Page 329

Chapter 25 — Pre-Chapter Quiz:

Question 49: how many rules do i have in relationships?

d.) one

#.) three

6.) five

9.) two

 

Question 50: why is it important to have standards?

n.) people can’t trust you if you don’t have them

@.) only the powerful have standards

+.) It’s hard to predict someone with good ones

3.) life is meaningless without them

Page 330

Almost everyone believes in justice. The question is what justice means to them, but in this chapter, we will learn my definition of injustice, and how you can apply it to your everyday lives, if you so choose. While the rest of this section is designed for everyone and a must-read in areas of justice, this chapter is not recommended for everyone, as it is highly specific to me, and everyone must decide on their own justice for themselves. Knowing what standards to have and what rules to follow is important because it helps other people recognize WHO you are, much more quickly, and with less pain and effort on everyone’s part; including yourself. A man without standards can never be trusted, for he may be an honest man one day, and a liar the next. He may be your savior one day, and your doom the next. He has no boundaries, or limitations, on what he considers moral, ethical, or simply just. You will never know WHO he is. The same can be said of a man who changes his “standards” on a whim. Your standards must be the rules of the law within your life. This, of course, is not to say that they should never be changed; merely that they should never be changed without legitimate proof of a reason. Your standards must be seen as innocent until proven guilty.

You can be contradictory, to a degree, while still remaining just and true. In fact, it’s a rather powerful stance to have. If your strengths are varied, as to be strong from one extreme, all the way to another, what can you possibly have to fear? This is okay. In fact, I aimed to make you capable of such things, justifiably, within the last few chapters. The problem is having this exist without any rules. There is a difference between being contradictory and being chaotic. 

People are crazy, as well as a mystery. That’s what makes them fun, but too much unpredictability will often scare people (Greene and Elffers 123). If you are looking to instill fear in those around you, then yes, an

Page 331

absence of rules is very potent, very powerful, and very scary. They will be scared. As this series is being written to help for strong, long-lasting connections between you, yourself (through your gut), and others, I simply cannot recommend it for our purposes.

Or can I?

As for me, I truly believe that any rule within a code of honor is a good place to start. There is only one big rule when it comes to me and honor. You see, I’ve found that many people use “honor” or “morality” as a defense for their beliefs and as justification for what they are allowed to do to others. My friends, a code of honor, your morality, must be there to protect the world from you, not you from the world. This, of course, does not mean to simply put the world above you; it is merely to follow a law of empathy when creating honorable standards. As Martin Luthor King Jr. put it in his mountaintop speech:

“The first question which the Priest and the Levite asked was ‘If I stop to help this man what’ll happen to me?’... But, the good samaritan reversed the question ‘If I do NOT stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’."

- Martin Luthor King Junior, April 3rd 1968, one day before his death.

The point is to ask these questions in the right order. Thinking “What’ll happen to me?” before asking “What’ll happen to him?” will completely change your answer. You must ask about the other person first, or ignore what’ll happen to you all together. This is a powerful, and ethical use of a cognitive error known as “Loss Aversion” (Kahneman).

Page 332

Honor is a specific set of standards; one major subcategory that must be taken with the utmost care. Without honorable individuals, a society of justice is impossible. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that there were two types of laws: moral laws, and legal laws. He believed that only when the two laws are aligned and in sync, can justice truly be served. I agree with him. Without a set of strong individuals for society to stand on, what support can it truly have? Where else does the strength of true justice come from? Knowing your role in the courtroom is the first step towards letting people spot WHO you truly are. It is important that you remember, this is the main function, for us, in this book, of being justified. You can be you, and you can be you within the truest reality, meaning that you are true, you are real, and what you say, in the eyes of the public, and in the eyes of your heart, is simply fact. Without justice, without standards, who are you, truly? I still do not know. 

Okay. What I’m about to say might disturb you. I may seem unjustified. I may seem immoral, and you may begin to doubt what I am teaching you. I will sound secretly power-hungry, or simply insane. I am none of those things, but you may think otherwise once you’ve read and reacted to some of my other rules, once I get to them. 

One time, when I was in elementary school, me and my friend were driving a golf cart around in my backyard. My grandparents were rather wealthy, so we often did that sort of thing. On this day, a time came when I had to make the decision between making myself uncomfortable or my friend. You see, while we were driving around in the golf cart, I was, rather stupidly, jumping on and off the back while my friend drove at full speed. I considered myself quite the daredevil for doing this, but on one jump, I fell, and I fractured my wrist. 

My friend stopped the golf cart, ran over to me, and asked me how I was, and they asked rather hysterically. They were absolutely going to blame themselves if they knew what happened. That much was clear. They were crying already, and I hate it when my friends cry. My wrist was killing me, but I took a deep breath in…. iiiinnnn… And ouuuut… and then said 

Page 333

“Yeah! I’m absolutely fine.”

 

I then proceeded to keep playing, and even go to school the next day because I felt that if I had admitted my pain too soon, they’d have known what had happened, and all my acting would have been for nothing. During the school day, I ended up having to call home for my parents to get an X-ray. Still pretending it didn’t hurt, I said “My arm feels funny. I think I need to go home.”. When I went to school in a cast the next day, I made up this big fib that my sister had “run me over” with the golf cart. Of course, the teachers didn’t believe me, and so they called my mom. My mom then told my sister, and they were both terribly upset with me, but it worked; they assumed that there must have been some truth in it, and so they misremembered my sister as being the one who drove the golf cart during my daring stunts. My sister knew not to blame herself because I was the one acting recklessly and I had exaggerated in a terribly selfish way anyway, and my friend (someone I viewed as far more fragile) never even knew what they did.

I do have a high pain threshold, so this wasn’t as much about a sacrifice of comfort as much as it was a sacrifice of safety. I had NO IDEA if my arm would heal properly, but those are the sacrifices I make for my friends. I can say, with almost no doubt in my mind, and with no exaggeration, that I would, literally, die for the woman I love. This isn’t because I choose to be kind, or because I’m a saint. It’s just who I am. If I were a saint, I’d probably love this about myself without exception, but I do, truly, find myself hating this trait on more than many occasions. 

Consistency for consistency’s sake almost never ends well. There are times when sacrifices must be made, be it of you, or whatever you might have (such as your preferences). Sometimes you may need to sacrifice your money for the greater good, sometimes you must sacrifice your time, “a portion of our lives that we will never take back” according to

Page 334

Alexander the Great, and sometimes we must sacrifice other things. In these few cases, I choose to sacrifice my honor. There are times when your standards need to have serious consequences, whether you like it or not, but what “serious consequences” means is up to you. The point of this story is 2-fold. One is to make sure you know that standards aren’t easy to keep, but the truth is that they must be upheld, and the second? The second reason is that I simply wished to tell you the truth, no holes barred, before we went any further, because I cannot, in good conscience, keep secrets from you while starting new chapters on being justified. I won’t, and I refuse. 

This may be enough to learn from this chapter. If you start to get bored or uncomfortable with what’s next, you can skip this chapter, and move on to the rest of this section, at any time.

Sometimes sacrifices must be made. You WANT to feel that your past views on morality are justified, but you NEED to develop the tools that'll create true peace, fulfillment, and relationships. Now ask yourself, are you the type of person to put your wants above your needs?

Or the other way around?

I sincerely hope that you read this section. I believe that it can help almost everyone with at least something, but between success, and my dignity, I choose my dignity, and it would be undignified to hide my less appealing side from you, especially when you’re most likely here to trust your gut, and identify your more unpleasant parts (especially ignorance) of your own lives. Besides, by this point in time your gut should be able to tell you if I’m trustworthy or not, so hiding things would probably be more of an insult to your progress than to just be honest with you. If you believe me to be unacceptably unjust or crude, skip this chapter, but please give the rest of the section a chance. Either way, just know that you will be missed, because I will miss you. 

I am not a god. I am not a saint, but I do love those around me very much, even within my own imperfections. I don't like to make people

Page 335

feel uncomfortable, let alone in pain, but there are times when I feel a need to defend those that I love and care for, including myself, and so I've set aside set times and triggers for such immoral actions to take place.

Okay. Here are my rules, and the dark consequences to them. Outside of honor, which protects the world from me, the rules I use to protect myself are 3, and they are simple. 

These rules are as follows:

1. Do not hurt those I am in relationships with.

2. Do not hurt my relationships with those I am in relations with. 

And

3. Do not intentionally harm my body, my mind, or my soul, in ways that are irreparable, or must take copious amounts of time, energy, effort, or other resources, to be brought back to their previous state.

Please notice how these are all things NOT to do. This means that I have allowed for the most liberty I could when it came to their interactions with me.

Now, if they did something outside of this, say, to break something expensive within my house, that is not breaking any of my 3 rules, and I would simply ask that they reimburse me, without interest. If they were to hurt my friends however, not only would I say it’s an eye for an eye, but I’d be taking some extra teeth as well. Revenge is not often seen as justice. I wouldn’t say that it’s justice for myself either, but when you have wronged me, when you seem to have been unjustified in my kingdom, in my home, in my life, I feel free to do the same in yours.

Page 336

Terrible of me, I’m sure many of you feel, but these are my rules. These are the cases for my injustice.

I do not claim that these rules are friendly. They aren’t, but I know my WHO, who I am, and while it sounds like I'm making up excuses or simply lying, my WHO makes me an excessively selfless man. Once I have given you the title of friend, I become ever-loyal. Somehow, if I give it away, the very term that is "a friend" completely changes how I interact with you. This had, at first, simply made me more cautious of who I called friend, which worked rather well, but I eventually found that something more... potent, was needed for the more nonreceptive people.

So you see, there are 3 rules, 3 rules that’ll lead to hell for you, but they’re simply there as a safety net. It’s placed there so I don’t go dying for some asshole who doesn’t deserve it, and again, outside of those 3 rules, I allow for anything, ANYTHING else. I consider that last fact pretty stupid too, but I truly can’t come up with any other rules, or at least there are none I’d feel strongly enough about to implement.

These rules are set as a distinction between everyday life, and when I must go to war. I set up a code of honor, and I’ve set up 3 times in which I may allow that honor to be thrown out the window. Revenge is not supposed to sound honorable or justified. It isn’t, and that’s the point. When you break those rules, it’s no longer about justice, it’s about protecting me, who I care for, and what I care for. I will become unpredictable. I will release chaos upon you. I will have no standards, and you SHOULD be scared. Please note, however, that I would not break any of my 3 rules in pursuit of this revenge. I said I would throw some of my honor out the window. All the other rules still apply. Be it these 3, or any others outside of honor. Heck! Even some of my code of honor may stay there as well.

Now then, I’ve stated my darker feelings towards justice, and even injustice (towards truths and deceit), and I think I've made it clear that I feel the world needs a bit of both. I believe that you need to have

Page 337

standards, FOR YOUR STANDARDS. I especially do not ask that you adopt this mindset, only that you accept that they are there within me. I cannot, in good conscience, keep secrets from you while starting new chapters on being justified. I won’t, and I refuse. This is the whole truth.

Keep in mind that you must still find a set of standards that you, yourself, find justifiable, and that most of this section will be about compromise, how to obtain it, and how to share in the benefits of justice for everyone. Again, the rest of this section will be about trusting your gut, proving it right, and moving towards more justifiable paths in life. If you continue your life without at least a code of honor, defending the world from yourself, people will not be able to discover WHO you are without much pain and/or effort on their part, and many may simply skip over you all together. People fall in love, be it platonically, romantically, or otherwise, people feel things, based on a WHO. If you want them to like you, you need for them to know you, and know WHO you are. This includes getting liars/traitors to like you, be confident around you, and fall for your “cons” and beneficial compromises (Which will be taught in book 3.) It’s hard to con a con man if you don’t know how to control their emotions through your own, Therefore, you must know when to embrace the truth, and when to embrace a bit of delusion (temporarily). 

If you want them to find your connections peacefully and with a bit of joy in the process, even before they become marks, then consider this section as a crucial first step in controlling yourself for book 3. 

As I started discussing justice and the truth within a courtroom metaphor, I’d like to continue on with that… until I run out of ideas on how to use it, which I’m sure I will. Reality is no simple thing, after all. If you wish to learn the methods, the principles and the ways, of justice for all, truth for all, or truth for none, then let us begin, right here, and right now.