Arguing in good faith means knowing you might be wrong, but our economic system strongly discourages this openness to doubt. I never set out to be wrong, but I've learned to enjoy the surprise and delight that comes from realizing I should change my mind. Most people can
Originalists are royalists, and are trying to overturn American ideals of equality. Two hundred and forty-eight years ago, representatives from the thirteen American colonies of the British empire declared their independence from the throne. The Declaration of Independence is one of the founding documents of the United States of America,
When life moves faster than you can process, learn to anticipate or you'll get knotted up. Like many people with an excess of anxiety and isolation (but without children) in 2020, I took up a hobby. Crochet, in my case. I'd learned it as a child
Slavery is illegal in the United States, but the vast majority of us still are not free. The federal holiday Juneteenth celebrates the day (June 19, 1865) when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas were informed that they were free. Technically they had been free since the issuance of the Emancipation
Nostalgia is a longing for a feeling you had in the past, not the trappings that prompted the memory. My obligatory rock star crush in my twenties was Mark McGrath, the lead singer of Sugar Ray. Not only was he unabashedly a smarty-pants (he destroyed the competition on Rock and
When we open ourselves to compassion, we help ourselves, we help each other, and we help the world. In her book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, the religious scholar Karen Armstrong makes the case for a world based on compassion, and offers a roadmap for us. In Christianity, compassion
There is no good time for panic when you're a public servant. Before a crisis hits, when life feels like it's business as usual, there's no point. Once a crisis hits, when life feels like it's spinning out of control, there'
If you allow opaque algorithms to shape your view rather than supporting open source projects (like Ghost), you are virtually guaranteed future discombobulation. Personally, I hate that feeling. To feel discombobulated is to feel unmoored, to question, to doubt, to distrust memory. It's like reality is warping. It
At the beginning of the 2024, I set an intention to share more of my thoughts with the world. Unfortunately, I decided to compromise my commitment to open source (where possible), to go where everyone else seemed to be. That was right before some of the flaws of the for-profit
This is Practical Idealism Economics, a brand new site by Irena Asmundson that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is
