December 3, 2003

ELF Philosophy

• Ayn Rand
  In the spirit of the ELF Philosophy -
  "Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to enjoy. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy - a joy without penalty or guilt... Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions... there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned..."
  
  My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
  
  
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
  There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried ...
  
  
• ELF on Quality of Life
  ELF harbors the belief that the social welfare practices adopted by America, (and many other nations), is misguided in a way that fails to recognize that the human spirit achieves happiness, fulfillment and meaningful quality of life in circumstances where liberty encourages and enriches the value of incentive. By their very nature, entitlements, which are a design of American social policy badly installed to affect a contrived notion of equality, limit and deprive humans of their freedom. What drive human fulfillment and happiness is incentive based behaviors enabled by freedom. History makes it abundantly clear that in order to thrive, the human species needs to engage in self-reliant behaviors characterized by striving.
  
  
• ELF on the Notion of Equality
  It is a fact of life that people can and will never achieve equal successes. In all life forms, whether a garden plant, a mosquito or human, competitive striving is a natural process that, while, contrary to popular myth, does not result in a state of equality, but produces different outcomes and levels of success. All historical and cultural evidence supports the idea that human civilization is necessarily built on inequalities. Think of it, if for all people, incentives were equally influential and produced no different (or equal) outcomes, there would be no competition, no ladder to climb, no gain or advantage, no motive to strive or survive.

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  Quality of Life is People Striving to Thrive