The prestigious University of Oxford wants students to replace “she” and “he” with the more gender-neutral pronoun “ze.”
The university’s behavior code states that using the wrong pronoun for a transgender person is considered an offense, and a new leaflet distributed by the student union supposedly aims to cut down on hurt feelings and discrimination by encouraging students to use “ze” instead, the Independent reports.oxford
British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell applauded the move.
“It is a positive thing to not always emphasize gender divisions and barriers,” he told the Daily Mail.
“It is good to have gender-neutral pronouns for those who want them but it shouldn’t be compulsory,” Tatchell said. “This issue isn’t about being politically correct or censoring anyone. It’s about acknowledging the fact of changing gender identities and respecting people’s right to not define themselves as male or female.”
“Giving people the ‘ze’ option is a thoughtful, considerate move,” he said.
The change suggested by the Oxford’s student union follows a trend of schools moving toward more “gender inclusive” language to describe students who don’t want to be labeled male or female.
The University of Tennessee’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion issued a list of suggested gender-neutral pronouns for students that included “ze,” as well as other terms like “xe,” “hir,” “zir,” “xem,” and “wyr” to identify transgender students that created a public firestorm, The Tennessean reports.
Officials later removed the guidance from the university’s website amid the backlash, according to EAGnews.
In England, Cambridge University is also moving toward more “inclusive” language, and student welfare officer Sophie Buck told The Sunday Times student union events there “start with a speaker introducing themselves using a gender neutral pronoun.
“It’s part of a drive to make the union intersectional,” she said.
Remember, this is all entirely predictable. It is the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence on display: No institution can effectively serve two different functions. The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.
The public schools can no longer educate, so people are turning to homeschooling. The universities can no longer provide liberal arts educations, so people are becoming technology-assisted autodidacts. The banks no longer loan, the state and local governments no longer provide basic public services, the military does not defend the borders, the newspapers no longer provide news, the television networks no longer entertain, and the corporations are increasingly unable to provide employment.
Even as the institutions have been invaded and coopted in the interests of social justice, they have been rendered unable to fulfill their primary functions. This is the great internal contradiction that the SJWs will never be able to positively resolve, just as the Soviet communists were never able to resolve the contradiction of socialist calculation that brought down their economy and their empire 69 years after Ludwig von Mises first pointed it out. One might call it the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence; no man can serve two masters and no institution can effectively serve two different functions. The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.
There is no point trying to debate about what the purpose of a university is any longer. The public should stop funding them, their assets should be seized and distributed to the public, and new institutions will rise up to take their place. Nothing of value will be lost in the process, because they’re already not educating anyone anyhow.
It’s fascinating to see how quickly allowing women to attend the elite universities destroyed an institution that was centuries old. One would think someone, somewhere, would eventually notice that the same pattern is playing out again, and again, and again in a wide variety of institutions, from the men’s clubs to the churches.
CORRECTION: Apparently the situation at Oxford is not QUITE as bad as the article makes it look. It’s only the Oxford Student Union that has adopted this policy, not the entire university. So, it’s about 3-5 years less converged than the article describes it.
A text sample from the newly released Book Two in Arts of Dark and Light, A SEA OF SKULLS, featuring one of the new perspective characters, Lugbol, the captain of a warband of orcs called the Black Fist. If you are new to the fictional world of Selenoth, pick up both Books One and Two, but start with A THRONE OF BONES for a combined 1,303 pages of truly epic military fantasy.
“I have tasted Manflesh! I have raped she-men! I have burned Man cities!”
Lugbol rolled his eyes. Who hadn’t? He was almost embarrassed for the big mountain orc, who was boasting of his accomplishments while stalking back and forth in a large circle of about fifty warband leaders listening to their warleader’s customary evening rant. As for the burned cities, most of them had held populations smaller than Lugbol’s own kai hari gungiyar. If they were the terrible Man cities of which Lugbol had been told frightening stories since he was a small orcling, then he was a one-armed goblin.
“Man-Zarki’agh shaking in their tents! Man-Kings on their thrones pissing themselves when they hear the name Zlatagh! Zlatagh Life-taker! Zlatagh Piss-maker! Zlatagh Man-eater!”
That was their cue. “Maneater! Maneater!” the shugaba’ugh obediently chanted, Lugbol among them. He knew that Zlatagh secretly hungered after the praise-name Mansbane, but even the giant warleader knew better than to risk stepping on the clawed toes of the Great Orc Azzakhar, whose claim to the title would certainly trump Zlatagh’s.
And Lugbol rather doubted any Man-King had ever heard the name Zlatagh, let alone pissed himself for fear of it.
Zlatagh was an imposing brute, though, even for a mountain orc. He stood nearly a head taller than most of the shugaba’ugh gathered around him, with a thick chest and heavy muscles that belied his violent speed. A pair of captured iron Man plates covered each powerful shoulder; two cow’s horns had somehow been driven through the center of both breastplates, curving upward like two spare pairs of tusks. Zlatagh’s own tusks were nearly as large; they were thick, yellowed with maturity, and reached nearly to the tip of his nose. Almost unique among the orcs present, Zlatagh’s tusks were unsharpened and unadorned with any bone, paint, or metal.
But that didn’t mean they weren’t fearsome weapons. Lugbol had seen with his own eyes how the big orc once used them to disembowel a goblin. The goblin had been wearing leather armor too, which made the feat all the more impressive. After Azzakhar commanded Zlatagh to invade the Man lands two moons past, the Maneater had found himself facing three challenges to his leadership, two of them on the very first day. Zlatagh beheaded one with the monstrous cleaver he called Headchopper, blinded the second with his bare hands, and ripped the arm off the third before using it to bash in the skull of the overmatched orc. At this point, only a truly thick-skulled shugaba would dare to cross the giant orc, let alone challenge him.
Nor, beyond personal ambition, was there any reason for anyone to do so. Zlatagh was a good warleader, and the warbands over which he’d been given command had enjoyed an unbroken string of victories under his leadership. More than one hundred Man villages had been pillaged and burned, and the orc encampment was littered with the broken remnants of trophies taken throughout the spring campaign. None could complain that he had not passed the ultimate test of leadership; providing his followers with more food than they could eat and more booty than they could carry. Not a single orc’s belly didn’t bulge with fat of the last two moons’ devourings, and even the most cowardly goblin wolfrider wore decorative trophies of one sort or another by now.
That didn’t mean Lugbol was entirely confident in the big mountain orc. Smashing sparsely guarded hamlets and carrying off helpless herds and captives was one thing, defeating a large and well-armed army of the sort that waited for them at the northwestern edge of the Korokhurmagh was another. Zlatagh could boast that the Man chieftains were pissing themselves and afraid to take the field against him all he liked, but it hadn’t escaped Lugbol’s notice that it was their forces who avoided meeting the mounted patrols that chased them throughout the woods, and that Zlatagh hadn’t moved their encampment one step closer to the Man army ever since its presence had been reported by wolfriders fleeing from the metal-clad Mandokki warriors and the huge, fierce, four-legged beasts they rode.
“Who marches today! Who takes the fight to Man!”
“Lugbol!” Lugbol raised his fist and cried half-heartedly, quite happy to be outshouted by other shugaba’ugh more eager to demonstrate their enthusiasm to the big orc. “Lugbol!”
In truth, he was hoping to spend the next day or three in the camp, sleeping, squagging, and allowing four of his wounded warriors to recover from their injuries. One of his trophies was a large keg of yellow liquid that looked like piss, tasted like honey, and hit the skull harder than ale, wine, or club. He didn’t know what it was called, but he fully intended to drain it with the help of a few select companions this evening. It was a pity no females had been permitted; a few abokhi’agh would just about make for a perfect way to spend a lazy afternoon. There were a few she-men in the prisoner corral, but Lugbol was more in the mood for some relaxed and drunken squagging than having his ears assaulted by the piercing shrieks of a raped man. Rape was a fine thing when the dead enemy was strewn about, smoke was in one’s nostrils, and one’s blood was up, but for now it struck him as being more akin to work than pleasure. Especially considering how he only had one good arm at his disposal at the moment.
He watched the Maneater nod with satisfaction as the big orc looked over the shouting captains vying for his attention. Zlatagh laughed, a deep guttural sound, as he basked in the raw power of the moment. Two months of slaughter and victory had given him absolute control over the shugaba’ugh, and it was clear that he knew it.
“The auguries!” Zlatagh cried suddenly. “Bring forward the augurs! What say Gor-Gor?”
As the shouting dissolved into a general cheering, Lugbol saw a pair of heavily tattooed orcs with sharpened silver tusk-caps push into the center of the circle. They accompanied someone; at first Lugbol thought it might be a juvenile Man, but then he caught a sight of yellow-green skin and realized it was a goblin. Nearly half their troops were goblins; they had started out with ten thousand but thanks to the inevitable costs of the campaign, there were about fifteen hundred fewer of them now. The doomed creature looked wild with terror; he seemed to have a fair notion of his imminent fate. But he was silent and he did not struggle; there was literally nothing that a single goblin could do to save itself, not when surrounded by howling, blood-hungry orcs with arms twice the thickness of his legs.
The augury looked to be the usual entrail-reading. For some reason Lugbol had never quite grasped, Gor-Gor preferred to speak to his priests through the intestines of his lesser worshippers. Goblins were the preferred method of communication, though orcs, Men, and even large rats would do in a pinch. He noticed Gor-Gor never seemed to speak through either wolves or warboars, two martial commodities that were always in great demand.
The goblin broke his silence when one shaman kneeled down before him, then ripped open his stomach with both silver-tipped tusks. As the other shaman held the victim, chanting all the while, the killer began calling out the haruspictic ritual and reached into the goblin with both hands. Then he began walking backwards, pulling the dying goblin’s innards out. After taking seven steps, he gave three firm tugs, then finally released the bloody, stinking offal and let it fall with a wet thud. The other shaman followed his example, stepping back and finally allowing the moaning goblin to collapse, dying, to the ground.
Lugbol saw the shaman raise his bloody hands and call out to Gor-Gor. The shaman’s eyes suddenly rolled back into his head and he swayed back and forth, as if drunk, while looking over the entrails spread out upon the ground. He took a step forward, then another, holding his palms toward the ground with his fingers spread wide. It was as if he was feeling his way through something rising up from the spilled innards. Several of the shaman’s tattoos flared into life; a rune on his shoulder blazed red and began to smoke as it burned away his skin, but the shaman didn’t seem to feel or notice anything was wrong. With nothing but the whites of his eyes showing, he began to grunt and growl. Gradually, the guttural noises became discernible as words.
“Fire,” he rumbled. “Fire burns. Demon wings of fire, burning, burning. Demons, iron demons, and death.”
The shugaba’ugh looked at each other, confused. This was not how the ritual usually proceeded. Zlatagh’s eyes narrowed and he made as if to step forward, then the big orc stopped himself. Even a warleader would not dare to lay claws upon a shaman in the holy grip of Gor-Gor.
“Death come, death come, on fire and iron, death come to all!” The shaman’s voice rose into a shriek and he thrust his bloody hands skyward. Then, he began to shake and shiver, as if Gor-Gor was attempting to rid himself of his puppet. Finally, the shaman collapsed face-first on the ground, where he lay motionless except for his labored breathing. Smoke, stinking of burned flesh, rose from three or four blackened tattoos on his back and shoulders.
“The Hell he say? What does that mean?” a furious Zlatagh demanded of the other shaman. One might have almost thought that he was alarmed. “What was the damn augury?” Lugbol looked around at his fellow shugaba’ugh. They were agitated and alarmed, with one significant exception. Snaghak, alone among the warband captains, wore an expression that was full of fury. He no longer looked triumphant, he looked downright vengeful. And, for once, Lugbol thought, Snaghak’s hatred didn’t appear to be directed at him. He stifled a dismissive snort and returned his attention to Zlatagh, who had grabbed the smaller shaman by his tattooed shoulders and was shaking him while shouting in his face.
“I don’t know!” the smaller orc pleaded. “I swear, I swear by Gor-Gor’s tail, I don’t know what happened!”
Zlatagh snarled in disgust and shoved the tattooed orc away from him. Then a groan from the fallen shaman caught the big orc’s attention and he whirled around to see the shaman, his skin still smoking slightly, trying to push himself up from the ground. The injured shaman failed the first time with a barely muted cry, then his muscles bulged with effort as he succeeded in rising to his knees on his second attempt. He didn’t seem to have known what happened to him earlier, because he suddenly winced and looked down at the burns on his shoulders with an expression of pained surprise.
“You!” Zlatagh said, reaching out and pulling the shaman to his feet. “What did you do? What thing did you see in the guts there? What secrets did Gor-Gor tell you?”
The shaman rolled his eyes and slumped in the warleader’s grasp. His initial reply was a drawn-out groan, but when the warleader violently shook him, it seemed to pull him out of his swoon. “I saw death. Everywhere, death.”
“Whose death! The Man cities?”
“No,” the stricken shaman said. He stared intensely into Zlatagh’s face. “Ours. Everywhere, all throughout the woods, I saw orcs dead on the ground, murdered, all of them, by demons of fire and iron!”
“You lie!” Zlatagh shouted instinctively, before driving an oversized fist into the shaman’s tattooed face. There was a loud crunch and the shaman crumpled as if he’d been cloven through the head with a dwarven axe. Whether the shaman was dead or not, Lugbol couldn’t tell, but he wouldn’t be surprised either way.
Zlatagh pointed at the other shaman, who was cringing behind the corpse of the goblin. “You, read the bloody guts! And tell me the truth or I’ll rip your balls out of your sack and feed them to you!”
You may recall last night’s discussion of Chanhassan, and what a nice, low-crime area it is. But it’s not necessarily safe, because predators always go where the prey is. As I said yesterday, there isn’t a public or private school in America where there isn’t at least a would-be child molester:
The principal of Chanhassen High School was arrested Tuesday morning on suspicion of possessing child pornography. Timothy Dorway, 44, was booked Tuesday after Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force arrested him.
The arrest followed a search of his home in Victoria and at the high school where he was named principal in 2010.
Charges have not been filed in the case. No Eastern Carver County School students are involved in the investigation, according to the school district. Dorway was placed on leave Tuesday.
“This is a difficult day for our students, parents and community,” Superintendent Jim Bauck said in a statement. “There are questions that we want answers to and we’re working with the BCA as they conduct an investigation to find those answers.
Looking at the guy, they’d better dig up the floor of his basement and the beds of his flower gardens. Homeschool or else!
ESR is observant, as always, in his reflections on the Alt-Right, but he’s a little behind on the evolution of the conservative and libertarian right into the Alt-Right:
I’m worried, however, that that the alt-right may not remain a loose-knit collection of hoaxes – that the self-panickers are actually creating what they fear.
For there is a deep vein of anti-establishment anger out there (see Donald Trump, election of). The alt-right (to the limited and conditional extent it now exists) could capture that anger, and its provocateurs are doing their best to make you think it already has, but they’re scamming you – they’re fucking with your head. The entire on-line ‘alt-right’ probably musters fewer people than the Trumpster’s last victory rally.
It’s a kind of dark-side Discordian hack in progress, and I’m concerned that it might succeed. Vox Day is trying to ideologize the alt-right, actually assemble something coherent from the hoaxes. He might succeed, or someone else might. Draw some comfort that it won’t be the Neo-Nazis or KKK – they’re real fanatics of the sort the alt-right defines itself by mocking. Mein Kampf and ironic nihilism don’t mix well.
The best way to beat the “alt-right” is not to overestimate it, not to feed it with your fear. If you keep doing that, the vast majority of the rootless and disaffected who have never heard of it might decide there’s a strong horse there and sign on.
What ESR is missing, as most of those who consider themselves opposed to the imaginary while simultaneously attempting to understand the nonexistent do, is that attempting to discern the material existence of an abstraction is a fundamental category error.
The Alt-Right is a description of a collection of ideas. People can concur with some, all, or none of those ideas, but the ideas exist on whatever abstract plane that ideas exist regardless of whether anyone believes they are correct or not.
The “dark-side Discordian hack” has already succeeded, indeed, it could hardly fail. The failure of conservatism and the undeniable utopianism at the heart of libertarianism, combined with the obvious collapse of neo-liberalism, meant that an alternative to all three was absolutely inevitable. And the best way to understand the Alt-Right is to view it as the Keynesianism of the Right.
Keynes believed that his economics-based justification for central government control was necessary to prevent the collapse of the early 20th century liberal democracies into communism in the face of economic disaster. I contend that my nationalism-based justification for culturally homogeneous, religiously harmonious ethno-states is necessary to prevent the collapse of early 21st century illiberal multicultural societies into balkanized, totalitarian ethno-states actively engaged in large-scale violence.
The Alt-Right is the strongest horse that the West has got, because it is the only political philosophy that is in harmony with science, history, and reality as we currently observe it. It is the only Western political philosophy that is not intrinsically based in self-delusion. Everyone, especially liberals, would do well to sign on and ride it, or there won’t be a West and there won’t be any of the various aspects of society that Western liberals like ESR value.
ESR’s commenter Erbo sums it up nicely:
It’s been my opinion that the alt-right basically started gaining traction as a thing as the progressive Social Justice Warriors began seeking to expand their influence into new areas, such as science fiction (see: the circumstances leading up to Sad/Rabid Puppies), video games (see: Gamergate), open-source software development (see: this post by Our Host), and even heavy-metal music (see: this description of “Metalgate”). Clearly, they’d like to see their brand of political correctness spread everywhere.
“Always leave your opponent a line of retreat–unless you want a fight to the death.” The SJWs don’t want to leave any lines of retreat. Consequently, it seems inevitable that a group of people, drawing from some of the same groups reacting to the above developments, would decide to band together and proclaim, “If it’s war they want, then war they shall have!”
I’m not an opportunist. I’m not a revolutionary. I just wanted to write my books and design my games and live my life in peace. But SJWs, multiculturalists, diversicrats, and vibrants have collectively rendered that impossible, so now we’ve got to reset and rebuild Western civilization if we ever want to go back what we were doing in the first place.
Apparently the Michigan recount is pulling back the veil on Democrat vote fraud. An email from an anonymous insider.
People have known for years that Democrat-controlled Detroit has been rigging elections. During the Bush/Kerry election they had GOP poll watchers arrested and ran up 100 percent voter turnouts. It was so bad the Federal judges had to allow voter ID laws they had been blocking for years to take effect in Michigan.
The Hillary/Jill recount didn’t help Hillary, but it has hurt the Democrats’ reputations and may hurt them badly going forward. The count has been stopped but the state has now ordered an audit as to how 20 Democrat-controlled locations had a lot more Hillary votes than voters.
We use drivers license scans now for a computer record poll book, so they know how many voted. The worst location had 300 Hillary votes cast by 50 voters.
As the Alt-Right is demonstrating, all that is necessary for the Right to win is to show up and fight. Who would have imagined that anyone could come up with a strategy more effective than rolling over and playing dead?
The blackest thing ever happened on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania: A group of students recently removed a picture of William Shakespeare and replaced it with one of Audre Lorde.
Fisher-Bennett Hall is home to Penn’s English department, and the portrait of Shakespeare has resided over the main staircase in the building for years. The English department, in an effort to represent more diversity in writing, voted a few years ago to relocate the portrait and replace it.
Despite the vote, the picture was left in the entranceway of the building. The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that on Dec. 1, after an English-department town hall meeting discussing the election, a group of students removed Shakespeare’s portrait, delivered it to the office of English professor and department Chair Jed Esty, and replaced it with a photograph of black feminist writer Audre Lorde.
Esty, who declined to be interviewed, said in an email to the Daily Pennsylvanian, “Students removed the Shakespeare portrait and delivered it to my office as a way of affirming their commitment to a more inclusive mission for the English department.”
This may or may not be a more inclusive mission, but it is certainly a more illiterate one. Those who believe that a non-white “America” is going to resemble, in any way shape or form, the historical America, really aren’t paying attention.
Diversity is nothing more than cargo cultists mindlessly aping actual civilization. Forget actually maintaining it, they can’t even produce credible imitations that aren’t comedic parodies. By the time the cargo cultists obtain complete control of a formerly Western society, it won’t merely be Shakespeare being replaced, but functional flush toilets and 60+ life expectancies as well.
In Selenoth, the war drums are beating throughout the land. The savage orcs of Hagahorn and Zoth Ommog are on the move, imperiling Man, Dwarf, and Elf alike. The Houses Martial of Amorr have gone to war with each other, pitting legion against legion, and family against family as civil war wracks the disintegrating Empire. In the north, inhuman wolf-demons besiege the last redoubt of Man in the White Sea, while in Savondir, the royal house of de Mirid desperately prepares to defend the kingdom against an invading army that is larger than any it has ever faced before. And in the underground realm of the King of Iron Mountain, a strange new enemy has begun attacking dwarf villages throughout the Underdeep.
Beneath the widespread violence that has seized all Selenoth in its grasp, a select few are beginning to recognize the appearance of a historic pattern of almost unimaginable proportions. Are all these conflicts involving Orc, Elf, Man, and Dwarf the natural result of inevitable rivalries, or are they little more than battlegrounds in an ancient war that began long before the dawn of time?
Epic fantasy at its deepest and most intense. A SEA OF SKULLS is Book II in the ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT series that began with A THRONE OF BONES.
A SEA OF SKULLS is 449 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $5.99 on Amazon and at Castalia House. This is the early edition of the book; those who purchase it now will receive a free copy of the 850-page final edition in ebook format if they a) buy the book on Amazon and send a copy of the Kindle receipt to voxday-at-gmail-dot-com right away or b) buy the book from the Castalia House store.
UPDATE: just to be perfectly clear, New Release subscribers are free to download the bonus book from John Van Stry regardless of where they purchase A Sea of Skulls.
Every author faces a few decisions when he writes a book, particularly when writing a sequel. Be driven by the market or be driven by the vision. Write more of the same that has proven popular or go where the story takes you. These are not binary decisions, but a series of gradients, and while the consequences of those decisions vary, there are no right or wrong decisions per se, only more effective and less effective decisions which depend entirely upon the perspective.
I made two choices in writing the second book of Arts of Dark and Light, and I have no idea if my decisions will prove to be popular or not. The first decision was that it had to be better from my perspective and more true to my original vision than its predecessor was. That’s why it has taken longer to write. Before, I was only dealing in existing human cultures. Now, I had to work in 3+ inhuman cultures as well, which proved considerably more difficult. The second decision was to increase the contrast. A moral dilemma where there is neither potential loss to the character nor moral consequence is no true dilemma. A choice that is obvious to everyone but an idiot is no true choice. Good people do bad things, and bad people do good things, but the character of a man is seldom defined by a single act. And, I decided, even the most minor character deserves to be taken seriously, presented fairly, and speak with his own voice. Or her own voice. As an example of what I mean by that, here is a sample of the text at Castalia House.
In other words, this is a “damn the torpedoes” book. It should be interesting to learn who likes it better than A THRONE OF BONES and who likes it less. But I hope you will enjoy it, and I hope those of you who read it will be as diligent about posting serious and substantive reviews as you were with its predecessor.
As a side note, I find it incredible to observe that, according to Amazon’s page count, there is now more Selenoth, with 1837 pages of Summa Elvetica + A Throne of Bones + A Sea of Skulls, than there is Middle Earth proper, with 1531 for Lord of the Rings + The Hobbit. It’s not as good, of course – how could it possibly be – but it is worthy of the title “epic”. I should mention that there will be print editions in April-May and they will be the final edition.
Thanks very much to Matthew, Robert, and Kirk for all their hard work in getting this out before the end of the year.
A member of Prince’s band, Morris Hayes, recalls one instance in which the singer, clad in a turtleneck sweater and fuzzy boots, walked in to a hardware store to the shock of locals in Minnesota.
‘People are looking like, “Oh my God, Prince is in the hardware store!”,’ Hayes said.
Hayes then recalled how Prince had walked into the Ace store even though the car they drove was still in the parking lot with the keys in the ignition.
‘I’m [saying to him], “What did you do with the car?”’
‘He says, “It’s out there—it’s just running”.’
‘I said, “Prince, you can’t leave the car running—somebody could just steal the car”.’
‘He said, “This is Chanhassen—nobody’s gonna steal the car”.’
‘So we get out to the car and sure enough it’s out there, just running, smoke coming out of the tailpipe.’
‘And he’s like, “I told you”.’
A couple of observations. First, notice that no one at the hardware store spoke to him, they just looked. No one ever pestered Prince in Minnesota, you just don’t bother someone because he happens to be famous, which was one thing he really liked about living there. If Prince wanted to talk to you, he’d send someone over to let you know.
Second, based on the way Hayes describes things, it was probably winter. Winter is REALLY REALLY cold there. So, it’s pretty common to leave the car running if you’re not going to be in the store for that long. It’s kind of weird when it’s really cold, because the smoke actually drops to the ground when it comes out of the tailpipe.
And third, he was right, at least back in the day. No one was ever going to steal your car when you left it running. People did it all the time back then. It would be nice to think that they still do.
Who do we have in New Hampshire and Australia? If you’re Ilk and you’re licensed to practice in either juridiction, get in touch. The Big Dog is already on it, but we’ll need local talent for obvious reasons.
If your ideas are not yours, why care if those ideas are attacked? You are you. The ideas you choose to hold dear are how you live your life. Better ideas means a better life. Bad ideas are like a spare tire around your waist. Do you take it personally when you lose fat? You have lost part of yourself, haven’t you? Yet you rejoice. Adopt the same mindset when losing bad ideas.
Remind yourself that bad ideas ruin lives.
I saw too many friends go into bankruptcy after the housing bubble burst. I avoided that fate because I never purchased a home, though other bad ideas have cost me dearly.
Ask how much money you would bet on your ideas.
If your ideas are true and good, surely you’ll wager on them?
Do you know how many people cowered away from election bets? Everyone knew who would win the election, and few would put their money where their mouths were.
If you wouldn’t bet on an idea you hold on the world, then do you believe the idea to be true?
Embrace uncertainty as an opportunity for growth.
What is the element of every horror film? Suspense. Uncertainty. We cling onto certain beliefs, even when those beliefs are wrong, because in a state of nature surprise usually meant some form of attack from wolverines, tsunamis, and blizzards.
Hold true to ideas about gravity, as they will keep you alive. Remain fluid on ideas about the nature of the human condition, as other people have lives of their owns and those lives are influenced by an ever-changing zeitgeist.
Recognizing you are wrong today gives you an opportunity to be right tomorrow.
The first one is the most important. You are not the sum of your ideas. You can’t own an idea either. We are all wrong on a regular basis. Bad ideas are, by definition false, and anyone who values the truth should not hesitate to reject them.
