James L. C. Kafka - Fiction is My Reality

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

How the World Works

 

It’s Not Who Said It First – It’s Who Said It the Loudest.

 

How many times have you heard someone say something that you have said hundreds of times, but because a well-known person suddenly said it, it’s now a thing. And consequently, you’re a little pissed off about it.

I have often said, “You live long enough, you see enough.” Which is a very true statement now that I have lived long enough.

The opportunity to be the first, is a one chance per customer circumstance. No one remembers second place. Therefore, you could write down your thoughts or ideas and date it, get it notarized to prove you were first. But that doesn’t solve the problem – you have to be well-known or famous.

Case in point – On the day it went live, I said, “The internet will ruin the world.” I knew very little about it, but the little I did know told me nothing good will come of it. And here I am using it. (Yes, I am a hypocrite and I do see the irony.)





If fire was invented today, someone would find a way to ruin it.


Another case that is as old as the first tree – every new thing starts out hot and then someone throws a bucket of cold water on it. Why? Because when something is too good to be true, the all-seeing eye (Government – King – Dictator) realizes they might lose control/ power and so they quickly hose it down and moderate the output. This formula is a repeat offender. Think about everything that you truly loved doing or playing with, then think a little more, and then you’ll get that dumb look on your face, you know the one – and finally you’ll say, “Dammit!”

Books and games are great examples – When indie authors and game producers finally got a chance to create their own unshackled content – WOW! The stuff I remember seeing, reading, playing, was amazing.

And yes, I told my oldest son at the time, enjoy it while you can, it won’t last long. I was right. The bucket of cold water was fast and furious.

The line – “We need to protect the children!”  or any variation of that was and is the battle cry.

There is only one thing that survived. I won’t mention it here, but most adults know what it is.

The bright spot in this circle of madness is that – “What goes around, comes around.” A very true statement. However, the coming around part normally takes a long time to resurface.

Currently, writers/ authors have experienced this phenomenon. Write what you want. Make it gritty, hard, daring, bloody, and, . . . a handful buy and read. Next step – tone it down, followed by, that’s boring, and then the good stuff returns – and then it gets squashed again, because, “We need to protect the children.”

I have lived long enough to see it in action. Don’t even get me started about board games and D&D – that’s a 200k essay on how pissed off I got about the tone it down.

 

Enough gibberish – have a nice day, week, year, life.

 

-jk-