The Eagles song comes to mind for me with Mr. Franklins 9th.
Randy Meisner sings, "Take it....to the limit...one more time."
Poor Richard says,
“MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”
I reflect on friends and life acquaintances from my youth who threw moderation out the window. Those in mind made choices that have resulted in death and poor quality of life. They didn't avoid the extremes in our environment.
Charlie Munger has mentioned moderation multiple times also. He knows from studying Franklin, psychology, markets, and people that lack of moderation can flat kill you. Here he mentions,
"In my mind I have a little example I use whenever I think about ideology, and it’s these Scandinavian canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools in the Grand Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology."
Yes, he is speaking of ideology but the "windage factor" applies to chemical dependency, association bias, excessive spending, and social proofing behaviors that we all tend to.
What extremes have we gotten ourselves into? Look at your environment and actions. Keep an eye out for collections of pollution. What kind of pollution do you ask? Well, look at any unused resource. Look for the things that are out of order. Look for what's out of the pattern. Do you have a monoculture of behaviors daily? Take a solid look at your finances and look for the gaping wounds that bleed red. Look at what we do to support these infusions.
When honestly reflecting, many of our behaviors are not in moderation. The bell curve graph of my dead friends' life show that his energy was pretty short and high-pitched. Take Poor Charlie and Poor Richards' advice and avoid the suck holes by applying moderation. As Munger mentions,
" Don't even go near them."
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