Free The Animal

For weeks now I’ve been wondering what next thing awaits this blog. It gets about 400 visitors per day, which is nothing remarkable by the standards of some blogs that get thousands and thousands. Those blogs are almost uniformly political. But practical politics is a dead end, and even if it wasn’t, those blogs that get thousands of visitors say everything there is to say about everything going on in politics. My “niche,” of course, is an unconventional take on all that.

It gets old. There are plenty of blogs that reach the correct conclusion about…you name it. But for a rare few, they all stand on faulty premises. There’s a good argument to make that such a thing is worse than being wrong altogether. At the same time, every issue that gains political prominence does so because of the important ideas it implicates. And that’s where I like to hang out—at the fringes of it.

Those visitors who’ve known me from way back know that I used to hang out on Usenet debating something called Neo Tech. Yes, it’s whacked in some of its approaches to marketing its wares, but that’s really beside the point: if you get it. Here’s the Wikipedia article that does a remarkable job in distilling down the essence of it.

Moreover, I personally owe Neo-Tech a great debt. For, had I not stumbled upon it in 1990, while living in France—of all things—I would almost certainly not now be living a life that involves business and ideas. I’d just be cruising along, seeking guidance by looking at what everyone else is doing. At the same time, I’ve not read anything from Neo-Tech for years and years. I maybe hit their website three or four times per year, to see what might be going on (usually nothing new). But for those who get it, that’s the intention. Once you get it, you go on about your life. You leave home and set out. It was never, ever designed to be a day-by-day guide to living—which nothing like that can properly be. The individual mind holds the only proper place in that endeavor.

There’s a body of work called the 114 Neo-Tech Advantages that lays out everything that’s important about their take on living a happiness-filled life. I’ve been wanting to revisit those for awhile, now (after nearly 15 years), and so I’ve decided to post them one-by-one, here, at a rate of perhaps two to three per week and deal with the comments that ensue. I’m not going to debate about the publishing company, its authors, its methods, or anything like that. I’ll be happy to debate the content of each Advantage, as it’s posted.

Let’s go. I’m hoping it will be invigorating. Advantage #1 up tomorrow.

Update: Advantage #1: The Nature of Man & Woman

You might also like

1. PaleoHacks
2. Quick Hit
3. Opening Eyes on Twitter
4. “Darwin, Evolution and the Paleo Life”
5. A Bit of a Roundup in Fitness

Please spread the word