Chapter 14: Conclusion

I have disgorged a lot of reality on you in this book. The nature of our world means reality is ugly, especially regarding humanity. I apologize for going there, but it was necessary. You see the world a little more like it is, and a little less as you are supposed to see it.

Remember, our goal is not to change the world through some mass movement. That’s like a surfer hitting the waves with surfboard under one arm and a child’s sand bucket in the other hand. While she’s surfing she is also feverishly bailing water. You cup your hands and shout, “What are you doing out there?” She says, “I’m changing the wave, trying to make it better!”

We can change how we surf societal waves, but let’s not get caught bailing because the wave is too big and we’ll only end up with a mouth full of sand and broken seashells.

Authors have an addiction to this technique: They identify a serious problem, cast it as a class struggle, and then lament the difficulty we have with such class conflicts. Those class struggles are the waves, and we are the surfers. We cannot alone have much affect on them directly. In fact, class struggles show that there is something wrong, and that society as an organism is working to excrete the refuse and heal the wounds that cause the problem. The racial class struggle in the US is working on the erasure of racial hatred, though the ‘struggle’ part of class struggle means the process is not easy.

Rodney King’s pitiful plea that we all “just get along” is just as pitiful today as it was during the L.A. riots. It will never happen without tears. Utopia is a fool’s dream. But the difficulties we endure learning the hard way to “get along” will result in the proper values being championed and the wrong values being appropriately flushed down history’s sewer.

Richard Florida, in “The Rise of the Creative Class,” (his Creative Class  being a close analog to my Producers) tells us that “The members of the Creative Class today need to see that their economic function makes them the natural – indeed the only possible – leaders of twenty-first century society. But being newly emergent, the Creative Class does not yet have the awareness of itself, as a class, that is needed.” ^[41]

There are millions of Producers. Millions. Emerging and full grown. Touch them. Surf with them.

Though I maintain that we cannot change the world directly, take heart! You are a Producer. Only blue sky (and some hard work) awaits you. All the detail put forth about Paraducers and how they behave – do not memorize all that stuff! This is not about acrostics and lists and bullet points. No, but turn and face forward, take my encouragement and be a better, an excellent Producer tomorrow. And yet better the next day. Bring your children and spouse along, and teach them. Learn, live, grow, laugh and cry, and by this time next year you will be light years beyond those who seek to live by the sweat of your brow. Don’t even look back.

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis

You are a Producer. Surf the waves and control your own life, because it’s all about you.

Let the revolution begin.