💡 My Philosophy

I follow a diverse mix of philosophies, but first and foremost I believe in the power of choice. Not any choice, but right, true, good choices.
A good choice can make a bad day alright, a truly bad choice can ruin even the best days. Even with a limited chance, there is always a choice. Every moment we are choosing, from whom to marry to what to eat to how to breathe to when we sleep.
Every choice adds a little more or less to our character, and makes our habits a little stronger and more ingrained. The better and more frequently choose well, the more likely we're to choose well again, and inversely for when we choose unsoundly.

When we grow old, it's our best choices that we remember, and our worst choices that we regret.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

I also strongly believe in the power of intrinsic values - the value of life, the value of generative and creative works such as art, music, religion, farming, or just simple life lived with good friends and family. We must not fall victim to simple extractivism in life, we must generate and create, for without generativity life is extremely hard to live without. believe in the power of tradition and of the future, In the words of Bob Sullivan of Copper Horse Farms:

I follow the old, old way, like the bible: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.". But I also like to make little experiments, and see where we can try a little new thing here or there.

In his words, he is essentially looking for what I call Diachronic Integration. If diachronic means 'across time', then it is the integration of things across time, from past all the way to future into the present.
Another Amish Butcher I met once also embodied something similar, by taking old traditions of the Amish of valuing face-to-face and then integrating with modern internet by sending his digital correspondence by
the method of utilizing a printer which then transmits a scanned piece of paper he had hand-wrote by FAX to an email server operated by a third-party which then sends scanned PDF out to an email server which then finally reaches the internet.

By combining technology in this way, it's another kind of integration - Synchronic Integration, by integrating what's right there: the printer, the internet, the server, and the paper into a single whole.

Lastly, I belive in the potential of technology to an immense force for good in the world, but it must be tempered and based in intrinsic values and must not become an end in itself, because technology (from Greek techne "craftsmansip, teqnique, art") is a tool. When you inflate a tool into an end in itself, it displaces what are truly ends in themselves.