Education

Rules to live by

Enjoyment of life should be the object of every man and woman; it is the task of education to instruct people how to do so.  Health is the first requirement; for a human being this requires a properly functioning mind, and a properly functioning body.  Both must be free of toxic substances, and both must be provided with proper nutrients.  For the body, this is fairly obvious: we eat food, digest it, and then it must be removed; if any of these processes fails, we die.  After food is ingested into the body, it provides nutrients to the body for a short time, then it produces substances that are harmful, or toxic, to the body; if this used food is not removed, it poisons the body.

A similar process occurs relative to the mind.  Its “food” is knowledge: proper knowledge, that is.  Knowledge ‘consistent with facts of reality’ (“truth,” in one word) is proper “food” for the mind.  Unlike food for the body, this “food” for the mind, if it is true, will never deteriorate.  It is timeless: two plus two will always equal four.  It will never produce toxic effects for the mind: it will always serve the whole organism (body and soul, or mind) properly.  If knowledge is improper – that is, inconsistent with facts of reality, it will serve the whole organism badly.

The three main functions of the mind are a) to identify facts of reality, b) resolve on a proper course of action relative to those facts and c) direct the body accordingly.  If the mind does not properly identify facts of reality, the mind will also misfire on functions (b) and (c): the mind will lead the man or woman from one disaster to another.  In this case, the improperly identified facts represent a kind of toxic material within the mind, and will wreak havoc upon the mind and body as long as such facts are improperly identified.  The proper course of action is to remove such knowledge and replace it with properly identified facts.  Criminal, or disastrous, actions are evidence of improperly identified facts: of toxic intellectual “substances.”  It is just as unseemly to carry around, and display (with one’s actions), intellectual sewage as it is to carry around, and display, ordinary sewage.

The path to the enjoyment of life, is the capacity a) to properly use one’s mind, b) to keep one’s life innocent, and c) to remove contradictions when they appear.  The man who cannot perform all these functions, at least moderately well, will never travel upon this road.  These functions are very complicated affairs.  The man who can draft a lesson plan to learn how to do all these things does more than any other to advance the cause of human life.  So far as I know, we can put only two men in this category: Aristotle and Nathaniel Branden.  To the extent that men have learned lessons of these two, they have approached a condition experienced by no others: enjoyment of life on this planet.

Unfortunately, the lessons given by these two men are beyond the capacity of most men.  Maybe five percent of men are capable of learning the lessons of Aristotle and Nathaniel Branden.  This leads to another unfortunate circumstance: the other ninety-five percent of men will not let those who learn these lessons of life enjoy such lessons.  Nothing enrages a man more than to witness those who succeed where he has failed – especially when they reject as nonsense what he regards as sacred.  Nothing infuriates him more.  Owing to their power, their ignorance and their madness, these human failures have made the earth a slaughterhouse for as long as men have told their story – with men of integrity, justice and intelligence always preferred targets.

All this means that, if we are to enjoy life on this planet; if we are to enjoy life without oppression, without sleaze, without poverty, without institutionalized crime, we must bring lessons of Aristotle and Nathaniel Branden to a larger fraction of mankind than a mere five percent.  No, we do not have to reach all of the other ninety-five percent.  For now, we should only aim at, perhaps, another ten to twenty percent.

So, how can this be done?  Eulogies - and these must be given within a framework provided by Aristotle and Nathaniel Brandon.

Friendship

If freedom is our aim, the activity of friendship is essential.  Aristotle stated it best: “In tyrannies friendship and justice hardly exist, in democracies they exist more fully.  Hence, to establish a tyranny, we must destroy the bonds of friendship; to establish a free society, we must nurture them.” Nichomachean Ethics, viii

The role of children

When we ask, “What do children contribute to the welfare of man's society?” who would have thought that their role is to prevent its destruction.  “Man is a god in ruins.  When men are innocent, life shall be longer and pass into the immortal as gently as we awake from dreams.  Now, the world would be insane and rabid if these disorganizations [evil enterprises] should last for hundreds of years.  [They are] kept in check by death and infancy.  Infancy is the perpetual Messiah when it comes into the hands of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.”  Ralph W. Emerson, Generations

And Acharya S gives a short explanation of their role.

Maxims (pending)

Rules to die by

Cults of Totalitarianism (pending)

God-given rights