Good morning!
A quick dispatch before the next mad dash to the north:
What do you think an American revival looks like?
The drive back from Richmond is ideal for thinking, so I lapsed into that mental workshop that mirrors the woodshop.
Sometimes there’s precision and things of beauty created, and other times all that can be heard is a few wasps repeatedly crashing into the florescent lights.
It was mostly that. The challenge is this:
It’s rather easy to describe the problems, and only slightly harder to direct other people to solutions. “We need a law that _____.”
Well, no.
At least that’s not my place. Jon Haidt and his brilliant After Babel substack have the societal advice space locked in, anyway. (And his push for phone-free schools is gaining traction. Right on.)
My strategy is to figure out what I can do, do it, and scale that.
Along past Buckingham Court House, in the piney woods east of Appomattox, an idea floated in the window as I rolled along.
The Citizen’s Gym
The problem: Hard Times create strong men, which create Good Times, which create weak men, who create Hard Times.
I’m weak, times are hard, how do I get strong? God and the gym. (God = God for me, but might be highest ideal for someone else. Definitively the same, although results vary.)
What’s one level back from that?
Maybe this?
Outward Works: building a business, product, relationship, etc.
Learning: studying the great works that western civilization is founded on.
Growing: applying lessons from the studying, and feedback from the building, to grow myself. Also where health and spirituality enter the equation.
From what I gathered from the road, this seems like one possible way to sort what my tasks to be a better person, and better American. With constant work and attention to all three, it seems like a way towards being stronger, and like it would benefit the people immediately around me the most.
What are your thoughts? Please, try to break this before I build it up wrong. Drop a note or a call!
I know I owe many emails. Off to grab some breakfast, test some new podcasting microphones, and head up to Charlottesville. I’ll holler soon!
–Josh