Life Update: September 2026

Caveat emptor: this piece turned out heavier than I anticipated. 

First, an explanation. 

Last week I had to pass the buck on a post I was writing because I couldn’t make it work. This was extremely frustrating and I apologize to all of you for that. Long story short, it was an open letter to the CEO and owners of several subservience corporations who have been in the news recently. My goal was to write a letter encouraging them to cease activities that I view, not just as invasive, but as detrimental to human development in general. Try as I might, there was no way *I* personally could write that letter without letting my frustration boil over, or sounding hopelessly naive. It’s frustrating to admit, but I couldn’t make it work at all and I have scrapped it for the time being. I hope to return to this subject someday, hopefully none too late. In exchange for that subject, I have written an update on how my life is going... sorta. 

Second, a warning. 

I’ve noticed in my recent posts a tendency to claim absurdism as my philosophical outlook, with a Diogean influence. I don’t wish to keep harping on it just because I know you all have your own outlooks, but I will reiterate the point that, however absurd, incomprehensible, hopeless, or inherently meaningless I find existence, I do still choose to make my own meaning, to make my own hope and to laugh at the absurdity instead of sinking into despair. I have to underline this, but it’s just as important to admit when I’m feeling the weight of existence. And fair warning, me admitting that will get pretty heavy for the next few paragraphs. 

Third, a weary diatribe (Complaint... Grievance...? I don’t know which is the right word I’m looking for here.) 

A few months back in May, I made my list of goals for the year. Last week it hit me, finally, that I’m 27. It hit me right during the middle of a bad work day. I have some general anxiety issues, and I admit I tend to spiral. I suppose that this bad work day left me in a spiral. 

I need a new job for better health insurance and better financial reasons. I privately have to bemoan the fact that no one seems to be hiring, and companies don’t even seem to be responding to applicants anymore. I don’t know if this is because we’re in a shit economy, AI influence has made my type of work redundant, or the uncertainty around the midterms has resulted in a hiring freeze. 

Over this summer I’ve had two explorations of relationships, and two determinations by the guys I met that we shouldn’t continue.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed that I haven’t taken as much pleasure out of reading as I usually do. I’m hoping that this is just because I’ve read a lot recently and I’m just in a cycle. But I’m worried that my brain is seeking the cheap trill of YouTube algorithms and Instagram doomscrolling. 

I saw a report this week that the earth might be running out of fresh water. I haven’t seen any substantive confirmations yet, mostly because I’m too scared to check, but in light of the reports about AI data centers water consumption this seems scarily plausible. 

I don’t wish to harp on politics, but the way this country, and the whole world is going is depressing. Not to make too fine a point of it... but the president doesn’t seem conscious half the time, and actively malevolent when he is.  Not to mention that the Vice President of the United States recently said that he’ll be happy if his work leads to the end times... 

I just have to ask. WHAT. THE. FUCK? 

Are you familiar with the motif from Medieval art called the Danse Macabre? It’s usually an image of death, personified like the grim reaper, leading the dead and the soon to be dead from all walks of life in a dance to the grave, a rather on the nose allegory reminding people that mortality is universal and we will all die. Let me stress that: it’s a reminder that we will die. But modern life seems to be led by billionaires and politicians who have misunderstood the danse as a fucking queue to the exit. It’s like they all know we’re going to die and have figured, “welp, might as well start on the way.” 

Fourth, the worst part. 

I know I started this piece with an expression that I’m aging, but in all reality, I know that I’m still fairly young. And given the fact that I’m young, I could just be misunderstanding what I’m seeing. But does anyone else feel like this? Does anyone else feel like our leaders and some of the public are suicidal? Like they don’t see any possibility of changing paths because it’s too late?  

It’s been twenty-five years since 9/11. I admit I don’t remember it all too well. I just about remember my dad coming home from work early, and a terrible malaise, but I don’t remember the day. In retrospect however, I’m starting to think that this terrible event was the moment we all just gave up hope. I feel like it was the moment humanity nervously caught its breath, thought about the past horrors we had been trying to ignore and the bright future we had been trying to build, and then we exhaled in confusion and fear. We collectively decided that our only option to protect ourselves was to end everything in a mad, selfish scramble of war, greed and hatred towards the other. 

And it’s working. Barely taken us 30 years. 

Fifth, an attempted understanding and reconciliation. 

I realize that I’m struggling with pessimism, maybe with depression. But I want to emphasize that, difficult as it sounds, I do still have hope. It’s alive in me somewhere. It’s an absurd spark of joy dancing in me somehow. Just as I was writing this I realized I was singing along to some music I had playing, and that brought a smile to my face. Earlier today I laughed at an old Zero Punctuation video. 

What I want to know is, how do I spread this spark of joy? I don’t want it to die with me. Maybe through reconciliation, meaning I should reach out to people who share different ideologies, people who annoy me, people who have wronged me, people who just straight up hate my guts, people who I just straight up hate, - and forgive them, and ask forgiveness in return. Reconciliation and acceptance. 

I refuse to let other people decide how I should live my life, or decide that my life is already over. Fuck that. There is no middle finger big enough. I want to live, I will live, and I want other people to live with me. 

Fuck this end times bullshit. Choose hope. 

Me, a few months ago. I like this picture. 

Leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you. 

Disappointed With Myself

 

I had a post I was working on for this week, but I'm not happy with how it turned out. It's needs another week to germinate or I'll scrap it entirely and write something new. Sorry about that, lovers of my blog. 

Anyways, how're you guys doing? 

Anyone want to comment and just, you know, chill? 

This Review was Produced Without the Assistance of the ACME Corporation

OK it’s not lost on me that for two weeks in a row I’m writing about Albert Camus and the absurdity of life. Yeah, I’m seriously writing about the absurdity of life in coloration to a Loony Tunes movie. And in case you think I’m pulling that comparison out of my ass - no, it’s literally textual to the movie. A significant plot point takes it’s cues from the Myth of Sisyphus and then directly compares that to Wile E. Coyote’s attempts to catch the Roadrunner. 

So, if you weren’t aware of Coyote Vs. ACME, please allow me to light the fire of knowledge under you. This movie has been infamous for several years running now due to Warner Bros. being dicks about releasing it. Long story short, Coyote Vs. ACME was completed in 2023, but was shelved by the Brothers Warner so they could take a tax write off. And I mean they literally just canned it; far as I understand it, they had no intention of even releasing it on streaming. The Internet’s backlash to this was significant enough that Warner Bros. allowed director Dave Green to shop the film out to distribution companies that would want to take on the expense of releasing it. 

Lo and Behold, Ketchup Entertainment stepped in, and I think we should all salute their valiant efforts. A note on this, it’s projected to be somewhat of a success at the box office for it’s short theater engagement. Projections are estimating that CvA will net around $46 mil, which, while it wont recoup it’s $70Mill budget till it goes on streaming and home video, and likely won’t turn a profit, it is somewhat defying expectations. () Initial projections saw the movie earning only $12 million on it’s opening weekend, so it’s doing better than expected. Not phenomenal, but better. I strongly, strongly encourage you to go see this movie if a theater near you is playing it, just to let Warner Brothers know that this is the type of movie we want. 

And what type of movie is that? you ask. A children’s film about a coyote ... suing a giant magacorp for it’s faulty product line? It’s a corporate thriller about a cover up and a missing scientist? It’s a courtroom drama that ends with a congressional investigation like a Frank Capra movie? It’s an existentially bleak movie about an animated character realizing that he’s been an unwitting test subject for a corporation that doesn’t care that a marginalized consumer base is being treated as unwilling guinea pigs while buying products declared “state of the art?” Wait this is a children’s movie? 

Yes. It’s both a classic Loony Tunes comedy, and it’s a hilarious satire on corporate greed. It’s kind of a perfect satire actually. You’d argue that there’s no way a company would knowingly produce faulty products to test them on the population AND cover up their involvement ... and then you remember Theranos existed. And that Ford once put out the version of the Pinto that exploded when you rear-ended them. And that McDonald’s used to keep their coffee way, way too hot and burned an elderly woman (and then used the media to smear the lawsuit as frivolous). So take any one of these cartoony, stranger than reality incidents, slap an ACME logo on each company and it suddenly becomes startlingly plausible. It’s wonderful satire, and given the way Warner Bros. treated this film, it adds a sort of meta-fictional layer to the underdog punching up narrative. 

But as I mentioned, Sisyphus gets a mention. I won’t spoil how exactly; suffice to say it directly labels Wile E.’s pursuit of justice, dignity and yes, even the Roadrunner, Sisyphean tasks. It directly tackles the absurdity of carrying on in the face of failure and an indifferent universe. Wile E.’s lawyer Kevin Avery (played by a wonderfully disheveled Will Forte) starts the movie knowing what he is, an ambulance chaser eking out a living by settling case against ACME. He’s not looking for a fight, just a quick payday and small attempt at getting justice. But he faces two serious forces that slowly change his mind: Wile E.’s gosh-darned determinism to get justice from ACME and his niece Paige Avery’s (played by a wonderfully perky Lana Condor) enthusiasm for the law. It’s not like Avery is going to win (Mild spoilers) he is a two-bit lawyer going up against a gigantic conglomerate which has the power of the media and John Cena on their side, but the important thing is he keeps going. 

I do have some complaints about the movie, but they’re fairly minor. Arguably the pacing could have been trimmed down a little, and the editing and flow of the plot sorta fails around the 2/3rds mark. I also think Will Forte’s character could have been given slightly better motivation at the start of the story; his character parallels Wile E. Coyote in that way, he’s just an ambulance chaser and it felt like something was missing. Ultimately his character comes full circle so I can’t complain. 

If I haven’t made it clear, Coyote Vs. ACME is a good movie, smarter than you might think, and filled with fantastic animation. I have seriously undersold this movie’s animation thus far; I have seen cartoons mix with liveation this well since Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Go see it. One final note, I ahve to mention that this movie was inspired by a 1997 New Yorker article by humorist Ian Frazier. Written as a dry opening statement detailing the numerous injuries sustained by Wile E. Coyote as he uses faulty equipment from ACME. The original article is paywalled on the New Yorker site, but I found a copy reprinted in the Texas Bar Journal, of all places. Give it a read, it’s pretty funny. 

We Go On Singing

 I have to apologize in advance if I’m not entirely clear in my meaning, or if my writing seems jumbled in this post. I’m not the most analytical of thinkers, being more geared towards EQ than IQ so to speak, and my attempts to philosophize frequently fall flat. But with this post, I’m trying to wrangle some complicated feelings I’ve had this past week. Long story short, but in the past few months I’ve been flip-flopping between feeling frustrated, depressed, despairing, hopeful, angry and cynical and I’m trying to make sense of that. I’m just trying to warn you that this post might ramble more than usual, it might offer insights into my personality, and it might make references to George Carlin, Diogenes, Albert Camus, Yahtzee Crowshaw, Orson Welles, and others because I'm a pretentious fuck. 

In my younger years of thinking I knew everything about the world, I really thought that the best term to describe my outlook on the world was ‘cynic,’ and in my pretension I believed that I was free from the modern, pessimistic understanding of the word and that I was merely reacting appropriately to the world around me. Through college I experienced a profound existential crisis that removed much of my positive beliefs in the world, leading me to conclude that that humanity was primarily motivated by self-interest. I didn’t trust people in general, and I didn’t see much of a purpose to life or really even think I’d have much of a future. I wouldn’t say I was a nihilist, because I was still someone in search of meaning, and I thought that I could eventually find one. But I was certainly the pretentious fuck I pretended I wasn’t. (Still am, if you couldn't tell, I just don't deny it anymore.) 

Time taught me that I didn’t understand jack fucking shit about anything, let alone myself, and that while I won’t leave the world understanding much of anything, I can still at least try to learn and act like I understand. Ironically, my current world view (I say current because these things can change quickly) is influenced by the original cynicism as espoused by Diogenes, with a little bit of Albert Camus’ concept of the absurd. 

The original cynics believed in an Asceticism and simple living that viewed harmony with nature as the highest ethical calling. The cynics rejected most societal conventions as arbitrarily invented to control feelings of “shame.” Ethically, Greek Cynics wouldn’t be relativists, they would in fact honor virtues that come from nature quite highly. Think of it as the proto-stoicism, except most of cynics would mock the Stoics for being too self-important. (I’m indebted to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy for help with the philosophical concepts I tackle here.) 

It’s not a flawless philosophy, as Diogenes himself demonstrated. For instance, its Asceticism can be seen as leeching rather than self-sufficient once taken to it’s logical extremes. Secondly, societal morays exist for a reason, and there are sociological, technological, and medical advancements that we have crated for a reason. But I do still value at least three valuable aspects of cynicism. 

First, Diogenes was fucking hilarious, and his quips and clapbacks do indeed offer insight into societal hypocrisy. Second, I believe the preference for natural virtues over societal conventions has caused me to reevaluate my view that all humans are inherently self-interested to a fault. Arguably, self-interest isn’t our natural state, but something exacerbated by our society’s ordering ourselves. Thirdly, I believe that cynicism’s tenet of questioning everything that an authority tells you to accept is extremely valuable. It grounds you, reminds you that society really is just a set of illusions that we’ve all agreed to abide by. Social compacts do exist, and you have to remind yourself that while they’re necessary and kind of beneficial, some of them pretty ridiculous and we can definitely replace them with better systems. 

This is part of the frustration, anger, despair and unbridled maniacal fear and loathing I’ve been feeling. Let’s state the perfectly obvious with the words of George Carlin. “The longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is fucked up.” Its perfectly fucking obvious what’s fucked up: society is designating right before our very eyes. War, poverty, fascism, racism, LLM’s and Generative AI, rampant consumerism, MAGA, genocide, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, climate change, rising illiteracy rate, religious intolerance and extremism, unpunished pedophilia, artlessness, the destruction of the middle class, flagrant criminal activity in the highest levels of wealth and government, and the fucking cherry on the cake, Mr. Beast. Nah I’m fucking with you. The worst of it all is indifference, both at the highest levels of power and in the general public, everything is going to hell and nobody cares. It’s almost enough to justify the cynicism of my college days. 

But I can’t go back to that. You see, from my readings of the two branches, the difference between modern cynicism and classical cynicism is that classical cynics believed life was worth living. And I find myself in agreement with that premise. Exactly why I agree is hard to articulate, but I think the simplest explanation I have comes from my understanding of the Absurd. (I’ve mentioned Camus before, I don’t know if he believed exactly what I’m about to expound, but I’ll give him the credit.) 

As I understand it, the Absurd expresses the fundamental disharmony in our existence, specifically the feeling of requiring meaning from existence, but upon looking for meaning or purpose, we can only find an indifferent, senseless, silent universe. It’s an existentially terrifying idea. And it does get to me. I imagine we all know the feeling, striving most of our lives for some kind of relevancy, some kind of purpose, some kind of basic quality of life, and then we all slowly experience having our teeth kicked in. We struggle for years in dead-end jobs and end up loosing money. We look for avenues of self-expression that are safe, that recognize our basic humanity, only for bullies and corporations and people who call themselves Christians to curb our actions, to call us inhuman. We spend years trying to perfect our arts, only for people to make machines to replace us. And beyond that pain to our material and mental worlds, we have the underlying fear that it’s all for naught, because everything will pass away. 

Orson Welles spoke of this. In his documentary F For Fake, he takes a rather somber view of the purpose of art. Grand Cathedrals, paintings, books, poetry, film, drama, all will pass away, either to the slow erosion of entropy or the fires of censorship. “Our songs will all be silenced,” Welles said. “But what of it? Go on singing.” 

This was Camus’ solution to the absurdity of life: keep living. Life isn’t beautiful because it lasts, it’s beautiful because it’s lived. Art isn’t beautiful because it’s hanging on a wall, it’s beautiful because it took effort to create. I believe art, and life is even more beautiful in the face of this adversity, because defiance is beautiful. 

Recently, one of my favorite humorists, Yahtzee, and some of his journalistic friends created a line of merch for their independent media company, Second Wind. A coffee mug takes one of Yahtzee’s quotes, and illustrates this idea of defiance being beautiful. This mug (pictured above) triggered the idea for today post. (I’m including a link to the mug I’m referring to because even though I bought one and used a picture of it for this article, it’s still not my design or quote, and I’m certain they’d appreciate being credited.) Funnily enough, this even ties back into the story of Diogenes, who is one of the earliest recorded users of the middle finger.

There is indeed no middle finger big enough for the world right now. And every word I write, every day I live, is another gigantic middle finger to consumerism, AI, homophobia, this administration, flock cameras, and indifference. And yeah, it's hard to keep writing, it's hard to keep working every single day. But I really don't have anything better to do and frankly, it's fulfilling.  

And so we go on singing. 

It's One Of Those Days Where I Genuinely Don't Have Anything To Say

So Here's a few more picture of my recent Minecraft builds. 

Mostly I've been developing a strip of real estate I called Fisher's Narrows, so called because it's a long, narrow strip of land that I claimed.  

Here are the recent developments:

And the ones I'm most proud of: A cow pasture

A sheep and pig pen

And a chicken pit. Chickens are only in the pit because they can hop over fences. 

I'm also really proud of a public park I built for my friends, which features a gigantic chessboard. 

But the main attraction and the most effort I sank into a build recently is a half underwater house. This was partially inspired by a Frank Lloyd Wright style of natural building contrasting a modern setting. 

Note the shack indicated by the red arrow below, the entrance, leading to: 

A lovely view of the briny deeps. 

Anyways, that's all I've got this week. Have fun. 

I Shoot the Bastards, That's My Policy

 Very recently, science educator and author Hank Green has come under fire for using AI in some of his videos. (Story Link HERE) I don’t watch his content all that frequently (I am familiar with his Crash Course videos; it appears the he wasn't using Ai on those videos) so I wont say that this is anything like a betrayal of trust or some exaggerated bullshit like that. It's his response video that has prompted my post here today, I find it fairly thoughtful (link) and is worth considering as a creative. He suggested that having accountability as a creative is important with this kind of discussion, and that creators need to have AI policies and be upfront about their stance with their work. We'll come back to that. 

For the moment, I wish to make myself clear on the subject. In several of my posts I’ve expressed disdain for Large Language Models and generative AI. 

I loathe LLMs. I loathe generative AI. I loathe that my posts and my writing style might be studied by an LLM for its training. I loathe the AI generated slop that appears on YouTube and so much of the internet. I loathe that it has wormed it ways onto my social media feeds. I loathe the ethical problems, and the sociological and environmental effects AI produces. While I understand that they offer some advantages in some industries, specifically in areas of scientific research and coding, I must point out the distinction between industrial and creative usage and I question what good they actually do. 

Bottom line: I believe that AI has no place in the creative industries because the creative industries are the result of a highly personal process that generative AI by it’s nature foundationally circumvents. 

The satisfaction I find in writing is in the process of sitting my ass in my chair and trying to use the best words to capture the thoughts that run around my mind. It’s grueling. It’s frequently painful. But the reward of realizing that I expressed myself absolutely is an orgasmic rush beyond my wildest dreams. A few posts back I clarified that I write because I love doing the writing. That will not, cannot change. Flaubert said, “Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living,” and I agree. 

To bring this back to Hank Green: his idea that creatives should be upfront with their AI policies are is a really good idea.

I will establish right now my AI policy. This has applied to everything I’ve written before, but has not been articulated before now, and I will abide by this policy with everything I create going forward. I will publish a summary of my policy in the About Me section of my blog, visible on every page.

* I will never consciously or otherwise use an LLM or other form of generative AI to write anything, be that a novel, short story, blog post, pamphlet, song, poem, or Anti-AI screed.  Everything that I have written up till now was poured out of my own head through my hands, and it will remain that way. Every Picture I take, every video I shoot will be made by me.

* Simultaneously, I will not use a generative AI to produce any picture, video, song or other piece of creative work. 

* I write using the FocusWriter word processor with has an explicit anti-AI policy (link here) (download HERE). The only AI-Adjacent program it utilizes is a fairly useless spell checker that seems to think “foundationally,” “antidisestablishmentarianism,” and “dysentery” aren’t words. I can accept a spell checker, but I don’t abide by it. 

* As regards research, I avoid Google AI summaries and the obvious slop, but I cannot be certain that every article I pull wasn’t written or otherwise tampered with by an AI. The point is that here, I do my best so avoid AI, but I can’t be certain I didn’t cross paths with any. 

* I resent that LLMs might be reading my blog and using my words to train. I don’t know if I can stop that. Google might be doing that since I’m using their Blogger tool and they don’t have a clearly label AI policy. I don’t know if Substack offers a better policy. My point is, I deeply, deeply resent that my words might be used in this manner. 

To quote Dirty Harry and Frank Drebin, that’s my policy. 

Fair Warning, This One Might Be A Bit Political

Ever heard of Russell Kirk? Apparently he was quite a talented ghost story writer and if that’s how you know him, well... Then I hate to inform you that he was, apparently, one of the major American conservative voices in 20th century along with Christopher Buckley. He wrote a lot of non fiction about conservatism, notably penning an influential book (The Conservative Mind) tracing the history of conservative thought from Burke to the 1950’s. Honestly, documenting the development and impact of conservatism does seem like worthwhile subject for a book, so long as you’re not spending all your time bashing other ideologies. 

Anyways, a few weeks back I was made aware of Kirk via a list 10 principles that he considered to be foundational to conservatism. The list is... odd. Mostly because it doesn’t seem to understand what liberalism is, seeing it only as a force of destruction (somehow... we’ll get into that.) Anyway, I want to bring this list to your attention and comment (to the best of my ability) on the substance or lack thereof in these principles. I also want to be a little snarky with this post, so fair warning. Anyways, I present, Russell Kirk’s 10 Conservative Principles with Generous Helpings of Snark By Me. (Btw, I quote directly from his list a few times. I don't own his work, obviously, but I'm not going to attribute his website because I don't want to give this garbage more clicks. If you're that curious to read it, I won't stop you from googling.) 

Principle 1: The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.

Fine by me. What permanent moral truths are we talking about here? Love thy neighbor? Treat one another as you want to be treated? Hey wait a goddamn minutes - progressives believe in that one too... actually it’s kind of foundational to progressive ideology. The whole point of progressing to a new future is to leave a better world for our children. And what exactly do you mean that Human nature is a constant? That we’re always going to screw things up? I mean sure, there’s certainly historical precedent to be cynical about improvements remaining in place, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make improvements. 

Principle 2: The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. 

No problem with the premise - what customs are we talking about here? Such wholesome Western (read: White Anglo-European) customs such as stripping a women of her bodily autonomy by disguising it as “a higher calling”? Limiting what media we can consume in the name of a “moral order” while bleating about not having freedom? Beating up on Queers, African Americans, Jews and anyone else who might have different customs, conventions and continuities? Speaking of minorities, you know who has vibrant and quite lively communities filled with interesting customs? New customs are being created all the time and old customs are forever evolving, that’s part of continuity. 

Principle 3: Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. 

.....This would be easier to mock if it was in any way remotely understandable. Hang on a minute (checks the Russell Kirk website “Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time. Therefore conservatives very often emphasize the importance of prescription—that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary...”) 

Well that’s just insulting to modern man. Yes, all of what we know in our scientific and philosophical fields are based on the discoveries of the past, but get this, not everything our forefathers believed was right. In fact, they were quite stupid. It’s not like the middle ages were some golden age of humanity that we’re all secretly pining to return to. If we were to stack up every incorrect scientific in history, the number of formerly accepted reasons for how the stars turned on at night alone would take us to the stratosphere.  

Principle 4: Conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. 

Anyone who seeks wisdom is guided by prudence, regardless of political opinions. Exempli gratia: that it would not be prudent to elect an amoral orange turnip in an ill-fitting blue suit with a criminal record to the presidency just because it says things vaguely agree with. (stares into the camera)

Principle 5: Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. 

Oh, how kind of you to “pay attention” to the “principle” of “Variety”. And just what kind of variety are we talking about here? Business variety? Religious variety? Sexual variety? Miscegenation? Clearly not class variety or the so often mocked “diversity.” 

I gotta go back to the Kirk website, hang on. (*reads: For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at leveling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.’*) Oh... so, by “Variety” you mean a tiered social order. So Classism. 

Principle 6: Conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability. 

Hey asshole, lemme quote a Batman movie at you: “Why do we fall? So we can better learn to pick ourselves up again.” Stop using “we’re all imperfect” as an excuse not to fix broken systems or end harmful traditions. And also, stop using “we’re all imperfect” as an excuse to sit back and muse “c’est la vie” wistfully whenever you hear about the last shooting massacre in a day care. 

Principle 7: Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. 

No shit property and freedom are closely linked, what a fucking helpful observation. That’s why progressives want MORE PEOPLE TO OWN PROPERTY LIKE HOUSES THAT THEY ARE CURRENTLY BEING PRICED OUT OF. That’s why progressives ARE SERIOUSLY CONCERNED WITH DATA CENTERS TAKING UP LIVABLE LAND AND DRINKING WATER.

Principle 8: Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. 

I love voluntary community action! That’s called democracy! And speaking of opposing involuntary collectivism, note that it’s the progressives who who are in favor of exchange between cultural communities like ethic groups and queer communities, while conservatives want to restrict exchange in the name of the collective “social moral good.” And also note that, oh, just for example, corporations buying up large land parcels for data centers without community approval and replacing staff with large language models would technically be involuntary collectivism. (You might argue that, but the group that corporation are placing ahead of the individual workers are the shareholders, so fuck you.)

Principle 9: The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. 

Not a bad idea. THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU GIVE DRUG ADDLED PEDOPHILE BILLIONARES UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE FEDERAL GFOVERNMENT AND NUCLEAR ARSENALS? 

Principle 10: The thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. 

This is that prescription thing again isn’t it? In other words the most change you’re willing to accept is a change the weather? (so long as said change isn’t... climate change?)  

If it weren’t obvious by now, this is a really stupid list of principles. Most of it is just plain old classism, racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia wrapped up in the old Chesterton’s fence argument. If you’re unfamiliar, Chesterton’s fence is the following thought device: suppose you were to build a path through afield and suddenly come upon a fence that wasn’t on your survey. The prudent thing to do, instead of bulldozing the fence recklessly, is to hold off, trace down the builders of the fence and find out what it’s purpose was, and then figure out where to go from there.

Obviously, you should respect the past. I can respect not wanting to uproot old traditions recklessly in the name of progress as these traditions might have uses such as social cohesion. However, if that tradition was built of faulty logic, or superseded data, surely upgrading those traditions is called for. That’s the core of what progressiveness is. It’s wanting to leave a better world for the future and replacing the systems that no longer work with systems that will hopefully work better. 

Yes, that involves experimentation with new systems. Yes, that can be dangerous. Yes, I can understand why you’d prefer to cling to older customs that make you more comfortable. But Russell Kirk's principle of “prescription” is a cowardly, anti-intellectualist attitude that looks at the improvements humanity needs to make to survive in the modern world and says “...yeah we’re happy with our ignorance, thanks. We’ve made our money, and the rest of you can eat a dick.” 

Let's be clear here. Regardless of my political views, I'm certain people do have good reasons to be conservative. But I don't think any of these principles offers a remotely good basis for an ideology, and a worse reason to believe in that ideology.