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Do You Have a Prosperity Philosophy?

Posted By: Randy GageJuly 13, 2010

After 28 hours of travel, I’m back in my Sydney digs.  The cooler temperature is a nice relief.  BTW, I flew two legs on Emirates Airlines in their private suites.  I took some video for the next Prosperity TV clip, so look for that next week.  Now let’s get back to our discussion from last week on living by a congruent philosophy.  

I said you must have a philosophy and be able to articulate it.  You must be comfortable defending it, and ok with knowing that the most of the masses don’t have enough brainpower to understand this.

You can’t look for approval of the masses, and hope to live a life of prosperity, because those two objectives are mutually exclusive.  At least at this point in time, but hopefully that will change.

We change consciousness one person at a time.  And changing consciousness means you have the ability to analyze your beliefs.  How you got them, whether they serve you, and whether they can be justified with a logical extension of your philosophy.  Very few people are able to do this.

As an example, ask any American if they believe in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  They will maintain that they do.  Then ask if they believe the KKK,  Nazis, or some other hate group has the right to hold a peaceful march.

“No, no,” they exclaim.  “There has to be limits.  I’m all for free speech, but not in a case like this.”

Well that philosophy is not congruent.  It does not stand the test of logic.  Another example.

Suppose that a killer would go free, because the evidence that convicted him was obtained in an illegal search.  The judge throws the case out of court, as the Constitution requires that she do.  There would be an immediate outcry.

People want to “fix” the Constitution.  But you can’t correct this problem without infringing on the Bill of Rights.  The citizens must be safe from unwarranted and illegal searches from their government.  Which means that an occasional guilty party must go free, to protect the innocent and maintain the integrity of the Constitution.

Don’t get me wrong.  I would hate for a killer to go free.  And I hate the KKK and those other hate groups as much you probably do.  But I also have the intellectual capacity to see the principles and precedents that govern the bigger picture.
And you must too, or you will just be another member of the herd, reacting emotionally to the environment around you.

Give this some thought, and please shares your insights below.  Next post we’ll look at the difference between a real philosophy you can live by, and when you simply have a meme complex.

-RG

31 comments on “Do You Have a Prosperity Philosophy?”

  1. Thanks again, Randy -- As always, you're thoughts on prosperity are fascinating, usually provocatively insightful and helpful. I appreciate you and your posts.

    Glad you're celebrating life in Sydney - another of the world's most wonderful places to be!

    Marlyn and I send our best, Art

  2. Welcome back to Oz, Randy - I'm flying to Sydney myself tomorrow - NSAA meeting tomorrow night. Of course you can not support the right of free speech without granting it to everyone. And if I insist on my right to wear pants or a skirt in public, I must also defend the right of women to wear the burqua. Of course every freedom and right requires the responsibility to use it with respect. That's what we're forgetting. For people to live healthily and happily in communities they need to agree on their values and boundaries. As our immigration and transportation activity has increased, so our communities have lost their physical boundaries and forgotten the importance of negotiating their behavioral boundaries. It's the reponsibility of a community to maintain those boundaries through communication and negotiation - that's why we vote. And anyone who doesn't vote obviously doesn't care. I'm always hearing 'oh, they're all hopeless'. That's blame and victimhood. We don't always get what we want in this world (our beliefs get in the way). We often don't get what we deserve - which for some of us is just as well. But we always get what we settle for.

  3. Last night i finished my second read of Atlas Shrugged. Fantastic reading and learning experience. How philosophy of objectivism is used in reality of today I am learning from you. This time I read Aflas Shrugged it was a much deeper experience - Thank You!

    By the way, one thing I want to lead your attention to.
    When you posted the 'Are You Ready to Be Amazing' blog you wrote:
    "I'm not perfect. Just amazing".

    It puzzled me and my reply by then was: "But Randy IS perfect. As is everything in the univers, has always been, and will always be. Couldn’t it be that imperfection is an illusion?" 
    It leaned more to the oriental philosophies, and holds true in that it's about acceptance not of our vices but as things as they are. 

    You might find it interesting to ponder over what Ayn Rand wrote in John Galts speach somewhere in the end where she let him give solutions (in my paperback edition it is on page 969). He is saying:
     "Discard that unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming that man is imperfect. By what standard do you damn him when you claim it? Accept the fact that in the realm of morality nothing less than perfection will do. But perfection is not to be gauged by mystic commandments to practice the impossible, and your moral stature is not to be gauged by matters not open to your choice. Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality - not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.

    In wonder and respect Pierre Leyssac, CPH

    1. Actually I vacillate on that wording. You may hear me say we're all perfect creations of our creator and other times speak of the imperfections of our humanity. But I do believe it is all divine order, even the things that seem to be less than perfect. It's a choice of words and one as a wordsmith I haven't yet decided on. However, I do love Rand's take on moral perfection. An ideal I strive for.

      -RG

  4. I have always struggled with being congruent with my philosophy. I am not sure if I am congruent or justifying my reasons for not being congruent.

    For example, previously we had this discussion about racism and how a business owner should be able to refuse service to someone based on race.

    I argued that they could not because racism hurts others and is not rational. Am I congruent with my beliefs or just making excuses.

    I am still struggling with this 🙂

    As for letting a killer go, I agree they have rights like everyone else, but it is the remedy that I do not agree with.

    Throwing out the evidence is a remedy to violating their rights. If my rights were violated and I did not commit a crime what is my remedy? To sue.

    So my question would be why is throwing out evidence a remedy for violating the killer's rights?

    Could we not come up with another remedy and still lock them away, thereby protecting the rights of the general population against violence.

    I will be honest, I have no problem with the idea that the victim's rights outweigh the killer's rights and therefore if the evidence convicts the killer then they have no recourse.

    If they are found innocent then they can sue for having their rights violated.

    Am I out to lunch on this?

  5. Very interesting post Randy. People react with their guts, not with their brain... Not every one can make allowances. We have to accept some situations (even if they're unbearable) in order to protect our rights and freedom. We all have to think about this.

  6. It's not really all that possible to be only "Brain" centered, and the talk of "congruence" has merit, but again, is ultimately not all that possible.

    The idea of Crime isn't really congruent, and no "crime and punishment" really can be.

    Sure, it's TERRIBLE when someone kills another with a gun, but what about the gun wielder's thoughts? And what about when a company kills someone slowly with cigarettes?

    It seems to me that congruence would always be an IDEAL, but not possible without changing something fundamental.

  7. I think what you're saying is that we must 'walk the talk".. Living a life of paradox will produce the same results and that's to say more paradox. And that ain't good.

    Holding the vision and FEELING the knowing that it will happen through our thoughts and actions is crucial. And of course being grateful for every little thing in our lives is important too.. However, living a life of vision and not being grateful to those we meet, interact with or the things we take for granted is indeed paradox. I think we MUST maintain integrity with Who We Are. Failure to do that means we're out of integrity and we all know what happens there..

    Thanks Randy.

  8. Randy, reading your posts is like being poked in the head with a stick and then kicked in the stomach 🙂 in a good way tho. lol

    You are probably not an advocate of 24. I used to watch it and thought that the idiots who worked within the law were just stupid and flaky. Jack Bauer (the hero) would go and stab someone in the knee to get the info from him. Then in the nick of time he would use the info he gathered 'illegally' to disarm a nuclear bomb and save millions of lives. Then he was arrested for breaking the law, and I thought the system was stupid.

    I have to admit that I agreed with Jack every time but I never knew that it was sending me deeper into an incongruent philosophy. (Confused now ;| )

    If a nuclear bomb was about to go off in 5 mins and you had to illegally search someones home on a hot tip that the detonator was inside, would you think it was ok then or still against your philosophy?
    And would you give the OK for the search if the bomb was beside you?

    Because I was able to agree with congruence up to a point then all my reasoning and survival kicked in and now I am confused.

    Looking forward to your response 🙂

    Thanks

    1. Well I won't be so sanctimonious to say I wouldn't stab someone in the knee to prevent a nuclear attack. I doubt anyone can really know what they would do unless they were in that situation. Some thoughts on all this though...

      The Jack Bauer cowboy tactics look sexy on TV and seem like a good approach when presented in that context. But every repressive dictator believes in their cause the same way. I promise you the Castro brothers in Cuba use a similar rational to justify the oppression they use on their citizens.

      President Bush certainly wasn't above using them. But now every US soldier in a theater of war faces similar torture because we've gone down the slippery slope of waterboarding and torture. And I predict it will take decades before the real extent of the domestic spying, wiretapping and other illegal activity was used on the US people under the guise of the "Patriot" act.

      At the end of the day, we each have to be responsible for our own actions. And if you don;t live by principles, you have no moral compass to guide you.

      -RG

      1. Tough one this. My mind has been on a ping pong since this was topic was posted.

        Congruent philosophy really comes down to are you willing to die for what you believe. Until that is a yes then we really do not have a congruent philosophy at all.

        If we would break the philosophy to stop a nuclear bomb right beside us that was minutes from detonation then how far back is ok. 5mins, 30mins, 5 hours, a day, a week, a month, 10 years.

        Unless we say that we would absolutely die to protect our philosophy and let the bomb go off rather than illegally search a house then we are not congruent.

        I don't think that I have any philosophy that I would die to protect because basically everything I have ever believed has turned out to not be true, just a viewpoint at that stage in my life. I am always open to change and a higher viewpoint so to die to have a limited perspective would be insanity to me.

        I am all about survival as a philosophy. Go to the end so I can live out this life to the max. I know this has it's limitations also, but if i'm honest and it came to crunch point I would do almost anything to survive.

        Wow! as I write this I see the spiral that we could get into. And what we would be able to justify. Just as Bush did. I just don't know what I would really be willing to die for if I was faced with it!

        1. These are the wisest words I have read on this- and possibly any other- blog:
          "I don’t think that I have any philosophy that I would die to protect because basically everything I have ever believed has turned out to not be true, just a viewpoint at that stage in my life. I am always open to change and a higher viewpoint so to die to have a limited perspective would be insanity to me."

          Great!

      2. "At the end of the day, we each have to be responsible for our own actions. And if you don;t live by principles, you have no moral compass to guide you." Says it all..... Thank You
        In Oneness,
        Rob Wheeler

  9. Thanks Randy for encouraging us to have a Prosperity Philosophy.
    You made me think about this topic and it was hard to me recognize that freedom is the basic tenet of my inner being.
    Attempt to control the behavior of others (through influence or coercion) is almost impossible and it creates more struggle in our lives. I understood that diversity is most beneficial that sameness.

  10. Hi Randy-

    I'd like your thoughts on this, regarding a "congruent philosophy." These are head scratchers for me:

    How can one be "pro life" and then support a war and the death penalty? How can one rail against government entitlement programs and then collect social security and medicare? How can one rail against "big government" and then scream when the government doesn't step in quickly enough or with enough money during a disaster?

    Your thoughts?

  11. We live in a complex world. Find the truth that works for you and stop putting people on pedestals including randy cause they will disappoint you every time.

  12. Complex... is that what a lot of us are making this subject ?? is it really??... (a “congruent philosophy.”) is there not hundreds if not thousands of individuals that live and die by a "real philosophy" "there philosophy" How many really face the situations or examples given above, for that mater how many of us right here even faced something close to that ??? If you have a true “congruent philosophy.” You will attract that, that supports our “congruent philosophy.”

    Is it that simple ?

    I believe so.

    Is there people that died in or for what they believed... YES will more die in or for what the believe ... YES

    "True Courage-non conformity"

    PS No one can let "you" down only "you" can let "you" down

  13. The only reason our rights are getting infringed on more is because the PTB wants more power, more control. The more robotic our country is as a nation the easier we are to brainwash and do what they want... It's like the movie idiocracy! The people in that movie did anything they were told.

    The government should be smaller than a peanut! in my opinion at least... I believe that we should practically have anarchy! Just have a very small government and police force for crimes like theft, murder etc... We don't need 90% of the police we have now! all they do is ticket us for speeding! then come up with new "violations" that people think are laws but are really statutes.

    Excited to see freedom awareness come back 🙂 sooner than later! it's growing in consciousness! that's for sure!

    Thanks for the great post randy! always love to hear your thoughts.

    David

    1. Hey David- I see that we are watching the same internet videos and information- great stuff.

      BTW- I LOVE the movie Idiocracy- it's supposed to be a comedy, but I think it's a horror movie!!!

  14. Here's a great example of a incongruent philosophy. The Progressive Libertarian Party's position on national service.

    http://www.mjposner.com/plp/index_files/page0002.html

    Government Service: All 18 year olds will serve two years in either the US Military or US Peace Corp. This will be an unpaid position (room and board). In exchange, two years of college or tech school will be tuition free.

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  • 31 comments on “Do You Have a Prosperity Philosophy?”

    1. Thanks again, Randy -- As always, you're thoughts on prosperity are fascinating, usually provocatively insightful and helpful. I appreciate you and your posts.

      Glad you're celebrating life in Sydney - another of the world's most wonderful places to be!

      Marlyn and I send our best, Art

    2. Welcome back to Oz, Randy - I'm flying to Sydney myself tomorrow - NSAA meeting tomorrow night. Of course you can not support the right of free speech without granting it to everyone. And if I insist on my right to wear pants or a skirt in public, I must also defend the right of women to wear the burqua. Of course every freedom and right requires the responsibility to use it with respect. That's what we're forgetting. For people to live healthily and happily in communities they need to agree on their values and boundaries. As our immigration and transportation activity has increased, so our communities have lost their physical boundaries and forgotten the importance of negotiating their behavioral boundaries. It's the reponsibility of a community to maintain those boundaries through communication and negotiation - that's why we vote. And anyone who doesn't vote obviously doesn't care. I'm always hearing 'oh, they're all hopeless'. That's blame and victimhood. We don't always get what we want in this world (our beliefs get in the way). We often don't get what we deserve - which for some of us is just as well. But we always get what we settle for.

    3. Last night i finished my second read of Atlas Shrugged. Fantastic reading and learning experience. How philosophy of objectivism is used in reality of today I am learning from you. This time I read Aflas Shrugged it was a much deeper experience - Thank You!

      By the way, one thing I want to lead your attention to.
      When you posted the 'Are You Ready to Be Amazing' blog you wrote:
      "I'm not perfect. Just amazing".

      It puzzled me and my reply by then was: "But Randy IS perfect. As is everything in the univers, has always been, and will always be. Couldn’t it be that imperfection is an illusion?" 
      It leaned more to the oriental philosophies, and holds true in that it's about acceptance not of our vices but as things as they are. 

      You might find it interesting to ponder over what Ayn Rand wrote in John Galts speach somewhere in the end where she let him give solutions (in my paperback edition it is on page 969). He is saying:
       "Discard that unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming that man is imperfect. By what standard do you damn him when you claim it? Accept the fact that in the realm of morality nothing less than perfection will do. But perfection is not to be gauged by mystic commandments to practice the impossible, and your moral stature is not to be gauged by matters not open to your choice. Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality - not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.

      In wonder and respect Pierre Leyssac, CPH

      1. Actually I vacillate on that wording. You may hear me say we're all perfect creations of our creator and other times speak of the imperfections of our humanity. But I do believe it is all divine order, even the things that seem to be less than perfect. It's a choice of words and one as a wordsmith I haven't yet decided on. However, I do love Rand's take on moral perfection. An ideal I strive for.

        -RG

    4. I have always struggled with being congruent with my philosophy. I am not sure if I am congruent or justifying my reasons for not being congruent.

      For example, previously we had this discussion about racism and how a business owner should be able to refuse service to someone based on race.

      I argued that they could not because racism hurts others and is not rational. Am I congruent with my beliefs or just making excuses.

      I am still struggling with this 🙂

      As for letting a killer go, I agree they have rights like everyone else, but it is the remedy that I do not agree with.

      Throwing out the evidence is a remedy to violating their rights. If my rights were violated and I did not commit a crime what is my remedy? To sue.

      So my question would be why is throwing out evidence a remedy for violating the killer's rights?

      Could we not come up with another remedy and still lock them away, thereby protecting the rights of the general population against violence.

      I will be honest, I have no problem with the idea that the victim's rights outweigh the killer's rights and therefore if the evidence convicts the killer then they have no recourse.

      If they are found innocent then they can sue for having their rights violated.

      Am I out to lunch on this?

    5. Very interesting post Randy. People react with their guts, not with their brain... Not every one can make allowances. We have to accept some situations (even if they're unbearable) in order to protect our rights and freedom. We all have to think about this.

    6. It's not really all that possible to be only "Brain" centered, and the talk of "congruence" has merit, but again, is ultimately not all that possible.

      The idea of Crime isn't really congruent, and no "crime and punishment" really can be.

      Sure, it's TERRIBLE when someone kills another with a gun, but what about the gun wielder's thoughts? And what about when a company kills someone slowly with cigarettes?

      It seems to me that congruence would always be an IDEAL, but not possible without changing something fundamental.

    7. I think what you're saying is that we must 'walk the talk".. Living a life of paradox will produce the same results and that's to say more paradox. And that ain't good.

      Holding the vision and FEELING the knowing that it will happen through our thoughts and actions is crucial. And of course being grateful for every little thing in our lives is important too.. However, living a life of vision and not being grateful to those we meet, interact with or the things we take for granted is indeed paradox. I think we MUST maintain integrity with Who We Are. Failure to do that means we're out of integrity and we all know what happens there..

      Thanks Randy.

    8. Randy, reading your posts is like being poked in the head with a stick and then kicked in the stomach 🙂 in a good way tho. lol

      You are probably not an advocate of 24. I used to watch it and thought that the idiots who worked within the law were just stupid and flaky. Jack Bauer (the hero) would go and stab someone in the knee to get the info from him. Then in the nick of time he would use the info he gathered 'illegally' to disarm a nuclear bomb and save millions of lives. Then he was arrested for breaking the law, and I thought the system was stupid.

      I have to admit that I agreed with Jack every time but I never knew that it was sending me deeper into an incongruent philosophy. (Confused now ;| )

      If a nuclear bomb was about to go off in 5 mins and you had to illegally search someones home on a hot tip that the detonator was inside, would you think it was ok then or still against your philosophy?
      And would you give the OK for the search if the bomb was beside you?

      Because I was able to agree with congruence up to a point then all my reasoning and survival kicked in and now I am confused.

      Looking forward to your response 🙂

      Thanks

      1. Well I won't be so sanctimonious to say I wouldn't stab someone in the knee to prevent a nuclear attack. I doubt anyone can really know what they would do unless they were in that situation. Some thoughts on all this though...

        The Jack Bauer cowboy tactics look sexy on TV and seem like a good approach when presented in that context. But every repressive dictator believes in their cause the same way. I promise you the Castro brothers in Cuba use a similar rational to justify the oppression they use on their citizens.

        President Bush certainly wasn't above using them. But now every US soldier in a theater of war faces similar torture because we've gone down the slippery slope of waterboarding and torture. And I predict it will take decades before the real extent of the domestic spying, wiretapping and other illegal activity was used on the US people under the guise of the "Patriot" act.

        At the end of the day, we each have to be responsible for our own actions. And if you don;t live by principles, you have no moral compass to guide you.

        -RG

        1. Tough one this. My mind has been on a ping pong since this was topic was posted.

          Congruent philosophy really comes down to are you willing to die for what you believe. Until that is a yes then we really do not have a congruent philosophy at all.

          If we would break the philosophy to stop a nuclear bomb right beside us that was minutes from detonation then how far back is ok. 5mins, 30mins, 5 hours, a day, a week, a month, 10 years.

          Unless we say that we would absolutely die to protect our philosophy and let the bomb go off rather than illegally search a house then we are not congruent.

          I don't think that I have any philosophy that I would die to protect because basically everything I have ever believed has turned out to not be true, just a viewpoint at that stage in my life. I am always open to change and a higher viewpoint so to die to have a limited perspective would be insanity to me.

          I am all about survival as a philosophy. Go to the end so I can live out this life to the max. I know this has it's limitations also, but if i'm honest and it came to crunch point I would do almost anything to survive.

          Wow! as I write this I see the spiral that we could get into. And what we would be able to justify. Just as Bush did. I just don't know what I would really be willing to die for if I was faced with it!

          1. These are the wisest words I have read on this- and possibly any other- blog:
            "I don’t think that I have any philosophy that I would die to protect because basically everything I have ever believed has turned out to not be true, just a viewpoint at that stage in my life. I am always open to change and a higher viewpoint so to die to have a limited perspective would be insanity to me."

            Great!

        2. "At the end of the day, we each have to be responsible for our own actions. And if you don;t live by principles, you have no moral compass to guide you." Says it all..... Thank You
          In Oneness,
          Rob Wheeler

    9. Thanks Randy for encouraging us to have a Prosperity Philosophy.
      You made me think about this topic and it was hard to me recognize that freedom is the basic tenet of my inner being.
      Attempt to control the behavior of others (through influence or coercion) is almost impossible and it creates more struggle in our lives. I understood that diversity is most beneficial that sameness.

    10. Hi Randy-

      I'd like your thoughts on this, regarding a "congruent philosophy." These are head scratchers for me:

      How can one be "pro life" and then support a war and the death penalty? How can one rail against government entitlement programs and then collect social security and medicare? How can one rail against "big government" and then scream when the government doesn't step in quickly enough or with enough money during a disaster?

      Your thoughts?

    11. We live in a complex world. Find the truth that works for you and stop putting people on pedestals including randy cause they will disappoint you every time.

    12. Complex... is that what a lot of us are making this subject ?? is it really??... (a “congruent philosophy.”) is there not hundreds if not thousands of individuals that live and die by a "real philosophy" "there philosophy" How many really face the situations or examples given above, for that mater how many of us right here even faced something close to that ??? If you have a true “congruent philosophy.” You will attract that, that supports our “congruent philosophy.”

      Is it that simple ?

      I believe so.

      Is there people that died in or for what they believed... YES will more die in or for what the believe ... YES

      "True Courage-non conformity"

      PS No one can let "you" down only "you" can let "you" down

    13. The only reason our rights are getting infringed on more is because the PTB wants more power, more control. The more robotic our country is as a nation the easier we are to brainwash and do what they want... It's like the movie idiocracy! The people in that movie did anything they were told.

      The government should be smaller than a peanut! in my opinion at least... I believe that we should practically have anarchy! Just have a very small government and police force for crimes like theft, murder etc... We don't need 90% of the police we have now! all they do is ticket us for speeding! then come up with new "violations" that people think are laws but are really statutes.

      Excited to see freedom awareness come back 🙂 sooner than later! it's growing in consciousness! that's for sure!

      Thanks for the great post randy! always love to hear your thoughts.

      David

      1. Hey David- I see that we are watching the same internet videos and information- great stuff.

        BTW- I LOVE the movie Idiocracy- it's supposed to be a comedy, but I think it's a horror movie!!!

    14. Here's a great example of a incongruent philosophy. The Progressive Libertarian Party's position on national service.

      http://www.mjposner.com/plp/index_files/page0002.html

      Government Service: All 18 year olds will serve two years in either the US Military or US Peace Corp. This will be an unpaid position (room and board). In exchange, two years of college or tech school will be tuition free.

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