Free-Man's Perspective

(Originally published in 2019.)

You can’t write about this till I’m gone,” he said, “but that won’t be long.”

I hadn’t been to Jay’s Bar in a while, but I was invited by my old friend Martin. He was a basically nice guy who ended up working for an elite group. Continue reading “A Full Confession, Part One”

This episode of the Parallel Society podcast explains something that’s tremendously simple and is great news for us, but is at the same time deeply radical, going against the structure of the world we live in. And that’s a simple phrase: We are structured for magnificence.

This concept offends people, of course, but however off-putting this little phrase may seem, it is true. And it opens a door to a magnificent future.

And we can demonstrate that mankind is structured for morality.

Production Versus Plunder, Paul’s highly regarded history book, came together in a fascinating and almost amazing way. He’s never told the story before, but in this podcast, he does.

Most people still have the idea… the image… that the “Dark Ages” were filthy and grotesque, like a Monty Python film.

Not only is that false, but the people of the Dark Ages should be held in high regard. They’re the people who, for the first time in human history, killed slavery on a civilizational scale. They also created free market capitalism. And so, the prosperity that we enjoy to this day exists thanks to the people and ideas of the Dark Ages.

If that sounds crazy to you, you should probably listen.

Among the most important scientific findings of the 20^th century were those of Dr. Robert Sapolsky. His work was becoming an interesting but fairly straightforward study, until a freak accident turned it into a human turning point. (Don’t stop listening half-way through or you’ll miss it!) Sapolsky’s findings show that the kind of progress we dream about is unquestionably possible. That puts the burden back on us, of course… and that scares a lot of people… but let there be no more question, we CAN step into a better age.

It seems that right on the heels of a beautiful new vision, old fears come charging back to our minds, defending their positions. And so this episode explains why and how we will succeed. There’s really no doubt about the general outcome. The only uncertainty is the timing.

Cryptography has changed the world over the past few decades. Without it there would be no Internet commerce, no VPNs, or Tor, or Bitcoin, or Wikileaks, or the Snowden revelations, or BitTorrent. But however impressive the results, it’s the power of the crypto vision that has driven them… and a revelation it is. Those who grasp it are often changed for life.

(Originally published in 2019.)

A few years ago I wrote an article on status, to rather mixed reviews among the online commenters. Today I’m going back to status, “doubling down,” as people like to say these days. Continue reading “Status Revisited”