Joie de vive

aka "Joy of Life"

I had an epiphany last night and it made me feel real good about myself and everything frankly.

Let me tell you a bit about what set the stage for the epiphany and then tell you what it is.

I got a phone call last night from a good friend of mine. She called and we talked about how all her friends and members of her community found me to be a great, nice guy and that they want to spend more time with me. Plans, as far as I know, involved dinner and dancing, which always sounds fun to me. :)

Anyway, that was very uplifting and made me feel good that being myself was not in vain.

Secondly, I was reading some philosophy of Max Stirner who talks about Unions of Egoists and that the individual and self-interest are the most important things for a better society.

And so what hit me was that, I am great person. :)

Sounds egotistical but frankly that's ok.

I have come to realize that what is important to me in my wants and needs, and that being myself regardless of situations is very important to me. Sounds like this could be a bad thing right?

It's not. Because I also realized at the same time is that what also gives me pleasure is interacting with people that I enjoy. Be it friends or family or whatever, it gives me pleasure to be with them and all-in-all it is in my best self-interest to do what gives me pleasure.

The other caveat that goes with that is that I want all my friends and family to do the same thing! I want them to be themselves no matter what and do what gives them pleasure. It is in this that, by being together and having social intercourse (and maybe the other kind to) that both have a positive affect in our self-interests.

And yet another thing that I realized is that by satisfying my self-interest in wanting my friends and family to realize their self-interest I gain. It easily follows if everyone were to follow that principle. If your self-interest negatively affects your friends' and family's self-interest, then you are, by stating that you gain from their attaining their self-interest, hurting yourself, and hence hurting your self-interest.

What this also leads to is, directly or indirectly, by negatively affecting someone else's self-interest you are only hurting yourself directly or indirectly.

What I am trying to say I guess is, support everyone's self-interest as long as it doesn't negatively affect anyone else's self-interest. In this we are able to have a positive impact on everyone, directly or indirectly, while never harming our own self-interest.

So the idea of self-sacrifice negatively affects you and, by sacrificing to others, you are lowering their positive self-interest indirectly and hence you are in effect hurting everyone by your own self-sacrifice.

In a strange way it is very liberating. By serving my own self-interest, which is intimately involved in seeing my friends' and family's self-interest achieved and thus positively affecting me, I can make the world better for me and my community.

In effect, community is served best by achieving your self-interest, by helping those you care about achieve their self-interest because it helps you achieve your self-interest, and by not negatively affecting anyone else's self-interest then the community and society as a whole achieves positive self-interest.

I love epiphanies.