Education Mandatorium

Education. So fucking good it's mandatory. Best fucking idea since conscription. Doing anything with that life? Not any more, you're not. You're coming with me, kid.

School. Where we pack up the absolute most important things in the entire world—to us, I mean. I know none of you give a shit about someone else's rugrants. Anyway, we suit up our future in pigtails and new-smelling pencils, and we pack them off to the learning factory.

Did I say learning? I'm sorry, so very sorry. Learning is incidental. The learning we care about, anyway. What do we learn there? We learn that someone else decides when we're allowed to piss. We learn that to speak is a great privilege bestowed upon us—briefly—by an anointed stranger.

Above all, we learn that someone else knows better that we do, and they will hammer us down until the railroad is perfectly smooth.

Let me tell you a story. (It's a figure of speech. You have no choice. I'm already telling you a story.) I went out into the world, I met a nice girl, and together we made a couple of brilliant, beautiful new humans.

Being a fatherly boy—that is to say, a normal, decent human being, not a schmuck—I love and care a great deal about the two girls who are my sun and stars. Being not a complete idiot, I may have noticed that my two daughters are not stamped, identical coins. My younger daughter is as bright as the day and as warm as a summer breeze. And just asd fickle as the wind. Creative, laughing, funny, she wants to be around people and to make them happy and be happy around them.

Not the scholastic type my youngest.

Where was I? Ah. Humans. So. Two daughters. One is bookish, driven, agonizes over grades, stays up late on schoolwork, sits with me trying to understand her mathematics. The other? Life is full of people and places, and she wants to meet them, see them, talk to them, play, laugh, gossip—flitter-flutter-attention-deficit-whatever-the-hell-who-gives-a-rat's-ass, let's get some living done kind of girl!

One of these two has some serious trouble in school.

Plot twist: It's not the flitter-flutter extrovert.

No, friends. The daughter who had to attend "credit recovery" before school each day of the week or risk losing fucking credit for her classes was the one who had straight fucking A's!

That's what I'm talking about! They don't want to take our children from us so that they become educated. My daughter missed too many days of school, made A's, and scored highly on the standardized test batteries. Do you know which of these matters to the petty tyrants that write laws for—and admininster to—the institutions of instututionalization?

That they show up.

Here's the lesson, folks, and you can see the result of this anywhere you care to look:

It doesn't matter what you know, it doesn't matter how or whether you perform. All that matters is that you show up, and obey.

So stay in school, kids, cause otherwise your life might actually mean something.

Posted on by Mickey Mullin

Earnest Apathy, Part 3

This is Part Three of a series. Did you miss Parts One and Two, before you skittering around these here parts?

My mother lives in Oklahoma, and I was on the phone with her the next week after Liberty Forum, telling her about how excited I had been to experience all of this, and there were quite a number of thintgs that struck me at Liberty Forum, and multiple people I connected with and am continuing to explore new dialogs and relationsihps, but there was one that I thought my mother in particualr would like.

One of the speakers did his opening talk on what he called "Proactive Apathy," which resonated with me, since I've had this idea and domain name (and gamer tag) called "Earnest Apathy" for ages. I always liked the inherent contradiction in the name and the underlying ideas that it represents, and here's this gup going in a related direction, talking about spheres of influence versus spheres of control, and it was truly inspiring to me. It's one big reason I'm doing this right now.

The next day, the same guy does a talk on "aquaponics," growing food in a continually-cycled water system using—as part of that system—fish. Well, my mother is a fiercely independent woman, and herbalist, and an ethusiastic lover of fish and aquariums. I could not wait to tell her about this guy and his fish food.

"Mom, I went to this forum, I got to dress up in a suit"—I do like getting cleaned up, and c'mon, if you can't get excited about things to tell your mom, anymore, then maybe you're getting too full of yourself. "And Mom, there was this guy who does a podcast talking about 'aquaponics' where you grow food in water, and there's fish—"

"What's the name of his podcast?" she asked me. So I tell her, "Oh, it's called The Survival Podcast, and he talks about growing food, and livestock, and guns, and—"

"You mean Jack Spirko?"

...

Stunned for a second, I said, "Well. Yeah. That's the guy."

"Oh!" she said, "I've been listening to him for years! And you actually got to meet him?"

See what Mom did there, by the way? Here, I was all excited about getting to share "new" information with her—"new" information she'd already heard, watched YouTube videos on, drawn up plans for—and instead of taking the wind out of my sails, she effortlessly and honestly turned it right back into a cause for excitement, because I got to meet Jack Spirko and shake his hand.

It turns out I have plenty to say, and many more people to thank for inspiring me, but this time, I'm starting out with my good friend who invited me to volunteer, Mr. Jack Spirko,—who did not in any way ask me to endorse him—which I do, by the way. (To be honest, I doubt Jack even remembers me, I was just some face in a suit.) But check out The Survival Podcast anyway. And of course, Mom: Thanks, Mom!

Posted on by Mickey Mullin

Earnest Apathy, Part Two

This is Part Two of a three-part series. If you missed it, read Part 1, first.

Last December (2017), a friend came down near where I lived for a variety of reasons, —one of which happened to be her birthday, which is realy how I got to the point where I am now. We had a couple of drinks on her birthday, and when I epxressed how great it was to talk to someonone who didn't think that I was a some kind of selfish, stupid nutjob because I think people's lives are better when the're free, she mentioned that Liberty Forum in New Hampshire was coming up in February. This wasn't the fist time that she had mentioned a liberty-themed event to me—hell, one year, I actually registered and paid to go to PorcFest, but had to cancel my trip at the last minute to cover an event at work—but this time, everything came together, from timing to personal will, and I decided to go.

On top of attending, my friend was also coordinating the people who MCed the rooms and the conference—announcing speakers, getting them water, keeping them on time, those sorts of things—and asked if I wanted to volunteer. I thought, Wow, what better way to meet people than to be one of the folks helping out, that other people depend on? That would be great! So I said, Sure!

She stopped and said, "Now, Mickey: If you say you're going to volunteer, you have got to commit to being there. I need people who I can depend on."

Apparently, she was holding it against me, the two times I told her I was going to PorcFest and then...didn't. Well, I managed to convince her that she would definitely see my smiling face up ther, and I went.

I singed up to run one of the rooms for two of the three days, and here's a little personal detail about me: I'm what they call an "ambivert." Introverts have their recharge and self-healing time alone or in small, intimate groups, while extroverts are the ones organizing excursions and nights out, because they get all their energy from the interactions of groups of people. Few people are wholly 100% introvert or extrovert. Just about everyone needs a friend or some downtime; it's more about where you generate the majority of your happiness, mental health, creativity—whatever drives you in life. Well, ambiverts need both of those things in something that sort of approaches equal measure.

In my day job, I'm a computer programmer, and I have the privilege of working with a truly fantastic group of people ware are brilliant, funny, generous, genuine—and every one of them on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. My introvert gauge has read authoritatively FULL for a good long while, now. So full, in fact, that it was affecting my gumption to get out and refill my other tank.

Back to Liberty Forum. My friend walked me around and introduced me to dozens of people, who were open and energized, and genuinely happy to meet me. And then I got up in front of a room full of people. I was nervous, to begin with. If it makes you feel better, damn near everyone who stands in front of an audience gets nerves of some kind, at some point, possibly every single time they do it. (I do.) But I got up there, and I looked at a whole bunch of people who know—as I do—that nothing improves the lives of everyone more than the freedom to live as they choose, and I just...introduced people.

I don't know what I have to say that's important to other people—hopefully, I'm finding that voice—but I had to honor and the pleasure of looking out at all those people and announcing that someone was going to follow me onto the stage who was far more interesting that I was, who ould inform them, educate them, and engage them. I came off that so-called responsibility feeling electrified, excited, and alive.

This is Part Two of a three-part series. Part One should have been read first, and Part Three just makes sense in a read-me-next kind of deal.

Posted on by Mickey Mullin

Earnest Apathy, Part One

I felt an incredible sense of isolation. So many people around me—including people I care about—wanted to do things to and for other people "for their own good." There's a whole lot more nuance to that assertion than I want to address right now, but it boiled down to the fact that I was sick, emotionally sick, from so many people from all walks of life who devoted—devote—a great deal of energy to trying to change other people's lives to suit their own world view—not that they see it that way, of course—and losing sight—if they ever had sight of it in the first place—of two things that are vitally important.

First, the notion that freedom—that is, individuals unfettered from pursuing their own interests (so long as they are not harming other people)—was why people fled Europe in the first place. Nathan Hale famously said, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Hale wasn't seeking safety or security, he was hanged for spying on British troops because he so fervently believed in the natural right of all people to determine their own destiny, including the choice to risk and forfeit his own life in the effort to achinve that end.

The country he spoke of so passionately at his end was not a source of blind nationalism, or some warmongering jingoism, but a nation formed of people who laid down everything to secure the rights of people to practice and protect their individual liberty.

The second thing that gets lost in the paternalist rhetoric is the fact that seizing and siphoning the resources and productivity of a nation in order to "make the world a better place"—doesn't. Nanny state intervention and government-mandated social welfare programs incur costs by encouraging program dependency, eroding social cohesion, and also by lowering the overall wealth and prosperity of the places where they occur by directing resources in a place not necessarily where they will have the most impact.

Freedom is not just a pleasant notion bled for by idealistic nut jobs. It's the most effective means for improving the lot of every single individual who lives in a society.

Hold that last though, because I'll be coming back to it.

So, this feeling of isolation was really getting me down. I have a few people in my life who think—to my mind—sanely, but the overwhelming (important work, there, "overwelming")—the overwhelming majority either ranted and raved about—or tacitly accepted—ways of life that just took all the joy out of life.

On of my bastions of sanity—a close friend for over two decades—has for years been involved within groups of people who don't just whine about the lack of liberty, but who take positive action toward securing the rights of people to practice and protect their individual liberty. In retrospect, that sounds like a no-brainer, but though I had known about these people for years, I was caught up in the problems and challenges of everyday life and constantly distracted by all the shouting and posturing and sensationalizing happening all around me every day.

This is Part One of a three-part series. If you liked it, read Part Two and Part Three, as well.

Posted on by Mickey Mullin