Or, stay on the shore,
knowing for sure
where you will be,
and you will go nowhere

Times are strange

I used to care

But things have changed

Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you – except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize

Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you’ve found yourself feeling cruel towards other people? So what? It’s just growing pains. One can’t jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil. All growth demands destruction. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean – anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul – only then will you know true happiness.

A quest for self respect is the proof of its lack

Worry is a waste of emotional reserves. Very foolish. Unworthy of an enlightened person. Since we are merely creatures of our chemical metabolism and of economic factors of our background, there’s not a damn thing we can do about anything whatever. So why worry? There are, of course, apparent exceptions. Merely apparent. When circumstances delude us into thinking that free action is indicated.

I’d give my life to save you. Not because it’s any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t live for you.

Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who had ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.

That man. The unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received- hatred. The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man’s spirit, however, is his self. That entity that is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power- that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. He lived for himself.

And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things, which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man had no claws, no fangs, no horns no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant he needs a process of thought. To hunt he needs weapons and to make weapons- a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man-the function of his reasoning mind.

But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act – the process of reason – must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

We inherit the products of thought from other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an aeroplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty, which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be taken or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is for exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is the only means of survival.

Nothing is given to man on earth. Every thing he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative; he can survive in only one of two ways- by the independence of his own mind or as parasites fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows.

The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any kind of compulsion. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.

The basic need of the secondhander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first.

Altruism is a doctrine, which demands that man live for others and place others above self.

No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the secondhander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind’s basic principles. Men have been taught every percept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.

The man who tries to live for others is a dependant. He is a parasite in motive and makes a parasite of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality – the man who lives to serve others – is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, then how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit ? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism.

Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution- or there will be nothing to distribute. We praise an act of charity. We shrug an act of achievement.

Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it , one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. The man must wish to see others suffer – in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness is the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge, or act.

The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the secondhander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life and death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of a secondhander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival.

The egotist is the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not exist for any other man – and he asks of no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and respect possible between men.

The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Mans first duty is to himself. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of creative faculty, his thinking, and his work. But it does not include the sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator.

Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit.

But men are taught to regard secondhanders – tyrants, emperors, dictators – as exponents of egotism. By this fraud they were made to destroy the ego, themselves and others. The purpose of fraud was to destroy the creators. Or to harness them.

From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the secondhander.

The creator- denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited-went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along his energy. The secondhander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name- the individual against the collective.

Every major horror of history was in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men’s hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruistic to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivistic movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results.

The only good which men can do to another and the only statement of their proper relationship is – Hands off!