Essays on freedom and personal fulfilment by Chris Barclay
The jungle is so loud at night. Through a series of increasingly poor decisions, I found myself stranded on a ledge in the darkness, high up in the wilds of Mt. Intanon, the highest mountain in Thailand. Alone and ill-prepared, I had lost my way back to the trailhead and run out of daylight. It […]
Continue Reading中文 As social animals, people generally don’t respond well to confinement. That’s why it’s our primary form of punishment. It’s really the best disincentive to bad behavior we’ve come up with as a species. Lashings, public humiliation, attending traffic school, nothing makes people think twice more than the threat of being locked up. Which is […]
Continue ReadingIt would be a lie if I told you that I am not scared. For me, the most frightening part of being smashed against the wall of mortality is the feeling that my life has been a failure. That I haven’t had enough time to realize all of my dreams and to make the kinds […]
Continue ReadingIf attention is the currency of the internet, then anxiety is the currency of modern society. We are part of a massive, finely tuned anxiety machine that offers us the promise of freedom while churning out a dizzying array of choices that overloads our decision-making bandwidth, and distracts us from what really matters. More choice […]
Continue ReadingThe next time you find yourself ranting at salespeople, your mother, tech support, or other drivers, stop to remember rule #6. When I witness someone having a meltdown, it’s invariably because they have thrown rule #6 out the window. I’m guilty of such episodes, but at least I know the rule, despite a temporary lapse, […]
Continue ReadingThere’s a lot of apocalyptic chatter in the media these days, more so than usual. And you know it will only get worse as unscrupulous people seek to cash in on 2012 hysteria. This, in addition to the usual threats (anthrax, Jihadists, armies of the undead, and the ever-present menace of a robot uprising), has […]
Continue Reading“We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one’s aim is a dog’s death. But there is no shame in this. This is […]
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