I started my reading project with the intent of re-sharpening some mental tools and perhaps acquiring a few new ones in my attempt to make sense of the insanity playing out on the national stage, which insanity seems to me something like a shadow-play cast by the rest of society at large. The temptation is to superficiality, but I think this does a deep disservice to larger questions. The trick is to forswear the immediate flash and noise - the glamour - and look a little deeper, a little closer.
Eight-plus months in, I can slowly begin feeling ideas - which is to say these questions - growing more concrete. This is to say nothing about answers, of course. I intended to start with a framework, and however dim it still seems in my mind, a structure is nevertheless forming. All men by nature desire to know, after all. I don’t pretend that this project will provide any answers. It will certainly not spell an end to the questions. First principles seemed like a good place to start.