Commit
Commit.
Commit yourself in all the most important things in your life, whatever those things may be.
A common distinction between conservatism and libertarianism is a lack of commitment. A common distinction between progressivism and conservatism is a lack of commitment.
That’s not always bad.
There is nothing wrong with a lack of commitment to bad things. There is everything wrong with a life absent commitment. How easy it is to go about finding adult men-children and adult women-children living lives absent commitment.
To commit to nothing is practically the moniker of our era. To commit to nothing wholesome or edifying is a little closer to the reality.
There is a series of memes called NPC. The NPC comes from video games: Non-Player Character.
The NPC is the Borg-controlled entity in the video game that follows the command of the central brain and acts predictably. The same is used to describe the progressive left. Many are committed, though not to anything very worthwhile.
The commitment tends to be to the latest headlines, chyrons, complaints, talking points, and marching orders from approved media sources like CNN, The New York Times, Jezebel, Slate, and the like. This committed behavior is very fitting for an NPC, while the underlying philosophy is so debilitating to the adherent. Libertarians have such good ideas at their disposal, but are prone to not use them in a committed fashion. I don’t mean brainlessness. I mean committing to things that are good for you.
Hedonism, adult childism, head-in-the-sand-ism, perpetual tourism, atheism, agnosticism, apathy, and many other forms of non-committal positions exist popularly among libertarians. These are not necessarily non-commital positions, but they tend to be.
Commit To A Spouse
If you aren’t sure about the person you have in mind, it’s probably time to bail and find one that you are sure about. Life is short. Time is precious. For men, this guy is a good one to consult for that: The Tactical Guide to Women by Shawn T. Smith. For women there’s no one like Suzanne Venker on this topic. She’s the author of The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage. Men and women alike can benefit from listening to a year’s worth of her interviews . She’s countercultural in all the right ways.
Some people aren’t meant to be married. It’s a very small number. Any two healthy adults who mean to get along can get along.
Most benefit from it and curiously avoid it until an advanced age and for specious reasons, often in a pursuit of prolonging some form of childhood. Society does many a disfavor by being so permissive of childhood without end. Done right, marriage is edifying in a way that few other commitments in life can be.
Commit To A God
Bow down in prayer. Read the Bible each morning. Find a pastor or a church or a group or an interpretation that fits you. Go to church every week. Go through the motions of this edifying practice and I think you will be surprised at how quickly commitment builds faith. Faith is not reason. Faith is something else and faith is commonly the ingredient lacking in the libertarian who refuses to commit.
The Whig Theory — There might be other practices that are more fitting for you. In evaluating those practices, keep in mind Murray Rothbard’s criticism of the Whig theory of history, a theory that so dominates in our age. It deceives people into mindless trend following, an ill of this era, and many eras, but especially harmful today, for it says that which comes later chronologically must be better than that which comes sooner chronologically. Rothbard writes:
The Whig theory, subscribed to by almost all historians of science, including economics, is that scientific thought progresses patiently, one year after another developing, sifting, and testing theories, so that science marches onward and upward, each year, decade or generation learning more and possessing ever more correct scientific theories. On analogy with the Whig theory of history, coined in mid-nineteenth century England, which maintained that things are always getting (and therefore must get) better and better, the Whig historian of science, seemingly on firmer grounds than the regular Whig historian, implicitly or explicitly asserts that “later is always better” in any particular scientific discipline. The Whig historian (whether of science or of history proper) really maintains that, for any point of historical time, “whatever was, was right”, or at least better than “whatever was earlier”. The inevitable result is a complacent and infuriating Panglossian optimism. In the historiography of economic thought, the consequence is the firm i
Article from LewRockwell
