Go Get Your Own Cause

Even I don’t want to improve the world for the noblest and most righteous of motives; I have very selfish interests in mind. In the end, even my very real desire to make it better for every person, it is at heart a self-serving one. Though my stated goal is to improve the world for all, when I make those changes for everyone else, I am also improving it for myself; and that is not incidental nor a side effect, it is the desired effect whether I admit it or not. Since I would only wish to change those things that I consider needing changing, and I am limited to my own set of standards, there is a very simple, self-based being and intellect choosing the goals I strive for. Even if the things that I better are somehow in the general populations’ best interests, I only undertake to change them out of the desire to alleviate some concern of my own. Not everyone will agree with them, and many may want very different improvements or concerns to be dealt with, but that’s their own predicament, isn’t it?

Ice Cream and Evil

I posted earlier on the subject of choice, concentrating on the issue that some people have with allowing others to make choices. I want to discuss now another aspect of choosing, which is how to make a choice; especially gaining information in order to choose. For example, in order to decide what kind of ice cream you enjoy or wish to have, what do you base your choice on? There are many factors to consider, but if you come across a new flavor, and you haven’t experienced those ingredients before, how can you know if you’ll like it? I hope that many of you have just answered, "Try it!" Not only is it an appetizing method of choosing and gaining more information for making that decision, it is an experience: something more you have gone through to give yourself another in a (hopefully) long series of instructive moments in life. Each attempt, even the failed or unpalatable, is at least more information to make further decisions from. We often need all the help and detailed information that we can acquire, so making those mistakes and learning from them leads towards what we do desire: success. Whether we want to find the most delicious dessert or a job to spend one’s life doing, this method works equally well. So, if mistakes are beneficial and necessary, why do people spend so much time avoiding them? It is because we are trained to do so, we are constantly told as we mature, to “Get it right!” and “Not screw up!” In addition to being kept from opportunities and experiencing things, we are kept from learning those important lessons, as well as the benefit of learning about ourselves and our world. After all, the only way to know evil is to encounter it, the only way to know right is to do it. If children are kept sheltered from danger and not told about real threats to them, how are they ever to understand what to avoid? How can they truly know? The fairy tales they hear disguise the dangers they will face and only teach them to listen to and obey their elders. What happens when they grow up and the elders are not around is they are lost and still need someone else to direct them. It is important for our children to learn these lessons for themselves so they can be better prepared to avoid future problems and know what they actually want.