Compulsion Vs Cooperation

One of the big issues we as humans have in life is the line between compulsion and cooperation. We almost know instinctively that we must cooperate or die. Yet when we try to compel someone to cooperate with us we get rebellion or something worse. Still it seems that in every generation there are those who will say that the only way to achieve cooperation is to compel people to cooperate! It seems to me that cooperation is the exact opposite of compulsion and that if one tries to obtain cooperation by force (which is the definition of compulsion) then cooperation disappears.

The question remains though if we know that cooperation is necessary to maintain society how do we obtain the cooperation? The answer to that is persuasion. Persuasion that the person being asked to do something will benefit from that which he is being asked to do.

Now it is possible to persuade people that if they steal from 'the rich' it will be to their benefit. But since theft eventually breaks down societal cooperation it does not benefit you to listen to those who would convince you that when a group of people does a thing it is more moral than when an individual does a thing.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Lesson 59 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Since jealousy and greed are related closely, jealousy must obviously be a source or root of evil.

I am not so much interested in defining evil as identifying the cause of evil, these I have boiled down to greed, envy and jealousy. Indeed I believe that envy and jealousy are actually aspects of greed. Behind any behavior that could possibly be considered evil is the root of greed and its expression as naked greed, or greed disguised as envy or jealousy.

Sometimes of course greed is difficult to identify, for example when many people (including BHO in my humble opinion) start to talk about giving to the poor they rarely intend that they should give to the poor but are somewhat more like Judas Iscariot who had his hand in the money bag of Jesus. I say that even if they may not be stealing money for their own enrichment, for when they use the power of the government to take money from one person to give to another in order to appear to be generous they at minimum steal the accolade that would go with such a gift if they had not stepped between the ‘donor’ and the ‘recipient.’

However since BHO is running the money through the government chances are that at more than one level there are people who are diverting some of it to their own enrichment. This is on top of the fact that government ‘charity’ rarely does anything other than to increase the dependency of its recipient. While the increasing control this gives stokes the appetite of the government for ever greater power (which is one objective of some strains of greed) over all aspects of life.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Lesson 58 from The Hard knocks School of Life

Evil seems to me to be made up of three basic behaviors: greed, envy and lying.

Greed may be (I believe is) the underlying disease for the behavior for which envy is the motivation, and most of the time greed is also the motivation for lying.

The only motivation I have ever seen for lying other than greed is fear. This then brings up the question of whether or not fear motivated lying is as evil as greed motivated lying. Another issue that muddies the all lying is evil is the fact that at times lying can be very necessary to stop someone from carrying out an evil act. An example of this is those people who hid Jews from Hitler’s SS during world war two. These people obviously lied and did good. Thus lying became not only a necessary evil at that time but became an actual active good.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Good Intentions

Good Intentions

Good intentions put no food on the table

Nor do they put money in the bank

Good intentions do no work

And good intentions save no lives

More often than not

Though many won’t admit

Good intentions lead to bad ends!

© 2012 Vic Jones

Lesson 55 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Evil breeds hate. Then hatred breeds violence.

Hatred sets men one against another. The father of evil (if you believe the Bible) is Satan; the one thing Satan wants more than anything else is for men to hate one another. The fact that men hating one another breeds violence and causes men to destroy one another means that we do Satan’s work for him.

Perhaps you do not believe in Satan or in objective evil. If you insist on disbelieving in Satan that is fine; but not believing that we can define evil as one man stirring hatred for another for any reason seems to be lacking in understanding. For if we hate one another we can never have peace.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 48 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

The purpose of religion is the moral education of a society.

Some people may ask if moral education is necessary. Others may insist that we are unable to truly define what is moral. Whether or not a person believes that moral education is necessary children are consistently being morally educated. They may be receiving the message that if they want something that if they can take it that is a reasonable behavior or they may be receiving the message that they must respect other people in both their persons and their property.

I think though that one of the worst things I’m seeing today is the advancement of the idea that it is moral for a crowd to do things that it would be immoral for a person to do. This is a very dangerous idea. In fact a quick look at the French revolution will give a person chills when the behavior of the ‘masses’ is examined.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 47 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

You have heard the teaching that if your neighbor slaps your cheek you should offer him the other one. Some people have interpreted to mean that you should accept violence without recourse. This is untrue. If your neighbor balls up his fist and punches your nose you are well advised to return the favor immediately.

You say to me that returning violence for violence just escalates violence. I say that the appearance of weakness encourages violence. Most times it is possible to accept an insult (though to some people even accepting an insult can will be viewed as weakness) without injury; however when insult escalates to assault it is generally no longer wise to accept it.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 42 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

If you are doing something and you are not getting the results you expected don’t continue doing what you are doing. Stop and examine what is happening and rethink your strategy, you may need to change what you are doing.

Another way of stating this is that to do the same thing the same way and expect a different result is insanity. There is little doubt that failure should lead to reexamination of what a person is doing. Therefore anything that prevents people from reexamining their behavior in the face of failure is doing them a grave disservice.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 26 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

If good people don’t fight for what is right and good, evil people win!

What more needs to be said about this issue?

I suppose a great deal since there are some people (I think they are evil…) who say that you cannot really know what is right or good. Therefore it behooves us to consider what our definition of right and good is. When you are certain you know what is good then do not let others change your mind. When you do something look at the result, if other people are actually helped or improved by it there is a good probability that you are doing good. Conversely if people are being harmed and not improving because of what you are doing then you are doing wrong and to my mind possibly doing evil.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 23 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

If you want to help someone you need to be sure that what you do for, or to them doesn’t hurt them.
Is it possible to harm someone when you intend to help them? Absolutely! So then you ask: how is this possible? Suppose a parent wishing to protect their child keeps him in a padded cage and carries him everywhere the child wants to go; will the child not be crippled despite the parent’s intention to help the child? And what of the man who is given a fish by the government; is he not harmed as well? Yet the intention is that he not be hungry.

© 2010 Vic Jones

Lesson 19 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

The reason negative thinking works more often than positive thinking is that we are more apt to act on our negative thoughts than on our positive thoughts.


A fine example of acting (or not acting) on negative thinking is saying, ‘I can’t,’ when you (or I) say, ‘I can’t,’ we immediately act on that thought and simply refuse to try what ever it is that we said we could not do.


Wise people have told me (though I don’t do well at following their advice) that in order to overcome the tendency to say, ‘I can’t,’ I should look closely at one action that I’m avoiding by saying, ‘I can’t,’ and do that action to the best of my ability even if I don’t do well.


© 2010 Vic Jones

Lesson 18 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

It is neither thoughts nor intentions that matter but actions and results. It does not matter how noble your thought or intention is; if what you do harms someone then your action is wrong!
As with many of the statements I make to add much to this would be to hide its profound simplicity. Yet I’ve been asked how can such a short simple statement possibly be profound?

Only a person who was purposefully looking for complications would insist that a simple concept naturally lacks depth.

© 2010 Vic Jones