Author: Jon Henshaw

I passed a dead possum on the road today. Its face was turned towards me and its eyes were open, staring at me, with stains of blood that had poured out of its eyes when it was dying.

What is this possum’s life worth? What is our own life worth?

As someone who no longer believes in the existence of an afterlife or an omniscient invisible being that’s pulling all of the strings, I have a new perspective on the meaning of life. The answer for me has merely become to live.

Living is being in the moment; observing nature; focusing on your breathing; tasting food; smelling pleasant scents; drinking water; intimacy; rest; and feeling the sun give you warmth.

As humans, we allow our complexities and higher reasoning to stack, smother, and obscure what it means to be alive. We build and participate in social constructs that enrage us or cause us severe depression. We become chronically anxious and will either eat too much or not enough. We commit ourselves to debt for things we don’t need, enabling what we owe to become the master of our future actions.

Am I that possum? Are we all that possum after you strip away all of the social constructs that forever occupy our minds?

For me, the possum is a reminder that life is short and our bodies are fragile. It’s a reminder to step away from the fictions we’ve created and participate in, and to reset my body and mind with things that are simple and true, like breathing, resting, smelling, feeling, helping, and loving.

I will continue to create, participate, and do all of the things that I just mentioned that make life messy. But I’ll also try to be mindful and attempt to remain tethered to what is simple and real.

Information is the enemy of religion. There’s a direct correlation between access to dissenting, logical information about religion and one’s beliefs and devotion to it. This becomes exasperated when you introduce cultural phenomena, like the mixture of politics and religion that are incongruent with each other and society as a whole. This is especially true for younger believers whose minds are more capable of plasticity.

My philosophical status as a None[s] came from a direct result of religion mixed with politics. I was an Evangelical Christian for the first three decades of my life, but something significant happened in the early 2000s. I watched in dumbfounded despair as Christians across America were mindlessly controlled by fear-based rhetoric from our President and his Administration. It resulted in Christian books being published about when war was okay with God and the politicization of the pulpit. At the time, it was obvious to me that not only was the Administration lying, but the idea of rushing into the war was incongruent with my beliefs and scripture as I knew it. It was the first time I had ever witnessed firsthand the power of fear and groupthink.

That moment in time – a lying President, fear-based rhetoric, and blind devotion – was the catalyst for my six-year-long deconversion away from Christianity. The internet played a significant role in my ability to find and access information. However, there was also an agnostic and atheist book publishing Renaissance during that time. Some of the books I read were considered heretical, like Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, which shed light on the origins of the Bible and questioned the validity of Jesus. While others were thoughtful, provocative, and atheistic in nature, like Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great and Sam Harris’ The End of Faith. Without the internet and access to those books, it’s possible that I could still be clinging to my faith and suffering from even worse cognitive dissonance.

It’s now 2017 and one month into Trump’s presidency. Trump brings an entirely new degree of incongruence between his ideology and Christianity. Taking into account 1) the continued trend away from religion; 2) access to more philosophical and dissenting views via the internet and books; and 3) the coupling of the Trump presidency with conservative Christians (a true deal with the devil), I expect a new wave of Nones as a result. If you want to know how to kill your own religious relevance within society and among an entire generation, all you need to do is sit back and watch how conservative Christians are self-destructing through their myopic worldview and desire for theocracy.

In a world of games like Candy Crush, game creators borrow from psychology to intentionally make their games as addictive as possible. Players then allow these games to rob them of their precious time. Time away from socializing, relating, loving, and even creating.

If the game creators are lucky, they can make a lot of money. The end result is a profitable company and a sea of people who wasted their time and potential on nothing.

And then you have Flappy Bird.

The creator of Flappy Bird wrote the game in a week and over time, it became one of the most successful games on iTunes. At its peak, it was making $50,000/day in advertising. And then Dong Nguyen, the game’s creator, removed it.

Dong Nguyen told Forbes:

“Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.”

“But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”

Lan Anh Nguyen, Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App ‘Gone Forever’ Because It Was ‘An Addictive Product’, Forbes

So there you have it. Dong Nguyen is the only person looking out for your best interests in this cold and dark gaming world. He would rather you do something with your life than allow himself to get filthy, stinking rich.

Update March 11, 2014

Rolling Stone caught with Dong Nguyen and was able to get him to further elucidate his decision to pull the game.

But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he’s saved. One is from a woman chastising him for “distracting the children of the world.” Another laments that “13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it’s addicting like crack.” Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. “At first I thought they were just joking,” he says, “but I realize they really hurt themselves.” Nguyen – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart.

By early February, the weight of everything – the scrutiny, the relentless criticism, and accusations – felt crushing. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, didn’t want to go outdoors. His parents, he says, “worried about my well-being.” His tweets became darker and more cryptic. “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine,” read one. “But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.” He realized there was one thing to do: Pull the game. After tweeting that he was taking it down, 10 million people downloaded it in 22 hours. Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. “I’m master of my own fate,” he says. “Independent thinker.”

David Kushner, The Flight of the Birdman: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out, Rolling Stone

Near the end of the article, the author, David Kushner, asked him “will Flappy Bird ever fly again?” His answer was maybe, but it will have to come with the warning, “Please take a break.”