was “a bit sad about the upcoming holidays,” and what she “missed most was not being able to hug” her children – “especially over the holidays.”

From expectation to reality

During a recent SiriusXM Doctor Radio show on which I was the guest “expert,” I heard many real-life challenges families face: An older woman with underlying health conditions worrying about not getting to travel to see her children and grandchildren. Adult children who were weighing what would be worse – possibly infecting their older relatives by visiting or not being able to see their elderly relatives in person for what could be the last time.

While vaccinations are now authorized for emergency use, their rollout will take time and we can’t expect them to be an immediate solution for such hard decisions.

Public health guidelines still recommend using face masks and adhering to social distancing rules. They also recommend limiting travel well into the new year.

This push-pull, from expectation to reality, can be an especially hard adjustment. Instead of a one-time cure, will we be thinking of COVID-19 vaccinations as a perennial event, like with flu shot, and COVID-19 precautions as a fixture in our everyday lives?

Grandma is on Instagram

Contrary to stereotypes that cast older adults as tech-phobic, many older people are learning new skills to become more familiar with technology. That way, they can stay socially connected and accomplish tasks of daily living such as bill paying and grocery shopping.

Some older adults are even more likely than before to communicate with their loved ones during COVID-19 times using social media platforms.

Health care changing with the times

Health and social organizations are more attuned to negative impacts of social isolation and are instituting screening tools and referral sources for care. For example, a social isolation risk screener asks brief questions to detect early signs of social isolation and link older adults to needed services.

Another silver lining: Mental health problems may not be so stigmatized when many people have such obvious reasons for unhappiness.

Health care itself is changing, with benefits for patients’ time. Instead of expecting older adults to spend hours getting up and out of the house for a 15- to 30-minute appointment, telemedicine has come into many older adults’ homes.

There is renewed interest in advanced care planning as well. While doctors, older adults and their families may have been previously uncomfortable about bringing up the topic, such discussions are becoming more common, due in part to the high number of serious complications and fatalities in the older population.

And finally, as an aging expert, I see one more positive change: a de-stereotyping of older adults.

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.]

Beyond the statistics portraying the seriousness of COVID-19 among older adults, there is also a growing recognition that older adults are not all the same. COVID-19 experiences will be affected by existing physical and mental health as well as the social conditions in which older adults live.

While many older adults may be coping well, it’s important not to overlook those socially isolated older adults with persistent mental health challenges or difficulties getting access to technologies that can help them connect to others.

Marcia G. Ory, Regents and Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health, Texas A&M University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s a very impressive body of work, in many ways. The songwriting is excellent but equally impressive is the fact that it took TS and her collaborators only five months to put out the album. Evermore could have easily been created and finalized over the span of a few years, it’s that good, let alone a few months. This proves that TS is prolific and that she knows how to work smarter, not harder.

Regarding the production of the album, Evermore has a playfulness, optimism, and whimsicality about it that simply does not exist in Folklore. The latter is somber and perhaps more purposeful, but the former offers a kind of welcome reprieve. Evermore certainly has its heart – wrenching songs, but there’s just something there that differentiates it from its predecessor.

Thus far, my favorite tracks are ‘Cowboy Like Me,’ ‘Willow,’ ‘Champagne Problems,’ ‘Tolerate It,’ and ‘Happiness.’ These songs contain some of the most beautiful lyrics I’ve heard, rivaling even Folklore’s top track, ‘My Tears Ricochet,’ which, I believe, is one of the best songs in her music catalog.

Examples of these outstanding lyrics:

“What would you do if I break free and leave us in ruins? Took this dagger in me and removed it? Gain the weight of you, then lose it?”

“The skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to f*** this up.”

“Your heart was glass, I dropped it.”

“When did all our lessons start to look like weapons pointed at my deepest hurt?”

“No one teaches you what to do when a good man hurts you, and you know you hurt him, too.”

“Every bait – and – switch was a work of art.”

“I’m like the water when your ship pulled in that night: rough on the surface, but you cut through like a knife.”

Evermore is an alt – pop – folk masterpiece. Admittedly, I prefer Folklore, but Evermore gets an A+.

Source

Martha Ackelsberg, Smith College

I’ve been thinking a lot, recently, about the tension between demanding “individual rights” – in the sense of deciding whether or not to wear a mask – and calling for more action on the part of our government to protect us from the coronavirus pandemic.

I’m a political theorist, which means I study how communities are organized, how power is exercised and how people relate to one another in and between communities. I’ve realized – through talking to friends, and thinking about the protests against COVID-19-related restrictions that have taken place around the country – that many people do not understand that individual rights and state power are not really opposites.

The laws and policies that governments enact set the framework for the exercise of our rights. So, inaction on the part of government does not necessarily empower citizens. It can, effectively, take away our power, leaving us less able to act to address our needs.

‘War of all against all’

The Founders stated in the Declaration of Independence that “governments are instituted among Men … to secure their rights … to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Those goals cannot be pursued individually without governments to help create the conditions necessary for collective life. As Thomas Hobbes recognized almost four centuries ago, if everyone just does what they please, no one can trust anyone. We end up with chaos, uncertainty and a “war of all against all.”

Rights become worthless.

This paradox – of the need for government to enable the effective pursuit of individual aims – is particularly extreme in the situation of COVID-19 and its attendant economic crisis. Amid a rampaging pandemic, people have rights to do many things, but are they really free to exercise them?

It may not feel like you can enjoy the benefits of your individual rights when you have to be engaged in a continuous process of risk-assessment: Is it safe to leave my house? To go to work? To send my child to school? To visit my loved ones?

Even more, people confront those questions from very different perspectives: “Essential” workers have had to make decisions about whether to go to work and risk disease or death, or to stay home to protect themselves and their families and risk hunger and homelessness. Those who are unsafe in their homes, because they live with abusive parents or partners must choose between the danger of staying in and the dangers of leaving. Even those who work remotely make an assessment of risk every time they leave home, especially now that infections have surged, given the absence of clear, shared norms about social distancing, mask-wearing and other precautions against the spread of disease.

Collective framework

Each person experiences these as personal choices, however, because federal and state governments have failed to provide a truly collective framework within which people can be safer.

People may know, for example, that if everyone wore a mask in the presence of others, maintained social distance and avoided large crowds, it would be relatively safe to be out in public. But that goal cannot be achieved by voluntary individual actions alone, since the benefits are achieved only when most or all of us participate.

The only way to assure that everyone will be wearing a mask — understood as an act of community and collective care, an action taken to protect others, as well as ourselves — is for the government to require mask-wearing because it is needed for the protection of life.

It’s well accepted that governments can mandate that drivers must have insurance if they are to be allowed to register and drive a car, or that all children be vaccinated before they can attend school. These requirements are justified out of the recognition that our individual actions (or inactions) affect others as well as ourselves.

Of course — and here is where questions about individual rights come up against the need for government policy — in the absence of government economic support for individuals and families, for example, the costs of actions taken to protect others fall unequally.

If businesses close to slow the spread of disease, they protect both workers and consumers. But without government aid, they and their workers are the ones who bear the financial burdens of these actions as individuals.

Interdependence and mutual responsibility

That is why the CARES Act, which provided income for those who lost jobs and loans or grants to those who kept their workers on payroll, was critical.

It was government policy that recognized that collective caring behavior cannot be sustained without communal support. The CARES Act articulated, through a series of government programs, the idea that no one should be forced to be a martyr — say, to lose their livelihood — for the benefit of others.

Government policy of this sort (such as the relief bills now being considered by Congress) aims to ensure that those who forego work to protect others — or go to work to protect others, like essential workers — will not have to pay a personal price.

The ability to exercise the rights to work, to shop or to go to school depends upon having a relatively safe public space in which to operate. In turn, that requires all of us to attend to the rights and safety of others, as well as of ourselves.

Government is the means by which such attending — caring — is expressed and accomplished. It is only when people can count on others to be concerned for one another that they can truly be free to act, and exercise their rights, in the public arena.

Martha Ackelsberg, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government, emerita, Smith College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jane Orient, M.D., is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and a member of the FEE Board of Trustees. She is the author of Your Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism About National Health Care and a new novel about where the money is in medicine, Sutton’s Law.

The ongoing battle over “health-care reform” may be portrayed as a war between the American Medical Association and the Good Guys. The AMA is supposed to stand for Corporate Greed, and the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend Health Care, headquartered at Harvard University, is supposed to be on the side of Social Justice and everything good. The latter group (called “Doctors Against Profits” in the Wall Street Journal) recently dumped boxes of annual reports from investor-owned hospitals and health plans into Boston Harbor.

In reality, the issue is Managed Care versus Single Payer, even though neither group openly acknowledges its ultimate political goal.

While the two groups appear to be at odds, it is interesting that the AMA gives the Ad Hoc Committee a lot of column inches in its publications. The truth is that the two have much in common–and they both have the wrong answer to the problems with American medicine. So do Congress and the Clinton administration, which are likely to pass still more bad laws that will push us further down the yellow-brick road to the Single Payer Wizard (despite their advertised intentions, as in the Patient Access to Responsible Care Act, sponsored by Representative Charles Norwood of Georgia).

To get it right, we have to change the focus from doctors’ incomes (and the politics of envy and class warfare) to patients’ well-being, both medical and economic. Yes, profits are involved in medicine–as in every human activity. But remember that government and managed-care bureaucracies (which are more similar than different) are both focused on the bottom line: their budgets and their concept of the collective good. The AMA is ineffective at fighting them because its bureaucracy has the same problem and is in bed with the others.

Medicine is supposed to serve patients. If patients are served well and at an affordable cost, then doctors should be well rewarded (and rewards are not all financial). If doctors are rewarded for reasons that are largely unrelated to good service to patients, as opposed to corporate or government masters, then patients will surely suffer.

Patients have succumbed to one terrific sales job by insurers and the government, which were aided and abetted by physicians out for easy money from third parties. They all want patients to believe that happiness is a rich insurance plan that covers everything.

Such “insurance,” with first-dollar coverage or minimal out-of-pocket expense, is really prepayment for consumption and is definitely not a good deal. As one consumer, who happens to be a doctor, said, “I have sent about $75,000 to Blue Cross in the past ten years and have absolutely nothing to show for it.” Had he had a serious illness, he might still have had nothing to show for it. These days the covered services are “covered” by a gatekeeper and layers of committees.

If this sounds like a pitch for medical savings accounts, it is and it isn’t. MSAs are a kind of gimmick, a partial answer to the basic problem, which is the abuse of the concept of insurance–in large part due to tax discrimination against true medical insurance and in favor of prepayment for consumption.

Join us in preserving the principles of economic freedom and individual liberty for the rising generation

Support FEE’s Mission

Faulty Insurance

Both the type of insurance and the payment mechanism are at fault. By “payment mechanism” I mean the “assignment of benefits,” or payment, to the “provider” rather than to the supposed beneficiary. This is an invitation to fraud and abuse. (Nonetheless, Medicare does everything to encourage it.) Moreover, it tends to disguise the wastefulness and absurdity of processing huge numbers of claims for trivial sums of money.

Bureaucracies with a lust for power, insurers with a lust for profit (they get paid for all that ridiculous paperwork), doctors with extravagant tastes (who know they get more from the third party than they could ever get directly from patients), and patients with a distaste for personal responsibility–they all have a vested interest in the status quo. Moreover, everyone fears, and with good reason, that the first one to get off this merry-go-round will take a financial beating.

Probably the only way out is to stop the merry-go-round, all at once, for everybody. No more tax preferences for employer-provided “health benefits”: pay the workers with real money, not HMO money, and give an across-the-board tax cut from which all profit (not just those with employer-provided “health benefits”). No more “assignment of benefits”: pay all claims directly to the beneficiary, with a dual-payee check if that is considered necessary. And no more government mandates that prevent insurance companies from offering low-cost benefits suited to what patients want rather than what special-interest lobbies demand.

If this is done, there will be winners: insurance companies that offer no-nonsense, patient-tailored coverage at a reasonable cost; employers who can offer workers the equivalent of a raise without sacrificing competitiveness; workers who can have more money under their own control (rather than that of an insurance bureaucrat); patients who can buy the medical care they want instead of insurance that they don’t want; and doctors who are best at satisfying their patients.

There will also be losers: Those who profit from managing or gaming the present system—whether they are managed-care or insurance executives, government bounty hunters, bureaucrats, overpriced doctors and hospitals, insurance salesmen, and even patients who are constantly demanding more medical care (often of dubious value) as long as it is at someone else’s expense. Some of these folks can better themselves by finding useful, soul-satisfying work. And the congenital thieves can go back to robbing banks.

Such a system would be correctly called a free market. The transactions that occur there would be peaceful and voluntary.

The system that we have now may be called a market, but it is truly anything but. It is best described as a system of legal plunder, marked by class warfare and increasingly draconian coercion.

The way out is to take back our freedom, not to turn back the clock to old methods rightly called fascism, serfdom, or mercantilism, even if dressed up in new names like managed competition or single payer, and even if advocates stage a perverted version of a stunt (the Boston Tea Party) once pulled by real Sons of Liberty.

Remember, that historic event was about throwing out British mercantilism. How ironic that the actors in the recent parody would destroy American free enterprise and import British or Canadian socialism.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Jordan Peterson has been through hell.

In mid-2019, Peterson disappeared from public life as he struggled with severe health problems stemming from a physical dependency on prescription tranquilizers.

“Absolute hell,” is how his daughter Mikhaila described what he went through.

Two weeks ago, Peterson reemerged on YouTube to announce that he has recovered enough to start releasing new content again.

“I’m alive, and I have plans for the future,” he reported.

Peterson is also ready to share what he’s learned from his ordeal.

“I’ve learned some things during that trying time, I suppose,” he said, “or at least I can tell you what kept me going during what was certainly the worst period of my life.”

A look at how Jordan Peterson escaped the underworld with his spirit intact may hold lessons for us all. But first let’s briefly trace how he got there, as he and Mikhaila related his journey in a video from June.

Descensus ad Infernos

Peterson’s descent began in April 2019 when his wife Tammy was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

At that moment, Peterson experienced something he has discussed extensively in his books and lectures: the collapse of order and the emergence of chaos.

In his bestselling book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Peterson described order as “explored territory”: the known and the expected in our lives. “Order,” for example, “is the stability of your marriage.”

Indeed, Jordan’s marriage to Tammy was a major source of order and stability in his life. In the acknowledgments section of 12 Rules, Peterson wrote that his wife Tammy, “…has been an absolute pillar of honesty, stability, support, practical help, organization and patience…”

But then, he was informed, that pillar was soon to fall.

“Chaos,” Peterson wrote,” is the new place and time that emerges when tragedy strikes suddenly…”

“It’s the new and unpredictable suddenly emerging in the midst of the commonplace familiar.”

“It’s the place you end up when things fall apart…”

And when things fall apart, it can throw us for a loop emotionally. As Peterson wrote in his much earlier book, Maps of Meaning, “When the world remains known and familiar… our emotions remain under control. When the world suddenly transforms itself into something new, however, our emotions are dysregulated…”

Faced with such terrible news, Peterson’s anxiety spiked. He had already long been taking prescription benzodiazepines for anxiety. After his wife’s diagnosis, his doctor increased the dosage. However, this only seemed to make the anxiety worse. Peterson realized that he had developed a dangerous physical dependency.

Tammy defied her diagnosis by recovering soon after. But Jordan’s ordeal was just beginning.

His doctor had him try to quit cold turkey by swapping meds. But this sent his anxiety levels soaring. Then he tried to taper off, but that too was unbearable. Worst of all was that he developed a condition called akathisia, which Peterson likened to being jabbed with a cattle prod non-stop for all his waking hours. The condition kept him in constant motion, as lying, sitting, or standing still was unbearable.

Then Jordan, along with Mikhaila and her husband, began a long quest, first in North America and ultimately in eastern Europe, for medical help that would get him off the benzos and help him recover from the neurological damage he had suffered.

At various points, Peterson suffered delirium, hallucinations, time distortion, and physical impairments such that he was unable to walk up stairs or get into bed.

“It’s no overstatement,” Peterson related, “to say that for me the consequences of benzodiazepine withdrawal were worse than death.”

“You know, you don’t want to say something like that lightly,” he continued, “but there were lots of times, plenty of times, when it would have been preferable, as far as I could tell, just not to be there than to experience what I was experiencing.”

There is good reason not to dismiss Peterson’s account as an exaggeration. For example, a 2017 research article in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found a link between major physical illnesses and suicide risk.

How, then, did Peterson manage to endure such acute suffering? His philosophy of life may have had something to do with it.

Of Suffering and Survival

“Life is suffering,” Peterson wrote in 12 Rules. “There is no more basic, irrefutable truth.”

“What in the world should be done about that?” he asked. “The simplest, most obvious, and most direct answer? Pursue pleasure. Follow your impulses. Live for the moment.”

But Peterson rejected the notion that the pursuit of happiness is the proper goal of life, citing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a survivor and documenter of the Soviet gulag system, who wrote,

“…that the ‘pitiful ideology’ holding that ‘human beings are created for happiness’ was an ideology ‘done in by the first blow of the work assigner’s cudgel.’”

“In a crisis,” Peterson explained, “the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual. …a deeper meaning was required.”

“It’s all very well to think the meaning of life is happiness,” Peterson elaborated in an interview with The Guardian, “but what happens when you’re unhappy? Happiness is a great side effect. When it comes, accept it gratefully. But it’s fleeting and unpredictable. It’s not something to aim at – because it’s not an aim. And if happiness is the purpose of life, what happens when you’re unhappy? Then you’re a failure. And perhaps a suicidal failure. Happiness is like cotton candy. It’s just not going to do the job.”

In an interview with Dr. Oz, Peterson said of happiness: “It’s a shallow boat in a very rough ocean.”

And indeed, as Peterson related, it wasn’t happiness that got him through his health crisis. “The reason I did survive,” he said, “certainly wasn’t because I was enjoying my life.”

So what was the reason? What kind of life purpose is strong enough to withstand the overwhelming degree of suffering that can befall us in times of crisis and chaos? What “deeper meaning” will sustain the human spirit through a long, grinding sojourn in the underworld: through a bout of severe illness or a stint in a gulag?

For Peterson and Solzhenitsyn, the answer is responsibility.

As Peterson explained, Solzhenitsyn embraced radical responsibility and that was how he survived the gulag with his spirit, not only intact, but triumphant.

And Peterson credits his own survival to his attachment to his family (“The reason [I survived] was that I had family that I was very attached to…”) and his dedication to his work (“My work… was also extremely useful because I could sustain myself by producing and then culling through thoughts that were helpful, despite my anguish… and my lack of hope for the future.”).

Incredibly, Peterson managed to continue working on his next book throughout most of his health crisis.

“Responsibility: that’s what gives life meaning,” Peterson once said in a lecture. And, as he demonstrated in practice, a life of meaning is one that can weather a storm of suffering.

Full Circle

Peterson also credits his survival to the support of his family, which he described as “above and beyond the call of duty.” His daughter and his son-in-law were especially instrumental, as they took the lead in seeking and obtaining medical treatment for him, even as that quest took them into Russia in the dead of winter. “Yeah well, I wasn’t going to give up,” Mikhaila responded after Jordan, choked up with emotion, thanked her for her help.

This was especially poignant given that Peterson dedicated an entire chapter of 12 Rules to tell the story of Mikhaila’s own extremely painful lifelong battle with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

The Peterson family moved heaven and earth to help Mikhaila, while being careful not to rob her of her own strength by fostering helplessness. And now the responsibility that Jordan embraced long ago has come back to bless him, as the daughter he raised and cared for undertook the burden of saving his life in return.

“I have seen my teenage daughter,” Peterson wrote, “live through the destruction of her hip and her ankle and survive two years of continual, intense pain and emerge with her spirit intact. I watched her younger brother voluntarily and without resentment sacrifice many opportunities for friendship and social engagement to stand by her and us while she suffered. With love, encouragement, and character intact, a human being can be resilient beyond imagining.”

Admitting His Mistakes

One of the ways Solzhenitsyn embraced radical responsibility was to uncover within his soul any blame he himself bears in producing his own plight.

Peterson emulated his hero in this way as well.

“It’s quite shocking to me actually,” he confessed to his daughter, “that I didn’t know—despite my professional specialty that I had no idea how catastrophic benzodiazepine use could be.”

Mikhaila pointed out for the audience that he’s not a psychiatrist, but a psychologist. And psychologists counsel but don’t prescribe medicine.

Yet Peterson refused to let himself off the hook, saying, “It’s still useful to keep up on the relevant literature.”

Peterson is also seeking to redeem his mistakes and his suffering by spreading awareness of the dangers of benzodiazepine use. He also exemplified responsibility when he addressed head-on a criticism that some have levied against him:

“What’s the old saying: ‘physician heal thyself,’ right? I wrote a self-help book. I’m a psychologist. It’s like, ‘Well, why the hell didn’t I see this coming?’ and ‘Why wasn’t I more cautious?’ And I think those are reasonable questions. (…) Well, and then that’s the next question is: why should people take anything I say seriously, because of that? And I guess what I would say is, if you’re going to wait to learn from people who don’t make mistakes, or don’t have tragedy enter their life. You’re going to spend a long time waiting to learn something. And the second thing I would say is, in my lectures and my writings, I’ve never suggested that I was anything other than one of the people who also needed to learn these lessons. So I included myself in the population of people who needed some moral improvement.”

And he’s not just saying that after the fact. Long before his illness, he told The Guardian:

“Also, [12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos] isn’t only written for other people. It’s a warning to me. I’m also saying: ‘Look the hell out because the chickens come home to roost.’”

Physician heal thyself? Where it counted most, Dr. Peterson did heal himself.

He prescribed, both for himself and his audience, a life of meaning and responsibility as an antidote to chaos and despair. That prescription saved his life. Someday, it might save yours and mine as well.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.