It's Saturday! That means you'll have a couple hours to kill tonight, right? I hope so, because this is a solid biographical lecture on George Washington. The good, the bad, the ugly, all wrapped into a discussion from his parents all the way to his death. Seperating fact from fiction, and an earnest attempt at seeing the man behind the myth.St
Stephan Molyneux is still a nutter, but he does sometimes get things spot-on. This is one of those occasions. This is, essentially, what came to mind every time someone brought up George Washington as an anecdote in discussions concerning politics. Having just watched this video (over the course of the last week), I now have a more complete set of facts to draw on and a better chronology to set it in. This comes in handy when thinking about "restoring the republic" or "what the founding fathers wanted", so everyone ought to watch this.
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I intend to address education more in the future, but fir now, I think this is a fun and handy guide for advocating home education over state education. It's certainly not the most detailed or comprehensive argument, but it certainly provides a lot to think about and consider.
This site is a useful tool for the logician, rhetorician, internet sophist, and anyone else interested in either improving their own grasp of logic or demeaning others for their lack of logical acuity. A handy, accessible, and informative introduction to logical fallacies, this site is excellent for remedial logic development, since mainstream schooling has abandoned classical education.
While these little blurbs are useful, they do not fully explore the nature of these fallacies and they focus primarily on the formal (or logical) fallacies as opposed to the innumerable rhetorical fallacies that have been discussed in philosophy, but this is a great starting place for the beginner and a useful tool for the expert to help beginners understand. Disclaimer: People are often tempted to resort to the fallacy fallacy (depicted on this site) when discovering how common fallacious reasoning is in common discourse, discounting anything someone has to say because they were inarticulate in their expression of an idea. This is especially prevalent in liberal circles, where one is trained in the course of liberal arts education to do so (ad hominem, I know). Just try not to be "that guy" when you're out there battling for Truth. Five days late, I have another daily resource suggestion. I have a huge original content post that I've been working on all month, and life has really gotten ahead of me, but we will have some OC within the week, I promise. lol Today's suggestion is more of a tool, one which I will likely be posting specific resources from in the future. Formerly Books Should be Free, the site is now Loyal Books. This site is dedicated to spreading knowledge by way of making all books whose copyright protections have lapsed freely available to all. For the most part, they are available in audiobook form, primarily through Librivox. This has been a great resource for me, making audiobooks free so that I can listen to them while driving or working without paying more than the book costs for an audible subscription or comparable service.
Admittedly, because they are the "public domain" books, most of the books written in the last century are not available. However, One can still get a primer in philosophy, reading/listening to primary sources and anarchy with Lysander Spooner. I technically posted this as a resource suggestion in a post on the main blog a while back, but I thought it deserved "Daily Resource Suggestion status. I'm speaking, of course, about Existential Comics
To someone with even a loose grasp of philosophy, it is hilarious. For those that are lacking in philosophical education, this comic provides an excellent "starting place" for learning more. With explanations of the jokes and rich philosophical discourse, it will undoubtedly enrich the lives of those attempting to improve their mental faculties. Please, donate to their patreon, because the work they do really does make the world a better place. https://www.patreon.com/ExistentialComics You can also visit the new "Support This Site" page on my own blog and help this project along. The worst form of injustice is to attempt to make two unequal things equal. Today's resource is an essay that was published just last month by George Reisman. Unfortunately, nobody has produced a free copy of it yet, but you can get the kindle version for 99¢ on Amazon. It is a nice, short, easy read about why "equality of opportunity" is a dangerous lie. If you agree, this will help bolster your arguments for what is a very true and very unpopular position. If you disagree, I think you should read this essay and see what you think afterwards. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VW8RJ26/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00VW8RJ26&linkCode=as2&tag=thomacom-20&linkId=JU4HXR3HDEQ4ZXSX This article was recently featured in an interview with the author on the Tom Woods Show, in case you are too busy or poor to purchase and read the essay itself. I strongly recommend that conservatives at least listen to this interview, as it may change your mind. Not, towards the lefty "equality of results", but instead further away from that even more dangerous and gratuitous lie.
"My thesis is that the criteria by which individuals are deemed qualified or unqualified to become professionals involve not just technical knowledge as is generally assumed, but also attitude—in particular, attitude toward working within an assigned political and ideological framework. I contend, for example, that all tests of technical knowledge, such as the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) or the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), are at the same time tests of attitude and that the examinations used to assess professional qualification are no exception. I consider in detail how the neutral-looking technical questions on such examinations probe the candidate's attitude. Another School Sucks Podcast on my resource list. Expect to see more in the future, too, this is a very valuable resource. This discussion sounds essentially like a discussion of how to use NVC in debates. I am still skeptical as to whether NVC has any value in text-only conversations like those on facebook, but they make a decent case for giving it a shot.
They also discuss the nature of popular debates, and how they are all discussions of statist policy, even when they are billed as scientific debates. And there's a good chunk of discussion concerning some very good self-help tools at the end. I recently finished reading “Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life -- Second 2nd Edition”. I was very resistant to giving NVC a chance. My introduction to it was some people on Free Talk Live talking about it, and it sounded like some sort of cult-y, Scientology-like, “if we all learn to pray and talk with hippie vibes, the world will be healed”. Hearing about it from Stephan Molyneux next sealed the deal (he is a de-facto cult leader). Satya Nadella made this book required reading for Microsoft execs, which made me wonder if this was becoming a mainstream fad and made me even more resistant to the idea. Also, the name itself seemed off-putting to me. I figured (and still do) that any language that didn't consist of veiled or direct threats is, by default, non-violent.
Then, certain people that I don't always agree with but always respect their opinion and degree of thought it takes for them to develop an opinion re-introduced me to the idea of NVC. Between Brian Sovryn explaining that it has less to do with non-violence, and more to do with empathy, I started to reconsider. Seeing Adam Kokesh put it to work on Christopher Cantwell, of all people, sealed the deal. I saw the way that Kokesh (someone whom I've always been suspicious of) managed to basically shut down the angry part of Cantwell's brain and get a begrudging admission that NVC may be an effective tool. I still was very, very suspicious of the whole idea in general, but I knew I had to at least research it before dismissing it. I bought the book on Amazon for something like $15 and read it in a few weeks, taking it a few pages at a time. The book is easy to read, short and sweet, and gives actionable suggestions. While the methods of NVC aren't useful in every circumstance, (philosophical discourse, for instance), they are incredibly effective at smoothing out day-to-day interactions with people, especially adversarial people. I am, by no means, a peaceful parent, but I'm looking into that, as well. I can say this much, though, after giving NVC a shot, I've gotten incredible results with my middle child. It used to seem like her sole purpose in life was to antagonize me, but we're making excellent progress in getting along, thanks to Rosenberg. The way I understand NVC to operate is thus: We, in our culture today, are addicted to counter-productive emotions. We have developed a habit of being outraged at things. The4 internet has proven to be instrumental in fueling this addiction to outrage, as there's always something out there for anyone to be mad at. The way addictions work is in cycles. Stimulus, reaction, dopamine/adrenaline/etc, brain-drugs wear off, repeat. In the case of outrage, something touches on an unresolved need or desire within us, we get mad and lash out at at whoever or whatever touched on that nerve, we get a release of feel-good drugs in our brains, and we feel good about being miserable, repeat ad-infinitum. What NVC seems to do is interject itself between the stimulus and reaction and closes that loop prematurely. This is how addictions are broken, how good habits are formed, and how someone can talk down a 280 lb thug before getting their face punched in. It is also a method of communicating that, in closing that loop prematurely, leads people into uncharted areas of their own human mental experience and opens them up to actually exploring alternative ways of seeing the world, which is useful when discussing crucial matters such as human flourishing. As it stands now, I understand NVC in an almost entirely scholastic sense, but my early efforts at putting it into practice have already made family and work far more manageable. I recommend everyone read this book. I don't think it's some sort of silver-bullet to eliminating the state, as some do, but I do believe that this is a tool set that is irreplaceable if one wants to flourish in a post-state society. A young adult fiction book about an 11-year-old surviving the zombie apocalypse with a collection of skills learned from the Porcupine Freedom Scouts (a non-statist alternative to the Boy Scouts). It's educational, fun, short, and sweet. Oh, and Zombies. These zombies are a fresh take on a very stale genre villain.
I have some small degree of insider information about the next few installments of the series, the biology of the outbreak, and the inspiration for the story. I am certain the rest of the series will not disappoint. The best part? You can buy it with Bitcoin, here. Or, you can buy it on Amazon if you're stuck in the legacy economy, here. I've decided to post an almost-daily "resource suggestion" for people's elucidation on what I'm reading and listening to and why. The hope is that if people are interested by what I have to say or where I get my crazy ideas, that they can come here and see them.
The selection for today is the forward written and read by Brett Veinotte. It was written for an equally amazing book titled "Legally Kidnapped", which I also recommend that people read. For now, though, the audio of this one episode of School Sucks Podcast should suffice. http://schoolsucksproject.com/podcast-346-work-outside-the-system/ |
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