My upcoming book introduces Honor as a feeling, and as "The Force of Creation." I intend to spark the "Creator Revolution" with this book, and in so doing begin to bring about the "Age of Creation."
Below is an excerpt from a rough draft of my book proposal, which positions my upcoming book as an idea whose time has come. I welcome your thoughts. (Note: references to The Force are references to my book with that as a working title. It may be that my book proposal has no room for the info below, yet I think it speaks volumes for the potential sales volume of this book.)
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The Market for “An Idea Whose Time Has Come”
What is the size of the market for an idea whose time has come?
America was born from such an idea. The best-selling authors of that time sold the idea to the American people, and birthed a nation greater than the world has ever seen. Who can forget the writings of 1776: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence?
These writings were the spark that ignited a powder keg market that was ripe for revolution. 230 years later there is another powder keg market about ready to explode. We are once again on the brink of revolution. This time it’s an inner revolution. The market for inner freedom today rivals the market for political freedom in 1776.
The Age of Enlightenment of the 1700s had set the stage with a new vision of the future, a future of lasting happiness and continual progress through political freedom. This vision was based on the revolutionary idea that man was basically good, and that if man were freed from external controls, he would naturally use reason to act in accordance with his values and achieve happiness.
In 1776 America’s increasing conflicts with Britain created a market for Thomas Paine’s and Adam Smith’s best-sellers, which paved the way for political freedom and peace through revolution.
Today we find ourselves at the dawn of a New Age of Enlightenment. Increasing change is bringing more and more external and internal conflicts. While most of us continue to search for political solutions, more and more people are seeking happiness and progress through inner freedom.
Few today would argue that in order for man to naturally act in his best interest and achieve happiness it is not enough that he be free from external controls. The world is finally ripe for the idea that man must be free from the bonds of his inner conflicts as well. The more he is free from the limits of his inner conflicts, the more he can naturally access Honor, the Force of Creation—and the more he naturally becomes a powerful, conscious creator.
Just as Paine’s, Smith’s and Jefferson’s works inspired and gave courage to the cause of political independence and freedom, Skye’s work inspires and gives courage to the cause of psychological independence and freedom. The effect of Skye’s monumental work on the spirit of the great inner revolution—the “Creator Revolution”—may be immeasurable.
The idea of man as a free creator is an idea whose time has come.
The Secret of Revolutionary Bestsellers
It is no secret that fear and guilt control human behavior. In fact it is easy to see how institutions of each culture and time period build walls of fear and guilt in order to maintain their control and stay in power. Such walls are built with ideas. And such walls are torn down with revolutionary ideas.
Herein lies the secret of revolutionary bestsellers. Such bestsellers blast through the existing walls of fear and guilt and leave a pathway to a promised land.
It was not enough that many people yearned to be free in the late 18th century; most of the world believed that freedom was both dangerous and wrong. So dangerous and so wrong was the idea of freedom and revolution that most people were willing to suffer great injustices, rather than face the fear and guilt that freedom implied.
The walls against the dream of freedom and prosperity for all were massive, seemingly impenetrable walls. Predominant thought in the West during the Dark Ages held that man was a lowly sinner, his desires for things of the world were temptations of the Devil, and money was essentially “the root of all evil.” Living in the shadow of the medieval Church, people in the Dark Ages frowned upon reason, science, progress and wealth. Thus, although the Age of Enlightenment had brought man out of the Dark Ages with a bright dream of life with reason, science and progress; the walls keeping him from the promised land stood strong.
The books of the time that paved clear pathways through these mountainous walls of guilt and fear to the promised land of freedom became overnight bestsellers. Adam Smith’s revolutionary bestseller, Wealth of Nations, for example, freed man’s conscience and his fears about the dangers of freedom and capitalism.
Smith said that a free economy would be guided as if by the Invisible Hand of God.
In his book, Smith passionately extolled the simple yet enlightened idea that individuals are fully capable of setting prices for their goods, and thus guiding themselves to achieve wealth and happiness. His Wealth of Nations revolutionized the way governments and individuals view man and life.
Until new paradigms and ideas about rights, self-government and freedom were powerfully presented; there was no pathway to a revolution for political and economic freedom.
Without the paradigm of god-given natural rights of man, people would have felt too much guilt for acting contrary to the widely accepted Divine Rights of Kings dogma of the day. And without the moral and practical defenses of Capitalism and a principle-based, representative democracy, people would have not had the courage to trust in a new system for political and economic freedom.
The bestsellers of 1776 removed the 2 fundamental roadblocks to the success of the outer revolution. When these two roadblocks were removed, the rest was history. America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” went on to become the beacon of progress, freedom and success.
The Competition: Bestsellers Paving The Way for The Creator Revolution
Every trend feeds a counter trend. And while freedom, capitalism and self-governance have essentially become “the way of the world,” there is a rising mountain of opposition to political and economic freedom. More and more people are blaming economic and political freedom for the ills of the world. More and more people are buying into the notion that we as humans are naturally irrational, greedy, self-destructive animals, who need to be controlled. Some say we must control an individual’s economic choices, while others say we must control an individual’s personal life choices. The underlying premise is the same—man is too free and must be controlled.
The author, however, sees the problem not as too much outer freedom, but as a lack of inner freedom. The author sees all men fundamentally as powerful creators. The ills of the world, he contends, will not be solved with more outer controls, but with more inner freedom to naturally create. What is the market for such an idea?
The more the counter trend against outer freedom grows, the more guilt and fear limits people from taking advantage of their outer freedom. Becoming wealthy and financially successful, for example, means being judged by many as a greedy capitalist. Thus, the more the walls against outer freedom grow, the more there is a market for a pathway through the mountains of fear and guilt, a pathway to the promised land of achievement, happiness and success.
In fact, every time there is an original new pathway through the mountains, there is another mega-bestseller. Examples include,
1. Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People –real success comes from character, conscience and creating win-win solutions.
2. Robert Allen’s Nothing Down –strategies for real estate wealth where everyone wins and no one loses
3. Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad book series –being wealthy is a choice and the more wealth you have the bigger difference you can make for yourself and others
4. Dr. Eli Goldratt’s business bestsellers, The Goal and It’s Not Luck—Creating win-win solutions in life and business via logic.
5. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged—A fiction novel as an argument that man should live for his own happiness, and those who do are the ones who provide values for mankind and move the world forward.
6. Richard Bach’s novel, Jonathan Livingston Seagull—A compelling story of a seagull who followed his own mind and by doing so was one of the few who advanced and brought happiness to all “seagull-kind.”
7. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra—Presents the notion that there is no separation between inner and outer success.
8. The Road to Wealth by Suze Orman—A tool to uncover and transform your hidden beliefs about money, such as “Money is the root of all evil.”
9. A recent bestseller is Robert Allen’s The One Minute Millionaire, The Enlightened Way to Wealth –Promotes strategies in which everyone wins and wealth is used for good.
These books are synergistically paving the way for the Creator Revolution. Beyond best-selling books, however, evidence of an existing market for pathways to guiltless success is ubiquitous. Major trends in thinking, in life and in business are breaking down the barriers to free creation. Examples include,
1. Network Marketing A business model and a context for living life in which everyone can become wealthy (the determining factor is often said to be one’s level of faith, and one’s level of service to others). This industry is advancing with a religious revival type of fervor.
2. “New Age” Religions or Organizations –An example is Science of Mind, which teaches that there is no scarcity except in our minds, and we can create whatever we want in the world.
3. Modern, “American” Religions –Mormonism holds that we can grow to become gods and create our own worlds.
4. Modern, “American” Philosophies Ayn Rand’s Objectivism provides a non-religious system of ethics for capitalism, freedom and success.
5. Modern “American” Political Parties The Libertarian Party becomes more and more popular as more and more wealth creators feel unjustly limited and controlled by government.
All of these growing trends are building momentum for the coming Creator Revolution by breaking through the guilt barrier that inhibits wealth creation and worldly success.
However, just as there is an undeniable and growing need to deal with the guilt that many feel in creating wealth, there is a need to deal with the fear that many feel in facing and creating the future. As we grow nearer to what seems to be Armageddon via technology, we are also growing nearer to promises of a “heaven on earth” via technology.
A revival of religious fundamentalists and terrorists battling over Holy Lands together with rapidly advancing weapons technology is just one of the clouds that darkens our future. Yet the light through the clouds is coming from countertrends, such as the rise of more progressive and free-thinking people who are using technology to save lives by curing disease, feeding the hungry, creating wealth and resolving international conflicts.
More and more bestsellers are being written, which help people deal with their fear of the future. Such bestsellers include,
1. Sovereign Individual
2. Rich Dad’s Prophecy
3. Toffler’s Trilogy in the 80s, Third Wave, Future Shock and Power Shift
4. Naisbitt’s MegaTrends
As we head into a future of progress and wealth, more and more people are choosing to face it and welcome it, rather than fight it. More and more people are looking for ethical models to free them to go forth in the world and create. The FORCE provides such an ethical model.
The FORCE will complement all of the above-mentioned books by providing an ethical system of self-guidance to support an economic system of free enterprise. The FORCE will provide a context for inner and outer freedom.
In order to glimpse the potential impact The FORCE will have on the world, let’s look at how one concept can change the course of history, and how the history shall be forever changed with The FORCE’s concepts of man as Creator, and the feeling of Honor as a force of creation.
The Secret Power of A Single Concept
While society tends not to accept revolutionary new ideas without either logical proof or an appeal to mystical faith, there are incredible exceptions. It is these exceptions that tend to turn the tide in a revolution.
There is a certain category of concepts that have the power to change the course of history forever. Such concepts do not depend on either logical proof or mystical faith for their power. Their power lies in their lack of a need for proof and faith, and especially in their usefulness.
Just as revolutionary technologies such as the printing press, the automobile and the personal computer have changed the course of history forever due to their usefulness, certain concepts have affected an even larger change due only to their usefulness.
Civilization was born of a new concept, the concept of money. Money as a concept is revolutionary technology, so useful that it has changed the course of history forever. Cultures slow to adopt the concept of money are being left behind and out competed.
America and “the free world” were born of a new concept that, by virtue of its usefulness and simplicity, became “self-evident”—the concept of man’s natural rights. Speaking of the natural, unalienable rights of man in the birthing document of the United States of America, the Founding Fathers declare to the world that, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident.”
To the extent that such revolutionary concepts are not only useful but also understood to be “self-evident,” they become invaluable to the revolution. Such concepts are powerful in that they change the world regardless of logical proof and regardless of faith. Even countries that do no accept, agree or believe in the concepts of individual rights and freedom are being transformed by these concepts; in fact they are being left behind and out competed.
The revolutionary concept of money spawned civilization.
The revolutionary concept of rights spawned America and the free world.
The revolutionary concept of Honor as a feeling and as a force for creation, as introduced in The Force, will begin to spawn the author’s vision—a future of free creators. The concept of Honor as a feeling is 1) so useful for creating wealth and achieving success regardless of fear and guilt, and 2) so easily self-evident, that it will spread on its own like a virus and transform the world we live in—whether or not people accept it scientifically or mystically as “truth.”
Just as the concept of money generated a flood of technologies for wealth creation such as compound interest rates, mutual funds, ATMs, credit cards, etc., the concept of Honor as a feeling will generate a flood of technologies for creation. Several such technologies and tools which produce powerful results previously unattainable, inaccessible or unexplainable are presented in The FORCE.
How the Author’s Concept Will Launch the Creator Revolution
Many authors, while introducing potentially revolutionary concepts, make the mistake of arguing or proving the truth of their concept with evidence or arguments from the past. Thus, their new concept becomes just another position, just another argument in an old conversation. These authors fail to employ strategies that could change the underlying fabric of our conversation, namely by showing the concept’s usefulness and self-evident nature. Instead, they present their concept in a way that implies that the concept’s validity is dependent on the logic or emotional appeal of the author’s explanation. A major problem with this approach is that most people, when introduced to a new concept, look for flaws or inconsistencies by comparing it to existing knowledge or explanations.
There are several little understood methods for introducing revolutionary concepts in a way that has them naturally become a fundamental part of the conversation for revolution. One such approach that can be much more effective is to present the new concept as technology—as a tool. Show how the concept works in the world, and show the world in a new light, as colored by the new concept. This is one of the methods employed by the author in The FORCE.
The author is not concerned with arguing or proving the “truth” of his concept, nor is he concerned with “converting non-believers.” Rather, the author employs the method of showing the power, usability and validity of his two revolutionary concepts,
1) Humans as Creators (in a very practical sense, yet far beyond how we see ourselves today), and
2) Honor as a feeling and force of creation.
Like new technology, Honor is presented to the public as an appeal to RESULTS. As if to say,
Here is what this technology does. And you need not believe any particular theory as to why it works. You can use it to achieve what you want in life, and even if you don’t others will… and perhaps they’ll out-compete you, just as governments based on the concept of rights are out-competing communist governments and dictatorships.
“You can’t argue with success,” and you can’t argue with results. The concepts of man as creator, and Honor as a feeling, will create undeniable results for those who read The FORCE of Creation—results that “non-believers” will not be able to deny.
