I am

 

I am the way, the truth and the life….

The most important egoist – that’s Me!

Knowledge and cooperation are the two most important tools that the individual has to survive and succeed.

Knowledge – for obvious reasons – to be able to achieve his or her dreams, satisfy desires and learn how to yearn for more.

Cooperation for the same reasons – plus to disincentivize other people from encroaching on one’s life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

There is a story about a Chinese emperor who was the wisest person because he could learn something even from the dumbest person he met. And the dumbest person was dumb due to being unable to learn even from the wisest emperor.

Knowledge not only provides the means to achieve one’s goals but also clues on how to do that easier, lazier, more efficient – it teaches us shortcuts.

But there is irrelevant knowledge some would say – like astronomy, for example.

That may seem so.

But when Neanderthals were competing with our ancestors for a place in the future – we  won because we were more creative. The Neanderthals were bigger stronger and only engaged in inventing new tools when those tools seemed to obviously bring some immediate advantage. They also had art and possibly rudimentary faith. But we – had more – better art, stronger faith, more curious minds and that’s why we survived and they didn’t. That’s why we need astronomy, rock music, comedy and all the other good but seemingly useless stuff that we do and enjoy.

And yes knowledge gives us the idea of shortcuts and one of the most useful shortcuts is to exploit your neighbor. Doesn’t seem ethical but it works.

Mish Mash for busy minds

Master of Reality

 

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of Mankind is Man.”

Alexander Pope. An Essay on Man

 

I believe we are responsible for our own lives. It would be irrational to delude yourself with rewards sometimes in the unknown future let alone in unknown worlds. We have the greatest gift of life and all we need to forge our path though it. Unbelievable as it may seem at times most of us have the ability to reason. Regardless of if you believe in God or Nature, we have freedom because God loves us, because Nature values us. Loving parents respect their offspring and wouldn’t offend them with demeaning micromanagement and control. Slaves do not have responsibilities, free people do, regardless of position and in our own lives we are entitled to the highest possible position.

We are the sovereign kings and queens of the most important realm: our own lives. That’s a right to govern we don’t have the right to cede. And if that sounds too comfortable to be true it isn’t. If we are free of constraints it should be OK to do with our lives whatever we want including wasting them completely. But I don’t believe that’s true.

I love the biblical story about the Master of Talents who gave his servants talents according to their ability and when he came back demanded not only the talents back but also profit and reprimanded the one who buried them. That’s why I believe that as we expect good governance from politicians to deal with our taxes and other common resources and from business leaders to whom we entrust our investments it’s only logical that we have the greatest responsibility to govern our own lives not only to preserve but to make them as good as possible.

To put it simple I see God or Nature if you prefer as Masters of Talents and us as Masters of Reality. We take it as it is given to us and have the responsibility to make our lives as good as possible. We have all the tools and the ability to think is the most powerful among them followed by the ability to communicate and cooperate to achieve goals unreachable on one’s own.

We make mistakes along this road and that is only human. It is part of the learning process. The best bet to avoid mistakes and errors is to discuss and learn from others. Success is based on the respect for everyone’s rights and opinions even if we don’t agree.

Reality is what we create, it is what we dream of and work to achieve. A castle in the clouds will collapse if we don’t build foundations under it and that makes us real Masters of Reality. Reality exists as we create it or is the way it is because of our neglect. The Master has given us talents and it’s up to us to use them for prosperity. That’s the only way to be human. We have talents and freedom including the freedom to choose the life of a beast.

Mish Mash for busy minds

I am the way...

If faith grows out of love and love from hope and hope based on knowledge which is the best remedy for fear, then faith in oneself is the highest most honest faith that one can have. Because it's obvious that you can only love what you know and that what you know best and deepest you are destined to love most. If you believe that you were created in God's image or you believe that you are the pinnacle of evolution no matter how imperfect you are - you have to love yourself to be able to love anyone and anything else

It is a delusion to believe that I know anything at all if I don't know myself first and from myself my deepest desires and boldest dreams. Then it looks like you can't believe in anything at all if you don't have faith in yourself first. And if that is the most honest possible faith why don't pray to yourself:

Dear me - please, help me become the person that I want to be and may my will be done... Perhaps if you do that then God, or Nature or Society or all of them together will help me achieve just that. Or not - you do believe that God will trade favors for prayers (as if God needs anything from me) or Nature will just take a course naturally favorable to me (it actually did already if I am the progeny of a long line of survivors or perhaps because they were survivors it looks like nature was simply good to them.

David didn’t wait for God to kill Goliath - but picked up a couple of pebbles and opposed the scary giant who died confused by his own arrogance. I can’t imagine David praying to God to kill Goliath because David is understandably reluctant to do it himself. David has faith and took action in his own hands to get what he wanted. Was he always good - no. But what makes David admirable is his honesty and faithfulness to himself.

You cannot be saved if you don’t save yourself. That’s what airline safety instructions tell you to do. If you don’t put on your oxygen mask first you may faint before you are able to help that child next to you. You have to love yourself so everyone can love you and so you can love the others. And you can only love yourself if you reach deep inside to that divine essence, some call soul.

What You See Is What You Get

What you see is what you get in live. If you know more you will get it easier. Understanding how the world works is critical to achieve ones goals easier. That knowledge comes from reflection on personal and others' experience. By reflection I mean both creating assumptions on cause and effect relationships and analyzing the result of testing these assumptions in real life. Personal experience is the most expensive but most reliable method of testing these assumptions and it relates them to our personal goals, interests or desires more closely than others. An experiment or in other words an artificial model of reality to test our theories is cheaper than real life experience but can be inaccurate or misleading due to the necessary simplification of that reality. The danger of self deception is even greater when applied to complex phenomena like society, business and especially politics.

But if personal experience leads to better knowledge wouldn't that also mean that personal theories of happiness, ethics, economics and politics are better than general ones. And indeed that is the logical conclusion. General theories are always weaker and less informative than personal ones. That doesn't meant that the are unnecessary – we need them to establish understanding between us so we can get other to help us achieve our goals which would be difficult (if not impossible unless one resorts to coercion) if we don't have a shared system of values, meanings and beliefs on the projected results of certain actions. Coercion is bad not because of some obscure commandment but because it can only achieve short lived results deceptively easy. The results will be short lived and the whole coercive enterprise a waste of resources because anything that does not develop is bound to die out. The only way to improve the results from coercion is by more coercion thus inevitably causing more resistance until the balance tips over against the perpetrator of coercive practices. It's a futile exercise and that makes it bad policy to pursue.