About Me and This Blog…

I’m not comfortable in the public light. I generally think I’m an average man with a decent intellect and reasoning capabilities, so I don’t see why I should think myself special enough for anyone to listen to me. And yet, I also want to tell stories to the world. Even the best of us aren’t without inconsistencies, I suppose.

With traditional publishing waning, independent publishing is becoming more viable and seems to be more stable. This blog, then, becomes important for building my online presence to better sell books. Plus, going independent means I’m my own boss. I won’t be at the whim of some executive that thinks I should have a paraplegic, transgender midget as my main character because they need more intersectionality…or whatever the kids are tearing down statues for these days.

If building an online presence is needed, I should try to make something meaningful of it. I plan to use this blog to grow my ability to think analytically and critically about subjects. I hope to become adept at discussing philosophical viewpoints with clarity while being somewhat entertaining. I plan to stray away from current news as much as possible, but I reserve the right to discuss the philosophy behind news stories or current events should I feel like it. I don’t want to be a journalist, only a thinker.

So, this blog is going to be a forum for me to test ideas. For this reason, I encourage you to participate. I want to hear your challenges or additions to my opinions. But I want to keep this discussion civil.

Most discussions that I see online anymore are just two people screaming explitives at each other instead of listening. Here are some general points to remember while on this site.

1) I’m going to have opinions that piss you off. This is okay. Ideas wouldn’t be interesting if they didn’t push boundaries and challenge us.

2) If you disagree with me on a subject, I am more than happy to discuss the subject with you. Thinking critically on a subject is somewhat masturbatory without dialogue of some kind. I want my ideas challenged.

3) I am willing to change my mind given compelling evidence. I will not participate in a discussion with you if you are condescending or only arguing from an emotional viewpoint. Those discussions are pointless as they just devolve into sniping attacks at one another instead of coming to a more complete knowledge of a subject.

4) If we are discussing a topic you must have an answer to what Peter Boghossian calls a disconfirmation question. “Under what conditions could your belief be wrong?” I try to have disconfirmation points in all of my beliefs so that I leave myself open to changing my mind. It’s hard to become rigid in an ideology when you know what pillars your arguments rest on.

5) Refrain from ad hominem attacks. They don’t further a discussion and they make you look like a loser.

I agree with George Carlin on PC Culture and I don’t care if I offend you so I will probably be cancelled at some point. Let’s have fun until then!

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The American Spirit

America has long been filled with a hard-nosed, determined people who fight against the powers that be. We fought off the world’s largest empire when we were just a handful of scrappy colonies who had ideals for a better country, and we have spent 244 years battling within ourselves and with the world to create a better way of life. With this attitude and grit, we have created the most fair and prosperous society to date, and we keep striving for more.

The attacks on our history and our underpinning ideals the past few years has been disheartening (and those aren’t white ideals, you absolute loons who think so). At times I have felt like our great nation was slipping through our grasp soon to be filled by something much worse than we could imagine. I’ll probably get into the myriad of causes behind this unrest in later blogs, or at least the causes I can see, but let’s just say I’ve been less than optimistic about the future of our country.

That’s why waking to find these videos was a heartening sight:

Incredible pic.twitter.com/Wna8pSUAsn

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 5, 2020

Maybe these people shooting illegal fireworks into the sky are celebrating the 4^th of July against their local government’s wishes like Benny Johnson would like us to believe. Maybe they are bored and tired of the lock down. Maybe the increase in fireworks complaints over the past month have been caused by the protests.

Which ever amalgamation of those three parties (and however many parties I haven’t thought of) you want to believe in, one fact remains. Millions of red-blooded Americans went out last night, in blatant disregard for the rules set down by the overlords in California, to celebrate their greatest freedom. Their freedom to put their middle finger in the air so the powers at be can look upon with despair. Born from our disdain for those trying to control us. Born from our disregard for our “betters” who try to make us follow rules “for our own good.”

You might call it stupid. You might call it dangerous. I call it unfettered American Spirit. We aren’t pushed around easily and when we set our mind to something, we get it done. We won our freedom from one of the greatest empires the world ever knew. We soaked soil in blood to rid ourselves of the sin of slavery. We sacrificed our young men to stop a fanatic who killed millions. We fought a long, cold war against an ideology that enslaves every human unlucky enough to fall under its jurisdiction. I’m looking at you Socialism, 100 million body count and growing. Like a sick McDonald’s.

We are the United States of America. The job isn’t done and never will be. Utopia isn’t an attainable dream, for we are all imperfect humans driven by imperfect impulses, but we fight every day to be as good as we can be in a fallen world. And for that I am forever grateful.

And just because I found this and love it, have a look at a beautiful patriot:

This should be the GOP 2020 Platform: pic.twitter.com/2O1qqzeXR9

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 5, 2020

Correction, Benny, this should be the country’s platform.

Why Wyrd?

Wyrd – pronounced “Weird” – A concept in Norse Anglo-Saxon culture roughly relating to fate or personal Destiny.

I grew up surrounded by stories. While other kids ran outside, rode their bikes, or played sports my focus was on a book, a TV-show, a movie, or a videogame. As long as I could experience a protagonist struggle against an antagonist, I was happy. This meant that I grew up, well, weird. I didn’t make the same connections as other kids and was generally an outcast until late middle school when someone in my class found out that I kept a folder full of jokes to amuse myself during school.

I tried my hand at writing a few times when I was younger, but I never had the discipline to sit down and really make anything of the talent. Instead, I played with action figures and pretended to be fictional heroes living out stories when no one was looking. I hadn’t realized it at that time, but I had discovered my wyrd, my fate or personal destiny, but I didn’t have the wisdom to follow it properly. I even shoved my wyrd to the side for years which only created anxiety and timidity.

In college I acknowledged my wyrd, but I didn’t think deeply about my path. I followed the stormy winds of fate across America to California to the city of L.A. where I believed I wanted to be a screenwriter. This is where I learned that blindly allowing fate to push you through life is a dangerous game. I was never going to be happy writing stories only to have most of them collect dust at the bottom of a drawer because I couldn’t convince someone to spend millions of dollars to create a film out of my script. And when I could convince someone to buy my story from me, they would have free reign to bastardize and destroy what I had created to make what they wanted.

When I decided to write novels, allowing me to tell the stories I want to tell, I started looking for a name to create a brand from. That’s when I first learned of wyrd. In Norse mythology fate is set in stone, a concept that I don’t believe in, but my path to writing has felt guided by the hands of fate since I’m one of the only people in my family that enjoys reading or is in any way creative. I grew to like the word in this abstract aspect, but it wasn’t until I dug further into the meaning of wyrd and the philosophy behind the word that is sunk home for me.

The followers of Norse mythology didn’t focus on the inexorable nature of fate, instead they believed that a person’s fate wasn’t as important as the attitude with which a person faced whatever fate had in store for them. There is no honor in passively surrendering to fate. One must face fate as a battle to fight heroically, even if the battle is doomed to lose.

This is how I see wyrd publishing. This is me turning to face fate head-on. Instead of waiting for an agent to accept my writing and then work to get me published, I’m going to do the work myself. I’m going to face my wyrd with determination and grit. If I lose, I lose. Either way I will retain my honor. Sit in a silent room and think about your wyrd. Consider where it has led you and where you would prefer to go, then turn to face your fate with warpaint and a guttural roar.