August 2, 2007
by Clay Barham

Thousands of years ago, men began to have sparks of ingenuity and creative ideas to make his life, and his family's, safer and easier.  He discovered how to amplify his energy and increase his reach using tools he created.  He discovered the wheel and built the wagon, making him able to carry more of the product of his hunt.  He discovered how to harness fire.  That gave him heat and light.  Other men, who gathered in community, feared the individual's genius and struck back at anyone who challenged community habits and traditions.  Men were frightened of the genius they could not understand.

In the whole of man's existence, a few had the courage to dream and pursue them, even against the taboos and restrictions set by other, less capable men.  They created and often died for their creations.  Every new idea and improvement was a challenge to long accepted and established ways.  Inventive men, denounced and ridiculed, often died for their genius.  Men were afraid of offending their gods and rulers by offering the product of a single man's genius to the life of the community. Men would chase an itch, a spark of creativity, armed only with their enthusiasm.  In spite of the risk, the courageous visionaries kept on making their visions a reality.  They fought, suffered, even perished for their itch, but kept on scratching.

They did not chase their dreams to impress their relatives and tribal members.  They were not trying to get recognition from rulers and priests who would rather condemn them.  No creator innovated from a desire to please his community. His community hated the gifts he gave them because they feared its source, the individual creative mind living free of external domination.  People saw creative genius as madness, witchcraft, a sickness demanding prison or death. All the genius could see was the accomplishment and success of his work.  His creations gave form and meaning to his life, a life that was many times sacrificed to it.

The genius held his gifts above all rulers, gods and other men. He pressed forward against all threats of retribution, imprisonment and chains. He found he could not exist apart from his own mind and imagination.  His honor and integrity were his shield and weapon. He lived for his visions, not himself.  His achievements, though rarely accepted at first, were the things that glorified man as a child of his God. These, he came to understand, were the true gifts of God.  His individual consciousness could not long exist apart from his own self-interests.

Community, tribe or collective interests, other than fear, cannot exist.  The interests of the group grow from internalized threats of superstitions and externalized threats of a ruler. Community interests come from outside the core of the community.  Call it tradition, culture or fear; it defines the interests of community. Individual man, however, must think and act from his own interests.

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The conscious, objective mind cannot be compelled to work and create, except by own motives. The needs, opinions, wishes and interests of others simply try to limit an individual's creative mind. Man's creative vision, his imagination and intelligence, does not rise out of self-sacrifice.  No one can say his self-interests, the product of which so often serves others, are selfishness.  In the end, each man must judge himself and ignore the opinions of others.

The creative man must be independent from the rule and opinion of others who stand in judgment of his kind.  His creativity leaves no room for him to judge or be ruled by others, or serve their demands.  He associates with others only to the extent they neither judge nor try to rule him.  Every thing we have today, as tools and things that make life easier and healthier, came from the ingenuity of self-serving individuals.  Every wrong turn in the life of a community comes because community attempts to intercede and disrupt the individual's pursuit of a dream. The community, as a collective, simply fears the peculiarities of genius.  An individual's legitimate self-interest, because it stands apart, has always been the enemy of community interest, the views of the ruler.

America, the greatest political, sociological experiment in man's history, began on the principles of individual liberty.  Each man's "inalienable rights" gave him the freedom to pursue his right to his own happiness. He invented and produced.  He prospered, not so much to avoid starvation, but to achieve.  He did not use his liberty to plunder or display his personal value as a memorial to himself.  As he prospered, so to did his family. As his family prospered, so to does his community, and as his community prospered so does his state and nation.  America proved individual legitimate self-interest was best for a people, not community interest. This is the great experiment that politicians now ask you to destroy with your vote. 

The world around us is collapsing because of an almost religious belief in self-sacrifice.  That belief claims only community, nation and world interests are important, and self-interest less important.  Our rights as individuals to exist for our own sake are challenged.  When we do well at doing our own thing, we are condemned as selfish.  Communities prosper and exist without conflict or ruler when we are free, and suffer when we are not.  America proved the interests of community, its peace and prosperity could not exist without the freedom of the few to pursue their legitimate self-interests.

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Clay Barham [send him email] has been a candidate for the California legislature and a stand-in talk show host for ABC.  He was educated in physical and behavioral sciences, with a Ph.D. in sociology.  He is the author of five books, with his latest being Foundations of Modern American Conservatism and Liberalism: The Roots of Freedom and Tyranny.  Visit his website at http://www.claysamerica.com.