How To Pick-up Girls -- Or Why Chicks Dig Romantics

One of the great misconceptions concerning Romanticism, particularly among men, is that it is largely feminine in nature. Who can blame them? There is an entire section of bookstore fiction called "Romance" and an entire genre of film called romantic-comedy. Its all chick lit and chick flicks. Real men play sports and watch action films filled with wanton destruction and read Tom Clancy books.

The first step in tearing this misconception apart is a quick peek into the male psyche. Man is the producer; he is the hunter; he is the creature of action and material creation. The superior physical strength of the man allows him success and through competition with other men the stronger and more courageous men flourish.

It starts on the playground where the young lions develop their skills, and these testosterone fuelled wild boys find their place in the male hierarchy pretty early on. The aggressive, loud, and outspoken boys get the attention and increased social status which perpetuates itself as they get older. Success breeds success. The shy boys get sidelined which means less social experience, which means underdeveloped social skills, less social courage, and lower social status. When challenged by other boys they crumble, which means know your place or get put in your place. And who do the high status girl's fancy? Is it the nice, shy boy or the high status male?

Now unless you live in a retarded society, men generally grow-out of the physically oriented hierarchy. In modern civilization you don't pick fights in the office and meet co-workers in the parking structure after work. However, make no mistake, the hierarchy is still there. The competition is still there. You witness the male competitive nature in all areas of life, from business, to academia, to the arts. The winners and losers are still there. The man of courage, competence, and skill still rises to the top.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden Pond, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Nothing has really changed in the last 160 years, because most men want security and safety, especially if they have dependents. This means finding a job and keeping it for as long as possible. This means finding a place in the workplace hierarchy. This means having a routine incorporating work, family/social life, and leisure time and most of all maintaining that stasis. He pays homage to his innate masculine drives through his entertainment, the sympathetic viewing of sports and action movies, while he himself does nothing aside from the requirements for sustaining stasis.

Romanticism is a value driven lifestyle. This begins with the recognition of free will and the subsequent need to create and exchange values. This is the Romantic virtue of enterprise. The creation of values requires strength, courage, imagination, skill, determination, will power, self-belief, and passion. In the hero's journey from stasis, through chaos, and finally resting in a new stasis, it is in the state of chaos where true creation takes place.

One of my earliest memories involves me and the boy down the street playing when suddenly he kicked me. I was baffled. Why was he doing this to me? As I walked away, he followed after and kept kicking me. I wondered what I had done wrong as I guarded my bum with my hand and walked to the safety of my babysitter's house next door to his. This was chaos and I did not like it.

I know now that we were playing the social hierarchy game and I lost. I did not loose because I was "hurt". I lost because I did not want to play. One measure of strength among men is the ability to take abuse and still stand firm without retreating either physically by running away or mentally by going to that "safe place". Taking it like a man so to speak.

Whether you are creating a work of art, a machine, a company, or just making money work is involved, and that work is a movement through chaos: the mental chaos of intellectual creation, or the physical chaos of manual labour, or the tactical chaos of leadership. The mark of a man is his ability to produce/create values. The most successful of these men are the high-status males who have proven their worth. Those who avoid creation or only create what they need to maintain stasis are the lower status males dependent upon the production of the higher status males.

Women love men. The first criteria a straight woman has for a potential mate is that he is a man. From there we can say that she wants a quality man, in other words, she is attracted to the attributes associated with the high status men. These are the same qualities associated with the Romantic – strength, courage, imagination, skill, determination, will power, self-belief, and passion.

Romanticism is seen as feminine because the audience is largely female, however the subject of their attention are men of action. Therefore Romanticism itself is not feminine, but masculine. The Romantic man does not lead a life of quiet desperation. He is larger than life. Women find this very attractive.

This past month I have been catching-up on the final series of David Tennant's adventures as the Tenth Doctor in the Dr. Who series. I know many women who find the character attractive, but let's look at David Tennant. He is small, skinny, very pale, and has rather pointy features. He is not a conventionally good-looking man. Not ugly of course, but certain not a "hunk".

However, the character of The Doctor is very attractive to women because he incorporates all seven of the Romantic virtues. He is wise, proud, passionate, enterprising, magnanimous, chivalrous, and gallant. Specifically, he is easy-going, witty, clever, and more than a bit cheeky. There is also a deeper and darker aspect that flares to the surface from time to time usually born of righteous indignation and the occasional crack reveals deep emotional wounds, but these wounds are never paraded to others for their sympathy. He bears his own burdens like a man. And women love the mystery of the tortured soul.

Now in terms of fiction it is often said that women like drama. This is evident in the female attention given to soap operas. It might be equally said that men like chaos, as seen in the action film. This is not any old pointless chaos, but the chaos of creation. This is chaos with a purpose, be that purpose testing themselves against other men, or nature, or themselves. Deep down every man knows that his worth is measured through conflict and the absence of conflict is the absence of life. Nothing satisfies a woman's hunger for drama more than a man who is not afraid to embrace chaos.

So here we find the woman's dilemma. The good, stable, safe bet, kind and devoted man who satisfies her need for stasis cannot giver her drama, so she goes for the bad boy asshole who embraces chaos, though not as an act of creation. Remember the play ground hierarchy born of violence? These boys grown to men found that they could get values not by creation alone, but also through force, intimidation, and fraud. Victory in these conflicts increases their status, to a point, among those in their monkeysphere, but not necessarily in the broadest social sense. They thrive in chaos, whereas the Romantic is merely passing through it.

Women often say that they look for humour in a man. If that were true then the class clowns would get the hot girls and rock stars would take a back seat to stand-up comics. The truth is that humour demonstrates confidence and makes others feel happy. It's these positive feelings coupled with a display of social courage that attracts women, but too much becomes buffoonery which gets tiresome, annoying, and smells of trying too hard. Humour is part of the initial bonding process but too much kills the sincerity of passion.

What women really want is what women have always wanted. Women want their knight in shining armour. They want a man who is chivalrous and gallant. Two necessary ingredients in the creation of value are strength and courage. As seen in the bad boy, strength alone is not good enough. The strength needs to be used ethically, a concept known as chivalry. Gallantry is an easy-going, confident form of courage often accompanied by wit, thus incorporating the woman's professed desire for humour.

Let us presume, young man, that you have all these grand Romantic virtues. How is a woman to know that you possess them and therefore be attracted to you? The first is attitude. People who have these positive Romantic habits exhibit a certain manner through their body language and social interactions. For example, the passionate man is more interested in the world outside himself, so he would rather learn about other people than carry-on about himself. The proud man is so self-confident that he has nothing to prove to anyone so he does not behave arrogant or boorish. The gallant is so fearless that he can brush off the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune with a smile and a joke.

I remember a few occasions where I saw a very attractive women and I was afraid to approach her. Afterward I had a strange feeling that I could not put my finger on. Later I realised that I was feeling guilt. Why? Because I had sinned. I failed to act gallantly and thus lost a potential opportunity out of fear of failure. Such habitual behaviour leads to a life of quiet desperation. 

The second way that the Romantic publicises his attributes is through consequential possessions. If you have the virtues necessary to create and trade values, then it stands to reason that you have values. Women who look at a man's watch, shoes, or car are painted as being shallow and materialistic, but they are looking for signs of value-creation. 

Men believe that if they have these things then they will get the girl. No. These objects are merely symbols of the consequences of successful living. Anyone can wear a cross and not be a Christian. Likewise anyone can possess these things through trade, fortune, hook, or crook and yet not possess the whole package of Romantic virtues that women really want in a man.

One more thing about women. Generally speaking women are more social then men. They tend to move in herds, even to go to the toilet. Two girls may claim to hate each other and yet still herd-up. Social convention and status is much more important to women than to men. Even in the alternative scene which is supposedly counter to mainstream convention, girls will either choose the highest status men in that group (usually the guy most like the celebrity that they fancy) or they will go completely outside the scene for a man who may not be alternative, but is more socially acceptable in the broadest sense. This is my explanation for partnerships involving women who dress very romantically but choose men who are dressed quite ordinary.

As women mature social dictates rule their choices less and less until eventually they become like those old women who refuse to pluck those pesky two inch grey hairs sprouting from their faces. Yet even then their social orientation remains, albeit to a lesser degree from when they were teens.

This female social orientation may prove detrimental to the Romantic. As this rugged individualist charts his own life course the journey may take him into the wilderness. The woman may respect him or even glorify him, but she may not be attracted to him because he is so outwith the mainstream programs she is running. He is basically "weird". Imagine our Romantic builds a following. Now he has social status which makes him very attractive as a leader of men.

In the film Casablanca, Elsa has a choice between Laslo and Rick. Laslo is the Romantic outcast running for his life and fighting politically against the Nazis. Rick is also a Romantic, but he has social status and power. Elsa respects her husband, but she is attracted to Rick.

Philosophy began when someone went to a very wise man and asked, "What is the best way to live?" From that moment on the philosopher became what in modern parlance we would call a self-help guru. Philosophical questions concerning the nature of reality or knowledge are incidental to the key question of how to live a happy and prosperous life.  So the philosophy of the Romantic is likewise all about self-help.

This article is not really about picking-up girls, that too is incidental. It's a sales pitch. I'm selling a philosophy.  I'm advocating the benefits of adopting the 7 Romantic Virtues of Wisdom, Pride, Passion, Magnanimity, Enterprise, Chivalry, and Gallantry. If you master these habits, then yes. Chances are that you will get the girl.

Sentimentality

About ten years ago following the end of one of my relationships I phoned a friendly ex to find out what was wrong with me. Come-on, we've all done it at some point. She quite bluntly told me that I see the best in people, I see their potential, I see what they could become, but I never really see the person. Forgive me for I have sinned and I paid for my sin, not in the next world but where all sins are paid – here and now.

I have yet to write on the 7 Romantic Vices, but top of the list would surely be the sin of sentimentality. Mind you, a vice is a bad habit that leads to self-destruction, and I have a habit of sentimentality. But I am not the only one.

An emotion is a pre-programmed response to external or internal stimuli. I like to think of them as very advanced and complex human versions of animal instincts. For animals, including the human variant, the primary concerns are: Can I eat it? Will it eat me? For humans this translates as whether something represents the gaining of a value or the loss of a value. Gaining the value causes the baseline emotion of happiness and the loss of a value causes the baseline of sorrow; it is from these two that many other emotions are derived.

These emotions are sudden sparks triggered by the stimuli. We cannot plan them or expect them. These are natural, proper, and pure emotions. However, there are other types of emotions triggered by imagined stimuli. Desire is the imagined gaining of a value and fear is the imagined loss of a value.

In other words, these emotions are not real. They are derived from nothing but our thoughts.

These imagined emotions serve their purpose. All of human art exists because of this principle. Our feelings are sparked by images, through paintings, words, drama, music, and such, which inspire our imaginations and thus our emotions and then actions. It also allows for human empathy and sympathy not to mention the fear and worry that can help keep us safe. 

The problems start when these imagined emotions become inappropriate, excessive, or extreme. Consider a person who gushes over the cuteness of a kitten, a lover who idealises their other half to the point of nausea, or the hippie who cries when a tree is cut down as if their mother just died. These are all examples of sentimentality.

Psychologically, sentimentality represents a disconnect from reality. It is a form of avoidance and escape from unpleasant truths as the idea of people and things supersedes the reality of people and things in the person's mind. One place where this is seen is with former relationships where they become glorified in memory, but the realities that caused the break-up are forgotten or ignored because they are too painful. The same hold true with any form of nostalgia.

The facts of reality become brushed aside in favour of a world of the imagination. The perception of reality is tinted rosy because it is just easier to cope with and far more preferable, thus blinding people to the way things really are.

Consider the mother of a bully who cannot accept that her darling is a little shit. So she makes excuses for him or denies the facts. She is blinded by her sentimentality. Or how about the hippies who think life should be a Coca-cola commercial or that animals all gather round in the Circle of Life and sing songs. They may not believe it literally, but they definitely do on an emotional level.

I was watching a documentary in which hippies at a peace rally were asked to define peace. The answers all revolved around everyone being happy and loving each other. No. Peace is defined as not fighting. Love and happiness have nothing to do with it.

Now let's flip the coin. There is a darker side to sentimentality, as if that side was not dark enough. Sentimentality is the over-evaluation of a value that does not exist, or at least on a level to elicit that degree of feeling. What about under-evaluation? I suppose that would be cynicism.

Oscar Wilde wrote in Lady Windermere's Fan, "What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". I tend to think of the fox in the Aesop's Fable. He tried and tried to snatch the high grapes and finally gave up saying that the grapes were probably sour anyway. The sentimentalist over-estimates value and the cynic under-estimates it, one feels too much and the other too little. The truth is that both are fake. Both are in denial of reality. Remember that the fox really did want the grapes. Devaluing them is just an excuse for not trying to achieve.

In writing this, I keep thinking of California girls and Glasgow Boys. You are no doubt familiar with that stereotype made flesh of the girls squealing at the sight of a kitten, shoes, each other, or whatever. In Scotland there is the common expression, "That's shite, by the way". To this stereotype, everything is rubbish and they find fault and mock everything. Both groups personify the extremes of sentimentality and cynicism respectively.

For the Romantics, we have the value of Truth and the virtue of Wisdom. Both demand dealing with and accepting reality as it is. Therefore there is no room for either sentimentality or cynicism. They are sins.

The Subjective Reality of your mind is composed of nothing but your thoughts. These thoughts may be rooted in Objective Reality, or pure fantasy, or most likely a mixture of both. Therefore we must be on our guard against the twin vices of sentimentality and cynicism. Both faults involve reacting to the inner fantasy world a person would prefer rather than to the way that it is.

Here's is another Oscar Wilde quote for you. He defined a sentimental person as one 'who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.' As emotions go, the real ones are the ones that cost. This includes the cost of time, energy, and skill to acquire real values or the emotional cost of suffering real loss. 

We live in a world where fake emotions are running more and more rampant with each successive generation and we are all too polite to tell others that the emotions that they are truly feeling are bullshit. The Victorians had no problem with this, but alas we do. And yet, though we may see the motes in the eyes of others, it is much more difficult to see the log in our own, especially when it is part of our social programming.

The sad fact is that we do live in The Age of Feeling – an age of Platonic Idealism in which how you feel about something is more important that the reality of the thing regardless of Truth. After all, apparently truth is "subjective" these days.

I often make mention of the Age of Feeling. It has its philosophical roots with Platonic Idealism and of course Christianity, which made use of aspects of Plato's works, and we see its resurgence in the later half of the Nineteenth Century in Transcendentalism and Evangelical Christianity, but the real momentum begins with Edward Bernays in the 1920's.

Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the "father of public relations". He was the first to make use of psychological theories from his uncle and behaviourists like Ivan Pavlov to sell products ranging from cigarettes to baking mix to politicians to political ideologies. He called his scientific method of moulding public opinion the "engineering of consent" in his 1928 book Propaganda. Bernays was very much aware that the heart-strings control the puppet and this is done by altering the perception of reality that triggers the emotions and then the actions.

According to Bernays' daughter, Anne, her father did not believe that the public could be relied upon to vote for the right people, therefore "they had to be guided from above". Anne interpreted this as a sort of "enlightened despotism" ideology.

Today, every corporate or political salesman uses Bernays' techniques to generate fake emotions derived from a manipulated distortion of reality thus promoting the sentimentality and cynicism rampant in Western civilization during this Age of Feeling. Look here for more on Edward Bernays.

Here's an interesting experiment that I saw just today. Start with two wine bottles and fill them with the exact same wine and then invite someone to do a taste test between wines X and Y. In the experiment, the subjects were wired to record their pleasure centres. One wine was talked-up and the other talked down. The subjects said that the praised wine tasted superior and the machine said that more pleasure was derived from drinking it. Even though the wines were identical the subjects were absolutely convinced that one was far superior to the other simply based on the manipulation of a person's perception of reality.

Now imagine this experiment done to you during every waking hour since you were born. This is the Age of Feeling. How you feel about a thing is deemed more real that the thing itself. The result is a population conditioned to sin. 

Over the past four years I have swung from sin of sentimentality to the sin cynicism, and much of my current spiritual work these days involves undoing the programming I have as a product of this age and thus freeing me of these vices. My sins may be understood, excused, and I can blame society, but alas Athena is not merciful. Any breach of Natural Law must be paid for and I assure you that I have paid and continue to pay for my sins born of denying reality in favour of sentimentality and cynicism.

The 7 Romantic Virtues

Part 1: Aristotle and the Romantics

The following is a list that I have been contemplating for some time now and I admit that it is still very much a work in progress. I have chosen seven virtues because its traditional, but I am sure that I could list more. Perhaps I might use my Romantic licence to rebel and have nine virtues, then again, Aristotle had twelve.

So what then is a virtue? A virtue is a positive habit. For example you might say that brushing your teeth twice a day throughout your life has made it a habitual practice, the result is healthy teeth and gums, therefore it is a positive habit, or virtue. Let's say I choose to rebel. Virtues are for goody-two-shoes. So I don't brush regularly. This is a vice, a bad habit, because the result is a dirty, disease ridden mouth and all my teeth fall out.

When I write of Romanticism, I refer not simply to a movement in art and literature but to the zeitgeist (spirit of the age) of the Romantic Era from the late Seventeenth Century to the early Twentieth Century. What some call "The Long Century" or the Victorian Era since Queen Victoria's reign encompassed most of the period.

I mark the end of the Romantic Era in Europe with the starting of World War I and in the United States with the coming of the Great Depression. However, this was not a sudden end but a gradual decline; therefore elements of the Romantic have held progressively less and less influence with each successive generation throughout the Twentieth Century. Today elements are still present, but largely forgotten, misunderstood, or marginalised.

This is important to note because the philosophical foundation underpinning the culture of the Romantic Era was essentially Aristotelian in nature. On a basic level any philosophy, be it written, cultural, or personal, can be charted along a line with Platonic Idealism at one extreme and Aristotelian Realism on the other. The Twentieth Century saw the decline of the Aristotelian and the rise of the Platonic.

Idealism focuses on what I call the Subjective Reality, the realm of individual perception, belief, and feeling which we all inhabit. Religion and mysticism fall squarely into this camp, though some lean more to the Aristotelian right than others. Due to their emphasis on individual feelings and emotions the common wisdom places the Romantics in this camp as well. If an idea is not in keeping with reality we call it "romantic", as in dismissing someone's "romantic" notions.

I'll admit that my conception of the Romantic is not the mainstream, so here is my argument. First look at what preceded the Romantic – The Enlightenment, also known as the Neo-Classical Period and the Age of Reason. The hallmark of the age was the rediscovery and application of Greco-Roman thought. With the rise of Capitalism, Republicanism, and Science it laid the foundation for the individualism associated with the Long Century. There would be no Romantic without Enlightenment.

The Classicists championed order, reason, proportion and balance. The Romantics challenged this. The establishment embraced the Classical so they embraced the Gothic. The establishment upheld reason, so they upheld emotion. Where the establishment exalted beauty, they exalted the sublime. The Romantics were almost like rebellious teenagers who never really fell too far from the tree. This is most evident when the Neo-Classical Period passed and the Romantic flourished.

The Neo-Classicists emphasised the form itself as the source of beauty and the Romantics focused on the emotional reaction to the form. Nevertheless, both schools emphasised form – that is reality.

The result in the Romantic was an artistic style that was highly imagistic. The fine art copied reality and the literature was thick with descriptive details. This was all with the intent to stir the reader's passions by embellishing reality, not superseding it.

Think for a moment of another modern Romantic cliché, the romantic dinner. The whole experience is highly visceral through the careful orchestration and appreciation of reality. Think of the physicality of the wine, the meal, the candles, the music, and of course the partner.

In contrast, Idealism is the belief that reality as we perceive it is merely the reflection of a greater, supernatural reality only understood through the heart. Thus are the emotions divorced from the form and evoked by the idea of the form rather than the form itself. During the mid-Nineteenth Century Idealism entered popular culture in America through the Transcendentalist Movement which laid the groundwork for the late Twentieth Century and current "Age of Feeling".

The major difference between the world of today and that of the Victorians is the current predominance of Platonic Idealism over Aristotelian Realism. This is not to say that there were not Idealists in the Romantic Era or that there are not Aristotelians in the current post-modern. It is merely a case of the cultural dominance of one over the other in the general zeitgeist.

When was the last time that you heard an argument in which someone made an appeal to nature? No, I am not referring to environmentalists. Once there was this idea of Natural Law. It held that the universe is governed by laws and humans living in this universe are subject to those laws. As Sir Francis Bacon observed, "Nature to be
commanded, must be
obeyed." This argument was common during the Victorian Era, so no matter what heights they achieved, they were always grounded in reality. This is ultimately an Aristotelian notion.

The Idealist, however, is always focused on the future, by which I mean their idea of the future, rather than the reality of the past or present. For them, Natural Law is irrelevant because they do not recognise any authority beyond their own whim.

For example let's look at two stereotypical Star Trek geeks engaged in an argument. They can debate points from various episodes, quote the technical manuals, and perhaps even mention scientific studies. The ideas expressed can be incredibly intricate and complex displaying a stunning intellect from both parties. They can be so consumed by their own thoughts that they forget one important point. None of this is real.

In his essay, "Why Isn't Socialism Dead?", Lee Harris observes that despite a history of failure and mass murder socialism persists because people believe in the idea of it. Even in mixed economies, socialism only works as long as there are producers who are willing and able to fund it and a central bank capable of creating fiat currency, but that is only a temporary measure before the system eventually collapses under its own debt. We have seen this occur over and over again, it is happening now, and yet socialism persists because people want to believe and they make their arguments as an appeal to sentimentality rather than an appeal to nature.

Like the Star Trek geeks, politicians, lobbyist, academics, union activists, and special interests groups can endlessly debate and argue intellectual and complex ideas that are, like the starship Enterprise, pure fiction because they are not rooted in the fundamentals of reality. Any idea that goes against the supreme Law of Nature, that is Objective Reality, is a fiction, no matter how much it is contrived otherwise.

I tend to argue points based on fundamental principles of nature. When I argue with a socialist, they usually discuss the poor and suffering people of the world, be they the exploited workers, the single mothers, or the oppressed minorities. They might then point out the wealthy business owners or the evil corporations.

All of these examples are ideas of groups. Granted, they may single out a specific person who exemplifies their point, but ultimately its just generalisation. They then advocate taking the property from the evil group that has plenty and giving that money to the government who then redistributes it to the good people who have little and are in a state of need.

I would argue that such a practice goes against Natural Law. Look at the fundamentals. All animals produce to survive. For humans, this requires a means of production (capital) with which they produce values which are traded for other values. Successful producers provide the use of their capital to others so that can produce even more. The workers, who do not own the necessary capital to produce for themselves, receive a payment of values from their employers in exchange for their labour. The poor are those who lack the necessary skill, power, or opportunity to sell their time and energy at their required level of values. To state the obvious a bit more obviously, poor people are people who don't make enough money.

Humans exist, therefore we have a right to exist. The requirements to maintain that existence are food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and access to capital (either your own or an employers). If you've got that baseline sorted then that's you done. Anything else is a question of quantity and quality.

Admittedly, living at the baseline is pretty rubbish, but most appeals for the poor are not about existence but regard the quantity and quality of values, which is all relative. The outrage stems from the fact that some hypothetical person has more than another hypothetical person. So it can be argued that socialism is fundamentally based on the sin of covetousness which then leads to the sin of theft, also known as taxation for the purpose of the redistribution of wealth.

This is a sin because it goes against Natural Law. According to Mazlow's Heirarchy of Need, just above that baseline for existence is safety. Humans need to feel safe and secure. How safe and secure will you feel in a world where the government can use force to take your property thus leaving you with no recourse but to either submit or risk life and limb fighting back?

There are a number of ways to argue against socialism based on Natural Law. I've presented only one. My purpose here is to illustrate the difference between Platonic Idealism that places subjectivity and sentimentality over reality and Aristotelian Realism that obeys the Natural Law and bends the subjective around the objective. Romanticism looks at how the individual feels about reality while Idealism says the feelings are reality.

Natural Law also rewards the strong. The strong lions get the kill and the weak among the gazelles get the condiments. Look at political correctness and speech codes. You cannot say anything that I might find offensive. The Romantic, following the Natural Law, would respond, "I have the right to say whatever I like, and if you're too much of a pussy to deal with that, then fuck-off." Yes, nature can be brutal. I would argue that weakness, according to Natural Law, is also a sin. This is evident when we look at Aristotle's virtues in the next section.

Part 2: The Virtues

I once read a criticism of Aristotelian ethics that saw it as being those of a boring, middle-age man. This seems a far cry from the young, wild Romantics. The author focused on Aristotle's idea of the Golden Mean. It is the sweet middle-bit of human thought, feeling, and action that is not too hot and not too cold. No, it's not quite in keeping with Romantic extremism. However, when you look at the Aristotelian virtues within context the boring middle bit is more of a safe passage between two levels of self-destruction.

Rather than dwell on the Aristotelian virtues I have included a chart that illustrates the relationship between the Golden Mean and the vices of the extremes. The vices fall into two groups. One is having an excess of the quality and the other a deficiency of it. Each quality is also given a sphere of action or feeling, such as getting and spending money for both daily activities and major expenditures, and social interactions.

According to Aristotle's model, a bad person is a destructive or unproductive person. Today when we think of evil people we think of people who destroy the lives of others, and yet we pity, coddle, and protect the unproductive person. One is suffering from excess and the other of a deficiency. Neither is in the Golden Mean. Neither is good. The weak, timid, introvert is no more good than the abusive, aggressive extrovert. Where one overtly destroys the other covertly hinders.

When a man aims for the middle, The Golden Mean, but shoots either too high or too low, then he has missed the mark. This notion was so entrenched in Greek thought that an archery term was applied to ethics which literally means "to miss the mark". This word, hamartanein, is the same word used in the original Greek New Testament of the Bible and translates into English as the word sin.

As you read through the list, take time to consider people that you know, have seen in the media, and even yourself to see how the people in your world measure up.

ARISTOTLE'S TABLE OF VIRTUES AND VICES

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Fear and Confidence

Excess: Rashness

Mean: Courage

Deficiency: Cowardice

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Pleasure and Pain

Excess: Licentiousness/Self-indulgence

Mean: Temperance/Restraint

Deficiency: Insensibility

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Getting and Spending (minor)

Excess: Prodigality/Wastefulness

Mean: Liberality

Deficiency: Illiberality/Meanness

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Getting and Spending (major)

Excess: Vulgarity/Tastelessness

Mean: Magnificence

Deficiency: Pettiness/Niggardliness

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Honour and Dishonour (major)

Excess: Vanity

Mean: Magnanimity/of Noble spirit

Deficiency: Weak-spirited/lack of boldness and resolve

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Honour and Dishonour (minor)

Excess: Ambition/empty vanity

Mean: Proper ambition/pride

Deficiency: Unambitiousness/undue humility

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Anger

Excess: Quick-tempered

Mean: Patience/Good temper

Deficiency: Lack of spirit/unirascibility

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Self-expression

Excess: Boastfulness

Mean: Truthfulness

Deficiency: Understatement/mock modesty

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Conversation

Excess: Buffoonery

Mean: Wittiness

Deficiency: Boorishness, crass, or insensitive

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Social Conduct

Excess: Obsequiousness (being kiss-ass)

Mean: Friendliness

Deficiency: Cantankerousness

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Shame

Excess: Shyness

Mean: Modesty

Deficiency: Shamelessness

Sphere of Action or Feeling: Indignation

Excess: Envy

Mean: Righteous indignation

Deficiency: Malicious enjoyment/Spitefulness

As lists of virtues go, Aristotle's is the most complete. Here are a few other lists:

Cardinal: Prudence, Justice, Restraint/Temperance

Theological: Faith, Hope, Love or Charity.

Heavenly: Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, and Humility

Victorian: Work, Temperance, Orderliness, and Responsibility.

Bushido: Rectitude, Courage, Benevolence, Respect, Honesty, Honour, and Loyalty.

Those lists were taken from Wikipedia. Here is another taken from the book "G is for Gentleman" by Sam Martin. These are listed as "Top Ten Qualities To Nurture".

1. Competence – Knowledge breeds power.

2. Patience – And even keel will bring long life.

3. Resolve – Always follow through and you'll earn other people's respect.

4. Respect – Treat others with the same respect you hold for yourself.

5. Self assurance – Being sure of what you do allows others to be sure of who you are.

6. Spirit – Laughter is the fountain of youth.

7. Diplomacy – Making friends is harder but more rewarding than making enemies.

8. Courage – Never be afraid of failure.

9. Trustworthiness – Do what you say and say what you do.

10. Constitution – Persistence pays.

You'll no doubt notice overlaps in all of these lists, regardless of religion, culture or zeitgeist.

A virtue is a positive habit that will lead to flourishing. This pursuit of happiness is the goal of the Romantic, so it pays to be virtuous, even for "evil" Romantics. However, the Romantic has another important path.

Romanticism is a value focused lifestyle. Ayn Rand noted that philosophically Romanticism is the quest to glorify man's existence and psychologically it is the desire to make life more interesting. This is accomplished through the act of creation.

Think of the hero's journey. He begins in his safe home and ends in his safe home. Both are static states. Life is safe, routine, and comfortable. In between these two stasis points is chaos. That is where the story is. That is where life is interesting. That is where his existence becomes glorified. It is through this process of either defending or creating values.

Chaos is a tricky place to be. The hero may succeed in passing through it or he may be destroyed. This is where the Golden Mean applies. Too much stasis is boring and too much chaos may destroy you. Nevertheless, the Romantic hero must pass through chaos to gain his prize. So what virtues are required for him to make it safely through?

Before I answer that, there is one more important consideration regarding virtues. A virtue is a positive habit – it is an action. Every person acts rationally according to their Subjective Reality, therefore your actions are born from your core beliefs about the world. These beliefs determine your orientation to reality.

So if you believe that there is such a thing as plaque, that it causes tooth decay, eventual tooth loss, the only way to stop it is brushing twice a day, and the ramifications of these facts are accepted on a deep emotional level, then you will take care to brush twice a day till eventual it becomes part of your programming. Brushing becomes a virtue. As a consequence you have lovely teeth to be proud to have and show.

When we describe the orientation of one object to another, such as an aeroplane's orientation to the horizon, we use the word attitude. As we act in the world, others perceive our actions and interpret our orientation to reality. This is also called attitude.

When an employer criticises an employee's attitude and demands that he change it, what he is really asking him to do is to suddenly change his core beliefs. Needless to say this rarely permanently works despite the employee's attempts to change.

Likewise any attempt to acquire certain virtues requires a change in core beliefs and the creation of new patterns of behaviour --new habits -- and this new orientation to reality is perceived by others as attitude. From the individual's perspective this change of belief will be felt as mood, a general baseline emotional foundation.

In writing this I must admit to a failure. I attempted to list corresponding beliefs that lead to the virtues and the attitudes manifested for each. I still believe the theory to be sound, however beliefs are like a chemical mix with different variations all leading to the same result. Likewise there is a degree of interpretation involved in assessing attitude. Some people are inspired by the hero while others are intimidated. So I will leave it to you my dear reader to ask yourself what you believe and whether those beliefs promote the virtues to which you aspire to make habitual. Nonetheless, I have included some beliefs and attitudes where they seem appropriate.

If I were to ask you to imagine a Romantic and list his qualities, what would you list? It's a difficult question given the broad use of the word Romantic. Let's bypass the Byronic Hero in favour of something more mainstream as well a giving the traditional Romantic hero, in the Jean Valjean vein, and the anti-hero a miss. In this case let's focus on the popular conception.

This Romantic hero is individualistic, confident, dashing, charming, witty, tough, strong, competent and skilled. These are the qualities to which the real life Romantic should strive. He or she is that person often described as being "larger than life". Some people have these almost by nature while others have to develop these habits. That is my purpose for outlining these virtues here.

I have also differentiated between some masculine and feminine virtues. The central lie of the feminist movement is that men and women are the same. Equality does not mean uniformity. Due to evolution, men and women are different with different goals, interests, and inclinations. This applies to the virtues in that the requirements of the Romantic man are different from those of the Romantic woman.

Granted the last two decades has seen the rise of the female adventure hero who is a woman with the qualities associated with the male hero. The grand icon of this being Lara Croft. However, there are very, very few examples of this type of character in real life.

Virtues or attitudes to be predominantly masculine or feminine are indicated by an m or f.

The 7 Romantic Virtues

Belief : In order to control nature you must first understand it.
Virtue: Wisdom

Attitude: Competence

Belief : I am worthy of existence.
Virtue: Pride (self-confidence)
Attitude: m. Coolness/sang froid. f. Beaut

Belief : I live in a world of abundance.
Virtue: Magnanimity
Attitude: Acceptance

Belief : The world is an interesting place filled with new discoveries and new experiences.
Virtue: m. Passion f. Sensuality
Attitude: m. Dashing, Inquisitive f. Stylish, Creative

Belief : My existence is an end in itself. No on can claim my existence nor can I claim the existence of others.
Virtue: m. Enterprise f. Self-reliance
Attitude: m. Ambition f. Steadfastness. Faithfulness

Belief : It is vitally important to be strong and yet it is also important to care for others.
Virtue: m. Chivalry f. Grace
Attitude: m. The air of command that engenders confidence in others.
f. Warmth, kindness.

Belief : Failure is part of the process, so it is important to learn from it and keep going.
Virtue: m. Gallantry f. Charm
Attitude: Easy-going, carefree, witty

Here are some definitions to clarify the concepts:

Virtue: A positive pattern of habitual behaviour.

Wisdom: The alignment of Objective, Subjective, and Artificial Realities. Knowing how the world, society, and people work. The result is an attitude of competence and efficacy.

Pride: Self-confidence born of accomplishment and the sense of personal efficacy. It is what Aristotle called "the crown of virtues". It is the reward for living a virtuous life. The male attitude is the coolness born of self-confidence and in the female it is beauty manifested in care of her appearance because, "she's worth it". Beauty is endeavouring to create delight in all aspects of life, from environment, to manner, to appearance.

Magnanimity: To be of great generosity or noble-spirit. I have observed among the upper classes that I have met, those who might be deemed noble, that they are not critical or judgemental and show a certain generosity of spirit. Because the Romantic believes in the state of abundance, then he knows that there is always more. There is more money, love, and success in the world. This allows the attitude of acceptance of people and the world unhindered by the insecurity that he may be overshadowed or left without.

Passion/Sensuality: Passion is the state of high-interest representing the alignment of the mental and the emotional. What NLP practitioners call "The Flow State". I marked passion as masculine because captures the idea of the male drive to action. The feminine state is also passionate, but I used the word sensuality because women tend to be more attuned to the sense of things. The male attitude is dash, defined as spirited, audacious, full of high spirits. Also chic and fashionable. This aligns with female style and creativity.

Enterprise: This has three given definitions. 1) a company, business, organization, or other purposeful endeavour. 2) an undertaking or project, especially a daring and courageous one. 3) a willingness to undertake new or risky projects; energy and initiative. This incorporates the ideas of creating and trading values as well as self-reliance and initiative. This applies to the artist, the businessman, or the inventor. The attitude here is ambition.

Self-Reliance: The ability to discover answers and get things done without an over-dependency on others. I divided the masculine and feminine here because traditionally man is the producer and woman the reproducer. However in the post-modern world enterprise can apply to women as well. As a man produces he needs a counterpart that is not overly dependent on his time and emotional energy but rather can support his enterprise. He needs her to remain faithful and steadfast. Again, these roles today can be reversed.

Chivalry: The ability to be either aggressive (violent) or kind depending on the context. The Romantic recognises the Natural Law of strength as vital, but strength must be used ethically. Chivalry can be described as an ethical use of power.

Grace (gracious): There are a few words associated with grace including: kind, warmly courteous, tactful, and compassionate. There is no sense of entitlement and there is an appreciation of others born of respect. In many ways this is the female equivalent of chivalry in that a woman attacks more with her tongue than her physicality. Likewise, in the case of chivalry kindness is the default mode and aggressions only as the situation demands. So too is it with grace. It lacks the aggression element of chivalry as men are generally more often called upon to be an aggressor then a woman. Instead woman have tact.

Gallantry: Nonchalant courage, it is facing life with in easy-going manner and any conflict or difficulty with wit and determination.

Charm: The original meaning was to bewitch, as in a magic charm. In a person it denotes the ability generate positive and favourable emotions in others. Like gallantry, it involves an easy going sense of life and requires courage and self-belief to work.

So to summarize, here are the 7 Romantic Virtues

1. Wisdom
   
2. Pride (self-confidence)
   
3. Magnanimity
   
4. Passion/Sensuality
   
5. Enterprise/Self-reliance
   
6. Chivalry/Grace
   
7. Gallantry/Charm
   

Many of these virtues are worthy of expanded explanation and I have written extensively on some of them, such as passion, chivalry, and gallantry. Suffice to say that more can be added and perhaps even refined.

Creating this list has been an off and on work in progress for over a year now which is far too long a time so I have written this essay which is also a bit too long no doubt. The next step is how to make the deep inner changes necessary to turn these concepts into actions and eventually virtues. But that is another essay for another time. If you are eager for me to show my hand, then refer to my essay entitled "Hereotypes" and that will show you the path I have in mind.

Rebellion!

We humans are small group animals with a monkeysphere of 150 individuals each possessed of an individual consciousness and living in cities populated by millions and interconnected via a media web and a globalised trade and travel network involving billions of people. Wow. No wonder we're confused.

The human being is a creature caught between two worlds. It might be argued that the fruit from The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil granted mankind consciousness and with that the power of reason. From that point we rose above the other animals to become the gods of Earth. So perhaps the Serpent was not completely lying. However, there was a cost.

The cost is one of the central questions of philosophy. Man the self-aware and conscious individual versus Man the small group social animal. The Romantic takes the path of the individual.

In describing the origins of Romanticism it is possible to take a number of starting points in human cultural history. The original early Romantics of the mid to late Eighteenth Century were called Gothic because they drew their inspiration from the Gothic Period as opposed to the Classical Period embraced during the Enlightenment.

For those not in the know, when we speak of the Middle Ages or the Medieval Period it makes sense to ask, "The middle of what?" On one side is the Classical Period and on the other the Modern. We can say that now with hindsight, but the people of the early Modern Period referred to the Middle Ages as the Gothic Period. The term Romantic is derived from the medieval stories of the troubadours. So both Gothic and Romantic are of similar origins.

The warriors of the various tribal cultures, including the Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Goths, Visigoths, Norse, Franks, ect., were very individualistic. On the battlefield they sought to distinguish themselves so that they may be remembered in song forever. This appealed to the Romantics. Even today we admire the image of lone the barbarian warrior in the form of the classic image of the rebel. Think hairy biker.

Another origin story for the Romantics is found in the world of art. According to Classical aesthetics, beauty originates in the object itself and is derived from the laws of proportion. The Romantic artists believed that the emotions invoked by art come from the individual's response to the object, independent of the thing itself. In other words, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Then there is Paradise Lost. When John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, he wanted to make Satan a seductive character so that the reader could truly appreciate the fall of Adam and Eve. The problem was that Satan even seduced some of the readers.

The early Romantics saw Satan as the hero of the poem. The one who declared "It is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven". Satan is read as the individual rebelling against the supreme and authoritarian God/Society.

Finally, we might argue that Romanticism emerged as the culmination of freedom. The Reformation and the Enlightenment brought freedom of thought; the rise of Capitalism brought the means to act on that freedom; and Republicanism brought the ability to act on that freedom. Just a quick side note here. I mean the rise of republican government and not the rise of democracy. A republic protects the individual under the law, whereas a democracy is the mob rule will of the majority regardless of the individual.

I subscribe to all of these origins and I am sure that more strands can be applied. Each of these focus on Man the individual and as those inherent individualistic tendencies were exercised a shift of human consciousness occurred that created the Modern World.

Anthropologists have discovered that the concept of self, though inherent in the human species, is something that develops. As a consequence people living in a tribal situation or even a collectivist society have a less developed sense of self and personal identity. People are just part of the group and they exist in and for the group for mutual benefit.

The Romantics rebelled against society and collectivism. Instead they emphasised their individual thoughts, feelings, and will regardless of social dictates and encouraged others to do the same. To be a Romantic is to be a rebel.

Of course there is a problem here. On the one hand is individual consciousness and on the other there is small group animal –Individualism and Collectivism. Humans work best when working together. The man who works with society will benefit more than the man who works against it.

How many cool teen rebels eventually grow-up and either sell-out or hold their course to become pathetic loners? How many teen rebels learn to market their cool attitude and sell it to the public while maintaining the external image and yet still pandering to society? But this is a false dichotomy. The fact is that there is no either/or question here. Individualism and Collectivism are two extremes and each of us falls somewhere along the line.

Here is a picture of extreme individualism from Charles Baudelaire:

What is love?

The need to go outside oneself.

Man is an adoring animal.

To adore is to sacrifice oneself and to prostitute oneself

Thus all love is prostitution.

A woman is hungry and she wants to eat. Thirsty and she wants to drink.

She is in heat and she wants to be screwed.

What admirable qualities!

Woman is natural, that is to say abominable.

The more man cultivates the arts, the less he can get a hard-on.

A more and more apparent divorce takes place between the spirit and the brute.

Only the brute has no trouble getting a hard-on, and screwing is the lyricism of the masses.

To screw is to aspire to enter another person, and the artist never goes outside himself.

These passages provide an insight into Baudelaire's views on "the artist" (aka the Romantic) and women. If you are a single man who no longer wants to be single, then what do you do? You chase. You pander. You beg. You elevate this other human being to a level of adoration and thus demean yourself in the process, whether this is in a club or on-line. Who does she choose by the end of the night? Usually either "the brute" or the con artist. The brute because she is in heat and wants to be screwed or the con-artist because he can make her feel what she wants to feel. The only one not sucking-up is the brute and that is who she chooses.

This ideology is cruelly honest and to me it rings of perhaps Baudelaire getting passed-over in favour of a man he considers to be a brute.

This sort of extreme individualism seems to hold to the belief that my values are my own and to give them to another is an act of sacrificial trade. Pure trade occurs when there is an exchange of values. You exchange coins for milk and everyone says "thank you". However let's say that the retailer is selling the milk that you need for ten times the market value. You pay it because he is your only option, but you feel abused by the transaction. There is not an exchange of like for like values. When the exchange involves emotional values we feel used – or prostituted.

For Baudelaire, pandering for a woman's affections is a sacrificial trade. Her attentions and potential affections were unequal to his individualism and freedom. I do not necessarily agree, but I do see his point. I see daily the desirable women surrounded by toadying men and the women revelling in the attention. I have reached a stage in my development where I find that pathetic and I refuse to throw my hat in the ring, which of course leaves me wanting.

I'm am wanting because I am not engaging in the marketplace. You see, the balance between the individual and society is to be found in trade. The purely collectivist end of the spectrum demands sacrifice and prostitution. The purely individualist end hoards values like a miser. It confuses ego and arrogance with the self and pride. This is the rebel without a cause.

To be without a cause is to be without purpose. There is no direction. The rebellion is simply a defensive and antagonistic attitude towards society. Generally such people will surround themselves with like minded nihilists.

A rebel with a cause is a person who wants to accomplish something that goes against the social structure. To do this he needs help and to acquire the aid of others he must trade values. They must see some benefit in joining the rebellion.

Then there are the false rebels. I'm writing specifically of those student communists, socialist, and alleged anarchists. These rebels have a cause and their cause is the increase of government authority. What??? Yes, it is true. They are rebelling against the current powers that be because they do not believe that the government is either doing all that it could or should do to control the lives of others. It boggles the mind.

In its most basic sense to rebel is to act against the existing social authority for whatever reason, including just replacing the current leadership with those of your own choosing. So yes, these students can be rebels. However from the Romantic perspective of individualism slavery is slavery no matter who holds the whip, no matter if they strike hard or soft, and whoever promotes it is your enemy, no matter their twisted moral justification.

In the balance between Man the individual and Man the small group animal the pivot is composed of the Natural Rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, as long as you respect and do not violate the rights of others and they do the same for you, then everyone's cool. If they do threaten or violate your rights, then you have also the right to defend your rights and thus are you in a state of rebellion.

As long as everyone plays nice then Man the individual can profit enormously playing Man the small group animal. But never forget. Once that line is crossed the true spirit of the Romantic emerges, for he is always at his heart his own person. He is a rebel.

What Are You Worth?

We say that human life has value. Whenever someone calls something a value three questions should immediately come to mind. To whom is it a value? What is its worth, or level of value? And finally what makes it valuable.

Your greatest value is your existence, you are human, and therefore it is in your interest to declare the value of human life. But I think we can narrow this down a bit with the question. Each individual is of differing value depending on who the evaluator is.

Here's a thought experiment. Would you sacrifice the life of your child to save the life of some distant African villager? No? What about two, or ten, or a thousand? How many Africans would have to die before you would kill your child? Once you have a figure, and then consider not your child, but your parent, sibling, or lover. Then how many sacrifices are we talking? Now one more twist, how many people of your own country would you trade for the life of your next door neighbour?

My point with this exercise is to demonstrate that the value of individual human life depends on the evaluator. People we love or people close to us have more value to us than people we do not know thousands of miles away.

Apparently the human primate brain is capable of recognizing only 150 people as individuals, everyone else is just people. This is called the monkeysphere. Those individuals within our sphere have more value to us than those outside and events closer to our sphere have more value than those distant. So a local bus crash killing fifty people resonates more than thousands dying in an African famine.

This phenomenon is part of human nature. It is natural and normal. However, we humans love messing with nature. You see, we humans can also imagine and we have emotional responses to our imagination.

So back to the thought experiment. Think of your favourite musician, singer, or actor. Think about how their works make you feel. Imagine your positive feelings when watching or listening to them. Relive the way they inspire you. Now how many Africans go on the fire to save the life of a celebrity that you do not even know? Remember that this is someone who, for all intents and purposes, is an imagined relationship.

We value people who bring us value, particularly emotional values. Hippies and Christians tell us to love everyone. To do so is to deny the unique value of people that we truly love. No one wants their lover too say, "of course I love you…I love everyone".

When evaluating human value, people fall into three categories: direct value, indirect value and potential value. A direct value is someone you know who brings you benefit. An indirect value is not so direct.

Think of your beloved and highly valued PC? Where did it come from? There is the chain of events from Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, through all the designers, developers, the marketers, manufacturers, ect, ect., all the way through the various supply lines to make the value available to you. Then there is your end of the trade, think of all the people who make your pay cheque possible. People of indirect value are those people you cannot even imagine who make the values in your life possible, from your PC, to your milk, to your favourite chocolates.

Fellow humans, in that vague notion that we call society who exist well outside of your monkeysphere, are responsible for the values that you may take for granted in your daily life. These are people of indirect value.

People of potential value are those people you may or may not know who may or may not be of indirect value, but may possibly be of value. Think of the man who was rude to a stranger while running late to an important job interview only to discover this stranger is his interviewer. There are people outside of your monkeysphere who have the potential to become part of it. We all start off as strangers, it is where we end up that counts.

Beyond utility what makes something valuable is its scarcity. You have one mother but there are scores of potential milk delivery men in your area and millions of anonymous Africans (at least from your perspective). To the family and friends of these people they are unique and special snowflakes, but to you they are anonymous people outside of your monkeysphere. Any feelings or empathy that you have toward distant strangers comes from your own imagined thoughts and not from any actual relationship.

The purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness; happiness is an emotional response to gaining a value; values are created and traded, therefore people of value to us are those with whom we trade regularly, indirectly, or are potential trading partners. It is important to reemphasise that values may be material, such as goods, services, or money, or immaterial, such as the emotional values of love, acceptance, companionship, or comfort.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, "Everyone lives by selling something." Human existence, relationships, society and yes, civilization itself, is built on trading values. We are all networkers, marketers, and salesmen.

It may at first seem cruel to see human worth in terms of trade. I once knew someone who would whole-heartedly reject that concept. Then one day she spoke of her work in terms of the values she had to offer her employers. I pointed out that she understood the concept of trading values; however she only saw it one way. What she could offer them. Trade is a two way street. What did they have to offer her?

This is common in the popular altruism-based approach to ethics. If morality is based on sacrifice, then we calculate our value on what we have offered in sacrifice. I say that human value in the broadest sense is determined by what each person brings to the marketplace of values.

Imagine a marketplace, perhaps some Oriental setting. What is on offer? Exotic fruits, decorative rugs and tapestries, strange curiosities, interesting meals, unique services? There is diversity on offer because people are diverse. The products on offer may be material, such as in my illustration, or immaterial, such as emotional connections. If someone does not want to buy what you have on offer then someone else will. Everything has a place in the market, whether that place is big or small.

In film and television it is common for the rogue character to ask, "What's in it for me?" Supposedly moral people do things because they are the right thing to do and not for the sake of any profit. This is true, but only to a point.

If you are walking down busy street and you see someone suddenly collapse, why should you stop and help them? You don't know them. They aren't in your monkeysphere. They have no value to offer. So why stop? Because it is better to live in a world where people take care of strangers. If you or someone that you care for collapsed in the street, then you would hope people would stop and help. So ultimately it is in your interest to stop and promote that kind of world.

Benevolence is a good thing. However, suppose someone demands the values you possess, such as your time, energy, or property, with nothing to offer in exchange except their expectation of something for nothing perhaps laced with some moral platitudes regarding serving others, or a higher cause, or a sacred duty, or just a sob story.

Imagine yourself as a trader, which you are, but think of it in a more modern sense as a small business owner. Your purpose is to make money. You create values which you offer to others in exchange for money. Now suppose a charity worker comes to you and asks for money. They want something for nothing. You may deem this as a good cause and give the money. That is your choice.

However, giving away money on this occasion does not alter your purpose. You are still a small business owner looking for profit. You are under no moral obligation to give money away to everyone who asks.

Likewise your life is an end in itself, as are the lives of others to them. You have no claim on their lives and they have no claim on yours. Your purpose is the exchange of values, but this does not exclude being benevolent should you choose.

It is a perfectly moral and legitimate question to ask, "What's in it for me?" In the Nineteenth Century, it would have been considered to height of rudeness to enter negotiations with nothing on offer except moralising.

There was a scene in the old television series Young Indiana Jones in which Indy was in the Belgian Congo where he met Dr. Albert Schweitzer. In one particular scene Indy was describing the number of deaths in the Great War raging in Europe to the natives. One asked if there were as many as ten men killed. Indy was confused and said that there were thousands of dead. "Must be expensive," one African replied.

Dr. Schweitzer explained to young Indy that these people subscribed to what the ancient Celts called the honour price and Anglo-Saxons the "man-gold" where the law dictated a value to each member of society. The penalty for murder was payment of the honour price to the family. In the context of the story, among these Africans this also applied also to those killed in battle.

Young Indy was horrified by the notion of putting a monetary value on human life. Schweitzer responded, "At least they value human life." As Aristotle said, we do not value that which costs us nothing.

This also illustrates the difference between Capitalist and Socialist societies. Capitalism recognises the Natural Law that human value is based on the ability to create values. Again, I want to emphasise that these values need not be material. They are more often than not emotional. And yet even something like money is a symbolic token representing the result of human time, energy, and skill – immaterial values converted into material value.

In principal, if a man is wealthy through enterprise and hard work, as opposed to inherited wealth, then he has proven himself capable of high production. This production is then spread to others to increase their production. His creation of values makes him valuable, increases the value of others, and thus increases the value of society as a whole.

I am reminded of a scene in Les Misérables when Jean Valjean is considering turning himself in to Detective Javert to save the life of his look-a-like. In weighing his options, he considers the fate of the employees in his factory who are dependent on his production. When he does eventually escape the town, he leaves the factory to his workers who run it into the ground because they lack his management skill.

According to the traditional idea, the great man was great because others were dependent on his production and he is held responsible by his investors to continue and expand that production. The consequence is opportunity for those beneath him to support their families and improve their lives.

In a Socialist state, all men are deemed to be of equal value regardless of their ability to produce values. The man who brings nothing to the marketplace of values is equal to the man who brings everything. Politicians, bureaucrats, and their enforcers enter the marketplace as non-producing third parties to ensure this forced equality.

The result is the creation of an entire segment of the population who are possessed of a sense of entitlement to the values of others but produce little or nothing to contribute. Since human value is based on the creation and trading of values, there is a shift of consciousness to one that bases human value on emotional grounds. This ultimately devalues human life.

In the words of Ferris Bueller, "I do have a test today, that wasn't bullshit. It's on European socialism. I mean, really, what's the point? I'm not European. I don't plan on being European. So who gives a crap if they're socialists? They could be fascist anarchists, it still doesn't change the fact that I don't own a car."

This line from the film could be used to illustrate American ignorance of the world outside of their sphere. It may be deemed small-minded thinking and lacking a global perspective. However, in terms of a value-oriented approach to existence it is a perfectly valid point. The affairs of other nations are only relevant when they threaten our acquiring our values.

The alternative is to "feel" the pain of others who we do not know, who have absolutely no bearing on our lives, and live thousands of miles away in another country. We may acknowledge their woes, but at the end of the conversation we return to our lives, our values, and our concerns. Thus are many serious moralists hypocrites.

This is why global activist like to "put a face" on an issue, usually child's face. They want evoke emotional responses that are not natural. The ultimate message is that all human life is of value, which is true, but also that all human life should be of equal value to every person regardless of values. Therefore we must sacrifice our values for people who will likely never trade with us because it is the right thing to do.

Emotions are a response to values. When emotions are based on pure imagination without any real world foundation, then they are "fake" emotions. This is what the Victorians recognised as sentimentality.

Thus far I have presented an argument for value-based assessment of human value. The alternative is a sentimental-based assessment. This devalues human life because we are not actually valuing humanity so much as valuing our preconceived idea of certain segments of humanity. With Idealism the idea of the thing takes precedent over the reality of the thing. Anything that does not fit the idea must be eliminated.

In a quasi-socialist state like the United Kingdom the sentimental assessment of human worth has been sustained at a relatively high level. However, in more authoritarian states, such as Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Maoist China, the emotional bubble bursts and the result was the mass murder of tens of millions of people.

Why? Because a value-based judgement is focused on what one individual can offer other individuals as a direct, indirect, or potential source of values. When value is no longer determined by the marketplace of values but taken and redistributed by the state according to groups, then both the values and the creators of these values have no value beyond arbitrary levels determined by the state.

I appreciate that what I have written here may go against all we in the West have been taught. We are encouraged to love everyone and hold hands like in a Coca-cola commercial. Unfortunately Natural Law does not support that notion.

I also appreciate that what I have written here may be taken wrongly as a licence to be a dick. Nothing is further from the truth. In retail sales, the key to good customer service, what every customer expects on the most basic level, is for the experience to be pleasant. The same holds true in our dealings in the marketplace of values. Treat your fellow man with courtesy and respect. You can do that without being either loving or cruel. You can do that without either sacrifice or dishonesty.

Likewise internationally we must do what we can to encourage global trade to allow people thousands of miles away to bring their values into the marketplace and thus improve their lives. History has shown that the best way to alleviate poverty is to have a job. Governments do not create jobs and charities do not create jobs (except for their employees of course). Businesses create jobs.

As for your personal life, one might define success as the achievement of your values. People we call successful do so on a regular basis. The fruits of regular value creation usually yield money and money is exchanged for stuff. Thus is the well-dressed man in the nice car who takes luxurious holidays considered to be a success.

However, values are very personal. The achievement of your values and value creation may bring you happiness and bolster your self-esteem, but not all the stuff society equates with success. That does not matter as long as you are happy in the space that you have created for yourself.

So how valuable are you? If you are happy in your space then you are of value to yourself. If you produce values for others, then you are of value to them. If you mass produce values on a global scale, then you are of value to millions of people. If you want to increase your value, then create more values, market those values, and sell those values.

This applies in your monkeysphere and in the world at large. The great sin is expecting something for nothing. So you can create nothing and claim some sentimental value or you can create value and have true worth. The choice is yours.