Watching Children Learn Naturally

Watching children learn naturally, while following their own interests, is nothing short of astonishing. It shouldn’t be, of course. We shouldn’t be surprised that giving children freedom and autonomy, and trusting them to pursue passions most meaningful to them, would lead to deep and lasting learning. But Self-Directed Education is so rare in our widely schooled society that most of us don’t get the opportunity to see what learning without schooling (including school-at-home) looks like. Self-Directed Education, or unschooling, is strikingly different from schooling–in all of its various iterations.

The Craving for Wholeness That Drives Our Actions

There’s a sense of incompleteness in our lives. We have felt it since adolescence, at least, if not since early childhood — it’s a feeling that something is wrong with us, that something is missing, or that we’re missing out on something in the world. It’s a feeling of disconnection or loneliness from others, a sense that we don’t fit in. A feeling of moving through the world in isolation, unfulfilled, without a sense of intimacy with others, without a sense of purpose in what we’re doing.

Is Honesty a Virtue?

Everyone desires human connection, and we are able to get a higher quality connection the more honest we are. So, it seems insane that people would desire to lie to anyone they would have a relationship with. Sure, people who want to use people to get something in the short run would be incentivized to lie, but why would someone lie to someone they desire to have a long term relationship with?

The Tragicomedy of Russiagate

Let’s assume — purely for the sake of discussion since no evidence has been made public — that the Russians did it. Note, first, that the “it” looks like the product of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. I’m not going to do what Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, and the late Robert Parry have done so well so many times, namely, catalog all the inane acts the Putin-guided Russian intel agencies are said to have committed in order to bring down America. (Start here.) Suffice it to say that if that’s the best Putin can come up with, we have little to worry about.