I know someone who, against my advice, recently got a concealed carry permit. His experience drives home why I believe it’s a mistake to beg bullies for permission to exercise your natural human rights. The process is insulting and degrading. It is designed to treat you like a common criminal.
Tag: natural
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.
The Mystery of Beauty
I opened a new tab and, as is often the case, the background (courtesy Momentum Dash) gave me pause. It’s stunning. I couldn’t navigate away without stopping to stare at the sparkling sun on the edge of a rock-arch and ponder for a few minutes. And that’s just a photo. Close your eyes and imagine…
Love and Assertiveness
Love and Assertiveness are two sides of the same coin; one necessitates and depends on the other. Loving yourself requires asserting your rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Loving a partner requires assertiveness in creating and protecting an environment of honesty and communication. Loving a child requires asserting certain boundaries or limits around their behavior.
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?
The Myth of Institutionalized Learning
This weekend conversation exposes the deep, underlying myth in our culture that children cannot learn unless they are systematically taught. Whether in school or school-at-home, children can only learn when they are directed by an adult, when they follow an established curriculum, when they are prodded and assessed. How could a child possibly know how to identify plants if it wasn’t part of a school-like lesson?
75 Times Around the Sun
Yesterday I observed the 25th Anniversary of my 50th birthday. On the original occasion, I opined that, like Merle Haggard, I could say “my life’s been grand!” I said at the time that I had lived a great half-century, therefore no matter what happened to me after that I could say that most of my life had been grand. The facts of the matter are that the continuing quarter-century has been even grander.
Standing Up for Liberty Isn’t Political
You have no obligation to tolerate those trying to stop you from doing what you have a right to do. You have no obligation to play politics in self-defense. Why march or v*te for your rights? Just exercise them.
Jobs and AI
I am a survivor of the Expert Systems rage of the mid-80s. Every trade journal of every industry that even had a trickle of data processing was touting the next coming of Expert Systems. ES were premised on taking the most experienced, most expert of your business’s humans, then making a killer app with your tiny desktop computers that would cross-examine your clerks to make sure they answered all of the questions that your top guru would ask.
Why The Revolutionaries Are (Also) the Villains of Les Miserables
I recently rewatched the great 2011 film adaption of this movie, and I frequently dip back into the film’s excellent song soundtrack. But after some observation, I have a controversial opinion on the revolutionaries: while they are revolting against an unjust system, they’re not much worth our sympathy. There are a few reasons why the revolutionaries are also villains (of a sort) of this story. These also happen to be some of the reasons why in most wars, the revolutionaries are just as guilty as the state they’re revolting against.