Beginnings are risky.
When we meet new people, our first impressions set expectations that are hard to overcome. Reactions to a single word can lead to a lifelong relationship or to an abrupt end.
In the same way, the success of a blog depends on a reader’s first impressions of the first post. The first post provides direction and context, both for me in the role of writer, and for you in the role of reader.
A first post is as delicate as it is potent. What begins here sets expectations that must be met, and yet if we are to secure a lifelong relationship, then I need to get every word right.
Beginnings are risky, especially given my goal.
Thus, departures. My goal is to open new and better options for Humanity. A big goal. My belief is that the better idea always wins—in the end. No matter how much Humanity stumbles, we are always seeking the best course. My job, then, is to present my ideas in a way that shows they are the best options. My daunting task is to boldly assert that we can quickly depart from our failed ideas, our failed structures, and within a few generations secure a better destiny.
I’ve spent uncounted hours deciding what I want to write and how to write it, but I don’t know how many times I’ve changed the content of my first post. I finally realized that it doesn’t need to be what is most important to me or to you. All of my posts should exceed any normal standard of importance.
If important content is not a continuous quality of my posts you will stop reading them. And yet, this first post’s goals are to briefly state who I am, who you are, and to set the tone of what’s to come.
Who I Am
In about 1999-2001, I was at the top of my game and anxious to “do something different.” Reviewing my lifetime accomplishments, I realized that I’d made a few rich people a bit richer and…
That was all.
At the same time, my second marriage was speeding toward its matrimonial grave and I was no longer sure if any of my friends were my friends.
From that dark place I saw a light and followed it. I thought about what I wanted to do and explored doing it. I developed a thirty-year plan, which I’m twenty years into, with another twenty years to go.
Scheduling. Not my strongest suit.
I’ve spent two decades coming out of darkness and strengthening that light, that light being our future. My full intent has been to do one thing: improve the future for every person who will ever be born. And this might surprise you: I can do it. I am doing it. With or without your help, I will succeed. But with you, I’ll do it far faster.
That, I vow.
Who You Are
I hope you’ve already read the “Welcoming the Unwelcomed” message on the homepage, since it begins as an invitation to my hoped-for readers. Therein I describe you or someone you love, or both. If you don’t recognize you, no matter. Read on to where I describe how we can connect, while I simultaneously build obstacles that make it hard for us to connect.
If you haven’t read it, please do so.
What’s to Come
I intend much of what’s to come to surprise you, to enlighten you. I intend to give you tools that will change you. Just as they have been changing me.
I also want to arouse your laughter but, sadly for me, my humor isn’t for everybody.
When I began planning my what’s-to-come agenda I aimed a tad high. My first objective was to help solve the climate crisis, which back then I considered to be the pursuit that would have the highest payoff. However, after a few months of intense study I realized that I would never understand a fraction of the issues, would never discover a better solution than those our sloth-like society is half-heartedly pursuing.
No less for my failure, I continued to aim high. There are other great problems facing Humanity. Could my skills and experience help solve any of them?
Over the first year or so I discovered fifteen areas of endeavor where I could make a positive difference. I analyzed each area and decided what I could do and what I could not do, and sketched my thirty- or forty-year timeline.
The what-I-could-do list is what’s to come.
For starters, I’ve finished seven novels and I’ve put substantial effort toward another dozen or so. As well, I’m working on two nonfiction works. I’ll release the first two novels on April 1, the next two on May 1. Prior to publication you can read them for free if you’re interested. Follow the menu links. Beyond May 1, my publication schedule isn’t set, for unreasonably reasonable reasons. I’ve also drafted much of what I’ll post here, all of it currently in sketch mode, and I have a few other gifts I’m working on.
The bulk of what’s to come is the fulfillment of obligations I set for myself two decades ago, and presenting that content in a way that will engage and entertain you.
New Vectors
As a reminder, the difference between a direction and a vector is that a vector adds to direction the attribute of magnitude. Cleared it up, right?
An example will help. If you and I were racing to the top of a mountain, we could choose different routes. The paths we chose would be our directions, and your choice of path could easily decide which of us wins. But how fast you climb would be your magnitude, and your speed along your path—your vector—could mean that you win, even if you’ve chosen the longer path. Your chosen path to the top is your direction, and your speed is your magnitude. Direction plus speed equals your vector.
Applied here, our journey into the future can follow different routes, such as the path of the democrats or of the republicans—God forbid either—but the amount of energy we apply and where we apply that energy will measurably impact the success of our vector versus the vectors of others.
Which is where you come in.
If you like what you read in this first post enough to read the next post, please support me by sharing my posts. Snoop around the rest of the website. Find free things to read.
I’m doing my best to set alternative directions; better directions. The more readers I reach, the more quickly we abandon the senseless, murderous vectors others have set for us—vectors of unending conflict toward an inevitable result. By changing the vector of our efforts we can do more than just be first to the mountain’s top; we can climb a better mountain. Our children’s children’s children will be safer, saner, and happier than anyone now alive.
That too, I vow.
Choosing Mountains
To achieve a better future, we must deviate from current trends.
Therefore my posts will not be recitations of other people’s thinking. All content will be new, not aggregations of other people’s work, not rehashes of what you’ve read elsewhere. If I provide links to other websites for you to consider, it will be because I believe that the other site’s content exemplifies the same set of principles that I work from.
If anything I write is something you’ve seen on TV, heard on the radio, or you’ve come across anywhere else, please let me know. I will be humbled.
I’m climbing several mountains. My posts and books, as well as other efforts, describe alternatives that will help every Human Being live better. Live safer, live happier.
Long ago, I assumed that I could excise from my writing every bias, but you’ll find a bit of bias here and there. My apologies. However, while my biases will likely leak in, they’ll be biases similar to trying to decide for you which mountains to climb. What my biases won’t include are those that diminish you for being white, black, red, yellow, rich, poor or whatever. My catalog of biases includes writing only what will help all children, those now gracing our families and more-so those yet unborn.
Meaning that I’m biased against adults?
I want to help all adults too, but since most adults already know everything they need to know, they are—we are—a tougher sell. As we age our shells grow increasingly harder to crack.
Every Human Being is born free of shells. The younger the child, the less shell we adults have forced them into, so children have less to escape from. Adults accept new ideas less well than the young because we must first abandon our old ideas, the old ideas that we’ve spent a lifetime procuring, to make room for accepting newer, better ideas. That additional step, that abandonment of our old ideas, takes a lot of energy. The younger children are the less invested they are in our old truths, so they have more energy to spend pursuing unbiased truth.
Which is another chance for you to help. I mean to write only what is true and valuable to people yet unborn, and whenever I go off course you can correct me by leaving comments.
Activate
In the coming posts, expect new ideas. I cordially invite you to ferociously disagree with ideas I present. Judge me; judge my ideas. Focus your skepticism on my posts. Clarify how I’m wrong—and offer better solutions. Share my vector. Choose my mountains.
I have much to say, much of it potent, much of it provocative. When I no longer have things to say that you think are potent and provocative, or at least original and interesting, I hope that I’ll have the presence of mind to shut up. If not, tell me to shut up.
My Next Post
Remember my first sentence?
Beginnings are risky.
I went on to write that climbing mountains is risky. Beyond these, being open-minded is risky. And finally, no matter which future you perceive, the future is risky. Venturing into the future requires caution, but less caution than openness. Caution and openness are nearly opposites, but both are necessary, not only in our ever-quickening journey through the coming changes, but also in how we choose to create and support changes that are best for us and future generations. Being too cautious is as risky as is being too open.
Especially when your route into the future is cluttered with traps.
If you are to occasionally travel with me, you will surely fall into my traps.
Yes, I’ve set traps for you.
But don’t be alarmed. In fact, look forward to my traps. Accept their modest but provocative risks.
What is the subject of my next post?
Traps
