Be well and do good

---- or -----

Be good and do well?

In the first case, you look after yourself & live in a way that makes
your life most long and healthy and rich, and also do good for your
fellow man. In the second case, you put your energy toward becoming a
good person (whatever standard of personal goodness is), and do well
monetarily.

This is the difference between liberalism and conservatism: The way of
arranging existents. On the left, we have the ideology of longevity and
health and personal happiness ("be well") combined with the ideology of
philanthropy and good deeds and serving the long-term benefit of
humanity ("do good"). On the right, we have the religious belief
structure ("be good") combined with the corporate one ("do well").

By that standard of course I am a liberal. Doing good has been the
center of my belief system since I was a little kid; and being well
became important to me after I decided that I would not suicide & would
live a long and productive life. Whereas doing well has never been
important to me - having lived in mansions, on the street and
everywhere in between I say quite clearly that I would be satisfied
with a modest existence. The best form of doing well I've experienced
has been a product of doing genuine good; and it is my belief that it
is by doing genuine good that I will do well in a true sense and in a
sense that matters to me. As for the "be good" stuff, I see that as in
all cases leading to tyranny. Quite simply, it is not anyone's business
whether or not the next person is "good," and neither is it a
prerogative of anyone to prove that they are "good" by anyone else's
standard. Collectivization of ethics leads to tyranny. When government,
or community, or anything else, is based upon people convincing others
of their moral superiority, nobody can stand up to it without being
regarded as evil or insane; and what takes place is in fact
totalitarianism of the collective - totalitarianism, in fact, of those
who claim to speak for the collective. Which is a betrayal of liberty
and betrayal of the United States, and something that anyone with any
respect for America's founding principles not only has a right to, but
has a duty, to stand up to - both for the existing and the
yet-to-exist.

The cultures that make "being good" a priority, as I've said before,
unleash a de facto tyranny, in which people's will and self-definition
is usurped and given to those who claim to speak for public morality.
The person lacks a place to stand and gets swept up. Everyone is made
to disfigure themselves and turn into tattle-talers, snitches and
bullies. Liberty bites the dust and a hysteria is unleashed - a
hysteria that takes away from people a place on which to stand and
results in hideous abuses of human rights and civil rights, which are
only the natural consequences of betraying the natural right and the
self-determination and replacing it with collectivization of morals;
collectivization that leads to dictatorship of the proletariat.

These, and more, are reasons that I am a liberal. Anyone else?

Ilya Shambat.

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ilya_shambat2..@yahoo.com wrote:
> Be well and do good
>
> ---- or -----
>
> Be good and do well?

Something else.

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