Tag: liberty

Transform Rockford: Consensus or Compromise?

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After my previous posts about the Transform Rockford movement, I’ve been asked about the organization’s process to create consensus during their visioning sessions. To recap what I previously explained…at the meeting I attended, we were asked to write down the top 10 things we would like to see in Rockford’s future. Then the attendees were split into groups of 5 people to narrow down their own vision statements into 5 statements for each group. I was going to try to explain the details of the process, but it is confusing unless you actually do it. The process goes, generally speaking, like this: your…

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Thoughts on Transform Rockford

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After attending the last Transform Rockford community visioning session last night, I wrote a post describing the event. For the sake of brevity (or my feeble attempt at it) I didn’t really give much commentary on the organization itself. I am never short on opinions, so I know my readers would be disappointed if they didn’t get to hear my views on Transform Rockford.  As an introduction, I’ll admit I went to this meeting with much skepticism. I didn’t want to actually make a judgement without attending at least one event, but I was cynical, to say the least. The event turned out to…

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Transform Rockford: Final Visioning Session

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After a couple months of following the Transform Rockford calendar, I was finally able to attend their meeting tonight, at the RVC Woodward Technology Center. I almost didn’t go (there is a chemistry final looming over me this week…) but figured I better go now or I’d never make it. It was a good choice because as it turns out, this was the last community visioning session that they are holding, so I was glad to participate in that. A little background for those who aren’t familiar with Transform Rockford. I was not aware of the organization until February…I think they launched some time…

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The Benefits of Self-Education

I’m resurrecting this post fro 2012 because 1) my chemistry homework absorbed all my possible blogging time today, 2) it is an interesting post and I thought might be helpful for those who didn’t see it the first time around. : ) I’m always having conversations with people that go something like this, “so are you in school?” and I struggle to explain my whole life because there isn’t a nice, simple answer. I’m tempted to reply with, “I’m not a college student, I’m actually an autodidact.” But my own sense of social interaction prevents me from actually carrying this…

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Cocoons of Comfort

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I don’t belong in this place… where umbrellas and raincoats shelter us from the cold, stinging wetness of life. Where we protect ourselves from the bombardments of rain— tiny, brutal reminders that we exist. Where we wear gloves to avoid touching the rawness of the world. Where we scurry through life in our cocoon of comfort— not thinking perhaps coccoons are really coffins and comfort means we aren’t actually here. That which hurts is alive. – 12/15/12

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What is Classical Education?

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This morning I braved the snowy roads (the city apparently decided to not bother plowing even the major roads) to hear Matt Bianco, the national director of education for Classical Conversations speak on what classical education means. It was very informative, as well as entertaining, and I wanted to share what I learned… To make decisions about education, we have to know what our goal is. This really goes for anything in life. And as an aside, this fits perfectly with the human action axiom. We act to achieve ends, and it makes sense that we ought to consider what…

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Rousseau and Marx on Historical Progress

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This is an essay I wrote last semester for my Modern and Postmodern Philosophy class.  For Rousseau, historical progress only further removes man from his natural state of living. He argues that the cultivation of civilized studies weaken the natural virtues of men; in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Rousseau writes, “our souls have become corrupted to the extent that our sciences and our arts have advanced towards perfection.” He cites Romans of old as saying, “Since the learned men began to appear among us, good people have slipped away.” Rousseau attributes this decline to the intentional pursuit…

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Yes, I’m still alive…

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There’s a lot I could say. I think this post is so delayed because whenever I think about writing I wonder where in the world I’ll start. I guess the logical place to start is where I am right now. And I’m actually in the lovely town of Auburn Alabama, enjoying the Austrian Economics Research Conference at the Mises Institute. Yes, I know you’re jealous. It is amazing. Seriously. I think we sometimes get really distracted by our circumstances in life. We get caught up in where we’re at and forget where we want to be. Sometimes we need to…

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Rebel Against Pragmatism

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So to review…rebellion is not a negative thing, per se. Rebellion simply for the sake of rebellion is irrational. But rebellion which is inspired by a desire to improve, to solve a problem, to make this a better place…that kind of rebellion is necessary for the progress of humanity. In the last post I talked about the menace of mediocrity—being content with an ordinary life because that is what everyone else is doing. Now I want to discuss pragmatism, which, in my mind, is the most pernicious and pervasive philosophical error in our culture. “Pragmatism: An approach that assesses the truth…

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Rebel Against Mediocrity

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The word rebel has negative connotations. People seem to perceive it as hedonistic, self-centered denial or attack of some set structure or system, for the sole purpose of denying something to which other people adhere. Sometimes people rebel simply to rebel, but there can be completely valid and good reasons to rebel. Think about this way. If no one ever rebelled, nothing would have ever been done differently, and society today would be exactly the same as it was 6000 years ago. The first person to invent and use the wheel was rebelling against their cultural system. The Reformers were…

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