A Formula for Personal Ethics
What does it mean to become the person you were meant to be? What must you hold dear to succeed? In this brief treatise, we put the meta-to-the-meta in understanding why we are who we are, and the unique potential each one of us wields.
“Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the PERSON you become” — Jim Rohn
For me, I interpret this as: The level of your Ethics/Personality + Skills + Optimisation (of your daily life) = PERSON. The higher this score, the better the person you are, and I guess the “wealthier”.
But I would weigh each of those three components as follows: Ethics — 50%, Skills — 30%, Optimisation — 20%. (Each person could have different weights, depending on what their priorities are, but for me, this is the best set of weights for a person who could potentially change the world, so this is what I focus on). You can have all the skills in the world, but not know what to focus those on. You can know all the science in the world, but not know what for, or even WHY.
In today’s world, with LinkedIn, Facebook, and the pressure to be the next Elon Musk or Steve Jobs (or insert name of person you consider successful here ________), we think that all we are is the set of skills we’ve become good at. But that can’t be right, because there’s much more to us than just our skills right?? I mean, you don’t go on a date and forever talk about how successful you are at being a stock broker or an entrepreneur (unless you want to be a douche!) You have to have something else, something bigger, something more intuitive — something more PERSONAL than that.
And that’s where your “Ethics” comes in.
Remember, YOU are not just your skills. You are mainly your “morals” or “ethics” which put another way, is the PROCESS of how you arrive at a particular decision — yes or no. “Yes, I will be a corrupt congressman.” “No, I will not get the vaccine.” How the hell you arrived at these decisions, is beyond me! But nevertheless, that is your personal ethics — it is your thought processes on determining the merit of a particular thought or action, and successfully (or unsuccessfully) implementing that decision. Some people might call it “Philosophy” or “Psyche” or “Character”. But for me, it’s more personal and intuitive than a mere mindset. It is dynamic, and changeable. It is the mindset to the mindset — your “Personal Ethics”.
This process remains hidden away for most of us, for the simple fact, that we don’t want to bother. We feel that we are already burdened by the overload of our sensory existence, and so this often becomes very simple for many people: they either follow a religion, a sense of power, or a self-help book to the letter. Heck, even great men and women! So if you can name it, you can follow it. Pick your poison.
Yet, often, these “guides” throw you in the wrong direction — why? Because they are not alive. “God is Dead,” Nietzsche screamed. But so is he. They are not dynamic anymore (though their texts are constantly reinterpreted). And even if they were, how would they come to know about you and your peculiar circumstance? Why would they care? Their admonitions are compromises at best to the pure thing — you. They CANNOT be you. The PE is your own attempt at this dynamic guide that only you can truly nourish and unleash.
So how then do you acquire this elusive elixir, this instructive intuition? Well, quite simply — through time, experience, and gall. You may commit mistakes, so many mistakes, it numbs your ego to the core — yet it doesn’t matter, AS LONG AS, each time you do, you’re able to REFLECT on it, and change something, even JUST A LITTLE BIT, that you might have a more positive outcome in the future. There are no shortcuts, except for maybe reading, or actually getting to talk to a master. But in their absence, reading is the gift that even Prometheus’ flame could not usurp. Books, poetry, psalms, treatises, musings — these are the harbingers of the ages. They prepare you better for those moments of experience — the all too important ingredient, by which you cull waste, and thicken the mind — the mindset to the mindset. The metaphysics to your metaphysics —
Your Personal Ethics (PE).
This is the 50% (or more) that without which, you cannot win the game, no matter how hard you try. Psychology has delved into this realm many times, most recently in the form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), whereby how we think affects how we feel, and therefore how we act — and then that affects how we think again, and so on. Clearly there is a cyclical nature to this process. Yet somehow, this only describes what is truly happening within the PE. It is not it.
Throughout history, many people have been able to articulate (whether through words or deeds) these “Personal Ethics” to a level that was not previously possible — and this is essentially the great people who have influenced everybody else with their disruptive philosophies. But then again, you must remember, they are already dead. They don’t exist anymore (at least in the tangible sense), much less know about your position in the cosmos. The writers of Leviticus, for example, could not have foretold that gay people would be so productive (albeit, not in the human department, but in the economic department), that they would be allowed to marry in 2021! Nietzsche would’ve shrugged at my disdain of past lovers, and said, “At least you were loved!” So clearly, they can’t possibly know how to navigate your life, as ONLY YOU COULD. But you must listen to them anyway, with a humility and generosity that you would only afford a parent or a loved one. Like it or not, they did get some things right, and there is a way to extract the most fundamental fruits of human experience without catching the cold of callous malcontent.
So focus on which characters you most relate to. I personally relate a lot to Nietzsche. For a huge portion of my life, I thought I was just going to be some unsung hero (I still do). A loser in short. Got the skills — some skills at least — some personality — but no traction. God’s brain fart in the wind.
But then, in my deepest, darkest moments, I read Nietszche and Kant, and Robert Greene, and Jose Rizal, and I realized, these people exhibited the same symptoms of being a loser in the beginning. They were all belittled/bemoaned, at least to the extent their nature had pronounced them. “Just another indio,” “a madman,” “an absolute nerd.” So I dug in, I got hooked, trying to figure out the lessons they had learned — the nuggets of wisdom and gold they had so patiently sifted from the rivers of time. And Greene does an excellent job of compiling these “voices” in our past — that will always ring true today (see “The Laws of Human Nature”). So yeah, do a survey of all these voices and morals and see which ones fit you best, and WALK with it. DON’T RUN. Please. Hitler perhaps was the best example of a man who just ran with it — with Nietzsche’s idea of the “ubermensch” and look how that ended up — the subjugation and death of the world that was once 1939–1945.
So yeah, WALK with those people, and remember that there is something invaluable in each one of them. Don’t discount them. Learn to make them “fight” each other — as you would with your childhood toys — in your mind, allow their ideas to coalesce, mix and rattle each other out. As a child I always learned best when I was watching two opposites collide. “For it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” (Aristotle).
Then, REFLECT. And decide which elements of those treatises to mix into your own ETHICS, and experiment with them. Test them out. Validate and invalidate. See the results in the real world, where you are now. If it doesn’t quite work out, that’s fine, just go back to the drawing board and iterate, iterate, iterate — until there’s nothing left to iterate because your cells themselves can no longer iterate. This is the science of your truth. The effectuation of your being. That, or you die by hemlock. ;)
JACF
PS: I dedicate this maiden post to my mom! Whose birthday it is today! (March 30). May you continue to nag me to do useful and beneficial things, so that one day, I may combine that with an endless curiosity for “useless” things, and that will hopefully result in something nice and valuable. Warmest Hugs :)
References:
Nietzsche, F. W. (1968). The will to power. Vintage.
Gregor, M. J. (1996). Kant: The metaphysics of morals.
Greene, R. (2019). The laws of human nature. Penguin Books.
Holden, P. (2009). Unbecoming Rizal: José Garcia Villa’s Biographical Translations. Life Writing, 6(3), 287–302.
Luis H. Francia. (2014). José Rizal: A Man for All Generations. The Antioch Review, 72(1), 44–60. doi:10.7723/antiochreview.72.1.0044
