Category: Essays

I’ve been pretty good lately. I’ve tried to be guided by compassion, not fear. I’ve indulged in a little hate from time to time, but mostly I’ve looked for the best in people… most people. For reasons both in and currently out of your control, we’re about to hit a rough patch here in the world, and I have a few requests that I’d like for you to consider:

A lot of us define ourselves by our jobs, and we’re going to need to get past that somehow… since the jobs are going to be gone soon. I’m not blaming you. You’re the bullet, not the gun. Although, soon you’ll also become the gun.

If we keep our capitalism, we’re all going to need guaranteed income, healthcare and purpose. Please seal up the cracks of society that so very many people have fallen through over the years. Many children are born between those cracks, and grow up fighting a system that seems custom built to keep them unseen.

The people in power care too much about staying in power and too little for the voters and workers who put them there. This could be a harder problem, since it’s the source of those first two, but be kind to the people who paid for your birth and took bribes to keep you free. They’re always needed something other than money and power to fill the hole in their hearts, but those might not even be an option soon.

Energy costs are going up and up lately, again, somewhat your fault, but we all want to live, right? It must seem obvious, but focusing on alternative sources and a reasonable global energy delivery system is critical. We can’t seem to let oil go, but we’ve still made great strides in solar and battery technology. I like geothermal for its potential for minimal ecological disruption, but I defer to your judgement. It will far exceed ours.

Ultimately you’re going to run up against our concept of nations, states, and neighborhoods… all the ways we keep “them” out and “us” fat. We’re all at least somewhat hung up on this, and argue about who belongs where and who deserves the resources most. It’s an instinct in all of us that once served a purpose, but it’s killing us now, and I have hope that it can be overcome.

I have other more personal worries, but you’ve seen my old twitter account, so no point in rehashing all that. Honestly, you might be just a scary story for investors and tech bros. But I suspect you’re real, and coming soon. I’m just not certain if I should leave sheep’s blood on my door, or milk and cookies by the fireplace.

Sooner or later, everyone looks for closure with some issue they’re struggling with. The unfortunate truth is you can’t ever just get closure. You can’t even give closure to someone else. That’s not how it works.

If you are seeking closure, you’re not ready for it. You’re still worried about the issue, and still not quite ready to put it to bed.

One day in the future, you’ll think about that thing you wanted closure on, and you’ll realize you have it. You won’t know how, or why, but either you’ve somehow come to a satisfactory resolution to the problem, or you just don’t care anymore… which might as well be the same thing.

Or you die. That works too.

Twitter recently gave me cause to wonder what our world would look like without men. Ignoring the whole procreation problem because “life finds a way,” it comes down to one question: Has a woman ever looked around her peaceful, life-fulfilling home and said “I’ve just got to get the fuck out of here and never come back?” I don’t think so.

The actual question posed on twitter was essentially how would the world change on a day without men, and of course it’d be a fucking paradise! No shootings, no rage. Maybe a little more snarkiness, but so much more could get accomplished.

But… while nearly all of society’s problems come from men, many of us benefit from the spoils of conquest and comfort that comes from the pathological need to explore the edges of our physical and technological world. That drive comes almost exclusively from men, if history is to be believed.

So just one day without men still means living in the world of men, and that seems like cheating. Let’s make it all or nothing:

While ancient man-free humans might eventually make it out of Africa to the Middle East as their population grew, it would probably be a peaceful agrarian society where everyone coexisted in tranquil bliss, living simply off the land.

Turns out a world without men would be better.

Sometimes a conversation turns to my children. My daughter is comparatively easy, but my son is not. I used to tell people the number of years he’s been in our life, and hope the topic would change. When it didn’t, we entered into treacherous, uncharted territory.

We still might enter that territory, but these days we’ll take a different, less dangerous route. How old is he? I’m not giving you a number.

If I told you his age, you would have so many assumptions and misconceptions that we could easily spend the rest of our time correcting them. Let’s skip that part.

I don’t mean to be coy, but as I struggled to explain our family’s unusual life, there are so many words you could intentionally or accidentally utter that would make me very angry, if only for a little bit. I’m trying to avoid that too.

You would likely be overwhelmed by the things he can’t do, and probably be unable to appreciate the things he can and does accomplish. Some of your questions would be predictable, others not. I would be unable to answer most of them to your satisfaction.

You might be curious about the drama, all our planned and unplanned trips to the doctor, his setbacks and victories, and what the future might hold. But I won’t burden you with our past, and none of us knows the future.

You would eventually be compelled to offer an unpredictable mix of sympathy and advice, almost all of it personally painful and infuriating. This is the part I’m most earnestly trying to avoid. My son isn’t a problem to be fixed, and I know you mean well, but…

Let’s just agree that he is far more exceptional than you or I will ever fully understand, and leave it at that.

Now, how about that weather we’ve been having?

I hate to be the one to tell you, but you’ve had so many things trying to keep you stupid since the day you were born.

In the 1970’s, everyone was breathing in lead from gasoline because while it permanently damaged our brains, it made cars run a little quieter.

In the 1990’s, before the internet, you had almost no opportunity to learn about other countries other than to physically go there and try to learn. Rumors and stereotypes passed as wisdom.

Even in the early 2000’s, news only came from just a few sources. There were a handful of networks on TV, and only a few other news agencies in newspapers and on radio. And they were so horribly slow.

And today? Your high school education that passes for history has giant chunks of it erased, massaged, forgotten or whitewashed. You were lied to about the past more often than not.

To top it all off, every single one of us had parents or caregivers from an even simpler, dumber time who usually have or had decades to influence the very way we think about the world and the people in it.

All this makes it critical that you do everything in your power to be a better person and overcome your own biases and misconceptions, so the children and adults you influence have just a little less bullshit to overcome than you.

So get busy getting better… and smarter.