Nothing’s more complicated
Than the absence of a dream
Like an end without means,
And without a beginning it seems
Your eyes are running over,
With all that’s left inside
This little, this much,
This hollowness such
A thing to bear, or worse yet you fear,
Nothing at all, no place to fall
To fall from what?
From what you don’t have
Or at least you don’t realize,
And it’s driving you mad
Scooped out it feels,
And biting your heels
But in all that’s real,
It no longer lingers
Its now removed fingers
Lie powerless to touch
What once hurt so much
There’s only one clutch
In which you now reside
A hand so firm, and with sole design
To hold you and mold you
And fulfill what was told you
To create in you by this creativeness
What once felt like emptiness
Emptied out now, of all that was shallow,
Hollowed somehow, of all that was hollow
Yet you fear for tomorrow
For tomorrow may bring
May sting;
May not come
Still in it all, your eye’s filled with awe
Are yet soft as they thaw
To this goodness
This love
Your all
The Things That Make for Peace
(Originally posted here.)
“I am a man of peace; but when I speak, they are for war.” – Psalm 120:7
“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace–but now it is hidden from your eyes.” – Luke 19:41-42
“All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.” – Thomas a Kempis
I recently heard praise among churchgoers for the movie, “Act of Valor”, a movie about Navy SEAL’s funded in large part by the Navy itself. (And, judging by the previews, essentially a military recruitment film.) There is even a Bible study that coincides with the movie and is based on the SEAL code of honor. I was unexpectedly overcome with grief when it was excitedly mentioned during a church service I attended.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the terrible contrast I had just experienced. The sermon was on this verse from the Beatitudes in the book of Matthew:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Blessed are the peacemakers. And yet here Christians had high praise for a code of conduct espoused by an outfit whose entire purpose is to kill ruthlessly and efficiently. And not merely to kill, but specifically to kill whoever they are commanded to kill by the political powers in the United States without question. The very first tenet in the SEAL code of conduct is “Loyalty to Country” which means, in practical terms, obeying the orders of your superiors who are supposed to represent “the country”, however ill-defined the term.
Not only does obedience to the first tenet render obedience to any of the rest impossible, it is unfathomable to me how a Christian could find this a suitable basis for a Bible study intended to make men into better Christians. The first tenet of this code means, quite plainly, to forsake your own conscience, do not question the morality of your orders, do not seek to understand why you are supposed to be at war with whomever you are told to be at war with, do not investigate whether or not your targets are a genuine threat or deserving of death, but simply pull the trigger.
The Evangelical Church in America today looks very little like a body of Christ followers and more like a body of state and military followers. American flags grace many a pulpit. Veterans Day celebrations are common. Prayers for the success of military ventures are not unheard of. Calls by politicians and pundits for the use of violence in almost any country for almost any reason will almost always gain the unwavering support of the entire Evangelical community. Anything – including torture, assassinations, and “collateral damage” – can be excused and even praised if it is done “for the country” and under the stars and stripes.
How did this happen? Can you imagine Jesus, or Peter or John with Kevlar vests and M-16’s kicking in doors, screaming , and “double-tapping” people in the head before yelling, “All clear!”’ and high-fiving each other? Can you imagine them dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Can you imagine Jesus instructing his followers to study a code of conduct that begins first and foremost with, “Be loyal to the Roman government”?
Not only did Christ and the giants of the Christian faith refuse to aggress against others, no matter how sinful or evil, they even refused to use violence in self-defense and instead chose martyrdom. When Peter tried to defend Jesus with the sword by cutting off the ear of a soldier, Jesus rebuked him and healed the man’s ear.
Jesus did not instruct the disciples to go to the wilderness and train for a few months so they could plan a stealth nighttime assassination of the guards who crucified Him or any who opposed the Way. He told them to forgive. To Baptize. To turn the other cheek. To submit even to death for the sake of the gospel, rather than resort to violence. That is a radical message and they lived it.
And yet the Church finds herself cheering for the military and honoring them without questioning what they are doing, who they are killing, why they are doing it, or if it’s right. Worship of America and the myth of its righteousness have taken the place of any sense of individual moral responsibility on the part of soldiers or those who support them.
I left the church that morning with an immense weight on my soul. I wept. I wept because I knew exactly the sentiment expressed by most of the churchgoers that morning. I used to share it. I wept as I remembered my bloodlust after 9/11. I wanted the United States military to kill people. I wanted bombs to drop and guns to fire. I wanted somebody to get it, good and hard. I wanted death. I wanted war. I did not want peace. I felt no love, only hate.
This impulse is perhaps the most human of all impulses. It is also the very impulse Christ taught us to overcome and demonstrated how to do so by His own example. Even when others hate, love.
I wept as I saw in my mind’s eye the blood on the hands of nearly every Christian in this country. How many self-proclaimed followers of Christ have cheered on “the boys in uniform” during every conflict we’ve ever had, including wars of aggression, just because they’re “our countrymen” fighting for “our side”?
What are “the things that make for peace”? The belief that right and wrong trump nationality and patriotism. The belief that killing is only ever permissible as a last resort and in self-defense. An understanding that Congressional or Presidential approval of an action does not make it moral. That obeying orders is not a virtue unless the orders are virtuous, in which case they should be obeyed because they are right, not because they are orders. That voluntarily agreeing to kill whomever you are told to kill is not honorable. That love is better than vengeance.
Before you support any military action, conduct a brief mental experiment: imagine not the US Military, but you as an individual embarking on the mission in question. In the end it is only individuals who can act and bear moral responsibility for their actions. Imagine standing before God and saying, “I was only following orders”.
How many churches cheered for war against Iraq? Yet can you imagine a pastor standing before his church and saying, “For the next six months we are all going to train in explosives and guns, and we are taking a church trip to Iraq to kill bad people and make the world a safer place.” Who would support it? In moral terms, it is no different to support taking money from taxpayers to pay soldiers to do the same. In fact, the latter is in some ways more nefarious and less honest.
Most would argue that there is a difference between unjust violence and just violence – indeed there is. Some argue there is a difference between just war and unjust war – perhaps there is. But never in my years of observing church support for state military action have I witnessed a single discussion of whether the action was just or right. There have been a few discussions of whether it was “Constitutional”, but never whether it was moral. The morality of war is assumed by the mere fact that the war is waged by the United States Government.
Until the Church in America stops blindly supporting violence done in the name of patriotism, our hands are bloody and our witness is tainted. We say we are for peace, but we want war. We say we pray to the Prince of Peace, but we ask him to bless the violence committed by soldiers. We say “the law is written on our hearts” yet we ignore our hearts and only follow the laws of governments and call what they call right “good”, and what they call wrong “bad”.
In our ignorance, we support violence. We can cry out, “Father forgive us, for we know not what we do.” But after our eyes are opened and we begin to examine the morality of acts of violence, we will be held accountable for what we know. I pray we will be willing to oppose violence, even when doing so makes us “unpatriotic” or “un-American”; even when doing so may lead to our own persecution.
“He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God himself” — C. S. Lewis.
Why Corporations Don’t Support Freedom
There is a common assumption that advocacy of free-market ideas is funded in large part by big corporations. As much as I wish the many great organizations and projects that are educating in liberty received financial support from large corporations, almost none of them do, and when they do it is in very small amounts when compared to the other things such firms support.
But why? Businesses are constantly hampered and harassed by government regulation, taxation, and the uncertainty of the legal landscape one day to the next. Don’t they stand to gain from laissez faire? Well, yes, businesses stand to gain tremendously from market freedom. Entrepreneurs, owners, employees, consumers, and every other market participant stands to gain. Businesses of all sizes stand to gain, provided they can produce what consumers demand.
Aye, there’s the rub.
You see, while business stands to gain from free exchange, nobody knows which specific businesses will be most successful in a competitive environment. Consumers are a tough bunch to please. It takes a lot of work, and there’s a lot of uncertainty. The creative destruction of the market is a little daunting to a businessperson who dwells on it for long. It’s easier, for those who can afford it, to cozy up to the state and ensure that it’s restrictions and interventions hurt you a little less than they harm your competitors. If you have resources enough and play your cards right, you might even be able to get policies that make you more profitable or put your competitors out of business entirely.
The result? Bigger businesses tend to support state intervention, because they have the lawyers and money and can hire the guns of government. It is entirely possible that some of these very businesses would fare better under economic freedom, but they don’t know for sure, so they go the somewhat safer route of state cronyism. Smaller businesses typically aren’t organized enough and lack the resources to manipulate policy in their favor. Worse still, the unimaginable number of new ventures that would have been created were it not for government impediments have no voice at all; we don’t even know who would have created them.
In short, freedom is good for business, but scary to businesses.
Never Have a Magnum Opus
In yesterday’s post, I said,
“I’ve also found that viewing a post as the beginning of my own understanding of the topic, rather than my final word or magnum opus, is intellectually enriching and produces a wealth of new ideas down the road. But more on that later…”
Now is the later.
My son spends hours every day producing artwork. Sometimes he will go for several days on a single theme: a new super hero or comic book he’s created. He is lost in the world he creates as he produced dozens and dozens of drawings, each with elaborate back stories. Inevitably, whatever theme he’s on comes to a sudden and unexpected (for me, anyway) halt. He gets a new idea, abandons his previous project, and moves right on to the next.
As a father, of course I find his creations delightful and I have a strong urge to capture them as whole works and preserve them. He asked me once to help him turn his book of 30 different wizards and sorceresses (“Wizopedia”) into a website. I was excited to help and began digitizing his drawings and typing in his dictated details on each character…for the first two characters. Then he got bored and abandoned it for new ideas.
At first, I saw this flightiness as a weakness in him. Perhaps it is to a certain extent and he’ll need to learn to see some things through to completion. But the more I think on it, the more I see it as a strength, and the more I want to develop the same tendency in myself. My son is not concerned about an artistic legacy at this point. He’s not concerned about a shiny, neat and clean completed work to present to the world so he can bask in his accomplishment. He’s not trying to create his magnum opus. He creates for the sheer joy of it, and when he doesn’t feel that joy in a particular project, he moves to where he does.
When I think about the most interesting people, who’ve created the most interesting art or analysis, so many of them produced things until the very moment they passed. Some of the greatest academic minds produce interesting ideas into their 80’s and even 90’s. Contrariwise, there’s something sad about a person who produced a magnum opus, and then spent the remaining years living on that legacy, protecting it from being misinterpreted, and making sure the world was aware of its brilliance. It seems perhaps the best thing to do after creating is to let your creation out into the world and, in a sense, walk away from it and start creating something new.
When I think about my life, I try to imagine it as an upward trajectory through time, rather than a great peak followed by a slow decline in my twilight years. I want my greatest ideas, moments, experiences and creations to be those at the end of my life. It seems natural that this should be the case, at least until the physical body’s aging prohibits it, as we accumulate more knowledge and perspective through time. That is, if we don’t stagnate.
Rather than a single epic project, it seems a more interesting and challenging goal to see one’s entire life as a great work. Let your whole catalog of creations, from beginning to end, be your magnum opus. Never peak until you die.
Grow Up Slowly
About a year ago, I had lunch with a very successful couple. The husband had made a great deal of money early in life on a business start-up in a big city. After running the firm for a time, he sold most of his shares and the family moved to a picturesque rural dwelling. He spends but a few hours a week involved with his business, and the rest of his time is spent pursuing his passion for music and a great many other things. His wife is busy pursuing her passions in art and other cultural affairs.
I asked what prompted such a dramatic change at this early phase in life, especially when they could have easily continued with managing the business, or started another. They said, in complete agreement, “We moved out here because we wanted our kids to grow up slowly.”
I told my wife about the conversation, and those words have stuck with us ever since. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of it. We haven’t fully internalized it, but I know it was important for us to hear and consider while raising our own children. It’s easy to get stressed when they don’t walk right at the average age for walking, or don’t read or ride a bike or swim as early as your friend’s kids. It’s easy to try to cram their heads full of practical and theoretical knowledge and get them up to speed quickly. You imagine what you would be if you had been more learned early on. Or you simply want them to gain independence quicker so you won’t be as limited as a parent.
These are not necessarily bad desires, but this business about letting them grow up slowly just resonates on a deep level. There is something beautiful about the naivety of kids; about watching them try things they’re not prepared for; about how unaware they are of just how real the world can be. When they learn organically, on their own time, it’s amazing to see. Feeling free to sit back and soak it in as a parent is truly wonderful.
Even as I am trying to learn how to let my kids grow up slowly, I’m beginning to understand the benefits of slow growth for myself. While reading the fascinating book, How They Succeeded, I came across some interesting words by Alexander Graham Bell. The author and interviewer asked, “[I]s not hard study often necessary to success?” Bell replied,
“No; decidedly not. You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them. It is perseverance in the pursuit of studies that is really wanted.”
I’m the first to say that just getting things done is the key to success. Does an action bias contradict Bell’s words? I’m not sure that it does. Perhaps in the realm of action, haste is a great virtue, but in the realm of thought, slow growth is preferred: act fast, think slow. Not the best slogan, but there’s something to it.
The things we need to get out of the way – certain credentials, experiences, legwork, etc. – just need to be hammered through. But the really important stuff – our life philosophy, an entrepreneurial venture, a new paradigm, a book – needs to grow slowly with our experience and knowledge. It needs persistent mental activity, but not forced completion.
Since blogging every day, I have found occasions where I have nothing for the next day’s post. There are two ways to remedy the problem. The first is to quickly scan the news feeds, inbox, or bookshelf, come up with something, and type it. The second is to search for ideas that have been incubating for a long while, often subconsciously. A drive, walk, or talk with a deep-thinking friend can help me discover nascent ideas I didn’t even realize were under the surface. Those tend to be better than the posts I think up and crank out on the spot. I’ve also found that viewing a post as the beginning of my own understanding of the topic, rather than my final word or magnum opus, is intellectually enriching and produces a wealth of new ideas down the road. But more on that later…
Bell concludes on the topic,
“Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life. What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a fevv days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years. A horse is often a grandfather before a boy has attained his full maturity. The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. That intellectuality is more vigorous that has attained its strength gradually. It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider, and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation, persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.”
Rewrite the Present
Humans tend to have a “good ol’ days” bias. We imagine the past as better than it was. Over time, events and experiences in our own life that were dull or painful can become funny or wonderful as we recreate them in our memory. Epochs long before our time are romanticized, like the idea of the noble savage or the simple pleasure of pastoral life.
This bias can be problematic. We often critique the perceived failures and excesses of the present in comparison to a past that never was and is not possible. Some hate the fact that most of us buy food from people we don’t know, grown by still others we’ve never met. They hate it because they think it alienates us from what we eat in some way. They imagine some past where they would be joyously working a small field to harvest beautiful ready to eat produce that they planted months before with their own hands, far from the grit and concrete of the city and all that shipping and packaging. They don’t think clearly enough to see the constant festering blisters; the rotten, insect-ridden, small, and unreliable crops; the body odor of their family members sleeping in drafty homes with little privacy, and the unavailability of a varied diet, just to name a few oft forgotten realities.
In this case, a rosy bias towards the past makes us less able to effectively deal with real or perceived problems in the present. The romance is employed to prove the need for the use of force to stop human progress. It’s a version of the Nirvana Fallacy.
We could attempt, through mental discipline, to eradicate this tendency in ourselves. We could look hard and deep at the real past, internalize how rough it was, smash the romantic memories and become hardened realists. I think this is a bad solution.
The past is no longer a thing that exists. It is a bundle of ideas we carry in our brains. It is valuable only to the extent it enhances our present. A realistic assessment of the trials and travails before can sometimes make the present better and provide valuable knowledge. Just as often, it offers no value, but only makes us sad. An idealized and romantic past can bring a lot of joy and laughter that enhance our present. The fact that we recreate the material facts of the past and store mostly the positive is probably a wonderful thing. Recall the times you felt tremendous sadness, guilt or fear: Imagine carrying a realistic memory of all those compounded experiences around with you all the time.
More problematic than recreating the past is a failure to recreate the present. The way you perceive life determines the quality of it. If I think fondly on my childhood because I’m filtering it for the good, why not work on implementing a similar filter for the present? It’s never possible to be perfectly accurate in our perceptions of the world; we will always have limits and bias in our worldview. Why not cultivate that bias towards things that bring peace, freedom, and joy? It’s a little more than making lemonade out of lemons. It’s a conscious effort to learn from our brain’s natural filtering of the past and trying to implement it in the present. It’s a discipline. An optimistic outlook is no less accurate than a pessimistic outlook, but it is more fun.
A good place to start cultivating an optimistic (yet realistic) worldview is at Tough Minded Optimism.
In Praise of Weird
At the Students for Liberty International Conference over the weekend I heard and overheard several jokes and comments about how many weird participants were there. It was mostly good-hearted self-deprecation, but there was often a hint of concern. There was perhaps a subtle but sincere belief that, if libertarian ideas and the individuals and organizations at the event are to have an impact on the world, the oddballs need to be drowned out by normal people. I’m not so sure.
Of course any group that rallies around a particular interest or set of ideas will have it’s own vibe somewhat distinct from the “average” person in the world. (If you ever meet this average person, I’d be curious what he or she is like. I’ve searched for many years and have yet to meet them.) If insiders and outsiders alike view events like this as gatherings of assorted weirdos, that’s probably a sign of a vibrant, healthy, non-group-thinkish phenomenon. With libertarian ideas as the rallying point, all the better to have a broad swath of all that humanity has to offer in attire, personality, tastes and preferences; what a wonderful testament to the humane and universal character of the ideas.
If, on the other hand, there is a drive to get more conformity and less weirdness in order to look more like the mythical average person, such gatherings tend to end up either stale or cult-like. In the former case, a lot of social pressure to wear non-offensive clothing and behave in an average way can sap the energy and creative life out of groups of shared interests. I’ve seen churches like this. Everyone makes such a point to be normal – in part to prove to the world that believing what they do doesn’t make them strange, in part to prove it to themselves – that it’s like a bunch of Stepford wives. While it may make being a part of the group less risky, it doesn’t make it any more attractive to outsiders, and it certainly makes it more dull for insiders.
The latter and far worse result of the desire for normal is cult-like conformity. If nobody wants to be the weirdo who gives their “movement” a bad image by dressing out of fashion, everyone can end up wearing cute little matching suits. There are subcultures where everything down to facial hair is uniform. Not only is this creepy and off-putting to the outside world, but such pressure for aesthetic sameness seeps into the realm of the mind and grows into intellectual conformity, the death-knell of any social movement, especially one as radical and free as libertarianism.
The weirdness or non-weirdness of a group of people doesn’t seem to indicate much about their life and potential. It’s the sameness that does. If everyone is weird in the same way, you’ve got a closed off niche easily caricatured or ignored. If everyone is normal in the same way, you’ve got much the same thing. If you’ve got enough weirdos to make the normals feel surrounded by weirdos, and enough normals to make the weirdos feel like the minority they enjoy being, it’s probably a pretty exciting, interesting, dynamic and growing bunch united around some pretty powerful ideas.
I saw a lot of unusual looking and acting people at the event. They stood out because the majority of participants looked pretty normal and acted pretty sophisticated. I took both of these to be wonderful things, and I hope those commenting on the need for less weird were poking fun more than seriously hoping to change the culture and weed out the oddballs. The range of religions, styles, personalities, persuasions, motivations and behaviors in that room were a beautiful testament to the breadth, depth, and life of the ideas of freedom. Bring on the weird. May it never die.
Traveling with We and Me
Snow falls on a Southbound train
Flakes enough to paint and stain
All the world in their domain
Stuck inside this stagnant crust
On metal wheels and under-rust
Feels more like pain than wander-lust
Sitting still because of freight
To see its fate we wait and wait
The youngest stir, their voices grate
There has to be a better mode
To cross the land to one’s abode
Since progress from when horses rode
Indeed there is a smaller box
Much smoother too sans bed of rocks
To it the wiser masses flock
This newer mode more civilized
More flexible and free it rides
The height of speed industrialized
Often now is criticized
“We must ignore the soul to rise
Above the individual lies”
“The greater good we all comprise”
Or so they do idealize
I’m stuck here as I realize
The greatest mode of transport be
The one that makes a person free
And that one still a car for me
“So blow the smoke and smog”, they say,
“And hasten now our judgement day
Unless we find a better way”
Unless that way will give me wings
I won’t let go my joyous flings
I do not fear these doomsday things
I’ll drive my car free and fast
Knowing that the fad won’t last
It’ll be your train, not me that’s passed
So joyfully I’ll push the gas
You needn’t worry that I do
It’s me who pays instead of you
Unlike your train that’s funded through
Money taken from the rest
And given to the pompous blessed
So they can do what they deem best
I’ll keep mine, thank you, if you please
It makes us all feel more at ease
So keep your hands away, you sleaze
I’ll drive into my own sunset
Excited for new forms unmet
Or maybe my own private jet
There’s something wonderful and free
Left uncontrolled by transport “We”
When making plans for me is me
Democracy is Not Our Savior
(Originally posted here, but I remain bewildered by the religious devotion to democracy, so I’m reposting.)
Imagine if your local grocer used mass voting to determine what to stock on the shelves. Everyone in a 30-mile radius of the store would get a ballot every few years, and you could vote on what items they should sell. Think long and hard about what people would vote for. Do you think this would result in better selection and quality than the current system of letting markets decide?
Voting is an incredibly inefficient mode of social organization. It rewards irrationality, selfishness, ignorance and greed. It makes peaceful coordination and cooperation incredibly difficult. It is divisive and hopelessly, systemically flawed. All the incentives are wrong. We should not see voting or democracy as a solution to social or political problems, but one of the primary causes.
Perhaps my example of voting on groceries is unfair. In most political systems we don’t vote on each and every issue. Instead, imagine that residents within 30 miles of the grocer don’t vote on the store’s stock and policies, but rather vote on who should manage the store. Let’s go a little further and say they vote on the manager, CFO, board members and a handful of other middle-management roles. What would be the result?
For starters, those seeking to hold management positions at the grocery store should forget about any skills except the skill of convincing all the voters to vote for them. Marketing themselves as better than the other would-be managers would be the only thing that would get them the job; not their expertise at running a store or their knowledge of stocking procedures, management or the industry. Would people’s votes provide better and clearer information about who should manage the store than the profits, losses, operations and happiness of employees? Of course not.
At first glance, voting may seem similar to a market. After all, when people buy or don’t buy from the grocer, it sends price signals telling management what shoppers value. It’s like a vote, with a crucial difference: It costs the buyer. Market exchanges reveal what people want when they face trade-offs. Voting reveals what people want when it’s “free.” Lots of people might vote for the store manager who promises not to import anything from other countries because it makes them feel good to support local farmers. These same people, when faced with higher priced and lower quality local food in the open market might very well choose to purchase imported produce. Voters support candidates who promise to restrict cheap imported goods, then on the way home from the polls they stop and buy cheap, imported goods. Voting irrationally is costless, while shopping that way hurts your pocketbook.
Voting also turns friends into enemies. I have neighbors that support different products and services and businesses than I do, but this doesn’t cause any tension in our relationships. But if we were forced to vote on which products, services and businesses were available to us, how much they should cost and who would pay for it, in a zero-sum election, you’d better believe tension would arise.
The fact that no grocery stores select products or managers by popular vote should clue us in to something: Democracy is a far worse way of coordinating and managing complex processes than markets.
It’s easy to see how disastrously inferior democracy is to the market in providing groceries. The provision of food is the most fundamental and important service to any society; if the market can handle food provision so much better than democratic processes, why not the provision of less fundamental services like health care, education, protection and all kinds of lesser services? In truth, the incentives built in to the democratic process create massive inefficiencies in all these government services, as well as allow for corruption and all manner of moral transgression.Government failure is an inescapable part of government.
In civil society, voting is a rarely used mechanism. We vote on inconsequential things like where to eat or what movie to see with a small group of indecisive friends. Voting is used in religious or civic organizations to select board members or decide on some major issues. Not only are these relatively small, homogenous groups, but they are groups of people who have voluntarily come together around a shared vision. They can also freely enter and exit; shopping for a church or denomination may sound off-putting, but the freedom to do so is crucial to the health of individuals and churches.
Even in these smaller, voluntary institutions, voting has important incentive and information problems that most organizations try to curb in some way. The more populous the group, the more complex the decision—and the more costly or important the outcome, the worse voting is as a coordinating mechanism. When you’re dealing with hundreds of millions of people and a cross-section of highly complex policies with life-and-death consequences and millions in potential gains or losses, voting becomes an absurd mechanism of coordination. Governments may try to supplement voting with all kinds of irritating and invasive data collection like censuses, but these do not solve the problem in any way—and can make it worse. Does your grocery store need to conduct a census to supplement the anonymous information you provide them with your purchasing behavior?
Most advocates of limited government understand why tyranny and central planning are dangerous. But too often they assume more or better democracy will improve things. We hear about turning backward countries around by making them more democratic. We hear about turning our own country around by convincing people to vote for better candidates or policies. None of these will ultimately address the problem. The grocery store that is managed by vote would not be much better off if the residents selected a “better” manager; the manager would face the same lack of vital information, and the voters and manager would face the same bad incentives.
The way to make the world a freer, better and more prosperous place is not to enhance and expand democracy or to elect better people through the democratic process. It is instead to reduce to a minimum the number of things decided through the democratic process, and to allow more peaceful and emergent institutions for social and economic coordination to take its place. This can only happen when enough people understand and believe in the power of peaceful, voluntary interactions over the power of coercive political methods.
Be a Philosopher
I have had the privilege of meeting a lot of very successful people. Some have been successful in academia or art, but most have been successful in business of some kind. No matter how diverse the industry or experiences or path, all of these successful people have one thing in common: they are all philosophers.
Obviously, all of these people don’t have “philosopher” written on their business cards and they don’t publish articles in journals of philosophy. But they are all lovers of knowledge and people who have spent and do spend significant time and energy examining their life and pondering the world. I’m always amazed at how clear and coherent their life philosophy is. Scratch that; I’m amazed that they have a life philosophy. How many people do? Do you? Could you describe it in five minutes if someone asked you?
Highly successful people work hard and they work a lot. But they also observe and ponder. They continue to refine their worldview and test new theories to see if they work better than the old. If you want to achieve great things, cultivate your mind. As I’ve written before, you need to work your butt off, but if that work isn’t fueled with fresh ideas and new ways to see the world, you’ll only get so far. Take time to think. Let your thoughts grow and develop. Be a philosopher.
Carnivals Just Aren’t That Cool Anymore
We took the kids to a carnival of sorts last weekend. It was nothing huge, but I thought it would be pretty exciting for them. When we arrived, I was underwhelmed. There was popcorn and hot dogs and a little cotton candy machine. There was an inflatable slide and ski-ball. There were a few games and a few people in Star Wars costumes. We spent a few hours there and had a fine time, but it was nothing amazing.
It would be easy to fall back into the old-guy attitude of, “Things were so much more amazing when I was a kid”, or, “Kids these days are so spoiled, nothing is special anymore.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the Carnival wasn’t all that amazing simply because every day is so amazing for my kids. We’ve been to numerous backyard birthday parties or get-togethers for no special occasion at all where the hosts have rented giant bounce castles, slides, or water playthings. Cotton candy can be purchased cheaply almost anywhere. My kids love these things no less than I did as a kid, they just have the ability to enjoy them more often and on their own terms, not only after waiting in long lines and being crammed in with sweaty strangers.
It’s pretty amazing that it doesn’t require a monumental feat of organization, fundraising, ticket sales, and planning to have a once a year event with cool stuff for the kids. I appreciate this even more as I watch my kids have those nervous moments of indecision about whether or not to hazard the giant water slide. If they chicken out, they don’t have to spend possibly years regretting that they missed that one opportunity, as I had done in similar situations as a kid. They can take their time, and if they regret the decision not to give it a try, they’ll likely have a next time soon. They probably make better decisions because of the everyday availability of carnival trappings – I remember feeling sick almost every time I pounded giant wads of cotton candy or elephant ears with all the pent-up demand of an inmate on holiday.
I could be bitter at the fact that, in many ways, my kids have it better than I did, and therefor they don’t seem as excited about stuff I loved. But why? Who cares? I decided to enjoy the fact that I don’t have to run out and attend every fair, because my kids have a lot more options than I did. Yeah, sometimes it hurts that they don’t lavish me with praise for getting them a pack of Big League Chew or a corn-dog, but that’s my problem, not theirs. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them, it means I’m too sensitive and doing stuff more for me than them. They’ll probably never realize how awesome their world is compared to the past, but none of us really can. Let’s enjoy the present regardless!
I Write Because it Changes Me
In the movie Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) is told by a friend that, despite the mockery of his atheist colleagues, his prayers for his sick wife are having an effect. Lewis, however, is not concerned with whether or not prayer “works” in altering the universe:
“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me.”
This is a powerful bit of self-honesty. Lewis felt no need to respond to philosophical or theological objections to his actions. He wasn’t praying to convince God, he was praying because he knew the value to him of this activity, regardless of the outcome.
I have made a point recently to remind myself of why I write; not to change my audience, but to change me.
There will never be a shortage of people who offer objections to ideas I put to paper, or critique the way I choose to communicate those ideas. If my goal were to win over as many people as possible to my point of view, this would be incredibly stressful. Every objection would require a response or a change in my future behavior. It’s not a particularly fun or productive way to live.
Feedback is wonderful. It creates a connection between creator and consumer that results in better content. But feedback is only helpful if it doesn’t make us bitter and we don’t worship it. If it hurts us to hear and we begin to create things motivated entirely by the need to stick it to the “haters”, we’ll produce lower quality content and be less happy doing so. If we overvalue feedback and rethink every word to predict every possible way in which it might be misinterpreted, we’ll produce boring content and have less fun in the process. Both of these responses put the feedback of others in the drivers seat and you, the creator, in the passenger seat. Don’t let that happen.
Take in feedback, enjoy it, laugh at it, use it, but don’t pay it too much attention. Remind yourself that the reason you write (or read, or speak, or paint, or sing, or…) is because it changes you.
Homestead Your Interests
Homesteading is an age-old form of gaining common-law right to property. A piece of land that is unowned or abandoned can become yours if you improve upon and maintain it for a period of time. In the American West, pioneers would find a parcel of land they liked and stake it out as their own. So long as they built fences or signposts or boundary markers of some kind and generally maintained the property, it was considered theirs. Smart pioneers would homestead more than they could gainfully farm at first, looking to the future and leaving open the opportunity to expand their operation. We may not have vast stretches of unclaimed land today, but the need to homestead some metaphorical acreage is still very real.
You have a body of knowledge, expertise, and a set of activities that define you. This is your brand. I’ve written before about the danger of being hemmed in by your brand, especially if it’s a successful one. But how exactly can one prevent it? By homesteading more space than you can currently occupy.
If you really enjoy architecture and keep in the back of your mind the idea that someday you may put a lot of yourself into it, whether vocationally or avocationally, you need to stake out a territory that includes architecture, and keep the underbrush trimmed so it doesn’t begin to encroach on your homestead. Maybe you’re a lawyer, and all your friends and associates know you as the law guy. If you keep your passion for architecture under the surface for twenty years, never letting it see the light of day, it will be a lot harder to make a sudden switch from law to design. People will find it odd and see it as a frivolous deviation from your brand. You will feel a lot of pressure to prove that you’re serious about it. It will take a monumental amount of courage and resolve to make the move, and you will have to steel yourself against the reactions should you fail at first. It’s like homesteading a virgin wilderness full of hostile flora and fauna.
If, on the other hand, you staked out your creative territory early in dimensions far beyond just lawyerdom, and you maintained your property line with the occasional foray into architecture, the opportunity to make a move later will be far more real and the transition far less daunting. Maybe you keep copies of popular architecture magazines around for inspiration, and to let visitors see that you consider it a part of who you are. Maybe you write about it from time to time, or offer amateur architectural tours of your city. Maybe you keep a design table in your house and draw up blueprints. Whatever it is, if you maintain the fringes of your property, it will be a lot easier to occupy it should the opportunity arise.
I make myself post a song or a poem once a week on this blog. It feels a little odd sometimes, and It’s a little embarrassing. But I love creative writing and keep in the back of my mind the possibility of composing short stories, recording songs, or working on film scripts as something I may want to put more of myself into someday. I feel like it’s somewhere in me, but not yet ready to fully occupy my energy. If I go on only producing what currently comes more naturally, commentary and prose, one day I’ll feel the urge to emerge creatively and it will feel like such a drastic transition it may be overwhelming. I want to trim the weeds back at the corners of who I am by a little creative writing here and there. I want it to be public, so that a later switch won’t seem quite as out of left-field to the observing world. I’m under no illusion that posting a song once a week means I will be taken seriously should I become a full-time songwriter; far from it. It won’t be quite as scary though, and I’ll have a little more confidence being used to putting my creative side out there.
Think about who you are, what you love, and what far-fetched dreams you entertain. Draw a generous property line that includes even the most out-there interests. Homestead it, and keep title to your identity with regular maintenance. You never know when you’ll want to expand your brand. If you never do, who cares. You won’t have lost anything by keeping your boundaries wide.
Kiteboarders or Cops?
Last summer I had a conversation with a kiteboarder about his sport and the clan-like nature of his fellow athletes. He told me that the local government body has entertained the idea of putting more rules and restrictions on kiteboarding but that, thus far, they’ve been stymied. Every time they try, the community of boarders rallies information and support and kills the case for more regulation.
As usual, calls for government intervention follow highly visible events. Political operatives rarely push legislation because they spent hours studying how to make life better; instead they respond to opportunities to gain public support by appearing as the savior after bad things happen. In this case, there was a kiteboarder who cruised too close to swimmers and had a collision. No major injuries resulted, but it got a local reporter to write about this “growing problem”. Ordinances were proposed. Kiteboarders were able to stop them, mostly because the public was pretty indifferent and the few people that did care heard their stories.
The boarders explained two things: that no one could police bad actors better than they already were, and that no one should forget the immense value of kiteboarders, which outweighs the slightly increased risk to swimmers.
To illustrate the first point, the guy I was talking to described how all the boarders know each other, and new kites quickly attract the old guard. They get to know the new boarders and make sure they realize they are not only representing themselves, but are part of a community with all the benefits (helping each other in rough weather, etc.) and accountability. He said when an “idiot boarder” showboats, is in over their level of experience, or gets too close to swimmers, others in the community are quick to respond. Sometimes they even threaten to “take action” if the behavior doesn’t stop. He told me this works remarkably well. He laughed at the idea that shore-based beach police could respond to rogue boarders in any meaningful time-frame. He said by the time they arrived, the bad actor would have been thoroughly dealt with by other boarders.
The second point was even more powerful. Do kiteboarders increase the risks of beachgoing? Sure, a little bit. It’s one more thing going on and collision is a possibility, self-patrolling notwithstanding. But what about the benefits? Not just the economic benefits to beachside businesses from the popular sport, or the benefits to boarders themselves, but what about a reduction in risk to the beachgoing public? This boarder told me that in the last two summers alone no fewer than three people, two of them children, were saved from drowning by his fellow athletes. The kites allow boarders to zip across the water at lightening speed to the aid of struggling swimmers long before anyone from shore could. I’d take a slightly increased risk of a collision with a rogue boarder along with an reduced risk of drowning any day.
Every perceived new danger brings calls for regulation and intervention. But who is better at producing order and reducing risk; communities like the kiteboarders, or professional bureaucrats and enforcement agents? For a pleasant and safe beach experience, I’d take kiteboarders over cops any day.
(Also posted at LFB.org)
New Tides and Old Time
New tides pull the mind
Leaving old ideas behind
In the pools of time unkind
Glasses full of red wine,
Still we’re powerless to climb
The stormy seas of yours & mine
So pull the thread of this rhyme
Unfold the bundles we bind
As mud on the eyes of the blind
What’s yours is mine
& loving you I find
Is a piece of the divine