Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter.

Look back to look forward

What have we forgotten about? How did the ancients know the answer (or at least know about) so many of the problems we are still facing in 2025? Five thousand years ago, people were writing about crippling ambitions, the lust for money, being distracted, and low self esteem. If you need answers to these problems, you should research what answers they came up with. The older the problem, the older the answer.

Any problems that we have today, that did not exist hundreds/ thousands of years ago, are purely man made problems. Too much screen time? Man made. Bad diet? Because were eating man made food. Eat natural fruits, veggies and meats—if it has a marketing budget, its not real food. Have you ever seen an ad for mangoes? I believe the more similar your lifestyle, activities, and diet is to how humans would have lived 2000 years ago, the better you will feel.

Inflation. is man made. Inflation is not a law of nature… it does not need to occur. But the financial decision makers have designed and contributed to such a broken system that the only way to keep it propped up is to continue to print money, and thus continue to inflate prices and devalue dollars.

Content addiction is man made. We created this content, and now we are addicted to it. Significant amounts of collective human time has been spent on consuming absolutely useless content. In short, we created brain rot. 

Other man made problems include: poverty, war, immigration and violence. However, these have been around so long that I consider them baked into our DNA through evolution. I am more concerned with problems created in the last 100-200 years. 

Everything is a man made problem technically. We would all be living peacefully in the garden of eden if man was not persuaded to eat the apple or whatever. And we would all be speaking the same language and working harmoniously if we were humble and did not try to compete with god by building the Tower of Babel. Anyways, just a tool to evaluate your problems… How old is the problem you are dealing with? More to explore on this subject for sure.

Raising your standards

An idea to increase your effort is to first increase your expenses and cost of your habits. If I wanted to make more money, I could move into a nicer apartment that costs more monthly. Not enough to ruin me, but enough that it is not a comfortable expense. Just enough to light a fire under my ass. Or, if I want to hit the gym more, I could sign up for the most expensive gym around. More motivation since the cost of missing a session would be so great. However, in terms of gyms, its probably better to sign up for the most convenient gym, regardless of price. Similar to how the best school for a kid is the school closest to their home. Better to invest all the time you would save by not commuting in net positive activities. Rather than commuting to go to a marginally ‘better’ school.

Similar to the above idea, if you want to raise your intellect, you need to surround yourself with people smarter than you and read books that challenge you greatly. Be the dumbest in the room.

Quote to go

Thanks for reading!

Lucas