Marc and Angel Hack Life

About Marc and Angel Hack Life

Here at “Marc and Angel Hack Life” we enjoy sharing practical thoughts on a broad range of topics pertaining to life, hacks, productivity, aspirations, health, work, tech and general self improvement. We promise you will not find a regurgitation of someone else’s point of view on our site. Regardless of the topic at hand, these views are our own.

This site also contains our outlook and opinions on noteworthy events and people in and around our lives. We discuss the ever-changing fluctuations in our attitude toward past decisions and future goals. Some days it feels certain that we’re headed down the right path, and other times we feel completely misplaced. It’s a continual evolution of highs and lows characterized by the balancing of family, friends, work, desires, and aspirations.

Dancing around this immeasurable playground, our thoughts, dreams, and ingenuity create the groundwork for our forward drive. There’s a long string of experiences and ideas that design a lifestyle we persistently attempt to reconcile in an effort to make more significant. As we react over the past and dream about our future together, we begin to understand who we are and where we intend to go. Our life presses forth as we stumble over the balance of simplicity and extravagant ambition. “Marc and Angel Hack Life” serves as a repository of advice based on some of our life experiences.

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Contact us: marc [at] marcandangel [dot] com

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183 Entries in “About Marc and Angel Hack Life”

Pages: « 19 18 17 16 15 [14] 13 12 11 10 9 … 1 » Show All

#133
From: Elexis
March 15th, 2009 at 11:28 am

As a 25 year old female trying to find my sense of self in this crazy world, I want to send my sincere thanks to the many tips and advice blogs posted. I look forward to reading more on career advice and general well being. Many thanks!!
#132
From: Lucy
March 14th, 2009 at 7:46 am

Your blog is fantastic! It has some really wonderful advice, some beautiful affirmations of life and the love that can exist between people… with just a tiny touch self congratulatory.
#131
From: menon.nrk
March 5th, 2009 at 7:37 pm

Great site! The one article on body language was quite nice. We appreciate such user friendly advice. Good luck.
#130
From: Victor
February 26th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

I really enjoy reading your stuff, it’s simply brilliant!
Keep up the writing!
#129
From: Nicky
February 24th, 2009 at 5:38 am

Hey guys!

Amazing Stuff!!

I show your site to everyone, whenever i get the chance.

Keep it up!
#128
From: @MattWilsontv
February 19th, 2009 at 12:53 am

Hi guys, must say great content. My first comment on your blog i screwed up–I didn’t realize it was Marc and Angel’s blog. When I looked at the contact us i just saw marc@….please forgive me!

Anyway, keep doing what your doing! Great to see young people like you guys.
#127
From: Rob
February 15th, 2009 at 1:44 pm

Hey guys - I have to laugh - I like your site a lot and appreciate the effort you two have put into giving people a great deal of useful and wise information, perspectives. I said I have to laugh because I started this post off suggesting you add some books to your 30 books a person should read before 30. I have a moderately extensive background in philosophy and I saw the book from Rousseau on your list. and I started to write you saying that you if you are going to give foundational political philosophy a fair read you should read from all the major positisons on the spectrum not just one. I realize you have Thomas Paine on there too likely to be seen as a balancing act. but.. it is not really. So I started giving you the names and titles of the philosophers that I thought should be put on to be the list as representatives for the other points of view. And then I realized, this is some DRY stuff and not all of the books need to be read all the way through to get their meanings, including in my humble opinion The Rousseau book. Which I have read all the way through. For philosopy is is quite passionate utopian and flowery. You include in your book list its most famous line about folks living in shackles.

Anyway… I quickly realized that I was off base because not many people are going to read historical political philosophy from each position, nor do they need to, so long as they get a good book that perhaps goes over the whole spectrum of political philosophy and gives you the meat from each book that is relevant today. I unfortunately do not have a book to suggest this as I as a philosophy student had to read all the original source material and the synthesis was done in lecture not in a text book for me. So Instead of putting some information that I think you should add I am going to just impart a couple of concepts that I have found incredibly useful when looking at any political idea and its possible implications.

Ok there are in fact in the western secular world 4 basic points of view on government. the two concepts that make up these 4 points are the two forms of freedom that compete with each other and the two major group in any politics, the individual and the collective or group, which also compete with one another. Ok so here is goes. There are two kinds of freedom, Positive and Negative Freedom both are good. But positve freedome is the ablity to do or to have, like to own your own house or land, to be able to go to school or to have health care. Ok now negative freedom is the ability to free from interference or harassment. to be able to do what you want without obstruction. Like to where what you want, say what you want, to have privacy, to be able to keep the fruits of your own labor.

Ok so here is how all politics breaks down:

You have the to the far left the all group rights no individual rights, example communism, or dictatorship like castro, lable is collectivism. the state will make the best decisions and the best decisions are the ones that are the best for the group with zero consideration of what that means for the individuals, if you need to kill some? meh you got to break a few eggs to make an omelete. The state requires workers to sacrifice for the workers overall good and so forth. the next group is utilitarianism and socialism, examples are Switzerland (though its a special case) this is a group that is weight the following way the group is more important than the individual but the you can care abot the individual if it does not get in the way of the group, and positive freedom is far more imporatant than negative freedom. Meaning the government can tax you at a rate of 90 percent of your earnings once you earn more than what the state says is enough, but, the state provides all for everyone. Healthcare, education to an unlimited degree, even for murdering criminals. so there is some private property but the state can always take it away if the the govenrment deems “the people” need it for some important purpose. But there is atleast a consideration for the individual.

Ok, the next position can be called contractarian, meaning social contract between the individual and the society, or communitarianism if it explicitly adheres to the rights of individuals over the state first. Ok well as you imagine this is the mirror to socialism and utilitarianism. Freedom for the individual is highest but not only priority, and negative freedom, things like privacy, and right to own land, and the right to keep you fruits of your own labor are all sacred. But the state works hard to provide a fair start for the underprivliged, and it concerns itself with things that all individuals have a common interest in: like roads, border defense, laws for commercial transactions and external trade etcetera. (see any similarities to this model and that US?) examples of this writing are John Locke, Thomas jefferson, more recently John Rawles, (check out veil of ignorance some time - just google it).

OK the last point of view is that the state shold be almost entrely concerned with the rights of the individual and that the freedom we should be most concerned with is negative freedom or freedome from harrasment, and that postive freedom in any manner is an encroachment on negative freedom and therefore unfair period. The focus is on self reliance and people doing things without government intervention, a philosopher for this point of view Robert Nozick is most often used. example of this are actually hong kong before the hand over to China, the only role for government is very very limited to the most basic and essential common interests for a group. like limited criminal and lmited commercial laws, common defense and thats it — maybe road and infrastructure building, but why not let people in various communities decdide to do that themselves and pay for it how they decide.

Ok, Since I am boring you to death, will finish the bonus 5th position, and that is the true opposite to totalitarianism and that anarchy. Anarchy is a position that no permanent group structure should be in place because it will always be corrupted over time, and the sacred rights of the individuals both positive and negative will be injured. So instead, like the libertarians, let people come together when they want to only for specific purposes and only voluntarily. Once the purpose is over, so is the group, and there are no ongoing groups that can act in an official capacity.

So now you have it — the extremes of positive and negative freedom and the extremes of making important either all the group or the oposite all the individual and all the main categories in between. the US is some where between the the middle right and the middle left, depending on who is in power and the times in history but in general the constitution insures that government is limited in its ability to become corrupt and that the rights of the individual in both key positive and key negative freedoms are protected. so we lean more to the right center than the left center.

Anyway. I hope you all find that info interesting, and I will keep reading your site. At some point I might make my own blog and put up a reading list for philosophy beginners and I will let you all know. I will keep on reading your site and I hope my unproofread post makes some sense too you. I think if all americans had to take basic politcal philosophy so they understood the inherent trade offs, then there would be a lot more thinking and a lot less name calling. Life is just difficult plain and simple. And we as humans have come a long way to make it better and we should be proud of that. I am sure glad I have a computer and a grocery store and a house I can tell you that.

Cheers and be well,

Rob
#126
From: Mitza
February 14th, 2009 at 8:13 am

I like your blog a lot.
#125
From: Jules @ Lovely Las Vegas
February 12th, 2009 at 6:35 pm

Glad to have found you guys! Can’t wait to read some more of your posts.
#124
From: Sushant
February 8th, 2009 at 2:48 pm

Hey, you have some very interesting posts. Thank you for sharing…