20 April 2020 In recent days, claims have begun to emerge from numerous states that the Trump Administration writ large is seizing urgently-needed medical goods being imported or distributed to states, hospitals, and first responders battling the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s only one problem — no one appears to be doing…

“God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.” ~ Shadowlands Growing up, I was a selfish child. My parents set everything aside…

The concept of Auftragstaktik (or “Mission Command”) dictates that human beings are most set up for success when they are internally motivated to achieve a common purpose, and provided with the tools, resources, and latitude to chase that purpose in their own way. I believed then, and still do, that…

Humans are amazing, complex, frustrating creatures. Animals are predictable to a much higher degree of precision. They are driven by a small range of behavioral routines and physiological motivations, and tend to be limited to a smaller environment or habitat. But humans? We’re a maddening mix of emotions, agency, ethics…

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.” - Dr. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow I n the previous entries in this series on the MasterSelf blog, Garrett, John, Chance, and Deep Thrill (yes, that’s the…

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” - Wm. Shakespeare, The Tempest Every generation believes that, in some way, they are living in their own end times: The end of a familiar way of life. The end of reason. The end of the age of Man. It begins…

“How do you want to die?” This was the phrase offered by Alexander Cortes on a recent Aion Media broadcast discussing “The Crisis of Masculinity”, when he was asked about what one thing could he say to encourage people to live a better life. This is a second-order distillation of…

“Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” - Winston Churchill, 29 October 1941 In 1941, humanity…

We meet no ordinary people in our lives. - C.S. Lewis Enough real and digital ink has been spilled over the fight of “What is The Red Pill?” in the past decade to fill all the great libraries of antiquity. This is because humans are, generally speaking, creatures governed by…