Everybody Is Different

There is no one else in this world exactly like you. Every human being is different in almost every way except for their essential human nature as rational volitional beings.

Every individual is born with different inherent characteristics both physically and psychologically—different physical builds and abilities, different intellectual abilities and interests, different things they find enjoyable, different backgrounds and things they’ve learned and different tastes and interests. While many will share very similar abilities and interests with others, no two will be identical. None of those things, however, determine who or what any individual is, because all those characteristics are only the potential or resources from which one must make one’s self into the human being one chooses to be.

What’s Good For You?

There are two old expressions that emphasize the significance of human differences:

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison,” and, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

There are three things in our lives these facts bear on: 1. No individual is a statistic, 2. How we judge others, 3. How we make our choices.

1. You are not a statistic. Today, all authorities—governments, academics, educators and the popular press “experts,” emphasize the least important differences in human beings, like race, nationality, sex, and physical conditions (often called, “handicaps,”) as significant, while glossing over the only important differences in individuals, like integrity, achievement, and character. This mistake is partly due to a way of looking at human beings, “statistically,” as though anything could be known about any individual human being because they are assigned to some particular class or category of human beings. The truth, in fact is, nothing statistical about human beings applies to any individual. From health to individual virtue, what any group is statistically does not apply to any individual.

Statistically, “smoking causes cancer and shortens life,” but millions of individuals smoke and live to ripe old ages and never get cancer. Statistically, some ethnic groups are more intelligent, more criminal, more poor, or more financially successful, but millions of individuals in every ethnic group are the opposite of what the experts predict, statistically.

Every individual human being is different from every other human being and nothing can be known about any individual based on any statistic for any class someone assigns them to.

You are, as an individual human being, a member of a unique class of humans consisting of only one member, and what you are is determined solely by what you choose to make of your own life.

1. How you judge others (or others judge you). As a general principle, free individuals do not judge others except when one must know what kind of person one is directly associated with. How others choose to live their lives is just none of our business.

One reason you do not judge others is because it is not possible for you to know what is, “good,” or, “right,” for someone else, because everyone is different. If someone defies the requirements of their own nature as a human being they are living self-destructively, but it is not yours to make others live as they ought to, even if it is for their own good. If the consequences of their behavior dealt them by reality does not convince them, nothing you do will.

But others will frequently judge you, which does not matter, because it is not what anyone else judges about you that matters, but reality and what you know you are.

1. How you make our choices. Because you are different from everyone else, how you choose to live your life cannot be determined by any other authority than your own best thinking. You can learn about possibilities by observing how others live, and learn what is available to choose by consulting authorities, but no one else can show or tell you what is best for you and how you should live your life.

Must Think For Yourself

Every individual has their own mind and must learn all they can and make their own choices. If you are going to be free and successful as a human being you must choose what to think, what to believe, and what to do, and must never choose anything because it is what someone else chooses to think, believe or do. You are a unique human being and no one else can possibly know what is best for you or make the right choices for you.

—(10/26/2020)