It's important for these kinds of balanced messages to get out into the world. Well said.
But to be honest, this is so basic, so obvious, that it shows how far we've flown towards a radicalized racial mindset, and away from the essence of the individual. And that we have been utterly radicalized by the social justice warriors.
What needs to be said is exactly how, and by whom, these "racial" categories have been erected and made primary and draped upon everyone.
My next door neighbor is a biracial family with two small children, and they are the sweetest kids you can imagine. And what I often think about is the nonsense we will force them to deal with.
Quite. When people are prepared to hang the yellow or pink triangles on themselves, it's hard to protest when they're used as a substitute for actual personality or comprehension. That someone has to discover their identity beyond the colored triangle a certain (dysfunctional) segment of society has hung on them says something truly sad about where we are now and how much we've lost to get to this point.
I was STUNNED to realize this is written by a high school sophomore! I read this essay last week when it arrived in my email, and I looked for the byline but didn’t see it. Today it came out i the digest email and I hustled over here to offer my congrats! You’ve got a bright future ahead 🤍
What makes humans unique as a species is that we have evolved culturally away from tribalism towards individualism.
It is because humans expand knowledge and transmit it over generations that individual humans can do more than merely hunt or gather.
Instead, each individual can create (if they choose) their essential and unique identity by the choices we make and the actions we take.
The uniqueness or each human individual is true diversity. Unlike gnus, we are not defined but our birth characteristics.
Over the last 400 years, these facts have led to recognition of individual rights, especially property rights, and an explosion of prosperity in those cultures that embraced them.
Sadly, many cultures and many individuals remain primarily tribal in outlook. They say we are "social animals" which is true, but healthy social arrangements always derive from the individual choice of the members.
Wokism is a naïve form of bigotry that believes that humans are defined in rigid groups by their easily visible birth characteristics.
But you can't look at someone and see his true identity as a brain surgeon, options trader or con man. Nor can you readily understand what they do to justify (earn) their wealth or influence ("power"). This is one aspect of the "invisible hand" of markets and individual freedom of choice.
But a wokist sees all differences in "power" as deriving from easily visible birth characteristics.
Hello Maitreya, I read your article; it's an interesting look at the internal friction labels cause. You’re searching for something greater, but why look for a smaller box when you already belong to the largest one—humanity?
My feeling is that the problem is this: **[Quantifying the individual into data creates a cage; the solution is reclaiming inherent worth by refusing to be categorized.]**
Freedom means rejecting bureaucratic labels and social engineering. Why do they want to control you and define your worth? Because a categorized human is a manageable unit. To the "Managerial Man," you are not a person; you are a data point to be moved or redistributed for a "fictional greater good." This is an "anti-life" force that replaces the miracle of voluntary connection with the cold machinery of a mandate.
The core horror of state engineering is that it **destroys the moral character** of both the giver and the receiver. You cannot legislate love, and you cannot mandate mercy. When the state takes by force what should be given by grace, it turns a "gift" into a "seizure." True community is a matter of the heart, not social planning. By forcing "equity" through compulsion, the system removes the choice to be good. A "socially engineered" society becomes a moral desert because no one is acting out of virtue—only out of fear of a mandate.
This system is equally toxic for the receiver. State engineering traps the recipient in a **"deficit of the spirit,"** replacing the dignity of being a brother with the entitlement of being a client. Instead of a "miracle" of mutual humanity, they are given a state-mandated share that breeds a sense of victimhood rather than agency. It trains the recipient in resentment, teaching them to look for someone to blame based on a group label rather than recognizing their own capacity to give. It creates a cycle where the person is never "helped" to stand as a free individual, but is instead maintained as a cog in the machine—dependent, labeled, and spiritually stunted.
Your mind and property are yours. Your worth isn't a calculation; it’s simply because you’re human. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) urges systems to recognize individuals with equal rights, not labels. It is the most important document against totalitarianism, yet modern education systems often ignore it because it stops social engineering. Bureaucrats resist the UDHR because it asserts that rights are inherent to the individual, not gifts from the state.
This systemic thinking operates on the "law of the jungle"—a tribalism that breeds resentment and surveillance. When people have their property and thoughts controlled by the state, the result is inevitably a police state. As Gordon noted, if your education leads you to seek power over others' rights, you have missed the essence of life.
True freedom is the refusal to let the mandates of the state dictate the quality of your own spirit. We discovered in the most brutal camps that when everything else is stripped away—rank, clothes, and health—the individual spirit is what remains. No power on earth has a right to that space. Forced redistribution only creates a new class of victims and a new class of oppressors, fueled by an "immaturity" that refuses to see the neighbor as an individual.
We are seeing the psychological effect of people viewing themselves as data points that need a "perfect label" to be valid. But looking for more words is just redecorating the bars of a cell. We are already free once we realize we don't need to play the game they created.
Be a happy, beautiful human. You managed to walk out of the checkbox to be an individual with all of the rights and dignity inherent. That is the only thing they never want you to remember, because a person who knows their worth is inherent cannot be controlled. The only revolution that lasts is the one that takes place in the individual spirit; everything else is just a change of guards.
Oh my goodness. What a beautiful, life-affirming thing to read this morning.
In the end, we are all just here to live, as well and as expansively and kindly as we can.
Thank you.
It's important for these kinds of balanced messages to get out into the world. Well said.
But to be honest, this is so basic, so obvious, that it shows how far we've flown towards a radicalized racial mindset, and away from the essence of the individual. And that we have been utterly radicalized by the social justice warriors.
What needs to be said is exactly how, and by whom, these "racial" categories have been erected and made primary and draped upon everyone.
My next door neighbor is a biracial family with two small children, and they are the sweetest kids you can imagine. And what I often think about is the nonsense we will force them to deal with.
Quite. When people are prepared to hang the yellow or pink triangles on themselves, it's hard to protest when they're used as a substitute for actual personality or comprehension. That someone has to discover their identity beyond the colored triangle a certain (dysfunctional) segment of society has hung on them says something truly sad about where we are now and how much we've lost to get to this point.
The era of colors triangles
Well said. Treat people as people, not boxes.
I was STUNNED to realize this is written by a high school sophomore! I read this essay last week when it arrived in my email, and I looked for the byline but didn’t see it. Today it came out i the digest email and I hustled over here to offer my congrats! You’ve got a bright future ahead 🤍
What makes humans unique as a species is that we have evolved culturally away from tribalism towards individualism.
It is because humans expand knowledge and transmit it over generations that individual humans can do more than merely hunt or gather.
Instead, each individual can create (if they choose) their essential and unique identity by the choices we make and the actions we take.
The uniqueness or each human individual is true diversity. Unlike gnus, we are not defined but our birth characteristics.
Over the last 400 years, these facts have led to recognition of individual rights, especially property rights, and an explosion of prosperity in those cultures that embraced them.
Sadly, many cultures and many individuals remain primarily tribal in outlook. They say we are "social animals" which is true, but healthy social arrangements always derive from the individual choice of the members.
Wokism is a naïve form of bigotry that believes that humans are defined in rigid groups by their easily visible birth characteristics.
But you can't look at someone and see his true identity as a brain surgeon, options trader or con man. Nor can you readily understand what they do to justify (earn) their wealth or influence ("power"). This is one aspect of the "invisible hand" of markets and individual freedom of choice.
But a wokist sees all differences in "power" as deriving from easily visible birth characteristics.
Hello Maitreya, I read your article; it's an interesting look at the internal friction labels cause. You’re searching for something greater, but why look for a smaller box when you already belong to the largest one—humanity?
My feeling is that the problem is this: **[Quantifying the individual into data creates a cage; the solution is reclaiming inherent worth by refusing to be categorized.]**
Freedom means rejecting bureaucratic labels and social engineering. Why do they want to control you and define your worth? Because a categorized human is a manageable unit. To the "Managerial Man," you are not a person; you are a data point to be moved or redistributed for a "fictional greater good." This is an "anti-life" force that replaces the miracle of voluntary connection with the cold machinery of a mandate.
The core horror of state engineering is that it **destroys the moral character** of both the giver and the receiver. You cannot legislate love, and you cannot mandate mercy. When the state takes by force what should be given by grace, it turns a "gift" into a "seizure." True community is a matter of the heart, not social planning. By forcing "equity" through compulsion, the system removes the choice to be good. A "socially engineered" society becomes a moral desert because no one is acting out of virtue—only out of fear of a mandate.
This system is equally toxic for the receiver. State engineering traps the recipient in a **"deficit of the spirit,"** replacing the dignity of being a brother with the entitlement of being a client. Instead of a "miracle" of mutual humanity, they are given a state-mandated share that breeds a sense of victimhood rather than agency. It trains the recipient in resentment, teaching them to look for someone to blame based on a group label rather than recognizing their own capacity to give. It creates a cycle where the person is never "helped" to stand as a free individual, but is instead maintained as a cog in the machine—dependent, labeled, and spiritually stunted.
Your mind and property are yours. Your worth isn't a calculation; it’s simply because you’re human. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) urges systems to recognize individuals with equal rights, not labels. It is the most important document against totalitarianism, yet modern education systems often ignore it because it stops social engineering. Bureaucrats resist the UDHR because it asserts that rights are inherent to the individual, not gifts from the state.
This systemic thinking operates on the "law of the jungle"—a tribalism that breeds resentment and surveillance. When people have their property and thoughts controlled by the state, the result is inevitably a police state. As Gordon noted, if your education leads you to seek power over others' rights, you have missed the essence of life.
True freedom is the refusal to let the mandates of the state dictate the quality of your own spirit. We discovered in the most brutal camps that when everything else is stripped away—rank, clothes, and health—the individual spirit is what remains. No power on earth has a right to that space. Forced redistribution only creates a new class of victims and a new class of oppressors, fueled by an "immaturity" that refuses to see the neighbor as an individual.
We are seeing the psychological effect of people viewing themselves as data points that need a "perfect label" to be valid. But looking for more words is just redecorating the bars of a cell. We are already free once we realize we don't need to play the game they created.
Be a happy, beautiful human. You managed to walk out of the checkbox to be an individual with all of the rights and dignity inherent. That is the only thing they never want you to remember, because a person who knows their worth is inherent cannot be controlled. The only revolution that lasts is the one that takes place in the individual spirit; everything else is just a change of guards.
Identities are stupid. Just another way for humans to play their stupid status games with each other.