Well, us may be a misnomer.
Administrative matters – Contact information:
Email: alexander (at) asmallconsideration (dot) com
My name is Alexander – I’m a young man who currently works in the tech field doing security analysis. Yet, I don’t really feel that where or what I do for my work is necessarily the core part of my identity. To be entirely honest, I led with it because it sounds good – hits those notes of responsibility and authority that everyone wants to invoke in those who first meet them.
As I alluded to in my introduction post, I haven’t obtained any particularly noteworthy certificates of higher education. While I attended a moderately prestigious school for four years, I eventually dropped out due to personal issues. I began as a biochemistry major, then transitioned to a double major in philosophy after taking a philosophy 101 class and falling in love (with the subject, if you must know). It was in my philosophy classes where I first did a significant amount of critical reading and writing, and I discovered to my own surprise that I actually enjoyed the latter. I have always enjoyed reading, but didn’t find myself quite as engaged with writing until presented with some fascinating subjects and prompts to engage with.
During my college journey, my own personal politics also changed significantly. I was raised as a conservative, and hadn’t found any particular reason to change those views in my intellectual experiences to that point. I could probably even go so far as to say that I experimented with the libertarian movement, reading (and quite enjoying at the time) Ayn Rand and the like. When I started taking philosophy classes, I was forced for the first time to engage with opposing political and theoretical viewpoints that were not filtered through the lens of American cultural traditions. Suffice it to say that I found these views to be tremendously seductive and intellectually engaging. While I would not say that I currently belong to any particular school of political thought on the radical left of governance (socialism, communism, all those words us Americans have been trained to despise) I am quite sympathetic to their causes.
All of this is to say, if you haven’t yet closed this out of disgust, that I have at times been on both sides of the metaphorical aisle. I hope to use some of that perspective while writing here.