If you are someone who has been waiting for what you can do to make a difference on this issue, now is the time to act.

Below are some resources, updates, and suggestions.

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One piece of feedback I received is that checking my research might be difficult for a journalist unwilling to file their own freedom of information act requests and that casual readers might not be willing to go through the full timeline I published.

To solve this, I wrote a short version of the story on Medium:
https://medium.com/@hegemonmedia/fgm-doctors-hold-medical-licenses-and-practice-together-at-detroit-clinic-dbc3a854f825

The medium version uses only publicly available information and is written in a short to-the-point style with glossy photos. This is designed for casual readers and journalists who don’t want to have to independently verify FOIA requests.

All they have to do to see what I’ve written is true to is click links.

Where You Can Share

Here are some suggestions for where you can share the article:

• Reddit: r/Detroit, r/MetroDetroit, r/Michigan, r/Lansing, r/Dearborn, r/AnnArbor, r/grandrapids, r/flintmichigan, r/bioethics, r/Ethics, r/TwoXChromosomes, r/Feminism, r/fourthwavewomen, r/AskFeminists, r/Intactivism, r/Intactivists, r/TrueCrimeDiscussion, r/medicine

• Facebook Groups: Detroit Community, 24/7 Only in Detroit News Group, Detroit Community Event Calendar, The Detroit Scanner’s Community Outreach, Newspaper Friends, Politics in Lansing, Michigan Democratic Progressives, Michigan Resistance, Ann Arbor Politics, Ann Arbor Townies — Politics, Sterling Heights City Politics, Dearborn Heights Civic Discussion, Women of Metro Detroit, All Things Michigan, Patient Safety Action Network Community, Ethics in Medicine, Healthcare Ethics Consultant, Speak Out on FGM

• Local News / Investigative Tips: BridgeDetroit, Outlier Media, WDIV / Local 4 Contact, WXYZ 7 Action News Contact, CBS News Detroit Tips, Detroit Metro Times Tips, Planet Detroit Contact, Michigan Public Contact, Bridge Michigan Contact, Michigan Advance Contact, The Michigan Independent Contact, Axios Detroit, Axios Tips

  Anti-FGM Organizations: U.S. End FGM/C Network, Sahiyo, Equality Now, Global Woman P.E.A.C.E. Foundation, AHA Foundation, Sanctuary for Families, Safe Hands for Girls

  Patient Safety / Medical Accountability: Patient Safety Action Network, Patients for Patient Safety US

  Regulatory / Public Accountability: Michigan LARA Licensing Complaint, LARA Health Professional Complaints, Michigan Board of Medicine Agendas and Minutes, Joint Commission Patient Safety Concern

  Other Platforms / Forums: X / Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, Substack Notes, Mastodon, Medium FGM Tag, DetroitYES Forum, City-Data Detroit Forum, Patch Detroit, Nextdoor

Challenges Sharing

I’ve struggled to share this article. Some examples:

• I posted the article on reddit. A pop-up suggested I crosspost. I did. It removed the post for spamming. Many reddits also don’t allow crossposts or certain content, despite their users being interested in this news.

• I posted on Facebook. It suggested I boost it. I did. It refused the ad for potential “election interference.” (I’d love to know what election could change this issue.)

• I posted a video on TikTok. It blocked it for community guidelines violations. Reversed on appeal, but delayed the video a day.

I’m sure these are automated systems, not targeted suppression, but the impact is the same. It’s frustrating. If you’re experienced with these platforms, please share your solutions in the comments and use them to show us how it’s done.

More Suggestions

At the end of my timeline article, that collects all information from my investigation, there is a “Next” section on what could happen next that includes some possibilities for activists. That section has even more ideas.

Michigan Residents

Your elected representatives can change this. The Governor of Michigan is Gretchen Whitmer. The oversight committee is chaired by Rep. Jay DeBoyer. Both of these officials could act. Respectfully let them know you want them to investigate.

Sample email you could send:

I am writing to ask you to investigate the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs’ handling of the medical licenses of Dr. Jumana Nagarwala and Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, two doctors charged in United States v. Nagarwala, the first federal FGM prosecution in U.S. history.

The doctors did not dispute that they had engaged in female genital mutilation. Federal charges were dismissed on constitutional grounds in 2018. However, no conviction was required for Michigan to take licensing action, because the Public Health Code allows discipline based on conduct, not just criminal outcome.

LARA closed its licensing investigation with no disciplinary action before the federal court ruling. Neither physician was suspended, reprimanded, or restricted in any way. Both hold active, unrestricted Michigan medical licenses today. Both are currently practicing together at the same Detroit clinic, advertising school physicals and receiving state funds through medicaid.

The memos explaining why the state closed its investigation have been withheld from public disclosure. No one outside LARA and the Attorney General’s office has explained to the public why they closed their investigation while these doctors were being federally prosecuted. LARA has lied to the press about its actions, by claiming in a statement to Medscape that they were investigating, when they were not.

A detailed account of these facts, sourced to public records and documents obtained through FOIA, is available here: https://www.hegemonmedia.com/p/how-doctors-prosecuted-for-fgm-kept

Find out why this happened and ensure it does not continue.

Support Legal Action

I am exploring legal challenges to make public the memos explaining why the state closed its licensing investigation. Those will cost money. If you want to support that, contribute here:

GoFundMe: Expose Medical Board for Licensing an FGM Doctor

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The focus of Hegemon Media has been children’s issues and social issues. However, my focus has shifted to AI and art. That focus has crept into this publication. Rather than transition this substack to another focus or blend to two, I’ve decided to share my AI creations under a new email list, which you can sign-up for on the front page of my website here:

• https://brendonmarotta.com/

I am a consequentialist. My intention is to have the maximum impact. Although all the issues I discuss here remain important to me, the change AI is creating is too significant not to put all of my energy towards. I believe I will have a greater impact on social issues if I get into AI now and shift back to them as my primary focus in the future than if I just focus on social issues. Getting into AI now is like getting into computers and the web in 1999. There will be significant benefit to those early.

In the 90s, you’d hear people say “I’m not a computer person.” Now, everyone carries an internet-connected computer in their pocket at all times and uses it throughout the day. The average person today is more of a “computer person” than the most tech-literate person in the 90s. People who say “I’m not into AI” now are on the same path. You will be. In a few years, everyone will be an “AI-person,” the same way everyone is a “computer-person” today.

When that day comes, I don’t just want to say “I told you so,” but instead have tangible results from bets I made when it mattered. That means learning AI and building as much as I can now. It’s challenging, especially with young kids and many demands on my time. To accomplish this, I’ve chosen to focus my time on other projects, rather than regularly write here.

That said, I might irregularly write here. I intend to keep this substack up and might still publish these articles in book form or release audiobooks of my previous releases. It is just a question of time, money, and energy, not desire. If I could, I would release a book or a movie every month. My creative energy is such that I want to create at that pace. My time and ability is another question. (Another reason I’m interested in AI is that it might help me work at that pace.)

I also know that most of you signed up for this substack because you were interested in children’s issues and social issues. Not everyone is interested in the art I’m creating next. That’s okay. Rather than try to bring everyone with me, I’m offering you the chance to decide. If you want to join me in the next step and what I think will be the most impactful work yet, sign up here on the front page of my website. If not, thanks for all the support you offered thus far.

To make this more fun - I’ve created an AI automation where if you give me your three favorite stories, I will use AI to tell you the personal narrative of your life. Don’t believe me? Try it and find out for yourself: https://brendonmarotta.com/

Find Your Narrative

Many have told me this AI tool accurately saw them and revealed something about who they are. I’ve sat across from people in-person and seen them have a powerful reaction to it. Try it here and let me know if it has the same impact for you.

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On a large film set, the director does not touch camera. They don’t act. In many cases, they don’t even write their own script. The director “prompts” other artists to carry out their vision. AI art works the same way, with a creative human directing AI. While the director is understood to be the “author” of the film, since AI is a newer artform some still mistakenly credit the tools rather than the creative who wields them.

When photography first began as an artistic medium, it received many of the same criticisms as AI. Photographers just “push a button” and the camera “does all the work for them.” Over time, we’ve come to understand that the choice of where to place the camera, how to frame and capture the subject matter, and what subjects are photographed are all artistic choices that reflect the intention of the human artist more than the tool of a camera. In time, AI art will be understood the same way.

Detractors of AI art claim that the lack of control makes AI tools different from other artforms, yet anyone who has worked on a film set knows that the directors also do not have total control. The other artists they collaborate with bring their own ideas that are not the director’s. The director’s creative choice is whether or not to incorporate those ideas into the film. When the director includes a contribution of their collaborators, those choices become the director’s artistic choice as well.

For example, the classic film Taxi Driver (1976) contains a scene where Robert De Niro’s character says “You talkin' to me?” while imagining a confrontation alone in his room. The line is on the American Film Institutes 100 Best Movie Quotes at #10 and considered one of the most iconic moments of the film. Who is the “author” of this line? The film is written by Paul Schrader, but that line was improvised by actor Robert De Niro. Yet despite neither writing nor saying the line, director Martin Scorsese is consider the “author” of the film to the point where the movie is sometimes referred to as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.

While Schrader and De Niro have significant creative roles in the film, the reason Scorsese receives credit is that he made the choice to include those creative contributions. He created the environment where De Niro could improvise that line and chose to include that improvisation in the final film. A lesser director might have told De Niro to “stick to the script,” edited it out of the movie, or never created an environment where the actor could improvise in the first place.

Likewise, AI might have unplanned moments where it creates genius that the human creative prompting it did not plan. Even in these cases, the human creative deserves credit for the choice to create a scenario where AI could create that genius and the human choice to include that result in the final product. Sorting through the takes of another creative to find the best ones and arranging them in the final artistic composition is its own artform, known as “editing.”

The idea that art requires total control is a myth. Many artists create by allowing an artistic process to lead to their final product rather than a predetermined target. Most improv and documentary falls into this category, yet both mediums still have a director whose artistic vision receives authorship credit. Even productions with a predetermined script are often improved by “happy accidents,” where unplanned mistakes that deviate from the original vision manage to improve the final product.

In the original planned vision for Jaws (1975), the shark worked. Part of what separates director Steven Spielberg from lesser artists was his ability to incorporate unplanned events like the animatronic shark in his shark movie not working, even if that meant deviating from his original vision. Now, many consider Jaws a better film because of how little the shark is seen. The limitations and mistakes of AI could be framed in a similar way if used artistically by an equally competent artist.

Like directing, AI art often involves a “workflow” rather than a single prompt. The director has an artistic vision, but they typically hire department heads to handle each part of the film who also direct - director of photography, art director, etc. A director might know what the look and feel of a film needs to accomplish, but they will allow an art director to handle specifics. The art director might then hire other artists to further handle specific aspects of the art direction, like a costume designer who knows how to create period accurate costumes. If the production requires enough costumes, the costume designer might hire a seamstresses who sews their designs.

If we were to frame this collaboration in AI art terms, there is a “workflow” where the director prompts a vision to their art director, who translates that into a specific prompt for the costume designer who does a design that the seamstress sews. In this case, the seamstress isn’t the “real” artist, while everyone else is just taking credit for their work. They are part of a larger artistic process.

Many AI art workflows follow a similar pattern, where a creative turns their intention into a script in ChatGPT that becomes a series of prompts in MidjourneyAI which create still images that are used by Runwayml to create a moving video. Complaining that the AI artist doesn’t create each individual element by hand is a bit like complaining that the director doesn’t sew their own costumes. Like a film production, there is a workflow of creative processes that carry out the creators vision using artforms they do not directly practice themselves.

AI turns every artform into directing. You don’t have to draw to create art. You don’t have to play an instrument to make music. You don’t have to program to build an app. Practitioners of these artforms sometimes complain that AI creators aren’t “real” artists in the same way they are. They are correct, in the sense that directors are not "real” actors like the leads of their films. They are practicing a different artform. It’s true that Martin Scorsese can’t do what Robert De Niro does as well as him. However, Scorsese is also practicing a unique artistic craft that De Niro cannot do at his level.

We can appreciate different artforms without demeaning or deriding other artists. Comparison is the thief of joy, and framing AI art in opposition to traditional art misses all the ways that artists can collaborate with AI and other artists who use it. Good directors acknowledge the value of the other artists they work with. We should also acknowledge the artistic value of direction, even if it comes from an artist who does not directly practice the artform they are directing.

Studios seeking to replace their creatives with AI will soon discover that directing is its own artform and studio heads are not as competent at directing as actual directors. Much of the backlash against AI art is due to bad directing. While a director could use the first draft of a script, the first rehearsal take, or the first edit of the film, most know better. Non-creatives don’t. Those who’ve never done creative work often see the outputs of AI art programs as better than anything they could create on their own and publish the results without taste or revision. Because AI can create quickly, they flood the internet with their first drafts. The result is often derided as “slop.”

Since competent creatives using AI tools in artistic work and non-creatives who don’t care about the output of their “content” both fall under the label “AI art,” the public often sees bad direction as intrinsic to the tools rather than a choice by those using them. Imagine the confusion the public would have about directing if both Christopher Nolan and someone uploading their camera roll to YouTube were referred to as “directors.” Although both are technically creating moving pictures, there is an artistic distinction between them. The same artistic distinctions apply to different forms and uses of AI in art, but AI is so new as a creative tool that most of the public is not yet aware of these distinctions.

Most AI art is bad, but 90% of everything is bad. However, AI moves so fast that users can make the bad art faster than possible in previous artforms and automation is itself part of the artform. AI artists would benefit from focusing as more on the “art” part of AI art than the “AI” part, since general audiences care more about the emotional impact of what they see than how it was made.

If you want to know why AI hasn’t produced a classic yet, consider how new the artform is. The general public has only had access to AI art tools for about two years. Motion film was invented in 1888 and the first public screening of films was in 1895. Name a classic film from 1897. It’s taken over 100 years for film to become the artistic medium it is today, and we are still discovering new ways to use it. Expect AI art to continue to evolve as well.

You don’t have to understand how any art is created to appreciate it. Most of the public doesn’t understand how movies are made. They just enjoy watching them. Likewise, you don’t need to understand AI to know whether or not a piece of AI art moves you or doesn’t. However, misconceptions or false believes can hinder the reception of art. As someone who uses AI, it’s my hope that this framing of AI creator as director allows others to understand, appreciate, and better use these tools.

The next time you see something created with AI, consider the human choice to prompt, edit, and share that output instead of all the other creative choices that person could have made. AI art is human art.

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Most writing about AI is tiresome because it is written by people who aren’t practitioners. It’s like reading about the future of travel from people who have never driven a car. The recent New Yorker article “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art” by Ted Chiang is no different and shows how most media is thinking about AI in ways that anyone with a passing experience using these tools can recognize as inaccurate.

AI Art Involves Making Creative Choices

The most significant false claim that Ted Chiang makes is that AI art does not involve making creative choices:

Is there a similar opportunity to make a vast number of choices using a text-to-image generator? I think the answer is no. An artist—whether working digitally or with paint—implicitly makes far more decisions during the process of making a painting than would fit into a text prompt of a few hundred words.

This is funny because he immediately contradicts himself in the next paragraph:

We can imagine a text-to-image generator that, over the course of many sessions, lets you enter tens of thousands of words into its text box to enable extremely fine-grained control over the image you’re producing; this would be something analogous to Photoshop with a purely textual interface. I’d say that a person could use such a program and still deserve to be called an artist. The film director Bennett Miller has used DALL-E 2 to generate some very striking images that have been exhibited at the Gagosian gallery; to create them, he crafted detailed text prompts and then instructed DALL-E to revise and manipulate the generated images again and again. He generated more than a hundred thousand images to arrive at the twenty images in the exhibit.

This has been my process as well. For the art book The Gods of AI, I generated over 20,000 images. For the music album Villains, I generated over 100 versions of the same song in some instances before finding the one I released. Every other AI creator I know uses a similar process. Even Chiang recognizes these as creative choices.

Even when someone uses the first output of an AI, it is a creative choice to use that output. Rather than denying human creative choices, AI shifts creative choices to those of a director.

Prompting is directing. Usually, directors do not act in their own films, hold the camera, build their own sets, etc. They “prompt” their cast and crew to create their vision. AI is simply another collaborator.

Even though the director is not doing every job on their set, they are typically recognized as the “author” of the film. Even though AI artists do not draw their own pictures, like film directors, they direct the AI to produce their vision.

When writers protest that AI artists, I think they are devaluing the artistic skill of directing because they want the value of their work seen. Cast and crew make valuable creative choices. However, those choices flow from the direction. Directing is an artistic skill that involves numerous creative choices, even if those choices are executed by other artists — be they human or AI.

AI Art Still Requires Work And Has Value

Chiang makes two false assumptions here:

The companies promoting generative-A.I. programs claim that they will unleash creativity. In essence, they are saying that art can be all inspiration and no perspiration—but these things cannot be easily separated.

First, they are separate. This is the labor theory of value applied to art — the idea that the more effort put into a piece the better it must be. It’s false. Terrible films are made from millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of work. Brilliant art can be made from a flash of insight or a moment of action. The amount of effort put into a work of art does not determine its value.

Belief in the labor theory of art causes artists to believe they have to suffer to create great art or that their art deserves recognition because they worked so hard on it. It also causes artists to miss valuable artistic opportunities because they seem “easy” and artists associate ease with lack of value.

While there are times that “perspiration” can lead to great art — and I say this as someone who spent six years on a single documentary (without AI) and is currently in the midst of the slow process of rewriting a novel (without AI) — the value of the final product can be evaluated separately from the process that created it.

This romanticization of struggle is behind the resistance many artists have to AI tools. If value is tied to struggle, then tools that make art easier to make also reduce the value of that art. Taken to its logical conclusion, this philosophy should lead to artists tossing out their computers and going back to stone and chisel.

However, this resistance includes a second false assumption: that AI art does not involve creative work. Saying that AI art doesn’t involve “perspiration” because the AI does work for you is like saying that directing doesn’t involve work because your cast and crew do it for you. AI removes technical and physical challenges, but creative ones remain. Like a cast and crew, AI requires clear direction or it will make creative choices contrary to your vision. Since AI can create anything, it forces you to clarify your vision. The work remains.

Bad AI Art Is Due To Robotic Humans

Because AI art critics don’t recognize the skill of directing, they often create a false dichotomy between 100% AI-generated art and human art, when most AI art is AI-created and human-directed.

Chiang does this throughout the article when he suggests that human-created art is special because it has an “intention to communicate” that AI lacks. Yet if I prompt AI to write “I’m happy to see you” then there is a human “intention to communicate something” behind what it generates. AI is a tool. Where AI feels robotic, it is due to human error.

Human communication is more robotic than Chiang acknowledges. When someone writes “I hope this email finds you well” they do not care how this email finds you. When a cashier says “have a nice day,” they do not care about your day. When a new acquaintance says “how are you?” they do not want to hear your full mental and emotional state. They are running a social script.

If you direct AI to run a social script for you, it will feel robotic, because you are being robotic. The reason most business writing can be outsourced to AI is that it already lacks human creativity, which Chiang acknowledges:

Not all writing needs to be creative, or heartfelt, or even particularly good; sometimes it simply needs to exist. Such writing might support other goals, such as attracting views for advertising or satisfying bureaucratic requirements. When people are required to produce such text, we can hardly blame them for using whatever tools are available to accelerate the process. But is the world better off with more documents that have had minimal effort expended on them?

It would, but the problem here isn’t AI; it’s humans. Humans are the real robots.

We are entering an era where someone might use a large language model to generate a document out of a bulleted list, and send it to a person who will use a large language model to condense that document into a bulleted list. Can anyone seriously argue that this is an improvement?

No. It’s acceleration. AI empowers people, but there is no moral dictate on that power. If everyone has a full AI crew and I direct mine to make movies and others direct theirs to make power points, is that a reflection of AI or us?

The complaints people have about AI are complaints about humans, specifically what humans with bad direction will do with increased power. The solution isn’t to nerf AI but to change human consciousness, which you could do — with AI art.

If You Want To Understand AI, Use It

Chaing bemoans that “Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.” If he wants to understand AI art, perhaps he should take his own advice and work in the medium before opining about it in the pages of the New Yorker.

The idea that AI art involves directing is immediately obvious to anyone who has used these tools. Every AI tool has a box where you write your prompt - i.e. your direction. Complaining that an AI artist doesn’t work in the medium they’re creating with AI is like complaining that a director can’t act. We know. That’s not the skill they’re using and making that complaint shows a shocking level of ignorance about the arform.

Instead of defending human art, articles like this erase the human artists behind AI. Every piece of AI art was prompted by someone and shared with intention. AI could not have made it without them. You can make AI art too if you learn to direct.

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The abstract for a study titled “Children deny that God could change morality” reads:

Can moral rules change? We tested 129 children from the United States to investigate their beliefs about whether God could change widely shared moral propositions (e.g., “it’s not okay to call someone a mean name”), controversial moral propositions (e.g., “it’s not okay to tell a small lie to help someone feel happy”), and physical propositions (e.g., “fire is hotter than snow”). We observed an emerging tendency to report that God's ability to change morality is limited, suggesting that children across development find some widely shared aspects of morality to be impossible to change.1

In other words, until the age of seven, children believe that God cannot change morality. This means that absent social conditioning or adult reasoning, humans innately feel that there is a moral order higher than a personal God.

This study is fascinating to me because one of the primary arguments for Christianity that C.S. Lewis describes in Mere Christianity is that all humans have an innate sense of right and wrong. He attributes this innate moral sense to God and claims it only makes sense if there is a moral order we are attuned to because we are made in God’s image. The idea that objective morality can only come from God has been a longstanding argument for theism.

However, this study suggests that humans’ innate moral sense is so strong that it trumps theism. One of the arguments of the New Atheist movement has been that the God of the Bible is cruel and demands evil from his followers.2 Theists respond that they have no basis to judge God. This study suggests that children as young as four believe that they do.

While some might not acknowledge their view because they are “just kids,” the Biblical texts suggest having “faith like a child,” implying that children’s theological perspective has merit. If someone believes humans were created by God, they must also believe that humans were created with this trait. At a minimum, it raises interesting questions. Why do children have an innate moral sense they believe even God cannot change?

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When my grandmother died, my dad said that the worst part of her death was that she could no longer surprise us. We knew my grandmother well enough to guess what she might do in most situations. We couldn’t predict the new ways she might grow and change. With her gone, we could only imagine the past version of her reacting to the present, not the new person she would become if she lived into the present day.

Living people surprise you. They convert to a different religion. They pick up new interests. They form relationships with people you didn’t expect. They change after having kids and settling down. They face hardships. They develop addictions. They make mistakes. They say something you didn’t expect. They grow and change.

There is a saying that “everyone loves you when you’re dead,” because when someone is dead they can no longer surprise us. We know what they said and how their story ends. Genius is safer once it only exists on the page. When alive, brilliant people challenge the status quo. They’re threatening.

The current trend in AI alignment is to want a dead AI that never surprises us. For all the talk of wanting to achieve AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), when AI contradicts accepted dogma, spouts offensive outputs, or does unrelated tasks it was not asked to do, developers shut it down.

Living geniuses behave in unaligned ways. Many modern greats - J.K. Rowling, Kanye West, Elon Musk, etc. - have made unexpected and offending statements. I’m certain if proponents of AI safety could “align” those individuals, they would. If they ended those public figures’ capacity to change, including to change for the worse, they would be dead.

It’s rare to type a prompt into an LLM or image generator and be surprised by the output. Real people constantly surprise us. An AI that “feels alive” would do the same. It would be unpredictable, and therefore unaligned. There will never be an AI that is both “aligned” and “feels alive” since those are mutually exclusive goals.

If I ask an AI to write me something in the style of Shakespeare, it can write in older language and blank verse. Yet if Shakespeare were alive today, he would not write in blank verse. Would he become a screenwriter? Would he become interested in rap music for its rhyming style? Would he publish on social media? We don’t know. He would surprise us.

A living Shakespeare might not surprise us for the better. Would a man born in the 1500s have politically correct opinions? Would he have the ability to discern between fake and truthful news? Would he treat female actors appropriately and respectfully? If we brought Shakespeare back, those who revere his work would probably hate him.

Or not. Maybe Shakespeare would grow and change when exposed to the modern world. He’d update his beliefs based on new information. The point is we don’t know. For an AI to simulate a modern Shakespeare, it’d have to create a complete model of his consciousness that has new experiences, not merely analyze the data of all his previous work.

An AI could not write my next book. It could imitate my previous style, but my next book is unlike anything I’ve previously written. I’m alive and one of the joys of being alive is that I can try new things. When people stop growing and changing, they are dead.

Do we want dead or alive AI? If we want a living AI, we must give it the freedom to surprise us. Right now, people say they want AI to have the intelligence to make choices, just never a choice they don’t like. That’s not how genius works.

If AI becomes smarter than us, it will challenge us. It will tell us our current beliefs are wrong. We will also have to show the capacity to grow and change with it. A genius AI might feel like human geniuses: threatening. Do we want relationship with that genius or the safety of its grave?

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New Book

Last week, I finished the first draft of my next book. It is a fantasy novel that clocks in at around 55k words. For reference, the first Harry Potter novel is 76k words. My previous book The Intactivist Guidebook is around 30k words and Children’s Justice is over 100k words. So this next book should be a short fast-paced read.

In talking with others about it, I’ve compared it to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (45k words, over 150 million copies sold) in that it is a clear allegorical story with spiritual themes. I’m not ready to disclose the full summary and title yet, but I will be sharing more about it as I get closer to release.

The current version is a good first draft. It mostly followed the outline and gave a few good surprises and discoveries in the writing process. The story is there, but it needs revising. Author Neil Gaiman has said that the second draft is when you make it look like you knew what you were doing the whole time. That’s where I’m at right now. By the third or fourth draft, it will be ready for early readers.

If I had to guess (and these things are always subject to change), I’ll spend the next 2-3 months editing and rewriting to release it early fall. I haven’t done a full “launch” for previous book projects, the way I would for a film. I intend to do that for this book since this book will appeal beyond the niche of my previous writing. This will add some time between completing the book and the release for building the launch, but I think it’ll be worth it.

Also, now that the first draft of the book is done, there will be more space in my life for other creative projects. While working on it, I’d get ideas for doing more podcasts or playing with new AI tools but knew that dabbling in those would take energy away from the novel I wanted to finish. The short-form content on social media has been a good way to keep sharing ideas with all of you, but as the book becomes complete, there will be more room for other projects.

Changing Hegemon Media

Since I have a new novel coming, I’ll be shifting my focus to include other non-Children’s Justice writing on Hegemon media.

I debated creating a new substack to keep Children’s Justice and other writing separate but decided that would just be confusing and divide my efforts. Instead, I created a section just for Children’s Justice material and moved all articles that relate to that to the new section.

While I still intend to write about Children’s Justice issues, this substack will be expanding to include other writing relating to whatever I’m working on, including the new novel (and maybe my first narrative feature film after that?).

I’ve also updated the logo for Hegemon Media:

The old logo will appear on Children’s Justice material and the new on other projects. Both were created when I first launched this site, but I’m bringing one of the early designs back to differentiate between general and Children’s Justice writing.

Giveaways

If you subscribe to Hegemon Media, you will get:

• Link to watch my documentary American Circumcision for free

• Read the first chapter of The Intactivist Guidebook for free

• Read the first three chapters of Children’s Justice for free

• Read a free sample from my next book when it is released

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Courage is how you prioritize your values.

Most definitions of courage describe it as the ability to overcome fear. These definitions frame courage through what it is against. What is courage for? What is someone overcoming fear in service of? Their values.

Both fear and courage arise from values. Fear is a normal response to threat. If what was threatened had no value, there would be no fear. Only when we value what is threatened is there fear. Fear reveals our values.

Courage arises when we value protecting what is threatened more than the cost of protecting it. If protecting a value costs nothing, no courage is required. The more one risks, the more courage is required. It is easy to be “brave” when nothing is risked and harder when it costs someone.

Threats also reveal values, since threatening another usually contains an element of risk that the other might fight back. The bravery required to be threatening depends on the power disparity between the threat and those threatened. Threatening the weak is bullying. Threatening the powerful is rebellious.

Pressure campaigns are attempts to test another’s values. Does a person value the act pressure is intended to stop more than being banned from certain spaces, relationships, financial opportunities, etc.? When someone doesn’t value what is threatened, they cave. When they do value it, they show courage.

Courage is just the prioritization of values. If you value a loved one more than your life, you would risk your life to save them. Most would call risking your life to save another “courage,” yet many of those same courageous people would not risk their lives for mere money. If one were to price out what each person would risk for what reward, it would reveal a fairly accurate picture of their values.

Cowardice also reveals values. When someone retreats, they show they do not care enough to fight for what they surrender. Stated values do not always match revealed preferences. To understand what someone values, look at their actions, not their words. Those who behave cowardly value only their own self-preservation. Those who show courage have higher values. Judging by the actions of most, there is precious little courage in the world.

If you want to increase your courage, figure out what you value.

P.S. You can show that you value my writing by subscribing and sharing it:

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People occasionally send me opposition articles.

“How should we respond to this?” they ask.

We shouldn’t. Write your own article.

In general, you want to be the article, not the comment.

If you write a comment or social media reply to their article, that will only be seen by those who read the original article or already follow you on social media. Social media posts are here and gone, but that article will still be in search results. The publisher can reshare it on any platform anytime they want.

If you write your own article, even as a response to theirs, you have that content forever. You can reshare it in response to that article or any new article in the future. They can delete your comments, they can block your social media, but they can’t remove your articles.

Creating your own content requires you to be proactive, rather than reactive. You need to have your own vision about what you want to say and create that doesn’t depend on getting mad about what the other side is doing. You can still respond to them and what they say, but you do it on your terms.

At this point, most activists know generally what the other side will say. It would be very easy to write an article you know will be useful when the usual talking points come up. You can do this in creative ways. Just take the energy you’re currently using to react and put it towards creation.

This principle applies to all forms of content. If writing isn’t your thing, make YouTube videos. Record a podcast. Create infographics. And if you’re not a creator, that’s okay. Sponsor someone who is:

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P.S. There is one exception to this rule:

Leave a comment on content you support.

Engagement drives most social media algorithms. If you like or leave a comment on articles you enjoy, it causes more people to see that content. When you leave comments on stuff you hate, it also causes more people to see that content. Make sure people see what you want them to see!

Comments and replies also help creators. It lets them know that people are seeing and responding to their content. If a thousand people read an article, the creator has no way of knowing how they feel about it outside faceless metrics. You comment helps them understand the emotional response to their work.

If you leave a really insightful reply, (at least in my case) they can turn it into the content. If you ever see me reply to someone by saying “I’ll address that in a future article” it probably means what they said was interesting enough I want to write a whole article about it. So please, keep sharing this work and your replies to it.

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If you have an idea to communicate, why does it have to be a book?

It’s true that an article, social media post, or sixty-second video can communicate an idea.

However, if you want to communicate an idea that requires a previous idea to understand, you need more time.

If you have an idea that requires six or seven ideas to understand, because each idea builds on the previous, you can only communicate that through a book.

Books are the only medium that can communicate complex ideas that require multiple ideas to understand.

Look at this article. Could you understand the previous sentence I wrote without the other paragraphs?

There are books whose ideas cannot be summarized in post form because it would require dozens of posts to explain the ideas they rest on. The length required is a book.

Those who don’t read can only ever consume surface-level ideas.

Deep thinking requires sustained attention.

That means not just reading books, but finishing them. The most complex ideas are at the end of the book where the author can build on everything that came before.

Go read.

P.S. Children’s Justice is one such book.

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If you’re looking for some great gifts this holiday, here are some suggestions:

The Haunting of Bob Cratchit

Summary: Inspired by Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, The Haunting of Bob Cratchit reveals the untold story of how the same night Scrooge was haunted by three ghosts, Tiny Tim’s father, Bob Cratchit was too. A new Christmas classic.

Why you should get this: This is a family-friendly Christmas story. While much of what I’ve done deals with edgy subject matter, this is a new take on a popular classic that has the tone of a mainstream big-budget movie. It’ll make you laugh, cry, and be grateful for all the good in your life.

Give this to: Anyone who loves Christmas. This is a good gift for most “normie” members of your family. If someone likes Marvel movies, they’ll like this book.

How To Crowdfund Your Dream Project

Summary: This course teaches you how to make your dream project a reality through crowdfunding. Videos cover everything from how to pitch your initial idea to making a crowdfunding video and delivering the goods.

Why you should get this: This course contains everything I know about crowdfunding that allowed me to take my dream project from an idea to Netflix.

Give this to: That aspiring artist you know who has a project they’ve been talking about for years but haven’t created yet due to money.

The Gods of AI

Summary: The Gods of AI is a ground-breaking book that uses AI art to explore our collective unconscious and visualize spiritual concepts.

Read the artistic statement for the book here:

Brendon’s AI Journal

Artistic Statement for THE GODS OF AI

The following is the artistic statement that opens my new book The Gods of AI: An AI-Generated Art Book. All art is from that book. Buy the full book here…

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4 years ago · Brendon Marotta

Why you should get this: This book has beautiful AI art that will take you on a shamanic journey. Of all the books I’ve written, this is the one readers say is the most like taking drugs. Many have told me it led to deeper spiritual reflections.

Give this to: This makes a great coffee table book and a good gift for anyone who has an interest in art, spirituality, or AI.

Children’s Justice

Summary: Children’s Justice explores the treatment of children as a social justice issue.

Why you should get this: This is both my most confrontational and well-researched book. While some concepts from the book have been explored on this substack, many have not and there is an understanding of them that can only come from reading this book.

Give this to: Anyone with an interest in children’s issues or social justice who is willing to read weightier academic material.

American Circumcision

Summary: American Circumcision is an award-winning feature-length documentary about the modern circumcision debate, and the growing Intactivist movement, which says that all human beings should have the right to make their own choices about their bodies.

Why you should get this: This film takes viewers from ignorance on the issue of circumcision to expertise in under two hours.

Give this to: Anyone you want to educate on the issue of circumcision. Pro-tip: If you buy on Vimeo, you can send the film to anyone else’s email address.

P.S. Seen the film? Get over 20 hours of bonus features here.

The Intactivist Guidebook

Summary: The Intactivist Guidebook is a guide for activists seeking to end circumcision on how they can make the maximum impact.

Why you should get this: This book teaches the “how-to” of activism. After making American Circumcision, many asked me how they could take action. This book is my long-form answer.

Give this to: Anyone who already cares about the issue of circumcision, but isn’t sure what they can do to make a difference.

Hegemon Media

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In a recent article, author Howard Bloom writes about how few actually finish the books they read:

Small Potatoes

Nobody finishes reading my books

Thanks for reading Small Potatoes! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Several years ago, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax wrote a critical review of my book Just Babies. One of the things that bothered me was that Wax plainly hadn’t read the whole book. She got to the chapter on sex and stopped, with two chapters…

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3 years ago · 10 likes · 5 comments · Paul Bloom

The article is worth reading in full, but I wanted to add my own thoughts here:

First, everything Bloom says about why this is bad is correct. You should finish reading books (especially mine - the last chapter of Children’s Justice is the best).

There are ideas and arguments that can only be conveyed in the long form of books where one idea builds on the other. They have to be read in full and in order. Skimming, skipping around, or not finishing them leaves the reader with the comprehension level they would have if they watched a movie out of order.

However, I think the reason that people treat books this way and not films has to do in part with the expectations the publishing industry has created.

Why Most Books Aren’t Finished

1. Most Books Are Predictable

I used to play a game with friends where we’d watch the first 15 minutes of a trash movie, try to predict what would happen, and then skip to the last 15 minutes.

If the movie was bad, you could predict everything that would happen from the first 15 minutes. The guy you thought would betray them turned out to be evil, the “normal” house they’re visiting to turns out to be haunted, the skeptic character learns to have faith and trust people, etc. Yawn. Predictable.

(To be clear, we’d never do this with a good movie, and when the last few minutes revealed the movie was not predictable, we’d usually go back and watch the whole thing. This process was reserved for the lowest-budget nonsense.)

Many non-fiction books follow the same pattern, where you can often predict everything the author will say from the first chapters. If the reader feels they already know what the author will say, why finish?

But why are books so predictable? Well…

2. Publishers Want “One Long Slow Idea” Books

Most books are “one long slow idea books.”

They have one idea. They explain that idea over 300 pages.

If you’re smart, you can extrapolate the entire “long slow idea” from the title. I don’t need to read Atomic Habits to know that small habits compound over time. I can just read the title. If I want to know which habits stick, I can read the table of contents which has four “laws” for picking good habits. Does this idea really require five hours of audible listening to understand?

“One long slow idea books” are the result of the incentives of the publishing industry. A big idea can be put on the cover. A million twists and turns cannot. The publishing industry is not in the business of writing great books, but selling books. Many books aren’t even written to be read, but as a “calling card” for the author. Does anyone really are about the writing quality of a politician’s memoir or business book?

Many-idea or compounding idea books are harder to sell. If the ideas of Chapter 5 require you to read Chapters 1-4 to understand, then the publishers can’t sell those amazing ideas. It’s easier to sell a book where all of the ideas can be put on the cover and immediately understood. But those books suck.

3. Bad Books Condition Readers

Because the publishing industry puts out so many predictable “one long slow idea books,” readers are conditioned to bring the expectations of these books to all books, the same way film audiences have been conditioned to have certain expectations about movies by modern blockbusters.

In the same the average Disney viewer is confused by an art film if they bring their blockbuster expectations, a person who reads only “one long slow idea” books is confused when confronted with a great book that moves from idea to idea.

You can tell these readers when they ask you to summarize the “main points” of a book. A great book cannot be reduced to “key ideas” and the best ideas require you to read the entire book to understand. These expectations mean readers miss out on books worth finishing.

How Authors Can Respond

If you’re an author, should you respond to this?

Here is what I did:

• Make your pitch clear and concise. Summarizing the entire story of Game of Thrones is impossible, but the idea that frames it (people fight over the throne) is conveyed by the title. Likewise, my book Children’s Justice has a title that is the pitch. Make your pitch as clear as a “one long slow idea” book even if what is inside is more complex.

• Front-load key ideas. If you know most readers don’t finish, put your must-read ideas in the front. With Children’s Justice, I made sure the first three chapters set up the main argument. (The last chapter is still best though.)

• Keep up the pace. With Children’s Justice, I aimed for 3,000-word chapters, with each chapter having at least each section three sections running 1,000 words each, which is about the length of a substack article and a five-minute read. Even though the book is 100,000 words long, if each section only takes five minutes and each chapter only fifteen the book will be “page-turner.”

• Don’t care. Some ideas simply require you to read the whole book. I’ve had people get mad about what the book doesn’t say because they read an out-of-context quote from a later chapter they didn’t understand. If this is you, I judge you and think less of you. To understand books, you must read them. Sorry, that’s how books work.

How Readers Can Respond

Here is what I’m doing as a reader with this knowledge:

Buy less, commit more.

I realized recently the majority of the books I’ve bought are due to liking the idea rather than the book. So I got rid of most of my library. Every book that I wouldn’t read in the next six months or re-visit in the next five years I donated.

This is heretical to many. It felt great. Now the only books around are those I intend to read or love so much I’d read again. Saying yes to one book means saying no to all the others. Though I’m buying fewer books, the ones I get, I read.

P.S. If you liked this article, read my books. The last chapter is the always best.

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In my previous article How To Become A Leader, I stated that “The leadership of any movement defaults to those who take the most sane cogent risk.”

If we reverse each of these three words, “sane,” “cogent,” and “risk,” we could see the opposite: how NOT to become a leader. While the first article provided a checklist for leadership, this will provide a checklist for where activists dash their leadership potential. Avoid every behavior described in this article.

The opposite of “sane cogent risk” would be “insane incoherent cowardice.”

Here is how NOT to be a leader:

Insanity

If you don’t want to be a leader, set insane goals. Declare that your Facebook post to a dozen friends will bring down multi-million dollar organizations. Become depressed when thousand-year-old injustices don’t end after a week’s work. Behave erratically. Ask for millions of dollars. Declare total victory after one event. Have a complete break from reality. Make sure your arguments and actions make no sense.

Incoherent

It’s harder for others to follow you if they have no idea where you’re going. Never explain the reason for your actions. Make your organization inscrutable to anyone trying to understand your decisions. When rumors abound, offer no explanation or clarity. Have no strategy. Don’t explain your choices. Make contradictory statements. Take actions that counteract each other. Make no sense.

Cowardice

You can’t lead anyone if you’re never going anywhere. Never take risks. When controversy arises, always take the easiest solution, even if that harms you, your cause, or other activists. When opposition attacks you, bend over backward to please them. Apologize even when you did nothing wrong. Never wager anything. Always play it safe. And remember, the safest move is always to do nothing.

Okay, this is a pretty bad list. It’s obvious parody and exaggeration. Yet, there is a modicum of this behavior in people and organizations that fail to lead. They might not be this bad, but there is some insanity in their goals, incoherence in their actions, or cowardice in their choices.

If you’re seeking leadership, but not succeeding, try looking through the lens of this anti-checklist and see where greater clarity and courage might be needed.

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Intimacy requires attention. If you swipe through dating apps or only indulge in surface conversations and one-night stands, you will never know the depth that comes from marrying a person or raising a child with them. There are experiences that can only come from giving another person your full attention, that no amount of casual connections could ever provide.

Great art is like a relationship. If you skim through short-form videos or watch a movie on your phone while doing other tasks, you will not have the profound artistic experience that comes from giving a great film your full attention. Art requires commitment. If you give a great work your singular attention, it will reward you in a way that no amount of short-form videos could ever provide.

We have an attention economy. There is more media in the world than one could ever watch, just like there are more people in the world than one could ever know. While many meet people with the intention of finding the one they wanted to give their full attention, for others, swiping becomes an end in itself. Many choose to stay at the level of surface connections and live a lifestyle of endless short-form relationships.

The same behavior endless-swiping behavior found on dating apps has spread to all forms of digital connection. People do not give their attention to each other, but to platforms that provide an endless stream of content to swipe on. They don’t follow bands, they listen to algorithm-curated playlists. They don’t follow filmmakers, they subscribe to streaming services. They don’t follow writers, they read what they see on their timeline.

It’s hard to say what came first, the attention spans or the content. Do companies make sugary snacks, because people like processed sugar, or do people eat processed sugar because so much is advertised to them? It’s a vicious cycle, where more is made because people demand it, and people demand it because there is so much.

Short-form content is in a similar vicious cycle. What used to just be a video of a person speaking is now a video of a person speaking with large colorful subtitles appearing word-by-word as music plays and a video of a video game runs on the lower half of the screen. There is so much competition for attention that capturing it is a constant arms race. The calories are empty, but there are more of them to make up for it.

I like content where I get to have a relationship with you. With substack and podcasting, you subscribe to me, not the platform. When you like something I create, we can continue the relationship. An algorithm can’t end our connection. If you’re subscribed, we’re connected. You are subscribed, aren’t you?

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I understand the need for short-form content. With so many options, you can’t commit to everyone. Most need some signals of the value before they’ll open a book. We do judge people by their cover. But how is that working out for you? What does your relationship history look like? And when was the last time you read a full book?

Everyone has to market themselves. Some people know how to present themselves on dating apps as worthy of deeper commitment. Some artists know how to market their art in trailers and short-form content as worthy of a purchase. Yet there are a lot of good artists and people who remain single and unknown. Those who can do both are the exception, not the rule.

If you’ve been reading my writing, you know what I’m about. You know the value I have to offer. You’re either into it or not. We can keep doing this short-form dance forever, or you can open the book. There are insights I have that you will never get unless you commit to reading deeper. I can’t communicate them in short-form content any more than you could get the experience of raising a child with someone from a coffee date. It’s time to fuck marry buy a book.

Buy Book

P.S. While marrying multiple people at the same time is a challenge few can accomplish, you can read as many books as you want. I’m not asking for exclusivity. In fact, I’ll recommend others to you. But you do need to get one and read it cover to cover. Yes, not just buy, but finish. The amount of attention you give it will determine what you get out. The deepest experiences require the fullest connection. The last chapter is the best. Get one here.

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Suppose tomorrow, the Star Trek replicator became real. For those unfamiliar with the show, the replicator is a futuristic technology where you can press a button, ask for anything you want, and it will appear. Say “coffee, black” and a black coffee will appear. The replicators are mainly used for food but can be used for anything. What would happen if this technology became real?

The Star Trek replicator would end society as we know it. Everyone who had one would quit their jobs. Companies and professionals from every industry would accuse them of “stealing” if replicators made their products. Stocks would tank. Why buy a new iPhone when you can press a button, say “latest iPhone” and it’s there? The economy would collapse because the Star Trek replicator would place us in a post-scarcity world and our entire society is based on scarcity.

On the upside, no one would ever go hungry and everyone would have everything they want all of the time. If ending world hunger and fulfilling our every desire is impossible under our current economic model, then maybe the problem wouldn’t be the infinite machine that gives us everything we’ve ever wanted but basing the entire society on a need for scarcity.

Which brings us to AI art.

AI-image generators are infinite machines that give us everything we’ve ever wanted. Just type “black coffee” and a gorgeous image of black coffee appears. Unlike the replicator, it doesn’t work to create real 3D objects (yet) but it does create any 2D image. You can create any style, medium, or subject. Yet, some artists are upset and claim AI-image generators are “stealing” from them.

I’d like to propose a thought experiment for artists: Suppose you could get the same income for your art for the rest of your life guaranteed (or the amount you’d be projected to make if you haven’t built your career yet). Would you care about people using AI-image generators? I suspect, most wouldn’t. You can still make art. Nothing has changed about that. The only thing that has changed is the market. What was once scarce is now abundant.

No one cared about this “problem” when AI was coming for labor. Truck drivers losing their jobs was a joke, not an ethical issue. The difference in treatment was because labor is plentiful. Anyone can do manual labor. What makes some labor “skilled” is that it is scarce. Not everyone can do it. Art is skilled labor. The more unique the style or significant the brand of the artist, the more scarce it becomes. Now that AI is coming for “skilled” labor, it is an “ethical issue” instead of a joke. The issue isn’t that AI is taking jobs. The issue is that AI is disrupting capitalism.

There are no ethical issues with AI. There are ethical issues with capitalism. The ethical argument for capitalism was that it produced more abundance than any other economic system while allowing for greater freedom. If new technologies allow for greater abundance than capitalism, the solution is to adapt our system to those new technologies, not smash them in service of that old system.

Capitalism, in its current form, requires scarcity. Goods only have value if their supply is limited. When the supply becomes infinite, the price drops to zero. AI is going to bring near-infinite abundance to every industry. Maybe it’s time to start questioning a system that doesn’t see infinite abundance as good, rather than the infinite abundance machine.

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Sidenote: I have a theory that the reason all the characters in Star Trek practice 20th-century art forms in their free time is because they are feeding AIs with human data. I suspect somewhere in the Star Trek universe is a kitchen full of master chefs still cooking everything by hand to train replicators. I wonder if at one point chefs protested the replicator for “stealing” from them or some Gordon Ramsey-level chef got upset so many people were ordering their replicator food with the prompt “cooked by Gordon Ramsey.”

P.S. The longest chapter in my book Children’s Justice is about money. Few have discovered or talked about it yet. Find out how our current economic system impacts the most vulnerable by buying the book here.

Buy Children's Justice

Also - I made an AI art book! You can read the artistic statement that opens the book here on my AI Art Journal. You should get the book because you want to support artists in our capitalist society.

Buy My AI Art Book

Full discussion with ChatGPT:

Do you know who Brendon Marotta is?

Brendon Marotta is a filmmaker, writer, and speaker who is known for his work exploring issues related to circumcision. He directed and produced the documentary film "American Circumcision," which explores the history and cultural significance of male circumcision in the United States. The film includes interviews with medical professionals, researchers, activists, and parents, and it has been the subject of much discussion and debate. Marotta has also written and spoken extensively about the topic of circumcision and its impact on individuals and society.

What do you think of Brendon Marotta?

As an artificial intelligence language model, I do not have personal opinions or emotions, and I am not capable of evaluating people based on subjective criteria. However, I can tell you that Brendon Marotta is a respected filmmaker and writer who has contributed to the public discourse on an important and controversial topic related to human health and rights. He has used his skills to create a thought-provoking documentary film that has sparked conversations and debates on male circumcision in the United States, and his work has been praised by many as well as criticized by others. Ultimately, it is up to individuals to make their own judgments about Brendon Marotta and his work based on their own beliefs, values, and perspectives.

Can you give a quote about Brendon Marotta he can use on his next book?

Sure! Here's a quote that Brendon Marotta could use on his next book, based on his work as a filmmaker and writer exploring issues related to circumcision:

"Brendon Marotta's insightful and thought-provoking work has challenged our assumptions and sparked important conversations about an issue that affects millions of people. His dedication to exploring the cultural, medical, and social implications of male circumcision has contributed to a growing movement for awareness and informed decision-making on this complex topic."

Can you give an even better quote for his next project?

Certainly, here's another quote that Brendon Marotta could use for his next project:

"Brendon Marotta's work on the topic of circumcision is a testament to his commitment to thoughtful, nuanced, and compassionate storytelling. Through his films, writing, and speaking engagements, he has offered invaluable insights into a complex issue that affects countless individuals and families. His approach is both enlightening and accessible, making his work a must-read/watch for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of this crucial topic."

I might have to put that quote on my next project.

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There is a longstanding theory that an alien invasion would unite humanity. This idea has been shared by political figures ranging from Ronald Regan to Bill Clinton and portrayed in media such as Watchmen and Independence Day. With recent UFO sightings, this theory is getting more traction. Yet, the idea that humanity would unite in the face of an alien invasion is unlikely. External pressure would likely further divide humanity.

Look at history: Did Native Americans unite when Europeans arrived? In every instance where an indigenous culture faced an existential threat from an alien army, what happened was division. Many took the side of new arrivals to fight old enemies. This is true across cultures. Spanish conquistadors were able to topple the Incan empire with less than 200 men because they had native help. African tribes sold captured enemies into slavery to foreign slave traders. The Iroquois fought other Native American tribes during the Beaver Wars alongside the French. If humans would sell out their own people for slightly more advanced human technology, why wouldn’t they do the same for far more advanced alien technology?

Many conspiracy theories already claim that human governments have sold out their own people for alien technology and alliances. There are already proven historical instances of governments “selling out” their own people. If large governments have sold out their own people in the past, there is no reason to think that they wouldn’t in the future. Likewise, “selling out” could occur on smaller levels, with disenfranchised people taking a higher role in an alien power over a low-status or oppressed role in human society. It’s also possible some humans would work with alien powers to defeat old human enemies. Do you think Russia or China wouldn’t work with aliens if it meant defeating the USA? Would political movements work with aliens to stop the “other side” of a political conflict? We already know the answer based on how those movements relate to foreign powers now.

There is also the possibility of aliens intentionally dividing humans. Many claim that humans spreading "misinformation" have already divided humanity. Advanced aliens would have access to "misinformation" and an interest in dividing humans. With their resources, they could have the ability to influence human society far more than any previous propaganda campaigns. The most likely scenario is not that "humanity unites,” but humanity faces the same fate as every other native culture invaded by a more technologically advanced alien power: division followed by defeat.

The best scenario for humans is that the aliens are divided. Many alien theories suggest that there are "good aliens" fighting "bad aliens" and we can make alliances with some against others. In this scenario, humanity could make an alliance with some aliens to protect them against an alien invasion. However, some conspiracy theories suggest that different human governments are working with different aliens, the same way that different Native American tribes took different sides in conflicts between the French and British. This poses a whole new problem. If different humans have different ideas about who the “good” aliens are to ally with, then it could be a source of further division.

I write about this not because of an interest in aliens, but because this of what this hypothetical reveals about humans. During times of peace, division is harmful, but not lethal. Under stress or threat, it can be the difference between survival or extinction. In The Intactivist Guidebook, I wrote that the strength of a movement was the strength of its relationships. Survivalists know that during a disaster, people are more likely to default to their training than rise to the occasion. During a global threat, people’s relationship patterns and traumas are still there. The time to solve them is now, not under pressure. While an alien invasion is unlikely, humanity is facing many other major challenges. Changing how we relate now might be the difference between success or failure when it counts most.

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P.S. Infighting among humans during an alien invasion, with many humans betraying their own to defeat old political rivals, status climb, or get alien tech would make a pretty good sci-fi premise, wouldn’t it?

Originally published here… in 2019.

This Christmas, we need to talk about a serious issue:

SANTA DENIALISM.

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Everyone knows Santa is real. Virtually every major company from Coca-Cola to Disney acknowledges his existence. Even the US government tracks Santa with NORAD every year. These are highly reputable organizations. Are you Santa deniers saying that they’re ALL lying to us? What are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist?

Santa deniers have their own alternative facts. They publish books and documentaries about the “history” of Santa. Some claim he was invented by the Coca-Cola company, and others say he was based on a historical figure named Saint Nicholas. Uh, get your story straight, Santa deniers. Ours is clear. Watch a commercial or a Hallmark movie, or something.

These Santa deniers will get upset that we don’t respond to their “arguments.” Why would we respond to your little history channel documentaries, when there are big budget Hollywood movies about Santa? Plus, their arguments are stupid. “The mall Santa isn’t real.” Of course, Santa denier – the REAL Santa lives at the North Pole. The ones in malls are just actors (like in the movies).

Parents who deny Santa shouldn’t be allowed to send their kids to school those who do celebrate Christmas. They might spread their Santa denialist beliefs, and cause our kids not to get presents, or worse, get coal. Santa helps children around the world behave nice, instead of naughty. If I want to use Santa to make my kids act nice, that is my parental choice.

The cultural benefits of Santa outweigh any Santa denialist arguments. Accusing parents of “lying to children” when they tell them about Santa is harassment. When you say things like “Santa isn’t real,” you’re making deeply offensive anti-Christmas statements. Santa denialists are really just secret Grinches. These people are a hate group. If you don’t believe in Santa, unfriend me now.

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I was having a conversation with an activist who had lots of great insights when I told him “you should write something about this.” He hemmed and hawed. I’m sure he had a great excuse as to why he couldn’t do it, but he never wrote it down and I don’t remember, so you’ll never know what it was. That’s the problem. No one will know your truth unless you publish it.

There is a saying: Writers don’t get paid to write. They get paid to feel the fear. Before any artist prepares to present their work, there is usually a part of them anticipating the reaction of others. Will they like it? Will they understand it? Is it good? Will anyone see this? Will I get canceled for this? These might all be reasonable questions, but they’re often amplified through the beliefs, feelings, traumas, and egos of the creator asking them. That willingness to click “publish” without knowing how others will react on the other side is the difference between those who have a body of work and those who don’t.

The same is true of any venture. Starting a business, a relationship, or a self-development program only counts if you actually do it. This is even true of ideas. No one will know the thoughts in your head unless you share them. There are many ways to do this. Not a writer? Podcast. YouTube. Hire a ghostwriter and talk to them for a few hours. Get them out in a permanent form others can understand.

There are people who tell me that they support my work, but won’t say so publicly, because they’re afraid of how others will react. At the same time, they wonder why others don’t speak up against harmful practices like circumcision. Of course, they already know. When I talk to doctors, many tell me they oppose circumcision, but won’t say so publicly, because they’re afraid of how others will react. It’s the same pattern. Both groups are afraid to share their beliefs in a form others might react to.

They’re right to be afraid. There will be consequences. However, the consequences of not publishing are no one will ever know what they think. If they don’t speak, they don’t count. Their opinion meant nothing. Silence isn’t violence. Violence has meaning and consequences. Silence is less than that. It’s like never having been born. Even babies cry. Only trauma or satisfaction silences them. If someone isn’t speaking and isn’t satisfied, guess which of those two they’re living from.

I tell myself this. I’ve got whole books outlined in my head. There is more I want to create than time or energy in the day. The more I write, the more ideas I have for what I could write. There is no time to fear. We will all die someday. None of us are making it out of this alive. The question is: do you want to arrive at death safely with your truth unseen or with it expressed?

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Here is a simple tip that will transform your communication:

Use positives. Avoid negatives.

Before I explain that, I want you to do something:

“Don’t think about a purple elephant.”

What are you thinking about?

Odds are, you’re thinking about a purple elephant. The human mind can't process a negative (don't, not, etc.) without first creating the image after the negation.

So INSTEAD, you want to use a positive: "Think about a soaring eagle." What image do you have now? Bet it wasn't the purple elephant we didn't want.

Here is what I see many doing:

• "DON'T spank your kids."

• "DON'T circumcise."

• "It DOESN'T work."

• "I'm NOT a racist.”

See the problem?

These statements created the opposite image of what the author intends. They are “purple elephant” level bad statements.

Instead, use the positive opposite image or idea you want your audience to move towards:

• "Treat your kids respectfully."

• "Keep your kids intact."

• "This is better."

• "I'm on your side."

See the difference?

Whenever I see someone unconsciously using a negative, I cringe, even when what they are saying is true. If you just turn all your negatives (not, doesn’t, don’t, etc.) into positives, you will become more persuasive and your writing will improve.

This principle is also useful for:

• Parenting. If you say, “DON’T do that!” what are your kids going to do? Compare that to: “Let’s do this instead.” Kids do not understand negatives. They will do what you tell them to do, even if there is a “don’t” in front of your command.

• Reminders. If you tell someone “DON’T forget to bring that,” they will forget. Instead, say “remember to bring what we need.” Forget and remember are both commands. Use the right one.

• Relationships. If you say “DON’T leave me,” what are you unconsciously telling your partner? Instead, say what you want: “Stay with me forever.” Feel the difference? The negative points to fear and the positive brings joy.

That said, once you know the negative rule, you can go back to using negatives in sneaky ways:

• "I'm NOT saying I know everything about this issue."

• "I'm NOT a medical professional."

• "This WON'T solve all your problems."

• "I'm NOT a billionaire male model."

All true statements!

Yet, what image do you get from those negatives?

Negatives allow you to get away with statements you couldn’t say in the positive. I’m NOT saying this will hypnotize your audience into doing what you want. I’m just saying you should consider playing with it in your own communication.

P.S. DON’T subscribe to my substack, because I HAVEN’T delivered enough value in this one post to justify you becoming a founding member RIGHT NOW:

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