{"id":15869,"date":"2012-04-13T11:16:51","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T18:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=15869"},"modified":"2012-04-13T11:17:05","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T18:17:05","slug":"from-man-alive-evaluating-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15869\/from-man-alive-evaluating-values\/","title":{"rendered":"From Man Alive! – “Evaluating values.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.<\/em><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Extract from Chapter 6. Evaluating values.<\/a><\/h3>\n

<\/a>We like to think of human history as a clash of great men, their hair flowing in the breeze, their muscles rippling, their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon. In reality, virtually all of the so-called great leaders of history were just like our fearless leaders in the present day: Chiseling, conniving, endlessly grasping grafters, each one striving with all his crafty cunning to go one-up in the sleaziest possible way on all the others. We celebrate and revere the most successful career criminals of each human epoch, and we forget entirely the brilliant minds who actually produced<\/em> all the riches we take for granted.<\/p>\n

Still worse, we fail to note that each one of those renowned thugs was backed up by a scheming little shaman, a full-time professional rationalizer of evil, whose job it was to tell the same transparent lies to the boss thug and his henchmen over and over again, to assure them, again and again, that their actions were righteous because they so obviously were not, to keep them from drowning in the liquor they had to swill to quiet the cognitive dissonance within their own minds. That shaman – first a high-priest, later a theologian, still later a philosopher – was also tasked with the vitally important job of gulling fools into believing that a brute like Alexander the “Great” was a greater benefactor to humanity than a genius like Socrates. Just about everything you know of human history is a testament to the success of that shaman and his intellectual heirs.<\/p>\n

Your values are inverted, and I can demonstrate this with an example very close to home. For your whole life you have been told – and you have probably believed – that the United States Constitution is a grand and noble document that exists to safeguard your liberty. In reality, it is a sort of peace-treaty drafted by three corrupt political factions in early America. The owners of the newly-erected factories in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states wanted to impose high Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 6. Evaluating values. We like to think of human history as a clash of great men, their hair flowing in the breeze, their muscles rippling, their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon. In reality, virtually all of the so-called great leaders of […]<\/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":[24,212,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-egoism-in-action","7":"category-flourishing","8":"category-group-therapy","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15835,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15835\/from-man-alive-youre-in-this-all-alone\/","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":0},"title":"From Man Alive! – “You’re in this all alone.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 1. You\u2019re in this all alone. Each individual human being is his own first and best philosopher, like it or don\u2019t, for this simple reason: You are not born knowing how to stay alive, and, absent some\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":15884,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15884\/from-man-alive-a-calculus-of-morality-on-a-first-grade-number-line\/","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":1},"title":"From Man Alive! – “A calculus of morality on a first-grade number line.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 7. A calculus of morality on a first-grade number line. You live an easy life, and that has made it easy for you to be thoughtless and glib about your values. You say things like \u201cWhatcha gonna\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":15845,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15845\/from-man-alive-speaking-in-tongues\/","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":2},"title":"From Man Alive! – “Speaking in tongues.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 3. Speaking in tongues. One of the things that protects humanity from all of the philosophers and academics who insist that we are nothing special is the power of speech. Not speech deployed to argue against them;\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":15831,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15831\/a-celebration-of-me-man-alive-is-alive\/","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":3},"title":"A celebration of me: Man Alive! is alive!","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I just traded two weeks of my life for the rest of human history. That's what it feels like. It's funny even to me to live at that level of hubris! I've always been able to work very hard when I need to, and I've always loved the way I\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":15895,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15895\/from-man-alive-the-high-cost-of-mindlessness\/","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":4},"title":"From Man Alive! – “The high cost of mindlessness.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 9. The high cost of mindlessness. Because you never trained your mind to think about the ontology of human nature \u2013 don\u2019t fault yourself for that; no one else did, either \u2013 you thought they were just\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":15910,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15910\/from-man-alive-the-love-of-splendor-is-the-life-divine\/","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":5},"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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15869"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15871,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15869\/revisions\/15871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}