It’s true that vampires are “part demon”, but that’s not enough to make them physically immortal. (sunlight and stakes anyone?)

My world has a lot of literal soul mates. Characters who have been together in previous lives finding each other again, or who for some reason couldn’t be together in previous lives but now are able to rectify that. I like the drama of characters who have these deep roots and connections to each other, rediscovering those connections. Of course, not every book will address whether or not characters have a pre-existing connection if it isn’t germane to the book.

Another side effect of this is you never really know if a villain is dead. In the case of demons, you can’t really kill them, you can just magically bind them. In the case of other types of villains, they die, but they come back. Luckily they don’t usually remember who they were. Either they continue being evil assholes in their new incarnation or they make a change for the better.

Some books in the series happen in a future dystopian society in which the humans all know about the preternatural world. (fun, fun). Who shows up again in this world, and what side they’ll be on may surprise you when we get there.

For now, we’re still in the books that are introducing the world and allowing you to meet the different factions and key players in how the world unfolds.

One of the challenges with writing a world with reincarnation as well as truly immortal characters (like the demons and angels) is creating a sense of drama out of that. The fact that most of the humans don’t realize they are immortal does part of the work there. Also, never knowing who you’ll have to deal with again at a future date is fun to play around with as well.

I also like the set-up of taking a character who goes through all these lifetimes and fixing them in one state for awhile or forever as is the case when a demon is created or someone is turned into a vampire.

You might notice a couple of strong recurring themes in my work: redemption and perspective.

Perspective: everybody is the hero of their own story. With the exception of the villain in Kept (and he didn’t survive long in my world), I try to make 3-dimensional villains who have their own motivations and goals. If the story were told from their perspective, you would see their side and root for them. Because, in general, their goal isn’t to “destroy humanity” or “take over the world”. It’s much more nuanced than that. Nobody thinks they’re the bad guy, and in your own story you aren’t. But while you’re the hero of your own story, you may be the villain of somebody else’s. I find this concept fascinating, and it’s a theme I repeat. It’s why good guys will become villains and villains will become good guys because it’s all about whose head we are in at any given moment.

Redemption: another theme I visit a lot. The idea that redemption is an ongoing process and evolution for a person and that we save ourselves and we save each other. It’s a collaborative act of co-creation. i.e. I don’t see people as victims waiting for a rescuer. In Save My Soul mutual redemption is a theme and it’s a theme I’ll re-visit probably many times in many ways.

Dark Mercy: Dark Mercy is not a romance. However, Hadrian and Angeline WILL end up together. I say this as the author, not to be spoilery, but to tell you that I write romance. Romance involves happily ever afters. The question isn’t IF a couple will end up together but how that will happen. Sometimes the road isn’t completely linear, but that’s okay. I feel, and I hope more sophisticated readers agree, that it’s a far bigger payoff when the route isn’t a straight line.

Dark Mercy is the story of how Hadrian and Angeline meet and it isn’t a fluffy story. There is pain for both of them, and they each have a complicated history. The ending isn’t fluffy happyverse but it’s their backstory. It’s the thing that will make their novel together work. (Book 5 in the full-length books).

Similarly, just like I might use a novella to give a set-up story that isn’t the actual HEA, I might create a “happily for now” that might require something bad to happen to bring the couple to a full HEA. For example, Jane and Cole. Something will happen in book 3 (The Catalyst) that some might not like but it will be resolved by the end of the book. The point isn’t to “take something away from you” but to give you an “actual” HEA. Right now Cole and Jane do not have an HEA. Cole has a lifespan of hundreds of years and Jane has a normal human lifespan. That’s not happy except in the most short-sighted way. But, that will be addressed.

So, Hadrian and Angeline ARE a future couple. Don’t worry, all will be well. But THIS story in Dark Mercy is the story I have to tell first. The payoff will be bigger for you later. Though I hope readers will be able to appreciate the story for what it is, now.

Anyway, there are two basic things people who “believe in 2012″ think. One side is the doomsday prophecies. There are almost unlimited ideas of all the awful/evil things that could happen in 2012, presumably because of the Mayans, or planetary alignment or whatever. The other side thinks in more positive terms, that 2012 is going to mark some kind of mass spiritual awakening where we will FINALLY start to love each other and STOP trying to coerce each other in big and small ways.

This second option is also usually thought to have something to do with the Mayans, planetary alignment, or whatever. (Another thing that could be brought in is the “age of Aquarius”… the idea that there are these various “earth ages” where certain attitudes prevail on the planet.)

The way I see it… mass hysteria is bad. When large groups of people think and behave in a negative way, they can create self-fulfilling prophecies. If you have to believe something is going to “happen” in 2012, then for the sake of everybody else, believe in the more optimistic thing. Believe and put all your energy into the hope of a mass spiritual awakening leading people to expanded awareness and peace toward each other. Thinking in terms of doomsday helps no one. And if you really believe in doomsday, then you wouldn’t have the power to stop it… that’s why it’s called ‘doomsday’. The power you do have is in what you choose to put your energy into.

Make it your goal in 2012 to put something positive out into the universe. It doesn’t have to be big things. Be kind to people. Smile. Laugh. Help when you can. Ask for help when you need it. Oh, and… here are two videos that seem somehow appropriate here: (A few additional thoughts below these two videos.)

I’m not going to watch the 2012 movie this year because I refuse to feed into mass hysteria even in the form of entertainment. Y2k was pointless mental suffering. A lot of people fluffed it off but a lot of people suffered for nothing because other people just HAD to put that negativity out there.

Choose this year, in 2012 to see the beauty and wonder around you. Choose to give some of that beauty and wonder to someone else. Stop fighting over everything (something I’m working on as a big goal this year. I also want to make my blog a positive/uplifting place this year as much as possible to facilitate a more positive attitude in myself and others). Pick your battles. Understand each other. Love each other.

That is all that matters.

In life we can choose to live on the fear track or the love track. These are two different paths that lead to two very different life experiences. At no time has this contrast been more obvious than now.

This is your year… make it something beautiful.

So I did it. I threw away 50 things. They were all things I didn’t need, didn’t use, but kept thinking “eventually, someday I might wear this/use this/need this” But eventually it becomes obvious that some stuff you just hang onto even knowing deep down you won’t use it, it isn’t particularly sentimental or valuable, it’s just… taking up space.

And Tom, if you’re reading this, no… I did not throw out anything that was yours. Just my stuff.

Though, I did ask him if we could throw away one particularly stupid, ugly coffee mug (it advertised an eye doctor neither of us go to.) He wanted to keep it. Okay. Not another coffee mug is coming in here until one goes out. I’m okay with the label “coffee mug Nazi”.

(ETA: Tom told me why he kept the ugly coffee mug. He wants something expendable and unimportant to take with him out in the garage in case it gets broken or messed up it won’t be something he actually cares if it gets broken. Fair enough. Point taken. I just don’t want us to accumulate 300 coffee mugs.)

Tom thinks I’m insane about this. And perhaps I am. But I’m serious about not cluttering up my life with a bunch of crap I just have to clean and dust around. We agreed when we moved that we weren’t going to “accumulate” unnecessarily. I like the open space and not having a ton of things crammed into every nook and cranny. I like being able to find things. I like knowing that everything I own: I use, wear, or keep because it is genuinely personally valuable to me… and not one of 300 knick knacks that weren’t in any way prioritized.

It is starting to become clear to me that… minimalism is HARD. It’s especially hard in a consumeristic culture. It’s super duper hard when we seem to have this built-in urge to shop and buy stuff. I am slowly ACCUMULATING SHIT.

Cue scary music.

So… this weekend, (or sooner), my plan is to go through and throw stuff away. Or give it away. Or do something with it where it’s not in my house. What makes this worse is… I bought 3 Blu-Ray movies last night. (Yes, I’ve made peace finally with Blu-ray. Now I like it.) Do I NEED these movies? No. I do not. Will I watch them frequently enough to own them? Probably not. Could I have just watched them on Netflix or Amazon instant video rental? Yes. Yes I could.

Another issue is books. I have a Kindle and yet I keep buying paper books. WHY???? OMFG WHY????

*falls over*

I need to seriously clean out drawers, closets, evaluate what I want in my house and what I don’t. The big basic issue here is that I don’t need most of this “just in case”. I don’t need most of it at all.

I kind of wish it was before Xmas. I could Re-Gift a lot of this stuff.

Either way, I’m going to re-minimalize. I’m going to make this a monthly practice. Each month I’m going to go through and look at the crap I’ve accumulated and get rid of some of it. If I continue to do this ruthlessly, then I MAY stop BUYING STUFF. If I know I’m just going to throw it away and that the money will then be wasted, maybe I won’t do it.

And the money will be wasted anyway, because if something ends up in the back of a closet cluttering up your life but not being used ever, then it’s still a waste. Just having an object that reminds me of my stupidity and poor impulse control is hardly a consolation prize.

My big issue with “drama” is that it is a time suck which takes me away from writing and it’s a creative energy suck which makes it hard to write when I do pull myself away from the nonsense. So it’s just completely unproductive to my process and I want nothing to do with it. This is why I no longer comment on other people’s blogs or on writing/publishing forums. I need to hoard that creative energy for my own purposes.

So here are the goals for 2012:

1. Read 50 books. It doesn’t matter if they are fiction or nonfiction. I just need to be engaging regularly with the written word and that’s about a book a week. I’m probably going to create a private/personal Goodreads account, not related to my author account so I can just list the books I read. (i.e. I don’t want a friend list or people “watching me read”, I just want a convenient place to store a private list.) I feel like “reading in public” would lead to writers sending me their books. I don’t like to read by request. I want to read what I want to read when I want to read it with no obligation real or imagined attached to the act.

2. Write 365,000 words. That was my goal for this year, but I didn’t even come close. Therefore I’m going to keep the goal the same for next year. The difference for 2012 is I’m not going to have a word quota per day. I’m going to just focus on getting work done and out the door. If I’m focused in that way, the word count will come.

3. Trust those I hire more to do what I pay them to do. Try to micromanage my cover artist and audio people less. They are fabulous at what they do and that’s why they are on my team. I have no reason to doubt their talent or the quality of their work. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to pay attention to quality, just that I’m going to try to micromanage other people’s creative process less and trust they know what they’re doing.

4. Start developing a new pen name. With increased productivity, someone is going to start crying about my speed and how I must be “rushing crap out the door”. The fact is that I spend the EXACT same amount of actual time on a project whether I have a work ethic about it or only work one day a week while spending the rest of the time laying around watching soap operas. Also, I’ve found that the faster I write a rough draft, the cleaner it tends to be (because I stay out of the critical internal editor mode and in creative mode). When that happens, the work tends to need less editing/overhaul… so where exactly is all the “extra time” a book is supposed to take me? I have to be true to my own creative process. At the same time, I’m going to have to spread it out over more pen names than I currently have to avoid drama… and also to keep from having all my eggs in one author basket.

5. Ignore the Internet as much as humanly possible. 2011 was the year of “easing away from arguing on the Internet”. I’ve done pretty well with that and I want to continue in that direction. The more hermit-y I am, the less insane I am. That’s good times. This ignoring includes ignoring reviews, unless someone is specifically reviewing something that I’ve requested them to review. Unsolicited reviews will be ignored… unless the reviewer emails me personally to tell me about the review. I’m happy to read something you wrote about my book if you ask me to read it. I am not, however, going to just read random reviews for the hell of it. When the work goes out the door, it’s EXACTLY what I want it to be. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it is my best attempt at sharing my vision for the work. The things some readers don’t like about it, I KNOW going in what those issues are. I am not changing how I write or my vision, so reading unsolicited critiques will only serve to annoy me.

6. Streamline marketing. This is another thing I’ve worked on during 2011. I want to stay focused on the limited and focused way I market since almost everything else I’ve tried seems to produce lackluster results, and I don’t want to waste time on it when I can be working on getting more work out there. Plus, any time I do something marketing related that has me on the wrong end of the 80/20 rule, it depresses me, which makes it harder to be creative.

7. Balance in other areas of life. Eating healthy, exercising, keeping my house reasonably well-maintained, spending time with family and friends. Basically knowing when to put work away (as much as a writer really can).

So that’s the goal list for 2012. I feel these goals are reasonable and many of them build on previous progress.

Look at any blog and the comments section is filled with bobble-headed yes-men (or women) with the OCCASIONAL diverging opinion (which seems to annoy everybody else who just wants to hear endless reinforcement of their view and doesn’t appreciate someone stirring the shit.)

We take opinions of others too personally. I would love to get to the point where the only people whose opinion I cared about on any level were people who were actually legitimately important to me. Not RANDOM people who may have interacted with me for five minutes and somehow think they know me… or people who have never interacted with me at all… yet still somehow think they have an opinion.

This taking things too personally is sometimes understandable, depending on the subject. Other times it’s patently insane… like when people assume that just because they have a different opinion that they are being attacked when someone else shares an alternate view and hasn’t said anything personal at all.

I think we do this in real life, too. I just think in real life we generally avoid people we don’t like as much as possible. On the Internet it feels like there is nowhere to go… except off the Internet. Also, in real life, usually when we run into someone we don’t like, we aren’t often surrounded by a posse of our friends. On the Internet it seems opinions travel in packs. So if someone comes and shares an opinion you don’t like, there is a group of people who can devolve into psychotic glee by bashing the deviant who has the gall to think something original.

There are some truly bizarre interpersonal dynamics on the Internet, and frankly, I’m not sure they are all that healthy. I’m usually happier when I’m not on the Internet a lot.

I think human beings haven’t really evolved for this kind of disconnected global interaction. We’re meant to be in small tribes where everybody knows everybody and at least if someone has a fucking opinion… it’s halfway informed.

I find myself often irrationally irritated by opinions that disagree with mine. I have no idea why this is. It’s just this sort of seething discontent. And it’s not all the time on every subject. Just sometimes and on some subjects. And I’m really not aware of many human beings who this type of thing doesn’t apply to. Like I don’t think there is this whole big percentage of the population who can sit back smug in the knowledge that they don’t feel this exact same way when it comes to other people’s opinions.

It makes me think we’re all really just a bunch of self-serving assholes because the people we like the most are the people who think most like us, and the people we like the least are the people who think least like us. (Like somehow we deserve a medal for being that awesome.) And you can’t pat yourself on the back if you have this big cornucopia of people from all walks of life in your friend circle… cause if you really LIKE all this wild variety in your life as some sort of personal statement about “who you are”… well… it still goes back to what you “like”. And it’s still a worldview of diversity that you expect other people to agree with or… you don’t like them.

I’m not sure what my point is except that it’s patently weird to me how we ALL think the whole fucking internet or even a single person on it somehow “really cares” about our opinions about every random thing we come across. But they don’t. But we all keep sharing opinions about everything with total strangers who don’t even KNOW us. And we still get irritated with others who don’t share our opinions or don’t “get” our opinions. We still think they are stupid or wrong or something else lame.

Where does this need to share every bowel movement with the whole world even come from? I’m trying to imagine my mom as a kid… way back before the interwebz feeling unbelievably compelled to share with 506 total strangers in her vicinity what she ate for breakfast or why she thinks a certain book or movie is awesome. I’m not talking sharing opinions with actual friends and people who ‘get you’. I mean random people.

Back in real life, we still think someone who just starts spouting off with their every little opinion to some dude they don’t know at the bus stop is possibly a little crazy. Of course, as soon as we witness that, we run to tell the whole Internet about it, not realizing our behavior is the exact same thing but in pixels.

Are we so disconnected now as a society that we hunger for ANY connection with ANY human no matter how shallow or vapid that connection? No matter how little the other person knows or understands us? Even if we’re just tossing it out into a void like throwing spaghetti on a wall to see what sticks with someone? Are we really so narcissistic that we take PERSONALLY any opinion from any random human that disagrees with our own or doesn’t like something about us or what we have to offer the world?

I think yes. We are. And I include myself in this as well. Not like I’m pontificating from on high. Yet… the ultimate irony is… here I am… on the Internet… shouting out my random opinions to total strangers. Somehow it’s no longer good enough to share thoughts with one or two close friends or in a private journal. We are all mini-celebrities and we all must ANNOUNCE to the whole world, our every activity and thought.

We call blogging and Twitter and Facebook social media. We call it “connecting” but we aren’t connecting. We’re masturbating, and those who agree with us are our wank material.

From where does this neurosis come and how the FUCK can I get rid of it? I think it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could go a month without sharing any random opinions on the Internet… AND without reacting irrationally to the random opinions of people I don’t know on the Internet. A month may be too ambitious though. I should try a day first and see how that goes.

When I send something to betas, I don’t twiddle my thumbs. I’ve got something to work on while they have it. When it comes back, I make the necessary edits and then send it on to my copyeditor and then go back to whatever else is going on. Rough draft takes longer than edits which takes longer than copyedits (as far as the work I personally have to do at each stage.) So the goal is to keep the pipeline full.

I’m also working out when to take legitimate days off or what days need to be busier/harder days. For writing days I now like to do big word counts so I can get rough draft done faster and not dick over it for months and months. So I set aside days where I can do this uninterrupted.

Even though I have a bit of writing I’d like to get done this month, I think it’s safe to say I won’t make my 365k word count goal for the year. But this is the largest goal I’ve made for a year and this is, I think my biggest word count talley for a year. It’s not miniscule.

Next year’s goal is going to also be 365k, except my expectation isn’t going to be that I need to do exactly 1k a day every day. That’s rather insane for me. Even though it’s not a giant number of words, I seem to work best when my day’s work focus is on one particular task rather than hopping from editing brain into writing brain in the same 24 hour period. I think I’m more of a sprinter.

Given my new set-up, it may be possible to write more than 365k next year, but since I won’t achieve that goal this year I’m not going to raise the bar until i do achieve it. So next year the goal is 365k also… and if I do better than that, great!

I’d also like to go back to my 50 book challenge again. Though I’ll be keeping my reading list private as I have more recently. I’ve thought about making it a fiction/nonfiction mix again like I did this past year. Though for 2011 my book count was fairly abysmal. Going to try to do better for 2012. It’s the end of the world, after all… I’ve got a lot of reading to catch up on.

So, he’s telling me this story in IM about when he was 3 and it was Christmas:

A fat man in a sled is not going to make good time
I don’t care how you explain it
I never fell for santa
Never
Nor the tooth fairy
Why would someone sneak into my room and leave me money for my tooth?
Total nonsense

The TV and the radio were making that little “NORAD is tracking saint nick” thing.
And I was thinking… “This is bullshit.”

What would be Santa’s motivation? Why would he do this?
Why a sled?
Deer are not airborn creatures

Seriously. At three years old, a flying fat man visiting every house on Earth and depositing toys before sunrise pegged the bullshit meter
“Here’s something from SANTA!”….okay…thanks “Santa”
I mean come on
I don’t think I was two…
The moon landing was when I was two
Now THAT I thought was incredibly cool

I’m extremely interested in sociology and evolutionary psychology. I’m very interested in understanding why people behave the way they do, especially in groups and especially in relationship to instincts and behaviors that don’t make much sense in a modern world but make a lot of sense in the ancient world.

So one interesting thing I’m thinking about right now is differences between the sexes that many women get offended about or deny, but nevertheless seemed to want in the first place.

I’m going to make three statements. One or two of them may not upset you. One or two of them might. But after I list them I’m going to explain WHY I think them, and why it makes NO sense for women to be upset about them. Ready? Brace yourself.

Men are taller than women.

Men are stronger than women. (physical strength)

Men are smarter than women. (IQ)

*backs away from the torches and pitchforks*

Let’s take a moment to calmly breathe and sit quietly in a dark room for five minutes until the rage passes.

To be clear obviously every man is not taller than every woman smarter than every woman or stronger than every woman. But when you take them as a whole, compare these issues (using IQ tests as the intelligence marker–not going to get into every stripe of intelligence here as it’s not germane to this discussion), “in general”/”on average” men come out ahead in all areas.

The first one, men are taller than women, doesn’t really seem to bug most women. I’ve never seen a woman get upset about this. So we’ll start with this since it’s safest. Not every man is taller than every woman. Almost all of us (women) can find plenty of men who are shorter than us. But on average, men are taller than women and the tallest men are generally taller than the tallest women.

The second one bothers some women but not other women. While some women are physically stronger than some men, overwhelmingly men are physically stronger than women to such a degree that it’s pointless to argue the issue, though some women quietly (or not so quietly) seethe about it. But since the majority of women don’t find most of their personal identity in their physical strength, especially in relationship to men, it’s usually more of something that bothers some on “principle”… just not liking being physically weaker “on principle”.

The last one bothers a LOT of women, probably some reading this right now. Because intelligence is one of those issues that SHOULDN’T differ by gender. We sort of kind of get why men might be taller and stronger, but we fundamentally don’t find it fair that they are smarter, too. So we naturally rebel against the idea, assume a misogynist with an ax to grind botched a study, or etc. Again, keep in mind, we are talking about ‘on average/in general’. So if you are a guy you don’t get to gloat that you are smarter than every woman. You most assuredly are not unless you are one of the three living people with the top three highest recorded IQ’s. All of them are men so those men can justifiably say they are smarter than all women. (But they won’t… because they are smart.) The fourth on the list is a woman with a verified 186 IQ, whose last name is ironically Savant. What are the odds on that one?

She’s smarter than everybody on the planet pretty much but three men. Of course, technically, there are people who have never had their IQs tested who may be as smart or smarter than any of these people. However, the more extreme an IQ gets, either high or low, the less likely you are to find someone with that level of measurable intelligence. I also won’t debate whether or not intelligence can “really be measured”. It can be measured accurately enough to act as predictor to a whole host of outcomes in life, so it’s measurable enough.

Plenty of women are smarter than the average man. So honestly, even though it “seems” like some horrific unfairness that men are “smarter than women” this really has nothing to do with how individual human beings measure up against each other. Nor is it really a reason for any reasonably intelligent woman to get that worked up. If you’re intelligent and secure in your own intelligence then odds are good that “most men” are not smarter than you. Definitely not the average random man. So why feel inferior about it?

In case some people have steam coming out of their ears and are vowing to never read another book of mine… I’m going to explain WHY I think these inequalities exist. I do not think men are in any way empirically “better” than women. I think men and women are “different”. However there are areas in which men have a definite edge over women. But there is a reason. And if you’re a woman, you will read it and never feel “inferior” again.

Because women wanted and/or needed it that way.

I know… totally crazy huh? And actually freaking bizarre that we’re going to now sit back and bitch about what we selected. Here is the deal… getting into evolutionary psychological theory here… way back in the before time, women needed men who were bigger, stronger, faster, smarter to PROTECT THEM and give them and their children the best possible life and the most safety and security. It was about surviving and thriving in a world that had not yet been made into the environment we live in now.

But it’s not about survival right now. Generally speaking, most of us don’t need men to run 24/7 interference for us with the rest of the world, and yet… most women are STILL sexually attracted to men who are taller than them, smarter than them, and stronger than them.

Men are in these ways “superior”, because that’s what complemented what women were and needed the most. Because men are the competers and women are the choosers, there was evolutionary pressure for men to have those qualities women generally chose over other qualities. The taller, stronger, smarter males were seen as most appealing/beneficial to the females so they were the ones who got to spread their genes. (There are other examples of this in many modern mammals’ mating practices and preferences as well. So it’s not just humans.)

Incidentally, this is also why women are more “manipulative” than men. If we were going to play with fire like that, we had to be smart enough to get the man to actually PROTECT and care for us instead of turn on us. Even though men technically could just “take” and even though many men “have” done just that… the majority of men, for whatever reason, evolved into a more cooperative form of mating where they competed for the attentions and affections of women and had the instinct to protect rather than harm them. The radical notion is… men need love too. I know… try not to fall out of your chair, it’s true.

Most heterosexual women do NOT want to date or marry men who are shorter than them, physically weaker than them or less intelligent. We can say such women are unenlightened or allowing men to oppress them or whatever the hysterical battle cry du jour is… but it still is what it is. And men who are “equal” in these areas don’t stand a much better shot statistically, either.

There appears to still be this kernel of want in most women for the strong alpha protector male. (There is a reason this trope is the most popular in romance fiction.) Sometimes things go awry and a woman makes a mistake and picks an abusive type, but that’s not what they’re after. The women who have the most opportunities (i.e. the ones who have the most men after them and can afford to be choosy), with rare exception, choose stronger, taller, smarter.

So as long as we women find taller, stronger, smarter to be sexually appealing, we’re going to keep selecting for it. Those genes will continue to be passed down, and men “in general”/”on average” will continue to be taller, stronger, and smarter. It is not a conspiracy against women. It’s not some evil woman-hating ploy to keep women down and oppressed. It’s what turns our cranks. If it doesn’t, all we have to do is stop choosing it, but it’s not fair to act offended by it or deny it, when it was first necessary for survival and then continued to be our preference. And I acknowledge not every woman prefers this type of male, but on the whole, this is the case. It’s why we HAVE the situation we have. Nothing I’ve said applies to every single human being, but it’s true enough in most cases that there is a definite pattern and this is my theory about why that pattern exists and why it’s not reasonable to be offended by it.