Eric's Philosophy Page
I've had several life philosophies in my life.
Selfishness -- When I was a teenager, I thought that one should Be selfish, to take what you want out of life, so long as it is not at the expense of others.
Love thy neighbor -- Later, however, experience taught me that selfishness does not bring as much satisfaction as does altruism. I became enamored of the Christian philosophy of Love your neighbor as you would have your neighbor love you.
Utilitarianism -- While attending business school, I became familiar with the economic concept of utility, which is a fancy term for overall well-being. Further, it became clear (in an economic sense) that the way to optimize any system is to optimize each of its parts. The way to optimize a particular part of a system is to optimize it for the best results of the overall system. If all such parts of the system are so optimized, the system is optimized. I began to think of the world, and of mankind itself, as the system. Therefore, it made sense that the way we ought to live our lives, the way we ought to make each and every decision, is based on what we perceive will cause the best net result for the system (i.e., the world and society) as a whole.
The current life philosophy I advocate is twofold:
Everything we do should be what we perceive to be in the best net interest of the world and society as a whole. Note that it is usually in the best net interest of the world and society as a whole to love your neighbors as you would have them love you.
Because many decisions have virtually no perceptable effect on society as a whole, I suggest that another criteria governing every day decision making is to Always endeavor to do things which you are proud of and Always avoid doing things of which you are ashamed. I suggest that a test for whether you are ashamed of something is to ask yourself if you would have any reservations about telling anyone that you had done whatever action you are pondering. If you don't think that you could bring yourself to tell someone, you certainly aren't proud of the action, you may very well be ashamed of it, and you probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you do things which you are proud of and avoid doing things which you are ashamed of, you will like yourself more and you will avoid the problems of poor self-esteem.
My favorite philosopher is Ralph Waldo Emerson. His survey Self Reliance is an excellent piece that all people should read at least once in their lives (preferably in their early formative years). This work is one of the most quotable of all literature. Key quotes therefrom:
Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
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This page last updated 01/03/02
© 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002 Eric E. Haas