Fuck Your Principles?

So far, I love The Firestarter Sessions.

One of the things I really love about this ebook is that Danielle states right up front (in the prelude) you shouldn’t just agree with what she says–you should think about it and decide for yourself if you agree with her or not. To me, this is probably one of the best lines I have heard from a mentor trying to impart their knowledge.

What did I do with this?

I found something I disagree with.

From The FireStarter Sessions and at “best business advice i’ve ever received, part 1”

Fuck your so-called principles.
- Mr. A., lawyer

Some young TV producers and I were very tangled in a very good-for-them but bad-for-me contract. “It’s not about the money grab they’re going for,” I ranted to my lawyer. “I don’t care about the money. It’s about the principle of the matter. What they’re doing is so wrong and they bloody well know it.”

“So you want to drag this out for months because of your principles?” he said. “You want to sink a few more grand into this because of your principles? I’ve had a lot of clients over the years who have made themselves sick, wrecked their marriages, or drained their finances to protect their so-called principles.

Of course the Producer Girls are wrong. They’re greedy twits. You could countersue and probably crush them. But fuck your principles and get on with your life.”

And so I did.

The above case describes a power struggle between Danielle and the Producer Girls.

So, what Danielle is saying here is that, in this situation, she was never going to be able to teach the Producer Girls “they are so wrong.” In this case, throwing money at the situation wasn’t going to help.

But she could get out of the situation. Once the contract was up, she didn’t have to renew it. And now, out of the situation, she never has to do business with them again unless she chooses to. She can do business with other people–other people who aren’t going to treat her the way the Producer Girls treated her.

That’s still standing by your principles. She just made the decision that it wasn’t important enough–it didn’t benefit her enough–to teach the Girls they were wrong.

Unfortunately, there are LOTS of people who aren’t going to “get” what we believe in. There are lots of people like the Producer Girls who may try and take advantage of you.

Standing up for our principles doesn’t mean we have to teach them to everyone we come into contact with, no matter what. It means we choose how to live our own lives. We choose to do business with people who we want to do business with–and on what level we want to do business with them.

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From “principles: the perils and the ecstasy of clinging to your ideals”

Principles can wreak havoc in your life. When Galileo plea-bargained with the Catholics he let his values be publicly steamrolled. But secretly, he stayed anchored to his astronomical ideals (“Sure I’ll confess to heresy, just lock me up so I can get back to my white paper!”) He played the system back.

Then we have guys like The Crucible’s John Proctor who let those “weighted with authority” push him to the brink of extreme choice: yes to our truth, means no to yours. John was unwilling to play along and the pilgrims hanged him. He stood his moral ground and left his wife a widow and his kids fatherless.

One thing not taken into consideration here is why the two people in the above statements chose to do what they did.

Galileo’s choice was simple: 1) to stand up and say that he believed what he believed and be put to death for heresy or 2) to state publicly that he was wrong and to continue living under house arrest.

He chose to make the required public statement saying that he was wrong for saying what he did. In the latter years of his life, he worked on a book called “Two New Sciences” and this book is the reason he is called the “father of modern physics.”

What would he have gained from death at the hands of the Church?

I think Galileo’s death would have caused the truth to be hidden for much longer. Perhaps it would have showed the Church’s power to be much greater–and proponents of the heliocentric theory of the solar system would have trembled in fear as one of their greatest advocates was killed by an enemy more powerful than they.

Galileo’s death would not have benefited anyone.

On to John Proctor of Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible.”

According to the SparkNotes for “The Crucible”, one motif of the story is “accusation, confessions and legal proceedings.” During the Salem Witch Trials, the judges would accuse and accept nothing but guilty confessions therefore lending weight to the accusations.

Proctor attempts to break this cycle with a confession of his own, when he admits to the affair with Abigail, but this confession is trumped by the accusation of witchcraft against him, which in turn demands a confession. Proctor’s courageous decision, at the close of the play, to die rather than confess to a sin that he did not commit, finally breaks the cycle. The court collapses shortly afterward, undone by the refusal of its victims to propagate lies.

It is not only his principles that he is dying for. The benefit John received was the knowledge he ended that cycle and no one else would be put through it again. This means his wife, his children, the villagers… They were all safe now.

John’s “playing along” would have solved nothing except, perhaps, they might have left him alone. Instead, he is responsible for the end to the cycle of accusations and confessions.

It’s that “choice” thing again.

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But again, we shouldn’t blindly follow principles we don’t understand or haven’t fully thought through.

From “expand your life, take your dogma for a walk,”

But we need to return to continual questioning of our beliefs (and our faith) if we’re interested in expanding. And communing. And the thrill of certainty. Without certainty, you go mad. Without inquiry, you wither…

Fessing up to the follies of your dogma can burn a lot of energy — like rockets do before they take off.

In this article from White Hot Truth, Danielle talks about dogma and questioning what our beliefs (and principles) are. We want to expand ourselves, right? We want to grow as people, as human beings–that’s ultimately what we’re all here for, right?

You should know WHY you believe what you do. And, every now and then, refresh yourself on those reasons.

The problem comes when we get so stuck into our dogma and into our beliefs and principles that we have lost WHY we do these things in the first place. Then we become like the Church in the Galileo example–afraid and angry that our all-high beliefs have been challenged, because what if we’re wrong? What does it mean what we believe is proved to be wrong?

If we’re truly looking for truth, sometimes we might just BE wrong.

But that’s ok. Because we’re not perfect and, you know what? We have the ability to change.

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So what do you think?

(Blockquotes have the original emphasis.)

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