Archive for 2020
Chapter 36 The difference between dogma and doctrine is the difference between faith and thought. The extent to which an ideological system is taken on faith is the extent to which it is dogmatic. The extent to which an ideological system is by its leaders expected to be taken on faith is the extent […]
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Chapter 9 There is no sort of freedom other than the sort which voluntary exchange brings about. In its fundamental form, freedom has only one meaning: freedom is the absence of state force. Freedom is the omission of governmental coercion, compulsion, and force — whether that force is direct, as in assault, or indirect, […]
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Most human-beings don’t think too much about the great problems of existence, concerning which things, most humans behave as most around them behave. Most people perform certain daily acts without paying particular attention to their acts, neither to the ideological theories nor the hierarchical structures that undergird them. Most people do most of things for […]
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It was toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy. Their bread, their work, their private lives began to depend on this or that decision in disputes on […]
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Excerpted from my forthcoming: Chapter 4 Independent thought is critical thought – it is the critical faculty at its best: the faculty of identification, evaluation, discernment, grasping. Thought, in turn, is accomplished by means of language, which is precisely why the more you understand the words you’re using, the clearer and more streamlined […]
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Excerpted from Chapter 3 of my forthcoming. Chapter 3 Independent thinking is you, your car, and an auto-mechanic you don’t really know. Independent thinking is you taking your car in for a biannual tune-up, strictly routine. After handing the auto-mechanic your car keys and then waiting in the lobby for approximately five minutes, […]
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Excerpted from my forthcoming: Chapter 30 Since humans are each discrete, individuated beings, with a singular consciousness, born into a complex system of nature, humans are because of this infinitely diverse. This is a good thing, and it is a beautiful thing. This infinite diversity means, however, that humans are inherently unequal – in countless […]
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Excerpted from my forthcoming: Chapter 12 Tribalism is a form of collectivism, which is a philosophy that denies the primacy of the individual human-being and subordinates her to a so-named collective. Tribalism is the logical result and the logical elaboration of postmodernist irrational philosophy. Irrationalism is a school of philosophical thought, with a long and […]
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This is excerpted from Chapter 25 of my forthcoming. Chapter 25 Howard Zinn is the author of a cultic classic called A People’s History of the United States, which is a tour-de-force of historical misinformation, sloppy scholarship, and outright prevarications. This perhaps partially explains why on the subject of history and the role of the […]
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This is excerpted from Chapter 22 of my forthcoming. Chapter 22 “Every serious civilization,” she said, “like every serious person, possesses an essence or a spirit. A soul, if you like.” The woman speaking was a political refugee. She was standing – and not sitting – at my bar one mellow Tuesday evening. She […]
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The following is excerpted from my forthcoming. Chapter 1 The art of independent thinking is the art of individual inquiry, and individual inquiry is rooted in observation. When a child learns through personal experience, by bouncing it on a concrete surface, that a properly filled basketball can be dribbled, but then after testing the […]
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As many among us stated in the beginning: absent a cure or vaccination, you simply cannot stop the spread of any coronavirus or rhinovirus, novel or non-novel. Nor does the virus get bored or tired and so move on to another planet. This is why I’m posting a recent thread I read (click on each image […]
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The heartbreaking truth about human enslavement is that it’s existed across all races and all major cultures, and it has existed since the dawn of humankind: Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Jewish, African, Asian, European, Mayan, Aztec, and countless others. As long as there have been human beings, there have also been purveyors of force enslaving their […]
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Today is the 90th birthday of the American economist Dr. Thomas Sowell — a true genius and independent-thinker, who’s been an inspiration to me for a long time, and from whom I’ve learned a great deal. I sincerely believe that it has never been more important to read and understand Thomas Sowell. In his autobiography […]
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This is for all those who don’t believe that science has become totally politicized and therefore totally corrupt — climate science perhaps most especially — who have hounded and harassed me and others like me a long time now for pointing out that the peer-review process has long become a farce and the scientific method, […]
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(c)Ray Harvey 2011