As my family has traveled the country and met or stayed with other voluntaryists and unschoolers, I can’t help but notice certain general customs among people and families of this kind. Without putting anybody in a box or limiting how it is expressed or experienced, here is the voluntaryist ethnicity as I’ve seen it.
Tag: business
Why Unschoolers Grow Up to Be Entrepreneurs
Almost by definition, entrepreneurs are creative thinkers and experimental doers. They reject the status quo and devise new approaches and better inventions. They are risk-takers and dreamers, valuing ingenuity over convention. They get things done. It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that many unschoolers become entrepreneurs.
White People Should Call Each Other “Nigga”
I’m a big believer in the idea that people give words their power. If “fuck” is said often by a three-year-old (which in my house, it is) then it loses its power. It’s just a fun thing to say, and when used non-playfully, it just doesn’t have as much bite. And isn’t that a good thing? Don’t we disarm pricks just a little bit by softening the meaning of the words they want to use against us?
Navigating around The Robots
If I’m out riding my bike it is my responsibility to not let the cars run over me. I can say it is the other drivers’ responsibility to watch out for me, but where will that get me? Dead.
You Don’t Need to Make a Career out of Everything You Love
The people who tell you to “do what you love” have always been right. After all, what’s the alternative? Refusing to do what you love? Where you’ll go wrong, however, is if you make the mistake of equating “do what you love” with “find a way to get paid for every single thing you love or else you’re wasting your time.” Whatever you do, don’t do that.
They Will Not Leave You Alone
If you were to find some place in the middle of nowhere in the woods, where no one was living, on land no one was using, which types of people would leave you in peace, and which would feel justified intruding into your life and initiating violence against you?
By Leaving People Alone
Questions: How will children be educated? How will people get health care? How will business fluctuations be prevented or moderated? How will people get personal security? How will people receive income when they can no longer work? How will the society’s distressed and disabled receive support and care?
Holy Pole Quilt, or Else!
A guy who lives across the street from my parents assumed I would be on his side. A new convenience store/truck stop in the area apparently doesn’t fly Holy Pole Quilt. This offends the man.
The Public Face of the Rulers
They get up every morning and take a warm shower. They dress in clean business suits and ties. They speak — most of the time — in calm, measured, seemingly reasonable tones. They appear to be normal, respectable people.
The Job Skills That Will Be Essential in 20 Years (Aren’t What You Think)
It will be the things which technology can’t really teach you that will be in short supply. It will be all the things which are essential for business but which are psychologically uncomfortable.They will be the interpersonal and “soft” human skills that everything in our world is training us to lose. And because those things power innovation and make the world work, they will be highly valuable to have on your side.