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Welcome to 2017

Happy new year everyone. Wasn’t 2016 an interesting year. I had a great time. How about you?

Back in February 2016 I wrote, ‘It’s time to be quiet for a while‘. Looking back now, I see that I did 30 posts for the entire year, about 2.5 posts per month. It was a quiet year for writing, for sure, but still more than I thought there would be. I’m curious about how 2017 is going to look.

2016 was the year when everyone discovered that facts don’t matter when trying to persuade a nation. This is an important thing to understand, as we recognise that people make decisions on emotion rather than on facts. Even if the facts tell them they should make different decisions, they’ll still decide according to their emotions instead.

This applies to everything in our lives.

I have a friend who knows for a fact that if he keeps drinking it’ll kill him. His doctor has told him so. And yet he keeps drinking because it makes him feel good. His emotions are more important to him than the facts, even though he’s likely unaware of it.

As we think about New Year’s resolutions, we could also think that the facts we make resolutions over, will be overruled by our emotions. It’s a fact many of us are overweight so we make a resolution to go on a diet and exercise more. But our emotions about how difficult that ends up being will carry more weight and we decide the facts don’t matter.

The facts don’t matter.

People who believe it’s a fact that mankind is the cause of climate change do nothing to avoid contributing to climate change. Why? Because facts don’t matter when they’re using the heater or airconditioner to stay comfortable, or to drive to work or on holiday, or to fly to a business or leisure destination…

We pay lip service to ‘facts’, while living our lives according to the illusion that works best for us, ignoring all those pesky facts even though we say they’re important.

2017 is going to be the year where this gets more interesting. Some people are not going to enjoy it at all, particularly those who value facts and lose their mind when they see it doesn’t actually matter. I’m going to be laughing all the way, just like I did in 2016…


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