Cory Doctorow wants to save the world.

I just finished reading Makers, Doctorow’s (fictional) treatise on the entrepreneurial spirit and the effects of a free (ish) market in a microcosm, or rather, the effects of the entrepreneurial spirit when said spirit ignores the “rules” imposed by outside forces. If you haven’t read this surprisingly addictive narrative, I highly recommend it. It’s a good story, after all, full of love and friendship and enough business and gadget ideas to float the average innovator for a few lifetimes.

What I liked about Makers is what it wasn’t: It was neither a utopian nor dystopian paradise (it was too realistic for that, too aware of the problems we now face, and too honest about them), and the emphasis was largely on the small, the individual, rather than a diatribe of how, if we’re not careful, centralized bureaucracies and/or megacorporations will take over the world. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Makers was an up close and personal look at how individuals operate within a given market, how their reach can be extended by the use of sharing (e.g. open-source) technologies, or broken by stifling regulations, and how owner-operated businesses have the potential to realize real change for the most marginalized members of a given society.

In other words, Makers outlines one way in which humanity can help itself to a better future.

Like I said. Doctorow wants to save the world.

As a fellow libertarian (albeit a right-leaning one, as opposed to Doctorow’s left-leaning ideologies), I found quite a bit of food for thought within the pages of the manifesto that is, whether intentionally or not, Makers. What would the world be like if intellectual property weren’t so jealously guarded? If innovators were free of the stifling burdens of government regulation? If those on the fringes of society were given (or could manufacture) the tools they need in order to survive? Makers covers all of that and much, much more.

Doctorow’s stories are full of ideas and the optimistic idealism of a man who deeply believes in his cause.

And that brings me to a recent revelation of mine. I’m not going to go into the backstory, but suffice it to say that I recently realized that it’s much easier to change people’s minds through fiction than through non-fiction. There’s something about the fictional narrative that allows us to suspend our own beliefs for a few moments and immerse ourselves in someone else’s viewpoint. In fact, that’s the very function of story, to allow us to vicariously and safely live outside our normal, everyday experiences.

Want to know whether you could survive the Zombie Apocalypse? There’s a story for that. (Ok, there are a lot of stories for that.) How about a vampire bite? A trip through space? Being stranded on the moon, or on the event horizon of a black hole, or alone in a house with a serial killer just a phone call away? Yup, we can live all of those scenarios through story.

People resist having deeply held beliefs challenged through the direct confrontation of articles or op-eds or whatnot, however factual; indeed, such confrontations, even when non-adversarial in nature, tend to entrench those beliefs rather than changing them.

Ah, but fiction is another story, quite literally. I’m in the middle of writing a blog post about three books that changed the way I view the world, each in different ways. You probably have those stories, too, and they’re not all “message” fiction. Any story that resonates with the reader has the power to change that reader in some way. That’s the power of a well-written narrative.

Which brings me full circle to what Makers is, a treatise on the individual, on small, localized economies (microeconomies, for some), and on change at the intimate, rather than systemic, level (although Makers touches on systemic change as well, particularly as touched off by local change).

While researching dystopian/utopian novels recently, I found a discussion (which I’ve since lost) in which someone asserted that in all of those story worlds, either a massive, centralized, bureaucratized government was at the center of the problems, or a massive, centralized, bureaucratized megacorporation (or a handful of megacorporations) was at the center of the problems, and that society cannot function without one or the other.

That deep-seated and myopic belief explains our current over-reliance on large, centralized governments.

By focusing on individual effort and achievement, Makers provides a fresh perspective on the prevailing viewpoint, as well as a stark reminder that individuals form and direct society, not government. We truly do not need nanny states in order to live safely and happily. In fact, humans lived for millennia without oppressive governments; bureaucracies didn’t come along until the agricultural revolution and the resultant large-scale settlements, and we have regretted inventing them ever since. Indeed, we’ve forgotten that we can rule ourselves without the overweening hand of big government.

“But, but, but…,” I hear you say, and I’m telling you flat out: Wean yourself away from that idea, from the need to have someone else tell you what to do. The more rules we have, the more we rely on gatekeepers and rule makers and infringement punishers; the more we rely on others to dictate our own behavior, the less we police ourselves, the less civilized we are, the less respectful, the less adult.

Govern yourself. It’s really that simple. Be respectful, be kind, be honest. Honor your agreements, don’t promise more than you can deliver, raise your children and grandchildren in the same manner. There you go. Rules for a truly civilized society. Hey, those rules have worked well for a very long time, and you know that saying: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Whatever you do, break away from the idea that the future will be ruled by megagovernments and megacorporations. The future is individual, a rising trend led by “youpreneurs” and modern innovators, by people like Cory Doctorow who aren’t afraid to step up and share their ideas on how we can make the world a better place.

And that’s something to cheer about.

Makers is available everywhere. Seriously. Go to Doctorow’s website to learn more.