The world is a moving target. New ideas comes up all the time, some are great in forwarding our survival potential while others are not offering much and can even be counter survival.
We’ve recently seen how some were forced to socialize with fellow employees after work or get fired while others feel they have the freedom of speech threatened if they can’t express whatever they want wherever they are. I’m going to express my views on the above and how it’s easy for me to make the right decision.
I start with looking at the intention behind a communication. Some people manages to make you feel uneasy using words that does not necessarily sound, well, bad. This is where I ask myself and often the person – What was the intention with that communication?
That tends to instantly make it obvious to me that the other person is indeed trying to squash my survival potential. Or, it might just show the the amount of insecurity the other person is suffering from.
When someone lack understanding of a subject or person(s) they may resort to attacking others to cover up their own insecurity. Bullies are prime examples of this. If they did not feel insecure there would little reason to belittle others. The instinct is to shift attention away from themselves so nobody notices. And if people, especially kids, were not so quick in making fun of others the world would have fewer bullies.
Children are typically not very educated and lack answers to a lot of things, so it’s not all that surprising that they ridicule each others. When I grew up one learned to grow a “thick skin” and not take things so personally. Why take to heart things people say that are clearly not me?
Have you noticed how friends and family can hurt you more than strangers? You have many more agreements and often depend on them and any disagreement is a larger threat to your survival than a what a stranger says who don’t know you from a hole in the wall.
These days there is definitely a generation of people coming into adulthood who grew up with little tolerance of anything not absolutely clean and socially perfect. And though these are not bad things in and of themselves, they tend to come with a limited ability to deal with things that are different, or could have a single bacteria. In other words low tolerance.
Wanting a perfect world might be a perfectly valid goal – but should not come at the expense of not being able to deal with anything out of the ordinary. I call this having a lowered survival potential.
A high survival potential means being able to deal with a large variety of things. Have little to do with what you desire or want. Simply, can you handle what is going on in your environment?
One should be able to sit back and view the world from three feet behind it and simply observe.
Free from social ideas and pressures one has a vantage point to observe things that might not be clear when being in the middle of it. This is a simple yet very powerful ability to assume. From here one can make decisions that benefits more than it hurts (if it hurts at all).
Having a good understanding of people you can see what is going on and come up with a way to improve the condition they are in without getting bent out of shape because they said, for example, mean things.
I grew up intensely interested in people and what makes them tick.
In fact I spent my years up to 18 studying them to learn as much as I could about people. After having satisfied that I decided to observe myself in different situations and how I handle life. With that I arrived at a very stable place where nobody could easily shake my certainty. I discovered that I had a much higher survival potential than most. (I was able to make decisions that had a high level of success and it brought me a lot of happiness.) Unfortunately I also became arrogant which was not helpful.
It was not until I realized that compassion was something that helped others at a level much higher than just my own survival. I really should have learned that lesson sooner but I was happily “coasting” through life and livingness with few cares.
Fortunately I arrived at realizing that my happiness depended on others happiness and that to be able to help others you had to be able to equally carry a big stick and have a lot of compassion for your fellow man. (Yes, I know that this is not politically correct and I should say person. But in my eyes mankind means all people not just men. And certainly mankind would not survive (biologically) as a species with only men, or women for that matter.)
OK, looking at being compassionate, the ability to look at people with love and a desire for them to succeed and win in spite of. That clearly does not mean help a person committing crime or other actions that lowers people ability to survive. So where is the line, the line that separates pro-survival and counter-survival?
In actuality it is rather simple – does that action help or hinders the greatest number?
For example, if someone is about to blow up a building with people in it and the only way you can prevent that from happening is to kill the person about to do so, that is pro-survival. Sitting back and while in disbelief and horror and simply let him do so would be counter-survival. Taking the risk of personal injury while attempting to stop him is your decision. But doing so could be something you would do because of personal integrity.
Personal integrity is a key ingredient in having a happy life.
Many have lost track of what that means, often because no or few examples was present while you grew up. Life can be a jungle, where life can appear to have little value. We do have an innate (built-in) sense of integrity. There are things we would not do, or always do. Defending mom, for example, is a common always-do. These are the things that makes up each of our’s integrity. Thing that makes us feel good or bad about ourselves when dropping all the social attitudes and honestly look ourselves in the mirror.
If there has been enough violations of our own integrity we might find ourselves in situations we don’t really want, bad luck might be increasing. Right and wrong might be not clear due to having collected too many justifications in an attempt to not feel bad about wrong decision and not knowing how to correct those decisions. I consider luck being closely related to how I feel about myself and my personal integrity.
OK, let’s look at the right of free speech.
If you have your own or are visiting someone else forum there are typically rules of what is acceptable and not. In other words the owner can dictate what goes and does not go on their forum. Free speech is not a universal thing you have and can do as you please.
Free speech is the First Amendment in our Constitution and relates to what the government can silence or not. Not what others can enforce in their home or forum. In other words you can cry foul play if it is the government that tries to stop you from expressing something.
In a public place you have the right of free speech and you can seek help, and protection, by the government to be able to publicly express yourself in a public place or forum.
The First Amendment struggles with where to draw the line. For me it once again is a simple call – does the expression suggest or motivate people to commit legal and ethical crimes? Back to the greatest number of pro-survival or counter-survival acts.
The US is a country founded on laws. Laws that is intended to be pro-survival to ensure the people in the country survives. However sometimes they are out of date, out of touch and even plainly wrong.
One can commit crimes to try to correct the laws but that is ultimately not resulting in an increase in survival, even if it appears to do so in the short term.
Our laws are governed by the Supreme Court. Their job is to be the legal back stop, to ensure that when a law is applied it is applied fairly and justly. The Supreme Court adjust its view as the popular view changes. They are however usually many years behind.
When we dislike or even hate what others think there is a great possibility that we are not relying on our own observations but what someone else says is so. In other words we often rely on “knowledge” from others. Knowledge that might not be so much like free speech like but colored by someones personal gain.
How does one make one’s own observations when it seems too difficult or entirely impossible and out of reach?
Clearly in that situation one can’t.
In that situation one has to get good at evaluating the source of the information. Do they have personal observations or in their turn relies on someone else? If you read it or hear it in the news what is the actual observed evaluation you have done of what they say? Are they mostly forwarding bad news, speak in generalities with few or no specifics?
I do my own investigation of the type of articles a reporter writes. What is the language and the intention in their message? Is it promoting pro or counter survival actions and views?
Again, here it is important to see if it is legal to follow their suggestions?
Some people (and reporters) tend to hide their intention behind a message that promotes something that might be good for some but is destructive to others, and also have a tendency to not offer a legal solution, one that could result in jail time, physical damage and even death.
Having evaluated the above points one then looks over the balance of the various points to see where do they fall? When adding them up you must brush aside personal views and simply evaluating it from greatest good for the greatest number, which includes legal options.
Look at it this way. If you go around violating the law you are promoting not following the law, which is why often laws are enforced in a way as to set an example. Unfortunate for the person in question, even bad luck, but without following our laws we will not have a country of the free.
Laws are broken down into civil and criminal law. Which breaks further down into levels of severity.
Traffic law is usually a violation of civil law but when the violation is sever enough becomes criminal.
Running your car into a group of protesters that you feel are a threat to your survival might seem like the thing to do but ask yourself this question, does it violate any law, and in this case criminal law? The person doing so might think it was the right thing to do because of the perceived vile nature of the demonstrators.
However a quick evaluation show that the demonstrators were actually exercising their First Amendment. Hitting people with your car is not a protected action but falls under criminal law (murder or attempted murder). Looking at both the short and long term potential solution to whatever problem that person thought he was solving that action did not make any difference other than get him sent to prison.
Therefor it is a good practice to evaluate the action, and to do so more thoroughly the greater the liability involved.
For example, regardless of what you think of any political party, having an armed insurrection and storm a sitting Congress, even if the sitting president says so, is filled with huge liability with next to no positive potential outcome.
It might be considered a fun activity, lots of challenges and excitment. You might feel you have the opportunity to be part of 1776 part 2 and have your name in the history books.
It is however full of really real liabilities. In 1776 we fought an invading force trying to remove our independence. If you have looked at all at US history you can see how political things swing back and forth and does not go over the edge in either direction.
Inciting a violent overthrow of the government is not the American way. That happens in countries where people don’t have a strong constitution such as ours. They do it because their living conditions are so poor their only hope of actual survival is to force a new government into place.
Unfortunately for those countries, it never ends up with a fair government by the people for the people. Look at Russia, several countries South of the border, throughout history people in these countries have very low survival potentials. Something I hope the US will never sink to.
If you support illegal actions you never end up with in a long-term increase in survival potential.
The excitement of a successful coup is quickly squashed when the new dictator grab the reins. Russia has never had anything but a dictator in office, except for a short period which resulted in the end of the Soviet Union and brought democracy to the public. Putin ended that over a number of years but slowly installing new laws that limited, for example, free speech. Now it carries 15 years to speak up against him.
The way to happiness does not come from or is accomplished through illegal and violent actions but from caring for your fellow man, from showing him compassion and support, from increased education about people and certainly from knowing the laws of the land and how to successfully operate within it.
Remember, lies persist and truth solves problems.