Before I started Zen Habits, I was in a place in my life where I had a beautiful family, but I was stuck and dissatisfied with myself. I knew I wanted to change things — my health, finances, job, way that I was approaching life — but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do about any of it. Most of the time, I just ignored all of this, and distracted myself. I didn’t have any clarity on what I wanted or what I needed to do.
Tag: change
Coronavirus and the World As You Know It
It’s a strange thing, knowing about the oncoming coronavirus. I realize it will infect a great many people. And I realize that it may make things like convenient grocery runs a thing of the past. I realize this bright beautiful place of commerce and civilization may be emptied, or may be shut down.
Open Borders: Think of the Children
I love to see kids reading Open Borders. When my daughter was five, she read it over my shoulder as I wrote it – and I knew I was right to make it a graphic novel. Since then, I’ve heard about dozens of kids enjoying the book. When I advertise it and add #ThinkOfTheChildren, I’m not joking. I really would like to put Open Borders in the hands of every kid on Earth.
Natural Law, Fictions, Context
In this post, we will examine 3 related areas of discussion. They are related in that general failures to understand them are the sources of most (if not all) of our problems in the history, and pre-history, of the Sapiens species. Natural law governs everything in the real world, but we need to create fictions to draw meaning among the events of natural law. And we need to understand context to have more precise knowledge among the consequences of natural law interacting with human adaptation.
Socialism: Playing With Fire
How should the best socialists react when they discover that a new socialist experiment is about to start? “With dread” is the only sensible answer. After all, the best socialists don’t merely know the horrifying history of the Soviet Union and Maoist China. The best socialists also know the psychotic sociology of the typical socialist, who savors the revolutionary “honeymoon” until the horror becomes too blatant to deny.
Peter Gray: How Humans Learn (2h6m)
This episode features an interview of evolutionary psychologist, research professor, and author Peter Gray from 2020 by John Papola, host of the Emergent Order podcast. They discuss the worlds of developmental and evolutionary psychology, the way that the education system has changed, the origins of school, and much more. The conversation surrounds Peter’s personal experience with the education system through his son, which is what led him to studying development and education.
American Fictionalists
It is both fun and informative to consider lists. To debate the list is a sign that you have engaged with someone who knows what she is talking about. This morning, I asked Google to find web pages that opined as to whom might be included on a list of the greatest American fictionalists (novelists,…
Politics is Still Stupid
The combination of Public Choice theory, which explains how politics works and why it doesn’t, and understanding social change, plus lived experience of working in politics, policy, education, and finally entrepreneurship have made it abundantly clear to me that politics is at best a ridiculous spectator sport. At worst a terrible addiction that makes you an asshole and a moron all at once.
Is Nature Delicate or Resilient?
At any one snapshot of time, the balance is complex and apparently precarious. Big change can result from small changes. But when you unpause the scene and observe through time, the self-correcting and adaptive nature of the systems turns out to be a more powerful force than any insurgence at any single moment.
Dumb Activist vs the Mountainmen
One year during the mountainman rendezvous I was attending somewhere in the Rockies, a guy wearing cut-offs and mud (the mud was apparently intentional) suddenly rode his dirt bike into camp and into the rather active shooting range, between the shooters and their targets. Shooting paused. Mountainmen grumbled, laughed, and watched to see what the idiot would do next.