Understanding Primitive Motivation

In a free market world, people transact and interact with one another on the basis of free, uncompelled choices in their own best interests, rather than being dictated by the will of another.

In reading the letters and editorials in the local newspapers, their offerings are almost exclusively of the mentality that simply presenting the authentic facts and letting people make up their own minds, are not an option or their purpose. The autocratic editors pre-select only those articles that make people do/think whatever it is they want them to -- usually under the mistaken notion that they are more enlightened than everybody else. They are the Boss, “the experts” (bureaucrats)-- so if people don’t do as they say, they get punished and disciplined until they have the right attitude of accepting their proper places and the “right” authorities, which are invariably themselves.

These people have anointed themselves as the leaders because they are “enlightened” -- or “liberal” for short. How one makes such people have an insight into their own behaviors and the understanding of others, is the problem of cultures and individuals dealing with those they presume share the same values of freedom and independence that they do -- and why they cannot understand that it is not sufficient to just insist that one be “reasonable,” to ensure one’s safety and security.

People who believe that it is proper to force others to their own will no matter what, think lying, cheating, and killing others is justified in achieving those ends. Such people have to be controlled and monitored -- but fortunately, they are not most people. They are roughly 5%, who because of their destructive behaviors, have a disproportionate impact on the rest -- and disproportionately highest effect among themselves.

That is to say, violent (criminal) people, inflict the greatest destruction among similarly violent people -- and in that fashion, tend to self-regulate their own influence. While it is true that criminals victimize innocent people, they tend to victimize those who share similar values -- of also being inclined to abuse and exploit the people they fraternize with.

So one of the great and necessary skills, is to be able to discern that manner of motivations and orientation in others -- and remove oneself from that exposure and proximity, in favor of those one can transact and interact in good faith and a high degree of confidence in sharing an understanding. Rather than being “politically incorrect,” this is what all life forms do -- find and create those conditions that favor their survival, rather than allow themselves to be extinguished or live their lives under great hardship, duress and disadvantage equally randomly.

Treating each appropriately, is not having double-standards and being contradictory, as the guilty will accuse, but having one standard for the fair treatment of all. Responses that are inappropriate to the event, is not consistent with the overall objective of creating a “more perfect” (better) life, that should be the right of everyone, and not just the right of a self-anointed few. That is what one is discerning and discriminating for -- and not heed the demands and commandments, that one should not determine these matters for themselves, in their own best interests -- even making it illegal to act in their own self-defense and better judgment, claiming that they voted to surrender those “inalienable rights” -- fairly and squarely, in a democratic process.