The one thing you need to know

All you need to know is it's up to you.Whatever "it" is, you can and must take care of it.

That realization can and will fill you with fear. That realization can and – if you let it – fill you with the greatest sense of power and peace.

No longer is it out of your control. No longer is it dependent on someone "out there" who may or may not ever notice or care.

No – that is to say, yes – you have the reins of your life. You decide what happens next.

"If it's going to be, it's up to me." It really is that simple.

It's not easy. If anyone tells you "easy," they're lying to you or perhaps even to themselves.

But simple? Yes, it's really simple: You can be the change you want in the world.

In simple fact, if you are not that change, it won't happen. Not, at least, in your world.

That boss? That spouse? That senator? That president? They can't affect your world. They don't have the power. They can't get inside you and tinker with you – your soul, your attitude, your thoughts, your feelings. Only you can get that close. Only you can tinker with what's in there.

Yes, you can let them in. But the change – if you care to change – is up to you.

And if you're right – if they want you to change in a way you know isn't right – well, then, hold on. Don't let someone else take the power from you.

Oh, no doubt, someone with "power" can affect the external trappings of your life. They can confine you, adjust your wages, withdraw your job, beat you, steal from you, and cause you discomfort and pain – physical, mental or spiritual. Yes, they can even kill you.

But they can't touch you unless and until you let them.

By "you" I mean that special sentience – that unique essence of who you are – what makes you you.

It belongs to you. You were born with it, and it will stay with you until the mortal vessel you occupy and operate runs out of power.

You can never again control what happened before. That happened. It's over. But you can always control how you react to it, now, this moment.

Your reactions – your proactions – are in your hands. Your hands – those powerful tools that can pick up a tool and do your bidding. Those mighty tools that can reach out and build or close in a fist – that can nourish or strangle – that can grow a garden or drive a car or tear down a wall or take a life.

Your hands – your mind – your soul can be instruments of life or death. Choose wisely. Find wisdom. Seek truth. Ignore lies – no, wait: Correct lies.

You are not the only one who wants to know the truth. You are not the only one who wants to be the change. Help others understand.

But know this: Each of us has the power to change only one life – the one under the control of the person you call I. me. myself. You do not have the power to change or control your neighbor, your mate, your parent, your child, or that stranger.

You do have the power to persuade – or to force your will on others. In the first instance you can gain a soulmate, an ally, a companion, a fellow. In the second you gain nothing but solitude and hatred and bitterness and resentment.

You cannot take their freedom, no matter how high and thick you build the walls of their cage. Neither can others take your freedom, no matter how high and thick they build the walls of your cage. It's all up to you.

You have the power, you have the controls, you have the reins of your life – but only your life.

The extent to which you lead others is completely dependent on those others. The extent to which others lead you is completely dependent on you.

Decide this moment to take the reins of your life. They've been in your hands all along anyway. They've taken you to this place, good or bad or indifferent, where you are at this moment.

Where do you want to go next?

It's entirely – entirely – up to you.

4 things I didn’t know on graduation day

[My column for the May 20, 2015, Door County Advocate]

They say time flies, but it really doesn’t. You wake up one morning and suddenly it’s 2015, and the young man who remembers sweltering in the sun in a black robe while Sen. William Proxmire was awarded an honorary degree and a speaker who exhorted us to go forth and do great things is thinking, “Wait, wasn’t it just 1975?”

But of course it wasn’t. A day is a long time, and a year is a longer time, and today marks 14,610 days – that is to say, 40 years – since a full-of-himself, naive young man dove into the real world. For most of those days I have been what people call a journalist – a watcher of events and recorder of the first draft of history.

And what I have learned in all of those days! Here are four things I knew but didn’t fully know on my first day of work as a full-time reporter.

> There are no superheroes, just folks. I walked into a men’s room during a long city council meeting, and a U.S. senator came in and stood beside me. For some reason it was a revelation that nature also calls him during the days and nights.

They’re all just people, muddling along as best as they can, like you and me. Not big damn heroes. Not super villains. Just guys and gals who need to get through the day, feed the dog, sift the cat litter, same as everyone. It helps to remember that.

> You may not realize when you’re teaching. A reporter came in and started telling about the court sentencing she had just witnessed. She needed to share the raw emotion of the defendant, his family’s tears, the victims’ anger. Don’t spend the words speaking them out loud, I said, write them down while the moment is still fresh.

She wrote a great great story, and years later she told people what an important lesson that was. I needed to be reminded I had said that. It made me feel worthy. It also made me fear what I might be teaching on bad days.

> Success is a long-term everyday enterprise. When I ran for state Assembly, I was proudest that both the conservative governor and the leader of the city teachers union told me, “I never knew you were a Republican.”

That was because I had spent 22 years burying my personal opinion and trying simply to accurately convey what people were saying and doing. That was the job. It still is, except when the word “Opinion” appears on the top of the page.

> Every person is different. I have met good thinkers and compassionate people and rascals and scoundrels in every race, color, creed, gender, political party, ethnic origin, orientation, whatever. All of them unique. When we tuck people in a group, we lose sight of who they are.

You think you know what to expect because I’m an older white male journalist who once ran for Assembly as a Republican. Because of those assumptions you’ve done both of us a disservice.

Do yourself a favor: Stop thinking “All of those people are x” or even “Generally speaking those people are y.” Approach every person as a mystery to be solved, because most everything important about that person you cannot know based on the category you’re tempted to tuck them in.

> Oh yes, and a bonus fifth lesson: Never use a credit card. Never. Ever. Never. I’m still paying for that mistake.

A little writing about writing and art

Ray Bradbury is among the greatest writers of the 20th century, and on a more personal note he is my favorite writer most days. Bradbury (1920-2012) wrote an essay called “Zen in the Art of Writing” in which he boiled the craft of writing down to four words: “Work. Relaxation. Don’t think.”

Specifically he said that while you write, don’t think about the possibility of making money with your words – even if you’re a full-time writer whose livelihood depends on it – and don’t think about the process of writing. Just let the words flow.

It’s a tricky balancing act, but every writer at least occasionally enters a “zone” where good stuff just flows from your fingers. Time enough to edit later. For the moments of creation, it’s enough to get the thoughts out and worry later about whether the words are in the proper order.

Bradbury broke into the business of writing by making a commitment to write at least one short story every week. He didn’t worry about whether they were any good or “saleable,” he just wanted to establish a habit. At the end of the first year, he had 52 short stories. Almost none of them sold, but some of them did, and his career was underway.

Writer and filmmaker Joss Whedon is doing interviews this month in advance of his next blockbuster (”Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron”), and one statement jumped off the page at me: “I have a contract with my audience – that I will do better, that I will give them a reason to come in again that is more than the reason we gave them last time.”

What a powerful motivation for an artist! Whedon is the creator of several popular, well-known works from TV series to movies and even comic books, and his audience is passionate about him because they sense that commitment – that he considers his contract with them more important than any financial contract. Bradbury would likely say Whedon “gets it” – care first about the writing, and the rest will take care of itself.

There’s a brilliant little movie that Preston Sturges made in 1941, “Sullivan’s Travels,” about a filmmaker of popular comedies who decides he’d rather try to do something “important.” Instead of another silly feature, he aims to adapt a pretentious literary work called “O Brother Where Are Thou” (and yes, that’s where the 2000 film got its name).

He embarks on an undercover journey to feel what the characters in the novel experienced. Long story short, in the end he finds himself in an audience of prisoners watching a Disney Pluto cartoon.

He laughs at the antics on the screen, then looks around and sees the roomful of inmates also laughing – released from their miserable circumstances for a few minutes of something resembling joy – and he realizes that his silly comedies also meet a basic human need and he has already done something “important” with his genius for entertaining people.

We live for the act of creation – and each of us creates something in everything we do every day. There is an art to driving a busload of kids to school, there is an art to serving a great cup of coffee, there is an art to collecting garbage.

In our art we make the world a better place for others, whether we serve an audience of one or a million, whether we write a poem for our sweetheart or a blockbuster summer movie for mass consumption.

Think about your “audience” – the people you serve – and make a contract to do your best and make today’s best even better than yesterday, and you’ll achieve that better world.

Mom saves the day with the facts

I hadn’t been alive for very long, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to die yet. But the little poster in the front window of the barber shop in Little Falls, N.J., told me it might not be long.

In stark bold letters, the poster announced “The 7 warning signs of leukemia.” I didn’t know exactly what leukemia was, but it sounded scary and in the late 1950s it was almost always fatal. The poster said it was cancer of the blood.

I did an inventory for the signs. “Change in a mole or wart” — well, my little body was littered with moles, but I was pretty sure they all looked the same as the day before. “Fatigue” — no, I had plenty of energy; I was a kid after all. “Hoarseness” —

I cleared my throat. Was I hoarse? I did have a little bit of a tickle there, a small frog perhaps. I tried a few words.

“Hello? Hello? Oh no.” My voice was a little ragged.

I might have leukemia! It was a real possibility. The poster said so: My voice was hoarse.

I squirmed my way through the haircut, panic rising in my soul at every clip. Why waste my time with a haircut when I might have so little time to spare?

Afraid to say anything out loud, I was quiet on the way home, and the next time I was with my mother without the brothers around, I approached her and said solemnly, “Mom, I have to talk to you.”

She could tell right away that I was a tad distraught. No doubt she looked around the house to see if anything else was broken, but the look on my face told her this was different from guilt. I led her into a bedroom and closed the door.

“What? What is it?” Now she was starting to get anxious herself.

I threw myself against her apron and hung on for dear life.

“One of the symptoms of cancer is hoarseness and today I’m hoarse!!!” I wailed.

For just a moment there was no sound in the room except for my terrified sobbing.

And then, a soft laugh.

You know the scene in the movie “A Christmas Story” where Ralphie gets in a fight and afterward his brother, Randy, hides under the kitchen sink? When Mom asks what he’s doing there, he screams, “Daddy’s gonna kill Ralphie!”

Mom gives a soft chuckle and says reassuringly, “No, Daddy’s not going to kill Ralphie.”

That’s exactly how I sounded that day and exactly how my own mother sounded when she said, “No, you don’t have cancer.”

Patiently, she told me I needed to have more than one symptom before I needed to consider the most dire diagnosis. I realized I probably was going to live. The fright eased its way out of my tiny frame.

Lesson learned: Wait until you have all of the facts before jumping to conclusions. So often we become afraid because we only understand part of the story. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” says the old proverb — but the emphasis is on the word little. If you don’t have full knowledge, you can make a dangerous mistake — such as being paralyzed by fear.

The leukemia society didn’t mean to frighten a little boy that day, but planting a little fear in your mind is a common motivational tactic. The idea of the poster was to get you to a doctor, but it also works for product advertising and politicians.

When I sought more information from the closest trusted source at hand — my mom — the fears were dispelled.

Are you scared of something you don’t fully understand? Get more information. Most of the time, the situation is not as dire as you fear. And even more often, as I learned by discovering I didn’t have leukemia, the situation is not even a “situation” at all.

This column is an excerpt from the book Refuse to be Afraid.

Your fears are lying to you

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid!"

What are you afraid of? How could you not be?

It seems that every commercial, every politician, every news story begins with an appeal to our deepest darkest fears. As a society we’re obsessed with the latest disease, the latest threat to our environment, the latest threat to our personal and collective security, the latest threat to our freedom, the latest threat to our very way of life.

I’ve been writing about confronting and overcoming fear for years, and the threats and rumors of threats just keep on coming.

You know what? You’re probably not going to die of Ebola. The country is not going to dissolve into chaos because of the election results. You’re probably not going to be killed in a terrorist attack. You’re probably not going to get cancer or poison yourself or have a four-hour erection anytime soon.

Yes: You could die of Ebola. The country might dissolve into chaos. You might be killed in a terrorist attack. You might get cancer or poison yourself or get a four-hour erection.

But those things probably won’t happen. In fact, I all but guarantee it.

At least the odds are so good that you will live through today, and tomorrow, that your best bet is to quit worrying and focus on living.

Sometimes the most fabulous, incredible stuff comes out of nowhere and smacks you upside the head with delight if you keep yourself open to the possibilities instead of the fears.

That happened to me about 20 years ago, the first time I listened to the wonderful Tom Petty album called Wildflowers. There, in the middle of a song called “Crawling Back to You,” Tom hit me between the eyes with a simple, life-affirming truth:

“Most things I worry about never happen anyway.”

Don’t let them scare you. You’re going to live. Do you hear me? You’re going to live!

Whatever is frightening you, you’re going to live through it. Whatever you think is about to defeat you, you’re going to live through it, and you will live to fight another day.

Now, I did say I “all but” guarantee it. We all die of something. But you gain nothing by worrying about it: Most things you worry about never happen anyway.

The key to freedom, the key to realizing your dreams, is to spit in the eye of your fear. Sure you’re afraid; work with that. Take the nervous energy you waste worrying and convert it into the triumphant energy of doing something great today.

Who is this guy anyway?

The completion of a project gives a guy a chance to stop and take a deep breath. As the world awaits Tuesday's release of the Myke Phoenix compilation Year of the Dinosaur, I find myself taking a deep breath and contemplating what the bibliography so far means.

Since I was 10 years old and found a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #4 at the old IGA in Milton, Vermont, I have enjoyed superhero stories. Well, even before that - I do remember enjoying a Legion of Super-Heroes story or two before the summer of 1963 - but Spider-Man and Marvel Comics made me a fan. A few years later I heard about a series of 1930s pulp hero reprints of a superhero named Doc Savage, and Cold Death started me on the path that would lead me to Myke Phoenix.

My Myke stories are designed to take you about an hour to read, approximating the comic book experience or perhaps a TV show. Year of the Dinosaur collects the 12 stories I've written in the past year or so, with a bonus short called "A Myke Phoenix Christmas."

I first conceived of Myke when I was a late-30s radio news reporter. I finished four stories and started several others, but the lack of a practical outlet to share them with the world led me to set the project aside. The indie publishing movement provided that outlet, and those earlier stories have been available since 2008 as The Adventures of Myke Phoenix.

But of course, my world view goes beyond the confines of the superhero adventure. (That is not to say we couldn't have a lengthy conversation about the superiority of Marvel's The Avengers to any Superman or Batman movie ever made.)

I've always thought war was stupid, and I've come to think of states as counterproductive to individual human endeavor. That led me to write The Imaginary Revolution, the memoirs of the man who led the planet Sirius IV to independence from Earth and beyond to a commonwealth that had no state government apparatus. As discussion raged over what form of government to establish for the newly free world, protagonist, Ray Kaliber, asked the simple question, "Why do we need a government at all?"

The story is a sequel of sorts, or at least set in the same universe, as The Imaginary Bomb, a space opera perhaps best known as a series of podcasts I voiced in 2006. The universe is based sometime in the future from now, when humanity has discovered how to tap the power of the imagination as an energy source. As too often happens with new technology, someone has considered the implications of weaponized imaginary power, and my interplanetary truck drivers get tangled up in stopping the imaginary bomb before it hurts someone.

I also have a collection of short stories, Wildflower Man, anchored by the story that has gained quite a following in its podcast form, if I may say so. I haven't transferred that book to digital form because, to be honest, I wish it was a little longer. I keep meaning to write a few more short stories to pad it out. One of these days.

I've also collected some of my essays on a couple of themes. Refuse to be Afraid is about empowering yourself to battle through the fears and impulses that keep us from the greatness we could accomplish: Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream.

And A Scream of Consciousness discusses ways to fight past the distractions of everyday life and concentrate on the needs of this moment, right now. These two books, and the "What I Believe" section of The Imaginary Revolution, probably sum up what I might pretentiously describe as my life philosophy.

So there are seven books, five fiction and two non-fiction, that hopefully will entertain you, perhaps could change your life, and at least will tell you a bit about who this guy is anyway.

If you're reading this on Friday, Nov. 14, 2014, the day I wrote this, you have until tonight to get a free download of Firespiders Unleashed, the pivotal Myke Phoenix story that opens the trilogy that also includes March of the Alien Dead, Claws of Death and Talons of Justice. Yes, it's a four-part trilogy. I blame Hollywood. Or perhaps Douglas Adams.

Starting Saturday I'll be devoting most of my shameless self-promotion to the collection that climaxes with those four stories, Year of the Dinosaur. But I really do like the way the saga ends, so if you want to cut to the chase and save a couple of bucks, buying the individual stories is a pretty good investment.

In any case, those are the motivations that drove the bookshelf of my stuff to date. So now you know.

Gojira and the cuddly monster factor, revisited

The suspenseful new trailer for the new movie Godzilla seems to promise the first great movie since 1954 about the big green monster. Folks like me grew up loving Raymond Burr intoning "What has happened here was caused by a force that until a few days ago was beyond the scope of man's imagination," but then saw the original Japanese film and realized that the American version had stripped the story of most of its power.

Nearly 30 other movies have been made featuring the creature in Gojira, but, well, here are my thoughts on the matter that I wrote about five years ago and included in my book Refuse to be Afraid. The new film looks different, and by that I mean it appeals to the spark in me that was inspired by the original film. We'll find out in May if the promise is kept.

Gojira and the cuddly monster factor

From time to time I wonder about the process that converted Godzilla into a series of movies that appeal mostly to children.

The 1954 Japanese film Gojira is a remarkable drama. Nine years after the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a creature emerges from the depths of the seas, shaken loose by the vibrations of nuclear bomb testing and mutated to unnatural proportions by the bombs' radiation.

A scientist has created a weapon even more terrible than an atomic bomb, one so horrible that he refuses to share the process he used to discover the technology and resists efforts to use the weapon against the giant creature, even as Japan's largest city comes under siege.

It's a movie about war, peace, violence and nonviolence, technology and the simple ongoing question: Just because something can be done, is it right and just to do it? A very thoughtful and important movie with fantasy and science fiction elements.

Gojira was repackaged as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, for distribution in America, and each and every one of its more than 20 sequels has been mindless child's play. One almost has to wonder: What was so dangerous about the ideas in Gojira that it had to be so trivialized?

But then — scary monsters are often transformed into cuddly children's toys. Look at the stark and poignant story of the man built from parts of other men by Dr. Frankenstein. The iconic image of Boris Karloff in his monster makeup eventually became Herman Munster.

Perhaps it's simply a natural reaction to looking into the depths of the soul and finding darkness. We step away, we dress up the darkness with childlike innocence, and we look the other way. A person can only spend so much in the dark before needing a little sunshine.

Conspiracy to suppress dangerous ideas didn't turn Gojira into Godzilla. We just need to be reassured that things that go bump in the night are just bumps.

Warning: The sky is falling!

The last few years have proved H.L. Mencken’s oft (but not oft enough) quoted statement that “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

I thought of that this week when I heard the news that Canada has announced the first avian flu death in North America – a traveler who recently returned from a trip to China.

Keep an eye out for suggestions by which government can lead us to be led to safely from this latest hobgoblin.

It truly is an endless series of hobgoblins, too. As if the bird flu wasn’t enough, there’s a deadly pig virus that has spread to 22 states.

You can almost follow the template in the average news story about these hobgoblins. First, we meet a victim of the hobgoblin as he or she struggles. Then, we are presented with numbers or evidence that the hobgoblin affects many people.

Next, a government official talks about what has been done to fight the hobgoblin and how much could be accomplished if only they had more money or if only the law were strengthened. The solution is almost always more taxpayer dollars or a tougher law, and less freedom or individual choice. The solution presented is very rarely fewer taxpayer dollars (so you can choose how your dollars are spent) or a relaxation of the law (so you can choose for yourself how – or whether – to address the matter).

The practical politicians like it when you’re scared – it gives them another chance to show how much you need them.

A better solution in almost every case: Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself.

How to escape crippling fear

Another great post from The Robert D. Smith:

Fear never has a happy face. Therefore smile.
Fear talks in monotone. Therefore speak with emotion and inflection.
Fear looks sloppy. Therefore clean up as if you are going on your first date.
Fear has no manners. Therefore act with grace and politeness.
Fear gives no certainty. Therefore give and seek certainty (from yourself and all others involved) in everything you do.
Fear focuses on all the reasons why you can’t do something. Therefore focus on the reasons why you can.
Fear focuses only on itself. Therefore do all you can to serve others, especially those closest to you.
Fear makes no decisions. You cannot correct a decision that has not been made. This is why fearful people get nothing done.

Refuse to be Afraid! Free yourself. And follow your dreams ...

Refuse to be Afraid

Some time ago I collected a bunch of blog posts and threads into a little book whose name is still the subtitle of this site: Refuse to be Afraid. Free yourself. Dream. A few people have purchased or otherwise seen the book, and I'd like to believe it's done some small good in the world.

I browsed through it again Thursday morning. It's still timely – probably always will be as long as people use fear to try to control other people. It seems today more than ever, the fear mongers are loose on the streets and airwaves and bandwidth everywhere. And so I'd like to quietly remind you of my little book of pep talks, which concludes with a confession:

A funny thing happened to me on my way toward producing a book called Refuse to be Afraid, designed to help people overcome the everyday and extraordinary fears that stand in the way of their freedom and their dreams.

I got scared.

What if everyone already knows this stuff and I’m the last to figure it out? What if I help everyone overcome their fears and it turns out it was good to be afraid — after all, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t really out to get you? What if I’m just writing a collection of clichés that no one can take seriously? What if — What if — ?

 It took two or three extra years for me to finish this book, because I didn’t follow the advice I was laying out in this book. So I bring you these suggestions from personal experience and to say: I know how you feel. I’ve been there. ...

The evidence that my fears were ungrounded is right here: You’re reading the book I was afraid would be ignored and dismissed, the thoughts that I was afraid to share under my own name.

You can get past your fears, too. It gets easier with every step you take — but make no mistake, the fear will never completely go away.

So: you’re scared. So am I — some days more than others. The first step was recognizing that almost all of the time, I was afraid of nothing. I learned that fear is an irrational and useless emotion. It is a seductive and dangerous force that urges us to stay in our comfort zones: Anything more than the quotidian, the familiar, is scary — sometimes a little scary, sometimes downright frightening.

But you were made for more than this. Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream. And you will succeed.

There are at least three ways to get hold of Refuse to be Afraid, four if you include searching through my blogs for the original entries.

You can find the Kindle version.

You can find the .epub version for other ereaders.

You can have the good old-fashioned paperback.

Yes, this is a pitch for you to separate yourself from a few pennies. I continue to believe you could use this message for those days when you've had enough of the overwhelming message of the age: Be afraid! It's a scary world! You can't protect yourself from the monsters! We can rescue you!

They're lying to you. Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream.

shutdown politics

Found on Facebook ...

Happy Government Shutdown/Obamacare Marketplace Launch Day

H.L. Mencken would be having a field day with our Practical Politician in Chief's efforts to keep the populace alarmed.

My guess? Your life will go on today. Maybe it'll be a good day, maybe it won't, but the federal government's troubles won't affect you dramatically.

What you were told to fear were imaginary hobgoblins.

25 victims of the procrastination monster

The procrastination monster is sitting on my shoulders, big time. As I’ve written before, procrastination is one expression of fear.

What am I afraid of? Who knows? At this point, who cares? I just need to kill the beast.

I sat down over the weekend to see what the procrastination monster is blocking. Some projects have been waiting as long as two or three years, or more.

The list of WPB projects that are still awaiting the light of day includes:

√ At least eight adventures of Myke Phoenix, including three in various stages of completion.

√ Packaging and marketing the Refuse to be Afraid audiobook, which I recorded long ago.

√ Recording, packaging and marketing the A Scream of Consciousness audiobook.

√ Recording, packaging and marketing the Imaginary Revolution audiobook.

√ Producing the next 13-week series of the Uncle Warren’s Attic podcast, episodes 81-93.

√ Finishing the second novel in the trilogy that began with The Imaginary Bomb and concludes (?) with The Imaginary Revolution called The Imaginary Lover. I've conceived a different ending than the one I tossed out in a past musing.

There’s more, but you get the picture. The lack of production is not a result of having no ideas and nothing to do.

It’s the monster.

Probably I should do the Curly thing, just pick one and get on it.

Perhaps I should ask: What would YOU like to see (or hear next)?

Assault of the imaginary hobgoblins

Every day comes a new example of H.L. Mencken’s imaginary hobgoblins. You know, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The whole aim of practical politicians is to tap into fear and offer up a solution that involves putting your freedom into the hands of overlords who know better and can protect you. Of course, they don’t know better, and they can’t protect you.

I look through my book of notes to myself and see an occasional reflection of each day’s imaginary hobgoblins which didn’t come true. Remember on New Year’s Eve, Congress or President Obama (depending on who you believed was being obstinate) was going to drive the country over the fiscal cliff? In April North Korea was going to launch a nuclear missile any moment and there had been a bird flu outbreak in China. The proposed solution in each case was a government action or new regulation of some sort.

For the upteenth time, my journal quoted Tom Petty: “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.” And they don’t. They even drove over the fiscal cliff a few months later, and the average person barely noticed.

But that doesn’t stop the craven from trying to make you worry, so that you will place your freedom in their hands, clamorous to be led to safety.

They can’t and won’t protect your freedom or lead you to safety. Freedom is a state of mind, and when you trade it for some bit of external security, you have already lessened it.

Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself.

Thoughts on the end of the world

There’s a blizzard warning where I am. Right now it’s just pretty – a firm but so-far gentle snow blanketing the ground with a layer of white. The wind is blowing hard enough that there are spots where greenish and brown vegetation still shows through. But the people who know about such things insist the layer will be at least a foot deep in a few hours.

Tomorrow the world ends in a blaze of fire, according to some folks who have drawn conclusions based on an ancient civilization’s calendar. As one explanation I saw noted, the world did not end when we got to the end of the 2011 calendar, and so it’s likely that the day after the end of the Mayan calendar, life will go on for most of us. And if there are Mayans left among us, they’ll mark the first day of a new epoch.

Everything and everyone does end, of course, although probably not all at once. I’m approaching the end of my sixth decade here, and I’ve seen my share of confused and frightened people who were absolutely positive that the world was going to end on such and such a date.

Tragically, some of them were right in a way, as they decided to end their own lives on or before that date. It was indeed the end of the world for them. For the rest of us, the world went on.

You do need to wrap your mind around the certainty that your stay on this world is finite. It’s not a bad or a good thing, this dying stuff, it’s just the way it is. Understanding that lends a certain degree of urgency to doing whatever it is you believe it’s important to do.

It’s a source of freedom, actually; if you knew you were going to die soon, how would you choose to live your life? Well, sooner or later you ARE going to die, so why not live that way now? Go ahead and write that novel or build that house or preserve that marsh or do those good deeds you always wanted to get done. Start building your legacy today, and you’ll have that much more time to build a big and solid one.

I’m guessing that the world will not end in a blaze of fire tomorrow, and so later today I’ll head out with the snowblower. My bet is that the snow will not melt in a firestorm in the morning, and I will get to keep working and fulfilling my purpose. And so will you. Someday the world will end for both of us, but probably not today or tomorrow.

We're all gonna die

I repeat myself – but these thoughts are still relevant, still part of my book Refuse to be Afraid, and relevant to the new book, The Imaginary Revolution. And so I repeat myself:

My eye was caught at the antique store by a thick, well-worn book titled "Modern Medical Counselor." By its condition it was clear the book was anything but modern, and the price ($2) was right, so, figuring it would be an interesting excursion into the past, I brought it home.

What actually caught my attention was the section that I casually opened to, even before I brought the book home: "Survival in Atomic Bombing." The copyright date of the book is 1951, so browsing through this book will be a traipse through an era where communism and nuclear death were our greatest fears.

With the knowledge of what was to happen in the next 60 years, we know the fears were largely unfounded. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still the only cities ever destroyed by atomic bombs. Although the great communist bogeyman reared his ugly head many times over the years, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics fell apart under the weight of its totalitarian follies and China has decided to try burying us the good old American way, by establishing government-subsidized monopolies.

In other words, the fear that was used as an excuse to impose on our liberties never came true. Communism and nuclear catastrophe did not destroy us.

Today, the fear is of small groups of terrorists (and "rogue nations") with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. The fear is that an influenza virus that kills birds will find a way to migrate into humans and cause a pandemic. The fear is that standing too close to a person smoking a cigarette will give you cancer. We can let those fears control us, we can let others use those fears to justify locking us into cages, or we can refuse to be afraid and live our lives as free men and women.

Here is the fear that lurks behind all of these fears: We are afraid to die. We are especially afraid to die before we experience a ripe old age.

Here is the truth: We all will die, some of us "before our time." The real choice we all have: We can live and die as slaves, or we can live and die as free men and women.

Most of our lives we exist in the gray area between freedom and slavery, convincing ourselves that we are making our choices freely: When we hand the chains to our government and our bosses and our creditors, we rationalize that we are making a free decision to enslave ourselves. And it usually is a freely made choice — in the beginning.

Like Jacob Marley's ghost, we accumulate shackles as we progress through life, usually out of fear — fear of poverty, fear of going hungry, fear of not having a reliable car. And the biggest fear of them all is the fear of death.

Accepting that you will die is the beginning of freedom. The title of the song "Live Like You're Dying"  is its message.

These thoughts, especially as I relate them in a political context, could be misconstrued as advocating violent resistance against the slave masters. Nothing could be further from the truth. The revolution I advocate is an internal one:

Refuse to be afraid. Resist the impulse to yield to the fear and let someone strip your liberty in the name of security and protection. Live like you were dying — because you are dying, someday, so better to live free than in chains.

You can do it

The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step.

He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure. His every thought is allied with power, and all difficulties are bravely met and wisely overcome. His purposes are seasonably planted, and they bloom and bring forth fruit, which does not fall prematurely to the ground.

Thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force: he who knows this is ready to become something higher and stronger than a mere bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations; he who does this has become the conscious and intelligent wielder of his mental powers.

James Allen

As A Man Thinketh

Ramping up the politics of fear

Here we go again.

Four years ago I wrote:

Towards the climax of the great movie about violence and the state V for Vendetta, megalomanical leader Adam Sutler declares the time has come for the rulers of totalitarian England to remind the peasantry "why they need us." What follows is a montage of news reports clearly intended to cow the citizenry into a state of fear, reminding them that the government is the only thing standing between their security and utter chaos.

A civil war drags on in the former United States. Water shortages are reported and predicted because of a lack of sufficient rain for two years. Police arrest nine suspects who were hoarding vaccine against the deadly avian flu. Twenty-seven people have died in the wake of the discovery of a new airborne disease. New evidence links the terrorist V to an attack on London 14 years earlier - reminding them of the attack that made citizens turn to the government for protection in the first place. A skeptical bar patron says out loud: "Can you believe this shit?" Of course we can't, and we shouldn't.

The truth revealed by the movie is that the state is the source of the chaos. The titular character V, either a freedom fighter or a terrorist depending upon point of view, helps detective Finch uncover the reality that the central terrorist attack of his age was staged by government forces seeking control of citizens' lives under the cover of providing more security. V himself is the product of secret government medical research gone awry.

A central theme of the movie is the same as mine: Refuse to be afraid. The standard political script has been unchanged for decades now: Remind people about something they fear. Offer yourself as the solution to that which they fear. Once elected, strip people of freedom in the name of fighting that which they fear. Rule with an iron fist or a velvet glove, but rule; do not let people live for themselves in freedom.

Thursday night I surfed around the Web and found: Israel could attack Iran in April, May or June. James Cameron has bought a farm in New Zealand and speculation is it's to ensure his family is safe if America collapses. President Obama says his religious faith leads him to seize wealth and redistribute it among the masses, citing the Gospel of Luke. A new flesh-eating virus is spread by sneezes.

Can you believe this shit?

The politics of fear is being ramped up again. Think through your fear; don't let the demagogues control you. Don't be conned into surrendering your freedom in the name of protection from imaginary hobgoblins.

Adam Sutler is revealed in the end of the film to be a ineffectual, frightened little man who know no solution but violence. You don't need the Adam Sutlers of the world. Think for yourself. Refuse to be Afraid. Free yourself. Follow your dreams.

Shut up and quit trying to scare me.

Friends, I gotta tell you, I've just about had it. I'm pretty much sick of politicians, pundits and reporters telling me the world will come to an end ...

- if Ron Paul becomes president;

- if Barack Obama remains president;

- if Newt Gingrich becomes president;

- if Scott Walker remains governor of Wisconsin;

- if unions grab power back from Walker;

- if Democrats take both the House and Senate;

- if Republicans take both the Senate and House;

- if the government doesn't help the economy;

- if the government attempts to help the economy;

- if billionaires spend money on campaign ads;

- if unions spend money on campaign ads;

- if the Occupiers have their way;

- if the tea partiers have their way; or

- if the Mayan calendar ends Dec. 21 for a good reason.

I am bone weary of being told how fearful I need to be. I'm exhausted from listening to people tell me that my peace of mind and safety are threatened by some hobgoblin or another.

I'm even tired of quoting the immortal H.L. Mencken, but he was right when he wrote it and he's righter than ever today: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

I refuse to be afraid! And I strongly suggest you do, too. Ask yourself why you're afraid of whichever scenario listed above makes you afraid. Who are you clamoring to lead you and the rest of us to safety? Has it occurred to you that they want you to be afraid for a reason – so you will entrust them with power that rightly belongs in your own hands?


Last election cycle I released a little book about overcoming fear. With all the mongering going on now, you might want to consider an inoculation against this disease called fear. You can buy Refuse to be Afraid by clicking on this sentence.

But more important, just read the title. Refuse to be Afraid. When somebody tells you how awful it would be if [insert scenario here], laugh at that somebody. Refuse to be Afraid. Repeat after me:

"Shut up and quit trying to scare me!"

Seth Godin's essay "The chance of a lifetime"

Heading into the new year, Seth Godin reaches back for words that still resonate.

Here's a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

Many people will have to answer that question by saying, "I spent my time waiting, whining, worrying, and wishing." Because that's what seems to be going around these days. Fortunately, though, not everyone will have to confess to having made such a bad choice ...

Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that's to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

In other words, Refuse to be Afraid. And that chance you were going to take someday? Take it. Now!

Make it a great New Year.