Trial and Error

Nobody asked but …

Almost two months ago, I wrote a blog article in which I felt gratified that my teen granddaughters were experimenting with civil disobedience.  They participated in the worldwide climate strike.  It is OK if they took the wrong side, because they were right to speak out.  Experimenting is good.  The worst thing that can happen is that they might favor a wrong philosophy, but never re-examine that decision.  People who never re-examine their positions are candidates for the Darwin Awards.

In a more recent blog, I admitted to some egregious naivete, in the past, and I promised to address it directly in a future post.  In retrospect, I have always been an individually conscious voluntaryist, but I admit to the following mistakes along the way:

• I liked Ike, but was too young to vote,
• I would have gone all the way with JFK, but was still too young to vote,
• I was atracted to the non-authoritarian hippy lifestyle, but I was anti-war (for the wrong reasons),
• I was pro LBJ, before the Gulf of Tonkin incident,
• I voted for Nixon, in the mistaken hopes that he would quickly end the Vietnam War,
• I voted for Carter, in hopes of ending White House corruption,
• Until 2008, I voted, believing in the system, and that the right POTUS would not be incentivized toward war, irrationality, and corruption,
• Until 2000, I believed that history could show us examples of successful POTUS’es.
• Now I know, beyond believing, that no human can be a successful master of other human beings.

Each of these mistakes taught me a lesson.  I will continue to try, and err, but I will not forsake my hard-won principles of anarchism.

— Kilgore Forelle