Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Daring to Look Evil in the Face

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gulad

As some of you may recall, I learned about Jordan Peterson and his work less than a month ago, and I dived into it feet-first. One book that he mentioned repeatedly, which likewise I had never heard about, was The Gulag Archipelago by Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

I figured, well, Peterson thinks it’s an incredibly important read, the author won a Nobel prize, and some scholars consider is the best non-fiction book of the 20th century, so, yeah, maybe I should buy it. So I did.

I am only 10% of the way through the book, so it’s somewhat presumptuous of me to write a post having anything to do with a book whose surface I’ve barely scratched, but even with this modest exposure, I have some thoughts I’d like to share based on what I’ve read so far and what thoughts it is conjuring.

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The Changing World Order

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Before the plane ride home on Sunday, I needed something good to do, so I (paid full retail) bought a new book from Ray Dalio called Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order. It’s over 500 pages, but it was just the right length for the flight from Columbus back to San Francisco.

I think Mr. Dalio has basically amassed a bunch of cool research and charts and is, like a good chef, using the basic ingredients to make a variety of different dishes. I’ve already bought a few recent Dalio books, and they all have the same DNA.

Still, I found this one to be the most accessible and easy-to-read. I think almost any adult could get something good out of it, since it spells out quite plain how basically the United States is utterly hosed and China is going to shove us off the world stage. Dalio isn’t precise (nor could he be) about when this is going to happen, but he makes clear it has the potential to be very, very, VERY ugly and horrific. So, yeah, right up the alley of the kinds of things that interest me. I paid $35 for it (shame on me, but I was desperate) but the link above is for Amazon where it’s like $21 or so. Give it a read!

Brushing It Off

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I’ve decided to start my novel again.

Although I’ve written dozens of books, and even a screenplay, I’ve never written a novel in my life. Some months ago, I made an earnest attempt to write one. As I started the second chapter, I got cold feet. I was worried I simply couldn’t do it. So I set it aside for a long while.

But I’ve decided to take another stab at it. It’s utterly unfamiliar territory to me, and there sheer organization of the thing is what I’ve been grappling with tonight.

I’ll share with you the one page the precedes even the first chapter. It is a simple vignette, and it is in no way directly related to the content of the book. But perhaps sharing this tiny morsel will give me the courage or incentive to press on. I have a lot to say in this book. I just don’t know if I have the talent to say it properly.

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Jordan Peterson

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It’s anecdote time. Two of them, actually, and they are closely-related.

The first is the reaction I have when someone writes to me very excitedly saying how much they love the site and wish they had discovered me years ago. And I ask myself: have I been hiding?

Slope has been around over sixteen years. It advertises both in print and online. I have had a prominent show every weekday on tastytrade since the company launched. And I am absolutely confounded why it took so long for them to find me in the first place.

I had an experience today which helped me answer that question. I listen to YouTube quite a lot while I’m puttering around the house, normally enjoying things like music or comedians. Quite by chance today, it played a video by someone I had never heard of before: Jordan Peterson.

Now, those of you who know of his work are surely thinking, “How could you NOT have heard of him? What cave have you been living in?” Because he’s hugely successful author and a major figure in the world of political and social commentary.

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The Scale of Time & Space

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Recently I felt the urge to read something substantial, so I scanned my bookshelves and selected Paul Kennedy’s 1989 survey of 500 years of political and economic history called The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Of course, the book came out just before an absolutely remarkable dozen year period in which the entire world was turned upside down several times. It is precisely the kind of book I love reading: jam packed with tales of the flow of monarchs, political leaders, economic cycles, wars, and discoveries. My highlighter pen has been quite busy the past couple of days.

This book got me thinking about how difficult it is for humans to think in real terms about just how big, small, long, or short things in our lives are. As an example, I believe we consider periods of time as far, far longer than is appropriate while at the same time have absolutely no honest image in our heads about how incredibly tiny we are and how gargantuan space is. It’s a matter of scale, warped, I believe, by our own failures in perception.

Let’s take this history book, for example. 500 years might as well be 500 million to most people. It seems like an incomprehensibly long period of time, mainly because our own lives are limited to about 75 years or so. Our own lifespan seems to be “the known universe” as far as we are concerned, so reading about events from, say, the year 1550 is little different than reading about the Big Bang.

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