Why You Should Visit Cemeteries: Survivorship Bias
No matter where Rick looks, he sees rock stars. They appear on television, on the front pages of magazines, in concert programs, and at online fan sites. Their songs are unavoidable–in the mall, on his playlist, in the gym. The rock stars are everywhere. There are lots of them. And they are successful. Motivated by the stores of countless guitar heroes, Rick starts a band. Will he make it big? The probability lies a fraction above zero. Like so many others, he will most likely end up in the graveyard of failed musicians. This burial ground houses ten thousand times more musicians than the stage does, but no journalist is interested in failures–with the exception of fallen superstars. This makes the cemetery invisible to outsiders.
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Here you have the entire philosophy of money-making, just as it was organized from the actual achievements of the most successful men known to the American people during the past fifty years. It describes what to do, also, how to do it!
It presents complete instructions on how to sell your personal services.
It provides you with a perfect system of self-analysis that will readily disclose what has been standing between you and “the big money” in the past.
The habit of thinking about dying instead of making the most of life, due, generally, to lack of purpose, or lack of a suitable occupation. This fear is more prevalent among the aged, but sometimes the more youthful are victims of it. The greatest of all remedies for the fear of death is a burning desire for achievement, backed by useful service to others. A busy person seldom has time to think about dying. He finds life too thrilling to worry about death. Sometimes the fear of death is closely associated with the Fear of Poverty, where one’s death would leave loved ones poverty-stricken. In other cases, the fear of death is caused by illness and the consequent breaking down of physical body resistance. The commonest causes of the fear of death are: ill-health, poverty, lack of appropriate occupation, disappointment over love, insanity, religious fanaticism.
To some this is the cruelest of all the basic fears. The reason is obvious. The terrible pangs of fear associated with the thought of death, in the majority of cases, may be charged directly to religious fanaticism. So-called “heathen” are less afraid of death than the more “civilized.” For hundreds of millions of years man has been asking the still-unanswered questions, “whence” and “whither.” Where did I come from, and where am I going?
During the darker ages of the past, the more cunning and crafty were not slow to offer the answer to these questions, for a price. Witness, now, the major source of origin of the fear of death.
The tendency to slow down and develop an inferiority complex at the age of mental maturity, around the age of forty, falsely believing one’s self to be “slipping” because of age. (The truth is that man’s most useful years, mentally and spiritually, are those between forty and sixty).
The habit of speaking apologetically of one’s self as “being old” merely because one has reached the age of forty, or fifty, instead of reversing the rule and expressing gratitude for having reached the age of wisdom and understanding.
In the main, this fear grows out of two sources. First, the thought that old age may bring with it poverty. Secondly, and by far the most common source of origin, from false and cruel teachings of the past which have been too well mixed with “fire and brimstone,” and other bogies cunningly designed to enslave man through fear.
In the basic fear of old age, man has two very sound reasons for his apprehension–one growing out of his distrust of his fellowman, who may seize whatever worldly goods he may possess, and the other arising from the terrible pictures of the world beyond, which were planted in his mind, through social heredity before he came into full possession of his mind.
Jealousy. The habit of being suspicious of friends and loved ones without any reasonable evidence of sufficient grounds. (Jealousy is a form of dementia praecox which sometimes becomes violent without the slightest cause). The habit of accusing wife or husband of infidelity without grounds. General suspicion of everyone, absolute faith in no one.
The original source of this inherent fear needs but little description, because it obviously grew out of man’s polygamous habit of stealing his fellow man’s mate, and his habit of taking liberties with her whenever he could.
Jealousy, and other similar forms of dementia praecox grow out of man’s inherited fear of the loss of love of someone. This fear is the most painful of all the six basic fears. It probably plays more havoc with the body and mind than any of the other basic fears, as it often leads to permanent insanity.
