Scott Adams passed away
yesterday, a not altogether unexpected eventuality. I started to listen to his
podcast Coffee with Scott Adams shortly before his announcement about
his prostate cancer; before I had been amused by his creation Dilbert
for years. The only reason I stopped getting the Dilbert collections was
because my financial straits stopped me from buying them, and when I could
again, I was so far behind it seemed too hard to catch up, and I had sold the
couple I had. I had no interest in his self-help books because I really don’t
do self-help books. Only when I became interested in his podcast on advice did
I dip my toe in that water. I found him a warm, dry, intelligent presence, and
I came to rely on him for company during my mornings.
He came along with some
baggage, of course, as his opponents were trying to ‘reframe’ him as a racist,
misogynist bigot as a justification for his cancellation as a cartoonist. Perhaps
the real reason behind it was his mild, rational support of Trump, a refusal to
follow the liberal narrative. He was constantly evolving. He went from
proposing a pandeistic theory of God and the universe to, in his last days, a
qualified acceptance of Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, somewhat on the
strength of Pascal’s Wager. He went from hotly advocating the legality of
assisted suicide (in the wake of his father’s painful and prolonged passing) to rejecting it
for himself and becoming a shining example of grace under suffering and death.
Here is a more thorough
account of the details, stitched together from Wikipedia and various other
sources. It may be a little early (Adams himself often advocated for waiting
for further information before blathering out an opinion) but here goes.
Scott Raymond Adams (June
8, 1957 – January 13, 2026) was an American author and cartoonist. He was the
creator of the Dilbert comic strip and
nonfiction works of business, commentary, and satire.
Adams worked in various
corporate roles before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. By the
mid-1990s, Dilbert, created in 1989, had gained national prominence
in the United States and began to reach a worldwide audience, remaining popular
throughout the following decades and spawning several books written by Adams.
In the mid-2010s, Adams emerged as an independent commentator of events and
politics.
He wrote in a satirical way
about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in
corporations. In addition, Adams wrote books in various other areas, including
the pandeistic spiritual
novella God's Debris and
books on political and management topics, including Loserthink.
God's Debris: A Thought
Experiment is a 2001 novella by Dilbert creator Scott
Adams. The introduction disclaims any personal views held by
the author, "The opinions and philosophies expressed by the characters are
not my own, except by coincidence in a few spots not worth mentioning."
God's Debris espouses
a philosophy based on the idea that
the simplest explanation tends to be the best. The book proposes a form
of pandeism and monism,
postulating that an omnipotent God
annihilated Itself in the Big
Bang,
because an omniscient entity would already
know everything possible except Its own lack of existence, and exists now as
the smallest units of matter and
the law of probability, or "God's
debris".
The book subscribes to
the Lakoffian point of view,
in that the mind is viewed as a "delusion generator" rather than a
window to true understanding. As George
Lakoff said: "Our ordinary conceptual system, in
terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in
nature." The particular philosophy espoused has been identified as a form
of pandeism,
the concept that a god created the universe by becoming the universe.
The Religion War
is a 2004 novel by Dilbert creator Scott
Adams, and the sequel to his novella God's Debris.
This book takes place right before the last chapter of that book. Adams has
asserted that it is his two religion-themed novels, and not Dilbert,
that “will be his ultimate legacy.”
In February 2023, Dilbert was
dropped by numerous newspapers and its distributor, Andrews McMeel Syndication,
after Adams made [supposed] racist comments on his Real Coffee YouTube channel,
which he defended as hyperbole.
Scott Adams has explained
his controversial 2023 comments, in which he referred to Black people as a
"hate group" and advised white people to "get the hell
away" from them, by stating they were hyperbole intended to spark
a productive conversation about race relations. He claimed his words were
taken out of context and that his larger point was misunderstood.
Context of the Remarks
During a February 2023
episode of his YouTube show, Adams was discussing a Rasmussen Reports poll that
asked people if they agreed with the statement, "It's OK to be
white". According to the poll, 53% of Black respondents agreed, but 26%
disagreed and 21% were unsure. Adams focused on the percentage that did not
agree with the statement.
Adams quoted the poll
results, stating that if nearly half of Black people are not okay with white
people, that constitutes a hate group, and he wanted nothing to do with them.
He then advised white people to "get the hell away from Black people,"
stating there was no fixing the situation.
He relaunched Dilbert
as a webcomic on
his Locals website
and continued to be active on social media until his death in 2026.
A Final Message From Scott
Adams:
If you are reading this,
things did not go well for me. I have a few things to say before I go. My body
failed before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this, January 1st, 2026.
If you wonder about any of my choices for my estate, or anything else, please
know I am free of any coercion or inappropriate influence of any sort. I
promise. Next, many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before
I go. I'm not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation for
doing so looks attractive. So, here I go: I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and
savior, and I look forward to spending an eternity with him. The part about me
not being a believer should be quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won't
need any more convincing than that. And I hope I am still qualified for entry. With
your permission, I'd like to explain something about my life.
For the first part of my
life, I was focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent, as a way to
find meaning. That worked. But marriages don't always last forever, and mine
eventually ended, in a highly amicable way. I'm grateful for those years and
for the people I came to call my family. Once the marriage unwound, I needed a
new focus. A new meaning. And so I donated myself to "the world,"
literally speaking the words out loud in my otherwise silent home. From that
point on, I looked for ways I could add the most to people's lives, one way or
another. That marked the start of my evolution from Dilbert cartoonist to an
author of — what I hoped would be — useful books. By then, I believed I had
amassed enough life lessons that I could start passing them on. I continued
making Dilbert comics, of course. As luck would have it, I'm a good writer. My
first book in the "useful" genre was How to Fail at Almost
Everything and Still Win Big. That book turned out to be a huge success,
often imitated, and influencing a wide variety of people. I still hear every
day how much that book changed lives. My plan to be useful was working.
I followed up with my
book Win Bigly, that trained an army of citizens how to be more
persuasive, which they correctly saw as a minor super power. I know that book
changed lives because I hear it often. You'll probably never know the impact
the book had on the world, but I know, and it pleases me while giving me a
sense of meaning that is impossible to describe. My next book, Loserthink,
tried to teach people how to think better, especially if they were displaying
their thinking on social media. That one didn't put much of a dent in the
universe, but I tried. Finally, my book Reframe Your Brain taught
readers how to program their own thoughts to make their personal and
professional lives better. I was surprised and delighted at how much positive
impact that book is having. I also started podcasting a live show called Coffee
With Scott Adams, dedicated to helping people think about the world, and
their lives, in a more productive way. I didn't plan it this way, but it ended
up helping lots of lonely people find a community that made them feel less
lonely. Again, that had great meaning for me.
I had an amazing life. I
gave it everything I had. If you got any benefits from my work, I'm asking you
to pay it forward as best you can. That is the legacy I want.
Be useful.
And please know I loved you
all to the end.
Scott Adams
Scott Adams materials that
have passed through my hands:
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