I just watched the entire Daredevil season 1 on Netflix in 3 days.
Prior to that I watched the entire Arrow series in 4 days.
And Agents of Shield? I polished that off in 2 days.
Before Netflix – I got into the Sopranos box set – that was a killer.
Earlier today, my 6 year old son and I explored the idea of being able to watch episodes of a series whenever you wanted and I explained how different his experience was to mine when I was his age – 35 years ago.
When I was a kid, you watched an episode of something a week – at the predetermined time. When video recorders came up, you could choose to record a series but had to do that weekly at the predetermined time. You could only watch the entire series after it had been aired.
Then came boxsets. Boxsets moved things on a bit. You could watch entire seasons that had aired a few years to a few months ago. But the interval based episode format was still the same.
Netflix disrupts this format by making both syndicated and original content available in episodes but without the interval – you don’t have to wait at all to watch episodes in a season and only a short time for new seasons. I don’t know whether they are following the trend of the ‘NOW’ generation or leading it. Actually I don’t care.
What I care about is the content – specifically how stories are told. Three hours of a series of episodes is theatrically different from a three hour movie. Even my 6 year old – Ruben – understands this. Things developed to be consumed in intervals must build in enough hooks to keep you coming back every week to see how it unfolds. So there needs to be drama, thrill and suspense – all key emotional manipulators – in each episode – to trigger anticipation. Over the course of a week, perhaps our human system can handle such manipulation, but when you binge – as I and millions of others do – what damage does that cause to our emotional and sensory systems?
To a large extent we have the same experience with franchises like Lord of the Rings and Avengers. The interval is longer between episodes and each episode is itself a longer show. But collapse the intervals and watch them back to back and you are in danger of seriously messing with your mind and possibly your perception of reality.
I’m sure Netflix and others – Amazon etc – argue this is disruption in format is about choice and in part I agree. However, I am curious to understand whether that choice is both real and actionable when the content is designed to hook.
Do you watch Netflix or binge on boxsets – how does it affect you?
Every business – however large and however profitable – is a startup. Or is about to be. The big WTF is that they just don’t realise it yet.
This epiphany struck me recently and life hasn’t been the same since. I am eternally grateful to Massimo Lucchina for stating the simple truth behind this and triggering the idea that follows.
A Successful business model is a non-loss making one.
Steve G Blank, in his book – “The Startup Owner’s Manual” – defines a startup as ‘ an organisation searching for a repeatable and sustainable business model’.
When I first read this and applied Steve’s ideas to my own startups, I made the rookie mistake of thinking it was a one off search. I committed my time and resources to validating my idea and doing customer development, sure, I needed to do that – every startup does. The mistake is thinking is was a one off activity and this thinking can lead to unsustainable behavior.
When you are going from zero customers and revenue to something enough to quit your day job for, it can seem like you only have to do this searching thing once and yes, it can take ages.
Whilst searching, you might twist and turn as you try and find that seam of gold in a grotty old mine. If you take the right kind of risks, you might find enough of this seam to generate some revenue and gain early customers. You might even make enough to print some decent business cards, move out of your parents’ garage, hire some people and get into business.
What you soon realise is that a business model is a relative thing. The model needs to generate at least as much – if not – more revenue than your costs – hence profit. The trouble is that as you grow revenue, gain new customers, expand your market share – possibly with the same products and services – your costs grow too.
So a business model is about the relationship between revenue and costs and a successful one is where revenue trumps costs most of the time.
You die because your heart stops
Just as the heartbeat is proof of life, so it is that consistently not making a loss – in the case of successful non profits – and consistently turning a profit – in the case of for-profits – is the indicator of life in business. Many things can kill a business, but how it dies is that it becomes increasingly loss making and ultimately insolvent or euthanised before that point.
What happens when revenues do not grow as fast as costs are rising?
Or when costs remain constant or daresay, even drop, but so do your revenues?
Quite simply, what does your business do when revenue does not match or even outpace costs and your once successful model is losing steam?
There is some value in understanding how this might happen because there may be some learning into what the next twist, turn or pivot that your business needs to take to regain its mojo. I’ll write another post that delves into the various ways this slow failing model can happen.
Suffice to say, every business will encounter this problem and will continue to encounter it whilst they exist. In fact the reason they cease to exist will be singularly because their business model fails and they are unable to find another one quickly enough.
Whilst the triggers for a previously successful business model starting its descent from profitability to oblivion can differ between business and industries, the symptoms are always the same – declining profits.
Every business hitting a growth ceiling will either hover around it , drop from it or crash through it.
So, let’s assume for a moment that you get from zero customers to current break even – hurray you are officially an unofficial non-profit. You might tick along for a while. What this looks like in real life might be that:
You don’t gain any more customers,
Or don’t charge your existing customers any more for the same offering.
Or you charge them more for something new, but still only matching costs.
Or you are gaining as many customers as you are losing
Basically what you have is equilibrium. This business has found a ceiling and is hovering around it. It is not simply a revenue ceiling. It is a growth ceiling – honouring the relationship between costs and revenue.
This situation is actually identical to a company that has grown from $100m to , say, $1bn revenues. Heck, some of that growth might even have resulted in profit. Though now they find themselves steadfastly unable to break through that revenue ceiling, often falling just below it or even accidentally crossing it momentarily.
Both business are hovering, simultaneously trying to stop dropping away whilst unsuccessfully trying to break through. But only one of these is in a worse shape than the other.
Can you work out which one and why?
The only difference between these two examples is how far each has to fall and how much it has at its disposal to both prevent it from falling and propel it crashing through the ceiling.
To break through a ceiling *always* requires a search for a new business model i.e becoming a startup.
This sounds drastic – and it often is. Though in practice, the new business model is a variation of the previous one. Business models are merely versions of each other – each iteration a new version beyond the previous one.
Businesses hovering beneath a growth ceiling must – quite simply – find a different way to make money. This may be new product or service offerings; or the same products in new markets or radically change the revenue vs costs relationship – usually by slashing costs, because revenues aren’t budging.
I believe though that this last option is really one of the dumbest things a business in this situation can do – especially if it is not *yet* in dire straits. Ahem , Yahoo.
Why reducing your search capacity during a search a dumb idea.
If you buy into my assertion that breaking through the growth ceiling is a search problem, then it becomes clear that a search often benefits from having as many eyes involved in coordinated search effort as possible.
Imagine a search for a chest full of pure gold doubloons in the Atlantic Ocean.
Can you imagine starting with 100 people with skin in the search and then firing them , reducing the search effort down to 50 people. Clearly to search the Atlantic, you need as many people and vessels to search the space as possible. Why would you knowingly reduce that effort?
Costs aside, the only reason I observe that this might be done is because those doing the reducing do not have the skills to effectively coordinate this many people in a search. This assumes they even recognise that searching is what they need to do.
Once you have broken through a ceiling, the clock is reset and starts ticking again.
Just when you thought it was safe to put away the search lights and whistles because your new business model has been found, you discover that you simply are now on a countdown to reaching the next ceiling. The most prudent thing you can possibly do is to recognise this and begin to explore and create options for the inevitable next growth ceiling.
I am discovering a new passion and it is that beyond each growth ceiling is a new way of thinking and approach, to get momentum to make the next ceiling easier to crash through and to make the next hover as short as possible.
Look around you and see if you can identify the ceilings in the companies you know. Can you observe how they are trying to crash through the ceiling?
I would really love to hear your views and experiences around this idea – I’m still developing it. Tweet or comment and make my day!
I pride myself on being able to find common ground with most people. To find the shared value and work with them to achieve it.
The joy of working with people who truly value you and are open to ideas is unsurpassed. Exploring the challenges whilst still respecting each other, disagreeing whilst still collaborating deeply – these are all hallmarks of passionate working relationships. This is what I now unreservedly seek.
I’ve spent years gaining and honing skills and techniques to build rapport, to understand people and their needs and to build bridges between my world view and theirs. It has been enormously insightful and satisfying.
But all that experience has also taught me a ton of stuff and helped me come to the conclusion that there are certain behaviours that I do not want to work with it. Ever again.
8 Behaviours I Don’t Want to Work With
It isn’t about people as much as it is about behaviours that people, in certain situations, exhibit. Here are the top showstoppers for me:
Having and operating an agenda that is about controlling others.
Withholding material information from me about what and, more importantly, why we are doing what we are doing.
Demonstrating a lack of openness to ideas.
Reluctance, even when supported, to express how you feel and what you need.
Being dismissive of attempts to create more openness between you, me and others.
Applying the ‘power’ you have in an organisation in a coercive and authoritarian way.
Treating people like resources and using that word easily and happily.
Undervaluing human connectedness and ‘soft’ skills like empathy, trust and respect
Life is too short
There are a few simple reasons I have reached this place, but the most important for me – I think – is that life is too short.
Life is too short to waste it with people who take joyfully but give reluctantly. It is too short to struggle on an on against mindsets that are in constant conflict on the most fundamental of values.
Life is too short to spend even a moment on work that is entirely unfulfilling – where you are neither contributing nor benefiting. It is too short to spend it playing the political games that burn time with little real value.
Yet life is too short not to work with behaviours that joyfully embrace diversity of approach, thought and experience. It is not long enough to really explore the unexplored awesomeness of passionate people. Life is too short not to seek value in joy or to separate ‘life’ from ‘work’. And that is what I want to work with now – for the rest of my life.
What behaviours would prevent you from working deeply and unreservedly with someone else? I’d love to hear from you via comments or @mhsutton on Twitter.
I have a tax bill due. It is ‘tax on profits’ and while I have the money set aside to pay it, there is still a deep sense of hesitation to hand the money over.
Hold up, here comes the science bit. Long ago humans became collectives to live and hunt together, socialise and defend themselves against their common threats. Living together brings its benefits and its own unique complications and so they evolved their communities norms or codes of conduct to address those complications. Laws and taboos emerged, carried in the carrier oil of the day – usually fear of some super powerful deity (or deities). Later these became commandments, religious law and in some communities – constitutions and legal code. Living together also came with additional cost. The cost in time, effort and materials to do the common things and to maintain them. As money evolved, these costs were rolled eventually up into a tax.
Money made things simpler, but it also made some things more complicated – it changed and changes the relationship people have with their community. It is important – in my view – that the people in a community contribute time and effort to the community work and not simply pay for it.
Fundamentally I am socialist. I deeply believe we are better together. I believe our collective should work for the good of all, especially the least able of us. This costs money – I get that. I’m not against funding our collective. I’m pro-fair taxes and anti-waste.
Basically I’m pissed off about taxes
My current beef with taxes is around a fundamental thing – how it is spent. Not just my taxes but all government revenue.
I deeply disagree with how my taxes are spent in the UK. I did with the previous Labour government and even more so with the current LibCon artists. I don’t want to fund wars dressed up as collective defense. I don’t want to fund insidious espionage on me and my compatriots in the name of the bogeyman. I want better outcomes for the poorest in my community – this takes money and care that money cannot buy. I want an efficient administration, not one in the clutches of greedy corporations that spend the pot I contribute to as though it were free.
Without choice, proportional taxation is malignant.
I don’t get to choose how my taxes are spent – I mean real choice – that is heard and acted on. That leads me to deeply resent proportional taxation – the idea those who have more, pay more. In theory, I am happy to pay more, if I have more. But the dysfunction on how those taxes are spent has turned that dream into a nightmare. The more I make, the more guns are bought, the more waste there is. The more spying there is. The more bankers are bailed out. The more money is diverted away from the things I want to see improve and the more money that is channeled to the things I definitely do not. The more of my taxes go to make the greedy rich, richer. This is not what I want.
So as I was in the shower contemplating handing over a not insignificant sum of corporation taxes I wondered how to pay for our shared interests without screwing over the people that pay it.
What if there was a flat subscription to be British (or American or any other nationality)?
You sign up, get a welcome pack and a token that gives access all the services that are available. Services are provided and maintained by the collective administration. It won’t be run for profit. Clearly sometimes we have to buy in things we are incapable of producing ourselves and that is rolled into the subscriptions.
This would, of course, be a no contract subscription model. You can cancel anytime. You might still access the same services, but at full cost or you might not access any at all. If there was a better provider of citizenship, you had the choice to sign up to them. If fact, you could sign up to as many as you could afford – but remember at any one time, you are probably going to just use one set of services, mostly.
Subscription
The subscription model is a little different from online apps. We can figure out what the basic subscription is and people can pay that. We can also figure out what it is worth and people can contribute their skills to realise that worth. For example, a doctor might choose to provide 200 hours of medical cover to a community clinic in exchange for their subscription. They might do it to pay the subscription for their child too. Streets need cleaning, gardens need tending, meals need serving and the lonely need company – all are aspects of collective needs that are overlooked.
What really helps this is understand what collective needs are to be met to keep our collective thriving. It is not only money that makes the world go round!
The essentials
Everyone gets the essential services – wellness (include healthcare and basic nutrition), collective security, transportation, access to essential infrastructure and maintenance. Education is also essential, although a little different from other things. Any citizen can access learning to any level they choose, with a payback option if they decide to take go become filthy rich instead of contributing their expertise back into the community!
But what of national resources? They belong to everyone, some generate revenue and that goes into the pot along with the subs. We pay out of the pot to maintain them and provide open access to everyone to things like parks and spas etc.
We never borrow money our revenue can’t cover. Scratch that, we never borrow. Period.
In the end this might mean we grow at a pace that is sustainable. If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, we would invent lots!
There is still a market
The non essential stuff is provided by the market (yes there is still one). Basically it is everything that is not considered essential. Education is another funny one. You might buy specialised education on the market (with money from the collective pot). That, like all education, is an investment.
Sometime the lines are blurry , especially with spending our collective pot on things in the market. The distinction here is that the essential stuff is run not-for-profit – by whoever delivers it. This distinction is protected by the most binding of oaths. There is absolutely no screwing with that. By anyone. We might add to the list of essentials but almost never remove from it and even then only by referendum.
Administration is essential. The popular perception is that it is waste – after all it does not contribute to the services nor to the pot. My view is that it is not waste, but it is one of the areas that could be really wasteful.
What of corporate taxes? Well participants in the market who are not citizens would pay a fee to participate in the market. How much they pay would be linked to their level of participation in the market. Not yet sure this is based on profit. Nonetheless, but they would be bound by our laws on how they operate within our market including labor practices and protections.
Entitlement
There is entitlement. If you pay your subs or you contribute it’s equivalent in community work, you are entitled to use the services. Simple.
There are exceptions, to the ‘pay/contribute and be entitled’ rule. For those who cannot pay and who cannot contribute in other ways , for example the severely disabled or chronically ill. Our collective will subsidise them. Clearly there is a limit to how much subsidy (how many can be subsidised and/or subsidy per person) but I am currently not sure how that would work. Though I suspect there are some services that do not cost more, the more people who use them and so in real terms, the subsidy may not be substantial. There are exceptions.
Children could be subscribed by their parents. There would be no automatic citizenship and you can change whenever you want. If you want choice, then it applies across the board.
Transparency, absolute transparency
For this to work, we need absolute transparency. Everything that needs doing is public so that the others in the collective can contribute. We already know what we all pay (the same rate subs). We’ll also need to know the the size of the pot – including other revenue that feeds it – it needs to be constantly accessible and perpetually accurate. We need to see and know every penny spent and to whom and for what. The actual cost of our administration is available to scrutiny by anyone. It is the accountability that transparency engenders that will help check the waste. Transparency does not come for free, it has to be paid for also – in money and in vigilance.
Transparency takes away some of issues we are currently stuck at. For example being transparent with entitlement means that the decision on identity cards – the usual form the token that provides access to services take – would be a no-brainer. If you access services, you need a token. This token, incidentally, is also your travel card. It shows you are a paid up member of that collective and can travel under its flag.
Pensions
One area of contention for me is pensions. With this model, your subs pay for what you use now. The current public pensions crisis , in my opinion, is borne out of the shortsightedness of its creators. Basically they started with noble intentions and then they found, almost immediately, it didn’t work. So they lied. They took money they were supposed to save for ‘future’ and used it to fund the now and took the ‘now’ money of taxpayers (in the future) to pay the pensioners whose money they had already spent. It is an elaborate ‘robbing Peter to pay Grandpa Paul’ scam.
So in this model , I do not consider pensions an essential service covered by subs. If you want one, you contribute separately and you buy one that suits your circumstances from the market. We can agree that you must have one, but where you get it from is up to you. To make things easy, we might collect it as part of subs, but it doesn’t go into the pot. It goes directly to the pension provider you bough it from. That way the mandatory aspect is enforced.
Clearly in the future you can use that revenue to continue to be a subscribed member of the collective.
Explore with me
This is an evolving idea. Though it might make you feel uneasy – ideas can do that – please help me explore it. As I wrote this, I thought we are pretty close in some aspects.
What might be the gaps and how might we close them. What would you consider to be our collective needs. Which are essential and which are not. Would you pay for a monarchy for example?
How might the administration be created without the drunkenness that power inspires? I’m open to ideas!
Are we better off remodeling our current system or starting from scratch?
What are your thoughts? I’d love to know and share.
I was 25 when I watched “Jazz” the anthology by Ken Burns where he successfully introduces jazz music to a much wider audience. I love jazz and to be able to learn some of the dynamics of the bands and artists was hugely exciting.
Charlie “Bird” Parker was an exceptional saxophonist who helped create the bebop sound (and genre) and defined the music the influenced almost all other forms of popular music from that point. To many of his contemporaries, he was a genius . Yet he was also chronically addicted to heroin, though he was later rehabilitated from his addiction and seemingly remained clean till his death.
Why am I sharing this?
Well, I remember watching Jazz and especially learning about Charlie Parker who, as an aspiring saxophonist, I totally admired, At the height of his fame, his sound was adored by his contemporaries, almost worshipped. So much that many wanted to emulate it. But it was almost impossible to copy, so many variations, complex harmonies. Even Bird couldn’t teach you to play like him. In order to understand how one guy could be so brilliant – many who sought to gain the same abilities looked at his lifestyle and they saw heroin. Watching Jazz, I was shocked to learn that so of these performers, all pretty good in their own right, thought that perhaps his addiction gave him his abilities. So they took heroin too.
I see so many self-help blogs and the life-hacking culture that share so many ideas for improving one’s life. From weight loss to getting better at a language. I like to think all this information comes from a place of goodness – driven by the desire to share what has worked in one person to others. Yet they are sold as “this worked for me , it will work for you too”. In truth, you might get lucky and they might just work.
Start your day at 5.30am and go for a run! It will change your life.
Split your day into 90 minute sessions (because the science proves it) and you will get more done.
Fart before playing your numbers on the lottery, I won big, you will too. (ok, I made that one up).
My point is that what works for one person is not guaranteed to work for another. At best, one person’s experience is no more than a suggestion to another.
Lifelong curiousity is the real message
What makes one person explore a different routine to the one they have always had?
What motivates people to take up new skills or do weird experiments on themselves?
Often it is because something is not working they way they want. Often it is nothing more than seeking to answer “what might happen if…”.
This is such a powerful idea, one that fuels so much innovation and discovery and, I believe, is the central message of this life hacking, self help industry – which mostly sells the discoveries that are the result of curiosity.
But I think that most people who are into life hacking do not even realise that their discovery (as cool as it might be) is itself less unimportant than the spirit of curiosity through which they derived it. Curiosity to explore alternatives, to experiment and to discover.
I would much rather read about that than be peddled a 5.30AM run to start my day or a blended smoothie to boost my brain power.
We are each unique- even as the systems all around us want to make us believe we are not. The mainstream of everything requires that we can be categorised, grouped. How else do you understand 7 billion people? But we are each more than a category (easier to understand – we are each a category!). So let’s each find what works for us and contribute it into the larger pool of ideas that others can steal freely from as they emerge what works for them and as we do that, let us celebrate the spirit of curiosity that drives it all in the first place.
Learn to be curious about life, the universe and everything. You will live a better, more fulfilling life.
I have been following the BBC reporting of the Israeli killing of 9 activists on board the Gaza blockade busting flotilla.
9 people were shot and killed by Israeli forces. The Israelis claim there were guns on the ship – none have been found. Now they seem to be saying they had ‘reports’ there were weapons on board the ship and ‘ the use of force was the only way to stop the flotilla’.
Meanwhile – the BBC – in true ‘plant seeds of doubt and dehumanisation’ fashion report that…
‘Eight Turks and 1 Turkish-American were killed’.
Turkish-American??? Is that a nationality or are we now counting the dead by ethno-nationality. What is the relevance that this individual was an American of Turkish descent?
Is it so inconceivable that any other American citizen could act on their conscience and be on that flotilla protesting the imprisonment of an entire people?
It is my belief that the media and most commonly the BBC , use this technique to undermine the legitimacy of the individual by correlating their action to their ethnicity – when there is no obvious connection. It serves to reduce the significance of the protest or the power of the act. Somehow they deserved to be shot and killed because they were Turkish and Turkish-American. Somehow their lives are less valuable , somehow they are more expendible.
Do the BBC do this intentionally – I don’t actually think so. I think the instituationalisation of bias is so ingrained that they simply do it and no one checks, no one picks its up. To the reporter, their editors – it is quality reporting. All paid for by the UK tax payer.
I hardly read the news anymore from the mainstream – what passes for news these days has been put through so many filters of political correctness, national security, popularity etc that what comes out is dross. I have never believed in the BBC and its so called impartiality and it must surely be time for a new organisation – especially one funded by the tax payer – to be overhauled and manned by the likes of Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Mark Curtis – individuals who report what they find with equanimity and honesty.
Barack Obama made history. That is undisputed and worthy of celebration.
But what is this fiasco about the order in which world leaders get to visit him?
On 5th Feb, the BBC reports that Tony Blair met President Obama. Other media mongers extended this as a oneupmanship against Gordon Brown.
Today , the Japanese prime minister has been reported as the first world leader to visit President Obama.
Did the newspapers read the same when the three kings made it to the manger to see baby Jesus – don’t be silly, there weren’t any newspapers back then!
But seriously is Obama the new Jesus with world leaders paying homage to the saviour , or is it more mafia like – with capos from the various smaller families coming in to show respect to the capo di capo tutti! The beers can’t really be that much colder in the White House.
With spectacular size comes spectacular impact. The collapse of the global financial system is just that – spectacular.
I searched for exactly what the ‘Global Financial System’ and was (un?)reliably informed (by Wikipedia) that is a system, operating across borders and nations, for the movement of money and other financial instruments.
So, simply put, it is the basis for international trade and mutual economic dependence.
Trade has always existed between nations and the GFS is only the most recent attempt at trying to regulate it. As crooked as it now appears – riddled with greed and devoid of social conscience, it may have started with some semblence of honourable intent.
It is perhaps laudable that by engineering a state of fundamental interdependence, the creators of the GFS were , perhaps in part, aiming to replace military conflict between States with a more overwhelming concern – security and health of connected economies.
The only trouble is , when a system is so interdependent, crucial points of failure start to emerge. Pinch one of these points and the system fails. As we now see happening.
Yet this system was founded on the interests of the rich and powerful, they gang together – deciding who sells what and for how much. Wait a second, I hear you chime – the markets decide. Of course they do. But barkets are about demand and supply… and cash and control. The global rich and powerful (corporations and governments – who can tell the difference) control so much raw cash that they use their financial might and the power they weild through thier political arms, to bully and buy control of the markets.
Yet, it is the only system we seem to have, so whether we realise the markets are fiddled, what choice do the rest of us have. Especially when there is little steadfast unity amongst those who are overwhelmingly disadvantaged by the GFS.
Any system (financial or otherwise) that begins with a uneven playing field can never be fair. I hate to play the colonial card , but if you look closely enough, the economies of former colonies are
So, something as simple as banks (the arteries in this system) not lending to each other has crippled all the other functions of the system.
The lending issue is only a symptom – the underlying disease being unregulated sharks, fueled by greed, destroying what little trust was in the system.
We, the poor and middle-classes – the beasts upon whose labour the entire system is funded, are left broke and starving from a bankrupt and broken system.
When you encounter an article that starts ‘What if…’ that’s the cue to engage your imagination and cast aside your preconceptions on life. So…
What if God really did not want to be God. What if God was simply asked to do a rush job on the Creation as a favour for some other supreme being – an office junior in a Ministry of Creation just doing a job. It does sound like a rush job doesn’t it – six days to create a world. Oceans, forests AND man!
Did God really sign up for all that goes with the role. All that worshipping and pretentious piety. Has God ended with more than He bargained for? Even the idea of God’s gender is questioned, is He a he or a she or maybe even a ‘they’?
For the purpose of this post, I’ll go with the popular ‘He’.
The constant questioning of His existence, all that blaming and cussing. All that cruelty in His name, all that blood spilt in crusades for His glory. But of course, as is typical with Ministry employees, He has been moved on to something else now, with little consideration how his last project is progressing. Perhaps every now and then, He might get a call about some missing paperwork or design decision. But the longer it persists, the less He remembers.
Of course most of the chaos has been caused by arguably God’s greatest creation – Man (its funny – do dolphins think of God , if they did do they think they are His greatest creation or is that exclusively a human arrogance?).
So, reluctantly corralled into this job, what if God was a little forward thinking and gave Man a little more intelligence than was planned. He hoped that in doing this He could avoid some future maintenance by creating a being that had the power of choice, free will and thought (of course the power of choice would absolve the creator of the responsibility for the creations choices – nice).
Perhaps the creation and a short time thereafter was God’s retirement; perhaps the world, the land ,seas and oceans, flora and fauna were all final farewell frivolities?. Perhaps despite all that praying and belief, no one is actually listening because God is in retirement in some divine Costa Del Sol. Perhaps shit really just happens.
Cast into this reluctant role of super deity, the beginning and the end, what if God does not have a grand plan for each one of His creations and after the Creation(which was a Ministry design anyway) He basically ran out of ideas of what to do wit this Creation of His.
What if contrary to popular belief God does not know, see and hear it all.A victim of his own success, perhaps God has really had enough of this enforced support role and now wants to be rid of this project that never goes away – that is more trouble than its worth.
