The first stage of panic (and second and third) is to scramble around looking for someone to follow. Many of us followed others into bars, but clearly most followed hoarders of toilet paper and hand sanitizer into all the dollar stores, the drugstores, and the supermarkets. But the thing that is now most scarce is information. Human beings continue to query “whadya know?”, but the answer is still “not much, you?”
Tag: responsibility
Do Your Goddamn Duty During the Goddamn Pandemic, Dammit
If you want to risk your own sickness, that’s fine. The problem is that you won’t just be impacting yourself. If you get infected and continue to go to public places, you are causing the pandemic to get worse. You are infecting others who will put additional burden on a healthcare system which is (at this rate) going to be overwhelmed. And you are infecting people who may die from this virus.
Danger Is Temporary: Cowardice Is Forever
Danger and pain are external: you feel them and experience them, and then they are gone. Your own conscience and your society discharge you. Cowardice is a state of mind – and the memory of it lasts forever. Your conscience and your society hold you captive.
Coronavirus Reminds Us What Education Without Schooling Can Look Like
We have collectively become so programmed to believe that education and schooling are synonymous that we can’t imagine learning without schooling and become frazzled and fearful when schools are shuttered. If nothing else, perhaps this worldwide health scare will remind us that schooling isn’t inevitable and education does not need to be confined to a conventional classroom.
Process and Product
In the long run, it makes no difference which employees were there on time, or even which employees were there at all. All that is necessary is buy-in among the positions filled.
Moral Approximates
Careful examination of real-world conflict does occasionally uncover not moral equivalents, but moral approximates. Though the two sides’ moral status is not precisely equal, they are morally more-or-less the same.
The Subtle Art II
You are not responsible for Mark Manson. You are not responsible for Kilgore Forelle. The sine qua non of voluntaryism is that you only get to enjoy liberties if you are willing to accept, wholly, the consequences that arise from using those liberties.
The Subtle Art
The message is that it’s all Kabuki theater so one should operate by one’s self-determined principles and sense of responsibility. I hesitate to say that Manson is a voluntaryist, but I hesitate to say that he is not.
Words Poorly Used #146 — Partisanship
The word “partisan” comes from variants of words for separation or apartness. But it doesn’t refer to individuality or critical thinking. Partisans are usually shackled to an idea that is the opposite of individuality, responsibility, or critical thinking.
The Source of Decisions vs. the Sequence of Decisions
In reality, only individuals can ever decide. Only individuals act. Individuals decide to listen to other individuals or ignore them. You can’t change this. To say, “Let the experts/government/market decide” is just a less clear way of saying, “Let individuals decide”. The thing that changes are the consequences and incentives for those individuals. What is really being debated is what happens after an individual decides.