Do no harm but take no shit.

Don’t be a dick.

Number one rule I have.

The Parable of the Teacup

"Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

The Parable of the Strawberry

"A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!"

To crush your enemies, See them driven before you, And to hear the lamentation of their women.

Conquer the things stopping you from what you want to do. This can be poverty, people, or circumstance. See those things that you have beaten lie at your feet, and revel in the outcries of the things that you now have bested.

Be kind to others and let go of attachments. Have lived a very happy and successful life by doing just those two things.

Try to be as unlike the cuurent US administration as possible?

For the last year or so I’ve just been trying not to kill myself

Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.

Try to make life better for yourself and for everyone else. Try to have compassion for everyone. You don’t have to agree with them or support what they do, but treat them as having worth.

My ethos boils down to…

1. The Golden Rule: Your rights end where other’s rights begin, and vice versa.
2. Natural Rights: Any action or inaction, thought, or word, spoken or written, that does not cross the line of the Golden Rule is a natural right.
3. Ethics: All ethics are founded upon, and entirely dependent upon, points 1 & 2.
4. Morality Is Unethical: Morality, allowing for arbitrary precepts, is inherently unethical.
5. Effort: Strive to live ethically.
6. Inaction is Action: Inaction is, itself, an action. If your inaction results (even indirectly) in someone’s natural rights being infringed, your inaction is unethical.
7. Consideration: Actions often have cascading, indirect consequences, and you bear full responsibility for them. Therefore, failure to consider the indirect consequences of your (in)actions is also unethical.
8. Graciousness: Treat others the way they wish to be treated. Recognize the dividends that gracious behavior has on preserving the natural rights of both yourself and others.
9. Defend the Social Contract: Ethical behavior is a contract between individuals. Aggressors and instigators who violate that contract are not subject to its protections. As such, adherents are obliged to defend both themselves and others from such infringements to preserve the greater social stability.
10. Imperfection: Acknowledge that no body, no thing, and no system is perfect. Not you, not others, not nature, not these precepts. Mistakes are inevitable, it is the effort and intention that matters. Accept and treasure imperfection, and be faithful to the spirit rather than the letter.

Stoic and Buddhist philosophy. No religious metaphysical stuff like gods, spirits or reincarnation.

On a basic level be kind and accept impermanence.

Hmm…let’s put this in perspective. We live in a tiny dot flying around a cosmic sized flushing toilet bowl that is it self flying around a larger flushing toilet bowl… Both have centers that either melt everything and or stretch it til the atoms break apart…or both. We are direct descendants of life forms…not animals perhaps but life forms who appeared from random motion and electric volts and radiation in and around a primordial mix of random liquid shit. And we are the 1 second before midnight if the entire earth had been around for an entire day. In short we are nothing. Who cares if some guy wants tariffs on China while raping someone during a celebration for a new pope. However…if you lived here, your entire puny life trapped inside a calcium basket full of your own meat and guts with 8 other billion people in the same conditions, I would much rather it be a happy blip than a blip filled with and torture. And lots and lots of sex. If you’re 21, my recommendation as a working professional who designs and builds really freaking cool gadgets is to go find someone to fuck pronto. And fuck. A lot. Use protection, don’t have kids unless you want to. But just make love day and night. Once you turn 35 make some goals for the rest of your blip. Then spend the rest of your blip. Thru all, make your self happy and make others happy. Just help each other. It serves no one if you live the tiny puny piece of time pissed off and you piss off others.

Everyone here is saying “don’t be a dick”. That is not sufficient. That just makes you middling, not good. To be good, you must also stop people who ARE being dicks.

Do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t harm others.

• don’t be an asshole
• everything is allowed as long as nobody is getting hurt
• act when you see something wrong
• when you are able to help do so
• in all other cases mind your own business