DATING DESTINY

DESTINY FAVORS MONOGAMY. CELIBACY AND RESOLVE

What is your type? We're all supposed to have one. How do you like your dream --tall and dark or short and easy? Have you found one marriage-worthy or are you still waiting? If so, don't be rushed or ridiculed into choosing. Trust destiny instead to deliver.

ON BEING STERN

We must be stern when things obstruct. In yielding to opposition we exalt luck, courting rather than contending courageously. Meanwhile failure feeds its myth; yet winners confound it.

SO MUCH

So much of what we say is based on conjecture. So much of what we desire is rooted in illusion. So many of our dreams are as deeply doubted as they are desired. So much of our life is ambiguous, ambivalent, and still-born.

ON DECK

Are you on deck or at the desk? Have you a bat or are you still doing the undesirable? If the desk is the deck, then continue to sit. If not, how will you hit? Places matter, else there would be no batter's box.

THE URGE TO REGULATE

The urge to regulate represents a diversion of democracy and usurpation of the autonomy entrusted to citizens by reason and sanctioned by law. Thus “red-tape” has become the red-herring enabling governments to galvanize their efforts to prevent the emergence of truly free markets by manufacturing amorphous mechanisms that suppress the growth of cottage industries (and contrary ideas), which would ultimately enhance our ability to build a genuinely liberal and liberating society. If, however, this society sees itself as complete, then it is compelled to create oppressive protocols that stifle citizen’s efforts to implement their unique ideas.

This claim neither denies the need nor denounces the value of regulation as a means of managing public safety (e.g. Borders' attempts to retail his barbecue). However, it does substantiate his sentiment and sustain his argument that the regulatory state is effectually and efficiently becoming a new form of totalitarianism wherein only certain avenues are open to certain people with access to powers and persons that grant permits and permission for them to pursue their projects unimpeded.

Borders, however, launches a logical fallacy in his fertile comparison of over-regulation with applying for welfare, which is an equally arduous process. I also reject his reductionism, saying that, “In the end, all I wanted was to sell barbecue sauce.” In this regard, the relationship between ends and means are malleable. One feeds the other and informs both because of their bond. We just have to be Spartan to limit special interests from suppressing our pursuits which, unfortunately Borders wasn’t.

Characteristically, democracy and capitalism are constructed on contradictory, ambiguous and occasionally conflicting concepts supported by prescriptions and tempered by provisions designed for quality control. Concern with over-regulation, however, as expressed by Borders can become a form of “paper terrorism” whereby citizens are subverted by processes that require conformity to regulations multiplied beyond reason and without regard for commonsense. Perhaps a concept co-opted from philosophy might diminish the dominion of these mandates, namely, a revised version of Occam’s Razor, which would prevent “regulations from being multiplied unnecessarily in efforts to protect public interests.”

If this principle prevailed, the ability of special interests to suppress the emergence of entrepreneurial ventures by their vulturous actions would erode significantly. More important, such an approach would impugn the intellectual parochialism that imperils the progress of democracy, domestically and internationally. In this progressive climate oppressive provisions would cease to prevail, and yield rather to the rule of reason and the right of persons to pursue their peculiar projects in a climate of least resistance. Such a change, however, would require revision in the contemporary demeanor of American democracy, which routinely lets itself be bullied by global events that ultimately hinder citizen’s ability to exercise greater degrees of self-determination because of being deterred unjustly and illegitimately. Moreover, our allegiance to the logic of a flattened world seems to require inflexible systems that suppress rather than serve social interests and citizen needs, threatening freedom in the process.



References

Paper terrorism is the use of false liens, frivolous lawsuits, bogus letters of credit, and other legal documents lacking sound factual basis as a method of harassment, especially against government officials.[1] It is popular among some anti-government groups and those associated with the redemption movement. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_terrorism)

ON FRICTION

I have sat for days waiting for dawn to wave its wand over my life.

Friction is the option least taken. Given a choice, we refuse to chase what chafes. So, we pursue what chastens instead, chasing in leisure the excellence of others. Hence, our obsession with celebrity culture. How different would things be if we were as interested in ourselves as we are in these? Being so doesn't mean that we couldn't peek occasionally. But it would require us to own more honestly our charge, however hard the task or long the climb.

CROSSING OVER

Threaten fear and it will cheer us on.

Thresholds threaten but can't prevent our entry unless we doubt our chances. If so, we remain on the verge resisting the urge to crossover.