Okay, a warning, part one: every once in a while (not too often, don’t worry), I’m going to go off on a rant about religion and faith. The reason for this is fairly simple: I have been a practicing Christian for most of my life, and this is a part of my life and experience that is very important to me. Warning, part two: I’m not your usual Christian. I am a radical. Don’t expect sugary platitudes or ‘rules for living’ or any of the crap that most of my ‘brethren’ seem to be addicted to. I don’t have my car radio tuned to the gospel station (I prefer Classical or Hard Rock), and while I have read a huge portion of the Bible, I don’t quote it chapter and verse unless I absolutely have to. I have come to my spiritual knowledge and principles through study and deep thought. I do not accept any principle from any one strictly on the basis of accepted authority. If any part of the foregoing information offends you – get lost. Nothing I have to say will interest you. I don’t need your comments or flames and I will simply delete anything snarky or offensive you have to say. If, on the other hand, you are okay with my attitudes so far, read on. I’ll get around to offending you shortly.

            Nearly every Christian can repeat Paul’s famous last line in I Cor 13: “These three remain – faith, hope and love – but the greatest of these is love.” The word ‘love’ is translated ‘charity’ in the KJV, but that’s mostly to point out the difference in the Greek: agape as opposed to phileo. All well and good. Past that point, most everyone gets it wrong. Indeed, Paul was writing about faith, hope and love – but what does that mean? A great many Christians seem to think that ‘desperate belief, wishful thinking and warm feelings’ can be just as easily inserted in the passage. They will urgently deny this, of course, but they’re not at all clear about what should be put in their place. The average understanding of the average Christian is woefully incompatible with the reality of the Kingdom as Christ preached it, and even mostly incompatible with Paul’s understanding of it. The problem comes, not because Paul was unclear (though he sometimes is), but because we as Christians don’t get clear of our natural, human assumptions of how the world is supposed to work. Warning: I’m about to get offensive.

            When we are very small, the world is a big, scary place with darkness, strange noises and all sorts of adults and other creatures inhabiting it – not all of whom are nice, or even harmless. Danger is everywhere the farther we get from our parents – and in the worst cases, even our parents can sometimes threaten us or harm us. In an attempt to stave off the fear and panic, we invent for ourselves – or learn from our parents, who are no smarter than we are, seemingly – a whole slew of beliefs, superstitions (difficult to tell the difference, sometimes), magical spells and customs, and a whole false history to make us feel more important, more special, than we really are. The older we get, the more those hastily created bulwarks get filled in, strengthened and smoothed until we finally accept them not only as good explanations but as the actual truth of things. Anyone coming along and pointing out how false and hollow those cherished assumptions and customs are, are immediately mistrusted, hated, driven out, beaten – hung on a cross. We do it every day.

            Let’s be clear about this – most people don’t understand what ‘faith, hope and love’ actually means. Amorphous belief is not faith. Desperately wishing on a star is not hope. Warm feelings about someone you like (and who likes you back) is not love. What you are experiencing is actually superstition, false history and self-importance. All of these run clean counter to the Kingdom. They are, in fact, types of rebellion – all punishable by death. Let’s break it down.

            What is love? Well, first off, it’s not a feeling. What you feel for a person who likes you back is actually a form of self-love. You like me, you help me, you make me feel good – so I love you. What is the opposite of love? It’s not hatred. Hatred is another form of self-love; you oppose me, you neglect or hurt me – I hate you, because I’m more important than anyone else. The opposite of love is actually fear. Remember “perfect love casts out all fear”? That’s what it means. Love is the antidote to fear. It gets us out of our self-centered little worlds and makes us venture out to where others are and help them to the best of our abilities. Without fear. Love is not a feeling, it’s an action. It’s not something you feel – it’s something you do.

            What is faith? It’s not a set of customs or rituals that a person uses to change an outcome, that’s magic. Magic is the attempt to control one’s own destiny through either bribing or cajoling a ‘higher power’ (and therefore controlling that higher power) into doing what you want or perhaps skirting the issue of a greater-than-me altogether and attempting to harness and use ‘mystical forces’ or ‘the will of the Universe’ to do your bidding. Faith is not belief in some amorphous concept like ‘things just naturally get better’, or ‘nothing happens without a reason’. Hogwash. That’s not faith, that’s superstition, again. Face facts: most things in your life happen randomly – who you meet, who you marry, what job you train to do – certainly where and when you were born, and to whom. Freedom of choice means you get to decide if this person you met is a good match for you, whether this job is the right one for you, et cetera. When you invoke ‘higher meaning’ in these things, you just muddy the water, make it tougher to change if you need to, and give yourself a false sense of fatalism (or destiny, if you prefer – another illusion). Faith is actually trust – in action. You get up every morning in faith that the sun will rise – statistically a good bet. You have faith that your spouse still cares for you – not always a good bet, and the reason that betrayal hurts the way it does. We have faith in buildings standing up, in governments staying in power, in children and pets always loving us. We don’t even think about questioning these things, usually, and build our lives as if these things will never let us down. When they do, the devastation is total. Many people have been injured so often, from so many different directions, that they end up without faith of any kind – they trust nothing and no-one. Faith in God is exactly this – trust, so total and complete that he can ask you to do anything, even (or maybe especially) something that sounds crazy, uncomfortable, even dangerous – and you do it without question or hesitation. You just know he won’t let you down. Simple? Hardly.

            What is hope? Someone asked me this at one point, and I didn’t have an answer for him. Is it an extension of faith? Is it a belief in a pretty-pretty afterlife? Is it a forlorn wish that tomorrow has just got to be better than today? I have begun to see hope as a kind of compass, pointing us to the True North. Hope gives us a direction towards which we steer our lives. It’s the opposite of fatalism – an understanding that the past is not what we think it was, and that the future is unwritten – we must simply sail towards it. But more than that, it’s a deep knowledge that the great Weaver of time, space and spirit will bring all things to his conclusion in his own fashion. And that we are allowed to add our own little flourishes to the Great Tapestry, that in fact, that is what we are meant to do. If we have a Purpose, it is just that – to love God and others through our actions, to have faith that whatever he asks us to do is not only possible, but right, and to understand that we are not put here to selfishly guard our little toys, but to step forward and write, paint, sing our unique perspectives into being, thereby enriching everyone around us, not just (or even primarily) ourselves. Therefore, all your most closely-held and cherished assumptions and assertions about the universe and God are just plain wrong.

            Offended yet?

pax et ama

bcd

            A twenty-something man of my acquaintance has been bending the ears of anyone who’ll listen, talking about his Great Scheme to Become a Millionaire in No Time. I have to say I admire his enthusiasm and his energy, but I am dismayed by his naiveté. He has been studying his subject – stock market projections and wealth creation – for a very short time and in fact has no money to show for his trouble, though he can tell you all about how it works. His Great Scheme involves codifying his knowledge and selling it as a home-study course. He expects to retire by the age of thirty. He will fail.

            Now, before you get all bent out of shape, I’m not picking on him because he’s young, and I don’t think he’s stupid – quite the contrary, he’s a bright guy. The problem is not that he’s dumb, it’s that he has no experience – he has no idea what he’s actually up against, because he hasn’t had the chance to fail solidly enough, yet. And believe it or not, failure is a very important part of any education. He’s also missing three other very important things to make his plan work: sales ability, a good suit and at least a million dollars in profit from using his system. Five million dollars would be more convincing.

            Without the proof that his system will work – verifiable proof, by the way, not just his word – he hasn’t got a prayer of hooking even the most gullible investors, let alone enough people at $200 a ticket to set him up for life. (That’s what he wants to charge for seminars.) Not to mention that he needs to hire a lawyer to look over all his written and spoken material to make sure he’s not putting himself in an actionable position with anything he puts out there. As well as learning to follow the lawyers’ accepted script precisely. People who feel they’ve been swindled (whether they have or not) are very nasty customers, and they lawyer-up quickly.

            A good suit and a well-groomed look is far more important than many people realize. Unless you’re already an internationally famous Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, walking out on a stage in sweatpants and sneakers is going to make the audience get up and demand their money back. Once you become a Personality you can wear whatever you want – until then, no. This guy has no idea how to properly wear clothes, let alone what to wear. His current outfits (mostly sports-related or even pseudo-gang-related stuff) will undoubtedly appeal to the younger set, but they don’t generally have money to invest.

            Finally, one of the most important skills anyone can cultivate is the ability to stand up next to a microphone in front of five to ten thousand people and speak calmly, clearly and concisely – to sell not just your product, but more importantly yourself to a large audience. Most people never do this. Most people would rather face a man-eating lion than give an after-dinner speech, which is partly why most people remain losers. The young man in question has a confrontational manner, speaks poorly and is no kind of salesman. He will fail utterly. The sooner, the better.

            I can almost hear the growling resentment from the younger members of the audience, the ones who insist that I’m just throwing dirt in their faces because I’m jaded and cynical. As well as old. Nothing could be farther from the truth. (Well, yes – I am old.) I actually want this young man to succeed, and if he keeps at it and learns the hard lessons of business, I think he will. But I’ve been in his shoes, with starry eyes, full of huge ideas and no real understanding of what the world expected of me. I am not rich, I have never run a huge company or owned a house on a mountain top. But I have started and closed several small companies, I have been down the myriad paths that wind through the brambles on the way to success. I have the scars to prove it. What I want to do is help this guy find his way, quicker and easier than I ever did, but I’m afraid that can’t happen. You see, like most people – especially those with more ideas than experience – he probably won’t want to listen to me. He’ll think ‘that’s fine for you, old man, but I’m different! I’ll succeed where you failed.’ Probably not. The reason I say that is because when I was his age, I said something equally silly to someone who was trying to help me, and I was too proud and too stubborn to listen. I had to learn the hard way because I left myself no choice. I drove away all those who might have mentored me because I felt I was smarter than they were, and my path was different than theirs. Both of those suppositions may have been true, but that did not give me the right to push aside their proffered help. I offended them and severely hindered myself. Because I was proud. So saying, Lesson One: pride is worthless to you. Get rid of it as quickly as you can. Lesson Two: find a mentor and listen. Lesson Three: practice, practice, practice.

            I predict, if my acquaintance can take the lessons to heart and improve himself, there’s no reason he couldn’t become a stellar success. If he continues to think himself too smart to need help – he could still be successful, just much later and with a painful history. From personal experience.

            From time to time in these blogs, I will try to pass on a few things I have learned in my long and apparently directionless journeys. You will not offend me if you pay no attention to my warnings or fail to learn the lessons I try to teach. If you have that much of a cob up your ass, that’s your issue, not mine. But I will continue to try to pass on what I’ve learned. If even just one person takes what I say to heart and profits by it, I have won.

TGC

for Angelica – because she asked

            It’s said that an artist has ‘influences’ – the works or philosophies of other artists, writers, musicians, etc. that inform or flavor his work. A great deal of an artist’s oeuvre can be understood by reference to his influences. Not all artists have mentors, though many do – but all of them have influences. Some influences are good – some are not. Some lead the artist down dark paths, or into destructive behaviors. Those artists that fall into darkness tend not to live very long. We tell our children to be careful who they associate with, for much the same reason. Young writers and many young artists often intentionally copy the style, voice or composition choices of others they admire. Of course, they must outgrow this phase in order to find their own voice, but their later styles often include some of the flavor of their earlier models.

            So, who are my influences?

            There are a great number of writers, artists, scientists, philosophers and composers that I admire, including: Hemingway, Picasso, Einstein, Socrates, Bach, Tolkien, Van Gogh, Newton, Plato and Mozart. Each has influenced me to a greater or lesser extent. I feel I understand them, understand their work, and how they came to their separate visions. We won’t even go into Shakespeare in this rant. But far and away, the most influential men I have studied (and yes, they have all been men), have been Benjamin Franklin, C.S. Lewis, Richard Feynman, Ludwig van Beethoven and Leonardo DaVinci. Do you see the difference in type as well as in scope? Let me elaborate.

            Each man from the first list was a recognized genius, a ground-breaking thinker as well as profoundly expert in his field. Some led lives of wealth, others poverty – some were recognized in their own time, some only after death – a few were quiet and retiring, most were bold and expressive. But they all share one trait which might not be immediately obvious: they were good at one thing, and generally only one. They were specialists – a term we have come to associate with high achievement and great intellect in this country.

            The men from the second list were all generalists. Generalists can have anything from a few to a few dozen subjects they explore. This would seem to water down all of the subjects, making advancement unlikely. We tend not to expect much in the way of innovation from generalists – we are wrong. Many of the most powerful thinkers in history have been masters of more than one subject. Of the aforementioned group, only one – Lewis – had only two or three strong subjects. Beethoven is not an obvious candidate, but his work influenced so much of what music became for the next hundred years, and his work changed so much over his own lifetime, that I include him. Franklin and Feynman were polymaths – good or influential, sometimes even groundbreaking in many different subjects and disciplines. Da Vinci, of course, is the prime example of the term ‘Renaissance Man’. I have studied these men and their work over the years because they spoke to me most strongly, more clearly than any others. I am also a generalist. In one way or another I have tried to emulate their works, learn their styles and see their visions more clearly. I have no idea how close I’ve come to replicating their styles (probably not very), but I know that some fragmentary essence of each has informed my own work over the years. I also know that I’ve worn out a lot of ears and many people’s patience while expounding upon this or that work or idea of theirs. But mostly, up to this point, it’s just been a lot of talk. I hope to change that at last.

            You see, for far too long, I let my art and my mind grow stagnant – feeble, even. There were any number of reasons for this, none of them good, and the final result was that I entered into a delusional state, where I believed I was just one step away from great fame and influence, that all my dreams would come true if I just believed hard enough, if I could get the Universe to cough them up, without any sweat or even apparent effort on my own part. In other words, I became functionally insane. I could still carry on a coherent conversation, though people quickly tired of my self-aggrandizing attitudes. I could hold down a job, though I didn’t really see the point. I talked incessantly of the great things I would do – and did none of them. My brain continually ran in smaller and smaller circles, self-referential, self-congratulatory, self-deluding. The worst part of the whole business was that I was blind to all of this. I could see nothing around me. I was too far gone.

            About twelve years ago, I woke up. I won’t go into any great detail here, except to say that I suddenly knew how Rip Van Winkle must have felt. Over the ensuing years, as my mind has healed and my art has recovered, I have felt like the prisoner in Plato’s Cave of Shadows – able to see and understand the lie that most people call a normal life, at long last free to follow my own way. Since then, I have written two novels, a novella, a number of short stories, and I continue to push forward on other writing projects. My drawing is becoming easier, freer – I can move back into paints soon. I am finally doing many of the things that I only ‘planned’ to do earlier. And I begin to fully understand some of the things that my influences have had to say regarding art and life. I am chagrined that it has taken me so long to get to this point, but I am grateful that I am, at last, here.

            My outlook is better, my future brighter on this, the other side of madness. I don’t mean to say that things will get better or even easier…just that my art will at last begin to live on its own. And that, in my own thinking, is worth all the pain and triumph. I think Ben, Jack, Dick, Ludwig and Leo would agree.

bcd

            A while ago, the internet – mostly Twitter – erupted with a new thirty second fascination: #Millennialbillofrights. It started as a joke, another way to chide Millennials for their supposed self-centered, whiny, entitled attitudes. It ended up being something more. Of course, it attracted the haters and flamers, but it also attracted the Millennials themselves, attempting to defend themselves against the Boomers. It feels a little weird to say this, as a Boomer myself, but the Millennials have as much right to be pissed at us as we had to be pissed at our parents. Now, for those of you with a short attention span (you know who you are) I present:

The Short Version

            All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again, unless we drop our flags and our prejudices, and work together for the change we want.

(Do you see what I did there?) (#)

            And for those with the patience to listen to me ramble, I present:

The Long Version

            Having graduated High School in 1975 (yes, I’m old), I was faced, along with my entire generation, with a horrifying world that I was expected to make right. The Vietnam War had just ended, and badly. For those too young to know how badly, just understand that it was the only war in the Twentieth Century that we ran away from with our tail between our legs. And there was none of the current ‘Thank you for your service’ that I get when I mention that I’m a veteran. The guys who came back from Vietnam were spit on, called ‘baby killer’, and ignored by their own government. The Economy was a wreck; there were no jobs worth having. Education was a joke; the system was constantly derided as ‘irrelevant’. President Nixon had resigned from office under threat of Impeachment. We had been to the moon, but now we couldn’t even seem to get off the planet. The environment was completely polluted, with no help in sight. And to cap the whole rosy picture, the Soviet Union seemed to be winning the Cold War, and we stood on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Fun, huh? One of the most commonly played songs in the mid-70’s was “My Generation” by The Who. We were angry, we were powerless, and we were expected to solve the problems that our parents had dropped in our laps. Sound familiar? No? Then let me up the ante.

            The Millennials have been handed a world that is trying to tear itself apart under the twin guns of Terrorism and Economic Instability. The U.S. government is a very un-funny joke. There are no jobs worth having. The only jobs commonly available don’t pay a living wage. Education is no longer broken, it’s unrecoverable. You have to have a High School diploma to get any job other than Walmart, and you have to have a college degree to get a job that pays above the poverty line. Just above. We’re not sure whether China is an enemy or an ally. Climate change is progressing rapidly (yes, it’s a real thing, pull your head out of your ass), and there’s no solution in sight. The race problems of the 1960’s haven’t really gone away, because people are as stupid as ever. Religious radicals of all types are threatening Armageddon on their own terms, and we’re stupidly backing the ones that wave the American flag. Our last President was impeached – twice. We are reeling under the lash of a lethal Pandemic. And we still can’t leave the planet.

            One of the icons of my generation, David Bowie, died a few years ago. Rest in Peace, David. He was ahead of his time in the 60’s and 70’s, and even though he’s dead, he’s still 20 years ahead of us. Remember the verse from “Changes”?

                        “And these children that you spit on,

                        As they try to change their world,

                        Are immune to your consultations.

                        They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.”

It was written about my generation. It applies to the Millennials. It applies to all generations. We have all been handed a mess of a world and expected to clean it up – with no instructions, no help, and no direction to travel towards. And just as my generation were spit on and called ‘whiners’ and ‘entitled’, so do we do to our children and grandchildren. This. Must. Stop.

            It does us no earthly good to drop our problems on our children’s doorstep and walk away as if it wasn’t our fault. It did (and does) no good to blame the generation before, or ridicule the generation following. The world is screwed up. We need to fix this, and we need to do it together. The young ones have the energy; the oldsters have the wisdom. It has always been thus, but it’s only been true for the last hundred years or so that we assume no connection between the generations. Our ‘Cult of Youth’ attitudes have robbed us of the ability to talk to one another, help one another. There is no generation gap – there never was. We need – individually, corporately, nationally – to reconnect with each other. My generation solved a huge number of problems: nuclear brinkmanship, ecological collapse, the computer revolution, just to name a few. We have knowledge and wisdom to share with the younger ones, knowledge that they desperately need in order to handle the newest spate of problems. Share. Support. Encourage. Do for them what your parents refused to do for you: treat them like the adults they’ve become, not the children you still see them as. It’s a truism that we get the world we deserve. One of the ways we come to deserve a better world is by helping those who are honestly trying to make it better.

            Go ye, therefore, and do likewise.

            pax et ama

            TGC

            In my house, we love cats. And we take really good care of them – two of our last three lived past the age of eighteen. For a housecat, that’s extreme old age. My Lizzie died a few months ago. I was (and still am) heartbroken. But after a suitable period of mourning, we decided to get a couple of kittens. Oh. Dear. God! What an ordeal! We’ve been to several different ‘cat shelters’ and even to a cat adoption event put on by a group that calls themselves SNARL – how appropriate – and without exception, every one of them have a huge, long application process just for you to get a cat! They require a home visit (a video walk-through is acceptable), and they absolutely insist that the cat must NEVER go outdoors. At any time. For any reason. Ever. Well, okay, I figured I could lie my way through that bit, but then this very serious girl behind the table informed me that if the cat ever got out, was found and scanned, the chip would go off and they would be informed of the infraction. And then they would come and take away my cat! Excuse me, but is this not my animal? How do you get to take away my cat? I’m not bad to cats – an eighteen and a twenty year old cat having lived in my house should say something about the way I treat the animals. Nope – application denied. You know what? If I don’t actually own the animal, you keep it. And no, I’m not giving you a donation.

            I could not believe that these self-righteous, self-appointed guardians of the feline population were not only being allowed to get away with this ridiculous sham of ‘cat adoptions’ but were even being actively abetted by the local authorities. Cats are not the same as dogs. Dogs have always shared our caves and huts, cats never did. Dogs are domesticated animals, cats are almost always legally considered wild animals. Caging a wild animal is a far worse crime than letting it risk its life amongst coyotes and cars. These nosy Pollyannas are creating a worse problem than the one they’re trying to ‘fix’.

            But this points up a whole slew of other groups of ‘concerned citizens’ – busybodies, really – who think they should be able to tell you how to live. They poke into your houses, your jobs, your private amusements – carrying their white gloves, their book of Rules (newly minted) and their superior sneers – and pick, pick, pick at everything. You can’t do this, you can’t look at that, no smoking, no drinking, no PDA – or Heaven help you, they will bring down the power of the law on you, evildoer. Strange how many of these people are named ‘Karen’. (Don’t even get me started on Home Owner’s Associations.) They’re better than you are, they know it, and by God, they’re going to make sure you know it, too. I’m sure you can think of a half-dozen groups like this without even trying hard – some ‘religious’, some not. I promise you, there’s a special place in Hell for busybodies. But it gets worse.

            A little digression into history: can anyone name the worst mistake America ever made, championed and steamrollered by a slew of well-meaning, self-righteous busybodies? Answer: Constitutional Amendment #18 – Prohibition. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other groups campaigned ceaselessly for years until this amendment was created and passed. The WCTU wanted, and got, all alcoholic drinks removed from the shelves of every shop in the United States. The intention was to rid the land of ‘Demon Rum’, that “destroyer of lives, homewrecker and creator of poverty and woe”. What it did instead was to create a thirst for alcohol unseen in this country prior to that time. Think about it – if you’re not allowed to have something, that makes you want it ten times more. And if it could not be had legally, then Organized Crime was happy to fill the need. Prior to 1917, the Mob was mostly a local problem in New York and Chicago. Petty criminals for the most part, suddenly they had money and fame – lots of both. Mob bosses became movie stars, everyone knew someone who could ‘get ‘em the goods’, and it became fashionable to be seen with criminals and speak their lingo. The 21^st Amendment repealed the 18^th in 1933, but the damage was done. Consider – prior to 1917, parents used to tell their kids, “If you get lost or separated from Mommy and Daddy, find a policeman. Policemen are your friends.” How many parents would say that today? Judges were pillars of the community, lawyers were upright defenders of the Law and Truth. (Politicians had always been seen as a little crooked.) After Prohibition, there was a complete change in the way we perceived lawyers, judges and police. Judges were crooked, lawyers were sharks, police were ‘on the take’. The entire fabric of American society was eroded because a bunch of ‘goody-two-shoes’ types got their way and flexed their idea of the way America should run. Horrifying.

            Don’t let this happen again. Take back your freedom, people. There’s a lot of other people out there trying to take it from you. Not just the criminals and crooked politicians, but the ones who claim to be working in your best interests – they usually aren’t. Freedom doesn’t mean the right (duty?) to be what other people tell you to be. Freedom means the right to do whatever you want, be whatever you want, think and say whatever you want, as long as you’re not doing it to hurt others. And if you make a little money doing what you want, good on you. Just be careful. Those same people who tried to take your freedom away will also try to steal your money, either claiming it was always theirs, or by insisting you got the money through unfair and illegal means – they will try to take it from you. Don’t let them. We’ll cover this in another blog.

            People feel really lost and powerless these days – they shouldn’t. You are not powerless. Modern technology has levelled the playing field in ways undreamt-of by its creators. You can Tweet someone out of office, or into it. You can create nation-wide activism using social media. Is the government spying on you? Damn right it is – spy right back. A little-known stock trading app damn near crashed Wall Street. You Have the Power. Go use it the right way – topple dictatorships, crush monopolies and destroy terrorism. But please, for the love of God – don’t be self-righteous and bitchy about it. Don’t be so damned Good.

pax et ama

TGC

            Many years ago, Robert Heinlein (if you don’t know who he was, shame on you!) made a number of predictions based on his knowledge of science and human nature. They follow:

            Robert Heinlein’s 19 Predictions –

This is what he wrote, in 1949 – published in 1952.

“So let’s have a few free-swinging predictions about the future. Some will be wrong – but cautious predictions are sure to be wrong.

1. Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door — C.O.D. It’s yours when you pay for it.

2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between the sexes to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure. 

3. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to repel an attack from outer space. 

4. It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a “preventive war.” We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we have guaranteed to defend.

5. In fifteen years the housing shortage will be solved by a “breakthrough” into new technologies which will make every house now standing as obsolete as privies.

6. We’ll all be getting a little hungry by and by.

7. The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called “modern art” will be discussed only by psychiatrists.

8. Freud will be classed as a pre-scientific, intuitive pioneer and psychoanalysis will be replaced by a growing, changing “operational psychology” based on measurement and prediction.

9. Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will all be conquered; the revolutionary new problem in medical research will be to accomplish “regeneration,” i.e., to enable a man to grow a new leg, rather than fit him with an artificial limb.

10. By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar system, and the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be a-building.

11. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple inquiries, and transmit vision. 

12. Intelligent life will be found on Mars.

13. A thousand miles an hour at a cent a mile will be commonplace; short hauls will be made in evacuated subways at extreme speed. 

14. A major objective of applied physics will be to control gravity.

15. We will not achieve a “World State” in the predictable future. Nevertheless, Communism will vanish from this planet.

16. Increasing mobility will disenfranchise a majority of the population. About 1990 a constitutional amendment will do away with state lines while retaining the semblance.

17. All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a continent-wide basis by a multiple electronic “brain.”

18. Fish and yeast will become our principal sources of proteins. Beef will be a luxury; lamb and mutton will disappear.

19. Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will “Civilization” be destroyed.

Here are things we won’t get soon, if ever:

— Travel through time
— Travel faster than the speed of light
— “Radio” transmission of matter.
— Manlike robots with manlike reactions
— Laboratory creation of life
— Real understanding of what “thought” is and how it is related to matter.
— Scientific proof of personal survival after death.

— Nor a permanent end to war.”

            Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov made similar predictions. (See: http://mentalfloss.com/article/57157/arthur-c-clarke-predicts-future-1964 and http://mentalfloss.com/article/54343/12-predictions-isaac-asimov-made-about-2014-1964 ) In each case, each man was partly right and partly wrong. Where they were wrong, they were almost embarrassingly off the mark, but where they were right it seems almost prophetic. These effects are less a function of the intelligence of the men involved (considerable in all cases), and more a reflection of human beings’ natural tendency to experience what I will call ‘parochial tunnel-vision’. We all believe that we’re the center of the universe and that nothing was as good, and people were stupider in the past than they are now. On the other hand, our forward vision is so murky, that we can’t clearly imagine a reasonable future. We believe, in fact, that we live at the pinnacle of civilization, and that things can only go Star Trek or Walking Dead from here on out. Both views are wrong.

            Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein – often called the ‘Big 3’ of classic science fiction – were very intelligent, no doubt, but they suffered from the same blindness as the rest of us. The fact that they weren’t as blind as we tend to be, can be marked up to two things: 1) they knew their science and technology – better than most anyone of the time; and 2), they weren’t afraid to look like fools. In fact, each man stated in one way or another that the chief difficulty was to over-reach rather than under-reach when it came to prediction, because to be too cautious was to be absolutely wrong.

            So, in the spirit of these great prophets of science-prediction, and with more than a little nod to my own monumental hubris, I too will attempt a look into the future. (Oy…) Ok, here goes. In the next 50 years –

1. Intelligent life will be living on Mars… and among the asteroids, possibly on Venus. In short, we should see colonies spring up in five distinct areas: Mars, the Moon, the larger moons of the outer planets (includes various asteroids), Venus, and a number of independent space colonies. Children will be born in the next fifty years, and grow to adulthood, who have never touched Earth. This is not a ‘nice-to-have’ idea, it’s essential for humanity’s survival. More on that, later.
2. Closely related – terraforming will become a growth industry. Terraforming Mars will be a problem – terraforming Venus will be a BITCH.
3. Armed fundamentalist groups will attempt to overthrow the legitimate governments of their countries and establish a “Kingdom of Heaven”. This is not limited to the Islamic states and is in fact already beginning. These attempts will fail, but the ensuing chaos will not be fun. Violent suppression of all religion is a likely result.
4. NASA will either cease to exist or revert to a job that government agencies do quite well – regulation and oversight.
5. Commercial spaceflight will become the only kind. The possibilities for abuse are rampant, so I hope that NASA does stick around… just to keep everyone above board.
6. Computer monitors, keyboards, mice and in fact the whole apparatus of modern computing will go away. Information Technology will take over. You will be able to summon a video on thin air in front of you anywhere in the world, modify it to your needs and use voice or mental commands to access any information, anywhere, anytime. Cell phones, laptops, pads and other hardware will also disappear. The resultant electronics industry collapse will be sudden and painful. Goodbye, Apple.
7. Education problems will be solved in an unforeseen manner. What we will see is not an improvement in educational theory, but a complete change. Schools as we know them will cease to exist. Direct download of information to the brain is not unlikely. This also smacks of Big-Brotherism, so watchdog groups will spring up to protect the innocent. Since an entire liberal arts education may be ‘burned’ into a mind in a matter of moments, people will start to work at a younger age. Child labor laws will be modified. Day care centers will replace schools.
8. Energy will finally become free to all, virtually unlimited, despite loud and sometimes violent attempts by the energy companies to stop or stall this outcome. If this happens concurrently with several other predictions here, the world economy will collapse and there is likely to be a global civil war. Our only salvation may come from our space colonies, so let’s get building!
9. Because of the backlash against organized religion, it may become illegal to hold or promote ‘heretical’, non-scientific views. Hide your Bibles.
10. There will be a brief flirtation with a ‘One World Government’ – the Internet will be both its bulwark and its destruction. Neo-feudalism may result, but city-states will be quickly subsumed by regional and ethnic states. Nuclear weaponry will be outlawed – on Earth.
11. Fusion power will only be one of many new power sources open for business. Gravity will be harnessed. Cold fusion will be re-discovered and legitimized. We are less than 20 years away from the instantaneous transmission of inorganic matter. Organic matter (especially people) will take much longer to perfect.
12. If you can transmit matter, you can rearrange it. Replication technology will reach full fruition, marking an end to poverty and hunger, but not violence.
13. Between free energy, free food, free Internet and the collapse of most of the world’s economy, the daily lives of ordinary people will change radically. No, we will not get a Roddenberry future – initially it’ll be a huge mess, with near total unemployment, political upheaval and civic unrest. But people can’t live in barbarism forever, regardless of the doomsayer’s visions. Cottage industry, wholesale artistic revolution and ‘living mobile’ (moving constantly just for the adventure) will become the new norm for Earth-bound humanity. Monetary systems won’t go away, they will become playthings.
14. Space-bourne humanity will create most of the new technology, much of the new art, and all of the new multi-planetary economy. Get used to the idea of ‘credits’. Cryptocurrency will become the only kind. Space will spawn the first multi-trillionaires.
15. Starflight will become possible, in terms of human lifespans, and the Great Diaspora will begin. This event will mark the end of humanity’s vulnerability to local disasters. ‘Armageddon’, if it even happens in the next 100 years, will be a local problem.
16. We will find ways to repair the damage we have done to Earth.
17. There will be a ‘Next Testament’.

            Some will say that this list doesn’t go far enough, others will say I’ve gone too far. I’m only calling things as I see them. The changes, wonders and terrors I have related do not mean we are destined to live in a Paradise on Earth, with all social ills only a distant memory – far from it. People are still selfish, greedy and stupid on the whole. There will still be violence, rape, discrimination and murder. In fact, unless drastic measures are taken, the gentrification of humanity is likely to result in ever increasing trouble, just from boredom. I will deal with this issue in other places.

            This list is not all-inclusive, either, but for brevity I couldn’t put down everything. Only time can show how close I’ve gotten with some of this stuff, but I feel pretty confident in my conclusions. I think ‘Admiral Bob’ would approve.

TGC

Note: this blog is a re-issue of a rant I put out a number of years ago. Still relevant.

            I have had a saying for many years, now: ‘Our technology is a hundred years ahead of us and accelerating, our social, governmental and educational systems are a hundred years behind and slowing down, the Church still pines for the Dark Ages, and our bodies are stuck in the caves. Is it any wonder we’re confused?’ The more I read and think about these things, however, the more I realize that my statement doesn’t go far enough.

            Our technology is not an out of control beast that runs our lives. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The tech we want is the tech that survives. The tech we dislike has no chance, no matter how advanced or how much backing it has. Market forces are the sole determinant of whether or not a technology takes hold. VCRs were once a thing, now they’re gone. MySpace was replaced by Facebook. But computers and computer technology has been so successful that it’s now nearly ubiquitous. Much like cars. And aircraft. We can no longer imagine our life without them. And in fact, so much of our economy is built directly on technologies that we have adopted, that to remove them is to doom the world economy to collapse and billions of people to starvation and worse. We cannot return to the world that was, and most of us are smart enough not to want to. The pace of our lives sets the pace for our technologies, which in turn accelerate the pace of our lives. And the adoption of new technologies makes not only the old ones redundant and pointless, but destroys the need for the systems that supported them. So, change advances on all fronts at an ever-increasing pace.

            On the other hand, governments and the social systems they support (including, but not limited to: education, health care, building codes and standards, etc) are dedicated to the concept of ‘maintaining the status quo’. They were put in place specifically to advance and defend the established standards of our society. The trouble is, the standard they adhere to is no longer valid. Many, if not all, of our social systems were cemented in place during the Industrial Age. This was a time of striving for ever higher profits, which demanded extremely conservative and strictly defined social norms. Every man and woman had a job to do, and we were trained to believe that the world would crumble if we tried to escape our cubicles. Freedom was traded for security. But we no longer live in the Industrial Age – what was secure, is no longer. Companies come and go without warning, and without apparently affecting the economy in any substantive way, except to leave a lot of people confused and scrambling to find a new job, with a more ‘stable’ company – only to discover that no such company exists. Indeed, even the largest companies, the so-called ‘blue chip’ stocks, are no longer certain to be there tomorrow. And it’s not just the companies that suffer – the people who have worked and trained for years to fill a particular role can suddenly find themselves marginalized and unemployed. The education which was supposed to have been their ticket to a long and ever increasing financial future – useless.

            The educational system that came about during the Industrial Age was designed to supply the ever-hungry mills, factories and executive hierarchies with fresh talent as fast as possible. It replaced the old apprenticeship/classical educational system of the Agricultural Age with one designed to give everyone the same basic education, to be augmented and specialized to train the best and brightest to fill the scientific, engineering and management positions. But with the end of the old world, the current system is again woefully inadequate, training youth for positions that no longer exist, using a paradigm that no longer applies. Again, returning to the old ways is impossible, and applying one more fix to a tottering system will only make it collapse faster. The youth of this nation know, intuitively, that the education they are being offered is worthless. Things were bad when I was young – I knew, without being able to express it, that most of what I was being taught was pointless and outmoded – but the situation is now unrecoverable. Children are taught how to take tests, not how to think. There are computers in every classroom, but the kids are kept from experimenting with them, instead having the same old facts and dates rammed down their throats – just with GIFs and icons, now. There can be no further thought of repairing our educational system. It must simply be replaced, entirely. But this will not be the worst fight in our future. Social systems are far easier to eradicate and replace than religious beliefs.

            The Catholic Church is understandably in love with the Fourteenth Century – they were in absolute control up until Martin Luther started making waves, and every nation and king in Europe, and many in the Middle East, recognized them as the absolute last word between man and God. With the rapid proliferation of reformist, revisionist and reactionary Protestant churches, their power base was eroded until it’s now a shadow of its old self. Now the Protestant churches find themselves in a similar pickle. During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, the Church embraced the Scientific Revolution, believing that any new knowledge about the Creation could only help strengthen their position. But now science seems to have more answers than they do, and it makes them nervous. So like the Catholic priests before them, they declare war on science, either openly or in secret, not understanding that science can be their greatest ally, if they’ll only bend a little. But religions don’t bend. They see only one interpretation to anything written in the Bible or the Quran, and damnation to anyone who says differently. Over the last few decades, the situation has grown worse. Believing themselves under attack, the various denominations have taken different roads to try to hang on to the faithful. Some few have tried to incorporate new insights and theories into their dogma, but a great many have backtracked into fundamentalism, and ossified their beliefs. Religious leaders in the Middle East are raising armies of fanatical believers and arming them, sending them out to cleanse the world of unbelief. It’s only a matter of time before Christian fundamentalist groups do the same in America and throughout Europe. In fact, it’s already begun. This cannot be allowed to continue. There are increasing numbers of people throughout the world, mostly young people, who have legitimate questions about faith and God, and quite frankly they don’t accept the old, pat answers. They will not long put up with being forced to believe any particular dogma. Add to that the recent strides that have been made in normalizing relations between the races, and even including groups that were, until very recently, considered irredeemable sinners and outcasts, and we get a truly explosive mixture. Violent conflict appears inevitable.

            Finally, what do we do about these silly bodies we find ourselves stuck in? Unable to handle extremes of temperature, humidity or pressure, limited in senses, strength and speed, easily killed, prone to illness, and largely stupid – humans are fairly pathetic when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. But in the coming centuries, our species will face challenges we can barely imagine. From climate change to First Contact, our children, grandchildren and even we, ourselves, will be thrown headlong into situations for which we have no close analogy. We’re just not ready. Our unchecked appetites have made us fat, our unrestrained greed is threatening the very planet we live on, and our hubris has led us to the point where we are willing to destroy ourselves to prove that we were right all along. Our bodies cannot process many of the things we feed them. We still think tribally, even while we’re being forced to live in a global community. We create technologies and economic systems, then get frightened or suspicious of them, as if we were still wearing grass skirts or bear skins. We require new horizons, new sources of information and raw materials in order to keep expanding, but we shy away from every frontier and mumble incantations against dragons and demons. We are not only physically incapable of handling the next frontier without technological aid, we are mentally and emotionally unprepared.

            Or are we? Have we actually been preparing ourselves for the Next Big Thing, all the while not noticing it? There has been a paradigm shift in our arts and literature, but no one seems to realize what it means. From the turn of the last century, right up to and including the 1950’s, art and literature (and even popular culture) got progressively dark and gloomy. It started in Europe, where the ravages of the Industrial Revolution did the earliest damage. People were living in fear of the machines they were creating, and this fear was coming out in the arts. Witness Edvard Munch’s The Scream, or The Jungle by Sinclair. With the advent of the atom bomb, the fear reached a fever pitch. The possibility of species annihilation became very real and immediate to most people. However, all but unnoticed, a shift in thinking was taking place. A new optimism was cropping up in a very unusual place – in pulp science fiction. While much of what was being written and sketched involved post-catastrophic survival, a few voices were trumpeting the possibilities of the new frontier. We were being introduced to strange vistas, new races, and different ways of defining what it is to be human. The visual media have been slower to catch up (I’m sorry, but Star Trek and Star Wars are science-fantasy, not science-fiction), but there have been a few worthy efforts over the past few decades. Dune and Ender’s Game are standouts in fiction, 2001, A Space Odyssey and Interstellar in film. Even Trek and Wars have had their effect on our thinking. I am not the only person, nor even the first, to point out that many items in our current technological grab-bag were first proposed by Gene Roddenberry in his gung-ho space opera. But the best of the best of the early pioneers of science fiction have yet to be clearly understood. Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke and Bradbury foresaw a world that was vast and strange, littered with technology we can barely imagine, admittedly with the occasional alien, but most often just humans being what they are: twisted and bent at times, upright and heroic at others. They tried to show us that people will remain people no matter what situation we find ourselves in. That rather than fight the breakneck pace of evolution we have imposed on ourselves, we need to ride it, flow with it, harness it. But in order to do that, we will need to change a lot of other things that we assume are unchangeable, and see things that are truly unchanging in a new light. That, and that alone, is the challenge of our times.

TGC

            Artists are an odd lot. Some (very few) are geniuses – most are not, but we all think we are. Except those who believe that they have nothing to say, no one to say it to, and who cares, anyway? Can an entire sub-class of humans have bipolar disorder? As a group? Seems so. Why is that? Can anyone be an artist? What is an artist?

            Okay, ‘can of worms’ time. I’m about to broach a subject that almost no one can agree on, everyone has an opinion on, and the ones who yell their opinions the loudest usually don’t know anything about the subject, anyway. Sounds like fun – here goes.

            I’ve been an artist, in multiple disciplines, for most of my life – at least fifty years. In that time, I’ve come up with an idea or two on the subject. First off, art requires more than talent. It also requires more than inspiration, but we’ll get to that. Talent is a nice start, but the artist has to truly buckle down and learn the tools and techniques of the craft in order to be any good at it. I’ve had others disagree strongly with this point, but I see it as inescapable. Picasso famously stated that he had no use for any painter who didn’t sit in front of their easel for at least eight hours every day. Presumably the artist in question wasn’t merely daydreaming, sleeping or picking their nose the whole time. Yes, Picasso was known for his abstract paintings, but he was also one of the finest realists of his day. Writers constantly tout the maxim – ‘A-B-C’: Apply Butt to Chair. Actors are always taking classes, dancers are always dancing, musicians usually practice for many hours every day. Why? Because if you don’t work at it, you don’t get better. And if you don’t get better, you get worse. Sux, but truth.

            Art is less about inspiration (though that does occur – more on that later) and more about active observation. Art shares this trait with science, believe it or not. Artists look carefully at the world, draw it in through their noses, their pores, their ears – then process it through the twisted mishmash of their individual psyches, informed and diffracted by their life experiences, and finally splash the result across a canvas or a stage or a sheet of paper. The intention is to show people around us what we’ve seen and what we think of it. It’s a messy process. Where art differs from science is that art has rules, dammit. Science is mostly messing around with stuff that intrigues you, then writing down the results. The math comes later. Prove me wrong.

            Art talks to you. I’m not referring to the audience, here. Yes, you’re important, but I’ll get to you. Art talks to the artist, tells her what it wants to be. Some art whispers, some bops along to its own tune (occasionally in a language the artist doesn’t understand), some art cusses and fumes, some shouts and throws furniture around. Most of the best artists I’ve known over the years seem to embrace the louder forms. Is it any wonder the Greeks and Romans insisted that all art came from otherworldly spirits called Muses? Inspiration or ‘in spiritu’ in a literal sense. Many artists, even today, would agree with this. For all our work and honing of the craft, there comes a point where many artists fall back on trusting an intelligence which doesn’t precisely inhabit their bodies. I think this is backwards – the falling back, I mean. We do need to start the process by getting down to the business of art – the ‘grind’ in some people’s view – but by doing so, we invite the Muse into the process, and as long as we can stay open to ‘outside inspiration’, the whole event can work as smoothly as possible under the circumstances. In my own case as a writer, I usually start with a rough idea (I have tons of them), sit down and start writing the first paragraph. Typically, by the time I hit the third paragraph, I’m ‘in the zone’, if you will. This doesn’t always work, especially with the longer forms (novels), but for the most part things roll along just fine. It’s a fun and exciting way to work.

            Editing is an absolutely necessary part of any artistic endeavor. As Hemingway put it: “The first draft of anything is shit.” Do better than that, I dare you. After the first rush of creation is done and you’re catching your breath and changing the sheets, you’ll start to see little things in your magnum opus that annoy you or seem incomplete. Make a note of them and wait. Depending on your schedule, or patience, you should wait a few days or a week to change anything. If you’re working in acrylics, you only have minutes. Oils, a few days. But change things, change everything if you need to – as long as it makes the end result better. In terms of words or music, shorter is usually better. Gives the remaining notes more punch.

            Finally – the audience is as much a part of the artistic process as the artist (told you I’d get back to you). A painting which no one sees doesn’t exist, a play no one watches doesn’t happen, a story no one reads is just literary masturbation. Art is a form of communication and there must be a speaker and a listener for communication to occur. Any art the artist produces only for himself is just practice. Furthermore, there must be feedback for the process to be both useful and rewarding. Put more succinctly, audiences need to support the arts – with their applause, their admiration and their money. Art lifts up the soul of the viewer (consumer) as much as it salves the soul of the artist. Cities that embrace the arts become more beautiful and attract more tourists. Art lovers that support and encourage local artists help keep the body count from suicide under control. Not actually kidding. Make it a habit to take time out and go to a neighborhood gallery, see a local theatre production or listen to live music. Your show will still be on Netflix next week – you won’t miss it.

            So, artists are an odd bunch. And while anyone can exercise some creativity, I would insist that artists are actually uncommon as well as weird. But we are essential to the functioning of society in ways that are not usually considered. For instance – the fact that artists can be mildly psychotic or hallucinogenic bleeds off the negative energy of the society around them, making the body politic healthier in an odd sort of way. The audience reads the story, looks at the painting, listens to the music, and without knowing all the physics and metaphysics of the transfer, feels better about life and the future. Surely that’s useful – and worthy of your approval. Your donation at the door is kindly appreciated.

TGC

            I have spent a considerable amount of time studying genius and geniuses. I did this partly because I was sincerely interested in what it was that made these people different, but also out of a fervent hope that I would recognize equivalent qualities in myself. Vanity, really; I wanted to be able to point to these things and say, “Look, I told you I was a genius!” Silly. I finally came to the conclusion that if ‘genius is as genius does’ (to twist a phrase from Forrest Gump), then I wasn’t much of a genius, because I’d never done anything.

            Anyway, genius seems to me to be almost more trouble than it’s worth. Geniuses are generally seen as weirdos, non-conformists and socially inept (quite often true); they are perceived – whether openly or privately – as cold, aloof and often dangerous to society (not often true); and their work is generally supposed to be incomprehensible, esoteric or even completely unimportant to everyday life (almost never true). ‘Common’ people almost see them as Martians or cartoon characters, anything but human.

            At the same time as this half-awe/half-fear sort of image roots itself in the minds of common people, there is also the tendency to see geniuses as half-baked, infantile or even slightly insane. The combination of these images creates a very confusing societal reaction to genius. Most people aren’t comfortable around them, and don’t really want to be. This image is actually echoed in the minds of many geniuses, causing (on average) one of several reactions within the genius. Either they accept the ‘fact’ that society will not accept them, or they struggle vainly to win the acceptance of society. In the first instance, acceptance of their own ‘weirdness’ either makes them withdraw from society (often completely – think Tesla), or out of intellectual pride they disdain the company of ‘lesser’ men and become sour and intractable (Newton). In the second instance they may try so hard to make themselves seem innocuous that they very nearly disappear into the woodwork (Freeman Dyson), or they work so hard at being popular that they become outrageous and annoying (Mozart). They cannot escape what they are, the mass of humanity will never be comfortable with them, and most geniuses (like most other people) do not have the strength of character to be exactly who they are in spite of all expectations to the contrary. They tend to burn out or self-destruct early, especially prodigies. It’s a lonely business.

            I think a few definitions may be in order here.

• Genius: a person with not simply outrageously high intelligence, but immense intellect coupled with highly unorthodox and creative modes of thinking. A genius will not simply be able to master his field; he will discover new pathways unseen to those before him.
• Prodigy: a genius who demonstrates her abilities at a very early age, often before the age of 5. Prodigies are also most commonly polymaths.
• Polymath: a person who can readily absorb and master several (often diverse) types of knowledge. A ‘Renaissance Man’.
• Highly Intelligent: a person with an agile and powerful intellect but lacking the extra creative abilities that might make her a genius.
• Highly Creative: a person with a deep and powerful emotional and creative impulse but lacking the essential intellectual adroitness to take his art ‘to the next level’.

I will not muddy the waters here by trying to put an I.Q. score on any of these definitions. In my experience, the I.Q. test is largely worthless. There are many recent examples of people whose scores exceeded 180, but who were definitely not geniuses. On the other hand, Richard Feynman (most definitely a genius), scored a ‘paltry’ 150. So much for randomized testing.

            The idea that genius and insanity go hand in glove is ridiculous, if regrettably understandable. Few geniuses have mild to severe mental problems (granted both Tesla and Howard Hughes suffered from OCD), and even fewer are outrightly psychotic (Van Gogh). But in the public imagination, most geniuses are a little ‘cracked’. Why? Consider the fact that when most people think ‘genius’ they get an image of Einstein. Not Einstein as he was when he formulated the Special and General Theories of Relativity, but the elder Einstein of Princeton – he of the wild hair, baggy sweaters and no socks (even in winter!). This is not an image that inspires a feeling of “Oh don’t worry, he’s really alright.” Those who are more widely read or have a better grasp of history may think of Van Gogh, Mozart or Newton. Not exactly poster boys for sanity or correct social behavior. Those who remember da Vinci are usually simply awestruck – as they should be. But the problem is actually more insidious than that.

            The problem is social, or more precisely, society’s insistence that everyone must follow the herd, or be excluded from it. For the broad mass of humanity, this is a very good thing. It gives people boundaries, limits – and lets them know not to trust those who stubbornly refuse to abide within the limits. Geniuses, on the other hand, by their very nature tread (often exuberantly) in territory that most people find confusing if not completely terrifying. Because they see paths and solutions that others cannot even guess at, their work is very often misunderstood, denigrated or even completely rejected by those who cannot see their vision. Also, if you tell a genius that they have to stop doing the work that chose them, they would have no idea what you’re talking about. And let me make one thing absolutely clear. In every last case, I have found that the driving force, the very life blood of every genius, is THE WORK. Without their work their outlook is dim, their mood is depressive (often suicidal), and their lives have no meaning to them. Even when everything else about their existence is at least tolerable, if they find they can’t work, they collapse in on themselves. Conversely, a genius who is terminally ill or certain of their immanent death, if they’re still working – they can endure nearly anything until death finally claims them. Geniuses don’t retire.

            To bring this back to a personal level, I find that I share many things in common with these uncommon people. However, for the longest time – for reasons that I will not go into here – I abandoned the Work. This was intolerable pain and a deep shame to me, and much of the reason that I tend to have depressive episodes. My recent return to ‘sanity’ (as close as that term applies to me) and the decision to try as best I might to salvage something of my vision while I still live, have given me new purpose, new direction. I may never be recognized as a genius, but it no longer matters. Now, the Work is all. Am I mad? Only history can say.

TGC

• Historical note – I originally wrote this rant some years ago, but finding it again, and finding it just as true as ever, I decided to include it here.

            I’m old enough that I’ve lived through a lot of history. The Civil Rights Movement. The Moon landings. The birth (and death) of Rock and Roll. The Challenger disaster. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Los Angeles in the 90’s (including, but not limited to, the Rodney King riots). The first black President. The first black woman Vice-President. And now the whole nonsense of an attempted mob take-over of the Election process, aided and abetted by a sitting President. I hate sitting on the side-lines watching History take place. But I have a sneaking suspicion that no-one wants me to be out there making History. You think things are a mess now?

            I’m in a strange sort of position. I’m a Republican, but I’m not most peoples’ idea of a Republican. I’m actually a Centrist. That means I kinda like some ideas that each party has, I really don’t like a whole bunch of ideas that each party has, and quite frankly I think both sides need to pull their heads out of their asses and wise up. Because I’m a visionary, I have all kinds of ideas about how things should work. However, I would be the world’s worst candidate for any public office – mostly because I hate politics and I have no use for personal power. But like most people, I have way too many opinions – so I’m going to barf some of them out.

            We’ve seen a lot of political hay made through the use of social media. I’m sure that a lot of people would like to see that go away, but it won’t – at least not until social media itself implodes, which it will (and none too soon) – but I think it’s going to backfire on the politicians. You see, a lot of the way politics operates, and has for centuries, trades on the fact that the seats of power are far removed from the people and it takes a lot of effort for any citizen or group of citizens to get directly involved. A lot of ‘pork’ and corruption in government trades on this difficulty in communication. Not anymore. Now public opinion is instantaneous, volatile and often hostile. Worse, no politician who wants to win re-election (all of them) can afford to ignore the moment-by-moment ‘will of the people’. This one fact is going to change politics in unexpected ways, and forever.

            There’s been a lot of pundits during the Pandemic making dire predictions about the imminent collapse of the American Economy. They have been consistently wrong. They will continue to be wrong, because they have no idea what the Economy is. Wall Street could collapse, and the effect would be minor. Fortune 500 companies come and go with nary a ripple. The Fed can raise or lower the Prime Rate all it wants, the effect will be barely noticeable. The Economy no longer consists of these things. The Economy is people and people are now connected in ways they never were before. China is trying desperately to keep its people and their internet under strict control – China is doomed to fall because of this. We have passed the watershed point. Nationally and globally, no one and no government will be able to tell the people what to do or what to believe or what to think for very long anymore. The internet is the new printing press and the death of dictatorships.

            The American military has changed a lot, sometimes dramatically, from what it was when I was in the service in the 80’s. It’s about to undergo a radical change. As long as nations exist as fundamental entities, there will be a need for armies, navies, air forces and the Marines. But things are about to get confusing. Humanity is gathering itself for a leap off the home planet into homes throughout the Solar System and even to the stars. This is an impossibly large amount of territory for any nation or group of nations to control and defend. New governments will spring up on Mars, amongst the space colonies and the moons of the major planets. I think the move to create a US Space Force is a mistake, except in a purely defensive mode. However, I think we may see a move toward a purely non-partisan, non-nationalistic kind of peace keeping/police force throughout the Sol system – a kind of ‘Space Patrol’ if you will – that would answer only to the United Nations, if it answered to anything at all. Nations which would be signatory to a ‘Space Patrol Agreement’ would be required to reduce the size and scope of their militaries to purely defensive levels. Non-signatory nations would be advised that any aggression on their part toward their neighbors would be met by a swift and terrible response from the ‘Patrol’. This Agreement would be very difficult to create and ratify, but once done it would end the concept of Superpower political pressure. There will be huge resistance to this. Not fun.

            These are only the most obvious changes I see on the horizon, and as in any attempt at prognostication, I am certain to miss the mark on several predictions if I’m not just outright wrong. But being too safe in predicting means one is sure to be wrong. I will cover this later. For now, let me just state that I’ve begun to have a severe distaste for the old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times”. Interesting times, indeed.

pax et ama

TGC