Welcome to Minds!

I'm not an official #Minds ambassador in any capacity, but with so many new subscribers to my page, I wanted to take a moment to say hello and introduce myself. 

Seeing the writing on the wall, I started looking around for a new social-media home last fall. I've been in and out of Minds a couple of times, but now it feels like home. With the current Big Tech purges going on, it's good to have a place that understands the value and necessity of free expression. 

I know there are other alt-tech sites that similarly focus on privacy and free speech. But Minds feels more grown up, with deeper conversations on a wider range of topics than you can find at a lot of its competitors. Gab is great at what it does, for example, but you can only listen to conservatives complaining to each other about the same stuff for so long. 

Still, I admit that I talk about politics quite a bit. I actually hate politics, but I think it's important to be aware of what's going on around us. As Pericles was purported to have said, "You may choose not to take an interest in politics, but rest assured that politics will take an interest in you."

As for where I stand, I lean more right than left, and I default to individual liberty in most things. I resist groupthink, question official narratives, and call out propaganda where I see it. Overall, I like to think I have a pretty good bullshit detector. But I don't really have a "side" that I neatly fall in with. The best approximate summation of my worldview would be "anarcho-something-or-other," but the truth is I hate being boxed in with labels. 

The salt-of-the-earth working-class folks I grew up around in the American Midwest left their mark on me for sure. But there have been many others. I consider paleocons, populists, and localists to be fellow travelers. I cut my teeth on Thoreau and consider Lao-tzu and Thomas Jefferson among my brightest guiding lights. I'm drawn to Jordan Peterson and others in the Intellectual Dark Web, with their pursuit of Enlightenment-rooted rationality in the midst of a world of emotionally driven, anti-intellectual, anti-individualist wokeness. I embrace voices on the left who still value free speech and who speak out against corporate neoliberalism, like Glenn Greenwald, Caitlin Johnstone, and Jimmy Dore. But I enjoy listening to Noam Chomsky just as much as I do Tucker Carlson. 

Ultimately, it's my contention that while it's good to have guideposts to help you navigate the thicket of life, the only lasting and satisfying path is the one you forge on your own. When I first heard Jiddu Krishnamurti say that truth is a pathless land, I knew exactly what he meant.

I get the feeling that Minds, for whatever reason, appeals to the oddballs and weirdos like me. The thinkers, the questioners, the lovers of art and music and nature and beauty, the square pegs in round holes. Maybe I'm just projecting, but it warms my heart to think there might just be some little niche meeting place for us in the world. The tone of Minds has changed a little bit in recent weeks, with the influx of refugees from the likes of Facebook and Twitter, but overall I think there's still a healthy and eclectic mix of people here. I hope it stays that way even as it grows.

One thing I miss from Facebook is talking to my normie friends about everyday stuff. That's one thing that alt-tech hasn't been able to deliver on. But of course it's not their fault, either. If our friends would just migrate with us to these new sites, all would be well. But that just means it's up to all of us to make new friends and create new groups and networks at places like this. The fatal flaw that so many people made was to assume that woke corporations with massive power would never turn on those who didn't share their views. Parler, in hindsight, was foolish to ever rely on Amazon's servers for its existence. Now we know better, and now we can all start the hard work of building out new infrastructure that will support and defend freedom of speech. It will be a long and difficult process, but those of us who are here have alreaday taken the first step, which is to leave our abusive relationships with Facebook, Google, Twitter, and all the rest, and help places like Minds grow.

Another reason I came to Minds is that I edit for a living and write for fun, and I'd love to be able to monetize my writing someday. I'm not looking to become rich and famous; I'd just like to be able to be compensated for the time I invest in my hobby. It may never happen, and that's fine. I've been blogging for years now, and I haven't earned a penny yet. Either way, writing keeps me sane... and I don't need to tell you that having outlets for the betterment of our mental health is crucial these days. 

I'd be curious to know how the rest of you ended up at Minds, what other services you use, and what social media you gave up, if any. As for me, I stopped using Facebook and deleted my Twitter account, which I barely ever used anyway. I blog at Substack and also use VK for social media, but Minds is becoming my home base. 

I look forward to getting to know all of you. Thanks for being here!

Header image by Minds user neutronboar. Reproduced with permission.