The First Rule
by Robert S Strength
This blog is the personal account of Robert S Strength.
I have a few rules. I break them sometimes, and usually regret doing so. I am not religious, or more accurately, I am an agnostic. (A person who does not make any claim to knowledge about the existance or nature of god or the unknowable.) My rules have become a philosophy. The rules don't have numbers on them, and I'm not going to give you a list and pretend that it is complete. The current list exists only in my head and is too long to remember in a sitting, but there is one rule that stands above all the other rules. It is the rule that started the whole concept of having a set of rules, or a code to live by. This is the First Rule.
That's the big first rule. It is the core of the entire philosophy and is the catalyst for most of my life. It is an order of action. It is a task given to myself in the effort of being a better person. In order to be what you believe is good and right, to be what you love, you have to know what you love. You have to understand yourself and your desires, and you have to seek reason and purpose in life.
So what do I want to be? What is a "good" man, after all? We learn a lot from the people who raise us. Our parents give us some of our basic methods of thinking. Our friends show us things our parents didn't, and we grow more. We learn how to interact with the world in different ways, but most of us respect the same things. There are truths that everyone eventually arrives at.
Why do so many people think that stealing is so obviously wrong? Theft is a crime in every single culture on Earth, and it is punishable harshly everywhere. Why is it wrong for one human being to take from another? Is survival not the end goal of all people? If I can take a person's things and survive easier, am I not fulfilling my human nature?
There are so many people who have laid a foundation of philosophy that it would seem like a
Be good and right.
So what do I want to be? What is a "good" man, after all? We learn a lot from the people who raise us. Our parents give us some of our basic methods of thinking. Our friends show us things our parents didn't, and we grow more. We learn how to interact with the world in different ways, but most of us respect the same things. There are truths that everyone eventually arrives at.
Why do so many people think that stealing is so obviously wrong? Theft is a crime in every single culture on Earth, and it is punishable harshly everywhere. Why is it wrong for one human being to take from another? Is survival not the end goal of all people? If I can take a person's things and survive easier, am I not fulfilling my human nature?
There are so many people who have laid a foundation of philosophy that it would seem like a
simple task to hop on the internet and Google the term philosophy and spend a bit reading up. After that you would have a logical and diverse understanding of the function of morality on the actions of humans living in a society, right? Good...fucking...luck.
The first two links there on Google are ads to some super-expensive skin creme and the third is for wikipedia, which has an astounding amount of information on the subject, about seven times as much information as would be needed to confuse Stephen Hawking. It's about as neatly bundled as a sack of leaves, and it means about as much.
The truth is, your morality is built by your own experiences and your take on them. You simply can't learn them like you could learn math from a book. You have to have experiences and develop into your moral code. If a bully beats you up every day in school, the result is that your philosophy on life changes, and in your world bullies are a big problem. I happen to have been six feet tall since I started high school, and can't remember having been punched or punching anyone the entire course of my teenage years. In my world, bullies are not that big of a deal.
All that long windedness comes down to this final point:
I am writing this blog to get experience as a writer. The subject matter will be largely drawn my own experiences and my personal take on the world. I will discuss, without asking forgiveness, every subject in candor and honesty. I will try to communicate my philosophy through my experiences and my ongoing life.
The first two links there on Google are ads to some super-expensive skin creme and the third is for wikipedia, which has an astounding amount of information on the subject, about seven times as much information as would be needed to confuse Stephen Hawking. It's about as neatly bundled as a sack of leaves, and it means about as much.
The truth is, your morality is built by your own experiences and your take on them. You simply can't learn them like you could learn math from a book. You have to have experiences and develop into your moral code. If a bully beats you up every day in school, the result is that your philosophy on life changes, and in your world bullies are a big problem. I happen to have been six feet tall since I started high school, and can't remember having been punched or punching anyone the entire course of my teenage years. In my world, bullies are not that big of a deal.
All that long windedness comes down to this final point:
I am writing this blog to get experience as a writer. The subject matter will be largely drawn my own experiences and my personal take on the world. I will discuss, without asking forgiveness, every subject in candor and honesty. I will try to communicate my philosophy through my experiences and my ongoing life.
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