This ad is gorgeous, isn't it? There is a beautiful dog who has been designated by one lovely and innocent child, as her protector and friend. If this Bloodhound, this being, chose to defile its own personality, ego, self, what would become of this child?

If this dog was anything other than what it is, we would be looking at a completely different ad, and that's why You matter.

You do know that, don't you? Your mama told you that and you believed it and you believed it because it is true and you knew that about yourself.

Then you went to school.

In school you mattered only as far as you could fit into a group, get along with your teacher, play nice with others. How horrifying. How sad that you spend the most formative years of your life learning, reciting, and regurgitating memes that pushed you into a place in a group, but now you are a grown up, and it's time for you to know, for real this time, that You matter.

The person you are, that unique extraordinary person the makes you- all those memes in your head- those matter to the world. And they matter to the world so much that if you continue to force them to disappear, they will be missed. Your memes, the unique way you put information together, the ideas that you carry with you everywhere you go cannot be replicated and they matter to us as a species, and they matter to us as individuals, because here's what happens when they disappear- the individual disappears and you become a shadow of yourself.

We are meme machines. We have the unique ability among all species to process complex ideas and share information and I believe that if you willfully, purposefully choose to ignore the information you are able to share, you are diminishing your self. Forget what you were taught about playing nice with others, you matter and you are to be celebrated.

Greg Swann, on the BloodhoundBlog:

A Bloodhound’s virtues are genetic accidents, but that doesn’t make them less than perfectly admirable, whether evidenced in the dog or anthropomorphized and expressed in thoroughly conscious human behavior. Brought up right, a Bloodhound is a natural alpha, regal and indomitable. The dog will move with a lanky, un-self-conscious arrogance that is simply heart-breakingly beautiful to look upon: This what a thriving organism looks like.

I am steadfastly, philosophically opposed to the idea of humility. I think it is one of many evil ideas foisted off on us by malefactors who love us best at our absolute worst. To say to me, “You’re arrogant,” or, “you have a big ego,” is no reproach. On the one hand, it is a statement of obvious fact. But on the other, it puts me on my guard against you. A healthy, normal human being moves and acts and thinks and speaks with the lanky arrogance of a healthy, normal Bloodhound. When people don’t behave that way, I want to know why. When they affect to preach against healthy, normal human behavior, I go on defense — and not by half-measures.

Let's look again at this extraordinary ad: We would never want this Bloodhound to be anything other than what it is right at this moment- how could we? Its own self is so crucial to the world, that a young girl is depending on this same self.

Here's the thing: I want this for you as well. I want you to be so much your own self, that you would never ever consider losing that self, dissipating that self. I am empathetic, that's part of who I am and it makes me ache for you and it's painful for me to see you when you are less than whole, but, I cannot become less of me, for you. I will not lose myself because you refuse to be yourself.

We are at our best when we are fully freely functioning who we are, and when you see that and believe it, and begin to live your life knowing that you matter, at that moment, we are us, you are you, and that, in and of itself, is the most pure and beautiful thing the world has ever known.

Greg Swann from the BloodhoundBlog:

(...) we are all about to be involuntarily inducted into a cannibal cult. My question for you: Will you choose to be devoured by your neighbors, or will you elect to devour them instead? –GSS

 
What I want to discuss is Socrates’ question about whether it is better to inflict an injury or to have an injury inflicted upon you. It’s a favorite of sophists and sophomores, I know, but I think it strikes at the very core of justice. The justice I seek and seek to defend is not “out there”, apart from myself. Justice (or injustice) is not what others do to me, it’s what I do to myself and to others. Where I find myself availing myself of the fallacies tu quoque or two wrongs make a right, I am rationalizing injustice, and the worst havoc I am wreaking is upon my own ego.

The Nazarene’s answer to Socrates was this: It is better to have an injury inflicted upon you, because redemption is still possible to one who has not inflicted injury upon another. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I don’t believe redemption hinges upon any one event. But I do believe that a “justice” that is itself unjust is vain at best and evil at worst. (...)

There's so much more...