I’ve been taking a lengthy break from the news cycle — the first in a long while. Disappointment at Ted Cruz’ withdrawal from the presidential race was probably what prompted it more than any other single event, but it’s also been a long time coming. I’ve observed that constant engagement with the nonstop news machine tends to create a toxic, bogged-down perspective — one whose opportunity cost is difficulty thinking about the longer term and seeing the bigger picture. The day-to-day bad news is made worse by the fact that much of it is foreseeable — the result of decisions being made based on flawed theories whose siren song of wishful thinking garners steadfast devotion. Watching the results unfold wears on the spirit after a while; you get weary of playing Cassandra. The world we inhabit today has become profoundly disconnected from the culture I grew up in and fell in love with, and not for the better. The inconvenient terrible acts of some are excused, while others who espouse our most cherished foundational values are painted as the worst of villains, as befits the “narrative”, the demagoguery of the day. In this light, the 24/7 news cycle resembles more and more a play full of sound and fury, that in the end signifies very little about the long term. Reportage often tells one more about what bien pensants have decided we ought to think about a topic, than about what factually happened when and why. Like carbonated sugar water, it becomes easy to give up, once you realize how little you miss it and how well you can live without it. Disengaging for a while has enabled me to see a bigger picture that is too easily obscured by obsession with the tumultuous short-term. It seems to me that history is cyclical. A frontier culture founded on the ideal of freedom lasts only so long before we sabotage ourselves with self-doubt born of boredom and insufficient challenge, of removal from continuous salutary testing of our ideas and efforts against reality. Eventually the clock runs out on any given place, and the imperative presents itself: those who wish to rekindle the great experiment must find a way out to a new frontier. So I’ve come to realize that I can either curse my luck for what things have become, or choose to connect with a profound sense of gratitude for the time and place I grew up in — one that showed me something truly beautiful and precious that no slander can diminish, for I lived it and saw it with my own eyes. Knowing what is possible is a huge part of the battle to rekindle it. We have a recipe that is portable — one that can perform its miracles again elsewhere, if we only take care to understand what it’s taught us.
On Independence Day, it’s traditional to think of the events that impelled the American colonists to separation from England, of the hard-fought Revolutionary War that followed and the acts of courage and sacrifice to which we owe our precious Liberty. This year, I find myself thinking also of the individual assertions of independence that quietly preceded all of that, as royal subjects one by one decided they’d had enough, and chose to embrace great risk in trade for the mere opportunity to build new lives by their own hands in a far-off land — in a place across an ocean where they could live in true, untrammeled freedom. Today we find ourselves on the cusp of a similar juncture. When a suitable destination presents itself, what happens next will at first happen quietly, and will probably pass largely unnoticed. The wheels that will impel some to that journey are already in motion. For those few who heed the call, the results will be nothing short of transformative. The characteristically American reactor will know reignition in a new place. True freedom will yield its generous bounty unhindered, and courageous men and women will once again celebrate a hard-won and therefore precious life, forged of their own efforts, in Liberty.
For the short-term, I may yet feel gloom. For the long term, that gloom is far outshined by stirring beauty that impels me forward, my heart aglow with joy. I cannot wait to see what our tribe of restless wanderers creates next.
Bill had some very good news to relay, in a Mother’s Day email and on The Stratosphere Lounge: He’s managed to add enough new BillWhittle.com members to keep the lights on and continue producing “Right Angle” episodes with Steve Green and Scott Ott. I allowed myself to be cautiously optimistic, but wasn’t sure they’d be able to pull it off. Many thanks to those who’ve made the continuation of this trio’s great work possible!
Those who’ve been stopping by here for a while know I’ve been a big fan and enthusiastic promoter of Bill’s extraordinary work, since the days of Eject! Eject! Eject! and Bill’s magnificent Silent America essays in particular. I highly recommend heading over to BillWhittle.com or catching a Stratosphere Lounge episode to check out Bill’s latest. (In addition to the [almost] weekly live show on Ustream, there are past episodes on Bill’s YouTube channel.)
Speaking of Bill, Steve, and Scott: While gathering links to their latest work, I ran across this Trifecta gem I’d completely missed last year, that resonates uncannily with a thought I’ve been mulling over quite a bit lately: Maybe cities are a mistake. So many of the problems and vulnerabilities we face seem to result from the helplessness and dependency that dense urban centers engender. Cities insulate us from the realities of what is and isn’t essential for our survival. Urban living saps us of our self-reliance, and deprives us of the continual, salutary testing and re-testing against nature that would otherwise drive us to cultivate essential skills and build resilience. It’s anonymizing, and leaves us dependent on corruptible and inevitably corrupt, wasteful, and unreliable centralized institutions, where we might otherwise develop mutual reliance on our neighbors in a more resilient, decentralized, voluntary web of trust for mutual benefit. City life makes it too easy for us to disconnect from reality, in ways that jeopardize our ability to deal with said reality when it rears its ugly head. We become, in a real sense, victims of our own success. Furthermore, dense urban centers make our thusly-concentrated populations easy targets for Jihadi lunatics who are just dying to prove the extent of their depravity on a massive scale.
I say all of this as someone who loves many of the products of city life — from technological marvels to universities, museums, and cuisine from all over the world — and has experienced life in many U.S. cities — from Los Angeles, where I grew up, to Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco, and New York. It just seems that the negatives have come to outweigh the positives, and we may benefit from a change in direction. Dense urban centers of population may be largely an Industrial Age relic that we’d do well to re-assess look beyond. In a time when much of our activity now takes place in a knowledge and service economy, it may be entirely possible to de-centralize our populations without abandoning (and perhaps even better facilitating) the continued advancement of positive technological developments.
Having moved to an 1880s farmhouse in northern New Jersey two years ago, I feel like I have one foot already in a more rural world, and the sense of well-being I’ve gained has led me to wonder what else I’ve been missing. I haven’t worried much about imminent Apocalypse since growing up in the 1980s under fear of a Soviet ICBM attack. But the direction things seem to be going in is awakening dormant prepper/survivalist instincts in me. If the center will not hold, how will the remnant of what we are keep the flame of civilization lit until we can make a way to piece things together again? It’s been decades since this old place was worked as a farm (with the benefit of surrounding acreage that’s since been sliced up and sold to home builders). But I find myself thinking: even if the results don’t make much of a dent in our weekly dependence on grocery stores, learning some basic skill with growing a few small crops might be a good and useful thing. (Stay tuned; maybe I’ll have some Spring planting news soon.)
This is the kind of stuff that’s been on my mind as I contemplate the short-term mitigation of circumstances we need before we’ll be able to achieve a longer-term way out to the next place. Bill, Steve, and Scott bring some interesting perspectives to the table in this Trifecta — and the Green Acres theme is a nice touch. I remember watching the show at my aunt’s house growing up. Maybe that was a foreshadowing of my life to come?
Crabapples are all we’re growing right now, by the way. Feeding the deer, and leading my 3-year-old son to ask with concern whether they contain tiny crabs, seem to be about all they’re good for. But the trees do give us some very nice flowers:
Bill announced on Episode 118 of The Stratosphere Lounge last night that he’s made it about halfway to his minimum goal of 1,000 new BillWhittle.com members in the wake of PJTV’s closing. That’s great news for those of us who love and are continually uplifted and revitalized by Bill’s superb work, and more success than I’d have dared expect in such a short time, but it also means he still needs 500 additional new members to be able to continue the work he does so expertly, and “a bit more than that” to be able to continue to do Trifecta episodes (under the new show name “Right Angle”) with the wonderful Steve Green and Scott Ott.
If the clarity these guys bring to the table means as much to you as it does me, please consider joining or hitting the tipjar at BillWhittle.com.
A sampling of the trio’s latest work (they’re wasting no time getting right to it with new material):
Those who’ve followed my ramblings here for any amount of time know I’m a big fan and supporter of Bill Whittle’s superb work. I credit Bill’s early writing at Eject! Eject! Eject!, and his Silent America essays in particular, with saving me from despair and helping me navigate the dark waters I found myself in post-9/11, and I’ve enthusiastically promoted his work ever since.
With the announcement that PJTV is shutting down production, Bill — whose work on PJTV shows like Trifecta and Afterburner has been his primary source of income — needs our help to continue producing the great content he creates. Memberships at Bill’s site — BillWhittle.com — start at just $10/month. If he can get about 1,000 former PJTV subscribers to become BillWhittle.com members at that level, he’ll be able to continue creating the great video content he publishes there, and may even be able to bring Steve Green and Scott Ott over to continue their great work on Trifecta and explore new possibilities. If you’ve enjoyed and been uplifted by Bill’s work anywhere near as much as I have, please consider supporting that work at this key moment for Bill. I’d say we need his articulate insight now more than ever.
Update 2016-04-21: If you prefer hitting Bill’s tipjar to joining with a recurring membership fee (or just want to contribute a little extra), there are “One Time Contribution” links needlessly hiding on the “Platinum” membership page. Consider them as another way to keep Bill’s great work coming!
Just a couple of decades ago, one noted, the only people who firmly believed that there were planets circling other stars were science fiction fans. Now we’re discovering new planets all the time, and some estimates suggest that there may be billions of these exoplanets throughout our galaxy. So that’s one reason to be talking about interstellar travel: Now there’s somewhere to go.
Another reason is that while talk is no substitute for action, it can be a pretty important precursor. Much of our progress in space to date has been achieved because of people (usually science fiction fans) who wanted to explore places where no human had ever gone. As physicist and science fiction writer Greg Benford remarked, ultimately, we can do this, “but you can’t do it if you stop thinking about it.” Science fiction keeps people thinking about it, and that’s good.
Freedom is a tremendous and precious inheritance. To develop our potential, thrive in it, and pass it along to each successive generation is our highest calling. I write here to give my thanks, and to seek ways we can cultivate the resilience, independence, courage, and indomitable spirit necessary to sustain a culture that cherishes liberty.
