Brain Fertilizer

Here are some major assumption that I use in almost all my thinking:

When you cannot control your circumstances, you can still control how you react to those circumstances. That's character.

Difficult situations are part of life. We grow during difficult situations. Most of the things worth achieving in life require sacrifice, effort, pain, toil, sweat, tears, and blood. Deal with it.

Morality (as opposed to religious morality) is simply what works in life to achieve happiness, contentment, and inner peace. It means taking long-term gain over short-term gratification. Morality is the collected wisdom of the ages. It isn't perfect, and is continually growing...but ignoring wisdom is a sure way to avoidable pain and suffering.

Pain and suffering themselves aren't bad. Getting in physical shape and staying there requires pain and suffering of your body. Well, guess what? Getting in emotional, mental, and spiritual shape and staying there requires pain and suffering of the mind. The key is to differentiate between what is "damaging" pain and suffering, and what is the pain and suffering of growth.*

There's more, but this will do. It gives you an idea of the way I approach life, and thus the way I approach social issues.

*for instance: having a child, even an unwanted child, will bring about growth...although it will be painful. The younger you are, the more difficult it will be...but it still results in growth. But finding out you are sterile because of past abortions is a damaging pain and suffering isn't it? I'd wager the number of people hurt due to physical and emotional complications from abortions far outnumber the people hurt due to physical and emotional complications from unwanted pregnancies brought to term. It is truly revealing to consider which result liberals prefer...although I'm convinced it isn't a conscious preference as much as a conditioned one...