I Already Googled It

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged—it may be the Christmas season, but it’s also exam season—so I decided I’d come share something I wrote on a forum.

There was a thread with someone complaining about their “depression“, their low grades in school, their family etc., and refusing to take ownership of their problems and just get through it.  Instead they were blaming their parents (teenagers lol) and their therapist.  After a while of trying to tell him to man up, I broke into this TL;DR after someone attacked me…

…it sparked quite the debate, as you’ll be able to imagine by the time you reach the end.

Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I don’t have a “silver fucking spoon”, because neither my family nor I are wealthy. Neither my family nor I had unusual privilege; we didn’t have opportunities that thousands of other people haven’t had. People get where they’re going—or not—in life because they decide to go there or not.

You think my life has been easy? You think anyone’s life has been easy? No. Life is hard. It demands that you work for what you want, or that you don’t have it. I’m willing to work for it. I’m willing to take responsibility. I—and I alone—am willing to be responsible for my life and what happens in it. Both the good and the bad, I own and am responsible for them both. I can take pride in what I have because I earned it. I can fix what’s wrong with me because I caused it; I chose it—because it’s under my control.

I’m not a piece of paper in the wind, blowing from place-to-place by the volition of everyone of myself—no one is. They choose to be because it’s convenient. It’s convenient to blame where you are and what you are on everything but yourself, because if you’re the one responsible for it, then you’ve forced yourself to take responsibility. You’ve forced yourself into a position where you—and you alone—have to dig yourself out, where you have to fix it, where you have to work to achieve, and people don’t want that. People want everyone and everything except themselves to be responsible. They want to be lazy and achieve nothing and go nowhere and blame it on mommy and daddy, to blame it on depression, to blame it on learning disabilities, to blame it on their therapist, their teacher, their principal, to blame it on “the system”, to blame it on “the establishment”, to blame it an AD[H]D, to blame it on Asperger’s.

Everyone has their cross or crosses to bear. Everyone has something that they have to face head on and defeat, but they have to face it and defeat it. Everyone has hurdles that they have to jump over, but only they can jump over them. No one can fix your problems by giving you a hand up, because you have to take that hand and be willing to climb. No one can fix your problems with welfare or handouts, because that feeds you for a day, it does not feed you for a lifetime—only you can do that. No one can fix your problems because they are your problems and they require your dedication and effort to fix. If you sit there laying blame instead of picking up the yoke and working for what you want, you’ll never have what you want. All you’ll have are excuses you can use to explain to the bystander why you don’t have you want, but that won’t fill you with satisfaction, that won’t fill your life with joy, that won’t make your tenure on this earth worth living, it won’t help you sleep with the thoughts of what could’ve been. Only you—and you alone—can do that.

You can be born into privilege, into wealth, into power, but it won’t make any difference if you aren’t driven, because wealth can be mis-managed, because wealth must be earned and kept and maintained, because power is contingent on the people over whom it is exercised, because without people willing to heed your words, your supposed “power” means nothing, because privilege is contingent on the people elevating you above themselves, because unless people are willing to put you before others, you have no “privilege”, and because ultimately privilege, wealth, and power are not happiness or satisfaction in and of themselves. Many privileged men, many powerful men, many wealthy men, lived terrible lives because while privilege, power, and wealth are means to happiness, they are not happiness. They will bring you no happiness and no satisfaction unless you and you alone know what you want and are willing to exercise them to have it.

He can sit in his room, on his computer, on these forums, complaining about his lot in life, about his supposed depression, about his family, about school, about all these things, but that will get him nowhere—as I’ve said. At the end of the day, he’ll still be sitting. He’ll have accomplished nothing. He’ll be no further ahead. He’ll have nothing to be not-depressed about. He’ll spend his whole life complaining about his lot while the way he leads his life makes the lot he has in life. His complaints will become and remain self-fulfilling prophesy, and it will inconvenience no one but himself. He can make all the excuses he wants, he can scapegoat whatever conditions or whatever misfortunes he wants, but that won’t change the fact that he is a “have not”, while others—those who went out into the world and made a place for themselves—are “haves”. That’s not injustice, that’s justice. That’s not unfair, that’s fair. You are what you make yourself. Your life is what you make it. Ownership of your life isn’t just the ability to lead it, it’s the ability to decide it, and since only you can make those decisions—since you own your life—you—and you alone—are responsible for them.

You’ll notice that the men who take ownership of their lives and their decisions are the ones who have done well for themselves, who have good lives—the “haves”. You say that this is because they are successful, that they say these things to maintain the status quo, to make themselves appear good, hard-working, and motivated. You say that they are only “haves” because of luck—because of things beyond their control. You say that the destitute and the down-trodden—those who blame everyone but themselves for their lot in life—are the truly aware ones, the ones who believe that men are not controllers of their own destiny, but rather beholden entirely to the whimsy of fate, those who believe that your fate is decided for you, rather than you deciding your fate.

I tell you that it is exactly the opposite. The men of wealth, of success, the men of happiness, these are the men who are truly enlightened. No man obtains wealth or success or happiness by luck, for wealth must be produced by his own effort, or obtained through trade by the consent of his fellow man. Wealth is a judgment upon your work and your effort by your fellow man. Wealth is truly earned. Success is but a rubric whereby everything in your life is measured, and it is decided whether you have done well for yourself or not. Happiness is having what you want. They are intrinsically linked. To be happy you must know what you want and you must obtain it. To possess wealth you must produce it or obtain it from your fellow man by trade. To be successful you must be wealthy and happy. None of this is luck, it is a measurement of you. Of what your life is and what you have made it. No one makes you successful or unsuccessful. Men are born and remain free, with the ability to think for themselves and determine their own fate. Since their fate is determined by them—since they are free, capable of deciding for themselves—then they own their fate, and whether it be good or bad, they own it and are responsible for it. No one cares more highly for you than you do, for all men are born and remain selfish and individualistic, interested only in their own success, happiness, and wealth. If you wish to be happy, you must know what you want and you must get it. To be wealthy, you must make other men happy—you must satisfy and appeal to their endemic selfishness—so that you may part them from their wealth and add it to your own.

No man—being born and remaining free—is ever exploited by another man, for in a free society all associations and transactions are voluntary. The only one who may exploit him is himself, by giving into his laziness, his depravity, by refusing to live his life and live it well. And when a man does this, then all the judgment of other men crash down upon him. Then the framework by which those who live their lives and live it well are made happy destroys him utterly—and not unfairly. He may know what he wants—know what it will take for him to be happy—but he will not be allowed to have it, for he offers no one anything for which they are willing to trade—he cannot acquire the wealth by which he may be happy.

There is, however, one hope for the men who destroy their own lives. They betray what makes them human—their mind—and turn instead to what separates animals and men. They raise arms, they raise clenched fists against the “establishment” and the “bourgeoisie”. They point guns at their fellow man and seize what they could not earn by force. They betray reason and free will, instead seizing what they want. These are the men who do not understand that the world was not built by destroyers and looters, but by producers. The world was not built by men of weakness, stupidity, or force, but rather was built by men of wealth, success, and production. The world was not built by men who cried about their lot in life, who complained that it was unfair or too hard. No. The world was built by men of fortitude, men who were armed with nothing but their own vision. Men who knew what they wanted, and weren’t afraid to go out amongst their fellow man and get it, men who didn’t fear the mind. Men who didn’t demonize the individual, with his wants and needs, but dignified the individual, granting the individual the satisfaction of those wants and needs in exchange for the satisfaction of his own wants and needs. Men who realized that trade isn’t exploitation, that it isn’t evil, that dealing with your fellow man by offering him something he wants in exchange for something you want is the most righteous thing that you can do.

You do not engage in trade, nor produce the things needed to trade, by complaining about your lot in life. Rather you engage in trade, you produce the things necessary for trade, and make yourself happy by obtaining what you want in life through trade, through your own effort; by making yourself and your effort something that those around you value and want and are willing to trade for.

So who will you empower? Who will you dignify? Those who create happiness—both for themselves and others—through their own effort, through their ownership of themselves and their lives, or those who lay claim by tears or guns upon happiness which is not theirs and which they have neither produced nor earned? The food that you eat to sustain yourself, was this produced by tears or by guns, or was it produced by men who stand tall, seizing control of themselves and their minds and their lives, who are willing to work for themselves?

You tell me that I have no understanding of the world or its realities, and yet you yourself do not seem to understand that it is not tears or guns that make the world go around. It is not tears or guns which have lifted men from a tribal existence living off the land, to a metropolitan existence where man rules the land. It was not tears or guns that gave you the ability to eat oranges not only when they are in season, or not only where they grow naturally, but wherever and whenever you want. Tears and guns bring upon the world death, destruction, hunger, and starvation, for crying idly does not plough fields nor harvest them, and violence cannot force wheat to sprout nor place it upon the mill nor make it into the bread you require to survive.

I ask for men to be and remain empowered—masters and makers of their own fate. You ask for them to be a piece of paper in the wind, going wherever those around them take them. I ask for progress, betterment both of the self and others. You ask for destruction. You deal with me by insults. I deal with you by words and logic—the tools of the mind.

Which of us is truly noble?

If the world is so terrible, then why has it not changed? Many men of great power from differing backgrounds and with differing views have ruled great portions of the earth throughout history. Many men have pointed many guns at many people and sought to change human nature, and yet all have failed. When will you realize that no common good, that no collective power or cause, can trump the individual? Because every collective, every common good, is an umbrella under which stand many men. To deny the individual for the sake of your collective or your common good is to destroy each component of your collective and your common good. To take from the rich to give to the poor is to place higher value upon the poor than the rich, to say that the poor may keep all that they earn and that they may seize the wealth of the rich, but that the rich may not even keep that which they earn. To say that men are not owners of themselves and of their minds and of their destinies is to defy everything it means to be human, to destroy the selfishness and individualism which are at the core of our existence and the motives which incite us to make the world a better place.

I see men for what they are and love it, love their nature and wish to see it unleashed. You see men for what they aren’t and seek to destroy and change their nature, to mold them by force into something you would prefer more, and wonder why they rebel at every turn. It is not that they are unintelligent or unenlightened, it is that men are and are driven to remain free, and that they may be bent, but they may never be broken.

So—as mentioned in my last blog post—I visited a theatre festival—the Chemainus Theatre Festival—on Saturday for my father’s birthday.

The play was A Christmas Carol, and while I love the Alastair Sim version (1951)—I watch it every Christmas Eve without fail, as was my late grandfather’s (also named Robert!) tradition—this rendition was terrible. The script was terrible—important parts removed, ridiculous parts added (what an affront to Dickens’ masterpiece!)—as was—in my opinion—the cast. They had some punk ~13-year-old playing the Ghost of Christmases Past.

I did my best to sit respectfully throughout, although I did spend a large amount of time examining the lighting apparatuses…

ANYWAY, enough about this theatre festival—this post is tagged “Randian” and “Libertarianism“, not “I am now a liberal” (don’t worry, that category doesn’t exist).

I was wandering around in the lobby, when I found this gem:

Do you like theatre?

It doesn’t matter, if you live in Canada you pay for it anyway.

Don’t worry! If your business can’t convince its prospective customers that your products and/or services are worth their money, you can always appeal to big government and they’ll use the force of law to grab those same customers’ money and give it to you!

If the Chemainus Theatre Festival isn’t proof enough of this, see General Government Motors.

But why?

I like Microsoft for the same reason I think Ayn Rand would love them.  They’re not like Apple—who sells a way of life—or Linux—which, quite literally, sells nothing (or, if you buy into Stallman’s rhetoric, sells a political ideology).  Microsoft just sells things that make money.

This “sell[ing] things that make money” mindset isn’t just reflected in the products they sell, but the support they supply for those products.  People will sit there and try and tell you it’s evil for a company to do nothing but try and make money, because after all, isn’t money the root of all evil (inb4: “TL;DR“)?

But in reality, it benefits both them and their customers.  Unlike Steve Jobs—who foists his beliefs about competitors products on you, see: FLASH IS EVIL THE IPHONE WILL NEVER RUN IT…iPad either—or the Linux community—who act like it’s blasphemous for something to cost money—Microsoft doesn’t care.  Pay them for Windows, and then you’re left alone.  If you want to run Flash, or not do Windows Updates, or whatever, Microsoft doesn’t care.  They have their money, and that’s all they want.

Money is just a way of expressing desire.  If customers want something, they’ll be willing to pay for it.  Therefore—in order to fulfill their goal of As Much Money As Possible™—Microsoft has to make sure people want their products, and therefore buy their products, and then are happy with their products, so they’ll buy from Microsoft all over again.  A lot of detractors use “M$“ as a form of Microsoft mockery, without realizing that if you love Microsoft for what it really is, it’s a badge of pride.

This attitude is visible in Microsoft’s design and support of their products.  I’m not saying that every Microsoft product ever has been phenomenal, but when they mess something up (I’m looking at you Windows ME) they learn from it (see: Windows 2000).  When customers want something, Microsoft doesn’t complain about how what they make, provide, or support is better, and refuse to give the customers what they want (I’m looking at you Steve Jobs, no Flash support, really?), they just shrug their shoulders and give them what they want.

Exampe: Internet Information Services, Microsoft’s web server (which runs this website) and the foremost competitor to the Apache web server.  Microsoft has put a lot of effort into making a very rich and powerful web framework—ASP.NET.  If you ask me I’ll tell you that ASP.NET is better than PHP.  I imagine Microsoft would say the same thing.  Now think about if Steve Jobs were in charge at Microsoft.  He’d probably walk around with his horn-rimmed glasses, black turtleneck, and faded jeans, talking very strongly about how PHP is terrible, and how IIS isn’t going to support it because it’s just better that way.

Is this the Microsoft approach?

No.  In fact, quite the opposite.  At the same time a team at the Redmond campus is labouring away to make ASP.NET better, faster, and more powerful, the IIS team is working directly with Zend to make PHP run faster on IIS, they’re blogging about PHP on IIS, and they’re hosting PHP support on their webpage (look at that, it even has its own subdomain!).

A lot of Microsoft fans—myself included—become very passionate about Microsoft supremacy, especially when it comes to Apple and Macs.

So what about Microsoft?  Surely they hate and eschew Apple and Macs even more?

No.  In fact, quite the opposite.  At the same time a team at the Redmond campus is labouring away to make Windows Phone a major competitor to the iPhone, another team is writing an iPhone app for Windows Live Messenger. While the Windows team is labouring away to make Windows 7 better, more user-friendly and intuitive, and more powerful, to compete with Mac OSX—which is slowly but surely making inroads—another team is working to make an office productivity suite for Mac that’s essentially a twin of Microsoft’s flagship Microsoft Office.  In fact, Microsoft maintains a lab devoted just to Macs.

So what about FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)?  What about Linux—a massive competitor to Windows Server?  Surely Microsoft doesn’t partake in any of this!

Today, in a break from the ordinary, Microsoft released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The drivers will be available to the Linux community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

That’s right, Microsoft software, in your Linux kernel, under your GPL.

We are seeing Microsoft communities and open source communities grow together, which is ultimately of benefit to our customers. The Linux community, for example, has built a platform used by many customers. So our strategy is to enhance interoperability between the Windows platform and many open source technologies, which includes Linux, to provide the choices our customers are asking for.

—Sam Ramji, Senior Director of Platform Strategy, Microsoft

You see, Microsoft doesn’t care.  Microsoft doesn’t care that it’s Linux, or Mac, or PHP, or open source, or closed source.  Microsoft isn’t dogmatic, they don’t force their opinions on their customers.

They just care that they’re making money.  And to do that, they build good products that are both vertically and horizontally integrated.

Why?  Is it because they’re the evil M$?  No.  It’s because they’re good.  Because they want money, and only people who buy their products have the money that they want, and only through drawing customers in through exceptional products and an exceptional user experience and seamless integration and excellent support can they obtain that money that is the only thing they desire.

To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss—the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery—that you must offer them values, not wounds—that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade—with reason, not force, as their final arbiter—it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability—and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

—Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957