OUR GUIDING BELIEFS AND PRINCIPLES
All great lives commence with a person’s quiet realization that they will never again play the role of the coward or the victim.
All great organizations commence when leadership realizes its organization is a system of justice, truth, and nobility. Employees and stakeholders who believe the organization is just, truthful, and noble will fully engage in its cause. Those who do not believe so will disengage, and the organization will suffer.
All great leaders create environments for industrious, diligent, and self-motivated people to thrive, prosper and flourish. Fear, beratement, and intimidation have very short-term benefits, and in the long term, they are incredibly destructive to the organization. This applies especially to leadership in politics.
All great leaders never seek or accept praise for an organization’s successes. Furthermore, great leaders are solely blameworthy for all its failures.
Everybody does their very best at all times with what they know, desire and choose; their sense of purpose; their intentions and their belief in a transcendental reality. For people to do better, they must improve their knowledge, beliefs, desires, intentions and sense of purpose. It is our duty to offer to help them. But it is their choice to accept the invitation to become better.
We are in a war over anthropology. That is, what is the meaning of life? What is in our human nature? What is the best governance structure for society to enable human flourishing?
It is in our nature to be compassionate and to care for others. We are disturbed to action by the suffering of others. It is also in our nature to improve our lives and the lives of those who depend on us.
Happiness is defined as general satisfaction with one’s life as a whole (Charles Murray). Unfortunately, most people errantly discard many good elements of their lives to correct some tiny element with which they are dissatisfied.
All happiness begins with awe, gratitude, and personal responsibility.
Envy is the most debilitating emotion known to man and is the root of most people’s unhappiness.
Sacrificial love is the only force powerful enough to stop and reverse chaos, entropy, and decay.
The most important question one must ask themselves is “how great a person can God’s forgiving grace enable me to be?”
The second most important question one can ask is, “how great a nation can God’s forgiving grace enable us to be?”
The law or principle of non-contradiction is the most foundational of first principles. Hypocrisy is unmasked when one understands this law. Truth, on the other hand, is made obvious and sublime when tested by this law.
All men are created equal, that their Creator endows them with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Declaration of Independence)
The most extraordinary constitution ever created for any nation in history reads as follows: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do establish this constitution of the United States of America.” (US Constitution)
Life must never be lived as a victim, a villain, or hero. Yet, the victim, villain, hero drama triangle is entrenched in American culture and its politics. We are all personally empowered to live outside this drama triangle where happiness and dignity ultimately lay.
Everybody everywhere desires these three things: joy, significance, and meaning. These are the ties that bind. The common ground.
Life is very, very hard. Acknowledge that fact first, and then you can transcend it. (M. Scott Peck, M.D., The Road Less Travelled)
Love is extending oneself for the benefit of others without regard to personal costs. This sounds a lot like ” sacrifice.”
The American Dream is not for dreamers. It is for workers and their indefatigably hard work. Most people are not willing to pay the very high price of having a wonderful life.
We must live by intention and not live by accident. Most people seem to live their lives with no intention and consequently live by accident. They then claim they were victimized by some artificial oppression when the outcome is below their expectations. They end up consumed by envy.
It is God’s intention for us to know how we are to live our lives. It is therefore imperative we figure out God’s intention for our lives, not our own.
Insolence (not giving thanks or praise) is a key source of despair, even depression (outside of mental illness). (M. Scott Peck, M.D., The Road Less Travelled)
Not all suffering is legitimate suffering. There is much non-legitimate suffering – people who have brought suffering on to themselves by intention or by knowingly continuous sinful actions without any attempt at personal redemption.
We must always bear the consequences of all our decisions, whatever the personal cost (Loss of fortune, family, job, reputation). That is the beginning of growth and the end of internalized tyranny. In other words, in the absence of personal responsibility there cannot be personal growth.
Suspend your fear of being embarrassed (a form of internal tyranny), and you can be great. (Steve Jobs)
Justice, beauty, and truth are objectively embedded with the eternal attributes of the “good.” The attributes of the “good” ascribed to justice, beauty, and truth are not subjectively bestowed by the observer. (Plato, interpreted)
There is no such thing as “moral relativism.” There are absolutes in good and evil, right and wrong. Truth is objective and immoveable.
The purpose of business is to make peoples’ lives better. If you efficiently accomplish that objective, you will be successful with sustainable and growing revenues, profits, and shareholder value. If you do not, you will not!
The purpose of man or woman is the pursuit of “happiness” (Greek ‘Eudemonia’) through the right virtuous habits that lead to moral excellence, intellectual excellence, practical wisdom, and moral courage. (Aristotle)
Living from a sense of “duty” (Immanuel Kant) is far more virtuous than living from “utility maximization” (David Hume). It is regrettable and wrong that all current models of economic theory and human behavior are based on personal utility maximization. People are far more complicated than being selfish utility maximizers. They know virtue lies in a sense of duty.
Consumption is not virtuous. Production is virtuous. We obviously have a problem in America with the antagonism between consumption and production.
Honoring promises, regardless of the personal costs to do so, is a primary source of happiness. If you cannot keep a commitment you have made, you must renegotiate or change the commitment. Do not just ignore it and assume it was never made and assume there are no long-term effects from the abandonment of your promise.
We must live our lives first by reason and, secondly, by passion. We lead with discipline of reason, and then empower it with the passion’s energy. It is youthful immaturity to lead one’s life with unchecked passion.
There is a divine realm that is beyond comprehension, beyond what physical science can explain, and only so much that reason can explain. The Enlightenment got a lot of things right, but not everything preceding it was wrong. We must subordinate ourselves to God.