Call Of The Mild

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London

My son reads Harry Potter books. I’m told many adults read them. I don’t get it.

Actually, I do. Harry Potter is in his author’s idea of unsatisfactory circumstances. He believes himself to be very special solely by the virtue of his birth, and is encouraged by weirdos to change his circumstances by simply wishing they were not so.

Sounds like the lament of many people. And it’s just as passive as the average person has become. I wish things were wonderful because dang it, I’m special.

You’re probably not. Special, that is. Few people are in any meaningful way. Besides, most people who are considered special now are not worthwhile human beings in even the most minute way. They just manage to gain notoriety any old way they can cadge it.

I read Jack London books when I was little. People in Jack London books didn’t hang around expecting that their innate wonderfulness would be acknowledged if they just wished hard enough. They went out in the world and made their way. That world was not some foppish boarding school where nothing much ever happens. And entire industries of thought devoted to the idea that you’re deserving of praise and a medal because you manage to flick the lightswitch by the door, then bravely make it into your bed in the dark, seems to indicate a sort of invertebrate outlook on the world.

You don’t have to go to the Yukon, son. Just don’t think you’re going to accomplish anything by wishing it would happen. That’s a politician’s job, and I’d prefer you’d avoid that sort of outright criminality, even if you’re not… special.