Enjoying the view from Limbo
To assign proper definitions to the oversimplifying and overused jargon of modern psychology (which is typically employed as a set of catchall abstractions without any essential lines of demarcation), an extravert is a person who gains energy in the company of others, while feeling drained during extended periods spent alone, whereas an introvert experiences the opposite dynamic. In other words, an introvert is...
Today I found, on my MSN news feed, a typical fearmongering headline in these days of continuous authoritarian propaganda: “Omicron Patients Becoming ‘Really Sick in a Different Way.’” The quotation in that headline, as I discovered, is from a “leading ER doctor,” specifically an associate professor from Columbia University Medical Center. The linked news item is a short video report, in which scare...
Liberty's Labors Lost / Pandemic that Ate a Planet / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 5, 2022
A few days ago, I took a student for lunch and enjoyed my first experience of being asked to present my proof of vaccination as a condition for being granted the privilege of eating soup in a restaurant. I took the opportunity to explain to my student, with whom I happened to be reading Brave New World that day, the special emotional significance,...
From Business Insider: “A noted political scientist warned that the US could be under the rule of a right-wing dictator by 2030.” The noted academic in question is one Thomas Homer-Dixon (first time I have ever noted him, to be honest), a Canadian think-tank researcher of the global enviro-socialist variety — the kind of “political scientist” for whom alleged concerns about the environment...
The reason advertisements consistently portray everyone as a smiling idiot, a self-absorbed advantage-seeker, a gushing sentimentalist, a self-righteous slogan-spouter, a hypersexual poseur, or an all-knowing and assertive fake expert, is that professional advertisers know how to do their job. The essence of their job is to attract the greatest number of targeted consumers by appealing to the most common tastes and tendencies of...
Anyone who says, whether stridently or matter-of-factly, whether publicly or in your living room, that in order to solve this or that problem, “we have to come together globally to take the necessary actions,” is showing you, in no uncertain terms, that he has wittingly or unwittingly accepted the premise that it is both good and necessary for the entire human race to...
Anyone who has ever slipped backwards on ice or fallen down a flight of stairs knows the feeling: the trajectory of uncontrolled descent having passed the point of no return, you have no choice but to wait for the painfully certain outcome, helplessly. In addition to the two generic examples I have just mentioned, I also have a particularly personal memory — possibly...
Objective wealth.– Wealth, understood not in its typical, purely relative sense, but as an objective state of being, is not a measure of how much you possess, but of how little you need; not of what you earn, but of what you save; not of how much you can spend, but of how little you waste. Needless to say, poverty may properly be...
Private property, contrary to two centuries of socialist activism against the idea, is essentially a moral tenet, one of the most universal and naturally occurring of all moral tenets. As such, it is perhaps the single most effective social tether on the monster of coercive violence which lurks just around the corner in all human societies. And while in common perception it is...
What the budding socialist says explicitly: “I am willing to pay more taxes in order to help the underprivileged.” Implied meaning (Level 1, moral belief): “Everyone should be willing to pay more taxes in order to help the underprivileged.” Implied meaning (Level 2, moral imperative): “Everyone must pay more taxes in order to help the underprivileged.” Implied meaning (Level 3, political activism): “The...
Follow: