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  • Michael Edmondson

In what direction are you moving?


Today is October 1 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you remind yourself that the direction in which you are moving is far greater than where you currently stand?”

People who navigate the chaos understand that they are not a tree and can switch directions at any moment.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted “I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” Holmes was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932, and as Acting Chief Justice of the United States from January–February 1930.

Noted for his long service, his concise and pithy opinions and his deference to the decisions of elected legislatures, he is one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in history, particularly for his "clear and present danger" opinion for a unanimous Court in the 1919 case of Schenck v. United States, and is one of the most influential American common law judges, honored during his lifetime in Great Britain as well as the United States.

Holmes retired from the Court at the age of 90 years, making him the oldest Justice in the Supreme Court's history.

Profoundly influenced by his experience fighting in the American Civil War, Holmes helped move American legal thinking towards legal realism, as summed up in his maxim: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." Holmes espoused a form of moral skepticism and opposed the doctrine of natural law, marking a significant shift in American jurisprudence.

As he wrote in one of his most famous opinions, his dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919), he regarded the United States Constitution as "an experiment, as all life is an experiment" and believed that as a consequence "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death."

How often do you remind yourself that the direction in which you are moving is far greater than where you currently stand?”

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