A Right To Sustenance - Its time for real change

Heres an article I wrote last week in support of a book I'm writing. The right to sustenance is only part of the shift of social structures that we'll need after our leaders run capitalism into the ground. So let me know what you think ATS. Don't be afraid to pick it apart and tell me why I'm an idiot. It'll only make the article and the philosophy of Free Labor better. Thanks.



A Right to Sustenance


A right to sustenance is the idea that all citizens should be guaranteed adequate food, water and shelter. It’s the idea that everyone in society deserves equal access to life necessities regardless of employability. Life, the act of living, shouldn’t be contigent upon the skills I have to offer an economic system that’s morally bankrupt in the first place. A right to sustenance is what separates us from our tribal, foraging ancestors. They had one, we don’t. If we follow the rules of society and contribute to the well being of that society through our jobs, then shouldn’t be guaranteed basic life necessities that even our nomadic, hunter-gatherer ancestors could provide? What good is a right to free speech if our bellies are growling louder?

Our leaders become powerful through the withholding of the right to sustenance. This is what marks the difference between our “civilization” and “tribal” society. Withholding food makes us work to get it. Would we have built gigantic stone pyramids in the hot, baking heat of the Egyptian desert if not for someone withholding food and rewarding our labor with it?
Except nowadays we have a level of abstraction, one extra step, which shrouds the sinister purpose of work-to-eat society. Its called money. Instead of working directly for food; we work for money with which we buy food. This simple intermediary step makes us easier to control since society ceases to function upon the trading of tangible goods and services but upon mathematical tricks like “interest” and “sub-prime financial derivatives”. These are things we don’t understand and aren’t supposed to. Money also covers the tracks of our global subjugation and slavery by trading us a symbol for our labor power. By giving us money to work, our leaders basically trade us nothing for something.

Money’s value is simply our collective faith in its ability to be traded for goods and services. Money is a symbol. We cannot eat money and it cannot keep us safe or warm. It only functions within the particular set of rules that we have created for it. Without these rules, without this artificial environment called an economy, there is no purpose for money in the basic day to day life of human beings.
The only way for money to be relevant to us is if it attaches itself to something truly meaningful: food and shelter. This is why we trade money for basic life necessities; to make money relevant to society. By leeching relevance from food and shelter money has become the most powerful symbol of our time. Money is a vampire that sucks the value from sustenance while it erases the right to sustenance from our collective memory. This is why the right to sustenance, something so easy to provide, seems so fanciful.
Money moves people to do things they don’t want to. The fancy name that economics professors give this phenomenon is “work”. This makes money the perfect vehicle for the exploitation of the have-nots, you and me. In exchange for 40 hours a week of our time, 1/3 of our life that we’ll never get back, we get colored paper. The rich trade us nothing for something. It seems like a great deal if you’re the ones printing the paper.
A right to sustenance is so treasonous and scary to our leaders because we are the ones getting something for nothing. For simply following the law and contributing to society through work, we should be rewarded with a basic standard of security and comfort, a right to sustenance. The trouble is, as work-to-eat culture forces itself upon nearly every society on the planet, the right to sustenance is disappearing.

Work-To-Eat : Mono-Culture

Let’s imagine a tribal society that gets invaded by our society, say North American Indians in the 1800’s. Here we find dozens of groups of people who discovered various methods of organizing themselves and staying alive and in harmony with the environment. Some tribes were strictly nomadic and followed herds of animals. Some tribes lived more settled and domesticated plants and animals. They all had different methods of survival, how to eat and shelter themselves.
But suddenly comes a different culture that forces itself upon the tribes. It is their duty as Christians to convert the heathens to civilized citizens. In this invader society the only way to get food and shelter is to get a job and trade money for what was once freely available. European culture erased the right to sustenance as they violently coerced tribal peoples into their lifestyle. Most cultures die under the stress of this change. Some adapt. But all across the world this work-to-eat culture has spread itself.
You already know what you would have to do to survive if you went to Tokyo or Holland or Mexico City. You’d have to get a job, get a place to stay and buy your food at the store. The world is suffering under the boredom and stress of this mono-culture. There is no variety and no choice in the matter. If you’re not good enough to make money doing it, you may never do what you love for a living. This stifles human creativity since all our energy is put into jobs and only so called “experts” get to be scientists and artists and athletes.
Work-to-eat culture is incapable of fulfilling our needs since the needs of the economy always come first. The economy is kind of like having a kid. Sure its nice to have and fun to watch it grow but its just so damn needy and in the back of our heads there’s always the whisper that we could be doing something more with our lives.

Spending is Voting

Unfortunately, the same situation that played itself out with the North American Indians is played out year after year as the diversity of human culture gets swallowed by the pecking orders and economic number games of work-to-eat culture. With the death of these cultures comes the inevitable death of the right to sustenance. For if we forget how to provide a right to sustenance we forget what makes us truly human in the first place, our empathy.
We empathize with other people’s struggles but have no idea how to help. Stop the destruction of human societies by buying less. The less we buy the less money gigantic corporations have to invade people’s homeland and force our way of life upon them. These cultures teach us who we are and who we can be. They remind us that there’s more than one way to build a successful culture, a successful way of organizing ourselves for our collective benefit.
Where you spend your money is how you really vote in our society. If you support McDonald’s with your money then you are solidifying McDonald’s relevance to society thus making them stronger and more important. If you buy gas then you are further entrenching fossil fuels into the fabric of our lives. Spending is voting. Where we spend our money is perhaps the only non-violent means of change that our leaders will listen to. So please, spend with care.

We must learn to live without the gigantic corporations that have weaseled their way into our lives. This begins by beating them at their own game. Use money, their best weapon, against them. Ignore them financially. They will wither and die like worms on the summer sidewalk and finally, true change will come.

Who Else Has A Right To Sustenance?

Let us demonstrate why every human being on the planet needs a right to sustenance by showing how we already provide a right to sustenance for millions of people. We’ve already discussed how life is not a guaranteed right in our current society. Life is a privilege admitted only to those that work. Meaning if you or I were jobless we would be homeless and hungry pretty quickly. We need a right to sustenance because we do not take care of each other. We allow each other to live on the street and die of hunger and cold. We must provide a right to sustenance because this is not who we are. We no longer want to be a species that lets each other starve and die. We must provide a right to sustenance because people should not go hungry simply because they don’t have something silly like symbolic, colored paper.
Now realize that there are millions upon millions of people who already have a right to sustenance. They are fully provided for. Food, water, shelter and clothing are no longer a concern for these people and yet, they only “earned” this right to sustenance by violating the rules of society. The only human beings who are fully provided for by society, some for the rest of their lives, are prisoners.
Yes, we have decided that those that break the rules, murderers, rapists and other violent, anti-social people, are fully deserving of life’s necessities even though they don’t work. Meanwhile, you and I, the law abiding and contributing members of society, have to fight it out like dogs for the best jobs in order to provide the best life for our families. Why reward the criminals with free food, water and shelter while the good citizens have to struggle and compete against each other?
A right to sustenance is a God-given right (or Goddess-given or Nature-given or Whatever-given). It is our leaders who have taken this right away from us when they made us work for food. Our leaders have stepped between us and our harmonious relationship with nature. We are now overpopulated, stretching the limits of our energy reserves and pollution pumping economy. The right to sustenance ensures that we stay in balance with Nature. We would decrease our polluting ways by slowing down the economic engine that is driven on waste, excess and living beyond our means. We’ve reached the limits of what this society and this economy can provide for the people of the world. It is time to take matters into our own hands, build an energy and economic infrastructure that benefits the people, you and I, instead of a small group of super rich international businessmen.

Free Labor – A Thought Experiment

The new economic system will be one that ensures balance. In the same way that planets and stars all move in a perfect harmony, the way that atomic forces even out the energies contained in a molecule, the same way every natural system finds a healthy, vibrant balance if left alone, is the way our economy must function.
Our basic human needs of food, water and shelter must be equally distributed. With the rise of global economies and, in turn, global consciousness, there must a world standard of living. The problem before us is how to balance the needs of human beings with the needs of the planet. The economy, whose needs have always come first in this society, will be taken out of the oven and set aside to cool. It’s no longer the main course because we can’t feed ourselves with it anymore. We’ve outgrown the need for a selfish, competitive economy. We’ve reached its limits. After it finally collapses from exhaustion, broken and bruised, the economy must rise up anew, with new tenets and a new, modern view of humankind.

This new society based on economic freedom, meaning freedom from the economy, is called Free Labor. The goal of the economy is not to make the most money, or sell the most items. The goal is not to win the game, so to speak, because life is not a game. Life is a song and you play it. There are no winners or losers, only different songs for different times. The goal of Free Labor is to help everyone play their song the best they can. We all have the capability of creating artistic works of unbelievable beauty. Free Labor wants to allow us to fulfill ourselves, to be the best human beings we can be.

Free Labor will provide this lifestyle by providing us all a choice. It is the choice to work or to not work. The problem is: with work-to-eat culture we are forced to labor and not always at the job that we want. Personally, I want to write ideas like this professionally but I have to be a cook to pay the bills. Sound familiar? As human beings we are unfulfilled by this economy.
By allowing all law abiding, contributing participants in society equal access to food, water and shelter, workers of the world will finally have a choice. We can work our jobs but why work the ones we don’t like if we can get free food, water and housing? By providing a right to sustenance we can flip flop the entire power structure of society. Employers would have to convince us to work for them, not the other way around. They would be the ones competing for our labor. They would have to provide the incentive to work instead of wrenching our work from us through manipulated starvation.

Those that wanted to work still could. If you want that fancy car or big screen TV then by all means work to get it. But if we want to spend more time with our families, exercise, heal the environment, be creative and enjoy more free time then we could do all these things because our creative contribution, whether it’s healing the environment or hand crafting clocks, would earn us free food and shelter. Free food and shelter is our paycheck for abiding by the law and contributing the best way we can to the improvement of each other’s lives.
The only reason economies exist to provide a framework within which we can improve each other’s lives while improving our own. Free Labor does this better than our current system because Free Labor gets the best out of people.
Because human beings will be working for their own fulfillment we will work better than when our labor is forced out of us. This means inventions and artistic works of unfathomable novelty will be created. Scientific achievements will skyrocket since we can finally break free from the rigid academic hierarchies and scientific dogma that stifle the beauty and creativity of science. Our social systems will become distributive meaning we will all share power, decision making and execution of the ideas. We will have unheard of amounts of energy and free time in which to do that which we do best and thus, contribute to society the best we can.

By providing access to basic life necessities, Free Labor will eradicate all the unnecessary jobs, including jobs that are dangerous or dangerously unfulfilling. We simply wouldn’t work the jobs that didn’t need to be done. Free Labor would streamline society. We’d use our collective labor power, the greatest source of renewable energy on the planet, only where we needed to. The rest of our energies could be devoted to improving society, ourselves, the planet and the lives of our great grandchildren.

The Shift

I know that a complete transition from work-to-eat culture to Free Labor may freak some people out. It sounds a bit fantastic; all play and no work. But perhaps, as we ween ourselves off our work addiction, we could rotate shifts at all the jobs. A system could be devised in which we work two 3 month shifts as a busdriver or city planner or farmer. This way the work is shared and society doesn’t crumble because no one wants to be a janitor.
Although I firmly believe that there are very many people who do all types of jobs simply for the joy of doing them. The opponents of Free Labor want us to believe that people will be lazy and get nothing done if they are given the choice but I believe the opposite. Because the goal of Free Labor is fulfillment of a meaningful life and because many of us get that fulfillment from our jobs, we will continue working just like before.
Where the jobless will go is not into a life of pointless hedonism but into areas of art and science which were closed to them before. Grassroots science and artistic projects will explode onto the forefront of human culture. We will become a creative society.

Why Free Labor Is Possible

Free Labor is very real and very possible. After the inevitable collapse of the current structures we will be free to build upon our mistakes and learn how to better run society for empathic human beings.
First, we would grow food as well as we possibly can. We actually do not do this right now. Farmers must burn crops and governments must pay farmers NOT TO GROW because if we grew food as best we could it would be so cheap it’d topple the economy. This is another example of us satisfying the needs of the economy before we satisfy our own human needs.
Second, free energy will be harnessed. Wind, solar, geothermal and tidal energies can be distributed to each household creating an autonomous, self sustaining unit. Aren’t capitalists always talking about how people need to be free, independent and not rely on the state? Well here’s the capitalist’s opportunity to make a whole bunch of money selling these systems to the individual while transitioning our energy infrastructure to something more adherent to their ideas of “rugged individualism” and self-reliance.
Third, Free Labor is not expounding the ideas of socialist or communist or capitalist theories. It does not want to interfere with the inner mechanism of capitalism. We do not want to delve into your rabbit hole theories of financial derivatives and put options. We simply want to provide the people of the world a basic standard of living in order for them to become the human beings that they want to be.
I’m not advocating any of the old economic systems because they do nothing for the psychological fulfillment of human beings. In every existing system we have people in power telling us to work for food. It does not matter the banner under which work-to-eat culture flies, whether it be socialist or capitalist or fascist. All are equally unfulfilling. They rely on forced labor and hierarchy which is facilitated and maintained by money manipulation. Free Labor does not want to sit at the top of the power pyramid. We want to topple the power pyramid
Fourth, human beings are not evil, scheming and conniving. We are not playing out deep seeded negative psychological episodes like Freud or the Enlightenment thinkers believed. We are trying to belong. We want to belong first and we want to fulfill our own individual desires second. When these two needs, to belong and to fulfill ourselves, are stifled we become who the Enlightenment thinkers thought we are: selfish, greedy, scheming and shallow. Now that we know more, its time we build an economic and social system that better fulfills the needs of human beings.
Fifth, we are becoming a global consciousness. Everyone on the planet is our family. Capitalism was built for the national consciousness. As the economic system takes us to a global consciousness, the money system and work-to-eat culture do not provide for us anymore. As we move into a global consciousness we need something new that responds to our changing needs. I believe Free Labor is the system that will allow us to reach the next phase of human development.

A Final Disclaimer

I do not blame the capitalist economy or its inventors. We could have never gotten to this point if not for the amazing things work-to-eat culture and capitalism has provided for us.
To have built capitalism and democracy was impressive. It made sense to them considering how they understood human needs. They were still battling the environment so it made sense to build an economic system in which we battle each other. They were fighting for life and they constructed a social system to reflect that. I don’t want to get into all the great things that capitalism has done because the list could go on for pages. It has taught us a lot about ourselves and without it we could have never reached this axis of change.
But our current economy is simply a product of its time. It was invented in 1776 well before the advent of psychology and sociology taught us about the gigantic icebergs of subconscious need that teem just below our surface. We know more about ourselves, about who we are as human beings, so its time to have a social system that responds to this knowledge. We are doing today’s job with yesterday’s tools.
In order to allow humanity to flourish, the control acquired by the work-to-eat culture must be relinquished. Our leaders, who put so much faith into this system that they appoint themselves the guardians of it, will inevitably fall. Capitalism and work-to-eat culture is not built to last and these two ideas are tearing the economic world by the seams right now. Capitalism believes it can have infinite growth in a finite world. The profits must exceed last quarter or the company, the jobs and therefore our access to life necessities disappear. But you cannot have infinite growth in a finite world. There’s only so much stuff we want to buy.

In the past hundred years we’ve learned a lot about who we are as a species. We are an empathic, caring species who want to belong and work together. We are constantly forming identities with bigger and bigger groups, from tribes to religions to nations to the emerging global identity. Free Labor takes into account the inner psychological needs of the human being as best as we know right now. When we learn more about ourselves we will develop a new system to replace Free Labor. But why must we continue to work against each other instead of with each other? Do we have to let another human being, another child, starve because their family cannot find a job to buy food? Why should we continue to satisfy the needs of the economic system before we satisfy our own human needs? We come first. The economy, the infrastructure, the myths and religions of the world need to serve us, not the other way around.
As we realize our impact on the environment and how our spending choices can negatively affect ourselves and the planet, we find that the first step to changing our corrupt and polluted world is to change our financial habits, together. A right to sustenance will only be granted if our leaders are stressed and the system isn’t working for them. Together, we can be the wrench in the system. We must boycott the evil companies. Buy from small, family owned businesses. We must coerce the rich to give us a right to sustenance in return for buying their products again. Until then, starve the rich. Spend with care. Work together. Love.

I did not read your entire post, I’ve gotta go out like right now, so please forgive me if you answered these questions.

How do you guarantee people food and water? How do you make sure it is healthy food and clean water? If say you had a group of 10 people (all adults 6 females, 4 males) and only water and food for 4, how do you decide who gets it? Who makes that decision?

I have absolutely no right to healthy food and clean water, but I do have extremely easy access to it. I am privileged in this sense. But there is no right to be given or taken away. I think the "taken away" part is a biggie.

I have absolutely no right to healthy food and clean water, and I don’t want one.

I tried to read through real quick, and I am interested in reading the rest of your post soon. Please forgive me for throwing a few questions out there.

Peace

[edit on 11-7-2010 by worlds_away]

Where is it written that humankind must be psychologically fulfilled? And who will produce this food you say we have a right to? Who will provide the clean water? Who will build the shelters? And do you think they will be willing to do it without compensation?
And what happens when the weather doesn't cooperate and you have crop failure? (As one who grew up on a Southern cotton farm, trust me when I say Mother Nature is a bitch!) Who decides who gets to eat and how much?
Who decides and enforces how many calories each person gets daily?

Doc, it has been my sad experience that very few humans do things solely from altruism. I suggest you read "Atlas Shrugged," although I suspect you have. If you have, then read it again. We already have a welfare state. What you propose would lead, in my opinion, to a much bigger one.

Good luck on the book. I will be watching this thread. I sense a major debate coming on.

To the OP:

While I agree largely with your sentiment, I have to point out what I see as one major flaw in the logic, or perhaps it is just bad wording.

It’s the idea that everyone in society deserves equal access to life necessities regardless of employability. Life, the act of living, shouldn’t be contingent upon the skills I have to offer an economic system that’s morally bankrupt in the first place.

No one has a "right" to resources. We have, instead, a responsibility. First to ourselves, to procure and provide for our own basic needs. Second, to all other we have a responsibility to do so in a manner that does not impose our own will on another, nor impoverishes another by our own procurement.

What we need so desperately is a paradigm shift from rights to responsibilities. First we must instill pride and nobility, along with humility and compassion. Pride in oneself, ones family, ones home, ones street, ones community, ones city, etc.

When the people take pride in these things, they will gladly work (as they are able) to support themselves and their neighbors in a mutually beneficial way.
This principle is already become apparent in the idea of time banks.

In this way, we as a race could finally do away with money, and thus governments, for good.

You say "regardless of employability" but I say everyone is employable. Almost everyone can sweep the street in front of their home, though some areas will remain specialized, such as medicine. Weather it be the strong, young, arm that protects or the wise, old, mind that imparts wisdom- all have something to offer; all are employable.

Originally posted by doctornamtab
A right to sustenance is the idea that all citizens should be guaranteed adequate food, water and shelter.

This is one of those things that sound good, but isn't going to be that workable due to the obvious side effects.

If I give you a "right to sustenance", I also want a "right for you not to reproduce until you are providing enough of your own damn sustenance for both you and your offspring".

Otherwise the inevitable will occur, and it's Australian rabbits time.

I will defend your right to get up off of your ass and grow or hunt for your own food, or creating something worthy of trading for food or having a skill you can trade for food.
Only if you can prove to me, through rigorous testing, that you are physically or mentally incapable of doing ANY of those things, would I consider giving you basic sustenance for nothing.

[edit on 11-7-2010 by Kaiju]

OP, i support your idea.


i never asked to come to this stupid planet with all its stupid rules.

since i did not of my own volition cause myself to come into life, i must insist that at a minimum the ability to maintain my life also be granted to me at no cost to myself.

reply to post by blood0fheroes

Good sentiment. Excellent logic. But it is not infallible. There are people who will never take pride in themselves, or their homes, much less their street or community. I wish it were not so, but some are just too lazy to care.
Then there are those for whom every thing must be perfect. Their yard will always be mowed, the house will always have a fresh coat of paint, and if need be, one could eat off the floor.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to instill pride, nobility, compassion and humility. I hope people will see that we have a responsibility to manage our resourses. But as long as we have politicains going out of their way to rob people of these characteristics, not speak of not leading by example, as long as our leaders cannot be good fiscal stewards of the money we are forced to give them, I'm afraid there is not much hope.
But I'll do my part.

reply to post by tgidkp


Lol, I hope your being sarcastic! We didn't ask you to come to this stupid planet with its stupid rules. If there are people out there who are too lazy to provide basic sustenance for themselves and actually *expect* those things to be handed to them, then we should ship them all off onto some island and see how it works out.

Personally, I expect no handouts. I work hard for everything I have, and I am proud of it. In fact, (im sure I will get flamed for this), I believe that we should discontinue the foodstamps program entirely.

Everything and everyone have a right to sustenance. That means learning to cope with the environment, move to places that sustain fertile land or at least use technology where places are dry and desolate. And all this requires learning not to destroy other habitats, too. For there lives others creatures before humans.

[edit on 2010-7-11 by pikypiky]

reply to post by State of Mind


no. i am not being sarcastic.

most ideally, i would be in favor of being granted some small share of the worlds resources (land) as a natural inheritance to do with as i please away from the demands of my fellow beings and governments. i would be totally secure upon this land to work and provide for myself, or to trade it as i see fit.

again, as an unwitting participant in this strange game, i do lay CLAIM to what might be called "my fair share", whatever that might be.

you would like to paint this as me wanting to be lazy and live off the work of others. to the contrary: i would like nothing more than to be left completely alone and to be the sole beneficiary of my own labor.


but as it stands, i am forced to come into this game under "their" set of rules, and with no natural inheritance. as such, i am an automatic loser in this game of winners until i can prove myself otherwise. if we truly believe in a "spiritual value" of ourselves and our fellow beings, it seems strange and unfair to put someone at such a stark disadvantage from the moment they arrive on this planet.


no. i say this: if i have to play your stupid little game, if you are going to strip me of what is rightfully mine and place me into your tiny box, then at a minimum i request that the ability to sustain my life, within these mandated boundaries, be provided to me at no cost.

it is not an unreasonable or unthinkable or even shameful request.

reply to post by State of Mind

You'll get no flaming from me. Like you, I work for everything I get. And guess what? I don't mind. I like being responsible.

Originally posted by tgidkp
reply to post by State of Mind

 

most ideally, i would be in favor of being granted some small share of the worlds resources (land) as a natural inheritance to do with as i please away from the demands of my fellow beings and governments. i would be totally secure upon this land to work and provide for myself, or to trade it as i see fit.

again, as an unwitting participant in this strange game, i do lay CLAIM to what might be called "my fair share", whatever that might be.

you would like to paint this as me wanting to be lazy and live off the work of others. to the contrary: i would like nothing more than to be left completely alone and to be the sole beneficiary of my own labor.


but as it stands, i am forced to come into this game under "their" set of rules, and with no natural inheritance. as such, i am an automatic loser in this game of winners until i can prove myself otherwise. if we truly believe in a "spiritual value" of ourselves and our fellow beings, it seems strange and unfair to put someone at such a stark disadvantage from the moment they arrive on this planet.


no. i say this: if i have to play your stupid little game, if you are going to strip me of what is rightfully mine and place me into your tiny box, then at a minimum i request that the ability to sustain my life, within these mandated boundaries, be provided to me at no cost.

it is not an unreasonable or unthinkable or even shameful request.

And who would "grant" you this land? You say that you don't want to be painted as lazy or living off of the work of others, yet you want to be "granted" land, "at no cost" no less! And whose going to give that to you, free of cost? You can be sure that by you taking "your fair share" you will be taking land from someone who has worked for it. It is shameful to expect something for nothing in return.

You say that you are stripped of what is rightfully yours. What a joke. Owning land is not a right; it is a privilege that must be worked and paid for. No one owes you anything.

reply to post by State of Mind


no one has a birth-right to land, eh? please listen carefully to the words of one of our founding fathers:

"Create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."

- Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice.

it sounds like you, State of Mind, are pretty squarely locked into the current paradigm. so much so that even though we are in agreement that "no one owes me anything", you still take an offensive stance. i hope you do not consider yourself to be someone that can "see outside the box".


so, let me put it to you another way. k?

if i should choose to not be part of this system.....that i no longer wish to be part of ANY system. that i reject the claims of any and all nation-states that would have me as part of their system.

where then shall i go?

oh. huh. you mean to tell me that i HAVE NO CHOICE?! that by simple virtue of my birth i am compelled to submit to the claims of this or that system of control?

no, really. you just tell me where i can go where i can be secure within myself to work and live at my own leisure according to my own conscience. i will not ask for anything from anyone that is not commensurate with fair trade. no one owes me anything.


but, if my life is not to be my own. then the cost of maintenance of my life does not fall upon my shoulders.

www.nostate.com...

reply to post by kettlebellysmith


Very true, my logic rarely is infallible. However, though changing the hearts of the entirety of the human population is desirable, I agree that it is highly improbable.

Fortunately the entirety isnt needed to affect this change, just a slight majority or large minority. This can be accomplished as such: Pride in others begins with pride in oneself. It is contagious. You must be convinced of your own self worth. From here, you must treat all others with the same equal value that you ascribe to yourself. No more, no less.

By doing so we help convince others of their self worth. We all must strive to know that our life has meaning, and value.

Im reminded of an amusing but relevant old adage:
"If each won one, and each one won, won one; what hosts could be won!"

You see, it begins with you and it begins with me.