Nothing is ever stable. Without warning, life demands us to go beyond what we think we can do. These moments test us. We cower away from the strangeness of the new demands, or we prove our worth by acting. Whether we fail or succeed in these spontaneous exams is no matter. What matters is that we are elevated to something better than we were before.
Tag: media
Be Confident Above All Else
A person is more than the knowledge they hold and the body they control. A person is, fundamentally, awareness of themselves. The way you see yourself changes everything about you. Thinking and feeling exactly the way you are is the root of confidence. Anything that strays from the mark of reality will color all your actions.
A Voluntaryist Completes the Proust Questionnaire
Remember the premise, to wit: This would be a good architecture for an interview with a very objective voluntaryist. So I have put myself into the personification of a scholarly, principled, individualist voluntaryist to imagine how honest answers to these questions might look.
Teachers Are Like Cops
If you do exactly what they say and convince yourself that they know better than you … you might think they are good people doing a good thing. Once you choose not to live under the thumb of other people, the people who wish to bully you will show themselves to be bullies.
The Perfect System
Entire industries are built off of this desire to find the perfect system for anything that you have uncertainty about. I know, because I’ve spent a good deal of my life looking for the Perfect System in so many areas. I’ve developed nearly perfect systems in many parts of my life. But today, I’m going to share something I’ve worked years developing: my Perfect System.
What a Perverse Presidential Incentive System!
All I can say is, we’ve got a hell of a political system on our hands when the surest way for a president to win the adoration of those who thought him a dangerous, ignorant, narcissistic, erratic, and bullshitting blowhard yesterday is to drop a bomb or fire a cruise missile today.
A Conversation Between Voluntaryists: Responsible Voting?
One of the best things about voluntaryism is you never know who is a voluntaryist. Kentucky is a big-government, culturally-conservative state, where I was born and raised in. Then I found out I have a like-minded neighbor. Among the radical libertarians who have made the Bluegrass state their home is Kilgore Forelle. Over breakfast we came up with a voluntaryist thesis which we turned into this dialogue here on EVC.
Cognitive Bias #2 — Bandwagon Effect
Just this past Friday, we went to war with heavy reliance on the fact that we are susceptible to the bandwagon effect. We might also refer to this as “monkey see, monkey do” (while adding the cautionary “monkey get in trouble, too.”) We humans can’t seem to resist the spin and flash of a circus bandwagon.
Political Means and Economic Means
There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man…is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others… I propose… to call one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means”… while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the “political means.”
Undone: How to Change Our Procrastination Patterns
Procrastination starts from an avoidance of something from fear, then becomes a pattern that hardens into a habit. We reinforce this procrastination habit through years of practice, and it hurts us in so many ways in our lives — not only with work tasks, but much more.