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!
Following are collected thoughts I posted to Twitter this Thanksgiving — reposted here with Twitter-isms tidied up. This is the stuff in my heart of hearts that I strive to remind myself of:
It’s a fine day to be reminded, to practice the gratitude I strive for each and every day. I am grateful for a true abundance of blessings.
I’m grateful for the culture I grew up in and have loved and treasured all my life. Thank you, America, and those who’ve risked all for our freedom!
I’m grateful for all of you, who labor with me to strengthen and preserve this magnificent, precious Civilization we are so lucky to call home.
I’m grateful for childhood, for the time and place where I grew up and all that it showed me about what we can be and achieve.
I’m grateful for my children, for their chance to see the world anew, without yet knowing the burden of worry about our future. I’m grateful for the opportunity to see the world anew through their eyes, through their genuine candor and boundless curiosity and enthusiasm.
I’m grateful for our indomitable spark — for hope of A Way Out and the chance to reignite this great experiment in Liberty.
I’m thankful for the abundance we enjoy, for our boundless capacity to create when we are truly Free.
I’m grateful for those who’ve sacrificed to safeguard this Civilization. Thank you and much respect to our veterans and active duty.
I’m thankful I got to know the American Way of Life before the era of “Fundamental Transformation”. It is everything I’ve ever wanted.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to reflect and get to know myself better: to understand what I am about and why, and what I must do next.
I’m thankful for the dedicated contributions & inspiring examples of patriots like Bill Whittle. I hope one day to repay what I’ve been given. (Thank you, Bill! — And Happy Thanksgiving!)
An attitude of thankfulness is a choice that is free to everyone…
This Thanksgiving, and in the days to follow, choose gratitude. Be thankful for the nation, for your life, for those whom you love and those who love you, flaws and all. Like a muscle, you can strengthen this virtue with regular exercise.
…
Seneca wrote that we even should be thankful for the most “fleeting and slippery possession” of all — the time we have left on earth. … None of us know if we have a day left or a century, but we should choose to spend each minute in gratitude.
Sounds like a good practice to me. I’ve added “gratitude” as a post category, to help remind myself to give thanks and look on the bright side.
It’s been ten years since I published my first post here, and in retrospect, I’m very glad I followed that impulse to start writing and publishing. Whether or not this project has been of value to others (I certainly hope it has, to at least a few), it has definitely been of great value to me — as a place to methodically sort out my thinking, respond to things that have troubled my ever-restless mind, and assemble a vision for something better to work toward. However infrequent my writing and posting has been, the cumulative result is a record of my thinking that I’m glad to have, and the process of producing it has helped me to better understand myself and get my bearings, in ways that continue to profoundly shape my life.
I set this blog up in part to express my gratitude for a culture that I love dearly, and am grateful to have been a part of — one that I feel we should be celebrating, even as others labor earnestly to weaken it and tear it down. It has been important to me to counteract the misguided “counter-culture” of bitter, vindictive social criticism that has as its aim to subvert, undermine, and dismantle the culture of liberty I have loved dearly all my life. Moreover, it is important to me to help correct the misconceptions that needlessly place people in the service of such destructive ideas and attitudes, to their and our detriment. I have endeavored to do some measure of that here.
I have also attempted to warn others about the threats we face — from within and without. I don’t know whether I have succeeded in changing any minds. The lure of wishful thinking and self-deceptive platitudes seems to be far stronger than I’d imagined. I now expect there are many people who I’ll simply never be able to reach. Nonetheless, I stubbornly persist.
If there is one resounding conclusion that I have reached and keep coming back to lately, it’s that we’re a Frontier culture in desperate need of a way out — of a new place to escape to. It’s become my mission to find that way out, and chart a practical means by which we can achieve it. This, above all else, is the project I expect to devote much of my energy to for the foreseeable future.
My profound thanks to those who’ve stopped by to read now and then, and thus have joined me for some part of this journey. I appreciate your company, and hope you’ll be with me on the roads yet to come. Amid reasons for despair, I find hope that we shall go on.
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.
