The just-released movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, is a stunning achievement on many levels. 

The movie’s appearance on the big screen is an achievement in and of itself, in light of the rumored efforts by the Hollywood establishment to blackball the production.  The film’s producers created a remarkably credible product while using B-list actors and operating on a limited budget of less than $15 million. 

It is also stunning that such a movie can make it to the big screen in today’s political and social milieu.  The themes conveyed by the movie include exaltation of free market capitalism, admiration of grand achievement by heroic individuals and businesses freed from constraints, and demonization of a heavy-handed government that impedes progress with cronyism and pandering to the lowest common denominator.

But perhaps the most impressive facet of the movie is that it moves quickly, despite being an adaptation of a book that is almost 1200 pages long and addresses complex ideas and philosophy.  While the current release is Part One of a planned trilogy, the director and writers compressed a tremendous volume of literary content into an engaging, fast-paced, entertaining product that allows the viewer to lose track of time.  And the theme, content, and dialogue are so different from mainstream movies that viewers are likely to find themselves hanging on every word and event in the film.   

Perhaps the only disappointing aspect of the film is that the writers took license with some elements of the plot and characters that deviate from Rand’s book.  While such license was necessary to compress the literary work into a movie, reasonable bounds were occasionally overstepped.  As with all movie adaptations of classic novels, viewers who have read the book will conclude that the literary version is more inspiring, insightful, and complex.  That is not a reason to avoid the movie, which is worth far more than the price of admission.  It is, however, a reason to buy the book after seeing the movie.   

Abstract

Supply and demand curves do not often inspire consideration of morality. Economics nominally consists of obtuse theorems and calculations, which makes it easy for the deeper meaning of its concepts to escape attention. But certain economic principles are so fundamental to the human condition that they permeate our social interaction and organization. Of necessity, these economic principles intersect with basic moral principles. It is impossible to fully understand economics or morality without grasping this relationship.

Preamble

The following are fundamental aspects of the human condition that cause economic and moral principles to intersect:

• We have desires that are practically unlimited. This means that we yearn for more than we currently possess, that we dream of adventures beyond our current circumstance, that we aspire to accomplishments beyond our current standing, that we ache for more comfort and protection than our current security blankets, and that we compare ourselves to others who currently have more of these things. We may reprimand ourselves and describe these desires as somehow spiritually debasing, but they are universal for all cultures, for all races, and for all eras.

• We have finite resources available to us. There are only so many natural resources accessible on the planet. There are only so many waking hours in a day and only so many days in a lifetime available for productive activity or recreation. There is only so much energy that can be reasonably tapped. There are limits to our current technology. There are laws of nature and physics that constrain our possible actions. All of these constraints are real, and they must be dealt with, because there is no magical wizard or paternalistic deity to negate them.

• The conflict between unlimited desires and finite resources must somehow be resolved. There are six billion sovereign individuals competing for finite resources in a confined space called Earth. There will necessarily be disagreements when billions of people must divvy up resources. It is clear that some method must exist for allocating such scarce resources to fulfill everyone’s desires in an organized, peaceful manner. Which method humanity chooses is a crucial moral test.

• There are only two philosophies for allocating scarce resources on a widespread scale. These are:

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  • Free market capitalism. This is an economic system that empowers free citizens to make individual choices in various markets that allocate labor, capital, and products based on freely floating prices determined by these individual decisions. Such a system includes a minimal set of rules generally based on a constitution supported by laws that defend and protect individual rights and property. Economic power is exercised by free people trading with each other to optimize value, as determined by each trader. The beneficiaries of economic transactions are individual citizens, who create wealth through effort, efficiency, and investment

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  • Government force. This includes any economic system that empowers government to allocate labor, capital, and products based on objectives established by government and imposed by implied or actual force on individual citizens. Examples of economies based on government force include socialism, communism, feudalism, and fascism. Such societies are generally supported by laws that defend and protect the prerogatives of the state or ruling elites and limit the freedom of individual citizens. Economic power is exercised by agents of the state determining resource allocation by means of taxation policies, wealth redistribution, regulatory requirements, and ownership or control of the means of production. Value is determined by agents of the state. The beneficiaries of economic transactions are agents of the state and citizens chosen by the state.Wealth is viewed as something to be divided up, rather than created.

There are many academic resources that address the comparative merits of these two different philosophies.Most of these writings compare them on the basis of economic efficiency and effectiveness. While these are important considerations, they are trumped by the more basic consideration of morality. This exposition will focus on the moral implications of free market capitalism versus government force as philosophies for allocating scarce resources.

We will begin with an examination of the basic free market model. This model includes a set of data representing demand (points on a curve that reflect individual demand intentions) and a set of data representing supply (points on a curve that reflect individual supply intentions), with an equilibrium point at the intersection that represents a resulting market price. A generic depiction is shown below:

Although this model is disarmingly simple, its moral implications are profound. But, before we can begin discussing moral implications, we must first discuss the mechanics of the model, in order to understand how it operates. Here are the basic mechanics:

Demand curve (D):

1. This curve represents the quantities of a market good that consumers are willing and able to purchase at various prices.
2. Generally, when price is high, consumers will buy less. When price is low, consumers will buy more. This is an enormously powerful and accurate description of human behavior.
3. The law of diminishing marginal utility will prevent demand from becoming infinite, no matter how low the price goes. No matter how cheap any good is, consumers simply do not need outlandish quantities, because each incremental unit has slightly less marginal utility.

Supply curve (S):

1. This curve represents the quantities of a market good that suppliers are willing and able to bring to market at various prices.
2. Generally, when price is high, suppliers will bring more to the market. When price is low, suppliers will bring less. This is an enormously powerful and accurate description of human behavior.
3. The law of diminishing marginal returns will prevent supply from becoming infinite, no matter how high the price goes. No matter how much someone may be willing to pay for something, it gets increasingly difficult to obtain incremental quantities, because easily available resources get consumed first.

Equilibrium:

1. Equilibrium is the point where the supply curve and the demand curve intersect, meaning that this is where supplier intentions and customer intentions are the same.
2. At this equilibrium point, the actual price and the actual level of consumption is determined by the market. This is the point where hypothetical curves of price/quantity combinations become a single, real expression of price and consumption.

Markets exist for anything that can be traded by people. Markets exist for goods, such as things you might buy in a store, where you trade money for these objects. Markets exist for services, such as those offered by restaurants or barbers, where you trade money for these conveniences. Markets exist for labor, where your time and energy is traded for wages. Markets exist for capital, where your savings and investments are used by others in exchange for a return, such as dividends, profit, or interest. Markets exist for intellectual property, such as writings, artistry, or performances that are traded by entertainers for money. Markets exist for real property, which is traded or leased by owners for money.

These various markets are astonishingly efficient. Consumers and suppliers “voting” with their dollars and their resources in these markets create a staggering amount of information about intentions and relative values that guides decision making. The “vote” that each participant makes in the market influences the equilibrium point, which in turn updates information for all other participants in that market, without any other organizing force in society. This widespread market information is a fertile ground for competition and for movement of resources to the most desired state (equilibrium). This continual flow of information guides enormously complex economic activity among billions of participants around the world. Adam Smith described it as the “invisible hand” of the market. The implication is that societies (collections of individual market participants) can peacefully make decisions about resource allocation without the “visible hand” of institutional force, such as wielded by governments.

Efficiency is important, but it is a mistake to rely on it as the sole justification for free market capitalism. The argument used for government controlled economies is never based on efficiency. It is always based on morality, albeit perverse perspectives of morality. The moral arguments for economies based on government force are fundamentally flawed, as will be discussed below, but they are arguments nonetheless, and people are influenced by them. Unfortunately, the defenders of free markets are often so absorbed in arguing efficiency that they risk losing the debate to advocates of government force, because they are fighting the wrong battle. They lose the moral argument simply because they fail to engage in the moral argument.Defenders of free markets lose sight of the fact that things are not right or wrong because they are efficient or inefficient. They are right or wrong because they pass or fail certain moral tests. In order for defenders of free markets to survive the continual encroachment of government force, it is far more important to win the morality debate than to win the efficiency debate.

So, what is the moral argument for free market capitalism? What does morality have to do with esoteric things like demand curves, supply curves, and equilibrium points? Aren’t these just mathematical gadgets and ephemeral abstractions of amoral materialistic motives?

This exposition argues that the supply and demand model described earlier is inherently a profound moral proposition that trumps any moral argument put forward by advocates of economies based on government force, such as socialism and communism. The supply and demand model is not just a mechanism for achieving market efficiency. It is also the proper moral basis for deciding how freely chosen human desires should be fulfilled in a world of scarcity.

The Morality of Supply and Demand

The free market model, as represented by the traditional supply and demand curves, is also a moral foundation for organizing economic activity between humans. The following points illustrate this truth:

1) Free markets are a pure expression of free choice. Individuals participating in a free market operate with the liberty to make decisions regarding consumption and production. This freedom eliminates force from these decisions. Force is the opposite of morality, because morality is inherently an exercise of free will based on values. In a free market, you cannot force others to buy your products, and others cannot force you to buy theirs. Peaceful agreement must be reached before a transaction can occur, and this agreement must be satisfactory to both parties. Such collaboration is a positive moral expression of human behavior, because it is executed without force.Government controlled economies use force to execute taxation policies, wealth redistribution, asset seizure, regulation, quotas, and various other methods to overrule decisions that would otherwise be made by individuals exercising free will.

2) Free markets are a pure expression of economic democracy. As consumers and producers “vote” with their dollars in the market, decisions are made regarding prices and consumption levels. These decisions do not require governments or armies to determine or to enforce. They are simply the result of all participants expressing their wishes and then living with the market-clearing results of those wishes. In this manner, economic values are established by society without guns being fired or individual rights being suppressed. Government controlled economies are an expression of pure totalitarianism, wherein certain bureaucrats undemocratically determine prices and resource allocation.

3) Free markets are a pure recognition of the equality of all perspectives. All participants in a market have an equal opportunity to choose. There is no centralized bureaucracy that has a “supreme opinion” about what is valuable for society to produce or to consume. All opinions of all citizens provide input to the markets. If you have an obscure desire that you wish to be fulfilled, the market will fulfill it, if there is a price that is agreeable to you and a producer. There is no absolute “right” or “wrong” of demand or supply, because it is not possible to objectively determine whether one person’s opinion of what should be produced or consumed is any better than another person’s. To allow select individuals or groups of individuals to make production and consumption decisions on behalf of everyone else is tantamount to relegating average citizens to the status of children without rights or personalities, or worse still, to relegate them to the status of slaves. The free market eliminates the potential moral dilemma of individual wishes differing from societal wishes, because it is not possible to objectively determine “societal wishes” without allowing all participants to freely act and influence the market. When societies impose production and consumption decisions by force, individual desires get disconnected from societal desires, immediately and inescapably. Such disconnect disables morality completely, because not only does society arbitrarily cease to protect certain citizens, it actually violates their right to life. When the common good of society becomes superior to the individual good of its citizens, the rights of certain individual citizens are inherently diminished. There can be no moral justification for this.The rights of one person, or of one group of people, are not inherently superior to that of another, even if a government decrees it to be so.

4) Free markets are a source of pure information. If “price” is eliminated from markets (as economies based on government force would like to do), then “value” is also eliminated. It is not possible to know what society collectively values without allowing freely established supply and demand curves to emerge from their individual choices, and these curves are not possible without the concept of price. The information contained in a price is a magnificent summation of society’s collective valuation. This information is obtained without force or without institutional bias. It is simply the result of everyone expressing their wishes freely. Such information is priceless (pun intended), and is not possible in a force-based economy in which individual desires are suppressed or ignored. By simple definition, if a society does not allow price to reflect the collective valuations of citizens, then any resulting decision must be flawed, in the sense that the decision ignores the “votes” of some individuals in favor of other individuals whose input (and therefore power) is considered superior.

5) Free markets are a pure expression of cooperation. Trade is a fundamental human activity. When trade is freely executed, both parties are inherently better off than if they didn’t trade. This is necessarily so, because no one will freely make themselves worse off. With free trade, all participants in society can take advantage of everyone’s skills and resources by offering their own skills and resources in exchange. This enables specialization and optimized resource allocation, all accomplished without force and with full cooperation between consenting citizens. Economies managed by government force are an exercise in unwilling obedience rather than willing cooperation.

6) Free markets are a pure expression of individual rights protected by law. The concept of limited government and individual rights, in the framework of a constitutional republic and rule of law, is not possible without free markets. If individuals are not free to make their own decisions about the sale of their labor, the purchase of goods and services, and the control and investment of their wealth and property, then their individual rights are not only unprotected, they are an illusion. Free markets and the sovereignty of the individual are synonymous. If a centralized bureaucracy has the power to determine how your labor will be used and compensated, the power to determine what you can buy at what price, and the power to set limits on your wealth and disposition of your property, then you are nothing more than a powerless ward of the state. In such a condition, you have no rights, and you are effectively protected by no laws.

7) Free markets will create the most output with the least amount of resources. In essence, free markets are the best conservators of the world’s resources. Each citizen is intrinsically motivated to optimize value by selecting the best among alternatives. The gain or loss from each trade accrues to each trader, who has visceral drive to make the right choice. Government force, on the other hand, separates those absorbing the risks and costs of transactions from those benefitting from them. Not only does this necessarily introduce inefficiency because there is no longer a visceral drive to make the right choice and optimize value, a layer of unproductive bureaucracy is added to each transaction. Governments will always be more wasteful than free markets, because government controlled transactions are more costly, driven more by politics than value, guided more by dogma than real information, and motivated more by preservation of the state (an artificial entity) than preservation of each citizen (real entities). The inherent superiority of information flow, unconstrained resource movement, and value-based competition enables free market economies to always husband resources more effectively than economies managed by government force.

The notion of morality at the scale of societies is inextricably bound with free markets. Societies that do not allow their members the freedom to choose their economic associations and the trade resulting from them can lay no claim to morality. Who among us has the unchallengeable authority and the absolute mandate to determine how each of us should allocate our time and our resources? For any individual or collection of people to claim such authority and mandate is an abomination and a disavowal of any moral legitimacy. It is tantamount to saying that one person’s wishes is superior to another person’s, and furthermore that this superiority can be manifested forcefully. There can be no greater antithesis to morality than such a claim. Such claims are the source of slavery and concentration camps, of gulags and re-education programs, of omnipotent leaders and conscripted proletarians. Such claims ignore the most fundamental element of morality – you own yourself and the results of your efforts. To the degree that someone else owns you or the results of your efforts, you are a slave.

For any civilization that has progressed beyond simple tribalism, free markets are the perfect expression of morality in society. Oscar Wilde once said that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. This is perhaps worth a chuckle, but nothing more. The truth is that free individuals know the value of everything, and they seek only the freedom to exchange value for value in the marketplace. The aggregate valuation of free individuals in a marketplace determines prices, and prices determine the proper allocation of resources in society. It is government, operating with blind force and unconstrained ambition, which knows the value of nothing. Knowing the value of nothing, governments can only misallocate resources and sub-optimize societal satisfaction. This is why free market economies are more efficient than institutionalized force economies. It is also why they have greater moral standing.

Dr. Maria Montessori observed, “The very foundation of social morality is bound up with money. There is something grand to be grasped here, to realize that this is the most important fact in the organization of society and in social morality.” Ayn Rand adds, “Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.” Free markets are the epitome of morality. Government controlled economies are the epitome of evil. The victims of government controlled economies in Cuba, the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, and Eastern Europe will testify to the truth of this. Or, more precisely, the inescapable mechanics and morality of supply and demand curves will testify.

In this grand and perhaps vain yearning for the indestructible self, we overlook a more subtle immortality that runs through every person who has ever lived and sired offspring.   It is not the dramatic immortality described above.  It is not the endless existence of the specific biographical person we are intimately aware of, with all of the unique epigrams and memories of our distinct selves.   However, there is something integral to us that has lived for billions of years and is likely to live billions more.   We are a part of something enormous and magnificent that, if contemplated properly, stretches our understanding of the scope and breadth of life. 

In a very real sense, we are all 3.5 billion years old.  The particular bits of genetic material that inhabit the center of each of our selfish universes have propagated and continuously evolved over eons, periodically shedding one protein shell in exchange for a new one.   Our body, nominally constructed of water and minerals, is home for an organizing force that has been alive for a very long time.   This organizing force has migrated from one temporary home to another in an unbroken stream that does indeed sneak quietly into the realm of immortality.

From very humble and simple origins in an earlier epoch, human DNA has evolved ever broader and more spectacular exosystems to protect itself and to transfer itself from one generation of host to the next.  The structure of the cell itself is an exosystem, or a "shell", to protect the fragile DNA and to give it machinery to reconstruct itself when necessary.  Cells are protected by "shells" of organs, skeletons, and other complex exosystems to further facilitate nourishment, protection, and regeneration of DNA.  We have evolved to an extent that we are able to construct exosystems that stand apart from our bodies, such as clothes, shelter, and even cities.  These exosystems all serve to protect the corporal host, and therefore to protect the DNA that created and defines the host.   Even ethics and morality, to which we often ascribe unwarranted purity and supernaturalism, can be thought of more mundanely as high level neural exosystems that allow us to navigate successfully in a bewildering world of relationships and interdependencies, in order to mate and parent, giving our DNA further assurance of protection and regeneration.

Not only does our DNA pass from host to host generationally, our bodies replace most of their cells every seven years or so.  In this context, "you" are freshly reconstructed every now and then with new molecules and minerals.  The only thing that is constant in this continuous renewal is the information represented by your DNA.  This information, which has been refined over billions of years in an unending river out of Eden, instructs inanimate material to assemble into the replacement "you".   Every person who has ever lived has been constructed from this river of information, and those that have had children have fed the river with additional trickles of information.  Your body is a carbon-based host for an organizing force that itself has never experienced death since its inception so many millenia ago. 

Supernaturalists often hypothesize about a life force called the soul.   In a sense, they are right that there is an infomation-based essence to your being that stands apart from the chemistry of your corporal existence.  However, they are wrong in postulating that your "essence" is of divine origin.  Your soul, the fount of information that created and recreates you, is your DNA.  It is a soul that is processed and modified by every person who ever lived.  It is not a soul of personality nor an eternal encapsulation of individual ego.  Rather, it is the blueprint of life, the template of animate, replicating existence.

Is this strain of DNA truly immortal?  Will it live forever?  History argues in its favor, given the 3.5 billion year ordeal that it has already weathered.  Thus far, it has bridged countless generations, morphing into millions of species that inhabit the entire planet, populating the seas, the skies, and the earth with a plethora of stunning forms and functions.   It has undergone spectacular adaptations to a wide array of inimical environments and it has survived innumerable cataclysms from within and without.  At some point, it may even follow its hosts to make an extraterrestrial leap and continue replicating elsewhere in the universe.

Unfortunately, entropy  will almost certainly establish an upper boundery on the longevity of this organizing life force.  Nearly every theory of our future points to physical demise of the universe due, if nothing else, to inevitable decay into low energy states defined by the second law of thermodynamics.  But that probable demise is likely to happen billions of years in the future.  Until then, the river out of Eden will continue to proliferate, in some form or another, perhaps even on planets other than earth.

This is likely not the individualized immortality that we hoped for, but rather than rue the temporal nature of our corporal host of the DNA life force, we can choose instead to celebrate the blessing of every moment of awareness that this living river out of Eden has bequeathed to us.  We are each a part of this endless river, which still has an infinity of stories to tell and vignettes to unfold.  And if we are so blessed, our children will be unique signatures and twists that we will add to this stream of immortality. 

(With gratitude to Richard Dawkins for the "river out of Eden" allegory). 

Stars formed from gaseous clouds, then clustered into galaxies. Planets formed from the scattered remnants of stars that died, and then clustered into solar systems. In a random, chaotic, unscripted way, everything in the universe found an order, and behaved according to some simple laws. In this way, the universe grew and expanded, with a lifeless, perhaps even programmed, progression toward disorder.

Things were going along smoothly, until a blue green planet coalesced somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. This planet initially conformed to the mindless, entropic rules of the universe, until a strange confluence of chaos, chemicals, heat, and voltaic energy created self replicating carbon compounds that gradually morphed into bizarre single-celled organisms that painstakingly evolved into multi-celled organisms, which then transformed into many species of complex organisms. Two things happened next. First, these organisms began to care whether they existed or not. Then the highest level species began to wonder what it all meant. From these two things came the notions of good and bad and right and wrong, which were codified into isms and religions.  And then all hell broke loose....

This Manifesto for Living begins with the question “Why do we want to go on living?”

Think deeply about it. The answers will be profound. At the core of all of our answers will be a lust for life itself. This lust for life is experienced both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative experience of this lust is expressed as a yearning for immortality, which drives us toward the need to reproduce and to examine the spiritual nature of our existence. The qualitative experience of the lust for life is expressed as a yearning for joy and continual growth.

There is a polarity to life. At one end of the spectrum lie pain and death, which are synonymous. At the other end lie joy and life, which are synonymous. The goal is to choose for joy and life, and to wage battle against pain and death. Since we live in an inimical universe, we cannot avoid this battle. We can only determine the degree to which we will win or lose.

However, this choice is often ambiguous. We choose between life and death and between joy and pain in an intellectual environment of imperfect knowledge and a psychological environment of fear. Both environments will adversely impact the quality of our choices. Ignorance clouds the mind, and fear paralyzes it.

Thus, greater knowledge and less fear will move us toward better choices, and therefore toward optimized joy and life. These choices are inescapable. They occur thousands of time each day. In between every stimulus and response lies the gap in which we decide the path of our lives. Between every stimulus and response we wrestle, consciously or unconsciously, with the fundamental choice between joy and pain and between life and death. These choices are binary. They are either/or. With each choice we make, we are either moving closer to joy and life, or closer to pain and death. This is why the fog of ignorance can be catastrophic, and why the paralysis of fear can be debilitating. Knowledge is the only effective weapon that we as humans possess. Fear is the opposite of everything good. It is the opposite of love, growth, esteem, relationship, joy, peace, and thus life. Understanding this is extremely important.

The purpose of life is joy, since joy is synonymous with life. Every living organism, no matter how great or small, seeks to move toward that which enhances joy and life, and away from that which gives rise to pain and death. It is an instinctive and existentially fundamental movement which conforms to nature’s law of identity (nothing can behave in contradiction to it’s nature). Joy and life are indistinguishable, as are pain and death. Joy requires growth, since optimizing life is a process of continuous improvement. Our condition is either improving or decaying, and there is zero probability that where we are at now is ideal. Growth requires change, which is often experienced as a temporary, uncomfortable disequilibrium. Since this disequilibrium is unavoidable and difficult to confront, change requires vision, conviction, courage, audacity, and a JFDI attitude.

This preamble only scratches the surface of a lifetime of observation and thought. To get a deeper perspective, read the following books in the order listed below:

“Catch-22”, by Joseph Heller

“Anthem”, by Ayn Rand

“The Fountainhead”, by Ayn Rand

“The Six Pillars of Self Esteem”, by Nathaniel Branden

“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, by Stephen Covey

"River Out of Eden", by Richard Dawkins

"The Science of Good and Evil", by Michael Shermer

“The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success”, by Deepak Chopra

"Total Freedom", by Jiddu Krishnamurti

And now, the Manifesto for Living.....

Life is infinitely precious.

Life is infinitely precious because of it’s scarcity and it’s potential.

Life is scarce because it is the most finite element of existence in the universe. It is so finite because it is temporary, irreplaceable, and irreproducible, and therefore it is the one thing that violates the law of conservation in the universe.  It is the only element of existence that is volitionally extropic.

Life has enormous potential, because it can be anything a free will is determined to make it. Existence is an unprogrammed field of infinite possibilities, and we alone as cognitive, volitional, living beings have the ability to transform the unmanifest into the manifest.

The purpose of life is non-contradictory joy. The preconditions for non-contradictory joy are Self Esteem, Connectedness, and an Unmortgaged Spirit.

Self Esteem requires:

-Proactively expressing and pursuing your intentions and desires

-Recognizing that you get what you deserve (Law of Karma or Cause and Effect)

-An unyielding belief in yourself and your unique value

-A sense of accomplishment through achievement (doing)

-Continual growth toward wisdom and completeness

-Rational thinking and principle-centered decision making

-Self Referral (i.e., Self as the standard for all meaning, or Independence)

Connectedness requires:

-Evolving a life mission and vision that begins with the end in mind

-Recognizing that relationships (interdependencies) are the most rewarding manifestations of individualism (independence).

-Loving and being loved, without conditions

-Giving and receiving, without conditions

-Seeking first to understand, then to be understood

-Nurturing a “mind/body/spirit” partner as a mirror to your soul

-Practicing non-judgment and acceptance

-Playing a meaningful role in the human community

-Having a sense of place, family, and home

-Win/win thinking

Unmortgaged Spirit requires:

-Considering your past only as a learning experience, considering your future only to plan, and living your life in the present with complete awareness and focus.

-Freedom of action and thought

-A will to live, which manifests itself as a lust for joy

-No fear, which manifests itself as risk-taking and boldness

-A child’s world view (seeing the world as fun, humorous, and curious)

-Uninhibited expression of self

-Detachment from superficial status symbols and outcomes

-Embracing uncertainty, because security is a prison for the soul

-Becoming aware of your paradigms and challenging them

The conclusion to the Manifesto for Living is provided by Gautama Buddha: “This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.”