Rules: Who Needs Them?

A fair amount of what interests me these days has to do with the experience of aging. So today, I wanted to write about how my thinking about liberty and bureaucracy has changed over the years.

In getting my thoughts together, this quotation, often incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill, popped into my mind:

“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”

And then, of course, that sentimental biblical phrase (Corinthians 13:11) came to mind:

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”

Never mind.

When my partners and I began developing Rancho Santana 25 years ago, we imagined we were creating a sort of Libertarian Eden, a retreat from the encroaching big-government bureaucracy and petty tyranny of North America. Thus, when it came to creating rules for our fledgling community, our stance was: “The fewer the better.”

That policy worked for a while. We allowed lot owners to do whatever they wanted to do with their lots. They could regrade them, deforest them, drill wells in them, erect cell towers and windmills on them. Anything.

This worked until it didn’t. We discovered that many of our Libertarian-minded settlers didn’t always appreciate the amount of freedom the community afforded. A windmill can be an admirable idea. But when it’s blocking your neighbor’s view of the ocean, and sounding like a jet plane taking off, it becomes an invasion of and an assault on his liberty.

So, complaint by complaint, and despite our reservations, we were forced to establish more and more regulations and restrictions. I was reminded me of this when, at a recent meeting of the resort’s board, we found ourselves dealing with yet another complaint. In this case, it had to do with a new resident that had bought a house that had some pest problems. “You guys should have building codes that have the same standards as we have back in California,” he said.

“Oh, boy,” I thought. “This will never stop until we’ve made our haven as bureaucratic as any and all of the towns and cities we fled from in the States.”

And we are not the only example of this. A friend of ours, a bestselling author, developed his own version of our residential community in Argentina about ten years after we started Rancho Santana. When it comes to Libertarianism, he’s about as hardcore as it gets. And yet, the last time I visited his resort, their book of homeowner association bylaws looked to be even thicker than ours!

What’s the point?

The point: It’s easy to be a Libertarian or a Marxist or an anarchist when you are young and unburdened with responsibility. But as you grow older and take on the responsibilities of adulthood, those glittering ideologies become impossible to keep.

Except, of course, if you are a hypocrite — i.e., you make your living as a university professor, a politician, or a book and essay writer (like me)!

Continue Reading

Don’t Judge Them! And Don’t Call Them Pedophiles!

Have you heard about the new class of oppressed and marginalized people? Unrecognized (until now) victims of societal prejudice?

They call themselves MAPs. An acronym for “Minor-Attracted Persons.”

Yes, we used to call such people pedophiles. But that is pedophiliaphobic. And pedophiliaphobia is, like transphobia, an evil outcome of White privilege and the male hierarchy.

Think I’m kidding?

In less than a half-hour, I found more than 20 stories of people – academics and psychologists, mostly – making the argument that, as one said, “They are one of the most misunderstood and vilified groups of people in America today.”

Here’s a study on the “myths” lay people have about pedophilia.

Here’s one from the National Library of Medicine.

Here, a prison psychiatrist tries to persuade inmates to be more sympathetic to pedophiles.

And, finally, there’s this from my favorite commonsense commentators on YouTube.

 

Don’t Store Your Moolah in Venmo! 

Obed, my computer guy, sent me this link that explains that any money stored with Venmo, PayPal, and CashApp does not necessarily have FDIC protection against bank failure.

Check it out here.

Continue Reading

How Much Do You REALLY Like Good Movies?

As an industry rule, movies should be 90 minutes long. A well-respected director can get away with 80 minutes on the downside and 120 on the upside. But viewers shy away from movies that are longer than two hours, even if they are very good. And since movies are very expensive to make, producers take this very seriously.

That said, following are 10 long movies that Calum Russell, who writes for Far Out Magazine, says are worth the investment of your time.

I’ve seen only two of them: Once Upon a Time in America and The Sorrow and the Pity. And, yes, IMO, both were very good and worth the extra time you’ll have to invest to enjoy them. As for the others, I don’t know. I’m going to check them out by watching the trailers and then – based on how good the trailers are and how long the movies are – decide whether or not I want to put them on my to-watch list.

Here they are. For your convenience, I’ve arranged them in order of their run lengths, from the “shortest” (3 hours, 22 minutes) to the longest (9 hours, 26 minutes).

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

3h 22m

Director: Chantal Akerman

Year: 1975

Click here.

 

Eureka

3h 37m

Director: Shinji Aoyama

Year: 2000

Click here.

 

Once Upon a Time in America

3h 49m

Director: Sergio Leone

Year: 1984

Click here.

 

A Brighter Summer Day

3h 57m

Director: Edward Yang

Year: 1991

Click here.

 

The Sorrow and the Pity

4h 11m

Director: Marcel Ophüls

Year: 1969

Click here.

 

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition)

4h 12m

Director: Peter Jackson

Year: 2003

Click here.

 

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

4h 48m

Director: Jonas Mekas

Year: 2000

Click here.

 

Near Death

5h 58m

Director: Frederick Wiseman

Year: 1989

Click here.

 

Sátántangó

7h 19m

Director: Béla Tarr

Year: 1994

Click here.

 

Shoah 

9h 26m

Director: Claude Lanzmann

Year: 1985

Click here.

 

You can read the Far Out article with Russell’s comments here.

Continue Reading

“Why should we consider the soul mortal?”

From Diaries of Note, an interesting entry by Wanda Gág, an author and artist who, in 1928, published Millions of Cats, a bestselling children’s book. Twenty years earlier, when she was 22, she wrote this entry about an ongoing discussion she was having with Adolph Dehn, a fellow art student at the Minneapolis School of Art, on the intersection of science and religion in trying to understand the mortality or immortality of the human soul. What I found enjoyable about it was not so much the reasoning (which seemed appropriate for a serious 22-year-old thinker) but the gentleness of her feelings towards both the argument and Mr. Dehn.

Click here.

Continue Reading

Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for death” 

Emily Dickinson might be America’s greatest poet. Even better than Walt Whitman or E.A. Poe. At the very least, she is America’s best Metaphysical poet. If you’ve never heard one of her poems recited, this will be a treat. Click here.

Continue Reading

The COVID Response: What We Got Wrong

Have Your Ears Been Ringing?

For as long as the COVID vaccines have been available, the CDC has received some complaints about ear-related problems. In a recent study, researchers reviewed 500 cases of screened patients and found that 61 of them (14.5 %) had reported one or more ear or hearing-related symptoms within four weeks of vaccination. That included 21 (5.0 %) with hearing loss, 26 (6.2 %) with tinnitus, 33 (7.9 %) with dizziness, and 19 (4.5 %) with vertigo.

Continue Reading

From JT, a copywriter, re the availability of my books: 

“Hi Mark and team. I loved Great Leads and recently started poking around at your other books. Wondering how I can get a copy of Words That Work: 117 Ways to Speak More Powerfully.

“Thanks for your help.”

My Response: Most of my books are available on Amazon. (Go to “My Books” on the MarkFord.net website for a complete list.) If you’d like a copy of any of them that are not available on Amazon (including Words That Work, Making the Most of Your Time, and Wealth Building for Freelancers):

* Send a check for $10 (for each book) to cover shipping and postage.

* Make the check payable to Cap & Bells Press, LLC. (No cash, please.)

* Include your name and mailing address and mail it to:

Cap & Bells Press

Attn: GKoo

235 NE 4th Ave., Suite 101

Delray Beach, FL 33483

 

From BJ re my review in the May 30 issue of Orson Welles’s production of The Trial

“After reading your review, I watched it. I’m a fan of Welles but had never seen this movie. I agree with you. It was so good in so many ways.”

 

From AS re my comments in the June 2 issue about companies selling “shares” of museum-quality art: 

“The art deal for fractionalized ownership sounds more like ‘fictionalized” ownership.”

Continue Reading

The USA is where? 

Another amusing video clip of “Ask college students basic questions to see how dumb they are.” In this case, about basic geography.

Click here.

Continue Reading