To Those of You who consider yourselves to be alive:
Know this. You are endowed with certain rights. America's forefathers highlighted them, but they have always been the rights of human beings.
- Life - You have the right to be alive and no one may take that from you.
- Liberty - You have the right to be free.
- The Pursuit of Happiness - Notice that it says pursuit. This doesn't mean that you are able to be happy at the expense of others, and it doesn't mean that you are automatically given happiness just because you think you deserve to be happy. It merely means that no one should be allowed to keep you from trying to be happy on your own.
Let me take these points one step at a time to make certain that everyone has the gist of where I'm going with this.
You do not have the right to live at the expense of others, nor does anyone have the right to live at your expense. You cannot give your life so that someone else can live, and you cannot take life from someone else so that you can live. These are very key points. Think about them. This also means that you can't use people for your own gain, to use their backs for work and then call it your own.
You have the right to be free from unjust incarceration - both physical and mental. Just as no one can live for you, no one can think for you. Very few people realize that thinking for themselves is a privilege and a right and very few people exercise that right, or even want to. Think of the presidential election that everyone is in such an uproar over. Did you vote for the candidate that YOU decided was the best, or did you vote for the one that someone else told you to vote for, or worse yet, did you not vote because you thought that your vote wasn't worth it? You allowed someone else to think for you, and you gave up your right to decide for yourself, to think for yourself. People give up their mental liberties everyday. Why? Because it easier to let someone else do the thinking and the deciding for you. Also, because if the choice was wrong, you can say that it wasn't your fault. If you do not think for yourself, you are giving up your mental liberty, as surely as if you let someone lock you in a dungeon away from your physical liberty.
The pursuit of happiness is the most difficult of all. Today people expect to be happy because they feel it is their right to be happy, because they deserve to be happy, when they don't realize that being happy is not something that someone can give you, and no one deserves to be happy just on the basis that they want to be happy. You must pursue happiness. You must work for happiness. It doesn't just fall into your lap. You cannot derive happiness simply from stating that you deserve to be happy. Joy is man's greatest achievement, and millions never achieve joy because they expect someone or something else to make them joyful. If you are unhappy, it is because you sit back and expect someone or something to bring you happiness without ever having to work toward making yourself happy. Joy comes from within, from a sense of pride and a sense of self-fulfillment. Seek joy and happiness within yourself.
Nowhere in the list of human rights is 1) the right to physically or mentally harm others for your own benefit, 2) the right for someone else to educate, feed, clothe, house and nurse you, 3) the right for you to impose your thoughts, opinions, beliefs and ideas on someone else, 4) the right for you to use someone else's thoughts, ideas, or labor as your own 5) the right to lay back and let someone else think for you.
I write this because it is my goal to help generate a kernel of independent thought within those who read this. It is my sincerest hope that in some small way, I have helped pull a single person along the path of objective thought so that someday they can say "I think for myself!" and actually mean it. This is not altruistic in nature, by any means. It is worth my time if I can generate one more person who will think for themselves, and save people from having to think for them. If I can pull the unthinkers away from people who will gladly think for them. (the ones who will gladly think for you are using you for their own purpose), then my work will have been worth it. I have no use for any of you beyond the things that you will create once you learn to stand on your own two feet.
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