Keeping your identity small
Several years ago, Paul Graham, of Y Combinator fame wrote an essay entitled “Keep your Identity Small." The premise is that discussions of religion and politics almost never result in anything resembling the give-and-take around other subjects. Two people can have an intelligent conversation about the pros and cons of certain brands of rice cookers^[We happen to use a Zojirushi and like it a lot; but I’d never introduce myself as a Zojirushian.
Islamic weapons An interesting piece from The Atlantic on understanding ISIS on their own clearly-stated terms.
“We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al‑Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it…Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime.
If you’ve lived in the U.S. for any length of time, you realize that we have a national obsession with home ownership. Yet I’m beginning to wonder about this bit of American orthodoxy. I’ve owned 4 homes and none of them seemed like much of an investment to me. The last home that we sold was an enormous loss. We are now in a transition, anticipating our new move; so we are house-free (and debt-free!
In the popular sci-fi movie series “The Matrix”, a handful of humans discover that the perception of reality has been artificially engineered by computer software. By taking the red pill1 a person can be released from the deception, thereby seeing things as they truly are. About material “stuff”, I’ve had the same sort of epiphany.
Three years ago, we decided we needed to build a house.
Spring has finally arrived in Minnesota. So have dandelions.
On one of our walks, my daughter ViolinGirl exclaimed how much she loved the yellow “daisies” that dot some lawns. She wished our lawn could be covered with these beautiful flowers.
What a strange circumstance! We begin life appreciating the random beauty of these “weeds.” But once we reach adulthood, neighborhood peer pressure and cultural expectations have us spraying toxic chemicals - to our own detriment, no less - to eradicate these cherished flowers.
Patricia Cohen’s piece “Middle Class, but Feeling Economically Insecure”1 published yesterday in the New York Times raises several discrepancies between the economics of the middle class and one’s identification with that group. Reading the comments on the article I was struck by how divided Americans' points of view are when it comes to the middle class and the causes of its distress. Clearly middle class wages have stagnated in the years immediately preceding and following 9/11.
Politics is hopeless arena in which to enact individual values. Commercial interest will always win because of the enormous cost of modern politics. As I’ve written before1 I think that voting is an inefficient way of effecting change in a way that aligns with personal values. Persons can only be elected when they affiliate themselves with a package of values whose source is largely commercial interest. For example, if I placed the highest values on a balanced federal budget, low defense spending, universal health care, and inclusive rights, who would I vote for?
Those darned Republicans just can’t catch a break these days. In the latest cultural eruption, the Indiana legislature passed a bill which its governor signed into law. The bill allows places of business to refuse to serve persons if doing would conflict with their sincerely-held religious beliefs. An avalanche of public outcry has Indiana’s governor making a hasty retreat.
Charles Blow of the New York Times weighs in about how we should deal with the juxtaposition of free exercise of religious beliefs and discrimination: