One Hundred Lenses

For my objectivist friends this is a good place to make a point.

You value the power of the individual and their freedom to make selfish choices. Your reasoning is if we do what is best for ourselves and those we love, others will also benefit as we create and add value. You are concerned that charity is often marketed through guilt and social pressures that amount to extortion.

Let me task you with considering a basic tenet of free societies. In an open market a transaction will not occur unless both parties see a benefit for themselves; all involved parties have to believe they win. Increased wealth results from every exchange. Markets unencumbered by intervention continually increase the prosperity of every free person.

Just as the founders of the United States changed John Locke's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property" when they inserted it into the Declaration of Independence to an equally Lockeian "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it would be well to recognize not all benefits derived from open markets involve property.

One great benefit within volunteering and charity is the sweet taste of giving. The joys that come from a personal choice to give or volunteer keep growing, unlike most pursued pleasures that diminish with repetition.

To those that have experienced it in large doses, philanthropy can be a tremendous pleasure that brings enormous satisfaction.

And it helps others.

Primary and secondary education are used to prepare students for college. The education industry markets college degrees as the only route to get a good job or a promotion. Follow and don't think so you can get a nice job, with benefits, in a bureaucracy. Statistics supporting this sales claim for a college degree are from decades ago when industrialization was still growing.

This antiquated view of life, a leftover from the dying bureaucratic age, is the wrong way to prepare for a future requiring creative minds.,

Seek out mentally healthy thought food, not the predigested kibble thrown at you.

You have been intellectually fattened to remove any potential for strenuous individual mental activity. It will never be considered valuable to any bureaucracy, such as the schools you were forced to endure, to allow consideration that you might exist just fine without its corrosive ministrations.

If what government approved institutions offer is truly valuable to any but themselves, would they make laws forcing it upon us and have to steal from our paychecks to support it? Would they so bend society as to create flaccid axioms intoning the value they offer, all tied to their definition of "success." Would they provide student loans and other inducements to trade in your freedoms for an ersatz life of herd like conspicuous consumption?

Has the forcefully limited thinking of others been used to shape your thoughts?

Ah, but I have made you uncomfortable grasshopper. Ignore the previous and rejoin the corpulent herd; your hungry shepherds, the wolves, miss your compliance within their rituals.

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"Civilization's development has always been initiated by individuals balancing demands within their intimate groups against personal needs for independence and identity. Social engineers and planners always error at this point. What they endeavor is to convert humankind from small, intimate, flexible tribes to a collective with one mind (their mind of course).

They want to make all the complex human herds and packs of individuals into a single hive of drones. They have always failed, they will always fail; for outstanding individuals will continue to emerge - imagining and accomplishing exceptional goals - changing everything." - Allan R. Wallace



100% of direct income from my lenses goes to micro-finance solutions for world poverty provided by the Grameen Foundation. The Grameen Foundation is creating a rising tide of positive influence upon our world.

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky