My daughters’ kindergarten teachers once pulled me and their dad aside at afterschool pickup time to have The Talk with us about our daughters’ behavior at school.
 
What was the crime for which my daughters, their dad, and I got reprimanded? My daughters had been telling the other kindergarteners that Santa Claus wasn’t real.
 
The other children who did believe in Santa Claus naturally got extremely upset by this news—and their parents got extremely upset by it, too. The parents wanted the teachers to tell us to tell our daughters to stop this behavior. My children were raised Jewish, so these other parents wanted my daughters to keep this information to themselves to preserve the illusion.
 
These other parents called it preserving, “The Magic.”
 
We had a lengthy discussion with these teachers in which I refused to instruct my daughters to do anything of the kind. I stated categorically that I was proud of my daughters for standing up for their convictions and having the courage to challenge others in theirs.
 
I stated that, if my daughters were out there telling people that Santa Claus isn't real, then more power to them. I stated that the issue when much further than merely believing a Christmas fairy tale. It strikes at the very heart of truth.
 
Your opinion means nothing. No one in the world is under any obligation to accept your opinion on any subject whatsoever just because you stated your opinion out loud.
 
Opinion is the lowest and weakest form of intellectual rigor.
 
If you believe that Santa Claus exists, you better be ready to back it up with facts and evidence. No one will nor should they take your word for it.
 
If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God or that God exists or even that science is the only real truth—whatever it is you believe—you better pack a lunch and bring all your arguments, logic, examples, and demonstrable, repeatable data to support your claim. Your opinion doesn’t fall into any of those categories.
 
If you believe there are only two genders or that there are twenty-two genders or if you believe that there are unlimited genders—no matter what you believe—the burden of proof is on you to convince people using the power of your evidence, logic, and critical thinking skills.
 
There is no one alive on Planet Earth who is under any obligation to believe as you believe just because you opened your mouth and a certain combination of sounds came out.
 
Your opinion means nothing if you can’t back it up and actually convince people to change their views.
 
We have a problem in the world today. We all seem to think that those who believe differently are committing some sort of crime and might actually deserve to be taken out and shot simply because they believe differently.
 
We think this and even say it in the media when none of us even takes the time to think about why WE believe as we do. If you really believe something, you should be able to explain why. You should be able to point to the logic and evidence that convinced you to believe that. You should be able to repeat these arguments to others to show them why they should believe as you do.
 
It doesn’t work to simply write these people off by saying they’re stupid or evil or just lost. The burden is on you to convince them using language they can understand. You can’t use the language of your own belief to convince someone to believe something they already don’t believe. That doesn’t work. You have to use their language to convince them.
 
If you really believe what you say you believe, you should care enough about the other person to want to show them a better way. You wouldn’t be so quick to write them off and consign them to the ash heap of eternity for the crime of believing something you disagree with.
 
If your opinion has any validity at all, if your opinion is worth enough for anyone to respect it even for a second, then the other person’s opinion is just as important as yours. You are the one who is under an obligation to take their opinion into account and consider the possibility that they could be right and you are the one who is lost, ignorant, or just misinformed—which, let’s be honest, is a very real possibility.
 
I made these arguments to my daughters’ kindergarten teachers and I told them that I wasn’t in the habit of lying to my children about the nature of reality. I wasn’t about to start lying to them just so some other parents could lie to their children about it. If some parent does want to lie to their children and tell them Santa Claus exists when the parents know for a fact that he doesn’t, then that’s the other parent’s decision. I’m not going to take responsibility for the outcome.
 
When I said this, one of the teachers got tears in her eyes. She admitted that her sixteen-year-old son still had not forgiven her for lying to him about Santa Claus.
 
Lying to our loved ones about something we know to be untrue has massive, long-term consequences we may or may not have considered. We all might want to think about that when we choose which beliefs we teach our children.
 
Whatever beliefs we teach our children, our children need to be prepared to go out into the world and meet people who believe differently. Our children need to be prepared to defend their beliefs—not with torches and pitchforks and lynch mobs—but with logical arguments, hard evidence, and real-world, repeatable examples that prove the truth of what they’re saying.
 
Our children need to understand that no one has any reason to protect your feelings just because they’re yours. We all have feelings. We all have opinions. We all have deeply held convictions and beliefs.
 
Your feelings, opinions, and convictions are no more valid than the next person’s. You are under just as great an obligation to consider and protect the other person’s feelings and beliefs as they are to protect yours.
 
If you think you have the right to go out into the world and challenge other people’s beliefs and opinions, you better be ready for the other person to do the same thing back to you.
 
You might discover that their logic, evidence, and arguments are actually far more robust than yours. Your logic, evidence, and arguments might crumble before theirs and you might be forced to change your position.
 
This is how we arrive at the truth. We don’t arrive at the truth by getting up a lynch mob every time we discover that someone believes differently than we do.
 
Attacking another person’s beliefs in this way actually blocks us from arriving at the truth. It prevents us from hearing the evidence that might convince us that what the other person believes is actually true and we are the ones who have been living a delusion.
 
None of us wants to live a lie—and yet that’s exactly what we are doing when we refuse to listen and actually take the time to communicate the reasons behind our beliefs to others. Stomping your foot and throwing a tantrum because someone hurt your feelings is not the way to convince someone that you’re right. It actually makes you look even weaker than you already are.
 
That behavior on its own is proof that your position is fragile and you don’t have the logic, evidence, and arguments to support your view. You’re announcing to the world that you already know your position is indefensible. This is the quickest way to convince people that your view is wrong. No one would want to sign up for an indefensible position and that’s exactly what you’re asking them to do.
 
Your opinion means nothing. You need to bring something a lot stronger than that or pack up and go home.
_______________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

Do a quick internet search on the Christian Trinity and you’ll open up a whole hornet’s nest of ideas, debates, discussions, and explanations of what it is, what it isn’t, whether it’s strictly, doctrinally correct, whether it’s ever explicitly stated in the Bible, and whether a person (or Christian) really needs to believe in the Trinity in order to the “saved”.
 
So let’s break this down and figure out exactly what we’re talking about here.
 
The Christian Trinity is the belief in, “The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit” as equal and co-dominant attributes of the one unified Godhead.
 
Christian theologians and believers explain that the three-part nature of the Trinity doesn’t contradict the oneness of God and that this is one of the paradoxes of religious belief.
 
One explanation of the Trinity uses the analogy of water. Water has three states—solid, liquid, and gas. Steam is water. Ice is water. Liquid water is water. It’s all water. It has three states or expressions, but at its core nature we’re talking about one thing.
 
Some explain the Trinity by using the analogy of an egg. The egg has three parts—the white, the yolk, and the shell. The egg isn’t a whole egg without each and every one of all three of these parts, but we’re still talking about one thing—the egg.
 
Others describe the Trinity as three manifestations of God’s expression in the world. Some say we aren’t talking about three different “whats” but three different “hows”. God expresses Himself in three different ways—through The Father, through The Son, and through The Holy Spirit.
 
These concepts start to fall apart when we analyze them in their own context. The entirety of the Christian faith is built on the belief that Jesus is the Son of God and that he represents “The Son” aspect of the one Godhead.
 
We’re going to put aside the question of whether or not this is true because that’s a different discussion altogether.
 
For the purpose of our analysis of the Trinity, we’re only going to examine the doctrine of the Trinity in its own right. We’re going to take apart these arguments by showing that they don’t hold up even under explanations given by their own adherents and believers.
 
Let’s take the egg argument. It is true that an egg is made up of a shell, a white, and a yolk. Each of these is a constituent part of the egg, which is the whole.
 
The yolk, the egg, and the white are each finite parts of a finite object in space. We can separate these parts from each other.
 
If we’re going to pledge allegiance to something, it would make more sense to say that we pledge allegiance to the egg rather than, say, the yolk.
 
We would assume that the egg itself, being the whole, would be a more important and more complete form of whatever it is we’re supposed to be pledging allegiance to, venerating, and worshiping as the Godhead.
 
We wouldn’t think we should be giving that kind of allegiance to something that’s just a part of this Godhead.
 
It would make no sense whatsoever for someone to say that you aren’t completing your obligations to the Godhead because you’re giving your allegiance to the egg instead of the yolk.
 
It would make no sense to say that believing in the essential nature of the yolk is somehow more important than believing in the whole entirety of the egg.
 
It would make no sense for certain people to say that you or I were actually demonic, misguided, forsaken, and even outright damned because we choose to venerate the egg as a whole totality rather than one particular part to the exclusion of all the other parts.
 
By the same argument, it would make no sense for anyone to say we have to venerate ice as the most essential form of water instead of just giving our allegiance to water in general.
 
Yet that’s exactly what the Trinity and Christian doctrine is asking us to do. It’s asking us to deny or downplay the supremacy of the whole in favor of a part—and at the same time asking us to reaffirm the supremacy of the whole. It’s a contradiction that goes way beyond being a paradox.
 
A paradox is a supposition that makes sense and its opposite also makes sense. This isn’t a paradox because one of the suppositions doesn’t make sense at all.
 
The only logical response to these arguments—if they are valid at all—is that we should venerate and give our allegiance to the whole, not the part.
 
If Christians truly believe in the one indivisible nature of the Godhead, then it only makes sense that we should give our allegiance to that instead of to some divisible part of this one whole.
 
Christians also claim to believe in the divinity of the Ten Commandments.
 
The very first commandment enjoins us that we should never have any other gods before the One True God or to worship any facsimile of Him or any particular aspect of His nature.
 
It makes no sense for Christians to say that we are worshiping and giving our allegiance to the One True Godhead by believing in the divinity of Jesus because—they say—he is the One True Godhead.
 
If that was true, we either wouldn’t need a separate name for him nor would we need a separate religion that elevates him above all the other supposed parts, facsimiles, and representations of him.
 
If that was true, it would be just as valid to say that you believe in and follow the Holy Spirit—which is what religions like Buddhism do.
 
If this was true, there would be absolutely no benefit to following Jesus verses following the One True Godhead as embodied in the Father or just the One Ineffable Wholeness of the Infinite Godhead. We wouldn’t need Jesus at all.
 
The reason we have different names for the shell, the yolk, and the white of an egg is because these things are separate and distinct from each other. Each one is finite and divisible from the others. They aren’t one and the same as the whole—which is exactly what the Christian concept of Jesus as the Son of God is. They say he is God as well as being one of these parts or separate expressions—and that isn’t possible.
 
It wouldn’t be correct of us to say the shell is one and the same with the whole egg. It wouldn’t be correct of us to say that ice is one and the same with the totality of water because it isn’t. Water can be other things that are not ice just as an egg can be other things that are not shell.
 
The expressions or manifestations theory doesn’t work, either. If we’re going to say that God expresses Himself in three different ways, then it also follows that He would express himself in thousands of ways. It would be just as valid to say that He expresses himself through each and every human being alive and every human being who has ever lived.
 
If the Christian argument is that something can be one thing and three things at the same time, then it would be just as valid to say I’m going to put my faith in the one thing. I don’t need the three things because the one thing is just as valid.
 
If we take the egg and water arguments at their face value, then the one thing is the more valid definition of what we’re talking about—not the three separate things—none of which embody the totality of what we’re talking about.
 
Gone are the days when any religion or group can tell its members to just accept an ideology without question and threaten its members with negative consequences if they do question.
 
During the 2002 Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal, one frustrated investigator stated that the Church’s delays, obstructions, and secrecy resembled the behavior of the Mafia more than a religious institution.
 
Abusive authoritarian cults tell their members to accept an ideology without question and punish those who do question. That’s what cults do. A truly religious organization—an institution that truly wishes the best for us and wants us to follow truth, goodness, and holiness—such an institution would never ask us to accept any ideology without question.
 
A truly benevolent belief system would encourage questions and challenges. A truly benevolent belief system would want us to investigate on our own, to think critically, and to discover the ultimate truth that would give our lives the most meaning and connection to the Divine.
 
The days are long gone when any belief system can expect us to just swallow a totally illogical argument that makes no sense and doesn’t comport with reality. Critical thinking is the essence of spiritual belief. If a belief system doesn’t give us that much, then it’s useless to us and has no place in our lives.
_______________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

Imagine you’re walking or driving down the street and you see a young teenage girl standing on the sidewalk.
 
She has her hair dyed black and gelled up in spikes. She’s wearing heavy black makeup, black lipstick, black eyeshadow, and she’s penciled her eyebrows so thickly that they’re three times their normal size.
 
She’s wearing safety pins for jewelry, a thick, heavy, oversized leather jacket covered in chains and spikes, a short leather miniskirt, fishnet stockings, and heavy black combat boots. She’s also wearing wide wrist cuffs covered in spikes.
 
Keep that image in your mind.
 
Now imagine you’re walking or driving down the street and you see a businessman standing on the sidewalk.
 
He’s wearing an expensive tailored suit with his tie cinched up all the way to his neck. He’s wearing an expensive watch, a gold tiepin, a brightly colored pocket square, highly polished leather shoes, a leather belt, and he’s carrying a briefcase.
 
He keeps his hair clipped short, he has a manicure, and he’s in excellent shape with broad, muscular shoulders and not a scrap of fat around his midsection.
 
Both of these two people are broadcasting to the world that they belong to two separate and mutually exclusive social demographics.
 
Both of them are using their clothes, their appearance, their visual presentation, and their body language to announce to everyone they see that they belong to two separate groups.
 
Every single one of us can tell at a split-second’s glance exactly which group these people belong to. None of us could possibly mistake the signals they’re sending. None of us could possibly think either of them belongs to the other person’s group.
 
We aren’t doing these people any disservice by making these judgments. Quite the contrary. We’re doing both of these people a massive service.
 
They want us to make these judgments. They want us to understand the very first time we see them exactly who they are, what they value, and where they belong in society. That’s exactly why both of them use these signals—so we understand these things right off the bat BEFORE we find out anything else about them.
 
Both of these people want to make an impression on us. Both of these people want our first impression to color everything else we might learn about who they are. Neither of these people wants to leave any doubt in our minds exactly who we’re dealing with.
 
These people do this so that we WILL make these judgments. These people want to make sure we understand that these are the most important things we can possibly find out about who they are, what they value, and where they fit in society.
 
Neither of these people wants to be mistaken for the other. Each of them would be highly insulted if anyone made the mistake of assigning them to the other person’s group.
 
Neither of these people wants to be included in the other person’s group. Belonging to the other person’s group is the worst fate each of them can possibly imagine.
 
The businessman would never want anyone to think of him as fringe, rebellious, or counterculture. The goth teenager would never want anyone to think of her as driven, ambitious, or successful.
 
No one wants to be included in opposing or even different groups. No one wants inclusion.
 
When people say they want inclusion, they really mean they want acceptance.
 
Everyone wants their life choices, preferences, and group affiliations to be accepted without any pressure, manipulation, or implication that we should change to something else or to fit what someone else thinks we should be.
 
We want the freedom and acceptance to live our values, associate with people who agree with us and share our tastes, and not to be bombarded every minute of the day with the message that we’re wrong, evil, or misguided for choosing to live this way.
 
No one wants inclusion. Inclusion isn’t a thing. These lines between groups and demographics are there for a reason. They’re there to mark that Group A is over here and Group B is over there.
 
No one in Group A wants to cross that line to be included in Group B and vice versa.
 
What they really want is to be left alone to follow their own path without any interference from others.
 
This applies to all of us regardless of what group or demographic we belong to.
 
The sooner we all understand this and learn it, the better we’ll be able to live with each other, accept each other, and actually come to value each other because of our differences instead of hating each other for them.
_______________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

Think of human life as divided into three stages.
 
The first stage is childhood. This is where the individual develops a sense of identity, who they are, and where they fit into a family. The individual lays the foundation for how they’re going to show up in the world at large.
 
Adolescence is the stage where the individual starts to form a sense of where they fit into society. Relationships with peers become all-important as a kind of incubator for all future relationships. It becomes socially important to fit in and to be seen as doing what everyone else is doing.
 
 Adulthood is the stage where the individual should have ideally already built the structure of their own identity. They should have already learned who they are, why they’re here, and where they fit into society as a whole.
 
Individuality takes the foreground in adulthood. We care less and less as we age about conforming to what everyone else is doing.
 
We establish ourselves as unique from everyone else with our own identities, our own gifts, and we learn to leverage these so we can make a contribution that society will value.
 
The process of growing from childhood through adolescence to adulthood teaches us many lessons.
 
One of the most important lessons we learn in the process of growing up is that it isn’t advisable, beneficial, or productive to copy everyone else around us.
 
We learn that the world values us for our individuality, not for turning ourselves into robots exactly like every robot coming off the assembly line.
 
Copying others is not a way to establish our own identity. Our identity as individuals is rooted in our points of difference—the things that make us completely other than what everyone else is.
 
We find out as we age that the world only values our points of difference. The world doesn’t need or care about things it can get from every other person out there. In fact, the world despises those things and shuns them.
 
Offering a unique valuable contribution to the world means showing our unique individuality and offering something no one else can offer. These are the only things the world values.
 
The same goes for relationships. No one wants to love a robot. No one can love a robot.
 
No one can love us if we aren’t showing up as unique individuals. In fact, our uniqueness is the only thing we have that anyone could possibly love. No one can love the things about us that every other person on the planet already has.
 
A wise man once said, “A normal person is someone you don’t know very well.”
 
As we grow and gain wisdom in life, we come to realize that there is no such thing as the status quo. There is no such thing as average. There is no such thing as normal.
 
Everyone goes through a crisis of identity when they enter adolescence. This crisis is in fact what adolescence is. Everyone goes through exactly the same thing. It would be abnormal and worrisome if someone didn’t go through it.
 
Every child goes through the crisis of letting go of their child self, rebuilding their identity from the ground up, and trying to figure out who they are and how they fit into the world.
 
A adolescent who appears to have it all together on the outside is covering up their insecurities to make themselves blend in. They have no idea who they are or how they fit in.
 
They have no established identity of their own, so they try to make themselves a cookie-cutter copy of everyone else in the hope that no one will notice anything objectionable or unusual about them.
 
Adolescents have an irrational phobia of anyone considering them weird, different, or unusual.
 
We find it easy to look around at the people near us or in the media and think they’re normal. We find it easy to think these people are living the way societal rules tells us we should live.
 
The truth is that these people are going through all the same stress, anxiety, insecurity, and internal questioning that we’re going through on a daily basis.
 
This is called being human. No one escapes it.
 
Having a bunch of money doesn’t make it go away. Achieving any kind of success in business or society doesn’t make it go away. It can’t go away because this is a necessary part of being human.
 
Anyone who claims not to be going through these things is lying and putting on a false front. They do this to try to trick everyone into thinking the person is normal and everything is the way it should be.
 
A person would only need to do this if they’re struggling on the inside and want to hide that struggle. This is the paradox of viewing someone else as more normal, more acceptable, and more popular than ourselves.
 
Most of the time, the more normal and put-together someone looks on the outside, the more insecure, anxious, and troubled they are on the inside.
 
There is no such thing as the social status quo. There is no such thing as normal.
 
It isn’t possible for us to be perfectly average and to exactly fit into what “society” says we should be.
 
The reality is that there is no society that might say this. Society is made up of individuals who all fall into two categories.
 
The first category consists of the people who are following all the other people around them, copying trends, trying to keep up with what everyone else is doing, and trying to blend in so no one sees anything unique or different or individual about them.
 
The second category consists of the people who have gone through the fire to discover their own unique identity, mission, and gifts. These people embrace who they are and market it to the world as a unique offering no one can get from anywhere else.
 
We need to understand that everyone in the first category is living with the strain and anxiety of NOT knowing who they are, where they belong, or what they’re really doing here.
 
These people aren’t making it easier for themselves by blending in. They’re actually making it harder because we’re all born with an innate drive to ask these questions and to seek the answers.
 
These people are deliberately shutting themselves off from the one source of information that would actually make them happy. They think being accepted by society will ease the tension and anxiety of not belonging.
 
In reality, following others and copying them is a recipe for disaster. We’ll constantly feel like we don’t belong because no one will ever be able to accept us for who we truly are. No one will ever even find out who we truly are.
 
These people spend their entire lives locked in the adolescent need to belong to some outside notion of the status quo. These people avoid the path of identity at all costs.
 
These people spend their lives chasing trends, finding out and following what everyone else is doing, and blocking out all drive to discover themselves and what their own unique path in life might be.
 
Lasting happiness, acceptance, belonging, and a sense of purpose can only be found through embracing our individuality. This is in fact the essence of maturity. It is in fact the secret that makes life worth living.
------------------All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

Maybe it’s because I have children. They’re the reason I wound up watching a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine videos, so bear with me while I take a trip down childhood lane.
 
Thomas the Tank Engine and his engine friends all care about one thing. They all want to be Really Useful Engines. They work hard to get the job done and to keep the North Western Railway running the way it should.
 
We all want to be Really Useful Engines. We all want to be valuable and contribute to society. We also want to make a living and support ourselves through our own efforts. We want to make money and be successful and to be able to buy the things we want.
 
So why do so many of us have trouble when it comes to finances and employment?
 
Finance and employment is the arena in which we demonstrate to the world that we have something valuable to offer. When we offer something of value to the world, we get paid for it. This is where our thinking can cause us problems.
 
The psychologist Erik Erikson developed a theory of child development that teaches us a lot about this subject. He outlines the different psychological stages of development and when and where in childhood people develop certain mental structures that stay with them for life.
 
Erikson’s model helps us understand how disrupted child development can implant damaged worldviews in our minds. These corrupted models stay with us long into adulthood and can become permanent unless we take steps to change them.
 
Negative experiences and childhood trauma corrupt our view of the world. They destroy the social contract that says the world is a fair, safe place where people get what they deserve according to their skills, gifts, and abilities. Corrupted models and worldviews destroy our sense of justice that bad people get punished for their crimes.
 
This violation of trust makes us question whether we’re really able to understand what another person is saying or if we’re misreading their true intentions.
 
These corrupted, misleading models destroy our ability to trust in a benevolent authority figure. Powerful people may have taken advantage of us and misused their authority to get what they wanted from us. They taught us that authority figures are malicious and can’t be trusted.
 
All of these issues impact our finances and employment. If we can’t trust an authority figure, we’re going to have a hard time working under any kind of boss or business owner who wants to tell us what to do.
 
We react to authority in one of two ways. Either we rebel against and push the authority away by saying, “You can’t tell me what to do!”
 
Or we knuckle under and obey. We put our boss in the position of authority previously occupied by the person who misused their authority against us the first time.
 
We cooperate out of fear. They recreate original power dynamic with our boss so we can get along and keep our jobs.
 
All of us received a message from our parents and society about money, employment, and our relationship with the outer world.
 
Our parents give us our first, most important programming about what money means, what we have to do to get it, and how we’re going to relate to the world through the medium of finance.
 
Take a moment to examine these messages. Maybe your parents told you to go to college, get a good job, and build a safe retirement account.
 
Maybe your parents taught you through example that you would never get a job and that you would be on welfare all your life.
 
Maybe your parents modeled for you that you should turn to a life of crime and spend your life in prison.
 
Once we understand this model, we can take power back into our own hands. We don’t have to do it the way our parents told us to. We don’t have to live in poverty and hopelessness anymore—nor do we have to be corporate wage slaves.
 
There’s a beautiful parable in the Bible that Jesus tells his followers on Mount Olivet. The story is called The Parable of The Talents.
 
In this case, the talents are actually gold coins used as money. Some versions call the story The Parable of the Minas (a coin of money) or The Parable of the Pounds.
 
In the story, a rich man gives each of his three servants a certain number of gold coins to see which of them uses the money the best way.
 
The first one buries his money in the ground to keep it safe. The master calls this man an ‘evil and lazy servant’. He takes the money away from him and throws him out on the street where there will be ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’.
 
The other two servants invested their money and doubled it. The master calls them ‘good and faithful servants’ and rewards them.
 
He takes the money away from the one who hid his talent and gives it to the one who made the most profit. The master says, “For the one who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”
 
This is an inspiring and insightful story that teaches us to use our abilities. In the story, the ‘talent’ refers to money, but we can learn a lot by taking the modern meaning of the word to understand he’s talking about our inborn gifts, abilities, and strengths.
 
Each of us was born with gifts. We all have skills and abilities unique to us. If we sit on them and hide them from the world, we might as well not have them at all. They won’t benefit us and we’ll wallow in misery for life.
 
Even if we get a good job, keep our head down, and build a safe retirement account, we’re going to come to the end of our lives feeling hollow and unfulfilled.
 
We’re going to understand at the core of our being that we didn’t live the best life we could have. We’re going to realize we could have done more. We could have been happier.
 
We could have made just as much money doing something we love and being our own boss. We don’t have to kowtow to someone else to get there.
 
The alternative is living in poverty and scraping by on hand-outs. A lot of poor people make the excuse, “I’d rather be poor than bow and scrape to someone else for a living.” This is their way of rebelling against authority. They refuse to play the game and obey, so they opt out and do nothing.
 
What they don’t realize is that there’s a third way to make a living—one that doesn’t involve obeying OR living on hand-outs. This requires that we to invest our talents, gifts, and abilities and turn them into profit. This means being our own boss and ruling OURSELVES more strictly than a boss ever could.
 
I spent 25 years unemployed and unemployable. I got fired from dozens of jobs. I couldn’t deal with authority and I couldn’t communicate effectively with other human beings.
 
I had been on welfare for nearly eight years when I became a professional freelance writer at the age of 40. I had lived under a bridge. I had lived in the back of a pickup truck. I had gone without food countless times because I had no money.
 
All of this came from one simple misunderstanding. I had a certain concept in my mind of what the word “job” meant.
 
When I thought about working for a living, I imagined getting up in the morning, getting dressed, going somewhere, working for somebody else, clocking in and clocking out, getting a paycheck, and having a boss tell me what to do.
 
I didn’t understand there was another way. I never could have envisioned the life I have now.
 
Let me paint you a picture of the job I have now. This will give you a perfect view of what I’m talking about.
 
Nowadays, I get up in the morning. I spend the first hours of my day taking care of my kids. I make their breakfasts and pack their lunchboxes.
 
I give out lots of cuddles. I brush and braid my two daughters’ hair. I do all this in between taking a shower, doing my workout, and getting myself ready for the day. I make sure the kids have their backpacks. Then I drive them to school.
 
I drop off my two girls at school and drive back home with my little boy. I work on the computer while he plays with his train set and listens to audiobooks. Remember Thomas the Tank Engine? Now you know how I learned so much about him.
 
I type non-stop from 9am to 3pm. Then I go pick up the girls from school. After that, I take care of home, do laundry, make dinner, clean the kitchen, help with homework and reading practice, etc, etc, etc.
 
No one tells me what to do. I communicate with my clients. I negotiate my contracts. I set my own schedule. I decide when I’m going to do a contract and when I’m going to complete it.
 
No one tells me I have to write a certain amount per day to get the contract done on time. I decide that and I’m the one who tells myself to write a certain amount every day. I push myself.
 
I’m a much stricter taskmaster to myself than any boss I ever had. That’s my job and I LOVE it. I’m doing something that is tons of fun. I’m good at it and I get paid really, really well. I support my family doing something that’s a game to me. I couldn’t ask for a better life.
 
Take a look at your own life. What did you really enjoy doing as a child? Do you have a passion you love doing? Are you really good at something?
 
Pick out two or three things you would absolutely LOVE to make a living doing. What would it actually take for you to make a decent living doing them? Would you have to market yourself? Would you have to create a portfolio of your work and apply for jobs?
 
A lot of people have a mental block when it comes to asking for money in exchange for something they did. We think helping people and making money are mutually exclusive and we can’t do both. All of that has to go down the tubes for this to work.
 
All of us HAVE to get paid. There is no reason on God’s green Earth why any of us should put time and effort into creating something, only to receive nothing in return. We’re giving value to the world and people should pay us for it.
 
Think of a fruiting tree. We draw nourishment from the soil to produce something other people value.
 
They should exchange something THEY value to get what we produced. No one would dream of going to the supermarket and taking a nice, ripe peach without paying for it. Why should my clients and customers pay nothing to get something I slaved to create? They shouldn’t.
 
Hobbyists and amateurs work for free. Professionals get paid. We can all keep being hobbyists and amateurs. We can keep working our day jobs, but that’s not going to make us happy.
 
Understand this: when we start getting paid to do something, it turns into a job. Say I’m an amateur potter and I want to become a professional. Once I do that and start making a living at it, I’m going to have to turn it into a job like any other.
 
I have to get up in the morning and go do my job. I have to spend a certain number of hours working in my studio and it will be work. Trust me on this. I don’t get to screw around doing whatever I please. I need a set schedule and I need to force myself to stick to it.
 
That’s what I do as a writer. I don’t sit down in front of the computer to have fun. It’s a job. It’s effort.
 
I have stress. I have to deal with clients and customers. I have to deal with people I don’t like. Artists have to organize venues to show their work. They have to keep their accounts in order and stick to a production budget. There will be times—lots of times—when we don’t want to do the hard slog and we have to do it anyway.
 
A job without stress is called a hobby. Amateurs and hobbyists don’t have stress. Professionals have stress. Professionals have a job. Amateurs and hobbyists have fun. They save the stress for the day jobs they hate.
 
We don’t stop working when we go out on our own to do a job we love. Most entrepreneurs work harder at their businesses than they ever did at a job. We have more stress and more responsibility.
 
There is one thing we will never have to deal with again. We will never have to deal with an authority figure again. That is a wonderful, freeing feeling you have to experience to believe. No one will ever tell us what to do, not even our clients. When we negotiate with them, we communicate as equals.
 
When I talk to my clients, I tell them how much they’re going to pay me. I tell them when I’m going to start the job and when I’m going to finish it.
 
This comes with a flip side. They tell me what they want, too. They tell me the specifics of the job they want me to write. I don’t get to write whatever I please. I have to make certain they get the product they want or I’m out of a job.
 
It’s very important to me that all my clients get the book they want and that they leave satisfied. That’s what makes me a professional. I’m not a child playing in the sandbox.
 
They come to the table expecting to spend a certain amount of money. In exchange, they want a product they can use that fills their needs. That’s what I provide.
 
When I apply for a job, I send them a cover letter that tells them my experience. I tell them that I’m absolutely confident I can deliver what they want and that I’m the best person for that job.
 
This comes from experience, but it also comes from believing in myself. It comes from believing I can do what I say I will do. It comes from an ironclad commitment to my work and to delivering.
 
So how can you get this for yourself? How do you build a life you love? How do you get a job that doesn’t include an authority figure?
 
Option #1: Freelancing.
 
If you’re a writer, graphic designer, IT whiz, architect, biologist, researcher, engineer, or just about anything else, you can freelance. You can make as much if not more from freelancing, all the while being your own boss.
 
The internet is your best friend. There are dozens of freelancing platforms where anyone can apply for jobs in any one of hundreds of fields. Get creative. Build a portfolio. Put yourself out there.
 
A portfolio doesn’t have to be perfect. Just get started. Your portfolio and your job will evolve over time. Apply for a job you KNOW you can successfully complete. Get paid. Then apply for another one. Put one foot in front of the other. Stack one brick on top of another. That’s how to build a career.
 
When I started freelance writing, I created a portfolio with two very generic writing samples on it. I fired off one very cookie-cutter contemporary romance and one piece of lesbian erotica. I stuck them up on a freelancing platform and started applying for jobs.
 
I started writing erotica. Then I noticed that one of my clients had posted a job for action/adventure. I asked him to give me a chance. That’s how my career started. I started at the bottom of the pay scale working for less than minimum wage.
 
When I started, I sucked. I studied writing craft. One of my clients gave me a link to one of my books that he had published so I could read the reviews. That’s how I got better. I honed my craft and I worked my way up to the top of my pay scale, which is where I am now.
 
Option #2: Commission work.
 
A commission salesperson gets paid based on how many sales they make. They have to hustle as they’ve never hustled before and that can be a massive motivational boost.
 
The more I work, the more I get paid. That salesperson has to get themselves up in the morning, get out there, meet their customers, and talk them up. Salespeople have to present a professional appearance. They have to communicate effectively. Most of them love it and thrive on the pressure.
 
They might have a boss, but their boss doesn’t tell them what to do. The salesperson has to manage themselves. They have to push themselves if they want to get paid.
 
Option #3: Start your own business.
 
Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket! This is a big step, but it can also be the most rewarding.
 
The sky is the limit when it comes to profit. A new business could become the next KFC. It could become the next Microsoft. Do you have something you love to do? Do you have an idea you’re busting to share with the world?
 
I started this blog on the side while working full time as a professional freelance writer. I did it in the small hours of the morning. I did it on weekends. I made a website and I started posting content. End of story.
 
Remember: the internet is your best friend. There is no one on the planet you cannot reach. Customers and clients are out there searching for you. They are hungry for what you have to offer. They are just waiting for you to come along, solve their problems for them, and they will pay you for it.
 
We all have a choice to make. Which would you rather have?
 
Would you rather have a successful job & acknowledgement from the universe that you’re a Really Useful Engine and people value your gifts and talents?
 
Or would you rather live the rest of your life wondering what might have been? Would you rather wake up one day and find out you’re old and useless and that you’ll never know what you could have accomplished if you only summoned the courage to take the first step?
______________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

We get issued at birth with the greatest supercomputer ever designed.
 
The problem is that we don’t get issued with any instructions on how to work the supercomputer. We all have to flounder around using trial and error to figure it out, which can lead to disastrous consequences.
 
In the worst case, a malfunctioning supercomputer can cause us incalculable damage.
 
Thinking the wrong thing can do more damage to our wellbeing, our health, and our happiness than someone or something deliberately setting out to harm us. 
 
Life is the training manual for learning how to operation these computers we all carry around in our heads. Unfortunately, this process takes decades.
 
It might take us into our fifties or beyond before we master the basics so we can actually start living productive, effective lives. 
 
Some people never figure it out. They spend their lives miserable and destroying themselves and everyone around them.
 
This is a really, really stupid way to run the world, but I don’t make the rules.
 
So today I’m issuing everyone with an instruction manual for your brain. These techniques will make sure our onboard computers are functioning the way they ought to. These instructions will allow us to correct any errors or malfunctions that may pop up. 
 
Think of your life as a car you’re driving down a road. It’s up to you to get behind the wheel and steer the car where you want it to go.
 
If we got into a car and smashed our foot down on the accelerator pedal without bothering to steer, we would probably wind up sinking into the bay, not to mention threatening life and limb of ourselves and everyone around us.  
 
To operate our lives, we have to steer.
 
Think of the human body as a high-performance racehorse that needs proper nutrition and exercise to function at its peak.
 
We can also see our bodies as cars. Our bodies need the right fuel, the right maintenance, the right tire pressure. They break down and become unusable if we neglect them. The same thing happens to our bodies. 
 
If we had a computer that didn’t work right, we might say a few bad words to it. Then we would take it to a programmer and get it fixed so it did what we wanted it to do. 
 
If a car coughed, spluttered, and lurched down the highway belching black smoke from under the hood, we would take the car to the repair shop.
 
We wouldn’t get the car back until the mechanic fixed it—and I mean really fixed what was wrong with it and returned it to its proper state of functioning.  
 
If the mechanic tilted their head to one side, listened to us describe what went wrong with the car, and said, “How did that make you feel?” we would want to sue them for fraud. We would take the car from mechanic to mechanic until we found someone who could actually fix the damn thing. 
 
We all have things going on in our brains that work against our best interest. Our negative self-talk, outdated beliefs, and self-sabotaging doubts interferes with us living our best lives. 
 
We watch other people whizzing past us on the highway of life while we limp along the shoulder in half-dead jalopies strapped together with duct tape.
 
Our cars billow smoke across the windshield so we can’t see the road ahead while others cruise past us pumping music from their high-performance sound systems. We watch these people waving and smiling from their windows and it makes us feel even worse. 
 
Today is the day we get our cars and our onboard computers fixed so they actually work. 
 
The first step it to recognize that all this trash in our heads is slowing us down and even stopping us from living our lives.
 
A lot of this garbage needs to be eliminated. Other parts need to be repaired and corrected. Fortunately for us, it can be. 
 
Our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, doubts, and ideas as really just habits. That’s what our thoughts are. They’re habits like every other habit in our lives.
 
Repetition over time locks our brains into these entrenched ruts. We keep thinking the same things over and over again year after year, even when we know these things aren’t true.
 
These thought patterns become so habitualized that we don’t even recognize the patterns that keep those habits in place. 
 
Let’s take out our magnifying glasses and analyze a random thought I know a lot of you suffer with. Here is the thought we’re going to analyze.
 
“I’m worthless and everyone would be better off without me.” 
 
This thought is extremely counterproductive to a healthy, thriving life. It is poisonous and it is completely untrue. It’s a bald-faced lie and yet so many of us carry this around with us.
 
We spend year after year believing this and repeating it to ourselves. Why? Do you even realize how tragic that is? 
 
I could spout off a whole laundry list of other thoughts, ideas, notions, and doubts we tell ourselves.
 
“I’m ugly.” “I’m unlovable.” I’ll stop there. You get the idea. 
 
The thoughts we want to eliminate and reprogram are all either blatantly untrue, they’re supported by flimsy or nonexistent evidence, or they’re leading us to a conclusion that is against our long-term wellbeing. These are the criteria we’re going to use to identify thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that need to be changed. 
 
These thoughts and others like them are all habits. They’re mental habits.
 
Maybe our parents or someone else told us this in a way that the thoughts took root in our minds. Maybe these toxic people pointed out evidence they said supported these beliefs. 
 
How the habit became ingrained does matter, but it doesn’t matter nearly as much as breaking these habits.
 
We break these habits exactly the same way we would break any other unhealthy habit like smoking and drinking too much. 
 
How do we break habits? We dissect them down into pieces. We dismantle the habit into its support components.
 
We need to understand each segment in a continuous train of thought that brought us to the conclusion that we are worthless and that everyone will be better off without us. 
 
That conclusion is the endpoint of a sequence of other thoughts that carries us to the conclusion. 
 
Think about the support habits and entrenched lifestyle routines that keep someone smoking cigarettes year after year.
 
Maybe the person grew up in a house where their parents smoked. Maybe the person surrounds themselves with friends who smoke.
 
Maybe the person buys cigarettes as a matter of routine each time they stop for groceries or gas.
 
The person has to set aside a certain amount of money in their weekly budget so they can afford to buy cigarettes. They go through a series of steps that make smoking frictionless and inevitable. 
 
Now apply the same logic to our thoughts. We started out with a certain thought pattern that may have been implanted some outside source.
 
Now we go through a set routine that keeps the thought pattern going. We consistently focus on the evidence we choose to believe proves that the conclusion is true. 
 
We dwell on every tiny mistake or stumble. We magnify every awkward moment and turn that into more evidence to convince ourselves that we are worthless, that we will never amount to anything, and that WE are the problem that needs to be solved to protect the world from everything that is wrong with us. 
 
We do this while ignoring the evidence of our achievements, talents, relationships, and strengths. This is the evidence that we ARE valuable, that people love us in spite of our faults, that our lives are something good and holy. 
 
Each of us has the tools and screwdrivers and soldering irons necessary to fix these computers in our heads. First of all, we need to roll up our sleeves and take the thing apart. We need to expose the wiring that is interfering with our operating systems. 
 
Next, we trace exactly where our thinking is malfunctioning. We identify the lies and manipulation other people used to screw us up. We attack those thoughts and replace them with the correct programming that serves our best interest. 
 
Our thoughts and feelings are systems we put in place to make our brains function in a certain way. Thoughts and feelings are blocks of code made up of many lines, each one an idea or thought on its own. These lines combine to form a single mental process that carries us to a conclusion, an outcome, or a life function. 
 
All we have to do is go through the same process of habitually repeating the opposite thought or belief to replace the old one.
 
We got like this by thinking the negative thought again and again for years. Now we have to do the same thing in reverse.
 
We need to hold up and focus on the evidence that we are valuable, that we are loved, and that we have something priceless to contribute to the world and the rest of society.
 
This evidence is all around us—in every facet of our lives. We just have to look for it. If it isn’t there readily available where you can see it, you can create it.
 
All you have to do is accomplish your goals, be kind and loving to those around you, and start living your life on purpose in a way that proves to yourself that you deserve to be here.
 
This process isn’t easy, but it’s a whole lot better than living in misery with all these horrible thoughts in our heads. These thoughts can either wreck our lives or build us into something happy, beautiful, and thriving.
 
Each of us can and should take it upon ourselves to make sure our brains are running the right programs.
 
Mental illness, negative self-talk, or other malfunctions are all the end-stage symptoms of an operating system infected with viruses or programming errors.
 
We can reprogram these out so our brains function properly and bring us the fulfilment and happiness we all crave. 
________________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

Lost somewhere in the mists of fantasyland dwells the elusive unicorn who can eat as much as they want of whatever they want whenever they want.
 
This mythical creature doesn’t have to worry about their health, their weight, or their appearance. 
 
The rest of us have issues with food. Everyone reading this has body image issues, weight problems, and eating disorders.
 
We’re constantly at war with ourselves over eating too much or too little, weighing too much or too little, or thinking we’re eating or weighing too much or too little.  
 
Nearly every blog article or self-help outlet begins the discussion on food, weight, and body image with the idea that we should all just love ourselves a lot more.
 
That’s all really wonderful, but it doesn’t do much to improve our health. It definitely doesn’t help if we have an eating disorder. 
 
So what are we supposed to do about it? 
 
I struggled with anorexia for twenty years. Then I had three kids and struggled another twenty years to lose the weight I gained when I was pregnant.
 
So whichever side of this issue you’re on, take this as a message from someone who has been where you are now. 
 
Let me paint you a picture of a healthy attitude toward food. 
 
Let’s say we bought a prize racehorse worth $50million.
 
We would make absolutely certain that the animal got the right amount of the right kind of food at the right times of the day.
 
We would probably pay a lot of money to hire a veterinary nutritionist to tell us exactly what, when, and how much the horse should eat.
 
We would weigh every meal down to the microgram. What the food looked and tasted like would be so far down on the priority list that they wouldn’t even show up on our radar.
 
We would make sure the horse got exactly the right amount of exercise, not too much and not too little, balanced with adequate rest, to ensure the horse performed at its peak.
 
We would give the horse a comfortable place to sleep so nothing disturbed it and so the horse would feel relaxed and well taken care of. 
 
Why would we go to such lengths to do all this? Because we recognize the horse’s value. We would want to protect our investment and make sure the horse could run its best race.
 
Now let’s apply the same logic to ourselves.
 
We don’t go to the same pains to ensure that we get the right amount of the right kind of food so that we stay in the peak of health.
 
Why don’t we do this? Because we don’t value ourselves.
 
We think we don’t matter, that it’s too much trouble, or that we don’t deserve that kind of care, attention, and effort.
 
Disordered eating is a form of self-sabotage that keeps all our other problems going.
 
If we’re already overweight, we tell ourselves that one more donut won’t make any difference, so why not?
 
We tell ourselves that one more day of slouching on the couch won’t make any difference, so we might as well put off exercising until tomorrow.
 
We tell ourselves every lie in the book. Meanwhile, the negative health consequences of eating this way keep piling up and getting worse as we age.
 
Our bodies become less able to cope with the stress of dosing ourselves every day with toxic poisons.
 
These substances don’t just fail to provide the nutrition we need. These foods actually strip away any nutrition that we do consume.
 
They rob us of the building blocks we need to live. That’s why our bodies break down and stop working.
 
A healthy approach to food treats us and our physical needs the same way we would treat a high-value racehorse. It treats us as our most valuable investment. 
 
Food is not a form of entertainment. It is not a form of recreation. 
 
Food is not a carnival ride of sensations to constantly stimulate us with adrenaline rushes of excitement.
 
We do not eat food for pleasure. Food is not what we do when we go out with our friends or what we do when we’re bored.
 
It isn’t there to give our hands something to do while we watch videos.  
 
It isn’t a reward for surviving our stressful lives or to make us feel better about our how worthless we feel.
 
Food is a tool. The purpose of that tool is to maximize our performance, both mental and physical, and to keep us alive and in the peak of health.
 
If food doesn’t accomplish that, it isn’t doing its job. It would be better for us not to eat at all than to eat foods that doesn’t keep us healthy and alive.
 
There is no magical barrier between our brains and the rest of our bodies. The same blood that flows through your brain also flows through every other part of your body, including your gut.
 
Serotonin is the chemical most anti-depressants try to mimic and the majority of our serotonin is produced in the gut.
 
What happens in the brain affects the rest of the body and what happens in the body affects the brain.
 
If we have any mental health problem at all—which is most people reading this—our first project should be to start eating correctly. 
 
Depression, anxiety, body image issues—they all come down to what we put in our mouths.
 
What we put in is what we get out. Food is the foundation of everything. Garbage in, Garbage out. 
 
Food is not our friend. Food is a tool. 
 
Food is not optional. What we eat, when we eat, and how we eat are not optional, either. 
 
Athletes, dancers, celebrities, supermodels, bodybuilders—all the people whose bodies we admire—they all treat food as a job.
 
These people aren’t out there eating whatever they want. No way. They count every calorie going in.
 
They don’t eat trash. They weigh their food down to the microgram and account for every macronutrient.
 
These people wouldn’t dare to treat food as anything else because everything they do depends on what they eat. They can’t eat a bunch of trash and expect to get the result they want. 
 
They value the result so highly that they make certain they eat accordingly. They treat food as a job because it IS their job. 
 
I can hear the protests now. Some might argue that this approach robs eating of all its pleasure. I would ask just how much pleasure we’re getting from this kind of disordered eating. 
 
Eating compulsively or unconsciously doesn’t give us any pleasure from our food. This kind of disordered eating is exactly the thing that is robbing us of getting any pleasure from our food.
 
If you went out and stuffed your face with a candy bar right now, it wouldn’t give you any pleasure. It wouldn’t make you happy. You would get a few seconds of a nice taste in your mouth.
 
You’ve probably tasted that same candy bar a million times before. You could probably get exactly the same feeling of pleasure by NOT eating the candy bar and simply remembering what it tastes like.
 
Eating it won’t do anything for you except to make you ashamed of losing control of yourself.
 
Disordered eating habits definitely aren’t giving us any pleasure if they’re causing us mental illness or unhappiness. Anorexics definitely aren’t taking any pleasure in food. 
 
Disordered eating habits make hate our bodies and feel terrible about ourselves. This feeling isn’t worth the few seconds of pleasure we get from putting something sugary in our mouths.
 
We can take far more pleasure by valuing ourselves. What could be more pleasurable than biting into a crisp, juicy tomato or a ripe strawberry?
 
We can experience a rush of gratitude when we put this food in our mouths and truly appreciate the taste for the joy that it is.
 
We can get more pleasure and genuine fulfilment from that than we would from cramming a whole chocolate cake into our mouths.  
 
The energy, well-being, and pride we feel from being healthy and active gives us far more pleasure than eating a whole pizza at two o’clock in the morning. 
 
Expressing gratitude for our food is another essential key to changing our attitude about what we put into our mouths and why.
 
I love the scene from The Road Warrior (1981) where Mad Max is sitting next to his car using a spoon to eat dog food out of a can. He finishes eating and throws the empty can to his dog to lick out.
 
This is what food is. It’s there to keep us alive. That is its only function in our lives.
 
Imagine we were prisoners in a concentration camp. We would get maybe two small bowls of rice a day and maybe some vegetables if we were lucky.
 
We would feel so unbelievably grateful for that food. We would cherish and keep track of every grain of rice.
 
We would get far more than our current allotment of calories—and it would be enough.
 
We wouldn’t resent not getting more. We would be too relieved and happy to get our daily food. We would thank God every time the prison wardens put the food into our bowls.
 
We could all feel that way toward our food right now. We could experience that level of bliss, gratitude, and appreciation every time we sit down in front of our meal to eat.
 
We wouldn’t care what the food is. We wouldn’t care if it’s a certain number of calories less than what our entitled brains thinks we deserve.
 
Now imagine what that prisoner would think if he or she could see us stuffing our faces with all this trash.
 
Imagine what that prisoner would think if he or she saw how dangerously overweight we are and we’re still out here stuffing ourselves as fast as we possibly can with the absolute worst poison money can buy.
 
We are all so unbelievably lucky to have good, nutritious food in front of us to keep us healthy and alive.
 
Changing our broken relationship with food requires a key change in perspective.
 
We need to realize the food’s true role in our lives and fully appreciate what a blessing it can be—but only if we treat it with the respect it deserves.
 _____________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

If anyone in the world has seen the terrible side of human nature, it’s me.  I’ve seen and personally experienced the worst that humanity can dish out.
 
No one can deny that evil exists in the world. Evil people are out there doing evil things right now.
 
I have also seen the good in the world, especially the good in people.
 
Good people are out there performing heroic and even angelic acts of goodness every day—far more than evil people are performing evil acts.
 
Life wouldn’t work if evil outweighed good or even if they were equally powerful.
 
We can all live in our houses, drive our cars, and raise our families because the vast majority of people do the right thing every day.
 
Raising children is a perfect example of this. The vast majority of parents work extremely hard to do the right thing for their children. Parents do this every day at great sacrifice to themselves.
 
The human race wouldn’t exist if bad parents balanced good parents in equal numbers. We wouldn’t be able to raise enough children to adulthood to keep our population going.
 
Parents perform these microscopic, unseen acts of heroism every single day. These parents go unsung by everyone—everyone except their own children.
 
It only takes the smallest twist of logic and perspective to see these acts of goodness.
 
Any of us can make a choice at any moment of the day to see how good the world is. All we have to do is open our eyes.
 
We are also making a choice when we turn a blind eye to these acts of goodness and fill our sight with nothing but evil. No one is making that choice for us.
 
Let’s take a look at the poem, “Good Bones”, by Maggie Smith, and before you ask, no, this isn’t the same Dame Maggie Smith, the actress of Harry Potter fame.
 
You can find both the poem and a photo of the poet here.
 
I will reprint the poem here for any of you who don’t want to follow the link.
 
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
 
This poem presents several problems right from the outset, so let’s begin our critique with the very first line.
 
First of all, we all know that life is short and ends in death. No one in the human race escapes this truth. There is absolutely no reason to keep this truth from our children.
 
Keeping this from our children, glossing over it, or lying about it would be an extremely manipulative and harmful thing to do to a child.
 
It would be tantamount to emotional abuse of the worst kind. Any child would be within their rights to despise a parent who did this.
 
The statement that the world is at least fifty-percent terrible and this is a conservative estimate is also a bald-faced lie.
 
If you actually believe this, if you’re so depressed that you actually think the world is such a terrible place and people are so terrible, if you actually can’t see all the good happening around you every single day, you better not be telling your children that.
 
Better yet, don’t have children at all.
 
It would be morally reprehensible for you to bring children into a world you think is so bad.
 
If you actually believe your child has a fifty-percent chance of winding up murdered and bagged at the bottom of a lake, then you are the monster for bringing that child into such a world.
 
It would also be incredibly wrong for a parent to keep from their children the fact that strangers might pose a danger to them.
 
Every parent is responsible for teaching their children about these dangers and preparing the children to deal with the situation should it arise.
 
None of this means there aren’t a lot of good people in the world. In fact, the majority of people your child will meet will be fundamentally good people.
 
Sure, they will be flawed people, but we’re all flawed. That doesn’t make a person evil.
 
It is also our responsibility as parents to teach our children to accept the good people that they do meet, to give people a chance to prove themselves, and to develop trust in the right people.
 
That won’t happen if a child goes out into the world armored against everyone and thinking the world is a terrible place.
 
The last part of the poem encapsulates the poet’s message. She’s trying to sell her children on a world she doesn’t think exists. She believes the world is a shithole.
 
Seriously, if you really believe that, you shouldn’t be here at all. Show some gratitude for all the blessings in your life.
 
Teach your children to be grateful for the blessings and goodness surrounding you.
 
Teach them to appreciate the actions of so many good people that come together to create the comfortable life we all enjoy.
 
The poet is advocating outright lying to our children. The world she’s selling them—the world she doesn’t think exists—is the good world, the beautiful world, the world where people care about each other, help each other, and love each other.
 
This world exists right outside your window. In fact, it probably exists right inside your home right now. It exists all around you and even in you.
 
This world only exists because all of us contribute to it and work for it. We are the ones who make it that way with all our love, care, and effort.
 
This poem is a picture of depression. It’s a picture of someone so nihilistic, hopeless, and buried in negative thinking that they’re incapable of seeing the beauty and goodness around them.
 
This is a picture of someone so narcissistically self-absorbed that they aren’t capable of seeing the horrific repercussions their own negative attitude can have on those around them.
 
This is a picture of someone so mentally sick and lacking in real-world perspective that they think it’s okay to pass this negative attitude on to others.
 
Ironically, the person who first shared this poem with me did think the poem was written by Dame Maggie Smith, the actress. That apparently gave the poem some credibility in this person’s mind.
 
The person also suffers from severe, life-long depression. She shared me this poem because she resonated with it and presumably thought I would relate to it, too.
 
If I had to tell my children one thing, it would be this. This poem is a lesson in how not to live your life. Take all the advice and worldview of this poem and do exactly the opposite.
 
See the world as good and people as inherently good. Embrace all the beauty and goodness life has to offer. Fill your mind and your sight with nothing else.
 
Do this and watch the evil of the world shrink away to a tiny pinprick on the horizon.
 
That is how you build a happy, productive, good life that you and your children can look back on with pride.
 
I hope this helps someone. God bless you all.
________________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

My father committed suicide when he was fifty-eight years old. My grandfather, my father’s father, also committed suicide when he was fifty-eight.
 
My father suffered from lifelong depression. He lived reclusively, avoided relationships of all kinds, and drank and smoked to excess.
 
He developed widespread cancer in his fifties. When it progressed and made him weak, he shot himself in the head.
 
I never knew my father. He and my mother divorced when I was an infant.
 
He withdrew from my life and avoided relationships with me and his other daughter. He continued to avoid relationships with his own children right up until the day he died.
 
I tried repeatedly in the last ten years of his life to establish an ongoing relationship with him. He always avoided it.
 
When I heard that he was sick and in the hospital, I wanted to drive down to San Francisco to visit him. His mother, my grandmother, told me not to because he wouldn’t want that.
 
I knew she was right, so I didn’t go. A few days later, I got the phone call that he was dead.
 
I was in the middle of a painful period in my own life and struggling with mental health issues myself at the time.
 
His death infuriated me. Suicide is the ultimate fuck-you to the survivors. It’s a strong, clear message that the person doesn’t give a shit who they hurt as long as they don’t have to deal with the fallout.
 
I hear this story from the surviving relatives of suicides all the time. Suicide doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make anything better.
 
Suicide accomplishes only one thing. It dumps your problems onto the people left behind.
 
As bad as you think your life is right now, you would be passing the buck to your surviving loved ones for them to solve those problems in your place.
 
This is the lowest, most despicable, most cowardly thing any human being can do.
 
In many cases, committing suicide makes the problem worse. That is the mess you are leaving for your loved ones to clean up while you escape out the backdoor with your tail between your legs.
 
Most people who feel suicidal think to themselves, “I don’t want to live anymore.”
 
Think about it.
 
What you’re really saying is, “I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
 
Things can change. Things can improve. Whatever your problems are, the resources exist somewhere in the world to solve these problems.
 
There is no reason on God’s green Earth for you to believe that things will stay like this forever.
 
Everything changes. That’s the one iron rule of Life 101. Nothing stays the same.
 
You’re playing the victim card if you believe you’re trapped in this situation forever with no way out.
 
You’re making an excuse so you don’t have to do the work, roll up your sleeves, and put in the effort to change your circumstances.
 
Most likely, you’re a chronic complainer who focuses exclusively on the problem instead of the solution.
 
You get your kicks out of bitching and moaning about how bad things are.
 
In reality, you’re just a weak, pathetic coward who would rather complain than actually do the hard work to fix whatever it is you’re complaining about.
 
If I sound like I’m ranting, you’re right. I’m the surviving daughter of a father who committed suicide.
 
I’ve also spent many years suicidally depressed, so trust me, I know what I’m talking about.
 
Suicide is the coward’s way out.
 
My father could have spent the last years, weeks, and days of his life giving me something I never had from anyone else.
 
He could have helped me. He could have told me that he loved me. He could have made me feel like I had a father instead of leaving me completely on my own.
 
He did none of those things.
 
People who commit suicide are the most selfish people on the planet.
 
They are so self-obsessed and self-centered that it never once crosses their minds that they might gain some fulfillment from dedicating themselves to others.
 
There will always be someone somewhere in the world who needs your help. You’re suicidal right now because you aren’t looking for these people. You aren’t thinking about what you could do for them and how you could help them.
 
Your experience—the pain you’re going through right now—is the very thing that would help them. It is the one thing someone needs from you the most.
 
The movie Me Before You offers us a perfect example of this.
 
Will, the male lead of the movie, is paralyzed from the neck down, severely depressed, and decides to end his life. He makes a pact with his mother that he will stay alive for six months before he commits suicide.
 
In that time, he develops a romance with Louisa. Their relationship brings new joy to his life, but in the end, he still chooses to end his life even knowing how much it will hurt her.
 
This is such a classic example of suicidal mentality. Will is so consumed with his own imagined problems that he would deliberately hurt the woman he loves.
 
He never considers that his pain might be worth the cost so he can give something to her, be there for her, and support her in developing her own life.
 
He never considers that he might be the thing she most needs in the world.
 
I can hear the howls of protest now. Some of you are probably already telling yourselves that I’m being insensitive to people who suffer from suicidal depression.
 
You’re probably telling yourselves that this is the disease of depression—that it stops us from thinking outside ourselves and seeing the larger picture that might give us the hope to go on.
 
Remember what I said earlier. I have been suicidally depressed. I spent years battling the urge to drive into town, buy a shotgun, and blow my brains out.
 
This attitude is not a disease. The only disease is the disease of cowardice, selfishness, and an addiction to blaming everyone else for your problems.
 
It’s a disease of weakness and refusal to take accountability for your life and solving your own problems.
 
It’s a disease of kicking everyone else in the face to soothe your own pathetic ego. It’s a disease of always putting yourself first at the expense of everyone else, including your own children.
 
If you have children, consider the message you would be sending to them if you committed suicide.
 
Believe me, I speak from experience on this.
 
You’re sending your children a message that they are worthless, that their own parents don’t give a shit about them, and that suicide is the example they should follow.
 
I have two generations of people setting this example for me. When I spoke to my grandmother about my father’s suicide, she said, “It’s genetic.”
 
My first thought was, “Well, where does that leave me?”
 
Suicidal depression is not genetic. It isn’t a medical condition. It’s a choice—a selfish, cowardly choice that only weak, selfish, cowardly people make.
 
Take this is a message from one of the loved ones you plan to leave behind—the loved ones you will leave holding the bag of all your problems along with all the additional problems they will have to face as a result of your despicable choice.
 
Be the bigger person. Change your life if it’s so bad. No one can do it for you. Grow up and stop being such a whining, complaining quitter.
 
That’s what you are if you commit suicide. You’re a quitter.
 
Trust me when I tell you that many, many people have faced what you are facing now or circumstances far, far worse.
 
These people rose up. They seized their problems by the horns. These people dug in and wrestled that problem into submission.
 
These people are true heroes. They overcome. They become something a thousand times greater than they were.
 
They don’t stop until they claim the happiness that is rightfully theirs. They build lives of promise, success, and fulfilment that bring joy and prosperity to everyone around them.
 
That could be you.
 
You could be the person everyone admires. You could be the person inspiring a generation with your story, your courage, and your service.
 
You wouldn’t feel any desire to commit suicide if you did all that. Your life would be too rewarding, too meaningful, and too overflowing with love and happiness.
 
There is only one thing standing between you and that life.
 
You are the only person standing between you and that life. You can make that choice right now. You can start living that life right now.
 
You can make the decision to get off this path and start following another path—a path that will give you all the happiness and interconnectedness you could ask for.
 
You can start that right now. Nothing is stopping you. You can do it without even taking your eyes off this page.
 
You just have to make a choice.
 
You have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t.
 
The people left behind will hate you for abandoning them and leaving them to solve your problems for you.
 
Those people you claim to love so much will have every right to hate you. You will be proving them right, and once you’re gone, you won’t ever be able to take it back.
 
Think about that before you consider committing suicide. Your life could actually mean something if you only wanted it to.
 
You can decide that it does or you can decide that it doesn’t. No one does that for you.
 
It’s your own fault if it doesn’t. The choice is always yours, so let’s not fool ourselves about this being a disease or any other ridiculous excuse.
 
Do something about it.
 
You don’t deserve of pity or support if you don’t do something about it. You deserve contempt.
 
Your surviving loved ones are the people who deserve pity and support. That starts with you. Take care of them. That’s your job, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and go do it.
____________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

We constantly hear that religious belief is a matter of faith. In some circles, the word “faith” is used as another word for religious belief.
 
Ask anyone who believes in God why they follow a certain religion. You’ll inevitably hear the same answer.
 
You just have to have faith.
 
This is another way of saying we should suspend our rationality and accept the existence of something for which we have no empirical evidence.
 
If you’ve read the Proof for the Existence of God, you already know what I think of this idea.
 
I don’t take the existence of God on faith and no one else should, either.
 
We see the same problem when certain religions want to use their own texts as evidence that God exists or that it behaves in a certain way to manifest itself in people’s lives.
 
This simply does not work. If you want to convince someone that aliens exist, you’ll need to use something other than alien texts as proof.
 
We need to see some concrete evidence or at least some logical reason that doesn’t completely conflict with our the evidence of our senses.
 
Your religious texts have an inherent confirmation bias that rules them out as a credible source of evidence. Any sane person can understand this.
 
The same is true of faith.
 
You cannot tell someone who doesn’t believe in God that they have to have faith in order to believe in God. This is a circular argument.
 
The person already doesn’t believe in God. The person already doesn’t believe because they don’t see the evidence.
 
The person might be open-minded enough to question if God exists after all. The person might be willing to take that leap if you only offered some evidence that was compelling enough.
 
Faith is not that evidence. Faith is the opposite of evidence.
 
Faith is the wool unscrupulous people pull over our eyes to manipulate us into feeling guilty for demanding evidence.
 
The worst part of this is that the evidence is there. People just need to be shown where it is and how to see it.
 
But I digress.
 
Most of you know I’m a giant Ed Mylett fan. He tells the story of an experience that changed his life when he was a young man.
 
He got his start as a salesman selling insurance policies. He met with a young couple, husband and wife, and tried to sell them an insurance policy.
 
The couple had two little daughters and this family was just starting out in life. The couple didn’t have much money.
 
Ed made his pitch and the couple decided they needed to think about it before they made a decision on whether they were ready to invest that amount of money.
 
They left the meeting, and that night, they got into a terrible car accident that killed both parents.
 
The two little girls wound up living with a distant relative who was not the most ideal person to take care of them.
 
Ed blamed himself for what happened to them. He believes that, if he had only been a better salesman and closed that deal, the girls would have gotten a better outcome in life.
 
He believes he didn’t understand how to use the right language to overcome the parents’ objections.
 
He didn’t know enough as a salesman to address their concerns and articulate why this insurance policy was so important.
 
He didn’t connect the money these people would spend to the one thing that was most important to them—their children’s future.
 
Now follow the same logic when our friendly neighborhood religious evangelist is trying to convince our hardened skeptic that God exists.
 
No doubt you truly believe that following your religion is the best thing that could happen to anyone.
 
You naturally believe that anyone adhering to your religion will incur incredible benefits to their life and their spiritual connection with God.
 
If you really believed that, you would be morally obligated to convince the person to join your religion. You wouldn’t let yourself walk away and leave the person to burn in Hell.
 
You only do let yourself walk away because you don’t really believe that’s what will happen.
 
Compassionate people don’t do that. They don’t knowingly leave someone to suffer, especially not to suffer for all eternity in the fires of Hell.
 
It simply doesn’t work for you to bombard the person with the need to have faith and then walk away blaming them for not listening to you.
 
If you truly believed your own dogma, you would tailor your language to their needs. You would address THEIR concerns instead of using your own language—a language they already don’t speak.
 
If the person spoke Swahili, you wouldn’t blame them for not understanding you when you are speaking English.
 
You would go out of your way to use language they could clearly understand.
 
Bill Rice is a pastor whose offers workshops, retreats, and meetings for the deaf population so they can hear the Christian message in their own language.
 
He saw a need that the deaf community wasn’t being served by the mainstream Christian world.
 
The same goes for someone who doesn’t believe in God. You can’t use the language of faith to convince these people. They already don’t believe.
 
You have to use language they can understand. You have to address the core needs and concerns that your dogma is already failing to answer.
 
The concept of faith has no place in any discussion of religion or philosophy. None of us should believe in something we can’t see or otherwise directly experience. That’s just ridiculous.
 
The reality is that we DO experience a spiritual connection. We DO experience incredible benefits from adhering to our chosen belief system.
 
We see the evidence playing out all around us in the beauty of nature, in the lives of others, in good deeds, and in the love of close relationships.
 
This is the evidence. We don’t have to rely on faith at all—and if we’re honest, the truth is that we don’t rely on it. None of us does. We just fail to articulate exactly what the evidence is.
 
The concept of faith is nothing but smoke and mirrors. It’s the collection of world religions telling us in so many words, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
 
Faith is the opposite of belief. Faith is a word people use when they don’t believe in something, but they want desperately for everyone else in the world to believe that they do believe.
 
If you truly believed in God, you would be able to point to something specific that convinced you it was real.
 
Faith is the opposite of this. If God is so real, why can’t you point to this evidence? It should be right in front of you.
 
You should be able to at least be able to point to the positive effect your belief has had on your life.
 
You should at least be able to demonstrate that you were once lost and depressed and now you are energized, connected, and motivated by life.
 
This is not faith. Highlighting and pointing out this evidence is the equivalent of a business putting positive customer testimonials on its website.
 
In the business world, this is called social proof.
 
It might not be as good as concrete empirical evidence of God’s existence, but it’s better than nothing—which is what faith is.
 
Fortunately for all of us, this concrete empirical evidence actually does exist. It’s all around us every minute of the day.
 
If you can’t see this evidence for yourself right now, head on over to the Proof for the Existence of God page where I explain it to you.
 
Your life will improve a thousandfold as soon as you see this evidence. You never have to rely on faith ever again.
________________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.