SplendorQuest.com

I’ve known for more than a year that I want to write a book about what we’re getting wrong.

As a species, that is.

Through all of human history.

Surely that’s a man-sized ambition — and perhaps also a new high-water mark for the abstract concept denoted by the word “hubris.”

That’s as may be. In truth, this is an undertaking I would rather not undertake. For one thing, I’m busy and, in consequence, I’m physically tired much of the time. For another, this is less a thankless job than it is a task for which I can reasonably expect to be punished. Not officially punished, one may hope, but it seems likely that I will be derided, hectored or hounded as I proceed with this project. I don’t shun that sort of thing, not ever, but it’s not something I actively court.

But none of that matters. The ideas I want to talk about drive me wild — in the best of all possible senses. I abhor every form of the claim of unchosen duty, and yet I feel that I must go through all this, that I cannot live in peace, much less die in peace, until I have transcribed every bit of everything (more…)

…prepare yourself for the asshole cops…

Just think: If you just keep voting for more and more government, eventually the nanny-state might find a way to stuff you back up into your mammy’s womb. Or, failing that, they’ll exterminate you and everyone you know and love. Either way, the world will finally be rid of the pestilence of pesky humanity.

Black humor? No shit. But at least you don’t have to wonder who’s the asswipe now…

[This is me in February of 2004. It’s fun for me to read now, because we were selling a lot then, and — like a lot of folks — the next year, 2005, was my best year so far. I didn’t plan to follow that up with three years of drought, but some days the bear eats you. This year started out with five more months of drought, and yet we’re going to finish 2009 somewhere between $8 and $10 million in gross volume. We’re surfing a 90-day pipeline of around $100K in GCI, and I’m working very hard to pump that up to $250K. If we can get there, we’ll actually have a business.

But: I’m not selling success as a matter of dollars and cents. That matters to me, but not as much as Splendor does, not as much as integrity and follow-through and a comprehensive commitment not just to the good but to getting better — all the time. I have an essay aborning in me about everything I have learned about sales in the last ten years, but even that’s not as much as I want to do — as much as I want to have done. I (more…)

[This is me, from 09/10/2006. –GSS]

 
Cathy and I watched The Path to 9/11 on television tonight. I had forgotten that we were in Metro New York for the Turn of the Millennium. My father lives in Connecticut, and we went there that year for New Year’s Day. The photo you see is my son crawling all over a bronze statue of a stock broker in Liberty Park, directly across from what was then the Merrill Lynch Building — on December 30, 1999. I lived in Manhattan for ten years, from 1976 to 1986. For quite a few of those years, I worked just across from Liberty Park, in the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway. At the other end of that little brick park was the southeast entrance to the World Trade Center complex. I worked insane hours in those days, and, very often, when I got out of work, I would go sit at this tiny circular plaza plopped down between the Twin Towers. Not quite pre-dawn, still full dark, but completely deserted — and to be completely alone in New York City is an accomplishment. I would throw my head back and look up at the towers, the fourth movement (more…)

This is me looking back on looking back on a Labor Day a long time ago. The first extract was written on Labor Day, 2005, as the City of New Orleans was demonstrating for all of us that dependence on government is a fatal error. The second extract was written a year or two before that. And the Labor Day I am talking about there must have been eleven or twelve years ago. Even so, every bit of this is perfectly apposite to the world we live in now — more is the pity.

This is me from elsewhen. I think about this every year at Labor Day. I spent much of the weekend working on business planning issues, macro, micro and meta. I remember from the days when I had a job how much I relished long weekends, because I could build so much on vast tracts of uninterrupted time. I did a bunch of money work last week, but my weekend was virtually my own — to fill with the work that too often takes a back seat to money work. Off and on we had Fox News on in the office, and the whining, pissing and moaning was an (more…)

“Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.”Charles Eames

“You gotta pick your battles”.-Mom

There are dragons at the drawbridge, there are demons inside the fortress. The goal is to understand which dragons are the threat and which demons must be purged.

Physical safety is mandatory. Health is a priority: Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health. Health, safety, and security must be maintained or created, the rest is going to depend on personality, time, desire. You gotta pick your battles, although, once health is attained the rest is simply a matter of balance.

I can’t do anything unless I’m brutally honest with myself about what is going on. What must be done? What should be done? What could be done? What can’t be done? How will it affect the balance in my life? Can I answer these questions honestly? If not, who can help me find the truth?

Then, you have to get to work. Every day. Wake up ready, get something accomplished, go to bed satisfied. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Adjust as necessary, find the truth always, get something accomplished every day.

I’m not sure the method is as important as the (more…)

Quoted from Mark Alexander’s wonderful Richard Mitchell web site:

 
When Benjamin Franklin was hardly more than a boy, but clearly a comer, he decided to achieve moral perfection. As guides in this enterprise, he chose Jesus and Socrates. One of his self-assigned rules for daily behavior was nothing more than this: "Imitate Jesus and Socrates."

I suspect that few would disagree. Even most militant atheists admire Jesus, while assuming, of course, that they admire him for the right reasons. Even those who have no philosophy and want none admire Socrates, although exactly why, they can not say. And very few, I think, would tell the young Franklin that he ought to have made some different choices: Alexander, for instance, or Francis Bacon.

Jesus, just now, has no shortage of would-be imitators, although they do seem to disagree among themselves as to how he ought to be imitated. But the imitators of Socrates, if any there be, are hard to find. For one thing, if they are more or less accurately imitating him, they will not organize themselves into Socrates clubs and pronounce their views. If we want to talk with them, we will have to seek them out; and, unless we ourselves become, to (more…)

TCSDaily:

It goes beyond a failure to find ideas that increase education; many have embraced ideas that are clearly destructive. Our experts really don’t seem all that interested in education as most people understand this term. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, for example, don’t seem to be priorities. What we see in education makes sense only if we assume that our educators have an agenda we don’t know about, or that they are malevolent, or both.

So what agenda, you’re wondering, are they actually focused on? What’s the answer to the mystery? Here is my deduction: that those at the top of the Education Industrial Complex, since the time of John Dewey, have been collectivists first, and educators second or third. The goal of creating an educated child was too often superceded by the goal of creating a cooperative child.

Broadly speaking, they undermined educational success in two ways. First, they found reasons to delete and dilute the curriculum. Second, the things they did teach, they often taught in confusing, unhelpful ways. I could reel off a list of 50 failed pedagogies, none of which lived up to the hype or the hope, things such as New Math, Reform Math, Constructivism, Bilingual Education, Self Esteem, et (more…)

My son is a Cub Scout. A few weekends ago he had his yearly ScoutORama, a sort of Scout convention and trade fair. The theme of this year’s event was ‘American Heroes,’ and it turns out that American Heroes, for the most part, build small catapults and cook in Dutch ovens. One Cub pack took the theme rather more to heart, with a huge display called ‘Freedom In Unity’.

To an attending Cub Scout I said, “Is it conceivable to you that unity and freedom might conflict?”

After a moment’s thought, he said: “Huh?”

As a father of an eleven-year-old, I fully expected this retort. Undismayed, I pressed on: “Isn’t it reasonable to suppose that the quality best represented by the word ‘freedom’ is freedom from other people?”

“HUH?!

And my wife pulled me away, arguing, quite correctly, that it is unfair to expect children to regurgitate, much less competently defend, the horseshit they are force-fed by adults.

They do so eventually, of course, and thus become the adults who do the force-feeding of the next generation of helpless victims — unminded before they can be fully mindful, starved and stuffed at the same time, gorged forevermore on horseshit.

But: It’s not the what, it’s the where, the (more…)