by Mr. Mean-Spirited
Think of life as something like trying to walk across a highway. Got that in your mind? Traffic is moving along pretty heavy, but you still need to find a way to get to the other side of the freeway. Even when there is no crosswalk, even when there is no pedestrian causeway, you very existence depends on getting across that road. Vehicle after vehicle zooms past. You do not hold any animosity for the unknown drivers – all of them have their own particular places to go. You wait for the right moment to walk across the road.
All of a sudden, you notice a slight gap in vehicles. You realize that if you maintain a precise pace, you can just make it across. Not a second to spare. At just the right moment, you enter the roadway – after making your way across the first lane, there is no turning back. Moving vehicles are just inches away from your flesh. You’re committed to the plan you have chosen. You have to do this.
Then one car slows down. What the hell? You had expected the vehicle to maintain the same speed and to pass you by now. Now you have no way of knowing exactly what the driver might be intending: just to stop so that you might get hit by a moving vehicle in the lane beside him – or maybe he has merely reduced speed because he thinks some different traffic law applies. The sedan, you notice with some caution, has not completely stopped – just reduced velocity. You believe that the driver is just being some sort of a Good Samaritan – but he has now made it impossible for you to get to the other side.
Because of the operator’s unwelcome help, your very life is now in jeopardy. If only that other person had just minded his own business, you might have made it where you needed to go. Now you are stuck in between life-threatening vehicles – all because some bastard wanted to be nice. Kindness kills.
by Mr. Mean-Spirited
An honorable man is a hostile man. A brave man is a brutal man. A courageous man is a cruel man. Above all else, a dignified man makes everyone around him feel dispirited.
But a cheerful guy is always a coward. A generous man is invariably a gutless man. A kind man is completely controlled by mass culture.
The ruling class wants everyone to be nice to each other because the population is more easily managed that way. A populace is so much more easily controlled if the citizens are constantly apologizing to each other. A nice guy is easier to manipulate: he doesn’t object, he doesn’t complain, he doesn’t even raise his voice. You make adults obey exactly the same way that you make children behave: by getting them to be good.
If you want to reject social indoctrination, then you have got to do everything that society opposes. If humanitarians tell you that selfishness is wrong, then you need to become completely self-centered. If altruists say that the ego is a bad thing, then you better become more egotistical. Maintaining a continual attitude of unpleasantness is the only way that you are going to be able to resist socialization. Unkindness is not just a matter of self-respect, as much as unfriendliness is a means of self-protection.
To another freethinker, the presence of a fellow individualist might be intensely inspirational – but to the human horde, an individualist is going to be profoundly demoralizing. Only to another person who values personal freedom will a misfit seem encouraging – the rest of humanity will find him incredibly depressing. If you aren’t antagonizing your neighbors, then you aren’t doing individualism. If you aren’t detested by your fellow human beings, then you haven’t accomplished anything.
You become an individualist not by rejecting all contact with other people, but by reforming the way that you interact with others. You do not have to withdraw to a desert island (no matter how tempting that sounds), but you have to carry that island within you (palm fronds and all). You gain freedom by surrounding your personality by a sort of “mental moat.” You become an individualist by conveying such an attitude of contempt toward other people that you become an outcast in the eyes of the rest of society. You communicate such an attitude of repugnance that other people do not want to come near you.
The only way that you are going to defend your independence is by actively defeating all do-gooders, and that destruction is going to make you seem a threatening figure to the more subservient herd. Say what you like about an obnoxious jerk: at least he isn’t conned by some fraudulent charity. A man without sympathy will never be suckered. So you might as well remain unkind: others may hate you, but at least they won’t be taking advantage of you.
Be alienated, be alert, be alarmed. But don’t be nice about it.
