A Book I'm Writing: Chapter One

I've been working on a book for the last year and I just wanted to offer up an introduction. It's a children's book, of sorts. I've tried to simplify the language as much as possible, while still attempting to raise the level of linguistic competence of those children that are lucky enough to read the finished product.


Introduction: My dear children, I write to you concerning issues you may not yet understand and about ideas, the consequences of which you probably haven't experienced. But I must write to you now, while you are still young, still fresh with life and curiosity, before your parents and pastors, your deliberately stupid teachers and your cultural Idols sabotage everything good and human and exciting about you. If I wait until you are older, it will be too late. You will become one of them.

You see, you live in a world dominated by adults who have not discovered any real meaning in their lives, and so they have sought to manufacture meaning, a purpose for themselves, by advocating a set of ideals derived from their fears and insecurities, and their firm belief that the world is simply a terrible and unjust place that must be changed in order to make us all feel better, more important, and more safe.

They are really quite angry with the world and with nature, specifically with human nature. Religious people will tell you that human nature is evil or "sinful". Other people will tell you that human nature is selfish, greedy, and violent - something we must all protect ourselves against. They'll try to convince you that Nature is cruel and that what makes people different from everything else in the Universe is that we have the potential to avoid cruelty. We, unlike everything else in the world, have the ability to be loving, tolerant, compassionate, self-sacrificing, altruistic, peaceful, and global in our thinking.

Sadly, the adults in your life are probably more "childish" than you are. Most likely they aren't as honest, decisive, or self-aware as you are; and you probably aren't that honest yourselves! As adults, all they have that you lack is responsibility for their own survival (a responsibility that they try to avoid as much as is humanly possible). You see, you have been born into a society that regrets and fears just about everything. The result is a culture of resentment. Your culture is so immersed in hypocrisy that understanding it is extremely difficult.

Human Beings, to their credit, excel at adaptation. We excel so well at this that we find ourselves able to adapt to lifestyles and beliefs that we don't even understand. All people really know is that they want to feel good about themselves. So they like to believe in things that make them feel good. In other words, they still need fairy tales. My hope for you, is that you will one day set aside fairy tales and become the kind of adults your parents and teachers fear and simply cannot understand. My hope is that you will rebel.

In the following pages, I will talk to you about love, tolerance, compassion, sacrifice, peace, community, hope, fear, and virtue. I explain this to you now, why the adults in your life believe the things they believe and behave the way they behave, that you will gain the courage to refuse to follow in their footsteps. Your parents, your pastors, your teachers, and the rest of the adults in your life aren't evil. They aren't bad people that deserve to feel guilty. You see, what troubles them is more like a sickness. They simply have contracted an intellectual virus that has made their minds terribly sick with stupidity.

Only by learning to be honest with ourselves about who we are and what kind of world we live in can we avoid being stupid. Any attempt to deny reality, to build for ourselves a fake world in our imaginations that feels more comforting, will inevitably result in being stupid. Some of the most knowledgeable people in the world are stupid, because knowledge itself does not make a person wise. You can know all the facts there are to know and still not understand a single truth. We must begin by understanding how the ideas adults put their faith in hurt their ability to understand the world around them, causing them to feel great resentment for the world, for other people, and for life itself.

But I warn you, do not become too excited by what is to follow. The world is a subtle place, filled with vague truths derived from murky experiences. Knowing anything with certainty is extremely difficult and at the moment you feel the most certain, you will still discover the lingering and unshakable presence of doubt. Believe me, this is a good thing, as I shall explain later. All you must do now is to engage your natural desire to question everything and to ask yourselves whether what your parents and teachers have told you makes any sense at all.

There are plenty of good-natured parents and teachers out there in America. Sadly, even the good-natured ones have become gullible and naive. Indeed, they have nothing but the best intentions, the highest hopes, and the bravest dreams in mind for you and your future - only, they haven't the slightest idea about how to get you there, what skills and abilities you'll need along the way, and what kind of mind set you'll require. They want you to be happy, which is such a terribly dumb thing to want for your children and students. You see, they will deprive you of the discipline, virtue, and knowledge you need to survive and thrive in the world, in an attempt to see you appear happy.

Many adults believe that happiness is something that comes when things are easy, in the absence of conflict and struggle, in the absence of failure and self-doubt. So adults will try to make things easy on you, to build up your self-esteem without actually requiring you to earn the right to be happy with yourself. They don't want you to struggle. They don't want you to experience failure. They don't want you to feel badly, ever. What they seem incapable of understanding is that unhappiness and "feeling badly" are important emotions that let us know that something is lacking or that we are doing something wrong.

Most people seem to believe that when they fail, it means they are a failure. This is silly. All failure means is that we've made a series of mistakes or miscalculations. The obvious response to failure is to figure out what our mistakes were and to change our course of action. These same people seem to believe that hard and unhappy circumstances make people unhappy. The only thing that will make you unhappy in life is the inability to deal with difficult situations. Every obstacle is an opportunity to learn how to deal with difficulty. The better you are at dealing with difficulty, the less stressful difficulties will become in your life. So all your parents and teachers really accomplish when they try to shield you from life's difficulties and obstacles is preventing you from learning to deal with them in a productive and constructive way.

This obsession people have with happiness and this desire for easiness creates a ridiculous amount of unhappiness and anxiety in the lives of Americans. The harder something is to achieve, the more rewarding the achievement. If happiness was easy, if it was cheap, if it existed in abundance, do you really think people would be so concerned about it? Unhappy adults often find meaning in the happiness of their children and students. They are victims in their own life-story and they want to shield you from all the things and feelings they believe are responsible for their own misery. What they haven't figured out is that they are responsible for their own unhappiness and the only people they have to blame are themselves. Bad things happen all the time and there will be times when each of us experiences sadness and disappointment. And yet, happiness, if it is a part of your life, will lift you up and allow you to move beyond that which has past.

Regardless of how young you are, you already want to be happy. You already know what makes you happy and you don't need your parents and teachers there to make this happen for you. What you really need from your parents and teachers is an education, both academically and ethically. You need them to teach you the values and skills you'll require to become self-reliant individuals, able to take care of yourselves and your families when you get older. The shame of it all is that your parents and teachers, if they resemble your average American, are insecure and unhappy, and themselves lacking the values and skills required to be self-reliant adults. Self-Reliance is important for many reasons, especially as it relates to happiness, primarily because people dependent on other people for their security and happiness are naturally plagued by insecurity, fear, and resentment. They become obsessed with controlling the people around them, who they think have a necessary role to play in their own emotional disposition.

Regardless, each of us is responsible for our own happiness. So much of our anxiety comes from having other people imposing themselves upon us, demanding that we be responsible for making them happy; but, you can't make anyone truly happy. In fact, the only kind of person that can really experience happiness with other people, are people who are already happy themselves. Unlike unhappy people, they aren't all tied up in knots on the inside. They aren't weighed down by their own insecurities, fears, doubts, and neediness. Only a person with the peace of mind and contentment experienced when they are happy, can ever really be relaxed enough to enjoy the company and companionship of others.

What you need to learn is self-discipline, focus, a healthy work ethic, and the tedious process of goal setting and goal realization. You are responsible for learning to take care of yourself and this means learning the skills necessary to empower you to act successfully. All the concern for your psychological happiness that your parents and teachers may show you does nothing to empower you to achieve the desires of your heart. Wanting to be happy is easy. Actually being happy, as many of the adults in your life have already discovered, is hard.

To be happy, a person must be able to achieve and possess the things they value most in life. You must learn to be in control of your own destiny. The more you can do for yourselves, the less stressful life will become; and believe me, the leading causes of unhappiness in life are stress, indecisiveness, procrastination, insecurity, and fear. When you know how to take care of yourself, when you aren't dependent on other people for the things that you need and desire, you will discover that stress, insecurity, and fear simply do not play the role in your life that it plays in the lives of so many disconsolate people.

How can people develop meaningful and healthy relationships with one another, which we need, when they are consumed by stress, insecurity, and fear? I simply cannot imagine the terrible impact our society has had on America's children. Throughout out your entire lives you have been immersed in a culture that tells you how bad the world is. Children are taught to be afraid of every injustice, inequality, and obstacle this world has to offer, instead of being taught how to overcome injustice, inequality, and obstacles through hard work, self-discipline, and self-reliance. Do you really want to place your life in the hands of others, to be dependent on other people for your happiness and safety? Life is much less stressful and complicated when you provide for your own happiness and security, when you simply refuse to be bullied and imposed upon by other people.

But this is the opposite of what your parents and teachers are telling you. The chances are good that your parents and teachers are teaching you that we all have to make sacrifices for each other so that we can all be secure. That so long as anyone is sick, poor, and unhappy, that we all have a responsibility to do our part to make their lives better. And yet for all their commitment to self-sacrifice and trying to make the lives of the people in this world better, we still live with sickness, poverty, and unhappiness; and because people are becoming less and less self-reliant, the people feel a greater sense of community in their misery.

Anyone that demands human sacrifice for the greater good is your enemy. They are a person that believes that they are their brothers keeper. They are a person that believes that we are all responsible for one another and that your brothers' unhappiness is your unhappiness, that your brothers' problems ought to be your problems. Why? Why should anyone degrade Mankind in this way? It is far better to teach people to take responsibility for themselves and to demand that people be accountable for themselves, than it is to yoke us all together into one miserable, frightened, helpless bunch.

Even if the world does not change, you can, at the very least, remove yourself from this sickness. You can take responsibility for yourself and refuse to take responsibility for the lives of others. This goodness will be met with great hostility and resentment. People will try to guilt you into submission, into mutual-dependence and mutual-misery. People will try to make you feel bad about the rewards you earn when so many other people in the world are suffering. Believe me, these sick people will not allow you to be happy so long as there is a single human being on this planet with problems. You do not want to be apart of this miserable and violent illness the world around you is suffering from!

What is most important to you? Maybe it's family or friends, maybe it is something you excel at like baseball or the piano, or maybe it's art or literature. Maybe it is your religious faith or a dream you have of becoming something in the future. Regardless of what is most important to you, you will discover that in order to have what is most valuable to you, you will have to work for it. If sports or academics are what you value, you will have to work hard to excel. If your interests are more social, then you have to work hard to build quality relationships with the people you care about.

I have noticed that, when asked about what is important in life, unhappy people tend to speak in generalities and happy people tend to list specifics. I believe this tells us something about happiness and where it comes from. If you don't know what is important, if you don't know what you really care about, specifically, then you have no real purpose or drive in your life. You have no motor or fuel. Nothing to push you. Without purpose or drive, life becomes something you react to. Happy people tend to be pro-active people, always moving in a specific direction toward what they care about. Unhappy people, unsure of what is really important to them, or unsure of their ability to achieve what is important to them, have no direction to move toward, no willingness to work toward even the things they suspect they want, and so most of their time is spent reacting to whatever is going on around them.

It is not a coincidence that a person who enjoys something tends to excel in that area. When you excel in something, two things happen. First, you experience a feeling of joy because what you are doing is enjoyable (obvious, I know). Second, you experience a feeling of pride, because you are doing well at something you enjoy. Enjoyment is how something you care about makes you feel, while pride is something you feel about yourself in response to excelling in an area you enjoy. Happy people take pride in what they do and tend to enjoy themselves even when they are working hard and overcoming obstacles, because the hard work and the obstacles aren't the ends they are focused on. Happy people are more focused on the gratification that they know awaits them once they have achieved whatever it is they have set out to achieve.

When you don't know what you want or what matters to you, when you live your life reacting to the things that go on around you, what is there to enjoy or take pride in? Pretty much all you really experience is whether you are feeling good or feeling bad in the moment. When all you have is how you feel about the moment, that's where your focus will be. Feeling good becomes the only goal. So people take pleasure in the little things, in having fun with friends or enjoying things that simply feel good: food, sex, entertainment and fun, drugs and alcohol, and the enjoyment of material things. Of course, it is no surprised that people become dependent on the object or subject that makes them feel good.

Food, sex, idleness, substance abuse, or simply buying things often become a vice. Eating to the point that you become fat doesn't make you happy, but the act of eating, in the moment, makes you feel good. Having sex just to feel like someone is paying attention to you, or feeling like someone wants you, doesn't make you happy, but it does make you feel good in the moment. Playing video games is fun, in the moment, but a video game is not going to make you a happy person. Drugs and Alcohol feel good and provide some excitement to your life, but they don't make you happy. Buying things feels exciting for a few moments, but then once the novelty wears off and the excitement goes away, you'll have to buy something else to feel good again.

Anytime you find yourself dependent on a thing or an activity in order to feel good, see it as a sign that you are not living your life in a way that makes you happy. Understand, children, that a happy person can delay gratification because they are working toward something they truly value. A happy person can deal with stress, pain, and frustration, because their focus is on something more important than how they are feeling in the moment. They are proactive and productive people who always seem to have a goal, who seem comfortable and at ease with whatever is happening around them. Events, in the moment, don't change who they are, nor do specific events or moments define them.

But if all you have are simple pleasures, if pleasure is where your focus is, then the chances are that everything that happens around you changes you and defines you, moment to moment, event to event. This is why unhappy, unfocused, unmotivated people become victims. They can't make themselves feel happy on their own, because they don't take pride in anything and they don't have anything in their life that they truly enjoy. Their entire experience of life, is of the world making them feel good or making them feel bad. They react pleasantly to what makes them feel good and they react negatively toward what makes them feel bad. Imagine an entire life of reacting to what happens to you. Wouldn't that be stressful and miserable? To the sick, life is always happening to them. Think about what this means for the person who feels this way. They aren't in control of their life. The world is. They aren't responsible for how they feel or what they do. The world is. These people are controlled by how the world and by how other people make them feel. They are defined by the opinions others have of them.


Dependency and misery are contagious. Dependent and unhappy people will live their entire lives resenting independent and happy people. An entire ethical system has developed around the illness of unhappiness. You see children, people have bought into a lie that happiness is the absence pain and anxiety; when in truth, a happy person simply isn't weighed down by the pain and anxiety they feel. Of course life offers pain and suffering, stress and insecurity, things to fear, weariness, sickness, and all kinds of unanticipated obstacles; but are these things that should define our attitude and thinking? Do these things justify idealistic acts of aggression against human liberty and the sovereignty of the individual?

Of course not.

Yet, there is an idea floating around in the vacuous minds of Man that beliefs that need justifies everything, and just about anything can be defined as a need. There is another stupefying idea buzzing about, which is just as damaging, that essentially views justice as "getting what one deserves". When I use the word "deserve", I am talking about what an individual has earned, or the rightful consequences of ones' actions. Yet, there is no telling what society will claim it deserves on behalf of the many, at the expense of the few.

The idea that we have a right to have what we need and that we should always get what we feel we deserve, are awfully dangerous. Within these ideas rest an endless world of subjective human demands. The people who feel that they have a right to have everything they need become takers, through force or coercion, while the people that feel they should always get what they deserve become victims, always ready to justify why they haven't gotten what they deserve and why the world is so viciously unfair. Pay attention and you will see this all around you: From the girl, who instead of taking responsibility for the consequences of her actions, seeks to paint herself as a victim to gain your sympathy, to get you to overlook her misdeeds; to the boy who takes whatever he wants, because, he argues, "he needs it".

Takers and Victims are easy to spot. They are the ones constantly complaining about how the word is unjust. They are the ones always looking to take what they need from others instead of earning it for themselves. They are the ones who talk endlessly about fairness, equity, and equality. They are the resentful ones, the angry ones, the petulant and endlessly unsatisfied ones. These are the people who will try to convince you that you owe them something or that you should feel guilt and pity, not for anything that you've done wrong, but because of the things you've done right. If your parents have a lot of money, it doesn't matter to these people how hard they had to work for it. They are supposed to feel ashamed of having money when others do not. These people resent your parents success, their merit, their goodness, and not only do they want to compel your parents to serve them, but they want them to agree that they ought to be compelled!

Imagine yourself on a baseball team. You practice and work hard, you live and breathe baseball all day long. You earn the position as the starting second baseman. Then one day, a collection of parents come to your coach and complain that it is unfair that you get to play all the time, while their children are stuck sitting on the bench. It's not their kids fault that they aren't as good as you, why should they be made to suffer the humiliation of sitting on the bench while you get to play and hog all the glory. This puts your coach in a difficult position. If he allowed himself do what is right for the team and keep you on the field as long as possible, then the parents will say, "you want to humiliate our kids!". He doesn't want to be thought of as the sort of man that humiliates children, so he takes you out of the game for the last two innings, "to give everyone a chance to play".

You work hard to be the best at what you do, because you believe that what you are doing is valuable. Being a good second baseman is a valuable thing to be. The kids on the bench might just be playing for fun, or because their parents want them to get exercise, or because they want to interact with other kids. Why should you have to sacrifice something you value and work hard for to someone else who doesn't value it as much as you do, who won't even appreciate playing in the game as much as you do? Why should you feel bad for being so good? Making you feel bad for being good is the only science mediocre people are likely to master.

They have names for people who want to be the best and work hard to be so: selfish, arrogant, cocky, obsessive, and workaholic are but a few of them. They resent you for having the motivation that they lack, that drive to excel that simply doesn't interest them. They don't think it is fair that people that work hard, people motivated by their desire to have what means the most to them, to surround themselves with things that they value, should actually get to hog all the rewards and valuable things they worked so hard to get. These are the people that have bought into the twisted and distorted meanings of the concepts of fairness, equality, and justice. These are the takers and the victims who will resent and harass the providers and the achievers. These are the enemies of individualism, capitalism, liberty, and of all the social and psychological boundaries confident and self-reliant people establish for themselves.

Don't become a taker or a victim. It is a disgusting and pathetic thing to be. When your friends get together to complain about how unfair the world is, distance yourself. When your parents talk about how other people are the reason they don't have everything they want and need, feel sorry for them. When your teachers and coaches devalue the things that are important to you by trying to be fair to everyone, Rebel! Rebelling against these kinds of people is the right thing to do. Because these people shackle themselves to their own stress and unhappiness; and they'll shackle you too, if you let them.

Misery loves company. This much we've seen is true. Don't keep the company of the miserable, or the chances are, you'll find yourself miserable too.

How long is this manifesto of yours? I can see an average high schooler understanding it, but you're going to need to add color to attract readers and cut out the generalizations (anyone who preaches equality and fairness is a "taker"?). In all seriousness, this is just a huge block of text without facts, figures, or examples save the one with the baseball player.

The kids who will read this are the same ones who will read Ayn Rand multiple times, and even I could only get through Atlas Shrugged once (for now).

Children can read Dick and Jane go to the Zoo with Spot. I don't think they can read your book, though. Lots of material that may be too deep for them too. But I am sure that the parents of the next Stephen Hawking may be interested in a copy of it.

mind if I critique?

danarhea said:

Children can read Dick and Jane go to the Zoo with Spot. I don't think they can read your book, though. Lots of material that may be too deep for them too. But I am sure that the parents of the next Stephen Hawking may be interested in a copy of it.

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Children won't read the book, but it is nevertheless a book for them. It is a book with lessons I feel that children need to learn, not that they'll be able to understand it when they are young. But if they discover the ideas in high school or college, it should at least explain to them why things are so backwards.

Arch Enemy said:

mind if I critique?

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Critique away. I am awful with editing. Eventually I'm going to have to sit down with someone have them rip everything apart and help me put all back together in a way that ensures clearer communication of ideas. I'll also need to break up sentences so that you don't forget how the sentence began by the time you finish it.

Not saying your book has a bad idea, but since it won't be read anyway why not make it for animals same idea just a little changes.

Not only will you be making a point but a lot of animal lovers like me would probably read it.

Burning Giraffe said:

I've been working on a book for the last year and I just wanted to offer up an introduction. It's a children's book, of sorts. I've tried to simplify the language as much as possible, while still attempting to raise the level of linguistic competence of those children that are lucky enough to read the finished product.

Rebellion
(A Book for Children)​

Introduction: My dear children, .

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Are you trying to start a cult or something?

winston53660 said:

Are you trying to start a cult or something?

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No. Just trying to shift the focus of cultural perspectives.

Burning Giraffe said:

No. Just trying to shift the focus of cultural perspectives.

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If you can find a communitarian (not a communist; there are differences) to write an opposing book, you could perhaps get people to read both at once so the teens don't get tired of one-sidedness.

Edify_Always_In_All_Ways said:

If you can find a communitarian (not a communist; there are differences) to write an opposing book, you could perhaps get people to read both at once so the teens don't get tired of one-sidedness.

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Teens need more one-sidedness.

Burning Giraffe said:

Critique away. I am awful with editing. Eventually I'm going to have to sit down with someone have them rip everything apart and help me put all back together in a way that ensures clearer communication of ideas. I'll also need to break up sentences so that you don't forget how the sentence began by the time you finish it.

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Alright give me a bit and I will send you some suggestions via private message.

Burning Giraffe said:

Teens need more one-sidedness.

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First post got deleted, but the kids who will be able to get through your book are the kind of kids who can see through pure unsubstantiated rhetoric without sources. We do see the world in shades of grey, and we haven't had as much time to get entrenched in our personal philosophies as many adults (the ones who buy Ann Coulter books or happily, unthinkingly sit through the latest hit from Michel Moore).

Edify_Always_In_All_Ways said:

First post got deleted, but the kids who will be able to get through your book are the kind of kids who can see through pure unsubstantiated rhetoric without sources. We do see the world in shades of grey, and we haven't had as much time to get entrenched in our personal philosophies as many adults (the ones who buy Ann Coulter books or happily, unthinkingly sit through the latest hit from Michel Moore).

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Most of the kids I hung out with in high school were extremely entrenched. We pursued self-education passionately, if only because we didn't trust the education we received from our teachers and parents. Kids today seem much more docile and eager to please their elders. Kids seem much more willing to accept dictation and beliefs from the "establishment". Whereas, in my day, we despised the Establishment. Don't confuse indecisiveness, apathy, and disinterest with seeing the world through "shades of gray".

Burning Giraffe said:

Most of the kids I hung out with in high school were extremely entrenched. We pursued self-education passionately, if only because we didn't trust the education we received from our teachers and parents. Kids today seem much more docile and eager to please their elders. Kids seem much more willing to accept dictation and beliefs from the "establishment". Whereas, in my day, we despised the Establishment. Don't confuse indecisiveness, apathy, and disinterest with seeing the world through "shades of gray".

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How well do you know kids these days? Do you interact with the most intellectual millenials often? I know very few thinking teens I would describe as "docile".

Edify_Always_In_All_Ways said:

How well do you know kids these days? Do you interact with the most intellectual millenials often? I know very few thinking teens I would describe as "docile".

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Unhuh. "millenials" isn't a word. I certainly agree that you probably know very few thinking teens.

Burning Giraffe said:

Children won't read the book, but it is nevertheless a book for them. It is a book with lessons I feel that children need to learn, not that they'll be able to understand it when they are young. But if they discover the ideas in high school or college, it should at least explain to them why things are so backwards.

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Can I write a thoughtful satire of your book?

If you give me your permission, I'll actually have to read your book and not just skim it.

Chapter One: We'll get there when we get there.

Chapter Two: I don't care who started it!

Chapter Three: Then your teacher's an idiot!

I'm trying to not procrastinate the writing I'm being paid to do, so if you say yes, I may be a few chapters behind you.

Let me know.

Burning Giraffe said:

Unhuh. "millenials" isn't a word. I certainly agree that you probably know very few thinking teens.

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[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y]Generation Y - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

Ian Shapira said:

But the next generation, a growing force in presidential politics, the job market and the spread of social networking, is harder to define. Lumped under millennials or generation Y, some in their 20s and early 30s say those titles and others ginned up almost daily in a brand-obsessed pop culture confuse them. They are unsure what most encapsulates their experience.

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Unhuh. Right. Before you mock the idea of teens that think, take a deep look at your own thought. I've come into intellectual contact with some of the greatest minds currently floating around the country's high schools, and they certainly think. They do so as much, or more, than the average adult, but if you're one of those people that thinks average adults are sheep, than I guess that I won't convince you. Have fun when you move into a retirement home run by millenials.