Social Dysfunction — Worrying about free-riders is a legitimate concern, but addressing the matter by making the cure worse than the disease is absurd.
Charles D. Hayes
Charles D. Hayes is a self-taught philosopher and one of America’s strongest advocates for lifelong learning. He spent his youth in Texas and served as a U.S. Marine and as a police officer before embarking on a career in the oil industry. Alaska has been his home for more than forty years.
Promoting the idea that education should be thought of not as something you get but as something you take, Hayes encourages readers to pursue learning throughout their lives, to stay receptive to new ideas, and to consider their legacy to future generations in the actions they take and the wisdom they convey. In 2006, he established September University, a site devoted to ongoing dialogue among September University participants in search of the better argument.
Hayes’ work has been featured in The L.A. Progressive, USA Today, and the UTNE Reader, on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and on Alaska Public Radio’s Talk of Alaska. His web site, Autodictat provides resources for self-directed learners—from advice about credentials to philosophy about the value that lifelong learning brings to everyday living.
All books and shorter works by Charles D. Hayes are available
here.
The Angst of Aging in the Age of Trump
Perceiving that the current president is so unfit, so ignorant of the demands of his job as president, and so mentally unbalanced, we feel as if we may yet live to see the end of life in America as we have always known it.
GOP May Help Us to Demand Single-Payer Healthcare
Charles D. Hayes: If the GOP were to replace the ACA with something better, that would be great, but we know it’s not going to happen.
Mainstream Media Malpractice
Charles Hayes: The astronomical free coverage given to raging acts of bigotry, racism, ethnocentrism, and nonsensical ranting wasn’t about democracy, it was about increasing commercial revenue.
Pledge of Allegiance or Pledge of Obedience?
Charles Hayes: For fifty years after its debut, the Pledge of Allegiance was accompanied by the “Bellamy Salute” – right hand extended with palm upward. This was later changed to disassociate it with the symbolism of the Third Reich.
Slouching Toward a Political Fukushima
Charles Hayes: The paranoid antigovernment crowd is hyper-alert for evidence that government forces are out to get them, and their pattern-matching gray matter is up to the challenge of perceiving connections where any hint of cause and effect can be imagined.
Sarah Palin vs Donald Trump
Charles Hayes: A look at Donald Trump and Sarah Palin offers a clear demonstration of the double standard and implicit gender bias at work in American politics.
Why ‘Anyone But HER’ Seems So Obvious to So Many
Charles Hayes: The often-heard declaration that anyone would be better as president than Hillary Clinton is so steeped in the ethos of misogyny that to deny this reality is blatantly hypocritical. It’s equivalent to saying anyone would better than a neurosurgeon to operate on your brain.
Life as a Dance with Reality
Charles Hayes: Inevitably there are many things we have to take on faith because there are times when even science has to create cranes that rest on skyhook assumptions.
How Free Are We Really?
Charles Hayes: We still aspire to an ethos of self-reliance and rugged individualism espoused by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson at a time when we were poorer in purse but much more independent.
Threatened Worldviews and Extremism
Charles Hayes: People today are experiencing future shock from the unsettling notion that reality bears little relation to the narrative that most of us internalized growing up. Threatened Worldviews
Life’s Purpose: Ripples
Charles Hayes: If we dig deep in psychology, what the evidence suggests is that, on many levels and in many different ways, we human beings are engaged consciously and subconsciously in trying to do things that are meaningful. Life Purpose
Gun Safety: Common Sense, Not Politics
Gun Safety regulations have been made nearly impossible for reasons that have nothing to do with the reality of public safety, but everything to do with partisan politics
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