It is difficult to take people as they are when you have been subject to liars before. I was a part of a cult. I did not believe, but that did not matter. The facts remained: People acted as if I were their family and put up that charade but, in the end, I truly meant nothing to them. That leads me to the question, what does family or friends mean to people in a cult? I don’t think it means anything. I think, if you are in a cult, then the people you consider to be your friends or family do not have any real value. The value you might impose on them is that they share the same ill-founded belief that you do, and that belief is the only value you know. But that belief isn’t real or, if it is, it is not well-founded and will not serve the same purpose that real convictions hold.

Values are difficult to talk about and difficult to define. To take a shortcut, I think values can be exemplified in behaviours. Someone might exhibit a behaviour you find praiseworthy, and that is an example of a value. Hard work is a good example of this. I find it difficult to imagine a hard-working individual who is not owed at least some praise. Even if their intentions are despicable, the courage it takes to form values and to act on them is worth something. Because most people do not have the courage to create value. To work hard is better than the alternative, no matter the intentions. You can criticize the intentions of a hard-working individual, but that is besides the point. Their hard-work ought to be evaluated in itself and praised for the determination alone. Leave the intentions separate when making this evaluation, that is a separate matter.

There is another choice distinct from creating value, and that is giving up. Believing that you cannot create value and taking up the values that someone else created (without reason) is no different from hating your Self. You can reason about values that some one has told you about. For example, our parents probably taught us about the value of hard work, but we ought not to take that on faith. Someone in a real position of authority can tell us about something we ought to value and sometimes, we should reason that they do have the authority to do so, but that requires actual thought. It is weak-willed and self-hating to decide based on word alone what values some one ought to take to heart.

Think for example of someone you admire. This person is probably skillful in at least one area of human faculties, and you will probably listen to them when they speak about those areas, but you don’t rely solely on their word, your reason is involved in that decision. Say for example, you are a guitarist and you are listening to a guitarist you admire give a speech on playing solos or something to that effect. He might say that “you need to play with feel, forget about the scales” or something like that. Since you admire him, you want to take him at his word, but you don’t. You, being a guitarist, evaluate a couple things before you decide on what he said. First, you acknowledge his perceived authority and realize that he might know something that you do not. Second, you draw on your own experience. You might think “Gee, I do play better when I think about ‘feels’ than when I rely on scales.” And after that point, you reason that what he said is sensible and you adopt it into your own guitar playing. That is what reasoning about values from someone else looks like.

What it does NOT look like is when someone you do not know, have never met, and have no reason to believe in says something like “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” and you decide “Gee, for some impossible reason I feel like I should believe this guy because it’s easy to do so.” And so you believe that you ought to “Render unto Caesar that which is Casesar’s”. But where is the reasoning in this belief? You are reasoning with your weak will because you are afraid to decide for your Self in this case. You do not know, from experience, whether this guy knows shit; therefore, you have no reason to take him at his word alone. You want, in this case, the benefits of reason without the hard work involved.

If a chemist tells you that water is composed of two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom, and you do not know whether this is true, you can decide, based on his authority, whether to believe him or not. Is he planning to gain something by misleading you? Or is he honest with his experience? The decision is yours to make, but in this case, it is obviously correct to believe the chemist, but you don’t really have any obligation to do so. You would not be making a moral error in neglecting to listen to the chemist as you do not have any convincing reason to believe him aside from that he is a chemist. You are essentially taking his word on faith.

Faith is a way that we reason about the world when we do not have any other means of doing so. If you were to choose between reason and faith, you ought to choose reason. But it’s not always the case that we are able to do so. With the example of the chemist, we are not equipped with the technology to examine water ourselves, to make the distinction between Hydrogen and Oxygen, and to reason that water is composed that way. We are forced to take the chemist at his word or reject his statement altogether. Faith in the religious sense takes this too far. Religious faith is predicated on too many premises and most of those premises can be reasoned against. The refusal to think is, I believe, the vilest evil there is.

Back to values. If you accept that you have some capacity to decide between good and evil, or useful and useless, then you accept that values are real. Values are that which serve your life in one way or another. The problem with talking about values is curious because we order the world in terms of values. It’s difficult to talk about how we order the world because it is so ingrained in us that it requires a great deal of human self-awareness to actually understand what we mean, even when we think like this all the time.

I think a lot about ethics. I think more people should because I’m not convinced that ethics dictates how most people live their lives. It certainly doesn’t dictate mine a lot of the time, but it should. When I act outside of ethics, I am doing something wrong. Ethics are, necessarily, something that you decide upon. Nobody but your Self can tell you how to act ethically. They might try to tell you how to do it, and they might be right, but ultimately, it’s up to you to draw your own conclusions and, if you reason correctly, then you can arrive at the right conclusion.

Ernest Hemingway allegedly said that writing is like taking water from a well.

You may take a bucket or two at a time and come back shortly after to find the well as full as it was before; however, if you take many buckets at once, it will take a while before that well is full again.

I do not write a lot and have decided only to write when I feel it to be necessary. It is necessary for my brain health. I don’t go to therapy, perhaps I should, but I can only go to so many sessions before I have to pay out of my own pocket. I am covered by the insurance policy with the university I go to. They cover about 50% of dental work and 500$ worth of therapy. I have already used about 300$ this year, and haven’t found it to be a long-term solution considering my limited funds. Yes, I’m sure if I continued regular therapy that I would see improvements, but it’s simply not in the cards at the moment.

So I decided in class one day to turn to writing. It must have been a boring class because I thought about a lot of things. For one, this is necessary for my health. Two, I want to be able to have something vulnerable that can teach me about myself so that I may feel better in my life. Three, I want to continue this long enough as a sort of story to tell about my life that I might pass on to my children or theirs far down the line. Maybe even create it as a sort of website where others can do the same.

I don’t like social media. I do use Twitter, however, but only as a source of news for less than 10 minutes a day. I have an Instagram account that I never go on, but have kept for the sake of friends that I do not talk to. Besides those 10 minutes a day, and the data that Facebook inevitably harvests from my inactive Instagram account, I avoid social media altogether. Social media, I think, includes Reddit. Because people on Reddit like to attempt to make strange distinctions between their drug of choice and other social media outlets, I feel it important to note that it is the same.

I used to use Reddit a lot when I was younger. Mentally, I regard this the same of how I used to drink excessively when I was the same age. Both behaviors serve as little more than a distraction from your daily life, and they necessarily drain your time that you could be using for other more worthwhile activities. Yes, social media can help to keep you informed of current events, in the way that I use it today, but I still don’t think that’s a good excuse. I mean that I am not using my time wisely when I go on Twitter. Why should I care that Joe Biden gave the state of the union address the other day? Why do I care that the premiere of my province is giving a tax exemption to breweries?

On the other hand, I learned from Twitter on Saturday that the next day would be daylight-savings time. That saved me a morning hassle as I worked at 7:00AM the next day. But still, I wonder if there was a way to keep up to date on all of these things happening in the world without using social media.

“But what about friends?” And this is where I might differ from most other people. Because I think a lot of people recognize that social media is a force for evil, but they don’t care that much. They might justify it in this way, that they are keeping up to date with their friends. But that is hardly the majority of the time that people use these things for. It’s a false justification. It is the same as if an alcoholic said “But what about social lubricant?”

I think you should try to meet your friends face to face. That belief might leave me more isolated than most, but it is so difficult and trivial to text each other as a main form of communication.

A friend of mine recently gave me a call. I knew him since I was eleven years old and just starting real, non-homeschooled, school. It was truly good to hear from him, to talk to him, and to realize that people that I used to be friends with can still be friends.

But I don’t think social media works that way. Not for the most part, anyways: that’s the function of calling or texting.

Something that I have come to realize is that social media companies are politically biased. Everyone is, but those in charge of social media companies have a lot of power over what people see. Even search engines, such as Google, have manipulated search results in favour of political biases. This, in combination with the algorithms that dictate what users see (in order to keep them engaged for longer) means that avid social media users often become political radicalists. And “avid social media users” encompasses a large percentage of the population. Which is why I am weary of what the present has brought, and what the future will bring.

The terminology has seeped into the vocabulary of people. People talk about “content” with regards to time-wasting online videos and other forms of media. They talk about their “feed” or “for you page”. And I think about the algorithms that control that and the impact that it might have on people.

I have seen a poster on the university campus that said something along the lines of “you should follow queer creators [on social media]” and I thought “why?” Look, I think that it is clear by my writing that I am not prejudiced towards the sexual proclivities that different people have. As far as I am aware, they don’t have a choice in those matters, and that is of no concern to me. And it shouldn’t be. When it comes to sexual things the only thing that matters is that the two people involved consent and find enjoyment. And that’s a tricky matter as people can often persuade themselves into believing that they consent, but that’s irrelevant to what I’m talking about. The point is, why should I follow ANYONE on social media? Why is anyone moralizing about these things? The correct answer, I think, is that you really shouldn’t spend time on social media. That might make you more isolated, but does that really matter? Is connecting online at all comparable to connecting in person?

You ought to seek real human connection. Social media is a substitute for that in the same way that drugs are a substitute for achievement (and human connection as well). You ought to seek human connection because it will help you to learn about yourself and where you fit in the world. It will teach you what your values are and it will keep you from becoming insane. Social media does not keep you from going insane and, I think, it rewards insanity.

The point of what I’m talking about, and I will talk more about it in the future, is that I think it would be beneficial to a lot of people to sit down and write. And a funny idea I had was that this website I’m using to write for my Self could be a database for others to do the same. They would be able to connect with their ideas, values, emotions, and perhaps realize things within themselves that they didn’t know; they would be able to have something to pass on to future generations for the future to say “This is who he was”; they could have novels of their ideas and their beliefs written down in the same way that we have the great classics in literature passed down through generations.

Of course, this would be separated from social media. It would be anonymous and only something people could read if they happened upon it or you deliberately shown it to them. Essentially a personal blog without the algorithms that addict people and the likes and reactions that keep them engaged. Like a way to easily write journals that you could keep and pass down and use to your advantage, as opposed to the advantage of some shady corporation in China.

This is not fleshed out, but it is perhaps worth consideration in the distant future, I think. The thing is that it would not make a lot of money and it would only engage those who see the benefit. Many people have no inclination towards writing, and plenty of people prefer the short term benefit of mindless social media use.

I like to think of my Self as having strong principles. Generally, strong principles go against practical common knowledge. I may be wrong in some of my principles, but I am human and I will do all that I can to change to become my ideal Self. That is, funnily enough, one of my principles.

You ought not to rely on God, at least not in the traditional sense. Rationality is Man’s means of survival. I’ve said it before. Man does not have sharp claws nor fangs, but he has a mind that he relies on for his survival. I love to use bears as an example. Bears are huge. They have large muscle mass, sharp claws, and wicked canines. They do not need to rely on their mind for survival, so you will never see a bear build a civilization with other fellow bears: they have no need. Man, on the other hand, has some size, some teeth, and some muscles, but is comparatively futile in combat with other predators. But Man has a powerful mind that he uses to his advantage.

What advantage? Survival. That is the highest value and one which is shared with all other forms of life. When you look out onto the world, you regard everything in terms of value or utility. A piece of dog shit on the sidewalk has potentially negative utility to you, so you are disgusted. A crisp hundred dollar bill, however, provides you a great deal of utility, so you pick it up. Every value you have can be distilled into your survival, and this is true no matter what species you belong to. Man wants to survive, and so he uses His mind. There are plenty of degrees of complexity to this, but it holds no matter what.

Why get married? So that you can become a better version of your Self. After all, two heads are better than one. Why become a better version of your Self? You are more resilient, more knowledgable, and better equipped to deal with the difficulties that the world has to offer. And why do you want that for your Self? Well, it’s so that you can survive. You can conquer all that which the world has to throw at you and you aren’t so dissatisfied or lost in life that you succumb to your own depression, which I think has become a motivator in life.

I believe that it used to be the case that Man did not often have to deal with suicide. His priorities involved not starving and not being eaten by a bear. But those threats have been diminishing since at least the Industrial Revolution. So what does he do with his time? The biological drive is still there. He still has a deep desire to be more resilient and capable of feeding himself and avoiding bears, but he also has a deep desire to feel pleasure and avoid pain. So he is at a cross-roads. Some choose to optimize their being for pleasure or happiness. That can involve addiction, social avoidance, isolation, short-term momentary happiness and, ultimately, their demise. But that is all in accordance with their biological drive to eat and not be eaten. Alternatively, they can choose to dedicate themself to be the best possible them that they could feasibly be because, of course, they wish to eat and not to be eaten. Most people are a mix of the two. But a greater threat these days than days before is dissatisfaction and it’s consequences, namely, suicide.

So we can distill marriage into the desire, the instinct, to survive. And I think this is the case for every goal or ambition that people have.

The reason that I do not think people ought to dedicate themselves to God, in the traditional sense, is that God takes the responsibility away from them for their own survival, among other things. As I’ve said, Man uses his mind to survive. He is responsible for doing so and he dictates what is good and what is evil. He should not rely on others, generally, to tell him which is which. That is an insult to his intelligence and therefore an insult to his ability to survive.

I am hard on religion, but as I’ve said before, I don’t think that the atheist necessarily has a leg up on the devotedly religious. The atheist rejects God, correctly so, but is often still prone to falling for a similar trap. I am speaking mostly about that which is worse even worse than subjecting your Self to God, which is losing your Self in hedonism or nihilism.

Both have a insidiously evil nature to them. The hedonist believes that pleasure is all that matters; the nihilist believes that nothing matters. The consequences of these beliefs are not something I will talk too much about as I feel they speak for themselves.

Just as social media provides an alternative to social connection; religion provides an alternative to meaning. If one were to stop using social media, he would need to find a way to connect with others. Similarily, if one were to lose their faith in God, he would need to find meaning. Many atheists have not found meaning and so they fall for the aforementioned traps. But just as man is capable of ascribing values to the world in which he lives, so too is he able to ascribe meaning. Before meaning can be reached, however, he must come to terms with his values, his principles.

To take a shortcut from this journey of self-discovery, I believe anyone who searches for this meaning honestly will come to the same conclusion.

He wishes for life after death.

For most, this involves bearing and raising moderately successful children. And that is a real ambition, a real goal, and it has real meaning that I am ill-equipped to even describe. For others, this involves some sort of creative ambition of creating something that can outlast you. Again, most people are a mix of both, and they should be a mix of both. Regardless, Man wishes to leave his mark on the world in which he lives. Like a dog pissing on a fire hydrant, but Man hopes to subsist through the water and cleaning chemicals used on the fire hydrant. He wishes for his children to have children, for his artistic merit to continue to be realized hundreds of years after his death. This seems to me to follow directly from man’s will to survive. If he wishes to live, then he wishes to live even after his death, and so he finds ways of doing that even if he doesn’t realize it.

There are plenty of traps along the way, however.

Back to what I consider my strong principles. I might tell this story and let that be the end of today. I moved to this city two hours south of my home town. I have been here for nearly three years which is by far the longest I’ve ever lived in a place besides my parents house. Previous to moving here, I was a rather serious alcoholic. And the consequence of that involved a relationship that I did not care for. Of course, as an alcoholic, I yearned for connection for connection’s sake. So I was in a relationship with someone I did not love for over three years.

We moved here together to go to school. I might talk more in depth about this in the future as it might be worth organizing in my head, but ultimately, it doesn’t bother me, so it’s not a priority. Still, it would probably be worth writing some things down for my sake of understanding my Self.

Anyways, We lived here where I live now. We used to be on the other side of the city where the homeless crack addicts would break into our apartment complex and pass out in the hallway. We lived there for about eight months before moving here for six months. At the end of that six months of daily drinking I decided it was the end of the relationship. I acted a little bit wrong about it too. I was sitting and fiddling on the piano as I told her probably without looking at her too much, but it had been a long time coming of that. Perhaps she didn’t realize it until she called me about a week later about how it was for the best (though not necessarily in those words). She said I was cold about it and that it hurt. I probably was. Anyways, that day that I ended it, I had to go to work from five to close. She called her mom who helped her move out during that time. She left almost nothing in the apartment but her piano, (what used to be) our cat, another cat we were temporarily caring for, and our photo album.

Months went by and I was alone. Just weeks after she left, I stopped drinking. I don’t know how that worked. I was focusing on school and writing music and doing lonesome things that are good to do alone. She eventually texted my parents asking them to bring her piano back. I did not like that. Had she came down and gotten her piano, I would’ve been happy to move it into her car; had she sent her parents down and gotten her piano, I would’ve been happy to move it into theirs. But she wanted me and my parents to do the work for her. I did not like the idea. So, when my mother came down to take me out to lunch I told her that I would not move the piano on account of her (having disrespected me multiple times) asking me to do her a favour. It went against my principles. My mother hated that decision of mine. I stand by it today but somewhat unsure. The piano belonged to her, but she abandoned it and asked a favour from me. I did not want to do her a favour as I do not want to do favours for people I do not respect or do not respect me. I do not believe I am obligated either. But my mother tried to make me feel bad about it. I felt bad that she did that. My mother has these outbursts which affect me and which are delicately crafted to affect me, I think. The piano is still here.

My principles could be wrong. But I can admit that. If I reason that my principles are wrong, then I think that I would change them accordingly. Sometimes, principles go against practicality. I think a lot of people sacrifice that. It’s easy to do. But I think that it is wrong to do so. That’s it for today.

Everybody has irrational things that they believe on some level, even if they have a reasonable amount of evidence to the contrary.

One of my things, for example, is that I believe that I could be a doctor. I admit this could boil down to an incomprehensible level of ignorance on my part, but I have my reasons.

The evidence of my eyes, and that is where most people’s reasoning about the world comes from, is that doctors don’t really need to know anything. This is because most people’s experience with doctors is that they sit in a room for what feels like a rudely lengthy amount of time, a somewhat non-chalant guy comes in the room, you tell him your symptoms, he postulates some theories, and then LEAVES THE ROOM. Then, after another amount of time, he reenters the room and tells you what he thinks is going on. Granted, he might check your ears or blood pressure before he leaves, but my main issue is that he leaves the room for a while and returns with his final analysis. How is he not just looking up my symptoms online? From my experience, I have no reason to believe that he does anything other than that, and that is why I think I could be a doctor.

“But what about the years of school? Doctors need so much schooling to get where they are, how could you possibly be a doctor without the training?” – You may ask. Well, I understand where that’s coming from, but that’s where my irrational belief really shows itself. Because I don’t think they need that training. A basic understanding of the human body will help, but if you’re just looking up symptoms online, then the main skill you need is to accurately search things up and parse through the information online. And yes, you have to be very good at that, but you don’t need that much medical expertise. Maybe it takes a real doctor to deal with big problems, such as cancer, but if people come in with the flu or stomache aches, and can tell me how they fell, I reckon I could handle it.

Sounds ridiculous right? I must sound like a real ignorant moron right now. But I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think you have beliefs that are just as nonsensical as mine. Everybody does. If you’re honest with yourself, you might even be able to name a few.

For example, you are prejudiced. That’s not an insult, that’s a fact of life. Everybody is prejudiced towards some sort of people. That’s not that bad if you realize it. The problems of prejudice come from when you honestly don’t believe that you are prejudiced, that every judgment you make about people is well-informed, and that you are not guilty of that which you criticize others about. That’s where real evil comes from because if you recognize that you are prejudiced, you understand that your assessments are not necessarily cognizant of reality, and you don’t take actions to enforce your will on others or preoccupy your brain with negative thoughts.

That’s not to say that everyone ought to love each other all the time no matter what. That is a disgusting rhetoric, and it’s exactly what I would want people to believe if I was a disgusting person.

If you claim that you love everyone, regardless of who they are, what you are really saying is that your love has no value, that it takes nothing to earn your love, that you do not respect your Self, that you have low expectations for humanity, and that you actually love no one.

The biggest heart of the matter here is not loving your Self. I believe everything follows from that. If you love yourself then, necessarily, you would not disrespect your love by giving it to the undeserving because that would be insulting your Self. You would not insult people who you love, not purposefully anyways, so why would you do it to yourself? Hence, if you love your Self, then you do not give out your love unwittingly to those that you see as undeserving of it.

I think this is one of the many things that people do not hear these days. I am young and so I will not entertain whether this was always an issue or not, I have no idea. But I believe it stands today that people are subconsciously taught that their love has no value and that they ought to love everyone. This is true at least in the Western world that is built namely on Christian principles, in which “loving your enemy” is told to be virtuous. It is anything but. You should not love your enemy and, if you think that you should, what does that doctrine say about your friends? If you are to love your enemies and your friends, then you are saying that you regard your friends as just the same as your enemies. That doesn’t sound very friendly to me.

I could have this wrong too, the big book does not specifically say that you ought to love your enemies just as much as your friends (not to my knowledge anyways) but only that you ought to love your enemies. It may be virtuous, according to the big book, that you love your enemies but love your friends a hundred times as much. In which case, I would say that is a less evil doctrine, but still one that devalues your love to the extent that you would categorize the people you hold in the highest regard with those in the lowest. You are worth more than that.

You are flawed though. For all that I talk about how humanity is the closest thing to Gods that you and I are aware of, that does not mean people are perfect. Throughout all of history, there have been Gods or God-like figures that represent or embody evil in some sense. The remarkable thing about that, is that it’s up to you which one you get to be. I think people can be a great force for good if they so choose. That is hard though, I know that. But it can be figured out through reasoning.

People do not have claws or fangs or remarkable muscles, but they have a mind and, through that mind, they have survived for as long as history. It stands that your capacity to reason is exactly what is keeping you alive and for what? Why should you be alive? You live and you use your mind to ascribe values to the experiences you have. If you haven’t killed yourself yet, then you know on some level that you are capable of dictating whether something is good or bad, heaven or hell. Being alive then, is something that is good, even if it is comprised of bad experiences. Suffering, I have said before, is inescapable. Everyone probably knows that. But they use their minds to try to reduce the amount of suffering and maximize the amount of pleasure they have in life. In some sense, we think like Utilitarians. But where the classical Utilitarians go wrong, is that they deal out the cards of utility to everyone equally or, if not, then they still place to much emphasis on other people’s utility.

The truth is that your utility, your happiness, counts for everything. A complete strangers does not count. That might sound selfish. It is. There’s no reason to apologize for it either. And you will see why.

Imagine that you are walking home one day and not in any particular rush. Also, imagine that it is January and you live in Canada. This might be easier for some to imagine than others. Now, on your way to your igloo, you notice that someone’s car is pointed perpendicular to the sidewalk. You hear the roar of their engine and see their tires spinning but it’s all futile. The driver then unrolls his window and asks if you can push his car.

If you take what I’ve said above, that a strangers utility or pleasure counts for nothing, then you might infer that you have no reason or obligation to help this guy get his car unstuck. You would be wrong, however. But it is correct that you have no obligation. Rarely are you ever obligated to someone else unless you’ve made a promise (in which case it’s more accurately an obligation to your Self anyways). But you might have a reason to help this guy get his car unstuck. That is whether you are willing to make the trade of your time for helping another person with their problem. There are plenty of ways of looking about this.

First, you will feel good after helping this guy get unstuck from the snow. This is true of every person everywhere from my experience, and this is often reason enough for people to help. Also, you won’t feel good if you don’t help this guy get unstuck. You will get an extra five minutes to do with whatever you please, but if you weigh that against the feeling you get after helping this guy, then I think it’s clear how the scale tips.

Second, this guy might not be a stranger. He is, in this scenario, but what if he doesn’t remain that way? After all, you live close to where he was driving, what if you were later in a similar scenario and asked him a favour? If he remembers you, he might not be so inclined to help you out. People older than infants have a remarkable capability to sacrifice immediate pleasure for their future. That’s what you do when you save money or, more simply, when you go to work. There is another reason to help this guy out.

Finally, even as antisocial as you are, you probably don’t value your five minutes more than this guy values his five minutes. He’s probably looking to go somewhere important. Now, that doesn’t factor into your decision, and it certainly doesn’t obligate you, but you are implicitly making a trade off here and might ask your Self what you would like in that scenario. For all the slave-morality that is taught in the big book “Treat people as you want to be treated” is sometimes good advice. It is sometimes not good advice, but I can get into that another time. I have a lifetime to be writing this anyways.

Notice that in no scenario do I mention the obligation to help this guy out. I don’t say that you have a duty to stand there and push his car, nor do I say that you are less of a good person if you neglect to help.

What I am saying that, in your selfishness, you can still reason that it is better for you to help people, even strangers who you know nothing about. Snakelike people like to claim that “people are social animals” (usually for the purposes of imposing their will on you) but that is only half of the story. People are also anti-social animals. Be honest with yourself, and you’ll know that to be just as true, if not more so, than “people are social animals.” But telling the truth is usually not a good way of manipulating people into doing what you want them to do.

To get political, although this really shouldn’t be a hot topic, that is why capitalism works. If you allow a system for people to work for their own benefit, then they will benefit others because that is the reasonable thing to do. The proof is in the pudding. I am not typing this on a machine created for the benefit of other people; you are not going to bed tonight under a roof put there for your sake; you don’t go to work for the purpose of your clients or customers. Obviously, people can be unreasonable, usually if they are too lazy to think, and the consequences of that are terrible, but that is a result of humanity and is not a consequence of allowing people the right to self-determination and the right to free trade.

That is why I say that people are selfish and that is a GOOD thing. Thank God that the people who built the house you are sleeping in were selfish and self-motivated, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to create your bedroom.