For me, among the biggest parts were supervising contractors and also the garage sales, but not the actual sales process. In fact, there’s a whole cottage industry that exists to simultaneously warn you against selling your own home and yet get paid commissions off the fact that home sellers typically pay out the buyer’s Realtor commission. In other words, you can readily pick up books that coach real estate agents on how to make big money off FSBOs, even as they’re warning you not to do a FSBO. Realtors are just in business, like the rest of us. They’re in sales, and if there’s money on the table, expect them to take it . I ran my garage sales the same way. I wanted whatever you had in your pocketses. A lot of Realtors even try to hit you for two commissions saying they’re really “working for two people” (so you end up paying the same as if you were represented by an agent and weren’t a FSBO). That line (and that concept) just doesn’t work on me. The whole point of doing a FSBO is that the homeowner does the marketing, preparation of contracts, etc. Who’s paying me for *my* labor, if I give an agent two full commissions? Not going to happen. I didn’t even offer full commission to the buyer’s agent. I turned it around. *I* am the one doing twice the work. I offered 2%, not 3 (or the new attempt to push the tip up to 3.5) or, alternately, a discount on the sales price if the buyer didn’t bring an agent.

Like anything else, if a pro can do it, there’s a DIY (do it yourself) approach – from rocket building to selling or just about anything. Besides, I figured a marketing consultant who can’t market his own house, and a sales trainer who can’t sell it, isn’t up to snuff. What’s all that experience good for, if not for things like this? So I boned up on the process and requirements, built a killer property web site, hit the appropriate networks, and prepared the contract and disclosures as well as an explanation of the negotiation/contract/mortgage/closing process for the buyers. I treated it like a business, same as the garage sales which, incidentally, I ran just like a store – re-arranging inventory immediately after purchases, doing dynamic pricing, meet, greet, and salesmanship, and thorough pre-sale marketing – to great success.

To be fair, I had purchased a house in a hot neighborhood with climbing values, lots of surrounding development that constantly increased demand (Whole Foods and similar desirable places, proximity to several of the city’s biggest and most up and coming employers, with their corporate campuses, and some of the most coveted Roman Catholic schools, as well as close proximity to multiple arts and theatre districts, fashionable nightlife districts, and the Asian district – our Chinatown). So yes, I had an edge. Houses in my neighborhood go very quickly. It’s safe, quiet, there are strollers after dark, and it has multiple freeway access within a stone’s throw, so you can get anywhere relatively quickly. These reasons and potentials are the reason I picked the neighborhood in the first place. But of course, I had to market those facts (which I did, educating the buyers who weren’t familiar with the enclave) as well as highlighting the upgrades and remodel I had done.

We had a lot of people thinking we were just blowing smoke when we weren’t gone a month or two after mentioning it. That time wasn’t idle. We were earning money, working like self-employed people do, but also overhauling or replacing just about everything in the house. New roof, siding, gutters, screens, picture window, central heat and air, water heater, front doors, texture and paint, granite, stainless, tile, etc.  And we were also doing a life overhaul as well – life hacking in numerous venues. For one thing, we reduced our possessions to a) only enough to fit in one big room and b) nothing we can’t walk away from and be fine. We went virtual on everything – phones, banks, mail, anything that would tie us to only one location.

We had pegged Spring to pull the trigger on the sale, with a target of being on the market in early April. With the work on the house done, everything virtualized, and possessions down to an all time minimum, we looked around and there was nothing stopping us. It was my people’s Holy Week (which is generally a week off from Protestants/Roman Catholics), and we generally don’t take on new projects during that time. At the outset, I had built the property site, created a listing, but was waiting to hit the MLS (through a listing-only agent) until the culmination of the week. But when I saved the listing, it sent it out over some of the standard networks automatically, and I started getting calls within 5 hours of it hitting.

What ended up happening was we didn’t even have time to post to the MLS or put a sign in the lawn. The first family that contacted us contracted for the house. No agent for either party, we negotiated a reasonable price as honorable people on both sides, stayed in frequent contact throughout the process, and closed in thirty days. We had people and agents both calling (contrary to the common myth that no agents will show FSBOs to their clients), frustrated, because we didn’t even post a sign, or because they didn’t get a chance, telling us to let them know if it didn’t close. We heard of at least one agent telling his client it was a “fake” listing (she came to see the house anyway), and we built up some Realtor and purchaser contacts, but the buyers made their financing, the close went fairly smoothly, and we were out of the place before ‘the morning of’, in time for the final walkthrough.

Among the principles we decided to follow is going forward regardless of who says what until there’s a contract, and planning rapid redeployment in case buyer financing fails or it doesn’t close. We didn’t have to hedge, it turned out, but it was not only the correct rational approach, it was emotionally better too. One of the most interesting dilemmas we faced is when to sell the staging furniture. We kept a lot of inherited stuff we didn’t want or didn’t use, to stage the house. If you contract to close in 30 days, and the buyer’s don’t make financing, you might not find out until a week before closing. Meanwhile, if you’ve sold the staging furniture, you have to essentially buy replacements or re-list the house improperly staged and effectively empty. It’s a risk. Renting furniture from a traditional furniture rental place is no good, because the rental services want 30 days notice to pick up (yeah, it’s in the fine print) so you can’t ditch the stuff in a week, necessarily, and there are other gotchas in their contracts. There are professional staging companies, but it’s not a DIY budget item – it’s pricey. As it was, we sold all the small stuff right away – and then let the big stuff go before we had lender confirmation, because there was a constellation of buyers ready to pay and you act when there’s enough cash being waved around. If there’s anything else we took away, I think it’s that rationality, honesty, and honor are premium virtues in such a transaction, and buyers value it highly. I used the best stuff I had from being an independent professional and working on small projects, and it was quite rewarding.

This is, like most of the outcomes of my experiments, kind of an “I told you so” for some people. For those who said, “it’s harder than you think”, I’m guessing you don’t usually know what I think. For those who said, “you’d better not try it”, you should have known I try most things, in one way or another. To be fair, I have a significant amount of real estate background – I’m eclectic – I have background in a whole lot of things – I accumulate backgrounds much like I accumulate reading. Charles Morse, again, one of my heroes. But I didn’t use much knowledge that isn’t available easily on the web or in a book and available to anyone. In fact, I acquired some it partly because I knew I’d sell one day, aside from the business and professional reasons – I filed away mentally what I thought I might need.

For me, the life experiments I undertake have multiple purposes. The most important one is to understand what is real and what is possible, rather than simply accept what I’m told or go along with what I’m told I should do. They’re also important, though, because they reaffirm that I can continue to both govern myself and successfully operate within the world, using resourcefulness, creativity, rational thought and planning, and a degree of the expected (for those of us who have come to expect it) serendipity that I take to be the pillar of cloud in the desert, the providence that rains manna from the sky – all of this while remaining decidedly experimental – that is to say exceeding mere normalcy. This particular experiment rolls a lot of things into one. Sales and marketing, I mentioned. A lot of handy work that was self-taught, which I mentioned in other experiments, ranging from electrical to plumbing to tile work to roofing (yes, I did some initial roofing myself), to floor repair and more.

I remember being told as a kid I’d never be the guy that changes his own oil. I used to, but I’ve been too busy mixing grout and thinset or running security circuits. This experiment also rolls in other experiments at lifestyle change (mobility), ethics (reducing footprint), and in lifehacking in general. People sell their own homes every day – I’m not trying to make too big a deal out of it – but when you grew up hearing that there’s some general deficiency in yourself, so that you can’t do what others can do (the exact contradiction to Morse’s maxim), so that you’ll always be dependent on the good graces of others, or that if you do succeed at something it’s a product of accident or luck and not because you intended it or made smart decisions that you expect to have at least some kind of contributory effect even if you can’t yet see what it will be – when your rational and emotional efficacy has been systematically challenged, then every independent act is restorative. Every experiment, pass or fail, is a reaffirmation that you are capable of doing the unexpected, the un-dictated, and will come out better consistently and in general than if you went along. Your independence becomes then a sign of your strength – not of foolishness or immaturity. Even the accidents are often a signal that you’re going the right way. No one ever conducted an experiment who didn’t have the balls to fail at a few or spend a bit of something valuable to get an answer.

In the end, we decided to sell one week, sold the next, closed in 30, and were gone like the wind, with the help of some enthusiastic, willing, and decidedly sane buyers. Mission accomplished. While we’re not fans, anymore, of home ownership, and I never wish to own again [it isn't because I couldn't make my mortgage payment (we had a low, fixed rate), or because I can't take care of myself financially (I was doing better than ever at the time), or because of some 'failure' -  it's because a house is a financially fruit loop way to invest capital if that's your goal, and if you're honest about all the math, and it radically alters lifestyle in ways I find incredibly culturally prohibitive, restrictive, and stifling], the house sale itself was a stunning success. We were more or less moved out by the time anyone realized we were gone (I like that). Suddenly the neighbors had new neighbors; we just evaporated. Our footprint wasn’t there anymore. There was never even a moving van. Just a rented minivan for a day. And as a reaffirmation of the potential of social media networks, technology and the internet, for marketing, it was also a pretty cool event.

Experiment: Success! Here are some photos from the experience.

• At Valspar, we believe there is power in color.
• I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities… (the President)
• I believe we’re all equal…

Belief, statements of belief, belief systems are the culture’s primary communicative stock and trade. Protestantism focuses on belief because it denies the sacramental character of reality. For the Protestant, the inner man is what is most authentic, and an ultimate personalism (each person is the priest of their own atittudes) supertends the identity. You are, in effect, what you believe, and what you believe (even if you just borrowed it from a movie or someone else’s speech or common parlance) not only defines you, it is inherently made personal by being made the center of identity, since the Protestant, necessarily, conflates person with nature in a “personal nature”.

I mention this because the cultural Protestant (whether religious or not) is simply unaware that many of us do not in fact operate in this way. For those of us who are not believers (in the cultural religion), beliefs are trivial, incidental, generally irrelevant. When confronted with someone offering up their contrary beliefs, instead of feeling compelled to stop and debate, as though those beliefs were relevant, we might be thinking that people believe any number of things – beliefs are cheap – some people believe Elvis is alive – other people believe in income redistribution – still others believe our culture needs this or that solution to a problem they believe plagues us.

These beliefs are significant to the believer to such a degree, having confused them with his own identity, that to dismiss them is (for the cultural Protestant) to dismiss him – he himself, and indeed anyone who shares his attitudes. To a nonbeliever, beliefs are ephemera, transitory, and ultimately peripheral. “What do you believe?” people ask, or “What do your people believe?”, never realizing that the question itself is incorrect. The question itself begs the question, presuming in its premises that belief systems are definitive are a means of identity. The person who asks the question is presuming not only that we are both Protestant, in the cultural sense, but that Protestantism is total – it is all there is – it is simply ‘how things are’ or ‘what the world is’.

This is why it is necessary to offer occasional statements of unbelieverness – which is not the same thing as “disbelief”. Disbelief presumes that culture is propositional and, again, begs the question. I am not a collection of beliefs. My soul – that is my mind, will, and emotions – does not consist of propositions, nor does the soul of anything I am part of – not my family, not my religion, not my friendships, and not my life. I wasn’t born an unbeliever. Like you, I took in Protestantism of one form or another with my mother’s milk. So the journey to becoming an unbeliever meant first considering the culture as might Max Weber or Eric Voegelin – exploring for the possibility of a bigger world, a world beyond, a world that is not adequately explained by the culture. And then it meant rejecting the religion of those around me, and paying with that the requisite costs, which I understood and traded on gladly. You cannot become an unbeliever if you value consensual reality over reality, or the culture over the world.

The tedious drone of belief is unending. Turn on the radio, stick your head into a coffee shop, pick up a newspaper, consume some popular art, and most of what you hear will be a statement of belief. A doctrinal proposal. An alternative conclusion within the same tired epistemologies. I have an answer, actually, for those who ask me what I believe. I don’t believe.

It’s interesting that the first two words of the Creed in my Faith are “I believe”, and the West has borrowed and revised that Creed to suit its own principle of deity and personal religion. But the most significant revision is not the words themselves, but the meaning and act of saying “I believe”. For my people, the next several words of each stanza are the point. It is not the subjective “I believe” that could just as easily believe in longer prison sentences for drug offenders or in some theoretical principle of community. Rather it is the eternally personal object of belief, that must precede the operation of belief. “In one God the Father… And in one Lord Jesus Christ… And in the Holy Ghost… In One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” – always a belief in a pre-existing personal object. The subjective is a participation in the objective personality.

For this culture, by contrast, the significance of belief is in the “I” – in the subjective personalism of the mental action. What follows the phrase “I believe”, even if it is the same phrase, is a propositional reality – a hypothesis – a thing that could as easily be Buddha or Job Growth or Individual Liberty. In short, even when we are saying the same words, we are not speaking the same language. The Protestantism of the culture is talking about itself – the object of its talk is an extension of itself. It’s like when someone says or asks if this or that food is good. Good for whom? According to whom? Or is the speaker the only one who really exists? The fundamental solipsism of preference, and of belief, are a hallmark of the cultural attitude. Whoever it is who is the “I” in “I believe” is the one who exists in a way that the rest of us don’t really exist except as participants in the same propositional assent.

Why am I an unbeliever? So I can exist. So others can exist without believing or disbelieving. So the world can exist, not merely the culture – which consists of propositions. I am an unbeliever for the very reason that I say the original Creed in the manner of my people – so that persons beyond myself can exist (or more correctly, since that’s cultural language – so that I can allow for their existence). I am an unbeliever so I can know – know, specifically a world and persons outside of the subjective perceptions of the ideologue. Belief locks us up tight in the squinting inner prayer to the omni-essential self. Which is why Protestant religionists pray in that manner, and Protestant non-religionists are unaware that we do not share their assumptions and yet do exist independently of them. I am an unbeliever so that when I believe, it is not a subjective preference for one of any number of subjective perceptions, but rather an interaction with someone that is not me or a mere extension of my solipsism – so that it is rather the encounter with someone else entirely.

So next time you hear the phrase “I believe” and “I believe” and “I believe” (and if you listen, you’ll hear it at least 20 times today, in one form or another), think “blah” and “blah” and “blah blah blah”.

I don’t expect people with scant knowledge of religion and history, or who can’t distinguish fact from opinion, or one opinion from another for that matter, or who don’t have a spouse they are sworn to defend to understand this attitude. One can only expect it to be misunderstood and mischaracterized. It is thought that the various antichrists appearing throughout history belong merely to the realm of religion and not to abomination against all that is genuine and honorable. But as Christ addressed himself to all of life, to the whole of human experience, so do those who have taken power where Christ brought peace, and have used that power to use the rest of us, despitefully as Anne wrote in her letter. The dissolving of the monasteries, and the slander against the monks that preceded it, just as Henry slandered Anne in order to demolish her, summed up a fundamental attack on the culture, cleaving it from any remaining ascetic character, along with the ‘virtues’ that entails. Henry is said to have died in his disease shouting “Monks! Monks! Monks!” but who knows.

I am not claiming to be more honorable or less guilty than Henry, and don’t have much use for people who would. I do, however, mark this as one of the great points of failing in Western history, where the West’s knees buckled and it finally fell. Not the only point, certainly not the worst one, but certainly a significant one. It was a catastrophe of vast seismic proportion. I’m currently reading The Handmaid’s Tale, which is about a similar situation to Anne’s. She was rejected for failing to bear Henry an heir. It’s instructive to ponder her final written words, which were to her husband, May 6:

“Sir,Your Grace’s displeasure, and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, as what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. Whereas you send unto me (willing me to confess a truth, and so obtain your favour) by such an one, whom you know to be my ancient professed enemy. I no sooner received this message by him, than I rightly conceived your meaning; and if, as you say, confessing a truth indeed may procure my safety, I shall with all willingness and duty perform your demand.

But let not your Grace ever imagine, that your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault, where not so much as a thought thereof preceded. And to speak a truth, never prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn: with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself, if God and your Grace’s pleasure had been so pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation or received Queenship, but that I always looked for such an alteration as I now find; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your Grace’s fancy, the least alteration I knew was fit and sufficient to draw that fancy to some other object. You have chosen me, from a low estate, to be your Queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire. If then you found me worthy of such honour, good your Grace let not any light fancy, or bad council of mine enemies, withdraw your princely favour from me; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain, of a disloyal heart toward your good grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutiful wife, and the infant-princess your daughter. Try me, good king, but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and judges; yea let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open flame; then shall you see either my innocence cleared, your suspicion and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared. So that whatsoever God or you may determine of me, your grace may be freed of an open censure, and mine offense being so lawfully proved, your grace is at liberty, both before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me as an unlawful wife, but to follow your affection, already settled on that party, for whose sake I am now as I am, whose name I could some good while since have pointed unto, your Grace being not ignorant of my suspicion therein. But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death, but an infamous slander must bring you the enjoying of your desired happiness; then I desire of God, that he will pardon your great sin therein, and likewise mine enemies, the instruments thereof, and that he will not call you to a strict account of your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at his general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear, and in whose judgment I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me) mine innocence shall be openly known, and sufficiently cleared. My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your Grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, who (as I understand) are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake. If ever I found favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request, and I will so leave to trouble your Grace any further, with mine earnest prayers to the Trinity to have your Grace in his good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, this sixth of May;

Your most loyal and ever faithful wife,

Anne Boleyn”

This is not the Anne of a TV miniseries, or the speculations of historical gossips who fancy themselves historically literate. This is a human Anne, not a white trash fantasy characterization. The woman was not only despitely used by her husband, and those who abandoned her to his tyranny and sacrificed her to their own greed and religious arrogance, she is now so often used by us to titillate. One has only to catch a few episodes of The Tudors where she appears, or listen to some armchair survey of historical scandals by men who read detective magazines in their spare time to know this is so. Some have even blamed her for “making” Henry a heretic, equivalent to blaming a woman for adultery when she’s been raped (which goes on in various places, as we all well know). We wronged you, Anne. You will stand up in the Judgment you referred to and say that we wronged you, we who have been pleased to make that wrong into a culture and a set of ‘values’ and assumptions and premises that typify the wrong. You will point your finger at my culture, at my country, not only your own, and we will not be able to answer it. As you have prayed mercy on Henry, spare us also by your prayers for the same.

I was looking at Celtic armor work tonight: Parade Helmet 350BC, Gold Torque 400BC, Waterloo Helmet 100BC (would originally have been golden w. red glass studs) and I remembered a conversation with a colleague last year or so on ancient machinery and ship sizes. Here are a few of those items: The Nemi Ships,  The Antikythera Mechanism, Hero’s steam and wind machines, and The Baghdad Battery. The piston pump, Archimedean screw pump, ballista, true dome (based on the golden ratio) and other such technology is more familiar, and are found along with navigational, time keeping, engineering, and metallurgical tools of both miniature and grand scale throughout the Mediterranean, including adjacent India & the Middle East and the Western empire. The Chinese had seismic detectors, matches, paper and moveable type (of course the Egyptians had papyrus, and others wrote on leather, and tooled lettering indicates something similar was universal or unnecessary – look at ogham writing), cast iron, drills, suspension bridges, natural gas as fuel, magnetic compasses, raised relief maps, propellers, crossbows, south pointing chariot (chariot with built-in compass that always pointed south not north), and gun powder. Ancient navigation is now known to have been indisputably global in every sense of the word, and there’s enough evidence for global communication, trade, and cultural exchange that only an obtuse naysayer could keep waving it away.

But of course, none of these are the most significant technological possession of ancient man. It’s the math. Incredibly advanced mathematics which, if they did not result overnight in the ipad nonetheless resulted in things that the average American college kid couldn’t explain on a math quiz. We’re talking about stellar math, in both senses of the word. And that’s not ancient aliens talking – I’m not offering an opinion – it’s fact – you either are aware of it, or ignorant of it, but the fact is still right there.

I find it fascinating to look at the detail on that parade helmet or that torque, and realize that it was not simple grunting and polishing until it came out right over weeks and weeks of mindless labour that produced such things. It was a general mathematical sophistication – a math sense – the kind that only comes from a generalized education that draws in a variety of practical subjects ranging from human anatomy, geometric symmetry, and calculation (mathematics) ability, as well as metallurgy, engineering understanding, and other scientific senses. Remove ‘academia’ as a quality from education, and you’ve got an example of the ideal education in that parade helmet – a general education that far exceeds that of our high school honors students, despite their being certain that ancient man couldn’t possibly be way ahead of them on such things. Remove the academia, the footnotes, the cross references, and modern kids are illiterate dunces by comparison.

An old college professor and I were discussing the other night that there are 3 myths that modern man cherishes but which are anti-scientific about ancient man:

1. that Homo sapiens was the only intelligent, tool-making, language-using, culture-bearing (read soul-possessing) hominid (we’ve really good science to the contrary)
2. that Homo sapiens never crossbred in significant numbers with other hominids (it happened all the time – they were more like different ethnic groups, not different species – we’ve got really good science that demonstrates this conclusively, even if people still have their heads in evolutionary assertions that are, quite simply, out of date even if still in the textbooks – I remember Piltdown man and spontaneous generation, by the way, so I’m well aware of how people can stomp up and down about “what we know” when in fact, it’s crap – I’ve met them years later still insisting that even the forgeries were real – like those who kept giving to Jim and Tammy Baker after the fall)
3. that more recent man is uniformly more advanced than more historically distant man (obviously false given that the West painted itself blue and lived in caves for quite some time – when compared w. the Sumerians, it’s an odd claim that the direction of technological advancement has always been upward – the historical record does not match the assumption – we could spend time on the urinals and steam baths of Byzantium and the stench of the English if one likes, but it’s just unnecessary – history is replete with examples – you can only fail to trip over them if you’re already on your arse)

PART TWO: OUTRAGE

The stuff is fascinating but it also is deeply disappointing and outrageous.

I was selling books the other day and discussing illiteracy with a buyer. When de Tocqueville toured the American frontier, he wrote that he couldn’t find a shack on the farthest reaches that didn’t have a copy of both Shakespeare and the Bible (the King James – you know, the one junior claims he can’t understand). Ask a school kid and he’ll tell you people “were barley larnin thar letters and rithmatick” but it’s not so – it’s mythology. It’s like believing what you see in a movie or read in Hawthorne is actually what happened – like history includes the cave men of Geico or the Vikings of Capital One. Look at what kids learn at Thanksgiving. They don’t know jack about the pilgrims, who drank and partied, according to scholarship that’s now 25 years old. And no, they weren’t thanking the Indians. Not that the politically incorrect fundamentalists have it right either – no self-respecting Pilgrim would spit on today’s megachurches. They had prayer books, robes, candles, and liturgies, just like Wesley and Luther did. That aside, John Quincy Adams said that national illiteracy at his time was 1/4 of 1%. Functional illiteracy was rated in the 1980s at simply 1/4 (25% for those of you who didn’t larn rithmatick).

The whole direction of historical understanding with scorn and lofty superiority is simply the historical version of ethnic supremacy. It’s racism with time swapped for parentage and bloodline. And each kid that sops that slop up is a little Goebbels in principle without realizing it. Dickens wrote, as a child, a history of England that you couldn’t get away with assigning as reading in today’s high schools. Parents would start riots over requiring unrealistic standards of literacy. It would belabor the point to go back and describe the mediaeval model of education and what ordinary beginners had to learn just to remain at a desk. Today, you get people who talk only in blocks of ideas they’ve been given pre-packaged, like the person the other day who said “Well, you know, capitalism…” They can barely complete sentences correctly.  That one ended in ellipses, because she couldn’t remember what she’d been told or ‘educated’ (conditioned) to accept. Superiority without effort. Dismissing whole blocks of time, culture, and experience without even any actual knowledge. Without literacy. Things dismissed for the sake of mood.

Today’s education is merely illiteracy given the credence once reserved for authentic knowledge. Ideology takes the  place of knowledge. The student even dismisses knowledge as inaccessible if not inferior to ideology. It’s no different from what passes for religious indoctrination in fundamentalist circles. In fact, it’s no different, hate to say, than the ‘education’ given Reich students where the mythos of our place in the age, our relation to history and its participants, and the relation of ideology to knowledge superseded anything like the actual understanding possessed by endless examples of ‘ancient’ man. It is thought that ancient means barbaric, but take away the window dressing – unplug the iPad and strip away the Calvins (which don’t take much technology to create, by the way, and are still made by slaves as garments once were in some ancient cultures), and you are left with punks. That’s right, we’re a bunch of snotty punks, that a Celt in the 2 centuries before Christ would look at as ignoramuses.

PART THREE: MODERN MERIT BADGES

I see all those bumper stickers with “My kid is an honors student at such and such school.” In other words, he can barely hit the level of beginning literacy. He’s above average, and not a complete moron. But seriously, it’s like bragging about being the fifteenth Yugoslavian postal carrier. So what? You know how many of those bumper stickers they print? I got a gold star too. The people I see generated with the academic equivalent of epaulets on their shoulders and medals on their chests are of middling or passing intelligence. Sure, they’re brighter than average, but that’s a commentary on the average, not on their brightness. In fact, while I’m not going to dig into it in this post, a combination of specious ideology, failed logic, and misinformed generalizations tends to make a dunce out of any academic star. It’s like getting a badge for being most corporate-minded in your cubicle or office. Really? Do you know what that award really means? Does someone have to tell you? It means you’re excellent livestock. Really superb. No, not particularly wise. Maybe cleverer than average, but then look out at those cubicles – that’s the average. Whoopdeedoo as they say in the Midwest.

Arrogance, utter arrogance of an intolerable kind. You think *I’m* being arrogant? What do you call someone who dismisses millennia of diverse cultures as “primitive” in comparison to himself or herself? Arrogance isn’t calling bullsh*t on the entire edifice of attitudes and assumptions that spins that myth from cradle to grave. Arrogance is the petit historical imperialist supremacist who keeps pretending we went from monkeys to caves to pyramids to King Arthur to penicillin to the ipad. That’s arrogance, because actual arrogance depends on ignorance.

PART FOUR: TESLA

I figure a good place to start the humility is learning just about anything about Tesla. The guy who gave us the electrical outlet you’re using to read this (A/C current). It’s common to associate any mention of Tesla with conspiracy theories. For that matter, most people are ignorant about that topic too, as if all of it were opinion and there were no conclusive facts. Arrogance always dismisses without actual knowledge. It depends, as we said, on ignorance. Always. Arrogance is never awareness of knowledge in the face of ignorance – it’s rather unawareness of one’s own ignorance in the face of reality. Tesla, though, demonstrates that we are *still* to this moment not living according to the level of accessible technology.

We’ve primarily channeled technology (you can call it science, research, or whatever you like – I’m using the archaeological term) – into directions of warfare, entertainment (which is a compliment to warfare – you need it to keep us lulled – like infants being handed jingling keys to play with – if you’re going to effect a policy of perpetual warfare), and control. Primarily the latter. The effect of technologies of control are easily observable in multinational corporate weapons trade, multinational corporate energy, multinational corporate food, multinational corporate medicine, and multinational corporate finance. It’s a running joke that we were all supposed to be riding around in energy-efficient hovercars by now and living on the moon – like the Jetsons. The reason we’re still driving around in little combustion vehicles and picking up bacteria from our shag carpet and diseases from mad cows is that the technologies that Tesla was working on (based on the math Tesla was using) were either dismissed as eccentric, funneled into black ops projects, or sublimated into technologies of control. Think of them like early, physics versions of the internet and social media, in terms of their potential for the world.

Don’t believe it? How would you know? What, exactly, do you know? Anything? Or are you dismissing it in ignorance? So who’s arrogant? We’ve got really good social policy analysis on how this has been done with more efficient food production technologies, more efficient energy technologies (most of my websites run on wind, by the way, so don’t poo poo that as “not actually possible until we’re living like Star Trek in some distant age), more efficient medical technologies, and certainly more efficient social technologies for diplomacy and financial justice for more people. We are constantly sublimating, dismissing, or funneling away more effective, more efficient technologies.

Hell, I’ve spent half my life in a place where a man is judged by the size of his truck, in which he is the sole passenger, and which he gladly pays $100/week to drive saying he wouldn’t take a train even if it were free and faster, either one or both. Tell me that ideology, superiority (pride), arrogance and ignorance haven’t directed those decisions to benefit a few on behalf of a willing, livestock trophy-winning, merit badge-sporting many. It’s just what energy multinationals long to hear. But they’re using inferior technology, older technology, more primitive technology. Something that 200 BC Celt would probably regard as stupid. People whose people go on to procreate and thrive keep pushing the envelope – they’re constantly improving. *Those* are the smart kids. Not “hey, I’m sharper than an ancient Celt – I’ve got Facebook” – no, Facebook might just make you an idiot. Can you describe the engineering principle used in a suspension bridge? Do you think in the 9th century the whole world was peeing up against a barn? Most of us are half an idiot, to be fair.

LASTLY: CONCLUSIONS

Until we dispense with the historical, archaelogical, ideological, and anthropological myths that keep us from taking fair stock of ourselves, our ancestors, and the world, we will continue, I contend, to yield to bigotries that foment arrogance and culminate in livestock roles under technologies of control, including social technologies and cultural engineering. Remember Veruca Salt in Dahl’s Willy Wonka? Or Harry’s cousin Dudley in Harry Potter? Both were spoiled kids who wanted to be told they were the brightest and best, that they were uniquely fit to ascend above others, and that no one else was really as good, generally speaking. We are like that, like Veruca and Dudley, when we cling to the 3 myths mentioned in part one (above). And it does us no decent service to delude ourselves with these things. Our culture suffers from a deprivation of many things that were common in the ancient world (like genuine shame that isn’t confused for unhealthy guilt, and genuine grieving that isn’t confused for unhealthy loss of perspective, just to name a couple), and we could do with quite a lot more cultural humility, whether in regard to differences in ethnicity, ethos, or time. We are not the best. Most of the people saying that can’t do the math that was well known to ancient man. Someone they’ve heard of can, sure. Maybe some distant cousin. But they can’t. Or they can’t do a host of other things. All the while stamping and saying we’re unique, we’re superior, and we’re naturally fit to ascend.

Besides that, we’re missing out on some really cool knowledge, and the ability to use it in our thoughts. Once we quit assuming things, we create the possibility of actually knowing things. It’s shocking to me how many people can’t distinguish an opinion from a fact. You tell them some historical thing occurred, or some object exists, or whatever – and they act as if they were encountering an opinion that they’re entitled to disagree with. In effect, they reduce all reality to opinions, and effectively construct a neurotic pseudo reality around them. A collection of things they “decide” to believe. As if belief and reality were synonymous. As Lewis Black pointed out, you’re not entitled to your opinion – you’re entitled to your informed opinion. That’s a distinction between an opinion about a fact and the confusion of an opinion with a fact. We may not agree, Lewis and I, on everything – so what – at least he gets it. Your opinions (and mine) really have no bearing on what’s there or not there. “Well I think men were mostly agrarian…” It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what I think. They weren’t. Or they were. But it’s one or the other. The inability to think at all (again, not going into wider topics like epistemology and Aristotle’s 3 laws) is a hallmark of the arrogance we’ve overlaid upon historical certainty. Just back to Tesla as an example: you don’t get to have an opinion on whether Tesla gave us A/C. You get to accept it, or be ignorant of it. It’s not offered as an opinion. All right, so we can piddle around about the particulars, but the point is that a thing either is or isn’t so. A or not A, to briefly cite Aristotle.

The average school kid (and the grown up version is just you and I, so it’s not really about kids – it’s just being a bit more polite to any probable demographic who might read this), can’t even reason out the basics of the most obvious equations. He can “learn” them in the sense of memorizing, like the quadratic equation, but he can’t tell you what they mean. A or not A. A thing either is or isn’t so. The law of the excluded middle – required in compliment to the other two laws of thought, of course. Where “primitive man” (a mythological creature I could argue, for the sake of argument, didn’t ever exist, not really – like the so-called “Dark Ages”) was busy doing metathinking (generations of people doing it in succession), we are lucky to get through school with a bit of rote memorization, which is all our understanding of history is – the memorization of conclusions and supporting reasons parroted from others who are parroting still others who may or may not actually have thought. Thought becomes a pass the buck exercise in a chain of people offloading the obligation or duty. Conclusions are in vogue, thought is passe. Mythology becomes superstition, and superstition becomes rote, even about the things we feign precise knowledge of. I wrote at the Rules of Work blog about someone parroting the “a thing only has the value of what someone will pay” nonsense and, without reference to any other theory of value, it is mere superstition. It isn’t knowledge and certainly isn’t wisdom. It’s not even clever. It’s a moo, in response to other moos.

Look at that helmet, that torque. Those shouldn’t be there. That 1st century BC astrolabe shouldn’t be there. The battery shouldn’t be there. Hell, we shouldn’t have ancient printing presses. Remember, that wasn’t invented until *much* later! In our era. The era of pop-everything. The world is big, and one more example of that is ancient technology, along with its implications for modern attitude. Sadly, I’m not seeing much effect.

Aren’t you worried about security?

Actually, stuff that’s safely in the cloud, protected by Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and further levels of encryption and security on top of that, are far more secure than sitting on a hard drive that can be accessed easily by malware, data recovery, and various forms of spying. That site you or your brother in law visited is probably making a copy right now. Which would you rather have, a) all the iron-clad security of your cheesy home computer system or b) security and encryption continually hardened by a team of people whose sole purpose is that task on servers protected by enterprise grade firewalls with intrusion detection and countermeasures, among other things? Yeah, I am concerned about security – which is why I use the cloud.

Aren’t you worried about losing your data?

Actually, data in the cloud is usually backed up redundantly and automatically three times over, even if they don’t tell you about it. With AWS, I have triple-redundant images of my data physically stored in separate parts of the United States. It’s about as safe as it gets. The Apollo moon rocket probably wasn’t as secure. Compare that to your home computer. All it takes is a good brownout, hard drive crash, malware infection, fire, flood, or theft to wipe or expose that stuff. You think the average home computer user has offsite backups, let alone sufficiently redundant ones? Let alone current ones? Let alone automated ones? When’s the last time 3/4 of the people you know backed up? Where’s their critical data – in soggy file folders in the basement? Aren’t they worried about their data?

How can you find anything?

Actually, things that are in the cloud – documents, music, photos, whatever – are searchable at speeds that dramatically exceed what you can do with your hard drive. With Google discontinuing Google Desktop Search to focus on the cloud (a move I disagree with at this time, but understand and ultimately think is the correct direction), your best bet for quickly and easily locating that term paper you wrote in 1986 or that photo of your first cat is lightening fast servers maintained, and kept clean and lean, for secure access in the cloud. Finding things is greatly improved. Besides the fast searches, I’ve never been more organized, and I tend to be very organized and to keep everything. Going to the cloud helped me rationally structure my data in ways that I’m more likely to know what I have, because I know what I’m willing to jettison if that dollar a month becomes too much. I know what zip file I have to download if I need to actually put it on a drive for some reason.

What about that notorious breach or data loss?

Actually, the exception underscores the rule. The reason that notorious breach or data loss of cloud storage is so significant in terms of PR, but is of virtually no significance in terms of actual damage to most of us, is that it stands out as such a notable exception. Breaches of home computers and data loss on home computers have become so common place that we’ve come to just expect them. Which is why some people are still hoarding soggy files in the basement. Compare the numbers and frequency. Data is far safer and more secure in the cloud. Not on the typical corporate server, mind you. Those guys are idiots, mostly. Corporations and government agencies routinely make stupid IT decisions (usually it’s the corporate people, not the IT guys) that result in exposing your private data to the world. But people that are in the cloud storage business aren’t that stupid, on the whole. After all, they really have one primary job – safely and securely store data on fast, searchable servers with enterprise grade encryption and firewalls. The rest is marketing. Given a choice between AWS and that computer sitting in your dining room, or the laptop you sometimes take to Starbucks, or that thumb drive in your coat pocket, let alone the PC in your kid’s bedroom that’s full of family photos and stalker bait, I’m going with Amazon.

Isn’t it more expensive?

Actually, it’s cheaper than dirt. Seriously – I can’t buy potting soil for the price of my cloud storage. I dumped virtually everything, and I think my total cost to maintain is around a dollar a month. In other words, if I ever became homeless, I’d still have everything. You? Compare a $12/year to what you’re spending replacing (and cleaning) hard drives.

What if the grid goes down?

If the grid goes down, you won’t be worried about digging out that short story you wrote two years to help bring post-apocalyptic civilization (oxymoron) beyond Thunderdome. You’ll have more immediate and desperate worries. But as your hard drives degrade, in the darkness of your urban cave, and the data on your backup CDs evaporates or begins to glitch from digital media degredation (what, you didn’t know CDs start to lose their bits after about 3 years? and hard drives too. Why do you think the warranty is only 3yrs on the premium ones?), you might actually long for the comfort of not having to stay there by your PC and starve in order to protect your rotting data. I’m going to do what my people have always done in that situation. Throw a pack over my shoulder and migrate toward a better climate. If the grid comes back up, I’ll leave the team of server experts to recover the real grid, which has always been just a series of servers. That’s all the internet is – servers. If the cloud is down, the whole net is down. What difference does my hard drive make?

What about employees of cloud companies eyeing your data?

Well, I think of this like the claim that we never actually landed on the moon. They can have my digital music and ebooks, of course. But all the critical stuff is either encrypted to where even their own employees can’t see it any easier than the NSA, if they want to go to that trouble, let alone focus on me, or it’s coded (in a tiny few cases) so that, even if the encryption were busted, it wouldn’t matter. What – they might read that book report you plagiarized in high school that got an A from that credulous teacher who patted you on the back and told you about your potential? They’re scrutinizing your long-haired phase or that time you got a mullet? What are you really worried about? If you’ve got a lot of compromising photos of yourself, you’ve got issues that go beyond where you keep your data. And if they’re on your hard drive, they’re so easily exposed to the web, intruders, thieves, data recovery jocks (when you discard the PC), technicians (what do you think they search for first when you take your PC to the nerd squad for repair? – .gif – that’s what). Worried you’ll be embarrassed if out of the millions of people who have written a poem about flowers, they’ll go through all it takes to find yours, and then actually spend time reading it? They’re more likely playing Worlds of Warcraft with their spare time. No, this is projection. The kind of employees that would try to eye your data are more likely to work where *you* work, or be you, which is why you shouldn’t guard your own data but leave it to people who will actually be good at it instead of dipping around looking at trivial crap. You’re worried about the server guys not because they’re like themselves, but because you’re imagining you or people you know as the server guys.

What about identity theft?

You send e-mail, right? E-mail, generally speaking, traverses the web “in the open” – meaning it’s not encrypted and can be grabbed and read by anyone with sufficient knowledge. That’s why it’s forbidden to use it for government guaranteed loan transactions (e.g. by appraisers and mortgage brokers) in any situation where it may contain your personal information or data. Of course, those guys send attachments back and forth all the time “in the open” (i.e. by ordinary e-mail). It’s a violation of the GLB (Gramm–Leach–Bliley) Act, but who’s really paying attention when you’re trying to buy a house to keep your hard drives in? People who send e-mail, for personal or business purposes, and are afraid to use “the cloud” don’t make any sense. You’re already using it – the only question is whether it’s secured and encrypted or sent “in the open”. E-mail traverses servers (which is what the internet is – a network of servers), is stored on servers (it has to be), and usually in easily readable format. It’s far easier to read your e-mail than your cloud documents. If you’re really concerned about day to day security, you should be paying more attention to how you communicate. Frankly, the easiest method to carry out identity theft is stealing e-mail. Yes, it’s sometimes done through breaches of bank security, or more often from online store vendors who have your credit card information, but that stuff is being fairly well mitigated. Extra security layers have become the norm in reliable online accounts, identity data and financial data are being segregated through privacy measures, return policies and no-liability policies are helping remove your financial risk, and I think most of us aren’t going to stop buying anything online. It’s far, far more likely actually, for you to get your data stolen at a local ATM or video store than from Netflix. So, what identity theft measures, protocols, and policies have you implemented in your e-mail?

OK, so here come the positives.

Think of it like this: if you were going to run an enterprise grade application that would drive a company and ensure rock solid day to day operation, would you install it to your home computer, as it stands right now? Or given the choice, would you run it from Amazon? I know my answer. There are also some really positive benefits of dumping the hard drive (in principle, even if your local computer still has one in fact). It’s amazing to me that people think nothing of putting their money in the bank instead of the mattress, or trusting their mail to the post office, but can’t keep their documents, photos, and other stuff online. We do our banking entirely online, by the way. We don’t have a single walk-in bank account – it’s all remote, online deposit, etc. The least secure place you can put anything is the place you’re most likely to put it *instead* of the cloud.

Portability: I can be anywhere and, if I have access to sufficiently advanced hardware, and enough of it, can do my work. I can walk away from any place at any time, hit the “securely wipe” button for temporary files, and leave nothing of import behind, but still access whatever I need from anywhere I land. That’s a strong kind of freedom – one of the most basic ones; freedom of movement is guaranteed by Western legal principles but only rarely exercised in the US. Inspired by the new class of mobile entrepreneurs, it’s a value I prize highly. Fire, flood, theft – these threaten some of my clothes (replaceable), some sticks of furniture (I’ll see furniture again), and what little food is in the fridge, but they don’t touch the stuff I need to work, to move, to live, and to remember where I’ve been. The choices we can make now make that come from portability are priceless. And hey, it’s reversible if I ever decide (as people seem to think I will) that it was all a big mistake. I can download all that crap to any hard drive in the world, if I really need to become the hard drive guy again. But why go back? The stuff is there to be used or saved but not to chain me to a particular place full of digital furniture and technology that I have to guard with my life. You can hit us with a bazooka and, as long as the people survive, the rest is fine.

Sensibility: The cloud has helped me rationally order my life. Because of the cloud, things like an HSA, IRA, ACD, and really solid accounting (which people seem to always mean to do but skip) are part of my planning.

Peace of Mind: I’m far *more* suspicious, certainly not less, than the next guy. But I’m not concerned that Google is feeding me targeted advertisements. So? I’m not worried that Google is using my photos to improve image recognition. So? And for me, letting go of a pile of data that I treat as physical stuff occupying physical space, that I have to look at, keep track of, protect, secure, back up, and carry with me when I move, is peace of mind. I feel a bit more like Bilbo did after his adventure. I can walk out my door, down my garden path, and I find out where the road will take me, with little more than my cloak, hat, and walking stick. That’s back to portability, but the point I’m making is that “home” isn’t the stuff anymore. It’s the intangible. As Francis said in Brother Sun, Sister Moon, “if we had possessions, we’d have to fight to protect them”. I may not live with only a rope and a single garment, but certainly having home be in things that are less destructable, less transient, gives greater peace of mind. Home is not, as so many people tell me it is, a mortgage, a driveway, and a lot of knickknacks and furnishings from Walmart or Pier One Imports.

Earlier Experiments: I bought into the first mainstream generation of netbooks. I still like them for very fast startup and web access for quick work – not a lot of multitasking. In fact, I settled on a type of netbook that has no hard drive access and depends utterly on the internet – a Google Chromebook. If you’re not connected to the web, it doesn’t do much, although there are a lot of offline apps now. But they all still run in the browser and use the browser cache for storage. People ask what I do if there’s no internet. I answer “go someplace else”. What I’m thinking is “I go back to a first world environment, whether that’s the local coffee shop, or whatever. Some place with access to information.” Or I flip over to GSM (cellular) internet, if I’m stuck with no way to leave in one of those ‘in between’ places like an auditorium. Honestly, though, I can’t imagine staying in a hotel without internet. I leave coffee shops (without ordering) that don’t have it. People sometimes think I’m being too demanding. I’m sorry, but internet is the 21st century equivalent of electricity and running water. I simply don’t go to places that don’t have those, unless the goal is to get away from civilization’s trappings. I demand flushing toilets, electrified light fixtures, and yes internet, and I view them as equivalent technologies. What’s the point of light if there’s nothing to read? Discussion? Discussion of what? How inane is discussion if there’s no information to discuss? You don’t have internet? You might as well have an outhouse and kerosene lamps. And then, do I really want coffee there?

Newer Experiments: I have an ipad too (you think no hard drive access is an issue? try no USB port – that’s a *real* problem). And I have a Kindle. All of these serve various purposes that have been quite successful. I call my ipad my “idea-pad”, because I use a stylus with it and find it an ideal tool for visualizing problems or organizing thoughts. I hardly ever touch my traditional laptop. It takes too long to boot, has to run a lot of extra security crap (because it’s based around the idea of a hard drive), and I have to treat it like a portable appliance (can’t jar it, drop it, etc – because it has a drive that spins). And what do I have on that drive? Nothing. Just the operating system and a few behind-the-times software applications. Even the antivirus is cloud-based, tho, and I really just use the browsers. And besides, it doesn’t come with built-in Bamboo tablet and stylus, and it doesn’t respond to gestures and swipes like my ipad does (it’s slow for that kind of activity). And no, a generic tablet isn’t the same thing. Guys that think that are still living in the PC era, and ultimately the hard drive era, quoting “specs” that you can root, and wipe, and overclock, etc. If data is in the cloud, and you just need the net, what’s the point of all that? We long ago reached a level of processor power and cheap, available RAM for doing whatever we want on the web. The design elements are what matter now, not the specs. And there’s no comparison (even w/o Flash and without a USB port, for which Apple should be flogged) between an ipad and a generic Android tablet, as much as I like Google and it’s operating systems. The ipad is like driving a well-designed automobile vs. a K-car (for those of you old enough to remember).

Earlier Societal Experiments: The first generation of netbooks had solid state (SSD) drives. No moving parts, you could drop them, and they are much faster, and no defragging (don’t defrag your SSD!). Those netbooks were competing on the basis of design and schema. The 2nd generation tho, if you can call the following Christmas that, all had traditional hard drives and were competing on the basis of specs. They were boasting 250GB. Really? Why on earth do you need 250GB of hard drive space on a portable computer with a 10″ monitor in the age of the Internet? And of course, purchasers were deeply disappointed and went back to laptops when the netbooks turned out to be “underpowered” versions of the same. It’s because they were using them wrong, and buying them for the wrong reason, and netbook manufacturers weren’t holding the line like Google and Apple. It’s like buying an air conditioner to keep your milk cold. It’s just an uneducated move. And the netbook makers shot themselves in the foot while Jobs was pointing out, rightly, that people don’t really know what they want until you tell them what they need – something borne out in my line of work.

Newer Societal Experiments: What I’ve determined is that the netbook /cloudbook thing is too soon for people who need some storage, and the ipad (as a mobile device) is just fine for people who only talk to friends with the internet or who will have more than one device. I’m not against multiple devices, but what I’d love to see is a hybridization of ipad, Chromebook and Amazon cloud storage. I’d like to see, instead of hard drive storage, a system that treats AWS as your hard drive, and uses SSD for the operating system and apps. Not because that alone is a sufficient change of mentality, but because it’s a transitional one for most people. There are already apps that do this with AWS. If I was building a system for a family member who didn’t just need mobile stuff, I’d set it up so that AWS *is* the primary data storage, with drive letters and everything. No backing up (Amazon does that), no worry about data loss, encryption issues, and nobody scraping data off the disk when the machine goes belly up – it was never on the disk to begin with. Compare that to Dropbox, which is still based on the hard drive as a primary appliance (delete the dropbox folder from your hard drive and it deletes it from your dropbox), and AWS is way ahead – just not as immediately clear for most people. It’s hardware in the cloud. Dropbox is an app. But apps like Goodsync and Cloudberry are making AWS more accessible.

In short and in summary, I can commit to the cloud because the cloud is safer, more secure, more reliable, less expensive, more easily searchable, with greater portability and peace of mind. More, greater, and less than what? Than a system based on phonograph technology. I’m not knocking the phonograph, and it’s equivalents (tape cassettes and floppy & hard drives – the stuff computers have used for data storage). They were very useful in their time. I’m saying their time is up. It’s too much infrastructure and the wrong architecture given the options now available for lifestyle and how technology fits into it. Don’t believe you’ll ever keep your data in the cloud? Where’s the data in your phone? You know, the contacts, messages, and e-mail you receive that way? It’s either sitting on the phone, ready to be lost or stolen, or it’s being backed up into the cloud.

addenda: What about Carbonite, Mozy, Crashplan, Backblaze, etc? Sure, I use Backblaze. But I don’t really need it. It’s just yet more redundancy. You can set things up so your cloud storage tools back up to each other. I do that with web sites. They’re automatically backed up to Amazon. But how about this: back up the cloud to your hard drive, not the other way around. If you’re really concerned, that’s all you need to do. For example, Google Docs lets you download a zip file of all your documents. Do that once in a while. Or again, use a service or cloud app to do it. There are plenty.

I prefer a genuinely cross cultural attitude – or what we might call a catholic one, using the original shorthand instead of the upstart lingo. That’s just the point – what one dismisses without understanding, one finds it necessary to reinvent – to “discover”, as though it weren’t already there.

A genuinely catholic attitude (or liberal one, if you prefer), doesn’t have to derive personal meaning from something to take stock of the depth that’s in it for other people. When a tradition has grown up around something that gives people inspiration, solace, or a sense of honor, such a mind recognizes substance in the meaning that people derives from it, and appreciates it. A fake liberalism tries to do this with paintings in a museum but fails in its areas of special prejudice. A hypocritical liberalism, become shrill with its imitation of the catholic mind and its falling short, like a finger painting to a Rembrandt, looks for justification in the failings of a people. The Inquisition and the Crusades are favorites. One could cite the genocides of their own people – if they were Americans, the only people ever to use nuclear weapons on a civilian populace, the people that broke every treaty it ever made with the Indians and reduced their population to a speck, the people that only recently – in the last 50 years or so, fully honored its former slaves’ right to vote – but tit for tat won’t make the point. There’s always the more righteous or less guilty crime to play with in the argument. And simply put, it would be just as much a fallacy to paint every example of meaning in American culture with the brush of Hiroshima as to dismiss Africa as the dark continent as to guilt-by-association Mother Theresa with Torquemada. And if you have to look that reference up, you really shouldn’t be citing the Inquisition in regard to anything. It’s disappointing to watch people bring up the Inquisition and not even know there was more than one, and they were different and highly localized. If they had more knowledge of it, they might be turning up their noses with indignation at Chorizo and Gazpacho instead of 6th century Irish hymns. It would be just as silly, but closer to the mark.

Last illustration: when you see a family about to part through travelling, and someone sits on their suitcases, and the family joins hands and prays for their safe journey and safe return, you might walk on by, oblivious, because it’s not your family. But if you’ve ever loved someone – I don’t mean the infatuation of hearts and flowers – I mean if you’ve ever breathed with their breath because they were flesh of your flesh (it’s saddening how many young people haven’t ever known this, and become commensurately shrill in their dismissals and denunciations of others) – then you know the same agony, concern, desire, and hope of those travelers. And you may have no one, but you at least understand there is meaning for those people in those moments and, if you have any character, you regard the meaning as substance. You may never have found or experienced anything good for you, with depth for you, in religion. And if that’s true, you should at least understand that, to some of us, it’s like learning that you’re that person that has never had anyone to worry over when they travel. And I’m not suggesting you then rush out and acquire a religion from a menu of options in a buffet of faith. You only get fast food options that way, anyway. Shrug if you like, at religion. But don’t casually wave all examples of it away as ephemeral or ridiculous. As Hopkins wrote, “there lives the dearest, freshest deep down things” even if we don’t always understand them.

1. EXPERIENCE: Live in the world, not the Midwest. Spend a year somewhere, living a daily, ordinary non-tourist life. Wherever you are is not the greatest place on Earth. The more places you live (not just visit), the more you can see things for what they are.
2. HEALTH: Get well. Take supplements. Fix what’s broken. See iherb.com if you need a place to start. Everyone has a handful of things that either don’t work right, or could just be much better. Don’t spend years not fixing them.
3. MONEY: Follow David Ramsey’s 10 Steps. Get out of debt. If you’re debt free, get a Roth. Track all bills & accounts. Use a spreadsheet if it’s a lot. Google Docs is great. Life’s too short to spend wondering where your money went.
4. CHARITY: Give to the poor – start something regular. See globalgiving.org – you can start small. Nothing in life is worth much if it’s not something we share, innately, with other people. And that tells us how to help them.
5. FREEDOM/SECURITY: Get a sideline or start a company. Be good at more than one thing. Find your vocation and follow it to the world of meaning. Our real and true work purifies the general derangement inflicted on us by the sedentary passions that fester in modern life. Find a way to dump the indignities of rush hour.
6. LOVE: Dating sucks. Think long term. Be friends first. Stop playing or compromising. Be real, fix your own life, not break someone else’s. No one can really give general advice on specific relationships, like making a marriage better. But there’s excellent collective experience on messing up one’s life. Stop living in the chivalrous middle ages or the slimy 70s and grow up.
7. HEALTH INSURANCE: Get control of your health care security. It’s too important to trifle with. Contribute to an HSA and get high deductable insurance. Supplemental/gap insurance if you can swing it.
8. DEATH: Protect your loved ones with enough life insurance. Execute a Will. Execute Advance Health Care Directives and HIPAA paperwork. Think ahead, all the way to funeral arrangements. Chances of us all living to be 100 are slim.
9. OPTIONS: Stay lean, agile, mobile. Rent, don’t buy, unless you’re willing to marry your location. Own only what you need. Don’t horde or collect. Ignore fashions. Reduce, compact, and slim the requirements of life to the essentials. Let them be defined by what you are doing with your life.
10. TIME: Reclaim & control your time: buy online, don’t shop, drive less. Starve Facebook. Use a planning calendar. Optimize. Be amazing in what you can do compared to people who spend time casually.
11. FOOD: Eat healthy – pay more for it. Dump fast food. Half your plate is vegetables. Go organic. Feel better, think better, live better, be kinder to the world.
12. FITNESS: Exercise regularly. Sleep hard. Get more energy. Fight disease.
13. ART: Read, challenge, learn, grow. Spend less time on ideology, more on creativity. A person with no literature is a person who can’t think and shouldn’t speak.
14. RELIGION: Stop dicking around and do something consistent. If it’s easy, popular, about other people, or threatening, it isn’t real (just like with politics).
15. MAKE PEACE: Remake your mind for peace. Find ways to resist your own temptation to control, correct, manage, intimidate, and use others. It’s not peace if you go to war against the non-peaceful – it’s hypocrisy. Strive continually to overcome the violence, fear and fearmongering, and the impulse to power over others the culture has planted in you. It may take all your life.

Some of these are from hard-won experience, some are advice I followed, some I discovered by ‘accident’ or providence, some I still fight to live up to. But these are the rules that keep panning out for me. Another way to think of them is the ethics of a life. They’re my version of that. Also, they’re 15 experiments which I rate a success, to the degree I carry them out.

Image by Plastic Legions

A joke about pedophile Roman Catholic priests is an admixture of truth and cynicism, truth and dishonesty. The collective breathe easier, because someone has finally acknowledged the disgust, the pent up frustration. In that sense, humor is always a sign of truth telling. It is the truth that some religious people committed foul things, and other religious people covered it up. But it is also an incontrovertable truth that many morally blameless men of exemplary ethics occupy the priesthood and daily make the world a better place because of it. If you don’t know that, you’re a bigot, not a truth-seeker. So humor is also equally untruthful, because it tends to paint an entire reality with the broad crayon of momentary titillation. It doesn’t generally get at the hard issues. It can’t adequately deal with apartheid or the communist revolution except on the most superficial and inadequate, and ultimately misrepresentative level. Without it, though, without anyone saying “hah hah”, as Lewis Black points out, we become distorted by the doctrines we hold in place of truth.

A thing is either true or it isn’t. There are no degrees of truth. However, there are degrees of understanding, and there are admixtures of representation that we call truth or untruth not because they are not mixed with their opposite, but because instinctively, we love the truth enough and despise untruth enough, that we are overjoyed to get mostly the one and outraged to get mostly the other – enough to greet truth burdened with distortion and error with perhaps undue enthusiasm, and error that contains some truth with perhaps undue rejection and outright dismissal – perhaps too great a sense of purity. In effect, we are in love with the pure, in the sense of being enamoured with it, but we love, in a deliberate and lasting way, the truth itself – we love it more than purity – and we’ll endure some level of impurity to get at it. If it’s too much impurity, we’ll pretend we don’t mourn when it carries away some of the truth, but deep down we feel even that loss in the form of bewilderment, the way a grieving person seems a bit directionless.

Each of these comments is a rejection of the absolutist confusion of truth with purity. For the absolutist, whatever is not mixed is truthful. The story which seems to fit perfectly is taken as gospel – as adequately explaining a thing. Impurity is everywhere, and admixture is the way of the world – there’s nothing that isn’t polluted with Death, which is why the absolutist finds it most convenient to retreat from the world and into theoria – theory – doctrine – the truthyness (not truthfulness) of propositions – political, religious, or common platitudes. It’s not that we don’t love purity as well – it’s that it is nowhere to be found in this world, if it is of the substance of the world. We either take our truth polluted with runoff, or we make up (fabricate) our “truthy” propositions, our doctrinal statements about things, and our unspoken doctrinal assumptions. Doctrine, in this sense – not falsehood –  is the opposite of truth.

We’re not talking about expedience. Sometimes the evangelical’s assertion that goodness in ordinary art is to be applauded can devolve into encouraging art to have a “message” – a doctrine – that stands in for art’s capacity for truth. “What’s the message of this film?” you’ll hear on NPR. It’s not just the evangelical right – it’s the whitebread, yuppy liberals too. Doctrinal types are all on one side of the spectrum, for all their pretense of being right and left – they are arrayed, as doctrine is arrayed, on the opposite side from truth and falsehood. Purity on one side – truth and falsehood on the other. But it is true that those who love truth more than they are enamored with purity will find relief, comfort, and encouragement in art that contains distortions. You can hate cop shows, because of the constant justification of expedience – cops are paid to lie – no two ways about it – if you deny that, you’re just ignorant of the job . And also because cop shows often receive funding from government agencies to run scripts that ‘advertise’ a certain message – the doctrine makers are always poking their noses in – this month it’s what happens to drug users, next month it’s shaping the perception of terrorists – again, if you reject this, you’re just uneducated on how it works – it’s not lack of available information – it’s that you don’t know. But those shows sometimes, because of the strength of the writers, also tell a good story, and a good story is always the truth.

It’s a common adage, a cute one, that fiction writers are in the business of being paid to lie (just like cops). But successful fiction writers, the ones that grab us and inspire us, or make us weep, even when they kill people we love, and hurt people we adore, are in fact being paid to tell the truth. A good story is always the truth. True enough, the word “good” is easy currency, and there are plenty of people calling the Twilight series a good story who don’t know the difference. It’s like saying “this bean dip is good”; I’m sorry, but it’s bean dip – it’s about as far from good as good gets. We’re not begrudging their enjoyment, but it doesn’t have to involve a conversation any more than taking a “good” dump. But truly good stories, the kind of stories that inspire, encourage, or move minds of every calibre, can only do so because they are the truth, even if completely inaccurate or wholly made up. Braveheart is a good example. The guy that sits in a first viewing of Braveheart and claims he’s above it, that it’s lowbrow, is just a snob (i.e. dishonest about culture and preferring doctrine/purity over truth). It doesn’t matter if you’ve read the entire Western canon or if you have to ask what calibre of shot that cannon fires, you must acknowledge that Braveheart is a good story. And at the same time, if you know anything about it, you must acknowledge it is a woefully historically inadequate one (conflating periods of history and people who didn’t live at the same time as each other). It’s messianic fiction of the most egregious kind (part of that trend of every ethnicity gets a hero – the first Polish postal worker, etc). It features an American as the Scots hero, because there aren’t any good Scots actors (sorry Sean Connery). Actually there are many, Moneypenny. But for all that, it’s a good story, and it is, in that most important way, the truth. In fact, the people that want to sit around after and say “you know that Robert the Bruce didn’t actually fight in that battle…” – well, you just want to throw your sandwich at them. They’d make excellent school hall monitors.

It’s just as common to dismiss any underlying truth to human experience – to feign superiority in that way – as to pretend to be above being affected by the truth of a good story. The conscientious evolutionist rejects religion, but usually can’t stay in a room when basic logic is defending it. The guy who wants a life of bean dip and video games writes off the Western canon, but also the Watchtower – so it’s not like he really knows the difference – it’s just easier to disbelieve than to make distinctions. The fundamentalist rejects ethics and tries to turn the epic of a people he finds in a book, that his people didn’t write, into a set of doctrinal propositions that supercede the precepts of justice those very people struggled with – which gives you neoconservatism as fundamentalism turned into expedience (pragmatic utilitarianism). There are those who reject anything that doesn’t gain social approval – they want the ‘truth’ of cool. You hear them mouthing various assertions about social ethics in the form of doctrines, but they’re not interested in the ethics of how they respond to the ‘uncool’ and those who disagree with their group – not in actual ethics – not in truth itself. Truthyness rules the day. Remember the Saturday Night Live skit, where they asked GW Bush to sum up his policy in one word and he said… “strategery” (stra-TEE-jury). Truthyness abounds.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses came to see me today, and I sent them away. They had the truth(yness). I saw it in their hands. I could have had it for a very modest donation. But the truth was they sent women, in pairs, in nice cars, dressed a certain way, because the truthyness has to be presented a certain way to get people to take it. That’s the truth. It’s also the truth that underneath the doctrine, that the bean dip guy has absorbed from his culture just as much as the Watchtower fundamentalists have from theirs, are real people. So I tried not to snarl, not to be too growly. I was incredibly firm – they didn’t say a word when I said, “Whatever you’re selling (didn’t dismiss their particular doctrine), I’m not interested. Could you please leave?” Maybe I could be a “nicer” person, but I don’t think so. But, if anything, it does give me an opportunity to think about truth and how much we all desire it, tho at the same time we are afraid and tend to make love to it through a sheet – which is the doctrines – the messageness –  I mentioned.

When you look at photos of virgins, often, they are doing the hover-hand thing with the women in the photo. Maybe it’s not virginity per se, but it’s a certain delicacy in handling women – a sense that she might be outraged and the embarrassment or other social penalties extreme for touching her without her express consent (at least that’s the theory – I think it’s also that touching is an intimate thing – a truth, there – and his feeling is that she’d reject intimacy – but photos extort people into pretense situations – forced to smile – forced to stand close). Let’s go with the theory, tho. If you’re in a photo with me, and we’re getting in tight for the camera, my hands are going to be on you. Hips, shoulders, maybe even a bit of neck. I’ll fit right into the nearest curve. I try to stop short of thighs, even though I’m really comfortable with it. I find that a lot of skeptics about truth are simply virgins when it comes to it. Not that they haven’t experimented with truthyness. But joining an evangelical cult, sitting in the back of a Methodist Church, or being active in a political movement isn’t really the same thing – it’s more sex with a sheet up – it’s truthyness. Strategery. It’s like the WMDs in Iraq (now Iran). We know they’re there, but that isn’t the truth. The truth is who we are as a people that we still want to want to decide to decide to believe what people want us to in order to not have to face up to what we are. Strategery is truthyness is strategery.

We’re ready to bomb someone (because we want to) because they have WMDs.  We dismiss Roman Catholicism (without any theological literacy), because all priests are molesting children or complicit in it, or because they’re guilty by association – and while we’re at it, let’s reject all religion too (because while we’re dropping distinctions, it’s easiest to drop all distinctions). We’re ripe for truthyness; we’re virgins in regard to the truth. Or we “have” the truth (right there, tucked under our arm – whether it’s the Watchtower, or our understanding of the Hebrew/Orthodox scriptures – even if we’re not Hebrew or Orthodox). We come from long lines of virgins to the truth. But art still gets us. You don’t have to drag a fundamentalist, a neoconservative, or even a non-violent liberal to see Braveheart the first time. And there’s a reason the Jehovah’s Witnesses are forbidden to watch such movies (except sometimes under the premise that it will help them relate to the people they’re trying to convert). The Mormons, of course, create a cleaned up version with no sex or swear words (all the violence still intact) for the Utah market, but they don’t reject the story. The gamers know the game will suck, but try it out anyway, because even though they reject “truth”, the movie was good, and they watch it again eating bean dip. Art gets through. The truth gets through. Truth is that thing that lets us breathe, that provides relief. That’s where the Soviets (and now the “Red Chinese”) failed – the more you drop an “iron curtain” over people’s access to art, the more they will hunger for it.

“Information” has become the truthy substitute for truth in this regard. Wikipedia and Google and Youtube stand in for truth and art (sometimes Youtube is art, to be fair). But you can get wrong information. And it will indoctrinate, but not set you free, in the way truth does. We live in such an information glut that even the people who specialize in information seem to be lacking the pertinent truths. How common is it for some kid to mouth off “you can’t tell me anything about x, I have a degree in x.” I’m especially amused when x is ethics or theology – but really, anything. In truth, the degree doesn’t mean diddly just now if you missed the truth that’s operative at the moment, or that’s applicable to the situation at hand. Put your hands on her, dammit! If she slaps you, smile but don’t move your hand. If she only slaps you once, move your hand deliberately – either away or on her. But stop being truthy – be truthful. Information isn’t always truth, except in the way Stephen King uses it (“information” is a very special word in his book “Hearts in Atlantis”, which is a book about truth).

You see truthy people flirting, hover hand, with truth by dabbling. A little ‘realization’ here, a little mental upgrade there, but always keeping that sheet up – always the distance. St. Irenaeus of Lyons described it as “always asking questions, but never intending to really come to the truth”. Truthy flirters stop at the first breath of truth, and ooh and ahh over the profundity of it. Wow, a girl. Yeah, but imagine what actually touching her shoulder would be like. Imagine if you didn’t take out the sex scenes and the swearing. Imagine if it was good like Braveheart was good.

The first step in getting past being a truth virgin is allowing for the possibility. The next step is questioning the truth of the truthy platitudes you’ve used like a sheet to shield you from truth. It could be that intellectually superior dismissal of anything not informationally doctrinal. Hordes of IT types go down that path to truth virginity (citing those Roman Catholic child molesters as they go). It could be the lazy, bean dip dismissal of all distinctions (there’s no underlying truth, there’s just simplicity, and the next X-box). Or maybe it’s the way you’re reading our book, which your people wouldn’t have the capacity to write, which is why you’re always “explaining” it. Or maybe you did write your own book, and you’re just going to the next door after I shoo you away from mine, all dressed up to market something which doesn’t have the authenticity to sell itself. Maybe you’re deep in the cool social ethics, and above all the rest of us trogs – I know I am, sometimes. It keeps me insulated from the truth, when I want to be. But real ethics, truthful ethics, is so very much more involved. It’s the difference between a woman and thinking about a woman on the way home after the photo where you hover handed her.

I’ve never met anyone who I thought was interested in truth who didn’t allow for the possibility of truth and who wasn’t critical and dubious of the sheet they had up against it. If there’s really nothing on the other side of the sheet, why have it at all? If there’s no possibility of something there, why would you need a barrier? Fear of the truth is the reason we hover hand it. What I’m interested in is slipping past the hand with art. I’m not an artist yet. I’m not a writer yet. It’s my intention to be one. We’ll see. In the meantime, shoo, shoo away from my door with the brochure containing the truth. You’re better off bringing over a Braveheart DVD and offering to come in and watch it with me one more time. For me, it’s 13th Warrior, but I can do Braveheart.

Experiment: Success

Just so you know, if I know you or you know me, I am NOT sitting around with anyone talking about where you shop, how you f*ck, or whether I think you have a good marriage or relationship w. your girlfriend. That’s pathetic. That’s the activity of culturally inbred hillbillies who have nothing better to do, and whose calculations of value in the world amount to “We’re the right people, and if it’s differ’n't than that, it’s wrong.” Add some twang to the word “wrong” to cover the fact that it’s bullsh*t. It’s not just women who do sit around like high schoolers and do this, either, in case you’re inclined to think so. Grown men do it, too. I remember someone moving in next to me who was part of the “in” crowd in a religious group I was part of as a kid (i.e. 18-21). He was talking about people in their thirties that we knew, mutually. “You know they sit around and talk about you, don’t you?” No, I said, I had no idea. Why? How is that a fun evening? They’re obsessed, he would say, because you’re different. They can’t abide it. Jeez, really? That’s you’re f*cking life, sitting around discussing the stuff *I* buy, or what kind of sex you think I like (you’ve no clue, believe me)? I mean, what is it, a Midwestern disease?

But that’s the impression I get. It’s cultural, and it rubs off on everyone. That’s one of the things I love about NYC. You can talk about keeping heads in your freezer on the subway or in a diner and nobody thinks it’s up to them to base their life around it. You can only spend your time monitoring who is right and who is wrong if you’ve got nothing else to do and live nowhere that has anything. Oh, they’re interested in societal problems. Bigotry right there among them. And there are bigots there, but everyone’s there, so they blend in. But jeez, in the Midwest you can’t walk a mile without someone deciding if it’s right/wrong/neutral, true/false/unknown. Everything gets broken into categories of whether your individual behavior is approved. By whom? By the crowd, of course. The mass, the throng, the little town of four thousand f*cking inbreds who know it all about how we’re each supposed to live. I’m sorry, but they don’t know diddly.

So maybe I can’t fix it, but I can tell you this, it has to be actively resisted because it’ll get us. Stay in it long enough, and be unguarded, and soon I’ll be telling someone about what’s wrong with the clothes you buy, and you’ll be commenting on my marriage as if your opinion mattered. It’s an insidious disease, and it’ll infect us if we let it.