Prologue
I don’t know where these writings will lead, but I do know where this will start. Before that I must thank, my grandparents, my parents, my wife Keri, my son Jack, to my Aunt Lael and Brother Tom, and to my friends and colleagues both former and present, Greg Latham, Joe Dougherty, Josh Turney, Kevin Hammer, Jay Brieler, Josh Vandervort, Marchan Adkins, Randy Anderson, Chris Schumacher, George Pincock, Jim Heising, Ron Franczyck, and Brian Beatty, who all have taken insight and provoked it as well. If I didn’t acknowledge you, it’s not that you did not influence me or that you were not significant in my life. It’s just space is limited and these are the people who don’t always agree with me, but had the respect to question my thoughts without resorting to fallacies and listen openly which is something I may or may not be good at myself, but with them I know I am more open to listen and consider other perspectives and this is as much their work as mine even though I don’t think any of them want to be credited with it.
Where these writings lead starts with the rejection of authority and the freedom to explore. Humans in the digital age have shown an increasing willingness to cluster into larger and larger groups with little diversification in thought and action. This congregation has created binary thinking and acceptance of totalitarian positions of authority within human society which have held the human race back from its potential in self glorifying and selfish ways into what is increasingly becoming to very distinct, binary, and polar opposite groups. I see this increasing division as harmful to the growth and future of human society.
From the time of my earliest memories, I have explored whenever I had the chance and I have challenged authority whenever I could. It wasn’t until recent events happened in Charlottesville, VA occurred for me to completely understand why I am this way and it took another author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, to write and speak in a way which explained how and why I think and act the way I do almost 5 years ago when I was first introduced to his works. It was then the time came for me to start understand what many of my friends have said about in not understanding me.
The journey from what many of those close enough to know me as intimately as possible call me in completely incongruous ways rebellious, contrarian, argumentative, mischievous, thoughtful, prickly, obsessive, demanding, elitist, spiteful, condescending, thankful, thankless, selfish, selfless, loving, hateful, etc… throughout childhood into adulthood has culminated itself in a self-reflection from reading Taleb to the Charlottesville, VA incident. This self-reflection has given rise to two axioms; the first is we must be free to explore as to enhance the lives around us to make a difference in making the world better around us and the second is we must start with the premise of authority having to be challenged to allow such exploration to occur.
While it may seem those two axioms seem to give rise to a chaotic state of existence for many, I did not state that authority was wrong, but authority must be challenged and nor did I state exploration must intrude on the lives of others. It is often the opposite which is true, exploration creates more opportunities to be wrong, and authority which intrudes on the lives of others. In systems design, an Authority, is often a blocking or access-control agent, and an Explorer is an agent to find pathways. If a system has an Authority agent blocking an Explorer, then the explorer has to challenge the authority or explore a way to circumvent the authority of the agent. There are many real life examples of this Authority-Explorer agent interaction from markets to immigration to the use of pharmaceuticals in sport to enhance performance.
Too often, I have seen the use of informal fallacies in arguments against explorer agents supporting authority agents from appeals to ignorance and authority, cherry picking, and straw man arguments as if an explorer’s challenge to authority represents a moral or ethical decay or chaos if the authority doesn’t keep the explorer in check. The authority agent has more to gain by allowing exploration and much to lose by not allowing exploration as each challenge to authority to which it allows exploration gives the authority agent to remove corrupting processes from its operation and validating it’s moral and ethical righteousness within a certain scope. Of course, on the other hand, exploration may create the question of why such an authority is allowed at all and cause the eradication of such authority within a system. In terms, of discourse and thought in a society this should produce many uncomfortable discussions and decisions. We must learn to be comfortable in being uncomfortable, which means we must be comfortable in the thought we may be wrong in not allowing challenges to authority or we may be wrong in challenging authority and creating necessary road blocks. It’s not about how many times we get it wrong, but how can we move forward getting it closer to being right and just.
I see this as an opportunity to show how agents of change are more beneficial to society than agents of authority. However, I also see this an opportunity to grow and learn more about how society operates as a complex, dynamic system.
