A friend said this on the phone: “I’m sorry this is taking me so long. I’m really bad at computers.”

My reply: “Why would you say it that way?”

“Huh?”

“I understand that you’re reporting on what you see as being a matter of fact. But why not say it this way: ‘Computers have been a challenge for me, but I find I’m getting better with experience.’ You’re telling the exact same truth, not misrepresenting anything. But by focusing on what you’re doing right, you’ll improve your future performance just by changing your attitude.”

I’m not talking about canned affirmations. I’m talking about the words you choose when you’re telling the unshaded truth about your life, your mind, your talents, your work, your relationships.

You can say: “I’m a lousy writer.” But you can be just as truthful by saying this instead: “It hasn’t been easy for me to improve my writing skills, but I’m finding that hard work is paying off for me.”

You can say: “I always get lost when I go someplace for the first time.” But it would be equally factual to say, “I find it beneficial to prepare carefully before I travel to an unfamiliar neighborhood.”

You can say: “I’ll probably lose.” But you would be no less honest to say, “I just might win.”

The statements you make about yourself might seem to you to be statements of fact at the time you are making them. But whatever truth there might be in those expressions right now, you are also writing the script for your future. Saying “I’ll probably lose” is functionally equivalent to saying “I’ll never win.” If you don’t mean to say that you can never, ever get anything right, then stop telling these brutal lies about yourself.

If you invert those expressions instead — concentrating on everything you get right, not everything you get wrong — by that one simple change of habit you will rewrite the script of your future. There’s no telling how high you can rise, once you stop putting yourself down, but, at a minimum, you will write yourself a much happier ending.

Here’s what I say: I’m working very hard to change the world for the better — for myself, for my family and friends, and for everyone. Here is how you can help: Stop telling those awful lies about your life, and start telling beautiful truths instead.

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.1.4: “Get me rewrite!” How to revise the script of your life — writing yourself a happy ending.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

Manifest your own destiny: You say you want a revolution? Yeah, well anyone can piss and moan about how bad everything is. If you want things to change, I’m making a stout effort to show you how to achieve revolutionary change — from the inside out. But your own efforts at self-improvement will bear sweeter fruit sooner if you share what you’re learning with other people who love to live. You’ve never heard anything like this before. Why would you hoard it to yourself?

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

The very first thing she said to me was, “I’m Anastasia.”

She had pronounced the name ‘Anna-stay-juh’ but I took care to be more formal. I nodded gravely and said, “‘Ah-nah-STAH-ziuh’. I’m honored.”

She giggled delightedly. “Why’d you say it that way?”

“To lilt, to laugh, to dance, to dream. To fly, to sigh, to sing, to speak. To embroider the air, to perfect it with the perfect sound: ‘Ah-nah-STAH-ziuh’.”

She giggled again and that was answer enough.

She was four-and-a-half on the day we met. Not awfully, terribly short, but at no risk of scraping her head on anything. She had a round little face that had borrowed too much mischief to be cherubic but was angelic nevertheless. Her hair was brown and it was almost always almost everywhere; it was obviously brushed and tied and obviously instantly disarrayed by her mischievous wanderings. She was a beautiful child, beautiful inside and out, but her eyes were the crowning glory of her nobility. They were bluer than blue, deep and dark and purple, as purple as the crest of a dynasty. They were clearer than any gemstone, and they seemed not to reap the light but to sow it. For all the days I knew her, I could never see enough of those purple gemstone eyes.

“What’re you doing there?” she asked. I was sitting in the shade of a little olive grove reading a book. She was standing on something behind the block wall of the property next door, just her head and shoulders above the wall.

“House-sitting. You know what that means?” She shook her head and her hair flew into a more advanced state of disarray. “It’s like baby-sitting only easier.”

“Why’re you doing it?”

I shrugged. “The official answer is, I’m helping out a friend. The unofficial answer is, TV, refrigerator, hot and cold running everything. Does that make any sense to you?”

It might have or it might not, but we’ll never know, because she changed the subject. “I have a kitten. His name is ‘Sputin.”

I said, “Rasputin. Somebody likes Russian names. Say it: ‘Ra-spyoo-tin’.”

“Why?”

“Just say it. ‘Ra-spyoo-tin’.”

She said, “‘Ra-spyoo-tin’.” Her voice was high and sweet. And breathless of course. Her speech was good, but she had a tendency to thrust her words soundly through her upper lip. The tongue is a fearsome sword, but it takes time to master.

I said, “Children must learn to enunciate. Can you say that word? ‘Ih-nun-cee-ate’.”

She said, “‘Ih-nun-sate’.”

“‘Ih-nun-cee-ate’.”

“‘Ih-nun-cee-ate’.”

“That’s it. Say it again.”

“‘Ih-nun-cee-ate’.”

“Bravo! Well done. First you crawl, then you walk, then you run. If you work at it, you can master anything.”

“Why?”

‘Why?’ is a dangerous question from a four-year-old. It may be a sincere request for more information and it may be nothing more than a doorstop to keep the conversation open. I said, “The purpose of mastery is mastery. The purpose of excellence is excellence. Can you say ‘excellence’?”

“Sure I can!”

“Well say it.”

“Excellence.”

I said, “Excellent!” and she giggled.

“I have to go,” she confided. “I’m s’posed to clean up.”

“‘Suh-posed’.”

“‘Suh-posed’,” she replied.

I said, “‘Ih-nun-cee-ate’.”

She scrunched her face up in a scowl.

“Say it.”

“What for?”

“To lilt, to laugh, to dance, to dream. To fly, to sigh, to sing, to speak. To spin like a ballerina on the tip of your tongue, to glide across the universe and embroider the air with breathtaking sound.”

She laughed from her belly. “You’re silly!”

“You just figured that out?”

The next afternoon she announced her presence at the top of the wall by declaiming, “‘Ih-nun-cee-ate’.”

I nodded. “How do you fare, fair Empress?”

“You said the same word twice.”

“Homonyms. Words that sound the same but mean different things. ‘Hah-mow-nim’. Say it.”

“‘Hah-mow-nim’.”

“That was homonimble of you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s a made-up word. When you master the words, you get to make up words of your own. It’s called wit, deservedly or not.”

I’m pretty sure that flew past her, but it didn’t matter because all she wanted to do was chat; comprehension wasn’t a grave necessity. And that kind of chatting about words set the pattern of our days, me in the olive grove and Anastasia at the top of the wall. The afternoons were never very hot and the evenings were never very cold and, even though the pollen from the trees made my eyes water, the air smelled so green and pure and that little girl’s eyes were so alive with the light of life that I couldn’t think of any more enjoyable way to spend my time.

And you might think it odd that a little girl should tolerate so much word play, but the simple truth is that the prize children prize is a grown-up’s full attention, and they don’t care how it comes wrapped. For an adult, play requires a site, a uniform, equipment and a long list of rules. But a child needs no more than the sword of her tongue and the shield of her smile to conquer the vast empires of the imagination, to plunder abundance and always leave behind her more treasure than she could ever haul away.

“‘Ah-nah-STAH-ziuh’,” I said one afternoon. “Do you know the story of the first Anastasia, the little girl who had your name first?”

“I get to see the movie when I’m bigger.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of scary. There’s a mean old man named Rasputin, like your cat, and he makes people think he’s a sorcerer. But the little girl isn’t scary, even though a lot of scary things happen to her.”

“What things?”

“What really matters is that she gets lost, and she’s so young that she forgets all about her family. She’s a princess, an empress, and a lot of people hope that someday she’ll claim her empire.”

“Does she?”

I shrugged. “It’s just a story. The real Anastasia died in 1918 with the rest of her family. But people like to tell that story because it makes them think that the most remarkable, wonderful things can happen anywhere.”

She gazed upon me with a regal certainty. “They can.”

“I agree completely. It’s the difference between royalty and nobility. Royalty is just a pose, just a costume. But nobility shines through everything, through the most wretched squalor ever known.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Every man a king, my Empress. Every fair maiden a fair princess in disguise. I never met an ignoble baby. Can you say ‘igg-no-bel’?”

“No.”

“Hardly anyone can. But all the babies are noble, as noble as a kitten, as noble as a wolf cub. Warriors in their way and champions of justice, if only of their own. Sovereigns who cannot conceive of an alternative to sovereignty and masters of all they survey. But somehow the crowns and the crests of nobility erode away and all that’s left are scared little people chasing after the costumery of royalty, begging for something to kneel to. Do you want me to teach you something very noble to say?”

She nodded solemnly.

“This is the most noble thing I can think of for any human being to say: ‘Do your worst. I will not kneel.’”

She said, “Do your worst. I will not kneel.”

“That’s right. Just the words, no special emphasis. Nobility triumphs when it fearlessly faces tragedy. And that, my Empress, is the most remarkable, wonderful thing that can ever happen…”

Late one afternoon I said, “I know a very hard word. You want to try it?”

“Sure.”

I said, “Chiaroscuro. ‘Key-are-es-kyoor-oh’. Say it.”

“‘Key-are-es-kyoor-oh’.”

“Excellent!”

“‘Key-are-es-kyoor-oh’,” she said again.

“What are you teaching my daughter?” a woman’s voice asked from the other side of the wall.

“It’s just words, mama.”

“Whatever for?”

Very primly, very clearly, very precisely, Anastasia said, “The purpose of mastery is mastery.” To me she said, “What’s it mean?”

“What?”

“‘Key-are-es-kyoor-oh’.”

“It’s the interplay of light and shadow. In pictures, in paintings — but sometimes I think it means the conflict between good and evil, right and wrong. We have pictures and we have words and we have songs and poems and stories, and that’s a testament to the triumph of the light, don’t you think?”

She shrugged and that was answer enough.

One day when the fall had come to pay a call upon the olive trees Anastasia climbed to the top of the wall to tell me she was moving away.

I bit my lower lip and blinked very fast, surprised at myself.

“What’s the matter?”

I smiled a tight little smile, a smile for keeping things in. “This never happened before. It’s always me who goes away, not the other way around.”

“Aren’t you leaving soon?”

“Couple of weeks. You’re right, of course you’re right. It’s just new, that’s all.”

And of course it took forever. I can bug-out in three minutes flat, but it took Anastasia’s family days and days to pack up and go. She came to the wall to talk to me every day and it was so nice and so awful, sweet words embroidered around a black crepe deadline.

I said good-bye to her at the curb in front of her house and I felt wretched and I tried very hard not to show it. Just a little kid, right? Just the most remarkable, wonderful thing there is, a young sovereign, wild and free.

I held her tiny little hands in mine and said, “Ingenuous. Can you say it? ‘In-jen-you-us’.”

“‘In-jen-you-us’. What does it mean?”

“It means a lot of things — open and honest and artless and innocent. But what it really means is to be born free. It means to be born without being required to kneel. That’s what you are, Anastasia of the purple gemstone eyes. Born free. The hard job is to stay free.”

“Do your worst,” she intoned with a regal delight. “I will not kneel.”

I kissed her on the forehead and she climbed into the back seat of the waiting car and sailed forth to claim her empire.

[This was written for genuine Bloodhounds. Please check your chip!]

I always start simple. Then I try to stay there. This post is no exception. I even cut it in half, to keep it as simple as possible. The main question I seek to answer here is, “What is owing?”

You see, I owe Greg Swann. No, not for anything he sold me, nor because of anything he expects, let alone demands. He did do some software work back in the ’90s, but I paid for that. BTW his code is used to this day, making one part of our company’s website much better than any of our competitors’. And since that part is about the price, and since I offer (what once was!) a commoditized item, it means the whole website is better, from the customer’s POV. And in business, as is no secret here, there’s no other relevant POV.

Greg Swann has inspired me, as he’s inspired so many people, but lots of people inspire lots of other people. We don’t go around keeping track of who inspired us how much, and how much we ought to pay for each. So surely there’s no debt in that, right? Well, I guess it all depends on what you consider a debt.

And that’s the point…a debt is something you consider a debt. Never mind contracts and mortgages for a moment, for this is about owing. And this is about the fact of the matter. You cannot be in any volitional state, with or without others, save by your own…well, your own volition. This is not a comment on money debts or their resolution in cases of dispute; this is a comment on the existential state of owing.

I know this is important because of a six-month discussion on the net. A chap, once affectionately known as “Police-State Jim,” has the most intricate, most carefully crafted “argument” about why our obligations are properly enforced with physical coercion. And more…why this is so very, very moral and why it’s downright necessary for happiness. It’s a maze of contrived definitions, false dichotomies, stolen concepts and even more, and this fellow also happens to be an eloquent writer, a pleasure to read if you ignore what he says. He goes from “moral obligation” to “legal obligation” with everything resting on what an obligation is. Which is how, according to him, you come to be obligated because of the volition of others. He acknowledges that your volition has to exist, but the key element is that the other person “expects, demands or relies” upon your freely chosen decision to be in debt to him. On its face this is intuitive, but as always it’s missing the underlying connection…”So even then, why would it be proper to engage physical coercion?” This is Greg’s specialty, so I won’t explain now, why that’s not proper.

No, my point is even wider. It’s that an expectation, demand or reliance can’t create anything in you anyway. Nothing can create anything in you, but you. Other entities can do things to you, but they can’t do them in you. This is plainly obvious, almost childish to say. Yet virtually every craziness we engage socially, is built around the pretense that this is not true. From God to the Poll, every contrivance we make to control ourselves, has an implicit premise that something might control ourselves, besides ourselves. I mean, really now.

Nothing can ever change until we lose this false foundational premise. You are as you choose, now and forevermore. You don’t choose what other people or other things do to you, but you exclusively choose who you will be in the face of them. The good news, of course, is that this applies to happiness or joy or pride or humor or fun or…

I call my ethical system “egoism” but oddly, I don’t choose it because I judge that it’s so ethical, like compared to other ethical systems. No, for me it’s only about the facts of the matter, and I always identify before I judge. How we engage with others is a very important ethical judgment, and so I believe it must be built upon accurate, or correspondent, identification. I don’t pick from among systems; I develop principles.

I owe Greg Swann because I decided that I owe Greg Swann. I have very good reasons for that, but it really doesn’t matter for this. The relevant point is that I owe him, and this is how I choose to pay him. Those reasons are all mine, and it feels good–that is, it enhances ego-adoration–when one pays one’s debts. That’s why that last car payment feels so good…you earned that car, which translates almost directly to, “You lived.” And living is what Splendor is all about. Living, as a human, creates Splendor.

If we choose to create it, that is. Greg can’t create any Splendor in me, nor anyone else. But he can point out some facts with which we can create it ourselves. The identification of facts is the fuel of the mind. I go so far as to call us “identifying machines.” As I wrote here a while ago, Greg has spent his life dishing out some facts about being human, and just like Crick & Watson, he cracked some important keys. You all know this; that’s why you’re here. You’re people of the mind, and Greg has filled you up with what we used to call “Ethyl”…nowadays it’s “Premium.” Well, I took those facts and used them. Since I don’t like something for nothing, and since I don’t want to do what I don’t like, I therefore decide that I owe him, and that this is how I shall pay him.

That’s all. Notice that Greg has nothing to do with this existential state. Notice that nobody could have anything to do with it, except myself. Everything else is prattle. Everything else is someone saying what they’re willing to do to hang onto their false premises.

This post was originally “Owing and Owning,” with about half dedicated to real estate. I think I’ll go with one at a time, and cut this off here. You all made me feel quite welcome when I first arrived, so maybe I’ll save the rest as a sort of payment in gratitude for that.

That way I can even enjoy the time I owe you!

[The following was duplicated from the original at indarchy.com.]

With “we” here, I mean the so-called “freedom lovers.” I mean those of us who understood what’s been going on for a very long time, and who didn’t like it one little bit. I mean those who’ve been citing the Founding Documents, with a focus on the ideas involved. I mean those who knew all along that reality admits of no contradictions…not in the physical realm and not in the human realm.

We saw all this and we saw even worse. We knew all along that production wasn’t a series of numbers to be tracked. We knew–from principle as well as experience–that statism simply can’t last. We know the nature of the entities involved, and we know that something can’t come from nothing…no matter how deep your wish nor how long your whip. We understood the whole time, the last few decades and the next few years, what simply must happen if collectivism and statism rule the day.

And that’s the part we got wrong. Thank goodness. We see things how they are and we conclude to where they must lead. Hence, the picture in our minds is usually one of collapse. We see fools thinking they may sit at home and somehow live a long, happy life. We see fools thinking that if they tweak the whip just right, then they may be happy too. We see thugs all around us, honestly believing that they are doing the moral good, because they’ve been taught nothing else, not ever. We understand the errors, and we know that logic simply commands–that is, reality simply commands–that somehow all of this must collapse and somehow a new world must be built on the ashes and bodies so wastefully piled.

That was our error, for a human life is not a structure. There are no bricks to tear down, nor foundations to be dismantled. Human life is built on time, and the time is always what it is…now. There is no time in which action can be done, nor is there any time for which we may willfully choose, except the present.

It’s not that the foundation mustn’t be properly built; of course it must. Luckily that’s a piece of cake, so easy that it doesn’t even take any physical building. The foundation is what’s already there, and in fact was the only thing there all along. The foundation is what decent people choose, and decent people are chomping at the bit to choose what’s right. They just never heard it, that’s all. And from what I can tell, they’re about to hear it, in spades.

I guess the message here is simple. We’ve known this all along too, but these are the times when it must become clear as a bell, and not a single mistake can be made when imparting it. Human life is about creation and building, and we must remain ever-conscious in remembering that the only thing a human life can directly create and build, is the single life itself.

The correct message is not, “Tear it down.” The correct message is, “Build it up.”

I hope I don’t seem to be a scold.

It suits my ends to poke around in the trash can inside your brain, but I’m not doing it to be mean — nor to induce you to feel bad about yourself. I know a whole lot about the interior mental processes that motivate the pursuit of values and disvalues — and about the subsequent and secondary consequences of those mental processes — but it’s not as if I can actually read your mind.

So how do I know so much about how your mind works? I don’t, not by any means except inference. What I know about is how my mind works. We are alike as things — we are ontological equals — so I know that your mind works the same way mine does — no less than and for the same reasons that your heart works the same way mine does. Moreover, I can look you in the eye and tell you the truth of your life in excruciating detail, working from nothing other than past experience with myself and other people. Our differences make us unique and beautiful, but our similarities make us comprehensible to each other.

So without intending to scold you, I need to say something to you in the gentlest way I can:

You’re getting everything wrong!!

Wrong, wrong, wrong. All the time, for all your life. Everyone, everywhere, for all of human history. Wrong, wrong, wrong — always and everywhere wrong — with wrong heaped upon wrong in twisted, corrupt dogmas of wrongness.

Do you want proof?

It could be you’re all hunched up in resentment at being called wrong. Or maybe you’re folded in on yourself in guilt, revisiting all of your past perceived sins. But here’s how I know that you’re wrong, and that you’ve been wrong about nearly everything, for almost all of your life:

Because being wrong doesn’t matter. Being right is the only thing that matters.

We all tell lies, the worst of them to ourselves. We all shirk our responsibilities, crafting sullen silent soliloquies to justify our laziness. We all hurt other people, and we are all hurt by them. We all do things we know are wrong when we’re doing them, and we all live with the pain of those errors forever — silently, in a stolid solitude, but forever.

The things you have done that are wrong are not to be dismissed, shrugged off. They can’t be, no matter how much you might wish they could. But redemption is egoism in action. There are limits to how much of the past damage you have done to your self you can undo, but we redeem our errors not by penance and not by renunciation but by acts of splendor.

All you need is an idle moment to catch your self doing something wrong — in the past. What you need instead is to catch your self doing something right — right now.

In due course, I’m going to talk about the world and about everything that can go wrong with it — wars and diseases and tyrannies and cataclysms and catastrophes unending — but what I am really talking about, what I am always talking about is self-love, the all-but-unendurable worship by the self of the self, this as a matter of simple justice, in appreciation for past and present physical and purely introspective expressions of mental and moral greatness.

You are too much aware of your past sins and failures because you have too little greatness in your life — too little splendor — to be conscious of instead.

Do you see? Your self is your life, and your awareness of your self is the source and the sink of every other awareness you have ever had. Your relationship with your self is primary and paramount in any other relationship you might have with other people or with things outside your mind. Every purposive action you take is taken first by your self upon your self, and there is nothing you can think, say, do or experience that is not felt first, most and always by your self.

Your self is the star of every scene of every act in the drama of your life. So here’s an interesting question: When your self takes the stage, what do you see?

The same thing I see, for what that’s worth. Your body is the physical expression of your self, and your every triumph, your every disaster and your every delight and terror is written on your face, on your skin, in your posture, in your movements and in your speech for any observant person to see. But the self of the mind, your true self, is visible only to you. I can see how your past has inscribed itself into the cells of your body, but only you can see the self you would have and could have and should have become.

This is the dirty little secret I know about you, the one I refuse to keep quiet about: I know you’ve betrayed the self of your imagination in just about every way possible. I know there are things you are burning, burning, burning to do — and yet you talked yourself out of doing them, again and again. I know there are things you want desperately to have achieved — but not desperately enough to dig in and do them. I know you have been pressured, again and again, into doing things you knew were wrong when you did them, and I know you have done other things you knew were wrong purely out of spite, frustrating yourself more than anyone else.

I know that when you were four or five years old, you imagined for yourself a glorious self, a thing of illimitable goodness. And I know you have smudged and smeared and soiled and sullied and chipped and chopped away at that image of your self ever since. I know that you’ve never stopped mourning what is in fact a gradual and persistent and ultimately fatal self-annihilation, and I know that you hate your own self-abnegation so much that you would do almost anything to make it stop — except stop doing it.

How do I know all this? Duh.

I’ve understood everything I’m talking about at progressively higher levels of abstraction since I was very young, but that doesn’t mean that I have been spared the horrifying and mentally-permanent spectacle of self-induced error. Too much the contrary, alas, and with less of the self-serving self-righteous self-justification other people might lay claim to.

But guess what? None of this matters at all. I am lucky, in my own error-ridden past, in this way: I try to pay attention to everything, so I’ve learned a lot from my own past self-destructive actions. But still more importantly, self-destruction does not matter, except to the extent that one must learn to stop doing it. What truly matters, all that truly matters is self-construction, realizing — making real — that image of your self you crafted for yourself when you were four or five years old.

The world outside your mind is just so much weather — sunny one day, rainy the next, meaningless almost all the time. Other people matter to your self only to the extent that you yourself matter to your self. All that really matters is your self and what you are doing with it.

Do you see your self as being ugly, small, of no consequence? That’s because that is how you behave. You see your self all the time. Every thought you have is hugely about your self, and every purposive physical action you take is your self manifesting itself in the world outside your mind. What you see of your self in your mind’s eye is the accumulated reflection of what you have seen of your self — today and on every day before this one.

Do you want to see your self as being beautiful? As a thing of uncontainable enormity? Do you want to see your self for what it really is, as the most important thing that could ever exist within the universe of your consciousness? If this is what you want, then you have to behave that way. In the world outside your mind, you have to manifest the self you have imagined for yourself inside your mind.

What is it that you want to do? What is it that you want to have accomplished? You have to do those things. You have to see yourself doing those things. When you feel pressure to betray your self, from other people or from some doctrine of self-annihilation, you have to stand up to that pressure — you have to be the hero you loved to imagine for your self when you were young.

Making mistakes does not matter. Acting deliberately in error does not matter. Being evil does not matter. Failing your self — refusing out of spite and laziness to be the self you would have and could have and should have become — does not matter. What’s one more zero on the scoreboard of time, after all?

All that matters, all that matters, all that ever matters is being right — for an instant, for an hour, for a day, for a year, for a lifetime. As a matter of ontology, being right is the only way to achieve anything, but, even before that, being right is the only way you can live with your self. You have the power to choose who you will be, but you do not have the power to escape who you have become — not and remain conscious as a living human being. You cannot wish your way to greatness, you cannot erase your memories of your past evils, and you cannot worship your self in appreciation for the accomplishment of nothing. You can choose always to build upon and burnish your self, or you can choose instead to soil and dismantle it. But you cannot love who you are without behaving lovably in the actions of your existence.

Just that much is the most amazingly, wonderfully inspiring thing you could ever think about, if you make it your business to think about it all the way through. But there is a level of inspiration beyond this one, if you stop to consider that you are just like me and we two are just like everyone else.

If you have habituated self-destructive behavior, you have to stop. But merely not being wrong is not sufficient. All that matters is being right. So you self-identify an error and set about to correct it, making up for past injuries to yourself and other people, as much as you can, and doing better going forward. And you do that again and again, one bad habit after another, each one as you discover it. And after a while, the habit of self-improvement becomes the defining metaphor of your life — improving not your mind or your body directly, but improving your self in ways that result in improvements in your mind and in your body — and in your behavior. That much is remarkable: The more greatness you see in your own real-time and remembered behavior, the more greatness you will see in your self, in the silence and solitude of your mind.

Now think of this: Your next-door neighbor is just like you. So is your brother-in-law and the nice lady who cleans your office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We are each one of us identical, ontologically, to all the others, and there is nothing that you can do to improve your self that your neighbor cannot do as well. Imagine what could happen if your neighbor and your brother-in-law and your cleaning lady and everyone you know were to commit themselves to a lifetime of continuous self-improvement. Imagine if every human being on the face of the planet, living now and yet to be born, were committed to the idea of being his or her best possible self, committed to being good, to being great, to being better every day.

Imagine a world where each living human being has chosen to live for nothing other than self-adoration — to being everything he desires, everything he admires, everything he aspires to — all day, every day, with not one second lost to self-betrayal, self-abnegation, self-destruction.

Do you think that might be a world worth living in?

Do you think that might be a world worth working toward?

You live in squalor, and there is an extent to which you worship that squalor. As long as everything is wrong, wrong, wrong, as long as everything is bad and ever and always worse, you can absolve yourself of any responsibility for your circumstances — it’s all out there, all of it beyond your control. But you hate your life, to the extent that you do, because you hate what you see yourself doing with your life. And you love your life, when you do, when you see your self living up to itself. The world you want to live in is not one where everything out there is perfect, but where the world of your self is perfectible and steadily more perfect.

On other days, in other essays, I can talk about how the world conspires against your self. But that doesn’t really matter, nor does anything else you might name. All that matters, all that ever matters in the context of your own life, is what you yourself are getting right. If you want to change the world, this is within your power — but you can only change it from the inside out. Do that, and nothing that happens outside your mind will matter very much. And if we can persuade enough other people to pursue self-adoration along with us, the world outside our minds will change for the better for all of us.

I have many more reasons to be cheerful still to discuss, but this is all the reason you need to be filled to bursting with optimism. You don’t need to change the world. What you need to change is your thinking, your habits of mind and your behavior. Make those changes and, regardless of any squalor still to be found in the world, your own life will be a paradise of illimitable splendor.

How do I know all this? Duh…

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.1.4: “Get me rewrite!” How to revise the script of your life — writing yourself a happy ending.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

Manifest your own destiny: You say you want a revolution? Yeah, well anyone can piss and moan about how bad everything is. If you want things to change, I’m making a stout effort to show you how to achieve revolutionary change — from the inside out. But your own efforts at self-improvement will bear sweeter fruit sooner if you share what you’re learning with other people who love to live. You’ve never heard anything like this before. Why would you hoard it to yourself?

Art is demanding, and that’s good. But art is petulant and importunate and presumptuous to a fault. Art is that damned nuisance of a snoopy neighbor who keeps knocking, knocking, knocking on your cellar door. Art goes straight for the places you forbid yourself to think about and rummages through your most terrifying secrets like a burglar tearing through your underwear drawer. Good art makes you hate it as you devour it, shun it as you immerse yourself in it. Good art makes you restless and jagged and ragged and inspired. Good art makes you shiver. Great art makes you cringe.

Art is a vanity in precisely this way: I presume to recreate reality in my own image and likeness, and I have the effrontery to demand that you not only acknowledge that reality but prefer it. I presume to seize the universe and squeeze out of it a tiny seed of truth. And I presume to plant that seed within you — without your consent, perhaps without even your knowledge. And I presume to nurture this new universe I have caused to grow within you until you scream — if I am good enough — scream from agony and delight. And I presume to do all of this for no purpose of yours, but only for reasons of my own devising. And at the end of it you may thank me or damn me, but you will never have been more than the means to my end: I sought not you but only to spawn myself anew within you — immaculate conceptualization. Art is a vanity because it is the means by which the artist postures as a god — and not a very merciful god.

I see all of this and yet I embrace it. I am as much art’s victim as you, although on my best days I am lucky enough to have a bit of my own back. But as a species and as individuals we are unwilling to forswear the worst of our vices without that resounding blow to the head that art alone provides. Our artists are vain and petulant god-impostors, but they do for us the job we demand of gods: They fill us with awe and wonder and terror and they give us the excuse we seem to need to repent of vice.

As a species, as individuals, we are born enormous and we waste the span of our days and our years shrinking, shrinking, shrinking until we vanish away to nothingness. And while it would be vain and petulant and importunate and presumptuous to a fault for me to call any work of mine art, nonetheless I am come to you to give you a most resounding blow to the head in the hope that it will give you the excuse you seem to need to repent of this awful vice of shrinking.

I love humanity in principle but I loathe much of it in practice. And that is the sort of statement I normally rebel against. The implication is that there are two universes, one perfect but unreal, one real but inherently imperfect. I don’t believe in unreality and I don’t believe perfection is beyond our reach. I love what humanity can become, but for the most part has not. One of the reasons we revere great artists is because they have nurtured the seed of greatness that each of us carries within us. One of the reasons we despise great artists, sneering at their human imperfections, is because we despise ourselves for having failed to nurture the seed of greatness that each of us carries within us. I love to envision a humanity that rejoices in its potential for greatness and therefore never has cause to despise itself.

Is that not a godlike vision? Do not dare call it a merciful vision. I seek for you not ease, not comfort, not quiet, but their polar opposites. I would wish that you work ceaselessly, obsessively, beyond every standard of human endurance, to writhe and seethe and bleed giving birth to your greatness. And I would wish for you to undertake all of this at once, without delay. I have seen enough of this shrinking, and I want it to stop.

Is that not sufficiently demanding? I presume to dictate to you the terms of your existence, and I do it with the utmost effrontery. I demand not just that you repent of vice, I expect you to punch out some hefty virtues, and no half measures. I am importunate by any interpretation and I am petulant beyond dispute.

Is that not presumptuous enough for you? Surely it is, for you and I both know the nature of those most terrifying secrets, but I alone am presumptuous enough to reveal them. I am no mere snoopy neighbor, no mere rummaging burglar. I am you, you in your most furtive and delicious and concealed and coveted moments. I am you in principle, never in practice. Perfect but unreal, burnished to a glow in the utter secrecy of the imagination, hidden from every eye in the universe, even from your own. I am the seed of that greatness within you, fully grown in another garden.

Is that not vanity personified? Indeed. But exactly. I am vanity personified, the word made flesh, the world made fresh. Infuriatingly fresh. I am a resounding blow to your head with a cold, wet fish. I don’t want to knock some sense into you; that’s not possible. I want you to unlock that horrid dungeon of the mind in which all the sense is imprisoned. You know what I am because you know what you are — in principle. I want you to be what you are in principle in practice.

I want you to stop shrinking, shrinking, shrinking and instead nurture the seed of your own enormity. I am not another empty-headed little door-to-door salesman peddling self-esteem or self-improvement or self-advancement or self-delusion. I am a thundering god-impostor and I demand from you self-love, the total worship of the ego by the ego. Self-love cannot be bought or sold, it can only be earned at the price of enormous effort. And I demand that you make that effort to deserve your own adoration.

The words that are running through your mind right now are the words by which you have made war on your life since your childhood. Those words are the means by which you endlessly shrink away to nothingness. You will not grow merely by ceasing to despise your potential for greatness, but you cannot grow as long as you persist in this hideous self-annihilation. You are born to live, no less than any tree or bird, and you have the potential to live in a way impossible to the plants and the animals, to live a life of beauty and meaning and achievement. But you cannot live that life while you are pursuing its destruction.

I am a student of the base and the squalid. But I am a poet of the glorious, the immense. I imagine for myself a radiant universe and I people it with giants. In my work I write about this failure of humanity or that error, this vice or that sin, and it would be easy enough to suppose that it is humanity itself, the stuff we’re made of, that is imperfect. But I know this is untrue. Humanity’s failure is not a failure of materials, not a failure of design. It is a failure of nerve. At least until now, we have lacked the courage to become what we truly are, reasoning animals.

I gaze into the squalor and I would wish that people stop indulging their stupidities, stop gathering into herds, stop pandering to their craven appetites — stop behaving as animals. But there is no end to the vices we could forswear and it would never be enough. We require not an end of vice, but a commencement of virtue. We need not to stop behaving as animals, we need to start behaving fully as human beings. All the time.

Good art makes you shiver, gentle reader, and great art makes you cringe. The very best art makes you change, and I am vain enough to hope that this day and these words will mark a change in your life that will last forever. If you will dare to be as enormous in practice as you furtively imagine yourself in principle, you will have a treasure that no one — no artist and no god — can ever provide for you: A life that you will not have to affect to despise by shrinking, shrinking, shrinking away to nothingness, a life that you can revere — openly, joyously, gloriously. And if you come one day to the perfect complement of this day, the day when you birth for yourself a universe as radiant as the one I would plant within you, I hope that you will share your self-reverence as I have shared mine with you.

Living is what you’re doing when you’re too enthralled to notice. Dying is what you’re doing when all you can do is notice. Our destiny is not to die without ever having dared to live. Our destiny is to thrive. Without shame. Without apologies. And without one instant of shrinking. I worship what you can become. I beseech you to become it and rejoice boundlessly in your enormity.

Greg Swann, 5/20/96

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.1.4: “Get me rewrite!” How to revise the script of your life — writing yourself a happy ending.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

Manifest your own destiny: You say you want a revolution? Yeah, well anyone can piss and moan about how bad everything is. If you want things to change, I’m making a stout effort to show you how to achieve revolutionary change — from the inside out. But your own efforts at self-improvement will bear sweeter fruit sooner if you share what you’re learning with other people who love to live. You’ve never heard anything like this before. Why would you hoard it to yourself?

Here’s an eye-opening item from the news feeds: Up to four out of five women are faking orgasms, at least some of the time. Last weekend, I was incredulous at Camille Paglia’s lamentations about sexlessness in the middle class, but, even though I’ve read — and doubted — all of the claims about anorgasmic women, still, I have never been prepared to lend any of this any credence.

And, yes, I’m talking about adult subject matter. If you’re still a giggling pre-teen, you might giggle off elsewhere. I intend to approach this as philosophy, but, if anything, that will just bring out more self-induced juvenility. The actual reason that normal adult Americans have bad sex is because they refuse — very probably in every realm of their lives — to take joy seriously. But we can’t even get that far without a commitment on your part to stop blushing and start thinking. If you won’t do this, what I plan to do here will be a waste of your time.

And must I also defend this as real estate? If you want to learn every new vendorslut trick for not making money while you betray your own soul, get thee to Agent Shortbus or any one of a hundred other sites. If you want to learn how to be a whole soul, to be the highest and best person you can be — at work, at home and in the privacy of the bedroom — let’s talk. But the only subject that matters to me is being alive as a self-conscious human being — and being good at it — and this post is 100% on-topic for that theme.

Are we down to nothing but adults who are prepared to be serious about human joy? Let’s start with a very basic premise: Normal, healthy adult human beings who love each other romantically should have great sex together virtually all of the time. Disabled? That could be a problem. Disabled in the mission-critical hardware? A bigger problem, but not an insuperable one. Stressed? Distracted? Drunk? Your timing is bad. Not in love? You’re screwed — but not in the good way.

My take in reading all of these alarming articles about pandemic sexual dysfunction is that the most likely problem is that, no matter how desperately people might be trying to have sex, only a precious few of them are fully committed to making love. We told ourselves, during the sexual revolution, that we were breaking the chains of biology. In fact, we were simply rationalizing a mindless, empty promiscuity. Getting laid is easy — and despite the lies we tell ourselves about the past, it has always been easy. It’s loving and being loved that’s hard to achieve, and it seems plausible to me that the more easy sex you chase, the harder it will be for you to forge a lasting, trusting commitment with another person.

How stupid is that?

We’re talking about self-love, self-adoration, now and always. This is all I am talking about, all I am ever talking about. Philosophy is all-encompassing, but philosophy begins with ethics, with teleology, with the unique self you have self-abstracted for yourself and what you choose to do with it. Is casual sex liberating? When you wake up next to someone you hardly know, and whose appearance and habits and character disgust you in the light of day — have you burnished and exalted your self, or have you soiled and diminished it? Will last night and this morning be moments of your life you will revisit with pride, or, when these events recall themselves to your memory, unbidden, again and again, will you feel shame, regret, revulsion, disgust?

Just as a general principle, anything you do that leaves you feeling ashamed or regretful or revolted or disgusted with your self is a disvalue, a thing not to be pursued but to be shunned and avoided. This is painfully obvious — and there is nothing I have to say that is not completely obvious to any normal five-year-old — but equally obvious are all the evidences of shame, regret, revulsion and disgust one can see on any Saturday or Sunday morning, just about 10 am. That’s when the boys and girls slink home in their night-club clothes, soiled just a little bit more, diminished to just a little bit less, encumbered forever with one more memory they can’t bear to look at and yet can’t ever manage to forget.

Again: How stupid is that?

Good grief! If all you need to do is to purge yourself of unwanted fluids, stay home and masturbate. Truly, there is no action you can take that is more fundamentally self-loving than self-loving itself, and, as side benefits, it’s fast, cheap and easy to clean up. It doesn’t leave you feeling disgust or hatred for yourself — despite what you were told at church. To the contrary, the endorphin kick will lend you a mild euphoria. And I’m pretty sure you won’t feel any need to fake anything.

I write as a man, and men don’t need to be told to masturbate. Any woman who really has a problem achieving orgasms with the man she loves should probably learn to love herself quite a bit more than she has. Love-making is a skill, and it’s not something that one is born knowing how to do. It doesn’t “just come naturally.” Women manage to cloud their minds with all kinds of barriers to their own enjoyment — worries about their looks, their weight, their clothes, jewelry and cosmetics, along with worries about everything else on the face of the earth. But even if she’s fully-committed to her own orgiastic joy, a woman still has to learn how to manage the hardware. Here again, men have it easier. Through the miracle of ultrasound, we know that little boys cuddle their puds while they’re still in the womb. All they learn later is how to deny it.

Here are two cool facts about a woman’s sexual hardware:

First, there’s almost nothing to master. We all know about the clitoris. If you can’t find it, you need to spend twenty or thirty seconds watching hi-def internet porn. And we’ve all heard about the G-spot, the allegedly elusive key to unlocking the treasure chest of every woman’s delight. Here’s the cool part: They’re all one organ. The clitoris is aligned on the exterior wall, the G-spot on the interior wall, and the whole thing is hugely sensitive. It’s exactly like the glans on a man’s penis — and don’t forget that men and women are just a variation on the same basic design — and, with just your thumb and two fingers, you can make the woman you love melt in your hand. It’s a very simply massage, and all you have to do is give it your time and pay attention to what she likes better and what she likes best.

Second, everything on a woman is sexual hardware. Men like to focus on a few choice targets, but a woman in love is in love over every inch of her skin, in every tiny hair of that skin, in every spot on her body that can be touched or stroked or caressed or kissed. For both men and women, the most important — and most enthralling — sex organ is the mind, but women often are not as adept as man can be at lying to themselves about the value of mere lust — which we have already identified as a disvalue. I don’t claim to understand what the sex act might be like for a woman who is not in love, but I’m inclined to think that it might not end in an orgasm — even if she fakes one.

But here’s the coolest fact of all about women’s sexual hardware: Once she starts coming, she doesn’t have to stop. A man’s orgasm is co-terminus with and is in many ways identical to ejaculation. What that means is that, no matter how aroused a man might be, and no matter how much he might want to achieve orgasm, if he has nothing to deliver, he will not climax. This is not true of women. A woman who loves her lover and understands how best to achieve orgasm can come again and again, effectively continuously — for five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour — to the limit of her physical endurance.

Think about that. Potential score: Infinity. Actual score: Zero. Precisely how screwed up are we, that something that should be infinitely pleasurable turns out to be, for as many as four out of five women, a nasty burden, an unwelcome chore, a task on a checklist to be dispensed with as quickly as possible and gotten out of the way?

Yet again: How stupid is that?

But don’t think I’m absolving the men. If women don’t achieve orgasm, it’s their own damn fault, but if men don’t experience orgasm as the fullest and finest expression of everything that is to be cherished and celebrated in human life, then they’re screwed, too. Coming is easy for a man. It’s commitment that’s hard. But without that commitment — without the full and fully-loving commitment to a partner you can’t bear to live without — sex is just a short spasm of pleasure followed by a lifetime of regret — lied about, white-washed, papered-over, renounced again and again in a short wince of otherwise introspective pain — but fundamentally self-destructive.

How stupid, how stupid, how stupid is that?

None of this is necessary. Women have to learn how their bodies work — and they have to learn to get out of their own way. Men have to learn how women’s bodies work, and how to control their own enthusiasm — which, incidentally, is a lot of fun just by itself. But both sexes have to learn the most important thing there is to know about sex: It’s not good for you if you’re not in love with your partner, but it is glorious — enthralling — soul-enriching — if you are. Very simple, very obvious. Your parents told you, but you knew it without having to be told. Making love is the most nakedly, openly vulnerable thing you can do with another person. How could it be any good with someone you don’t know, don’t like, don’t trust, don’t respect, don’t love? Why would anyone ever expect sex without love to be anything but a disappointment, in the long run?

So let’s get beyond that. You’ll either do better, going forward, or you won’t. What’s interesting to me about Paglia’s article and about the fake orgasm article is that love-making is the one activity of modern net.wise yuppies that seems to be immune, somehow, from the normal yuppie obsessions. Buying a new computer? You’ll read everything you can find on-line. Shopping for a new TV? You’ll be able to name the key features and short-comings of half-a-dozens models. Making love with your spouse, whom you truly do adore? No thought, no preparation, no tools, no toys, no accessories.

How stupid is that?

No one would clean a kitchen without cleaning supplies. No one would rebuild a transmission without tools. Yet we all show up in the bedroom armed with nothing but ignorance and unlimited needs — which soon enough turn into unlimited resentments. Very, very dumb.

Witness:

That’s an affiliate link to Fascinations, a very female-friendly sexual-aids emporium. It’s a true affiliate link; I’m undertaking a chore that no one else you know has been willing to do, and I’m going to get paid for it. Not everything they sell is worth buying, and, in general, you get what you pay for. But if you are looking for one relatively-inexpensive item that will make a world of difference in your love-making right away, buy a big bottle of Maximus lubricant and use it liberally. If both of you get rid of all or most of your pubic hair, you’ll like it even better. The front face of both of your pubic regions is very sensitive, when aroused, and if a guy manages to hang out right there, moving hardly at all, he can risk almost nothing while delivering almost everything. That’s very cool, but it’s not something you can do “naturally,” without theory, without practice and without after-market support.

Are the men wincing and cringing by now? Are you unmanned by the thought that you might need help in the bedroom? Are you equally emasculated by your hammers and your screwdrivers? The fact is that sex toys — the right sex toys — are just plain fun — as much fun for him as they are for her. Just shopping for them can be fun, if the two of you are open enough to talk about what you might enjoy. Marriage is a conversation you never want to end, and love-making is the most completely eloquent form that conversation can take. Sex toys will make your love-making better, but being honest with each other about love-making — thinking about it, planning for it, talking about it before, during and after — this is what it means to be serious about joy.

I am not anyone’s Casanova, nor am I any sort of expert on the physics or mechanics of lust. But I am as serious as I can be about my marriage, and I want for our love-making to be the best it can be, the best the two of us can make it. I talk about getting better at everything all the time, and this is one more part of my life where I want to devote my time and attention to getting better. We say that Americans are obsessed with sex, but obviously this cannot be so. We might be obsessed with titillation, but when it comes down to delivering the goods — actually making love — our minds are elsewhere.

How stupid is that?

But if you make love mindfully, then sex becomes everything you ever hoped it could be, everything you expected it to be when you were young. If love is a marriage of like minds, then your love-making can be your wedding day all over, over and over again, as often and as enthrallingly as you want to relive it. Your bodies will come together, and that just by itself is a delight, if you are alone and naked with your life’s delight. But your souls will come together, too, and this is a level of exultation that no mere animal — nor mere strangers — can achieve. True love-making occurs when like minds meet, marry, melt and merge, when there is nothing left to your conversation but mothertongue, the language of bodies, and yet the room is filled to bursting with the ringing tones of fathertongue: “I love you more than anything! I love who I am when I’m making love with you, and I love it that you respond to me the same way.”

This is doable. This is attainable. Speaking not of statistics but of the ontology of the human body, mind and spirit: This is normal. Everything the body does is an expression of the self. I know I love my wife, and I know she loves me, because we love each other all time, as often as we can, for as long as we can, as enthrallingly as we can. But we love each other all the time, in everything we do, and there is a degree to which we are always making love, no matter where we might be or how we are dressed. It’s all one thing. Everything is all one thing. And mastery, in whatever you might be doing, may not be easy, but the effort you put into your marriage will be repaid in vast abundance.

And how smart is that?

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.1.4: “Get me rewrite!” How to revise the script of your life — writing yourself a happy ending.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

Manifest your own destiny: You say you want a revolution? Yeah, well anyone can piss and moan about how bad everything is. If you want things to change, I’m making a stout effort to show you how to achieve revolutionary change — from the inside out. But your own efforts at self-improvement will bear sweeter fruit sooner if you share what you’re learning with other people who love to live. You’ve never heard anything like this before. Why would you hoard it to yourself?

Arizona State Senate Bill 1070 — the “Welcome to the Hotel California” legislation that has drawn so much attention nation-wide — will take effect on July 29th, 2010. Two other bills that will become law that day are more interesting to me, if not to TV-camera-mugging know-nothings in other states.

First, it will be lawful in Arizona for citizens to carry a concealed weapon without applying for a state permit. Arizona has always been an open-carry state, and, until now, a concealed carry permit required nothing more than a small fee plus 16 hours of instruction. With or without the legal requirement, the instruction is not a bad idea. But what will change on July 29th is the attitude of bad guys. Unlike thugs in, say, Chicago, criminals in Phoenix know there is a high degree of likelihood that ordinary people will be armed. As Robert A. Heinlein said, “An armed society is a polite society.”

Second, firearms manufactured and sold within the state of Arizona will not be subject to the Federal Brady Law’s national firearms database. It’s not a big deal right now, but it is plausible that there will come a time that the Feds — or their surlier successors — might try to confiscate every gun they know about. Having weapons Johnny G-Man knows nothing about might turn out to be an important advantage, if the shit hits the fan.

Look at this:

Isn’t that a sweet little pistol? It’s a Ruger LCP, specifically designed for concealed carry. It’s a .380, six rounds in the grip, one in the chamber, so it’s strictly a self-defense weapon. But it’s just a little bit larger in all dimensions than a pack of index cards, so it is very easy to conceal on your person. You can get a belt-mounted holster for it that looks like a camera case.

That’s a Realtor’s gun, a salesperson’s gun, a weapon for people who go to a lot of places they’ve never been before and don’t know what to expect. Less than ten ounces, and no one knows you have it until it turns out to be your other lock box key. And now that both the U.S. Border Patrol and the Toronto Police Department have made it plain that you are on your own, should you need to defend your own life or property, it seems like a gun like that might be a good investment.

Take note: This is not a SHTF weapon. I intend to talk about what might happen if some or all of western civilization hits the skids — taking account, always, that I do not expect this to happen — but a gun this size is not adequate for self-defense if self-defense becomes an everyday chore. Per Steve Earle, “It can get you into trouble, but it can’t get you out.” But this is a very nice form factor for a concealed weapon, just enough firepower to contain casual idiocy.

And here is where I live right now: I’m going to buy two of these in August, one for each of us to carry every day. I truly do not believe the shit is going to hit the fan, but I am less resolved in that belief than I have been at any time in my life so far. I want for my mother back home to buy and learn to use a Colt 1911, also, but I know she won’t. I sent her pepper spray and rosary beads, instead.

What’s even sweeter for me about that Ruger LCP is that Sturm Ruger’s factories are in Prescott. Janet Napolitano, the very-publicly-inept head of the department of Homeland Security, was the gun-hating governor of Arizona in her last disaster of a job. Next month she and the entire BATF can go pound sand. That much makes me proud to call myself an Arizonan.

But what about you? Should you arm yourself now, just in case? I think like a Realtor, and I think every female Realtor should be armed at all times. I think every post-pubescent female should be armed to the teeth, though, so maybe that doesn’t count. But, male or female, if it’s plausible to you that being able to brandish or even fire a weapon could prevent a worse harm, to you or to another party, I think you have a responsibility to yourself, to your family and to your estate to be able adequately to defend yourself, your property and your companions. The adverb matters: Simply owning and carrying a firearm is not enough. It’s much more important to learn to use and maintain the weapon safely and effectively. Usus est magister optimus. Practice is the best teacher.

So: Do I carry a weapon now? No. But I want Cathleen to do this. And I do recognize that events can take us by surprise, our haughty hubris notwithstanding. And I like it that Arizona is doing this, and I agree wholeheartedly with the underlying sentiment: Not only is it our right as Americans to provide for our own defense, it is also our responsibility to do this. The perfect symbol of the American citizen is not an eagle but a Saguaro cactus: Not solitary, but proudly independent, armed mightily, but never in offense, yet utterly ruthless, inconquerable and unforgettable in defense.

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.1.4: “Get me rewrite!” How to revise the script of your life — writing yourself a happy ending.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

Manifest your own destiny: You say you want a revolution? Yeah, well anyone can piss and moan about how bad everything is. If you want things to change, I’m making a stout effort to show you how to achieve revolutionary change — from the inside out. But your own efforts at self-improvement will bear sweeter fruit sooner if you share what you’re learning with other people who love to live. You’ve never heard anything like this before. Why would you hoard it to yourself?

This is a dumb thing to say, but at the same time, I think it’s the essence of everything, the one thing that most needs to be said:

I love life. I love living. I love being alive as a human being — a genetic homo sapiens within whom has been cultivated a self — and I love, love, love being that self with a deep and abiding adoration. I don’t want to be anyone but me, but I want to be me to the utmost, to the evermost — without shame, without hiding or disguising myself in any way and without one word of apology to anyone, ever.

This is fact, obvious and dumb to say but utterly necessary to understand: We are each of us all alone inside the mind, and the self of atoms, actions and events that others see is the physical expression of the self of the imagination that each one of us sees only of his own self and only alone, within that perfect solitude of the mind.

Just that much is breathtakingly beautiful, if you take the time to think about it: A reflexively recollecting mental process, by iteratively expressing itself — in the observable world, of course, but first and most and almost continuously in purely introspective activity — essentially becomes itself and then, over time, progressively recreates itself — learning, changing, growing — over and over again. The self is its own self-abstracted abstraction, and your relationship with your own unique self is by far the most important relationship in your life.

The self is the song of itself, and each one of us is his own song, his own soul, unique and incomparable and fundamentally inexpressible to others. Without human upbringing, we are bad imitations of animals, at best. But with it, by age five each one of us is his own song, his own soul, his own ego, his own “I am.” Are we but ghosts, lost and horrified in a lurching, chaotic machine? Are we mindless fleshy worms squirming without purpose across the fertile fields of time? Or is each one of us an artifact of his own devising — each one of us unavoidably a work of art — a poem, a sonnet, a song, a symphony? The life that is the true life of a human being is the self, the self-sculpted mental image of itself.

But even beyond that, to live the fully-human life is to express with your mind, your body, your time and your efforts how desperately you want to live the human life. The world you see inside your mind is a map of the world you’re looking for in the physical world, the place where your own unique self will fit perfectly, the world that matches your expectations, the world that makes sense to you. If you maintain your self as a thing of beauty, the world you find outside your mind will be a thing of beauty and wonder and ever-abundant delight. If your mind is functioning, and if you’ve trained yourself to use it properly, then the world is yours to remake as you will. You can perfect what’s working and reinvent what isn’t. Every animal must suffer, every one but you, for you alone among animals have the power to identify and then to correct or eradicate the causes of your miseries.

Does that sound like you? If it does, I like you sight unseen. That’s the world that I see when I’m alone, staring at the horizon or visiting and revisiting my own words on my computer’s display, and that’s the world that I love best to live in, the place I love most to be on my best days.

But let me tell you about another world, a darker place where nothing works, where everything is wrong, where every motive is ugly and yet nothing is so ugly as the guilt-drenched, pain-wrenched faces of the people, each one of whom is either doing something vicious or stoically dreading someone else doing something even worse. In such a place — and don’t think I haven’t lived there, too, on the days when I’ve been bad and on the days when I’ve been worse — in such a place it might make sense to ask, “Who am I to throw stones?” But, pathetic though it may be, what everyone does, when they see a world like that, when they see a human race that despicable, is to relay to humanity — patiently, repeatedly, frequently, at length and in excruciating detail — everything it is getting wrong.

In that world, when I am there, when you are there, virtue means nothing. All that is necessary is to lack — and to deplore with appropriate venom — the other guy’s vices. This might seem to be a comfortable place to live. After all, no shirt is too dirty, no stance too disreputable, provided the next person is dirtier still. Whatever vestigial need you might feel to look up to the things you value in life, it is more than sufficient — satiating, at least, if not satisfying — always to look down.

Each one of us felt enormous once, back before we learned how to lie to the self, as unique in the mind’s eye as each us truly is unique in reality. But any one of us can feel himself free to become as small as he might like, so long as there is someone to be pointed at who is smaller still. We begin the human life as everything, as the utmost and the evermost, and yet most of us spend most of our lives chipping away at the self-sculpted image of the self until there is nothing much left of it — nothing to be saluted or even acknowledged, much less worshipped, exalted, burnished to a golden glow.

In that dark and ugly world, we spend every ounce of energy we have striving to become everything we’re not, anything we’re not — anything we can never, ever be, so long as it’s not anything at all like what we must be, to be human. You have a self, the uniquely human consciousness, as an ontological fact, as the unavoidable consequence of a past series of choices, with the first and most significant of those choices having originated with your parents. But to be a self, to be your own self, this is a matter of choice — teleology — your own continuous, on-going, internally-originated choices. But even then, you can only avoid being that gorgeous and irreplaceable self you have created for yourself by progressively soiling and scourging and dismantling the self-sculpted image of the uniquely-human life you worked so hard to make — from the instant of your conception to that strange awakening of the self-conscious mind at the age of four or five. To be human is to be a self, yet and it is the self that each one of us — myself included — often seem to want most desperately not to be.

This is an error. This is the source of all human errors, the wellspring of every crime, every atrocity — and of every sneaky, smarmy little lie. Every purposive human action is taken first by the self upon the self. To strive — in vain — to soil and scourge and dismantle reality, you must first soil and scourge and dismantle your own self-abstracted self. The world is what it is, but your soul is what you make it — gorgeous or hideous, omnipotent or impotent, a thing of glorious, radiant beauty or the object of your own unforgiving, unrelenting spite. You cannot ever destroy reality. But you can destroy your self, if you work at it long enough, and in destroying your self you will succeed in destroying everything you love and admire and look up to, everything you wanted to be when you were four or five years old.

You are a self unavoidably, through no choice of your own. By the time you were capable of making conscious choices, the job of becoming a self was already fully done. But the self you are is entirely your choice, and no one else can even see, much less cause or prevent your choosing. You can choose to live in that dark and ugly world of fear and doubt and misery. Or you can choose to live in the world as you saw it on the day you first woke up as a self-sculpted soul, the world of beauty and wonder and ever-abundant delight. But you will choose. Being is ontology, and it is unavoidable. Choosing is teleology — but it is inescapable. You can choose the light or the darkness, or you can run from one to the other, wasting your life in a lather of dithering. But you cannot be alive as a human being and yet, somehow, choose not to choose. You cannot choose what you are. Your only choice is who you’ll be.

Is that a curse, a crushing burden no one can carry? Or is it the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing that could ever be? You are the god of your own existence, the alpha, the omega, the without-which-nothing. To be a self is such an amazing thing, such an unprecedented thing, the fountainhead of meaning that gushes riotous meaning upon everything else. The universe is everything there is, and yet it is nothing without you — without your seeing it for what it really is, without you taking it and making of it the world you choose for yourself — the place where your own unique self will fit perfectly, the world that matches your expectations, the world that makes sense to you. This is the power you have within you — if you choose to exercise it.

That’s what I’m doing. I’ve wasted too much of my life avoiding this chore — putting it off out of fear of the consequences, but putting it off, too, out of shear laziness. But I want more than this from my own life, from my own self. I want to live to the fullest extent I can. As a reverberating consequence of my own expressions of my own unique self, I want to hear my ideas echoed back to me in your expressions of your self. I don’t want to see my own reflection. I don’t want to hear my own voice, echoing in the uninterruptible silence of my mind. I want to see my soul’s sister, my soul’s brother reflected back to me, voicing not my own thoughts but thoughts like mine, thoughts about the fully-human life, the life that is worth not just living but loving, rejoicing, the life that reveres nothing above itself and that reveres itself to the utmost, to the evermost — without shame, without any disguise and without even the hint of an apology.

This is what we can be, and this is what we should be. We can make less of our selves, each one of us alone in the perfect solitude of the mind. But we cannot ever be other than what we are. It is foolish and tragic and completely unnecessary not to make the most of the unrepeatable, irreplaceable gift of human consciousness. But if we choose to honor and cherish and exult in that incredible gift instead, there is nothing that is beyond our reach.

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.1.4: “Get me rewrite!” How to revise the script of your life — writing yourself a happy ending.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

Manifest your own destiny: You say you want a revolution? Yeah, well anyone can piss and moan about how bad everything is. If you want things to change, I’m making a stout effort to show you how to achieve revolutionary change — from the inside out. But your own efforts at self-improvement will bear sweeter fruit sooner if you share what you’re learning with other people who love to live. You’ve never heard anything like this before. Why would you hoard it to yourself?

What a delight it is that the citizens of Massachusetts have risen up against the federal leviathan. All across the country, the tea party movement is furiously aboil, angry Americans anxiously awaiting the opportunity to pull some levers in a voting booth.

But if the current populist uprising is nothing more than yet another throw-the-bums-out movement, it will come to nothing. We threw the bums out good and hard in 1994, and yet the federal leviathan has done nothing but grow since then. By now the national government is so huge that it threatens to crush the nation and its people and productive plant beneath its enormous weight.

It is not enough to throw the bums out. To contain the federal government, we have to cut its powers. Nothing else will stop its long-term growth.

The United States was originally conceived of as a confederation of sovereign states. The states joined together for those common purposes that seemed to make sense to them, with each state retaining is sovereignty in all other matters.

That was the theory — the federal government was to be the hand-servant of the states. In practice, the federal government has usurped the power of the states from the very beginning, with the abuses becoming more bold and more comprehensive with each passing decade.

This turns out to have been a mistake — as we are discovering. Where each state is independent of all the others, each one can try different policies. The states can become the laboratories of democracy that the founding fathers envisioned.

But to achieve this, we will have to rein in the federal leviathan. The states and the people need to reassert their ownership of and control over the national government.

How? By constitutional amendment. Probably by constitutional convention, since it seems unlikely that sitting members of Congress will vote to circumscribe their awesome and terrifying powers.

But here, in a very short summary, is what needs to be done, if the head of steam built up by the tea party movement is not to be wasted. The text within the quotation marks is proposed amendatory language, followed by a discussion of the objective to be achieved.

1. “The words ‘general welfare’ appearing in the United States Constitution or its Amendments do not create any powers of the legislative, executive or judicial branches of the government of the United States. Any legislation authorized by the words ‘general welfare’ is repealed.” This gets rid of one of the most pernicious pieces of federal elasticity. The pretext for forcing people to buy health insurance under Obamacare — now dead, one may hope — was to have been the general welfare clause.

2. “Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that clause is repealed.” This does away with the power of the federal government to regulate commerce. The interstate commerce clause is second only to the general welfare clause as a means of enlarging the power of the national government.

3. “Amendement 16 to the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that Amendment is repealed.” Goodbye federal income tax. The federal government will have to return to taxation by capitation — the head tax.

4. “Amendement 17 to the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that Amendment is repealed.” This language puts the Senate back under the control of the states. This was a vital check on federal power. Its absence is what has permitted the most abusive usurpations of power by the federal leviathan.

5. “No governmental entity in the United States nor any office-holder or employee of any governmental entity in the United States is immune from criminal prosecution or civil litigation.” This eliminates the legal doctrine called sovereign immunity. The argument is that the people ought not be able to sue themselves. But when government officials commit crimes against citizens, they should be held fully accountable to the law. Americans fought and died so that no sovereign could tread on the rights of the people.

Taken as a whole, this language will eliminate much of the federal government. The power to defend the nation will be retained, but most of the alphabet soup agencies will be gone, as will be most of the taxes and regulations strangling our economy. The states will have to fill some gaps, but I think we will all be quietly amazed at how little value the national government brings to civic life — and how relieved we all will be to be out from under its enormous weight.