Star Agent, Grade Zero, B’ama sat at the hidden terminal in his office, ready to write his final report back to galactic headquarters. The interface hummed as his fingers entered the type-field and he smiled to himself –he’d really done it, the toughest mission of his soon-to-be-legendary career.

You magnificent bastard, he thought. I’ll bet they give you your own moon after this.

Only a few hours left before could leave this primitive backwater and return to civilization. Might as well get to it:

MISSION SUCCESSFUL. INFILTRATED GOVERNMENT OF MOST POWERFUL NATION-STATE ON BLITTO, P-3, AND ASSUMED COMMAND. POLICIES AND LAWS IMPLEMENTED WILL ENSURE SUCCESSFUL INVASION WHEN FLEET ARRIVES.

He paused for a moment, relishing the feeling of completion, and looked out his window at the snow-covered lawn. Flowers would be springing from the thorny bushes outside again soon. It was a shame he’d miss that –they were delicious. He continued:

INFILTRATION NOTE; SMALL PORTION OF POPULATION SUSPECTED THIS AGENT WAS NOT ONE OF THEM, BUT DUE TO SELECTION OF SUBSPECIES ETHNIC FEATURES THIS AGENT WAS MISTAKEN FOR NATIVE FROM OTHER CONTINENT.

That bit should please his boss. She’d chosen this bioform for him at random, but would undoubtedly take credit for it as if it were deliberate. She’d also repay his loyalty for setting up the narrative of her foresight. Besides, it was such a lovely shade of brown –another thing he’d miss. Oh well…

Bama hesitated before continuing –this was the hard part:

GRAVE CONCERNS ABOUT HANDING PLANETARY GOVERNANCE BACK TO CLYN-TON REPTILOIDS. IT IS NOT THIS AGENT’S PLACE TO SUGGEST POLICY TO THE COUNCIL, BUT HAVING SPENT EIGHT CYCLES WORKING TO CORRECT DAMAGE LINGERING FROM THEIR LAST TERM, THIS AGENT SUGGESTS ALLOWING QUALIFIED LOCAL AN ATTEMPT AT GOVERNING OWN PLANET -*RESULTS COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE ANY WORSE*.

This would undoubtedly anger their delegate to the Council. The CLYN-TONs were such a vile race and Bama had no idea why they were allowed to take turns administering pre-conquest worlds, let alone granted full membership to participate in galactic management.

No, not worth it, he thought, deleting the entire paragraph. With the fleet set to arrive within the cycle, it wouldn’t really matter how badly they managed things. They could hand over power to one of those tasty thorn-flower bushes outside his office and it wouldn’t stop what was coming. All he’d accomplish would be to make a powerful enemy and put his own career in jeopardy.

Shame though, someone will eventually need to deal with those scaly dirtbags.

He flicked the Send receptor and his bioform exhaled in relief. Done, finally done. Years of manipulating the indigenous population, making subtle changes to policy, planting memetic time-bombs in the planet’s dank cultural subconscious – it would all pay off, for the glory of the Galactic Collective. All he needed was the reply to confirm the report was received and he could go home, retire, and reap his rewards, bask in his glory.

Text flashed on the display. Without a second glance he stood up and walked out, crossing the lawn to board the primitive aircraft that would ferry him to the trans-warp bunker.

And gleaming on the holographic display in the now-empty ovular office, the message read:

“THANKS ØBAMA”

When my daughter was four, she flat-out asked if Santa was made up. And of course, being me, I told her the truth.

We all know the basic arguments both for and against teaching your child to believe in a morbidly obese chimney burglar from the Arctic. Each boils down to whether or not you feel Belief itself is a good thing. And I’ve always tended to side with the rational over the irrational.

But then I ran into this piece of dialogue in a book by Terry Pratchett, that makes a solid case for teaching your child to believe in St. Nick, or in the world he was writing about, the “Hogfather”. The voice in all caps, belongs to Death himself:

All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET— Death waved a hand -AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS  IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY

Draw your own conclusions, but either way, that’s a brilliant piece of writing.

Merry Christmas you guys; wherever you are, however you celebrate it.

Emotions are like bare asses: some people may appreciate seeing yours, everyone else is going to be uncomfortable.

That said, I’m genuinely happy right now.

On moving to Austin, my girlfriend gave me a warning: “This town is like Neverland”, she said, “full of pixies and Lost Boys who never want to grow up”.

At the time I thought that was pithy, even cute. But after being here for almost a year and having my own adventures, I know what she said was both completely accurate, and depressingly cynical.

This town does attract a certain kind of person. And while some squander their youth –content to do little more than bundle themselves in a particular aesthetic– a brave few stand bare-assed against the elements, offering up the most intimate parts of themselves to a world that seems determined to make them pay dearly for the privilege.

Like Peter Pan, these people are the heroes of this town; the young mother raising two kids on her own while sacrificing sleep to finish a brilliant novel, the guy wearing long sleeves in the Texas heat so he can straddle the fence between worlds where his tattoos either establish or undermine his credibility, the rough-looking couple arguing on the street corner about whether or not he’ll ever be on stage like them –her faith defying his doubt.

When you actually know these people as people, you can’t help rooting for them. And more, you can’t help resenting a world where the brightest lights are often submerged underwater, struggling to break the surface.

As both a futurist and a realist, the idea of a post-scarcity world where no one has to “earn a living” has all sorts of negative implications for the strength of our species. It’s easy to be cynical that vast majority of people, in the absence of a struggle to live, would do little but consume and reproduce and leave nothing worthwhile in their wake. But it’s even easier to dismiss this cynicism when you brush up against people who scratch and claw to both earn a living, and to live meaningful lives, to create beautiful things and leave the planet richer for having been on it.

And when you know these people, you find yourself hoping there really was that kind of pixie dust; for the sake of the mother, and the skin painter, and the hopeful couple, all trying to fly in this Neverland.

The only reason to pursue Strength is so that you can practice Kindness. A strong person has a greater capacity for being kind: providing for those they love, standing up to injustice, protecting those who are weaker.

Pursuing strength for any other reason leads to vanity, at best, and cruelty, at worst.

You’re not going to click this, even if you agree with it. Especially if you agree with it. You’re going to Like this post, maybe even share it, but your relationship with digital media has been so abusive that clicking on something seems like a risky commitment to a longer-term, intellectual relationship.

And you’re not ready for that right now, are you?

The difference between peasants and free men is that peasants are only allowed to bear arms in the service of their betters.

The bulk of feudal peasants led lives that, for the time, were safe and comfortable; as long as they served the nobility well and knew their places. But we abandoned Feudalism for a reason, and our ancestors faced all sorts of horrors and brutality at the hands of princes to do so for their children’s children: us.

Fear may be the most effective force for motivating large groups of people, but it tends to motivate people in one of two ways: to prepare for a fight, or to huddle together in the hope someone stronger will protect them.
Which group you fall into says a lot about your character.

I love people.

No, seriously.

Why are you making that face?

You can tell how much I love people by the fact that I’m constantly disappointed by them; only a thing you love can disappoint you.

I think the source of that disappointment is a desire to see the potential of our species on full display when there isn’t some threat or crisis to rouse it; for people to come together to accomplish something based on idealism, rather than necessity.

Why does it take something dire before we demonstrate our collective potential? Why does every great collective effort seem to be the result of some sort of crisis or coercion? Even the greatest achievement of the Human race –putting men on the surface of the moon– despite what Kennedy said, came about largely because of a national fear of the Soviets beating us to it. Sure, NASA is still doing great things, but in the absence of a similar looming threat –terrorists not having declared Jihad on Space– the agency is clinging on with its fingernails under constant threat of an ever-shrinking budget.

So what’s the deal, why does it seem that we’re incapable of unified greatness without looming tragedy?

Here’s my thought: happiness.

Once people are happy, once our basic needs are met and we’re relatively safe, most of us find no compelling need to make grand efforts, to trade comfort and pleasure for struggle and effort. I get this, I really do. After a long week –and my weeks are ridiculously long these days– all I want to do is bask in the presence of someone dear to me and cram pleasurable things into the various holes in my head: food, music, shows and sights. And from an evolutionary perspective, as a species, this motivational plateau makes even more sense. The Human race has made it, folks: top of the fuckin’ food chain, virtually complete command of nature –Netflix and Chill a bit, right?

Wrong.

That’s how animals behave. In the absence of any biological needs, animals do fuck-all. They have no inherent purpose to their lives other than to breed more of themselves. And whether or not there’s an external, inherent purpose in sentient life, we have the ability to define one for ourselves.

I don’t want this to read this as an indictment against recreation or pastimes. I’m happy that millions turn off their televisions and get out into the world to create or do wonderful things –your Interpretive Yoga podcast is not on trial here. But those millions are still the exception. And despite being armed with historically unprecedented wealth, opportunity, and most importantly, information, only a handful are actually choosing to participate in grand projects that push our species forward.

And I certainly wouldn’t be such a dick as to imply that people who are content to live simple lives –or especially those that have no choice in the matter– are animals. But if you’ve got the means to do amazing things, why the hell aren’t you doing them? Why aren’t we all doing them together? Why the hell is it 2015 and we’re still a one-planet species, mired to the neck in bullshit, rather than exploring the universe?

Dinosaurs were at the top of the food chain once, and now we pump them into our cars so we can go to work and the mall and soccer practice. What other species is going to come along and decorate buildings with our bones if we don’t Human the fuck up?

You know, I think I finally figured out what chaps my ass about hipsters, especially the Austin variety:

If you’re in your teens or early twenties, it’s fine that you’re trying to establish an identity, or even just cultivating an image.

But by the time you’re 30, if you haven’t managed to congeal your own personality, independent of a cultural trend, it’s probably because your life has been so soft and sheltered that you’ve never earned the kind of scars that give a person some actual character.

As the guy said: being a character isn’t the same as having character. And as I’ve said: wearing a hat doesn’t make up for lack of a personality.

It’s funny when you look back at a draft of something you wrote when your head was in a different place, in a different time –when you were a different person. I wrote this when I was high on a certainty that I knew where things were going in my life. I was a few chapters into something I thought was going to be an epic novel, only to find out it was only meant to be a short story.

At some point in the history of this country, we got sidetracked.

We became more concerned with safety and security than independence and liberty. Being entertained became more important than being informed. Being a man became more about cultivating an image than leaving a legacy.

I don’t think there are any easy solutions to this problem, or whether or not it’s already too late –how do you address the problems of a toxic culture without wading knee-deep into it?

But I do think I know how we got to this point. It was when we started allowing people to glorify being ignorant, to believe that feelings are as important as facts, and that reality can be determined by democracy.

No child gets left behind if we shut down the trains and abandon everyone at the station.

You want to know something else I know? That I will do everything I can within my relatively modest circle of influence, to drag people, kicking and screaming if necessary, onto that train, so we can get moving again.

Because goddamnit, in my childhood I was promised spaceships and new frontiers, but all I got was drone delivery and Netflix.

It reads like something I’d write; like everything I’ve written it annoys me on re-reading it. So why does it feel like a stranger wrote it?