“My 5 year old son keeps asking to do more math, and I have to keep explaining to him that school is over, and it’s summer vacation now!” Sorry, but you’re doing home education wrong. Anytime anyone, of any age, expresses an interest in math, I’m happy to oblige.
Tag: value
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.
Find Value in Themselves with No Pretense
I believe that there is a type of confidence that is a personality characteristic. It is a feeling like you belong and will make your place in the world. It is a feeling as if you are right whether or not you are correct. It is a confidence that if morality says you are bad, you know morality is full of shit.
Marx Was Wrong
Marx really didn’t understand anything about economics. Economics seems to be all about human motivations. He didn’t seem to understand anyone’s motivation except his own. And apparently he was insane.
Most Concerns with Safety are Bullshit
Sure, wear a seat belt on a two hour drive. Don’t wash your fruit before eating it. Let your kids go outside and talk to strangers.
The Debate Over Taxation Cannot Be Value-Free
When anyone calls for a new tax or a tax increase, what that person wants is for government personnel to threaten force against anyone who fails to surrender his or her money to the state. But almost no one speaks in those terms. If tax advocates did that, their rhetoric at least would be honest (and only in that sense noble.) Instead, such people engage in base rhetoric.
Self-Sabotage Negates All Progress
Influence comes from two places. Force comes from the outer world, composed of every character and situation you’ll ever know. Force also comes from within. There is an inner world of values, concepts, and associations to guide you on your path. A weak inner world guarantees that your progress will fester, making you slave to external forces.
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.
Poisonous Narratives
Victim/predator narratives are highly saturated within Western culture. This isn’t only limited to feminists, SJWs, alt-right, BLM, trans-activists or anyone else. It is everywhere, including your mind and my mind.
Influences I
Whenever someone asks me which philosophers I follow, I very quickly branch off into persons who do not seem to be philosophers within the narrow meaning of the term, lover of knowledge. But how could Mark Twain possibly be not that? If asked who are the great wits, I will come up with a list from all over the place. In what universe would we think Lewis Carroll was not as witty as could be?