Edward Snowden on the forming of beliefs at an early age

At the age of 22, when I entered the American intelligence community, I didn't have any politics. Like most young people, I had solid convictions that I refused to accept weren't truly mine but rather a contradictory cluster of inherited principles. My mind was a mashup of the values I was raised with and the ideals I encountered online. It took me until my late twenties to finally understand that so much of what I believed—or what I thought I believed—was just youthful imprinting. We learn to speak by imitating the speech of the adults around us, and in the process of that learning we wind up also imitating their opinions until we've deluded ourselves into thinking that the words we're using are our own.

~ Edward Snowden, "I Went to Work for the Government and I Found a Failed System," Reason.com, November 5, 2019

Kevin Duffy on alternative lifestyles

Society promotes values/lifestyle choices and marriage/family unit remains the most popular choice even though it's been losing ground to alternative lifestyles since probably the '60s. Marriage/family still clings to a slight lead, but its position is precarious.

Is this trend a good thing? Marriage/family hasn't always been the lifestyle of choice; it evolved and won out after tens of thousands of years of trial and error. There had to be a reason. Men, for example, are biologically wired to populate the planet, not necessarily live in monogamy. Would the human species stand a better chance of survival if we got rid of this quaint custom?

I'm all in favor of having the freedom to make choices. Ultimately good ideas win out and unsustainable lifestyle choices fail. It's just hard to know when.

~ Kevin Duffy