David McElroy

All of your life, you have been brainwashed to obey whichever mob holds power where you live.

The brainwashing uses different language in different places. You’re taught to respect authority. You are taught to believe there is something holy about “our democratic system.” In some countries, you are taught to respect and obey the will of a party or of one particular leader. But in all systems, the result is the same.

You must obey the people who give you orders. You must give them your money and other property when they demand it. You must live by the rules they dictate. And you must be willing to kill outsiders if you’re told to do so.

Political groups violently argue about all sorts of things, but they all agree that if they are able to seize power, you and I must obey them. In this way, they are all alike. They are unwilling to let us live as free individuals — making voluntary arrangements among ourselves — because they don’t believe you and I would make the decisions they want us to make.

The real political and social question we face is whether we want to live as free individuals or as obedient slaves to whoever holds power. You are either on the side of the individual or you are part of a mob which wants to enforce its will on everybody.

I stand against the mob. I stand for the individual, even when I disagree with your choices.

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Their voices were quiet, but I could tell the man and woman were arguing. She seemed calm and dispassionate. He was full of rage. They were sitting near me Monday evening.

His angry words got louder. Finally, he stood and glared down at her.

“I don’t care what you think of me,” he said loudly. “I don’t need you or your approval!”

And then he stalked out of the restaurant, never looking back.

I knew he was lying, but I have no idea whether he knew that. If he hadn’t cared about the woman’s approval, he wouldn’t have been so angry. He wouldn’t have protested so strongly. And if he really hadn’t cared what she thought of him, he wouldn’t be a normal human being.

I’ve been fighting this battle all my life. I don’t want to care what anybody else thinks about me. I don’t want my actions to be shaped by fear of being hurt by your disapproval. I’ve often lied to myself and I’ve sworn I didn’t care.

I don’t want to need you, but I do. I don’t want to crave your approval, but I do.

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For half an hour, I had forced myself to listen to something I cared nothing about. Hal and I were talking about some new technologies for capturing real estate sales leads from our website. He’s the owner of the realty company where I work and we talk about technology quite a bit.

But this time, the discussion was purely based on finding sales leads and automating the sales funnel to turn leads into clients. The technology is powerful and realistic. I suspect it will work for us. There’s a very good chance it will be profitable.

But the truth is that I simply didn’t care.

Hal has a sales background. In fact, he’s probably the best salesperson I’ve ever known. He enjoys the process. In fact, he gets excited about it.

But as we talked — and I tried to make myself care about what we were talking about — I suddenly had a moment of clarity.

I don’t care about making money, at least for its own sake. I care about ideas. I care about causes. I care about fighting a good fight for something I believe in. When that makes money for me, it’s a nice benefit.

But I’m never going to care about making money as an end in itself.

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