Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Monday, May 22, 2017
LIFE, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness (Part 2)
Okay, so, we're talking about the Declaration of Independence and how it laid the foundations for what came after it. It itself is not a legal document, but we refer to it as a foundational piece of our history, our ideals, and, yes, our government. Last week, we were talking about the pursuit of Happiness, and how we, culturally, have messed that all up, but, really, you should just go back and read last week's post. This week, let's move on a bit and, by doing that, go back to our first principle: Life.
Let's look again at the Declaration:
The very first Right he lists is the Right to Life. [Remember from last post, I'm talking about adults. There is nothing Pro-Life in any of this. That's a completely separate matter.] Yes, I'm going to talk about healthcare.
See, we have these Rights, and we institute Governments to make sure that the things themselves that we have a Right to are not taken away from us by someone stronger or more powerful than us. Including that government itself. What that means in this context is that the government, our government, is here to protect our Life and our Right to that Life.
Which is what makes it so insulting when a GOP asshole, a member of our Government who has been mandated by the fact that he is a part of that Government to protect our collective Right to Life, says something inane like, "Nobody dies because they don't have access to healthcare." That was Raul Labrador, by the way, part of the Right-wing Nutjob sector of the government defending the new death warrant the GOP call the "American Health Care Act," a bill which clearly favors the insurers over the insured and the very wealthy (who don't really need the help) over the average citizen. It is, in short, a bill that says, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Way more equal.
The GOP has clearly demonstrated that they have become "destructive of those ends" of securing our Right to Life.
In fact, the GOP has been clearly demonstrating that for, well, decades, what with their destructive environmental policies, their stance against safety net social programs, their support of hazardous industry over the welfare of communities, their support of the NRA and "stand your ground" laws, and their general willingness to assume that if a cop shoots a black man, even an unarmed black man, he must have had good reason. The whole healthcare thing? That's just them spitting in the faces of the people who got them where they are and saying, "No, we don't like you either."
Government to the GOP has become about how to make a profit and no longer has anything to do with securing our "unalienable Rights." Their Form of Government has become destructive of those ends which secure for us our Right to Life; as such, "it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it." We are "the People." "We the People."
Look, the Republicans continue to say that healthcare is not a Right but a privilege. It's that stance which allows someone like Labrador to say things like nobody dies from lack of healthcare, but people die from lack adequate healthcare ALL THE TIME. In fact, it's the lack of access to healthcare that causes people to die from preventable or manageable illnesses. They can't afford to go to the doctor until it's too late. And, no, I don't have the numbers for that, but I don't really think I need to have them.
What I'm saying here is that the GOP is just plain wrong on this. If we're going to refer to the Declaration as one of our Founding Documents (and the GOP loves to claim how they stand by our Founding Documents), then you can't really get around the fact that it proclaims that WE ALL have the Right to Life. That is, after all, why hospitals can't send anyone away. And, at one point in time, that was the best we could do, but it's not anymore.
And here's the thing, we don't have the right to the best healthcare we can afford; that doesn't work with all men being created equal. If the wealthy have access to better healthcare, that means that we are not being treated equally. The Truth is that we have the Right to the best healthcare available. All of us, all the time. The kind of healthcare you get should not be dependent upon your wealth. That is NOT equality in our Right to Life.
Seriously, it's time for us, the People, to alter our Government. We have a Right to equal healthcare and equal Life. If gaining access to that means abolishing the GOP and their stagnant and destructive ways, well, that's what needs to happen. I do not consent to be governed by the assholes currently holding the reins of power, and it's time we took them back.
Let's look again at the Declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...So... Let's reaffirm the Rights we're talking about. There are only three: Life, Liberty, and the PURSUIT of Happiness. Jefferson is saying here that these three things in particular (there could be more than three, but these three in particular) are innate. They have been created within us and the Right CANNOT be taken away. The thing itself can be taken away, but the Right to have it cannot be. To safeguard these Rights, mankind (humankind) institutes Governments, and those Governments only exist through the consent of the people.
The very first Right he lists is the Right to Life. [Remember from last post, I'm talking about adults. There is nothing Pro-Life in any of this. That's a completely separate matter.] Yes, I'm going to talk about healthcare.
See, we have these Rights, and we institute Governments to make sure that the things themselves that we have a Right to are not taken away from us by someone stronger or more powerful than us. Including that government itself. What that means in this context is that the government, our government, is here to protect our Life and our Right to that Life.
Which is what makes it so insulting when a GOP asshole, a member of our Government who has been mandated by the fact that he is a part of that Government to protect our collective Right to Life, says something inane like, "Nobody dies because they don't have access to healthcare." That was Raul Labrador, by the way, part of the Right-wing Nutjob sector of the government defending the new death warrant the GOP call the "American Health Care Act," a bill which clearly favors the insurers over the insured and the very wealthy (who don't really need the help) over the average citizen. It is, in short, a bill that says, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Way more equal.
The GOP has clearly demonstrated that they have become "destructive of those ends" of securing our Right to Life.
In fact, the GOP has been clearly demonstrating that for, well, decades, what with their destructive environmental policies, their stance against safety net social programs, their support of hazardous industry over the welfare of communities, their support of the NRA and "stand your ground" laws, and their general willingness to assume that if a cop shoots a black man, even an unarmed black man, he must have had good reason. The whole healthcare thing? That's just them spitting in the faces of the people who got them where they are and saying, "No, we don't like you either."
Government to the GOP has become about how to make a profit and no longer has anything to do with securing our "unalienable Rights." Their Form of Government has become destructive of those ends which secure for us our Right to Life; as such, "it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it." We are "the People." "We the People."
Look, the Republicans continue to say that healthcare is not a Right but a privilege. It's that stance which allows someone like Labrador to say things like nobody dies from lack of healthcare, but people die from lack adequate healthcare ALL THE TIME. In fact, it's the lack of access to healthcare that causes people to die from preventable or manageable illnesses. They can't afford to go to the doctor until it's too late. And, no, I don't have the numbers for that, but I don't really think I need to have them.
What I'm saying here is that the GOP is just plain wrong on this. If we're going to refer to the Declaration as one of our Founding Documents (and the GOP loves to claim how they stand by our Founding Documents), then you can't really get around the fact that it proclaims that WE ALL have the Right to Life. That is, after all, why hospitals can't send anyone away. And, at one point in time, that was the best we could do, but it's not anymore.
And here's the thing, we don't have the right to the best healthcare we can afford; that doesn't work with all men being created equal. If the wealthy have access to better healthcare, that means that we are not being treated equally. The Truth is that we have the Right to the best healthcare available. All of us, all the time. The kind of healthcare you get should not be dependent upon your wealth. That is NOT equality in our Right to Life.
Seriously, it's time for us, the People, to alter our Government. We have a Right to equal healthcare and equal Life. If gaining access to that means abolishing the GOP and their stagnant and destructive ways, well, that's what needs to happen. I do not consent to be governed by the assholes currently holding the reins of power, and it's time we took them back.
Monday, May 15, 2017
Life, Liberty, and the PURSUIT of Happiness (Part 1)
Let me make one thing very clear here before I get started:
The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, not like the Constitution. There is nothing in it that establishes law or structures or anything of the sort. Nevertheless, we hold it as a foundational document, especially that part about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So let's look at that for a moment:
I think the order of these three things is important, kind of like Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
1. All humans have the unalienable Right to Life.
(A robot may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
2. All humans have the unalienable Right to Liberty (freedom) except where it would deprive some other human of his/her Right to Life.
(A robot must obey orders from humans except when it would cause a conflict with the First Law.)
3. All humans have the unalienable Right to pursue their own Happiness except when it would deprive some other human of his/her Right to Liberty and/or Life.
(A robot must protect its own existence as long as that does not conflict with the First or Second Law.)
Just for a moment, because there is SO much in this to talk about, and I'm not even through quoting the Declaration at you yet, let's talk about this whole happiness thing, because I think we have it all messed up. Actually, I'm sure of it.
See, we've come to believe, somehow, that our Right is actually to Happiness itself, not the pursuit of it. We Americans have come to believe that we Deserve to be Happy. Part of me wants to blame it on McDonald's and that whole "you deserve a break today" crap, but it has as much to do with the current of cult of positivity as it does anything else.
The real problem isn't even the Happiness itself; it's that we have somehow decided that Happiness is the primary Law. We've culturally decided that our own individual Happinesses come ahead of other people's Liberty and Life. And that's just fucked up. No, seriously, it is.
Here's from an actual conversation I had with someone back around the end of October/beginning of November last year (yes, that puts it heading into the election):
Him: But I want to make more money at my job.
Me: It's the Democrats who want to raise the minimum wage...
Him: Fuck that! I don't want to raise the minimum wage. I won't get a raise if the minimum wage is raised. In fact, I don't want it raised at all.
Me: But it would help...
Him: Fuck them! If they can't get a job that pays better than minimum wage, then they don't deserve to make more anyway.
Me: I was going to say it would help the economy, but that's an amazing attitude.
Him: I don't care about the economy. I just want to make more money.
Clearly, he didn't have any real concept of what the economy even is, and he was adamant in his disdain for minimum wage employs, lumping most of them in as "Mexicans, anyway, probably illegals" who don't deserve anything better than they're getting especially if it meant that he wasn't going to be better off.
And he's not the only person I've talked to with that attitude, just the most flagrant about it. He had, as most people seem to have, no qualms about his own "happiness" coming at the expense of others, and he believed it was his Right. At some point toward the end of the conversation, he even said, "I have a right to be happy," which is about where I quit, because there's no good way to approach that mindset. Sure, you can say, "Well, actually, no you don't. No one has the Right to Happiness," because the response is always, "Why not?" And, possibly, "If other people get to be happy, I should get to be happy, too." And, well, those people are already missing the point.
I have to add, here, that facebook culture doesn't help with all of this, but I'm not going to go into that. There have been plenty of studies showing the validity of "keeping up with the FB Jones" and how destructive that whole thing is. And, now, I'm wondering if that's a 50s thing, which would take this whole issue back to the Boomers, probably the most narcissistic generation in the history of the world. Seriously, there's a book about it which I want to get because it sounds fascinating.
What I do know for certain is that we, as a cultural, have to abandon this idea that we have a Right to Happiness and that it's okay for it to come at the expense of others. The pursuit of happiness is not the same thing as the happiness, and we have to give up on the idea that it is and on the idea that having a lot of stuff is what is going to do that for us.
In fact, your Right to pursue your own Happiness doesn't get to come at the expense of others' Rights to pursue their own Happiness. If you think it does, you're the problem.
The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, not like the Constitution. There is nothing in it that establishes law or structures or anything of the sort. Nevertheless, we hold it as a foundational document, especially that part about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So let's look at that for a moment:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.Yes, I'm skipping over the equality part this time (sort of) because I talk a lot about equality. Not that I'm skipping it, I'm just allowing it to be understood that all (adult) humans have the equal unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Also, there is nothing in this that is a pro-life statement. I'm not arguing that one way or the other, so we're going to use the arbitrary definition of talking about "adults." Children do not, under the law, enjoy full rights. If they were allowed to pursue happiness in whatever way they wanted... well, it just wouldn't end well.
I think the order of these three things is important, kind of like Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
1. All humans have the unalienable Right to Life.
(A robot may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
2. All humans have the unalienable Right to Liberty (freedom) except where it would deprive some other human of his/her Right to Life.
(A robot must obey orders from humans except when it would cause a conflict with the First Law.)
3. All humans have the unalienable Right to pursue their own Happiness except when it would deprive some other human of his/her Right to Liberty and/or Life.
(A robot must protect its own existence as long as that does not conflict with the First or Second Law.)
Just for a moment, because there is SO much in this to talk about, and I'm not even through quoting the Declaration at you yet, let's talk about this whole happiness thing, because I think we have it all messed up. Actually, I'm sure of it.
See, we've come to believe, somehow, that our Right is actually to Happiness itself, not the pursuit of it. We Americans have come to believe that we Deserve to be Happy. Part of me wants to blame it on McDonald's and that whole "you deserve a break today" crap, but it has as much to do with the current of cult of positivity as it does anything else.
The real problem isn't even the Happiness itself; it's that we have somehow decided that Happiness is the primary Law. We've culturally decided that our own individual Happinesses come ahead of other people's Liberty and Life. And that's just fucked up. No, seriously, it is.
Here's from an actual conversation I had with someone back around the end of October/beginning of November last year (yes, that puts it heading into the election):
Him: But I want to make more money at my job.
Me: It's the Democrats who want to raise the minimum wage...
Him: Fuck that! I don't want to raise the minimum wage. I won't get a raise if the minimum wage is raised. In fact, I don't want it raised at all.
Me: But it would help...
Him: Fuck them! If they can't get a job that pays better than minimum wage, then they don't deserve to make more anyway.
Me: I was going to say it would help the economy, but that's an amazing attitude.
Him: I don't care about the economy. I just want to make more money.
Clearly, he didn't have any real concept of what the economy even is, and he was adamant in his disdain for minimum wage employs, lumping most of them in as "Mexicans, anyway, probably illegals" who don't deserve anything better than they're getting especially if it meant that he wasn't going to be better off.
And he's not the only person I've talked to with that attitude, just the most flagrant about it. He had, as most people seem to have, no qualms about his own "happiness" coming at the expense of others, and he believed it was his Right. At some point toward the end of the conversation, he even said, "I have a right to be happy," which is about where I quit, because there's no good way to approach that mindset. Sure, you can say, "Well, actually, no you don't. No one has the Right to Happiness," because the response is always, "Why not?" And, possibly, "If other people get to be happy, I should get to be happy, too." And, well, those people are already missing the point.
I have to add, here, that facebook culture doesn't help with all of this, but I'm not going to go into that. There have been plenty of studies showing the validity of "keeping up with the FB Jones" and how destructive that whole thing is. And, now, I'm wondering if that's a 50s thing, which would take this whole issue back to the Boomers, probably the most narcissistic generation in the history of the world. Seriously, there's a book about it which I want to get because it sounds fascinating.
What I do know for certain is that we, as a cultural, have to abandon this idea that we have a Right to Happiness and that it's okay for it to come at the expense of others. The pursuit of happiness is not the same thing as the happiness, and we have to give up on the idea that it is and on the idea that having a lot of stuff is what is going to do that for us.
In fact, your Right to pursue your own Happiness doesn't get to come at the expense of others' Rights to pursue their own Happiness. If you think it does, you're the problem.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Truth, Justice, and the "American Way"
"Truth, justice, and the American way," as a phrase, has been around for long enough at this point that people don't realize it originated with Superman. They may know it's been associated with Superman but most people think it's its own thing, not what amounts to a marketing phrase for the 50's Adventures of Superman, the Superman show I watched in syndication when I was a kid.
I'm not sure if there was an idea tying truth and justice to America prior to Superman (and I'm not doing the research on that, right now, to try and figure it out),but Superman, since his inception, has been tied to truth and justice. From the early days of the comic book to his days on the radio and, then, in the earlier TV series, Superman always stated that he was here to fight for truth and justice. That's all, just truth and justice. Those, to me, seem like things worth fighting for. I'm not so sure about the "American way."
See, the "American way" was something tossed in during the 50s in the midst of the Red Scare and McCarthy-ism and was less about America than it was about White America: Leave It To Beaver, white picket fences, and Father Knows Best. Probably some Andy Griffith, too. TV in the 50s was all about the "American way," and it's hard for me to dissociate that idea from those TV shows because they epitomize so much of the idea of the "American way."
And I'm not going to try and say that there's nothing attractive about those shows and the, for lack of a better word, ideal they put on display. But it was all a fantasy. Real life America was never like Father Knows Best or Mayberry. Real life America has never been all White all the time in nice little subdivisions with white picket fences. And it's never been about women who wear their heels and pearls in the kitchen while making dinner all day. All of this isn't even a White fantasy; it's a White Male fantasy about how everyone else lives to serve them in their own individual little kingdoms.
It's kind of sick.
It's possible I wouldn't have a problem with the whole "truth, justice, and the American way" thing if truth and justice were a part of it, had ever been a part of it. But the "American way," as it applies here, has always been about white male supremacy. It's why Steve Bannon holds the 50s up as his ideal era of what we need to get back to. The White Male was supreme, and everyone else knew their places.
As for truth and justice? We seem to have culturally abandoned those ideas of late. We've abandoned truth in favor of opinion and, even, outright lies. You can see the evidence of that in the man who was elected president, a man with absolutely no relationship with truth whatsoever. His lackeys display the same break from reality with their "alternative facts" and misrepresentation of historical accuracy. Sorry folks, history is not an opinion. Things happened. Saying they didn't or trying to recast those events in some other light doesn't make them not have happened.
And we've abandoned justice in favor of racial prejudice and allowing the rich more and more power and money. "We" have allowed the Republicans to wave religious dogma at Conservatives to keep them in power so that they can continually enable corporations the ability to take advantage of people, poison their water, and keep them in debt. That Jeff Sessions and Neil Gorsuch are where they are serve as proof that we have shoved justice down the stairs and broken her scales. We have become the money lenders in the Temple, and have elected the worst of them as president.
This seems to be the "American Way": no truth, no justice, just the dream of white picket fences in white neighbors with white schools.
Superman isn't coming. It's time to abandon this "American Way" nonsense as the fable it always was. It's time to stand for truth and justice. Truth and Justice! Which means demanding, all of us, that we have politicians who are knowledgeable, smart, and believe in facts, not money. It means demanding a change to the system so that the system doesn't check our skin color before it decides who gets a fair shake. It's time.
Friday, December 30, 2016
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (a book review post)
Which has nothing to do with what "Christianity" is, and has been for the last several decades at least, in America today. "Christianity" is a religion of hate, exclusion, and fundamentalism; the religion that supported a man to the Presidency who is completely antithetical to everything Christianity represents. Or says it represents.
And, no, the book has nothing to do with modern politics, but it does deal heavily with how different a thing can be from the actuality, the truth, that it was based on.
I think the audience for a book like this is probably fairly small, and not because it's not good. It is. It's well written, well researched, and well supported. However, "Christians" will dismiss the book as, I'll just say, liberal propaganda, which is sad, because it's "Christians" who need this book more than anyone. "Christians" need to be challenged to think beyond the shallow tripe they are spoon fed on Sunday mornings. Of course, being a book ostensibly about Jesus, there's no reason non-Christians should have any interest in the book... unless it's someone just curious about the history.
I'm not going to go into detail about the book -- you can read the blurb from the book for yourself -- however, I'll touch on one part:
The latter part of the book deals with a division within the early church between James (the leader of the church in Jerusalem) and Paul, who was one step removed from being a heretic. Much of our modern church, modern "Christianity" is built around what Paul wrote, a man who never met Jesus, yet claimed to speak with greater authority about him than Jesus' own brother (the aforementioned James) and the rest of the apostles. The piece that history loses is that in his day Paul was an outlier, someone trying to peel off members from the main body of the early church with heretical teachings and who stayed in conflict with James for much of his ministry.
In fact, Paul was losing. And bitter.
Probably, we would know nothing of Paul today had not two things happened:
1. James was assassinated.
2. The Romans leveled Jerusalem, the side effect of which was destroying the central power structure of the early Church.
Basically, this allowed the Church to become a more gentile-centric organization than it would have been if it had remained centered in Jerusalem. It allowed the New Testament to become a book of Paul's teachings rather than a book of Jesus' teachings, and the current "Christian" church relies much more heavily on Paul than it does Jesus. Not that the representation of Jesus is completely accurate.
Anyway...
As a Truth seeker, I found the book fascinating and would highly recommend it.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Angels Unbound: Furtur (an a-to-z post)
Furtur
Lucifer might be the Father of Lies, but Furtur is the true Demon of Lies. Having been taken in by Lucifer's original lies and unable to unbelieve them, he is now incapable of telling the truth. That is unless he is trapped in a magical circle of some type. If you can capture him, he reverts to the form he wore before he was warped and, then, he loses the ability to lie. Whereas once he brought love to man, now he brings only lust. He is a bringer of storms and tempests.
Already released:
Lucifer might be the Father of Lies, but Furtur is the true Demon of Lies. Having been taken in by Lucifer's original lies and unable to unbelieve them, he is now incapable of telling the truth. That is unless he is trapped in a magical circle of some type. If you can capture him, he reverts to the form he wore before he was warped and, then, he loses the ability to lie. Whereas once he brought love to man, now he brings only lust. He is a bringer of storms and tempests.
Already released:
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Going On the Offensive (an IWSG post)
I'm not one for all of that resolution stuff or making lists of goals or any of that stuff. I figure I'm going to do something or I'm not and making a "resolution" isn't going to change that. If I make any kind of list at all, it's only so that I don't forget things (and I'm not really the best at those kinds of lists, either), so don't look at this post as some sort of New Year's resolution thing; it's not. In fact, the idea for this post has been sitting in my notes since October, and I've been thinking about it for longer than that, but this seems about as good a time as any to get on with it.
First, this is likely to be my last IWSG post. Unless something just grabs me and tells me "I am an IWSG post!" it will be. To a large extent (and I've talked about this before), it's because IWSG is completely misnamed. There is no actual support in or from this group. It's an encouragement group, and there's nothing wrong with that other than that it should call itself that. Encouragement says "Good job!" and "You can do it!" and this group is all about those things. Support does more than it says (things like buying indie books and reviewing them rather than only ever talking about the big, mainstream traditionally published stuff), and it's rare to find other indie authors doing things that support indie authors.
Sorry (not sorry), it's just the truth.
Oh, and sporting links and announcements for books you haven't read is also encouragement not support. Yeah, I know some of you are disagreeing with that, but, really, how many people do you expect to buy a book when what you're doing is this:
"Hey! Buy this book that I haven't read and am never going to read! I'm sure it's good because this person I (sort of) know wrote it."
That amounts to "good job" and "I believe in you," not actually doing anything that supports the author.
Disclaimer: Yes, some of you out there do do the actual support things, but there aren't very many of you, and you don't do it because of IWSG. It's just something you do.
Which brings me to what is the point of this post: being more offensive. Yes, there is the part of the title that is going on the attack, and I mean that, too, but a lot of it has to do with not holding back anymore. Conventional wisdom is all about how "we" shouldn't be controversial or do things that could alienate readers or... whatever. It's all about the things we don't say and never speaking our actual minds because we might offend someone. Well, screw that.
Okay, before you screw that, let me be clear about something: I'm not talking about using "honesty" as a tool to be mean to someone. That's just being mean no matter how many people try to tell you it's just "brutal honesty." Those people suck and are liars. There's a difference between saying:
"This manuscript is full of grammar and punctuation issues." (truth) and
"This is the biggest piece of trash I ever read." (brutal honesty)
You should never resort to "brutal honesty" (unless it's at Snow Crash or Peter Jackson). Or unless you're talking about people in general, because general people are pretty stupid.
So, okay, if you're going to be brutally honest just own it and say you're being mean or something. I mean, seriously, I'd really appreciate the opportunity to be brutally honest with Peter Jackson.
All of that said, very often people are offended by the truth, but you should never let the fear of someone's offense stop you from saying the truth, even if that truth is only your own truth. And, really, despite what I was just saying about Peter Jackson, there's a difference between speaking the truth and just being mean (though, with him, I'd make an exception and be mean along with my truth (give me a break, the guy sleeps in money; he can take it)).
Basically, you can expect to see more things which could be seen to be as controversial here on the blog. Or maybe they won't be; I don't know. All I know is that I don't plan on holding back in the things I talk about anymore. Yeah, I know. Some of you out there are thinking, "He's been holding back?" Crazy, right? But it's the truth. But no more of that here!
Oh, and also...
I never really meant to have a schedule here on StrangePegs, not when I started, but I developed one after tracking patterns of page views. I settled into what seemed to be the optimal days. No more of that either! Yeah, that's right out the window. I'm just going to be posting whenever I feel like it from now on, so you'll have to be paying attention, I suppose. That is if you stick around to be offended in the first place. Being on a blogging schedule, though, has been being confining. For a while, now, actually, so it's just time to move on from that. The blogging is not the writing and, when it starts getting in the way of the writing, you have to get rid of it.
Not the blog, just the schedule.
All right [And, just by the way, that's the correct way to spell "all right;" it's two words, not one, so quit putting "alright" in your manuscripts.], there you have it. Changes and stuff that just so happen to coincide with the new year, but, hey, as much as I like all (most) of you writer types, you're really not my target audience. I can tell by my sales. Which is not to say that I want you to go away, but I have to start appealing to, well, to people who just read.
Or pissing them off.
Or something.
I guess we'll see how it goes.
First, this is likely to be my last IWSG post. Unless something just grabs me and tells me "I am an IWSG post!" it will be. To a large extent (and I've talked about this before), it's because IWSG is completely misnamed. There is no actual support in or from this group. It's an encouragement group, and there's nothing wrong with that other than that it should call itself that. Encouragement says "Good job!" and "You can do it!" and this group is all about those things. Support does more than it says (things like buying indie books and reviewing them rather than only ever talking about the big, mainstream traditionally published stuff), and it's rare to find other indie authors doing things that support indie authors.
Sorry (not sorry), it's just the truth.
Oh, and sporting links and announcements for books you haven't read is also encouragement not support. Yeah, I know some of you are disagreeing with that, but, really, how many people do you expect to buy a book when what you're doing is this:
"Hey! Buy this book that I haven't read and am never going to read! I'm sure it's good because this person I (sort of) know wrote it."
That amounts to "good job" and "I believe in you," not actually doing anything that supports the author.
Disclaimer: Yes, some of you out there do do the actual support things, but there aren't very many of you, and you don't do it because of IWSG. It's just something you do.
Which brings me to what is the point of this post: being more offensive. Yes, there is the part of the title that is going on the attack, and I mean that, too, but a lot of it has to do with not holding back anymore. Conventional wisdom is all about how "we" shouldn't be controversial or do things that could alienate readers or... whatever. It's all about the things we don't say and never speaking our actual minds because we might offend someone. Well, screw that.
Okay, before you screw that, let me be clear about something: I'm not talking about using "honesty" as a tool to be mean to someone. That's just being mean no matter how many people try to tell you it's just "brutal honesty." Those people suck and are liars. There's a difference between saying:
"This manuscript is full of grammar and punctuation issues." (truth) and
"This is the biggest piece of trash I ever read." (brutal honesty)
You should never resort to "brutal honesty" (unless it's at Snow Crash or Peter Jackson). Or unless you're talking about people in general, because general people are pretty stupid.
So, okay, if you're going to be brutally honest just own it and say you're being mean or something. I mean, seriously, I'd really appreciate the opportunity to be brutally honest with Peter Jackson.
All of that said, very often people are offended by the truth, but you should never let the fear of someone's offense stop you from saying the truth, even if that truth is only your own truth. And, really, despite what I was just saying about Peter Jackson, there's a difference between speaking the truth and just being mean (though, with him, I'd make an exception and be mean along with my truth (give me a break, the guy sleeps in money; he can take it)).
Basically, you can expect to see more things which could be seen to be as controversial here on the blog. Or maybe they won't be; I don't know. All I know is that I don't plan on holding back in the things I talk about anymore. Yeah, I know. Some of you out there are thinking, "He's been holding back?" Crazy, right? But it's the truth. But no more of that here!
Oh, and also...
I never really meant to have a schedule here on StrangePegs, not when I started, but I developed one after tracking patterns of page views. I settled into what seemed to be the optimal days. No more of that either! Yeah, that's right out the window. I'm just going to be posting whenever I feel like it from now on, so you'll have to be paying attention, I suppose. That is if you stick around to be offended in the first place. Being on a blogging schedule, though, has been being confining. For a while, now, actually, so it's just time to move on from that. The blogging is not the writing and, when it starts getting in the way of the writing, you have to get rid of it.
Not the blog, just the schedule.
All right [And, just by the way, that's the correct way to spell "all right;" it's two words, not one, so quit putting "alright" in your manuscripts.], there you have it. Changes and stuff that just so happen to coincide with the new year, but, hey, as much as I like all (most) of you writer types, you're really not my target audience. I can tell by my sales. Which is not to say that I want you to go away, but I have to start appealing to, well, to people who just read.
Or pissing them off.
Or something.
I guess we'll see how it goes.
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