Peter says,

“Bob,

Who the hell are you? Because of all your talk, I just figured out something extremely important in my personal life that relates to my family. Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.

That means thanks in bad guy talk. ”

Comment by Peter

MY REPLY:

Ain’t it amazing what happens when you get that ole noggin going?

Contrary to all our training, the fact is that a healthy human mind is NOT divided into neat categories. So if someone is loosening up your frontal lobe with political reflections, that SHOULD give you some insight into your own personal life that you can use.

I spill my guts here, but only when I think it might interest you.

I also spill my guts here because ***I*** want to be sure where my opinions are coming from. That should give you some prodding to think of where your opinions are coming from.

The Ten Commandments are a lot easier than The Golden Rule. To follow the Commandments is like reading a set of directions.

But The Golden Rule requires you to carefully seprate what somebody else really wants from what you think he wants. But along with this effort comes a huge benefit. You begin to understand what YOU want. You begin to think seriously about what your family really wants and what they need from you. The Commandments won’t do that for you.

This is just one EXAMPLE. If thinking about politics does not cause you to examine yourself, then it is simply wrong. Politics is a way of getting what you really want, especially things you want because YOU feel they are good.

Experts today tell us not only the means but the ends. But telling us what our ends are is exactly what an expert is NOT for. I hire a legal expert to attain MY goals, not his. I hire a professor to teach me what I need to know to do what I want done, not to tell me what I want done.

So it’s not just to be impressive that I keep repeating that, in all the world, there is one person you desperately need to be your friend:

YOU.

You do NOT have “mere opinions” as opposed to some preacher or professor who has an objective outlook.

All this interrelationship is essential if you are to make a friend of the friend you need most. All this is essential if you are to do unto to follow The Golden Rule. All this is essential if you are to have freedom. By definition, a person is not free if he lets someone else dictate to him what he wants, even if the person doing the dictating is a libertarian.

As I said before, what I really want to do is to think out and state things that you are dealing with around the edges. But also, if I am really successful, it will not just be on the specific points you were thinking about that I will ring a bell.

If I really do what I want to do, you will get a revelation like Peter did, “Well, damn, that’s the approach I should use in dealing with this personal or family situation!”

Eric Hoffer was a writer of aphorisms. He said that he had a peculiar way of doing research for his writing. He would have an idea and then he would go to the library and start looking at things randomly. If he was there for half an hour and did not see any relevance to the concept he had in mind, he would go on to something else.

In other words, Hoffer felt that what he was thinking about had to apply GENERALLY or it did not apply at all. If what he was thinking about had the general truth he was looking for, something he read in that half hour would be affected by it.

Everybody else goes to the library and digs for something that relates to what they are thinking. Hoffer wanted ideas that interrelated with everything.

I want to get your frontal lobe going and your guts capable of standing up against dictators.

Once you do that, I want you to take it run with it.

I got a lot of guts and a hell of a frontal lobe, but I also have muscles. The fact that I have muscles doesn’t mean I want to do all the work myself.

I want co-workers, not disciples.