Unlike climate change, this event and its consequences are not matters of speculation; the future that will follow the elections is, in its main outlines, as predictable as anything in human life can be.
Tag: future
Remember
In my life, I have seen the sky full of war planes, a polio epidemic, Vietnam, McCarthyism, Watergate (and subsequent scandals), Kent State, urban race riots, military adventurism (read quagmirism), 911, the seeds of past wars becoming the weeds of future wars. We have survived. We are surviving.
Yes, Things Have Been This Bad Before; In Fact, They’ve Been Far Worse
The president of the United States is fear-mongering over the approach of a convoy of Latin American immigrants to get his “base” to the polls. His Democratic opponents are pretending that every Republican voter is a potential mail-bomber, for the same purpose.
What is Work?
That’s a deceptively hard question. It’s also of crucial importance. There isn’t one right answer, but there is YOUR right answer. Finding and defining your relationship to work is a huge component to fulfillment that almost everyone neglects.
Victory Against Evil Is Never Final
I was talking with some church friends last night about the frustrating cycle of history found in the Biblical stories. People turn to violence and injustice and fall to violence and injustice again and again, cycle after cycle. It’s really depressing. If you look more broadly, you can find the same cycle of failure and redemption and new failure in stories and in history. We see the same evils coming back again and again. And there is no guarantee that good done now will obviously last forever.
The Taylor Series
The concept of a Taylor Series is the idea that no matter how chaotic something, taken as a whole, might be, there are parts of it that are well behaved. Then taken as a whole again, a collection of well behaved parts, the whole something is well behaved.
Trump’s Middle East Delusions Persist
“There are no perfect solutions.” This is true. Past injustices can never be fully rectified. But “solutions” can be closer to or further from perfection, and we know which Team Trump’s solution will be.
The Conclusion Comes Last
Discovering and doing what you love is analogous to dating. Before getting on bended knee to propose to a beautiful stranger, it might be wiser to flirt first and see where that goes.
On Mortality and Children
Today, I didn’t listen to any podcasts or audiobooks or music. I just walked in silence. The cemetery air was a little heavier than usual, and I got to thinking about mortality. It only took me a few minutes of initial discomfort to come to terms with my own mortality. It took me a little more time and discomfort to come to terms with the mortality of my wife and peers. Then an awful thought popped into my head. My children will die someday. I can’t begin to explain how dreadfully this hit me.
On Economic Growth
There is one overriding theme to everything I’ve learned about economics and economic growth: the importance of secure property rights.