Enjoying the view from Limbo
I reproduce here, with minor modifications, my reply to a multi-part inquiry from a serious Korean student about the meaning of equality, as that term is used in the context of democratic theory and practice. I have included a few of the student’s own questions (designated with “Q”) from our written exchange, as they form the context for my particular points of emphasis. ...
Most human beings throughout all of the known history of our species have lived in subjection, whether in literal slavery or in the somewhat more figurative but no less tangible enslavement of life lived at the end of tyrannical tethers. They have had to struggle their way through some sort of unnatural or partial existence in which the most fundamental choices Nature provides...
In a free society, thoughtful and engaged men would gather as rational agents responsible for their own shared well-being, to discuss what ought to be done. They would attempt to persuade their fellows, and the results of these orations and arguments would sway public purposes and policies, even create discernible swerves in the course of history. Public discourse would be not merely relevant,...
You will always have a bed and food, and even last dibs on some medical care, as long as you remain useful. (And who doesn’t want to remain useful?) You never have to solve a significant problem or make a difficult decision — as long as you are reasonable enough to accept your status passively and learn to appreciate the advantages of going...
We are obsessed with finding habitable planets because we have begun to intuit that our modern progress has trapped us forever with one another here on Earth, which is to say we have explored ourselves beyond all hope of any new nook or cranny to dream of. We have nowhere left to go on this planet to escape from the oppressiveness of our...
Plato’s Republic belongs to a world without smartphones. Smartphones belong to a world without Plato’s Republic. The difference is that Plato’s Republic can explain smartphones, whereas smartphones cannot explain Plato’s Republic.
Every time I notice something interesting, beautiful, or fascinating, my attention is almost immediately distracted by humans interfering with my point of view.
The United States Congress, a de facto communist front group pretending to be “the people’s house,” just sanctified, and the United States of The Struggle Against America’s Systemic Racism just celebrated, something called “Juneteenth” — suitably, a made-up word for a made-up holiday. Or rather “holiday,” since there is nothing holy going on here. If irony meant what today’s public school English teachers...
Just the way it is.– Our age is subject to normalcy bias on a scale that would be utterly unthinkable and practically impossible without a century of compulsory government schooling designed to indoctrinate every human being to spiritual submission and the matter-of-fact acceptance of bondage.
Regular readers may have noticed that I am writing very little these days concerning The Pandemic That Ate a Planet. Living in Korea, which was the first epicenter of the outbreak outside of Wuhan, China, back in February 2020, I hit the ground running on this coronavirus debacle and its political exploitations right at the outset, and then maintained a consistent stream of...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 11, 2021 · Last modified January 14, 2021
I would rather face the ugliness squarely and suffer through its worst than comfort myself with pretty and convenient illusions. If I am to live the rest of my life as a slave, let me know this and embrace the reality I cannot avoid, rather than presenting me with fantasy heroes and earthly saviors whose appeal will only serve to tighten my shackles....
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