When a person rejects the baseless notion that God exists, he is faced with an important choice: accept the materialist idea that we are mere physical machines or seek another form of spirituality. The first is not fulfilling; the second can be frustrating if one turns to popular sources such as neuroscientist Sam Harris. He claims to offer a rational spirituality while really relying on stolen concepts and mysticism, as Objective Standard Institute fellow Maddox Locher details in his review of Harris’s book Waking Up.

Spirituality isn’t the only field where people are searching for other options. As more people realize that perhaps college isn’t for them, the market for alternatives continues to grow. Thomas Walker interviewed an employee at one of them, Praxis, to explore what the program offers and why young people who don’t need a college degree for their chosen career paths should consider it. In the quest for fulfilling professional success, as in that for secular spirituality, observation and reason are the only sustainable materials that pave the way to flourishing.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Angelica Werth
Associate Editor

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In Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Sam Harris presents his theory of spirituality as an alternative to those that are faith based. But the core premise Harris relies upon throughout the book is equally as faith based as the religions from which he attempts to distance himself.

Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher, is famous for his biting critiques of religion (primarily in his response to 9/11 in The End of Faith), for which he became known as one of the “Four Horsemen” of “New Atheism.” New Atheism is a movement of atheists united by a shared distrust in religion and a stated respect for rationality as a secular source for purpose, meaning, morality, spirituality, and other values often credited to religion. The Four Horsemen, the central intellectual leaders of this movement, also included philosopher Daniel Dennett, orator Christopher Hitchens, and biologist Richard Dawkins.1

In the first chapter of Waking Up, Harris acknowledges that “spirituality must be distinguished from religion” (8). He goes on to argue that spirituality doesn’t require accepting the baseless metaphysical claims religionists assert, such as the notion that a man walked on water, turned water into wine, and arose from the dead. What is spirituality, then? Harris believes the answer largely can be found in Buddhism.

Harris, like many people, acknowledges that Buddhism is a mixture of good and bad ideas, and he accepts those he considers good while rejecting those he considers bad. He thinks “its central teachings are entirely empirical . . .” and “[u]nlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: ‘If you do X, you will experience Y’” (28, 30).

Despite being cautious to distance himself from faith-based spirituality, Harris accepts the baseless Buddhist notion that the purpose of spirituality is “self-transcendence,” which Harris interprets as “cutting through the illusion of the self,” that being “what is meant by ‘spirituality’ in the context of this book” (9).

To “self-transcend,” he advocates for a specific kind of meditation called vipassana. One of its aims is to achieve “mindfulness,” which he describes as “a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant” (35). He argues that various values (e.g., family, health, wealth, mastery, etc.) require keeping “the machinery of happiness running day after day” (i.e., continuous effort), which are “forms of happiness [that] aren’t good enough” because “our feelings of fulfillment do not last” (45). Harris argues that meditation can “uncover a form of well-being that is inherent to the nature of our minds” (124).

Why Harris thinks that “our feelings of fulfillment” aren’t “good enough” because they’re temporary is unclear. The mere fact that positive states can be short-lived doesn’t mean they “aren’t good enough”—aren’t good enough, for what? He never clarifies his standard. Plus, doesn’t meditation require continuous effort, too? Doesn’t this mean that the benefits of meditation “do not last” and, therefore, aren’t good enough either? Harris sits on the fence with this issue: “I remain agnostic as to whether anyone has achieved such [well-being] permanently” (45). Harris reckons that because most kinds of happiness are fleeting, they aren’t of much value—and the happiness that is good enough is the “kind” that can be maintained without any effort after a certain point.

Those who perfect “self-transcendental” meditation, Harris claims, will become “spiritual masters” who will no longer “feel that there is an inner self who is a thinker of [one’s] thoughts” (45). In fact, he believes that the “inner self” is a chief source of unhappiness whose solution is meditation: “Taking oneself to be the thinker of one’s thoughts . . . is a delusion that produces nearly every species of human conflict and unhappiness. . . . The practice of meditation is a method of breaking the spell of thought” (101).

In asserting all these claims, Harris never raises or answers obvious questions. If there is no self, who will meditate? Who will be mindful? Who will “no longer feel that there is an inner self”? Who will feel happy as a result of “self-transcendence”? Who is undergoing “delusions” and/or “illusions” in the first place?

Harris is telling us that spirituality (a positive, life-serving value) requires recognition of the “fact” that you don’t exist—that there is no “you” capable of understanding, practicing, or receiving the benefits of spirituality. How could such a spirituality be of value to you, then? Given that so many people use the concept of “I,” Harris included, what does he think it refers to? To him, “‘I’ is itself a feeling that arises among the contents of consciousness” (104).

If “I” is merely a feeling in consciousness, whose consciousness are we talking about? Does Harris believe that consciousness can exist apart from the one who possesses it? Harris elaborates: “[Saying the self is illusory] is not to say that people are illusory. I see no reason to doubt that each of us exists or that the ongoing history of our personhood can be conventionally described as the history of our ‘selves’” (91). He continues by pointing out the many changes we undergo in our lives (e.g., marriage, illness, professional success, etc.)—and he argues, “It is convenient to ascribe these changes to the self. That is not the self I’m talking about” (92). To him, the self is “the subject of experience in each present moment—the feeling of being a thinker of thoughts inside of one’s head, the sense of being an owner or inhabitant of a physical body, which this false self seems to appropriate as a kind of vehicle” (92). Directly after this, he continues:

Even if you don’t believe such a homunculus exists—perhaps because you believe, on the basis of science, that you are identical to your body and brain rather than a ghostly resident therein—you almost certainly feel like an internal self in almost every waking moment . . . [and] this self is nowhere to be found. It cannot be seen among the particulars of experience [or] when experience itself is viewed as a totality. However, its absence can be found—and when it is, the feeling of being a self disappears. (92)

Harris assumes that when people refer to the self, they point to a “ghostly resident” that one should be able to see directly. Given that this is impossible, he denies the self and equates it with a “feeling.” But the fact that some define the self this way doesn’t mean that is what the self is. The self is a concept that refers to the integrated unity of body and mind, two interdependent parts that we can isolate mentally for thinking purposes but cannot actually isolate without the death of the other part. Harris calls the self either “a feeling” or a “ghostly resident” to dismiss it. Both are strawmen.

Harris’s spirituality, in essence, consists of using your mind to “transcend” past yourself via meditation or psychedelics so that you might achieve a permanent, “effortless” state of happiness and escape the suffering produced by “[t]aking oneself to be the thinker of one’s thoughts.”

The reason Harris reaches so bizarre a conclusion about spirituality is because he abuses concepts throughout the book. His core fallacy is denying the concept of self while using it and concepts that logically depend on it: “I,” “you,” “consciousness,” and so on.2 For example, he writes, “[Meditating] with sufficient attention to realize that no inner self exists, is a very sophisticated skill. . . . [I]t can be a powerful tool for self-regulation and self-awareness” (47, emphasis added). If there is no self, how can you “self-regulate” or be “self-aware?” He even admits that he uses these concepts despite not thinking they refer to anything of substance: “I will invoke a variety of concepts that have yet to do much useful work in our study of the natural world . . . but do very heavy lifting throughout the course of our lives: concepts such as self and ego and I” (83). How can concepts do “very heavy lifting” if they aren’t useful? Harris never explains.3

This fatal flaw undermines spirituality. Spirituality is the identification, pursuit, and achievement of the nonphysical values that our mind (i.e., spirit) requires.4 For example, a man who rock-climbs outdoors with friends does so, in part, to pursue nonphysical values such as a flow state, camaraderie, humor, joy, and beauty. He climbs to serve a particular aspect of himself. If “we” have no self, “we” have no spirit—and spirituality is made impossible. Harris can’t escape that spirituality requires a spiritualist.

Harris does touch on some topics that are interesting in their own right (e.g., the split-brain phenomenon and the effects of psychedelics). However, one can easily read about these elsewhere without Harris’s hogwash.

Waking Up promises a rational alternative to faith-based spirituality that fails because it relies on a faith-based assumption: that the self is an illusion. Because of his head-in-the-clouds self-denialism, Harris has written a work that is both self-refuting and self-destructive—and he finds himself standing shoulder to shoulder with the very religionists he decries.

2

This error is known as the stolen concept fallacy:

Thinking in Principles

Conceptual Fallacies and How to Avoid Them

Logical fallacies are not the only errors that retard thinking. Conceptual fallacies do, too, and often in subtler, more destructive ways…

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2 years ago · 22 likes · 2 comments · Craig Biddle

Joshua Sternberg is an enrollment adviser working with prospective participants of Praxis, a college-alternative educational program. A graduate of the program, he got a job in software sales through Praxis.

Thomas F. Walker: Thanks for joining me. Praxis positions itself as a “college alternative.” Why do we need an alternative to college education?

Joshua Sternberg: We need an alternative to traditional college education because there’s a gap in the market that needs to be filled. What college today is really good for is being in a good place to drink with your buddies, go to football games, have a good time for four years, and essentially delay adulthood. The cost of that is that it takes about twenty years to pay off your student-loan debt. The average federal student borrower owes about $40,000, and only about half of bachelor’s graduates land a job that needs their degree within a year of graduating. That’s underemployment, not unemployment. College hasn’t been serving people who are looking to actually get a career started, and that fact is backed by the statistics. That’s what Praxis is here to solve—to equip people to begin jobs. We have an entrepreneur track that helps people start their own businesses. We also have a track that helps people get into a job, and we even guarantee them a job offer if they complete the full program.

Walker: It’s a short, cheap program compared to a three- or four-year college degree, being less than a year. How are you able to deliver that much value in such a short time?

Sternberg: The interesting way to answer that question is to peek into the history of college. The first universities trained people for a few learned professions: the church, law, and medicine. Harvard, the first college in the American colonies, was founded partly to make sure New England’s churches had educated ministers. College was never designed to prepare most people for most jobs. Then, in the forties and fifties, a college degree made you stand apart. In our grandparents’ day, fewer than 7 percent of people had a college degree, so you stood out, and you were special. Nowadays, about 38 percent of people have a college degree, so it’s simply not standing out anymore.

To focus on your question of how we’re able to offer it affordably, it’s because we’re not focused on the fluff. We don’t have a hundred-acre facility; we don’t have a forty-person staff to maintain lawns. Our staff is concentrated on getting you the skills that you need to get a job, so our full program costs $7,500, far less expensive than college.

Walker: How can you guarantee a job? I was also wondering: As well as offering something unique to students that they’re lacking at college, are you also offering something unique to employers that they find college graduates are missing? I know they often find that they have to supplement education in terms of people’s writing ability, mathematical ability, and the like.

Sternberg: I’ll take the employer side of the question first. The struggle that employers face is that people send them résumés like it’s junk mail. Most recruiting employers can tell you how many résumés they’ve looked at, how hard it is to tell them apart, and how little a résumé can tell you about someone. For example, if you say that you have a college degree, that doesn’t help much because it could be an irrelevant degree. It could also mean that you got that degree by the seat of your pants, and you barely studied. Maybe you used AI and Google to answer most of the questions. Obviously, that’s not a blanket statement, but typically a college degree doesn’t help them find out what they want.

At Praxis, we teach a process of proving what you can do. Our students, instead of creating résumés (although that is something you typically have to do), create projects. If I wanted to work for you, Thomas, I would look up your company, I would see what you need and what I could improve. For example, if I wanted to be your social media manager, I would look at all your company’s social profiles, and then I would create social posts, videos, images for Instagram. Then I would send you an email in which I also would attach a video of myself, saying, “Hey, Thomas, I am super enthused about what you’re doing over there, and I think that I can make a huge impact on your social media team. Here’s proof: four posts that I created for you. Feel free to use these, and I think these can make a huge difference in your business.” That’s what we teach our students, instead of the typical résumé, and the reason that we offer a job-offer guarantee is because we’re so confident in that process that we’re willing to stake our money on it and say, “If you don’t get a job offer using this process, we will give you your money back.”

Walker: On your website, you talk a lot about the fact that you teach critical thinking; you “teach people how to think, not what to think.” Can you talk about how that enables your students to decide what they’re passionate about and find lines of work that they will actually be good at and motivated to succeed in?

Sternberg: The traditional school system looks like this: You sit in a class, and you are told to memorize a certain amount of information and certain types of information. There’s not much room to ask questions. We have a lot of great teachers in our education system, but the system fundamentally is that way. On the other hand, we teach our students by doing projects that help with critical thinking. Instead of being told what to do, you’re given a problem. For example, if we need a marketing campaign for a company, you’re taught to think about how to get that done. You’re taught to think things like, “What do people want to see that would get them interested in my product?” “Where can I post these things?” Then you do the work—you actually build a marketing campaign, and you have to use your brain to think and create it from scratch. That’s what Praxis means; it comes from the word praxeology—to do, as opposed to merely theorizing.

Walker: Praxis is Greek for “action,” if I remember correctly?

Sternberg: That’s right.

Walker: How did Praxis start its journey of providing this alternative approach to education? What brought you to where you are today as a company?

Sternberg: The inspiration came from the two entrepreneurs who began the company, Isaac Morehouse and T. K. Coleman. They teamed up about ten years ago because they saw the gap in the market that college was leaving. Because they’re entrepreneurs who love to be on to the next thing, they transitioned Praxis into new leadership, and they started new projects of their own.

We’ve noticed that when people join our program, they become part of our community, and they essentially become ambassadors for what we do. A tremendous number of our students come from referrals from our current alumni. We see Praxis continuing to build that community in the future. For example, in our alumni community just the other day, an alumnus from our program posted, essentially, “Hey. The company that I’ve been working at since I graduated Praxis is looking to hire a bunch of salespeople. Can we get something going?” Even after finishing the program, you get lifetime benefits because you’re part of that network of people who’ve gone before you, who are on your level and are all enthusiastic about improving their careers. We see that scaling into a much bigger community, and we see ourselves being a real problem for college in the future.

Walker: When you talk about a gap in the market, I imagine a situation in which there are some people for whom college is potentially right, such as those who want academic careers. And then there are some who are better off going straight into trades. So, could you give me a sense of the person in between, the one whom Praxis is for? How does someone know whether this is the right path to take?

Sternberg: I love that question, because that’s part of what I do in my job as an enrollment adviser. I talk to parents and kids and help them decide. A couple months ago, I got on the phone with a kid who was interested in going into the medical field. I said, “Go to college.” You really can’t go into that career, realistically speaking, without going to college. So, one of the things that I would advise people is: If you’re considering college, there are websites out there that will help you see the underemployment rate of each degree. Go on one of those websites, look at the degree that you’re interested in, and see the underemployment rate—the odds that you won’t actually be working in that career if you study it. Careers such as chemical engineering and nursing have low underemployment rates, so if you want to go into those careers, if you’re passionate about one of them, I would highly recommend going to college. You’ll probably get a job. On the other side, majors such as liberal arts and criminal justice have really high underemployment rates. If you’re interested in those, I would suggest you take a second look. If you’re looking to go for fun, maybe that’s all right, but if you’re looking to go into a career in that, the odds are against you. So, that’s the first thing I would check. The next is: Are you the kind of person who wants to work outside? Do you like working with your hands? If that describes you, go to trade school. There are a lot of great trades. You can make crazy good money in the trades. The training for those is a lot shorter than college.

For Praxis, I would say, “Are you unsure about what you want to do?” That describes a lot of our people—they just don’t know what they want to do with their futures. If that’s you, Praxis can help you get started in a career in which you start making money, and you have a huge opportunity to get promoted and make more money while you gain experience and work out what you’re interested in doing. I like to use a chess analogy: If you’re in the middle of a chess game, it doesn’t really matter how you got there. All that matters is that you make the best move possible where you are. So, a lot of times for a lot of people, that’s starting to make money and gain skills right now, as opposed to in four years if you go to college. Instead, you’ve had a job via Praxis for four years, and you have a lot of money. So, Praxis is for those people who want to get started making money and for people who don’t know what they want to do next.

Walker: As part of your program, do you provide tools for people to work out what they want to do?

Sternberg: Absolutely. The best way to answer that is to go into how our program is structured. We have two phases. The first is Incubate, and that’s $850. The purpose of Incubate is to help you decide which direction you want to go, and whether Praxis is even right for you. Before you commit the full $7,500, you can commit $850, so your risk is much lower. In those six weeks, you build the habits and skills every career needs, such as networking, taking feedback, and pitching the value you can bring to a company. You can ask yourself, “Is this right for me?” You may well come to the end of it and say, “You know what? College is right for me.” No harm, no foul. You haven’t committed $7,500. If you do go on to Accelerate, the first two months give you hands-on experience in areas of business such as sales, marketing, operations, and customer success, which is different from customer service. Instead of responding to problems as they come in, you own a set of client accounts and work alongside those clients to make sure they’re equipped to succeed. The resource we have that I’m most proud of is that every one of our students gets not just the leadership from our head instructor, but they also get assigned a personal mentor. That’s someone who has gone through the program and graduated a few years earlier and is coming back to give advice not only on how to complete the program, but also on working out what they’re interested in and which direction to go. Incubate builds in time for that. Participants have one-on-one calls with their mentor, and the last week is about reflecting on what they value, what motivates them long-term, and which companies and careers inspire them. That’s super important, helping people decide what they want to do, and it’s something that we put a lot of our resources into supporting.

Walker: Are there any restrictions on who can apply, such as age or location?

Sternberg: Yes. Our audience is 17–25-year-olds. We are meant to be a college-alternative program, so this program isn’t designed for people later in their careers, maybe with twenty years of work experience trying to relaunch into something else. And typically, it’s more of a step back if you have twenty years of experience. We also can’t generally allow people younger than seventeen into the program because it’s hard to offer full-time employment. No one really wants to offer full-time employment to a sixteen-year-old. There are a lot of government rules about child labor. We sometimes make exceptions on either end that mean people can participate in the program, but they may not be able to take advantage of the job-offer guarantee. In terms of location, anyone can join us globally, but the job-offer guarantee only applies to U.S. citizens.

Walker: What’s next for you guys? How do you see either your organization or this college-alternative movement generally growing in the future?

Sternberg: We’ve seen more growth in the last quarter than in the previous couple years, and we hope to see that continue. We hope to see more students coming in, getting passionate about what we do and about building our community. We really believe the reason that more people haven’t decided to go away from college is simply a lack of awareness. There’s a huge social stigma that you have to go to college to be a success. College can help you be a success, but it is not a guarantee. Once more people know about what we do and the options out there—not only Praxis, but other college alternatives, too—we anticipate that colleges are in for a rude awakening in the short term.

Walker: I hope we can move toward a more diverse way of learning because such a large proportion of people going to college is damaging both to people who should go to college and don’t stand out like they should and to people for whom it’s not really the right choice in the first place.

Thanks so much for joining me. Is there anything else you want to let readers know, such as where they can find you?

Sternberg: The best way to stay in touch with us is to follow us on social media. We have regular live webinars in which you can learn more, and you can go on our website and book time with one of our advisers to speak to them for fifteen minutes about your child or yourself if you’re interested, which can help you decide whether Praxis is the right decision for you.

Walker: Thanks very much.

Sternberg: Thank you.

Nearly every month, there’s a new adaptation of a beloved classic novel coming out, from last year’s Frankenstein to last month’s Sense and Sensibility to Greta Gerwig’s upcoming The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. It’s delightful to see new perspectives and modern storytelling techniques applied to influential stories, but we must be on our guard against subjectivism and other ethical errors sneaking in to dilute or distort the timeless themes that have inspired generations. In my review of Netflix’s recently released East of Eden series, I point out just such an error in their portrayal of Cathy—a blackhearted villainness who, in this telling, is supposed to evoke empathy in the audience.

As some sharp cultural commentators have noted, empathy even for evildoers has become a replacement for rational ethical judgement in some circles. Gad Saad attempts to break down this phenomenon in his Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind. But his approach is sadly flawed, as reviewer Michael Dahlen explains. This Halloween weekend, dive into these ruthless dissections of the horror of subjectivism dressed up as good intentions or treat yourself to some of our archival content directly related to the holiday of monsters.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Angelica Werth
Associate Editor

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Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind
by Gad Saad
New York: Broadside Books, 2026
255 pp. $32.99 (Kindle)

During a burglary, sixteen-year-old Travis Lewis murdered Sally Snowden McKay, age seventy-five, and her nephew, Joseph Baker. Lewis was found guilty and sentenced to twenty-eight and a half years in prison. Sally’s daughter, Martha McKay, forgave Lewis, visited him while he was imprisoned, and petitioned for his early release. She also offered him a job in the same house where he had murdered her mother and cousin. Lewis then murdered Martha, too.

According to Gad Saad, a professor and evolutionary behavioral scientist, this is an example of “suicidal empathy,” the phenomenon that gives his book, a New York Times bestseller, its title. Saad is not against empathy. Although he notes that it “has up to forty-three distinct definitions within the academic literature,” he doesn’t say what definition he’s using (2). Nevertheless, he believes that empathy is a “noble virtue” and that it “helps promote prosocial behavior. . . . But our empathy must be tethered to rational boundaries rooted in reciprocity” (163). More specifically, one’s empathy “must be invoked at the right time, in the right amount, and to the right targets” (166). In short, “empathy must be deployed in a strategically discriminating manner” (100).

Although this implies that we have control over how we empathize, Saad also argues that we have an “empathy module” that can malfunction or “misfire” (a term he uses eighteen times in the preface and first chapter). Empathy turns suicidal when it’s excessive and directed at the wrong targets. Examples of this, Saad claims, include empathy for certain felons, rapists, and murderers but not their victims; empathy for squatters but not the homeowners who can’t remove them; empathy for transgender athletes but not the disadvantaged women who must compete against them; empathy for homeless drug addicts setting up encampments in public parks but not taxpaying park users and their children.

Suicidal empathy, Saad writes, “spreads akin to an emotional contagion throughout an entire society, and its effects are long-lasting” (xiv). These effects include a broad range of outlandish behaviors, systems, and policies. If suicidal empathy is “not properly contained, it will destroy the West” (xiv).

The book discusses examples of suicidal empathy across a wide range of issues, including immigration, COVID policies, climate activism, the welfare state, the criminal justice system, and more. It also includes a chapter on what Saad calls “forbidden knowledge,” meaning facts, ideas, and research that some want to suppress because they might offend certain groups—a mindset Saad characterizes as, “If the truth lacks empathy, reject it!” (xii). One example is the “fat acceptance” movement, which seeks “to elevate the sense of self-worth of overweight people, even if it means espousing pure fiction” (30). In the closing chapter, Saad explains how to inoculate oneself against suicidal empathy.

An important subtheme of the book is the destructiveness of emotionalism, the doctrine and practice of placing emotions above facts, logic, and reason. “Our emotions,” Saad writes, “can lead us astray when they are deployed in contexts when it would serve us best to invoke our reasoning faculty” (10). When people succumb to suicidal empathy, he explains, viewing the world through “the prism of maximizing empathy now,” they focus only on “first-order effects” while ignoring the “disastrous long-term consequences” (158–59).

Although this subtheme is valid, and although Saad detects a real problem in our culture, his theory of suicidal empathy has significant flaws.

To start, “suicidal empathy” is not the appropriate name for his theory. It is more accurately one of misdirected sympathy or compassion than of empathy. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines empathy as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”1 By this definition, Saad’s view that one can empathize with the “wrong targets” is incorrect. One might, for example, empathize with a criminal (i.e., try to understand why he did what he did and to feel what he feels). But that does not necessarily mean that one cares about the criminal, excuses his behavior, or thinks he deserves one’s help. (For consistency with the quoted material, I will use the word “empathy” as Saad does for the rest of the review. But keep in mind how he uses it: Although he doesn’t explicitly define empathy, his usage suggests that he means not only understanding and sharing another person’s thoughts and emotions but also wanting to alleviate that person’s distress.)

The theory is also ill-defined. Saad presents no principle or criteria for determining when empathy crosses the line from merely inappropriate to suicidal. This omission becomes evident as one reads through his numerous examples and anecdotes. Many are questionable, as they are not obviously motivated by empathy, much less “suicidal” empathy.

Consider two. First, Saad describes a Jaguar advertisement from late 2024 featuring “a bunch of weirdly dressed people of color (including some apparent nonbinary and transgender folks) sashaying around.” This “suicidally empathetic advertising campaign” destroyed Jaguar’s “massive intergenerational brand equity” (133). Although the campaign triggered a backlash, its purpose was to rebrand the company for the ultra-luxury electric vehicle market. Jaguar’s sales did collapse, but mostly for reasons unrelated to the ad. Running it was a miscalculation, but I could not find any evidence that it was motivated by empathy.

The second example is the Laken Riley case. José Ibarra, a Venezuelan immigrant who was in the United States illegally, attacked Riley, a twenty-two-year-old nursing student, while she was jogging. He attempted to rape her, then murdered her after she resisted. “A key reason that the death penalty was not sought,” according to Saad, “is because of a suicidally empathetic progressive district attorney named Deborah Gonzalez who does not believe in the death penalty” (35). Instead, she pursued life without parole with the Riley family’s support. One might strongly disapprove of Gonzalez’s decision, but even if it was motivated by empathy, locking up a murderer for life cannot reasonably be considered “suicidal.”

Saad’s questionable examples aside, his others do illustrate problems that point to a common underlying cause. But invoking misdirected empathy, although it may play a role, is an unsatisfying explanation. The crucial question is: Why do some people have empathy for the wrong targets?

Saad provides a couple of answers, though he places little emphasis on either. First, he says that suicidal empathy is “driven by misplaced existential guilt. . . . The suicidally empathetic person feels guilty that they were born in the West, whereas others were not as fortunate” (19). But this raises a further question: Why would one feel guilty about that?

His other answer, which is much less clear, is “parasitic ideas” (a phrase he borrows from his earlier book, The Parasitic Mind). These ideas include “woke social justice” (xiv), intersectionality (32), cultural relativism (47, 81), doomsday environmentalism (102, 104), and social determinism, the doctrine that “all life outcomes are due to external forces” (17). In most cases, however, he doesn’t explain exactly how these ideas connect to suicidal empathy. And when he does address it, his accounts are inconsistent. For example, he says, “the West’s intelligentsia . . . is infected by a mind parasite that causes its empathy module to misfire” (xi). Later, he suggests that the causation runs in the opposite direction: “Parasitic ideas . . . are driven by misguided empathy” (15). In yet another place, he implies that they are merely associated, neither clearly causing the other: “Parasitic ideas . . . flourish best when coupled with a narrative of empathy” (xiv; emphasis added).

To the extent that “parasitic ideas” and “existential guilt” contribute to suicidal empathy, they are, at best, intermediate causes. But Saad fails to identify the fundamental cause because he is looking in the wrong place. Consider his examples involving squatters, certain criminals, and the welfare state. In these and other cases, the persons receiving empathy are deemed weaker, needier, or otherwise less powerful. But what about the aggrieved parties? For example, empathizing with a squatter while dismissing the burden imposed on the homeowner implicitly assumes that the squatter’s need gives him a moral claim on what belongs to someone else. The underlying premise here is that those more fortunate should yield their rights, property, or security to those less fortunate. This goes deeper than mere empathy (suicidal or not); it is a moral demand for sacrifice.

According to ethicist Peter Singer, “we ought to give until we reach the level of marginal utility. . . . This would mean, of course, that one would reduce oneself to very near the material circumstances of a Bengali refugee.”2 On this view, if anyone is worse off than you are, then to be moral, you must sacrifice your wealth, values, and interests for his sake. As philosopher C. D. Broad writes,

each of us is often under an obligation to sacrifice his own happiness, and sometimes to sacrifice his own development and life, for the benefit of certain other persons and groups, even when it is doubtful whether more good will be produced by doing so than by not doing so.3

The morality Singer and Broad are conveying here—the morality that demands self-denial, self-abnegation, and self-sacrifice, the morality of subordinating the lives of some people to the needs of others—is altruism.

The example with which I opened this review clearly displays this morality. Martha McKay sacrificed justice, common sense, her safety, and ultimately her life for the sake of helping the man who murdered her mother and cousin.

But one might wonder: Aren’t altruism and empathy essentially the same? Although often associated, they are categorically different. Altruism is a morality; empathy is an emotional-psychological capacity and skill. Unlike altruism, which provides ethical guidance, empathy alone doesn’t tell you how to act or how to judge others.

The morality of altruism, not misdirected empathy, is the root cause of the unhinged—and sometimes suicidal—behaviors, systems, and policies that Saad is trying to explain. In any issue or situation, when some people automatically side with whomever they consider weaker, needier, or less powerful while evading any relevant facts, altruism is the implicit moral premise behind this pattern of judgment. After all, if those more fortunate are morally obligated to sacrifice for those less fortunate, then why shouldn’t we always side with the latter—even when they harm, threaten, or burden the former? (Siding with the needier party may be right, but not simply because they’re needier.) By elevating need above all other considerations, altruism provides a moral rationalization for dismissing the rights, interests, and liberties of anyone whose quality of life exceeds that of Singer’s Bengali refugee.

Saad writes, “A behavioral outcome of empathy is the human capacity to be altruistic,” a capacity he describes as a “noble reflex” (6). Although he stops far short of taking altruism to its logical conclusion, as Singer does, Saad’s favorable view of it likely explains, at least in part, why he fails to identify the deeper moral issue.

Besides the problems with Saad’s central argument, some of his claims about specific issues are highly dubious. Because of this and his occasionally snarky, hyperbolic tone, his writing often reads as an attempt not to persuade skeptical readers but to pander to a conservative audience.

For example, he writes, “The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] headed by Elon Musk has . . . eliminated a breathtaking amount of corruption, waste, and fraud” (144). A breathtaking amount? DOGE’s initial goal was to cut $2 trillion in federal government spending, which it lowered to $1 trillion, then to $150 billion (a paltry 2 percent of federal spending). DOGE claimed estimated savings of $215 billion, but this figure could not be independently verified. A Government Accountability Office audit found significant problems with DOGE’s calculations and methodology, suggesting that the cuts fell short of even its own $150 billion unbreathtaking goal.4

Despite factual overstatements such as this, Saad’s attempt to formulate a theory that explains a broad range of personal behaviors, cultural issues, and political policies is both ambitious and admirable. Unfortunately, it fails, as his theory is misnamed, ill-defined, and a poor fit for many of his examples. Most important, he doesn’t look in the right place (morality) for the fundamental cause of the phenomena his theory is trying to explain.

Author’s note: This review contains spoilers.

What makes a story a timeless classic? According to John Steinbeck, “A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last.”1 For a story’s theme to be universal, it must be built with highly abstract, broadly applicable concepts, clearly embodied in vivid characters and dramatic action.

This is what Steinbeck aimed for in East of Eden, which, though it was published late in his life, he called “the first book”—one he had been practicing to write for thirty-five years.2 Its theme is the most universal and morally fundamental of all: the choice between good and evil. The recently released Netflix adaptation, unfortunately, only conveys that theme partially.

A core leitmotif of the story is the pattern drawn from the myth of Cain and Abel; one young man thinking his father loves him less than his brother and lashing out at his brother in response. This sense of rejection, or a lack of love, as a motivation for evil is an important subtheme. In the Cain and Abel parable, God prefers Abel’s offering, so Cain feels rejected and is angry. God tells Cain he can do better and to try again. But the precise wording is important, and it is discussed at length by some of the main characters. One of them, Lee (played by Hoon Lee), studies the original Hebrew and reports back to the others:

The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin [“do thou”], and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in “thou shalt,” meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—“Thou mayest”—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if “Thou mayest”—it is also true that “Thou mayest not.” . . . Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth, and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.3

This conversation appears in the Netflix series, too, albeit in a shortened form.

More important for conveying the theme, the series faithfully traces several choices that characters face—times when they feel trapped but something or someone reminds them that they always have a choice. One of the main characters, Adam (Christopher Abott), is a particularly strong example. For instance, Adam barely interacts with his twin sons for the first ten years of their lives, leaving the family’s servant (Lee) to raise them. But a chance visit makes him wonder whether the four of them ought to be living on their own on a ranch—and he makes the first significant decision to advance their welfare, which is to move into town where the boys would have better schooling. Later, Adam realizes that he’s been making a version of the same mistake his father made with him by expecting his now-teenage sons to be a certain way rather than looking at who they are—and he tries to correct it. He is bound neither by his past errors nor by his parent’s errors; he can choose to be better, even if he does so imperfectly. The Netflix version of Adam shows this: a man who strives, errs, falls into a slump, and dusts himself off and tries again. Adam, despite his faults, chooses to work toward the good.

However, an important character complicates this idea in the novel and obliterates it in the series: Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh). She is introduced to us in the novel as a “monster” and lives up to it: She kills her parents, shoots her husband, poisons her employer, and generally ruthlessly manipulates anyone in her path, becoming the madam of a whorehouse who is feared by her girls and blackmails her clientele. For the first half of the show, Cathy is shown to be exactly this. Pugh flawlessly portrays the deceitful woman, able to seem charming and innocent one minute and coldly brutal the next. However, in the final two episodes, the audience is given reason to sympathize with her.

The show creates sympathy in two ways that the novel does not. First, it suggests that she is capable of actual love. Evil people cannot truly love because they lack the ability to admire the good in another—on some level, they recognize the good as a challenge or rebuke to themselves. In both the novel and the show, she pacifies Adam’s brother Charles (Mike Faist), who hates her, by sleeping with him. Adam and Cathy then move across the country, and Cathy never sees Charles again. But in the show, Cathy muses that she could have loved Charles, and in her final days she has visions of him acting as a lover, speaking to her softly, advising her, allowing her to caress his cheek. He speaks the words generated by her own paranoia as though he were trying to protect her. In the novel, this paranoia is more clearly shown to be a consequence of her own actions as she fears that one of her crimes will come to light.

The second method of creating sympathy is through the implication that she feels remorse. In the show, she is bothered by memories of her past crimes, seeing them flash before her and becoming upset. Then, there is her response when her son Aron (Joe Anders) sees her at the whorehouse after believing throughout his childhood that she was dead. He turns away from her, clearly upset, and leaves. She cries, whether out of hurt by his rejection or shame inspired by his condemnation. The scene is only described briefly in the novel, but in that scene she does not cry—she laughs.

That Cathy is less evil and more able to feel in this adaptation was not accidental. Screenwriter and executive producer Zoe Kazan said in an interview that she approached the character by asking, “What if we think of her not as the embodiment of evil but as a person who does really bad things? [laughs] And I think we learn more about ourselves if we don’t think about, like, ‘evil people’ as being that different from us.”4 (How similar evil people are to us depends on our own moral stature; the implication that we can learn about ourselves by considering evil people as being like us is not incisive commentary but a shocking confession.) The problem with Kazan’s interpretation is that Cathy is not the embodiment of evil in the literal sense, in the way that Sauron is in The Lord of the Rings (an entity who at times doesn’t even have a body; he is simply pure evil). She is evil through her own choices—which brings us back to the core theme of the novel: choice. Everyone has choices; Cathy had a plethora of them. And time and again she chose badly.

This is not to say that exploring a villain’s motivations always whitewashes them. But Steinbeck spends little time on Cathy’s motivations for a reason: They aren’t important to judging her or understanding her. He offers only one brief explanation for her actions: She felt that others “had something she lacked, and she didn’t know what it was.”5 This does not diminish her evil but ties it into his subtheme of rejection (real or imagined) as motivation for immoral acts; if Cathy lacks something everyone else seems to have, she anticipates rejection from them on those grounds. She then copes with that threat or imagined rejection by closing off certain parts of herself and seeking limited (usually financial) gain at everyone else’s expense. Redemption is possible, in this story as in life—but repeatedly, Cathy chooses to manipulate or hurt others. She becomes suspicious of every possible show of love or honesty, disbelieving, for example, that Adam really could have loved her.

The challenge of the ambitious author, one who desires to write a story of great scope and universal importance, is to embody his abstractions in characters who are larger than life yet seem real. As philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand put it in her treatise on aesthetics, a character “has to be an abstraction, yet look like a concrete; it has to have the universality of an abstraction and, simultaneously, the unrepeatable uniqueness of a person.”6 Steinbeck achieved this with Cathy, developing a woman who is shocking, compelling, and a paradigmatic case of evil. Kazan’s interpretation does not respect this achievement, and Pugh’s stellar acting makes the problem worse, not better, by perfectly portraying the muddled moral sense of Kazan’s creation rather than the extreme evil of the original.

What makes Steinbeck’s story universal is that it grapples with good and evil and comes out with the profound truth that we each get to choose between them again and again. Neither a deity nor our ancestors nor even our own pasts will save us or doom us, because timshel—thou mayest. It is a clarion call to strive toward virtue every moment of our lives, and it is a shame that the Netflix adaptation failed to portray this stark truth through the most intense character in its source material.

This week, the latest film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility hits theaters across the USA. As Angelica Werth shows in her review of the film, it captures the essential spirit of the novel while significantly departing from the original work in a few respects, some effective, others less so.

Also new this week, Rebecca Day looks back on the life and achievements of William Grant Still, the often-overlooked composer who experimented with combining blues and classical music. Still had no time for the racial boundaries associated with the genres in the 1950s, and in his pioneering work, he created a new form of music imbued with individualistic American values.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Thomas F. Walker
Managing Editor

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Directed by Georgia Oakley
Written by Diana Reid
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles
Distributed by Focus Features
Running time: 131 minutes
Rated PG for thematic elements, partial nudity, and brief violence

Few adaptations of Jane Austen’s works have been as universally beloved by Janeites as Ang Lee’s 1995 Sense and Sensibility. The performances of Emma Thompson (who also wrote the screenplay) and Alan Rickman, the warm color palette, and delightful score add to a faithful adaptation many fans doubted could be matched. But the new adaptation of this work, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, is a strong contender.

Sense and Sensibility focuses on the Dashwood sisters, raised in the household of their recently deceased father, a landowning gentleman. The ladies inherited only a small amount of money upon his death, which, along with the machinations of an unscrupulous half brother and his wife, means that they’re left with a much-diminished lifestyle. This is where the action starts; soon, the ladies move to a countryside cottage owned by distant relatives (a cousin named Mrs. Jennings and her son-in-law). The main drama of the story revolves around the titular sense of Elinor—who represents the rationalism that had been dominant in the Enlightenment of Austen’s youth—and sensibility (or sentimentality) of Marianne—who represents the then-new Romantic movement and its emotionalism. Both women are faced with complex romantic prospects, which they approach differently. The sisters learn from one another the proper relationship between reason and emotion and the balance between sharing and discretion.

This rendition’s greatest technical strength—and an important means by which it stays faithful to the source material—is the acting. Each actor’s line delivery matches his or her character brilliantly, such that even characters who have only a few minutes of screen time still leave a distinct impression of who they are. Among the supporting characters, the most memorable performance is that of Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Jennings. From the first moment we see her to the last, she flawlessly portrays the matron’s jovial, expressive, and at times oblivious yet always well-meaning demeanor. She adopts a chortling laugh that will forever echo in my mind when I think of Mrs. Jennings or any character who resembles her.

Also admirable are the performances of those playing the primary Dashwood family—both individually and as a group. Elinor’s steadfast resolve and prudence (Edgar-Jones), Marianne’s passionate abandon (Creed-Miles), Mrs. Dashwood’s fanciful hopefulness (Caitríona Balfe), and Margaret’s earnest, adolescent spunk (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) all come through wonderfully and at times comically, often eliciting laughter from those in the cinema I attended. The love and care between the sisters are noticeable and touching throughout. The costuming also highlights their distinctive characters; in a few scenes, Marianne is dressed in floaty purplish dresses and wearing loose (arguably overly messy) hair, whereas Elinor is sometimes seen in a crisp white dress with a navy vest, her hair carefully pinned back.

The superb acting and solid screenplay do much to tell the story; they are supported by a varied score that helps to give voice to the characters’ emotions. In one scene, stoic Elinor has received devastating news but says nothing, and her face moves little while others continue chatting. The camera tightens in on her face while the strings in the background overwhelm the voices of her companions, showing us wordlessly her internal state—agitated, hurt, and unable to attend to the world around her.

Janeites who prefer a textually (as opposed to spiritually) faithful adaptation will doubtless be troubled by notable changes to two of the central romantic relationships. At the risk of being accused of blasphemy, I argue that one is for the better in the sense of narrative impact. Elinor’s love interest, Edward Ferrars (George MacKay), has long been engaged secretly to a penniless, maneuvering woman named Lucy Steele (Ceara Coveney). In the novel, Edward formed this engagement himself when he was young and is unwilling to call it off because he has given his word, despite knowing how adamantly his mother would disapprove of the match. His steadfastness, however misguided, is part of what Elinor admires about him. In the new movie, Edward formed the engagement under his mother’s guidance when Lucy had plenty of money, but then her family unfortunately loses it all. Edward doesn’t want to cause her further hardship and thus maintains the relationship against his mother’s wishes. In other words, the filmmakers have taken young Edward from being misguided and foolish to being more consistently a man of his word, regardless of and even in opposition to his mother’s ambition—doubling down on the characteristic Elinor most likes about him. In so doing, the film increases the drama of her inner conflict: The reason she loves him is the reason she can’t have him.

The other significant change concerns Marianne’s relationship with the quiet Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum). At first, she dismisses his suitorship because she believes him to be without passion for art, nature, or romance. But toward the end of the novel, she falls gravely ill, and his steady care and attention to her and her family—along with her newfound integration of reason with her passion—leads her to give him a chance. Austen’s treatment of the ending has long been decried by critics as more resigned than romantic (such critics are arguably wrong on this point). The movie attempts to correct this by having Colonel Brandon act in a fit of passion to defend Marianne’s honor. Although this gives her a more obviously happy ending, it somewhat softens the lesson Marianne must learn about others: that unrestrained passion, regardless of its grounds, is not necessarily the measure of either a person’s character or of his enjoyment of life.

The vibrant acting, the warmth among the Dashwoods, the humor of Mrs. Jennings, the intensified resolve of Edward, and the courage of Colonel Brandon combine to create a film that’s bursting with life and memorable characters. This effect is slightly hampered by a tendency to use filters that give the film a grayish color palette more often than makes sense given the plot. Nevertheless, the characters’ intense emotions and deep commitment to what they regard as the right way to live outshines this minor defect.

This adaptation may not win over Janeites who prefer a movie that deviates little from the original—but those who love her characters may well be able to enjoy the vividness with which they are portrayed here. Moreover, any moviegoer who appreciates a story with warm family relationships, character growth, and a thought-provoking exploration of the proper approach to romantic relationships will get a lot out of this delightful film.

William Grant Still (1895–1978) was a pioneering composer who sought to create a distinct style of American classical music grounded in his own artistic vision. He produced nearly two hundred works during his career, spanning symphonies, suites, operas, and ballets. As he grew more prolific, his artistic perspective put him at odds with prevailing attitudes of the time, creating tension between him and his contemporaries.

Still remains one of America’s underrated composers because he worked during a time when it was popular to view music through the lens of racial identity—which Still rejected. Although Still recognized the complex history of race in America and incorporated the music of various ethnic groups into his compositions, he also strived to transcend the confines of race-based thinking. He was an individualist striving for what he described as a “universal idiom” in music. An Arkansas native, he composed during the early- to mid-20th century, an era when collectivism was especially in vogue among working artists of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement centered around reshaping, through creative works, what they considered to be black identity. As a black man, Still was often expected to support the movement. But he was his own man, and he documented his individualistic artistic stances in his writings, such as this incisive entry:

I have always felt, when people have asked me to bow to their will, that I may indeed be wrong—but if I am wrong, let it be my own mistake, not one I have been led into. It may be that I am mistaken in having tried to establish my own mode of musician expression. But it more nearly expresses my true self than any mode I might have borrowed!1

Still’s writings and musical works reveal a creator with an active mind—one who once found allies within movements such as the Harlem Renaissance before becoming the opposition.

Because of a number of factors—Still’s individualist views, his political stances, his appreciation of American culture, and how others reacted to these in light of his background—his legacy is obscure. But it is also important. His symphonies—such as his tribute to America’s bountiful resources, Western Hemisphere—and his mindset toward his work—evidenced by his remark, “It is what I would like to write, not what others have insisted that I write”—reveal a cerebral and stubborn composer who thought about artistic principle as much as the artwork itself.2 “Still was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” wrote music director Leon Botstein.3 Still’s belief in individualism and in the merit of a unified America “made him something of a pariah,” Botstein stated.4 He also noted that Still “defied expectations and set his own path.”5 And it is one worth exploring.

Musician and writer J. Edward Britton described Still as a “famed yet underappreciated composer.”6 Still’s unique artistic repertoire and his inspiring philosophical contemplation show us that though he remains an underrated founding father of American-style classical music, his visionary compositions and thought-out ideas are worthy of appreciation and study.

A Dream Realized

When Still was a teenager, he set out on an ambitious path. He had long been inspired by the Red Seal phonograph records featuring various classical composers that his stepfather brought home. One day, while listening to those records, he decided to become a professional musician. “I knew then that I would be happy only if someday I could compose operatic music,” he wrote while also sharing that the symphony orchestra was something that “deeply interested me from the very start of my musical life.”7 His mother, a teacher, was another key influence: “She constantly urged me to make something of myself, and not to follow the path of least resistance.”8

Still realized his childhood dream in 1931, when he was thirty-six years old, with the premiere of his breakthrough work, Afro-American Symphony. The work was not only a nod to his teenage classical roots, but also to his early work with W. C. Handy, known as “The Father of the Blues,” during the 1920s. Within the symphony he sought to integrate uniquely American and historically African American genres, such as the blues, with European classical music. The symphony features four movements—“Longing,” “Sorrow,” “Humor,” and “Aspiration”—that elevate the blues to a new standard within the classical framework. And the orchestra plays an uplifting story; each movement is set to a selection by Revolutionary-era poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The accompaniment for the final section, “Aspiration,” reads,

Be proud, my Race, in mind and soul,
Thy name is writ on Glory’s scroll
In characters of fire.
High ‘mid the clouds of Fame’s bright sky,
Thy banner’s blazoned folds now fly,
And truth shall lift them higher.

The Afro-American Symphony includes race-centric elements—its title, certain poetry excerpts, the genre selection for the work—but Still’s overall goal was to position genres such as the blues as key players among the Western musical landscape. In his words, he wanted historically black genres in the country to become “another American voice.”9 “That was the reason I decided to create a musical theme in the Blues idiom and develop it into the highest of musical forms—the Symphony,” he stated.10

Early on, Still established a leitmotif that would recur throughout his catalog—a fearless exploration and fusion of genres and styles, something he felt compelled to do as he developed “an individual form of expression.”11 Although Afro-American Symphony received positive critical praise, it also set him against prevailing winds of the decade. Many of his colleagues at the time regarded the arts as divided into black and white. But Still was interested in elevating his individual voice and connecting with audiences, regardless of skin color. Commenting on the widening racial divide of the arts at the time, he said, “For me, there is no White or Black music, there is only music by individual men that is important if it attempts to dignify all men, not just a particular race.”12

A Quest for Beauty in Music

The 1930s proved to be a productive decade for Still as he shifted from what he called the “blues idiom” to the “universal idiom,” which focused on connecting with audiences through works that unify rather than divide. He was an in-demand arranger, orchestrator, and composer, and he was commissioned for the arrangement of various compositions for organizations such as the League of Composers, Cleveland Orchestra, the New York World’s Fair, and the United States Military Academy band. He briefly worked for Columbia Pictures before conducting orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also received an honorary master’s degree from Wilberforce University in 1936 and went on to receive eight more from higher education institutions over his career.

As his accolades grew, he spread his wings artistically, covering new subjects in his repertoire. His 1936 suite, III Visions, featuring the fan-favorite middle movement, “Summerland,” chronicles his view of the journey of a soul. He wrote the piano suite for his wife and musical collaborator, Verna Arvey, who played the piece during its public debut in Los Angeles. The suite highlighted an overarching goal that would set Still apart from many of his modernist contemporaries moving forward: “Experimentation for the sake of experimentation can only produce a poor substitute for music, and we are now in need of real music, not contrived sounds. We need a new contemporary goal. I suggest that this goal be beauty, and I maintain that there is no substitute for inspiration.”13

In 1945, Still wrote his penultimate symphony, his fourth, titled Western Hemisphere. In it, the listener finds the composer expressing reverence for the beauty and resources of America’s natural landscape. The piece opens with the portrayal of “The vigorous, life-sustaining forces of the Hemisphere.”14 The listener is then taken through a series of movements chronicling “the natural beauties of the hemisphere” and its benevolent essence.15 “[It] portrays—in a sense—the spirit of the American people,” Still wrote, noting that his vision for the work celebrates “the rich human and natural resources of all of the Americas.”16

His focus on individual expression, his quest for beauty in music, and his celebration of America’s abundance put him at odds with musical circles that were embracing communist ideals more and more. “He is an independent thinker, not a musical faddist. He has always spoken for himself,” stated writer Robert Bartlett Haas.17 After a busy three decades from the 1920s through the 1940s, the 1950s would be different for the inspired composer. And this made him directly confront the pushback he had been quietly facing.

“Lean Years”

Back in 1936, Still had begun work with Langston Hughes to complete the opera Troubled Island, about the Haitian Revolution of 1791. But creative differences and Hughes’s lack of availability put a strain on their professional partnership. By 1939, though the opera had been completed, their relationship had been all but dissolved. On top of that, Hughes was a popular figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that became increasingly sympathetic to communism as the years passed, putting Still and his anti-communist views in direct opposition.

Sometime between 1931 and 1935, modernist musicians had formed a new organization in New York: the Composers’ Collective. It was an affiliation of the Workers’ Music League, which was part of the American Communist Party, and these affiliations held influence within the American musical landscape. Author Catherine Parsons Smith noted that through 1936, despite some negative press, Still “regularly attracted critical admiration.”18 But subsequent years were a different story. In a 1946 review of Still’s work, New York Times music critic Olin Downes, who aligned himself with leftist “progressive” causes, referred to the composer’s style and the push for universal qualities within his works as “diluted” and deprived of its “racial essence.” He described Still as a “smoothed out” composer, which, he concluded, “is unfortunate.”19

Still began speaking out about the ostracization he faced as a composer with anti-communist views. In 1949, he prepared a speech with Arvey’s help for Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles, wherein he addressed the issue:

I turn now to one tremendous problem that confronts only those composers in our country who are loyal Americans. It is a problem created by the opposition of communists to all who do not subscribe to their beliefs. . . . Through underhanded maneuvering they have placed their emissaries in . . . important positions where they very effectively . . . prevent loyal American composers from being heard whenever and wherever possible.20

He then used a personal example to highlight the suppression he believed he was facing: “From a person [employed in the Victor Record Co.,] . . . a person in a position to know what goes on, I learned that a small group of communists dictate what music shall and shall not be recorded by that company.”21 His daughter, Judith Anne, later recalled a privately arranged meeting, allegedly by Hughes, in which Still was asked to become a member of the Communist Party in America. “The result seemed to create suspicion rather than interest on Still’s part,” wrote musicologist Catherine Parsons Smith.22 (Hughes would go on to publicly deny being an official member of the party.)

Still struggled to find commissions and consistent work in the 1950s. “His devotion to an individualistic musical voice led to some lean years,” wrote Paul J. Horsley for the Philadelphia Orchestra.23 Judith Anne, who began stewarding Still’s musical legacy in the early 1980s, once remarked that her father made an important decision early in his career as he faced financial difficulties while caring for his family and trying to make music that paid the bills. One evening, while lying in bed in his family home in Harlem, he made a vow. “He determined that he would write the kind of music that he wanted to write, regardless of hardship,” she recalled.24

During the later years of his professional career, that vow was tested—but never broken.

Choosing Between Principles and Peers

The 1960s and 1970s brought increasingly avant-garde and abstract compositions to the mainstream fold, and Still’s Romantic style of composing fell largely by the wayside. He continued to compose privately, but his public output significantly decreased before his passing in 1978. Despite his lackluster final years, his professional longevity through the early- and mid-20th century and his unparalleled catalog set him apart as one of America’s few distinguished composers. Music writers and historians often point out Still’s “firsts” in an effort to show his influence: the first African American to have a symphony performed by a major US orchestra, the first African American to conduct a major US symphony orchestra, the first African American to have an opera produced by a major US company—among others. But through each recognition, Still stuck to his individualist principles. The story goes, when referred to by the nickname given to him by others, “The Dean of Afro-American Composers,” he shot back, “Why wasn’t Copland the dean of white composers?”25

During a time of encouraged separatism in the arts, Still integrated; during a time of abstract musical works, he strove to create works filled with beauty and meaning. Whatever Still was expected to be, whether from the perspective of a narrow-minded white critic or narrow-minded black activist, he wasn’t, which often caused him to have to choose between his principles and his peers. “Still did not behave in a way that those who discriminated against him wished him to act; neither did he conform to the wishes of those who looked to him to join in a common cause,” wrote Botstein.26 He was too modern for traditionalists and too traditional for modernists. His music and his writing show that he chose his principles, during prolific years and lean ones.

Still risked his reputation and career for his integrity and his belief in the right to individual expression and paid for it. But today, his legacy as a skilled, visionary composer stands strong. “In the same way a sociology student must study Tocqueville to understand American society, or a philosophy student must study Edmund Burke to discover the theoretical underpinnings of American politics, there is no greater composer for the study of American music than William Grant Still,” Britton wrote.27

In a 1994 essay, author and writer Gayle Murchison shared how she hoped Still would be represented in years to come. “Perhaps the years following the 1995 centennial of Still’s birth will bring about a renaissance of Still studies and result in a deeper understanding of Still as a man of letters and a man of music,” she wrote, adding, “Perhaps he will be seen, more properly, as ‘Still, American Composer of American Music.’”28

On the third anniversary of the horrendous Hamas attack against innocent Israelis on October 7th, 2023, many in the West remain ignorant of the true nature of the evil that perpetrated that attack. Mere days before the anniversary, another would-be murderer attempted to hijack and crash a plane full of Israelis into the terminal building at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport in the name of Islam. The fact he failed is thanks to the heroic actions of captain Smit Machchhar and the passengers who helped him subdue the fanatical jihadist. Their actions, which I describe in my latest article, are a welcome reminder that those who value human life can triumph over those who would destroy it.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Thomas F. Walker
Managing Editor

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Imagine that you’re in the cruise stage of a perfectly normal flight when suddenly, the plane goes into a nosedive, flying downward at full speed. It drops more than half the way from cruise altitude to the ground in less than a minute, then just as suddenly it pulls up into a vertical climb. Then it plunges again.

That’s what happened to the passengers on FlyDubai Flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv on September 30, 2026, as it was passing over Saudi Arabia. That all 174 passengers on board the plane survived to tell the tale is thanks to the actions of several brave men, most of all Captain Smit Machchhar.1

As the passengers endured the terrifying ordeal, in the cockpit a life-and-death battle was underway. Intending to murder everybody on board in the name of Islam, first officer Hamam al-Hammami had attacked Machchhar with an ax before taking control of the plane, reportedly intending to crash it in Israeli territory, possibly the terminal building at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.2 Grievously wounded and believing that his life was over, Machchhar decided to fight back. In an interview from his hospital bed with Narenda Modi, prime minister of Machchhar’s native India, he said, “When I fell, I could tell the plane was going down. I told myself to give it one last push. The door was right there. I was still getting injured. But I managed to open the door and the others came in.”3

The others he refers to were a group of passengers who rushed the cockpit, overpowering al-Hammami. They included Tzvika Manes, Yaniv Hayun, Dr. Shota Musayev, and Asaf Rajuan. Hayun pulled back on the aircraft’s controls, ending its nosedive and restoring stable flight, explaining later that he only knew how to do so from watching episodes of Air Crash Investigation (also known as Air Disaster and Mayday).4 Musayev, a dentist, treated Machchhar’s injuries as best he could, later saying that Machchhar likely would have died from blood loss had they waited any longer to treat him.5

After that, two off-duty pilots who were traveling on the plane to work the return flight to Dubai took over and declared an emergency. Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia responded. On arrival there, Saudi authorities arrested al-Hammami and took him and Machchhar to a hospital. While the passengers waited for FlyDubai to send another aircraft to complete their journey to Tel Aviv, some photographed the plane, revealing that the extreme stresses it had been exposed to during its 600-mph dive had torn away most of the rudder.6

Machchhar’s decision to fight back and open the cockpit door despite his injuries, pain, and fading energy was an act of pure heroism. To call it “selfless” (as many, including his former employer SpiceJet, are) is unfair to him—his actions evidence that he valued human life, and his decision was an act of integrity to his own values.7 The same is true of the passengers who rushed the cockpit. Their actions, contrasted with those of al-Hammami, are a crystal-clear example of the difference between people who value human life and people who hold it in contempt.

Flight 1073 is a vital reminder to take seriously the threat Islamic terrorism poses to free, life-loving people everywhere. But it is also a welcome reminder that the world is full of people such as Smit Machchhar—people who care about human life and embody that in their heroic actions.

Written and directed by Curry Barker
Starring Cooper Tomlinson and Inde Navarette
Distributed by Focus Features (United States)
Running time: 109 minutes
Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, sexual content, pervasive language, and brief graphic nudity.

Obsession (2025) follows Bear Bailey (Michael Johnston), an introverted, hopeless romantic who faces severe anxiety trying to confess his love to his good friend, Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarette).

In the opening shots, the cold palette and absence of characters close to Bear emphasize his unhappiness in his isolation. Characters in the background are blurry but still perceptible, suggesting that human connection is constantly in the back of Bear’s mind but always out of reach. This loneliness is underscored when his cat, Sandy, dies; she had been the only other occupant of the one-bedroom home he inherited from his grandmother.

His infatuation with Nikki seems sweet on the surface. But during his speech to his best friend, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), in which he practices what he will say to her as he confesses his feelings, it’s clear that he loves what Nikki provides for him rather than Nikki herself.

Pretending to talk to Nikki, he says, “You were the only person who was nice to me when I moved here.” This suggests that Bear has experienced social ostracization and exclusion before, and this line explains in part his intense nervousness and anxiety about talking to Nikki, who is supposed to be his friend. It also suggests that Bear views himself as an outsider. Instead of this being a singular experience that he has grown or learned from, it is now a facet of his personality, and he views Nikki’s acceptance of him as an outsider as a reason to believe that they could be happy together romantically.

After a phone call with Nikki during which she complains about losing her crystal necklace, he goes to a crystal shop to buy her another. This will be his in; by replacing something she cherished, he will be able to say the thing he cannot with words—that he loves and cares for her.

But when he gets to the crystal shop, he is instead enchanted by a small children’s toy called the One Wish Willow, which grants the user one wish if he breaks the stick in half. It is unclear why Bear decides to pick this toy over the necklace. It has no significance for Nikki other than that it would be a present from her friend Bear. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the intimacy of replacing a necklace was too explicit a confession for Bear, so he went for a less obvious option in case Nikki said no. This choice reveals something about Bear’s character: He abandons his logic for his emotion. His fear of rejection is understandable, but he makes an incomprehensible choice. Giving Nikki the necklace would surely communicate his feelings better than giving her the One Wish Willow, which says absolutely nothing on its face. He has more of a chance of being rejected by giving her the One Wish Willow because it is not personal to Nikki and therefore does not convey the message that he understands her and cares for her.

This abandonment of logic for the sake of emotional security is a consistent feature of this story, which not only diverts Bear away from a path of clarity and reason but is also the driving mechanism through which Nikki is subjected to torture.

After several excruciating tries to draw Nikki away from their friends for a personal talk at trivia night, Bear settles for driving her home. In the car, their conversation suggests closeness but is stilted by silences that should be filled with Bear’s confessions. Instead, he keeps quiet, pushing himself to talk but always doing so to change the topic, much to his own frustration.

After Nikki eventually gets out of the car and walks toward her door, Bear realizes that he forgot to give her the One Wish Willow. Knowing that even if he had, he wouldn’t have said what he really feels, he instead breaks the stick and says the words to himself, “I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone else in the world.”

What follows is completely unexpected. The wish has a horrific effect on Nikki’s life. Her body is taken over by an extremely violent and obsessive entity. She lies that her dad has cancer to invoke sympathy from Bear, so he stays with her all the time. She digs up his dead cat and makes a shrine to her on Bear’s kitchen floor to show her devotion to him. She brutally kills her best friend, with whom she suspects Bear is having an affair, by smashing her face into her steering wheel. The real Nikki is buried in her own body, and we see fleeting glimpses of her when she suddenly recoils from Bear’s touch, screaming in agony and disorientation.

As audience members, we must admit that Bear had no way to know that his wish would cause this. For the first quarter of the film, he suspects that his wish has worked, but he resists accepting that because of the impossibility. But we get periodic glimpses that the real Nikki is trapped inside her own mind—and Bear sees them. Even if he could not accept that his wish had worked, Nikki’s actions are in line with someone experiencing a psychotic break. After digging up the cat, Nikki makes Bear lunch for work. When he bites into the strange, discolored meat, he realizes that she has cut up his cat and fed it to him. A picture of the two of them is taped to the inside of the lunchbox lid; Bear is circled with the words “you,” and Nikki is circled with the words “not me.” So why does he spend so much of the film trying to find ways to contain this new Nikki so they could have the relationship he has always dreamed of?

We can sympathize with Bear for rejecting a conclusion that seems inconceivable. His entire worldview must change to accept that Nikki’s body has been hijacked due to his wish. Previously, he believed that he lived in a world governed by reason, but he now knows that he lives in a world where dark magic can affect the lives of innocent, unassuming citizens. This is also hard to accept because it means that Nikki is powerless to stop it. Bear has forced Nikki into a state of waking torture in which she has become a prisoner inside her own body with absolutely no hope of breaking out.

In a state of intense bewilderment, Bear goes back to the crystal shop for answers, where he is told, rather candidly, that the only way to free Nikki from this agony is to kill himself. If he dies, the wish will die with him, and Nikki will be free; otherwise, Nikki will live like this forever, in an endless state of powerless servitude.

The film has presented us with an unwinnable ultimatum, which can reasonably evoke sympathy from the audience. Only one solution exists, which requires the biggest loss any human being can suffer. However, it is made clear through the consistent presentations of Nikki’s agony that this is a necessary action. In the final scenes, as Bear debates whether to overdose on pills to end his torment, the film is faster paced, manic, evoking the feeling that Bear is running out of time before something even worse happens, and we cannot help but hope for his death to prevent it. His life taken to save Nikki’s is not a sacrifice, because a life in which he has wreaked such havoc on an undeserving Nikki is not a life worth living. Forcing someone into servitude is a catastrophic violation of individual rights, and morally it must be met with forfeiture of the criminal’s own rights, even if the full effects were unintended. What removes or diminishes our sympathy for Bear is how long it takes him to recognize the fact that he has done something wrong and therefore, should be punished. Even if Bear didn’t know what his wish would entail when he first made it, his decision to accept someone else’s enslavement as long as it serves his desires is evil.

One of the most basic virtues we can exercise is choosing to think rationally and to evaluate the world around us. Therefore, wilfully inducing inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment is a source of evil. Bear spends much of the film ignoring that which he knows is true: Nikki is behaving significantly out of character in a way that puts her life and the lives of others in danger. He lies to his friends and himself, trying to convince them that Nikki is fine, that they love each other so she seems different. When no one believes him, he regurgitates her lie about her dad dying to explain her drastic change, even though he knows it is untrue and makes no sense considering their distant relationship. He isolates her further by telling Ian that nothing is wrong with her, even when Ian identifies her behavior as beyond abnormal and suggests that Bear might be taking advantage of her in her time of crisis.

In the dead of night, the real Nikki manages to break through to talk to Bear, saying that the entity inside of her is sleeping. She begs Bear to kill her, emphasizing that this experience is agonizing and terrifying. Instead of empathizing with her and recognizing his own mistakes, he demands to know what’s so bad about being with him that she would rather be dead. She tries to reply that she has never been with him, but he cuts her off by storming out of the room.

Although Bear, to some degree, is a victim of circumstance, his callousness and complete disregard for Nikki’s experience is truly evil. He had no way to know that his wish would induce such a horrific experience for everyone involved. But when he identified his wish as directly responsible, he should have taken the necessary steps to remedy it. He should not have continued to puppet her around, treating her more like an object than a person. One of the most horrifying and graphic scenes is when he has sex with her; the camera zooms in on her blank expression, absent and disassociated from her own body, as Nikki makes placid sounds of enjoyment.

Even if it is unintended, subjecting someone to involuntary servitude is one of the most heinous acts a person can commit, and there is properly a legal requirement to take away some of the criminal’s own rights in response. But Bear being arrested and thrown in prison would not have freed Nikki. The only way Bear could free Nikki was to take his own life or to take hers. But taking hers would have been immoral to the highest degree because she did nothing wrong.

We can feel sympathy for Bear that he is left without options, but logic and reality demand recognition. His decision to ignore Nikki’s predicament is evil; by doing so, Bear willingly ignores his ability to think by pretending he doesn’t understand the circumstances, which only serves to prolong Nikki’s servitude to him.

Bear’s death is a catharsis for the audience. The audience and Bear are the only ones who know that Nikki is trapped inside of her own body because of the wish. We see Nikki, charismatic and confident before Bear subjects her to this torture. Then we see her in the final scene, screaming yet paralyzed by shock, and we know Bear had to die—anything else would not have delivered the retribution Nikki deserved. Obsession horrifically shows the evils of this action, dealt with justly through the ending.

We can feel sorry for Bear that he had to take his own life while recognizing it is the only thing a sane person could do—because he’d doomed Nikki to a fate worse than death.

Achieving a happy, fulfilling life depends on recognizing that your values, choices, and actions are within your control. This week, Maddox Locher details how he took charge of his thinking and life choices in “How I Renounced Religion and Embraced a Life of Reason” (adapted from his talk at LevelUp 2025). Also, I interview life coach Daria Ermolenko about how to “get in the driving seat of your life” by discovering and understanding the nature and causes of your emotions.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Thomas F. Walker
Managing Editor

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Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a live talk and has been lightly edited. It retains the cadence and idiosyncrasies of an oral presentation.

Religion taught me how to lie before I knew what honesty is.

I still remember sitting in my Sunday school class when I was about ten years old. The teacher asked the class, “How has God been working in your life?” I heard a variety of responses. One girl said that she had run into a friend at the grocery store. This friend hadn’t been going to church for a long time, and the girl said that God had “placed” her friend at the grocery store so that she could evangelize to her and bring her back to church. There was a boy in the class who also gave a similar story of God “working” in his life. He said that his mother came across a Bible verse that really helped them both through a difficult time. His grandmother had recently passed away, and this verse helped them cope with their grief. He claimed that God “placed” that verse there. As I sat there and listened to these stories, I couldn’t help but wonder: Weren’t these just happy accidents?

I didn’t see how God was working in their lives—I simply saw people acting in the same ways they always had. What would it say about their choices if God were determining their actions? What would it mean if the mother was “pushed” to read the Bible that day? Would it have made any difference if she had found the Bible verse? Also, would her grief, on some level, be ordained by God, too? On the other hand, if the girl’s friend was “placed” at the grocery store by God, what does that say about her friend’s “choices?”

In other words: Do our actions have any meaning at all if we’re not choosing them?

This train of thought was interrupted when the teacher turned to me and asked, “Maddox, how has God been working in your life?” I sat frozen for a bit because I wasn’t sure how to answer.

But I felt compelled to give an answer because, in the church, it was looked down upon to openly doubt or to say, “Well, I don’t really know. I don’t really see how God is working.” I felt as if I had to make up an example because I desperately wanted to fit in—I wanted to conform for comfort. So, I did.

I lied that day. I decided to tell the entire class that I, too, saw God working in my life. I told them that I dropped my Bible on the ground, and it opened on the perfect story to help me through a difficult time, too (I wasn’t very original).

When I shared this, I was rewarded. My teacher affirmed me by saying, “Good job, Maddox. Thanks for sharing that great story. I’m glad to see that God’s working in your life, too.” I had so many experiences like this in which I was thinking something different from what everyone else seemed to be thinking, but I didn’t trust my own thoughts. I conformed because, like many people, I liked to be liked, and I disliked being disliked.

I grew up in the church and went to Christian private school from the ages of four to fourteen. During that time, I was completely immersed in Christianity. I went to “science” class, and I was taught creationism. I attended two services weekly: one on Wednesday and one on Sunday. I also was on sports teams and attended all sorts of other classes—but all baked Christian tenets into what otherwise would be normal activities and subjects.

Christianity was in every area of my life. One time, when I was on the soccer team at my middle school, the teacher told us that anything we achieved on the soccer field was ultimately God’s doing because he’s the one who created us—he gave me my body, and when I scored a goal, it was for the Lord.

So, when I scored a goal or did anything that I felt proud of, I convinced myself that I shouldn’t be proud of it. I discredited my own achievements. I belittled myself so that I could “serve God” by giving him credit for everything “I” did—and this pattern was common in many things I did.

All my achievements were ultimately “justified” if they served God—which often meant serving other people. I went on a mission trip to Houston when I was about sixteen years old. The goal of the trip was to go into poor neighborhoods to give away food, hand out Bibles, and share our testimonies (our stories of how we became Christian).

We were basically put into a child labor camp in the scorching heat. My first tasks were to paint a church wall and give away food. I remember another task pretty vividly: My pastors asked me to knock on people’s front doors in an attempt to give them food and to share my testimony. I wondered why I believed in Christianity in the first place. I started calling myself a Christian in first grade under the guidance of my teacher. I still remember that day vividly: I broke down in tears along with much of the first-grade class because I felt so guilty for being a “sinner.”

My teacher had great power to prime us emotionally to believe anything. But when I went to a stranger’s door, I wasn’t sure how to persuade anyone to believe in Christianity. It had always been an emotional thing for me; I had never considered that I had never embraced Christianity on a rational basis. I had adopted Christianity partly because I was mimicking other children—and all of us were obeying adults who told us what to believe.

At first, I was scared to go up to a stranger’s door. But I also felt guilty not doing it because I saw everyone else going up to doors and knocking.

I felt that I was supposed to because, if I didn’t, what kind of Christian would I be? Eventually, the guilt motivated me to knock on a door. A lady opened it, and after a few minutes of conversation, she revealed that she believed in Allah.

This was a curveball that I hadn’t expected. I didn’t know how to respond. How was I supposed to explain that her faith was wrong? I had no idea what to do. So, I said “OK, have a nice day. Bye.”

In essence, I was taught that I was supposed to serve God—not myself. If I didn’t, then I was guilty and would be sent to hell.

Similar “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations recurred throughout my childhood. During my final year of high school, our local government shut down our school to “slow the spread” of COVID-19. As a result, we went remote for the last two months of the year. I remember thinking, Oh, this is great. I can just go home and play video games! Many of my teachers didn’t know what to do. So, I went home and did the minimum coursework necessary to pass my final year of school. Once summer arrived, I fell into a deep depression because I lacked purpose.

During this time, I sensed on some level that something important was either wrong with or missing from my life. On one hand, I resented others setting my schedule and determining my priorities, but on the other, I saw the importance of having some structure in my life. I decided that I needed more structure—but on my own terms.

I considered going into the military; both my parents had been in the air force. If I went, I could learn how to become a radio operator or learn another skill on the military’s dime. But the military didn’t appeal to me because I would have to sign away years of my life.

Another option was college. College is very expensive, although the idea was interesting. I could jump into subjects such as engineering or video game development. But I didn’t want to go into student debt or spend three to four years on a degree program, especially considering that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life yet.

I sat on my hands until my mother reminded me of Praxis, an online college alternative. Its goal is to help young people build meaningful careers rather than merely find jobs that pay the bills. This really interested me because its website guaranteed a satisfying, well-paying job or your money back. Praxis, which was both shorter and cheaper than college, seemed like a good option. I decided to take the leap.

In Praxis, I learned all sorts of skills. I learned how to manage my time more effectively, maintain a sound financial budget, and improve my communication skills. I also did “value identification exercises” in which I asked myself questions aimed at discovering what I wanted out of life and what actions I would have to take to achieve those values. Through these exercises, I realized that many of the things I spent my time on weren’t things I wanted to value; I prioritized them because other people said I had to.

Right before beginning the job-hunt portion of Praxis, I attended an adviser call. She gave me a simple, very helpful piece of advice: “In order to grow, you have to work hard; you have to do difficult things.” This made sense to me; any time I’d grown, it was always difficult. After providing this advice, she asked me, “Maddox, what is the thing that comes immediately to mind that you see as difficult and that you think you should do?” What came to my mind was sales.

At the time, I was considering a few career options, but sales scared me because I feared getting rejected by prospective customers, most of whom were adults well into their careers. Who was I to try to persuade them? I knew that if I wanted to be someone who could persuade and trade with others effectively, I needed to keep building communication skills. I got a sales job at a software company.

I’m telling you all this because Praxis helped me stop simply accepting the premises I was holding because someone else had told me to. I began examining Christianity as thoroughly as I was my career.

However, I want to emphasize that, at this point, I was only beginning to question Christianity, and only in certain respects. I wasn’t yet questioning the truth of Christianity—only my understanding of it. I thought that I could become better at persuading others of its value if I could first persuade myself in clear and powerful language. To learn how to do that, I went to a class at my church on how to argue “logically” for Christianity.

The teacher of that class affirmed what I already suspected: “In order to convince somebody else, you first have to convince yourself.” I felt that Christianity was true—that was the whole reason I was in this class. But when I reflected on how I knew it was true, I realized that I didn’t.

I began to ask more questions, such as: How can I know anything is true? How is knowledge possible? What even is truth? Where does it come from? Why are some people certain and others uncertain?

Although it wasn’t the teacher’s intention, I began to slowly whittle away at my faith. Due to this class, I decided to temporarily suspend my belief in Christianity. I still felt emotional attachment to Christianity, but I strongly wanted to learn to defend it rationally, and to do that (I thought), I would have to approach Christianity as if I were a nonbeliever.

This experience reignited my dormant passion for discovering truth. From a young age, I wanted to learn truths about the world, but my Christian community often squashed my inquisitive tendencies. They said that the “truth” of the Bible was all I needed.

With my mind primed to look for the nature and source of truth, I found myself drawn in 2021 to a conference called TOS-Con (now called LevelUp). I came across a variety of helpful ideas and articles at and after this event. One article fundamentally transformed my views on a subject I had never thought about before: “Reason vs. Mysticism: Truth and Consequences” by Craig Biddle. It shows how reason and faith are two opposing and incompatible ways of attempting to gain knowledge. By thinking about this article, I realized that I had been trying to go by faith when it came to Christianity, but in many other areas of my life, I was going by reason. I determined that if I were to accept Christianity, I would need to be able to ground it in reality using reason.

As I learned from novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, “Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.”1 For example, we know that gravity exists. If we hold a ball at arm’s length and let go of it, it will fall to the ground. We see countless other objects obeying the law of gravity every day. With this knowledge, we can assume that anything we let go of on Earth that is heavier than air will fall to the ground. If we then see a magician appearing to levitate, we know he must be counteracting the force of gravity somehow. Perhaps he has a well-hidden wire system, or he is relying on an optical illusion. These answers fit our knowledge of reality—we know that whatever he is doing, it’s not “supernatural”; it’s part of the same reality that we understand through reason. If we see something that doesn’t fit that understanding, we know we’re either mistaken in what we think we’re seeing or missing a piece of knowledge about reality—and we can set about finding out what we need to resolve the conflict. Reason helps us spot the holes in our thinking and form an integrated, noncontradictory view of reality.

On the other hand, there’s faith. Faith is the acceptance of an idea as true without evidence or in direct contradiction to evidence. For example, I used to believe in young earth creationism, the idea that God created the world in six days about six thousand to ten thousand years ago. But young earth creationism contradicts many facts. The fossil record alone—which includes fossils from millions of years ago—demonstrates that the age of the Earth is much older than six to ten thousand years old. Faith requires accepting such contradictory claims as these or rejecting perceptually available evidence.

As I learned more about epistemology (the study of human knowledge), I learned more about what reason and faith are—and how we properly validate our understanding of the nature of each. Regarding more and more issues, I began to ask myself, “Am I going by faith or by reason?” In asking this question, I realized that the vast majority of my religious beliefs could only be accepted on faith.

I realized that I couldn’t use faith to confirm Christianity’s truth because if faith is a valid means of knowledge, then anything goes.2 Recall the Muslim lady I mentioned earlier: We believed in different gods and mutually exclusive religious ideas, and we both believed via faith.

For example: Faith doesn’t solve the problem that under Christianity, Jesus is considered the immortal son of God; and under Islam, Jesus is considered a mortal prophet. Jesus can’t be both immortal and mortal. Faith, if valid, justifies not only contradictions such as this without any evidence—it permits belief in anything without evidence.

These ideas helped me clarify my approach to seeking truth and figure out whether Christianity was true. At this point, Christianity still seemed to have a vestige of value: It seemed to preach great ethics.

Rand’s ideas about morality, alongside my newfound understanding of reason versus faith, helped me begin to deconstruct my Christianity. Morality is a code of values that we use to guide our choices and actions; on this much, Rand and Christianity generally agree. However, Rand identified a crucial element of morality that Christianity explicitly rejects: The purpose of an individual’s life is his own happiness on Earth. Morality can either be rational, irrational, or some mixture of both. In other words: There can be aspects of a moral code that are life-serving and others that are not.

By studying Rand’s ethics, I learned that there are different kinds of moral codes. For most of my life, I had been accepting a kind of morality that I didn’t even know I was accepting. This was the morality of altruism—more specifically, religious altruism. Altruism literally means “otherism.” It’s the idea that being moral requires sacrificing yourself to others. In my case, it meant sacrificing for God. Rand validly criticized altruism; she pointed out that there are no rational reasons we should sacrifice ourselves for others. I tried finding reasons to sacrifice, but I couldn’t. I didn’t see, for example, why I should become a missionary just because God said so.

Rand also clarified the concept of selfishness as the rational alternative to altruism. She called her morality “rational egoism.” Egoism gets a bad rap; many people assume that egoism necessarily advocates preying on others and sacrificing them to yourself to “benefit” in the immediate moment. There are some people whose ethical codes amount to this, but this isn’t what Rand advocates. She condemned such behavior because it violates rights or otherwise destroys the conditions on which human life depends. She pointed out that preying on others is actually selfless—it harms and destroys the self in addition to harming others. It is much more profitable (in every sense of the word) to be kind and generous to others by default unless a specific person’s actions warrant different treatment.3

If I hurt someone (except in self-defense or defense of others) or steal from him without just cause, there are many negative consequences for both of us. The police might catch me and put me in prison. Psychologically, I would be tormented. I’d forever have to wonder, Will I get caught? Moreover, if I don’t respect rights, why should anyone respect mine? Such behavior would damage my self-esteem, too. How could I respect myself if I do disgraceful things?

Rand advocated rational self-interest (“rational” is redundant once we truly understand what self-interest is and why, but this is a topic for another day). This requires looking at all the relevant facts of reality, and it requires integrating all such facts into a noncontradictory code of ethics.

In part, morality is a matter of surviving. If we don’t have water, food, or air, then we will wither away physically. Morally, we must achieve these values—if we want to continue to exist. Morality is also a matter of thriving. If we don’t have good friendships or meaningful work, we’ll wither away emotionally and psychologically. Morally, we must achieve such kinds of spiritually fulfilling values—if we want to live life to the fullest.

With my newfound understanding of epistemology and ethics, I went to my pastors hoping to understand why they believed everything the Bible said. Like a curious three-year-old, I asked them “why” repeatedly. One time, we discussed the “virtue” of unconditional love. I didn’t understand how loving somebody who isn’t deserving of it could be just. Doesn’t justice involve giving people what they deserve, including love? You should reward the good for being good, and you should not reward bad people for being bad, right?

They answered, in part, by saying that God justifies unconditional love. He loves us no matter what we do. I wasn’t satisfied; how does God justify this? Such a question always received the same kind of response: “Sorry, but God’s ways are higher than our ways. There’s just no way of knowing why he says some of the things he does. You just need to have faith, Maddox.”

What this meant was: “You need to give up your mind. You need to stop looking at reality and obey God without questioning and without understanding. You need to blindly accept.” But this was not acceptable to me. I realized that my pastors weren’t the moral authorities I’d once thought they were. In fact, God wasn’t the authority I thought he was. I became seriously disillusioned with Christianity. Everyone at church held values that I no longer saw as values. When I went to church, it felt like everyone knew I was doubting my faith and was no longer a Christian.

I didn’t renounce Christianity overnight. Despite knowing that Christianity didn’t make sense, I kept flip-flopping between it and this “scary” thing called atheism. I didn’t want to call myself an atheist—in fact, I called myself agnostic for a long time because it was easier to say, “I’m on the fence.” But there is no “fence” when all you have is a binary choice: Believe or don’t. I became a de facto atheist, even if I wasn’t yet ready to accept the label.

I continued to outwardly deny this. Because I was afraid to say otherwise, I kept telling other Christians that I still believed. I was worried that others would consider me immoral for being an atheist. Part of me still sought their nods of approval, but I now knew that others’ approval doesn’t change reality.

Religion reinforces and requires dishonesty. In the first story I shared with you, my teacher encouraged me to lie. She encouraged me to give a certain kind of answer to her question regardless of whether that answer had any correspondence to reality. The fact is: There’s no evidence for God—or him “working” in our lives.

Second, embracing religion produces a lot of guilt, shame, and fear. I was afraid that if I questioned Christianity or told people in my religious community what I thought, they wouldn’t accept me. So, I lied. Being part of the community was comfortable and familiar even if it was intermingled with fear, shame, and guilt.

Third, embracing religion requires sacrificing one’s life to God—which means giving up one’s highest and most precious value in exchange for something that doesn’t even exist. There is no worse trade—but it is required of a serious Christian.

On the other hand, embracing reason offered many good things. First, reason is our only means of discovering what is true. Using it, we can identify whether an idea is supported by facts or not. If it is, it may be true. If it is not, it can’t rationally be accepted as true.

Embracing reason has also helped me build my self-esteem. Even if we are worthy of respect and capable, we can’t know that except by reason.

Embracing reason also put me in direct control of my choices. When I fully accepted that I am capable of knowing things, I put myself firmly in the driver’s seat—and ejected God through the roof.

Given these two basic alternatives—faith or reason—what was I going to choose? I had been trying to “get serious” about Christianity, but every conclusion I came to via reason showed me that Christianity doesn’t make sense.

I ultimately chose reason.

I was finally freed from religion. I felt as though I could think for the first time.

Let me tell you a bit about what my life has been like since embracing reason.

Embracing reason has helped me be more at peace. I feel like I’m no longer in conflict with myself—I can be content. Before, I would experience conflicts between what “God wanted” and what I wanted. Such conflicts would discourage me from acting and put me into analysis paralysis. After embracing and acting consistently from reason, I no longer experience such conflicts.

Embracing reason also enabled me to see and achieve the ultimate goal of my life: to live it. I learned that I have only one life and that I should make it the best it can possibly be.

Embracing reason also led me to become a part of a team that I love to work with at Objective Standard Institute. They embrace reason. I think we’re doing so much good by spreading ideas that help others to do the same.

By acting independently using reason, I’ve met many new friends, colleagues, and people interested in the same ideas and hobbies as I am—the kind of people who expand one’s view of the world. I would never have been open to building relationships with these kinds of people before; as a Christian, I would have immediately judged them negatively.

When I was a Christian, I thought I knew the truth. Instead, dogma was stopping me from connecting with beautiful people. Not anymore. By embracing reason, I became more open to alternate perspectives.

I also had new experiences. For example, I performed in a musical called Fiddler on the Roof as a Russian dancer and a Jewish bottle dancer. Ironically, this is a somewhat religious play. I signed up for it because (a) it’s fun to dance and (b) I didn’t want to be afraid of religion anymore.

I want to leave you all with this: Embrace reason, be honest, and serve yourself.

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Daria Ermolenko is a life coach specializing in relationships and happiness. She holds a master’s degree in psychology and manages the quality of teacher training provision at the University of Buckingham. She also writes and speaks on psychology and happiness. In this discussion, she describes her approach to coaching, which is based on reason, free will, and examining one’s ideas, feelings, and premises.

Thomas F. Walker: Thanks for joining me. Why did you decide to get into psychology and coaching?

Daria Ermolenko: Although my qualifications are in psychology, it’s important to stress that I’m a coach, not a professional psychologist. I decided to specialize in coaching because I think it’s important to think about life in ways that have a demonstrable practical benefit for human flourishing.

In psychology, we sometimes present models for people to consider that are oversimplified and out of date. The newest research in neuroscience certainly hasn’t landed in psychology yet. I think a lot of the assumptions psychologists make about the brain are completely mistaken. But if we know that a certain psychological approach leads to flourishing, such as the Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement (PERMA) approach, why wouldn’t we try to use it to help people? Coaching is a practical way of bringing psychological research into people’s lives.

Walker: Do you have an example of how psychology hasn’t caught up to neuroscience?

Ermolenko: If you read the latest research in neuroscience, the idea that very distinct areas of the brain are responsible for certain functions is essentially untrue. It’s partially true sometimes, but if you read studies on people who have certain areas of the brain removed or damaged and how their brains adapt, and all the research on neuroplasticity, the brain is capable of essentially reassigning other areas to keep certain functions going. But if you open many of the psychology textbooks that people are using today in universities, it won’t reflect that realization. Many of these books are ten or more years old, and a lot of their content simply isn’t accurate anymore because we know so much more about the brain. In many cases, the evidence is accumulating in the opposite direction to the models that were developed by the founding fathers of psychology.

Walker: Psychology is the newest science essentially, and it does seem like it’s still in its infancy. It’s also heavily influenced by philosophy. The philosophic premises you accept, whether you accept a deterministic premise or a behaviorist premise affect your approach to it. How much would you say your philosophic ideas influence how you approach coaching and training?

Ermolenko: Well, if I were in a university exam, I would say that my philosophic approaches aren’t influencing the way that I coach clients at all, because the established thinking is that they shouldn’t affect my choice of approach. The idea is that you want to be as curious as possible—you want to study all the different fields of psychology in as much depth as you can because you want to have the choice when working with a client as to what might help him or her best. I might think that cognitive behavioral therapy approaches are too rigid, but if I’m working with someone who prefers that rigidity, who’s asking for it essentially, then that’s what I might use. Other people are more artistically inclined, more curious, more philosophic, so with them you might apply a bit more of a mix of things—you might invite them to consider a character from a novel or something abstract as a model for habit formation or behavior change. I think the idea is to know as much as you can and to be creative.

I would say that my philosophic beliefs do influence my coaching where that’s in the best interest of the client—for example, my belief in free will. That’s very controversial. But also my beliefs more specifically on the matters at hand in a particular client’s scenario do influence how I coach. That’s why we have what’s called the “chemistry session” at the start of the coaching relationship, in which we ask ourselves, “Do I have beliefs that would prevent me from working with this client with integrity?” If yes, I say, “I’m not the best person to help you. I’ll refer you to a colleague because I don’t believe that the outcome you want is in your best interest, and I can’t in good conscience help you achieve it.”

Walker: It seems to me that without free will, coaching and psychology become meaningless anyway because you can’t change anything.

I saw a psychodynamic therapist for a while, and I eventually noticed that we had a fundamental incompatibility because he had this nonjudgmental attitude almost as an axiom wherein psychology is only about understanding who you are without judgment. He would resist my efforts to try to judge and change my own behavior, ideas, and feelings. Would you say you encourage clients to question and judge themselves and treat ideas, emotions, and premises as things that can be actively shaped and controlled by people making choices?

Ermolenko: Absolutely, I believe that wholeheartedly. I wish people believed that if you don’t believe in free will, why engage in the process of therapy or coaching?

I definitely think that people can shape their feelings. People can shape how their feelings develop in response to certain stimuli and triggers, which is essentially one of the biggest parts of coaching. This is another area wherein the latest research doesn’t map on to certain schools of thought in psychology. For example, people who believe that we shouldn’t challenge feelings have a mistaken view of how feelings arise. They think feelings simply exist, that we are compelled to follow them. But if you understand that sometimes feelings arise from something as simple as the fact that the temperature of your body has changed by half a degree, and suddenly in a situation in which you would usually be very calm you’re now angry—if you’re conscious of how your feelings arise, you stop seeing them as uncontrollable.

All of what I do is about challenging people’s feelings and challenging the origins of their behavior, thoughts, and impulses, and trying to shape those in line with how they’re motivated to live. That’s the point of it all. Believing that you are in the driver’s seat of your life, able to shape it, able to shape everything that goes along with it, to me is fundamental. It’s the life force that propels you because if you believe you’re passive in all of this, then why be curious? Why develop your brain? Why do anything, essentially?

Walker: You’ve hit on another philosophic premise there, which is mind-body integration. Not only do our physical sensations affect our moods, but our moods affect our bodies as well. We hold tension in our muscles. I’ve dealt with that a lot. Would you say that treating the mind as though it’s some kind of floating entity separate from physical reality is a premise that often comes up in coaching and psychology as well?

Ermolenko: I think so, but again, it depends on what the point is. If the point is to develop or disabuse yourself of certain beliefs, then treating the mind as a separate floating entity might be helpful to that particular end in a delimited way. However, if that’s the only framework you have, and you’re refusing to engage with basic science, that’s not going to work. For example, this often comes up in debates about treating depression, such as when somebody is not engaging with the basic ways to live well. If someone isn’t eating healthily, exercising, or going outside every day, then there’s no point going any further. Those are core physical ingredients that impact how the neurons in your brain interact with each other. You need a combination of everything. I think whatever issue makes logical sense to address in the moment is what professionals with integrity should address.

Walker: You ended up focusing on relationships specifically in your work. How important would you say relationships are to a person’s overall ability to flourish? Do you think they’re something we need for our happiness, or is it particular to each individual whether he or she needs a romantic partner, a big group of friends, close family connections, that kind of thing?

Ermolenko: I think so, based on what the research says and what I’ve observed with my clients: The importance of the specific number of connections you have varies in relation to people’s personalities. Clearly, some people are extroverted, and some are more introverted, but your perception of the extent to which you are succeeding in that domain is quite crucial. For example, if you want a romantic partner but you don’t have one, your opinion of your own well-being will be lower than someone who is accepting of the fact that these things take time, and you need to find the right person. It’s the expectation versus reality. At the same time, people who live longer, people who are healthier in old age, are the ones who have close, loving relationships. But I think there are individual differences, and clearly some people are self-sufficient and comfortable—if they find like-minded people they’re happy, but if they don’t, they almost would prefer to simply be self-sufficient. It’s all about identifying and managing each person’s expectations.

Walker: It sounds as though self-esteem’s the key concept here because, on the one hand, if a person’s struggling with self-esteem, he can become very dependent on other people for validation. That apparent “need” of having lots of friends or a partner can be an expression of something that’s missing internally. How does self-esteem enter into the question of how to coach people on relationships? Do you see relationships as key to self-esteem, or do you think self-esteem needs to be right first before a person starts trying to sort out his or her relationships?

Ermolenko: I think somebody’s self-esteem should ideally exist independently of his or her romantic relationships, because then you’re entering into relationships for the right reasons. I do a lot of work on self-esteem. I mainly try to point out to clients the long-term cost of relying on external validation for self-esteem, which is that they usually end up in mediocre relationships that they’re not happy with because they’ve received what they felt they needed in the immediate term, which is validation. But perhaps that real connection, that mutual respect, isn’t there. If you have low self-esteem and you’re relying on external validation, the way you come across to your partner is also influenced by that. You come across differently from somebody who is self-sufficient and would be able to be resilient should his or her partner leave. So, I think self-esteem is crucial, especially for people trying to find their path in this whole relationship game. If you’re trying to be comfortable walking in the light of the truth and identifying where perhaps things are suboptimal and need to change, then the higher your self-esteem, the more likely you are to make the right choice.

Walker: Do you find that all this is true for non-romantic relationships, such as friendships, as well?

Ermolenko: Because friendships and other relationships form earlier in life than romantic relationships, I think it’s actually much more the case with friendships. I work with certain clients exclusively on friendships, identifying, for example, what the problem is with simply telling somebody that you don’t want to go for a drink. To me, that’s really difficult to understand, so I have to be curious and ask things such as, “Why is it difficult to tell somebody exactly what you want?” Then the low self-esteem comes up, the childhood experiences, being left out at school, all that stuff that needs working through. Because we generally have more friends than we do romantic partners, the potential for self-esteem to be eroded further is even higher if you’re relying on validation from friends. In such cases, you’re inevitably going to be led to some sort of lowest common denominator there if you don’t have your own confidence and your own clear path in life and you’re merely relying on other people to pivot you wherever they wish to.

Walker: It’s almost a stereotype in psychology that everything goes back to your relationship with your mother or your father. How often do you find that that actually is a big element in why somebody’s not finding happiness in romance or in friendships?

Ermolenko: I do find that sometimes. I don’t find it as often as pop psychology suggests, but what I find is that the way people interact with their parents as an adult influences or is related to the way they interact with other adults. It’s almost like a formula, which obviously harks back to childhood. I’m interested to know why grown-up young adults who are otherwise successful and self-sufficient struggle to interact with their parents in a productive way, even when there’s been no severe childhood trauma or pathology. When they have unhealthy interactions with parents—when they lie or evade certain things to protect their parents’ opinions of them, for example—that then maps on to how they see themselves in the world as a partner, as a friend, as a colleague. I think parents are really important, and changing the way you interact with parents when you grow up is a good idea from what I’ve observed so far.

Walker: If you could give one piece of advice to a reader who’s getting started thinking about their relationships and life choices, what would it be?

Ermolenko: I would say that the easiest thing for the average person to grasp is that relationships are no different than any other domain. Because romantic relationships are carried out with one person at a time, they have considerable weight in someone’s life. Nowadays, people generally feel that they can have a variety of careers. They can pivot easily. I don’t think anyone’s worried that they have to stay in the same job forever anymore. It’s the same with friends—people can switch friendship groups or simply move. But I think with romantic relationships, we spend so much of our youth waiting to find that good relationship that’s going to carry on, and when we find a relationship of any kind, we almost want to put it into that category regardless of whether it truly fits.

Most of the work I do with clients is disabusing them of the notion that they should stay in a relationship that’s mediocre, one in which there’s loads of compromise. They would describe it as hard work, for example, when there’s underlying resentment but nothing’s radically wrong—most people would consider that to be a good relationship. But I have to explain to them that that mediocrity, that lack of self-actualization you feel, the lack of respect you feel for each other on a deep, mental level—that is enough for that relationship not to be healthy, because you’re engaging in it to the detriment of all other opportunities in a way that you’re not with friends or family or colleagues. So, the idea is to spot that mediocrity and analyze it and ask, “Why are you content in a situation in which you don’t want to invest in the relationship? In which it’s not driven by a positive impulse, but it’s a burden?” I investigate that and try to give people the tools they need to feel confident enough to walk away from situations like that so they can find ones in which they’re flourishing.

Walker: I find that a lot of people, especially in older generations such as Generation X and higher, tend to settle and compromise with somebody who’s clearly not their ideal. Do you find that people are so driven to find a partner that they will not wait and will choose security, stability, and validation over taking the time to find somebody who’s right for you? Which, if you’re an interesting and complex person, often requires looking overseas, looking in specific places; it requires being really patient and willing to search. You’re not going to find that person in your office, which I think a lot of people expect to.

Ermolenko: Yes, absolutely. It’s almost as if we may as well not be in the twenty-first century because people really do settle so quickly. Even though they don’t make things official quickly, and the social norms have changed, it may as well still be like it was in the past. The story I often hear (and, of course, the people I talk to have relationships that are mainly suboptimal because otherwise they wouldn’t come to a relationship coach, so you have to take what I say with a pinch of salt) is, “If there’s no reason not to, I will take the next step. If there’s no reason not to go on the second date, I’ll go on the second date. If there’s no reason not to make things official, I will.” There’s this passivity. Rather than it being a conscious choice to move toward something that they value, they’re thinking, “Well, I should be in a relationship, and there’s nothing wrong with this one. We only argue every night, but that’s OK because everyone else does that; my friend Sally and her partner do that, too.” But that’s merely because she wants to believe that she’s also in the right. People validate each other in this wrongness, and I’m trying to fight against it as best I can and equip people with self-esteem. They need to be able to exist outside of the romantic relationship realm until there’s a reason to enter it, rather than the other way around—this mindset of having a relationship at all costs. Why would you want a mediocre relationship even if there’s nothing badly wrong with it? Why would you not want the best relationship you can have? I think my job is to equip people with the understanding that they can have the best relationship possible to them, but they can’t do that if they’re not in it for the right reasons.

Walker: If people are interested in finding out more about what you do, where can they find you?

Ermolenko: People can find me on Life Coach Directory and on my website, dariaermolenko.com. I offer relationship coaching based on rationality, tailored to your personal needs and situation. I always have a consultation session, and if I’m not the right person to help you, I will let you know straight away. The idea is that I will challenge your thinking. I will challenge your assumptions and beliefs. I will challenge all the advice your friends have given you before you’ve come to me, and I will try to work with you to put you on a path on which you are flourishing and in a relationship that’s fulfilling, that you are fully actively engaged in rather than passively going through the motions and simply settling. Ultimately, I try to put people in the driver’s seat of their personal lives.

Walker: Thank you very much.

As a frequent flier in both Europe and America, I’ve enjoyed both the extremely low fares available in Europe and the higher standard of service often provided by American carriers. That we can’t have both in either market is the fault of government, according to Michael O’Leary, CEO of Europe’s largest airline, Ryanair. In this week’s new article, I celebrate O’Leary for his willingness to name and shame government for its role in holding back aviation competition.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles,

Thomas F. Walker
Managing Editor

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In 1994, a small, upstart Irish airline had been struggling to compete with the powerful duopoly of British Airways and Aer Lingus on routes between the United Kingdom and Ireland for ten years. It had a small fleet of elderly planes and growing debts. It had successfully drawn passengers away from the larger carriers by undercutting their prices, but its operating costs were outstripping its revenues. Its name was Ryanair.1

Enter entrepreneur Michael O’Leary. Taking inspiration from the successful U.S. budget airline Southwest, he transformed the small company, implementing an approach not seen before in Europe: He slashed Ryanair’s operating costs by removing all the “frills”—business-class cabins, complimentary food and drinks, inflight magazines—effectively turning its planes into flying commuter buses. He also standardized the company’s fleet on a single aircraft type, massively cutting maintenance and training costs.2

Since then, O’Leary has grown Ryanair into Europe’s largest airline. Between March 2025 and March 2026, it carried 208.4 million passengers on 647 aircraft to more than 200 destinations, generating an eyewatering profit of €2.26 billion.3 Its remarkable success has inspired others, with Europe’s low-cost carriers (primarily Ryanair, EasyJet, and WizzAir) now accounting for around 40 percent of all flights on the continent.4

Ryanair has achieved all this while slashing passenger fares to some of the lowest available anywhere in the world. Its prices typically start around €14.99 ($17.36) for a one-way ticket and go as low as €5 during sales.5 This is far cheaper than the fares that O’Leary’s inspiration, Southwest, offers on U.S. domestic flights, which typically start around $59.6 Newer U.S. budget carriers have taken inspiration from Ryanair, including Frontier and the recently collapsed Spirit Airlines, but none has been able to fully replicate its ultra-low-cost model in the U.S. market.

O’Leary is often asked whether Ryanair has any interest in expanding into the U.S. domestic market or other markets such as transatlantic routes, the Middle East, Africa, or Asia. His recent answer to this question at the 2026 Norges Bank Investment Conference shines a light on why U.S. budget airlines have struggled to replicate his success in the American market:

We work very well in Europe because we have pretty much incompetent competition in Europe, like Lufthansa, Air France/KLM . . . The U.S. airlines are a bit more aggressive; they are much stronger and much more well-embedded. . . .

The only good thing about Europe is it is a deregulated market for air travel. So, thankfully I get very little government interference. The minute I go outside of Europe, to the Middle East, to Asia, to the U.S., it is hugely government regulated. [Air travel in] the States is already reasonably well-run, although it’s quite expensive. [Operating there] wouldn’t work, and it would undermine Ryanair.7

O’Leary deserves kudos for pointing to government interference as the key barrier to improving the quality of air travel around the world. In the United States, regulations have caused the high fares that would make Ryanair’s model unviable and draw the company’s resources away from Europe, whereas in Europe, past and present government control of airlines has created a market in which challengers can outcompete them easily, as O’Leary says:

[European national airlines] are all useless. Government-owned, heavily regulated, hugely government-subsidized. All the [legacy carriers] are running around at the moment trying to get bailouts. . . . It’s not a hypercompetitive industry. . . . So, all I have to be is modestly competitive to be better than the rest of the competition in Europe, but that’s not setting the bar very high.8

Imagine the improvements that would be possible in a market that combined the best of both worlds—the better management of established U.S. airlines with the less-regulated market of Europe. O’Leary has no time for the way governments hamper business and restrict freedom, and he’s not afraid to make his derision public. Indeed, O’Leary credits his willingness to speak and act in accordance with his honest views as a factor in Ryanair’s success:

The advantage of not being overly sensitive about my reputation or our image or being culturally popular is that we’re ruthlessly low cost, and that gives us huge freedom to chase those kinds of cost-saving measures or to reinvent the way we drive the airlines, and then ultimately all the other morons will follow us along. The American airlines have just discovered charging for bags 15–20 years after we started doing it. Now they’re trying to do it as a way of gaining revenue whereas we did it not as a way of generating revenue but as a way of eliminating cost.9

Michael O’Leary deserves credit for his unabashed honesty in calling out government regulations for the way they constrain business and make us all worse off. His clarity on this issue, his willingness to say what he thinks without concern for others’ reactions, and his integrity in running his business in line with his ideas should be an inspiration to all.

Welcome to the Fall 2026 issue of The Objective Standard, the rational alternative to conservatism and regressivism.

When we navigate relationships, even with the moral clarity of an integrated, rational philosophy, determining the best course of action can be difficult. We need to fully understand both others and ourselves. One thing that can help enormously is actively engaging with well-crafted stories that show and contrast characters grasping and failing to grasp their emotions and motives—and the consequences for their lives. In “Seeing People Clearly: Lessons from Jane Austen,” Angelica Werth describes and demonstrates how one of literature’s greatest authors depicts these processes and how we can apply her insights to our own lives.

Art movements are often also philosophic movements. A powerful example of this is the little-known pre-Soviet Russian poetry school known as Acmeism. In “The Morning of Acmeism: The Forgotten School of Reality-Affirming Poetry,” Objective Standard Institute junior fellow Georgy Sinitsky details this movement and the brief expression of rationality it represented in the bleak history of Russian thought.

Rational philosophy is, by its nature, absolute—it is grounded in and expressive of the facts of reality. But whereas many think of absolute principles as restrictive, Craig Biddle argues in “The Liberating Absolutism of Objectivism” that this absolutism actually frees us from the tyrannical whims of subjectivism to understand and uphold principles that empower us to live our best lives.

Next, in part two of “Understanding the Declaration of Independence,” Timothy Sandefur continues his exploration of the ideas that underpinned the American founding, observing the timeless principles that apply as much in any era as they did in 1776.

To the extent that entrepreneurs are free from coercion, they will be able to innovate. I demonstrate this fact in “Project Sunrise: The Future of Intercontinental Travel,” detailing the impressive achievement of Airbus and Qantas in developing the longest-range passenger jet ever built. I also note how much further advanced aviation might be if it were not for past and present government meddling in the industry.

Then, in “The Volunteers Who Turned Failed Transport Links into Thriving Tourist Attractions,” I celebrate the passionate individuals who, in the stifling environment of widespread nationalization and industrial decline of 1950s Britain, set out to acquire and restore railway lines that today serve as an immersive educational experience of what life and industry were like in decades past, as well as offering opportunities for film, training, research, and more.

Kicking off our reviews for this issue, in “Angel Down Makes a Mockery of Pulitzer Prize’s Celebration of Excellence,” Angelica Werth examines this deeply flawed book, which rejects the conceptual nature of literature in favor of giving an emotional impression—as though the two must necessarily be opposed.

While books that reject meaning and clarity are awarded Pulitzers, movies either lacking in moral themes or possessing frighteningly dangerous ones are widely praised by critics and adored by the public. In “Nolan’s Odyssey (2026) Fails on All Levels: As an Adaptation, as a Film, and as a Story,” Tim White shows why Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s classic is more an insult than a tribute to the ancient epic. Meanwhile, in “Odysseus and the Limits of Ancient Heroism,” John Devlin recognizes the importance of the original work as the pioneer of heroism in literature while highlighting how the mysticism of ancient Greek culture undermined its otherwise heroic theme.

Then White highlights another example of morally bankrupt movies attracting widespread praise in “Citizen Vigilante Is Exactly What It Looks Like—and That’s Not a Good Thing.” His examination of the film explores many aspects of its story and the ethical premises it exhibits, while Robert Bidinotto’s “I Write Vigilante Thrillers—But Citizen Vigilante Disgusts Me” focuses on the nature of vigilante protagonists and offers a contrast to show how they can be heroic when written properly.

Rounding off this issue, in “Mickey 17: The Importance of Valuing Life—Especially Your Own,” Ava Scott-Nadal thoughtfully evaluates the film, which uses a creative science-fiction setting to explore how easily respect for individual lives can be lost and why we should always value human life and uphold our right to our own.

That’s it for this issue—I hope you enjoy the articles and reviews. If so, be sure to recommend and share them with friends on social media, in conversation, and especially on Substack. If you have a Substack publication of your own, please recommend The Objective Standard on your home page (see “recommendations” on your dashboard). And if you’ve not yet subscribed to the journal for people of reason, head over to TheObjectiveStandard.com and become a subscriber or upgrade your subscription today.

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Thomas F. Walker
Managing Editor
The Objective Standard

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Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a live talk and has been lightly edited. It retains the cadence and idiosyncrasies of an oral presentation.

Imagine that you have a crush on somebody and you have reason to believe that this person likes you back. Then you’re at a bar or a dance and you see him or her dancing with somebody else. What would you do? Or if you’ve been in this situation, what did you do?

Believe it or not, this is a situation that Jane Austen wrote about. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg; we all have to deal with many kinds of complex situations within relationships. At different times in our lives, we all have to make decisions about romantic relationships: Do we start a romantic relationship? Do we end one? We’ve all found ourselves in tricky conflicts with friends and had to resolve arguments. At times, we’ve had to negotiate better ways to communicate with our parents and siblings, and so on.

In order to equip ourselves for these inevitable and often painful situations, there are a few key things we can do. We can look to philosophy, which explores the fundamental nature of human beings, how we know what we know, and how we should act. We can look to psychology and learn about patterns of behavior, thought, and emotions and how we can influence them. But what people don’t often think about is that we can also look to great fiction—which dramatizes both. Or as Austen put it, novels can contain “the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties.”1

All good fiction includes conflict, which is fundamentally a clash of values. Two or more parties want things they’re willing to strive for—and they cannot both have them. (Occasionally, one character has an internal clash, or one “party” is actually a challenge posed by nature, but two or more parties is more common.) Great fiction also contains vivid characters, and many of these are archetypes: a particular kind of person who serves a certain plot function but whom you’ve probably also encountered in real life. Austen was especially good at showing archetypes in a subtle way, depicting how they fared and what they did in different situations and different kinds of relationships. But she also went deeper than that, and that’s why we’re going to talk about her work today.

Before we go any further, I want to say that fiction is something that is enjoyable in and of itself. We read a great novel and love it because it’s fun. Additionally, the digging a little deeper we’re going to do here is part of the enjoyment of fiction. The learning that we can do by thinking about characters, understanding them, and evaluating them adds to the enjoyment. This is because fiction can help us grasp essential truths on a fundamental level by connecting them to our emotions—by giving us a reason to care.

To contextualize Austen’s work, it helps to have a bit of background. She was born in 1775 and died mysteriously in 1817. She was the daughter of a preacher and part of a large family. She began writing from an early age, about twelve, beginning with humorous short stories and vignettes. When she initially began to publish novels, she did so anonymously. They were published as “by a lady.” That being said, there’s a lot we don’t know about her life. She didn’t keep a diary, or if she did, we don’t have it. There were no biographies of her written during her life. And the first biography wasn’t written for over half a century after her death by a nephew who didn’t know her that well.2 Nor do all of her letters survive; we have some, but her sister burned some. So, there’s a lot we don’t know. What we do know is what’s in her published works, particularly her main six novels. These are the four that she published during her lifetime (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma) and the two that her family published shortly after her death (Persuasion and Northanger Abbey).

Within these novels we see some pretty consistent characteristics. Austen is often noted for her wit; she liked to look at what’s absurd in the archetypes she employed, in their relationships, and in the social norms of her time and poke a bit of fun at them. For example, she absolutely detested people with authority who neglected the responsibilities that came with that authority, or even worse, abused it. We can see this is in the clergymen in her novels. The less important clergymen are lazy or hypocritical, but the important ones are always absurd. And they’re absurd in the same way: They’re pompous, self-important, and arrogant. They’re written for laughs, so we get to giggle at the fact that the person is this way, rather than being infuriated with them.

But Austen’s appeal goes deeper than that. In all of her novels, there are moral lessons. There is the development of timeless virtues, and this is why it’s still worth talking about them two hundred years after they were written, when a lot of the social norms she was criticizing are gone or significantly faded. We’ll get into these lessons in more depth, but a lot of them are around things such as justice and honesty. In order for her heroines to learn these lessons, they need to gain some kind of knowledge. Usually this is both internal knowledge about themselves and external knowledge about other people and the world around them. One of the fun things about Austen is that she actually gives us most of this information if we are attentive enough to pick up on it before the heroines do. It’s subtle.

However, possibly my favorite thing about Austen is that she creates a benevolent universe. All of her heroines get happy endings, but it’s not automatic, and it’s not guaranteed; they don’t know they will get them. They have to earn them. They have to develop their characters. These earned happy endings provide us with motivation along with an exploration of what the relevant virtues and principles look like when applied. We’re going to look at this from a few different angles.

Ideas Shape Choices

First, we must recognize that ideas shape choices. By ideas, I mean your core beliefs about human nature, what constitutes a good life, and what you expect from other people. It was common in Austen’s time for writers to think about their moral ideas and how they could explicitly promote those principles in their novels, or even to write novels in order to propagandize. Marilyn Butler, a preeminent Austen scholar, argues that what makes Austen stand out from her contemporaries, and one of the reasons that she is more influential than they, is that she showed us her characters’ ideas rather than telling us. Many of her contemporaries had their characters declare their philosophies in speeches or in letters. Occasionally in Austen we get a conversation, a snippet, or a sentence or two of this, but mostly we see who they are. They show us in their actions, their words, their topics of conversation, and how they speak about those topics. Austen was praised for her development of a variety of idiolects; each of her characters sounds different for a reason.3

She shows her characters’ ideas in a lot of ways, but I want to take one example. For this, we need to start with her intellectual context. As I mentioned, Austen was born in the late 18th century and started writing in the early 19th century. At this time, rationalism was giving way to romanticism in philosophy. The entirety of these philosophies goes beyond the scope of this discussion, but here are some relevant points. Rationalism emphasizes the use of reason over and detached from experience and emotion. It is often associated with sciences and things that are constructed by human beings. Romanticism is the opposite; it emphasizes the importance of emotion over reason, and it’s associated with nature and with the arts.

Austen examined these two schools in Sense and Sensibility. This title may sound a bit odd to a modern ear, but “sensibility” in her time meant something more like sentimentality or emotionalism. This is the only novel in which Austen had two heroines, sisters, one of whom represents sense and rationalism and the other sensibility and romanticism. Throughout this novel, she puts them in similar situations so we can see how they respond differently and what the results of those behaviors are. Along the way, they both go through different arcs.

Recall the imagined scenario in which your crush is talking to somebody else with evident interest. Austen puts both of the sisters in this situation, and we’ll see how they respond differently—according to their ideas about what is important and what constitutes a good life.

Marianne is our romantic; she’s not merely somebody who feels things strongly, but somebody who indulges her emotions as a matter of principle. She believes that to be a good person is to be emotional. She judges people by how passionate they are. When she goes to a ball and sees the gentleman she’s interested in, and who she thought was interested in her, with another lady, Austen tells us, “Her face was crimsoned over, and she exclaimed, in a voice of the greatest emotion, ‘Good God! Willoughby, what is the meaning of this? Have you not received my letters? Will you not shake hands with me?’”4 For Marianne, wearing her heart on her sleeve is a badge of honor. It would never occur to her to not say what she’s thinking or feeling, no matter how public the context or serious the consequences.

By contrast, we have her sister Elinor. Elinor wants to be rational, she wants to do the practical thing, she wants to do what she thinks is right—at the cost of ignoring her own emotions entirely. She shoves them down, suppresses them, trying to never make them somebody else’s problem but also not dealing with them herself. She finds herself in a similar situation to Marianne’s. She’s at home when the gentleman in whom she is interested comes to visit, as does another lady who is attached to him. Elinor thinks she ought to leave them alone;

she soon afterwards felt herself so heroically disposed as to determine, under pretence of fetching Marianne, to leave the others by themselves; and she really did it, and that in the handsomest manner, for she loitered away several minutes on the landing-place, with the most high-minded fortitude, before she went to her sister.5

Elinor is martyring herself because she refuses to acknowledge the reality and validity of her emotions.

Consider yourself in this scenario. What would you do in their places? Would you be more like Marianne and express your emotions clearly and vocally, regardless of who’s around? Would you be more like Elinor and shove them down and try to pretend they’re not there? Or something else? And why? What is it about your view of life and human nature that pushes you in that direction?

The “why” question is important because this kind of self-knowledge is essential to how we grow, which Marianne learns. She finds herself in a dire situation, and she realizes through reflection that it’s not only her actions that led her there but the beliefs that drove her actions. The most relevant idea is that being passionate and expressing her emotions is always right, without questioning them or thinking about the context of the situation and whether it was appropriate to express her emotions in that way.

She realizes that she’s able to correct her ideas and then her behavior. It’s an interesting kind of climax, a realization, but it’s one we see over and over again in Austen. As Butler put it, “her plots are a movement from ignorance to knowledge, culminating in a moment of intelligent discernment.”6 But the obstacles to that intelligent discernment, that knowledge, vary dramatically from novel to novel.

Self-Deception

Pride and Prejudice centers around self-deception, particularly in a heroine who believes herself a very good judge of character. In fact, the working title for the novel was First Impressions. The protagonist is Lizzy Bennet, who misjudges two key characters in the novel.

First, we have Mr. Wickham—a walking red flag. From the very beginning, he flirts with Lizzy, charms her, talks to her family kindly, and opens up. He talks to her about his past and how he’s been wronged by the other character. He’s open and amiable, so she overlooks the facts that he’s shared far more than is appropriate given their relationship and that he doesn’t do the things he said he was going to do. She also overlooks the fact that she doesn’t have the evidence to judge the claim that the other character had, in fact, wronged him.

The other character, Mr. Darcy, is quite offensive on their first meeting. He says something negative about Lizzy’s looks within her hearing. He’s generally standoffish and arrogant to everyone. Later, he starts to be more polite and behave like a gentleman, even correcting others’ rudeness toward her. But he’s still distant and reserved. He waves away any potential inadequacy on his part by saying he’s not good at making conversation with people.

There comes a situation in which Lizzy makes clear to him her disapproval—that she thinks that Mr. Darcy is a bad person because of what he supposedly did to Mr. Wickham as well as another reason. Mr. Darcy initially is angry, but he decides to explain himself, unintentionally creating a test for her. Mr. Darcy writes Lizzy a letter in which he sets forth his side of the story.

At first, she doesn’t want to believe it. She had thought herself a good judge of character; how could she be so wrong about two people? But she’s honest. She stops and thinks. She goes through the letter a couple of times. She asks herself whether what she’s reading makes sense with what she knows of each of the two men. She asks whether Darcy would have given her the kind of information that he gave her if it were not true. Over a couple of pages, Austen spells out the process of introspection and the realizations Lizzy has. Here is one sentence of it: “Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned.”7

Through Lizzy’s realization, she’s identifying her emotions, past and present, and how she deceived herself through them. Note how active this language is: “courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away.” This isn’t something that simply happened. Lizzy actively chose to ignore evidence, to ignore her sister’s warning, to ignore the red flags in Mr. Wickham and the positive things she was seeing about Mr. Darcy. She “drove reason away”—it was an active thing that she chose. The good news is that she can now choose differently. She can choose to look for more evidence, to act more civilly toward Mr. Darcy, and to reassess herself.

She thinks, “Till this moment I never knew myself.”8 She had not realized that her emotions could lead her astray in that way, but now she does. We already know that when we face tough decisions, we are shaping ourselves through what we decide. But we can also learn about ourselves if we choose to turn the spotlight inward and ask, How did we come to these conclusions? Why are we thinking what we’re thinking? Why do we want this? Why do we feel this way? If we ask those questions, we start to understand ourselves on a much deeper level.

We also are able to understand others better because we can see where our own emotions, misconceptions, hasty judgments, and insufficiently evidenced evaluations could be leading us astray. This is a pattern we see throughout Austen’s work: All her novels involve the characters gaining some kind of knowledge about themselves and about each other, and through this they come to better understand one another.

Better Understanding Others

We can learn from the processes, challenges, and triumphs of her characters and apply these lessons to our own lives to better understand the people around us. How? The following strategies are all things that we see Austen’s characters doing, that we can do as we read fiction, and that we can do with people in our own lives.

The first strategy is to think of yourself like a detective. In recent years, publishers have released several novels based on Austen’s works in which the author turns the heroine into a detective solving a murder or other mystery. The reason this works so well is because Austen depicted her female characters as detectives, trying to figure out the moral stature of the people around them so they can make the most important decision in the life of a woman in Regency England, which is whom to marry. A heroine has to put together different clues, and she can go wrong if, like Lizzy, she ignores some things that she really ought not to ignore.

In detective stories, very often the detective comes to a wrong conclusion initially. He has some evidence, but he puts it together wrongly. He thinks that he knows more than he does and creates a narrative that sounds compelling but is, in fact, incorrect. We see this throughout Austen’s novels, such as with Lizzy in regard to Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham.

If we’re actively reading fiction, we’re doing the same thing all the time. We want to figure out who the villain is, what’s behind the secret plot, or who the murderer is before the detective or hero does. We can also do this with people in our own lives. When we’re getting to know somebody or considering a relationship, we can look at the clues we have. We can ask ourselves what we know about his character, what we’ve seen from him, what makes sense as an explanation for his behavior, and whether we even know enough to come to a conclusion yet.

The next strategy is projection. I’m sure your parents have told you at some point to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. This is something that we do very naturally when we read fiction. In fact, the parts of our brains that we use when we’re imagining ourselves in the future are active when we’re reading fiction.9 But we can do this more deliberately. We can imagine we’re Marianne in Sense and Sensibility and ask ourselves what we would do in her situation, how we would feel. Austen’s characters encourage each other to do this, too. Lizzy’s friend encourages her to put herself in the shoes of her sister’s suitor to understand how he must be feeling at this moment so she can better advise her sister.

But sometimes it’s really hard to relate to people. Sometimes we cannot understand their thinking, and we cannot feel as they would feel. They’re simply too different from us; we wouldn’t behave in that way. Or maybe it’s even worse—maybe we’ve judged that this person is immoral, so we don’t want to feel like they would feel. We don’t want to imagine ourselves as a bad person.

In that case, we can employ “strategic empathy.” This is a strategy used by military analysts, because when you’re trying to figure out what to do in a war, it’s dangerous to feel as the enemy feels. But you still have to know how to handle them; you’ve got to figure out how to adapt your strategies for the situation. This is a whole field, but there are two important questions to consider: How does this person or group see themselves? And how do they see the situation? You don’t need to feel as they feel—only to understand where they’re coming from.

We see this, too, in Austen’s fiction. In Sense and Sensibility, Elinor, the rationalist, is confronted with a malicious character. She could never feel as this lady feels. She would never treat somebody the way this woman is treating other people. But by understanding how the other woman sees herself and how she sees the situation, Elinor knows how to handle her. She knows what to tell her and what not to tell her, how to frame things, and therefore how to get through the situation better.

The last point is not so much a strategy as a pitfall to avoid: assumed similarity, also known as excessive self-reference. We all have the most experience with ourselves; we spend more time with ourselves than we do with any other human being. The result is that we tend to assume that other people are like us. But other people are not like us in many ways. We can go wrong if we assume that their motivations, thinking, and emotions are like our own when we don’t have evidence for that.

In Emma, a mentor warns Emma against this. She says, “do not pretend, with your sweet temper, to understand a bad one, or to lay down rules for it: you must let it go its own way.”10 There are many characters in Austen’s fiction, mostly minor characters who are written for laughs, who do this frequently, such as Mr. Woodhouse in Emma and Lady Catherine De Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice. These people assume that others will think as they do, but in such a dramatic way that it’s funny.

But we also see it from the main characters. Part of the reason Marianne from Sense and Sensibility is so shocked and hurt at the ball is because she would never do what Willoughby has done. She values authenticity and the genuineness of emotion so much that to profess a feeling she didn’t fully feel and couldn’t fully commit to is unthinkable to her.

The above are merely a few examples that give us a step on the right path to figuring out how to apply the lessons Austen is offering us. But why should we?

First, Austen argues for moral growth. All of her characters develop some aspect of virtue throughout their respective stories; they all go through a character arc, and more specifically, a growth arc. A growth arc is when a character faces challenges and has to transform herself—to undergo realizations and change in some fundamental way—in order to meet a challenge. By thinking about these challenges and how the characters transform and meet them in fiction, we can more profitably ask ourselves: Where could I have, or have I had, a growth arc in my life?

If you look back at your own achievements and understand what you’ve overcome, that can add to your self-confidence—and it’s also a way of continually improving in the future. Maybe you’re facing challenges right now; maybe you will in the next year. How can you become a better person in order to meet that challenge or through meeting that challenge? Lizzy, for instance, becomes more honest and more just through better understanding herself and how she’s misjudged Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham. She develops those specific virtues. Austen, like Aristotle, does not conceive of virtue as a thing you achieve once and then you’re done. It’s not a finish line. Virtue is an active condition. It’s something we have to continually maintain; it’s the working state of the soul. Accordingly, in Austen’s fiction, we often see that, after her realization, the heroine has to put it to work multiple times. Lizzy has to encounter and talk to Mr. Darcy multiple times before the end of the story.

The reason it’s believable that her characters have these growth arcs and come to these conclusions and develop these virtues is because they are fundamentally truth seekers. This is an aspect of honesty. If it really, deeply matters to you what is true about a situation, what is true about a person’s character, or what was said or done in a given situation, the act of searching for the truth already puts you in a better place. What we see in Austen’s stories is that the characters who go through these growth arcs and develop these virtues are looking for the truth, and they end up with better relationships. They end up with good romantic relationships, and many of them also end up with better friendships and better family relationships, both in the sense of getting rid of some that are not good for them and in the sense of improving the ones they have. This is the happy ending I referred to earlier.

This makes sense. If we’re constantly working to better understand ourselves, better understand other people, be more honest, be more just, and grasp the truth, we’re going to have better relationships.

Flatterers versus Challengers

We see this clearly in Emma. Its protagonist, Emma Woodhouse, is spoiled, high status, privileged, and accountable to no one. Emma is often considered Austen’s most tightly plotted novel, and there’s a lot going on in it, so I will narrow down this discussion to two basic choices: choice of romantic partner and choice of friend.

Early on, Emma is drawn to people I call flatterers. These are the people who tell Emma only what she wants to hear—things that superficially feel good in the moment and puff up her ego. One flatterer, Frank Churchill, flirts with her. Another is Harriet Smith, who is lower status than Emma, poorer than Emma, younger than Emma, and less independent and strong-minded than Emma. She looks up to Emma for advice on virtually everything from buying ribbons to whom she should marry. Emma doesn’t think badly of these people; she wants the best for them. She takes on Harriet as a pet project to try to help her along in life. She doesn’t question why Frank would be flirting with her; she merely enjoys the attention and flirts back. But this leads her to disastrously misjudge the people around her because she’s not questioning her thinking. Both characters encourage her in whatever whim, fantasy, or misunderstanding she comes up with.

By contrast, there are the challengers—people who tell you what you need to hear, not always what you want to hear. The gentleman she ends up married to is described early in the novel as being “one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them.”11

Not all challengers are confrontational or blunt, however. You can also challenge the people around you simply through how you act, which is what we see with Jane Fairfax, the woman Emma ends up becoming friends with. Jane is on a similar social level to Emma, but she’s significantly more accomplished in the kinds of skills that ladies were expected to have in that era—things such as drawing and playing the piano. Emma is smart, but she has no patience and she is the opposite of diligent, so she never really develops these skills. From early in the novel, Emma has a vague dislike for Jane and doesn’t understand why, and she doesn’t stop to ask why either. One character comments that it’s because Emma “saw in [Jane] the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself.”12 By the time Emma starts to better understand her own emotions and realize what evidence she’s overlooked, which includes how she feels about all of these characters, she realizes that Jane is somebody who’s going to inspire her to be her best.

These are the kinds of friends and partners who are valuable and whom we should cherish—even though sometimes it’s more difficult in the moment because they may tell us that they think we’re wrong. As Butler puts it, “Emma makes mistakes in the first instance because, like all other human beings, she is fallible. She also makes more than she need, because for much of the novel she underrates the need for objective self-criticism.”13

Austen reportedly wrote in a letter that Emma is a heroine who nobody but herself would much like.14 But many of us do like Emma because we relate to the kinds of errors that she makes and how she learns to correct them. What do we learn from Emma? Similar to Lizzy Bennet, we learn the importance of understanding your emotions and how they’re influencing your judgment, including emotions you didn’t know you had or you didn’t know the reason for. For example, it’s not nice to dislike somebody who has done nothing wrong to you, as Emma dislikes Jane. So, most of us wouldn’t want to spend too much time thinking about that, and Emma doesn’t. But when she does, she can be much more just to Jane, and she gets a good friend out of the bargain.

Emma, like Lizzy Bennet, also misunderstands her own strengths. Lizzy thinks she’s a much better judge of character than she is. Emma thinks that she would be a great matchmaker. (Spoiler alert: She is not.) Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses enables you to better address many things in your life. Studies have been done on self-esteem showing that people who have high self-esteem are pretty accurate in their assessment of their abilities; they don’t think themselves better than they are.15 They know where their strengths and weaknesses are, which Emma eventually learns.

Emma also learns to avoid the assumed similarity problem; other people’s motivations may not be what yours would be. Part of why she misguides Harriet, despite genuinely wanting the best for her, is because she doesn’t understand what Harriet wants or respect her agency. Emma doesn’t understand why Frank would flirt with her if he wasn’t actually interested in her. She doesn’t understand why other people act as they do because she assumes that their motivations would be the same as hers.

She also doesn’t think about the fact that good intentions aren’t always enough. She genuinely wants what’s best for Harriet. But without taking into account what Harriet wants, Harriet’s context, and the fact that Harriet needs to make her own decisions, she’s going to make Harriet’s life worse—as, initially, she does.

The Pattern

We see a clear pattern across Austen’s novels. We start with a setup; we learn the financial and family situation of the heroine and a bit about her personality. Then something changes; usually the heroine moves or other people move to where she lives. In this new context, she has to judge people, usually at least two people. She judges wrongly, usually in at least two cases. She makes some kind of mistake that leads her to behave unjustly and in a way that’s not good for her in the long run or the people around her.

Then she has that moment of intelligent discernment, the realization. In each case, she has to make the choice to take that seriously, as we saw with Lizzy’s letter. And she does. She has a moment of reflection and realizes what’s gone wrong and then adjusts her behavior. This often takes a couple of tries. In most of Austen’s novels, the heroine is put in a situation in which she has to put her new knowledge to work at least two or three times. Austen did not believe (with Socrates) that knowing what is right is enough. You still have to put it into action.

It’s helpful to look at our own lives through this lens. We all know our own situations; we know who we are and what our lives are like. We all have faced changes and complexity in our lives. We all have made errors of judgment. What have been the triggers through which you realized that you were wrong? What kind of reflections did you go through in those moments? Or perhaps you’re now facing complexity or the prospect of change in your life. You can be on the lookout for these kinds of errors. You can start to understand what kind of reflection is going to turn them into a moment of growth for you rather than letting it only be pain or challenge or complexity. Hopefully, that will lead you to a happier ending.

Key Takeaways

Ideas shape choices—what we believe about ourselves, other people, and what a good life is will affect how we behave. The more explicitly we understand that, the easier it’s going to be to correct errors and to correct our course if we’ve gone wrong, as we saw with Marianne in Sense and Sensibility.

To do this, introspection is essential. Without it, we risk leading ourselves astray, misunderstanding our emotions, and losing sight of how they are affecting our thinking. If we want to be more just and honest, like Lizzy and Emma, we have to understand why we don’t want to pay attention to some kinds of evidence—why we don’t want to look at that feeling or think about that person. We have to ask ourselves those difficult questions. If we do, then we continue to develop the active condition of virtue. We keep moving in the right direction. And if we do that, we’ll see improvements in our relationships. Sometimes that means that some relationships end, but others can shift and develop a new dynamic that is healthier and better for both people.

We see with Marianne and Elinor in Sense and Sensibility that, as both of them learn from each other, they end up treating each other better. Austen’s fiction, in general, offers us this benevolence—this world in which hard work, serious introspection, and challenging oneself always lead to a good outcome. And that’s the reassurance we sometimes need when we’re in moments of difficulty. Her novels offer an exploration of different aspects of virtue that we may not have considered. We know that we should treat people as they deserve to be treated. But what does that look like? In real life, it’s complicated and messy, so examining it from different perspectives can be valuable.

Austen was a keen observer of how people think, interact, and talk. By reading her novels, we get clear explorations and examinations of both a person’s internal world and the external world, as well as how those things mesh. Art is an end in itself. We can simply enjoy reading Austen’s fiction because it’s funny, because her characters are vivid, or because we love the happy endings. But the more thoughtfully we engage with it, even only the aspects I’ve elaborated, the more it enriches us.

I hope I’ve convinced you to go read or reread Austen. But if I haven’t, or if you’ve tried and really didn’t enjoy it, here are some books, different in genre, era, and scope, that I would recommend if your goal is to better understand yourself and human nature and thereby improve your relationships. All of these books, to different extents, involve characters who learn to deal with and understand people who have different motives, different backgrounds, and different goals from themselves.

In Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, that is the main character’s whole arc. He wants to understand the principle behind a certain kind of person who thinks differently from him. In doing so, he’s able to improve his career and his relationships.

A related lesson is that of learning to work with those who are deeply different from yourself—not just understand them, but form alliances and build something together. We see this in Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, a dystopian sci-fi trilogy in which the character has to bring together people from entirely different planets in order to effectively rebel against tyranny.

The costs of misunderstanding others can be deep. It can cause not only a lot of guilt and shame for ourselves, but also serious consequences for others if we misunderstand them and don’t realize that we didn’t have enough evidence for the evaluations we drew. We see that in books such as Atonement by Ian McEwan and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

Thoughtful authors, such as Jane Austen, draw on observation and project principles that can help us thrive. Equipped with this knowledge, go forth, read more, and learn about yourself and other people.

This article appears in the Fall 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.

Editor’s note: This article is the second part of a serialized republication of a chapter from Timothy Sandefur’s book Proclaiming Liberty: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence, by permission of the Cato Institute. The first part was published in the Summer 2026 issue and the third will appear in the Winter 2026 issue.

The Grievances

Having set out the major premise—that a ruler who violates the principles of justice and seeks to destroy individual liberty is unworthy of allegiance—Jefferson proceeded to the minor premise: the list of incidents that proved George III had violated his subjects’ trust. In framing this list, Jefferson employed the wording he had prepared for the new Virginia constitution, as well as the list of complaints from his Summary View. To these were added grievances from other publications, such as the 1772 Boston Pamphlet. After the committee of five submitted its draft to Congress for editing, the delegates spent two days revising this list. As finally adopted on July 4, the Declaration began:

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

As soon as the Declaration was made public, critics began complaining that its list of grievances was so broadly worded that it was hard to determine which exact actions the colonists were referring to. But Congress had good reason for avoiding specifics. Countless other resolutions had already listed the laws Americans objected to; the First Congress had even provided citations so people could look them up. To do so again would bog down the Declaration and invite critics to dispute every jot and tittle. The time for such quibbling had passed.

Still, modern readers are sometimes puzzled about which “wholesome” laws the crown blocked. To begin with, colonists objected to the fact that all of their legislation was subject to a London veto. In some cases, kings had ordered colonial governors to reject entire categories of laws. The colonies were not allowed to grant divorces, for example, without royal approval.1 Governors were commanded to block bills to tax European imports or to pay colonial lobbyists in London.2 Worse, the home government had for decades barred the colonies from printing their own money. This created a chronic cash shortage, which forced Americans to barter or use complicated accounting devices to pay their bills, often at a financial loss. This policy of starving the colonists of cash could have cruel consequences in an age when debt was punishable by imprisonment.

But Jefferson had another, more important class of legislation in mind: the king forbade the colonists from adopting laws restricting the importation of slaves. The colonies—especially Virginia—had repeatedly tried to ban or restrict slave imports, only to be overridden by London. To Jefferson and other anti-slavery Patriots, restricting the slave trade offered a potential first step toward eliminating slavery itself. But the imperial government made clear that it would not allow Americans to hurt the Royal Africa Company’s bottom line. London had overridden efforts by Pennsylvania in 1712, South Carolina in 1760, New Jersey in 1763, and Virginia in 1710, 1727, and 1766 to ban or restrict slave imports—and in 1770, King George had ordered all colonial governors “upon pain of our highest displeasure” to veto “any laws whatever . . . by which the importation of slaves shall be in any respect prohibited or obstructed.”3 Thus, as Jefferson complained in the Summary View, George III preferred “the immediate advantages of a few African corsairs”—that is, British slave-catchers—“to the lasting interests of the American states, and to the rights of human nature, [which were] deeply wounded by this infamous practice.”4

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

The veto meant bills passed by American legislatures had to be shipped to England for review, and, if approved, sent back before going into effect. This took months even if the king’s officers acted quickly. In practice, however, it often took much longer. In 1770, for example, Virginia lawmakers passed a bill to prevent horse stealing; the Board of Trade in London did not get around to approving it until March 1773.5 One New Jersey bill went eight years before being reviewed. A South Carolina law adopted in 1696 was blocked in 1734.6 A New Hampshire statute passed in 1718 was not reviewed until 1769—and then it was vetoed.7 London also required colonial bills to contain “suspending clauses,” postponing implementation until royal approval could be obtained.8 The delays and disruptions caused by this protracted process and the potential of after-the-fact vetoes, rendered colonial lawmaking a frustrating, insulting, and often futile process.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

After the French and Indian War ended in 1763, the British government grew increasingly uncomfortable with the American colonies’ rapid expansion. Westward movement in particular seemed to threaten London’s hegemony, because the larger the population, and the more distant from the imperial capital, the more independent-minded Americans would become. “We ought rather to obstruct than encourage” westward movement, wrote one London intellectual, because otherwise “an army of an hundred thousand” would “not be able to control” the colonists, “whose hearts glow with the flame of liberty.”9 The government accordingly began discouraging emigration to America—nullifying colonial offers to pay travel costs for immigrants or to give them free land.10 It also sought to prevent the colonies from reapportioning their legislatures to accommodate people who moved west.

Population growth radically distorted the apportionment of these legislatures. In Pennsylvania, for example, the ratio went from one representative for every 336 adult white males in 1730 to one representative for every 1,301 in 1770.11 Yet the colonies, especially Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, were forbidden from taking steps to give frontier towns their own representatives.12 In North Carolina alone, the Colonial Office vetoed thirteen bills providing for the creation of new townships, in order to prevent additional representatives from being added to the colony’s legislature.13

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

This grievance did not appear in Jefferson’s initial draft and was probably added at Adams’s urging. In 1770, he had participated in a months-long dispute with Governor Hutchinson over the Governor’s order that Massachusetts’ legislature relocate from Boston to Cambridge. Four years later, Hutchinson’s successor, General Thomas Gage, moved it again, this time to Salem. But even worse was the situation in South Carolina, royal governor Greville Montagu twice dissolved the colonial legislature, then ordered it to meet in Beaufort instead of Charleston—and then moved it back, all for the express purpose of preventing his political opponents from attending. Such ploys—which doubtless brought to mind the schemes of the Stuart monarchs (especially Charles II, who in 1681 moved Parliament from London to Oxford, because its residents were more supportive of the monarchy)—had no other purpose than to subvert the constitution by silencing the people’s representatives.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

Practically all the colonies had their legislatures closed, at least temporarily, by royal governors seeking to silence opposition to London’s authority. Representatives in Virginia and Massachusetts were repeatedly sent home for passing resolutions against unconstitutional taxes and regulations, and Parliament had adopted laws permanently closing the legislatures of New York and Massachusetts. Westminster viewed these actions as unremarkable, because it saw colonial assemblies as subordinate institutions. But to the colonists, who thought their legislatures were miniature parliaments, they were outrageous violations of political autonomy.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

This accusation drew a subtle but suggestive parallel between George III and the much-detested Stuart kings, who reigned from 1603 until being overthrown in 1688. Attempting to rule without Parliament was widely viewed as among the Stuarts’ worst offenses; one that justified the English Civil War. Now, King George’s subordinates had repeatedly shut down colonial legislatures, then delayed reopening them for so long as to render it impossible to conduct business. The Massachusetts legislature was closed indefinitely. Virginia’s Governor, Lord Dunmore, had prorogued that colony’s legislature in August 1774 and only called them back into session when forced to, nearly a year later. North Carolina’s governor dissolved the legislature, then fled the colony. In South Carolina, a furious dispute between the governor and the assembly led to so many closures that the colonial legislature adopted no laws at all after February 1771.14

Colonists had responded to these closures by establishing unofficial “conventions” to operate in place of their legislatures, but British authorities refused to acknowledge the conventions’ legitimacy. The Declaration justified them by declaring that the lawmaking power is “incapable of annihilation” because it belongs inherently to the people. If Parliament closed a legislature, “the people at large” were free to establish new ones.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

Americans knew immigration was key to economic and social growth. “In Europe,” wrote Jefferson, “the object is to make the most of their land, labor being abundant,” whereas in America, the goal was “to make the most of our labor, land being abundant.”15 The same logic, however, made Britain increasingly suspicious of immigrants. The 1660 Navigation Act expressly barred anyone not English-born from working as a merchant, or from commanding a trading vessel.16 Even ships purchased in the colonies from foreigners were subjected to heavy tariffs.17 Meanwhile, the lack of a uniform naturalization policy led to frustrating inconsistencies. Naturalization in one colony was not valid in other colonies.18

Colonies resorted to naturalizing people on a case-by-case basis, but London then instructed America’s royal governors not to sign any naturalization laws. The empire cracked down still more in the mid-1770s, banning colonial governors from approving naturalizations “upon any pretense whatsoever.”19 It also barred non-naturalized foreigners from owning land in the colonies. This tended to reinforce London’s autocratic rule, since voting rights depended on property ownership. The government followed that up by prohibiting colonies from giving away land to newcomers, as they had done for years in hopes of attracting immigrants. From now on, Parliament said, colonial governments had to sell land to the highest bidder—and sell it with a new tax requirement attached.20

Even that wasn’t enough for some. In May 1774, Governor Dunmore urged the Colonial Office to make sure only “men of credit and ability” bought property on the frontier, because the west was “becoming the asylum” of “disorderly and unruly people . . . who, carrying with them an abhorrence of all authority and control, establish themselves in defiance of both and become the continual plague and embarrassment of every government.”21 Parliament, in short, was using its control over land titles as a choke-chain on America’s rapidly growing population.

He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries.

In his first draft, Jefferson accused the king of “suffer[ing] the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these colonies” by “refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers,” but Congress moderated his language.22 The courts had indeed ceased to operate in Virginia and Massachusetts—in Virginia because Dunmore dissolved the legislature before it adopted legislation to fund the courts, and in Massachusetts because jurymen refused to proceed under a system in which judges were paid directly by the king.

North Carolina courts were also closed, thanks to a years-long dispute regarding laws that enabled American lenders to “attach” the assets of English borrowers who failed to pay their bills. The right to seize assets from British debtors was crucial to American businessmen, who had no other practical way to recover from defaulting borrowers located across the sea. But in 1772, London officials forbade the colony’s legislature from authorizing this practice. Thus when lawmakers defiantly included a foreign-attachments provision in a bill to reform their legal system, royal governor Josiah Martin blocked it. The legislators responded by refusing to establish a court system without the attachment power. It was unfair, they argued, that imperial officials let New York and Pennsylvania adopt foreign-attachment laws, but not North Carolina. An impasse ensued, and North Carolina’s judiciary closed in 1773, not to reopen until the Revolution ended.

These were just some of the many clashes between Britain and the colonies over the organization of their judicial systems. The king had also disallowed the creation of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court unless the legislature narrowed its jurisdiction, blocked New York from empowering justices of the peace to decide cases involving less than £5 in damages, and vetoed a Virginia law that would have barred appeals of lawsuits involving fewer than £10.23 He blocked efforts by Pennsylvania, New York, and both Carolinas to provide judges with lifetime terms, and in 1761, instructed colonial governors to veto all such bills in the future.24 The empire wanted judges to answer to London, not to Americans.

Judicial independence was crucial to the Americans, especially to John Adams, who thought it essential to constitutional government. When London announced plans to pay judges’ salaries directly, he had maintained that this would make it impossible for Americans to obtain justice when challenging the government in court. Judges would inevitably fall prey to a “base servility of spirit” toward their paymasters and engage in “sordid, nauseous, and impious adulations to [their] superiors” rather than deciding cases neutrally.25 Adams would have had little patience for those who today claim that judicial review (the power of a court to declare a law unconstitutional) was an invention of the nineteenth century, or who assert that this practice is undemocratic, and that courts should be “restrained” instead of “active.” In his view, a vigilant and independent judiciary was indispensable to the rule of law and the preservation of liberty.

He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

The biblical metaphor of “swarms” had become common in America by 1776, to describe the way London was sending over agents to live off of the Americans like locusts devouring the crops of Old Testament farmers. To be governed like conquered foreigners doomed to labor for London’s enrichment, rather than for themselves, was the opposite of the American ideal of personal independence. But former Governor Hutchinson ridiculed this image in his pamphlet responding to the Declaration. He argued that no more than 30 or 40 such “officers” had been sent to America—that is, members of the American Customs Board and their subordinates—and that this was hardly enough to seriously burden the taxpayers.

Hutchinson was ignoring the fact that by “officers,” the Declaration’s authors were referring to the entire cadre of enforcers dispatched by England, which included thousands of soldiers, sailors, and inspectors, all of whom stood to profit from taxes and customs restrictions that the colonists considered unjust. Parliament had also adopted the Mutiny and Quartering Acts which forced colonists to house and supply these troops, who were stationed in America to spy on them. Parliament’s plan to pay governors, judges, and other bureaucrats with taxes taken from colonists—instead of leaving such decisions to local representatives—also meant that virtually every clerk, deputy, hanger-on, and bureaucrat would be paid with substance eaten out of the unconsenting people of America. There seemed no reason to doubt that the swarms of “pensioners” and “parasites” would grow.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

Jefferson had in mind the military occupation of Boston that began in 1768, but Whitehall had determined to maintain a permanent military presence in North America long before that. Following the French and Indian War, it stationed thousands of troops in the west (supplied and quartered at the colonists’ expense), ostensibly to protect Americans from French incursions or Native American uprisings, but also to block westward migration. Then, during the Stamp Act crisis in 1765, London had sent thousands more soldiers to Massachusetts, New York, and other colonies, and there they remained. This army—answerable exclusively to London—first served to menace the Americans and then, when Thomas Gage was made military governor, it became the official government, transforming the colony into a military autocracy.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

General Gage’s appointment as governor, with instructions empowering him to force civilian officials to assist him, meant all government in Massachusetts was effectively run by the army. Gage had implemented martial law, and Governor Dunmore had proclaimed martial law in Virginia, too, as did the governors of Quebec and Nova Scotia. They claimed the Mutiny Acts justified their actions, but one patriot pointed out, that only made things worse, because those statutes contained “no provision for securing the obedience of the military to the civil power, on which the preservation of our constitution depends.”26

The legality of these proclamations was doubtful. It was unclear at the time, whether the principle of martial law was even acknowledged in British jurisprudence.27 Blackstone and others said it was, but only when civilian authorities were incapable of operating.28 And that was not the case. Although Dunmore and Gage claimed that civilian rule had collapsed in their colonies, that wasn’t true. The Virginia House of Burgesses had tried to meet, in fact, only to be prevented by Dunmore’s refusal to come to the capital in Williamsburg. As for Massachusetts, Gage’s presence was the source of disorder.

This article appears in the Fall 2026 issue of The Objective Standard.