Ideology

I think I just have a really hard time with "principled" individuals. How can you stick to your guns when it's clear your principles don't always work in practice? How can you hang onto an ideal that proves time and again to be destructive? How can you sincerely think that the very act of being principled will benefit you and everyone else in the end? Because it makes you a good person? Do you understand that reality does not give good people preferential treatment? Do you realize that personal integrity means absolutely nothing to nature?

There are very practical things we cannot do because they are unethical. But there are a great many things that have no ethical bearing on anyone--where opinion is simply a question of "do I prefer this, or that?"--and it makes no sense to not do these things because they violate a personal principle. "I'll never watch a movie with [actor I don't like] in it, no matter how awesome the movie is. I just don't want that guy getting my money."

That's a simple example, but this sort of mentality extends into our politics, our social structure, and how we treat each other in general. My Way Or The Highway I'm sorry, I just can't support ____ in good conscience no matter what the cause is one of the single most stagnant, vulnerable positions you can possibly take on any subject in life. Where it can be annoying in trivial matters, such an attitude can be extremely dangerous in not-so-trivial matters; nature does not have any pity for the stagnant, intolerant, and those who refuse to adapt as the situation requires.

If you enjoy the camaraderie and social clout that inevitably comes from being a principled pillar, you had better make sure you are right when it counts; the day you are principled and wrong about a life and death situation, you may not have the chance to regret your rigidity when adversity snaps you like a twig and the world moves on without you.