Today’s “essay” involves pasting in my comments on Derek Siver’s blog piece from May 12 of My Life Was Changed by Four sentences in Four Books
Many of Derek’s commenters spoke in generalities and book titles, while my inclination, when it comes to personal growth and challenges is to speak in specifics. Here’s the link to Derek’s post.
My own contributions (comment numbers change over time) are numbers 11, 14, 60, 204, 228-9)
Here’s my relevant comments:
Several sentences come to mind from a “first person” science fiction series about “on the job training for a hero,” who is being mentored. He starts as a spoiled high school brat. In The War Against the Chtorr, the war is against invasive plants and animals from another world.
For folks with common sense, sightings of new animals seem like a hoax, the way Trump followers think climate change is a hoax, or (mistakenly) think tariffs are paid by foreign exporters to their country.
One sentence is to silently ask, “Do I have a contract to talk?” Unless an opinionated person asks for dialogue, I don’t feel a need to share when I know they are wrong.
Another is “Don’t defend yourself, because if you have to explain then you’ve already lost.” This sentence helps me to act mature.
Another is “Some people would rather die than admit they were wrong.”
In the first book they literally die; in the real world, that’s like us with no evidence, having expensive vote recounts and having 18 court cases showing an election was normal, but nevertheless clinging to our belief that a certain 2020 election was stolen…. as smaller farms are economically dying.
Regarding “bullshit” as explained by Matthew Mengerink, around comment #31. I am struck by the idea that one who talks bullshit has no care for the truth. I call it, “Not enough self discipline to care.”
In the Chtorr Wars book, as per my comment around #204, the young hero in David Gerrold’s book #2 is chosen to go off and try to communicate with the Chtorr. For doing so, a scientist wants him to be authentic.
She says, “…’Bullshit’ is a colloquialism. We use it to mean something that is inaccurate. A lie is bullshit. An excuse is bullshit. A justification, a rationalization, a reason, an explanation. All bullshit. Anything you use to excuse yourself from being responsible.
“From this moment on, anytime you are inaccurate, anytime you let bullshit fall from your mouth, I will bust your chops. You got that?”
Since reading those sentences, I am trying to be authentic.
A quick followup, since I see ourselves as being responsible to a political world:
If “bullshit” (BS) means inaccurate, then the folks who regard the current occupant of the White House as being a source of “journalism quality” truth are being “inaccurate” (BS-ing) to themselves.
… …
In the first Chtorr War book I like how there are chapter flashbacks to when the hero was in high school. All the students have to take “global ethics” to help them avoid another atomic war, since America… —(Wow, a war book without ‘Yankee bullshit’ such as ‘we won D-Day all by ourselves’)— …lost the last one.
(Only two Bombs were dropped by US allies in the the middle east, but the US president blinked and agreed to a harsh treaty, including disbanding nearly all the US armed forces and dumping their armaments and helicopters into the sea… but at least he prevented Armageddon)
The global ethics teacher explains that after they leave high school they will be citizens with the job —“who else is going to do it?”— of ensuring that their US president doesn’t indulge in any “military adventurism.” Strange how a book series from the 20th century, with dated “future technology” is still relevant today, As I write this, in late September of 2026, the public still isn’t confronting the current occupant’s “not a war, small potatoes” adventure in Iran, still isn’t asking Congress to investigate.
I guess we are always faced with the choice to be responsible or not. To be citizens, or instead, be like those “citizens on paper” who “vote” in Russia but who are “depoliticized.”
To my US readers: From way over here, it is plain that not only do the majority of Americans vote for congresspersons who believe in Trump, but, as well, the majority voted for Trump himself. And according to rumour, the Republican Party did not have a party convention for taking responsibility for doing hours of talking for hashing out a party platform. Instead, they merely said, “Our platform is whatever Trump believes.”
When a Yankee missile roars overhead…
People on the ground do not shake their fist at the “the US armed forces.”
They don’t curse and name whatever party is in power, in this case the Republicans.
No, with all their heart and soul they curse America. Those missiles represent your integrity at the national level.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
In Canadian cattle country,
September
2026
Footnotes:
~For illegally staying in Iran, and the Republican Party “jumping the shark,” see Politics Chat for September 17, (link) the Youtube version of Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson, link
~In the real world, for “would rather die than be wrong” see a physician’s book, researched with focus groups (as well as normal research), Dying of Whiteness.
~As for speaking (writing) in specifics, in my self help group, where most people talked in generalities, and about what they were “gonna do,” I talked instead about what I had just done, and was doing now. A man told me, “I like hearing you because “it really clears my head.””
~As for the Chtorr War series, it is out of print. Sorry. Four volumes were published. I’ve read the beginning of book #5, and Gerrold told me the series ending is already written, but I don’t expect the series to be re-printed until after the intervening volumes are done.
David Gerrold, by the way, is the guy who scripted The Trouble With Tribbles. Back when he was in his early twenties. Still alive, but his health is failing. (Yes, I prayed for him)
