Officer: “Do you all know why you are here?”
Recruit: “We’re here because we’re the best of the best of the best, SIR!”
J: “You have absolutely no idea why you’re here, do you?”
(scene from ‘Men In Black’ - 1997)
I’m a lousy writer. I’ll never be the best. I don’t even try.
When it comes to running 100 meters, Usain Bolt is the best. Holder of the World Record, winner of most World Championship and Olympic gold medals and such a fantastic character that I wonder why nobody ever thought of writing a novel about him: “The name is Bolt. USAIN Bolt…” That story would run all the way to the top of the New Joke Times Bestseller 100 in about 9.572 seconds.
There are others who come close, sometimes so close that we need a photo of the finish to see who the winner is. If Usain Bolt would run 1.500 meters or a marathon, others would be faster. It is possible that next week somebody else will break his World Record. But running is an exact science and almost everybody in the world agrees that now (spring 2016), when it comes to running 100 meters, Usain Bolt is the best.
Who is the best writer? You might think that the number one on the New Joke Times Bestseller list must be a good writer. Wrong. The bestseller list is only a list of companies who did the best marketing on selling books. When you buy a book, you haven’t read it yet, so the list is about spending money and not about the quality of the story. Also, there are lots of free books, shareware books and classics like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or ‘Don Quixote’ who are in no list of selling stories but lots of people mention them between their favourites. If we think about ‘the best writer’, we can’t use the bestsellers list.
Writing is art. Art is not an exact science. Art is a matter of taste. When it comes to writing, there is no such thing as the best book or the best writer. My favourite Fantasy writer is Tolkien, but I admit that Robin Hobb comes close. Imagine the dialogue when Tolkien and Robin Hobb meet at the annual Fantasy Fair. Would Tolkien say: “Ha, ha. I have more readers than you, I sold more books than you, and Hollywood has made Oscar-winning movies of my stories, so I’m a better writer than you are. If you are in doubt, I challenge you, next week in the New Joke Times Book Arena, to a race…”? Or would he say something like: “Hello Robin. How nice to meet you. I have read your books and I think they are great. They inspire me to write even better stories. I hope you liked my books too.”?
Why is it so important to be the best? In running it is clear: the best gets all the attention, all the sponsorship deals, all the fame, all the fans and all the money. In writing, Tolkien has, thanks to the movies and the merchandising, more readers and fans than Robin Hobb, who’s stories didn’t make it (yet) to the big screen, although it might be possible that Robin Hobb is the favourite of the two between all readers who read the books of both writers. Who is the best writer? Imagine that there is one book that is worldwide elected as ‘the best book’. That would make things easy. No other books needed? Burn the rest? What if I don’t like that book? Why is it so important to be the best?
Writing is art. In art, there is not such a thing as ‘the best’. In art, there are works that are more popular, works that get more attention and works that get better reviews, but all we can conclude is: they are all good. There are people who like them. And the only conclusion we can draw about writers is: if you wrote a book and can find one person who likes it, you’re a good writer. Or perhaps we’ll need something more. For me, it’s also good when a book has moral. I personally don’t like to read about fifty ways to turn a nice girl into a slut. So I suggest: if somebody likes your story and you defend the good, you’re a good writer.
Now we come to the part where opinion mixes with exact science: what is ‘good’? That’s like asking: “Describe ‘time’ to me.” Everybody knows what it is, but… giving a decent definition of it is not so simple. Writing is putting something into words, so others understand it. A good writer should be able to make it clear what ‘good’ (and the opposite: ‘bad’ or ‘evil’) means.
Bad is simple. In 1320, Dante finished one of the masterpieces of literature: ‘La Divina Commedia’. According to Dante, there are seven deadly sins. Each of them corresponds to a perverted form of love, subdivided into three groups: excessive love (Lust, Gluttony and Greed), deficient love (Sloth), and malicious love (Wrath, Envy and Pride). Pride, the evil to believe that you are better than others, was considered the sin that caused all the other sins. The deepest part of Dante’s Hell was reserved for the ones with the message: “Look at ME! I’m FABULOUS!”
When we read another masterpiece of classic literature, ‘The Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin, we find something remarkable: those seven deadly sins from 1320 were… the seven biggest virtues when mankind was still in his stage of development from animal to caveman. In those early days, the dangers that threatened both the species and each individual monkey-man were: famine, wild animals, diseases and natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes. The skills to survive were: eat (Gluttony), collect (Greed) and reproduce (Lust) as much as you can and save your energy (Sloth) to dedicate it only to those activities. There was only one rule: the Law of the Jungle, the Right of the Strongest, the Survival of the Fittest. The ones who were best fit to take what they wanted (Envy, Wrath), the monkey men on the top of the monkey rock (Pride) were the ones with the best future. All a monkey woman had to do was to be as sexy as possible, to seduce the monkey man who was on the top of the rock, and to join him in developing the skills of Gluttony, Greed, Lust and Sloth. This was the common behaviour for so many millenniums, that we call them ‘instincts’, as instinct is the opposite of extinct. There was no intelligence needed: we did it without thinking, thanks to millions of years of practice.
The Seven Skills For Survival became The Seven Sins. What was good in the time of the cave was bad in the time of Dante. That is an interesting idea. That’s an unexpected twist in the plot. What caused that? What was the reason for that switch of culture? The answer, in two words, is: humanity developed. Humanity learned. The animal with instincts became a (wo)man with brains. The caveman learned that one leader could reach the top of the rock, but with the help of all the other monkeys of the tribe, the whole group could go to the moon and back again.
Humanity became the dominant species of the planet, thanks to his intelligence and his social skills. Not even the strongest leader of the monkeys was strong enough to kill a mammoth, but with intelligence and the social skills to work together, the whole tribe found a way. It helped them through winter (Ice Age) and it helped them to grow further until they reached what you see around you: everything you see was planted, manufactured, created, invented and/or produced by other people. Every day you survive with hardly any effort, thanks to the services of others. Millions of other people made it possible that you drive a car, cross a bridge, eat lunch or watch what happened three seconds ago on the other side of the world. It is amazing what mankind has achieved by working together, in peace, thanks to a little intelligence and some social skills.
Dante was right: the Seven Deadly Sins were bad and evil, because they didn’t help Humanity 2.0 to reach the top of its potential. On the contrary: the Seven Deadly Sins meant a step back. The days of selfish ‘everything is for the strongest’ leadership, based on instincts, were over. In the old days, ‘Good’ was defined as ‘everything that gives a positive result for me and for now’. Since Dante ‘Good’ had another definition:
Good is everything that gives a positive result, for me AND for all the other people on this planet, for now AND for our future. All the rest is Bad.
New virtues were needed, to protect social life based on intelligence: Prudence, Justice, Temperance (meaning restriction or restraint), Courage, Faith, Hope, Charity, Wisdom or Knowledge, Purity, Humility, Effort, Honesty, Diligence, Fidelity, Humanity (notice the double meaning of that word!), Chastity, Abstinence, Generosity, Tolerance, Sacrifice, Persistence, Patience, Kindness, Forgiveness, Integrity, Modesty, Altruism, Love and Satisfaction, just to name a few.
Those Virtues are not the opposite of the Seven Sins, no; they cure the disease. Those Seven Sins were already in the DNA of the dinosaurs who dominated our planet 100 million years ago. The Seven Sins are our instincts; they are part of every human being from the day he is born. The good news is: the cure is something you can learn. The Virtues are not something like talent or the title of King that you have or not by birth. The Virtues are within the reach of everyone. It just depends on information (someone has to explain you about them and why they are important), work (spend time and energy to learn and practice) and help (others can give you advice, teach you how to do it, be a good example for you). How to become a good person is very much like learning how to become a good writer: Learn, work and find help. In other words: be intelligent and social, a.k.a.: be human.
This is highly important information for writers. Every plot of fiction tells the story of the battle of good against bad. The kind, pure Snow White and the hardworking, honest and brave Dwarfs go against the envy and the pride of The Queen. The good alliance of men, dwarfs, elves and Gandalf fight the battle for Middle Earth against the evil Orcs and the dark Lord Sauron. Every love story tells the plot of a lonely loveless life against a social relation where you can love and be loved. James Bond has a full-time job in saving the world against all the pride of the selfish evil that wants to destroy it. Fiction is the story of Good against Bad and if you want to be a good writer, you have to defend Good. Right? Wrong!
Most of the fiction you see is cheap entertainment, invented stories about invented characters, about unrealistic adventurers who solve unrealistic crimes or about unrealistic, beautiful, successful people who end up in unrealistic relationships. Those stories form 90% of the New Joke Times bestseller list. I will not be there in the year 2720, but I can assure you one thing: if mankind manages to survive the next 700 years, Dante will still be read and considered a masterpiece, while not even one of the writers from this year’s New Joke Times Bestseller List will be remembered. That is because our world is not a world of fiction. This is reality. Here we have a totally different story. Well, not totally. The content is the same, but the style has changed a lot.
The content of the story of life of everyone (the cavemen, Dante and you), is one word, but only a writer who writes in Spanish, Dutch and English is capable of explaining it ( - “Wow. Does such a writer exist?” - “Yes, there is one. His name is Ronaldo7.” - “Really? That’s amazing. That must be el mejor van de beste of the best of all the writers in the world.” - “Well… he’s too modest to admit it, and his characters are flat, his vocabulary is poor, his tone urgently needs a tuning fork, but, yes, he writes great plots.”)
The content, the highest goal in the life of every human being, is… Felicidad. That’s a Spanish word. In English, you might translate it as ‘Happiness’ (‘Alegría’ in Spanish, ‘Vrolijkheid’ in Dutch), but ‘happy’ is the opposite of ‘sad’ and Felicidad is not as simple as laughing when someone tells you a joke. In Dutch you might translate Felicidad as ‘Geluk’ (‘Suerte’ in Spanish, ‘Luck’ in English), but Felicidad is not depending on winning the lottery. We’ll use ‘Happiness’ here, but in the meaning of Felicidad: a mental and emotional state of overall and long-term well-being. Overall: for everyone. Long-term: for now AND the future. Mental and emotional: not just material. See above. See the definition of Good. Happiness is our highest goal and Good is the way to reach it. The ONLY way.
Now you know why Spanish people already start to laugh when you say: “I heard a good joke…”. They are always happy. They don’t even need the joke for that. And now you also understand why Spanish people are always happy: they have a word for it, Felicidad. English or Dutch speaking people don’t have that word in their language. It’s impossible for them to reach the highest goal in life, because… they don’t have a word for it. 1984 was right. But there is a superhero to save them: a writer. So, herewith, to save the lives of every English speaking native, I officially announce that the word Felizness or Felicity from now on is introduced for the missing term, and for the Dutch I herewith add the word Feliciteit to their native language. Problem solved. Free of charge. No need to pay me royalties for it. What do you say? The word Felicity already exists? It’s not in my dictionary… Let’s search the internet… You’re right… So you understand what I mean. That’s all that matters.
If you want to know more about Happiness, you can read the books of Andrew Matthews, especially ‘Happiness Now’. Andrew is the writer of this all-time number 1 on my personal best-books-ever list, but you might not know him yet, because the New Joke Times Bestseller list is not interested in Happiness, just in publishing the best of the best of the best in making money. If you would read Andrews books, you would make me very happy and… it would make you happy, which is your most important goal in life, which leads to the conclusion that it’s impossible that you have something more important to do than reading Andrew’s books, so…
And the most amazing, stunning, world-shocking conclusion of all this, the whole reason why we need to know so much about Good and Bad is: Good is the ONLY way that gives a positive result, World Peace, Felizness, a future for everybody. Bad can only lead to short-time happiness for the leader, and because in our world everybody depends on all the others, it can only lead to destruction, to extinction of the human race, to Lord Sauron winning the battle for Middle Earth and the Orcs who start eating the others until there are no others left (which is, of course, also bad for the Orcs, but they are stupid and don’t understand that).
The Dalai Lama said: “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” The caveman, Dante and upcoming President Whatshisname all want(ed) the same: Happiness. They have a dream and an activity. When the activity leads to fulfilment of the dream, all three will have a happy life and feel that they did Good, that they are Good people. The content is the same. The difference is in the style.
In the time of the caveman ‘instinct’ was the current style. You did not think about the reason of an earthquake or an ice age. You took it for what it was, a problem you had to solve, a situation you had to survive, and you followed your instincts which told you what to do (Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth, etc.).
In the time of Dante ‘God’ was the current style. It is better to say ‘Religion was the current style’ because others had a different God but followed the same style. People sacrificed everything for their religion. People had God as their dream and their guide. God was their spiritual example who told them what to do and how to do it. In 1320 they just stopped with the Crusades, 200 years of war, of killing other people who had the same God but another book. The book was important. People formed their opinions because they read a book. They read it every day, repeated it in special celebrations until everybody was convinced that God and Good were the same. A book formed the opinion of mankind… Interesting…
In the time of upcoming President Whatshisname ‘Religion’ still exists, but if we are honest, we should admit that our current style is ‘Science’. If you have a problem with your health, you don’t go to a medicine monkey-man who cures you with leaves of the Aloë Vera or a rain dance, you don’t go to church to pray for good health, but you go to a doctor who studied and has experience with the reaction of your body when you take drugs and other chemicals.
The most important science, the science for which we sacrifice everything, is called Economy, the science that studies the choices people make. Economy starts with the basic principle that ‘Happiness’ is the highest goal in life of every social intelligent human being (and, as we know now: also in the lives of the monkey men). Every living creature will act, choose, according to his belief of what’s best for his desire to fulfil his dream of Happiness. Interesting…
Thanks to Dante, we just found out that we can reach Happiness by following the 20+ virtues and avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins. We call that style Good. We even have a definition of Good. Economy teaches us that Happiness is a CHOICE. You don’t have to believe, like Dante. It’s science. You just have to understand. Happiness is something you can learn. All we have to do is explain it to everyone. World Peace plus Happiness for every person on this planet is the result. That is MOST important information. Let’s see if it’s on the nine o’clock news tonight…
We still have books that help us to form our opinion, we still have the examples of the people around us who give us information and make us think about the best way to achieve our goals, but we have one evil devil that was not there in Dante’s Hell: the media. They repeat the message of Economy every day, in special celebrations that they call ‘programs’ (from ‘programming’), until everybody is convinced that Gold and Good are the same.
TV, mobile phones and the internet, give us so much information that we can’t ignore their influence on our opinion. The information does not come from the factories that produced the TV, the phone or the PC, but from ‘others’, from commercial broadcasting companies and companies that sell books and newspapers. Most of the finance comes from companies that get commercials and advertisement and publicity in return of their invested money. The tool ‘repeat, repeat, repeat’ that made a success of Religion is still a bestseller, so we are all convinced that we can’t live without the news, our phone, the internet and the TV, and, very interesting, we are convinced that everything around us tells us what we have to do to be Good, to reach Felizness. If the whole world tells you the same story, they can’t be wrong, can they?
It’s economy. The ones that offer all that info are… commercial companies. Companies don’t have feelings. They are not writers who are interested in picking the best words. They are only interested in numbers, in making money. They are only interested in themselves. They speak in terms of ‘conquering market share with an effective campaign and a strategy to our most important victory: making more money’. If those words sound familiar: yes, they are from a war movie with John Wayne. Kill all the bad guys, because we’re the good guys. We’re the good guys because we survive. The winner takes it all. The strongest and richest and most powerful will become the best of the best of the best…”
Do you recognise that style? Is it Dante? Or is it the monkey?
Let’s have a look at the message that all those media give us and let’s try to analyse, as good writers, which Virtues are presented in the information that reaches us, information that is not only meant to influence us but repeated so often that ‘brainwash’ would be a better word. Stalin would love the amount of propaganda that every greedy company in our modern world is allowed to make (as long as they pay for it, of course. It’s the Law of the Jungle; the strongest and richest can pay for it and will survive). Here is a small summary of messages I get in one hour TV (the news and the commercials that pay for it) and magazines.
News: War (Wrath), street violence (Wrath) and domestic violence (Wrath, Envy), politicians fighting (Wrath) about who’s right and both sides claiming to be the only one who has the solution (Pride), elections are a sponsored race of becoming most popular (Pride), scandals about fraud and corruption (Greed), problems like obesity (Gluttony), AIDS (Lust), over-consumption and pollution and global warming (Greed, not paying for the damage we cause because we want more), problems caused by overpopulation (Lust), economic problems (Greed) that cause unemployment (Sloth) and economic crises thanks to greedy banks… Should I go on? We can’t get enough of all the bad news around us (there’s also good news, but not in that hour I watched). Mankind is his own worst enemy. We do this to ourselves.
Commercials: “You should buy this product (all): eat more (Gluttony), have more (Greed), for your own comfort so you can relax and do nothing (Sloth), make sure you show off to your neighbours and friends (Envy), make sure you look good and sexy (Lust) and do everything you can to become the successful, rich, best of the best of the best (Pride), and all you have to do is buy this product… Commercials don’t want us to think. They want us to spend and they speak directly to our instincts to convince us.
In books and movies we see the bad guy and the good guy do the same amount of killing (Wrath), but the good guy gets away with it because he is good (Good looking? Is that enough?). People fall in love at first sight, like the visible part of someone (Lust) is more important than his character (Virtues). In sports, there is only interest for the winner, the best (Pride). Less than 2% of the supporters are violent, but those violent supporters get more than 98% of the attention (Wrath). Magazines tell you that you have to be gorgeous, sexy, desirable (Lust), especially when you’re a woman, so you can hook the monkey on the top of the rock and have a secure future (and if you’re no longer the fairest of them all, there is Botox and plastic surgery and you can go shopping…). Millions of students study and graduate, but all our interest goes to the ones in Columbine who shoot others (Wrath). People KILL to become famous (Pride) and the media reward their effort. “If we educate the children, we don’t have to punish the adults.”, said Pythagoras 2000 years ago. We’ve learned to leave that education to the media, who we trust to do a better job than we can do ourselves. We tell our children that smoking kills, but we put them an average of 4 hours a day before the TV without any problem at all. What do they learn? What is the holy message they grow up with?
Yes, I only get messages that try to convince me that I should behave like a monkey and yes, the problems we all suffer are mainly caused by the Seven Sins and YES, this is my opinion and ¥€$ the one who sends those messages doesn’t care about the consequences as long as he makes a profit: making more money seems to be a holy excuse for everything! And YES, I challenge you to find examples of honesty and love and altruism and any one of those 20+ virtues I mentioned above. I’m sure you will find them. The idea I want to discuss… (I want you to THINK about it, not to follow my opinion, please, I have the idea that you are an intelligent human being who can work it out for himself/herself, so please don’t disappoint me here) The idea I have is that both Good and Bad are part of the world we live in, but… the religion of Economy and the ones who benefit financially (the companies and also part of the government), try to convince us, the workers and consumers, that good is bad and that bad is good. Their style is the style of Power, of the cavemen, of ‘everything for the leader’ of ‘the best of the best of the best’. We, all the others on this planet, the ones who need work and a home, who achieved what we have thanks to doing it together, we have a whole set of other interests, we need a whole different style, the style of Truth, of Virtues, the style of the 3 musketeers: “One for all and all for one”. We could give our money and our time to the ones who show responsible behaviour… We could decide to punish the I-Conomy and support the We-Conony… It’s Economy. We have a choice. We only need to know which choice is Good. All we need is a little bit of information. Who will tell them?
There is a war going on, a war between Good and Bad. In every war, both sides are convinced that they are Good, but their definitions of Good are completely different. I thought that Economy was a tool to reach Happiness, not that we should sacrifice our Happiness to get Economy out of the crisis. Governments were invented to help people, not to force people to sacrifice everything because they have to help Government. Are we still an intelligent species? Or are we running back to the times of instinct and cavemen? What is the definition of Good? What is YOUR definition of Good?
Yes, this is a great plot. This is a horror story like you could never have dreamed of. Horror fiction gives you the creeps, but how about real horror, horror that is worse than zombies, the horror of a real battle for Planet Earth, a serious threat to the whole planet and the dominating species who live on it, a world in which Superman does not exist... Who will save the world? Who will become the real hero? The clock is ticking… Look at all those problems on the news… Bad guys everywhere… Repeat and repeat and repeat… If we don’t repeat the behaviour of sex and violence, we’ll never learn… Somebody has to do something… But what?
And here comes the twist: The real bad guy in this story is… the writer. Yes, the writer. It’s the bad writer, the one who sacrifices everything to become the number one of the New Joke Times Bestseller list. It’s the bad writer who gives us nothing but thrillers and romance about unrealistic crimes and unrealistic relationships instead of informing us of the evil that hangs above our heads and what we should do to save ourselves. It’s the bad author who doesn’t care about the impact that all that violence and sex in his stories has on the opinion of his readers. It’s the bad writer who just does his job, for money (Greed), so he can eat (Gluttony) and have (Greed) and reproduce (Lust) as much as he can without doing any effort (Sloth) and getting the best reward that the commercial companies who benefit from his work can think of: he’ll become the number one (Pride). He’ll get all the fans, all the attention, all the publishing contracts and all the money that comes with it.
The writers are behind every story on the news and behind the decision to broadcast violence instead of paying interest to Mother Theresa. The writers write the text of every commercial. The writers get paid for it and feel good. All the writers? No. Only the bad writers. There is still hope. We have to find a Good writer. We’re looking for Superman. Do you know where you can find him?