Real rebellion is going to school wearing a clown suit
2008-11-14
When the subject of rebellion comes up with friends, I often quote this great phrase from “Lonely Dissent” :
[Real rebellion] doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.
Today Jason pointed to this YouTube video of Peter Schiff, two years ago, predicting exactly what's happening in the U.S. economy right now. (Click here to watch even part of this video to really understand the point of today's post.)
Every other expert on the show is laughing out loud (literally), scoffing at him, saying that's the most ridiculous thing ever. (Then watch those same experts make predictions about 2008 that could not have been more wrong.)
For all you musicians and entrepreneurs who are used to having people tell you your plan, band, or company will never work, let this be a great reminder of what real rebellion feels like, and how sweet it is when everyone else is wrong. :-)
I just realized why I never took to San Francisco. I love having something to rebel against! It’s easier for me to love LA because so many people hate it. But San Francisco... because everyone LOVES it, I can’t!
It takes you by surprise sometimes, just how "lonely" lonely dissent can be.
Sometimes you have to rebel, not only against the crowd, but against your friends and your family. And your own natural tendencies. Giving up everything you don’t want to get everything you want can be really hard.
But that’s the real work, isn’t it?
Jules
(I happened upon the Peter Schiff video today from a completely separate source. Peter Schiff must feel SO VINDICATED right now.)
oh. really sad seeing this on your blog.
Yes, but what’s his track record, and the track record of the other experts? He may have just gotten lucky. The fact of the matter is that you can’t really predict the future, you can just detect patterns and speculate. And sometimes you just get lucky and make a completely oddball prediction which just happens to be right.
If he’s a Cassandra that’s one thing, but there’s such a thing as randomly being right, too.
Oh, and also on the same point, if he’d been completely wrong, who would have remembered at all?
Yes, but that’s always the risk of rebellion. Whether it’s the start-up, the social movement, or the band trying to get its thing across, you have to go out in the woods, do your thing, and hope that some other people follow you. That’s very lonely. I wish I’d understood that better when I was in my teens and twenties. I probably would have accomplished more.
Type your comment here .I doesn´t Know,! !! Dig? STOP MAKING SENSE ! George Bush had just a comment on news; he said: ... the blame for our economic downfall is that we monitor too much our economics, rather than let it flow ´ NATURALLY ´....
to me it is a kind a same statement when Reagan went: ´ FACT`S ARE STUPID THINGS ....` George is probably the worst president ever...laughs.. oh my ....
MIND ya guys: Motzart died age 34 and was realized over 100 years later by some music scientist who discovered his compositions and went ´ wow´....
Bird died 34, too... the doctor predicted his age 64...
Hendrix died with just a few bucks on in his account.. at age 27....
Marley was 36... Himself predicting his death and illness 3 years earlier....
´Me gwon die at 36 like the Christ... ` Who are the real revolutionists? and what it is?
Now you tell me...
I love that you mention Peter Schiff. I have been following him for many years and he still understands the mechanical forces that are moving the markets about as good as anyone (Doug Noland also) . If a person follows what he is saying you can make a lot of money. Musicians will tend to try to make their money with music and that is like going to the desert to find water in some cases. There are people with their water hole that they find but on the whole there is a lot more sand than anything else. (big name acts are statistical freaks)
The best markets, energy precious metals and uranium have been sold off into the dirt because of a belief that there will be deep deflation. On TV this is what everyone is saying, the so called experts. (guy Adami, Dennis Gartman, Steve Forbes, Robert Praechter (who will still claim deflation when canned corn costs a 100 dollars a can) and every one else that parrots them. Peter understands that the "deflation" that we are having is from de-leveraging. Banks, hedge funds and everyone else short the dollar and long assets in leverage are being made to unwind the positions due to margin calls and redemptions. This forces buying of the dollar which will ultimately crash after this impulse is played out. It is true that the credit lockups of the past two years have killed businesses everywhere. There are plenty of real reasons to think that a vicious deflation is underway. My opinion is that they will only go into the greater depression after the currencies collapse and that gives everyone time get their act together in preparation for this.
There is tons of money sitting idle. When money velocity returns and the effects of the massive increase in the worldwide monetary base kick in the next round of inflation will be whithering. Many assets being shunned now will return 100 to 1 or much more later when the sentiment changes. Intelligent investing frequently involves doing what everyone is not doing in a large way at critical turning points. If someone knows the correct gold, silver, oil/gas, uranium stocks to purchase they will be blown away at what they make. If someone does not want to think much and just play for solid returns of merely 100% and better they could just buy silver and gold. Hold it in a foreign country because currency controls are coming. Then when you are rich go do what ever you want in music backed by your mighty wealth. You won’t have long to wait the printing presses of the worlds currencies are humming right now!
Thats amazing that you guys are following Peter. Bud Conrad, Jim Willie, Doug Noland, Jim Turk, Mark Faber, Puru Saxena and many others provide great insight into the complex world that we are members of.
I just saw Steve S. video. ... few years ago he predicted the down fall of economics. Yep...They laughed at him.... but who´s laughing now? ... it is always the same.!! Like, When Finland went to EU money union, I predicted , what is in fact , now happening. The prices have gone up 400- 600 hundred % compared what it used to be. An example: coffee and a bun - now 3.80 € - Before, 3 marks ...1 € = 6 marks... and this was just 6 years ago .. Fuller´s EBS ale 6.70 € in pub...Today!. I Drank it, so I should know!
And so on... count for ya self.... I am poorer than ever because the paychecks are dragging.... like they always do...mind ya : THE ONLY LEARNED PERSONS ARE SELF TAUGHT. THE OTHERS ARE TAUGHT. - Erno Paasilinna, Finnish Writer.
why?
real rebellion is realizing that no matter what you wear, they can’t take away your thoughts.
Related:
“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” - Howard Aiken
this is true.
except when that band genuinely sucks.
I was just thinking about the INCREDIBLE amount of well-intentioned but terrible advice I receive every single day, some of it directly to me personally and a basically unmeasurable amount if I count what I could spend all day reading online. Thanks for this reminder that others are not going to get it, you just have to follow the path you create for yourself.
Actually, Peter was part of a large group of Austrian Economists predicting the current crisis over the last decade (just as Mises predicted the 1929 crash in the early 20’s and Hayek predicted the results of Hoover and FDR’s policies in the early 30’s). The problem is the only Austrian Economists that ever get airtime on the 3-letter gov’t propoganada outlets are Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers (and more recently, Ron Paul).
Right on! What glee we got out of this video. Thanks for using this to encourage musicians. My partner Tim Champion and I are determined to make this a big year for
our band and for our music. Our plan is to stay busy making music and gigging and making videos and making guitar pedals.. So far very good for The Hippy Nuts.
and Tim Champion pedals just got selected in the Best of 2008 in Premier Guitar Magazine. It’s a brand new business and it’s so exciting to be selling so many so soon.
Derek, you said to just jump in and start a business without lengthy business plans.
Thanks for sharing those pearls of wisdom. Everybody, keep on smiling. Kathena
Just to say hi, and best wishes for this holiday season!!!!!
Fantastic Peter Schiff reference... yet another reason I wish Ron Paul would have been taken more seriously as a Presidential Candidate (Schiff was Paul's economic adviser).
Also a great point about not letting others' laughter at your ambitions bring you down.
Always believe in yourself and no matter what happens, keep moving forward towards your goal in life.
John Janes
being rebillion leads to innovaion and the way to freedom and self confidence. People who restrict their behaviuors and ambitions to norms of the society are boring and will not reach that far; but those who believe in their own way and don't give a damn of what others think about them, are the most clever because they will eventually get their goals by working hard as passion leads them, and they are likely to be the winners. my motto is: never suppress your self-actualisation because of social disapproval
Hey Derek, as always a pleasure to hear from you, and an honor to leave my opnion on another important topic for every artist as they journey on their path.
I think that's important for each of us NEVER LOOSE SIGHT OF, this is YOUR PATH, and your path alone.
When we begin to look at any musician/artist in a way that diggs deeper into the "makeup" of every person so much is there to be discovered, learned, analized and so on.
I know in my life I can speak from my personal experience that "mystery" has
always been surrounding what others openly have had to say about me.
Inside of myself mystery has been one of the key factors in me growing into who I am today. I have always believed in something more. There never have been borders, or rules. Everything I've been taught I've questioned. In reguard to organized schooling I've always felt like I was at a circus or a play. That I could taste the untruth in the air.
This isn't something I sought out as a child, it just was. As I became older and was fatefuly one day entranced by "mothermusic" I've been spellbound ever since.
Chances for this or that have presented themselves but I've let them pass by like a middays shadow. I've never stopped becoming further and further entranced by the "magic" that captured me that day as a kid when these formless, vibrations floating throught the air undenyably change me from within.
When something that has no form, and cannot be seen. Yet it can produce emotions transporting one to years past. Bringing with it exact smells, sights, as if one was living the moment once more.... That's very mysterious to me. I can't think of any other medium that has that power. Can you?
So to be lost in the "selfwilled" search to connect with and for and the abiity to channel this medium at my choosing, the questions presented in the topic of this disscusion become part of a whole that are only the surface layers, and to me come along with the deeper dedication that one who is truly seeking this mystical path finds as simple tokens or markers of some "progress" if you will. So as this path of mine contiues to unfold, so to do the "strange" or "mysterious" things those near and far from me have to say about who they precieve me to be.
I believe this will be a ever expanding part of the "way things are" in this incarnation I've chosen and so it is.
Remember this if nothing else... Love all, Serve all, this is our duty as human beings.
- Dominick Joseph