Emus vs. The Australians

October 15, 2026October 16, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

‘Let them have land,’ was a decision the Australian government arrived at to honor, reward, and/or pay tribute to soldiers returning home after World War I. ‘What could go wrong?’

“Anything that can go wrong, will,” we now say, almost reflexively, when we hear someone ask that question, citing the principles behind Murphy’s law.

‘Who could possibly be against such a proposal?’ someone in the government probably said. They might have a point there, as the land in question was Crown land, state-owned, or land acquired by the state. By giving that land to the soldiers, the politicians thought they would appear generous, noble, and patriotic, and the soldiers could lead a quiet life of growing wheat as a reward for their heroism and sacrifices. The politicians involved considered it a win-win. The proposal gained momentum, because it promised that the unattended lands would be worked by soldiers, ostensibly generating more tax revenue for the country.

The problem was that many of these soldiers didn’t know anything about farming. They were infantry men who knew how to kill people and break things, and they obviously knew how to survive on the battlefield. They did not know how to grow stuff. The politicians foresaw this problem, of course, and they provided the soldiers training farms in which they received extensive hands-on experience in general farming, dairying, poultry raising, and other agricultural activities. Private farmers and others provided government officials the essentials of farming to train these soldiers, including pest control measures and techniques to employ against insects, rabbits, kangaroos, birds, and any other animals who might eat away at their profits.

The next problem arose when even those soldiers who knew how to farm learned why no private farmers bought the land in the Campion district of Western Australia; the land was crap. The quality of the soil was poor, and it didn’t rain very often.

The government officials knew the land wasn’t great, and they admirably tried to do everything they could to help these soldiers-turned-farmers out, but no one could prepare for The Great Depression, and the collapse of wheat prices. After that, there was little government officials could do, and they likely felt horrible. When some of the landowners began complaining about an inordinate number of emus eating away at their profits, the government officials leapt at the chance to provide any assistance they could.

They started by offering “no need to panic” information that detailed how the emus were following their normal migration patterns, from the inlands to the west coast, after breeding season. The government officials offered them step-by-step advice and sent them brochures about the techniques they could use to cull emu populations.

The third problem arose when it stopped raining in the inland region. This drought caused the normal migration patterns to explode to roughly twenty thousand emus migrating to the coasts in search of food.

The emu is an odd-looking bird. The adult emus can reach 6’2” in height and about 121 lbs. Emus are generally skittish and harmless, like most birds, unless you corner them or appear to threaten their young. The soldiers never feared they were in danger, in other words, but the emus began treating their wheatfields like their own personal buffet.

The adult emu can eat around 2.5 lbs. of crop a day, and they were so fast and quick when they scattered that they proved difficult to impossible for the soldiers to catch or cull. The emus were also surprisingly strong, as they trampled the fences the soldiers put up, as if they were made of paper. This allowed the rabbits in, and the rabbits ate what the emus didn’t. Even those soldiers who had experience in farming were overwhelmed, and they joined the inexperienced farmers in asking the Australian government for any assistance the government could offer.

“Of course we will help,” Australia’s Defense Minister Sir George Pearce said. Pearce was speaking for a frustrated and helpless Australian government. There are no sources to confirm this interpretation, but I think the Australian government’s decision to attempt to cull the emus was a desperate attempt to do something in the face of a public outcry. There was nothing the government could do to improve the soil of the land they gave the soldiers, they couldn’t make it rain, and due to The Great Depression, there was little they could do about the subsidies they promised these soldiers.

The Australian citizen probably knew all of the above, but some citizens think the government can fix whatever is happening to them. This outcry was intensified by the fact that the Aussies who were suffering were WWI veterans.

The fourth problem was that the government officials thought this was something they could fix. There was little-to-nothing they could do about the farmers’ other problems, but culling a bunch of dumb birds seemed doable.

In his effort to do something, Sir George Pearce sent his best and brightest: Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery, Sergeant S. McMurray, and Gunner J. O’Halloran. Pearce also ordered Lewis machine guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition for them. Sir George Pearce and his defense ministry considered this such a great idea that they informed a cinematographer from Fox Movietone about the problem, and their proposed solution. All parties concerned thought this would provide some excellent newsreel footage for their audience.

Before we continue, it should be noted that emus cannot fly due to their small, vestigial wings, reduced flight muscles, heavy bones, and evolutionary adaptations that favor running over flight. This might lead the reader to believe it almost unfair for hunters to have this much ammunition to take down a bird that cannot fly. If unfair is a harsh term, how about not very sporting to shoot ground bound birds with machine guns?

The fifth problem arose when Major Meredith and his best and brightest contingent discovered that it’s not as easy to shoot stuff as they thought. If we have the best artillery human minds could create and the craftiest strategists the military found, the result is almost academic. We aim, shoot, and the thing is dead. It’s 1+1=2. The result on that first day was these decorated soldiers ended up firing about 2,500 rounds, and estimates suggest they culled roughly 50 to 500 emus. Meredith’s initial operation was widely viewed as so ineffective that contemporary reports claim that only a few had been killed. This led Meredith and his men to discover a sixth problem.

The sixth problem was emus do not form ranks, hold ground, and they don’t operate in patterns. There’s nothing strategic about what they do, so there is nothing to strategize over or figure out. They gather in herds, then they scatter into smaller groups, and they keep running. They’re not stationary targets. The three highly decorated warriors were equipped with a weapon optimized for densely grouped battlefield targets against thousands of highly mobile animals spread across miles of countryside. Meredith’s final report reads like a man trying to salvage dignity from absurdity. He praised the birds’ tactics. He noted their ability to absorb bullets and keep moving. He did not say the obvious thing: we brought the wrong tool to the wrong fight.

Before entering into this situation, Pearce and his people should’ve consulted with experienced emu hunters, as even the most experienced emu hunter often describes the effort involved as a humbling, frustrating, and exhausting experience. The adult emu can sprint up to thirty-one miles an hour, and some have clocked them as high as forty-three miles an hour. They can also change direction on a dime. When they lined up these emus in their sightlines, however, they either underestimated their speed, or the crack of the gun scared the emus into changing direction on a dime. At the end of the first engagement, these experienced, highly decorated soldiers only managed a handful of kills of the fifty sighted.

It should also be noted that these shots were taken after the locals in the area joined in on the effort and herded the emus toward the soldiers. The birds instinctually and involuntarily split into smaller groups and ran.

Two days later they set up an ambush at a water hole. A thousand emus fell for it. The gunners waited until the birds were close. They opened fire, but the prized Lewis gun jammed after a few rounds. The birds scattered.

Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery later described the effort, writing that the emus had “the invulnerability of tanks.”
The best and brightest tried mounting a gun on a truck and chasing the flocks. The terrain was so rough that the gunner spent more time holding onto the truck than shooting. One dead emu got tangled in the steering and the truck crashed through a fence. Meredith and his men realized that this was much more difficult than they suspected, and they suspended the operation.

The desperate farmers begged Pearce for another try. Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery and his two men returned on November 13th.
This second phase lasted until December 10th. Meredith claimed 986 confirmed kills and estimated another twenty-five hundred birds later died of wounds. That works out to about ten rounds per confirmed kill over a period of one month, one week, and one day.

For reasons endemic to human nature, Australia’s newspapers and their readers loved this humiliating exercise. They characterized it as the “Emu War,” and story was moving newspapers nationally and internationally. The writers and their readers loved the idea that a decorated defense minister, and his best and brightest, couldn’t effectively cull a bunch of dumb birds. They loved the idea that even though they had the best ammunition known to man and the benefit of the greatest military minds in their country, they were “outsmarted” by a bunch of emus. The idea that the warriors-turned-farmers were still suffering was basically viewed by these newspaper writers as the other side of a sensational story that they wanted to cover. They ended up devoting so little space to this other side that it’s fairly obvious they didn’t want to let something like human suffering get in the way of a great story.

We cannot fault the Australian government, Pearce, or Meredith for trying, but the circumstances beyond their control became circumstances beyond their control. They ended up culling less than 1,000 of the estimated 20,000 emu infestation. Meredith eventually conceded that he and his men could not effectively cull the emus, and he was recalled, thus ending all military operations.

Recognizing the futility of their goodwill, the government officials eventually decided to just give the ammunition to the farmers themselves, and they introduced a bounty system for every emu they shot and killed. The rifle-armed settlers proved far more effective than the machine-gun toting mercenaries. The rifle-armed settlers weren’t better shots, but they weren’t weekend warriors trying to prove their mettle either. They knew the land better than Meredith’s men, they were invested in the success of their efforts, and they had the time necessary to take out the tens of thousands of emus who were destroying their friends’ fields.

We could mock Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith and his men for failing to effectively cull a bunch of birds. They would probably confess that they were fighting a war against an enemy they didn’t understand. They would probably add that even though the emu is not blessed with the brain size that we normally associate with intelligence, they underestimated how intelligent the birds are. As those who establish modern scientific standards for animal intelligence later found, emus are not dumb birds. They cannot outdo crows or parrots on intelligence tests designed for birds, but they show some surprising abilities to solve puzzles, and they’re capable of noteworthy levels of innovation, memory, and adaptive learning.

The seventh problem arose when the government officials and the soldiers realized that in reality this was never a win-win situation, it was a lose-lose scenario. Even if they achieved their ultimate goal of effectively culled the emus, no one would be cheering them on, because the general sentiment would’ve been, “You did your job, what do you want from us an Ice Lolly?” They realized that in operations of this nature, the reason they resonate with the public is that it’s human nature to cheer on the underdog.

When we read the headlines like, emus vs. Australians, The Emu War, or humans vs. emus, we’re all cheering for the emus. We all cheer on the most helpless underdog of every situation. If, for example, there is a minor tragedy that killed numerous humans and one puppy named Fluffy. The media will find an image of Fluffy, or a picture of the breed, and Fluffy will become the local, statewide, and national symbol of the tragedy. Fluffy will become the helpless underdog in that story for the audience, in the same manner the emus were in this story. Yet, the other side of this story was that a bunch of veterans-turned-farmers couldn’t make ends meet for a variety of reasons, including that a bunch of emus were devouring whatever slim profits they should’ve made.

The other side of the story is that even without all the hurdles these soldiers-turned-farmers faced, farming is not only hard, it’s fraught with failure. For those who don’t know anything about farming, the idea that someone might call it a full-time job is a gross understatement. The typical farmer doesn’t have a social life or even much of a family life. Modern technology has made farming less arduous, but in the early 20th century, farming consumed a farmer’s life. And to have the blood, sweat, and tears they put into it go into a wild animal’s belly, should elicit, at least, equal amounts of sympathy. As we’ve detailed throughout this article, the emu infestation was only one element of the “all kinds of hell” these soldiers had to endure.

The government officials, Pearce, and Meredith knew this, and they did everything they could to help. Did they overdo it, did their desire to do something in the face of their inability to help the farmers in other ways, lead them to overdo it? Were some of their motivations political? They wouldn’t have invited a film crew to film if it wasn’t at least a little political, but it’s tough to argue that their goals weren’t noble.

In the end, the matter was eventually resolved by the government providing farmers ammunition and providing a bounty for every emu carcass. Perhaps that influenced non-farming Australians to join in a more extensive and long-term extermination strategy. The farmers also employed better fencing, which led some to believe the long-term resolution didn’t involve killing emus as much as trying to make it as hard as possible for the emus to enter the farm fields and damage the crops.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and it’s our natural inclination to read such a story and think we would’ve done things so much different and better, in the beginning, when it really counted. Those of us who are longtime fans of Swamp People can’t understand why the Aussies didn’t introduce the tried and tested, and age-old bounty system from the very beginning. There are no sources to suggest this, but we can guess that someone somewhere in the Parliamentary debates, correspondence, or local administrative officials introduced this proposal in the beginning. The problem was that the public outcry for government officials to do something for these veterans reached a fever pitch, and the officials wanted to do something tangible and substantial that they could point to in the next election as a record of their efficiency. The something they did led them to do something without considering the warning that whatever can go wrong will, a word of warning that later became Murphy’s Law.

The video they captured during episode can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lPTIk7Kl_Is?feature=share.

Killing the Irish II: Oliver Cromwell

August 30, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

Oliver Cromwell was ON A MISSION FROM GOD to destroy Ireland. Historians don’t care for that word “destroy”. “He didn’t want to destroy Ireland,” they say. “It was a British colony. Why would he want to destroy a colony that enriched Britain? The word destroy involves hyperbolic, moralizing.” If destroy is an operative term to achieve a desired effect if destroy, what term should we use to describe the effort to deprive a citizenry of their religious practice, political power, farmland, and food? Oliver Cromwell was a bad guy who wanted to destroy a colony, but historians don’t care for such stark characterizations, because they’re oversimplified, icky terms used by nonerudite nonhistorians who lack academic knowledge or scholarly learning.

If Oliver Cromwell (O.C.) wasn’t a bad man, he was definitely a mad one. The primary driver of his hostility toward Ireland was to avenge the political and religious freedoms and the land gains they made in The 1641 Ulster Rebellion. That Rebellion appears to have begun as an attempt at diplomacy to achieve political and religious freedoms, and to negotiate for Irish land ownership in Ireland, but as history repeatedly shows, every serious quest for freedom eventually involves barrels of one kind or another. The Irish achieved de facto political/religious gains and land reoccupation in this Rebellion, but they were never securely legalized by Charles I.

Cromwell’s Revenge

Before King Charles I could codify these Irish gains, Cromwell played an instrumental role in having King Charles I beheaded, and the Irish Royalists further angered him by remaining royal subjects of the crown.

To presumably garner support, Cromwell politically framed The 1641 Ulster Rebellion as a “massacre” of the British Protestants living in Ireland. Cromwell considered reversing the unformalized freedoms gains the Irish made during The Ulster Rebellion a vital part of his mission from God, and he sought to return the unformalized land gains regained by Catholics to the Brits. He labeled Catholicism a security risk and a religious insult to the British empire. To complete his mission from God, Cromwell sought to impose the good, clean Puritan order to try to finally put an end to Irish cries for freedom.

Cromwell used these directives to invade Ireland (eight years after the Ulster Rebellion), as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and general (commander) of the Parliamentarian army sent there. The Ulster Rebellion resulted in as many as 12,000 Protestant deaths (soldiers and civilian) in Ulster, be they through direct acts of violence, and the resultant deaths of exposure, starvation, and disease. To avenge those deaths, Cromwell’s invasion wiped out roughly 5,000–7,000 people (mostly soldiers, plus hundreds to low thousands of civilians). So, the vengeful element of his invasion fell somewhat short in pure numbers, when calculating the direct acts of violence alone. Yet, modern scholarly estimates put total population loss, resulting from the long-term consequences of Cromwell’s invasion at roughly 230,000–325,000 deaths, with the great majority being Irish Catholics (a modern estimate puts that number at 200,000 killed, of whom about 137,000 were civilians). Those larger numbers resulted from the long-term consequences of Cromwell’s invasion that include later commanders carrying out Cromwell’s vision by fighting the guerrilla resistance to that which Cromwell imposed on Ireland. Yet, Cromwell’s scorched earth tactics (slaughtering Irish livestock, burning their farm fields, forcing them off family farms, and blocking Irish ports importing food) played a significant role in destroying Ireland.

As horrific as these Cromwell’s actions were, the idea that he personally enriched himself as a result of the invasion might be more nefarious. After Cromwell seized the land The Ulster Rebellion unofficially secured for Irish Catholics, Cromwell not only took that land back from Irish control, he seized more land from Catholic Irish farmers. He seized the land to pay the soldiers of his New Model Army of which he was a senior commander, and as the senior commander, he was allocated Irish land, one plot of land was 5,225 acres. He also used the allocation of land to repay loans the “Adventurers” made to Parliament to fund the invasion, and of course Oliver Cromwell was one of those “Adventurers”. He was given 1,257 acres to repay his loan. He also drew substantial official pay and allowances as Lord Lieutenant and general (including a daily rate while in England and £2,000 per quarter while in Ireland, plus transport funds). So, not bad for a man purported to be on a mission from God.

I am not an academic or scholar of Irish history, it’s relationship with Britian, or the inner workings of the United Kingdom, but the limited research I’ve done for this article informs me that Cromwell was a leader who sought to slaughter the Irish for a religious differences, his own enrichment, and for a broader accumulation of his own power, but does that mean he was a bad guy? It might be hyperbolic, moralizing, overly simplistic, and lacking nuance to say so, but if I were to bullet point this all out on a chalkboard, or dry erase board, I would check, check, check my way to yes, and I don’t think I need letters after my name to arrive at that conclusion.

I think Oliver Cromwell cloaked himself in religiosity to convince Parliament, British citizens, and that image in the mirror that he was a righteous warrior as opposed to some simplistic notion of a bad guy. I also think the difference between the terms bad guy and warrior is relative to our respective eras, as the citizens of yesteryear were more apt to adorn a leader of men a warrior irrespective of the messy details that might lead modern men to consider that same leader a bad guy.

There were numerous bad guys who were declared warriors before Oliver Cromwell and since. What’s the difference, and how have those definitions changed and evolved over time? Norse mythology and historical accounts show that the Vikings and their ancestors valued empathy and sympathy as important virtues, but spiritual motivation of the Norse religion reinforced a mindset of aggression and conquest rather than mercy. The concept of bæðr (honor) meant that a warrior’s reputation and the honor of their kin were paramount, and killing an enemy was part of fulfilling that honor. Did Cromwell follow the same mindset, and does it diminish his bad guy qualities? What’s the difference between a righteous warrior who just happens to slaughter thousands and a bad guy who inflicts suffering with cinematic, maniacal laughter?

Although it may not stop most bad guys, modern man decided to codify the difference between righteous warriors and evil bad guys through Geneva Convention laws, Hague Regulations, Rome Statute, Protocols I and II, specific weapons treaties, human rights treaties, and customary law. This global legal network criminalizes and prohibits acts of barbarity in both war and peace, and it provides greater definition of good guys who happen to take military action versus the bad guys who act in barbarous ways. These instruments work together to try to provide some accountability for serious violations of international law. Whether or not these treaties and laws successfully deter barbarism is difficult to qualify or quantify, but my guess is a modern Oliver Cromwell would have a more difficult time promoting his mission from God to the Brits or these world bodies.

He would’ve had his defenders of course, defenders who echoed modern historian’s characterization, that he didn’t want to destroy Ireland, he just wanted to rip its heart out, so it would never make the mistake of thinking it could be a country again. He didn’t want to destroy Irish citizens. He just wanted to end their form of religious worship and any political dissent they may have considered in the future. Do we have any Catholic priests or political scientists in the audience? If we do, could you tell these modern historians that taking away a person’s political power and their religious practice tends to have an effect on their self-esteem? Modern historians say that suggesting Cromwell wanted to destroy Ireland is hyperbolic and moralizing, and he just wanted to end their food supply and steal their land. To do so, he knew he needed to slaughter their livestock, burn their farm fields, and block their ports to prevent food from getting in. I understand that historians prefer to view historical events from a dispassionate viewpoint, but how is that not an attempt to destroy a country? Do we have a biologist in the audience today? If we do, could you inform these historians that causing a famine tends to weaken a country from the inside out to the point of total destruction.

The Source Codes

July 18, 2024September 7, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“All I wanted to do was write a story about the Tortoise versus the Hare.”

I know but if you write that the tortoise is slow, won’t you be perpetuating a stereotype?

“We’re all just monologues, algorithms whirring, spinning tops bouncing off each other to build an unrivalled ensemble of narcissistic pathologies in skin suits,” he loved that line so much, he stole it. “We need to get back to our source code and dispense with all these other lines of machine code that programmers feed us to modify our thoughts and behavior.”

“We have a duty to be cheerful,” Martin Amis advised his daughters. “Be suspicious of the humorless.”

“We throw this line around a lot, but is anyone humorless? I’ve met some who come close, but I eventually found out their sense of humor was just more dark and cynical. Falling down was humorous to them, they enjoy bruises and blood, but for them to consider a joke hilarious, they want pain. They’re the type we could easily mistake for cheering on the downfall of humanity. Their sense of humor illustrates that the definition of humor is almost as varied as the sense of political identity, and it all boils down to this idea of a source code.”

What is a source code? According to built in “It is the foundation to a computer program and acts as written instructions that guide a program’s execution.” We have a similar code that basically guides our interactions with the nouns (people, places, and things) around us. Some call it our programming, but that word invites cynical speculation. Our definition of programming involves the detailed imprint left by the influential people from our maturation, and the experiences we have had that provide us our methods of dealing with the nouns we encounter. Our source code could be said to be the DNA of our programming. Depending on who we become, our sense of humor and political identity becomes intertwined as we grow into political animals.

The reader might consider this a simplistic approach, but I think some political animals are born in the audience of situation comedies and comedians. It bothers us when we don’t get jokes that reference larger matters. It makes us feel immature and uninformed. It frustrates us when we didn’t get reference jokes, so we study up on politics, until we arrive at this notion that “Everything is political.”

Say “Everything is political” to a large group of people, and most will say, “Well, it’s not to me.” Proponents of this notion will argue that if we drill deep enough into the sedimentary levels of everything, everything is political. I’ve met those who don’t even have to dig to find it. Some of them wish they hadn’t opened their mind’s eye to it, because they can’t turn it off now. They won’t laugh at a joke, unless it funnels appropriately. They hear, read and see it, searching for subtext in their never-ending search for points for their team, and they can only find humor in the vindictive and angry potshots volleyed at the other side.

“How did that happen?” others might ask political animals. We can all offer simplistic and autobiographical guesses, but for most the answer to how we became so political is, “It happens.” We can’t properly source it, but we know it happens. The next logical progression to this question is, “Why would you do that to yourself?” Most of us will experience some semblance of an escalation to politics is everything and everything is political, as we learn more about politics and build a political identity around that knowledge. Our goal, at the peak of this mindset will be to convince everyone around us of the beauty of our newfound philosophy. As we hover around that peak, however, we will see the futility of believing and seeing everything as political. Not to mention the frustration. The frustration arrives when we realize that about 75% will never agree with us. There is political, and there is political. Everyone’s experience with this is different, but the quest for ‘everything is political’ puts us in a downward spiral that can lead to humorlessness and some perpetual sense of dissatisfaction that can lead us to this sense of being unfulfilled, and as Amis warned, we should be suspicious of them.

“I have a friend for whom everything from national to local politics dictates her mood,” he said. “If she greets me with a smile and follows it with a generally pleasant afternoon, I know something happened, usually on a national scale to vindicate, or validate, her worldview. I suspected that my search for her mood, relative to political events, may have been coincidental, until she greeted one of my happy days with suspicion. She and I don’t speak openly of our positions, of course, as it’s all feel and suspicion, but if we did, and I said, “No, I just happen to be very happy today,” something tells me that she would scour her newsfeeds to find the true source of my happiness. The “Everything is political” animals generally believe that everyone is as political as they are, but most of us are afraid to admit it.

***

We all have different codes that we follow, pay allegiance to, and devote our lives, and most codes were written to feed the simple art of pleasing humans. Yet, some part of our innate reactions to their desire to please us leads to our almost instinctual dissatisfaction designed to require further appeasement. When we get our fast-food order, and we don’t find the errors until we get home, we complain, “They really need to slow down to make sure they get it right.” When we run across that fast-food employee who never gets it wrong, because he operates at such a methodical pace that it’s almost impossible for him to make an error, we complain, “I now realize I wouldn’t mind an error or two if that’s the price I have to pay!”

If everything is political to us, we’re almost required to maintain a certain level of dissatisfaction. If we want progress, we can never be satisfied, lest we slip back closer to the status quo. If we want everyone to agree with us, we want them to hear our passionate argument fueled by dissatisfaction, frustration, and anger.

“I note the etymology, the origin of words, and it’s always fascinating,” Martin Amis said. “‘Widow’, for instance means ‘be empty’, ‘torture’ means literally ‘to twist’. You look up a word … and find out more about it, then you feel a little grey cell burst into life in your head, as well as all the millions that are dying.” For Amis, language was a well from which he drew delight – and into which he gleefully, to our great pleasure, emptied sack after sack of melons.”

“You talk about the simple art of pleasing humans. Imagine finding a great word and being happy for a day? That’s a guy with a firm handle on his individual source code.”

“True, but the ‘everything is political’ animal has a firm handle on their source code too, and it makes them miserable.”

“[But] I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me.”— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Why do political animals pursue that which makes them miserable? Why do we enjoy watching and playing sports and video games, when the pain of constant failure far outweighs the temporary satisfaction of accomplishment? It’s a statement that seems contradictory, or absurd, but in reality, it expresses a truth, and the truth about the paradox is that it’s all about us. It’s all about how we hear, see, read, and absorb information. As frustrating as it is, we keep feeding the beast. We’re the problem here, and we always have been. We’re the source of the problem, and the source code tells us that it’s we’re the ones who have been the making all of the mistakes all along.

*******

Speaking exclusively to video games, my dad told us to “Just shut it off. If it makes you that angry, just shut it off.” It was so simplistic that we considered it hilarious. Just shut it off? Shut it off and presumably never play video games again? What my dad didn’t understand, and we didn’t either, was that video games became a part of our hard wiring. Following politics, like playing video games, makes us angry and leaves us perpetually unsatisfied, but that’s kind of the allure. Quick question, what do gamers do after achieving the ultimate glory of solving a game? They/we restart the game to do it over again. Temporary losses don’t mean much to either animal, and temporary wins mean almost as little. They might not even take a moment to wallow in the glory. They just start over.

We make mistakes when we chose to follow a source code. When we’re young and making messes where ever we go, they tell us to follow a code, then we see the errors of their code, and we rebel. If we want a reward, they say, we should follow their source code, but machine programmers whisper in our other ear that unless we want eternal strife, we’ll need to reject that particular source code. I didn’t believe those who coded me in my youth, because others helped me see that code for what it was, until I realized that their code required equal amounts of blind fealty. I went back and forth and forth and back, until I accidentally went so far beyond doing a 180 that I found myself turning 360-degrees to try to find what I considered a truth.

Some coders can be quite charming, as they inform us that they, like us, don’t know fecal matter. They’re the “I’m not an expert, but …” crowd. They’re funny, we appreciate their honesty, and we find their presentation compelling and persuasive. When they say they don’t know what they’re talking about, it’s delivered with their clown nose on, and then they take that clown nose off to inform us that no one else knows what they are talking about. Thus, we’re supposed to believe them when they rip apart the foundation of our source code, because at least they’re being honest about it.

“Have you ever tried following a source code?” I ask them. We get it from all corners. Everyone says we’re doing it wrong, even those following our code suggest that we’re doing it wrong, and some programmers tell us that we must be dumb for needing to follow a code in the first place. The only ones who seem to have any confidence in a code are those who don’t have one, and that is so much easier to defend.

“I wish I could believe in something, but I’ve got nothing to believe in,” the unintentionally condescending tell us. “It would be so nice to know as opposed to having to think so much.” The latter is not an exact quote, but the sentiment and inference is that believing in something frees us from having to think and question matters as much as they do, which doesn’t account for those of us who question everything, until we eventually find some code for which we happen to disagree. Those who write code also suggest that other codes exist in an authoritarian realm that require blind fealty, without questioning whether the lines of code might agree our beliefs system as opposed to us agreeing with it. The question we should ask in the face of their certitude is “Are there any nouns (people, places, and things) for whom you express blind fealty?” Most will say no, but if we talk with them long enough, we will eventually find something. We will also find those who don’t believe in anything, and they find that their most admirable quality.

Have you ever considered the idea that the source codes might not be the problem, and that it could be us? Our interpretations could be the problem. I thought I had all of my interpretations down, until someone offered me a new way of looking at what I thought I knew inside and out. It dawned on me that all of my interpretations were flawed, as flawed as I am. I knew everyone else’s interpretations were flawed, don’t we all, but I never considered the idea that I didn’t know squat. This has led me to a new interpretation of the qualifier: “…But that’s just my opinion, man. It’s what we were taught, and what we believe, but it could be wrong for all I know.”

Courage in our convictions leads to comfort, but when we extend that confidence to denounce anyone who deviates from our code as those who will pay, “according to the source code,” it’s not time to denounce the source code, it an opportunity to question ourselves more, and our preferred interpretations.

You have a code, I have a code, and it doesn’t matter what that source code is, it’s as flawed as you are, and as flawed as everyone who taught it to you and influenced you to add and subtract elements to it. Critics will tell us that the problem is not us, it’s our coders. Good for them, I say, you go girl, and all that, because the leader of any movement should welcome criticism, analyze it, and defeat it with performance. We shouldn’t dismiss it either. We should read it to determine if the critique is logical and reasonable. If it is, and it exposes vulnerabilities in our source code, we should adjust accordingly. We’ve all listened to leaders of movements, and some of those leaders have been taken out through irrational and illogical ad hominem attacks. The theme of these attacks is if we cut off the head of a snake, the body dies, but what does a quality leader do more than anything else? They codify the code. The make the complex understandable. They funnel all of the information into a focus that we use to funnel our focus.

I’ve listened to everyone from the crotchety old, traditional professor to the young, emotional, and heartfelt avant garde artists. I’ve mocked both for their pursuits, and I’ve turned my back on each of them at various times, until, as I wrote, I ended up turning 360-degrees to where I am now. I can passionately speak with both sides to a degree they both think I agree with them, but running through it all is a ironclad beliefs system that is steeped in my source code.

Line cooks, bus drivers, and waiters and waitresses have all influenced elements of my source code, almost as much as the great thinkers of history. As with great athletes, great thinkers, leaders of movements, and influencers of a source code, make mistakes. These mistakes, and moments of failure, make them who they are. We won’t see their failures, or most of them, because they’re often committed in the gestation cycle, but they get better, and they learn. When a critic highlights those mistakes and failures, we shouldn’t question the leader or our movement as much as we question ourselves. Leaders and movements come and go, but if we’re doing it right, the critic’s allegations shouldn’t matter to us, even if true. We shouldn’t even have to delete the lines of code the leader influenced, because they’re ours now. Our message to the critic should be, the source code is not the problem, and it never was. It’s as flawed as we are, as flawed as that leader was, and as flawed as we all are. The problem that we’ve never considered before is that it might be us, all of us, and our interpretations.