Journal 2024-04-28 Sunday morning.

Work at the job with the semiconductor equipment company continues to go well after 10+ months, the gig being not without its share of challenges and drama. I'm not super happy with the drama, but I do like that the job is challenging and demanding in a lot of positive ways; it is making me work hard and "level up" my technical and professional skills, which is what I want.

My work buddies in the IT shop are R. (who started with the company about the same time I did, last June) and S. (who joined us earlier this year). They are a couple of great guys to work with and I think we mesh well. Of the two, R. is closer to me in age, but S. and I are probably more alike in terms of personality; he is serious and intense in ways that remind me uncomfortably of myself. And R. is just this big, friendly, easygoing guy, so he's a great balance for us.

I've been going to shul regularly this month. For a long time I was trying to adhere to the no-driving-on-Shabbat thing, but the shul is a two-hour walk each way. Now I'm in pretty good health for a man 60+ years old, but two hours is just a long schlep - and that's four hours out of my day just getting there and back. I can do it if the weather's nice, but mostly I just end up thinking about how much my feet are hurting by the time I get there, and dreading the walk back home, and I don't have much energy left over for socializing. And spending Saturdays alone at home starts to feel really oppressive.

So this month I decided to bite the bullet and just start driving to shul like a normal person. And I've been making friends there, and have been getting called up for the Torah readings (and so getting over my stage fright around the latter). I made it to every Saturday morning service in April (although I missed the holiday service for the start of Passover last Tuesday). I plan to continue making this a regular thing. Especially in these times, I think it's important to have community.

Thomas Sowell on the two visions.

In short, ideological fault lines divide those who have different conceptions of the meaning of knowledge, and who consequently see knowledge as concentrated or dispersed. ...

Systemic processes are trial-and-error processes, with repeated or continuous - and consequential - feedback from those involved in these processes. ...

At the heart of the social vision prevalent among contemporary intellectuals is the belief that there are "problems" created by existing institutions and that "solutions" to these problems can be excogitated by intellectuals. This vision is both a vision of society and a vision of the role of intellectuals within society. In short, intellectuals have seen themselves not simply as an elite - in the passive sense in which large landowners, rentiers, or holders of various sinecures might qualify as elites - but as an *anointed* elite, people with a mission to lead others in one way or another toward better lives.

... [The] constrained vision is thus a tragic vision - not in the sense of believing that life must always be sad and gloomy, for much happiness and fulfillment are possible within a constrained world, but tragic in inherent limitations that cannot be overcome merely by changing institutions or by compassion, commitment, or other virtues which those with the vision of the anointed advocate or attribute to themselves.

The conflict between these two visions goes back for centuries. Those with the tragic vision and those with the vision of the anointed do not simply happen to differ on a range of policy issues. They *necessarily* differ ...

To those with the tragic vision, however, it is prosperity, peace, and such justice as we have achieved, which require not only explanation but constant efforts, trade-offs, and sacrifices, just to maintain them at their existing levels, much less promote their advancement over time. ...

The two visions differ fundamentally, not only in how they see the world, but also in how those who believe in these visions see themselves. If you happen to believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values and other features of the tragic vision, then you are just someone who believes in free market, judicial restraint, and traditional values. There is no personal exaltation inherent in those beliefs. But to be for "social justice" and "saving the environment," or to be "anti-war" is more than just a set of hypotheses about empirical facts. This vision puts you on a higher moral plane as someone concerned and compassionate, and someone who wants to preserve the beauty of nature and save the planet from being polluted by others less caring.

In short, one vision makes you somebody special and the other vision does not.

- Thomas Sowell, 'Intellectuals and Society'