Leaving the tribe/the known/the mapped terrain is an essential part of being human. And as long as you know and remember and feel and exercise your right to declare independence and walk away, you won’t find yourself fighting the battles which drain most of us.
Tag: animals
The Relation of Purposelessness to Prosperity
Centuries ago people produced to survive. The journey of survival was the motivating factor, but we evolved to be able to produce and find purpose in that production. We felt value as human beings in providing for ourselves and serving the people and values we care about. Today, our production is seemingly more distanced from our survival and the result is purposelessness.
Three Ways to Become Your Best Self
Although there is no exact definition as to what being your best self means, it can be agreed upon that it means being able to tap into your potentials and use them to a maximum to make a difference to the world around you.
Econ as Anatomy
We shouldn’t let the genuine triumphs of the experimental method overshadow the rest of the field. And we should staunchly resist anyone who uses methodological dogmas to veto well-established truths – or selectively pretend they don’t exist.
Humans are Capable of Both Peace and Violence
People like to debate whether humans are born with either the natural inclination for peace or for violence. I believe this is a false dichotomy. I think history has proven that humans are born with both the natural inclinations for peace and for violence.
Voluntary Law and Order
People are not all the same, and they make different choices because they have different values, circumstances, and levels of understanding. Sometimes those choices are peaceful and wise; sometimes they are not. So what are the best ways to promote good choices and cooperation while preventing and providing resolution for conflict?
Is It Wrong to Eat Some Animals But Not Others?
I just concluded an interesting conversation with someone who I assume is a vegan for ethical reasons. I’m not going to lump all ethical vegans together with this person, but I thought the conversation was instructive on the concept of “wrong.”
Things I Do
Friends and I meet monthly, and we call ourselves, informally, the logic group. The inevitable question came up but what do you do about it? I begin to make a mental list of things I do.
The Liberal Spirit and Its Opposite, Alt-Rightism
Maybe a few self-described libertarians cling to the idea that property is essentially about exclusion, but they are fated to hit a wall: liberalism is a spirit as well as a set of ideas, and it cannot be turned against itself. It fosters human solidarity, not separation. Libertarianism, like its precursor, is an answer to the question: under what conditions do reasoning social animals best flourish? In answering that question the way it has, liberalism offers no home to sowers of division.
I Do Not Want a “Well Behaved” Child
“Whoever wrote this and did the research is confused and did not define terms accurately. I spanked, not hit, all nine of my children and they do not hit. Never have. My grown children are well adjusted, well behaved, loving kids. I receive positive compliments about them often. Spanking is quite misunderstood.”