"Go to University, get a good job in the city and make lots of money."

The American housing landscape would profoundly benefit from an infusion of Aristotelian wisdom.

Aristotle taught us that true virtue resides in the golden mean, a harmonious balance nestled between the extremes, the vices, of deficiency and excess. He illustrated this with the example of courage, which elegantly balances between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of recklessness.

Yet, when we turn our gaze to the American housing industry, we find a disconcerting trend: a stark polarization in the sizes of new homes. The market is flooded with either diminutive abodes, scarcely spanning 600 ft², or sprawling estates that stretch beyond 2000 ft².

Considering the current size of the average American household, the ideal home size for most would hover around 1200 ft². Individuals or smaller families might find solace in spaces around 800-1000 ft², while larger families could thrive in homes ranging from 1400 to 1800 ft². Alas, the current housing narrative seems to have lost sight of these moderate, more practical dimensions, veering instead towards the extremes.

When you're shopping for a home, or building your own, keep this in mind and choose a home of sensible proportions

Where Christian faith is joyous, certain, serene, loving, humble, patient, submitting in all things to the Will of God, its Nihilist counterpart is full of doubt, suspicion, disgust, envy, jealousy, pride, impatience, rebelliousness, blasphemy–one or more of these qualities predominating in any given personality. It is an attitude of dissatisfaction with self, with the world, with society, with God; it knows but one thing: that it will not accept things as they are, but must devote its energies either to changing them or fleeing from them. It was well described by Bakunin as ‘the sentiment of rebellion, this Satanic pride, which spurns subjection to any master whatever, whether of divine or human origin.’

Nihilist rebellion, like Christian faith, is an ultimate and irreducible spiritual attitude, having its source and its strength in itself--and, of course, in the supernatural author of rebellion. We shall be unprepared to understand the nature or the success of Nihilism, or the existence of systematic representatives of it like Lenin and Hide, if we seek its source anywhere but in the primal Satanic will to negation and rebellion. Most Nihilists, of course, understand this will as something positive, as the source of "independence" and "freedom"; but the very language in which men like Bakunin find it necessary to express themselves, betrays the deeper import of their words to anyone prepared to take them seriously.

- Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age

Before the modern age the life of man was largely conditioned by the virtues of obedience, submission, and respect: to God, to the Church, to the lawful earthly authorities. To the modern man whom Nihilism has "enlightened," this Old Order is but a horrible memory of some dark past from which man has been "liberated"; modern history has been the chronicle of the fall of every authority. The Old Order has been overthrown, and if a precarious stability is maintained in what is unmistakably an age of "transition," a "new order" is clearly in the making; the age of the "rebel" is at hand.

- Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age

Nothingness, incoherence, antitheism, hatred of truth: what we have been discussing in these pages is more than mere philosophy, more even than a rebellion of man against a God he will no longer serve. A subtle intelligence lies behind these phenomena, and on an intricate plan which philosopher and revolutionary alike merely serve and do not command; we have to do with the work of Satan.

Many Nihilists, indeed, far from disputing this fact, glory in it. Bakunin found himself on the side of "Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and emancipator of worlds." Nietzsche proclaimed himself "Antichrist." Poets, decadents, and the avant-garde in general since the Romantic era have been greatly fascinated by Satanism, and some have tried to make it into a religion. Proudhon in so many words actually invoked Satan:

"Come to me, Lucifer, Satan, whoever you may be! Devil whom the faith of my fathers contrasted with God and the Church. I will act as spokesman for you and will demand nothing of you."

What is the Orthodox Christian to think of such words? Apologists and scholars of Nihilist thought, when they regard such passages as worthy of comment at all, usually dismiss them as imaginative exaggerations, as bold metaphors to express a perhaps childish "rebellion." To be sure, it must be admitted that there is a juvenile quality in the expression of most of modern "Satanism"; those who so easily invoke Satan and proclaim Antichrist can have very little awareness of the full import of their words, and few intend them to be taken with entire seriousness. This naive bravado reveals, nonetheless, a deeper truth. The Nihilist Revolution stands against authority and order, against Truth, against God; and to do this is, clearly, to stand with Satan. The Nihilist, since he usually believes in neither God nor Satan, may think it mere cleverness to defend, in his fight against God, the age-old enemy of God; but while he may think he is doing no more than playing with words, he is actually speaking the truth.

- Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age

The responses to that post are funny

What do you mean OP doesn't like Ted?

A response from the Poor Chat:

Should win prize as 50 year old rodent.