In my latest Epoch Times column I warn against chasing trends in fashion, food or public policy.

“remember that neither scientists nor laymen learn to see the world piecemeal or item by item. Except when all the conceptual and manipulative categories are prepared in advance – e.g., for the discovery of an additional transuranic element or for catching sight of a new house – both scientists and laymen sort out whole areas together from the flux of experience. The child who transfers the word ‘mama’ from all humans to all females to his mother is not just learning what ‘mama’ means or who his mother is. Simultaneously he is learning some of the differences between males and females as well as something about the ways in which all but one female will behave toward him. His reactions, expectations, and beliefs – indeed comma much of his perceived world – change accordingly.”

Thomas S. Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition

“The creation of a new creature, not ourselves, of a new conscious center, of a new and independent focus of experience and enjoyment, is an immeasurably more grand and godlike act even than a real love affair; how much more superior to a momentary physical satisfaction. If creating another self is not noble, why is pure self-indulgence nobler?”

G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly Sept. 27, 1930, quoted in “Why Do You Keep Asking Me Rhetorical Questions?” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)

In my latest Epoch Times column I unearth and reprint a set of principles I outlined when the 21st century was young and fresh to guide is through an uncertain future, and claim that I have been largely vindicated. I also challenge my fellow pundits to do likewise (and scoff at politicians’ forecasts) because I say you should listen to the person who gets it right not the one who offers soothing but inaccurate platitudes.

In my latest, and last, piece for Mercator I celebrate its mission while lamenting its passing, victim of an age far too prone to take frivolous things seriously and ignore the eternal verities. But I urge everyone to do the reverse.

“According to Wattenberg [“Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Names Wizard and creator of Namerology.com”], Jason barely registered in the 1950s when parents often picked a name following family tradition. If your great-grandfather was named Clarence Leroy, odds were a piece of that name would fall to you. Then came the counterculture movements of the 1960s. For the first time, parents began straying from traditional names. With the guardrails of convention removed, people were free to make up their own minds and forge their own paths. And suddenly, by the 1970s, every other kid was named Jason. Then a funny thing happened: Names started giving way to sounds. Jason begot Mason, Jackson, Grayson, Carson and a whole family of other ‘-son’ names that together make up a major 21st-century trend for baby boys. Nowadays, Wattenberg said, people not only have access to unlimited cable channels and the internet, but those innovations have helped usher in a ‘username creation’ mentality — meaning that if someone else has the same name, it’s viewed as taken. So parents tend to tweak their baby’s name just a bit — keeping the ‘-son,’ for example, while swapping the ‘Ja-’ for ‘Car-.’ Wattenberg finds ‘an incredible irony’ in this. People think they’re choosing something unique, but they do it in a way that winds up moving with the zeitgeist. As a result, names have actually got less distinctive over time, with nearly half of all baby names now following identifiable suffix trends — a phenomenon Wattenberg calls ‘lockstep individualism.’”

Daniel Wolfe in National Post July 22, 2024 [it’s a Washington Post piece and he was expecting a baby boy who was very possibly his first kid since he only just turned his attention to the “trendy baby name trap”].

“The man who says there are no sexes or no nations fares simply and precisely like the man who says there are no chairs and tables. He falls over them.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News November 8, 1913 quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #4 (March/April 2024) [and yes, he gave this warning over a century ago, yet again proving eerily prescient]

“A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense has really become very uncommon. Straightforward ideas appear strange and unfamiliar, and any thought that does not follow the conventional curve or twist, is supposed to be a sort of joke.”

G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly November 2, 1933 quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #4 (March/April 2024)