You can’t “should” people into living your way, but you can help them learn to make happier choices.

From a comment on Facebook, I cherry-picked these three words

> the natural order

responding as follows:

But because our behavior is governed by free will, this cannot exist for human beings. Rabbits cannot choose to be carnivores, tigers cannot choose to be vegans and neither can choose to eat nothing but whey protein and Doritos, but human beings can make any possible choice.

You might argue that some of those choices are unwise, but the person making them can offer up his counter-arguments, which may seem to you to be specious or profound. Either way, every other human being is exclusively self-controlled regardless of what you might think or say. There is no inescapable natural order, and you cannot reasonably expect to “should” other people into doing things your way instead of their own.

Meanwhile, self-adoration — making the conscious choice always to choose admirably — can be demonstrated to be an ontologically-consonant teleology — a manner of living most likely to yield happy consequences and least likely to result in persistent misery. It is a strategy that can be learned and taught — quite easily and without leaps of faith.

You can’t “should” people into living your way, but by evangelizing egoism, you can help them learn how to make the most and the best of living their own way.

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