One way or another, everyone alive today navigates in a world that grows denser with competing ideologies. The level of devotion solidifies to match the breadth of possible alignments. There are now more people who are more sure of the rightness of their increasingly opposing values. Conflict is inevitable. Clarity is essential.
Tag: principles
The Credibility of Statists
It’s like taking science advice from a person who has been convinced (or, who’s decided to “believe”) that the Earth is flat. It makes no sense to pretend they are credible in this particular arena.
Seek Out New Ways to Arrange Reality
The value of a mind does not reside solely in the total information it stores. Indeed, knowledge can betray you if it prevents you seeing beyond its boundaries. Whatever you know is not the limit to what can be known. Think beyond the constraints of tradition to look upon all things with new eyes.
Make Your Ambition Meet Your Insight
Intelligence and creativity, without the ability to apply them in proportion to their stature, are tremendous burdens to carry. Their unfulfillment can lead to a hollow kind of psychosis that rots a talented mind from within. To be given ample faculties is a responsibility for which few young people prepare. Through chance, a seed of greatness appeared in you. Now the seed must grow.
You Are Equal Parts Dark and Light
A good man handcrafts his values, communing with others who share his goals. Self-sacrifice comes naturally for a hero because he knows he is not losing himself when he invests his life into something authentically greater. Men can only be truly good when they have struggled to find their principles and carry them out in the world.
Optimistic about the Future of Liberty
This morning, after a little reflection, I’m more optimistic than ever about the future of liberty. There are so many great companies, organizations, and technologies that enable us to throw off the shackles of the state and its allied institutions.
Anarchists Asking for “Papers”
I would love to watch a supposed Murican “anarchist” who condones “closed borders” explain his philosophical “principles” to someone who happened to be born in Mexico.
Greatness is Rightful Action in Trying Times
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.
The Gift (?) of Oddness
Looking back on my life I find that the times that hold the most value are the times when I did things that were strange, unexpected, unconventional, risky, or just weird. Those are the things I remember and smile about the most.
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.