{"id":12737,"date":"2010-07-21T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T04:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=12737"},"modified":"2010-07-21T21:30:08","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T04:30:08","slug":"reasons-to-be-less-than-cheerful-part-3-0-2-what-has-it-cost-us-to-have-been-so-wrong-for-so-long-about-selflessness-and-self-adoration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/12737\/reasons-to-be-less-than-cheerful-part-3-0-2-what-has-it-cost-us-to-have-been-so-wrong-for-so-long-about-selflessness-and-self-adoration\/","title":{"rendered":"Reasons to be (less than) cheerful, Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’ve been told your whole life that all the troubles of the world owe to selfishness, and that the only true path to happiness is to renounce the self and to damn the only life you have ever known. Who told you this? Amazingly enough, it was thugs, priests and politicians — and their many, many minions. If you’ve read this far, you must know by now that every bit of this is a lie, the Big Lie that has been used in infinite variations over the course of all of human history to con decent, honest, innocent people like you into giving up everything you have for the benefit of the worst sorts of people.<\/p>\n

This is a premise I believe can be defended in reason to infinite precision: Everything squalid on the face of the earth, for all of human history, is the consequence of selflessness, of the deliberate, conscious, completely voluntary renunciation of the self by a person who has self-induced the belief that some objective he seeks can only be attained by an act of self-destruction.<\/p>\n

But that argument is just the corollary of this one: Everything we know of splendor, within our own minds and in the world around us, is an artifact not just of selfishness but of the most profound and most profoundly-beautiful self-love. If there is any normal state for human beings — normal as a matter of ontology, not statistics — this is it: To be so much in love with the things you make with the time of your life and the effort of your mind and your body that you cannot bear<\/em> for those things to be less than perfect.<\/p>\n

Think of that: Whether you’re looking at a skyscraper or listening to a symphony or simply teaching a child to read, the source of the splendor you experience is self-adoration and nothing else — not just your own delight at being alive, or the child’s, but also the architect’s, the composer’s, the author’s and all of the people who worked on those creations. And then consider that it is self-love — the self-love Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ve been told your whole life that all the troubles of the world owe to selfishness, and that the only true path to happiness is to renounce the self and to damn the only life you have ever known. Who told you this? Amazingly enough, it was thugs, priests and politicians — and their many, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251,4,24,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-big-mother","7":"category-disintermediation","8":"category-egoism-in-action","9":"category-group-therapy","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":17448,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/17448\/overnight-news-ants-repudiate-grasshopperism-in-a-national-landslide-grasshoppers-cant-catch-a-clue-for-dancing\/","url_meta":{"origin":12737,"position":0},"title":"Overnight News: Ants repudiate Grasshopperism in a national landslide. Grasshoppers can\u2019t catch a clue for\u00a0dancing.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 8, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The purpose of The Big Lie \u2013 shattered into infinite lies as Political Correctness \u2013 is to humiliate: The tyrant of the microsecond dares you to tell the truth, triumphing in your acquiescence. To hell with that. So: Here's a simple fact: China Joe Biden is the beneficiary of massive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Group Therapy"","block_context":{"text":"Group Therapy","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/group-therapy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ya think it's easy?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/BHBNewTopImage-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15910,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15910\/from-man-alive-the-love-of-splendor-is-the-life-divine\/","url_meta":{"origin":12737,"position":1},"title":"From Man Alive! – “The love of Splendor is the life divine.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 12. The love of Splendor is the life divine. There is one more idea I want to take up with you, and I think it is the most demanding one I know. You had to wrap your\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4049,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4049\/escaping-room-101\/","url_meta":{"origin":12737,"position":2},"title":"Escaping Room 101…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"[I wrote this in the late Summer of 1995. --GSS] \u00a0I moved to a new apartment this Spring, and it happens that my new apartment number is 101. We live by symbols, like it or not, and I can't look at my door or write my address without thinking of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6374,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/6374\/human-sovereignty-as-a-new-years-resolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":12737,"position":3},"title":"Human sovereignty as a New Year’s resolution","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 31, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I hate lies, and I hate just about everything that doesn't hate lies. We live our lives enmired in lies -- in hoke, in smoke, in hints and allusions and innuendoes, in juice and hustle and jive -- and it is entirely too easy to become one of the liars,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1774,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1774\/sun-microsystems-draws-free-pictures-of-the-twenty-first-century-to-be-shown-to-barbarians-to-illustrate-the-path-to-relevance\/","url_meta":{"origin":12737,"position":4},"title":"Sun Microsystems draws free pictures of the twenty-first century; to be shown to barbarians to illustrate the path to relevance","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"What's the opposite of an antiquated product in a useless form-factor being hoarded behind a paywall? 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