There are some lessons that I have to keep learning over and over again. It seems as though those are the life lessons which constantly break my heart.
I’m an idealist at heart. I can’t help it. I want to believe the best of others. There’s an ideal world that I see in my mind. Everybody gets along. Everybody is reasonable. Nobody uses force to get his way. We’re all free individuals, understanding that others should be allowed to make their own voluntary choices.
But ugly reality keeps intruding on my idealistic visions. People don’t understand those who don’t think or look or act like them. They band together in primitive tribal groups to oppose one another. They’re willing to use force — even to kill others — to ensure that others obey what they believe is right.
That idealistic part of me grew up believing that I could use reason and persuasion to show others the value of what I believed. But I was wrong. The tribes hate each other. The last thing they’re interested in is understanding one another.
And I’m broken-hearted each time I realize this — and again when I understand what it means for my future.
It’s hard to live in tension between what we ‘know’ and the unknown
I finally know why I feel like a fraud when people say I’m smart
We can’t defeat the existing system; we must build a better one instead
Attention, fellow nerds: How are we doing with ‘normal’ people?
We won’t be free until politicians lose power to control the Internet
Correcting an old error: there’s no such thing as ‘We the People’
When voters insist on lies, politicians follow their incentives and lie
It’s hard to shut off our internal chatterboxes to listen to silence
Timeless design principles beat suburban McMansions for beauty