Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

“Added value” is the popular name for what’s included at no extra charge. But we are entering a time when it will no longer be sufficient to tell the world what you include and what you stand for. To hold the attention of the public in 2012 and beyond, you must identify what you leave out and what you stand against.Organic fruit and vegetable growers leave out the fertilizer and pesticides. Netflix leaves out the trip to the video store. Southwest Airlines leaves out meals and assigned seating. Digital cameras leave out the film. The Full Plate Diet leaves out fiberless foods. What does your company leave out? My friend W. Reed Foster and his partner Joel Peterson were men ahead of their time. They employed this technique more than a decade ago to distinguish their brand in what is perhaps the most overcrowded retail category on earth: wine. If they had described their wine as “intense and full-bodied, with hints of…” they would have sounded exactly like 1,000 other wineries. But the slogan “No Wimpy Wines” made Ravenswood an important, worldwide brand. (Their wine also had to be good, of course, but that’s the easy part. Lots of vineyards produce good wine.)You can’t have insiders unless you have outsiders. I demonstrated this technique in last week’s Monday Morning Memo. I’ll wager you remember it: “Wizard Academy is not a school for whiners, posers, devil’s advocates, nitpickers, hand-wringers, crybabies, complainers, chicken-hearts or fools. But it is definitely the school for you.”I’ve written before about “leaving things out” and it’s becoming more important than ever. But definition though exclusion is about to be taken too far. John Steinbeck spoke of a similar time when he wrote, “a teetotaler is not content not to drink—he must stop all the drinking in the world; a vegetarian among us would outlaw the eating of meat.” I’m not saying that’s how it ought to be. I’m saying that’s how it’s going to be. And I have 3,000 years of history to back me up.We’re about to enter the final 10 years in the upswing of a “We” cycle, an event that happens only once every 80 years. It is a time of high polarization, Us versus Them. “Working together for the common good” produces, over time, a gang mentality. The Salem witch trials, Robespierre’s reign of terror in France, the American Civil War and the rise of Adolph Hitler are just a few of the angry, Us versus Them events that have occurred within 10 years of the zenith of a “We.” Just three weeks ago, Joan Smith, a reporter in Britain for The Independent wrote, “The red poppy has been a symbol of remembrance since shortly after the First World War… a means of honoring the fallen and raising money for veterans and their families… This year, the pressure to wear one has been greater than ever… This year, coercion of reluctant red-poppy wearers has been joined by an outbreak of sheer nastiness towards the few who wear white ones.” Stand-up comedian Chris Rock makes this point more sharply in the rabbit hole. I know today’s memo makes me sound like a raving loon, but I trust that our new book, Pendulum, will change your mind when it’s released in April.David Farland warns us, I believe, very presciently, “Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.” “Choose who to lose” works well in marketing. Not so well in life. Roy H. Williams

Man of La Mancha rocked Broadway in 1965 with its thundering theme song, The Impossible Dream. You remember that song, don’t you? It opens in soft reflection, “To dream the impossible dream… To fight the unbeatable foe…” but then it defies mortal gravity to rise heavenward on a column of fury like an old Apollo rocket from Cape Canaveral:This is my Quest: to follow that star!No matter how hopeless, no matter how far!To fight for the rightWithout question or pause,To be willing to march into hellFor a heavenly cause!And I know, if I’ll only be trueTo this glorious Quest,That my heart will lie peaceful and calmWhen I’m laid to my rest…Wise Men follow a star when they believe the destination will be worth the journey.Time and money: you can always save one by spending more of the other. But money can be replaced and time cannot. We spend the hours of our lives like a pocketful of pennies, one by one until they are gone. What are you buying with yours?Can you name your current journey? You can call it your 5-year plan, your business plan, your goal, your mission. You can dress it up with numerals and call it a pro forma or wrap it in legalese and call it a prospectus. All that really matters is that you understand your time, your energy, indeed the hours of your life are being spent in the pursuit of something.“And I know, if I’ll only be true to this glorious Quest, that my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest…”Wait a minute… are we talking about business goals, life goals, the Christmas story of Matthew chapter two or the Broadway musical of 1965?Yes, yes, yes and yes; we are talking about those. That’s the thing about an archetypal story. Its message will echo through different actors dressed in different costumes but the play never changes: Each of us follows a star. How clearly can you see yours?Wizard Academy is a 501c3 nonprofit educational organization committed to helping individuals achieve the things they have committed to do. You choose the star. We don’t care. Our only job is to get you there.A solid limestone plateau rises 900 feet above downtown Austin, overlooking that city from 20 miles away. We cut perfectly northward into that limestone with heavy diesel equipment for 4 months, then planted a vertical sword in the wall of the Stardeck that sits like a crown on the million-dollar tower we built at the end of it.Walk to the center of that deeply cut limestone becauseway and stand on the Laughlin stone on any clear night. The point of light just above the hilt of the sword is Polaris, the North Star that rises above the axis of the earth. The whole world revolves around it. Polaris has served as a navigational tool for millennia because unlike other stars, its position never changes.Can you name the star that beckons you?We cut a 300-foot furrow 14 feet deep in solid rock on top a 900-foot plateau and then built a landmark tower with a sword in its crown purely as a symbol to help us make a point: that’s how serious were are about the importance of picking a destination and launching your life’s journey.Wizard Academy is not a school for whiners, posers, devil’s advocates, nitpickers, hand-wringers, crybabies, complainers, chicken-hearts or fools.But it is definitely the school for you.Come. The next chapter of your adventure is about to begin.Roy H. Williams

Most people see life as a linear progression, a canoe ride on the river of time. The scenery passes. The sun rises and sets. Occasionally there is a storm.It’s a tempting metaphor because we often think of time flowing like a river and to see ourselves as passengers on that river is a natural extension. But my life hasn’t been like that and I’ll bet yours hasn’t either.I see us as boulders tumbling down a mountainside, our rough edges smoothed by all the hard places we encounter that make us older and wiser. We’re not often sure which way is up.Time is the gravity we cannot resist, the energy behind this avalanche called life. Before a thing is dealt with another is upon us and as we turn to it we’re bumped from behind because we don’t have time for this while the telephone rings and someone is at the door and then we go over a cliff.I didn’t see that coming. Did you?It’s hard to tell a person who you are because you are so many things.Quantum Theory was born when Werner Heisenberg published his Uncertainty Principle in 1927. He wrote, “It is impossible to determine accurately both the position and the direction and speed of a particle at the same instant.” His Uncertainty Principle opened the door to Chaos Theory and Fractal Geometry, the mapping of chaotic systems.Like you and me, Heisenberg lived the avalanche. I HAD ALREADY WRITTEN EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINEand was staring at the computer screen unsure of what to write next when “ding,” a little pop-up alerted me that one of my business partners, Manley Miller, had just sent me an email:Have you ever heard of the Droste effect?Apparently it’s Fractals + Portals. I clicked the hyperlink in Manley’s email and was greeted by a video that illustrated precisely what I was trying to describe. Manley’s boulder was evidently tumbling next to mine. I spent some time reading about the Droste Effect and said, “Wow. What I’m feeling is so common that it even has a name.” Here’s the weird part: No one on earth could have known what I was thinking and feeling in that moment. I had just received some unexpected news that caused me to lean against the wall, unable to focus my eyes. Stumbling to the computer I pecked out the words, “Life in the Clothes Dryer” and wrote the nine paragraphs at the top of this page. I didn’t plan to send them to you but then Manley’s email arrived.The Droste Effect is a powerful tool that combines the visual suction of a spiral with the infinity of a picture-within-a-picture-within-a-picture. The result is that the viewer is pulled into the alternate reality of a fractal image, the map of a highly specific infinity, one of the “many worlds” predicted by Quantum Theory.Variations of this visual technique will likely prove to be highly effective in online marketing. Do you want someone to click a button? Sprinkle a little Droste into the mix and watch what happens.Manley recognized the Droste Effect as a simple combination of fractals and portals because he remembered studying each of these in Wizard Academy’s Magical Worlds Communications Workshop and the even-more-advanced sequel to that class, Advanced Thought Particles (including Portals and the 12 Languages of the Mind.)These classes are taught back-to-back just once every other year.February 20-24, 2012.  I can hardly wait. It’s a wild, wild ride.Roy H. Williams

Our system of education is built on the belief that learning is best achieved by bringing the best of the past forward through expert advice and clear example. Consequently, educators rise through the ranks like officers in the military: through compliance and conformity to the norm. But in this era of quantum change, are we really best served by imitating the past? Let’s look at two characteristics the innovative leaders of today all seem to have in common:  1. They tend to be college dropouts. Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker of Facebook. Dropouts, all. The list goes on and on. 2. They have no fear of failure. Innovative leaders experiment constantly because they see failure as an unavoidable step toward success. These leaders know the truth about failure; it’s an extremely temporary condition, a fleeting moment, nothing to be feared. Failure is motion and motion is life.Educators hesitate to experiment because they fear failure and reprimand. Consequently, the average teacher with 20 years’ experience really has just 1 year’s experience 20 times.In the October 22 issue of the New York Times, researcher Michael Ellsberg wrote,“Entrepreneurs must embrace failure. I spent the last two years interviewing college dropouts who went on to become millionaires and billionaires. All spoke passionately about the importance of their business failures in leading them to success. Our education system encourages students to play it safe and retreat at the first sign of failure… Certainly, if you want to become a doctor, lawyer or engineer, then you must go to college. But, beyond regulated fields like these, the focus on higher education… is profoundly misguided.” Pennie had a fantastic idea while we were taking our morning walk. As she explained it to me, I realized her plan would make solid education more widely available, more relevant to the student and save a great deal of money as well.“Princess,” I said, “if someone isn’t already doing this, they will be soon. This is the right idea at the right time so it’s highly likely that lots of people are having this same idea right now.”I was right. Salman Kahn (pictured above,) already has the project well underway. Pennie’s idea – and Kahn’s – is to harness Youtube to deliver 10-to-12-minute tutorials in an effort to fill the painful gaps in public education.Stanford University professor Philip Zimbardo recently said,“There is a disaster recipe developing among boys in America dropping out of high school and college. And it’s not simply poor performance. One of the problems is, a recent study shows, that by the time a boy is 21, he has spent at least 10,000 hours playing video games by himself, alone… They live in a world they create. They’re playing Warcraft and these other games which are exciting… Their brains are being digitally rewired, which means they will never fit in a traditional classroom, which is analog. Somebody talks at you without even nice pictures. Meaning it’s boring. You control nothing. You sit there passively. Disaster.  These kids will never fit into that. They have to be in a situation where they are controlling something. And school is set up where you control nothing.” Video allows the world’s best teachers to be everywhere simultaneously. And if you eliminate the time spent for roll call, bad behavior, discipline, silent reading and working on exercises, there’s rarely more than 10 minutes of real teaching delivered during the average class-hour. Tightly scripted 10-minute videos allow the quicker students to move at 5 to 6 times their current pace while slower students are free to pause and rewind as often as they feel necessary. Everyone is happy. Everyone learns more. And the quality of education available to you is no longer dictated by your school district. Wizard Academy applauds Salman Kahn and will do everything we can to accelerate his success. I hear a question sparkling and tinkling in your mind.Your question sounds like those little sleigh bells that hang on Santa’s reindeer as they paw roof-snow in the moonlight, tiny flashes of light and sound that pierce the hot fog of the reindeer’s breath as it clouds the cold night air: “Does your newfound appreciation of video mean Wizard Academy is going to make all its classes available through online streaming?” That was your question, wasn’t it? Wizard Academy will definitely increase its video offerings of brick-on-brick information. But our greater energies will continue to be focused on expanding our selection of transformative classes, those immersion experiences that facilitate an understanding that can be gained in no other way.Informative classes are incremental and best taught through video.Transformative classes are experiential and best taught through immersion.As David Sandler said 25 years ago, “You can’t learn to ride a bicycle by listening to a tape or reading a book.”  Put down the book. Come to Wizard Academy and your tomorrow will be very much different than yesterday. Roy H. Williams

Storytelling is gaining momentum.  Open-mic nights are the hot ticket in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and New York with people lining up two hours before show time to hear storytellers tell stories.Let’s look at the reasons why:“Storytelling is human connection at its most primal form,” says Catherine Burns, artistic director for the storytelling broadcast, The Moth, winner of the 2010 Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media. “In the midst of this technological revolution, it’s not surprising to me that people are looking to return to their roots. We want more than a status update about a breakfast cereal or someone’s child’s potty-training escapades. We crave more than a ‘like’ on Facebook or a retweeted Tweet. Storytelling is to entertainment as the slow food movement is to dining – it’s fresh and it’s local.”Researchers at Princeton University in 2010 discovered that storytellers cause the brains of their listeners to operate in synch with their own. Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert and Uri Hasson used functional magnetic resonance imaging to reveal how the same brain areas in the storyteller and the listener were stimulated at precisely the same points in the story.The biological mechanism that enables vicarious experience was only recently discovered. Groups of specialized neurons called “mirror neurons” exist opposite each other in the left and right hemispheres of the brain, allowing us to vicariously participate in what someone else is experiencing.These neurons enable human empathy, allowing us to tune in to each others’ feelings. In effect, mirror neurons allow you to live inside the minds of others. This is why hearing stories of adventure is almost as exciting as having the adventure yourself.You don’t take books and movies with you; they take you with them.When you’re watching sports, a piece of you is in that game.  Salespeople, evangelists and speechwriters have long known that a good story can cause the listener to see and feel what the storyteller is seeing and feeling, thereby empowering the storyteller to transfer ideas and emotions intact. Every good story provides a point of entry – a portal – that allows the listener to join in the adventure. Secrets to Storytelling in Advertising will be the topic of our monthly webinar next Monday, November 14, and a special Storytelling Workshop will soon be announced at Wizard Academy. Questions? Jackie is your girl. You can phone her during business hours (Central Time) at 512-295-5700 or email her at Jackie@WizardOfAds.com Adventure. Storytelling. Advertising.Taking your business to the next level.Find your adventure. Tell your story.It works every time.Roy H. Williams

Pearl was a bit of a whore.We never kept her in a fenceSo she had puppies at least once a year.She was a good mother.Abandoned in the country, starving,We found her when I was in third grade.She knew she was my dog immediately.God help you if you got mad at me.A blur of fur and teeth and little-dog roaringAwaited you halfway to me. No one ever calledPearl’s bluff because they knew she wasn’t bluffing.I think I learned loyalty from Pearl.Her oversized sense of protectivenessExtended to the house a little, too.But not much.We lived on a small riseAt the end of a long driveway.We would see her asleep on the porch in the sunshineBut when the crunch of tires on gravel reached her earsShe would leap like Wonder Woman off the porchAnd race to the far end of the yard,Barking the whole while,Careful never to look our way.She’d bark at the unseen burglarThen cut and run a different way toStop and bark at other phantoms.The shutting of a car doorMade her look our way, startled,As if to say, “Oh, you’re back already?When did you arrive?”And then she would trot with great pride,Paws lifted a little too highHer head swinging back and forthAs if to say, “Aren’t I wonderful?”“Pearl, you’re wonderful,” I would sayBecause she knew her job and I knew mine.In later years I stepped from the kitchenInto the garage to see her curledWith a small cat under her foreleg,It’s head snuggled beneath her chin, friendsLaid down for a nap.The screen door springs closed with a clapAnd Pearl lifts her bleary eyes, “What was that?”She looks up to see me,With a cat in her bed.Standing slowly to her feetPearl gives a soft “woof,”As if to whisper,“The boss is here.”The cat, knowing her job, too,Stands,Looks at me,Looks at Pearl,Then trots out the garageAnd around the corner.Pearl gives me one more lookThen chases the catTo do her duty.Later, I walk outsideAnd see Pearl beside the houseIn the soft sunshineLaid down for a napWith her friend.Forty years laterI walk aroundanother house500 miles away,And secretly hope toSee Pearl and the catOne last time.– Roy H. Williams

Your brain is hardwired to notice the exception, the incongruity, the discrepancy, the disturbance, that thing – no matter how small – that doesn’t belong.  “Something of the sense of holiness on islands comes, I think, from this strange, elastic geography. Islands are made larger, paradoxically, by the scale of the sea that surrounds them. The element which might reduce them, which might be thought to besiege them, has the opposite effect. The sea elevates these few acres into something they would never be if hidden in the mass of the mainland. The sea makes islands significant.”– Adam Nicolson, Sea Room “The sea makes islands significant,” is just another way of saying “Normalcy makes the aberration exceptional,” or “Boredom makes the surprising delightful,” or “Mundanity makes the punch line funny.” The pattern makes the gap noticeable.Discoveries are made when people do something wrong.Discoveries are made when people do something new.Discoveries are made when people do something surprising.Discoveries are made when people do something different. Mistakes often lead to discoveries. This is why so many discoveries are made by accident.Discovery… is the signature… of Adventure. Adventure begins when we break a pattern, when we do something wrong, new, surprising or different. This insight has profound implications in advertising, public speaking, political campaigns and the arts, but these are not the focus of our attention today.Our thoughts are turned toward you. If you choose to take a wildly different route to work tomorrow, it will be less efficient that the route you normally take. But you will also see new scenery. If you took that different route to work tomorrow, you’d have to leave home earlier or risk being late. Leaving earlier would alter your schedule, disrupt your routine, break your pattern. And we wouldn’t want to do that. Would we? As long as we’re talking about things we’re not going to do, let’s plan not to stop somewhere along this new route to investigate something we notice. We couldn’t possibly make time for that. Could we? Adventure begins when you do something new, surprising or different. Anxious anticipation, nervous trepidation, heart palpitation and a tingling sensation. We don’t want those. Do we? If you take the long way to work tomorrow and stop to investigate something you notice, send me an email about it. Address that email to Adventure@WizardAcademy.org One thing leads to another.There’s really no telling where this might lead. Roy H. Williams

Anxious anticipation, nervous trepidation, heart palpitation and a tingling sensation are the smells and bells of adventure. Paul Tournier was a 3 year-old orphan in Switzerland when Teddy Roosevelt became President of the United States.  Paul grew up to become a doctor. He did a lot of thinking and he wrote a few books. Paul Tournier was nearly 70 when he wrote The Adventure of Living: “Our actual lives rarely suffice to assuage our thirst for adventure. Fortunately we can all supply the want by using our imaginations. The dullest and most humdrum life can be enlivened by imagined pleasures… Those who are lacking in imagination of their own can always use that of other people. There is no shortage of novels to read… The same mechanism of identification makes it possible in the cinema, through the radio or television, or at a circus to procure cheaply the feeling of taking part in an adventure. This is the case, too, with ‘sportsmen’ who come back from a football match proudly proclaiming ‘We won!’ although they personally have done nothing but applaud the winners… That the need for adventure lies behind the passion for gambling hardly needs mention. A habit that is quite as difficult to cure as gambling is that of drug-taking, in all its various forms. This too can be regarded as an expression of the instinct for adventure… Looked at in its best light, adultery may be seen to be for many men the only means of satisfying their craving for adventure.” Tournier believed every human life is a never-ending search for adventure. “A most important observation must, however, be made at this point, and that is that a distinction is to be made between quality adventure and quantity adventure. In capitalist countries financial success is still, if not a truly satisfying adventure, at least a symbol of adventure. There are of course other quantity adventures aside from those of money, gambling or dope. There is, for example, that of frenzied activity. It is obvious that for many people these days the whirl of activities with which they fill their lives is a compensation for a profound dissatisfaction in regard to the quality of life they are living.” Video games, movies, reality TV shows, online flirtations, romance novels, sporting events and conspiracy theories are just different manifestations of our common need for adventure. I learned all this in the first 17 pages of Tournier’s 250-page book. I’m glad my friend Ron told me about it. Purchases are often an adventure. Much of what we buy is bought to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are. The politically correct term for this, I believe, is self-expression. Kurt Vonnegut may have been pondering self-expression when he said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”I pretend to be a writer and an advertising consultant and a connoisseur of fine art. (I say “pretend” because I’m not actually qualified to be any of these things. It’s really quite an adventure.) What is your current adventure? Are the stakes high enough to make it truly riveting? Page 21 of Tournier’s The Adventure of Living helped me to understand why people often do stupid things: “Many people are never able to come to terms with the death to which every adventure is inevitably subject… The Law of Adventure is that it dies as it achieves its object.” And then we must find a new adventure. Desperate for adventure, some people feel compelled to outsmart society. Vandalism and shoplifting are two of the standby adventures of youth. Road rage and embezzlement are just around the corner. And all these people ever really wanted was anxious anticipation, nervous trepidation, heart palpitation and a tingling sensation.  Life is a challenge. New problems slap us daily. In the words of the immortal G.K. Chesterton, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”In other words, adventure is everywhere. You don’t even have to go looking for it. You just need to learn to recognize it when it’s wearing a disguise.Thornton Wilder said, “It’s when you’re safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.” But Mark Twain encouraged us openly. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Wizard Academy is a 501c3 nonprofit business school for companies with fewer than 100 employees. The Academy has helped launch hundreds of adventures and been a frosty oasis of rejuvenation for thousands of thirsty travelers hot in the middle of an adventure they had already begun. Come!Roy H. Williams

Style Guides and Audio Signatures: Part ThreeWords shine like a movie projector on the screen of imagination, creating lifelike images in the mind.1: Which actors will you place on the screen? Will your voice be first person “I,” second person “you,” or third person “they?”2. What will be your time perspective?Will your verbs be past tense “was,” present tense “am,” or future tense “will be?”These two, simple choices yield nine different voices:“I was…”I was walking down 5th street, my dog with me, when…“I am…” I am walking down 5th street, my dog with me, when…“I will be…”I will be walking down 5th street, my dog with me, when…“You were…”You were walking down 5th street, your dog with you, when…“You are…”  You are walking down 5th street, your dog with you, when…“You will be…”  You will be walking down 5th street, your dog with you, when…“They were…”Sally was walking down 5th street, her dog with her, when…“They are…”Sally is walking down 5th street, her dog with her, when…“They will be…”Sally will be walking down 5th street, her dog with her, when…3. How will you structure your sentences?At one end of the spectrum are long, rambling sentences that bridge from one thought to another in a conversational stream-of-consciousness reminiscent of how William Faulkner and Jack Kerouac would fill page after page with colorful images without ever feeling the need to take a breath or insert a period that might allow the listener to think a thought or see an image other than the ones they so carefully projected onto the screen of imagination.At the other end: Hemingway. Declarative. Short and tight. Calling upon the imagination to supply what the writer leaves out. Action happening between the lines. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Faulkner and Hemingway wrote in opposite styles but each of them won the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Faulkner in ’49, Hemingway in ’54.) Faulkner said of Hemingway, “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” To which Hemingway replied, “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”Somewhere between loquacious Faulkner and Spartan Hemingway is the meter, the cadence, the rhythm of syllables that will become a distinctive identifier of your brand, an important part of your audio signature.We’re very anxious to hear it.Roy H. Williams

The boys were born on the same day in the same year: February 12, 1809. Both were intensely private. Each boy lost his mother in early childhood. Neither was close to his father.The two never met but together they tipped the world on its axis and made it wobble for 100 years.You know the story of the first one; born in a log cabin, taught himself to read by the light of the fireplace, wrote with charcoal on the back of a shovel because there was no paper in the house, became a lawyer, had a big heart, kept the Union together. He accomplished his axis tilting because he believed the soaring words Thomas Jefferson had written 87 years earlier. He even made reference to those majestic ideals in the opening line of his most famous speech:“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”The other man believed precisely the opposite. He held a different set of truths to be self-evident. I find it strange that so many people consider him to be the greater hero. Robert was raised with privilege, servants, independently wealthy.  He toyed with the idea of becoming a doctor, then flirted with becoming a minister. His father said, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” At the age of 22, Robbie convinced the captain of a ship that he could provide intelligent conversation at the dinner table and was thus allowed to tag along on an adventure that would free a different kind of slave. Five years later, a much-changed Robert returned to the shores of England where he began to edit the journal of his journey. After two decades of agonizing refinement, the story of his voyage was published: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This book that elevated Charles Robert Darwin to god-like status was built upon his observation of “the survival of the fittest.” Lincoln held to the belief that all men are created equal, but Darwin insisted that some are a little more equal than others. His theory of natural selection tilted the earth again on its axis.  When humans use “survival of the fittest” as a model for making decisions, we lower ourselves to the level of animals. These conversations usually conclude with an agreement that “the end justifies the means” because of something we call “the greater good.” Natural selection would justify every pogrom and ethnic cleansing in our history. But the real earth-wobbling of Charles Robert Darwin was that he gave us a belief system that empowered us to triumphantly dismiss God from our thoughts. We say, “If God does not exist, then we are no longer subject to him.” This shedding of our need for a deity is generally regarded as “the next important step” in human evolution. Most of us, I believe, are captives of bad theology. We often escape one slavery only to be captured by another master even more demanding than the first. And each of us believes his or her own theology, or anti-theology, to provide the truest and best answers. Personally, I consider modern Darwinism to be a religion, or more accurately an anti-theology, a belief system that argues against a creator.  I believe in science and am devoted to its principles. I depend upon the reliability of physics. I acknowledge that evolution can and does happen. But I also believe that God spoke a universe into existence as is written in the book of Genesis and I believe “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” as is proclaimed in the Gospel of John. I am saddened by most televangelists and I deeply resent the annexation of Christianity by the religious right.  I am suspicious of anyone who claims to speak for God. You, too, have a theology or anti-theology, a belief system about God: whether he is or is not, and if he is, whether he is like this or like that. Most people believe in a God who is a lot like them. And this God can usually be trusted to do what that person would do if they were God. God obviously prefers your political party. After all, he’s not stupid, right? And he enables the athletes of your favorite sports teams. I do not mean to be irreverent. An atheist believes there is no god.A theist believes there is.An agnostic tries not to think about it. God is a big thought, a big question, often inflammatory, always uncomfortable, never to be brought up in polite society. I guess I’m just not feeling that polite today. Roy H. Williams