The Vikid Principles

Where there's Only One Principle and We Live on the Edge.

The Vikid Principles is a book I wanted to write for several years but for one reason or the other the idea wouldn’t solidify over something substantial. That is until now. The mind is a machine that likes to over complicate everything and my mind has been on hyper-drive for several years now.

What I realized is that The Vikid Principles doesn’t need to be a book… but I’ve wanted to be ‘author’ for my entire adult life and that meant “writing a book”. I was forcing myself into an unnecessary position.

In fact, what I wanted to say doesn’t need anything as voluminous or complex as a book at all, for it is the most simple of “principles” and the my mind was resisting it with all its might.

The Principle

Make Everything as Simple as Possible

Now, if I ended the it there, no doubt, you would reject it, misinterpret the message and then proceed to complicate things.

This is natural and what the mind does, so we will elaborate the principle with a bare bone skeleton framework. It will give us a little substance to keep the mind busy while we absorb what it actually means.

Simple ≠ Easy

There are many Simple things in life. Running a marathon is actually a extremely simple act that is not considered ‘easy’. You just need to run for 26.2 miles! To do it, you just run, run approximately 4 times a week, gently increasing distance, time and speed. You could probably achieve the goal in less than a year if you are of normal constitution. In fact I did just that in 2006 using Stu Mittleman’s, Slow Burn. Most of the important parts of the book could fit in a couple of pages by the way…

Quitting Smoking is rather simple itself. It’s simpler than smoking. There is no need to go out, buy the pack, find a place to smoke etc… all of which is more complex. Not Smoking, is simple. Many smokers on the other hand would argue with the ‘easy’ part.

Simple ≠ Stupid

Einsteins “Equivalency Principle” is extremely simple. Newton’s laws are simple. The idea behind Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is simple. Science is the art of simplicity. In fact ‘Reductionism’ which is at the heart of science is nothing but act of simplifying things. What scientists are trying to do is eliminate all sources of change and limit analysis to one variable.

Simple ≠ True

Newton’s laws are are both simple and very effective. They are however, not true. Neither probably, is Einstein’s modifications upon them.

When you start to really look at almost anything you think you ‘know’ as true. You find that it is not.

I am The Vikid Truth. I called the truth ‘wicked’ because, that is the only truth.

All Truth is lies.

It doesn’t make these ‘truths’ unuseful. However, realize that all truth is contingent and simply seeking ‘truth’ will lead to nothing but failure, complexity and frustration.

It is better to be simple and to adjust to circumstances as they arise.

Take for example, my 20 Day Water Fast done last month. There was much ‘truth’ going around before I started and a fair few warnings from friends. It was ‘dangerous’, ‘impossible’, ‘unhealthy’, ‘I would have no energy to work’, etc.. etc…

In the end (you can read about all 20 days here), it was something truly wonderful and mind expanding.

There is really nothing simpler than not eating. There is no trip to the supermarket, no meal prep, no endless pondering on what to eat, no diet books, etc…

You simply stop eating.

There is nothing more Vikid than the Truth.

Simple ≠ Worse

Take a look at (almost) any hit song, old or new. You find at the heart of the song is simplicity. Look at the iPhone, at its launch, it was lauded for the simplicity in its design interface. Apple are still leaders in this. Limited hardware, simple interfaces and the best products. My best pen? A biro. Case in point.

Simple ≠ Simple

Playing “Fire & Rain” by James Taylor, currently looks like a highly complex act to me. Yet, I bet James Taylor could do it in his sleep. There are hundreds, maybe thousands who could play it without any issues. Simple is relative, what is simple for one person isn’t necessarily simple for another. What is complex for you today may become simple in the future. Simple isn’t limiting. A software engineer might look at a game such as Doom and marvel at its simplicity while you might look at the code and get a heart attack.

Simple ≠ Lack of Ambition

Simple doesn’t mean that you don’t achieve whatever you want. It doesn’t mean that you don’t build a business or that you don’t climb K2. Ambition in itself is neither complex nor simple. It just is. Your relationship with a given ambition can have any level of complexity however.

Simple ≠ Cowardly

It takes courage to simply look at yourself and realize that you eat too much (or too little or the wrong shit). It probably takes more courage to act on that than to join a gym or read another diet book. But instinct tells us differently. We want it to be complex, we need to spend $1000 for someone to tell us why.

Otherwise why would we be stuck on something so simple?

Let’s take “Eating Meat” as an example (as a disclosure, it must be admitted that I started this habit again recently). Most meat is unhealthy due to the malpractice used in the meat farming industry. It doesn’t take a genius to see this. It takes courage to face it however.

Millions, if not billions, of people around the world get by fine without meat. There are professional athletes breaking records and winning competitions as vegans. You could stop eating meat (at least regularly).

That is a very simple act but I can bet my bottom $$$ that you will complicate the issue, so that you don’t have to. It’s mostly a courage issue. A fear for a “lack of protein” in almost every case I have ever come across. Otherwise it is a fear of being laughed at by friends for becoming a “vegetarian” or a fear of “missing out”.

There are another 100 examples I could give on what “Simple is Not” but why complicate the issue? I’m not writing a book! And you, I hope get the gist of the minimal framework and can explore the issue in your own time with spending a $1000 on someone to tell you why.

What is Simple?

Simple isn’t a thing. Simple means that you look at your life, your goals and your dreams.

Simple is both the Art of Negation and the Art of Addition.

First, you look at your life and remove unnecessary complications. You negate first, as removing is a simpler act than adding.

Have a complex life?

Then continually simplify… until life is simple. Take other options off the table.

You look at your memories and realize that they are just stories. You don’t have to do anything as complex as forgetting or altering memories. You just pay less attention to the stories.

This is the First Simplicity.

The future is a memory. Thinking about the future is an act that is structurally very similar to thinking about the past. The stories that you hold are just stories. It is a very simple recognition. That leaves you where you are, what people call ‘Now’. I don’t want to go Ekhart Tolle, on you. You don’t need to obsess on The Now, either.

Just realize that the past and future are actions you conduct in your mind. They are the act of remembering stories. Some of the stories you categorize as ‘happened’ and others as ‘will happen’ - it’s all the same act. It is an act happening now.

Right now… Is this the act of ‘remembering’… what you want to be involved in?

If so, all is well and good, otherwise, perhaps get on with something, simple.

For most of us, our goals and ambitions themselves are just memories. Somebody once told us that ‘blah’ was a goal. You made a promise to yourself, when you were 5, that you will achieve ‘X’ in life. You made a memory and now are tyrannized by the memory. You visit the story every day and measure yourself to this story. You add complexity and heartache to life. You need not forget it. Detach from the memory.

The Edge of Simplicity

You want to live life at the edge of simplicity, just before complexity.

You gently train yourself to do everything with simplicity at heart. It is so simple that it requires practically no training at all. The only training is awareness, so that you can notice the ‘edge’ and ‘stay on it’.

The undue efforts of complexity are banished from your thoughts, actions and vocabulary.

You break down complex actions into simple constituents. Do the constituents without complex effort. There is an edge, where simple becomes complex, where easy becomes hard.

You find that edge and live on it.

You trust that the edge will move of its own accord. All you have to do is find the edge and then live on the simple side of it.

This blog is such a simple act, I gave up the complexities of running my own website. Substack makes things super simple. No mark up, no distractions, only writing. This article is the result. I reduced the complexities of writing a book to writing an article, while sitting in a cafe and enjoying life. The words flow without extravagant efforts. I am at the edge of simplicity, at the edge of my linguistic and intellectual capacities.

While what I do is not difficult, it’s right on the edge.

And this is where we simply end up,

The Vikid Truth.