Truth – Page 13 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Four Questions That Describe The Meaning of Life

“Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.” – Monty Python, Meaning of Life

I heard that someone told the Dalai Lama this joke and he didn’t get it. Which is makes it even funnier.

I was busy trying to adjust my phone to listen to a podcast while driving and pouring coffee the other day, and it hit me like a ticket for inattentive driving: There are only four questions that are worth asking. I found that to be amazing, since I have hundreds of note cards with ideas for posts on them in boxes waiting for the right day for me to write them up. So how do I condense most of those ideas as answers to four questions?

I was worried that this was too simple. I bounced back and forth between three questions and four questions, but finally settled on four questions. They were simple questions, and the first one that occurred to me is the first one on this list.

What brought us here?
Who are we?
What is this place?
Where are we going?

Originally I had a fifth question, but then I found my keys. Under my hat. Again. Also, when I use the word “us” in this post, it’s certainly meant to include everyone. Everyone except Johnny Depp. He knows why.

But these are big questions. As I thought a bit about it, these are the questions that drive me to write this blog, with the exception of the odd post here and there.

What brought us here?

This was the first question, and it hit me as I was working out the ideas for a future post in my head. It hit me like an angry wet salmon wearing a bear suit. At its core, this questions the all of the conditions that led to our present state. All of them. It questions the way that we are – as individuals, as groups, as a species.

I would have sworn that Washington had a blue lightsaber.

This is only a four word question, but it’s a really big four word question. Thankfully, it’s simple to answer. All you need to understand it is the answers to any questions you can think of in these subjects:

All of human history.
All of physics.
How PEZ® was invented.
All of the history of the universe.

So, the question is very short, and the answer is very long.

We still don’t know many answers to questions that are fundamental about each of these subjects. One time I was talking to The Mrs. back around 2000. My exact quote to her was, “The Mrs., I’m willing to bet that one day they find that we have Neanderthal ancestors. I think that the reason why I came to that conclusion was based on me. I’m pale. I can sunburn under the glare from an LED computer monitor.

That sort of pale didn’t happen overnight. Along with other physical observations I’d made, it just seemed the most logical conclusion that Neanderthal wasn’t extinct. Neanderthal was us.

So when the DNA evidence came back and, eventually, showed that most European-descended people had Neanderthal DNA I wasn’t surprised. And I’m not surprised now when I hear that our most basic assumptions about the way that things like physics work are subject to change – massive change.

An example:

At CERN (where they smash atoms together like a tipsy celebutant celebrating that her parents purchased her way into USC™ smashes daddy’s Mercedes© into a mom’s parked Ferrari®) they recently celebrated, with campaign(!), that they had discovered a particle symmetry violation between anti-matter and regular matter.

If Vinnie drops a car on Frank’s car, neglecting air resistance and assuming g=9.81m/s . . .

That’s a lot of words for a very basic thing – let me break it down a bit. The Universe that we see is comprised almost entirely of normal matter, not anti-matter. But the Big Bang® should have produced equal quantities of both, so where did the anti-matter go? This is a pretty significant question, since anti-matter explodes with the force of a billion bipolar ex-wives (GigaX) when it comes into contact with normal matter. It’s really good for us that we don’t have this anti-matter going around and wanting alimony payments, but there’s no real reason that the Big Bang™ didn’t produce equal quantities of both.

This discovery from CERN might explain why my ex-wife anti-matter is thankfully rare in our environment. It appears that anti-matter doesn’t follow the same physical laws that matter does. This is the first time we’ve figured that out, but we don’t know how it’s different. But think just for a second – what if you could have a substance that wanted to fall up instead of down? That was anti-magnetic? That could coat, soothe, and protect a sore throat?

Yes. This discovery could provide technologies that we haven’t even dreamed about, but most people have never heard about it. Thankfully we’re all up to date on Kardashians, though.

Thankfully there’s tons of things left to discover, both about ourselves and about the Universe that we can safely ignore while we are Keepin’ up with the Kardashians.

Who are we?

I got this question down to three words. See what a ruthless self-editor I am? This question opens up a lot of today’s biggest mysteries:

How the human body works.
How the brain works.
What consciousness is.
If people have souls.
Why 80% of the world is silly and watches soccer.
What health is.
Immortality – anything besides a great three-letter-score in Scrabble®?
What motivates us.
Why we do the things we do.

I’ll admit, some of these questions do have overlap – the question of “What brought us here?” overlaps some with “Who are we?” Ancestors are crucial to both, for instance. Protip: since you inherit somewhere between 60% and 80% of our intelligence, the first thing you should strive to do is to convince your mom to pick a smart dad for you.

But even given thousands of researchers spending billions of dollars annually, the primary positive impacts to health in the last 150 years have been clean water, better nutrition, antiseptic surgical conditions, and antibiotics. Newspaper stories keep showing up about the immortality around the corner, but I haven’t even seen one fifty year old mouse, and we can cure any kind of mice-cancer at this point.

No, thanks, eyes are fine. And I’ll skip the colonoscopy, thank you.

Thankfully, medical science can all of the questions about why humans are like they are.

Except for the interesting ones.

What is this place?

Our surroundings are curious. There is the world and cosmos we live in, but there are also the civilizations we’ve made. How does all of it work?

What virtue is.
Where virtue comes from.
What societies work well for humanity.

This is the question I could (sort of) cram back into the other three, but I felt it was important enough because of the great deal of discord in society today, and the uncertainty about the future of what we’ve made. Understanding the ability for humans to govern themselves and live together is crucial, and we still haven’t gotten the knack yet.

Where are we going?

This is the final question, the future. The mysteries of the future are different. The past and present are set, the future is undecided, wrapped in probability. What are the big questions, the big unknowns of the future? This question is easy to answer if we just know:

The fate of ourselves.
The fate of our civilizations.
The fate of humanity.
The fate of life itself.
Physics (all of it), again.

I’ve mentioned religion twice. Though it’s not a constant part of posting, it’s a very important component in understanding these questions, especially the ones where I’ve listed it. And religion is important as a philosophical construct – it has been the largest single influence on humanity in all of recorded history, and probably before that. Beyond religion as pure philosophy, there is that possibility that deity as contemplated by religion exists, and maybe even close to what is on the label. Science certainly hasn’t ruled that possibility out.

Does a bear answer trivia questions in the woods?

But in 2000, they had ruled out the possibility that we were part Neanderthal, or at least that was the general consensus.

So you never know what we’ll learn in the future. And it looks like I’ve got plenty to write about, and with the amount of Neanderthal blood I have, probably some mammoth to catch and some caves to paint.

Books, Stoics, Immortality (Now Available on Stick)

“I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal.” – Highlander

Or maybe it was the scotch that made him immortal? When I drink scotch I’m bulletproof.

I once had a Grandboss (my boss’s boss) that once said, “Reading is the only way that you can know great minds across centuries.” He was deeply philosophical and attempted to use that philosophy to improve business results, and also to use history as analogy for business conditions. Prior to the movie 300 coming out, he was discussing the battle of Thermopylae and the courage of the Spartans to fight to the last man as a business analogy. Needless to say, when you’re using a battle where every single solder dies as an analogy, business isn’t going all that well.

Grandboss also assigned On War (a treatise on war and strategy during the Napoleonic era) by Von Clausewitz for us to read. I’m probably the only guy who actually did read it, and still have my copy. Needless to say, I loved my Grandboss, and still send him cards on Grandboss day. When I quit that job to take a new one, I told him first, and as a goodbye present? I gave him a book.

My Grandboss was right, though – reading allows us to know great minds across centuries. The nice thing is we can read the thoughts of dead Greeks like Epictetus. Epictetus spent his entire life studying and living stoic philosophy, which was a pretty hard thing to do when you were a slave with a gimpy leg. Epictetus eventually became free – we don’t know how, but I imagine he won the annual caddy’s golf tournament and got a scholarship from Judge Smails.

I bet Epictetus just wishes he wrote, “You’ll get nothing and like it.”

One thing we do know is that Epictetus did was spend a lot of time thinking about virtue and vice. We’ll spend more time on virtue on Monday’s post, but Epictetus came to the conclusion that the following things were neither vice nor virtue:

Wealth
Health
Life
Death
Pleasure
Pain

As wealth and health are at least two nominal themes of this blog (this is Friday, so I’m stretching it and saying this is a health post) it might seem a bit hypocritical that I spend time talking about health and wealth and then quote a dead lame Greek that says that neither of those are virtuous. But I would argue that my message on wealth is that true wealth is in having few needs (Seneca, Stoics, Money and You), and although I prefer pleasure to pain, I recognize that a pleasure repeated too often is a punishment (Pleasure, Stoicism, Blade Runner, VALIS and Philip K. Dick). And we also know that health is more controllable by our choices today than Epictetus did.

Immortal and omnipotent. And good on the mariachi trumpet.

Heck, I even got challenged by an Orthodox priest friend on whether or not learning for learning’s sake was, in a religious context, a vice. If so, there goes most of my Monday posts. The priest and I (as I recall, over a BBQ lunch) came to the conclusion that learning for learning’s sake was maybe a vice. Since he was also a fan of learning for learning’s sake, if it was a vice we were both guilty.

Going back to Epictetus’ list, Life and Death are on it as being neither virtues nor vices. I’m not sure about you, but I really prefer Wealth to Poverty, Health to Illness, and Life to Death. Epictetus felt the same way – it was okay to have preferences with the understanding that neither condition is, in itself, virtuous. I finally came to understand that while not virtuous, death is required for life. Oddly, I thank Bill Clinton for this realization.

It was during the Clinton presidency that I first looked around at the national leaders for both parties and thought, “Jeez, what a bunch of bozos.” Both sides were stupid or corrupt. Some were stupid and corrupt at the same time (looking at you, ghost of Ted Kennedy, I’ve imagined you’ve been plenty warm this winter). Back then I was a capital-L libertarian, and could see that both sides had as primary goals the restriction of freedom on their agenda in addition to being incompetent.

Beyond that, they were . . . awful. Spineless. They were tools of groups with different names but the same objectives – objectives that mostly didn’t favor you or me. Throw into this mix that one day at lunch I was thinking about immortality and the implications of living forever, which was spurred on by eating a tuna fish sandwich which might have been as old as Epictetus, who died in 135 A.D.

Elvis will never die. Mobility? That might be an issue.

If people were generally immortal? Our birthrate would plummet – 200 year old women have very few kids. As for me, I’d have plenty of time so rather than putting things off until next week, I’d put stuff off until next century. But the worst consequence?

Bill Clinton would forever be an elder statesman, always trying to increase his (and Hillary’s) power for all of eternity. Our current batch of elected officials would be about the best we’d get, or maybe the only ones we’d get. Senators and congresscritters already stay in office until the only way to keep them alive is though that experimental technique that turns them into zombie-like creatures that feast on living human flesh like Nancy Pelosi, or immortal robots like the Ruth Bader-Ginsbot™ 3000.

Thankfully, we live in a world where things die and the world moves on – just like a cell in a human body ceases to exist so new cells can take over. We have a name for immortal cells – cancer. Just like cells pass away, so do we to leave this world to the youth. I didn’t say death is “good” – just that it serves a purpose.

Okay, this is one boy who loved his mother.

Part of that purpose is focusing us on the here and now: in this way we don’t lose sight that life is precious and fleeting, like sedation dentistry. Perhaps the most precious thing we have is the shared time with those who have meaning to us (like your friendly blogger). But for those who have left us, honor them with the virtue that they helped you obtain. Be glad you had a part of their life, and had a chance to witness their virtue and learn from their vices. Look at how they have changed you, made you better so that they live on through their influence on you.

Lastly, for heaven’s sake, write something down. It’s the only way that someone can know your mind when you’re gone, unless they check your browser history.

Beer, Nuclear Bikinis, and Agriculture: What Made Us Who We Are

“A living nuclear weapon destined to walk the Earth forever. Indestructible. A victim of the modern nuclear age.” – Godzilla 1985

Ahh, sexy nuclear power.

I was at a job I had (while we lived in Houston) and I was getting coffee. One safety tip: the most dangerous place in the world is being between Ocasio-Cortez and a camera. The second most dangerous place in the world is being between me and the office coffee pot. On this particular day a gentleman who worked for a parallel department to mine was also at the coffee bar. We exchanged the ritual office grunting. “Ugh, John hate Mondays.” “Ugh, me hate Mondays too.” As I waited for my coffee to brew, he asked me this question:

“John Wilder, what do you think the most important invention in human history was?”

I thought about it. I didn’t have a ready answer, but this popped into my head. “Besides the bikini, I’d have to go with agriculture.” Who doesn’t love swimwear named after nuclear bomb testing?

See, told you nuclear power was sexy.

He was a little surprised. I think he expected me to say “stapler” or “strapless gown” or some other word starting with “s”, but, no, agriculture was my answer. And upon several years’ worth of reflection, do I stand by that answer? Yes.

Why?

Agriculture has remade our culture. Prior to agriculture, there was no real reason to stay in one location. In fact, if you hunted out an area, it would make sense to move to an area that hadn’t been hunted out – that would have been pressure for them to be nomadic and move periodically. A nomadic people has a limit to the amount of stuff they can have – they have to be able to carry it (or, if they’re a girl, convince the guys to carry it – fur bikinis were useful for that) to the next place they’ll make camp.

Okay, I’d carry her stuff.

Obviously, this lack of stuff limits the ability to create a technological society, and the nomadic lifestyle also makes it difficult for Amazon to deliver the hand-crank margarita maker you ordered since you don’t have an address. Why build a house, or a village? You’re just going to be leaving it to follow the critters you’re hunting. Certainly there were artifacts that were made before agriculture – Göbekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey was built before agriculture, starting at around 10,000 B.C., or about the same time your mom was learning to drive.

But nomadic tribes stayed small – limited by Dunbar’s number – this post is from when I wrote about it last year (Mental Illness, Dunbar’s Number, and the Divine Right of Kings):

Dunbar looked at primate group brain sizes, and compared to the size of the neocortex to the size of the primate “group” or tribe. After running the math, he predicted that humans should have a group size of around 150 – it’s related to the size of working memory that you have about other people. The commonly accepted maximum stable group size (average) is 100-250, which explains why I need to have my children program the streaming box hooked up to my television – my working memory is full of details like the shoe preferences of the administrative assistant at work from six jobs ago.

Göbekli Tepe – these people knew how to rock.

Now that doesn’t mean that Göbekli Tepe is proof that villages didn’t occur – Neanderthal habitations have been found even farther back in time, but those were probably seasonal as they followed the game. Göbekli Tepe was probably a ceremonial location where those people who collect ceramic figurines of frogs met for the annual ceramic frog convention, though this is just my speculation. But what isn’t speculation is that villages and settlements didn’t really exist until agriculture started, also around 10,000 B.C.

Perhaps the high point of Western Civilization?

And at that point everything changes. Archeological evidence indicates that hunter-gatherers worked just a fraction of the time (less than 20 hours per week) that the farmers worked after agriculture was invented. The hunter-gatherers spent time doing things that we think of as “fun” today – men take time off from work to hunt or fish. Women take time off to go and shop – modern-day gathering.

So why on earth did we stop doing things we’d been bred to find fun? We stopped hunting and gathering to trade for long hours of backbreaking farm labor in crowded villages that could allow violence, disease, and theft. My best guess that those hellish villages provided enough technological sophistication to provide constant streams of beer for the guys and red high-heeled shoes and makeup for the women. Oh, and the villages allowed for another unique feature: slavery. If you had an army (which you could now) you could go and take men, women, and crops from other villages. You could eat their food, and then make them plant more for you. And then you could make more beer.

But the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer is possibly enshrined in the Bible book of Genesis, in the story of Cain and Abel, where Cain the farmer, killed Abel the shepherd. The farmer killed the hunter-gatherer, which is what eventually happened within all of society.

Hey, bro, want to be a metaphor?

This change also impacted the genetics of humanity. As divisions of labor were made possible by the villages, genes for hunters were less in demand (except for soldiers) and genes for farmers were in demand. Artisans making pottery and accountants and tax collectors were now needed. The breeding for people changed: for the first time ever, people need to read, to do math. From my observation, it seems like math and reading are innate in many of the children I’ve worked with. The concepts are already within them.

That would indicate a pretty successful breeding program. Too dumb to read? No kids for you. Can’t add two plus two? Enjoy being the last of your family line.

In this way, man made civilization, and civilization changed man. If 10,000 B.C. man took a stroll in Central Park, Manhattan in modern clothes, he’d be indistinguishable physically from a modern man, if you could ignore the raw goose he was gnawing on. But mentally? He’d be incapable of living in a modern city. It’s probably he could never learn to do math, even rudimentary math. Reading would likely be possible only at the lowest levels, things like true crime books.

But he’d be a sucker for beer. And nuclear fur bikinis.

Göbekli Tepe photo by Zhengan [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

“That which you desire, controls you.”

“Egon, somehow this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head. Do you remember that?” – Ghostbusters

See, a bottle of wine costs $15. Plus the crap I buy on Amazon.

That which you desire, controls you.

Let’s look at common examples:

Money
Power
Respect
Sex
Great Parking Spaces at Denny’s
Friendship
Water in the Sahara Desert
“Buy One Get One Free” Coupons for Chocolate Dipped Ice Cream Cones at Dairy Queen®
Booze
Glittery Sunglasses in the Shape of Stars

Can’t you feel their magnetic pull?

When we see these desires, we see those who are driven by them and are instinctively repulsed. An example: when The Mrs. and I were newly married, we had an idea for a book – a humorous parody of the Clinton administration. Its title? An Intern’s Guide to the White House. I thought it was funny, and maybe we even still have a copy sitting around somewhere. If so, I’ll post it sometime – we got hooked up with a bad literary agent (we were young and stupid) and it never got published. But like George Washington jokes, that material is just a little out of date.

This is like a photo from the world’s most awkward prom.

But back when we were still optimistic the Intern’s Guide, The Mrs. and I were excited when the Starr Report (a report by the independent counsel looking into the Clintons) came out. We felt that it would make a perfect sequel to our Intern’s Guide. Heck, the working title for the sequel was The Starch Report.

Then I read the Starr Report. Ugh. What President Clinton did was . . . sad. You can forgive lots of things, but getting past disgust over behavior that was, by any standards, weak and pathetic is a pretty high bar. And it wasn’t the perjury that was the worst part – it was the complete lack of self-control. Just because a complete lack of self-control is legal doesn’t make it moral or desirable.

As you can see from President Clinton’s example, this lust wasn’t just a weakness, it was personally destructive to him. And some of our greatest fiction, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for example, explores this same theme. I still recall when Macbeth, in the movie version, gets kicked off campus. Then he and his wacky friends form a paranormal investigating service, and save New York from Macduff, who is portrayed as the Stay-Puft® Marshmallow Man.

Ahh, Shakespeare at his best.

But history has shown time and time again how lust for sex or lust for power has led to the downfall of the powerful – like the time Weinstein put the moves on Napoleon and Napoleon outed him on Twitter® with the #NapoleonToo campaign. But in all seriousness – if Napoleon had been content with France? If Weinstein could be . . . not Weinstein? Napoleon could have gone down in history as an amazing leader and statesman. And Weinstein could have maintained his revered status in Hollywood.

In the end, greed makes you poor. Need makes you needy. And desire makes you a slave.

But you’re saying, “John Wilder, all of that seems kind of negative. What’s the solution, I mean besides joining your cult of the Nudist Beatnik Threesome?”

Outcome independence. The idea of outcome independence is that who you are doesn’t change based on the results, and, win or lose you realize that’s an okay outcome. Like Kipling wrote in his poem, If (LINK):

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same . . .

You are independent of the outcomes around you – your job, the last raise you got, all of it. That’s not outcome indifference. Not at all. Throw yourself into getting to an outcome that you’re passionate about. Outcome independence isn’t being without passion, because nothing worthwhile ever gets done without passion. Let me explain with an example:

I was nearly a freshman in high school, and was mildly infatuated with a girl in class. Back then, people had phone books, and had their names in the book.

I called her house. Her dad (a doctor) answered.

“Is Michelle in?”

“Michelle, it’s for you.”

Michelle: “Hello?”

John Wilder: “Hi Michelle, it’s John Wilder. Interested in going to go see a movie?”

Michelle: “I’m sorry – I’m busy that night.”

Seriously, I didn’t leave anything out of the conversation. I asked her to a movie, and she said she was busy. But I had never said when I wanted to take her to a movie or even what movie. Even freshman me understood that meant that there was no night, ever, when she’d say yes.

Even then I was amused. I really wanted to go out with her – I was not indifferent – she was pretty cute. But when the outcome was negative, I didn’t have the slightest bit of loss of self-worth. There were lots of girls out there.

But failure is a result, too. I prefer to win. Strongly. But winning doesn’t make me a better person, and it doesn’t make me more moral – look at all of the really horrible people that have been successful. I could name them, but they have lawyers. I learned my lesson with Gandhi.

Losses can be better than a win . . . sometimes:

What did you learn?
Are you stronger?
Would success have been bad for you?
Is this just a temporary loss that brings about a greater victory?
Can you lose gracefully?
Is the loss pointing you to a mistake you’re making that you need to correct?

The best victories are internal. I know when I hit “publish” on a post whether or not I liked the post, whether or not I hit a home run. I really want you to like it, too, but internally, I know when I enjoyed writing it, and am pleased with the results. I’m passionate about it, and when I know I’ve done a good job, it makes it hard to go to sleep. I’m excited.

And I get enjoyment out of failing, too. If you never failed, victory wouldn’t feel so good. But I’d still like some glittery star glasses.

14 Magic Questions and Elon Musk’s New Quest for Genetically Engineered Cat Girls

We’ve been negotiating with men from outer space for seven years. – Real Men

I don’t think he’ll remember that in the morning.

The other night I was talking about an upcoming decision/issue that was bothering me with The Mrs. Don’t worry, that decision will be blog fodder when it’s all done, in some form or fashion, likely before Elon Musk invents and markets Electric Marijuana Boogie Panties©. But as we discussed my problem, The Mrs. caught me with a question that I’d asked her months earlier about a different issue she was having:

Why does it bother you?

That was a particularly powerful question to me. It was at that moment that I realized exactly how amazingly smart I was. I had asked a really good question. Why did it bother me? I thought a long time, and realized that what bothered me about my current situation had very little to do with anything that would hurt me today. Or this year. Or next year. Or the year after that. So, nothing to worry about today.

So why was I letting it bother me? In this case maybe it was pride, and in this case the worst kind of pride – wanting to win a game I wasn’t even interested in playing. But the short answer is this single powerful question made me feel better. Many problems die when exposed to this question. If they don’t die, use bleach or go see a doctor and get a topical cream.

But the real next question for me should have been: Who cares? I hate to tell you this, but, probably very few people. The bad news is I’m not the center of the universe that I thought I was. The good news is that few people remember the past events that bother and embarrass you the most. That one time I walked straight into the glass door at that party while carrying a McChicken® sandwich? Yeah. Nobody remembers that. It was embarrassing at the time, but even if someone did remember? They don’t care. Who cares? Family. Good friends. Santa. Nancy Pelosi.

Told you so.

What do you want? For a lot of people, that answer is money. For others it’s success. Fame. A new car. I’d add in the obvious follow up: Why do you want it? Money is useful only if you have a purpose for it, but it can become a trap, something you want just because you want it. And success, fame? Kipling said it best in his poem, If – “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same . . .” (The Chinese Farmer, Kipling, Marcus Aurelius, and You) Understanding what you want and why you want it is one secret to happiness. The other secret to happiness is television, according to this show I watched on television.

There are things we want that we shouldn’t, like sixteen bacon cheeseburgers, which is what I’d really like to eat tonight (Resolutions, Fasting, and Wilder’s Cult of the Blue Bikini). What attracts you to ______? Right now, my fill-in-the-blank is cheeseburgers. But I’ve seen people who are like sorority girls on a Tuesday night tub of frosting over something that’s obviously bad for them. Why? It’s because we think that _______ fills us up in some way where we’re empty. If you’re lucky, that fill-in-the-blank is something innocuous like fly fishing. If you’re not lucky, it’s something dangerous and life threatening, like ballroom dancing.

What if it’s you? I think these are the last words anyone wants to hear. The human brain is set up to produce a protective reality distortion field (it’s called the Romney Effect) that automatically changes the past to make itself blameless. Only real, unbiased thinking about the situation will allow working on the root cause, instead of the symptom. Sometimes you need a friend or a spouse to slap you right across the face with the fresh fish of reality.

What would you do if you had one month to live? Less mindless crap*, I’d bet.

What would you do if you lived forever? Would you sell insurance? Really? If you had infinite days you’d sell insurance? Okay.

Weirdo.

So, we know what Elon would do if he lived forever.

Why does the outcome matter? I know that sounds weird. But the ultimate outcome of our game is the same for each of us. We can postpone it. We can have different twists and turns, but the end of the journey is the same destination. And that destination is, of course, Minot, North Dakota. But since the outcome is a foregone conclusion, why not focus on the important thing – how we play the game? Every day there are choices between being virtuous and being, well, evil. Making the virtuous choice doesn’t make sure you’ll be wealthy, or famous, or successful – life doesn’t work like that. But it does make you virtuous, and I hear there are extra karma points for virtue that you can exchange in Heaven for extra minutes in the ball pit.

What if you did the opposite? Look back at your past – how many of your decisions mattered? How many things would have changed if you’d have picked differently. Many of the things we sweat and worry about simply don’t matter at all.

What would make it better? Cheese. And bacon. Those are universal constants – cheese and bacon make everything better.

Maybe we can get the Cat Girls with bacon?

There are things we control, like the weather, and things we can’t control, like our weight. Or did I get those backwards? Anyway, that brings up the next question: If it’s outside of your control, why are you sweating it? How much of your life do you spend worrying about things that you have absolutely no control over?

What would you sell your peace of mind for? A long life, lived in fear and regret is sad, like one of those clowns that terrorizes my dreams.

Was it worth it to spend a precious day of your life like you did today? Every moment is one less moment of your life. What you do with those moments is up to you. I’d suggest that you pick the things that are important to you, and get busy. Or, you know, there’s television.

*This blog may be crap, but it is not mindless. Or was it that it IS mindless, but NOT crap? I forget. Whichever one is better is the one I meant.

Truth, and Eight Types of Lies

“Would you prefer a lie or the truth?” – V for Vendetta

Never let Jack into your house. When he leaves the deli drawer will be empty, you’ll have to burn your seat cushions, and your cat will be pregnant.

I believe in Truth. Objective, verifiable Truth.

Gravity works. 100% of the time. When I toss my keys on the table they never fall off the side and shoot up toward the ceiling, unless it’s after 3AM in Australia, and only then if Australia’s had a lot to drink. When the Earth rotates so I can no longer see the Sun, the next morning the Earth will have rotated so I can again see the Sun, provided we killed all the groundhogs. See, simple true things.

There really is Truth. Are some things not certainties? Sure. There are things that are governed more by probability, and at the quantum level there may be events that exceed our understanding, but none of those things say that Truth doesn’t exist.

Somewhere a campaign against Truth started. The big proponents of it during the last century were a group of (mainly) French philosophers who had day jobs as postmen that smoked a lot of cigarettes while wearing berets and scowling and thus became known as the Postmodernists. But digging back further in time, the French got this idea from that German, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche went hopelessly slobbering Daffy Duck® insane by the time he was 44, so, of course he was a great role model for the French philosophers. “Truth doesn’t exist? Can you tell us more? What does purple taste like?”

Rumors were that the mustache remained sane.

The concept that “there is no Truth” is infectious and has become the herpes of philosophy. Mankind only dabbled with it once, but we just can’t get rid of it. Anti-Truth has successfully taken over a pretty big chunk of our education system. An example:

I saw a tweet on Twitter® on Saturday night from a college professor. She noted that she couldn’t get a classroom to admit that rape was wrong. From the students: “Other cultures may have different views. You can’t always say that what we [the enlightened students] consider rape is really rape in another culture.” Rape wasn’t a Truth.

When the professor made the statement that the United States didn’t have a “Rape Culture”, however, the class exploded. How could the teacher make such a statement? Thoughts so muddled can only come from those that reject Truth. Thankfully, all of those kids majoring in Pre-Barista (Miles, see, I told you I would steal it) can argue Truth while they make Pumpkin-Spice non-fat decaf lattes for doctors’ wives.

But that brings us to Lies. I think I’ve established that Truth exists, so that must mean that there are Lies.

What kinds of Lies are there?

I came up with eight kinds of Lies. I’ll be the first to admit that there is subjectivity in my categories, and that I might have missed some, but I’ll assert that 99% of the lies you will ever encounter will fall into one of these categories:

Direct Lies – these are the Lies of a five year old, or a Congressman. But I repeat myself. These are simple: “I didn’t steal the cookie.” “I didn’t touch the intern.”
Lies You Tell Yourself – The mirror is an amazing device that allows me to completely miss how I really look. I saw a picture of myself the other day, taken from fifty feet away. “Oh, crap, that’s me! Where did my hair go? Oh, yeah, my ears. At least I can braid those luscious locks.” My mirror doesn’t lie, it just reflects photons. TLEBME – The Lie Exists Behind My Eyes. This lie makes me think of Bobby Burns and the end of his poem, To a Louse: “O, wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us.” Burns could not spell, and was Scottish. But I again repeat myself. But Burns was awesome in understanding that, when viewed from outside, we’re neither as noble as we think we are or as interesting. Except for me.

Lies of Omission – Leaving out a word or two makes all the difference. Heck, sometimes just inflecting the wrong word is a lie. “No, dear, those pants don’t make your butt look big.” Another way to inflect that sentence is, “If you grow into your butt you will be eight feet tall.” See how a small change just in word inflection changes the whole meaning of the sentence? Regardless, omitting important details can turn a statement into a lie.
Lies of Word Choice – Love or hate Trump, you have to admit he is the single most entertaining politician of the last 100 years. But whenever Trump says anything, the Press™ (looking at you, New York Times® and Washington Post™) has to editorialize even the most mundane news story: “President Trump today made the unfounded claim that water is wet.” Want proof? A Google® search of “Trump unfounded” led to 2.3 million hits. Google© search of “Obama unfounded” led to 1.1 million hits. But, if you look at the first page, it’s all “Trump’s unfounded statements about Obama” type stories. Exclude Trump from the search results? 400,000 hits, and EVERY SINGLE result on the front page is a defense of “unfounded” attacks against Obama. Any time you see the word “Unfounded” know that you are being lied to. It’s the “I love you” of political journalism.

Lies of Vagueness – this is putting together a statement that can be filtered by the user to mean whatever they think it means. “I believe children are good,” might be a statement that reflects a belief that children are wonderful and full of hope and possibility. It also might mean that they’re tasty when cooked to medium with ketchup. I am coming to believe that Jordan Peterson is perhaps pretty good at this method of mendacity, even though I have reviewed him positively in the past. I’m now of the belief that I reviewed what I thought he said, rather than what he really meant, which nobody may really know. These are tougher to sift through – and require study. Beware of the vague.
Lies of Exaggeration – it’s been a decade since Al Gore predicted an ice-free (summer months) Arctic in 5-7 years. Yeah, about that, the Danish Meteorological Institute says no ice trend at all in the last 12. You tried, Al.

Lies of Timing – ever wonder why you’re hearing a story at a particular time and place? Perhaps manipulation is to blame?
Lies of Confusion – Marxists are the worst/best at this. They toss together salads of multi-syllable words that they’ve self-defined to the point of nonsense. An example from the Web: “Here is where the Marxist claim for the explanatory superiority of a class analysis comes into the mix, and the distinction between oppression and exploitation becomes crucially important.” Words. Meaning? They’re trying to cloud it – they use unusual words defined in mysterious ways to divorce you from Truth. Listen long enough? Pretty soon you become convinced that Venezuela is the true Socialist Worker’s Paradise and you’re being oppressed by your boss because he won’t let you FaceBook® all day on your phone because you have to make nonfat decaf pumpkin-spice lattes for doctors’ wives. That wouldn’t happen in Venezuela!

But I’ll toss one other thought out there: If you believe that a lie exists, which no rational person would argue against, then you must agree that truth exists.

And if there’s truth? There’s Truth.

Oh, and there go my keys floating by . . . Australia must be drinking again.

Why Are You Mad At Your Computer? It Doesn’t Care. Plus: A Deeply Meaningful Poem

â€œThey would’ve learned to wear skins, adoptedÂ stoicÂ mannerisms, learned the bow and the lance.â€ â€“ Star Trek

Okay, it was really only one color.Â But it was a LOT of ink.Â Staining and painting.Â Stainting?

I rarely saw Pop Wilder mad at any living human being, at least I rarely saw him mad after I reached the age of ten.Â And I assure you that I deserved it every single time he was mad at me â€“ drawing on the hardwood floor in ink under my bed wasnâ€™t a particularly popular move â€“ especially since Ma and Pop only discovered it the night before we were supposed to be out of the house so that the new owners could move in.

Oops.

Perhaps his even temper with people was learned.Â After being in banking for decades (and having me around for years), I imagine heâ€™d seen everything, including frogs swimming in the World War I helmet his father wore.Â It might be that he believed the worst of people, and that way when they werenâ€™t horrible, they pleasantly surprised him, and when he found ink on his hardwood floor and the family photo album soaking in the bathroom sink (I promise I had a good reason)?Â Or spray painted the fender of his brand-new car?Â Well, that was to be expected.

So, Pop Wilder was a mild and even tempered man and perhaps even a saint for not killing me.Â The one exception to him getting angry was that he would get mad at . . . things.Â Chainsaws.Â Cars.Â Snow machines.Â The blinking light on his VCR.Â In fact, the only time I ever heard him drop the f-bomb was when he was referring to his computer.Â He said it not long after Iâ€™d introduced him to the future The Mrs., and in her presence.Â â€œItâ€™s . . . itâ€™s all f****d up.â€Â Honoring Pop Wilderâ€™s tone and frustration make it a form of punctuation in our house when things have just gone completely wrong but in a comical and hopeless manner.

But what I do know is this: Â the computer didnâ€™t care.

Ahh, the United States Swear Force in action.

Dead Roman Marcus Aurelius nailed it when he wrote, â€œPray to change yourself, not your circumstances.â€Â Marcus wasnâ€™t referring to what was in his control.Â Being an Emperor of Rome, Marcus could control a lot of things, but thatâ€™s not what frustrated him.Â No, Marcus was referring to those things he couldnâ€™t control.Â Marcus was going to grow old and die, and he couldnâ€™t change that.Â Marcus would be resurrected as shoe salesman in Savannah, and he couldnâ€™t change that, either.Â Marcus wanted to change himself so he took those things that he couldnâ€™t control and not react to them.Â Why complain about gravity?

Marcus Aurelius, with a hipster beard before it was cool.

The computer doesnâ€™t care that youâ€™re mad at it.Â The computer wonâ€™t change if you speak harshly to it, though I hear Bezos is working on a computer that will buy random things from AmazonÂ® that it knows you wonâ€™t like, just to spite you if youâ€™re mean to it.Â Honestly, most people donâ€™t care if youâ€™re mad at them, either.Â The real secret is, however, that most things simply do not matter on any sort of cosmic scale.Â I even wrote you, dear Internet, a poem about that:

The Unblinking Stars

The stars looked down.
When Julius Caesar was born, they looked down.
When Caesar defeated the Gaul, they looked down.
When Caesar died, they looked down.

For every man, for every empire.
The stars looked down.
Unblinking.

When continents split, and then recombined.
The stars looked down.
Nearly eternal.

At every time, at ever place,
Every ambition, every love.
Every betrayal.Â Every loyalty.
The stars looked down.

Looking up at them, seeing into eternity.
I gasp.Â I wonder.Â I check the router.
Oh, good.Â The Internetâ€™s back up.
I wonder what just happened on Twitter?

I think that what sets us up to become angry about a situation is contained entirely within ourselves â€“ thereâ€™s a way that we think the world should be, and when the world refuses to be that way, we get angry.Â And the world doesnâ€™t completely conform to anyoneâ€™s hopes and dreams. Â From time to time, even I end up comparing my life to someone elseâ€™s life.Â But I do this particularly awful thing:Â I compare what theyâ€™re best at, to my accomplishments in the same arena.Â Letâ€™s take the business guy I knew.Â He had tens of millions of dollars, a house in the mountains, and even a vintage fighter airplane.Â I donâ€™t have tens of millions of dollars, a house in the mountains, or any airplane thatâ€™s not a model kit that I made when I was a kid.

Thereâ€™s a lot to envy, isnâ€™t there?Â I even think he had a pretty good marriage and smart kids.

Oh, and heâ€™s dead.Â And he died in a really dramatic fashion that probably left his widow with nearly no money after the lawsuit and attorneyâ€™s fees.Â So if Iâ€™m going to be envious, I have to be envious of the whole person, not some small aspect of their lives.Â Itâ€™s a big world and someone, somewhere has it all better than you.Â Theyâ€™re smarter than you, slimmer than you, with a really close, cool family.

And Iâ€™m okay with that, too.

One thing that helped me through my own personal envy was . . . cars.Â When I lived in Houston, there were really nice cars everywhere.Â And by nice, I mean cars that are worth more than my house.Â I felt envy.Â Then I thought about the car payment that they had to make (I read somewhere that most MercedesÂ® on the road are not paid for â€“ theyâ€™re for show).Â That made my four-year-old dad-four door car that Iâ€™d bought used seem a LOT better than the MercedesÂ® driven by the 27 year-old at the stop light next to me.

If youâ€™re a billionaire crime-fighting superhero that found an amulet that gives you super powers but also covers your body in reptilian scales while flying screaming skulls follow you around?Â I suppose itâ€™s okay if you buy yourself something nice every once in a while.

To recap:

The situation doesnâ€™t care. Donâ€™t get mad at it, especially if itâ€™s beyond your control.
Most things really donâ€™t matter â€“ donâ€™t get hung up on the trivia of now.
If you wonâ€™t remember it next year? Itâ€™s probably meaningless.Â Donâ€™t sweat it.
Donâ€™t compare yourself to others, unless theyâ€™re clearly awful in everything compared to you. Then gloat.
Expect that your children will destroy thousands and thousands of dollars of your property and at least a dozen priceless, irreplaceable heirlooms. And burn the counter with hot macaroni.Â And write on the bathroom walls.Â And . . . oh, wait, those were my kids . . .

Wait, what?Â Iâ€™m Pop Wilder now.Â When did that happen?

“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.

Pulp Fiction, Epsilon Theory, and The News Isn’t The News. Really.

“Zed? Zed’s dead, Baby.” – Pulp Fiction

So if the Internet is a motorcycle and Bruce Willis is original thought, at some point . . . we should just go drinking and stop thinking.

How much of your news . . . isn’t news? Turns out, a lot.

It starts out, for me, with a video on fiction writing:

The international-selling author Rob Kroese (buy his stuff, it’s awesome LINK) published a link to a YouTube (more about them later) video on Twitter®. This video is below; it’s exceptional advice for writers of fiction. In it, Trey and Matt point out that there simply must be causation in a story to make it pay off for the reader. A story isn’t just a sequence of events that happen and are randomly connected via the conjunction “and” – no. A story is a sequence where one event leads to the next, and there is causality. It’s not “and” it’s “because.” That’s the reason that Pulp Fiction is so awesome. Tarantino sets up a sequence of well thought-out stories and makes you, the movie goer, unjumble them to discern the real causality that underlies the plot. The genius is making you find the “because” and “therefore” of the film. The best part is that it only becomes clear at the end of the film how it all works together. Sure, it’s a one-trick pony thing to do, but it was masterfully done in Pulp Fiction, enough so Tarantino can still coast off that genius for decades.

Trey and Matt, please go back and watch early episodes of South Park©. It’s not too late to Make South Park™ Funny Again: #MSPFA. Check out the guys from the Venture Brothers® – they manage to do it. Especially all the Rusty Venture stuff.

Pulp Fiction is a movie where we were looking for causality to bring it all together for us. However, Rusty Guinn, writer extraordinaire from the excellent site Epsilon Theory (LINK) made an outstanding connection. He has for some time been talking about Fiat News. Here it is in his own words (emphasis in the original):

The Washington Post is in the fiat news business. They are trying to influence our political process to their institutional benefit, just like the Wall Street Journal and every other mainstream media institution is in the fiat news business. The Washington Post is never a foe to a status quo American regime, regardless of which party is in the White House, as the regime bestows on them the authority to issue fiat news. Still, if you trust the Washington Post, you are no less a fool.

The fiat news business is booming. As a result, the counterfeit news business is booming, too. And if the history of fiat money and counterfeit money is any guide, we ain’t seen nothing yet. (LINK)

So the short version of this is: a good story is poor news. What makes Pulp Fiction great, what makes spy stories exciting is that narrative. I don’t need that narrative with my news. I don’t want to hear the newscaster come on the radio and say, “It’s 38°F outside (291°C) because global warming is FAKE NEWS.” I also don’t want the newscaster to say, “It’s a scorching 102°F (-391°C) because TRUMP WANTS YOU TO DIE OF GLOBAL WARMING!” Yet I hear similar stories about the weather all of the time. “Hurricanes increasing because of global warming,” when I heard nothing of the sort about hurricanes declining because of not global warming in the relatively hurricane-free recent years. Even weather events are co-opted for Fiat News. Every story that can be remotely part of the narrative is brought in.

And before you complain about my temperature conversions, the metric system is for countries that haven’t put people on the Moon. Nanner-nanner.

Oh, that’s where Fiat News comes from.

It’s especially stark where I live. On my morning drive, I have the option of a radio station playing music from when Nixon was president, a station with programming from the American Family Network™ (Radio Free Jesus), and NPR™ (National Progressive Radio). I opt for silence most days. The bias in the reporting is like chewing on aluminum foil covered fingernails that just screeched on a chalkboard. At least American Family Network© is open and upfront about their bias: they are right leaning, and hate abortion, communism, Nancy Pelosi and any book written since Eisenhower was president. There is zero pretense of a bias-free story.

NPR® is worse. Whereas the American Family Network™ is open and honest about their bias, NPR© pretends that it is actual journalism. A case in point: on an NPR© segment during the program All Things (Leftists Agree With) Considered from a while back, there were two stories that ran in sequence. The first one was a blatant attempt to drum up sympathy for people who had broken the law and were continuing to break the law to be in this country. The second story was about how horrible a certain group was because there needed to be a law to stop their behavior (it involved guns, I think, and no one was hurt). NPR™ was consistent in its narrative – an adherence to liberal principles, even in what were framed as news stories. What was a crime, shouldn’t have been. What isn’t a crime, should be. In news segments. NPR© won’t say it, but they hate Trump, also Trump, Republicans that aren’t the Most Recent Republican To Do Something Trump Didn’t Like, and also Trump.

Bonnie thinks NPR® is news. Don’t be like Bonnie.

And NPR© will interview right-wing politicians, and will ask them blazingly tough questions about their policies and positions and any inconsistency is ruthlessly followed up. As it should be in an honest news organization. But a left-wing politician? The questions are all sympathetic, and the occasional vague answer to the equally occasional probing question is accepted without follow up.

NPR: “But Senator, didn’t your bill allow a million deaths a year due to the unforeseen consequences of unlicensed PEZ® operations?”

Liberal Senator: “Well, no, people die all the time. PEZ™ deaths are a thing that happens. But smokers, oh, my, and look at that shiny object!”

NPR: “Very shiny, Senator. Tell us, how is your cat doing?”

And ever notice that anything Trump says is “unfounded” whereas anything that a liberal says is, well, not burdened by an adjective? It’s like when The Mrs. indicates that I smoked a cigar in the basement. I reply “That’s an unfounded assertion!” while I make sure my cigar butt is safely thrown away.

Yeah.

And I see this in print, too. Especially now. The hallmarks of this Fiat News are obvious now that they’re pointed out. Like the Gimp, you can’t unsee them.

But you can count them. And Rusty Guinn did.

Rusty (who I believe is no relation to the Venture family) started with a variety of news sites. As a control, he selected several sites that aren’t news sites to use as a comparison. Vox.com™, for instance, has a mission to explain the news. It’s partisan. And that’s okay. It’s not a news site. Neither is the National Review®. Or the New Yorker©. The biggest use of the “Fiat News” words (the list of words like but, because, therefore, is at Epsilon) was from Vox. So Rusty set the Vox as a unit of measure. One day, I hope, the Wilder will be a unit of measure. A fundamental intrinsic value of the universe – it’s the measure of smugness that is so great that the ego cannot escape. What kind of hole would that be called? Hmmm. Oh. Please don’t say that in the comments.

But back to Rusty. His amazing graph speaks for itself:

Why? (And I can ask that because this isn’t a news site, and never has been, unless you’re as addled as an abacus adding algebra alumna from Alabama.)

Bias sells. The Washington Post® and New York Times™ are published to serve highly liberal people in highly liberal environments – so liberal that every morning they have a privilege review and spank the person with the most privilege, unless that person likes spanking. And then they don’t spank them. The Post® and Times™ are abetted by a journalistic corps that is 95% or more left-wing and comprised of the children of liberals that weren’t smart enough to make it into law school. The readers and journalists want to hate Trump. They want to write and read how awful he is doing. They want to hope that he’ll be impeached and then sent off to that hell that they feel he so richly deserves next week. This week would be better, but they’d be willing to wait until next week.

Fox News® and Breitbart™ rely on the same principle, but to a different audience, namely the right-wing. They want to hope that Hillary will be indicted next week and sent off to that hell that they feel she so richly deserves. But they have jobs, so they can wait a month or so for the show, as long as it’s on YouTube®.

And all of it pulls in viewers on the Internet and television, and causes newspapers to be purchased. Eyes and money flow to the business. In short?

It sells.

It sells because people like to see that others mirror their bias. They like feeling like part of that group (liberals more than conservatives, but that’s an r/K thing (LINK)). And the more biased? The better. They want that emotion. They want to feel that they are just, and someone will right the wrongs. They want . . . to feel hate for the other side. My journalism teacher from high school would punch me straight in the face if I were to write news stories with such bias. And she likes me, even though she’s a liberal and knows that I have all of the sympathy of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun all rolled up into one.

I watch YouTube® videos while I work out climbing stairs on an unending staircase that Robert Plant assured me would lead to Heaven. I’ll watch videos that pertain to my political interests some days when those stupid cats have stopped doing cute things because it’s a holiday.

But I noticed a trend. If I was watching a right-wing video, pretty soon I was seeing that the next video up was further right-wing. Further biased. If I watched that, the list would pretty soon be in amazingly right-wing territory. On the other side of the aisle, I imagine that someone who was watching a video on how free health care was good would, after a few iterations, be looking at YouTube© videos that supported Antifa™ as the neatest thing since Venezuelan Stalinism® and looking to create camps to re-educate corn farmers from Iowa into progressive Marxism® and collective farming.

Huh?

Yeah, YouTube® knows that emotions drive viewing. And emotions are driven by extremes. So its algorithm, purposefully or not, drives viewers to extreme viewpoints to get more video views. The Pugh study on political views supports this (LINK).

The media is purposefully encouraging the split in our country. Mainly for revenue and to sell papers, but also partially because they believe it’s the right thing to do. Thankfully this always ends well, and as a commenter, GSS, on a previous post has noted, this division isn’t new – it’s occurred many times and may be the norm during the life of our Republic.

It’s not like a newspaper could take us to war, is it?

And if you liked today’s selection here are some more posts along the same theme.

Enjoy, even with dinner!