Author: Mr Nobody
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What does saying something evolved accomplish?
I am trying to understand a linguistic and logical problem with the way we talk about certain positive traits we describe as evolutionary products. The problem is, that is some sense we seem to be saying that the cause of the causes are their effects. That in some sense the trajectory of time was inevitably…
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Why is dissatisfaction so easy?
It is a strange and disturbing observance that, despite the ease and comfort of my own state of life, it is so profoundly easy to hate everyone and everything, including myself, with my buzzing thoughts and fragile, needy body. And that pleasures enjoyed seem to serve only to delay or extend that state than to…
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The difference between making excuses and understanding
Why this distinction can be complicated when it comes to understanding the past. The following response was provoked when, on remarking that certain practices of the past were not the result of special malignancy, but rather the result of unexamined habit, someone else responded to me that it wasn’t necessary to make excuses; the practice…
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The limits of political power for securing happiness
Political power as a strategy is far less useful for producing personal well-being and success then it is for protecting personal well-being and success. This is partly a structural feature, simply because actual human production of capital, human capital or otherwise, takes place at the individual and not the collective level. It may be aggregated…
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On acts of courage and defiance and stubborn people
I walked away from my masters degree the week of graduation because I wouldn’t agree to the demands of my thesis committee, since I saw them as fundamentally compromising my beliefs. Now, maybe that’s because I was an idiot and a jerk and a coward. And I always want to keep that as my primary…
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Marriage as a test for parenthood
Is it possible that being married is, in some ways, the best test of and training ground for whether you’re capable of being a good parent? Especially for men, but likely for everyone? Children demand so much and offer so little back. If you can’t accept a different person’s interests as your own and flesh…
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The relative value of violence
Is it possible that violence is the cheapest price it’s possible to pay for personal freedom? That seems counter intuitive. It depends what you mean by costly, and for whom. A society that allows the greatest extremes of personal freedom would mean a society that involves itself the least amount possible in other types of…
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Why is instability comforting?
Why do I find Coronavirus comforting? Because it resets expectations and excuses any personal failure to produce the stability and consistency everyone else seems able to produce. I can fail, or not t be doing as well as everyone else, and feel fine about it. Is there, then, an instinct to welcome disaster in the…
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Violence as a creative force
Does war and competition generate as well as reflect belief in a society? Is it the mechanism by which periods of stability are generated, by forcing us to test our capabilities and develop means for survival? Is peace ultimately conducive to stability, or does it inevitably produce long term instability? Does long peace actually drive…
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Dawkins and atheistic optimism
The problem with Richard Dawkins’ speculation that “Perhaps I am a Pollyanna to believe that people would remain good when unobserved and unpoliced by God” is that, if his own theory is correct, people actually are unobserved and unpoliced by God, but nevertheless have achieved the sum total of human suffering and evil across the…
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