I am 25 so I grew up online during the golden age of internet atheism. r/atheism was still a default sub, 'The God Delusion' was released in 2006 when I was 14. What I came to realize is that I was essentially worshipping my logical analytical mind and believing that if I had a enough processing power I could think my way to any solution. Eventually what I came to realize is that the logical conscious mind we are always aware of isn't necessarily making the decisions, nor does it ever have a complete picture of reality. Once I believed that my logical mind was n't capable of truly capturing reality I felt comfortable training myself to believe in things that weren't "true" since nothing as perceived as the conscious mind is really "true".
And there you are lighting incense to an action figure with a mustache on it to help contemplate doing your own bike repairs (: .
I would recommend reading through the entire blog archive, all together it's about the same length as a book. You can skip over articles on things that aren't interesting to you, for example I don't care about real estate.
My personal philosophy is a combination of all the different sources I have been exposed too. My main influences would be the mustachian thought sphere (MMM, The Magic of Thinking Big, Stoicism), secular western buddhism (Buddhism Plain and Simple, In the realm of hungry ghosts, The magic of tidying up) Game theory probabilistic thinking (Poker background).
When I first started reading MMM I was already a very tribal person. The us vs them mentality really appealed to me because I was used to strongly identifying with minority tribes (atheist, vegan). After I started studying buddhism I've been able to let go of some of the tribalism of mustachianism , but the frugality and the powerful self belief have remained. This is an example of my personal philosophy forking from a monolithic belief system.
I also have a couple dieties I worship. MMM is the god of frugality and not being a wimp. RNGesus is the god of accepting random bad stuff. I'll spin up/down dieties to put on my altar depending on my current priorities/ needs.
I know recommending you a bunch of books isn't really a proper response, but a proper definition would be the length of a book and I haven't written that yet.
What I would recommend to everyone is to study different belief systems and roll your own religion. Our brain is designed to consume faith-y belief systems. It's arrogant to believe those mechanisms in your brain won't latch on to something. It should be something your consciously decide on and design.
Mr. Money Mustache started me down the path of exploring my own personal philosophy. I now worship MMM as a diety (MMM !== Pete Adeney in my religion). Thanks for the teachings Pete.
Yes we need to mandate that everywhere can be accessed by people sitting in giant piece of shit 2 ton internal combustion driven wheelchairs because they're too lazy to use their muscles. Total American cult of car mindset.