ideology

It took me most of my young life to figure this out. After growing up as a precocious political junkie I got jaded pretty early. I grew up in a rural conservative family but somehow, deep-down I’m an urban technophile who often hopes there’s no problem that walkable neighbourhoods and Twitter hashtags can’t solve. In [...]

It’s great to do “meaningful work” and have “meaningful dialog” and make “meaningful contributions.” But do you really know what it means? It’s often just a synonym for “good” — which can be , um, good — but at its worst it merely means that something “feels good” or “resembles good.” When it’s done right, [...]

Why I Have Principles

by Brian on 04-11-2009

in belief,civics,science

Principles are intellectual landmarks for orienting our actions and decisions as well as our opinions of others. Principles aren’t to be upheld at all costs; principles are provisional, to be upheld until they don’t work anymore — then broken and reformed… In fact, what we believe are our principles may not be (or probably aren’t) the [...]

Ex Industrialism

by Brian on 03-29-2009

in business,civics,economics

The ideas from my last post grew out of a line of thought I’ve been running for a couple of weeks and alluded to a few times before. The gist is that capitalism and socialism/communism share a few core assumptions. They’re two varieties of industrialism. They came of age at the same time, with reference to [...]