Philosophy
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Politics Is More Than What You Think it Is
because it’s really the science of influence. That’s part of the reason it plays a huge part in COVID-19 and what has happened and is happening in society. There is a lot of influence to be had throughout this process, through communication (or sometimes lack thereof) from society, the church, government, businesses, relationships, everything. Now politics includes everything you probably think it does. Government, leadership, philosophy. But at its core it’s about influence and which ideas get used, and how. It’s about exercising or seeking power in the governmental or public affairs of a state, municipality, etc (to quote Dictionary.com). That all takes influence, from campaigning to meeting people, to…
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It Was Objectively Interesting
It’s been 4 weeks since my adventure at The Objective Standard Conference (TOS_Con) in Park City, Utah, but I just realized I hadn’t written a blog post about it yet. I t was such a great adventure, and although, smaller, longer, and different from FEE-Con it was also very valuable. I learned a lot. I also had a ton of fun, that said FEECon was a better conference, it helped that there were more young people there. TOS-Con had some amazing and unique sessions. Some were more interesting to me than others, and some I admittedly didn’t enjoy but there were others I was ecstatic about. I used to hate…
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It’s Not Free
I just read something from someone I follow that read that anything that’s required to live should be free. There’s so much more wrong with that than I want to cover, or can cover in this blog post, but hear me loud and clear, it can’t be free because it costs something to produce. Unless you go to a public park and drink from the stream, or have food that grows or is raised on your own land. It can’t be free. Someone had to produce the food you buy, the place you live, and the clothes you wear, and they deserve to be paid for that. In a functioning…
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Changing the World One Mind at a Time.
I learned a lot at FEEcon this past weekend, and although I won’t be able to repeat all of it, here are some more thoughts. At one of the breakout seminars, I heard from Yaron Brock, who talked about freedom, economics, and truth. Although I don’t agree with him on everything, I still enjoyed the seminar. I really appreciated him talking about how we are freer than ever. Within that same vein, though, economists can’t measure happiness and that sometimes throws off our counting for freedom, success, and exchange. To give an example: Say you pay for an amusement park ticket, and you have a personal account you give your…
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Don’t stop with awesome, keep going.
I learned a lot at FEEcon this past weekend, and although I won’t be able to repeat all of it, here are some more thoughts. One of my favorite speakers was Dewitt Jones, a National Geographic photographer who did his first film project at 23 and has traveled the globe grabbing wonderful shots and learning about his skills along the way. See his website here: https://dewittjones.com/ (all quotes in this post are from Jones’) I want to share some of what he shared during his keynote presentation and add some of my own analysis. “Don’t be competitive with anyone else, you have your own set of skills.” (paraphrased). Understand that…
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Anxiousness and Time
I wrote the other day about being careful that time doesn’t pass before your eyes; that is, don’t wish away even seconds. But there’s another side to this: dreading various events, if you know something will come up don’t dwell on it, instead, prepare anything you need to, pray, and then keep going with your life knowing the time, and the event, will come and go. Right now I’m looking forward to an event that I was invited to by a friend, I don’t know much about what to expect, but I’m excited none the less. Here’s the thing though, I’ll have a friend there, I’ve already purchased what I…
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Is being the next “_____” helpful or harmful?
You often hear of stars get compared to another from the past, or, people will say someone is the next generation’s so and so. While this may be an honor at sometimes, is it actually helpful or harmful to the person and or society involved? First the positives. Notoriety, if its someone you meant to be or are proud to be, having your name associated with theirs could arguably be great marketing and encourage any and/or all their fans to find you. Unfortunately, it could be detrimental to be directly associated with another person and potentially judged against them. It could mean less creative freedom as well. I think it’s…
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(Don’t) Throw it in the Pile
You’ve probably heard the saying: “if everyone threw their problems into a pile, once you saw everyone else’s, you’d take your problems back instead”. One of my advisors recently turned that on its head. To put what he said in my own words: If everyone threw their good things in a pile next to everyone else, and realized how other people got to their good things we’d all take ours back. I love that this is what I see as an optimist’s version of the famous example. It challenges what we see, I mean people might have their own value in the process of how they got to where they…
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Being Mindful
Sometimes in our lives we become convinced we have something right, sometimes we are right but other times we may not be. It comes down mostly to wisdom and having the courage it rely on facts over feelings and focus on the truth. Being mindful is about being a critical thinker, not just in school, not just when you’re working on a project for work, but also when you believe you’ve found the truth, keep looking for proof, it will keep you sharper in your convictions, that and you’ll be better at defending those convictions. Also, though, make sure to listen to others and ask questions, just be nice about…
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Quotes
We like them because we have reason to believe they’ve been thought through because we see value in them or we like what the person who said them has done. Quotes often become famous when they have their real world or perhaps universal application. The first few who said “be careful what you wish for” may have been told they were crazy. After all, if you want it why couldn’t it be a good thing if that was all it had been in the past? This is a simple example but it gives a good framework for this idea. So next time you have an idea don’t think that it’s…
