Where I'm Headed

Apparently, one of the things to do here is to introduce yourself. That's kind of strange concept to me. One way of doing it is describing who you are. That can make for interesting sentence — I'm a Husband, Father, Christian, Anarchist, Economist, Philosopher, Book Addict, Comic Nerd, Sports Fan, and someone who spends way too much time thinking about who makes the best pizza. But I'm not sure that tells you much that's worth knowing. That describes what's been done in the past. I'm more interested in what's going to happen next. And that interesting list of terms only matters to the extent that it influences what's going to happen next.

So to me, an introduction is best when it describes where someone is trying to go and, hopefully, conveys the level of commitment they have to getting there. I'm less interested in what you are and more interested in what you're trying to be. And if someone doesn't have the answer to that kind of questioning, well, I guess that probably tells you about all you really need to know about that person.

Instead of telling you more about that list above, I'll let those things come up wherever they do in the process of telling you where I'm headed.

Any description of what I'm trying to do in life has to start with my Christian faith. In short, I'm trying to live as Jesus Christ would. That statement sounds incredibly egotistical when you say it or write it. Still, that is what Christians are called to do. But the one important element that we recognize is that we will never fully live up to that goal. So I fully acknowledge that I'm trying to reach an unreachable summit. There's probably some poetry in there about the journey being more important than the destination, but there's no need to pull that string any further for now.

On the subject of goals that can't be reached, I'm trying to be the best husband and father possible. It's another area where I know I'll continually come up short of the destination. But with that as my goal, I know I can always find something to improve on.

Beyond those two important things, I'm pursuing a path that doesn't even have a particularly defined goal, and whatever that goal might be, it's probably unreachable. Because of my faith, I believe I have a purpose. I don't know what the ends of that purpose are, but I know that steps I'm supposed to take towards it. In that vein of thinking, I'm attempting to become something of independent scholar/educator.

My ideas are far out of the mainstream. They certainly wouldn't be welcome in just about any modern university setting, and I would have to spend too much time in the realm of dishonesty to pursue anything down that path. But that's all right because, as I'll explain in future posts, most of what the mainstream thinks is wrong. So if I want to discover what's right, what's true, and teach that to people, then I have to operate outside the traditional educational structure. That's what I'm going to do.

The way I'll present these ideas will be varied. It may start with writing posts and articles, with books soon after. But I fully expect it to branch out into podcasts, videos, and other mediums. How it's done is less important than what is done.

I plan to present some original concepts, but it will take some time to build them up into a fully comprehensive presentation. In the meantime, I have other plans. I want to help people understand theories that, although I believe them to be true, haven't been presented in a way that's more digestible for those not willing to explore every inch of what original thinkers presented. Not everyone wants to read the works of economists and philosophers, and that's okay. I want to help people who are the next level down from that. Those who are interested in the ideas to the extent that they can explain the real world. I hope to bridge that gap.

The topics which I'll be discussing will be varied but will gravitate towards economics and social organization. Those concepts are incredibly linked in their own right, and that gets at another element of what I'm going to try to do. I want to show people how seemingly distinct concepts are far more linked than we recognize. School has trained people to think of ideas as exclusive and belonging to their unique category. The real world is nothing like that. I want to undo that damage that education has done.

No matter what the subject, economics, politics, faith, education, and so on, I'm solely interested in the truth. I would rather find out what's true, instead of holding onto a falsehood. I hope that all of that will reach some curious minds. I hope it starts to change some as well. But, as I mentioned above, I'm entirely unsure what the goal is; I just know what I'm doing next.

Moving on from those elements of life where I'm trying to reach a goal that I can't, there's one more area I want to mention. It's the only area that has a goal: I'm just trying to be better.

Because most of my time is spent pursuing goals I can't reach, I can get some satisfaction from achieving the goal of progress towards those unattainable goals. Improvement is any steps that take me closer. If day after day, week after week, and year after year, I'm closer to those goals than I was before, then I've reached a goal. I'm fascinated by the idea of potential. I'm not sure anyone can completely reach their potential, but I'm going to try. And each step towards fulfilling my potential is a victory in itself.

So that's where I'm going. I'm sure some of my other posts will fill in more about that list in the first paragraph. But without the context of where I'm headed, I'm not sure those traits would have made much sense anyway.