Justice and restoration for the marginalized people of our culture has (rightly) become a cause many of my fellow young people are championing. But I can’t help but feel frustration sometimes. There’s something that feels terribly “off” about some strains of this impulse, which shows up in the virtue signalling and “social justice warrioring” that comes along with the impulse for justice.
Author: James Walpole
James Walpole is a writer, startup marketer, intellectual explorer, and perpetual apprentice. He opted out of college to join the Praxis startup apprenticeship program and currently manages marketing and communications at bitcoin payment technology company BitPay. He writes daily at jameswalpole.com.
What Will Your “Back In My Day” Be Like?
Have you stopped lately to consider what stories you’ll be telling your children when you’re 40? Your grandchildren when you’re 80? This is a useful thought exercise. If you are in your teens, 20s, or 30s now, it makes you think about what you’re doing. And if you do not have a good answer, you might want to do something about it.
Feeling Progress vs. the Pride of Having Progressed
One of the healthiest feelings in the world is the feeling you get when you are growing toward a goal, toward unity, toward integrity, toward excellence, truth, and beauty. One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is the feeling of having progressed. Choose the former.
How People Become Experts
Depending on how many times you choose curiosity in any given track – computers, hardware, building, gardening, painting, etc – you can either become an expert or become someone who relies on experts. There’s no shame in either, but think about how you’re reacting to problems. Your curiosity or passivity now will shape your future.
Create (and Keep) a Volunteer Culture
Some of my favorite memories of working at my company include the chores that “weren’t my job”: moving boxes, ordering lunch, restocking the fridge, doing A/Vs setup, doing customer support, even sitting at the front desk.
I Kinda Understand Ancestor Worship Now
I remember first hearing about the ancestor worship practiced in some world cultures. I was bemused – clearly this was a silly superstition – one of the sillier religious beliefs that wasn’t mine. But now the phenomenon of ancestor worship is starting to make a little more sense as I get older.
Keep Some Self-Sufficiency In Your Life
I used to dream about becoming “self-sufficient” – growing and making most everything myself. And I put in a good amount of daydreaming time and real work toward that, raising all kinds of poultry, growing a garden, reading books on farm skills. Then I learned economics.
Redeem the Evil Days
Have you ever wondered how our time will be remembered? You start to ask this question a lot if you’ve read a lot of history. The passage of time can either paint a positive or negative picture of how you and your fellow humans spent your time and your lives.
Moral Philosophy and Deer Hunting
Set aside the ethics of hunting itself, and you find that within the act of hunting, there’s a whole world of right and wrong. Tonight I sat in a tower stand for hours without seeing any activity from the deer population. Then, right as darkness fell, three deer came out. All of a sudden I had some decisions to make.
Life Is a Trading Game
Once upon a time, there was a man who traded a red paperclip for a car. Now granted, he went through a lot of intermediary trades to get there – from paperclip to pen, pen to something else, and so on. He traded up. Not all of us are as savvy at bartering. But in a sense we all are playing a trading game in life itself.