What I Believe... - thecultofian.com

What I believe, part I (government):

Government exists to protect the weak from the wicked
The fall of empires is preceded by the decline of their educational system
Civilizations rest upon two things –the accountability of people and the maintenance of things: if you can find a way to measure them, then you can know if a civilization is on the rise or in decline
Freedom isn’t license to act, it is a compact to protect the esteem of ideals
Liberty isn’t license to act, it is the state of being free
No one is a greater patriot than I am
My America isn’t above admitting it was wrong and taking responsibility for its actions
Defense is a euphemism for fear
Citizenship is ruled by an ethos of duty

The Industrialized world practices a form of Capitalism that more closely resembles what is described in Das Kapital than what is described in The Wealth of Nations
There isn’t any point in being rich if you aren’t also wealthy.
Leisure is work in different clothes
Idleness is the opposite of work
Capitalism is utterly dependent upon scarcity
There is no scarcity without singularity – digital items are never singular
Capitalism is ruled by an ethos of choice

The Carnot Cycle and the Boyd Cycle can be used to explain almost all of the things we encounter on a daily basis
Time and space are relative
Poetry, not logic, is the best explanation for most of what we don’t understand
Poets already know what physicists are trying to discover

Sufficiency is a wedge between man and any given higher being ? nothing makes mankind more sufficient than technology, and as such, it can be viewed as the physical manifestation of sin in the universe
There cannot be social equilibrium without the heat death of society
Nothing worthwhile comes easy
Nothing worth doing marginally is worth doing at all
Good enough usually isn’t
If you aim at the wrong target, you don’t get points for hitting it
Computers are never to blame for a software failure, software writers are to blame
If you live in a world of lies, the truth becomes a secret
If you desire to know the truth, that desire must be stronger than the desire to believe lies
Knowing why you do something is as important as knowing how to do it
Control is the ethos of bullies and cowards
“I love you” is a promise, not a sales pitch