😊 The Secret to Happiness

There is a video circulating on 𝕏 that I keep thinking about.

A student approaches his master and asks: “What is the secret to eternal happiness?”

The teacher pauses. Then he answers: “Don’t argue with stupid people.”

The student is shocked. “Wait — that’s it?! That can’t be it. No, that can’t be right!”

The teacher looks at the student for a long three seconds.

Then he says: “You are right.”

The video cuts. The student is smiling. So was I.

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Where I’ve Landed

As this blog attests, the last five to ten years have been a journey — and not a comfortable one. I am now fiercely anti-Left in all its forms. I have long believed there is a globalist satanic cabal responsible for much of the chaos and suffering we see today, as the Epstein files have only begun to confirm — the night I wrote about it still feels raw. I believe the BBC and mainstream media are among the most destructive forces operating in the West today, and I hate what they do with something close to righteous indignation. I believe Trump Derangement Syndrome is a far deadlier and more damaging illness than Covid ever was. I believe Islam is incompatible with Western civilisation — a cancer, not a curiosity — wherever it seeks to infiltrate and conquer, as the halal question makes painfully clear.

More broadly, I have come to distrust everything mainstream. Not as a posture or a personality quirk, but as a considered, evidence-based conclusion. From what we eat, to medicine, to theology — yes, theology, to history and politics, to education, to the sciences themselves — I have come to see that the incentive mechanisms at work in every major institution produce, reliably and almost inevitably, narratives that are diametrically wrong. The mainstream is not just occasionally mistaken. It is structurally compromised. And you are usually better off doing the opposite of what it tells you.

I could go on. I won’t. Because that is not what this essay is about.

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The Lesson I Am Still Learning

This essay is about a different kind of wisdom — one I am learning almost in real time, and one that is humbling me.

I have spent years in arguments. Long ones. Hours. Sometimes days. Sometimes months. Every time I entered into a sustained exchange with a leftist, a progressive, a woke churchgoer — I came away exhausted, frustrated, and angry. Genuinely spent. And here is what I noticed every single time: by the end of it, I could defend my position more articulately than when I started. That part is genuinely valuable. The sharpening of argument under pressure is a real benefit.

But the other person? They had not moved an inch.

Not one inch.

We did not share a worldview. We did not share a framework for truth, for evidence, for what counts as a good argument. The gap between us was not one that could be closed by the right sequence of facts and logic. I kept thinking that if I could just find the right formulation, the right statistic, the right historical example, something would click. It never did.

And I have had to reckon with a painful question: Why did I think it would?

At root, I think it was arrogance. Pride. The quiet assumption that my interlocutor was simply not yet as far along as I was — and that I was the man to push them there, today, in this conversation. I repent of that. It was presumptuous. It was not love; it was ego wearing the costume of conviction.

The truth is simpler and harder: we are all on a journey. Some people are further along certain paths than others. You cannot drag someone to a destination they are not yet walking towards. Argument alone has never changed a worldview — only experience, and the grace of God, can do that.

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Even the Gospel

Here is the thing that really struck me: even the best thing in the world — the Good News of Jesus Christ, the free gift of salvation by grace through faith — is not something people accept automatically. Jesus himself knew this. He said:

“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”

Matthew 7:6 (NKJV)

If the greatest truth ever spoken — God become man, dying for sinners, rising again — meets resistance and rejection, how much more should I expect my views on media bias, dietary health, or Islamic expansionism to be unwelcome in the wrong ears?

The answer is not silence. The answer is discernment. Learn to read the room. Know who is genuinely searching and who is just performing. Offer the pearl to those with hands open to receive it. Walk away from those who want only to argue.

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A Tweet That Said It Better Than I Could

I came across something on 𝕏 recently that I think captures the exhaustion — and the eventual peace — of arriving at this conclusion. Someone wrote something to this effect:

I’m done giving people facts, statistics, first-hand experiences, etc. There is not much point in trying to save you anymore. Take all the vaccines. Abort your entire lifeline. Guzzle down antidepressants, statins, and every other drug you can. Smoke tons of weed. Chop your penis off and call yourself a chick. Then sign up for MAID and do us all a favour. That’s my medical advice to you. You win.

Now, before you bitch and moan — this is the position you wanted. After all, when I said the exact opposite, you all complained and tried to silence me. So don’t be a hypocrite now.

Provocative? Yes. Cynical? Perhaps. But there is something honest in it. It is the sound of a man who fought, was silenced, tried again, was ignored — and finally stopped trying to carry people who are determined not to be carried.

I am not quite there. I still believe in speaking truth. I still believe in the power of a well-placed word at the right moment to the right person. But I have stopped believing that sheer persistence, argument—by-argument, will change the mind of someone whose will is set against the truth.

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The Secret to Happiness

So perhaps the teacher in that video was wiser than he appeared. Not because truth doesn’t matter — it matters enormously. Not because we should never argue — sometimes we must. But because there is a kind of person with whom argument is not a gateway to understanding. It is a trap. A drain. A performance that exhausts you and changes nothing.

The secret to happiness is not lowering your convictions. It is not pretending the world is other than it is. It is learning — slowly, painfully, through years of unnecessary friction — who is worth the argument and who is not.

Pick your battles. Save your pearls. And trust that the teacher in that video knew exactly what he was doing when he let the student have the last word.