Since today is Independence Day -- when speeches drone over the loudspeakers as we soak our sunburned brains in booze, preparing for psychedelic fireworks that recall Apocalypse Now if not 1776 -- I thought I'd try to answer the question: Just what do you believe?Warning: This was an interesting exercise, but sure enough, nothing is as boring as reading a list of beliefs/opinions. (And having them costs next to nothing, so who cares?) Anyway, here's my list:
- "People are people," born by chance into a particular culture, and there's nothing sacred about culture. Common patterns emerge across cultures, but the details are arbitrary. Prison has a culture; New Guinea has upwards of a thousand cultures, as though a new variation was spawned each time a group left to settle the next valley.
- We can't take credit or blame for the culture we're born into; we can for the culture we're building.
- Ultimate reality is (currently) beyond our comprehension, in the realm of belief. And that's why fundamentalism is so poisonous -- unless we agree that we live in a real, factual world, independent of beliefs, there's no world we can share.
- Everything has a cost, and everything should: imagine how much nicer the world would be if exploiters (con men, developers, polluters, etc.) paid the full cost of what they'd unleashed.
- Freedom is the greatest thing on earth. But given the power to define who you are, who do you want to be? And one person's freedom -- say, to get rich selling car alarms -- can be another's poison.
- Most people just want to be left alone. The good: they leave others alone. The bad: they leave the world alone, so con men rule and suburbs sprawl without end.
- People appreciate things they pay for. You can't give people their identity, or self respect -- it's something they have to do themselves. What they need is opportunity, and enough chances to get it right.
- There is always going to be a battle for the soul of the world, and the
best plans seek the right balance of interests in a shared world, to steer it toward the light. (Where light = maximum opportunity & fairness, minimum suffering.) - Entropy eats the best plans just like it eats everything else.
- We come from and go to places outside our control (birth, death), and try
to control what's in between with a convincing story. - We are not programmed (though we are born with predispositions).
- We are not programmable (though we can be trained to a point, encouraged to be decent).
- Life unexamined is no life at all; life over-examined is no life at all.
- Finally, balance is the most boring and important idea in the world, and balancing apparent contradictions is the key to peace, success, contentment, etc. (Yes, I need to write a self help book... to help myself make some $.)
