A broken clock is correct twice a day, so the adage goes. I think I’m correct at least as often, possibly, hopefully, more. The other day I had an epiphany, of sorts, and shared it on Facebook. It went as follows: A person is mostly ignorant. People are ignorance compounded. Government is evidence of people’s hubris.
Tag: control
Band-Aid Solutions Are Lame and Nature is the Answer
The violations that plague us don’t come out of thin air one day. It is the result of the culmination of traumas inflicted onto us from day one (and actually before, while we are still in the womb) of entering into a world that profits and runs off of others people’s trauma. We literally live and operate in a place that is rooted in trauma and carries out traumatizing rituals on its most vulnerable people. So long as we passively accept these cultural narratives and practices, we cannot and should not expect better from our society.
Idealism Is Different From Ideology
Some people and organizations feel they have to make a choice between idealism and dry pragmatism. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of them is the false equivalency of idealistic behavior and ideological behavior. To be idealistic is to strive for the good, the just, the beautiful. Idealists aim for a better…
The Deviousness of “Have To”
“Have to” is one of those phrases that I only began thinking critically about when we travelled further along our unschooling journey. A major theme in radical unschooling is the removal of rules and obligations, and replaced with principles and choices. “Have to” often implies unchosen obligations, and can be, but is not always, incompatible with respecting your children’s autonomy and preferences.
All Bad Guys are Politicians, and Vice Versa
There are only two ways of interacting with others: the economic means, where both of you come out ahead, and the political means, where one “wins” at the expense of the other. The political means is acting through archation rather than respecting the rights of those with whom you are interacting. Politics is cheating.
“Welcome to Our Future”
A friend recently told me something scary and … sad. Something I am still trying to digest and ponder. Something which haunts me. He recently participated in mock “job interviews” of some college journalism students. One of the questions he asked them was “What’s the purpose of government?”.
“Avengers: Infinity War” Is A Cosmic Battle of Individualism vs. Collectivism
Thanos’ collectivism expresses itself in a backwards view of the world which many viewers may not immediately catch on to. Despite the film’s scenes on the devastated and once-populated Titan (which attempt to make Thanos’ mission seem sympathetic and reasonable) there are literally zero cases where eliminating half of a population by genocide improves productivity and wellbeing for the other half.
Adherence to the Constitution, or Not?
U.S. conservatives generally make a fetish of, among other things, strict federal immigration policy and strong support of the Constitution. It never seems to occur to them that these two positions are inconsistent, given that the Constitution gives no power whatsoever to Congress in regard to immigration controls. So, federal immigration policy of any kind is unconstitutional.
Freedom Begins in the Mind
There is no such thing as a ‘free country’ or a ‘free state’ because freedom is not an attribute of a country or a state. There are free individuals and a group of free individuals could comprise a free society, but freedom is fundamentally incompatible with centralized or even external governance. Stop wasting your time trying to create a free country and focus on actually being free.
Government: The God of Statism
AronRa, a popular outspoken atelatheist, whose work (in general) I love, defines a religion as “a faith-based belief system, including the notion that some element of self, be it memories or consciousness …a soul, perhaps… continues beyond the death of the physical body; transcends and survives that…”. I see no mention of belief in a god being a requirement for something to be a religion. But, do they really not believe in a god?