So Prince is dead. And with the current media-driven hysteria being the boogeyman (boogeypersons?) of transgenders in bathrooms, the overlap and juxtaposition this, and of people mourning his loss, creates a sort of absurd, but beautiful music.

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.

Lots of calls for more gun control this week. I find it all bitterly hilarious given what’s behind it all.

The root of the argument against armed citizens is the cynical view that the balance of people are bad, untrustworthy with liberty, and that the good, trustworthy people are working for the government.

What is the magical force that turns a man unerringly good when he seeks to attain authority over his fellow citizens? Obviously no one has ever abused their power to steal from the public  or kill out of anger  or betray the Bill of Rights and use an  illegal spying apparatus for personal gratification.

Are these people outliers? I want to think so. But so are criminals. And I refuse to believe that everyone in my country is just a murderer waiting for a means and motive. That’s the argument against an armed citizenry, and it is, frankly, bullshit.

So if that’s not the case, if people aren’t just ticking time bombs teetering on the edge of homicide, then there’s no justification for this never-ending campaign that seeks to incrementally de-quill all the porcupines because they can’t tell the difference between them and wolves.

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.