Be secure in yourself

Who you are, why you think you're here, what you think you need to do ... these are all important questions to ask. If you don't, you simply don't know ... you don't know yourself. You're guessing. You're on uncertain ground.

When you're on uncertain ground, you're a prime target for those who love to divide and conquer. If you can't decide, if you can't make up your mind, well, they are more than ready and willing to do just that.

A side effect of being secure in your person is what we call a "moral compass". You tend to not only know the difference between right and wrong, for example, but you are also more inclined to act in a way consistent with that knowledge. Say you have a problem with ethnicity (or race, if that's the word you understand), then when it comes to killing, you will most likely recognize that this problem is influencing (if not dictating) your attitude. You'll most likely pull back. If you realize, in another case, that you find no reasonable grounds to think that any one human life is worth more than any other human life, you come to realize that all killing is questionable at best, immoral in most cases. Some of tried to make the case that, say, serial killers know exactly what they are about, but I would argue that they often don't acknowledge that what they are doing is wrong because they lack the empathy that normal human beings have. In other words, it is a person who is of healthy mind who can know him or herself. People who can't are ill and in need of help. In other words, knowledge in general, and self-knowledge in particular, tends toward and leads one to consistency and uniformity on the one hand, but also to a strong(er) recognition of "the other" as well.

Another side effect of being secure in your person is increased sensitivity of what I'll call your "nonsense" detector (though any other reasonable terms, such as "insanity", "stupidity", "bullshit", etc. would work as well ... I'm trying to keep it neutral). You hear someone trying to make a point, presenting what they think is a cogent and coherent argument, offering a (at least to them) "reasonable" opinion, and you immediately realize that they don't have a point, their argument is full of holes or what they are offering isone of those opinions that is uttered in place of, not as a result of, thought.

The upside to this is that you needn't lose your cool when another starts spouting nonsense. You realize, very quickly in fact, they aren't contributing to the dialogue, and they certainly aren't contributing to the needed solution. You needn't waste any time trying to convince them of what they don't want to believe, and that frees up you and your own energy to find other thoughtful, reasonable, individuals like yourself who are secure enough in their beliefs and their persons that they are willing to try and fix real problems, not merely fix the blame.