My Seasonal List

“Finding the Challenges” is an original column appearing every other Wednesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Verbal Vol. Verbal is a software engineer, college professor, corporate information officer, life long student, farmer, libertarian, literarian, student of computer science and self-ordering phenomena, pre-TSA world traveler, domestic traveler. Archived columns can be found here. FTC-only RSS feed available here.

I would like …

  • an explanation for prospective war that is not an insult to the adult inquirer,
  • an expectation that no one even vaguely like the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen, will ever darken the doors of national bureaucracy again,
  • a promise that there will be no more televised debates among politicians running for the office of POTUS.  If I want to be lied to, I will go find a crackhead who needs money,
  • that I will continue to be a lifelong learner,
  • that I will continue to learn from my children, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren,
  • that I can keep on sharing ideas with my descendants that will be useful to them,
  • for there to be people who continue to do critical thinking,
  • for there to be people who can point out my filters so that I can reconsider whether they are still giving me good information,
  • that there will still be rugby, the sport,
  • that there will still be interscholastic cross-country meets, with lots of bright colors and beautiful autumn weather,
  • that I can remember the essence of Catch-22 better this time than when I read it the first time 50 years earlier,
  • to discover at least a dozen new philosophical minds and/or views in the coming year,
  • that I will encounter many more opportunities to absorb wisdom from H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Lysander Spooner, Murray Rothbard, George Carlin, Stephen Colbert. Louis CK, Robert Higgs, Tom Woods, Skyler Collins, and Scott Horton.
  • for there to be another spring, summer, fall, and winter,
  • more Mozart,
  • more new understanding of Alan Turing,
  • more outside-the-box technology ideas, from all quarters,
  • more colorful sunsets,
  • that Frank Sinatra will not be forgotten,
  • that Tony Bennett will keep on making duets,
  • never to forget Occam’s Razor,
  • to over-simplify, infrequently,
  • to understand complexity,
  • being more understanding of the past,
  • living in the present,
  • not fearing and not trying to control the future,
  • to recognize that the state is less of a problem than those who believe it can make problems go away,
  • recognizing that the lion’s share of climate change, in whatever direction it goes, will likely take place outside the circle of human control and central planning,
  • for people to see that science is never done, therefore it can never be settled,
  • at least another year, and longer is better, before the Great Yellowstone Volcano does its thing,
  • for the Segway to really amount to something significant,
  • that there be no tidal waves or tsunamis for awhile,
  • for the fourth estate to find honest work,
  • to take some more trips, with one being to Ireland,
  • to see some new lighthouses,
  • to have a pleasant experience with TSA, such as surviving their disbanding,
  • fewer hairballs from our lovely cats,
  • more time with cats, woodpeckers, dogs, horses, deer, turtles, and rabbits,
  • less propaganda,
  • to have more trips to places like the Waccamaw River tidal basin, the Thousand Islands, Newport RI, the Poconos in the Fall, scenic railroads, Block Island, and the Low Country.
  • for more statists to understand what anarchy and chaos mean.  The former means without rulers (not without rules) and the latter means the orderly transition (obeying all natural rules) between one system of order and another.  Both terms deal with natural dynamic change,
  • that our children will come to learn voluntarily what anarchy and chaos mean, and how they relate to freedom,
  • that we, as voluntaryists, understand the bewilderment of statists, patiently showing the way, not bossing, not intervening, not bullying, not despairing, not arguing.
  • acknowledging that we can let the children learn, therefore we can let the people learn.
  • more ANZAC cookies, and creme brulee,
  • that my memories will be treasurable, and that the sorrows will reside in context,
  • that I will have memories,
  • usability,
  • because it is critical, remembering that debates don’t have winners and losers,
  • that I will treat those I love as though differences don’t have winners and losers, …

As Cliff Arquette used to say, “It goes on.”


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