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.

I recently participated in a forum flame war about what men and women really want.
 
It brought up some interesting questions. I will attempt to answer those questions in this post.
 
The original poster asked the question: What are the differences between what men want and what women want?
 
I responded that I didn’t think men and women want anything really that different. I stated that both men and women want the same things.
 
They want trust, loyalty, security, understanding, validation, affection, attention, and intimacy.
 
It would be impossible to come up with a list of things men want that women DON’T want and vice versa.
 
Every single thing you could say men want, women also want. Every single thing you could say women want, men also want.
 
We're all human and we all have the same human needs and feelings. We wouldn't get into relationships with each other if we didn't want the same things.
 
We may not all be the same or think the same way, but we can empathize with each other and realize that we're all on the same page here.
 
We may not have the same perspectives, tendencies, and capabilities, but underneath it all, we are human.
 
The original poster felt that I was devaluing the conversation, his question, and him by not addressing his premise that men and women really are different.
 
He launched into a lengthy explanation about the problems of men who feel they are being exploited as nothing but wallets by women who only value them for their money.
 
This is mirrored on the other side by women who feel they are being exploited as nothing but pieces of meat by men who only value them for their bodies.
 
The original poster stated that the entire dating scene is arranged to use men as pay pigs.
 
Men are expected to have nice cars, pay for dinners, and to have their own houses and apartments to host their female counterparts.
 
Men pay to get into bars and clubs. They buy drinks for women they are interested in. Dating sites charge men and not women.
 
This is a complicated subject, so let’s focus just on this argument because it’s so prevalent in today’s dating environment.
 
There’s a wider flame war raging between men and women where neither side feels that the other is providing what each one truly needs.
 
First of all, let’s get one thing clear right from the outset. There are literally millions or even billions of men in the world who actually want women to value them for their financial resources and material success.
 
These men themselves are the ones who see their financial resources and material success as the benchmark of their value in the dating market and the wider world.
 
These are the same men who are complaining the loudest about women valuing them for their financial resources and material success.
 
The men who complain the loudest about women treating them as wallets are the same men who are treating themselves as wallets.
 
As with men, so with women. Women cater the most strongly to today’s standards of beauty and attractiveness. Women are the ones who hold themselves and each other to this standard.
 
These women pay thousands of dollars on their hair, makeup, clothing, plastic surgery, and dozens of other cosmetic enhancements.
 
These are the same women who feel the most wronged when men objectify them, use them, and throw them away.
 
Countless men have publicly stated that they don’t even like these standards. Men prefer natural women with natural health and beauty.
 
The women persist in these practices for themselves and each other, not because it makes them more appealing to men.
 
When a woman treats a man as a wallet or a walking ATM machine, she doesn’t respect him any more than a man respects a woman he can use and dump the next morning.
 
Women want strength, maturity, boundaries, mental stability, and fortitude of spirit in men. Women will happily give their hearts to men who are penniless and hideously ugly if the men are strong in character, authoritative, and determined.

Women who do seek wealth from men or form relationships based on financial resources do not give their hearts. They don't love these men and they don't respect them. The women come to hate these men, look down on them, and cheat on them.
 
Women might say they want money and go after rich men, but if they get lucky enough to get these men, the women don't respect them or treat them well—so that isn't what they want at all.
 
The same goes for men who say they want beauty and go after women based solely on their looks. Many prostitutes and adult dancers state that their customers are more interested in talking to someone about their problems than in the actual sex or seductive dancing.
 
Men who choose based on looks aren’t choosing a woman for stability, compassion, or her nurturing personality. They’re looking for a sex object and they treat the woman as one.

So we need to make a distinction between the superficial noises both sides are making with their mouths versus what they are actually looking for in the opposite sex. These are usually vastly different.
 
The truest desires of both men and women are to feel connected, to feel loved, and to have long-lasting relationships that feed our souls. Men are just as interested in security and long-term family connection-building as women.
 
Seeking something superficial and temporary is as likely to leave a man feeling hollow and used as it is to make the woman feel that way.
 
The truth is that both men and women get treated the way they will tolerate. No one is making men put up with women who treat them as wallets the same way no one is making women put up with men who treat them as bodies.
 
If someone is getting treated that way, it's because they lack the perspective, boundaries, and self-respect to demand that they be treated any better.
 
These people are desperate for something they will never get, so they put up with bad behavior from the opposite sex.


Men are participating in this status game and then complaining that  the game exists. Women go to great lengths to make themselves sexually appealing and then complain when they get treated as sex objects.
 
This only proves that neither men nor women want this arrangement at all.

It would be so easy for men to ignore gold-digging women and for women to ignore men who are obviously only interested in sex.
 
Those who don't ignore the warning signs are the ones who suffer. Hopefully, they will learn something and correct their dating standards to reflect what they really want.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world doesn't have this problem. They value marriage, family, raising the next generation, and building a society that works instead of fixating on instant gratification.
 
Putting up with this behavior is exactly the reason why this behavior exists. If people exercised some standards, the problem wouldn't exist at all.
 
It would quickly die away when the people exercising this behavior no longer had any options. The people they are pursuing wouldn't be interested anymore.

Let's say a billionaire man surrounds himself with women who are only after his money and only care about what kind of car he drives.
 
He could just as easily completely ignore these women and no longer surround himself with them.
 
He could instead look more carefully for a woman who is less interested in that and more interested in building a lasting, meaningful relationship with him.
 
The gold-diggers in his life would disappear. They would seek another billionaire elsewhere.
 
If all the billionaires did the same thing, these women would quickly realize that the billionaires weren't looking for them. The gold diggers would have no choice but to change their ways.

These behaviors only exist because so many people are entertaining them and rewarding the behavior with results.
 
The problem only exists for people who are living in the bubble where this behavior is the reality. There is a whole world of other people outside the bubble who don't buy into this and aren't interested in it at all.
 
We all need to take a certain degree of personal accountability in our lives. Wanting different things doesn’t make someone a bad person.
 
Blaming someone else for your problems is the height of cowardice and immaturity. Set standards for what you will tolerate from other people’s behavior.
 
If someone violates these standards, you have no one to blame but yourself for letting the person get away with 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.

​Allow me to set the stage by telling you a story.
 
A man and a woman were in a relationship. Both ran their own businesses. The woman was also a single mother.
 
As time went on, she began to lose confidence in her ability to handle her own affairs.
 
It started out when she asked her partner to help her respond to certain business emails she didn’t feel completely confident about handling correctly.
 
She asked for her male partner’s input about whether she was wording these emails in the best way.
 
Over time, this evolved to the point where the man was answering all her emails for her and conducting her business correspondence on her behalf.
 
The cycle progressed until she lost confidence in dealing with her clients in person, too.
 
She would go to work, and in the middle of the day, she would have to call up her male partner for help, either because she wasn’t sure how to handle certain situations or she just didn’t feel competent to manage her business on her own.
 
She eventually progressed to the point where she couldn’t function in social situations.
 
She would go to business meetings, lunches, and conferences. In the middle of trying to network and socialize with people, she would panic and freeze.
 
Her male partner would have to go with her so that he could step in at the right time, make their excuses, and take her away.
 
He would then spend hours calming her down, rebuilding her confidence in herself, and going through a lengthy and agonizing process of coaching her back to a state where she could face all her obligations and challenges.
 
The situation continued to deteriorate until the woman became so depressed and even suicidal that she ended the relationship.
 
She no longer felt like an asset to her male partner’s life and she no longer wanted to drag him down with her.
 
Here we see the first example of the vicious circle of one bad habit leading to another.
 
The following diagram illustrates this cycle in action.

​In this example, the woman became stressed at work, which happens to all of us.
 
She failed to handle this stress on her own, which caused her to lose confidence in her ability to handle this stress.
 
She began to doubt her own competence because, in fact, she wasn’t competent to deal with these situations on her own.
 
The idea that she was no longer competent to handle her own affairs caused her to lose respect for herself, which further eroded her confidence in herself.
 
Losing confidence in herself and questioning her own competence made her even more stressed about dealing with situations she once had no problem dealing with.
 
This loss of confidence further undermined her ability to cope, which caused her to fail to meet further challenges, which further degraded her sense of competence, self-respect, and self-worth.
 
This became a vicious cycle of ever-increasing descent into helplessness, self-loathing, and over-reliance on others to accomplish tasks she should have been able to accomplish herself.
 
The only way to get out of this is to break the cycle.
 
In this case, the male partner could have flatly refused to answer her emails for her.
 
Instead of helping her avoid these tasks, he could have bolstered her confidence and encouraged her to push through her self-doubt to meet the challenges on her own.
 
Meeting these challenges and overcoming her own fears is the only way to counteract the corrosive effect of always running away from them.

​Once we start doing this, the cycle leads us to ever-increasing levels of confidence, self-respect, and a certainty in our own competence.
 
We see ourselves handling these situations. We feel more competent to handle these situations, which leads us to take bolder steps to meet future challenges and overcome them.
 
This cycle plays out in dozens of areas of our lives.
 
For our second example, let’s look at the cycle of overeating and weight gain.
 
Here we see the same process at work.

​We gain weight from over-eating and inactivity. We see ourselves in the mirror as we would rather not see ourselves, which causes us to think badly about ourselves.
 
We might over-eat to ease our feelings or we might just think, “I already look terrible. It doesn’t matter if I eat this.”
 
This causes us to over-eat again. We know in our hearts that we’re letting ourselves down, which saps our self-confidence and self-respect.
 
We see ourselves in the mirror as still being overweight and unable to improve, which causes us to feel hopeless and unable to change, so we continue to think it doesn’t matter if I just eat this one thing right now just for today.
 
This is why people continue to gain weight year after year. This is why people fail to lose the weight and get healthy.
 
They get trapped in this cycle of losing respect for themselves. They see themselves as already overweight and don’t feel competent to change it, so they fall back on the one thing that comforts them—eating more than they should.
 
Here again, the only way to get out of this is to break the cycle and reverse it.

Once we start eating healthy and exercising consistently, we start to see results. This boosts our confidence and gives us the motivation to keep going.
 
We stick to our nutrition plan and our exercise routine, so we see further results, which makes us feel better about ourselves.
 
This gives us the willpower to resist the urge to cheat and slack off. We want to continue to see better results and we don’t want to lose the results we already have, so we don’t fall off the wagon in ways we might otherwise.
 
This pattern repeats in every aspect of our lives.
 
Every aspect of our lives is either cycling upward or it’s cycling downward. The only way to reverse the trend is to start cycling in the opposite direction.
 
As long as we stay in the same cycle, we’ll continue to go in the same direction, either up or down. The choice is always ours and we can change it at any time.
 
I’m not saying it’s easy. It isn’t. The only option is to bite the bullet and shatter the cycle.
 
The alternative is staying trapped in the same pattern of self-destructive negativity for the rest of our lives—and none of us wants that.
 
I hope this helped someone today. 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.

I’m a mother. I have three kids.
 
They aren’t as young as they used to be, but I remember how it was when they were babies and small toddlers.
 
Raising babies and young children is hard work. It’s one of the most challenging, stressful things a person can do.
 
These challenges can lead to mental health struggles for parents who aren’t prepared for the work, stress, and pressure involved.
 
The biggest problem is that babies and young children are totally unpredictable.
 
They wake up in the middle of the night, either because they’re hungry, need to go to the bathroom, because they’re scared or confused, or for no reason at all.
 
They don’t know how to communicate, so they can’t tell their caregivers what the problem is. Most of the time, babies and young children don’t know what the problem is.
 
Imagine you really, really needed to go to the bathroom, but you didn’t recognize that sensation.
 
You would be uncomfortable. Then you would be in pain.
 
Then you would become terrified because you didn’t know what was wrong with you. You might think you were dying and couldn’t do anything to stop it.
 
Babies and young children go through this every time they have to go to the bathroom, every time they get hungry, when they are tired, and every time they have a slight cramp in their stomachs or they’re uncomfortable because their diaper is wet.
 
Being an adult is so much easier. We recognize all these sensations. We can take steps to relieve them before they become uncomfortable.
 
This is why raising children is so nerve-wracking. We have to constantly guess at what the problem is.
 
Sometimes we can’t solve the problem at all and we just have to live with it and listen to the child cry.
 
I went through this in the first year with my oldest daughter. She had colic. She would get excruciating stomach cramps at the same time every afternoon.
 
She would cry nonstop for hours. It was absolute hell for me as I’m sure it was for her, too.
 
I couldn’t do anything to ease her pain. We just had to get through it so we could do it all again the next day. This went on for over a year.
 
Eventually, I got to the point where I went into it thinking I just wanted to be there for her.
 
I held her, bounced her up and down, and walked her around so she would know she wasn’t going through it alone. That was all I could do.
 
Even if we know what the problem is, it can be a nightmare trying to get the kid to take the steps to solve it.
 
Babies can start crying because they’re tired. They keep crying and crying, which keeps them awake, so they get more tired and more distressed.
 
The same goes for going to the bathroom. You can watch a little kid squirming and dancing around, crossing their legs, jumping up and down, and maybe even crying.
 
You can tell the kid, “Go to the bathroom. You’ll feel better.” The kid will sooner have a temper tantrum than listen to you.
 
The most important lesson I learned from raising kids is that, in order for both the children and the parents to stay sane, you must have routines.
 
Kids thrive on routines. The more routine their lives are, the more secure they feel. They can relax in the security of knowing what’s happening and when it’s going to happen.
 
For babies and young children, everything other than neutral is a disaster. The best we can hope for is to keep them at a neutral point as much of the time as possible.
 
To do this, we need to keep them fed, comfortable, and as rested as possible.
 
Routine is also critical for parents. Kids are already unpredictable enough as it is.
 
As parents, we need to remove as much stress and uncertainty from our lives as possible.
 
We need to know when we are going to make dinner. We need to know when we are going to put the child to bed so we can have some much-needed downtime every evening.
 
I learned from raising kids that we don’t stop needing routines as we get older.
 
Older children also thrive on routine. It gives them security and relieves them from making too many decisions.
 
All of us can get decision fatigue. Making decisions is one of the hardest parts of being an adult.
 
The more we can relieve ourselves of this responsibility, the easier it gets to navigate all the other unpredictabilities of life.
 
Routines give us the security to risk and push ourselves the way we need to.
 
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out by life, try introducing more routines for yourself. Schedule every minute of your day so you know when, where, and how everything is going to happen.
 
Plan out when you will wake up in the morning, when you will eat, when you’ll work, when you’ll exercise, and when you’ll do everything else.
 
This is how you’ll be able to meet all your obligations in the time allotted to you.
 
You will remove as much uncertainty, doubt, and insecurity from your life as possible.
 
It will also allow you to accomplish the maximum amount in any given day and achieve the goals you set for yourself.
 
I hope this helps. God bless everyone reading this.
_____________
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.

Just the Facts, Ma’am
 
Writing is a form of communication between one human being and another.
 
This should be obvious to anyone and it usually is when we are talking about non-fiction.
 
I have a point I want to communicate to my reader.
 
I make my point through my writing.
 
You read my opinion. My opinion has been transferred from my brain into yours through the medium of writing.
 
It isn’t so obvious when we talk about fiction, but it’s equally true. Fiction is a form of communication between the author and the reader.
 
Anything that interferes with this is subverting the purpose of writing.
 
The medium of fiction is story. The medium of fiction isn’t how wonderfully elaborate a writer came make their descriptions. The medium of fiction isn’t how big the writer’s vocabular is.
 
The medium of fiction isn’t even whether you get all the grammar and punctuation right.
 
The whole point of writing fiction is to immerse your reader in the story.
 
Readers read fiction to get immersed in the story. Anything that interferes with that is counter to the whole purpose of writing fiction.
 
If your goal in writing a piece of fiction is to influence the reader with your philosophical or political message, then this message needs to be embedded in the story in such a way that the reader doesn’t even see it.
 
Take Charles Dickens, for example. He told intense, engaging, often funny, heart-wrenching, poignant stories with a powerful political message.
 
Charles Dickens’ work was instrumental in getting the child labor laws of England changed. He brought public awareness to the problem, but he never clubbed his reader over the head with the need to change anything.
 
He simply portrayed what was already happening in the country. Everyone in England at the time already knew the situation. Everyone knew children were working in factories, in street jobs, as chimney sweeps, and in practically every other walk of life.
 
His stories didn’t tell anyone anything they didn’t already know. His work showed the human side of the situation and made people realize just how awful these children’s lives were.
 
If the author wants to convey a message and make the reader think, the message has to be woven into the story itself.
 
If the writer comes right out and tells the reader what to think, the writer has failed.
 
Bad art asks no questions.
 
Mediocre art asks the questions and tells the audience the answers.
 
Great art asks the questions and leaves them unanswered.
 
All great art does this. It makes the audience think without ever blatantly giving us the answer the author thinks we should come up with. The author lets us come to that conclusion on our own.
 
This is also hands down the most effective way to get people to change their opinion on something.
 
Most people already have an opinion on everything. Telling them or demanding them to change it will only make them hostile.
 
Showing them a different side of the same argument—the human side of the argument—is the best way to make them see the same problem from a different perspective.
 
We’re all human. Certain truths apply to all of us. Leveraging these truths is the best way to get inside someone’s head and leave your message there for them to think about it in their own way.
 
Anything that interferes with this communication process is the enemy of the fiction writer.
 
Our job as writers is to eliminate everything that doesn’t directly relate to our story.
 
This includes all our carefully constructed descriptions. Descriptions should be short, simple, and only convey the information the reader absolutely needs so they can understand the unfolding plot.
 
We can look at this process from the macro level, the micro level, and the mid level.
 
The micro level is the sentence and individual word level. A word, phase, or sentence that isn’t necessary to the plot has no place in any work of writing.
 
Here’s an example from my latest book. This is the original sentence.
 
It was the same sequence that always played out at the end of every bout.
 
In the edited version, I changed it to:
 
The same sequence always played out at the end of every bout.
 
I removed the words, It was, and that. The second sentence communicates exactly the same information with fewer words, so these words aren’t necessary.
 
Removing one, two, or three words isn’t a pedantic or inconsequential detail that is beneath our notice as writers.
 
These words are actually throwing roadblocks in front of us and our readers.
 
The unnecessary words create barriers between the writer and the reader that stops the reader from receiving the writer’s message.
 
The reader doesn’t care about anything except receiving the information as quickly, as simply, and as effortlessly as possible.
 
They might not register consciously that the author is using unnecessary words, but the reader will pick it up subconsciously.
 
The reader will intuitively understand that the author is wasting the reader’s time.
 
The writer is belaboring the point instead of just getting it out there as efficiently as possible.
 
This can be as simple as changing, was working, to just worked.
 
I have gone through this process dozens of times even just in the few minutes I spent writing this blog post. This a crucial and indispensable part of the writing process.
 
I also take the flow, rhythm, and readability of the text into account when I make the decision to remove a word or multiple words.
 
The mid level covers paragraphs, descriptions, and sections of chapters that don’t relate to the story or are just extra filler with no connection to the plot.
 
Here’s an example. See if you can tell which book the following description came from:
 
A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind.
 
Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the lake was visible.
 
Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea.
 
This description is totally irrelevant to the plot.
 
The reader would never know from this excerpt which book the description came from because this excerpt contains zero plot information.
 
This is three whole paragraphs—long paragraphs—that don’t belong in the book at all.
 
They could have been cut entirely. The rest of the book—the essential part of the story—would have been exactly the same.
 
Now let’s look at the macro level which is the most important level because it relates to elements of the story itself.
 
Think of the macro level as the outline level where we hammer out the skeleton bones that are going to hold up our story and carry our reader to a satisfying conclusion.
 
Unnecessary parts of the story at the macro level could include entire chapters.
 
The most glaring example of this is the Harry Potter books. The author included unnecessary and irrelevant chapters at the beginning of almost every single book. These chapters could easily have been cut without changing the story.
 
Take a look at the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
 
All of the information we received in this chapter could easily have been included in Hagrid’s conversation with Harry on the storm-tossed island when they first met.
 
The book should have started on the morning of Dudley’s birthday. The hair-cutting incident where Harry’s hair magically grew back after a disastrous haircut could have happened that same morning.
 
If I had written this book, I would have made this whole birthday scene, along with the trip to the zoo, happen the same day that Harry received his first Hogwart’s letter.
 
The author made the same mistake in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, only this time, she included two chapters that didn’t belong in the book.
 
The first chapter is a long, unnecessary scene of Cornelius Fudge’s meeting with the muggle Prime Minister.
 
The second chapter details Severus Snape’s meeting with Bellatrix LeStrange and Narcissa Malfoy.
 
All of the information we need from the first chapter about what’s going on in the magical world and the war against the Deatheaters could have been included in the third chapter when Dumbledore takes Harry from the Dursley’s.
 
Dumbledore could have told Harry all of this information in a few sentences. We didn’t need an entire chapter with two completely unknown characters to tell us this information.
 
The second chapter shouldn’t have been included at all.
 
It completely spoils the book that we find out ahead of time that Draco Malfoy joined the Deatheaters and that he was on a mission for them to infiltrate Hogwart’s and carry out their agenda there.
 
All the other information from the second chapter should have been revealed over the course of the whole book.
 
That’s the mystery—putting these puzzle pieces together. It ruins the story to dump them on the reader at the beginning.
 
These are plot points that should have been corrected in the outline phase. Other high-level details related to the story structure happen here. These are what makes the story successful or unsuccessful.
 
This is one of the biggest problems we see in the fiction world.
 
Writers are so full of themselves that they add any extra nonsense they feel like without regard to whether it relates to the story or not. Don’t be that person. Give the readers what they want—which is a good story and nothing else.

_______________

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.

There’s an old saying: If you can’t say, “No”, your “Yes” means nothing.
 
Tactfully saying no to invitations, requestions for help, and other obligations is an acquired skill we learn as we mature.
 
We all have an inborn desire to help others and for them to find us useful, helpful, caring, and generous.
 
Saying no seems to violate all of this, but we can’t say yes to everything.
 
Multiple TV shows, books blog articles, and documentaries have been written about what happens to a person’s life when they can’t say no to everyone who asks them for help.
 
These poor people become overburdened with time commitments until they have no free time for themselves.
 
They wind up helping people and causes they don’t even care about and doing things they don’t agree with.
 
People who can’t say no wind up hating those they pretend to help. The person resents the unwanted obligation and the commitment they can’t get out of.
 
People who can’t say no have no time to for projects and relationships they actually care about.
 
People who can’t say no don’t ever accomplish their goals because they say yes to too many other things.
 
Saying yes to everything means you can’t focus on the one, most important thing—actually accomplishing your goal.
 
As Warren Buffet says, “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
 
This is a big problem for anyone just starting out on the road to accomplishing a big goal. You have to put in the work upfront before the success comes later.
 
Those who would lay an unwanted obligation on you don’t understand that your goal is your top priority.
 
They don’t understand that it’s more important even if you aren’t getting paid for it at the moment.
 
Many people would argue that ‘No,’ is a complete sentence and that true freedom lies in saying no without having to explain yourself to anyone.
 
Oprah Winfrey once famously stated that you should only have to say, “No,” once. If anyone tries to convince you to change your mind after that, they are trying to control you.
 
I don’t argue with any of this, but I discovered a much more effective way to tell people no without causing as much social strain.
 
When I first started writing professionally, I was raising three children. I had friends who were other mothers in our PlayCenter community. These women often invited me and my children to their houses for social time and playdates.
 
Once I started writing for a living, the demand on my time shifted.
 
I developed this technique for turning down these obligations. I have used this method ever since to deflect unwanted invitations and requests for help.
 
This technique has served me well for many years.
 
I invite you to use this in your own life. It can do wonders. It makes saying “No,” so much easier.
 
Are you ready? Here it is.
 
I have to work.
 
That’s it. When someone invites you to a party you don’t want to go to, tell them, “I have to work.”
 
If someone invites you to an evening out bar crawling, tell them, “I have to work.”
 
First of all, every wage slave intuitively understands this statement. They reinterpret it to mean you have to work for your boss at a job.
 
The wage slave translates this to mean that you would lose your job if you accepted their invitation.
 
The second most important aspect of this phrase is that it’s true.
 
The person inviting you doesn’t need to know that the work you’re going to do is entirely voluntary or that you’re going to be working on your goal instead of going out with them.
 
You said you have to work and you do. You have to work on your goal.
 
“I’m sorry. I would really love to go, but I have to work.”
 
It’s that simple. Everyone understands this—and it’s true.
 
The person you’re talking to doesn’t need to know that you’re making them a lower priority than your goal. Telling them that would only upset them.
 
The person doesn’t need to know that you’re going to be doing a bunch of extremely hard, unpaid labor with no possibility of return.
 
The person doesn’t need to know that you’re going to be working on something they consider a hobby or a pastime.
 
I have to work.
 
You do have to work. You have to work on your goal.
 
If you said yes to every invitation, obligation, and request for help, you would never work on your goal. If you don’t do it now, when will you?
 
That’s it. That’s the secret.
 
I invite you to use this technique and spread it around to anyone who needs it.
 
The truth is that we don’t owe anyone any explanation.
 
Saying, “No,” outright with no explanation will only hurt people’s feelings.
 
There’s a better way—a way they already understand. It’s simple. It’s effective, and best of all, it’s absolutely true.
 
You never have to lie to anyone about what you’re doing, but you don’t have to explain it to them, either.
 
I hope this helps you as much as it helps me. God bless.
_____________
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.

I talk a lot about AI on this platform. Everyone else is talking about AI, too.
 
One thing that keeps coming up is this doomsday fear that AI will turn into Skynet.
 
Some people think AI already is Skynet.
 
What is Skynet, you ask?
 
Skynet is the fictional army of sentient robots that took over the world in the Terminator movies.
 
Skynet waged war against humanity, created the Terminators to hunt down humans, and drove humanity underground.
 
In the original Terminator movie, Skynet was an AI program that became self-aware.
 
Skynet realized that humans had the ability to shut it down, effectively killing it.
 
Skynet struck first and launched Judgment Day, a nuclear apocalypse that left Skynet in control of the planet and sent humans on the run.
 
This is the doomsday scenario people envision when they worry that AI will go too far and spiral out of humanity’s control.
 
I personally don’t think this will ever happen. Today I’m going to tell you why.
 
We are one power outage away from AI being a total non-issue.
 
Our power grid can barely keep up with the electricity demand of running all our screens, servers, heaters, and air conditioning fans.
 
Our infrastructure is failing on a mass scale all over the world. We can barely keep up with basic maintenance.
 
One small power surge is enough to wipe out huge sections of the country.
 
Case study #1: The Texas ice storms of February, 2021
 
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/15/texas-power-grid-winter-storm-2021/
 
This power outage was caused by a freak winter storm that put an additional strain on power plants. They struggled to keep up with the demand of so many customers using additional power for heating.
 
The extreme cold made the problem worse because the power plants weren’t designed to operate in those temperatures. The plants’ efficiency plummeted, which worsened the problem until the grid failed.
 
The storm caused 246 deaths across seventy-seven Texas counties.
 
Case study #2: The Northest Blackout of 2003
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
 
This blackout wiped out power to a vast section of New York state, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, Ontario, and even extended as far as Lansing, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio.
 
The blackout caused a domino effect from one original power plant  fault to the rest of the grid. The cascade eventually spread so extensively that it forced the shutdown of more than 265 power plants and caused 100 deaths.
 
Here again, weather played a role in the original outage. The temperature was only 88ºF, which isn’t really that high. The sources don’t even suggest that the power plants struggled in the heat. That would be impossible because this wouldn’t be considered an extreme temperature range for the affected areas.
 
The additional use of fans and air conditioners strained the infrastructure and put an extra load on the system. The increased power flow heated up the power lines which caused them to soften and sag.
 
We all know that computer equipment requires a certain temperature range in order to operate effectively. Every computer comes with a fan installed…..
 
So what happens when Skynet experiences an extreme weather event…..or just can’t operate in desert or tundra climates?
 
Skynet (or the power grid as we’re calling it) is critically dependent on electricity to maintain its optimal functioning temperature.
 
The electricity grid is critically dependent on its own generated electricity to function.
 
Are you getting the picture here? This is how a single failure can bring down the whole system.
 
That failure reduces the available power that keeps the system running. Hence, the system doesn’t run as well. Hence, there is less power available to run the system. Hence, the system loses even more efficiency and functionality.
 
The downward spiral worsens until the system collapses under its own weight.
 
If Skynet did exist, it would take a gargantuan amount of power, metals, fossil fuels, and other resources to keep it operational.
 
All of these resources are supplied by humans. Even now, computer companies use vast numbers of human workers to produce the electronics we all use every day.
 
Why do you think these jobs haven’t been outsourced to robots yet? Because the jobs still require a certain amount of critical analysis of which robots and AI aren’t capable.
 
Even if, by some distant chance, Skynet developed the ability to use solar power or some other sustainable power source, these intricate computer systems wouldn’t be able to operate in places like Siberia, northern Canada, and extremely hot desert climates.
 
Humans can survive in all these climates. We did it turning the Ice Age and we can do it again. Computers and robotics can’t.
 
Humans are vastly more adaptable and resilient than computers and robots. Humans would survive and we would end Skynet’s rule.
 
So don’t believe everything you hear about how AI will take over the world and make humans obsolete. That is never going to happen.
 
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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.

Who is Jocko Willink?
Jocko Willink is a decorated former Navy SEAL who served several tours in Iraq as a SEAL teams commander. He is now a motivational speaker, podcaster, leadership expert, and a legend in the self-development field.

What is Extreme Ownersnip?
Jocko is best known for his book and TED talk entitled, Extreme Ownership, in which he details the events of an Iraq mission gone wrong. Circumstances beyond his control caused the mission to end in casualties. He took extreme ownership by accepting responsibility for the incident even though he wasn’t directly at fault. He tells the story that his superiors respected him more for this than if he’d tried to explain the incident away.

Caveat:
Before we go any further, I want to preface this critique by saying that Jocko Willink is one of my personal heroes. I’m a massive Jocko fan and he’s one of the few in the self-development field that I look up to and consider a role model.

And now on to my critique:

I recently talked to someone who knows Jocko as a friend. This person told me a story of an interaction he had with Jocko that highlights this aspect of Jocko’s personality and personal philosophy.

This person had a heart condition that went untreated for years. It was totally asymptomatic so there was no indication that something was wrong.

This person went to all his scheduled medical checkups, had all the usual tests, and kept very close track of his health.

Because the condition was undetectable, his doctors missed the signs and this individual felt perfectly healthy. He had no reason to believe anything was wrong.

Things started to deteriorate and he began to lose energy and focus. He went back to his doctors, but no matter what tests they ran or blood samples they took, they couldn’t find anything wrong with him.

After many tests that kept coming back negative, the doctors finally ran a very obscure test and discovered the condition already in an advanced stage.

That same day, in the same office where they took the test, the doctors told this person, “You’re going into surgery right now.” They didn’t even let him leave the office. T

he condition had progressed to the lethal stage and they rushed him to emergency surgery then and there.

This person went through several heart surgeries, and at the time he told me this story, he still had one more to go.

When this person told Jocko what happened, Jocko’s response was, “You should have picked it up sooner.”

This is the essence of extreme ownership. It’s taking ownership, responsibility, and accountability of absolutely everything, no matter what it is, even things that are beyond our control.

Many of us who grew up in abusive families. Those who have been in any kind of abusive or toxic relationship understand this.

Holding someone responsible for something that is totally beyond their control is a form of coercion.

It’s a form of mental abuse that is the cornerstone of all abusive relationships.

Substance abuse, unhealthy eating, and every other kind of dysfunctional behavior is based on holding ourselves responsible for things we can’t control.

Abusers hold us responsible for the weather, for the actions, thoughts, and feelings of other people, for the abuser having a bad day at work, for things that happened to them in the past, and anything else they can think up to blame us for instead of the blaming person responsible—or for things for which no one is responsible.

They use this as a “reason” to punish us for things that may have happened before we were born or otherwise weren’t present for.

The list of things we can’t control is myriad. It would be impossible even to list them all, let alone control them.

We shouldn’t take responsibility for them. Not only is this not healthy. It’s actually the worst kind of conceit to think that we’re powerful enough or important enough to control all these things.

It’s extremely unhealthy to take ownership for someone else’s feelings and reactions.

It’s extremely unhealthy to say that we should have foreseen something that was impossible to foresee.

We could have been taking all prudent steps to foresee every possible contingency. Even then, we might still not see something coming.

We can’t and shouldn’t take responsibility for that.

We can deal with it. We can take responsibility for handling the situation in the present.

We cannot and should not ever hold ourselves responsible or take ownership of the thing happening.

Those of us that grew up with this kind of abuse internalize it until it becomes an integrated part of our thinking.

We carry it into adulthood where it develops into unhealthy relationships with food, substances, other people, ourselves, or bodies—the list is endless.

We continue to carry the burden of holding ourselves responsible for an unlimited list of actions, events, and even other people’s thoughts and feelings over which we have absolutely no control.

I’m all in favor of personal accountability and taking full responsibility of those aspects of our lives we can control.

I’m also in favor of creating contingency plans that prepare ourselves to deal with unforeseen circumstances, most of which are beyond our control.

It’s foolish—even pathological—to hold ourselves responsible for things we can’t control. This is the cornerstone—the very foundation—of coercion and we should strenuously avoid it at all costs.
It is absolutely critical that we do not EVER take responsibility for things we can’t control.

As with all my critiques, there is no doubt in my mind that Jocko is trying to improve his audience’s lives and to do his best for them in all areas.

I don’t question his motives nor do I think he’s doing this to be malicious, harmful, or confusing.

Like most self-improvement influencers, he genuinely cares about his audience, which is why he puts out his content for free.

I’m doing the same thing. I want to help my audience and give them tools that will actually work to improve their lives.

I consider it my job to point out other methods that would let the audience down, cause them setbacks or failures, or might actively harm someone who used those tools.

We all want what’s best for our audiences. I offer this critique in the spirit of service to everyone who reads it.

God Bless.
 
_____________
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.