Category: Old age of my youth – 2016

FRIDAY, 15 JULY 2016

I was addicted to smoking cigarettes for about fourteen years. I had no illusions about the effects it had on my health. And, like other smokers, I was regularly confronted by people who regarded it as their duty to tell me that smoking was bad for me.

“Don’t you know that you can get lung cancer or emphysema?” these people would ask.

I know, I would say. Spare me the speech. I won’t even try to argue with you.

“If you know,” my well-meaning friend or relative would retort, “why on earth do you keep smoking then?”

Because, I would answer, I need it.

I believe there is a parallel between the conversation that smokers have with non-smokers and the conversation between atheists and theists over the latter’s faith.

Many so-called believers spare no effort trying to convince agnostics and atheists that there is more than enough proof for the existence of God (can be any divine figure, but let’s confine ourselves for the moment to the god of monotheists, and more specifically the Christian religion – hence the term “God” with a capital G). They will use science. They will quote famous scientists like Albert Einstein. They will refer to incidents and experiences in their own lives. They will try to catch opponents off guard. “What do you say now?” they will ask after some or other anecdote.

In fact, in the intellectual wrestling match between people who believe in the existence of God and people who do not believe in the existence of God, the former has the uphill battle. The only question the non-believer has to ask is “How do you know?”

If someone claims that water boils at a certain temperature, and someone else looks at him in disbelief and asks how he knows that, the one who has made the claim can simply put a pot of water on a hot plate, stick in a thermometer and – voila! – within minutes the claim will be proven as fact. If the other person argues that it was a fluke, they can do it again, or even better – the “non-believer” can perform the experiment himself, with exactly the same result.

“How do you know God exists?” is a problem question for believers because they cannot prove the existence of God. They say they can prove it, but not with the same certainty that it can be proven that water boils at a certain temperature. The existence of God can simply not be proven. Not that the challenge deters many believers.

It is at this point where I want to return to the smoker who says: I know. You can’t tell me anything.

Rather than getting hot under the collar and quoting everyone from Plato to Einstein and talking about the complexity of the fly’s eye and the heat of the sun to try to prove that God exists, I wonder how it will work out if a believer simply stands back and says: “I know. You can’t tell me anything. I’ve read Sam Harris’ End of Faith. I’ve read Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion. I’ve read Hawking. I’ve seen plenty of Christopher Hitchens videos on YouTube. I know exactly what you’re going to tell me. And I can’t really say much to counter it. I can’t prove the existence of God like I can prove that water boils at a certain temperature. I mean, I can tell you about times when I’ve prayed, and that certain things happened that I saw as proof that God had heard my prayer and decided to intervene. But again, I know you’re going to talk about confirmation bias and so on. I have to be honest: I see your point. The onus is definitely on me to say why I believe in the existence of God, and I can’t say anything that will satisfy you. I completely understand your arguments.”

Why do you believe then, if you cannot prove that what you believe in is true, the non-believer will ask.

“Because, I need to believe,” the believer will reply. “I want to believe. I really hope with all my heart that God exists, and that there is life after death.”

Okay, the non-believer will say, but if what you say is true, if the God of Moses and Jesus and Paul really exists, and there is life after death, what do you think will happen to agnostics and atheists and other people who base their beliefs on reason and science and logic? What will happen to people like me?

“To be honest with you,” the person of faith will start, “I don’t know. I believe in a merciful god, a god who does not need for people to confirm his existence. The god that I believe in is not an insecure god. So for all I know, in a hundred years’ time you and I will both be in paradise chatting away about something else.”

Why not? Why is the above such an impossible position for so many followers of the Christian religion to take?

Is it because it requires modesty? Is modesty not a Fruit of the Spirit? And if a person who self-identifies as Christian has such a big problem being modest, can he or she really assert that they are Christian – or is it not that simple?

Is it because many Christians believe in a god who is angry? Is it because they believe in a god who wants to punish, in a god who created people to test them? And that he punishes people when they fail? Believe, or I will punish you? Believe in the right way or face the consequences?

Is that why believers get so angry with atheists – because the latter dare to not believe in the right way?

How would it be if Christians were more honest, to other people and to themselves? If they do not harbour an unholy fear of the malicious atheist, but see him or her as just another vulnerable human being who tries to make sense of their life and the world around them? How will it work for the Christian if he or she replies to questions from non-believers with an honest, “I don’t know”? If they admit that they believe because they want to believe? If they have to admit that they believe because they need to believe? If they have to admit that an impersonal cosmos without God is just too lonely, and without purpose and meaning? If they have to admit that they believe because they hope that what they believe is true, even if they cannot prove a single thing?

Is it not true that the believer and the atheist and all grades of believers and non-believers in between are all human beings who just try to make it through another day and night?

What good does it do to be unreasonable? Who benefits from it?

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WEDNESDAY, 13 JULY 2016

A reader on BrandSmit.NET recently commented on the Afrikaans version of the piece “Poor writer or wealthy entrepreneur” from March 2016. The following was my response.

Every writer needs to make up their own mind about what kind of writing they’d like to do. Do they want to make money with their writing? Do they want to educate? Or do they simply want to serve a good cause?

If you do want to make money with your writing, you need to identify a market and then write what those people want to read, and what they are willing to pay for. Same with anything you want to sell to make money. If you have oranges you’d like to sell, you’d better go where people want to buy oranges; otherwise you would have to find out what people are looking for in the location where you are, and then try to find ways to deliver those products to them at a price that leaves room for profit.

For me, my writing is in the first place free expression of my life experience, so I have to make sure I earn an income in other ways. If I make my writing available in printed book form, I accept that money will be part of the story. Okay, then I make a few bucks. But I would rather sell oranges every weekend outside a rugby stadium to make money than to change how or what I write in order for more people to like what I have written so I can get paid for it.

I am thus rather a part-time entrepreneur to bring in money and the rest of the time I write what I want, than a full-time writer but I have to write what is dictated by the market. If other writers want to do that, good for them – everyone has to eat and pay rent. There have also always been the lucky ones who write what they want to write, in the way they want to write it, and before they know what’s going on people are falling over their feet to lay their hands on a copy of their work.

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SATURDAY, 9 JULY 2016

A few reasons why religion attracts so many people:

1. “Ultimate Reality” – “This is the real truth. The rest is either a lie, or just parts of the truth.”

2. Membership – “You’re not alone anymore.”

3. Identity – “I finally know who I really am and how I fit into the Greater Scheme of Things.”

4. Community – “We’re all brothers and sisters in spirit.”

5. The promise of, and potential for, self-improvement

Any one of these reasons is good enough to attract people to a group or an organisation or a movement. Combine all the above and more, and you have yourself a powerful people magnet.

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THURSDAY, 30 JUNE 2016

On Monday, 12 November 2007 I jotted down two thoughts about making money. As is usually the case, I had some new insights today when I translated these notes.

This piece contains the original 2007 notes as well as the comments that I added today.

Monday, 12 November 2007 

All Internet marketing and e-book sales depend on one skill, one essential element, namely to convince someone to buy something.

30/06/2016:

This idea seems to refer to the skill that some people have to sell a proverbial block of ice to a resident of the North Pole. This is the wrong way to look at it. The idea is that you should find someone desperate for that block of ice, and then you make it available to him at a reasonable price; or you notice a particular group’s urgent need for regular deliveries of blocks of ice, and then you figure out a way to make those deliveries at a cost that leaves plenty of room for profit. No superior talent is required to sell the right product to the right market.

* * *

Monday, 12 November 2007

What is the difference between sports bettors and financial traders who are mostly on the losing side at the end of the day, and people who make a living with it?

The losers have no system, or the approach they use is not built on a solid idea or on reliable statistics. Long-term winners are also patient. They wait until an optimal opportunity arises. And even then they only risk a small percentage of their capital.

What are these opportunities? How much capital is needed to start? How much should you risk? What do you do when a “gamble” ends profitably for you? What do you do when it ends in a loss?

Answering these and other questions depends on where you plan to take your calculated risks. Knowing what to do also requires thorough research; you need to spend enough time devising a strategy, and you need the discipline to stick to your plan when you hit that first rough patch.

30/06/2016:

I used to think the professional sports bettor is a highly skilled predictor of sports results. The fact of the matter is, the person who makes a living with sports betting is someone who looks for value in the available price compared to the reasonable probability of a particular outcome.

One example: If there are fifty red marbles in a bag and fifty green marbles, the probability of pulling out a green one is fifty percent. If someone offers you odds of $1.01 for every $1 you bet, you don’t think twice – you bet on, say green every time, and over the course of a hundred bets you will end up with a loss of $50 and a profit of $50.50 (in theory it could be more because you may pull the fiftieth marble from the bag after ninety rounds).

So the professional sports bettor does not necessarily try to look for a winner – every player and every team wins at some point, and everyone loses eventually; what they do is to identify value in the available prices.

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FRIDAY, 24 JUNE 2016

Since I am awake enough in the morning to register what is happening on the clock face, I think of work. I think of work when I eat breakfast, when I shower, when I brush my teeth and when I get dressed. I think of work when I’m travelling to a place where I work. After working at a particular place, I go home. Then I eat something, and then I work. When I watch TV, I am aware that I’m not working. When I lie down to take a nap, I think about how long I’m not going to work. When I open Wikipedia in my browser, or Twitter, or Reddit or Facebook, I think about the fact that I’m taking a break from work. On Saturday evening and the whole of Sunday the big thing is that I try not to work. I work when I make money, and I work when I am busy with long-term, ambitious writing projects that are most likely never going to make any money.

What I do when I work may differ from what you do when you work, but most adults accept this story that life revolves around work without thinking about it too much.

Our simple, often illiterate ancestors of five or more centuries ago only worked for a few months of the year. The rest of the time they did what they had to do to survive, they rested, and occasionally they enjoyed a little something of a life that only lasted on average about thirty or forty years.

This begs the question: Since when did we – the working masses – allow ourselves to be programmed with this thing that we have to work at least fifty weeks of the year, at least five days a week, at least eight hours per day?

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