Conversation of Our Generation

I've talked to a couple of architects and discussed the charm of local neighborhoods. In my conversation with Bill Martin, we discussed restoring old homes. And, we talked about his philosophy on how to do that in a way that serves his client and is in keeping with the neighborhood. Furthermore, he does this with sustainability as a primary focus as well. If you're interested in learning more, listen below to understand his philosophy. You can also find more about Bill's work here.

https://conversationofourgeneration.com/2021/03/01/restoring-old-homes-with-beauty-and-purpose/(opens in a new tab)

After a while, homes need to be touched up. Even if they're in good shape, people may want to change them to fit a new style of living. So, restoring old homes is important if we don't want to tear down and rebuild. It is also a more efficient and sustainable way of updating a home than tearing down and rebuilding. The practicality of restoration, I think, is clear. But, there is something to maintaining the character and history of a home and not getting rid of it.

Bill does this with beauty. He focuses on creating an aesthetically impressive home that is in keeping with the neighborhood. Instead of trying to fuel his ego, he seeks to build something for the client and the community. Building with purpose is another part of this, ensuring that his building serves the client and the community. His approach that recognizes the need to balance these different uses and economic factors is unique. More architects should learn about his philosophy, which he calls E-FABism.

There comes a time when you have to fight, even if it seems hopeless. I think we're at that point in our culture. And no, I'm not calling for actual violence. I'm calling for us to simply rise up and speak the truth, even when it's hard. You may not want to be the one to take part in the battle. But when it's time to fight, you don't always have a choice. I think this book demonstrates how we ought to act when we're up against the wall and see no way out.

"Arise now, arise, Riders of Theoden!

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How to Know it's Time to Fight

It can be hard to know when you should stand your ground and fight. Sometimes it's clear, and sometimes it's murky. However, I think right now we can clearly see that our culture is under attack from many directions. Some of the most basic truths are being called into question. We don't trust our institutions, and deservedly so. Furthermore, the education of our children is being undermined and used to indoctrinate them. So, if you ask me, it's time to push back. It's time to fight.

But, how do we go about that? Has the left not completely taken over the culture? While they may have taken over most of the culture, I don't think fighting back is a lost cause. It may be a long shot, but they were able to systematically and radically subvert the culture over the past century. I think we can play their game of inches as well and flip the culture.

This is a sneak peak of my course on the Golden Mean. In this installment, I go through the first book of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Together, we'll walk through each chapter of Aristotle's Ethics, Lewis's Abolition of Man, Confucius' Analects and Doctrine of the Mean, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, and then discuss what they have in common. So, if you're ready to take your education into your own hands, let me know through the form below.

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Here's the outline I used so you can review it. And you can find a pdf version of the Nicomachean Ethics here. Or, you can buy a copy of your own here. If you want to get access to m

What can we do now, in our own lives, to improve our education? Despite the bleak diagnosis, I see two easy changes each of us can make in our mindset and our actions to improve our education.

School has become necessary only inasmuch as it is a credential for a career. But, that is changing rapidly with new ways to get job training like coding bootcamps or other digital tool certification. If you need to go to college, do that. However, if it can be avoided, you should avoid it.

Furthermore, you should still get the liberal education that puts you in touch with our history. We shouldn’t shrug our responsibility to pass down the wisdom, art, and beauty of our culture. It just can’t be found on the college campus. Each of us has to go and read the classics, learn about our history, and find alternatives to the college campus.

This episode is a bit of a departure from my normal conversations about politics, philosophy, etc. Nicole from the Infinity Twins podcast joined me to discuss productivity and how to prevent burnout. While I don't want to be in the self-help space, I do think this is a real problem today. So, I wanted to offer some thoughts from Nicole and myself to help people be more productive while also staying sane.

Burnout is what happens when you work too hard for too long. And in our culture, we are highly prone to overexerting ourselves without realizing it. The "Protestant work ethic" that Americans are praised for can be a tough burden to bear. Furthermore, what we consider rest is often not actually restful, which leads to burnout. The exhaustion that comes with burnout is our body signaling to us that it needs rest.

The way to do this is to find a balance in your life. You should work, and work hard. That's good. However, we shouldn't be working ourselves into an early grave or ignoring the most important things in life. God and family should be first in our lives, with healthy recreation following closely behind our work. Even soldiers get an R&R period now and then. The Golden Mean applies to all aspects of our lives, especially knowing how to prioritize different goods.

One of the major problems we find today is that our rest is not actually restful. Instead of calming down and spending some time in peace and quiet, we're constantly seeking stimulus. We may think we're "veging out" as we watch our favorite cop show, but that may not be the case. In fact, since so much of our work is mental, rather than physical, a little exercise might be better for rest than a couple hours of TV. But, some time with a loved one, a good book, or in prayer is always a good source of true rest.

The Golden Mean is an idea found in Aristotle's Ethics, The Tao Te Ching, and the Analects, and describes the right way of being. I've talked about the mean, or the way, previously on podcasts and articles. I wanted to revisit it here because I plan on diving deeper into what it is and why it matters. One of the courses coming soon will cover the thinkers from Aristotle and Lao Tsu to C.S. Lewis.

The Golden Mean is simply a manner of behaving where your life is balanced and virtuous. You find this balance by acting in a virtuous manner given certain situations. Aristotle defines these balances in great detail in Ethics. And, Lao Tzu and Confucius define the ideas of balance, especially in Confucius’ Doctrine of the Mean.

In order to follow the mean you must know your situation and act in accord with virtue, given the circumstances. Aristotle called this Practical Wisdom. Practical Wisdom is the ability, to look at a given situation and apply the knowledge you have properly. Sometimes it’s right to stay and fight, others negotiate, and sometimes running and hiding is the best you can do. Most actions are not in and of themselves good or bad, but can be assessed as good or bad given a certain situation.

In order to attain Practical Wisdom, you will need two pieces: knowledge and prudence. As for knowledge, you should be well-versed in many fields, especially the virtues. That way, you can assess a wide range of situations with as many of the facts as possible.

Bioethics, for example, is a tough field to master if you don’t have the scientific and philosophical background to understand the problem. Because our endeavors in life are not so narrowly focused, we must expand our search for knowledge to incorporate all aspects of our lives.

Prudence is the ability to assess the specific situation you’re in and pull from the proper knowledge sources to address that particular circumstance. It is right judgement.

Today, I want to talk about the first book of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. I think we're in a place where each of us has had something similar to Frodo thrust upon us. In the book, Gandalf basically says that we don't ask for these hard times, but when they come, we have to deal with it. This comes up as Frodo is lamenting about how he has to bear this burden and fight to save the world. Even though he did nothing to deserve his fate, he has to take responsibility and go on this journey.

Grab your copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy>>

And I think that as a culture, as a society, we have a lot of burdens that we have to face. This book offers a valuable lesson in what it takes to push back against evil. We're at a time where there is a similar feeling as what you have in the beginning of the Lord of the Rings. There is something hanging over our heads, looming, and I think there is an eerie feeling about where we're heading. What's sad about this is it isn't "our fault." Rather, it's something that's been thrust upon us and we have to respond. So how do we do that? Like Dr. Jordan Peterson talks about, we have to take responsibility - even if we aren't the cause of the suffering.

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So, Frodo decides to go on the adventure and to take responsibility for something that was thrust upon him. And, I think that's what we need today. We need men ready to take up responsibility, even if it is for something we didn't mess up. Instead of the childish, "He started it," argument, we should be a society of doers. And I really like this book because it just is relatable to a child can who is coming of age, but I think a young man can as well. It is a call to take on what is thrust upon you and bear that burden. If you want to be inspired to do that, check out this book if you haven't already. Below is a transcript for you to check out and see how Frodo takes responsibility.

Find out more: https://conversationofourgeneration.com/2021/02/12/take-responsibility-and-bear-your-burden--the-fellowship-of-the-ring-book-review/

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Stephen and Brian from The Vital Masculinty Podcast to discuss how we can build a more virtuous society. On their podcast, they focus on helping men become more virtuous, and I think that our society would benefit from more virtuous men. If we want to change the culture, I think we each have to play our part and grow in virtue. A society is simply the people in it. In order to change a society, we must each choose to choose virtue.

You can't build something if you don't know what you want to build, but sometimes things are fuzzy. The picture may not be clear, but we have to take action anyways. With that said, I think we can agree that a society filled with Justice, Prudence, Courage, and Temperance is good. These cardinal virtues are the center of a virtuous life, and therefore, a virtuous society. A virtuous society will have strong families, tight-knit communities, respect for differences, and healthy politics. So, how do we go about creating that?

A society is just a human beings in relationship with one another. The family is the building block of society because its the first relationship one has to other people. But, we can only control our own actions - so if we want to change the society we live in, we have to change our behaviors first. That's why I like the Vital Masculinity Podcast's emphasis on each man attaining virtue. So, if you want to see how you can do that, listen to this episode and check out their work as well.

Finding Community as A Man

One thing I struggle with is finding like-minded men to fight alongside me. We want a band of brothers, but often don't know how to find that. Plus, it doesn't help that men aren't the best at building bonds and putting themselves out there. If both parties aren't reaching out, then no new bonds will form. So, the guys and I discussed this issue in light of their recent series on friendship and my observation of the breakdown of communities.

Today we will be talking about what government has done with our money. Or better yet, the book: What Has Government Done To Our Money by Murray Rothbard. And, the reason I want to talk about this today is because I think it gives us a good basis and a good understanding of how to understand money at the basic level and how that interact our government. We have a lot of problems with money, and I think this book can help us fix them. 

I'm reading another book right now on Abraham Lincoln and why he may not have been such a great president, actually. The author brings up some good points about problems with nationalized banking and some of the other policies that the Whig Party, and then the Republican Party, took on that were very problematic and terrible ideas. We have this sense of money that is wildly incorrect, and that's what I want to talk about today. You should read this book to straighten out your understanding of the concept of money. Plus, it'll help elucidate the problems with money we face as a country.

I think that's really what the crux of this whole issue is - that it's so confusing, so tangled. We don't know how to classify this asset, and yet we use it daily. We understand how to interact with it in so many ways at a personal level. But we don't necessarily, when it gets into the macro monetary policy, understand things like what the Federal Reserve doing. How does that all work? That's where it gets very confusing, very muddled, and it becomes very easy for people who are in power to utilize that confusion in their favor. And, I think they do that a lot. Grab your copy here to learn about what the government did to our money>>

I've talked about this problem in the past in another episode that through inflation and other monetary policies that we have, an oligarchy or an elite group of people get first access to the money, and therefore, have the most power in our economy.

And so, that's why I think it's such an important read: money is a huge means of control. If there are people who are able to get first access and priority access to the money supply, they can influence economies. Especially because we see a democratization happening right now with the GameStonk thing and everything going on in politics.

They're pushing back against this institutional money that has the advantage in the market because they're close to power. And they are the ones who are nestled up and get the first, access to loans and cash flow.

I've wanted to do a deep dive into the history of architectural landmarks, and recently got the chance. Frank Cunha, who I've been talking to via Twitter, offered to talk about some of the buildings that changed how we look at architecture. So, I took him up on his offer. This lesson on traditional architecture will take a look at the Pantheon and St. Peter's to see how Christendom adopted Roman architecture. You can also find out more about Frank at his website or follow him on Twitter.

"Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness."

Truth, beauty, and goodness go together, and they cannot be separated. In order to have a good society, we must value truth and create beauty. Recently, I have talked a lot about restoring beauty in the arts and our architecture, but I don't have the expertise to give you the background.

The Pantheon is a Roman temple that has had several iterations. Over time, it has been converted to a Catholic church, rebuilt, and renovated. Throughout its storied history, there are instances of tremendous innovation. While the elegance of its design is truly sublime, the history of the Pantheon is incredible as well.

St. Peter's Basilica, likewise, has an incredible history. The history of St. Peter's Basilica as it stands today goes back centuries, and is filled with tough architectural decisions, politics, and strife between artists and the pope. But, what I want to focus on in this conversation is why it was built the way it was and what the architects had to do to give us this tremendous piece of traditional architecture.