I’m Steve Shirley, an engineer and author writing from my home in Frisco, Texas.  I’m pleased to meet you and hope that you’ll join me on my quest for answers, my hunt for wisdom.

What do you want?  My forthcoming book, The Hunt for Happiness,  is about that and more.   What is it that humans want to achieve in life, really?  Can we get what we want without helping others get what they want too?  My answer is both no, we can’t and no, we shouldn’t.  But we do try, don’t we?  We sure do, we all do, and we always have.  After all, we’re just human.  But Why?

Having spent more than a decade in self-directed study of ancient literature, I like to connect the dots and provide a little more depth to those dusty old books that still shape our lives through traditions, laws, morals, and so forth.  I think that understanding why we do things is really important, and the truth is that our society is based on some very old customers and literature.

This blog is where I’ll share some of the insights that I gain, where I’ll post information on my book, my future books, and where I’ll have the joy of interacting with people who share common interests and curiosity.

Little things, you know.  Like Thucydides (460-395 BCE) lamenting the ignorance of his forefathers in choosing to wear undergarments, ever the practical hoplite warrior, he.

Or things with a bit more gravitas, such as dating texts based on contents and world views.  Reading the First Epistle of Peter in a new translation the other day, it struck me that the author states that this was written from Babylon (1 Peter 5:13).  He of course means Rome.  You see, that dates the text as no earlier than 70 CE, 37-40 years after the Crucifixion.  You see, Rome is referred to Babylon because both Babylon (under Nebuchadnezzar II) and, Rome (much later, in 70 CE) destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.