My thoughts on the world

With my own thoughts continuously having questioning my understanding of this world, and Atlas Shrugged coming into picture, I suddenly find the world making sense to me. Now I understand why Ayn Rand says selfishness is a virtue as people may understand from her books. But to me it means a very positive and bright understanding.

Yes, selfishness is a virtue because we have to first and foremost consider our own values. What is of value to us. That is what matters. That makes the world seem right. Now from the world perspective I will explain what I feel the world sees as wrong with this. They see selfishness as keeping something from others, not giving. Ok, now they ask if you have in abundance you should give to those who do not. Now how does one have something in abundance - there could be three ways - through hard work, through inheritance and through looting.

Now if you are an honest person you would prefer to get everything you get through your own merit. Thats what always drove me. So what I get through my hard work I do not wish to give away, unless I see what I give as deserving. I feel that I m giving to someone something they have earned or will earn. If that is the case I do not keep tabs of what I give because its not charity, but something I feel they deserve. Or I give a loan based on faith that the person is honest enough to return because he is a sound investment.

Now I will club the inherited who doesnt work to earn a penny on their own and the looters into the same category, they have un earned money in their hands. They do not know the value of that money or expect money to come in the same means, through someone else's hard work. So they do not care giving it away in the name of charity to someone who may least deserve it. And they call that charity.

So now what you call selfishness is what is the life force of this world. The feeling that its your right to live and earn your right to live. Without this so called selfishness, human beings would have still never risen to anything of intellectual capacity except remain as savages. And funny enough its these so called selfish people who will support the selfless, unaware of it, while the selfless who are trying to not see this on purpose. So if you ask me, the selfish is right because he provides the livelihood for his own reason to live.

There is no helping the helpless. Excempting babies, children under the age of 5 and the senile and the mentally retarded, there are no helpless. Every other human being is capable of helping himself. So I say that you help those who work for it. If they dont earn according to their work, you take them away to work for you and pay more as deserving of their work. That is what you do which is right. Giving away money to a lazy beggar is not the right thing to do.

This is what I wish to follow as my principle too. Because if ever there comes a stage where a matter of survival comes into picture, only those who can help themselves will be saved. That, is a fact of life. Hence I feel from my sense of right and wrong, which I used to call human instinct, which in fact is not separate from my mind and my intellect, but a result of my understanding of this world, that if one does not recognise one's sense of self, then he has in fact given up on life. He is not living but is just trying to exist.

And living and existing are two very different things. Living is happiness.

What I found in Atlas Shrugged

I dont know if I will retain this feeling or if so if it will last long enough to be permenant. But I feel I need to understand the meaning of the word freedom.

Its because I read the book Atlas Shrugged.

It was there in the library in bangalore where I used to go. I kept seeing it and thinking next time and kept reading all the useless sci-fi and fantasy books. I guess I keep trying to escape into a world of fantasy and try not to see reality. And the more unhappy I became the more I tried to escape from real life, contrary to my expectations.

 

I expected the fantasy to be real even though I knew it was just wishful thinking. That was what was wrong with me. Because the truth was always there for me to see but I feared to acknowledge it because real life does not bring wishes to life, and my wishing does not create.

I now know that man is capable of creating. I want to create. In everything I do I will try to find life. Life is about living. Life has no gray areas except those that I choose to accept. Life is black and white. What you do is either good or bad. And I choose to do either.

When I choose bad and dont want to acknowledge it is when I try to hide behind the gray. That is when I become a coward. Thats when life moves away from me and I loose its meaning because I choose to ignore it. I have built a wall of gray around me that I need to tear down. Walls that I have built over how long a time I do not know yet.

Some of them might be white which I might have seen as black. Some of the white in my life might have been black and some of the black white. I have to tear down this wall on my own. Turn no stone unturned till I discover what are my true values and virtues. What I believe is right and wrong. Through what my intelligence and my understanding tells me.

I think its time I discovered what it is I want to do with my life. Set goals for myself. Do things I want to do. And not make a zero out of life, but move forward and make a difference for my own sake. Thats what I will continue doing from this moment onwards. 

 

And now I know why I never believed in god. Because god is what I see as that ultimate source for making wishes and believeing that I have no power. That route for punishing one's self for escaping the truth and creating a gray area by believing life is not in my hands. And thankfully that was the one thing my intellect saved me from and the one thing thats going to help me be truy enlightened and find peace and to be whole.

Now I have found the foundation from which I will find me. Because I know I exist and that I have my mind as a tool which I must learn to use. And how well I learn to use it is what will bring me meaning in life. Not wishes. And I am the only person I should serve. Because only that will bring me happiness. I am deluding myself if I believe that anyone else's happiness is above my own to me. Its a lie.