JUDGMENT - The Missing Moral Principle

Who is the Ragnar Danneskjold* of our time? Who is calling the destroyers of value to account?

We live in a time of a giant sucking sound. The WEST is flushing itself down the toilet.

Why? It cannot pronounce moral judgment. When I say "it," I mean that the culture is in such a weakened state that a strong pronouncement of moral judgment to true matters up would be shouted down as unseemly. Given this state, the strong pronouncement will have to be yelled through a din of naysayers. Someone will hear it anyway. I promise you, I will hear it if it can be heard.

I dedicate this piece to Bosch Fawstin. He's fearless, especially in his fingering the contradictions and inhumanity of the Muslims, and I love him for that. I really liked his entry into the Twin Towers Goes Global contest. Maybe now they can get why people don't want the Ground Zero Mosque.

Along this line, I've been thinking of all the "brands" that are being diminished because the people who speak for and work to enhance those brands will not pronounce moral judgment against Obama who, highly associated with them, is taking them down with him.

Here's some: Democrats, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Illinois, Oprah, Unions, Blacks in general, and the USA. (The only one I care about supporting is the USA. The rest will have to earn my respect one man or institution at a time.)

Wouldn't it be something if a leader from Harvard came forward and said that he now sees, with Obama as its currently most famous product, the enormous cost of Affirmative Action? OR wouldn't if be astounding if a black leader came forward and said that it's time for blacks to stop acting like a "pack" that "goes along to get along" and call Obama to account for all of his violations of human freedom, the most precious of conditions for the people who knew and tell the stories of slavery? Wouldn't it be amazing if a Democrat denounced Obama for enacting policies destroying the economy stating that it is time to call him to account regardless that he is black? Or gosh, wouldn't it be something if someone would stand up for America and apologize to "the best within us" for "forgetting who we are," by letting Obama, our President, besmirch the ideal that quickens the beat of the human heart around the globe?

All of us are going to pay dearly for "going along" with Obama - the Con. Every brand associated with Obama will pay. Oprah has never been held as high as she was before she endorsed Obama. (It's interesting about Oprah. People loved her and were always talking about her when her program was geared to all people. Who is she now that Obama favors blacks over whites in instance after instance and she says nothing? Swiss cheese?)

Harvard and Columbia are being drug through the streets insofar as providing a solid education for real values. They are gaining the reputation of being an intellectual hot house that doesn't know what goes on in the real world.

Chicago and Illinois have been corrupt for a long time, but now they have taken on a real and dangerous quality that they didn't have before. Why? Obama thrived there.

America granted grace, which I don't think has been an entirely good thing since freedom is its own reward, to blacks because their ancestors were slaves. That's over. I called the grocery clerk to account where before I would have let her slide.

The thing that is so clearly missing in the public arena of our era is judgment. No one will pronounce it. No one will take action for a proper standard. No one in Congress is making a dent on the corruption that is overtaking our government. It is simply missing.

In the ever-present choice of wings or spine, we've chosen wings.

36"w x 24"h acrylic on canvas, 2004

Where is the spine. It doesn't exist in this soupy, slurpy world of words. Just words - words that mean nothing except to have you think they do. For every statement coming out of Obama's mouth, we have a video or audio clip of him saying the opposite. Insanity reigns. Obama, the Con, spins more words tonight in his Jobs Speech. Words, just words. Except they are costing us not only our treasure, but our moral vitality.

Obama may paint a socialist utopia, but we all know that it shall not happen. Never has, never will. Why would it? No one gives a damn. And, no one does because the government won't allow it. Who can care when you are regulated from morning 'til night and this plague is spreading faster than we can get rid of it?

All will stop when someone with a voice that can be heard pronounces moral judgment - the judgment that gives one's moral vitality a bracing jolt!**

Who among us possesses THE VOICE THAT CAN BE HEARD? That is who we are waiting for.

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*Ragnar Danneskjold is a character in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. He was a pirate for justice. He calculated the amount a businessmen deserved from his production and trade, because he earned by trading value for value. Then he would attack ships which the government used to transfer wealth from America to People's States around the globe. (Sound like Obama?) When he got the wealth on board, he took it to a place where it was held in account for the producer of it. It became available to him when he chose to take his power back, go on strike and renounce being a sacrificial lamb.

**Ayn Rand is the only one in my lifetime that has done this. And she did it the hard way. She earned it.

The Killer Wedge

At the Moment of Vulnerability

Right now, this Obama Administration is working overtime to pass Government Health Care. What it seeks to do is become the health provider for the nation. What this means is:

YOU CANNOT FIRE YOUR DOCTOR.

You cannot choose your doctor, except for superficial characteristics; you can go nowhere except to government clinics and health facilities. This is the end of you as an independent human being - and right at the moment when you need to have safeguarded your independence the most - when you are the most vulnerable. This is what Government Health Care means.

Only one other time has this country engaged in this kind of activity. That was the institution of slavery. A slave could not fire his employer. He could not go elsewhere to find a place to work.

Above all else, this is the principle that MUST NOT get refastened onto the American people.

And it is not just you the citizen that is the slave. So long as a human being wants to practice in any aspect of the medical industry, (doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmacists, drug developers and producers, alternate forms of health care provision, emergency crews) he must work for the government or leave the country. Otherwise, he must leave this industry. Ultimately these are his only choices under Government Health Care. Runarounds and a black market will be against the law.

This is as evil as anyone can get when it comes to social life for human beings. This is a moral issue and nothing more.

Notice how many people are talking about the best way to create the program and how much it will cost as if the basic premise of slavery is quite all right. No one is talking about the basic issue. Even those who should know better than anyone what slavery is - and I am talking about the American black in particular - are looking at the "candy" in the hand of the politician rather than the club behind his back.

These men offering this "candy" are Barack Obama and all of his Administration, Nancy Pelosi, Teddy Kennedy, and a host of other politicians - liberal and conservative. It also includes corporations and their lobbyists who are trying to get in early on the game to provide the products that the government will need in its programs. They all need to be fought. The very idea of human bondage must be fought root and branch.

Obama has a Science Czar, John Holdren, who is on record with some very draconian methods of population control, wanting to reduce it to below replacement levels and advocating sterilizing men as the means. He has a Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, who believes in "Nudging" people into the right behavior via taxation.

I'm telling you, this is no different than the Progressives of the past. Their mission has always been to "improve" society by force. In the early 1900's, eugenics was their call as the means to this end. (The wildest of that advocacy was Nazi Germany.) Now it is what is called "nudging" - a program of taxation that discourages particular behaviors and fosters others. They think they can use FORCE, the law with taxes, fines and prison in the background, with a smile on their face and righteousness in their heart.

They are wrong. To force a "choice" is to obviate man's possession of volition - the capacity to choose. This negates his humanity at the root. No longer is he able to pursue values, reap the consequences and correct or continue his course of action. Good and bad no longer apply to one forced. Since he had to do it, all he can provide are excuses. He's powerless. Force misapplied by anyone, but above all the institution of government is a primary cause of social deterioration. It negates the mind and the pursuit of values. It kills human life.

I offer Government Education as a prime example. Compelling students to learn is not the same thing as showing that learning is a value to be pursued. Force and enrollment, the presentation of a possibility and its value so one can choose it or not, are opposites. Anyone who wants learning via enrollment, as opposed to indoctrination, has to provide it himself.

As an architect, I know what force is. Before Handicap Access became the law of the land and when I was in architecture school, books on handicap access were everywhere. If one had a client who wanted handicap access, one learned how to best provide it. There were many possibilities and there was much competition regarding solutions to various problems.

Once Handicap Access became law, the building code reduced all of this to a single section with rules and layouts. The investigation and search for better means not only for access but for handicap mobility largely ended.

When handicap access was just beginning, I had a doctor client who had need for it in his office. This was a remodel project and there was a bathroom present. The question arose as to whether a handicapped person could use the bathroom. I rented a wheelchair and investigated the matter for myself. I then took the results of my study and my solution to the building department and they were quite happy to approve it given that I actually knew how it was going to work.

Today that is impossible. Now with the rigid codification of everything regarding Handicap Access, it is way too costly to go after a better solution. Who wants get a variance with all that entails and/or go before a board to fight for something that may not be approved even if it works. Better to just do what the code says and be done with it. As a consequence, we see the repetition of the same plans over and over.

Further, rather than business who want to appeal to the handicapped offering the benefits of their facilities as an attraction for customers that they want and appreciate, all business and public buildings must provide the access whether they will ever need it. This results in a huge expense where not needed and deprives the business who welcome the handicapped to show that they welcome them. All of this is how society becomes gutted of its differentiation, values, and even beauty and charm. So much for the government and its influence.

Needless to say all of the innovation regarding handicap access has dried up. It doesn't exist. There is no longer any excitement around the subject.

And this is exactly where Government Health Care is headed but with a far worse aspect. You will be the government's slave unable to exercise your own mind and your own free will, the two fundamental aspects of remaining fully human. And this relative to the most personal aspect of yourself - your body.

One further note. Already, we are seeing the inhumanity in which the government will indulge itself to effect its programs. Here is an article entitled, Tough Love for Fat People. Because our society is unwilling to allow people to experience the consequences of their actions, most Washington voices think there is no choice but to coerce their behavior. The new scapegoats are going to be fat people - and, of course, smokers. Where are the articles on drug users, alcohol drinkers, and all the other things that people use to excess? What about those who binge on sugar? Or those who eat only protein? Or those who exercise to the point of hurting their bodies? You name it. Is this the direction you want society to head?

If not, you had better get on your high horse and soapbox. Government Health Care is the killer wedge on this matter.

Doesn't sound like a group of people I want to live around. See my previous post.

Here We Go Again

[This written in 1943.]

“It is generally recognized that mankind has achieved, since its rise from savagery, a miraculous progress in the realm of its material culture – and none whatever in the realm of its ethics. Our homes are superior to the cave of the Neanderthal man, but our morals are no better than his – worse, if anything, for we do not have his excuse for ignorance. There is no act of inhumanity which he perpetrated and which we do not perpetrate, except that he did not possess our exquisite means of perpetrating it and he could never equal our present scale. In a recently published book (The Spirit of Enterprise by Edgard M. Queeny), the author – intent upon a hymn to human progress – spends five pages describing man’s material triumphs. Then he adds: “Our morals have come a long way too. The mere thought of a feast on a loose piece of human flesh, which to the Bushmen brings mouth-watering longing, is to us horrid and nauseating.” This is all he can offers, without equivocation, for ten thousand years of man’s spiritual growth. And even this claim is open to question, because cannibalism occurred in Soviet Russia in the famines of 1921 and 1933, and God only knows or can bear the sight of what is occurring in Europe now.

“Why has man displayed such magnificent capacity for progress in the material realm and yet remained stagnant on the level of savagery in his spiritual stature? This discrepancy has been recognized, decried, deplored denounced by everyone. It has never been explained. Countless explanations of evil and remedies for it have been offered through the centuries. None of them worked. None of them cured or explained anything.

“Yet that which mankind holds as its moral ideal has been known and accepted for centuries. The basic principle of men’s morality has not changed since the beginning of recorded history. Under their superficial differences of symbolism, ritual and metaphysical justification, all great ethical systems from the Orient up, all religions, all human schools of thought have held a single moral axiom; the idea of selflessness. That which proceeds from love of self is evil; that which proceeds from love of others is good. Self-sacrifice, self-denial and self-renunciation have ever been considered the essence of virtue. In no other matter has mankind held to such total unity, so completely and for so long. Altruism is the doctrine which holds that man must live for others and place others above self. Humanity has proclaimed its moral ideal unanimously. It has never been questioned. It has always been the ideal of altruism. [Later in this chapter, AR notes that the cultures of ancient Greece and capitalist America were at least partial exceptions to this rule. ed.]

“This ideal has never been reached. In spite of its statement and restatement, in every land, in every age, in every language, in spite of its professed acceptance by all, mankind’s history has not been a growing record of benevolence, justice and brother-love, but an accelerating progression of horror, cruelty, and shame. Baffled, men have accepted the explanation that man is essentially evil; man is weak and imperfect; he doesn’t want to do good. The noble ideal of altruism is never quite to be achieved, only approximated; man is immoral by nature.

“But look back at mankind’s record. Every major horror of history was perpetrated – not by reason of and in the name of that which men held as evil, that is , selfishness – but through, by, for and in the name of an altruistic purpose. The Inquisition. Religious wars. Civil wars. The French Revolution. The German Revolution. The Russian Revolution. No act of selfishness has ever equaled the carnages perpetrated by disciples of altruism. Nor has any egoist ever roused masses of fanatical followers by enjoining them to go out to fight for his personal gain. Every leader gathered men through the slogans of a selfless purpose, through the plea for this self-sacrifice to a high altruistic goal: the salvation of others’ souls, the spread of enlightenment, the common good of their state.

“It is said that self-seeking hypocrites used these virtuous sentiments to delude their followers and achieve personal ends. Doubtless, there have been such and a great many of them. But they never caused the bloody terrors caused by the purest 'idealists.' The worst butchers were the most sincere. Robespierre asked and wished nothing for himself. Lenin asked and wished nothing for himself. But the record of Attila is that of an amateur compared to theirs. At the apex of every great tragedy of mankind there stands the figure of an incorruptible altruist. Yet, after every disaster men have said: 'The ideal was right, but Robespierre was the wrong man to put it into practice,' (of Torquemada, or Cromwell, or Lenin, or Hitler, or Stalin) and have gone on to try it again. [Watch The Triumph of the Will and notice how sincere Hitler is when he expresses his ideal for all the German people. SCB]

“But what is one to think of creatures who are willing, century after century, to bear every form of agony, every kind of martyrdom, for the sake of that which they consider their moral ideal? Are they creatures devoid of moral instinct? Is not the determination to act according to one’s conception of right, no matter what the price, precisely the attribute of a high moral sense? Men have been robbed, enslaved, tortured, slaughtered in the name of altruism. They have accepted, forgiven, and borne it, because their ideal demanded it of them. The price they have paid in unspeakable suffering should have granted them, at least, a badge of virtue.

“But the nature of their ideal has robbed them even of this earned honor.

“A true premise, once accepted, leads to a greater truth and a clearer knowledge with each subsequent step deduced from it. A false premise leads to a greater falsehood and a blacker evil, until, followed to its ultimate conclusion, it brings total destruction, as it must. The spiritual tragedy of mankind has now reached this last step. The spectacle of horror which the world presents at this moment has never been equaled and cannot be surpassed. This is the end of the blind alley of men’s thinking. And there is no way out – save all the way back, to the beginning, to the first principle which permitted men to be led into this.

“The ideal of altruism has now taken its ultimate toll. We are the witnesses of its climax. We see mankind destroying itself before our eyes. We see the price it is paying. We glance back at its history and we see the prince it has paid. But we look on and say: 'This noble ideal is beyond human nature, because men are imperfect and evil.'

“Isn’t it time to stop and to question that noble ideal instead?”

[This was written by Ayn Rand, September 4, 1943, in the middle of WWII. The source for this excerpt is Journals of Ayn Rand. This writing was never published in this form during her lifetime. It became the basis of Atlas Shrugged and the final form of her philosophy. After the publishing of Atlas Shrugged, she worked to present her philosophy in non-fiction form and published many books and articles to that effect. Fifty two years after Atlas Shrugged published in 1957, people are looking for a new philosophical basis for human action and the organization of society. Many can see that the United States is now poised to be the last great country to topple into this same abyss.

Ayn Rand's ideas are no less true today. We are in the grip of a major call to this same destructive ideal carried out by his dictatorship in the form of Barack Obama. Socialism and dictatorship fail wherever tried. But it is not socialism per se that has his words live for people. It is this horrible, stinking moral ideal which has been spread through every institution and church. The attempt to achieve it will not achieve it.

But I don't think that Obama cares to achieve it. His actions belie his rhetoric. He does care to use what you erroneously consider the best within you to mold you to his power. This is how he keeps his motives invisible to the unquestioning masses.

It is the moral ideal that is false as an ideal. People are not inherently evil. They possess free will and choose whether to be right or wrong, good or evil.

A person who is called to make a difference for other people as his primary motivation for living in the world is called by this error. It is not the proper call to goodness. No.

You do that which you want your life to be comprised of, present the results of your work, and when someone wants what you have to offer, he will buy it and accept it – of his own free will. He doesn't have to accept YOU. You've done that already if your moral base is correct. But this motivation depends on what Rand later calls the Virtue of Selfishness.

America has a fairly strong grasp of rational self-interest, rational egoism. Dont' let that go.

To hell, I say, with the sonorous siren song of Barack Obama. SCB]

John A. Allison IV - A Celebration of Freedom

The following is a tribute to a courageous freedom fighter in our time - John A. Allison IV. I delivered this speech to the Fellowship of Reason for its monthly Celebration of Freedom, April 6, 2008.
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John A. Allison IV was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1948. He went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate degree, a Bachelor of Business Administration, and was graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa Society, a measure of his academic achievements. While at UNC, he discovered articles by Ayn Rand and was profoundly influenced by her philosophy. He went on to receive his MBA from Duke University and then entered the banking industry. His first job came in 1971, at the age of 23, when he went to work for BB&T, a regional bank headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He rose through the ranks to President in 1987 and then to CEO in 1989. He is still the CEO. The bank gained notoriety and romantic appeal when it announced that it would not lend to anyone who gained their property through eminent domain. The bank has grown to the 9th largest financial holding company in the United States with currently reported assets of 131.6 billion dollars. Beyond its headquarters state of North Carolina, it has branches in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C.

If you go to the webpage of the bank, you learn that the principles of the bank's operation are straight out of Rand’s ethics. The company business is “brazenly stated” to be based on the facts of reality. Psychologizing, "do-gooderism" and excuses do not get play here. An outstanding BB&T employee, the website says, embodies Purpose, Rationality and Self-Esteem, the primary moral values of a Randian hero.

As the company grew it formed the BB&T Charitable Foundation. The kinds of projects that the Charitable Foundation have supported have been various but one kind of project has thrust John Allison and BB&T into the middle of one of, if not the greatest of all cultural battles of our time. He has chosen to offer universities grants if they will teach a course in which Atlas Shrugged is one of the books used.

John Allison - along with many others - have seen that capitalism has won the materialism side of the argument. With the collapse of communist Russia, and the inability of many other socialist societies to produce the basic needs for a society possible in this modern time, and the quick turnaround of countries that have embraced capitalism, such as Ireland, Poland, India, China to the extent it is able to be free, plus the older cases of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, the evidence is in. To the extent a country’s government fails to provide a legal structure that recognizes private property or it economically controls its society it will remain primitive or fail. If it controls the economy completely, it will fail completely. If it mixes control with some free aspects, it will be sluggish to the extent of the mixture.

So. What is capitalism? I quote Allison’s mentor, Ayn Rand:

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

Rand’s definition makes sense and can be rationally validated. But, morally we, as a culture, cannot whole-heartedly abide it. We, at this point in time, are committed to a different moral base – altruism – where everything has to be justified in terms of the society as a whole or the welfare of another person. To stand up for one’s own life and the right to live it by using the individual faculty of one’s mind and the economic freedom that entails which is the basis of capitalism is impossible to do unless you are MORALLY prepared to do so. (By that I mean that you have developed within yourself moral certainty, which I call a “tap root.”) Mr. Allison’s mission, which he chose to accept, was to establish in the culture the moral basis of capitalism, the weak leg of its foundation. The book which elucidates that foundation most clearly at this point in time is Atlas Shrugged, hence, his requirement that Atlas Shrugged be taught in the course(s) supported by BB&T’s grants.

The grants Mr. Allison offers are voluntary. No university is required to accept the grants. To this point, 27 colleges and universities have chosen to accept BB&T’s gifts and its conditions. In fact, now colleges are seeking out BB&T’s offers.

In some cases, the gifts pay for a professor to teach the moral basis of capitalism. In other cases, BB&T has funded a chair at the university or a separate department. The colleges and universities which have accepted these grants are the following:

Carolina Colleges

Appalachian State University
Campbell University
Clemson University
Duke University
Greensboro College
High Point University
Johnson C. Smith University
North Carolina State University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
University of South Carolina

Other than the Carolina Colleges

Christopher Newport University (VA)
George Mason University (VA)
Marshall University (WV)
Rockford College (IL)
University of Charleston (WV)
University of Florida
University of Kentucky
University of Texas at Austin
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech
West Virginia University
Western Kentucky University
Wheeling Jesuit University (WV)

As these gifts have been announced, they have kicked up the dust that must arise by confronting the prevalent moral code. Professors have argued that they are being “forced” by these gifts. They are confused between choosing freely and not having a choice. In the context of their original freely chosen selection, they cancelled their right to the “force” argument. What happened that they forget that?

Or, they argue that this undermines academic freedom and the right of the professor to select what he wants to teach. They fail to mention how other gifts have been designed to specialize in a particular area or of government grants that shape research and hence course material. They don’t want opposition to the ideas they profess. If you go online and Google BB&T and the grants, you can find any number of newspaper columns and letters to the editor that argue against the conditions of the grant. Also, there are bloggers who feel they must let us know that they are disgusted by Atlas Shrugged and its advocacy of selfishness as a virtue. Or how boring the book is. Or how long it is. Or how poor a writer Ms. Rand is.

So the battle goes on.

Lest you worry about the complaints leveled at Atlas Shrugged, C. Bradley Thompson, the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, says it this way:

“I’ve taught Atlas Shrugged for fifteen years during which time I’ve witnessed many remarkable things. For example, some 95% of my students report that Atlas Shrugged is the best book they’ve ever read. No book that I’ve taught comes remotely close to fostering a more robust exchange of ideas in the classroom. My students typically come to class after pulling an all-nighter debating Atlas with their friends, and then they pepper me with dozens of questions. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Ayn Rand’s ideas, few could deny that this is what the college experience is supposed to be like.

“During those few weeks each year when I teach Atlas Shrugged, I’ve seen hundreds of students become intellectually engaged in ways they weren’t before reading this extraordinary book. The comment I hear most often from students goes something like this: 'Atlas Shrugged sums up everything that I’ve always admired and believed but could never put into words.’ Ayn Rand’s novel speaks to many students’ deepest values and aspirations: it appeals to their sense of justice, integrity, honesty, and independence, and it appeals to their desire to live in a world where achievement and heroism are rewarded.

I chose to celebrate John A. Allison IV of BB&T and his courageous commitment to political freedom because it is one of the most crucial, philosophically fundamental, exciting, pro-freedom advances happening in the world today. Now that you know that it is happening, I hope you will join me in my joy of seeing this mighty moral battle unfold. The United States, the only country founded on individual rights is either going to blossom into full flower or fade from the earth.

Distinguishing Empty and Meaningless

Empty and Meaningless, a term familiar to Landmark Education graduates, is the point at which you get in a course where you can now create something new. People go into the course to break through something that has stopped them in their lives. It can be in a relationship. It can be in one's progress in one's career. It can be in any area of life where one feels stuck.

After almost two days of deconstruction of the world that you have built, you come to a place in your mind where you are sufficiently clear of that to create a new future. You have seen where you've erred, interpreted events incorrectly, have taken into your being (i.e., adopted as a basic premise in your knowledge and/or evaluative structure) something that has been stopping you from moving forward.

This place, free of past attachment of any kind, is called "empty and meaningless." As a point to which one gets himself to be free to create something new beyond the way he has been able to create in the past, he has to let go of the meaning that the old way had for him.

The distinction I want to make is this. Life is not, I say NOT, empty and meaningless, and to think that it is has serious consequences. (Those consequences are for a later post.) Life is an aspect of particular kinds of entities - namely living ones. These entities are to be distinguished from stones, tables, books and all sorts of inert, lifeless entities. The existence of these lifeless entities just is. They cannot take action to prolong their life because they don't possess life. They are just "banged" or moved around in the universe based on their own identity and the identities of the entities around them via the law of cause and effect - rather like billiard balls.

Entities possessing life, however, have a completely different situation. They have to constantly take action that keeps their lives in existence. Life is not automatic. It is maintained by action consistent with what the life needs to exist.

In the lower animals, this is automatic in the sense that they act to maintain their life until they are killed or die naturally. But in humans, who are distinguished from the lower animals by the faculty of reason, this is not automatic. A human being can choose at any moment to end his life and take the action to do so. In other words, life, for a human being is something that he chooses to keep in existence or not.

Because of this fact, everything around a human being is imbued by him with meaning. The basic meaning is, "Is this for me or against me?" "Does this further or hinder my life?"

Man's life and his faculty of reason are part of his nature. His creation of meaning is automatic. He will create meaning regardless. It is said that "Man is a meaning creating machine." That's true, except that he isn't a machine, and he has no choice in this matter. Thus life is not empty and meaningless. On the contrary, life is everywhere filled with meaning.

Given that, the area where you have choice and control is the meaning that you give a particular situation, event or attribute. And the Landmark exercise is valuable in altering the meaning that you give something - especially events and situations that happened in your past.

A person can see a difficult childhood as bad or he can see it as good or some combination. There were things he didn't have and didn't experience. On the other hand, he learned to be strong in the face of that and those ways may lead to success in many areas of life.

The point of this distinction is to not blithely say, "Life is empty and meaningless" as a way to dismiss worrying about something or to dismiss another person's concern. The point is to get in there, take charge of and be responsible for the meaning you create. Each of us, after all, is responsible for this individual human capacity.