I used to be a consulting engineer. I ran my own small firm and made fair piles of money. Then one day my phone stopped ringing because apparently I was too old. I now work a second career making about 7.5 percent of my former earnings, and I don't complain about it. I could cry and wail and shriek "age discrimination", but I don't because were I to do so, I would be a dishonest scoundrel attempting to secure something to which I am not entitled: a job guaranteeing me my former going rate. I would rather starve than stoop to such depravity.
So I work on a construction crew. It keeps me from getting fat at 68, keeps my other skills alive, and to be honest, it is more interesting and satisfying than dealing with whiny clients who make all manner of wildly stupid decisions despite your strong analysis, the upshots of which tell them in clean and concise language that those decisions are big time risk-laden losers.
I am owed NOTHING by this world, and neither are you, save that we respect one another's equal rights. I make my way and if one day I cannot, then I will leave this world for want of whatever it was I could not secure for myself. I can accept that precisely because I understand I am owed nothing, save respect for my natural rights, just as I owe the same to all others. Make your bones using your best honest effort. Some will win and some will lose. This is the nature of things.
If you want to learn and become reasonably wise, then learn this. I promise that it will serve you well.
Freedom, for which actual "anarchy" is nothing fancier than a somewhat arcane euphemism, demands seven things of a man:
1 Intellect
2 Smarts
3 Integrity
4 Respect
5 Generosity
6 Responsibility
7 Courage
Choose these and you will be a free man. But none of it is easy; much of it being terrifying at times, and aggravating much of the rest of the day. Then there is that slice of your soul that is going to rebel against each of these virtues precisely because they are all difficult, and therefore chafe against the part of you that is just a little bit rotten, wanting free stuff and cheap ease, not to mention having the world precisely to your liking.
I am owed NOTHING by this world, and neither are you, save that we respect one another's equal rights. I make my way and if one day I cannot, then I will leave this world for want of whatever it was I could not secure for myself. I can accept that precisely because I understand I am owed nothing, save respect for my natural rights, just as I owe the same to all others. Make your bones using your best honest effort. Some will win and some will lose. This is the nature of things.
If you want to learn and become reasonably wise, then learn this. I promise that it will serve you well.
Freedom, for which actual "anarchy" is nothing fancier than a somewhat arcane euphemism, demands seven things of a man:
1 Intellect
2 Smarts
3 Integrity
4 Respect
5 Generosity
6 Responsibility
7 Courage
Choose these and you will be a free man. But none of it is easy; much of it being terrifying at times, and aggravating much of the rest of the day. Then there is that slice of your soul that is going to rebel against each of these virtues precisely because they are all difficult, and therefore chafe against the part of you that is just a little bit rotten, wanting free stuff and cheap ease, not to mention having the world precisely to your liking.
That's your inner two-year old, and make no mistake, we all of us have one.
Being an adult means putting the brat in a box, burying him, and never again letting him darken your door - an effort that must continue unabated for a lifetime because that spoilt toddler is eternal, and he never ever gives up trying to strong arm you into caving to his insistence and, at times, tantrums. Why do you think people rob banks, end up in prison, dead, or destroy their lives with drugs and violence? It is because the leave their inner runt in charge, rather than keeping the little beggar on a choker with a very short leash.
Choosing to be an intact, free and sovereign adult can at times be a miserably difficult task. But when you choose correctly, you enjoy a brand of liberty that no amount of self-indulgence can ever come close to matching. Letting your base self run amok is the guaranteed path to disaster and death. Keeping him in his box is really the only reasonable path to a life worth living. The dividend of self-respect - knowing that you are the captain of your fate - is priceless, and nothing in this world can beat it. I know because I've been on both sides of that line.
The quality of your life is 90% dictated by your attitude. Choose to be a whiny cur and your life will be riddled with miseries at every turn. Choose to be an adult in control of your emotions, impulses and desires, and you will benefit from it in ways you cannot now imagine. Learning to eat bitter and yet remain intact and in control of yourself is high attainment. Comparatively few are able to do it; far fewer are willing to even try. But the failure is almost never one of capacity, but of will. People just decide that there's no point in being that good. And so they settle for being lesser men for the sake of getting what they think they want. This is the very definition of the Weakman.
Johnny gives in to the appeal of Eileen's legs because he just cannot (WILL not) stop thinking about what it must be like having them wrapped around his head. And so he dwells and dwells until his sense of what is right (like not cheating on his loving wife) shrinks in comparison to his sense of what he wants, resulting in all manner of rationalizing as to why it's OK, even if only for one time, to hit on Eileen. And that is just one of the manifold ways in which people run their lives off the rails with all the best of intentions.
You will never lose by choosing to be a free man, which is a man of knowledge; a man who runs himself, which is to say a man of self-control. Of that you have my sincere promise, but the path is difficult with most giving up, which is a terrible shame, for were they to stick with it, I confidently estimate that 90% or better of all the problems of which so many complain, would vanish as if by magic.
Ron Paul used to quip that "freedom is popular". He was wrong. Freedom is decidedly unpopular and it is so because of those seven requirements for being a free man.
Ball's in your court.
It always was. God bless you all, and until next time please accept my best wishes.
The good news here is that the more diligently you practice the habit of holding your inner destroyer at bay, the easier it becomes; the more familiar, and therefore the more comfortable. Bear also in mind that maintenance is a whole lot easier than getting up the slope in the first place. And at some point, much as with the practice of good mannerliness, it becomes pleasurable habit from which one gains endless satisfaction because you have become your own master. Few things are as satisfying as knowing that you are beyond some specific corruption not because you are inherently immune, but because you have chosen to be. That is the truest and greatest power a man can cultivate. You are in control of who you are and what you do, come what may. And what comes is not always the thing that you think you want, so be prepared for disappointments. Those are the times when it pays to be stubborn because giving in to the screaming brat may make you feel better in the moment, but down the road you are guaranteed to regret the decision.
The quality of your life is 90% dictated by your attitude. Choose to be a whiny cur and your life will be riddled with miseries at every turn. Choose to be an adult in control of your emotions, impulses and desires, and you will benefit from it in ways you cannot now imagine. Learning to eat bitter and yet remain intact and in control of yourself is high attainment. Comparatively few are able to do it; far fewer are willing to even try. But the failure is almost never one of capacity, but of will. People just decide that there's no point in being that good. And so they settle for being lesser men for the sake of getting what they think they want. This is the very definition of the Weakman.
Johnny gives in to the appeal of Eileen's legs because he just cannot (WILL not) stop thinking about what it must be like having them wrapped around his head. And so he dwells and dwells until his sense of what is right (like not cheating on his loving wife) shrinks in comparison to his sense of what he wants, resulting in all manner of rationalizing as to why it's OK, even if only for one time, to hit on Eileen. And that is just one of the manifold ways in which people run their lives off the rails with all the best of intentions.
You will never lose by choosing to be a free man, which is a man of knowledge; a man who runs himself, which is to say a man of self-control. Of that you have my sincere promise, but the path is difficult with most giving up, which is a terrible shame, for were they to stick with it, I confidently estimate that 90% or better of all the problems of which so many complain, would vanish as if by magic.
Ron Paul used to quip that "freedom is popular". He was wrong. Freedom is decidedly unpopular and it is so because of those seven requirements for being a free man.
Ball's in your court.
It always was. God bless you all, and until next time please accept my best wishes.
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