Morality101.net

This Morality webpage should have been the very first, but it was long delayed by secondary considerations which I have allowed to distract me.  Even today, expect that I shall continue to enhance and fine-tune this page.

To myself, morality is very simple, but the objective of helping others to grasp, contemplate, accept and adopt as the principles by which one may have and build a life with happiness and prosperity — that requires example and elaboration.

“Morality” and “Philosophy” seem hugely daunting and intimidating words, but true morality is neither intricate nor complex, despite that the subject has inspired the penning of countless books, billions of words, has consumed the entire lifetimes of some and the never-ending diatribe of many, seeming to demand far more time and effort than most humans care to endure.

From our USA Declaration of Independence, which states … “All men [have] certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These few words contain the essence of true Morality. Your rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are absolutes — they are not negotiable.  For You to compromise even any small part of those rights is immoral unto yourself, and unto your world.

Contrary to common belief, the above words are NOT contained within our Constitution. The Constitutional Amendments serve to partially correct that amazing oversight, but the sum of those Amendments fails to encompass the full meaning, and some contradict the meaning of that original phrase within the Declaration of Independence. Anyway, while the essence of morality is contained within that simple phrase, it seems that far too many do not bother to consider those words and thus cannot relate those to lives of true freedom.

Your RIGHT TO LIFE is an entirely personal and individual right, which cannot exist except that each person OWNS their life and all, which is necessary and thus proper, to sustain and enhance Life.  “Life” necessarily encompasses the entire spectrum of the components of Humanity.

Far beyond the basics of merely continuing to breathe, of having a beating heart, Human Life means not only the instincts necessary for survival, which are merely characteristics of all animals. Only Human life necessarily includes the the Mind and the ability to apply the human capability to Reason based upon all that is observable by one’s Senses, and to use one’s Reason to abstract and conceive of things beyond — innovation, improvement, expansion, and creation.

The only valid Morality is necessarily based upon our knowledge of that which Exists — those things which are known and knowable — which therefore can be perceived by our senses of vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Our senses proved our means of perceiving that which exists, and our mind can consider, expand upon and organize those perceptions, and by use of Reason can draw conclusions which necessarily conform to the knowable Existence, and/or provable by logical and scientific process.  Animals cannot Reason.  Reasoning is the unique, special and most precious characteristic of Humanity.

• Your life belongs only to YOU, which means… it does NOT belong to anyone else.
• Who has the right to your life? Only YOU!
• Who has the right to control or manipulate your Life? Only YOU!
• Who determines the level of quality of your Life? Only YOU!
• Who then is Responsible for your Life?  Hmmm, would that be YOU?
• Further, you are also responsible for the family which you have chosen, but no others.
• And in return your family is equally responsible for you.You may Choose to assume responsibility for others whom you value, but…
• The extent and longevity of responsibility for those others is strictly your Personal Choice.

Right to Life: Of course you have the right to life and therefore that life belongs to You.  If anyone else were to take your life, You would not exist, having neither Life nor any need or even desire for Life.  It sounds so elementary, doesn’t it?  Therefore, each of us must have our personal right to life.  To sustain and enhance that life is our primary duty to ourselves, for without life we are nothing.  Did I say something wrong here?  I think not,

which brings us to Your…
Right to Liberty: Most of us seldom think deeply about Liberty or Freedom – it’s just a word, something we’re supposed to have, and if “They” tell us we have Liberty, we tend to take “Them” at their word.  We truly do need to think about Liberty, each and every time we make choices affecting our Lives,  We need th consider whether we are truly Free to make those choices, or whether “They” have already made or limited those choices without your consent.

How is your Life sustained and enhanced?  With Your…
Property: — which is everything you own, hopefully because you earned it!  Property  includes your money, your income, your home, your earned assets, , your investments, even your wristwatch, your food and clothing.  But most importantly, Life includes Your Mind,  all Your Mind creates and does to enable your continuing survival and gain happiness and comfort for yourselves and your personal Circle.  Would you allow others to steal your property?  Of course not, for earning and accumulating and using your property is necessary to sustain and enhance your Life!  If you cannot and do not sustain your life, and if you fail to insist up your Right to do so, you die.  Being dead, you are unable to help your family, your friends, or your freely chosen charitable choices.  Once dead, how do you accumulate property to sustain and enhance the life of yourself and your loved ones?

Might you use your…
Mind? Would you use your mind to weigh the pros and cons of your every move, to make the best decisions toward your better Life?  Or would you cede your Mind for such  decisions over to someone else?  Who knows better than you what will be the best choices for your personal Life?  Would you turn your choices over to your neighbor, or to the criminal on another street, or to your mayor and council, or your governor, or your congressman, or your president?  Who can know better than you what is best for your personal life?  Who knows best of your circumstances, your desires, and your abilities?  Whose mind is really superior to Yours?

Which leads right into the necessity of having…
Personal Choice: Our choices are ours alone to make.  We can make good choices and reap the rewards, or we can make poor choices for which we will pay the price of decreased prosperity and happiness, or even cause loss of  Your Life.  If You turn your personal choices over to someone else, will that someone somehow care less about their own life, or will they be too busy making their own personal choices?  Can you really trust them to somehow make better choices for You than you can make for yourself?  This is not a rhetorical question!  If You will cede your Mind to another, then are you Human, or are you merely an animal, an entity without the unique  human ability to Reason?

Pursuit of Happiness. So long as you are alive and able, your property is yours with which to pursue the happiness you have earned, for yourself, your family and your chosen friends.  Happiness is not given, it is earned by your effort and your virtue.  It is to be treasured, and is not to be diminished by being stolen from you by neighbors, or governments or other criminals.  Happiness may be enhanced by sharing with those you treasure.  Even your charity via gift or effort may increase your happiness.

In furthering your Morality, realize that You are entirely responsible for your own Life.  You are also equally responsible allowing all others the same equal Right to Life.

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Ever wondered why there aren’t more “criminals” in this whole mortgage mess? Why there aren’t more mortgage broker perp walks? After all, they were predatory lenders, right? And where are the World-wide manhunts for the Wall Street iBankers escaping extradition? What they did to Iceland was against the law… right? Right?

For those who want the truth, rather than the evasion and excuses.
This is a MUST READ!

read more | digg story

Yes indeed, this is getting a bit off my beaten path, but is surely related in a different way.  This issue has churned around in the back of my little head for some years now, and now I guess it’s time.

The trigger was reading that the USA has 5% of it’s population in prison, and that is the highest percentage of any country in this whole WORLD!  (so this is a “free country”, huh?)

Five percent of 330-some million people, geez, that 16,5 million prisoners in our “free country”!  All those prisoners cost the remainder of we “free” citizens $30,000 each per year.  My calculator doesn’t have enough digits to compute the total, but it’s humungous!

My purpose here was not to look at the reasons for so many being in jail, that would be for another post another day, and will take some further research, as have all my writings here.  But “crimes without victims” certainly do count up.  Now I’m not into drugs, but both drug-dealers and drug users are many amongst those filling our jails to overflowing. I don’t see the users as “criminals”, and they should not be in jail.  However, I also disagree with the bleeding hearts that we have some responsibility for the rehab of drug-users.  Drug users are responsible unto themselves for the consequences of their own choices.  If those are minors, their parents are responsible; the taxpayers are not.

But back to my purpose.  Obviously the total number of real criminals is much smaller, and eliminating those convicted of crimes without victims would help alleviate the burden.  Surely there are others who don’t belong in prison, but that still leave a huge prison population.  Why do the bleeding hearts prevail, protecting the criminals who have been so violent or stealing from the good citizens?  So how to we refuse to support the baddies and zero the bill?

Whatever I should choose to say from here on is largely brainstorming.  I’d doing this because we need solutions based on freedom, and we need to have ideas on the table from which to build solutions.  So we need some fresh perspective, because what we’re doing does not work, it does not reform, and does not rehabilitate, so those are bad ideas we need to abandon.

Question 1:  Does the criminal owe a penalty to “the State”, or rather, to his victims?  Can we turn the criminal over to his victims, and let them determine the penalty, and to own the criminal’s life until the debt be repaid?  Of course we can, and I believe we should.

Question 2:  Should the criminal, once convicted, be held responsible for the value of damages he caused, or the life he took, or the cost of his trial?  Of course he should.

Question 3:  Are we (the ‘public’) responsible in any way for the care and feeding of criminals or for the welfare of criminals?  Do you have the guts and honesty to answer NO?

So do we build them prisons, and furnish utilities and guards and food and libraries and food?  Of course we don’t.  All we need do is prevent those criminals, who possess traits dangerous to others, from disappearing back into private society to repeat their dastardly deeds.

As we get from history, Australia was populated by England shipping it’s criminals there, dropping them off the boat, and leaving them to fend for themselves.  Have you noticed that Australia has evolved into a fine upstanding country and neighbor despite the genetic origins of it’s citizenry?  To a lesser extent, early American immigrant settlers included many of the same, from England as well as escapees from Germany, Ireland, Spain, France and other countries.  Nobody shouldered the burden for these emigrants.  It became necessary for them to find some niche in their new society where they might survive, and learn the necessary social skills and honor by which they could be acceptable to their new neighbors, and go forth and multiply, and prosper under newfound freedoms.  Of course many would have failed in many different ways; probably they did not survive, usually because they were unable to adapt to a moral social structure.  Those are not amongst the heroes of history, neither memorable nor remembered for anything of value.

Such islands today are not available, we can only designate a space where the criminals may park and strive to survive and to heal.  They must pay for the space they occupy, and paying for any of the services provided from outside their environment.  Both the Federal and State governments have huge holdings of such land; there is no shortages of land which might render this unfeasible.  If they wish to escape the sun or the snow or the wind, they can and must build their hut or cave as they see fit, and cooperate with others of their kind to create a social order in which they might survive progress.  They can do all these things only by producing within the free market, trading for goods and services, and learning how to survive and prosper by being responsible for themselves and cooperating with their fellowmen.  Their refusal or failure to learn these necessary moral postures might result in their death, but that would be of their own choosing, and is a social responsibility of anyone not directly involved.

At some point I may come back to this page to fine-tune and/or elaborate, but for now I want to publish this and get some action or reaction, either way.  We are all feeling our way on this issue.  Thank you.