Ayn Rand On Ethics

 

Ayn Rand accuses altruists of a slight of hand that allows them to foist their system off to the unsuspecting public. Here she is from Page viii from her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness: “For a view of the nature of altruism, its consequences and the enormity of the moral corruption it perpetrates, I shall refer you to Atlas Shrugged—or to any of today’s newspaper headlines. What concerns us here is altruism’s default in the field of ethical theory.

 

There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together in one ‘package-deal’: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.”

 

I am not skilled enough of a formal ethicist to know if altruists everywhere, always have failed to define a code of moral values as Rand accusing them of failing to do, but I do know that altruists believe the beneficiaries of values is to be received by others at the cost of the self, and a noble life is one lived in selfless service of others and the community, altruists insist.

 

I agree that we must define our code of moral values before we can provide people with a system of values to guide their lives by, a desperate deficiency that Rand hopes to fill with her program of rational egoism.

 

I am not much against her plan, but would subscribe to the view that the beneficiary of practiced egoism is everyone, the private self, one’s family, God, others and humanity in general.

 

Weak Wills

 

The human heart rules the head so the heart is what wills us or motivates us to do as we will do, but this emotional will is a dominant (internally in control) yet weak will (weak in acting and participating decisively out there in the world).

 

Ordinarily as naturally low-functioning adults, our wills are weak: we are fatalistic and enjoy submitting to the herd or authority figures or both. We enjoy collective structures of existence as herded nonentities in hierarchical ranking.  We allow our “betters”, the ruling elite, to abuse us, enslave us and exercise excess control over us. We in turn are the ‘betters’ to those beneath us in social or institutional rank.

 

When ordered to do evil by those above, or ordering those beneath us to do evil, all are eager to obey to stay in good standing with peers, underlings, and superiors. All go along to get along, and moral checks and balances on immoral behavior are weakened or nonexistent.

 

Because Satan rules this world, and we are born wicked, and we live in groups and in hierarchies, all these collectivist and altruistic, interconnected generators of evil, hate and the joy of destroying and hurting, contribute to mass social failure, the weak wills of the joiners hurt

all personally and collectively. This frightening failure to advance as a race ought to disgust and scare everyone.

 

To repair such social ugliness and damage, what is required is that the wills of each agent be strong, free, and mostly good. As rational, articulate, moral adults, the will of the awake and tuned0in moral person requires that egoist ethics and a strong and stronger free will per citizen will allow for the arrival on the societal scene of a better society.

 

Individuators are internally determined and strong-willed, not much determined anymore by their group affiliations, their milieu, or their genetic predispositions.

The more the moral agent maverizes, the stronger, the freer, the more logical and kinder (If the great soul recognizes the good choice from the evil choice, normally he will do what is right.).

 

The stronger, freer, and better is the good will of the maverizer, the more he will habitually be a good person (All people lapse and sin all the time but perhaps not in such major, repetitive, wiped-out, dramatic fashion, and he quickly repents, atones and resumes his good living and wise choosing.). His character will be good and his disposition will be loving.

Great Souls Among Us

 

Historically, it was quite typical and predictable that startled and most upset group-living, non-individuating and mediocre majorities in any community anywhere would react—often violently—to the few naturally occurring great souls living among them.

 

With my philosophy of Mavellonialism, I am proposing a social arrangement that cultivates and instructs the young on how they can become living angels and budding great souls.

 

When 3 out of 4 adults in any group or any community anywhere are great souls, at various stages of personal development, then a social revolution of profound importance and impact will have been unleashed and eventually entrenched as the normal, new social order.

 

The non-individuators and group-livers among these great souls will have been socially conditioned to live among the great souls without loathing them, without denying what they are, who they are and how superior they are. The mediocre joinrs will no longer attack the great souls for being strange and different, and no longer will great souls be without power, guns and requisite feistiness to tolerate being attacked or abused by anyone, anywhere. The mediocre joiners will have been taught to quite envying the great souls or feeling hopeless that they cannot compete with them. All the mediocre need to do us to immediately commence with amounting to something fine and great personally, the aptitude and capacity to so flourish is their innate, untapped identity should they care to explore such promising opportunity.

 

The non-individuators will learn to discriminate against none and allow none to discriminate against them either.

 

It should make for a high civilization, honoring all good deities, where people live happy exceptional lives as the social norm.

 

Using The Word Selfishness

 On Page vii of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand notes that selfishness, or excessive self-interest, is a synonym for evil, and it is.

I do not like the world selfishness, and insist upon replacing it with the word self-interest or enlightened self-interest. The following concepts promote self-interestedness without it being excessive or at the expense of anyone else.

Selfishness is just too loaded a world.

The Savage Heart

 Calvin Thomkins refers to Eric Hoffer's savage heart and I believe that Hoffer has a savage heart, but he is a morally fine man, so he sublimates and controls his violent self.

Thomkins on Page 64 of his autobiography on Hoffer recites how Hoffer was a natural orator, a potential demagogue.

Hoffer knew it, and, unlike Hitler, who long practiced at being a more effective, captivating demagogue, Hoffer knew this trait of his--to sway people as a speechifier, demagogue or guru--but he was ethically self-aware and recognized that powerful, natural ability to sway others is to lead a mass movement, and that social institution sickens all taken in by it.

What I call for with my anarchist-individuator supercitizens is a upper middle class citizenry, the majority of adults in any given polity or nation, to be strong smart, articulate, skeptical and powerful personally, that they would have no desire to rule another, or allow another to rule them, and that makes gurus and demagogues without clout or followers.

Listen to the quote form Page 64-65 in which Hoffer describes his ethical unwillingness to ever serve as a demagogue or to sway large groups of people: "The words come--it's happened to me several times. But I didn't like that feeling with the audience; it bothered me afterward, and I didn't speak again in public for a long time after that . . . You see, the reason I don't think I am an intellectual is that I'm not impressed by my ability to hold people with words."

Hoffer was an intellectual, but he was a blue-collar intellectual that worked with his hands. He was not elite or managing anyone. The intellectuals that he does not trust are the ones that are formally educated, and to manage others. Often these intellectuals believe they are genetically smarter and morally superior to the masses that they manage. These elitists are capable of enormous cruelty and utter ruthlessness, and it is they that Hoffer warns us about.

Group-Living Holding Us Back

 Group-living likely made humans able to survive in the past, but now this crude social arrangement is holding us down and back, and made lead to human extinction.

Hoffer's Moving In And Out Of Groups

 The idea is original to me that people should individual-live more than group-live, and that social life will be a lot more accepting and enjoyable for living angels among us, when it is acceptable and normal for great souls to socialize and mix when they want to, and to self-isolate when they choose too, without being scolded or punished. 

It appears that Hoffer socialized when he wanted to or needed to, and then disappeared into his flat when he needed to. Read this quote from Calvin Thomkins biography, Page 63: "After the Sunday-morning walk, Hoffer goes back to his room across town. He cannot be with people for too long a stretch, not even the people he loves."

The Most Western Philosopher

 It occurred to me this evening as I was reading from Calving Thomkins biography, Eric Hoffer, that Hoffer was the quintessential Western philosopher.  What makes him so Western is his wholehearted adopting and acceptance of the Hebraic concept that humans thrive apart from nature, and are to subdue nature. No other great religions espouse this master-servant relationship between humans-nature as do the Jews and Christians. Hoffer the atheist is a cultural Jew (perhaps genetically too) in a very deep, simpatico way.

Let me quote Hopkins from Pages 62 and 63: "Hoffer loves Golden Gate Park because it is entirely man-made: the fact that virtually every one of the thousands of shrubs, plants, and trees that grow there exists in a landscape created by man out of barren sand dunes fits in well with his theory that 'man became what he is not with the aid of but in spite of nature'"

My response: We are biological creatures of nature, and we are also good angels, part divine. As good angels we are apart from nature and create, direct, control and make a living off of nature. We can do all this while being loving, careful, responsible stewards of nature, but we are its masters and mistresses, not the other way around, without being degraded and held back.

Thomkins continues: "It was only by cutting himself off from nature that man became what he is, Hoffer believes,; man started to become human when he got out from under nature's inexorable laws, although in doing so he also made himself 'an eternal stranger in this world.'"

My response: we would be eternal strangers even if we were still hunters and gatherers living our tribal lives for another 200,000 years. We might as well build our urban, unnatural, mechanistic heaven, for that is where we belong and that is the only place living angels can ever feel at home.

Thomkins continues: "Nature--external and internal--remains the critical enemy of man. Hoffer developed a rather striking corollary to this theory one day not many years ago, when he visited the De Young Memorial Museum in the Golden Gate Park with Lili and young Eric. Seiing the Indian and Chinese stone carvings of the Avery Brundage Collection, it suddenly occurred to him that when man wanted to depict the devil, he almost invariably made him in the image of a bestial nature--with horns, tail, fur, and cloven hoof; God, on the other hand, had been created in the image of man himself."

My response: I am an suburban dweller but I love farming, gardening and trees. Part of North Dakota and my druid ancestry are stirring all the time. Yet, I know that Lucifer and Lera rise up out of nature, and keeping people in packs, herded, non-individuating, emotional and group-living--our natural altruist instincts being fully sanctioned and rewarded.

I also know that the Father and Mother are in nature and a part of nature, but they also transcend nature and are apart from nature. They are great loners and individuators, logical more than emotional and individual-living. We are made in their image; for they are not made in our image. 

Hoffer's unerring ontology and theology inform us that truth is what his thinking was.

Eric Hoffer On The Worst Tyrants

 Calvin Thomkins wrote a biography on Eric Hoffer, called Eric Hoffer. Hoffer was worried about viable cities, so they should be hundreds of small units where people, live, work and cooperate, all people of all ages learning all the time, and it is similar to my vague, concepts of individuator-anarchists supercitizens living in and running local cantons something like in Switzerland.

Hoffer describes his small urban prototype community on Page 60 and 61 of Thomkins' book: "'And the beautiful thing,'  he says, 'is that this would naturally not be a school, it would be a playground! I'm antagonistic to schools. I am afraid of school teachers and intellectuals--I think they make the worst tyrants in the world, and they never have any understanding of the masses.'

My response: Schools are hierarchical structures, filled with groupist, group-living non-individuators that love their being enslaved by the hierarchy in which they live, and all creativity and independence thought is bred out of them by teachers, administrators, intellectuals, and bureaucrats as part of the ruling elite. Their power lusts drives them to set moral restraint aside as they are capable of vicious cruelty to get and keep power.

Hoffer the wise realizes that these educated, credentialed elite rulers do not understand the masses at all. Otherwise they would let them be free of maverize and build the free market system to enrich themselves and society.

Thomkins continues quoting Hoffer: "'But what I came to realize is that when you have a small school district of about four hundred people, what you really have is an agora, you have a small Athens, you have the ideal setup where people with different interests, different potentialities, different inclinations, all meet each other, love each other, embrace and wrestle each other. This is the creative situation.'"

My response: This is a deschooled, anarchist society, and it is rather egalitarian and veyr open-ended. All as maverizers are part of the elite and part of the masses, both clqses in eah wuperitien, ll at the same time.

Happiness

 Happiness is elusively hard to define and pinpoint. It is harder yet to practice and achieve should one identify this goal. Dennis Prager and Aristotle have some helpful suggestions for defining happiness and then working towards this admirable goal.

Perhaps this recipe would require a pinch of emotional self-control learn from Stoic philosophy.

And sensible pursuit of pleasures as recommended by the Epicureans would be in order.

I would add egoistic ethics: to love and esteem God, the self, and others.

To live temperately and feel temperately help us be calmer, with the lows not so low and the highs not so high.

With these inputs, deep happiness should be available to you, even if you are naturally sad, and situationally suffering right now.

It is important to realize often that we cannot make things better by remaking the external world, but we can change how we react to what occurs in what we do in response to incoming stimuli experienced.

Also, we can be grateful and seek meaning, love, self-realization and a relationship with the High Power. We can be resolved nt to make things worse by refusing to sin deeply and by refusing to maverize.

To some degree you cannot be a happy person unless you are grateful for existence and are a good loving person.

Dennis Prager Quotes Reacted To By Me

 This week on his radio program, Prager lamented that the Left destroys all that it touches, all that is good and beautiful. He generalized that those that have nothing seek to undermine, deonstruct and destroy all that is loved and cherished by those that have something--religion, tradition, customs, values.

He is wise as usual. The Left, the cultural have-nots, are jealous of the haves, cultural conservatives. Leftists cannot compete so they seek instead to bring about religious, cultural, political, military and federal revolution to wipe out all that is good and dear.

This is how postmodernist-Marxist true believers think and conduct themselves when they are being sincere.

Prager is also quoted on Facebook that values are everything. I would like to amend that by adding that good values are everything.

Thanksgiving Day 2022

 We all need to be grateful that we were born, that God gave us life, and a chance to become a living angel. That is love, and our loving reaction is required. We should be grateful and express that gratititude in speech and action.

To live under a constitutional republic (America), now under attack, in wealth, freedom, law and order, is a state of incomparable blessing while existing on this mortal coil.

Give thanks and thank God for everything.

Genesis 50 : 15-21

 Joseph is not only Yahweh's favorite, but he should be Yahweh's favorite, because, by nature and by conscious intention, he will to be spiritually and morally good, and to walk in God's footsteps. Joseph is good because he transcends the desire for revenge over wrongs done him, and he builds a better life for his family, the two nations and for himself. He forgives his brothers their transgressions against him.

His brothers are naturally lesser men, but they also compound their genetic inferiority to Joseph (He is not that much smarter or better than them, and they are not innately that much more dim-witted and more corrupt than he is: In other words, all humans, if they work hard to be smart, good and self-realizing, they can still accomplish wondrous things, most pleasing to God and the Good Spirits. These brothers of Joseph may not have been able to accomplish what he could, if all were functioning at their high highest level, at full capacity, but what they were able to achieve would still remain really quite remarkable if they willed themselves to so accomplish great things, working on self-advancement and self-improvement over a lifetime. The effort of every individuator, or the lack thereof, impacts reality in a serious way, and the Divine Couple keep track. It is unwise to slight them and ignore them.) by freely willing to not do good, and not individuate.

Having rejected good living, they then compound their evil: they actively turned wicked. They plotted to murder Joseph, jealous of his superiority and excellence (Which is actual but is based far more on willing to be good and willing to work hard to achieve excellence--merited superiority--very little based in innate superiority) and jealous of his being favored by Israel, their father.

Jealousy, negative competitiveness, and a desire to wipe all that is good and loving would lead these thugs to consider murder, to kidnap Joseph and to lie to their father that Joseph was dead.

Here is the quote from The New American Bible that reveals their anxiety over how Joseph will treat them, now that their father is deceased: "Now that their father was dead, Joseph's brothers became fearful and thought, 'Suppose Joseph has been nursing a grudge against us and now plans to pay us back in full for all the wrong we did him!' So they approached Joseph and said 'Before your father died, he gave us these instructions: You shall say to Joseph, Jacob begs you to forgive the criminal wrongdoing of your brothers, who treated you so cruelly. Please therefore forgive the crime that we, the servants of your father's God committed. When they spoke these words to him, Joseph broke into tears. Then his brothers proceeded to fling themselves down before him and said, 'Let us be your slaves!' But Joseph replied to them, 'Have no fear. Can I take the place of God? Even though you meant harm to me, God meant it for good, to achieve his present end, the survival of many people. Therefore, have no fear. I will provide for you and for your children.' By thus speaking kindly to them he reassured them."

This quote is very rich in meaning. His dastardly brothers think that Joseph will not treat them despicably as they still would have treated him, if they were in with the Pharaoh as Joseph was. They betrayed Yahweh and their father, but now begged for forgiveness by citing whom they previously betrayed.

All they want to do is survive, so they degrade themselves by obsequiously throwing themselves at his feet, and are willing to serve him as slaves, not proud, independent, self-assured shepherds from Canaan.

Joseph the tender=hearted saint forgives them wholly. He is wise, and responds that judgement and divine justice must be meted out by God, so Joseph must not usurp this divine role--if only so many aristocrats, rulers, despots and kings were as humble as Joseph, knowing their place, it would be a more peaceful, less bloody historical story.

Let us see this same quote from the Holy Bible: "And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.

And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall you say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin, for their did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. 

And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants.

And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?

But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. 

Now therefore fear you not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them."

Notice that this quote refers to his brothers as willing to be his servants and not his slaves, and this a strong different interpretation.

The author of the Bible also notes that humans, like the brothers of Joseph, do wicked deeds of their own free will, and yet, God's long-range plans are fulfilled through their malign efforts. So does good come from evil?

It is impossible for a human inquirer to make sense of these contradictory Biblical claims, so I like others just accept the mystery on faith that some rationale for what happens or happened will eventually make sense.

Genesis 47: 7-10

 In the passage below, I enjoyed the analogy that a human is but a wayfarer, a sojourner with but a few years to live on earth. It is a sobering reality, how fast life passes. If one does wish to maverize, one has no time to dillydally.

Here is that passage from The New American Bible: "The Joseph brought his father Jacob and presented him to Pharaoh. After Jacob had paid his respects to Pharaoh, Pharaoh asked him, 'How many years have you lived?' Jacob replied: 'The years I have lived as a wayfarer amount to a hundred and thirty. Few and hard have been those years of my life, and they do not compare with the years that my ancestors lived as wayfarers.' Then Jacob bade Pharaoh farewell and withdrew from his presence."

I have three reactions to this fascinating passage. First, I love these old nouns, wayfarers and sojourner, nomadic wanderers of foot, not often heard today. Second, Jacob made light of his long life, and referred to his ancient relatives living for hundreds of years, suggesting all were but mere wayfarers living for a few short years. In comparison to eternity and immortal Yahweh, that description is sobering but apt. Third, I love the line that Jacob came to pay his respects to Pharaoh, for paying one's respect towards someone in power or authority is another famous phrase in English, though it may not have derived from the book of Genesis.

Here is the same quote from the Holy Bible: "And Joseph brought in Jacob his father and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, the days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh."

The word have different meanings here. Jacob blesses Pharaoh rather than paying his respects to Pharaoh and that is a huge distinction. Jacob thus comes across as a holy and devout man that blessed Pharaoh. Jacob refers to himself as a sojourner living out his pilgrimage here on earth, and this may indicate that his real permanent home and reward is in heaven or positive Sheol.

Jacob seems to regard life in this temporal home as a life of suffering and encountering evil, a journey at the end of which eternal life with Yahweh in some sort of Hebraic heaven may have been the ideal outcome.

Genesis 45:16-18

 Those with a classical or at least traditional Western education are appreciative of how the Bible and Shakespeare, two well known sources, provided popularized phrases used in vernacular English by millions of people, millions of times.

For example, Genesis appears to be the source of that famous phrase, living off the fat of the land, living well and high, and having not worked very hard to be recipients of such good fortune.

Here is that source from The New American Bible: "When the news reached Pharaoh's palace that Joseph's brothers had come, Praraoh and his courtiers were pleased. So Pharaoh told Joseph: 'Say to your brothers: This is what you shall do: Load up your animals and go without delay to the land of Canaan. There get your father and your families, and then come back here to me; I will assign you the best land in Egyot, where you will live off the fat of the land . . ."

This is a high honor for foreigners are gifted without condition the best land in the Nile Valley and that is a most generous gift from Pharaoh to the Hebrews.

Here is that same quote from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And the fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh's house, saying Joseph's brethren are come; and it pleased Pharaoh well, and his servants. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan. And take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land."

Genesis 42:38

 I knew that the ancient Hebrews believed in an afterlife and a netherworld, but theologians do not accept this view unanimously. But this line from Genesis seems to support Hebrew belief in an afterlife. Here is Jacob's remarks from The New American Bible: "But Jacob replied: 'My son shall not go down with you. Now that his full brother is dead, he is the only one left. If some disaster should befall him on the journey you must make, you would send my white head down to the nether world in grief.'"

Let me quote this same verse from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And he said, My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone: if mischief befall him by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave."

Now, this translation refers to Sheol or the grave, not to an afterlife, so it is a much for conservative interpretation. The contrast is stark.

The Conscience

 On the radio today (11/21/2022) Dennis Prager was pointing out that the conscience is easily overruled and suppressed as wicked people have no problem sleeping well, and not worrying about feeling guilty for misdeeds of the recent past, ones that they will repeat tomorrow, and long into the future.

He points out that the conscience naturally exists in the soul (my words) as God's wee, quiet voice instructing us, reproving us on how to live and redirect our lives. But the conscience is weak, and our natures are unruly and sin-oriented. The conscience is easily over-powered and pushed down into our subconscious until it is, in effect, deadened or silenced. The person's character is then so evil and bad, that from habit and free will, they sin with pleasure and pride and force of habit.

Prager advises that the moral and godly adult is one who exercises his conscience, and makes it strong and central to his character development, and central to all his decision-making.

Prager is right of course. I also worry that what all this signifies in practice for each moral agent can be tricky to interpret and implement. Unlike Prager, I do not regard self-esteem development as sinful and demonically prideful. 

If the individual does not love or esteem himself, he is angry, upset, bitter, resentful and in tremendous need to lash out and destroy and tear down others, and even Being itself. I would suggest that a person of high-self-esteem is one that loves God first, the Good Spirits second, then himself, then his loved ones and then other human beings farther out from the center of his life.

To love himself and to take care of himself is to discipline himself, and this includes a highly developed and strong conscience that he interacts with constantly and follows as in need of being coherent with the choices that he makes.

Where he sins, and disobeys his conscience and God's promptings, he should criticize himself, apologize to God and make amends.

His guilt should be proportionate to what he did wrong, but he must not lock in on endless self-attacking where he can never repent enough for what he did wrong. Endless self-attacking will lead to self-loathing or low self-esteem, and then he will hate himself and seek revenge on others and the world, and that is what evil is and does.

Please Do Not Misunderstand Me

 Please do not misunderstand me, or intentionally misconstrue my meaning and aim to gain some cheap credits with your popular peers.

I have never claimed that the ethical individualist, practicing normative egoism as a good person, would be required to be friendless or without companions, or social involvement.

First, he usually marries, has a spouse, and has children. Second, he is a member of an extended family. Third, he has a relationship with the good angels (the Good Spirits) and the Mother and Father (the Divine Couple).

He would have or should have friends (actual peers) or casual friends, real and superficial, among groupists, joiners, group-livers, non-individuators intolerant of mavericks.

Many groupists will be intolerant of him, and refuse to associate with him: be their peers, neighbors or coworkers.

It will get better in the decades ahead as Mavellonialism emerges and is accepted as part of the bourgeoning American culture.

As most individualists learn to maverize, and grow into the great-souled status that the Good Spirits always had in mind for each human, these emerged, merited great souls will find other great souls common and nearby to become Friends with.

In this new social regime, the great soul, the individuator, can have his cake and eat it too, He can primarily individual-live to do his own thing in active service to God, himself and to the community, while group-living the rest of th time moving in and out of social settings as he wills it with no fallout or loss of group rank for going his own way as he will, as often as he wills, how he will and to the degree that he will.

 

 

Is God Predictable?

 Yes, to some degree, God is predictable. We know that the Mother and Father are loving and just, so that, in the long run, and perhaps in the short run, they will see to our best interests, whether we are grateful for outcomes bequeathed, and whether we even understand what has just happened to us.

The Light Couple are wondrously creative, and Ever Becoming, so this entails that De and their Creation and its creatures are always evolving and changing. That pattern is vaguely predictable, but all bets are off after that point is made.

Sinners, All

 We are all sinners, and we all need to confess our sins against God, to ask forgiveness, repent and atone for past sins.

Now comes the hard part: to go and sin no more, at least at the type of sins that one had been indulging in.

To change, really change, and sin that way no more, it is one of the hardest adjustments for any human to make. The spirit is sometimes willing, and the flesh is always weak. I speak from direct, personal experience.

I hope and pray that my lapsing, misbehavior and repeated betrayal of God and the Good Spirits does not land me in hell.

Hoffer's Views On Nature

 In the Calvin Thomkins biography of Eric Hoffer, on Page 54 he captures Hoffer's quote on nature: " . . . I have this idea about man fighting nature on two fronts. There is nature around you, which you have to combat in order to make a living; and there is nature within you, the animal lusts, the part that Freud talks about. So you are fighting nature on two fronts. But here is a terrible thing: When you win on one front, you lose on the other! The triumph of the engineer brings affluence, brings victory over external nature, but it also sets up the stage for the psychiatrists. On the other hand, if you win the war against nature inside you, and end up with a population of yogis and ascetics, you are going to starve in the street. The idea of course, is not to win on either front. Man needs that tension, that stretching of the soul between two polarities . . ."

Hoffer, like Jordan Peterson, is an ethical and ontological moderate. Any set of polarities are to be won more than lost, against both poles at the same time--that is victory, and that ishow human flourish, invent and create. 

Concerning nature outside of us, we do not want to impose too much order upon it. Regarding nature within us, we do not want to succumb to being so natural that we cannot think or rise above nature. We want neither too much order nor too much chaos in our lives.

Calvin Thomkins On Eric Hoffer

 Calvin Thomkins wrote a biography on Eric Hoffer, called Eric Hoffer. On Page 53 he quotes Hoffer talking about all the groups that want him to speak to them: "Among the groups and organizations that seek him out, Hoffer says, the most persistent are the Jesuits, the Jews, and the psychiatrists. 'Every day I get letters from monsignors, from bishops--and I am a nonbeliever!' Hoffer shouts with delight at the irony. 'They tell me I am a theologian. My theology is theology of the souls, you see--I believe that God and the devil are fighting their battle, not in heaven but in man's soul. And I have a definition of God--anything that humanizes is God, anything that dehumanizes is the devil.'"

For an atheist Hoffer had a keen appreciation of good and evil and the divine battle between God and the devil. That eternal war between them is fought in heaven, in nature, in outer space and especially in the human souls as Hoffer noted.

Hoffer defines God as what humanizes humans and the devil as what dehumanizes them.

I assign to Hoffer at least one set of propositions that render this quote believable.

If Hoffer is an implicit egoist (I believe he is,) he would want human's, their pride, their self-esteem elevated and humanized, and my Mavellonialist maverization exemplies and amplifies this unfolding ambition.

Altruist ethics keep people down and back, suppressed and oppressed. And group-living altruists, with little self-esteem, are enslaved and herded nonindividuators. They are exploited, dehumanized and made to suffer, so their low self-esteem is the product of their dehumanized, wicked lifestyle.

Tom Bethell

Tom Bethell wrote a biography on Eric Hoffer: Eric Hoffer The Longshoreman Philosopher. On Page 91, he quotes from a letter that Hoffer wrote to Margaret Anderson: "I have done it every day for weeks. Each day I took a problem to the park and returned with a more or less satisfactory solution . . . The book was written in complete intellectual isolation. I have not discussed one idea with any human being, and not mentioned the book to anyone but you."

This original thinker and philsopher worked in complete isolation from others, and yet his work was so fine and seminal. I work mostly in isolation though my wife has proofed many of my blog site entries.

Both Hoffer and I are largely original thinkers, so perhaps individuators should do much of their work alone to be as innovative and creative as possible. Still, consulting with peers, especially after working alone to paint or write or generate a new invention, may be constructive and productive.

It may be the more isolated the great soul is while maverizing, the more profound and original is his thinking. Who knows?

Blessings From The Free Market Economy

 Capitalism is the economic system that fits democracy and especially our constitutional republicanism like a glove for a hand. 

Here are but a few mentioned benefits:

1. Here, if the poor work hard and smart, they can get ahead and become prosperous, maybe rich.

2. Under a modern, industrial, free-market system, a people are blessed with goods, services and their material well-being makes them happy, healthy and satisfied, moreso anyway. Being materialistiv makes us indiviualistic and that leads to moral goodness.

3. The individual flourishes in a free society governed to free up free markets to grow wealth and happiness for each person.

The Common People As Seen By Eric Hoffer

 Eric Hoffer was a shrewd and kind man. He knew that elites are no smarter than anyone else. He knew and believed that the common people were plenty smart, creative, and talented, and. if let to run their own affairs, they would do fine and required no elites to rule them.

Intellectuals, professors, American aristocrats, and other high society types actually believe they are smarter and morally superior to the masses that require being ruled and directed by their upper-class masters, and this is rationalization is corrupt and false, and is the source of most human suffering.

Where I have taken all this is to recommend that the little people, all of them--should they will it of their own free choice--can individuate their potential into actuality, as all of them are laden with talent.

As self-realizers, as anarchist-individuator-supercitizens, they can be exceptional, but they will exist and thrive in a classless society of upper middle class achievers, so there is no established  elite allowed to  rand wreck the country as all are elite and all are common, at the same time in the same person, both these traits revealed and shared in each person. That is where I recommend that we head.

A Cruel World

 Yes, it is a cruel world, run by the Dark Couple, backed by the children of darkness, born depraved, and running in packs, where their self-abuse and mutual-abuse is negatively augmented.

Mavellonialism is my ethical project to alleviate some of that foolishness and suffering.

Perspective

 

We do all see things from our perspective, and that is all right as long as we also recognize and openly admit and live by the axiom that good choices stem from seeing the world from a flying bird's eye view.

No Sense Of Proportion

 A fanatic has no sense of proportion and that personal moral failure and fractured attitudinal view is socially acceptable to his peers.

Much Turnover

 I have switched jobs many times in my checkered career. Why? I am not lazy so that was not the cause.

30% of my failure to fit in anywhere is my fault due to insubordination, narcissistic inability to comprehend how my superior smugness is offending and angering all around me--driving them away--arrogance, mouthiness, and a rebellious attitude towards authority and towards accepting group norms and their established pecking order in the workplace, which revolve around  getting along with and seeing things the way that Management sees things, and accepting without question their narrative of how things are.

I am also a good, kind person that becomes an obedient, happy, quieted employee when a kind, democratic boss wins me over. 

70% of y inability to survive at various workplaces is the fault of Management. Managers are not individuators or great souls, so a great soul like I am does distract, intimidate, irritate, and vex them. They obsess about me, and then lie to themselves and the clique under them to work together to drive me out, and it works quite well, and they are legally protected for their legal, social, ethical, and constitutional discrimination against this great soul and other great souls. All great souls should have legal, protected class status in the workplace.

They harass me endlessly and then with my excessive defensive temper the quarreling starts and it escalates and I am fired or resign.

I did take over the union in some jobs and fought management to a standoff for years at a time but that caused great strain for meh and me.

I am the victim but they accuse me of being a bully and victimizer, so they justify their cruelty, abuse and intolerance.

I am lately trying to not be so mouthy are enthusiastic so we will see if I can last a bit longer than normal before moving on. We will see.

Groups hate and constantly war against individualists and great souls are their favorite target. Work organizations are groupist and hierarchical, so that is where unconstitutional discrimination against individualtors occurs regularly, and that is the main reason why I have never settled in any job.

Truth Considered

 Truth is the product of fearless inquiry, to discover what we can know and do know and what we cannot know and do not know.

If we could never know the truth, and if skepticism were the epistemological law of the land, I would welcome the recognition of such cognitive reality. 

We cannot live well, and make good decisions, without knowing the truth about what is going on, and what is the human condition and end considering such revelation.

If epistemological nihilism or incorrigible skepticism are our fundamental situation, then we accept it and build our lives upon thin knowledge, building lives as best we can despite our lack of access to objective value and objective reality.

Extreme

 So often in human history a great soul is so misunderstood that an angry, hyper-aggressive mob will accost him directly, demanding that he renounce his point of view, and verbally and practically agree that they are right, and that he will see things and live as they do. 

If he does debase himself and surrender to their demands, he might yet live, even prosper.

If he refuses to repent and betray his own sincerely held values, they will shoot him, hang him, or burn him at the stake.

They could not stomach his superior truth when he was alive, but now after death this martyr lives forever in the public memory, a person to be venerated and emulated.

There is a gentler, more civilized way for great souls to live among us, and their daunting, original views can be absorbed into society without all this violent upheaval.

How this will be achieved in the future will be where most people are living angels, individuators that grew to be great and very developed, new great souls.

When so many are so courageous, creative, fearless, logical, and innovative, new ideas will be absorbed quickly and without social and political convulsions.

Each new idea will be brought into public consciousness with barely a ripple of startled, hostile reaction occurring.

Such a society will last much longer because its people are always growing, always self-transforming so static thinking will not be then much a worry,

Whichever

 Whether one proposes moral egoism or moral altruism as the desirable ethical system for people to follow and live by, if one is sensible, kind, and realistic, one advocates an ethical system that promotes the welfare of each individual, as well as the needs of the whole community, at the same time.

No altruist system worth its salt is advantageous for the people unless it upholds the dreams, needs and aspirations of each individual of that community.

No egoist system worth its salt is worth following unless its proponents lay out that by enlightened self-interest, the needs of each citizen and the requirements to be met for the community are best met through the practice of rational egoism.

Centralized Power

 It is my surmise that at a certain time in history, humans were able to survive, thrive, modernize, and become more civilized due to the arrival on the societal scene of hierarchies, whether feudal, economic, religious, or imperial, governmental structures.

Now, hierarchies are what we metaphysically, naturally, intuitively construct, per Jordan Peterson, but groupism, group-living, non-individuation, class society and big government all are causes of, are the products of and intimately connected to the development of hierarchical institutions over the centuries..

In a future set of de-institutionalized societies, hierarchies will still exist but are flattened into classless societies of universal (universal across that community or nation) of anarchist-individuator-supercitizens.

We cannot do not solve the excesses of capitalism where wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few and all are oppressed, kept down, poor and exploited by growing Marxist totalitarian government to rectify it; the cure is much worse than the disease—under totalitarian rule, the elite gets much richer, more powerful, and more entrenched. The people suffer horribly in such a hyper-stratified society.

Revolution will only replace current hierarchies with different and usually more corrupt, violent, and brutal totalitarian arrangement where Communist Party elites reorganize and strengthen the hierarchies which they promised to eradicate.

Only a society of supercitizens will relieve the dangers of elites and hierarchies that naturally occur. 

Only mostly nonviolent revolution by supercitizen conservatives can end elitism, class society and the corrupt abuse of power that automatically increases as hierarchies grow and expand.

Group Partisanship

 One of the primary flaws of group-living is the prejudiced, falsified, extremely partisan reaction in-group members exhibit. 

Towards their fellow insiders, their allies, their kin, their affection and favoritism is almost always slanted to cover up their associates crimes, sins and mistakes, and to give them more credit than they deserve for their triumphs, victories and successes.

Towards outlier, outsiders, dissidents, loners, and people belonging to competing groups, their dis-favoritism and hostility is so oppositional as to be delusional and hysterical. Their enemies can do nothing right and are innately evil, stupid, flawed, vicious and inferior, and their victories were stolen or accidental, and their failure can never be excused; it is always the fault of these enemies, and they are to be prosecuted to the max.

This flaw of inherent, profound attitudinal bias is so subjective, emotional, corrupt, and mendacious, that those holding this attitude are bound to wicked ways and practices, based in their sick attitudes and their vitiating culture.

 It is not helpful, kind, or truthful to ignore and downplay the virtues merited by one's enemies, while highlighting and exaggerating their vices and wrongdoings.

It is corrupt and sickening for the entire society to overemphasize the virtues of one’s friends, while excusing, ignoring, or silencing those that point of the errors and crimes of one's friends.

And the group partisanship so limiting and harmful just occurs among regular group-livers that are still rather individualist, temperate, and logical. That danger and harm is magnified ten or twenty times when citizens radicalize themselves as true believers belonging to a mass movement, whose guru or demagogue seeks national or world domination. When these children of darkness win, hell on earth is a literal reality.

We will not be a good, kind, fair, accurate and impartial people in our opinions and world view until we individual-live in America as anarchist-individuator-supercitizens. Such an original, independent thinking and rational egoists are able to compete and cooperate in a civilized, lawful, nonviolent manner.

That is the only way we will experience a world in which truth, impartiality and a fair and free press and reader/citizens are rather typical here.

The Ethics Of Dennis Prager

 It is not clear and easy to pigeonhole Dennis Prager's ethical view. On one hand he, like today on his radio show, warns people to ask what is good, not what is good for me. To ask what is good is to discover one's duty out there and to work and exert oneself to make the world better; it is not to ask what is good for me.

For the egoist he can ask what is in it for him, and one could replay that taking care of others is one way of taking care of the self.

Prager's altruistic criticism of asking what is in it for me does resonate with Christian and altruist criticism that individualism, egoism and self-concern are selfish, and are the most evil forces at work on the planet.

Then Prager elsewhere extols the virtue of American individualism, rationalism, and capitalism--all consistent with egoistic ethics.

Cancel Culture

 Dennis Prager defined as inveterate, serial liars those that threaten to accept without argument lies publicly sanctioned. These liars lie but also believe their lies, but shut down any alternative views, and those that express them.

Prager argues that conservatives are truth-tellers that could care less what Leftists says and waste no time trying to cancel them for opposing conservative views.

Again, he is correct. The Leftists are ideologues. And an ideologue is emotionally expressing his viewpoint as flawless and all opposing views and false, corrupt, and punishable.

Those, that are groupist in its rabid phase, as mass movement evangelists for their ism--like Leftists (not liberals)--lie all the time, and insist that the public publicly and privately mouth, espouse, agree with and are willing to lay down their lives for lies upholding the cherished cause.

Truth is moderate and that account is the near absolute truth as far as I can detect. I realize these two statements are contradictory and paradoxical but that is how the world seems to work. I cannot explain why or how it works that way, but God seems to want us to be moderate regarding truth and statements.

Regularly stated truths are right mostly and wrong a bit, and conventional lies are mostly false, but correct a bit. Great truths express one contrary view over its opposite, but not entirely.

Great falsehoods, the kind that fanatics hurl out verbally, are rantings about the pure truth of the contrary that they favor over its opposite view which they dismiss and discard as completely false and without any merit or insight.

When we lie, we are more emotional, unreasonable, groupist and totalist.

When we tell the truth we are fairly rational, impartial, individualistic and nuanced in our description of things, people and situations encountered in the world.

The Epistemology Of Deer Hunting

 Skilled deer hunters that get a deer or trophy buck every year may seem to be lucky, and perhaps they are for luck is always a factor in all our plans and undertakings. More than likely, those that consistently get their deer year after year are skilled, not lucky.

Here is how that skill or epistemological competence unfolds.

1. The hunter knows how deer think and behave. This allows him to be able to see, anticipate, see, and shoot their surprised deer, shocked and amazed (too late) that a human could be as woods worthy and elusive as his prey.

2. The hunter applies his thorough knowledge of how deer think and behave to the specific site of the hunt. He knows where deer sleep, their lanes to their feeding grounds, and their runs to water, etc. That is where the hunter builds his stand or his ground blind.

3. The hunter then applies what he has learned about deer and the unique features of the local hunted habitat, so that his hunt will likely be successful, due his competence more than his luck.

Prager On Happiness

 The wise Dennis Prager, on his radio show last week, was repeating his insight into the vital importance of being happy for human mental health. He went to far as to decree that being happy is an ethical obligation.

Now, Jordan Peterson disagrees, remarking that we should not pursue happiness, or self-esteem, or mindless pleasure, but meaning gained from self-discipline, taking on the heaviest responsibility that one can shoulder.

Both sages and ethicists are correct. Prager is a subtle thinker, and he admires Peterson, but Prager wants each person to lead a good life. His point, as I interpret it, is that one should not pursue cheap or mindless happiness, but that despite suffering and setbacks, being grateful for life, for God's gifts and cultivating a deep, calm, solid, solid positive attitude will allow one to be relatively happy no matter how many lemons that life hands one.

Prager advises that cheerful, grateful, non-resentful, thankful, and optimistic people cannot but be good. They are happy to know God, and to live a godly life, so they have not need to hurt anyone else because they are at peace inside themselves. I believe his advice is sound.

He also added a critically important moral addendum: another reason for striving to being as non-bitter, not angry, not resentful and playing the victim is that when one limits how unhappy one is, then one is less likely to need to attack others to vent pent-up personal frustration and self-loathing.