the first Old Roads essay:

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what is Old Roads about?

Our fundamental idea is that people gain from coming into contact with viewpoints that are not their own. We live in a time where the perceived world is getting standardized. Human cognitive diversity is getting shorn down to a handful of competing operating systems. The preservation of past cultural viewpoints can function as a great library of human choices and values, reminding us that the world is larger than we are being led to think.

The name Old Roads came from Jeremiah 6.16:

Stand at the crossroads, and look,
and ask for the old roads,
where the good way lies; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.

It seems to us that there are two ways of thinking about that call to ask for the old roads. One would be to find balm in a nostalgic version of the virtuous past, and that is perhaps closest to Jeremiah’s intent. But there is also the possibility of looking to old roads that have nothing to do with nostalgia, that serve to get us off the common, well-trodden roads. These barely traceable old roads, sometimes almost lost, are those we seek to promote on Old Roads.

by Martyn Smith