I found hope

Content advisory

• One (1) recovering ass-oholic.
• Dangerous levels of hope
• Trace amounts of Jordan Peterson

I thought I was winning arguments, but I was really just losing friends. It was 2017 when my wife and kids moved away without me. Everything turned on a dime.

It was a cold November night in Nashville, Tennessee.

"Last call!"

That was Piper’s cue. She came racing out the door and we walked around the block per usual, but it didn't look like our normal route. Everything was alive. I looked down and the ground was crimson red – blood stains from soldiers slain.

“No!”

I jerked Piper away. I couldn’t let her go there. It was sacred ground. Boys, men, brothers fought for my freedom there.

Suddenly, fighting over politics felt petty. Squabbling felt downright disrespectful to those who laid down their lives.

The epiphany came from an annoying little voice in my head. It was either the magic mushrooms I took earlier, or the Jordan Peterson podcast I was listening to.

I don't know, but either way one of ‘em shouted:

“FIX YOUR LIFE SON!!!

… in this order, child:

1. you
2. family
3. neighbors
4. community

If you can somehow manage all that, go ahead and worry about the rest of the world.

Until then...

Shut the fuck up Donny!”

I might be paraphrasing my epiphany, but it's pretty close.

There was a lot to fix.

My wife and I were fighting. Some of it was money. Most of it was my midlife crisis – my politics, the tin-foil hat. I was fed up with The Fed, Big Gov, War Incorporated. I wanted to homeschool the kids. I was mansplaining how to butter toast. Needless to say, Melina was suffering. Her father was ill and I was sick in the head. She didn't have any support. My mom was right around the corner, so I had a full-time angel by my side, but Mel had been missing her mom for years – crying herself to sleep.

So I decided then and there at the Battle of Franklin, that we were moving to Carolina. I was losing the fight and needed to retreat, skedaddle back behind family lines. Bring Momma to Momma. Melina's brother and all her crazy cousins were in Carolina. I adore them all and always wanted my twins to grow up knowing what cousin life was like. It was time to recruit troops, grow the tribe, and connect family territories. Time to make our own little world.

It was that night when I woke up, stopped dreaming of making it big in the music biz and moved on with my life. I didn't give up on my dreams. I just sorta grew out of a few.

Listen on SoundCloud

On faith, I told Melina to take Finn and Fiona to her mom's in Raleigh. Told her that missing them would light a fire under my ass, that it wouldn't take me long to find a job. So that was it. They bounced while I Airbnb’d the house and waved my magic wand.

A week later, a rabbit poked its head out of my top hat and gave me the enterprise marketing position I wanted. BB&T (or Ra-BB&T for fun) was a regional bank. They've since merged with Truist, but the original RaBB&T interviewed me six times – ran me through the gauntlet, then ghosted me for 11 months. I had already given up on them when I told Melina to go ahead of me.

After working ten years for United Methodist Communications, my wallet looked about as skinny as I was. I had moved up as far as I wanted to go in the non profit world. Any more mobility meant all-day meetings and managing people. Hard pass.

My mom told us she'd chase us down to the ends of the earth if we were planning to abscond with her grandbabies. So she retired and came along for the ride. Shortly after, I drove to Kentucky to rescue my dad and his 3-legged dog. Long story longer, within a couple years we had the whole tribe in one place. All of us within minutes of each other.

Best of all, I quit smoking politics cold turkey. The stuff will kill you. I'm sure it was a coincidence that Epstein bought 330 gallons of sulfuric acid right after investigations ramped up. Water purification. Riiiiiiight.

See how dark that got? It was all good news and fluffy rabbits, then BAM! Death cult 2020. That was me 24/7/365 around friends, dinner conversations, bedtime stories, or any time people permitted the opening of my face hole.

The move and all the family support helped, but I was still lost, walking on the edge of the world, about to lose the love of my life and everything we built together.

Around the same time, by chance, I discovered The Good News Network. If I have a guardian angel, she must have put that headline in front of me. I forget the story because it was just the first domino to fall – just one breakthrough among hundreds. I'm an all or nothing kinda guy, so I dove deep, went all the way down the rabbit hole, spent that night and the next five years reading one “miracle” after another, finding all the helpers in the world.

It was baptismal, biblical, unbelievable. Sci-fi turned reality. Bibliographies that check out! The research was real! Helpers are happening.

"Good God. We're saved. The entire world is saved (if we don't blow each other up, of course), but good lord. We might actually have a chance!"

Each headline of hope was a splash of sulfuric acid dissolving my fears away.

It flipped my script. Corporate media could no longer control my world. If I watch it today, it's morbid curiosity, usually filtered through the lens of Tim Dillon because he recognizes the absurdity of it all. His bullshit makes more sense than anything on TV today.

If I ever started to backslide, the annoying little voice in my head would come back and gently remind me:

“STFU”

It became my mantra.

I read The Good News Network religiously – mined their RSS feed for all the tech, energy and environmental breakthroughs buried beneath the "news."

Instead of arguing over politics, I'd share incredible stories with my kids at dinner. Instead of fostering fear, we watered hope. We all picked a few charities and put our money where our mouths were.

Ordinary people with extraordinary ideas are already saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Why wait for politicians to reinvent the wheel… or break it. Why wait for them to waste our money on corporate welfare and warfare?

Instead of shoving economics down my wife's throat, I gave her some money to play with in the stock market. We lost a LOT, but Melina's smart. She learned the game. It didn't take her long to figure out all the stuff I tried to force on her in Nashville. How politicians pick the winners and losers. How insider trading and major banks manipulate the market. How tariff wars and actual wars cripple free trade and lead to real human suffering at scale.

Economy = life

Melina hated when I’d go on my political rants, but once you understand money and power, you can't unsee the slave owners, the oligarchy, the monopoly, the greed that is government. Every government, all over the world pulling our strings.

Today we can talk politics around the dinner table because we want to. It's funny. Now it's Melina who can't stop talking about it, because it’s her "job"… to understand how politicians f#ck up our portfolio. Now we can laugh and poke holes in politics. That's what the removal of force and the injection of freedom does to a relationship, a people, a world.

Now she's the family stock broker. She's done amazing things with our money. She did it all on her own, after I STFU and got out of the way.

Economics isn't a magic pill, but once you understand it, you begin to see the world in a whole new light. Someone called me an oracle the other day. I laughed and said "I don't think I'm divinely inspired man. I'm just a dude ... just reading the writing on the wall."

My guy wasn't having it. "That's exactly what an oracle would say."

I don't know man. I feel like it's all right there in plain sight. Speculators understand how power and greed affect supply and demand. It's basic economics.

There's a reason most government educations dont teach economics during K-12. That would expose their scam to too many young impressionable minds.

That's my story. I'm still a recovering ass-oholic, but things are better because I stopped trying to fix the world. I started with myself. Moved out into the country. We watch sunsets with neighbors and give back because we can.

You can turn the news off right now. There’s sooooo much hope if you know where to look. I found her by sheer luck. Maybe she found me. I don't know, but here she is.

Find your story.

100+ Headlines of Hope to choose from

Pick one. Support your cause. Be the change.

Causes we support

• Anti-war.com exposes all the lies that get us into war. Best journalists ever IMO.
• HumanGovernance 3.0 teaches revolution → evolution. Chris is also a good friend.
• The Innocence Project frees innocent prisoners.
• You are The Power and Big Gov knows we can take them down. YATP is proving it everyday.

F#ck politics ... gently ... sweetly. Don't force it on people.

If you need a new mantra, try this one:

“ShuuuuuuuuD
Thuuuuuuuuuu
FuuuuuuuuuuG GuuuuuuuuuuP!”

Chant it (quietly to yourself or fist fights happen) and you might just feel a shift in the zeitgeist. You’ll start to come into your power. You might even start a revolution. It starts in your mind.

Relationship saver

I'm not a big JP fan, but he explains the Carl Rogers "Active Listening" rule better than anyone else and it sorta saved my marriage, sooooo maybe we should listen to people we disagree with.

Melinal: "Pause. Can we have an active listening sesh?"

Me: "Oh c'mon, is it that bad?

Melina: What did I just say?"

Me: "..."

Melina: "Was your question rhetorical?"

Me: "Uuuuuh."

Melina: "You dont have to answer that. Mine was rhetorical too."

Me: "Alright, you go first."

Turn it off. Not your significant other. The TV... as an experiment. It's good for any relationship. Turn it off and do some soul searching until you can truly listen to the other side.

TV > News > Despair > Gobble Gobble Gobble (what I used to sound like)

Don’t let despair take root.

Big Gov uses terror to trick us into thinking we still need the elite to rule over us, but if the people knew we’re already saving ourselves, the regime would topple overnight. In our minds, at least.

CNN can kiss GNN’s ass

The Good News Network is the best. Hands down, superb journalism. Excellent writers. Healing the world with hope. Actual hope though. Not the wishy washy word salad people like to talk about. I'm talking about action. They’re a proponent of public-funded efforts, but most of their stories are about private industry in the real world saving our asses from doom. They appear to be progressive in their politics, but it's not a bias in their writing. They mostly cover Ayn Rand's doers doing real work in the world. Thankfully, the doers haven't given up on us yet.

Normal people with extraordinary ideas are saving the planet. Sure, our taxes do subsidize a lot of innovation at the university level, but it’s the PEOPLE and honest industry putting the research into practice. People will always outpace the public sector in a sane world.

So, why do we need Big Gov parading around, wasting our money, plotting with the Epsteins of the world?

The elites know a revolution is coming. It might take 100 years for us all to wake up, but it’s a revolution that a voluntarist named @christophercook is writing about – all on Substack by the way. He's brilliant. The nation he's building is next-level evolution. Human rights aided by modern tech, communications and real-time accountability. A new phase of development called HumanGovernance 3.0. I implore everyone to block some time and check out his progress. Because it's really our progress.

The revolution has to start somewhere. Artists, authors, musicians – we all have a responsibility to shift the mood of the masses. We have the words they don’t know how to express. My stuff isn’t intellectual – far from it – but I do have the ability to connect dots and simplify complex ideas. Spreading hope is my way of helping people believe in themselves again – one of the first steps into a new way of thinking and living. Geothermal and vertical farming will be a MASSIVE leap forward towards saving ourselves and ruling over our own dominions.

HumanGovernance 3.0 is FAR from utopian thinking. After all, humans will be in charge of themselves. Just look at how we manage our households. But decentralized power means every bad idea affects a much smaller group. Decentralized fuck ups are much easier to fuck down. It's a better system. We need system thinkers and doers. Conversations needs to start now. We need to poke every hole, so the revolution makes sense to all the hole pokers.

Because let me tell you. I LOVE poking holes!