What is the purpose of a snowflake? While this is a question I circle back to many times in TCS, I would like to answer it a bit more literally and personally. What was my purpose in writing TCS in the first place? What was I trying to accomplish?
Before I wrote TCS, before I wrote any of my philosophical works (most of which have yet to see the light of day) I spent a good 15 years developing my personal philosophy. I devoured just about any book on religion and spirituality I could get my hands on, from ancient classics like the Bible, the Bhagavat Gita, and the Tao Te Ching to modern writers like Neale Donald Walsch, James Redfield, and Richard Bach. In doing this, I noticed a pattern. Most ancient spiritual writings are simple. They rely on repetition, patterns, stories, and allegories to get their points across. They tend to use simpler language, yet they are not shallow. On the contrary, they usually have multiple layers of meaning and leave themselves open to a certain degree of interpretation. They can be understood on the simplest level by children, yet can be delved deeper into by older believers.
On the other hand, most modern spiritual writings tend to be thick, heavy-handed things that assume a certain degree of maturity on the part of the reader. I would never dump Ram Dass or Eckhart Tolle into the lap of anyone under the age of 18 or so, for example. Yet by the time someone is an adult or near enough, they already have some degree of a philosophical framework, usually one they inherited from their parents, so there is an unlearning that they need to go into in order to appreciate these new ideas. Very little New Age writing is geared towards a younger reader or a beginner. There are a few exceptions, The Little Soul and the Sun by Mr. Walsch comes immediately to mind, but they are far from the rule.
That, obviously, is where I want TCS to come in.
I intend TCS to be a primer, an introduction to what I call Unity Theory. It covers the basic tenets of my philosophy: the Oneness of all things, the lack of a judgmental Deity or afterlife, the rough outlines of reincarnation, the purpose of life being experience, the (admittedly controversial) idea that good and bad are human concepts and not external absolutes. But I try to do this in such a way that even children can understand them.
The world, as it stands now, is not a true reflection of what we as humans desire. Our concepts of self, of right and wrong, and our priorities are out of phase with our actions. We, as a species, are behaving in ways that are self-destructive and run counter to what we as a species actually want: love in our lives, health in our bodies, connection with others, and a sense of purpose. The only way I feel this can change is if we change our core thinking about our relationship to each other and to all of existence, and this can only happen if we start teaching different core values from the earliest age. Do I think TCS fits this bill? Of course not, I am not that arrogant. But I believe it is one small step in the right direction.
James C. Struck: Author of The Curious Snowflake 