I haven’t been writing as much here as in past times, in part due to finding Twitter, GETTR, Parler, and Gab to be convenient outlets for concise, off-the-cuff thoughts. With the world gone as mad as it now has, I feel I have a great deal of catching up to do in this more enduring journal of observations, and much of it merits the deeper and more systematic exploration that writing longer pieces here facilitates. The task feels daunting at its outset, but I feel the need to tackle it with some persistent commitment, as there is so much gone awry in need of urgent remedy.
I haven’t yet written here, more than indirectly, about the now approximately two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our variously advisable and insane responses to it. There is much that needs to be captured for posterity, about the madness that we have allowed to descend on us and dominate our lives, and the darker-than-expected things I’ve learned about human nature in the process.
Simultaneous with the massive social experiment of addressing a global pandemic with radical measures decoupled from rational, salutary feedback loops, we in the USA were subjected to the determined resurgence of an unhinged social critic culture with which I have had all too much bitter experience. I can imagine that to well-intentioned younger generations this might have appeared to be something genuinely new and worthy of possible deference, but to me it is an old, familiar, and despicable foe in a very thinly veiled disguise. I have written here, since the beginning, of my heartfelt love for the American Idea and way of life. I have wanted for my life to stand as a celebration of this culture of ours and its possibilities — to express herein my feeling of gratitude for them, and to help others to see the beauty that I do and learn the means of thriving in it that I have acquired through a lifetime of observing, admiring, and learning from the achievements of others. I have wasted far too many moments of this precious journey in the company of smug, snide, bitter social critics — from academia in the late 90s and early ’00s, to the radical activist sub-culture of the art world, to eight years living in various parts of the the San Francisco Bay Area. I have watched so many of the things I love and value maligned, slandered, and disparaged by people whose fear, envy, narcissism, or other such mania have driven them to enthusiastically tear down and destroy rather than create. I have been, since my college years in the mid-90s, a witness to expressions of worldview and intent that I now regret having dismissed too lightly as fringe academic radicalism, which turned out to be the seeds of toxic ideology that means to “subvert” and dismantle everything I love, and which has seen its way, through persistent incrementalism, to the dubious and contrived claim of mainstream respectability it makes today. I assure you this is nothing new, but rather the down-the-road manifestation of decades of intellectual termites gnawing away at our cultural foundations — a phenomenon that I have witnessed. Yesterday’s uncontested absurdities have become today’s promoted ideology, leaving us in sad but not unrecoverable shape.
What we’ve come to now, as the culmination of decades of infiltration and radicalization of our education institutions (all the way from universities to K-12) is a broader cultural realization of how very far off course we’ve allowed ourselves to be blindly led. Those who mean to dismantle what they despise in this Liberty-loving culture have been acting with newly emboldened fervor, while simultaneously being umasked by parental oversight that they did not appear to anticipate. As a parent of two young boys who I love dearly, and whose futures must be as free, open, and optimistic as possible, it’s vitally important to me to support and be part of these parents’ and students’ rights movements. What the courage of past generations has purchased for our benefit at such high cost cannot be left casually on the table, sacrificed for no purpose and to no good end. It is worth the proverbial fight.
Watch for what I hope will be more frequent posts here in support of setting things right. I’ll endeavor to shed light on what I’ve seen, promote others’ good work, find and promote solutions, and maybe even lift my own spirits and yours a bit in the process.
No sooner mentioned than reinforced. The “long march through the institutions” is proceeding as planned.
Closing the loop on an earlier post: I’m glad to report that the house hunt I was so apprehensive about has reached a happy conclusion. All it takes, in the end, is one “right” place, and I’m very grateful to have finally found it. My wife and I closed last week on a neat old place (farmhouse colonial, built circa 1887) that has a reportedly excellent elementary school for our soon-to-be-kindergartner less than a mile away.
Like any house that age, it’s going to need some work, despite having been well cared for overall, but I’m enjoying the opportunity to do that work and get to make the creative decisions that go with it. After going back from being a homeowner to a renter three years ago, I’m happy to return to a situation of greater ownership and investment — something we can build on and make truly our own. The place has a tranquil feel to it that puts me at ease. — It’s a welcoming retreat that I’ve yearned for without fully realizing it. I think the experience of it will help me to get where I’m striving to go, and for that I am grateful.
The anticipated school challenges I wrote about still loom, but I think we’ve made a choice that gives us a strong foundation for grappling with them. My sons, 5 and 2, continue to amaze me with their natural curiosity and aptitude for learning, and I have strong hope that I can put all that I’ve learned to work, anticipating challenges and helping them learn how to find their bearings and succeed.
So I guess renovating and home improvement projects will be my new excuse for not writing here more often. I’ll try not to overuse it. There’ll be some inevitable extra demands on my time while we get set up and settled in, but once things have returned to a steady state I look forward to re-engaging on other projects that matter a great deal to me, including writing here and producing more No Fear Pioneer episodes.
My move from Blogger is effectively almost complete, by the way. I’ve ceased posting at fearlessdream.blogspot.com, and will be publishing new material here at fearlessdream.us. I just need to get around to adding a notice at the old site and a redirect to this one. Always something to do!…
Thanks for visiting. I look forward to getting to more of the interesting stuff that’s swimming around in my head in the near future…!
It’s time to start writing and publishing here again. Straining to get a business off the ground while raising two young boys, it’s been hard to find the time, but there are challenges ahead that I’m going to need to work out how to deal with, and working through my thoughts in writing seems more likely than anything else to help. I also feel the need to do something useful to help turn this culture of ours around — or, if that isn’t possible, at least help others to navigate a way out — so it’s time to make time.
With my older son on the verge of turning five, kindergarten and all that follows it are suddenly looming near — a prospect that brings me no small amount of dread and apprehension.
In part, I’m concerned because of my own difficulties with public school education — difficulties that, in summary, cultivated in me such a strong dislike for formal education that I waited four years before going to college and repairing that relationship. (Thankfully, college is not high school by any stretch. Having found a passion for physics through self-motivated study on my own, I devoted my very best efforts, and graduated with high honors.)
It’s absolutely vital to me that I not allow my own children to needlessly suffer the same troubles. (Yes, some part of it was a character-building learning experience, but much of it was a completely unnecessary impediment to my progress.) Given that my oldest son has a highly curious, creative mind that asks and can understand the answers to advanced, insightful questions, I’m thinking similar personality + similar school system = similar result, and I dread the thought of that.
I’ve also become aware that schools, and in particular public schools, have not only limitations but complex agendas whose constituent parts can come into conflict with my child’s best interests. Some have social goals, to which they may at times subordinate their students’ individual interests and advancement. To have my child’s future or development sacrificed in this way is unacceptable to me, and it’s something I’m braced to be ready to fight tooth and nail against.
Indoctrination? I suppose I should be worried about that too, and I am, a little, but not so much in the near term. I made it though junior and senior high school without encountering anything overtly troubling (though I now realize I was offered only partial truth about some things). But I’m well aware that my experience may not have been the norm, and that things have also had ample time to “progress” in the past … *ahem* … few decades. (Following Glenn Reynolds’ “K-12 Implosion Update” series is certainly enough to make one worry about the state and sanity of present-day education.) I’m fine with my kids having honest exposure to a wide range of ideas and being free to choose for themselves what philosophies they adopt, so long as they acquire the skill of applying research, reason, and common sense to discern truth. I wouldn’t want it any other way. When things are slanted, however — whether by omission or otherwise — to comport with an ideological agenda that discards hard-won lessons about the meaning of liberty, the origins of tyranny, and all that we have to be genuinely grateful for … well, then we’ll have a problem.
Whatever the long-term problems might be, the immediate challenge is to figure out where the best (least bad?) schools for our sons are located, and move accordingly. Given that all the towns within a reasonable distance from my wife’s job (my work is portable, currently) exact a steep property tax to fund their public schools (with rates around 2% vs. California’s 1%, and house prices comparable to California’s, your annual property tax bill comes to around $12,000-16,000), we had better hope that the local public schools will be good enough for the time being. Else, we’re going to have to find a way to pull in enough additional income to pay private school tuition on top of the cost of the public schools we’ll be paying for but not using.
I imagine large numbers of parents fall into the strategy of relying on a public schools of necessity, while supplementing with outside programs to fill in the weak spots, and striving to cope on their own with the problems public schooling creates and undo any damage that gets done. I certainly don’t expect that I can leave my children’s education to any school system. — That seems like folly, no matter how good the schools. Rather, I expect to be deeply involved in my children’s learning, doing whatever it takes to make the time for it to be a priority. It’s a long road ahead, that I’m sure many of you reading this have probably traveled already. I welcome advice, and will be actively seeking out as much useful information as I can find in the months and years to come. I expect a long, hard climb, but nothing could be more worth the effort than helping my children find their bearings and get off to the best start possible to happy and fulfilling lives.
