What’s this site all about?

By David McElroy · May 11, 2011

I don’t have any interest in starting a political movement. I just want to live life and be left alone as long as I’m peaceful with others. I’m trying to figure out how to do that. If you’re interested in doing the same — and if you want to do it without the shrill and angry confrontations of politics — I hope you’ll join me in a conversation that might lead to better lives for all of us.

My own political evolution is a long and twisting story. I grew up in a generally conservative household, but I was taught to be a political independent. I also learned — from school and from my own reading — to be an intensely patriotic kid. I believed in our political leaders. I believed in the political system. I believed in the morality of this country’s role in the world.

Over the years, I’ve lost faith in all of that, first for pragmatic reasons and later for moral reasons. At first, I thought the problems I saw could be solved by supporting one of the mainstream political parties, but I came to see that the mainstream parties are more alike than different, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. Next, I believed that supporting a libertarian approach to politics was the answer, but I came to see that it was impossible to talk people into doing the right thing. The more I thought about it, the more I saw that majoritarian systems can’t deliver what they claim, now or ever. Eventually, I discovered the basic moral truth that even if I could talk the majority into supporting my position, it’s immoral for me to impose it on others — and that is the central role of the state. Ultimately, the state is immoral.

If you’re still at a point where you believe in politics, I’m not here to talk you out of it. If you have an emotional attachment to the state, only you can decide you’re ready to give it up. If you believe in supporting a political party in order to avoid the chaos you believe would come about without the state, I’m not going to change your mind until you believe there are other alternatives to the chaos you envision.

But if you believe the state is both immoral and incompetent to protect the natural rights of individuals, maybe you’ve found the right place to connect with people who believe the same thing. I’m not interested in debating the state. I’m interested in finding ways to live peacefully without it.

I’d like to find a way to build a community of like-minded people who are also looking to find ways to live without the state. This is the beginning of my effort to do that. For now, I’ll be writing here and hoping the right people will find the site and get involved in commenting. In time, we might build a community through something like a message board. I’m not sure. I just know that the state isn’t going to come tumbling down until people believe they have an alternative to choose. This site is the beginning of my effort to find an alternative that works.

I don’t know what to tell you to expect. You’ll see a lot about the deficiencies of the state. There’ll certainly be some things about alternatives to the state. But you’ll see a lot that’s just “real life” from my point of view. You’ll see things that represent what’s important to me, such as animals and beauty and humor and my Christian faith.

I hope it will be entertaining. I hope it will be useful. Most of all, though, I hope it’s the beginning of meeting people who will become lifetime friends and partners in the effort to build better lives and a better world for everyone. We might not be able to change all of the world, but maybe we can change our corner of it.

I hope you’ll keep coming back.

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I have changed radically about some things over the years, but probably none of those changes have been as great as the ways that I feel about people who are viewed as evil or criminal. When I was young, I was eager to see criminals or foreign political enemies killed. Today, I don’t view such people though rose-colored glasses and I don’t view them as blameless folks who are going to turn their lives around if we just think happy thoughts. But I can’t celebrate the death of anybody, even if he might deserve it in some ways of thinking about it. Even if it’s sometimes necessary to kill someone — and those cases are often debatable — I regret the death of someone who will now never have a chance to discover love and change his life. There are some evil people in this world, but I can’t celebrate their deaths.

There was a time when I was idealistic enough to believe that if a writer expressed his thoughts clearly and simply enough, any bright and honest person would understand his point. I know better now. We all bring so many unconscious assumptions to the things we read that we often see what we expect to see instead of what the writer intended. This is incredibly frustrating to me as a writer, but I’m trying more and more to just say what I need to say — as clearly as I know how — and then ignore the inevitable responses which show that others perceived something which was not intended. I have to write for those who “get” where I’m coming from, not for those who see my words through personal filters that change my meaning. I hope my intentions are clear to you and I hope what I write can be useful to you, but if not, maybe my work just isn’t right for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I found out this evening that someone I casually knew killed himself last Wednesday. I didn’t know him well — and I never found him personable — but he had started work a couple of months ago at a restaurant where I go. He was a 26-year-old who struck me as a confused and unhappy person, but I didn’t think much about it since he stayed to himself and resisted my efforts to chat with him. It turns out that he had a history of depression and had a lot of gender confusion. He seemed very androgynous to me and I learned today that he presented himself as female in some situations. He was rejected by a romantic interest last week, so he went to the woods and killed himself. His body wasn’t found for three days. It’s tragic how miserable people around us can be and how we so rarely know the truth about things they struggle with.

I’ve been with people for most of this day, but I feel lonely tonight. I’ve had things on my mind for the last few days that I feel the strong need to talk about. I need someone to share my thoughts with — someone who’s interested in ideas and how they affect us. Someone who gets excited to discover new things and can find joy in seeing new ways those things might change our lives. I feel lonely tonight because I painfully remember what it feels like to have that — and I’m craving that sort of connection. I miss having someone I can call and say, “I’ve been reading something and it’s sparked some thoughts I want to share with you.” Those sorts of conversations have lasted for hours for me in the past — or for thousands of words if it’s an exchange of mail — and it feels wrong that there is nobody who wants to hear such things from me tonight. I used to think being lonely was about being alone, but I understand now it’s a longing for one particular person. The loneliest place to be when you need one person is in a crowd composed of people who cannot be who you need.

I don’t agree with everything the late Neil Postman wrote, but I would argue that no other recent scholar gives coherent structure to the last few hundred years in the way his books do. I’m currently re-reading his book, “Technopoly,” and I’m comforted to have a scholar give structure and definitions to things which I’ve observed and barely understood. I was enough of a technophile when I first read this book that I bristled at much of what it said. I didn’t want him to be right and it was easier to dismiss him as a Luddite. But as I see technology continue to enable an information glut which is changing society for the worse, I find comfort in his explanations for how we got here. I don’t yet know the solutions, but I finally understand the problems more clearly. I suspect that much of what we need to make life more meaningful can be found in things we accidentally threw away in the past to make room for technologies. I strongly urge you to read the book and think about its implications.

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