Whenever someone speaks of “how society is organized,” he has his eyes on taking away whatever you have and “organizing” it as he sees fit. Language like this is about someone seizing control of people and their property. It’s the language of thugs, not of free people. Free people organize themselves and make voluntary arrangements with others. Top-down control is completely contrary to the rights of individuals, whether that control is being used to benefit one part of a society or another. It’s equally wrong whether the theft is in the name of big companies or a religion or the most sanctimonious of all — for the “little people.” Fighting the evil of one sort of dictatorship by advocating a different sort of dictatorship is just as evil.
Briefly: It’s been four years since my life-threatening surgery
Briefly: For silly fun, check out what a gender swap might look like for you
Briefly: The cats are slowly getting back to normal; thanks for your concernBriefly: Nature’s beauty connects us to something greater than we are
I don’t see how anybody could spend a 70-degree evening under a canopy of spring leaves from massive trees — in the twilight after sunset — and not feel as though he’s communing with something in Nature that’s greater than he or she alone. I took pictures of a tree near my house at sunset and then drove home and spent the twilight in the yard with Lucy just feeling the joy of experiencing a stunning Creation as it unfolded all around me. It was another reminder that there is beauty everywhere — and that the beauty connects us to something greater than we are — if we just open our eyes and pay attention.
Briefly: We still hold the power, not Zuckerberg and Co.
Briefly: It’s when my ego is quiet that I lose my fears of going my own way
Briefly: Trump’s narcissistic rage makes his tantrums dangerousPredictions of doom keep failing, so isn’t it rational to doubt them?
For most of my life, I’ve been hearing very specific predictions that the Earth was doomed and humanity was all going to starve to death.
The prescriptions were always the same. Reduce energy use. Don’t have children. Recycle. Stop economic growth. Quit driving cars. The list went on and on.
The predictions we heard — from mainstream scientists respected by the environmental movement — were dire. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich told us (in his best-selling book, “The Population Bomb”) that millions and millions of people were doomed to starve to death no matter what we did. Respected ecologist Kenneth Watt told us that the world was cooling and that we were heading toward another ice age.
The point isn’t to laugh at the ignorance of well-meaning people in 1970, but to ask why we’re still following the prognostications and political agendas of people whose predictions have all been wrong before.
Leave your dead past behind; that’s not where you’re going
Without peaceful breakup plan, U.S. faces violent, angry collapse