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All collectivist efforts, which always require force and thus lead totalitarianism, are based upon the false belief that man's reason is capable of designing social systems which can improve his lot and are superior to anything which might come about spontaneously and without central direction.

This is one of the most serious errors men are prone to make and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocent individuals across modern history.

One term for this misguided attempt...

I find the phenomenon of path formation fascinating. Before a well worn path is formed people take different routes through the woods. Eventually, one route becomes the preferred one and everyone begins taking it.

None of this is planned of course, which is what makes it so fascinating to me. It is a 'compositive' occurrence which happens spontaneously and without a shred of planning.

In many instances this is how something comes to exist.

Consider language for instance. The only attempt to...

While opinion is invisible its effects are anything but. All individual action is driven by opinion. We do nothing unless we are of the opinion that our acting will improve circumstances or prevent them from becoming worse.

And, while we share much in common with our fellows, it is impossible that one person will have identical opinions regarding every topic that another individual has.

The challenge is to make the best use of this reality. We can learn very little from those who agree with us,...

Another concept which has fallen into serious disrepute is that of meritocracy. The situation is so bad that certain parties are claiming the the concept is a construct of white European males to suppress women and minorities, essentially preventing them from rising in various areas of human endeavor.

One can easily debunk this nonsense by pointing out the fact that people from India and Asia outperform white European males in many fields based upon merit and not ethnicity.

Attempts to portray...

Colonialism is used today almost exclusively as a term of opprobrium. It is used to demonize the west and especially western Europeans. If one reads only the side of the history of colonialism that portrays all of colonialists as horrible and even genocidal they would only be viewing one side of the historical ledger.

This rather myopic view is favored by those who wish to contort history to support their narrative and further their aims. These aims almost always involve money and power.

It is...

Concept creep is the phenomenon whereby harm related words such as 'racist', 'bullying', 'genocide', 'prejudice', etc. are expanded to include a broader range of phenomena than originally intended, thus increasing sensitivity to harm. It's one of the explanations for why so many young people are oversensitive and fragile.

The expansion may occur vertically by including less severe cases than those previously regarded as harmful or horizontally by including other behaviors previously not...

Perhaps you, like I hitchhiked when you were young. It was a common occurrence in the 60s and even into the early 70s. Even attractive young women felt safe hitchhiking.

So what happened, and when?

I believe that people began to feel less safe hitchhiking partly because of such highly publicized cases as that of the 'Zodiac Killer'.

Also, as the counterculture movement was winding down hitchhiking didn't so much display a nonconformist attitude as a lack of responsibility and failure to be...

I, like so many others have suffered the painful loss of a loved one in my lifetime. The most painful were those who were young people with their whole life before them.

Probably the most disturbing, if not more painful than the others was the loss of a granddaughter who committed suicide.

I have given a good deal of thought to the topics of depression, despair and suicide.

I think the reasons are because of the losses I mentioned, and my own predilection to be happy and positive, no matter my...

I don't suppose there is any area of life where language is misused and weaponized more than in politics.

I am old enough to remember when the word 'liberal' actually meant liberal. Then the crafty left commandeered the term in order to cloak themselves in a fine word which they were undeserving of.

Classical liberalism or what might be considered small 'l' libertarianism today was a well rounded and principled philosophy for living.

Unlike what passes for Liberalism today, it embraced some...

Coercion is the use of force or threat of force to make someone do something against their wishes or prevent them doing something they wish to do.

There are basically three means for getting people to do what we want them to do.

Argumentation, where we attempt to convince them with our words.

Incentivization, where we attempt to convince them by providing a benefit or reward.

Coercion, where we use or threaten to use force.

The first two are perfectly acceptable while the third is not.

I believe...

The concept of fairness is one which is bandied about a good deal but is not really thought through sufficiently.

What does it mean for something to be fair?

In some cases it is quite obvious while in many others it is less so.

For example, if you and I are assigned a science project together and I do all of the work and you get all of the credit, that is obviously not fair.

On the other hand if we both work on the project equally and are credited equally that is just as obviously fair.

Different...

I wish to follow my previous piece on epistemology with a related one.

There is probably nothing more central to the way we view reality than the role faith and reason play. One’s viewpoint and decision regarding this matter determines almost completely how they will decide the critical issues in their life, personally, socially and politically.

‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’

Consider that for moment. Evidence without evidence is essentially...

You can tell a good deal about a person by learning what they consider to be legitimate means of knowing anything.

If they indicate that anything other than observation and reason is a reliable means of knowing then you are dealing with a religious or mystical person.

Man's only means of knowing anything at all is through the use of his five senses to observe reality and then his faculty of reason to understand that which he has observed.

Almost all violence is committed by people who believe...

It was Frederick Hayek who first called my attention to the concept of 'Spontaneous Order'. He had concluded, and I believe his conclusion is irrefutable, that complex social systems such as language, money, rule of law, markets and boundaries come about spontaneously and without direction. There is no intent involved.

In other words no creator or any other central intentional figure is necessary for these complex systems to form and evolve. They come about as the result of the actions of many...

Frustration is that feeling we experience when our plans or goals are hindered, obstructed or derailed. It is not a pleasant feeling and is experienced differently by different people with different personalities. Some experience frustration as depression while others experience it as anger.

The key to avoiding frustration is to refuse to tie our happiness to outcomes per se, and instead focus on improving ourselves day by day.

Many people consider guilt and shame to be synonyms. That is not the case, This is just one more example of how our language has been corrupted.

Guilt is the fact that a person has done something wrong or committed a crime. It is a matter of fact.

Shame on the other hand is the feeling one experiences when they have done something they consider inappropriate.

People often mistakenly consider writers and authors as synonymous. They are not. They are closely related, and one might even suggest that the concept of writer is nested in the concept of author.

Many people are writers who are not authors while everyone who is an author is a writer.

A writer is anyone who engages in writing on a regular basis, either for their own personal enjoyment or as a profession. For example, a person who journals is a writer. So also is a newspaper or magazine...

People often deride competition while lauding cooperation. I consider this an error in judgment, and one with potentially serious consequences.

The reality is that competition and cooperation are the two sides of the same conceptual coin, and both are necessary to create and maintain the balance required for a healthy society and economy.

Competition is what accounts for the improvement of things as well as a reduction of the cost to produce and own them. Competition between rivals in any...

In order for a plant to take root, some reasonably fertile soil is required. Also, moisture and sunlight are needed. Something similar is the case in other areas of life. For example rebellions or uprisings of one sort or another are the result of pre-existing conditions which serve as a precursor to such events.

One such fertile soil which is a precursor of much human mischief and misery is boredom.

In a previous piece I discussed the topic of depression and why it is so prevalent in these...

I believe it was the late Andrew Breitbart who pointed out that politics is downstream from culture. I've always considered that an astute and important observation. It calls attention to the fact that politics doesn't create our culture but rather our culture forms the political landscape.

So that got me thinking about what was responsible for or upstream from our culture. It seems to me that the answer is morals. The moral values we hold determine the culture we consider acceptable and even...