about, hanging around the street corner.
In this book, when I say “Don’t think,” what I mean is: don’t listen to the chatter. Pay no attention to those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind.
Those are not your thoughts.
They are chatter.
They are Resistance.
Chatter is your mother and father’s well-intentioned expressions of caution, seeking to shield you from hurting yourself. Chatter is your teachers’ equally well-meaning attempts at socialization, training you to follow the rules. Chatter is your friends’ regular-Joe buddy-talk, trying to make you like them and follow the rules of the pack.
Chatter is Resistance.
Its aim is to reconcile you to “the way it is,” to make you exactly like everyone else, to render you amenable to societal order and discipline.
Where do our own real thoughts come from? How can we access them? From what source does our true, authentic self speak?
Answering that is the work you and I will do for the rest of our lives.
Ready to Rock and Roll
We’ve got our concept, we’ve got our theme. We know our start. We know where we want to finish. We’ve got our project in three acts on a single sheet of foolscap.
Ready to roll? We need only to remember our three mantras:
Stay primitive.
Trust the soup.
Swing for the seats.
And our final-final precept:
4. Be ready for Resistance.
The Universe Is Not Indifferent
I blame Communism. I blame Fascism. I blame psychotherapy. They—and a boatload of other well-intentioned ideologies that evolved during the mass-culture, industrialized, dehumanizing epoch of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—all posited the same fantasy. They all preached that human nature was perfectible and that, thereby, evil could be overcome.
It can’t.
When you and I set out to create anything—art, commerce, science, love—or to advance in the direction of a higher, nobler version of ourselves, we uncork from the universe, ineluctably, an equal and opposite reaction.
That reaction is Resistance. Resistance is an active, intelligent, protean, malign force—tireless, relentless, and inextinguishable—whose sole object is to stop us from becoming our best selves and from achieving our higher goals.
The universe is not indifferent. It is actively hostile.
Every principle espoused so far in this volume is predicated upon that truth. The aim of every axiom set forth thus far is to outwit, outflank, outmaneuver Resistance.
We can never eliminate Resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, and we can enlist allies that are as powerful as it is.
One thing we can never, never permit ourselves to do is to take Resistance lightly, to underestimate it or to fail to take it into account.
We must respect Resistance, like Sigourney Weaver respected the Alien, or St. George respected the dragon.
Fill in the Gaps
On our single sheet of foolscap we’ve got the Big Beats. Now what?
Fill in the gaps.
David Lean famously declared that a feature film should have seven or eight major sequences. That’s a pretty good guideline for our play, our album, our State of the Union address.
A video game should have seven or eight major movements; so should the newest high-tech gadget, or the latest fighter plane. Our new house should have seven or eight major spaces. A football game, a prize fight, a tennis match—if they’re going to be entertaining—should have seven or eight major swings of momentum.
That’s what we need now. We need to fill in the gaps with a series of great entertaining and enlightening scenes, sequences, or spaces.
Do Research Now
Now you can do your research. But stay on your diet.
Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time.
Research can be fun. It can be
In this book, when I say “Don’t think,” what I mean is: don’t listen to the chatter. Pay no attention to those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind.
Those are not your thoughts.
They are chatter.
They are Resistance.
Chatter is your mother and father’s well-intentioned expressions of caution, seeking to shield you from hurting yourself. Chatter is your teachers’ equally well-meaning attempts at socialization, training you to follow the rules. Chatter is your friends’ regular-Joe buddy-talk, trying to make you like them and follow the rules of the pack.
Chatter is Resistance.
Its aim is to reconcile you to “the way it is,” to make you exactly like everyone else, to render you amenable to societal order and discipline.
Where do our own real thoughts come from? How can we access them? From what source does our true, authentic self speak?
Answering that is the work you and I will do for the rest of our lives.
Ready to Rock and Roll
We’ve got our concept, we’ve got our theme. We know our start. We know where we want to finish. We’ve got our project in three acts on a single sheet of foolscap.
Ready to roll? We need only to remember our three mantras:
Stay primitive.
Trust the soup.
Swing for the seats.
And our final-final precept:
4. Be ready for Resistance.
The Universe Is Not Indifferent
I blame Communism. I blame Fascism. I blame psychotherapy. They—and a boatload of other well-intentioned ideologies that evolved during the mass-culture, industrialized, dehumanizing epoch of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—all posited the same fantasy. They all preached that human nature was perfectible and that, thereby, evil could be overcome.
It can’t.
When you and I set out to create anything—art, commerce, science, love—or to advance in the direction of a higher, nobler version of ourselves, we uncork from the universe, ineluctably, an equal and opposite reaction.
That reaction is Resistance. Resistance is an active, intelligent, protean, malign force—tireless, relentless, and inextinguishable—whose sole object is to stop us from becoming our best selves and from achieving our higher goals.
The universe is not indifferent. It is actively hostile.
Every principle espoused so far in this volume is predicated upon that truth. The aim of every axiom set forth thus far is to outwit, outflank, outmaneuver Resistance.
We can never eliminate Resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, and we can enlist allies that are as powerful as it is.
One thing we can never, never permit ourselves to do is to take Resistance lightly, to underestimate it or to fail to take it into account.
We must respect Resistance, like Sigourney Weaver respected the Alien, or St. George respected the dragon.
Fill in the Gaps
On our single sheet of foolscap we’ve got the Big Beats. Now what?
Fill in the gaps.
David Lean famously declared that a feature film should have seven or eight major sequences. That’s a pretty good guideline for our play, our album, our State of the Union address.
A video game should have seven or eight major movements; so should the newest high-tech gadget, or the latest fighter plane. Our new house should have seven or eight major spaces. A football game, a prize fight, a tennis match—if they’re going to be entertaining—should have seven or eight major swings of momentum.
That’s what we need now. We need to fill in the gaps with a series of great entertaining and enlightening scenes, sequences, or spaces.
Do Research Now
Now you can do your research. But stay on your diet.
Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time.
Research can be fun. It can be
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