Category: Commentary

Some Excellent Work on Education and Schooling

My friend and colleague Zak Slayback has had a wonderful series of blog posts about education, schooling, testing, unschooling, and many other fascinating and important topics in that area.  I cannot recommend them enough.

Ways to Think About Schooling Part 1

Ways to Think About Schooling Part 2

What is the Purpose of Childhood?

Let’s Abolish Childhood

Hayek and Camus Walk Into a School

Deschooling Myself

How “Below Average” Kills Dreams

“Would I Put Myself Through This?”

A Brief Defense of Playing as Learning

Zak is continuing to churn out some great stuff on these topics, so I encourage you to frequent his blog.  It’s been very interesting for me to see someone a decade my younger, with no kids of his own, and who by all measures was the apex of schooling success come to the same conclusions I have reached about schooling and childhood.  There is something very exciting about the synchronicity of someone else discovering similar books and ideas as you do the same, independent of each other.

What Liberal Arts Education Misses

I’m a big fan of liberal arts education.  Not in the classical sense of churning out dutiful citizen soldiers, but in the modern sense of a broad exploration into the humanities rather than a narrow vocational specialization.

The dichotomy between learning for “work” and learning “for its own sake” is ridiculous.  All meaningful learning has an end desired by the learner, whether to have fun or gain knowledge that helps earn money or both.  Liberal arts education is incredibly valuable as a tool to sharpen thinking and broaden the mind.  Despite all the names given to the disciplines therein, it all really boils down to the master discipline of philosophy.  Philosophy is valuable if for no other reason than that we all have a philosophy whether we want to or not.  It’s either examined or unexamined, and we are better at achieving our goals and ends if we examine our philosophy.

Still liberal arts education has a huge, gaping hole.  It’s not that it doesn’t teach enough hard skills or vocational specialization.  One could argue those are something that could be learned on top of a liberal arts foundation for those who want to master a particular skill.  Yet it is true that liberal arts education often makes it hard for individuals to bridge this gap between general critical thinking and particular ways they might apply it to create a meaningful life and career.  The missing piece is something a little more concrete than liberal arts but a little more abstract than vocational skill.  It’s an understanding of value creation.

Value creation is the only thing that matters when it comes to involvement in commercial life.  This is where philosophy meets action.  This is where theory meets practice.  An entirely pragmatic practitioner who only performs tasks may find herself flustered with limited career options just as easily as an abstract theorist who doesn’t know how to concretely practice his ideas.  The pragmatist misses the fact that it’s not just getting your hands dirty that brings career success, but creating value for others, which may or may not correlate to how many hours you work or how much you master a particular skill.  The theorist misses the fact that all the clear thinking in the world about the nature of people and the universe won’t put bread on the table unless they can translate it into something of value to others and exchange with them.

A truly powerful liberal arts education would include learning value creation.  What it is, and more importantly, how to do it.  The thing about value creation that differs from other things learned studying liberal arts is that it cannot be learned by intellectual examination alone.  You have to do it.  You have to enter the messy marketplace and bump into other humans with unique goals and desires and find a way to bring something of value to exchange.  If philosophy begins with ‘know thyself’ then working for pay is one of the most philosophical activities possible.  Getting others to voluntarily part with their resources because you can create something they value more will reveal more than you can imagine about yourself, your desires, habits, and unknown abilities you never would have guessed are valued by others.

It shouldn’t stop with merely performing the action.  Reflection and dissection of what’s happening will take you to the next level.  All the best entrepreneurs are deeply philosophical people.  They don’t merely work and try stuff and suddenly get lucky when people value something they created.  The analyze why, how it might be made better, what fundamental causes brought about success, etc.  They get to know whether their key value was the big idea, the management and execution, the network of talent, the sales job, or some combination.  This allows them to replicate success by focusing on the areas with highest return.

Philosophy is known for thought experiments, but the market is where its field experiments take place.  The most powerful liberal arts education is one that includes the study and practice of value creation.  This could mean digging into ideas in the humanities while simultaneously working at a company and trying to make it and yourself more money, not just as a practical but a philosophical exercise.  I’ve never understood people who’ve studied for decades but never entered the marketplace to exchange.  Perhaps it’s a carry-over from the Greek’s high-minded condescension towards merchants, but an attitude that treats value creation as beneath contemplation is impractical and illogical.

This passion for theory and big ideas and liberal arts combined with the thrill of value creation in the marketplace is what animates Praxis and what gets me up and working every day.  I’ve gotten to the point where I do not have any way to distinguish work from study.  In the office I’m as likely to be reading Seneca as going over an expense report.  I see both as equally important for my long term success and happiness.

We don’t need Plato’s philosopher kings.  The worst thing is to confer the use of force upon smart people who leave the production to others.  We could use more philosopher merchants who constantly examine themselves and seek to understand the world while testing their ideas in the voluntary marketplace of goods and services; who imagine a better world and then go out and create it themselves.

What if it Was You?

What would you do if the US economy hit rock bottom?  I mean real rock bottom.  Not like the dot-com or housing bust.  More like perpetual, long-term, no end in sight economic stagnation where grinding poverty was the norm.  If the average wage dropped below half of what it is today.  If you were only able to earn 12, 10, or 8 thousand a year no matter how hard you worked.  If there was no upward mobility and no prospect for a better life.  If your family lived in a house built mostly from pallets and scrap sheet metal and you had to pirate your electricity.  If sickness was frequent and medical care unreliable at best.  Try to imagine a US like that.

Meanwhile a nearby developed country is doing great.  They can’t hire enough workers.  Just moving there and doing the same thing you’re doing now will double your income immediately, improve your family housing and health, and provide ample opportunity for moving up over time for both you and your kids.  Your good friend did it.  Your brother did it.  They are living in paradise compared to what your family lives in.  Businesses there want to hire you, landlords want to rent to you, your kids want to go there.

Would you stay or would you go?

Would going make you heroic or criminal?

There is no room in a humane society for immigration restrictions.

It’s Not About You

The other day I saw a post on Facebook about the need to rethink the practice of men holding open the door for women, as it carries some implications that might be demeaning to women.  An interesting discussion that could be illuminating.  I scrolled through the comments to see people’s take and instead of arguments for or against the practice it was primarily posts like, “Well I hold the door for people and they thank me”, or, “I do (or do not) like it when people hold the door for me”.

This is not an uncommon scene on social media.  A broad argument or discussion topic is raised and everyone immediately refers to his or her own situation as proof for or against.  I’ve done it.  You probably have too.  There can be value in your perspective and your experiences may play a part in shaping the discussion, but when the first thing someone says in reply to a general argument is the word “I”, it’s really hard to get much further with a fruitful discussion.  It’s no longer about whether the practice of holding doors has more pros than cons, now it’s about whether the commenter is right or wrong, good or bad.  It’s too personal, too sensitive, and there’s no room for mental expansion or transformation.

I’ve tried to adopt the practice in any kind of debate or discussion of no self-references.  Even if I have a unique perspective or have experienced something related to the topic strongly, I don’t let myself use it.  I try to think about what my core idea is and lay out a clear case for it without any appeal to my own authority.  It’s a huge challenge, but when I stick to it I become a clearer thinker and it has the added bonus of making me less emotionally involved in the discussion.  (I don’t always stick to it!)

If someone were to say pet funerals are silly and you had a pet funeral as a child that meant a great deal to you, could you help someone see merit in the idea without immediately letting them know it helped you?  The minute you make it about you learning stops, because no one wants to offend.  Discussion becomes personal attack by default.  The chance for broadening horizons essentially ends, even though you may earn some sympathy and get someone to shut up.

Imagine every article, post, and argument you see not being about you, even if it’s about a topic very close to home.  Think about its premises and conclusion and what it fails to account for.  See if you can lay out your own ideas and agreement or objection without appeal to your experience or emotion.  If you can there’s a chance all parties will learn new things.  An added bonus, if someone in the discussion discovers that you have personal experience to draw from that makes you particularly passionate about a position, but chose not to build your argument around it, they will gain a tremendous amount of respect for you and your idea.

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The Danger of “I’m the Exception”

Everybody thinks public schools are in horrible shape.  But everyone also thinks their particular school or district is really good.  Congress has ridiculously low approval ratings and everyone thinks they’re a bunch of crooks and liars.  But everyone thinks the individual congressperson they voted for isn’t that bad, certainly better than the rest.  Everybody knows they house always wins in the long run, but how many people have told you they always break even or come out ahead at the casino?

When you clearly identify institutional and social problems for the public at large, but find yourself always somehow the exception, perhaps you aren’t looking closely or honestly enough.  Perhaps you have applied blinders in order to normalize your own past and present.  Perhaps the conclusion if applied consistently would be too much to deal with because it would leave you culpable in an admittedly bad system, process, behavior, or norm.

There really are exceptions to general rules and observations.  Just be careful if you find yourself in the exceptional position often.  You might be the dupe.

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(What) I Think, Therefore I Am (Able to Do)

This is an excellent article that provides a synopsis of the work of Carol Dweck.  I highly recommend it.  The core insight is simple: those who believe their intelligence and personality are malleable and something they have the power to shape and alter are able to sustain success, rise to challenges, and recover from failure.

It doesn’t really matter whether personality and intelligence are changeable.  Believing that they are creates a better mindset for dealing with the real world.  If you believe you can change yourself you won’t search for validation of what you are, you’ll try ti improve what you are.  You won’t feel defeated by failure because you can get better and try again.  You won’t feel threatened by the success of others but inspired by their example.

You can consciously cultivate a growth mindset.  There are practices and disciplines and slight alterations in your habits and use of language that can begin to chip away at the fixed mindset.  (I’ve found Martin Seligman to have some excellent resources for this.)  It’s the opposite of the silly self-esteem stuff like telling yourself you can do anything.  It’s more about taking on small challenges and overcoming them as a way to train your brain in how to succeed.

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Failure Does Not Make You a Failure

“I can’t afford to fail.”  A young person recently told me this.  He was deciding whether to try something he was really excited about, but that was new and different (not even particularly risky).  He meant it.  It was clear that he saw this as a make or break moment in his life, and it broke my heart.  You can afford to fail.  In fact, you can’t afford to avoid failure.

I’m not sure all the causes, though I believe schooling is a very deep part of the root system, but young people are terrified of failure.  It’s completely backwards.  Never in human history has there been such a soft landing.  Never has it been easier to recover.  When a business or an event or a project fails it doesn’t mean you fail.  In fact, a failed business can be the surest path to personal success.  If you don’t let it ruin you.

Failure is not catastrophic.  It’s just a part of the process of success.  You try to ride a bike and you fall down.  You try to play video games and you lose.  Kids seem able to recover from failure at these pretty easily.  Maybe because their parents don’t care and don’t show anxiety and anger and send them into remedial video game classes and summer camps.  Whatever the reason, there’s something to be taken from these failures.  Apply that same nonchalance to life.  Life is nothing but a series of games.

The desire to succeed and frustration at failure is normal and can be productive and motivating, but only when you’re doing something you know you want to be doing.  The real killer is crippling fear of failing at some arbitrary standard set by someone else, or fear of what other people will think even when you don’t really care about the end goal itself.  When exploring and learning something new, failure is to be expected.  Don’t internalize it.  Learn from it, laugh at it, and move on.

One you’ve gained some level of mastery, then competitive pressure and desire to be perfect can be helpful.  I read about a study where pool players were observed.  When they were told they were being observed and judged the amateur pool players started playing a lot worse.  The really good players started playing better.  We need a lot of judgement free space to explore and learn and decide what we like and get better at it.  Self-judgement needs to be the first to go.  After you’ve mastered something you can choose to take failure personally if it helps you and motivates you, but not before.

I think a lot of people are scared of entrepreneurship because they hear statistics about what percent of new businesses fail.  But notice what’s happening here.  You hear that a business failed, and in your mind you subtly converge the business with the founder and assume that the founder failed.  You assume if you start a business odds say it will fail, and therefore you will fail and you don’t want to fail.  But that’s not what happens.  When a business fails the people involved don’t fail.  They typically walk away with some great experience, knowledge, new connections, sometimes even money.

Stop being afraid of failure.  Stop worrying about being average or above average on some arbitrary scale created by someone besides yourself.  Freely explore and try things and learn things and get better at the stuff you love.  You’ve got to stop avoiding failure if you want to succeed.

Breaking the Once and Done Mentality

I hate to mow the lawn.  Still, I love few things more than a freshly cut and edged lawn.  I like the result, the problem is that only a few days later, it’s already visibly growing back.  That means it has to be cut again.  I want to be able to get it just right once and never have to deal with it again.  (I hate haircuts for the same reason.)

I want to do things once and move on.  I don’t like maintenance and repeated actions.  I try to carry all the grocery bags into the house in a single trip, even when it ends up taking longer and being ridiculously awkward.

I’m not going to pretend this mentality is all bad.  I think it’s a big strength much of the time.  But the main problem with it is that it creates all kinds of existential overhead.  I gets stressed just knowing something is in a constant state of limbo and not done for good.  This stress sucks, especially when you run a business.

I’ve never met a business owner who loves their current website.  It’s always, “Yeah, it’s not what it’s supposed to be.  We’re making some changes.”  Same goes for marketing copy, sales process, product, back office, etc.  Everything is a process.  You don’t just build it once.  That kind of dynamism is wonderful for customers and necessary for producers, but it can be frustrating for a build-it-once-and-move-on guy like myself.  I have to surround myself with people who enjoy the open-ended process (yet still have the ability to finish).

I can do it, and I do.  It’s necessary.  But I still haven’t learned how to do it happily.  It still stresses me out.  I guess I can start with my lawn.  If I can make my peace with the fact that grass just keeps growing back no matter how short I cut it, and embrace the rhythm and cycle, maybe I can apply that to larger things.

You’re Never Done Working Hard

Originally posted here.

One of my favorite stories is The Great Divorceby C.S. Lewis.  The plot involves residents of hell taking a day trip to heaven.  The interesting thing is that most of them don’t realize they were in hell, and don’t like it when they experience heaven.  Most choose to go back to hell.

It’s not a fire and brimstone hell, just a grey, bleak, lonely place where all the conversations and concerns are shallow.  Heaven is even less like the common vision of clouds and harps.  It is beautiful, but also terrifying, painful, and really, really hard.  The grass and trees and water are literally hard to the touch for the visitors.  Those who have been there for some time have become more substantial, and for them the blades of grass softly bend underfoot.  But the visitors are such shadowy, weak, ghost-like beings that they can hardly handle the hardness of the more realheavenly environs.  It takes time, effort, and struggle to be able to enjoy the wonders of this heaven.  In other words, heaven isn’t easy or safe, but it’s good.

We often strive to find some imagined heaven – some sort of stasis where no conflict or struggle or hard work exist – and in so doing become disillusioned by the fact that we never get there.  The thing is, I don’t think we’d actually want it if we found it.  It would look more like Lewis’s hell than heaven.  Safe, stagnant, dull.  A place where we become less real, and lose touch with what we want and who we are.

Think of the times when you are genuinely fulfilled, or in a state of flow.  Often they involve hard work and mental or physical challenges.  Even moments of apparent ease are only really enjoyable when they are earned, and when they are not indefinite, but part of a progression towards something greater still, like water stations in a marathon.

Without vision, people perish.  We need goals and challenges.  Not in order to get some reward or prize at the end, or to reach a state of rest, but to enjoy the challenges while we’re in them.  If we achieve them it’s not so we can finally be done, but so that we can set our sights still higher.  Those in the story who had been in heaven for some time were working to gain more strength to scale the mountain, and then the next thing beyond it.  Heaven was heaven – in full bloom and overpoweringly gorgeous – precisely because the growth never ceased.  Growth only happens with work.

Don’t put off enjoyment until you arrive at some imagined goal or end state.  If you arrive there, it won’t be that enjoyable.  If you don’t, you’ll have missed out on the opportunity to enjoy the process itself.  This doesn’t mean it’s just about the journey – a journey without a destination isn’t a journey.  It is about the destination, but because arrival means the ability to set out for the next, still greater destination as a new traveler who has grown through the trials of the previous leg.

Being fulfilled requires far more hard work than being dull, listless, or depressed.  But it’s worth it.

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Are All Governments the Same?

Here’s a radical proposition: The US government is no better or worse than any system of government in history.  In fact, all government systems are the same.  Governments do not differ in quality based on the rules, structures, or procedures they employ.

To support this proposition one would have to demonstrate that there is something besides the system of government that determines how oppressive a state is, since there are obvious and dramatic differences in levels of tyranny and quality of life under different governments.  The correlation between certain forms of government and lower levels of oppression causes many to believe the former cause the latter, and that if you just get the structure right you can avoid bad rules and limit extortion.  I don’t think the form of government matters much.

Any kind of state can be brutally oppressive.  Monarchy, democracy, and all forms of republicanism in between are capable of and have engaged in massive acts of violence and oppression.  All these forms also have examples of far less oppression than the historical norm.  It’s not the structure or the ways rulers are chosen or laws are passed and enforced.  So what is it?  What determines how oppressive a government is?

Belief.  That’s it.  It’s not that people get the government they want or believe in, it’s that they get the government they are willing to put up with without resistance.  It’s not just explicit, stated belief, it’s belief as demonstrated by action or lack of it.  How governable are the people?  That will determine how much government they get.  Not how much they want or claim to want.  Not what they idealize as right.  What they give in to.

It is obvious that all governments are run by small minorities who cannot command great populations unless a great number are willing to carry out and enforce their orders and a great number are willing to obey the enforcers.  Etienne de La Boetie described this phenomenon beautifully in his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude .  David Hume shared the same understanding of the origin of state power, as did Ludwig von Mises.  Yet most scholars and laypeople ignore this fundamental fact.

We get distracted in debates about procedure or arguments about the form of government or particular rulers or parties.  These are all just particular manifestations; the outgrowth of our own willingness to submit.  The US has been one of the freest countries in history not because of the Constitution but because the people happened to be some of the hardest to govern.  The Revolt against relatively benign British rule is evidence of a low tolerance for being governed by the early European inhabitants of the continent.

The great tragedy, as Boetie points out, is that once subjugated by whatever means (and it is always a means that involves convincing people they have to put up with it for some emergency or expediency), each successive generation tends to tolerate more oppression.  The existence of the oppressors is not an affront when you’ve never lived in a world without it.  The steady churn of propaganda and normalization of deprivation take hold.  This is why famous abolitionist Harriet Tubman said she could have freed twice as many slaves, if only they knew they were slaves.

Add to the propaganda and acceptance the fact that a great and growing number of people work directly for the state and make their living and gain their social status as its operatives.  An army of self-interested bureaucrats and their loved ones are in the long term more powerful than an army of soldiers.

It is not the rule of law that will save us from tyranny.  It is not a new parliamentary procedure or Constitutional amendment.  It is not an election.

The insight of scholars like Boetie reveal that the ultimate freedom from oppression is when we, “Resolve to serve no more.”  Be ungovernable.  Camus said, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”  Walk away from the bread and circuses.  Ignore the patriotic pomp.  Don’t work for the rulers.  Build the kind of life and society you want to live in.

Frank Chodorov, a libertarian activist and thinker, put it this way:

“If a prominent politician hires a hall to make a speech, stay away; the absent audience will bring him to a realization of his nothingness. The speeches and the written statements of a political figure are designed to impress you with his importance, and if you do not listen to the one or read the other you will not be influenced and he will give up the effort. It is the applause, the adulation we accord political personages that registers our regard for the power they wield; the deflation of that power is in proportion to our disregard of these personages. Without a cheering crowd there is no parade.”

It doesn’t require revolution by force.  That is only replacing one tyranny with another.  Imagine a law the proposal of which would be so deeply offensive that no political figure would dare bring it forward.  That is the mindset.  Now ask about why the constraints placed on politicians in this case, and the fear they have for acting, aren’t the same for every law they propose?  When they are, full freedom will reign, no matter what formal pieces of paper say.

Joy and the Other

Yesterday I posted about hedonism as life purpose.  One of the key elements mentioned in living a life of joy (not mere happiness) was the idea of a kind of reciprocity of delight.  Fulfillment seems to require more than delight for one self, but some other in which to delight and be delighted.  To become your true self as an individual it requires some other to be differentiated from, to collaborate with, and to enjoy.

That Other need not be only human.  There is a sense in which the ultimate Other is something far broader and greater than any one person.  When you feel like the world itself is collaborating with you, that is when you feel true joy.  Seeing reality as something not in opposition to you, but working with you.  The religious might call it divine will.  The non-religious might consider it living in line with the laws of the universe.  Astrologer Rob Brezsny calls it pronoia, “The suspicion that the Universe is a conspiracy on your behalf.”

That all sounds a bit too over-the-top, so let’s bring it home to a less sweeping context.  Consider acts of creation.  Painting, storytelling, songwriting, and the like.  There is a meaningful sense in which, in a state of flow, more is going on than just the creator producing.  The page gives back.  You develop a theme and play it and the music doesn’t just come from you, it gets right back in you and inspires you even as it is inspired by you.  If you give yourself to the art fully it gives something back to you.  In a romantic relationship the same effect is at work.  Being in love requires more than just admiration of another.  Your feelings are enhanced by the knowledge and evidence that you are adored in return.

This need for an Other in order to experience joy is radically individualistic.  It’s the opposite of an absorption of unique individuals into a universal blob.  In order to experience this reciprocal relationship with reality we have to get to know our unique selves.  We must be so differentiated that we cannot mistake anything or anyone else’s purposes for our own.  Then we can fully experience the joy of our own purpose by interacting harmoniously with others.

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Hedonism as Life Purpose

“Christian Hedonism”.  I encountered this phrase when I was about 16 and studying theology.  The concept had a big impact and stuck with me.  Whether or not you are religious there’s something powerful in it.

I believe it was a theologian named John Piper who coined the phrase, which made it especially intriguing because Piper was on the opposite side in many debates over free-will and other theological matters I was interested in when I first read it.  I won’t pretend to recall all the details but what I took away from the idea was that, in Piper’s mind, the Christian’s purpose in life is to take delight in existence, and take delight in God delighting in them for being delighted.  God created humans so that he could take pleasure in them, and seeing man take pleasure in life is what most pleased God.

I always associated the idea with a line from the movie Chariots of Fire, where the deeply religious Eric Liddell is chastised by his sister for missing church because he was running.  He said, “When I run I feel His pleasure.”  Not merely that Liddell was having a pleasurable experience himself, but that he felt the pleasure of God as he ran.

C.S. Lewis’s book The Four Loves describes the deep love that occurs when people are not only delighting in each other, but delighting that the other is delighting in them.

The word hedonism evokes excess, even destructive excess.  That’s a very shallow understanding of the idea.  It is true, if one merely indulges in short-run highs they may be called (and even call themselves) a hedonist.  But I think genuine hedonism, as the satisfaction of desires, is in fact life’s purpose.  The trick is discovering what those desires are and what it takes to satisfy them.  Running is not easy the way drinking a beer is easy.  Running is hard and at least a bit painful.  Yet Liddell (and he is not alone) described a kind of pleasure that far exceeds a mere exciting of the taste buds.

The deepest, truest human desires are not satisfied with temporary titillation alone.  Those can be a delightful part of existence, but cannot satisfy the soul’s most powerful longings.  Being fully alive requires some degree of challenge.  It requires some degree of pushing oneself, if even only to fight distraction and carve out time to marvel or think.  That is not to say it is only found in quiet contemplation.  Many of life’s most fulfilling moments are busy, bustling, social affairs.  But it seems true delight is best derived when some effort is required to obtain it.  It requires both connection to self and connection to something outside of oneself.  Simply taking what the stream of life floats us can be a decent indulgence, but it slowly erodes or numbs a deeper sense of meaning.

Hedonism as a conscious pursuit isn’t easy.  The self-knowledge and self-honesty required to take genuine delight in existence, and feel a kind of reciprocal delight being taken in you (whether by another, or by God, or by the universe, or whatever you may call it) is hard won.  It’s easier to let life happen to you and play the critic or the martyr.

With or without a religious narrative, the notion of finding your highest pleasure and pursuing it is powerful.  That seemingly paradoxical combination of the words, “Christian”, and, “Hedonist” has wisdom in it.  The former carries connotations of discipline, devotion, and the eschewing of worldly distractions.  The latter connotes joy, pleasure, and seizing every moment for pure delight.  That combination seems to be where the best life is found.  Perhaps the pursuit of pleasure is in fact a serious affair; as serious as life itself.

In Loving Memory of KJ Herr

(From the Praxis blog)

KJ

There is a GoFundMe campaign to help KJ’s family with funeral costs.  You can support them financially here: http://www.gofundme.com/KJHerr

I first met KJ Herr at a conference in Atlanta.  He enthusiastically approached me after my talk and said, “I started a business and it failed.  How do I overcome that and start again?”

His sincerity and earnestness stuck out.  He was admitting it was hard.  He hadn’t yet let the sting of the failure go, but he also knew he wanted to do more.  He had the spark.  His tenacity and the number of exciting projects he couldn’t stop talking about and working on make it incredibly difficult to deal with what has happened.  KJ is not with us any more, and it hurts.

I will never forget the interview and application process for KJ and working with him to find a business partner.  He wanted to get the most out of the program.  He was less concerned about challenges than he was about what he could gain.  He told me there was no point in doing something halfway, and he wanted to learn from the best how to create, innovate, and make the world a better, freer place.

KJ lived and breathed freedom.  He was actively involved with Students for Liberty and always engaging in intellectual and social pursuits revolving around themes of human liberty and flourishing.

I cannot begin to describe the difficulty in dealing with his passing.  We consider KJ family.  We miss him.  He was an irreplaceable part of the Praxis program and broader mission to inspire, educate, and encourage entrepreneurs.  He represented and exemplified our mission.  But he was so much more than that.  I only knew him through social media for a few years, and in person for less than a year.  I do not wish to speak for all that he was, only that which I knew him to be in my all too short time with him.  Words cannot express how much he is missed.

A few thoughts from our team and fellow participants:

“I had known KJ for a number of years. I remember when he opted-out of college and started “Robin Socks”, a company he had formed. Just before that I recall grabbing a beer with him in DC, talking about various ideas and ventures. That same night he had the gumption to ask John Mackey of Whole Foods a question about a business plan in front of a thousand people or so! Recently we were working on a little business plan that was gaining traction. KJ was a great guy and one of the few people who was willing to create something without looking for an exit, which is uncommon to see in the entrepreneurial space. I hope to further the business plan he had started in some shape or another over time. KJ was a bright and humble individual who didn’t waste time.” – Zac Corbett

“I’d known KJ for a few years through SFL and then working with him as he started Praxis. KJ and I shared a love of the San Antonio Spurs, which I always appreciated as it’s hard to find too many sports fans in the circles we were both part of. While I had not known KJ too well through our SFL work, his kindness did leave a mark on me, as it did with everyone he interacted with. It’s obvious why he was such good friends with Andrew Kaluza.

The time I was able to work with him through Praxis was a true pleasure. He gave a memorable speech at the opening seminar on his experience starting his own company, Robin Socks, and he was determined to gain as much experience as possible through the program so he could start his own company once again. I feel privileged to have been able to interact with him, particularly getting to discuss his ideas for new business ventures. KJ’s passion for entrepreneurship was infectious. I was very much looking forward to watching KJ create his own success through Praxis and beyond. It was clear he had the determination and ability to do so.

KJ, thank you for allowing me to be part of your life. You will be missed, friend.” – Cameron Sorsby

“I did not know KJ personally (to my great loss), but I interacted with him a few times in online Praxis discussions. He was so clearly everything that those who knew him better made him out to be – personable, creative, and dynamic.” – James Walpole

“From the day I met KJ, it was clear that he had not just a professional drive to accomplish things, but a deep, existential drive to see his plans to fruition in the world. He was an astonishing human being who had that rare capacity.” – Zak Slayback

“A couple of weeks before his passing, K.J. shared this on his Facebook page:

“Funny story/confession: This morning I decided I was going to stream a movie while eating breakfast instead of getting to work. As I get ready to load the movie, this captcha showed up to make sure I was a real person.”
stop wasting time
This funny little anecdote captures the spirit of K.J. perfectly for me: It shows him to be the kind of guy who could push himself and laugh at himself at the same time. While many people see the events around them as random, neutral, or boring, K.J. reacted to things as if they were both silly and serious, as if his everyday experiences were a series of invitations from the universe to laugh a little more and dream a little bigger. For the time he was with us, he did both of those things very very well.

On February 11 at 10:14pm 2015, K.J. wrote this on Facebook:

“At no time in my college career did I ever want to stay up and continue reading instead of going to bed. I only did it because I had to. Shout out to T.k. Coleman and the rest of the team at Praxis for putting together a curriculum that has me wanting to evade sleep and keep learning.”

A major part of my job is to challenge people to push themselves to study harder. Of all the bright young minds I’ve had the honor of coaching, K.J. is the literally the first person I’ve ever had to check up on for studying too much. “Go to sleep,” I would say, but his passion for knowledge would not be quenched. His love for learning kept him awake at night and it gave him the energy to make it through the next day.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.” I’ll have to live with my many unanswered questions concerning what K.J.’s future would have been like, but there is one thing I have no doubt about whatsoever: K.J. gave his all. He didn’t hold back. I feel like I owe it to him to allow that same spirit of zeal and determination to live in me. Thank you for being my teacher, K.J. The lessons you exemplified through the inspiring life you lived were not imparted to us in vain.” – T.K. Coleman

There is a GoFundMe campaign to help KJ’s family with funeral costs.  You can support them financially here: http://www.gofundme.com/KJHerr

Published
Categorized as Commentary

Tide

I have always been moved by the imagery of the tide.  There is something cleansing and freeing about it, yet powerful and dangerous at once.  The feeling of water steadily pulling can seem threatening, but I’ve never felt that way about it.  It feels liberating to me.  I can rest and it will do its work.  There is a sense of letting go connected with the push and pull of the tide.

Tides are relentless.  They don’t care what’s on the beach, or what the weather is like, or if it’s a convenient time for me.  They have no indecision, no waffling.  Its not like the rain that sometimes wants to fall but won’t make up its mind.  They proceed on their predictable pattern.  Sea creatures know this and let the tide bring them sustenance.  They naturally, gracefully navigate it with minimum resistance and find harmony in its rhythm.

Tides don’t affect small pools, only great lakes, seas, and oceans.

Tides reveal the connectedness of the universe.  A gray rock floating two hundred thousand miles away raises and lowers the water just down the beach.  Tides are tirelessly creative.  They play with grains of sand in and endless dance and make new beaches and shorelines every moment.

Tides are revealing.  When it goes out you can see previously obscured rocks, shoals, reefs, islands, and wrecks.

I don’t like to share my music, but today it felt right.  The quality is low because it was recorded on an iPhone and because I am a decidedly amateur musician.  Still, perhaps it can convey something that I am struggling to convey as I deal with the loss of a friend.

(If you are so inclined, you can support his family here.)

 

5 Reasons to Rethink College

Originally published on Thought Catalog.

Everyone knows you have to go to college to be successful.  Sometimes everyone is wrong.  Here are five reasons to rethink college as the best path to a fulfilling career and life.

1) It’s expensive.

Here’s a chart showing college debt and earnings for degree holders.

Guess what?  It doesn’t matter.  Charts and graphs and studies like this can’t help you make your decision about college for two reasons:  Because data can never show causality and aggregates are not individuals.

When it comes to causality, it’s pretty unclear college is doing the work.  Yes, degree holders on average earn more money than those without degrees.  People in Florida on average are older than people in the rest of the country.  Does Florida magically speed the aging process?  Degrees don’t magically make people more productive workers either.

College is a sorting mechanism more than it is a forming mechanism.  The types of people who get into and complete college are the kind who would command higher salaries anyway.  Some studies have followed people who attended Ivy League schools and others accepted to those schools but who chose lower ranked schools instead.  There wasn’t a difference in lifetime earnings.  In other words, Ivy League caliber people don’t need an Ivy League education to have high earnings.

As for aggregates and individuals, consider the following question: Are pickup trucks a good idea for 18-25 year olds?  Are they worth the cost?  How many studies would it take to prove it?  It’s obviously a dumb question.  There is no one answer for all 18-25 year olds.  Aggregate cost/benefit analyses for all 18-25 year olds buying pickup trucks won’t mean much to you in your highly personalized experience.  It’s just as ridiculous to come up with a single answer to questions about whether college is worth it for young people.

Data can’t do the work of deciding.  The only answer that matters is whether a particular path is worth it for you.  What do you want to get?  What are the possible ways of getting it?  What do they cost?  The cost is not just money but time, foregone opportunities, etc.  Whatever your decision, know why you’re doing it.  Which brings me to…

2) Most people don’t know why they’re doing it.

I ask high school students if they plan to go to college.  They all say yes.  When I ask “why” I have never heard anything but some variation on,

“Because I have to”, or, “To get a job”.

Then I ask what kind of job they want.  Crickets.  They don’t have any idea.

That’s perfectly fine – most teenagers don’t know and probably can’t know what they’ll be doing in ten or twenty years – but it’s pretty odd considering their entire reason for going to college is to get something about which they know nothing, including whether or not a degree will help them.

So the formula is, “I want X.  I have no idea what X is or what’s required to get it.  Therefore I’ll spend four years and tens of thousands of dollars on college.”  Maybe logic classes aren’t taught in high schools.

College may be a necessary or valuable way for you to get what you want out of life.  Then again maybe not.  The point is, you need to do some exploring and experimenting to find out.  You won’t know if your calling in life is marketing by sitting in a classroom and reading about it.  Spend some time around people who do it and see what it’s like.  If you love it, do you need a degree to do it?

The cultural narrative on college is, “Buy it!  Buy it!  No amount of cost or debt should factor into your decision, because it’s always worth it!”.  That’s a terrible way to make sound decisions about anything.  Remember the last time everyone was saying, “Buy! Buy! The price can only ever go up!”? (Housing bubble anyone…)

But maybe you’re going to college just for fun, which leads me to…

3) Most don’t enjoy it (and the parts they do enjoy can be had for free).

Parents and students tell me all the time that they’re unhappy with college.  Do you know what the number one complaint is?  Surprisingly, it’s not how much it costs.  It’s how much it sucks.

The number of young people who are bored in class and disappointed with the caliber of professors and students is staggering.  Students feel disengaged.  The part they like least about college is attending class and official duties.

If you sent a visitor from another planet to a typical college class and asked them to observe and report back to you what they thought they were witnessing they’d probably guess by the pained, dreary looks and lack of engagement it was some kind of penal colony or experiment where the students are being paid huge sums to endure fluorescently lit torment.  Nope, you tell them, these people are actually paying thousands to sit in the squeaky chairs and Snapchat their friends with a distracting TA in the background.

The things they love the most – parties, socialization, late night conversations, football games – can all be had without paying tuition.  Heck, if you really love a particular class or professor, I bet you can sneak into her class without registering and take it anyway.  I’ve never seen professors checking who’s current on tuition before the lecture.  They’d be thrilled to have someone in the class who was actually interested!

So why do people go?  Most don’t do it to stand out from the crowd, but to be normal; to blend in.  In that sense, it works.  But that might not be such a good thing…

4) It’s one size fits all in a world that demands customization.

Sure, there are lots of different majors and classes, but the approach is almost exactly the same in every case.  Follow rules, meet arbitrary deadlines with arbitrary assignments that will be glanced at by TA’s, passively listen to lectures and memorize answers you never need to know (because, you know, Google exists now).  

Chances are the job you’ll have in ten or twenty years doesn’t even exist yet.  That means the most valuable life and career skills are the very ones the classroom setting isn’t conducive for.  Adaptability, entrepreneurial thinking, creative problem solving, networking with people who can help you, etc.  In the classroom setting entrepreneurship is called cheating and networking is called missing class.

You can’t rely on your university to be your brand.  You are your own company, “Me, Inc.”, and you have to develop valuable skills and knowledge and find ways to communicate them to others.

The good news is, things you’ll really need to succeed are available in myriad forms, most much cheaper than the university.  Get a job.  Get a bunch of jobs.  Travel.  Talk to a lot of people.  Read.  Take online courses.  Write.  Figure out what you enjoy and practice it.  Work your butt off.  Anyone can graduate college.  It takes a lot more work to list what you want to gain and find the best way to get it.  Customize your life.  Don’t assume a degree can do this for you, because…

5) It doesn’t signal much anymore.

I overheard a classmate in college talking about how hard the test was (it wasn’t) and how many girls he wooed the previous night (he didn’t) and how hung-over he was (he was).  Right then and there I had an epiphany: He, like everyone else in the classroom, would probably graduate from this place.  Like me, they’d go on the job market and have the same degree.  Suddenly I felt the market value of my impending accomplishment plummet.

Let’s be real.  The only reason people keep paying so much for college is for the signal a degree sends to employers.  Sure, the other parts of the college bundle are great, but they can all be had in other, better and cheaper ways.  It’s the signal that keeps people buying.  But that signal is weakening and the value declining.

I talk to a lot of business owners.  They don’t care much about degrees anymore.  They want experience, proof of work ethic, and ability to quickly and coherently answer an email (only about seven people under the age of 25 have this ability).  College is the new high school.  Everyone does it, so it doesn’t make anyone stand out.  In fact, not going to college and having a damn good reason why might stand out a lot more.

Top venture capital firm Andreessen Horwitz specifically looks for entrepreneurs who were college dropouts, because it’s a good sign they are courageous and confident in their idea.  Google is one among many businesses to recently remove degrees from job requirements.

Get experience, gain confidence, learn what you like and don’t like, work hard, build skills, knowledge, and a network around your interests and goals.

College is one option among many.  Don’t do it just because everyone else does.  Those are the same people who bought a bunch of Beanie Babies as a retirement fund because everyone else was.