Any person has two sources of stimuli by which she gains knowledge, the experiential and the referential. And in both sources, there are granules of true or false information — code versus noise.
Tag: family
When It’s Time to Opt-Out of Institutions
As September rolls along, you may be having your own stopwatch moment. Maybe all is not quite right at your child’s school. Maybe you keep being reassured that it will get better, that this is just the way it is, that everything is fine. But maybe you keep sensing that timer.
To Do Great Damage
Probably the most significant of the reasons why the state won’t lose its powers is that the great majority of people everywhere want it to have those powers. They also want, of course, the state to use its powers in ways that feather their nests and make life miserable for people they dislike.
How To Be A Successful Edupreneur
Newsflash: Whether you run XYZ learning center or Nike, you are creating a value proposition for your clients that hinges on relationship-building and positive experiences. Relationships and positivity are not unique to non-profit edupreneurs. Clients are paying you for a product. This is a free-market exchange.
Are We Sure It Can’t It Happen Here?
One runs a risk whenever one cites the 20th century’s great terror states while discussing current ominous developments in the western democracies. Apparent comparisons of the United States or western and central European countries to Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia will inevitably be hooted down with accusations of alarmist conspiracy-mongering and worse, shameful ahistoricity. Nevertheless, that must not keep us from noticing and pointing to contemporary events that bear an eerie resemblance, however slight, to things that went on in those totalitarian terror states.
Enough Problems without Government
The threat posed by belief in government is greater in some areas but seems unavoidable everywhere, and that’s insane. Getting away from government is part of the reason the frontier has been historically popular, and without a frontier or other state-free spaces, there’s a ticking time bomb that can’t be defused. Society will eventually pay a price it can’t afford.
Identity and Social Constructs
I pity most people who get lost in identity. These are people pigeonholing themselves. These are people who can’t accept themselves. These are people who can’t negotiate who they are and how they feel with society and so they abandon themselves and opt to become an artificial construct.
The Joy of Familiar Strangers
We have lots of different kinds of relationships in life, from close family to extended family to close friends to acquaintances. But there’s another kind of relationship which is underrated: familiar strangers.
Prosperity: Maybe Not What I Thought It Meant
I’ve always thought of “prosperity” as having an abundance of material wealth, and that seems to be consistent with popular usage. However, my thinking here has been going through some changes lately.
Stop Criminalizing Parenthood
Today it seems that childhood freedom has gone the way of afternoon paper routes. Both are relics of an earlier time, when kids were allowed—expected even—to be outside, unsupervised, playing with friends around the neighborhood, riding bikes, mowing lawns, walking dogs, and a whole host of other common childhood activities.