Posted by
ICONIC FREEDOM on Sunday, July 12, 2009 12:37:58 PM
In America, we uphold freedom of the individual to decide his life. Our charter in this Republic protects the mob from the individual to seek his pursuit of happiness without threat of those who have dissimilar viewpoints, choices, and sources of morality & values.
Value is in the eye of the beholder, so is morality.
Morals are subjective. If you set a criterion for self & insist others be in abeyance to your criteria, then you seek to control others – you limit choice.
People don’t like the idea of individuals deciding their own morals because they lose the “moral high ground” argument by which to tell others how to live, what choices to make, what values to hold and sit in judgment on where someone else has “gone wrong”. You want to be “right”.
If you want to be “right” you’ve already abandon freedom for your personal agenda of imposing how you think everyone else should live. For what purpose do you need to be right?
If morals are only from within then affirmations outside you are not found and leave you floundering for approval. From whom are you seeking this approval? For what purpose would you be seeking approval outside yourself? Reward? Recognition? Favor? Righteousness?
Seeking of the any of the above for your choices negates your altruistic action; you do it for other reasons not as a natural choice you would otherwise bestow upon your fellow man.
If you’re helping the poor, for example, to seek favor from your personal deity, then you do so off the backs of others – where’s integrity in that? Using other people to get ahead? Ouch!
The poor need guidance toward self-reliance not a temporary-feel-good-in-the-moment handout which lands them right back where they were. There are solutions for that problem with the grace & generosity of others, certainly.
All interest is self- interest. Even if your choice is to feel good about what you’re doing – that’s self-interest in feeling good. There is no interest that is not self-interest.
Further, is it in your mind that everyone has to agree with your morals & values? How does that uphold the freedom of individuals to decide their own life which may not look like your own? Where is the free market value system in that kind of dictatorship?
The solution? Get morality out of your life – it archaic, antediluvian and useless. Instead, develop personal responsibility where you own your choices (Accountability), you have the ability to respond to your choices (Responsibility) and make your choices at no cost to others without their consent (Contract).
It also deflates political argument of what is or is not "moral" with regard to running government and society - it leaves it clean with the directive: "where is the upholding of individual freedom?"
We don't care about your morals & judgment of others, we care about how each will make his way in this life in total freedom of choice, not dictatorship.