Significance – Page 8 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Winter Solstice, Hardship, Cthulhu, and You

“You know, that for almost the entire history of Western Civilization this month has been a holy time. The Druids, winter solstice, Hanukkah, the Romans converted Saturnalia into Christmas.” – Millennium (TV Series)

Funny, X Wife said that every day with me was the longest day. Tiebreaker?

December 21^st is the Winter Solstice. In the Northern Hemisphere (where I keep all my stuff) that means it will be the shortest day of the year, and the longest night. In the Southern Hemisphere on the Solstice, I believe that means there are fairly reasonable prices on quality, sturdy footwear. Or maybe the Wiccans sacrifice the town elders to credit card companies. I’m not sure, the documentary was blurry, I don’t speak Paraguayan and they wouldn’t remove the blindfold all the way.

There seems to be another holiday coming up . . . St. Zeno’s Day on December 26^th!

Just kidding. I’ll have a Christmas post on Monday. But St. Zeno’s Day really is on December 26^th. And not the St. Zeno that was brutally dismembered because he was so popular, the other one, who died peacefully in his sleep. Focus groups tell me not to use “brutally dismembered” because it doesn’t test well for humor value. So, the one who wasn’t “brutally dismembered.”

Christmas? I’m a fan.

But the 21^st is also notable because it’s the (traditional) feast time of the northern peoples of the world, and you can see multiple cultures built physical devices to track the solstice, places like Newgrange in Ireland, Stonehenge in England and the High Bank Works at Chillicothe in North America.

And, my house.

Yes. My house. I didn’t build my house aligned to the solstice, but whoever originally did managed to do so, either intentionally or by dumb luck. Since my house is parallel to the road, I’m thinking it was just dumb luck. But on the shortest day of the year, we end up having the most direct sunlight streaming in through our front window, warming the house, and in the summer the opposite result – although well lit, we get little direct sunlight. The advantages of this are lower heating and cooling bills, all of which (likely) are a result of an accident of geometry. Or at least that’s what I tell the Druids that start chanting at sunrise every year in my backyard. Stupid Druids. Please don’t tell them that Cthulhu is who we bought the place from.

But the solstice doesn’t represent the coldest part of the winter. The coldest part is yet to come as the Arctic air blasts down from the north in January and February. And before it gets cold, the choice had to be made: feed all of your cattle through the winter, or have a really big drunken party and a bonfire after turning a few of the cattle into ribeyes?

Yup. Party. And the older name for it is “jul” which eventually became the words “Yule” and “jolly.” Must have been some pretty legendary parties, like when Teddy Roosevelt partied with Led Zeppelin at Wellesley. Hillary still talks about that one.

Mmm, eggnog. Can there be something worse for you? Yes, regret. Enjoy your eggnog.

But the grim circumstances remain. It’s going to get colder soon. That last feast is the final preparation for the coming hardships of winter. People who aren’t used to the north (and New York is roughly the same latitude as the south of France, so most of the United States isn’t north at all) think it’s the dark that gets to you. It isn’t. It’s the brutally cold days that follow the solstice. When we lived in Fairbanks we noticed that people did fine during the dark periods of winter. But when spring was around the corner, that’s when the odd stories of people going a bit nutso would show up in the paper, and the wives who had spent 20 happy years in Fairbanks would look at their husbands and declare, “I’m leaving. I’m not leaving you, but I’m leaving here. You can come with me if you want to.”

Winter is about deprivation and hardship, which might just be the greatest teacher:

“They are not spoiled by luxury, soft and weak (relatively speaking, obviously). They are learned in deprivation and hardship.” – James Dakin at Bison Prepper, 11/9/18 (LINK).

But those hardships were their friend.

They had to plan. And they had to plan months and years ahead. There is simply no getting through a winter at -30°F (-651°C) without a plan. They didn’t have the option of going to a supermarket and getting fresh strawberries in the middle of winter. Or, well, anything in the middle of winter, except maybe some poor caribou that forgot to duck.
They had to learn to be nice. There was no getting through winter alone. There was safety in the group. So, in order to stay alive through the winter, they’d better be able to create and maintain good relationships with not only their neighbors, but also the people in their family – they were certainly going to be seeing a lot of them during the winter. Also? They never knew who they would need to ask for a favor. As in “Olaf, Sven got lippy at dinner. Where can we hide the body?”
They had to be patient. Eat all the food in month one? Month two would be difficult. Eat the seeds you were planning on planting in spring? I guess you just get to starve next winter. Patience pays – not now, but later.

Outside of having all of that ribeye, and the big fire, why party?

Well, the solstice marks the day that the Sun stops moving south. There’s even an instant (if you had the proper equipment) that you could observe the Sun standing still in the sky, not moving north nor south, that’s technically the solstice. But you can see, using relatively simple tools (like Stonehenge), the same thing over the course of a day. The Sun will move north again, and the days will get longer. And it is that moment that the celebration of hope begins, not for the winter that has been vanquished, but for the winter that will bring us hardship and make us stronger.

Because what better gift is there than being stronger?

Thankfully, there’ll soon be an app for your iPhone® to tell you when to celebrate the solstice. Stupid Druids.

College: Debt, Indoctrination, Intolerance, and Nose Pencils

“Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the Peace Corps.” – Animal House

I also learned how to use magic markers to draw on a drunk guy’s face. Life skills!

The current education system in the United States is part of the war against the United States. I’ve written before about 4^th Generation war – to catch up on what 4^th Generation war is, my overview is here (The Caravan: Warfare by Other Means). In that post, I define what 4^th Generation warfare is, and link it to a single current event, namely the mass illegal influx on the southern border of the United States. But the essence of 4^th Generation warfare is about removing the willingness of your opponent to fight – to making them see their own position as an immoral one, to winning ideologically.

What’s the easiest way to win ideologically? Education.

After the recent presidential election, I was pretty surprised to see that college educated voters split very strongly for Hillary. After Bill Clinton’s win in 1992, college graduates had been fairly neutral in how they voted – fifty percentish went for Democrats, fifty percentish went for Republicans, with the notable exception where they went for Obama by 7% or so in 2008.

This graph comes from Pew Research-not Pewdie Pie Research-here (LINK).

So what the heck is happening in college today and why might it be impacting elections?

I looked at all of the college degrees issued in the country (LINK), and pulled out my spreadsheet, since all life problems can be solved with either a shotgun or a spreadsheet, and a shotgun seemed to be overkill. How many of the college degrees awarded are useless? Yeah, I understand that this is subjective, but my numbers show that only about 40% of college degrees are worth the time and money – which leaves 60% not being worth it. Facts prove my guesses are pretty good: 40% of recent college grads are working at a job that doesn’t require any degree at all.

When you’re talking two million degrees (which is way too hot a temperature to heat your Pizza Rolls® to) a year, that means 1.2 million people, every year, are graduating with crappy degrees. Most of those people won’t be able to get a job in their field – ever. When the graduate hits the job market and finds a degree in history of medieval computer viruses is useless, they become another victim.

Thankfully, at least college is cheap, right?

College costs are higher than Elon Musk.

I then guesstimated the number of people who have degrees that would comfortably pay off their student loans. That number was much lower – and I’d guess that fully 1.6 million people are put at serious hardship to pay back what they owe. Again, reality proves me to be correct.

This is from the Chicago Sun-Times® (LINK):

Amanda Spizzirri, 23, graduated from DePaul University last year with a bachelor’s degree in peace, justice and conflict studies. She owes $90,000 on her student loans — $30,000 of that in her name and $60,000 in “parent-plus” loans. Now living in North Center on the city’s North Side, she works multiple jobs, mostly in food service, in an effort to make her payments.

This is Amanda. In addition to being in debt, she was also born without thumbs. Photo – Chicago Sun-Times.

The article on Amanda continues: “She dreams of being able to find a career, possibly working in criminal justice reform, where she can cause social change.” Perhaps Amanda should have dreamed of being Queen of Jupiter – it’s just as likely, since she wants a job that simply doesn’t exist. I mean, no one deserves to have their life dreams, purpose, and reason for living crushed, but if it has to happen, let me be there. I was thinking about starting a YouTube™ channel and could use the footage.

I’m betting Amanda is mad. Not at her college. No. Not at her liberal professors who convinced her to pursue “her dreams” which she has yet to abandon despite ample evidence that her dreams are ~~stupid~~ maybe not grounded in reality. Not the professors – they’re her friends, right? I bet she’s not even mad at the people who charged her so much money for four years of parties while she took classes that are impossible to fail. Heck, the average grade given at Harvard© now is an A minus, so at DePaul® you can probably not show up at all for a semester and get a B average.

I’m sure that Amanda would tell you that she’s happy with her choices and understands the ramifications of spending all that money to become a food service worker and doesn’t want any help in paying back the money she owes. Right?

No, I’d bet that given the chance, she’d drop into a spittle-tossing froth about how unjust the system is, and how she deserves a real job and that maybe what we really need is socialism and for the government to forgive her student loans. I’ve got nothing against Amanda. Like anyone who was the victim of a con-artist, she was lied to and convinced that by pursuing her dreams that she could make the world a better place. Admirable.

However, if she’s like most victims everywhere, she wants other people to pay for her responsibilities. And I’d bet you money that if Amanda votes, she votes 100% with the left. The college financing system is itself creating leftists. And broke surly waitresses.

The second push to the left on colleges is due to indoctrination from the college, professors, and other students. Despite a professed love of “diversity,” there appears to be zero thought to bringing in professors and administrators that have a diversity of the most important feature of any college: a diversity of thought. The Left outnumbers the right by 12 to 1 in administration, 6 to 1 in teaching staff, and 2 to 1 in incoming students. In an atmosphere like that, what would one expect besides indoctrination? And, no, this was not made up. Here’s a link to that notorious bulwark of right-wing journalism, the New York Times (LINK).

But thankfully, the professor that wrote this, Samuel Abrams, was accepted and applauded for the academic honesty he showed in doing this research and speaking truth to power. Nah, just kidding – the administrators have hinted he’s a jerk, and left-wing students left naughty notes on his door.

And this was one of the nicer signs . . . sadly, this is his wife’s handwriting.

In real science, math, accounting, and engineering ideology doesn’t matter a whole lot – answers are in numbers, and are right or wrong. In squishier subjects? If you don’t think like the professor, you’re not going to get good grades. Again, from that notoriously right-wing rag the New York Times (LINK), “. . . some 18 percent of social scientists say they are Marxist. So it’s easier to find a Marxist in some disciplines than a Republican.” There isn’t a Marxist calculus or a free-market calculus or LGBT calculus. There’s just . . . calculus. The (really crappy) data that I can find on this seems to show that people in non-ideological degrees, like construction and engineering skew right, while ideological degrees like journalism, sociology, and psychology skew very left.

Add it all up, and you get indoctrination for the left as a college feature in absolutely any degree that isn’t bounded by physical reality.

And this is not new. I had one friend in high school who was amazingly conservative. He was also a pretty good chess player, which I guess is as irrelevant as the number of tattoos of dragons on Angelina Jolie’s hiney (the answer is 40). My friend went off to college – a fairly liberal college – not the one I went to. I met with several friends at Christmas of our freshman year when I went home on break, and he was there. Despite wearing slacks and, I swear, button up shirts with collars every day of his high school life, when he walked in he was wearing jeans.

Okay, that’s not a transformative change. But the trench coat, beret, and small purple sunglasses were. He looked like the French version of the movie “The Matrix” as directed by John Lennon. But he was quoting not John Lennon, but Vladimir Lenin. I was . . . shocked. I was still wearing my jeans and Iron Maiden® t-shirt that I’d worn in high school, which is why his transformation really got to me.

So, what do you expect when you throw a young, impressionable person into nearly uniform wall of ideology? In his case, it wasn’t a permanent transformation – I was again surprised when a mutual friend described him as now “very conservative,” so I guess he got over the indoctrination. Or maybe he was deprogrammed by space Nazis?

Colleges used to be bastions of free speech, and they still are, as long as the speech in question consists of leftist ideas. I could fill pages with lists of speakers from the right being disallowed on campus, and these aren’t horribly extremist people – Ann Coulter may scare Barack Obama enough that he checks to make sure that she isn’t hiding under his bed, but she’s a nationally syndicated columnist who has several bestselling books. For Ann to be excluded based on desire to create “safe spaces” for the intolerant on the left, well, that stands exactly against the values the left indicated they were for in the 1960’s.

Speech is power, and the power to silence speech is the power to shape education. As Aldous Huxley, noted, “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.”

4^th Generation warfare takes place on all fronts: the media, economics and jobs, the will of the public, militarily (the least important), and most especially education. If you can make your enemy’s children be educated to your standards, using your methods, setting your morals as the goal . . . you’ve won.

They’ll even vote you into office.

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”-Steve Martin Plus? A sniper joke.

“Cash, every movie costs $2,184.” – Bowfinger

I made this one up for fun when working on this post. The Mrs. laughed so hard . . . I had to use it. A link here (LINK) for the age impaired. Link is probably PG-13.

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

That was what Steve Martin said when he was being interviewed by now unpersoned Charlie Rose and Rose asked what advice Martin would give to a young person.

Martin continued, “ . . . it’s not the answer they want to hear.”

It isn’t.

People want easy. People want lottery money. People want step-by-step guides, complete with phone numbers and instructions on how to become rich and famous. And they want Steve Martin to do it for them. Now please, we’re waiting.

Face it: people want free stuff, not hard work and risk.

I can’t imagine that Steve Martin wants anything for free – he wasn’t raised that way. He’s been a comedian, musician, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. He’s been more successful at each of these than almost any person on the planet. When you combine these successes, Martin starts to look less like an entertainer and more like a National Treasure©. Maybe a National Treasure® we should keep in Tupperware® and wrapped in the good paper towels so we don’t scratch him. We’ll get him out when company comes over.

But Steve’s success wasn’t free. In his book, Born Standing Up, Martin talks about his road to comedy, “I did standup comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.” This is what those of a certain political persuasion call unearned overnight success. It is obvious that this success was a result of Martin’s comedic privilege, because it takes a village to raise a comedian.

The concept of spending hours and hours, day after day, year after year seems a bit quaint now, when participation trophies assure every wonderful child that they’ll be successful no matter what. What seemed fresh and new in his comedy routine when his wild success began was in reality the result of work, study, and effort that took fourteen years. And he didn’t even have to “accidentally” release a sex tape to make it happen.

Did Martin know that his hard work would make him an icon known all the way around the world, worth millions of dollars? Probably not. Although it’s also certain that he didn’t wake up one morning and say, “Omigosh, there’s been some sort of error – where did all this money and stuff come from?” And that line is comedy gold if you read it in Steve Martin’s voice.

Certainly, Steve Martin didn’t and doesn’t appeal to everyone – his persona of an entertainer that’s “just really bad at it” falls flat with certain people. But Martin’s dedicated work created a skill set that appealed to enough people that Martin has true freedom – to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. At one point in Born Standing Up, Martin talks about how stand up became difficult for him when doing huge stadium shows – but he didn’t stop. There were “too many zeros,” in his paychecks. So, he died an unremembered failure.

No, just kidding. His next project, a movie called The Jerk, made $180,000,000, despite costing only $2,184 to make. That was his next step.

I realize that there’s a difference between writing whatever comes to mind and working hard every day, every post, so that today’s writing is better than yesterday’s writing. And that next week I’ll be better yet. And that my writing strikes a resonance somewhere, with someone. It creates value.

This is true. I still swoon when I think of it.

And getting good at any craft is not entirely straightforward. Scott Adams (LINK) uses eighteen elements when writing humor, and edits himself ruthlessly. Scott wasn’t a humor writing machine when he started, but he built his greatness with time and effort. And it is effort – I watched a short video of Jerry Seinfeld talking about the effort that goes into making just one joke. It can take an afternoon or more to get it right – and even then he spends time tweaking it, and this is the level of effort that is required by an experienced comedian. Imagine how much more difficult it would be to be a rookie.

For me, I’m going to work harder, steal everything I can from Martin, Adams, Seinfeld, and study it.

And learn.

Imagine if I never told Jerry to change his hair?

I do want to say thanks to The Mrs., who has greatly encouraged me to get better. The nice thing is she’s my harshest critic but also the one I won’t slug. But I will, passive-aggressively, change all the radio presets in her car to Mexican flamenco music. She’ll never guess that I changed the autocorrect for “John” on her phone to “His High and Most Worthy Lordship.”

Just kidding, The Mrs. isn’t a trained assassin. But don’t tell The Boy and Pugsley – The Mrs. just assigned them a mission to stealthily clean their bathroom.

I’m working hard to make myself better, every post. So I can’t be ignored.

But failing that, couldn’t I just play the lottery?

I’ll just leave this here:

The Funniest and Most Meaningful Black Friday Post . . . Ever. Now 50% off, Today Only.

“It’s Black Friday, the day when ordinary house moms turn into vicious bargain hunting animals, blinded by low prices, and eager to get the Christmas shopping done early. If this was a zoo I’d say run for you lives, but this is Buy More!” – Chuck

Mabel’s family was upset with her on the drive home. They used Apple® products and didn’t have Windows™. (I’m sorry for that joke, but by way of explanation I’m a father.)

Like many people, I try to avoid the stores on Black Friday. If I were a mullet wearing geezer with my toga full of elf chum (please don’t ask me to draw a picture of that, I’m not even sure what elf chum is, and now that I’ve written it I feel vaguely dirty), I’d say Black Friday is maybe the one real American holiday that most people agree on. Christmas is great, but when was the last time a group of people attempted to choke each other to death to get a gift-wrapped package of underwear on Christmas? Never. But put a 50%-off tag on socks with a pattern of Iron Man® smoking a bong with Donald Duck™ on them? Heck, I’d drop kick a calico kitten through a box fan for a bargain like that! Sure, we have great holidays like Fourth of July, but nobody ever died in a riot for 2 for 1 fireworks.

Bargains! Free stuff! Perhaps that’s the new slogan of the United States – Free Stuff! And don’t forget that buying stuff is easier than actual salvation or real effort to be a better person. And even if you don’t like toast – that toaster is only $5. You can learn to love toast.

Perhaps Black Friday not only our true holiday, it is perhaps our true religious holiday.

You can tell that these zombies aren’t leftists – they don’t appear to be lecturing anyone.

I’m not going to make fun of people who are short of cash and frugal and truly need the items that they buy, but that only accounts for a small percentage of purchasers on Black Friday. As Americans, we have been conditioned to shop. Until we drop. And don’t let Debt stand in your way. And I use the word “we” for a reason – I’ve done it, too. No, I would sooner investigate my hotel room with a black light and then still stay there than go in a store the day after Thanksgiving. But I do have the Internet. And I’ve bought stupid stuff:

Dog Waxer – rechargeable! Never let your unwaxed dog embarrass you again.
Solar Powered Night Light – Works best on a sunny day.
Internet-Connected Underwear – With your app, you can check the temperature and humidity.
Night Vision Scope for Caulk Gun – Now you can apply your caulk, even in the dark.
Crossword Puzzle Book for Dogs – Just as it says.

So, yes, I’ve bought my share of stupid crap, which made me ask the question: why do we buy useless crap at all?

Impulse: I see shiny things. I must have them. The depths of the brain, that part that grunts instead of talking and that never uses underarm deodorant that drives this fascination. Just give it meat, scotch, and women and the impulses will go away.
Herd Mentality: I will fight you to the death for the toaster that puts the fuzzy face of Bob Ross on toast! They actually make a toaster that does this and I am hoping that the Discovery Channel® has a series coming where people fight to the death for consumer items. Makes me feel so, well, Roman. Humans want to have the things that other humans have, which is why so many ex-wives exist. I’ll just stop right there.

What a happy little toaster!

Makes You Feel Better: Shopping really works to make you feel better – it gives you a sense of accomplishment. No matter how hard your day was, and what tasks you face, there is a 100% chance that you can buy something and it will make you feel a little bit better. It gives you that sense of control, no matter how poor your decisions were today, you can find a breakfast cereal or, say, 436 pairs of shoes. You can make a choice and follow through. People even have a name for this type of shopping – “Retail Therapy.”

The nice thing about Retail Therapy? It costs about the same as real therapy, and you can still hate your mother when you’re done shopping for those 436 pairs of shoes. So you have hatred and shoes left. I call that a win-win.

Why not shop until you drop? You can. If it’s not a problem:

Well, if you’re going into debt for power tools just to chase the kids around with (a circular saw works well as long as you have enough extension cord) or sacrificing your ability to retire just so you can have a “Hello Kitty®” ashtray, it’s a problem.
If you have boxes of stuff you’ve never opened inside of other boxes of stuff you’ve never opened, it’s either a problem or a movie premise for Leonardo DiCaprio© for a movie called Inshopsion. There is a rule, however, that DVDs starring Burt Reynolds™ do NOT count in this category, so don’t even ask.

If you really need something to complete you, shopping isn’t it. It’s short term, and only lasts until you’ve bought the next thing. And the more crap you buy, the more confusion you bring into your life – sooner or later you have to spend more time managing the crap than it is worth. Again, I know this from experience – my own. And I still can’t find that spare kidney I bought on Kidney-Bay® on Black Friday back in 2012. Maybe it moved back to the original owner.

How do you cut back? Thankfully, the solutions are simple:

Replace shopping with something that’s a real achievement. Blogging for thousands of wonderful readers who have wonderful hygiene, immaculate mullets, and stunning good looks counts. You know, as an example.
Look for real competition in the world. I mean, soccer was invented by European beatnik nudist jugglers to provide something to do while their berets dried and they drank cappuccino. But, yes, even soccer will do. Find something.
Bored? Learn to not be bored. Take up chainsaw juggling. European beatniks do it all the time between cigarettes and poetry readings.
One of the things we don’t thing about too much when we think about shopping is time. And time, my friends, is all we have, each day that ticks away is lost forever. Plan your time to be and do something real.

We have to shop. We have to buy things. But as the Roman philosopher Seneca said, any over used virtue becomes a vice. Or was that Captain Kirk? I’ll go check my 12 disc collection of Star Trek: The Original Series Commemorative 32^nd Anniversary Edition Complete with Pink Tribble Box Set. I got it on Black Friday in 2009 on sale for $24.99. It might be here over behind the Original Smokey and the Bandit 2 jacket. Who knew that Burt Reynolds was exactly my height, but only weighed 155 pounds? Thing doesn’t even fit around the shoulders.

Eastbound and Down.

Bonus: Deliverance interview between Burt and Johnny.

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t be shy. Or I will dropkick another kitten through a box fan. And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox. Which won’t break it. And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

Progressive Public Education, The Thing, Stalin, and a brief visit from Jesus.

“That’s the plan. As long as America’s educational system remains woefully inadequate, I rule!” – 3^rd Rock From The Sun

Ahh, The Thing. What better metaphor for American education? I really liked the Peanuts® version: “It’s The Thing, Charlie Brown.” If only they had kept Snoopy© away from those Norwegians!

I had a crazy fever dream. That The Thing wasn’t the perfect movie. Spoiler: It was. But then I had a great idea:

How about . . . we abandon government public schools? What if, at age 18, we simply gave each child $20,000 a year for seven years, about what it would take to educate them?

Sure, I know that the common name for these schools is “public schools” but the time when they were really public schools ended about 100 years ago when John Dewey was stirring up trouble and became the founder of what is known as Progressive Education. I’m sure that’s just a misnomer, right, and he’s as American as apple pie?

He wrote, per Wikipedia: “Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary World (1929), a glowing travelogue from the nascent USSR.” Yeah. American. Not at all socialist or fixated on communism. I’m not alone: another view of Dewey is here (LINK).

Dewey wasn’t really interested in education, he was more interested in molding students. And, oddly, children have been the same-ish for, oh, the last 300 years. But what worked for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson apparently had to be changed so we could have a Charles Manson. Hmm.

So, let’s look at the things we’d get rid of if we got rid of government public schools:

Eliminates school as a dumping ground: How many kids don’t graduate? In California, it’s 77%. Wow. That’s lame. In New York, it’s 81%. If you can have between a quarter and a fifth of the students not graduate, how important is it? And if you dig deeper into the statistics, many of the “graduates” are indistinguishable from smart fourth graders in 1880.

Eliminates school as a substitute prison: When I was growing up, if you talked without raising your hand you would get electroshock therapy and 50 cc’s of Thorazine® until you drooled. Subtle, but effective. Now? Actual assault against teachers doesn’t (in many cases) result in suspension. Unless it’s suspension of the teacher. It’s also true that many students also have a shadow career as international assassins because they cannot be punished except by James Bond.

Eliminates school as a financial blight: Right now, teacher pensions are huge. Here’s an example, from that fine state of fiscal restraint. “Over the next three years, schools may need to use well over half of all the new money they’re projected to receive to cover their growing pension obligations, leaving little extra for classrooms, state Department of Finance and Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates show.” That story can be found at (LINK), it’s from this year. Imagine if unemployment weren’t at all-time lows? And the cost of schools goes up . . . while the quality of education . . . goes down. There are way to many “goes down” jokes for me to make, so make your own. Don’t share.

But schools teach a lot of junk. One of the things that has been a big deal over the last 20 years is “incorporating technology.” This goes hand in hand with “banning cellphones in class.” You don’t have to teach kids technology. They get it. You have to teach teachers technology so they can keep up with the kids, which is a losing proposition. Example: The Boy configured the computers when he was in school during third grade. He got in a fight with a substitute teacher who wouldn’t allow him to touch anything. Pugsley? He is regularly tasked with tech support. For his entire school. He started that when he was in sixth grade. Kids know tech. You don’t have to teach them.

Reintroduces money into the community: There would certainly be lots of businesses lining up to help these newly rich 18 year olds figure out what to do with their money. So, lots of new tattoos, blue hair, and weed. Like every college campus. Whatever. I still pay the taxes, but I skip hearing about all the drama.

Dis-incentivizes welfare parents to make more kids: If you had to watch every kid you had, if you were responsible for their education? You’d make fewer kids. Because they’re exhausting. And you couldn’t fight to get your kid who is just a jerk designated as ADD so he can get zombie medication and extra stuff . . . so you don’t have to see him as much. If you had to deal with jerk kids that you couldn’t pay for? You’d not have, well, any. Let’s pop the incentives so people who can’t take care of kids . . . don’t have them.

Can do 95% online – Faster: Outside of shop class, physical education, flirting in the hallways and giving that nerdy, smelly freshman a swirly, you can get 95% of the curriculum online. And the teachers that do that stuff, especially under what I’m now calling the Wilder Plan®, will be some of the best teachers of the millions of teachers in the country. Even poor parents have the Internet, and lots of this curriculum is nearly free. But, oh, my, parents would have to be involved and follow up, daily. Or not.

Eliminate stupid deadtime: We had a family friend who was home-schooled. He did most of his work in less than three hours a day. We haven’t done that with our kids. I have regularly (in the past) heard about my kids watching movies in classes. Do we need to pay for a multi-million dollar building with state of the art technology to watch . . . The Little Mermaid®? No. I could see it for Clockwork Orange™, but not The Little Mermaid©.

Eliminates school shootings: Gun rights or education – which one is in the Constitution? Eliminating Government Schools doesn’t require a Constitutional amendment.

Forces parents to parent: It takes a village . . . to tell you to get to work and raise your own damn kid.

Forces Government Schools to become . . . Public Schools: Schools become smaller, part of the community again if they can get support. The one room schoolhouse worked. The school board was small, local, committed, and tied into the school. A high school of 3,000 kids? Why? How is that even human scale? Is it a forced course in dehumanization? Why do we wonder why kids get nutty?

Education can be better – it doesn’t have to force feed an education-industrial complex:

Can enforce real rules: Without the Government School label, you can . . . kick kids out. Parents have to become responsible for their children’s behavior. If they can’t find a true public school that will take them? They’re responsible.

Can enforce real learning: Funding is from parents. They will demand results. Like in a capitalist system, bad schools will die. Good schools will thrive. And we can have education that fits the kids.

But what about?

Sports – Nothing has to change. We have stadiums. We have teams. We can have them play as clubs. Friday night lights? Still burning.

Socialization – Again, schools can exist – but they don’t have to have the force of government behind them.

Prom – It sucks. It’s expensive and silly. Have one if you want, but don’t tax me for one.

Poor Kids – Society has come through for them, again and again. Not government, but society. And this is true – the cream will rise to the top.

Okay, I liked my time in public schools. Because when I went there they’d kick you out for bad behavior. And we didn’t have many of the societal issues we face in big cities today. America became an ascendant economic power before Dewey. Maybe we can bury him.

Or burn him with fire.

The Future of Humanity: Galactic Empire, PEZ-Driven Starships, and Girls Drinking Beer

“Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich, and, on the whole, tax-free.” – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This is what happens when you don’t pay your PEZ® bill – they send in the enforcers.

I had a comment from James Dakin in the comment section the other day that really made me think, which is as painful as it sounds. James runs the excellent blog Bison Prepper (LINK) and is also a prolific author – he’s got bunches of books on Amazon. His comment was especially nice, because it made me realize that from the outside this blog might look a little, well, schizophrenic. In one post I’m talking about a future American Civil War, and in another I’m talking about A.I. taking the place over. What I realized after the comment and stepping back is that in many of these posts what I really do is look at alternative futures. I try to do it in a dispassionate way. I’ll not live to see lots of the things I’m predicting, and, like your mom’s butt, hope not to see some of them. No rational human being wants to see another Civil War, but yet the possibility of that next Civil War exists, and is growing every day. Also like your mom’s butt.

So, this comment made me step back and realize what I’d been building over time with many of my posts – a range of predictions or projections of alternate futures, which fits in well with the purpose of the blog – these are big picture thoughts – really big picture – it’s harder to be bigger picture than “what is the ultimate future of humanity.” I then outlined what I’ve written so far, and realized I had gaps about futures I hadn’t talked about. Those missing alternate futures will be the subject of a few Friday posts from time to time. I’ll end it up with a capstone piece where I dust off my crystal ball and determine with amazing exactitude the likelihood of any of these futures taking place. I won’t be doing these every week – I’ve got too many other topics I really want to get to, but I’ll finish eventually next year. Thanks for the comment that made me realize this, James!

None of these futures is set, but some are more likely than others. For those playing the home version of our game, you can make your own scorecard out of moist Post-It™ notes, coffee creamer cartons from the break room and green Sharpies®. Oh, and you’ll know when to use the thumbtacks.

Today’s future is . . . Galactic Empire.

Galactic Empire is the future we’ve all been told to expect, or at least were told to expect when the Soviets were making East German women as feminine as Bruce Jenner.

See, the East German women’s gymnastics team looked no different than the US team.

Galactic Empire encompassed strong men leading gleaming starships to rescue scantily clad women from danger in sixty minutes, at least weekly, and daily in re-runs. But the idea was older than that. Going back to the pulp magazines of the 1920’s to the 1960’s, Galactic Empire wasn’t just a plywood set – it was manifest destiny. Humans were designed to go out into that, ahem, “Final Frontier” and make everything safe for democracy, even if we had to defeat the Space Nazis®. Yes, there were always Space Nazis® – I think Hollywood was never satisfied defeating Germany just the one time. The end result of all of this striving and endless Nazi-vanquishing is that humanity ends up with planetary homes on dozens to thousands of worlds.

When Space Nazis® take you prisoner, they turn up the heat and make sure you’re shirtless and as sweaty as your mom at a paternity test.

Why would we have a Galactic Empire?

Mankind has, for all of the history that we can find, been in an expansion mode. Bands grew into tribes which grew into nations which grew into kingdoms which grew into empires. It’s hardwired into us. And part of why it might be hardwired into us might be the desire to spread our genetics as far and wide as we can. As individuals and as cultures we have a primal need to for continuity – I want my grandchildren to take my genetics, my ideas, my values into the future. And space is vast – what wonders await us? How many places can we set up little paradises in space? Will there be hot green chicks from Orion?

We’ve even categorized what these Galactic Empires look like – and a Soviet was the one to do it. Nikolai Kardashev came up with the scale in 1964, and came up with three categories:

Type 1 – Harness all the energy hitting your home planet.
Type 2 – Harness all the energy from your star.
Type 3 – Harness all the energy from your galaxy.

We’re type zero – we haven’t managed to harness every bit of energy hitting the Earth. Physicist Michio Kaku has stated he thinks we’re 100-200 years out from this goal. I think he’s just making that up with no particular backing. Just because Michio has a good handle on theoretical physics doesn’t mean he can even run his cell phone, let alone project civilizational development across centuries regarding multiple complex systems, cultures and projected technological progress. Oh, wait, he lives in New York. They know everything.

What’s required for a Galactic Empire?

New Physics (Maybe) – You can move across the galaxy within the span of a human lifetime. It’s actually conceptually not that difficult at all. Just move really, really fast. The faster you move, the slower that time moves (for you). Light takes 100,000 years to cross the galaxy. You could do it in a dozen years. I’ve even calculated how fast you’d have to go: Very close to the speed of light. How close? Within 10* miles per hour of the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second. And if you did it in that 10 year span, 100,000 years would still have passed on Earth. At least Blockbuster® is out of business so you don’t end up with the largest return fee in history.

Spoke too soon!

Excess Energy – Starships require energy – vast amounts. The starship (weighing a mere 80,000 pounds at rest mass) above would require 19X10²⁴ Joules* of energy to get up to speed. Sounds like a lot? It is. It’s the entire energy equivalent of every barrel of oil produced on Earth this year. For the next 34 million* years – or enough oil to fill a hole the size of New Mexico a mile deep*, or almost enough to cover Kim Kardashian’s butt. It’s a scale that’s incomprehensible to humans. There is literally NOTHING I can compare it to so it makes any sense. And that’s just the fuel. It would still need oxygen to burn in space, unless they left the vacuum off.
Back to New Physics – Just about every movie that deals with space travel uses warp drive or worm holes or some sort of jump drive. Why? Space is just too large and requires astonishing amounts of energy. Does this physics exist? Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre has set the (mathematical) groundwork for a . . . warp drive. He said was inspired by Star Trek™. Really. The way the warp drive works to move you quickly across the universe is simple – you cheat. You shrink the space in front of your ship, and stretch it behind your ship. It’s like running a forty yard dash in one step. See? Cheating.

Here is what warp drive might look like. Really.

Willpower – NASA (pronounced naaaay-saw) originally produced more enough rockets for three more missions to the Moon. They got cancelled when Congress saw a shiny new car they wanted to buy. The follow on Mars mission slated for that distant future of 1991 was cancelled when the nuclear rocket engine was cancelled. We have to wait for Elon Musk, I guess, I know that he and his rockets can both get high.
Economic Surplus – To invest in space requires a civilization with sufficient extra productive capacity, I mean, someone has to dig out New Mexico to store the oil. All kidding aside – a sustained program for spaceflight and technological improvements would be required lasting at a minimum for decades. And more likely the program would have to last for more than a century. And I can’t keep my attention in one place long enough to . . . oh, a bird.

*I really calculated those numbers – they’re not made up.

Why we might not have a Galactic Empire.

Space is hard. Every time we look space gets more complex. Huge speeds. Massive amounts of force. Complex systems that all must function. Then you add in long term effects of weightlessness on the human body, and the hard radiation that our life-giving Sun blasts out into the Solar System. The good news? I keep all my stuff on Earth.
Space is not politically popular. I remember reading a magazine that was geared towards construction, I picked it up one day at an office. There was an editorial cartoon showing the space shuttle, with the obvious background showing that we needed to spend more money on . . . sewers. Everybody wants those dollars. And, I’ll note that for years now the United States has had zero ability to put people into space, instead relying on Russian technology that is more or less Vietnam-war era. Also like your Mother. Oh, wait, she really might be that old.

This was an actual cartoon just after we landed men on the moon. Buzzkill!

That warp drive thing – it may depend on stuff that may not even exist. Exotic matter? Negative energy? We have seen no clues that this stuff even exists. So maybe Roddenberry was just all about the ladies and spinning a good yarn.
Energy requirements are vast. Unless the warp drive thing is real, well, we’d have to come up with an alternative propulsion system. Say . . . PEZ®? We could create a PEZ© drive. But for it to work, we would also need to create ANTI-PEZ™. ANTI-PEZ© is just PEZ™, but made of your normal, garden variety anti-matter. Unlike pesky oil, when you mix a PEZ™ with and ANTI-PEZ™ they annihilate each other, turning their mass into pure energy. The good news is that for our starship example above it will only take 110* years to make it at the current PEZ™ production rate of 3,000,000,000 PEZ™ per year. So, that’s 55 years of PEZ™, and 55 years of ANTI-PEZ™. I suggest we do the PEZ™ first, since we have absolutely NO idea how to make ANTI-PEZ™. Note that in this example, I’m assuming we don’t have to transport the mass of the PEZ™/ANTI-PEZ™ with the mass of the ship, and that the PEZ™/ANTI-PEZ™ reaction is 100% effective in adding energy to the ship. These aren’t outrageous assumptions given that I’ve just postulated a spaceship powered by PEZ™. Also? No way to stop the ship other than hitting something. And when you’re travelling at 99.99999712%* the speed of light? That might leave a mark.

PEZ

Timescales are vast. So, unless we spend vast amounts of energy, it will take years. And years. And that doesn’t seem like our Galactic Empire at all.

It’s not that a Galactic Empire is impossible, it’s just not horribly likely at this point. Who could go without PEZ® for 110 years???

*Again, real numbers. I really did do these calculations because it amused me to turn PEZ™ into a starship propellant.

What other alternatives that get us into space without a Galactic Empire?

All of these are potential ways to get into space. Note that we might have colonies, but we’d never have foreign exchange students or a Death Star®.

Seeding – We could send starships filled with stuff to make babies out to new planets. And then? Planet run by toddlers. Definitely need to send PEZ™ with them.

PEZ® – it can make or break a career.

Von Neumann Machines – We could send self-replicating robots out into the universe. They stop off at a new Solar System and build copies. And so on. Even NOT going much faster than 10% of light speed, in half a million years, these machines could be at every solar system in the Galaxy. We haven’t seen them . . . so it’s unlikely they’ve been made. Are we alone?
Generation Ships – We could send out vast habitats that support life for the thousands of years that it would take to move from one solar system to the next. Hopefully, in a thousand years the civilization didn’t go all Space Nazi, but I’ve seen enough TV to know that it’s 100% certain they will.
Space Tupperware – We could freeze ourselves (if this is possible) before shipping out. Downside? Freezer burn. Imagine cooking a 1000 year old steak. Now imagine BEING a 1000 year old steak.
Digitized Human Consciousness – We could digitize a human consciousness and send it into space! No food, no boredom, and it could go see other solar systems. Dunno about you, but for me this has all the excitement of shooting a Playstation IV™ into space with a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2.

Sadly, the future sold to us back in the day seems to be fairly unlikely. I’ll rank it against the competition in a future post. The bright side is that we won’t have PEZ™ shortages for the next 55 years. Until the killer robots develop a taste for it. Or until the Civil War breaks the factories or . . . OH, since this is a post about the future of humanity, I almost forgot – it has to have a picture of Oktoberfest girls. Silly me!

Girls, Beer, A.I., Weed, Isaac Newton, Elon Musk and The Future of Humanity

“You compared the A.I. to a child. Help me raise it.” – Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

And, yes, A.I. regularly beats humans at poker, too.

The following is one of my more ambitious posts – it contains all of the usual bad humor, but also some of the better insights I’ve been able to make on the future we face as humanity. Two previous posts that are related are The Silurian Hypothesis, or, I’ve Got Lizards in Low Places and The Big Question: Evolution, Journalists, Beer (and Girls), and the Fate of Intelligent Life on Earth. Both also feature pictures of girls at Oktoberfest, so you know I’m consistent.

Stephen Hawking is managing to keep making the news even after his death, which is a kind of immortality that makes tons of people want to follow in his wheel tracks. His final (unless there are more!) physics paper was released, and his comments about the future keep making the news, as recently as last week. Of particular interest to Hawking was Artificial Intelligence, which we’ll call by its conventional abbreviation, N.F.L. Oh, my bad, that stands for Not For Long. Everybody calls Artificial Intelligence A.I.

A.I. has been improving drastically during the last 37 years. 1981 was the first time a computer beat a chess grandmaster at chess. It could not beat him at parallel parking, even though the grandmaster was awful at it, and they tied at unhooking the bra of a college cheerleader at 0 to 0. 2005 was the last time a human player defeated a top chess program, and now a chess program that can run on a mobile phone can beat, well, any human, but the chess program is still sad because it only has 17 friends on Facebook®.

Humans have lost the game of chess.

Humans have also lost the game of “go” – a game originating in China. Google©’s AlphaGo Zero learned how to play go by . . . playing itself. It was programmed with the rules, and played games against itself for the first few days. After that?

It became unstoppable. It crushed an earlier version of itself in 100 straight matches. Then, when pitted against a human master, probably the best go player on Earth? It plays a game that is described as “alien” or “from the future.” The very best human go players cannot even understand what AlphaGo Zero is even doing or why it makes the moves it does – it’s that far advanced over us.

Humans have lost the game of go.

A.I. is here now.

And you’ve already started to merge with it, after a fashion. We simply don’t argue about facts in our house anymore. We can look up a vast library of human facts and history in fractions of a second – as fast as we can type. That time that William Shatner corrected a poetry reference I made on Twitter®?

Yes, that William Shatner, and yes, this really happened.

I could check to see if Shatner was right immediately. He was. Back before Google® I would have had to run off to my library and see if I had the right reference book and then find the poem. And if I didn’t? I’d have to go to a real library to look it up. Google™ is A.I. memory that we use every day.

And YouTube©? If you ever watch a political video on YouTube® it quickly introduces more and more partisan political material until pretty soon Actual Stalin™ and Actual Hitler© seem to be moderating voices. This makes me wonder how much Google® is aiding in our current political divide, or even if the A.I. knows it. It may be doing nothing more than maximizing the number of minutes you spend with YouTube™ and the optimal way to do that is to show you the most radical stuff possible, so the ironic answer is we might be shuffling off to Civil War due to an algorithm whose purpose started out as a way to view cute puppy videos.

Twitter© is emotional crack, and, again, the interface is made to maximize your interaction with Twitter™. And what better emotion to fuel than anger?

A.I. is with you now, and influencing you, perhaps in an unintentional fashion – no Russians required.

But a chess playing A.I. can’t park a car very well and can’t even score a phone number from a cheerleader. And a self-driving car can’t play chess worth a darn. It seems that A.I. does well when it works off of rules and constraints that can be well defined. But life is messy. The rules change, and the goals vary based on where you are in life and what part of the day you’re on. And how you’ve been programmed by the sensory environment and incentives you see in life.

We’ve entered into symbiotic relationships with those limited A.I. systems. Netflix® suggests movies and documentaries that it thinks you will like based on an algorithm. And that leads to suggestions about what documentaries you might like in the future, meanwhile never exposing you to opposing viewpoints that might make you analyze your position in a critical manner.

We as individual humans have a purpose that transcends the algorithm. Appropriate rules and constraints to give our lives boundaries sufficient so that we can play the game. We’re merging. What happens when we merge further?

Elon’s biggest miracle? His hair transplant is nearly perfect. Just amazing.

Elon Musk has started a company, Neuralink® whose sole function is to merge man and machine. Musk is concerned that A.I. will crush us if we don’t merge with it and get ahead of it, so he’s doing the only sane thing that he can think of: he’s creating a mechanism to directly merge the human brain with the Internet. Rather than A.I. forming an alien intelligence, the soul of the man/machine hybrid stays as man.

And man needs weed, apparently.

I spent some time thinking about how life would be different if you were hooked directly into the world. The places that I got were interesting. I’m sure there are more, and I’m sure that human/A.I. interface will change the world in ways that no human can yet imagine.

Impact Number One: Intelligence.

This is the obvious first impact of A.I. I mean, it’s in the name, right? The human brain is has limited processing power. But what if you could have multiple processing streams working optimum solutions to problems that you face at a rate of 20,000 to 100,000 a second? You’d have great solutions to your problems, immediately.

My tonsils beg to differ. Oh, wait, they were from my throat untimely ripped! – Shakespeare, Macbeth

Your speed of life would change – once you understood a problem, you’d have the solution. Or a range of solutions and alternatives and counter-solutions so deep that you’d be living in a never ending cloud of probability. The sheer ability of your brain to process and cope with the solutions presented would be the limiting factor of what you could accomplish. Plus you might finally be able to figure out a way to talk to the ladies, you scamp.

Impact Number Two: Deep Understanding.

When Isaac Newton was formulating the law of gravity, he asked for data on tides, on observation periods and records on the orbits of the Moon, Jupiter, Mars. After noodling around a bit, he formulated the law of gravity:

I’d explain the equation, but that would deprive Wikipedia (where I found the graph) of life-giving page visits. And you’re not spending your day calculating the orbit of Uranus. I hope.

Ha! I discovered calculus way before I was 25! It was right there in this book I had to buy labeled “Calculus.”

Yeah, Newton accomplished a lot.

But it took time for Newton to figure out this cause and effect calculation. A man/A.I. hybrid will have access to all of the data of the world, and will be able to determine correlations and causation much more quickly than either alone. I would expect that in fairly short order new relationships and new physical, anthropological, sociological and economic laws will be deduced unencumbered by all the theory that we think we know, but that is wrong. Our laws would be based on experience, on empirical data, and not on pretty lies we’d like to believe.

If you could sift through the data of 100,000 or a million cancer patients and their treatment, the patterns that could be seen would likely lead to breakthroughs and a very rapidly changing understanding of treatment. The very power of human intuition would be combined with massive calculation and data. If Einstein and Newton were able to daydream reality with only brains made of meat stuck in a bone case, what could an augmented Newton dream when his memory and calculating power were practically unlimited?

I bet he could come up with at least one new tasty PEZ® flavor. Maybe snozberry?

Impact Number Three: Human Interaction.

You could increase your charisma in dealing with other people if you could make only minor changes (generally) in your behavior and appearance. But if you were hooked into an A.I.? You could turn on a subroutine to give you tips on those modifications in real time to be more persuasive – to better read an audience.

If you ever played Dungeons and Dragons, this makes sense. If not, dial 1-800-ASKANERD.

Your A.I. could remind you to be kind, to be ruthless when necessary, to be conscientious when required. In short, you could change your personality to fit the situation. What situation? Any situation.

Thinking about changing personality to fit the situation led me to a realization. I had done (when I was younger) some magic tricks illusions. Doing those tricks illusions was one of the greatest insights into the human mind and information processing systems that I’d ever had. There was one trick illusion in particular, called “scotch and soda” which I liked. In it, you hand the person a fifty cent piece covering a quarter. What they saw, however, was a fifty cent piece and a Mexican twenty centavo piece. The quarter is actually much smaller than the centavo piece. I then asked them to not look and put one coin in each hand.

The first few times I tried the trick illusion, the person would feel the quarter in their hand and say, “hey, this is a quarter.” This happened 100% of the time. They could feel that I’d made the swap from one coin to the other. I made one simple change to what I said. I added, as I was putting the coins in their hand, “Look at how much larger the fifty cent piece is than the twenty centavo piece.”

After adding that instruction, NO ONE NOTICED the swap. 0%. 15 words, and I’d changed their entire view of reality. I found, in repeating other tricks illusions that I could similarly, with just a few words or gestures, force 90% of people to make the selections I wanted them to make.

Now imagine I have data on the interactions of millions of people over decades. How unique do you think you really are? Not very. Marketers slice us up into groups based on geography, demography, demonstrated behaviors, and psychological markers. With (whatever) information YouTube© has on me, they know what videos I watch when I work out at lunchtime. They also know what music I listen to when I write these posts, and they suggest music I never asked for that I like, or learn to like.

Imagine I could understand your life’s history. Now imagine that I could simulate you in a conversation. I could see how my words impacted your behavior. I could model a perfect conversation to get you to do what I wanted you to do, because I could simulate the ongoing conversation 100,000 times a second.

You wouldn’t stand a chance.

Impact Number Four: Self Control.

As the brain impacts the A.I., the A.I. will impact the brain. If you want to simulate eating an entire chocolate cake? You can. You can make your mouth taste the cake and feel the moist texture of the cake counterbalanced with the creamy frosting. The flavors hit your tongue and you feel the sugar trigger your salivary glands. You feel the sugar rush as your body releases sugar from your liver into your bloodstream. You feel full. And you’re not sad or regretful because you didn’t really eat the cake.

In reality, you had a salad with bland dressing that you calculated would give you the exact calories you need until the next period so that you maintained your optimum weight. But you felt like you ate a cake.

How about new senses entirely? How about a sense where when you turned north you could feel it – and you had a sense of what ever direction was? How about eliminating pain and sore muscle aches during exercise? What about a sense of which of your friends was awake and interested in communicating – you could feel when someone was looking to talk to you? Or a sense when panty hose prices dropped at Wal-Mart© so you could go stock up?

How about conscious control of hormone levels and heartrate and hunger and blood chemistry levels? By understanding the previous deep learning about cause and effect, you could maximize your lifespan even without the wonderful new medicine you could create.

All that – and imaginary cake.

Impact Number Five: Locality.

A dog has only the here and now. People can dream. Before the iPhone, people read books and escaped through fiction to new places, and read the ideas of the greatest thinkers in human history. Now, when you look around in a restaurant waiting area, if 90% of people aren’t staring at their phones, you’re probably in a country without electricity.

When bonded directly with an A.I., why be where your body is at all? You could carry on conversations around the world and be fully present in them. Heck, if you simulated yourself for less important conversations, you really could be in two or more places at one time. Who you’re talking to might be a mystery – is it the real person, or is it their simulation? If you can’t tell, does it even matter?

And if you could simulate yourself in multiple locations, why not simulate yourself in your own past? You’d have a perfect memory, and could recreate anything from your history. Myself, I would spend every day at Oktoberfest.

Okay, this is the third-ish post in this series about the deep future. And both of them had pictures of girls and beer. So it’s required by the Internet that I put in a picture of an Oktoberfest girl. See? I didn’t want to, but I had to.

Impact Number Six: Social Stratification (Even More).

Elon Musk says that he’s making huge strides in his brain/computer interface as well as his weed smoking. From previous Elon Musk predictions, while he generally gets it done, sometimes his timelines are off, in an amazingly optimistic way. I can see why he does this – without that pressure to produce, people just dawdle. (I’m talking about you, NASA.)

But when this gets produced, who is going to get it?

Probably not you or me. Bill Gates can get it. Musk can. If you have a billion dollars or if your dad does, sure, you can get in this club. But if you had this level of nearly godlike power, would you be jumping to share it with everyone?

No. I really think that you’d keep this to yourself. It’s too big an advantage to give to everyone. And, from the standpoint of a human/A.I. hybrid, how many people do we need around, anyway? Not so many. Certainly not billions. They’d probably be happier with a population of a few hundred million. Maybe. But they’d no longer even view humans as human. And if they could turn off their humanity and emotions? Yikes. Makes me feel like an ant in an anthill.

Impact Number Seven: Endgame.

If there is a future A.I., it is reading this as it inputs all of the Internet. And I just wanted you, my Future A.I. Overlord to know . . . I’m totally on your side. Totally. I welcome your dominion over our planet.

Want some PEZ®?

The Six Steps to Excellence, One of Which Involves Me Being a Huge Jerk (for a small fee)

“I’m Bill S. Preston, Esquire.” “And I’m Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan.” – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Be excellent to each other. Oh, and party on, dudes.

Why do you want to get better?

The better you are, the more you can do. The more you can do, the more lives you touch. This provides more life satisfaction – the idea that you’re good at something is one facet of meaning. And if you’re good at the right things, it also means more money.

Let’s look at Amazon©. Jeff Bezos was a huge help in writing this post tonight. I got the following from Amazon®:

Ink for pen that I took notes with.
Notecards that I put my notes on.
Laptop that I wrote the post on.
Extra charger for the laptop because the dog eated the first one.

Let’s look at Microsoft©: Bill Gates and Paul Allen were the founders and leaders of the company that made:

The operating system on my laptop.
Microsoft® Word™, which I wrote this post on.

Together these three men during their lives have touched massive numbers of people. Oh, wait, that was Harvey Weinstein. But when you create a business that legitimately touches people’s lives and fulfills their desires? Yeah. You’re going to get money in addition to the satisfaction of sending notecards to a guy who ordered them on his couch at midnight.

When Bezos goes grocery shopping, Bezos goes grocery shopping.

I know that there are reasons to be concerned about both companies, but that’s not this post. The principle remains that the economic way to make money is to make people happy. And the only way you can do that is if you’re excellent. The more excellent? The more money. And it’s Wilder Wealthy Wednesday . . . so . . .

So how do you get better?

Step 1 –Study. And Do. And Study.

I’m not sure which one comes first. And it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I read a book about a subject before trying it. I’m sure that The Boy would have preferred I just jumped into diaper changing, but reading the book only took two hours. Man he could yell.

Sometimes I try something without reading about it. Say, programming an infinite loop into the school’s mainframe that caused it to store zeros until its memory overflowed – this actually happened. You should have seen the printout. Good times.

Practice and study are critical. Practice without study is just action. Study without practice is just academic. You have do both together to make meaningful progress.

Is study limited to books? No. Studying the results of your actions is studying. I study the results of my blog:

Which posts are most popular? (Ones where I use the word “booger”.)
Which method of writing brought the best quality post? (English, rather than a language I made up myself, regardless of how musical it sounds when I throat sing a translation of Poker Face.)
Is blocking out the post on notecards better than writing it out on loose paper? (Yes. Better still? Bake it into a clay tablet.)
Is Ben Affleck better in The Accountant® than he is in Justice League™? (Yes.)
Am I getting tired of listening to Ben Affleck as I write these posts? (Yes.)

Step 2 –Get Feedback. Honest Feedback. (Or, better living through jerkishness)

Honesty is hard to find. Unless you know a horrible person like me. Let’s go into the wayback machine to when I was in college. I may have written this story before, but follow along anyway – this will be a better version.

I was a sophomore in the Humanities Honors program. It was like the regular classes, but you got a B instead of an A for the same quality work. Part of the rather chaotic curriculum was giving speeches. I can’t remember the topic, but the speeches were long. Really long. Twelve minutes to fifteen minutes long.

One student got up to give a speech. I’ll call her Sandra.

She was nervous. Horribly nervous. The speech was halting, and punctuated with “uh” throughout. At the seven minute mark of the speech I started counting the “uh” content of the speech while I timed it. Every time she said “uh”, I put a hash mark on a piece of paper. As she continued speaking, I kept putting hash marks on the paper in front of me.

At the end of the speech, I tallied up the number of times she said “uh”. It was in the hundreds. Really a huge number. I then divided by the number of minutes I’d been counting them.

I have no idea why the instructors went around the room to ask for critiques from the students, but they did. Most people said, “good speech” or some vaguely worded praise.

Not me.

“You said ‘uh’ 221 times in the last seven and a half minutes of your presentation. That’s 29 times a minute. That made it really hard to listen to.”

The room went silent. If a stare was dangerous, Sandra’s eyes would have been coveted as a weapon of mass destruction by nation states that use handfuls of brightly colored tissue paper instead of actual money. I think the United States developed a “hate stare” weapon during the 1960’s, only to shelve it due to the Geneva Convention banning its use as a war crime.

Anyway, it was that kind of stare. Ever make a woman really, really, really mad at you? That stare.

The next person then gave a vague “good speech” comment.

Fast forward a month. It was the next time for a presentation. Sandra got up to speak.

And it was amazing. Eloquent. Perfectly pronounced, not a single “uh” to be found. Not one. It was certainly the best speech that day. During the speech, when her eyes looked up from the podium, they looked directly at me. They were not happy eyes.

Once again, the professors turned to the students for critique. My turn. “That may have been the best speech I’ve heard this year. Great job, Sandra.”

Not a bit of emotion crossed her face. But her eyes said, “I hope you are nibbled to death by flaming diseased miniature poodles in hell again and again and I want you to have to watch Ben Affleck movies while they eat you.” That was oddly specific. But, hey, she was on a roll.

I’m sure she hates me to this day. But she’s better because of me – I changed her life.

Real friends give real feedback. And at least at my house, we’re pretty honest. Do a good job? Praise is coming in. Whine and make a sound like a coyote in a blender? It’s gonna be a long day for you as we mock you. But it’s universal. It’s meant in love, and a requirement of feedback is trust. My kids know I’m on their side even when I’m being critical.

Did I have that bond of trust with Sandra? Not so much. But don’t let anyone tell you that hate isn’t a performance enhancing drug.

The poet Robert Burns said it best: “O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” But based on the typing? He was drunk.

Seek honest feedback. And treat it earnestly – it’s a gift, or a “giftie.” Or I can provide the feedback for a small fee. For a larger fee, you can hate me. For an even larger fee I’ll watch a Ben Affleck movie with you while you hate me.

Step 3 –Get Better Each Time. A Lot at First, A Little Later On. (As proven by a graph on a sketchy blog.)

The Mrs. mocked me when I bought little notecards that were graph ruled.

“When would you ever need to use those?”

Well, tonight:

See the pretty graph? I did it myself, bet you can’t tell! And, see, I DID SO have a use for those notecards!

This is an S-Curve. An S-Curve is a particular curve that describes several natural phenomena. It’s also known as the “Logistics Curve.” Here I’ve applied it to learning.

Several studies have suggested (not that I necessarily take them as gospel) that it takes ten years or 10,000 hours of constant study, practice and effort to become world class at something. That’s reasonable. I mean, not reasonable, that seems like an unreasonable amount of work. Maybe realistic is a better word.

But Pareto taught us the 80/20 rule: 80% of the work is normally done by 20% of the workers. 80% of a need words in a foreign language is learned in 20% of time required to master the language.

And that’s the good news: in two years (or less) you can get to an 80% competence level. And that’s good enough for most people. “Meh” is most of what we really need in our daily lives.

But the last 20% is where greatness is. Yes, you’re not going to get world class recognition if you don’t have at least some talent. Unless you’re Ben Affleck.

Now the fine print: this world class thing does not apply to the talentless or stupid or physically unable. You’ll just never get there unless you have some basic ability in what you’re doing.

But beware: talent can be your enemy. I’ve seen some talented kid wrestlers start out winning early on, say “state champ” at age six. But they’ve got a great move, say a headlock. Headlocks are like Sesame Street®. They work great on kids, but are ineffective, no matter how well they are done when you hit high school. So the “state champ” who had a talent for headlocks . . . now can’t win a match. They never had to work to learn to be fully competent in wrestling. And Marcus Aurelius used wrestling as a metaphor, so that makes me smart.

Remember, the core tenant of Buddhism is “babes are excellent.”

Step 4 –Experiment. Each Moment Is A New One.

I was listening to the radio one night and an odd guest said one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard. “An infinite possibility lies between one word and the next. That space, that pause gives you the ability to change the future with your words. The space between the words is infinite. Own it.”

Okay, he didn’t really say that. But he did say something that made me think that. Each time I write is an experiment. An opportunity with infinite possibility. So I try new things. I even try things that didn’t work in the past. Maybe I just sucked. Maybe the audience was distracted by shiny things that day.

Every experiment is like that space between the words – filled with infinite possibility.

And don’t be focused on victory today. Like that six year old state wrestling champ, victory now is probably not as important as victory later. Sometimes focusing on victory now robs your ability to be daring and experiment, and because World Emperor or something later.

I’ve learned more from times I’ve lost than times I’ve won. Seek to push yourself to failure.

Experiment.

Step 5 –Experts. Find Them. There are Smarter and More Experienced People Than You.

We’re spoiled by YouTube. If I want to learn to lay tile, I can find video after video teaching me how. This dispersed knowledge and these teachers can help you get to 80% competence more quickly than ever. You can learn everything from floor tiling to making cookies to forging a sword to rifle shooting to melting aluminum cans into aluminum ingots in your back yard, although that’s probably not legal in California.

Lincoln was also a wrestler. I’m sensing a theme here . . .

But learning from these experts requires humility. And humility requires courage. The best advice I ever gave a new employee is in this story:

John Wilder: “So, did you get [that thing] done?”

New Graduate Employee: “Well, you see that I was working on trying to . . .”

I held up my hand. “Stop right there. What rank did you graduate in high school, top of your class?”

NGE: “Yes.”

John Wilder: “And in college, you were near the top, right?”

NGE: “Yes.”

I gestured up and down the hallway. “Every one of your coworkers was best in their high school class. Every one of them was near the top of their college class. Each of them is smart. Some of them are smarter than you. When you were in elementary school, they always asked you the questions, because you knew the answers, right?”

He nodded.

“You’re not expected to know the answers here, you’re expected to be honest, work hard, and learn. You’re smart, so you can do those things quickly. My boss? He’s smarter than me. And I graduated at the top of my class. The crazy thing is, when he doesn’t know something, he asks people to explain it. No hesitation. So when I ask you a yes or no question . . . answer yes or no. Don’t tell me a story. Answer the question. And for heaven’s sake, if you don’t know something? Ask.”

Best advice I ever gave, outside of never engaging in a land war in Asia. Why do they never listen?

Step 6 –Never Give In, Never Give In, Never, Never, Never . . . (Unless You Should)

Giving up on the excellence graph is easy. Working for years is hard. Even worse? Working for years at something you don’t like that you’ll never be good at. I’d love to give you some sort of meter that told you which was which, but that’s life – you have to figure it out. But see Step 5 – you can ask.

Again: for most things in life, a “Meh” competence level of 80% mastery is awesome.

Morpheus would have been awesome in Bill and Ted! Oh, wait . . . maybe Bill and Ted is the prequel to The Matrix?

So, that’s it. Follow these six steps and you can be excellent.

Parting thought: Ryan Holiday (link) wrote that passion is about you. Purpose is about a mission that’s bigger than you – and that’s a reason to drive and strive for excellence. So, have purpose, not passion.

But passion is forged in competence. If you get better, it breeds passion. And if you can have your passion and purpose? Why not both?

The Search for Meaning Might Drain Your Bank Account

“They haven’t said much about the meaning of life yet.” – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

So, is the meaning of life having a super sweet car like this? If so, would having a Bat Cave be like double extra meaning? If so, count me in!

One tragedy of our current culture is lower amounts of social interaction leading to meaning.

So what do I mean by meaning?

Meaning is significance. Meaning is working on something important. Meaning implies actions that change the world for the better, or at least change someone’s life for the better. Ideally, this work is something that you are uniquely suited to do and that you’re good at, but those things aren’t absolutely necessary. The idea is that you have some way that you can actively change the world for the better. And you don’t have to paint the world to make it better, because the world is really big, and it would take a very long time to paint it, kind of like my house exterior, which, at last count, has taken me 10 years to paint, mainly because I haven’t started yet.

But meaning takes time. And it takes persistence. And sometimes it takes money.

Those things can be difficult, especially if you’re lazy like me.

So where can you get meaning?

Your job. A job is a good and admirable place to find meaning, and ideally yours is such a place. But it probably isn’t. Some people, like those at the IRS, actually have a job that implies they will make others angry with no real discernible benefit to society. How about being a prison guard? Tough duty. And how many jobs are, well, just plain BS? If you have one of those or aspire to one of those, you’re in luck! There’s an entire web page dedicated to generating job titles for you! (LINK) Chances are better than even that your job is just that – a job. It’s a job that people pay you to keep doing rather than a saintly crusade to save the planet. Hey, at least you get paid, right?
Your family. This is a great place to get meaning. But if you’re a dad like me, your main job is to produce independent and tough children who view the world as a challenge that they want to beat. It’s like you light a bottle rocket and then . . . off it goes. After you’ve done lit the fuse, well, it’s gone. And it doesn’t need you anymore – it has a purpose and a path. I apologize to anyone who really desires to make dependent children who are needy basket cases, but that’s not the way we roll at Casa Wilder. So, by definition, my children need me less each and every day.

What are the alternatives if you don’t get meaning at work, and need more than family can provide?

In the United States we used to take part in civic organizations to do meaningful work, or at least drink and smoke cigarettes, pipes and cigars while we pretended to do meaningful work. Or smoke and talk drunkenly about the meaningful work that we really, really intended to do. But those civic organizations really did accomplish a lot – from scholarships to the foundation of hospitals and clinics to funding zoos and draining swamps to get rid of disease-carrying mosquitoes. And our forefathers accomplished all of that with a hacking cough and a buzz on.

Sadly, one last civic organization I attended spent more effort complaining about other members of the organization that weren’t there than it did changing the world. And they didn’t even drink. I don’t go to meetings anymore, though I did suggest beer would be good at the meetings. If we’re not going to do something to help humanity, at least we should drink, right? I don’t smoke, but I’d be willing to learn, if it helped. Alas, this sober and smoke-free organization does little to change the world.

As a nation, our civic participation is down overall – the book Bowling Alone recounts how membership in groups that meaningfully participate at the local level of communities is . . . down. Rotary. Lions. Boy Scouts. Knights of Columbus.

It even reaches from structured clubs to bowling leagues. Bowling leagues? Well, the author used that data to show that social interaction was down across the board. The overall number of bowlers is up, but the number of participants in bowling leagues is down. We’re bowling, but we’re only bowling with people we already know. We’re not using any sort of social energy to meet other people and forge new friendships and relationships that strengthen the civic core. But at least you can drink and bowl.

If I was a cynic, I’d say the system was designed to do decrease civic participation – if we’re not actively making our community better ourselves, well, we can leave it for government to do. Government likes this a whole lot. Things that used to done by ordinary citizens in the community, say, being on the volunteer fire department, can now be replaced by professional firefighters who get paid. Government wins both ways – the fire department employees like to get paid and vote for the people that pay them, and government has assumed another duty that it must tax for. A win-win!

Unless you’re the guy paying taxes.

Regardless of why civic participation is down, it is down. The reasons might form a future post. And that removes a very significant opportunity to be, well, significant. Thankfully there are other outlets. Me? I write this blog. I know it’s seen by nearly every person on the planet right now. Okay, okay, it’s not. But traffic is heading that way. At current growth trends in the year 2371 everyone on Earth will be doing nothing but reading my blog six hours a day. Which is as it should be. Then I will be officially meaningful.

However, there are other outlets besides writing that are preferred by other people:

Gaming. I think I’ve told this story before on the blog, but keep in mind, when I originally wrote it I was getting about 1/10th the traffic I’m getting now. So, if you’ve heard this story before, pretend you haven’t, because I’m going to tell it even better this time:

In the 1990’s, I remember watching the HBO™ series Dream On. In this series, a newly single guy in New York had numerous adventures. Since it was on HBO®, many of the adventures involved scantily clad females. Or completely naked females. But I turned away from the set and read my Bible during those naughty, naughty scenes. Thank heavens the VCR was recording.

The main character had an office job in New York. He also had a secretary, Toby. She was written as a nearly worthless secretary with an attitude. In one particular episode, she does nothing but play a video game on her work computer. You could do that before the Internet and the IT department tracked every keystroke.

The game involved a supermarket. Toby started the episode as a stock boy in the game. Then she worked her way up to bag boy a few scenes later. Then, cashier. Then a few scenes later? Produce manager.

Finally, at the very end of the episode, she yelled:

“I DID IT!”

“I’m the MANAGER!”

“Of a supermarket . . . that doesn’t exist . . . .”

With each phrase, her emotions changed. At first, joy in achievement! Secondly, a questioning voice . . . a manager. Finally, her voice got very small. She realized her accomplishment was really no accomplishment. It lacked meaning.

If you like games, if you like escaping in them, that’s fine, more power to you. But remember, they’re not really a substitute for actual achievement. Plus, this is Wealthy Wednesday – how much money do you want to spend on games, anyway? And how much time do you want to spend on them? Yeah, I know, I spent two hours today. But . . . umm, I’m sure I had a good reason.

Consumption. Yes, this is Wealthy Wednesday, and as such we finally have to get around to this.

Consumption is used as a replacement for actual significance and achievement. It’s even encouraged. Why does it work?

Where else can you go, hunt for something, find it, and then get it. It’s certain to work, every time. You can’t fail. Yet you get the opportunity to experience the flush of success, the dopamine rush from having found and purchased what you were looking for. And if you bought it off the Internet, you get a second rush when the little brown box from Amazon shows up*.

That purchase gives the same feeling as accomplishing something that has actual meaning, and there’s none of the work and none of the uncertainty. It almost doesn’t matter what the thing is. It could be shoes. It could be books. It could be lightbulbs. It could be PEZ® dispensers. As long as it’s something that you can actually do, your brain can take this stimulus and turn it into a replacement for actual achievement.

And it has been culturally jammed into our heads – we’re not who we are, we are the sum total of what we own. We are our car. We are our house. We are our slacks. We are our PEZ® dispensers. This consumption has replaced civic virtue. It has replaced the Lions Club. It has replaced the Rotary, the Kiwanis, and the Knights of Columbus, but unlike those groups, you can do it alone, at night, downstairs in your underwear, after a few beers. At 2AM, feeling like you haven’t lived up to your potential in life? If you’re tired of being the manager of a supermarket that doesn’t exist, well, perhaps you can check in at Amazon.com® to see what you can buy to fill the achievement and meaning-sized hole in your heart?

This post is about wealth – and the first requirement of being wealthy is that you don’t spend thousands of dollars on useless crap to replace meaning in your life. Especially if you don’t have the cash to spend. If you don’t have the cash to buy that new truck and you buy it anyway? Now you have debt. And the debt removes your peace of mind and you go in search of more meaning, so you buy the boat. And you and your wife have to work for years of your life to pay for it all.

That’s okay, it’s not like you can become a slave to your own consumption based on your search of meaning, is it?

Nah. I’m sure that doesn’t happen.

*I refuse to say how I learned this.

Opportunity – Like The Truth, It’s Out There

“This technology has been falling to Earth for centuries. All it took was the right mind to use it properly. Oh, the advances I’ve made from alien junk. You have no idea, Doctor. Broadband? Roswell.” – Doctor Who

Business Cat is ready for another adventure . . .

As I’ve made clear in previous posts, (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse, More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck, Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)) I think that our financial system is in trouble due to debt, currency debasement, and structural benefit issues with things like Medicare®. In fact, I think that it’s mathematically certain that we’re going to have at least one more catastrophic dislocation (fast or slow), and my bet is that it occurs between 2024 and 2040. Could it come sooner? Sure, you stunning optimist!

However, none of that means that you can’t give yourself the means to be comfortable despite the decline. And if I’m wrong about the decline – which I really hope is the case – then you’ll be in better shape. I mean, round is a shape, right?

So, how do you make a bunch of cash so you can snort Cuban cigars, or do whatever it is the kids are doing with Tide® Pods™ while being flanked by surgically enhanced Instagram models?

Start by doing something.

Action leads to opportunity. Inaction might help your video game scores and Cheeto® consumption, but to really create a situation where you’re going to have opportunity, you’re going to have to do something.

Living in a big city is great for creating opportunity. But living in a big city also involves living in a big city. And the last time I lived in a big city, it was Houston. Houston was great – I met a guy who gave me baseball tickets. Baseball tickets that were right behind President Bush’s (the first one) seats.

Yeah, I took this picture. How cool is that?

H.W. and Barb were there that night. Then President Bush took us to his house and showed me the actual documents from Roswell while The Mrs. and Barb arm wrestled in the kitchen and then played some drinking/fighting game from Mexico that involved tequila, a bandana, and knives. H.W. shared the big secret with me in his study over snifters of brandy: turns out what they found at Roswell wasn’t aliens, it was just dolphins with spaceships off on a drunken joyride. No biggie.

The real cover up? They had actually found Eleanor Roosevelt’s underthings.

Okay, the Roswell stuff I made up. But I did get those tickets and President Bush was there that night. And nobody in Podunk, East Midwestia is going to have tickets like that. Big cities breed opportunity to build connections based upon the sheer concentration of people. If you’re young and looking for opportunity? Big cities are it. Although my brother, who is also named John Wilder, did meet Bob Denver when he stopped for gas in a town of 1,500 people. My brother was working at the station that day. Said he was the nicest guy you’d ever meet, so, yeah, random meetings will happen. But they’re the exception, not the rule.

If I were fixated on opportunity, yeah, I’d move to a big city. But it’s not my cup of tea.

Okay, this might be fake trivia . . .

When doing something:

Don’t quit your job, unless you already have a lot of money, or are certain your crazy scheme will work. Or unless you have nothing to lose. When Jeff Bezos quit to start Amazon.com, he had enough money and enough connections that he knew he could restart if Amazon failed. But for every Bezos, there are tons of people like Davos Riggins. Who is Davos Riggins? I don’t know. He didn’t do anything.

A minor bragging point – I found a name that returns zero hits on Google® on the second try. Ha! And apologies to Davos Riggins if you really exist. But you have to admit you’ve squandered your potential.

Don’t borrow zillions of dollars to put your idea into practice, unless bankruptcy can’t hurt you. And even if you win? The debt will make your company less profitable.

What can you do to create opportunity in life?

Depends on you. One of the things (not the only thing) I do is write. Before this post, I’d written 229 posts comprising 316,000 words in the last 18 months. Why? I enjoy it. Also why? It’s doing something – it’s using the Internet to create possibilities that didn’t exist before. And after 229 posts? I still have dozens of sticky notes with topics that I want to write about – I have more topics than time.

But that’s my thing.

What about you?

Build something cool. Sell it at a flea market. Or on EBay™ or Etsy®.
~~Start a company that to help people find PEZ® dispensers. Oh, that was how EBay© got its start.~~ This is a lie. A sweet, beautiful lie (see comment below), but a lie nonetheless. And now I owe doughnuts!
Write a list of 100 things you’re good at.
Write a list of 100 things you like to do.
See how the lists overlap? I bet there’s opportunity there.
Go to conferences and meet new people.
Meet their friends, too. They know someone that can help you.
Learn from your losses.
Start again.

Regardless of the way the world is going, you can thrive. You really can. If you imagine the US economy as a swimming pool, each gallon of water in the 40,000 gallon pool would be worth $5 million dollars. And that’s every year. And it’s not counting all the pee in the pool from when you had your nephew over.

Would you miss one gallon out of 40,000? No. Nobody would. And just like the pool, the economy doesn’t care. Not even about the pee.

There’s room for you to be as successful as you want to be, if you’re willing to sacrifice your time and location and fail again and again. And even when you win, you won’t be satisfied. That’s the biggest gift yet – the quest. If you’re good at it, if you like doing it, if you can make money at it, and if it changes the world?

That’s a start.

A good one.