Aphorisms

Wisdom from the Wizard--The following quotes from Selfish Wizard are our favorite aphorisms from behind the curtain.

Self-Interest

Self-interest powers our actions, the way gravity powers the movements of the planets, the stars and the galaxies.

• Man’s ultimate concern is himself.
• Worship yourself as the creator of all things in your own life.
• Man is his own highest power.
• Man lives for his own sake.
• What passes for altruism is mere self-interested cooperation with others.
• Each person lives in his own virtual reality machine.
• All man can experience is himself.
• Man is not a rational being but a subjective one.
• Intentionality is always an expression of self-interest.
• Even a collective unconscious can only be experienced individually.
• Two lovers are not a “beast with two backs” but two beasts furiously seeking their own separate pleasures.
• There is no conversation more boring than with a person you don’t want anything from.
• We all want to be ourselves and to be recognized everywhere for it.
• Men and women take what they want from each other and do their best to ignore the rest.

Morality

Self-interest is the only compass for resolving ethical and moral questions.

• Morality is just an opinion.
• People who talk about morality rarely ask what it means.
• There is no such thing as a moral fact.
• Morality is a mask for what people want to do anyway.
• Good must be good for something; it cannot exist in the abstract.
• Good is what’s good for you; evil is anything not in your interest.
• Like time and space, good and evil are relative to the position of the observer.
• Compassion is what you feel when you realize you could suffer the same misfortune someone else already has.
• Empathy is the delusion that you know what someone else feels like exclusively by reference to your own feelings.
• Heroes are chosen as the expression of aspirational group values.

Religion

God is an avatar for the self.

• The Universe is a free market system.
• What does god do for the living?
• Who is the god who does not exist?
• Whether god exists or not, things here on earth can only be just the same as they are now.
• God’s non-existence is just the tip of the iceberg.
• God must not be very important if its very existence can be debated.
• All gods express human ideas and behaviors. Each god is a mask for some aspect of the human self.  The wisdom of gods that exist is what they express of the nature of man.
• God sprang from the forehead of man.
• God exists only in the minds of believers.
• God mirrors the believer; each justifies the other which is no other than himself.
• God’s believers don’t know what the god is that they believe in.
• God is a dead end for thought.
•  The devil is god’s favorite policeman and jailor; if you don’t do what god wants, the devil will take you to hell.

Free Will

Will is free or it is not will.

• Will is free, most everything else costs money.
• You are responsible for your actions whether you believe in free will or not.
• It’s not my fault, my brain made me do it!
• Free will from the slavery of determinism.
• The question for you is always what you are going to do in the matter.
• Free will is what you do in the face of a multitude of constraints.
• Free will exists whether you are conscious of it or not.
• If you are determined to be a determinist you cannot argue effectively about determinism.

Cooperation

"The human dilemma is that we are only interested in ourselves, yet we only obtain life's benefits by cooperating with others."

• Cooperation exists at every level of nature from atoms, to molecules to cells to neurons to beings.
• Gravity is a cooperative relationship.
• The only objective reality is subjective self-interest.
• The purpose of morality is cooperation.
• All human cooperation and group organizations are based on myths and fictions designed to overcome the reality of subjective self-interest.  
• Religions are shared myths designed to spur cooperation in the face of the actual disparate interests of individual believers.
• Cooperation based on shared illusions and myths can create significant benefits.
• Cooperation is the basis of all human progress and is an important element of actualizing individual self-interest.