“Equal parts pop-culture criticism, personal memoir and passionate rant on the meaning of everything, The Default Life takes a tour of our culture’s strange ideas and habits through the eyes of a 20-something. If you’ve ever wondered how Tony the Tiger influences your perception of reality, how iPhones and Coldplay have teamed up to make dating impossible, or how Disneyland and Saved by the Bell ruined childhood, this book is for you. You’ll never look at your world the same again.”
- The Author
“Sam is seeking to honestly and creatively engage with important issues that he sees emerging in his own life and the lives of his peers. I think we could use more young writers like Sam who are trying to live through the unique challenges of our time with love, faith, and a sense of humour.”
– Shad K, Juno Winning Rap Artist
“A Brilliant Debut.” – John Stackhouse, author of Humble Apologetics and Can God Be Trusted?
Sample Paragraphs:
Chapter One:
Some people experiment with drugs at university. I experimented with atheism.
I made a sort of ‘alter ego’ for myself, an alias to help me try on some stubbornly atheistic shoes. If our generation is skilled at any one thing, it’s multi-tasking – especially when it comes to personalities. Through this lens I hoped I might see Christians as a morally upright and loving bunch that obeyed a God fully deserving of my devotion. Instead, I began to see Christians as a bunch of confused maniacs hell bent on world domination and destruction, both political and environmental, in order that they might initiate the end of the world and the return of their ‘lord,’ the magic carpenter zombie.
Chapter Two:
When I was a kid, there was this Frosted Flakes ice hockey ad that was always on. There’s this nice kid – we’ll call him Billy – who’s playing ice hockey, and he shoots the puck, and it misses the net. The other team makes fun of him. “Ha-ha Billy, you suck at hockey.” He’s dejected. But fortunately, between periods, Tony is ready with a bowl of Frosted Flakes, which ‘Bring Out the Tiger in You!’ After Billy eats the sugary breakfast cereal, he scores a goal, and everyone is happy. Except for the other team, who lost, because they didn’t have Frosted Flakes in their dressing room. That, or the fact that they didn’t have an athletic cartoon tiger playing centre ice. Which – inexplicably – Billy’s team of twelve year olds does.
Chapter Three:
Every kid has a hero. When I was a kid, the typical heroes included Batman, Spiderman, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordon, and Michelangelo: from the Ninja Turtles, not the Renaissance. MC Hammer had to be up there, too. Maybe this is why legions of young people seem so lazy, so boring, and so morally ‘askew.’ Instead of revering saints or geniuses or warriors, we idolized guys who dressed in fancy costumes, ate lots of pizza, or did the moonwalk.
Chapter Four:
Why is this happening? Nick Naylor said that everyone’s got a mortgage to pay, and in our relativist culture of loose morals and even looser spending habits, this can justify just about anything. He calls it the “Yuppie Nuremburg defense.” “99 percent of everything done in the world, good or bad, is done to pay a mortgage.” As the renowned thinker P Diddy once said, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.” Kids are big business. If you teach them to want something bad enough to whine for it incessantly, you can make a lot of money. And this has become the go-to strategy for the Machiavellian corporate princes that control our economy. When a society sees the bottom line of success in economic terms, people are treated as a means to that end. But what happens when people are treated like things? Depression. Suicide. Manic behavior. Narcissism. Drug addiction. A culture of children who look, talk, and act like adults, but never learned to grow up, because they were never taught how.
Chapter Five:
In The Sims there are some questions you ask and some you don’t. You may ask ‘how’ type questions. For instance, “How do I (as in, your Sim) get a girlfriend?” or “How do I impress my neighbors?” These are relevant questions. These questions have simple answers. You buy expensive shoes, clothes, watches, and televisions. You garden. You treat people politely, and try to get along as best you can. This is the meaning of life. Basically, you try to be Canadian.
Chapter Six:
In my blurry recollection of history, this is how men settled things: with clubs, or swords, or guns, or fast cars. Exactly when we became ‘civilized’ and stopped doing such things, I don’t know. But I do know that, however violent they were, such actions were a vital part of the human experience. One was compelled to face his fears, rally his courage, and stand tall for his beliefs, no matter how trivial. One learned to stare into death’s penetrating eyes, and hold a level gaze. In moments like these, I imagine you’d feel truly alive. This is why I hate tolerance. Nobody stands up for what they believe anymore. Nobody fights. Nobody argues. We’ve all but forgotten how.
Chapter Seven:
This permeating attitude of self-entitlement is like the signature of my peer group, who’ve been taught by advertisers and TV role models that life is easy, that we deserve the best. This orthodoxy is easy enough to believe at university, because there, life is easy. And we like to pretend that it will be this way forever. But it won’t. That’s why I think they should take down all those nauseating self-empowerment posters and put up a giant picture of Simon Cowell staring down at you with that trademark, “You suck at life” look, over a caption that read’s “Don’t believe in yourself, because you are just a dumb kid.”
Chapter Eight:
I suppose The Simpsons’ popularity is partly due to their gloriously cruel depiction of middle class America. It’s comforting to those of us that never quite plumbed the depths of our potential, those of us still languishing in life’s bush league, to observe a family that is infinitely more embarrassing than ours. It resonates with Joe Briefcase and his band of underachievers, because we, like Homer and Marge, are basically disappointed in life. We aren’t living the dream. We’ve settled for watching other people live our dreams for us, onscreen. We’re stuck in middle class suburbia with a couple of kids before we know it. Working a dead end job, drinking too much, watching too much television, growing fat and old and dumb and bored. We make due with what we have, find entertainment in what we can, and squeeze as much joy from life’s fruit as a night at Applebee’s will permit. In watching The Simpsons, we are relieved for a few moments from the concerns imposed by our own failures and embarrassments, and are free to laugh at someone else’s.
Chapter Nine:
This is why the notion of dying in a plane crash is so hilarious. At least, to nature it must seem a bit funny. As funny as something as grisly as a plane crash can be. Because what sort of ‘gods’ die in such a manner as this: betrayed by their own creation? As much as we think we are becoming like God, who can control nature at his whim, we can’t. We are still humans. Poor, pitiable, depraved, selfish, mortal… humans. Still slaves to our fate. Still prone to disaster. Still clueless as to the meaning of life and how to achieve happiness. Still the only species that finds it necessary to bitch and moan about cell phone coverage at 25,000 feet.
Chapter Ten:
I’ve wanted to visit this place since I was, like, five. I’ve dreamt about it. This has been my life-goal. To visit this modern day utopia: this earthly attempt at heaven. The place “Where Dreams Come True!” I’ve come expecting the world, because this is what was promised me by countless advertisements and inspiring testimonials. I’ve come to live. To touch fingers with my childhood heroes. To recapture the imagination and emotion and excitement that once overflowed in my youth. I’ve come to escape the confining routine of the everyday, and like Peter Pan or Pinocchio, jump headfirst into a land of fantasy. And the anti-consumerist conscience that has been drilled into my psyche by repetitive viewings of this particular film won’t shut up. Tyler won’t shut up. He’s ruining it for me. “This is your life, and it’s ending, one minute at a time.”
Chapter Eleven:
To a little kid, there isn’t even a choice. Being righteous is the only option. You don’t sell out your beliefs, or turn your back on friends and mentors. You do what is right, no matter the consequences. Luke has not been bred into listless surrender to life’s darker realities by an unforgiving barrage of peer pressure, coercive propaganda and sense-destroying theme park rides. Even amongst tragedy, he has still retained a measure of innocence, and has not defaulted to the usual position of doing what it takes to survive. He still believes in something greater than himself. This kind of behavior, like the presence of Ewoks and happy endings, is much more plausible to the mind of an eight-year-old than it is to grown ups.
This is because little kids still believe that life is inherently good, and in order to be a hero, you mustn’t compromise your dreams or your beliefs for something as trivial as odds of survival. That’s why, to children, revolution is easy. To children, revolution isn’t a war. It’s a game.
