One of the best things I ever did for myself was to let go of the persecution complexes (plural) that I was carrying around. In reality, nobody is oppressing me. I am not being oppressed. I basically have control over the limits that get placed on my life.

I don’t wring my hands about society going down the drain, because it’s always been going down the drain (or so we’re told.) There’s never been a time in history that poets, priests, and politicians didn’t decry the escalating wickedness in the world, and they’re probably never going to stop. Meanwhile, with a few exceptions, life keeps getting more comfortable, lifespans continue to increase, we become gradually more tolerant of others and their differences, and egalitarianism increases.

My job is to light a fire under all that; to accelerate it as much as possible. To boldly ask, “have we killed enough people yet?” To assert that the answer is “Yes”, and still be at peace with the fact that many, many more will die. Eventually, maybe hundreds or thousands of years from now, the world will operate like Scandinavia: churches are museums; religion holds no power over much of anything; people are still handsomely rewarded for hard work, but if you decide you’d rather relax, you can still live comfortably. People will acknowledge and celebrate one another’s differences and let people be the way they want to be. Governments can lay off protecting us from ourselves–there will be no need–and instead act as distributors of risk. This is the best possible outcome.