When faced with bright minds of a negative disposition, keep it clear that the road of least resistance is that of indulgence. Indulgence in one’s opinions, the ideas we construct in order to make clear what is true and false, who is right or wrong, and how our beds should be made. Little of any of this has objective worth or value, and none of it will be granted to us as souvenirs when we depart for the world beyond. There is hardly a grain of substance in the effort we make to judge the outer world, the people in it and the events conveyed to us on this grand stage.

What does seem to have some iota of worth, some inkling of truth, is that nature loves to watch man bend curves into straight lines. It piques its interest when she witnesses something go against its own nature for the sake of something greater or something outside of itself. Absorbed entirely in his own personal quest to prove himself significant and garner the respect and affection of others, a man is left as a curved being. The curve is his mechanical disposition towards his own interests and the preferences those interests lean him towards. None of it, not a single element of what he is, is of his own design. His birth, upbringing, education and his conditioning upon the manifestation of external forces, are all dictated from beyond his own personal volition.

Humility should be the natural state of his psychology. He ought to feel most grateful and humbled by the mere fact of his existence. In such a state there might possibly even develop an inclination towards harmony. Efforts in all shapes and forms, governed by this inner resolve to acknowledge his gratitude, would take the form of treating others not as he feels like treating them but as he believes they should be treated according to objective values of morality. To be a good Samaritan within his household and community would be the practical result of an existential realization of his personal nothingness. He would not suffer unnecessarily upon the deeds of others and how they happen accidentally, or seemingly intentionally, against his own conception of what is good for him. He would brush off everything short of the threat of destruction, smiling at the fates for granting him yet another day on this mortal reality.

The sense and logic to personal morality is therefore a matter of common sense for those who dare to face reality. Contributions to the community, its people and the river of history one falls into, is truly the only sane course of action. One must take one’s own life lightly and take very seriously the well-being of everything else. To be of objective good, in the sense of ever-continual efforts to serve a betterment of the health and state of the world — which, after all,  grants breathing creatures their existence — is simply good manners. And if happiness be measured by a benchmark which excludes the hysterical rises and falls of delirious emotion, then this would certainly be the ideal inner condition to seek for oneself.