On Method

“No, buddy, don’t do it that way.”
“But it’s more sense like this! Why not?”
“Because it is the wrong way.”
“Says who?”
“Have you seen anybody do it this way before, ever?”
“No. But why should that matter?”
“It is not practiced that way. That shows it; that there must be a reason behind it.”
“Do you know that reason?”
“Not completely, no. But I respect others’ sense of understanding it.”
“More than you respect yours?”
“The way you’re doing it is wrong. You’ll know it and you’ll regret not taking my advice.”
“Perhaps. But I will have learned it then. My knowledge will not be second hand.”
“You’ll go through unnecessary struggle and suffer in the long run if you keep this attitude of yours towards everything else.”
“I will, perhaps. I’d rather my life be driven by need of knowledge or method of skill than by the voices of those around me. Voices which have become echoes of the past, voices agreed without thought, voices without a face.”
“You’ve become insane. Where did you learn to talk like this? Those fools of friends you have.. They fed you all this didn’t they? Don’t you know better than to be influenced by every little thing you hear?”
“Are you listening to yourself? Those last words you spoke, think about them. THINK, for once, what they mean. So what if my friends told me all that? What if I saw a revolutionary movie? What then? I am responsible for what all I allow myself to think. All that I hear or see or experience is not forced upon me, nor do I force myself to know such things. This is how chance works. It is just a fair accident that I happened to experience all the things that I did since my childhood in the exact manner and order that made it possible for me to speak like this in front of you, my father, at this moment in time. I was born to know this, to say this as indifferently as I can to you. I am born to do the things I will in the future. I think and I choose for myself. My friends are just drops of a personal tint in a pool of rainbow mix of my influential pond. For the record, my friends have no idea what I am up to now. They have no hand in this.”
“How dare you! You think I’m incapable of thinking? It will be too late for you when you learn it ‘your way’, you see. You will regret behaving like this.”
“Too late? It will be worth it, more than living in the shadow of dead opinions. People like you are fooled by time. It is only now that I concern myself with. You are ignorantly delusional. I will learn better when time allows me a reason to improve. My methods are not dictated by the past because I have no conception of it. You are a prisoner of the past and a servant to your future. I live, for myself. Now.”
“Get out… Before I punch you in the face! Get out of my sight!”
“I’d hoped you’d say that. I was prepared. You have proved your worth to my words. I will not utter a single one in your presence ever again. I shall hope that you learn to live the present tense someday.”
***
Why should method hold a universal purpose? Why have we lost so much of our sense of choice? This world is rotting because it is old. Humanity will die if it doesn’t birth a new school of modern dynamic thought. Man is restrained by men. Individualism needs a boost. Ego and Selfishness need redemption, because only with a sense of self can we have the sense of choice. We have become a people who believe that the only greatest virtue is that of selflessness, and we are taught that selfishness is the greatest evil. But for whom do we actually live? Our ego is made to lose courage, made to believe that it must surrender to the other, which also serves another, and another and so on, endlessly. We’re a mob, and mobs don’t respond to reason. They are driven by nothing, so are its constituent individuals.

I see a world ahead where people are driven by need. A place where to know and work for oneself takes place of servitude towards the greater of our race. Humanity is supposed to have a sense of individuality. Otherwise what are we but this flock of birds?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-just-one-bird-can-urge-entire-flock-change-directions-180952426/?no-ist

(^read with a new perspective)

A little related bit by one of my favorite persons (which includes Ayn Rand):