I submit that no American can have convictions about a
proper society, nor can he have a passion for life, unless he is
willing to take a stand for his right to be selfish. To defend himself against government coercion, he must have an intellectually defensible
love for high values. He must be so
ambitious for life that he will righteously dissent when told that he should sacrifice his values for sake of the collective.
In an age of rising taxes, increasing regulations, government entitlement programs and "shared sacrifice"; the rational individual must arm himself with the tools necessary to survive. Yet, the factors that enable survival are more than merely understanding economic principles gone awry. A whole host of philosophical issues impinge on the individual today and these issues, when answered by reason, will arm men with the tools necessary to achieve success. This will take a long-term approach, but the struggle must begin now.
Being selfish is not something one can do easily. It is not about striving to win over others. It is not about treachery and deceipt. It is not about hating others and seeking to win at their expense. Those are easy things to do and require no thought. Being selfish is about using reason and being convinced that the best way to achieve values is by honest living. Being selfish is about understanding what knowledge and integrity demand, what justice demands and how survival depends upon the virtues of rationality and production. Being selfish is about the mind and doing the thinking necessary to develop a solid foundation of metaphysical and epistemological premises. Being selfish is about enabling effective action in the pursuit of high values. Being selfish requires a lot of work.
Being selfish is not something one can do easily. It is not about striving to win over others. It is not about treachery and deceipt. It is not about hating others and seeking to win at their expense. Those are easy things to do and require no thought. Being selfish is about using reason and being convinced that the best way to achieve values is by honest living. Being selfish is about understanding what knowledge and integrity demand, what justice demands and how survival depends upon the virtues of rationality and production. Being selfish is about the mind and doing the thinking necessary to develop a solid foundation of metaphysical and epistemological premises. Being selfish is about enabling effective action in the pursuit of high values. Being selfish requires a lot of work.
As we watch events in other parts of the world, it is
becoming increasingly clear that bad times are ahead for the USA. How can you protect yourself, your money,
your energy and your rights? What can
you do to ensure that your freedom to live and thrive can be maintained or
recovered? The solution I suggest is
that every American should be selfish in the highest meaning of the term and that means he should seek the highest use of his mind.
There are essentially two obstacles to the proper exertion
of individual self-interest among Americans.
They are skepticism and mysticism.
These two fundamental movements have had devastating impact on the lives
of individuals. Skepticism keeps men
bound by the ropes of concrete-bound thinking and makes them incapable of
drawing the wider abstractions necessary to ascertain reality. Mysticism is
infected with rationalism and imprisons the mind by insisting that all ideas
be deduced from floating abstractions. These "bad" philosophies leave the
field of human thought vulnerable to the deadly consequences of altruism and
collectivism.
Why do I use a title such as “On Being Selfish”? One goal is to help remove the stigma
associated with the idea of living for oneself.
I’d like to show that being selfish is good and that it represents some
fairly fundamental issues such as reason, survival, morality and thriving. Secondly, the idea of being selfish has been denigrated to the point
of nearly destroying society and it must be reclaimed if society is to avoid the coming abyss.
I think Ayn Rand gave the perfect answer when she was asked “Why
do you use the word “selfishness” to denote virtuous qualities of character,
when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things
you mean?"[1]
Her answer:
“It is not a mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary
choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word
"selfishness" is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating
intellectual "package-deal," which is responsible, more than any
other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.
In popular usage, the word "selfishness" is a
synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples
over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being
and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any
immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word
"selfishness" is: concern with one's own interests.
This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does
not tell us whether concern with one's own interests is good or evil; nor does
it tell us what constitutes man's actual interests. It is the task of ethics to
answer such questions.”[2]
If you’d like to learn more about the writings of Ayn Rand,
click here: Amazon's
Ayn Rand Page and Amazon's
Leonard Peikoff Page.
Finally, I’d like to say that this blog is a private
endeavor, an effort to organize my life around my values in a time when
political events are daily making it more difficult to live for those values. I’m not going to create an organization and
ask you to join a community. I’m not
going to ask for donations or spend lots of money creating services that might (or
might not) make me rich. I am only going
to write about ideas and the actions that I will take to protect myself against those who are encroaching upon my individual rights.
Below is a list of general topics with some ideas for future
articles that I’d like to develop. If
you want to be notified when I post a new blog, you can friend me (Robert Villegas) on
Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/.
General Topics
·
Being Selfish – How to Survive the Possible collapse
o
What is Dictatorship?
o
History of Dictatorship
o
Going on Strike
·
Literature and Philosophy – Creating a Library
of Liberty
o
Book Reviews
·
The Next Election
o
Was the election stolen?
o
How did Philosophy Destroy Freedom?
·
Boycotts and Economic Warfare
o
How to eliminate Shortages and Long Gas Lines
o
Get out of the Stock Market, Get out of the Dollar
·
Checks and Balances – Political Opposition
o
Investigations and Impeachment
o
Keeping Obama too busy fighting for his job
·
The Future
o
Ideas and Freedom
o
Understanding How we got here
