Perspective

In this spirit of getting back on our feet, I want to offer some perspective that’s been of great help to me and I hope can be of help to some of you. This could maybe just was well be titled “Things I’ve Learned From Bill” since his work over the years has contributed so much to getting me to this point. (Thank you, Bill!) A grab-bag of thoughts adapted from my comment on “Becoming ungovernable”:

Remember that we are dealing with terrified control freaks, who can only win by consistently and repeatedly painting all the windows black. The more they try to tighten their miserable grip, the easier it will be to slip through their fingers, and the more determined even non-political people will become to escape their tedious, relentless demands. Their cult of submission and subservience has its hypnotic appeal, but it sure ain’t rock ‘n roll.

Remember that progress is what happens while Progressives are busy making other plans. Their vision of the future is fossilized and unable to flex when reality defies it. Their attempts at central planning and control are doomed to fail. Enough of us want to be free to cause them serious inconvenience, and we are way faster in the OODA loop than their lumbering Goliath of a state.

Remember that culture leads, and politics is downstream. Think of the culture you want to live in and live it now. Have the joyful attitude that it is assured, it is real, it cannot be taken from you. For me, and perhaps for others, the most onerous burden is not what is happening but the pervasive notion that we’re supposed to want it. I dismiss that notion with joy in my heart.

Reject false premises. Take it easy. Spend your time among friends. Enjoy life. Be cheerful. Laugh openly at the absurdity of Wokeness and all the rest. It’s good for you, and it drives the earnest scolds who demand 24/7 seriousness up the wall.

It is comical and absurd to live in a country whose current governing ideas have become intrinsically incompatible with its founding ideals and the way of life we desire. It cannot be so, and therefore it shall not be so, no matter how insistent the control freaks are to the contrary.

“Be an American,” indeed. “[B]ecome so American they can’t hold us, and have to vomit us forth whole” is great advice. Per the great honorary American, Captain Malcolm Reynolds: “I aim to misbehave.”

Make new friends, and build alliances. Consider what skills we have among us here, and how we can pool them toward a common goal. Build together. Trade. Facilitate a thriving Culture of Competence.

Learn about technologies that can help decentralize institutions, and consider ways we can employ them.

Think about what you love, and put more of it out there. I’ve rekindled my short-form podcast, “The No Fear Pioneer”, which was substantially inspired by Bill’s call to lead from the culture.  I’d love to work with others on similar projects. I’ve been thinking for a while about a “Stratolounge Mingler” podcast, where we could get to know one another and start building those crucial alliances while having more lighthearted fun than some think should be legal. Maybe there’s a way we can make stuff like that happen in some lightweight, decentralized way?

Also:

Be a sheepdog.

Never give up.

Moreover, we need to stop playing defense and thinking like a stationary target. “Hold the line” has proven to be a losing game. Things have gotten to where they are because Progressives have played their incrementalist game for the past 100 or so years with long-term goals. We need to think bigger, be active rather than reactive, have our own long-term future constantly in mind, and show them something they aren’t expecting.

I think we also have to confront the fact that the places to expect to live the life we want are where people haven’t gotten overly comfortable. We need to plan accordingly in our long-term thinking. At minimum as a “Plan B”, we need to make preparations for a hard reset where we will reignite American Individualism in new places — be they beyond Earth orbit, on the seas, in remote places they can’t be bothered with, or all of the above. Space colonization in particular is a long game, and is going to be a ton of work and toil, but the results will flip the board for those who yearn to be truly free. How to extend the lifetimes of new, free frontiers has been on my mind and is the subject of this week’s No Fear Pioneer (#7 – Extending the Frontier Cycle).

From my 2019 self-intro (misattributed by the site to another user; long story):

Progressives demand “Change” with great urgency. We will show them Change far bigger than they are prepared for — “radical” change; a hard reset to a free-wheeling, fun-loving, individualistic culture that will thrive just as the USA in its beginnings thrived. We will pioneer a reignition of the American experiment in harsh and hostile but wide-open new worlds, and those who fear uncertainty will be loath to follow.

To be sure, we need practical action in the here and now to balance this long-term pursuit, and I won’t blame anyone for dismissing this bit of crazy talk as crazy talk. But think how crazy the idea of leaving everything behind and crossing the Atlantic in wooden ships to colonize a dangerous and unknown frontier must have seemed to people hundreds of years ago. Think how crazy the idea of taking on the world’s strongest army and navy must have seemed to those who scoffed at their descendants. Their indomitable courage freed us. Now it’s our turn to do what must be done.

Seeing that destiny above and ahead of us has made a huge difference in my thinking in the here and now. It has reminded me that we are not a stationary target, and that, one way or another, everything we have worried about is an escapable condition.

I have finally in the past decade or so caught up to where Bill announced himself to be long ago: I no longer care what others say or how they may try to vilify or destroy me. I am ready to walk toward the fire. I am willing to be a public target. My love of this magnificent, free Civilization of ours is stronger than their hate, envy, endless scorn, and small thinking.

I’ve been planning my exit from the big tech company I work for, to return to entrepreneurship, and I’m looking to build alliances with trustworthy others in support of that. I’ve grown bored of wasting time on the unimaginative work I’ve been asked to do in recent years, when there are so very many things worth doing that will contribute more toward a freer and more exciting future for us all. My Dad’s passing last February (blog post also misattributed) reminded me that the clock is on, and always has been, and my present employer’s growing pandering to the left’s sacred cows isn’t exactly helping me want to stay, and reaffirms for me that they’ve lost direction and are adrift. Go where you are wanted and valued, I remind myself. Do what needs doing. I may start by trying to help catalyze free-speech self-publishing and voluntary, decentralized movement away from Big Social. My HTML editor/WordPress client, TypeMetal, taken in new directions, could do more help with that, I imagine, by helping people to own their content. I’ve also wondered about better tools for helping people take command of their finances, and see their losses to taxation more clearly, which could help promote awareness of the long-term opportunity costs and maybe influence popular opinion back toward shrinking the state. Many, many more ideas where those came from.

There is so much to do, and I am tremendously excited to have the chance to be a part of it with all of you.

Take heart and stay focused. The best, I truly believe, is yet to come.