Suicide is purposeful action. Therefore, to understand why people commit suicide we must understand what felt uneasiness they have decided is too much to continue tolerating. It may be many things, but this much is true as it concerns suicide: life itself has become intolerable, and the knowledge needed to make it tolerable is not currently known.
Tag: science
A Vaccine Against Orwellian Superstition
If there is one lesson that everyone should learn from studying even the most elementary economics, and if there is one major intellectual gift that sound economists gave humanity, then it is precisely this vaccine against Orwellian superstition, according to which destruction contains any productive value.
Influences III
If I were a guest on a podcast or an interview broadcast, when asked about my major influences, I would stick close to the names repeated by voluntaryists — Spooner, Bastiat, Jefferson, Mencken, Mises, Hazlitt, Rothbard, Higgs, and Woods. But in this more expansive context, I can stretch out to discuss the influences who made me a voluntaryist before I knew I was one, before I knew to read the internal literature of the voluntaryist, libertarian, individualist mainstream. Three such influences are Alan Turing, Dan Carlin, and Ruth Rendell.
The Liberty of Man
The consistent libertarian is not “hostile to family, to religion, to tradition, to culture, and to civic or social institutions,” but he is also not necessarily supportive of any particular version of these things.
In U.S. Universities, a Divorce Is Needed
If the worthwhile parts of the U.S. universities are to continue to thrive, or even to survive as serious endeavors, it would seem that a parting of the ways must come. The STEM fields must separate themselves from the bullshit parts of the universities. The latter can then go their own way to fester in their nonsense until the general public awakens to the need to cease supporting such activities altogether.
Life, Eating Animals, and Ethics
Do I value society with animals that I find delicious? No. Of course not. I value their taste and the nutrition that they provide. That’s it. And I obviously don’t value the hordes of insects I slaughter on a daily basis with my car. Who does?
A Kind Word on Behalf of the Mexicans
They are in the great majority of cases good and decent people seeking what most people seek—an opportunity to work toward building a better life for themselves and their children. For those of us who know them more intimately than most, it is painful to hear the ignorant and malicious statements that circulate about them, especially perhaps on social media, where people are frequently unrestrained in letting loose the most vitriolic and baseless accusations.
Is “Screen Time” Dangerous for Children?
Innovative technologies always seem distracting and disturbing to the adults attempting to master them, and transparent and obvious—not really technology at all—to those, like Augie, who encounter them as children.
Epochs, Evolution, Nationalism, and Synthesis: What Gives Anarchists The Best Chance At Reaching AnCapistan?
Anarchy doesn’t need to be redefined. The pillars are stable. What it needs is a new foundation, those very foundations that allowed the philosophy of Anarchy and Liberty to appear on the world stage in the first place. The Pillars are strong. The Foundation is crumbling.
We Are You
A day or two ago I had the displeasure of hearing an ad on the radio, which was the mindless mercenaries of the state trying to sound human, in the hopes of getting more people to join up to be mindless mercenaries.