You'll notice that I advocate a philosophy around here that I like to call "Spiritual Materialism." Spiritual Materialism is a philosophy that holds man to be a combination of spiritual and material factors. These factors are only conflict when the principles behind them are improperly understood. When properly understood and combined, they lead to a general state of happiness within one's life.
Spiritual Materialism understands reality in terms of individuals. Groups are simply collections of individuals who are usually working to achieve a particular end. Personal values must be understood in relation to one's own rights as an individual.
The first and primary right is the Right to Life. You have a right to live. In being conceived, you had a right to be born. Your right to live is based solely on the fact that you exist. As funny as it might sound, in order to accept your rights, you must accept that you exist - "I think, therefore I am." You wouldn't be reading this blog if you didn't exist.
From your right to life follows your right to secure your right to life. From this follows many other rights - a right to property, a right to self defense, a right to free speech, a right to be secure in your person, etc. You have these rights by nature - no government has bestowed them upon you. Likewise, in recognizing your own rights, you must acknowledge that others have the same rights. To deny natural rights to others is ultimately to deny that they belong to you as well.
What follows proceeds from my post A Defense of Capitalism. Your rights necessitate the existence of laws, which in turn necessitates the existence of government to make, enforce, and judge according to those laws. There's no legitimate means by which a government can violate the rights of some citizens to give "extra" rights to others. Governments don't have a right to take extra amounts of tax from certain citizens whom are wealth off to pay for social programs that are beyond the scopes of those governments. Social betterment proceeds from individual efforts, not government social programs.
When we look at ourselves as individuals, we find two principles at work - the spiritual and the material. The spiritual is that which is inside of us. It's what we think, what we feel, what we desire to create. It exists at our innermost core. The material, on the other hand, is the outer world around us, that context in which we interact with other individuals. It's literally matter. Where the two meet forms our waking lives, where we have a chance to manifest the spiritual into the material, through which we create. All which is created is a manifestation of the spiritual into the material, bestowing a spiritual nature upon material things. A great painting, for example, was the product of one's inner spirit manifested onto a material canvas. When men create, they bestow a spiritual quality into that which is, by nature, material.
This spirituality is best understood in the traditional sign of the sun, which is a circle with a dot in the middle of it. If you take a pencil and compass, place the needle on a fixed dot, and proceed to rotate the compass, you create a circle. The dot is its spirit, its essence, while the circle is its manifestation. Whether you are a theist or an atheist, you most certainly have that inner core from which all that you do manifests. This is spirit - it is your essence.
The proper manifestation of your spirit into the material world makes your spirit stronger, through bettering your material wealth. If you create something of value, you will make money, which in turn will allow you to live well physically. If you manage your wealth well, you will be able to create a better life for yourself and give yourself both the times and means to create far more. Your spirit and your material self play off of each other to determine you as a person. There is much esoteric meaning behind this interplay. I won't divulge that here. It's safe simply to say that this is all worth meditating on. Outer reality and inner reality merge to create YOU.
The wealth enhancement aspects of this blog exist to encourage you to seek the progress of which I speak. The political aspects are but a means to examine the world and safeguard that which you create. The spiritual and philosophical postings are meant to encourage you to seek the spiritual aspects of the material life around you, that you might be more fruitful.
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