How To Not Be Dead Weight

A simple rule of thumb for how to do what’s good for you and our shared future

A collective—be it a company or a country—is bound to fail if enough of its team members or citizens become dead weight.

How do I define “dead weight”?

A person whose infrequent participation in a collective is usually useless or even counterproductive to the collective's goals.

In an age of escalating conflict with autocratic superpowers whose leaders make proclamations like "Democracies cannot be sustained in the 21st century. Autocracies will run the world", those of us on the civilian front in the U.S. (and other democratic countries) may wonder what we can personally do to stop the spread of dystopian dictatorship—or at least not be dead weight.

After all, each of us has far more power than we might imagine to make or break the future of democracy in this decade that will define the global order for the next 50 years.

So what should we do?

There's a simple rule of thumb:

If I were Putin. Or if I were Xi. I would want as many Americans as possible to do their part to weaken the U.S. and democracies around the world.

If I could make you my puppet, I would want you to...

• Embrace cynicism

• Complain endlessly

• Pick pointless fights

• Get addicted to porn

• Support endless wars

• Stop using your hands

• Think books are stupid

• Isolate yourself socially

• Lose faith in democracy

• Look and feel like a zombie

• Sit all day and skip the gym

• Glorify authoritarian states

• Gamble away your life savings

• Believe that life is meaningless

• Not know how to build anything

• View raising kids as a waste of time

• Feel hopeless about democracy’s future

• Believe that nation-states are worthless

• Slip into a cycle of insatiable materialism

• Lose touch with reality while doom scrolling

• Dig yourself into a deep hole of financial debt

• Grow dependent on sugary, seed oil-heavy foods

• Believe the only way forward is to burn it all down

• Be obsessed with following fleeting pop culture trends

• Be willing to sell out higher ideals for money, fame, or power

• Flood your mind with useless information proliferating on apps like TikTok

And most importantly, I would want you to fear your fellow citizens more than anything else.

By the way, if you don’t think autocratic adversaries are constantly plotting how to subvert the future of democracy…

If you don’t think that they’re investing billions into making you a pawn in their global chess game…

Well… you’re as dumb and clueless as they hoped you would be.

So what’s the opposite of what they want you to do?

This is by no means a complete list, but it’s something like…

• Eat whole foods

• Break a sweat daily

• Take care of your family

• Develop genuine friendships

• Passionately interrogate the truth

• Do hard things that require courage

• Contribute meaningfully to your teams

• Be willing to challenge the “current thing”

• Read books by authors with proven track records

• Organize fellow citizens with shared values to better the country

• Delete social media that distracts you from doing what’s right for your future

• Know what you believe, say what you believe, and do what you say you’re going to do

• Do whatever else you have high conviction protects what should matter to all of us: our freedoms, our privacy, our democracy, our economy, our national security, our planet, and our shared future.

It may seem overwhelming to figure out how to add value to a collective, especially something as massive as a nation, but it's actually easier than you think:

It's a funny thing about human nature, but it's somehow easier to remember what not to do than what to do.

So take some time to step into your competitors' shoes. It might lead you to do a lot of good for yourself and our collective future.