3D: Daily Dose of Discernment

Thursday, May 28, 2026

The art of comedy is to set an expectation (outcome) in a common scenario for your audience, then to reinforce it with anecdotes, details, or facts until it is considered a given or natural by your audience (this varies across cities, urban populations, age groups, cultures, and around the world). Finally, suddenly or dramatically throw in something wildly unexpected or incongruent as the actual outcome (punch line).
The last step is where timing comes in. You must wait until your audience has the desired outcome in mind before you break it. If you rush through the joke, the expectation will not be fully formed, and the joke will fail.
Some can do comedy with total seriousness, which often makes the punchline more effective by providing greater contrast. Others can do comedy while self-mocking, creating a jovial mood among the audience and making them more likely to accept the punch line. Still others can deliver comedy with a playful attitude, creating a jovial mood in the audience and making them more likely to accept the punchline.
Comedy is based on the fact that when a proven expectation is broken, the mind needs to release the energy that would have gone to the expected ending it can no longer reach, and the laugh mechanism allows this release. This release is allowed because the expectation was not of consequence to the audience. Expectations attract energy and can become destructive when desired outcomes are not met.

The self does not grow; the ego grows.
The self does not develop; the ego develops.
The self does not become new things; the ego becomes new things.
The self remains as it was born; the ego changes continuously.
Personal growth is something to avoid, because it can only involve the ego.
Change your habits, learn new skills, and gain new insights and information, but none of that is who you are.

Everything you imagine is unreal; however, many have turned their imaginations into reality through disciplined effort, persistence, and intelligence.
Everything you imagine is unreal; however, by focusing on what you imagine, you can often find much of it already exists in the world.
Everything you imagine is unreal and has no God-like power to manifest itself in the world, no matter what practices (e.g., affirmation or intention) and time you devote to it. The universe does not owe your mental images obedience.
Everything you imagine is unreal; however, many mistakenly treat the mental objects of imagination as more real than the physical objects of the world.
Everything you imagine is unreal and has no God-like power to manifest itself in the world; however, many things that were only in the imagination that were fervently prayed for have become real through God.
The danger and problem is that too many treat their mental constructs as more real than the stubborn, indifferent physical world. They confuse the map for the territory, the fantasy for the fact. This inversion leads to delusion far more often than it leads to creation.
Hold two truths simultaneously: Imagination is unreal. Imagination is the raw material from which almost everything valuable in human civilization was born.

Worrying about your idea of a person is not the same as worrying about the actual person.
Feeling depressed about your idea of yourself is not the same as being depressed about who you really are.
Hating someone in your mind is not the same as hating a living, breathing human being.
Insecurity born from comparing your “inferior” self-image to someone else’s “superior” one is not just painful—it is fundamentally insane. It has no basis in reality.
Most of what you think is nothing, because you are thinking about ideas of people, places, and things instead of the things themselves.
Most of what you say is nothing, because you are speaking about ideas rather than reality.
Test this for yourself: Can you breathe an idea? Can you drink or eat one? Can you feed the starving with the idea of food? Clothe the naked with the idea of clothing? House the homeless with the idea of shelter? Politicians constantly try exactly that—and we all know how spectacularly it fails.
Reality is not optional. The moment you stop confusing your mental maps with the actual territory, your life becomes lighter, clearer, and far more sane.

Capitalists feed on and grow from profits, so they are incentivized by them.
Governments feed and grow from taxes, so they are incentivized by them.
When governments feed on taxes while trying to control or live off capitalism, the result is often authoritarianism, cronyism, and economic failure. They undermine the very system they depend on.
The core problem with tax-funded governments is that revenue collection becomes an end in itself. This dependence on taxes inevitably incentivizes the expansion of bureaucracies and state power.
The core problem with profit-driven businesses is that profit becomes an end in itself, leading to exploitation of workers, communities, and the environment.
One promising solution for businesses is the benefit corporation model, which legally requires companies to consider the well-being of employees, communities, and the environment alongside profits.
One proven solution for governments is radical downsizing. In Argentina, President Javier Milei has eliminated ministries, significantly cut public spending, reduced bureaucracy, and achieved budget surpluses—demonstrating that shrinking the state is possible.
We must redesign the system so that both governments and businesses feed on and grow from the prosperity, health, and happiness of the people they serve—not by extracting from them.

Pharisees follow rituals, not the Spirit.
Rituals often become subtle idolatry of forms.
Discipline matters, but ritual is not discipline; it is habit.
Rituals substitute motion for genuine engagement and presence.
Institutions love rituals because they scale, and that provides control and income.
A candle lit in awe pierces you the first time; however, by the hundredth, it is mere background noise.
New revivals arise to escape the current dead rituals, only to harden over time into new dead rituals, repeating the cycle across centuries.