9. You Owe Nothing to Society

You are not born with any obligation (or duty) of any kind to any other human being—not to humanity or society, or your country, your community, your neighbors, or your family, or any other individuals. No one else has a claim on your life, or any part of it. Your only “obligation” is to yourself and that obligation is to be the best human being you can be. The only one who suffers if you fail in that obligation is you.

This does not mean you have no obligation to others. It means your only obligation to others, and the only things you ever, “owe,” anyone else are those resulting from your own choice and actions. Your only responsibilities in life are for the consequences of your own behavior.

You are obligated to pay every debt you incur and promise to pay. You are obligated to keep every promise you make to others. You are obligated to pay those who provide you products and services. You are obligated to correct any harm your choices or actions may do to others. You are obligated to love those you have promised to love and protect and nurture those you brought into this world. All those things are your responsibility because you chose them.

Unearned Obligation

The entire world of modern intellectual and academic authority teaches the idea of unearned obligation, meaning some mystical responsibility one has to others having nothing to do with any choice or action of one’s own. It is called, “duty,” or, “social responsibility,” or some obscene notion of a, “moral imperative,” that requires one to place the purpose and value of other’s lives above one’s own. It is called, “altruism,” it means, “self-sacrifice,” and is usually put over with sickly sentimental motivators like: compassion, empathy, and sympathy.

Those others whom you are supposed to sacrifice your own life and interests were never chosen by you—not your family, nor your neighbors, nor your community, country, society, and certainly not the world. Your only obligation to those others is to deal with them honestly, never interfering in their lives, or seeking their hurt or harm—which exactly their obligation to you—nothing more or less than that.

Against The Individual

Every evil ever perpetrated by any society—every war, every mass atrocity, every genocide, and every act of terrorism—has been justified in the name of some form of altruistic “greater good,” of some collection, community, society, or mankind, against the good of the individuals.

All “Positive Human Relationships” in any society are possible only between independent free individuals whose only relationships are those chosen by each individual for their own mutual benefit. In any society, any relationship based on any concept of unearned obligation, always results in, “Negative Human Relationships” and the worst horrors are produced when the ideas of duty and altruism are imposed on individuals by agencies of force.

What to remember: No One Is Born Obligated To Anyone For Anything.

—(11/17/2020)