The Virtue of
Selfishness[1]
1. The Objectivist
Ethics
Rand: “An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals
are the means – and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers
its life is the good, that which
threatens it is the evil.” 11
Brian: How about suicidal people? How about
people who want to live only on certain conditions, and would prefer to die if
those conditions aren’t met? How about people who derive a lot of enjoyment
from actions which risk their lives and health? Life and health are important,
for the vast majority of people the most important, standards of value, but
they are not the only standards of value. When a choice must be made between
greater safety of life and health and another good that the actor finds
valuable, only their personal, subjective valuations can decide the issue.
Rand: “In answer to those philosophers who
claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and
the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist
and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value
which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value
judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that
a living entity is, determines what
it ought to do. So much for the issue
of the relation between “is” and “ought.” 12
Brian: Just because a living entity is, doesn’t mean that all of its actions
must be exclusively directed towards remaining in an ‘is’ state for as long as possible. For instance, let’s say that there
is a 40 year old man who smokes, and it is known with reasonable certainty that
if he continues smoking, he will die of lung cancer in 30 years at age 70. If
he quits smoking, then he has a good chance of extending his lifespan past the
age of 70. If we were to say: “You ought to quit smoking”, then this is merely
our arbitrary value judgement, there is nothing objective about it. To be
objective, we would have to say: “If you want to live past the age of 70, and
you believe that you will value this increased lifespan more than the enjoyment
that you would derive from smoking for the next 30 years, then you ought to
quit smoking”. We present the man with the facts about the causal relations in
this particular case, but ultimately it is he who must consult his own
subjective, arbitrary value judgements in order to make a decision. There is no
objectively ‘correct’ or ‘moral’ answer to this question.
Rand: “The men who attempt to survive, not
by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the
method of animals. But just as animals would not be able to survive by
attempting the method of plants, by rejecting locomotion and waiting for the
soil to feed them – so men cannot survive by attempting the method of animals,
by rejecting reason and counting on productive men to serve as their prey. Such looters may achieve their goals
for the range of a moment, at the price of destruction: the destruction of
their victims and their own. As evidence, I offer you any criminal or any
dictatorship.” 16
Brian: The analogy is highly imperfect. Individual animals
literally cannot survive through the method of plants; any who tried it would
die within a few days. Individual humans can and do survive, and sometimes
survive on a luxurious level, through loot and plunder of productive humans. I
reject the supposed evidence that all looters destroy themselves. Many
criminals, particularly the ones involved in organized crime, have done fine
for themselves. The same could be said of many dictators: Hu Jintao, Vladimir
Putin, Kim Jong Ill, and innumerable kings and nobles throughout history, all
seem to have done fine for themselves. And besides, criminals and dictators
aren’t the only ones who participate in looting. How about democratic
politicians? How about privileged citizens who support and end up benefitting
from the coercive actions of their governments?
Now, it is true that if looting and plundering became a
general mode of life, everyone, including the looters, would all be worse off,
because then no one would be able or willing to produce at all effectively. But
that is why most looters try to establish monopolies of looting: to prevent
looting from becoming general and from destroying the goose that lays the
golden eggs (the looted producers).
Rand: “The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is
an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the
means to the ends or the welfare of others – and, therefore, that man must live
for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others
to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose.”
19
Brian: This paragraph seems to be
expounding egoism, but if so there is a phrase which definitely does not belong
and which is not consistent with the rest of the paragraph. This is the phrase:
“nor sacrificing others to himself”. If the “achievement of his own happiness
is man’s highest moral purpose”, then why shouldn’t he seek to sacrifice others
to himself if, by doing so, he can increase his own happiness? In order to
minimize such attempts, men would do well to ensure that their social
institutions are set up in such a way that people can rarely benefit themselves
through the sacrifice of others. But moralistic pronouncements alone, not
backed by real sanctions, mean nothing to the egoist intent on advancing his
own happiness.
Rand: “I quote from Galt’s speech (from
Atlas Shrugged): “Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy – a joy without
penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does
not work for your own destruction.”” 20
Brian: I cannot accept this definition of
happiness. Throughout life, men make an innumerable series of choices between a and b. If a is preferred over
b, and one devotes one’s finite
resources to obtaining a rather than b, than b can be considered the cost (opportunity cost) of obtaining a. In most cases, the actor does not
consider a to be positive and b to be negative. Rather, the actor
considers b to be positive, but a to be more positive, and hence he
chooses a. But this means that b is still a valued good, even if a is a more valued good. The “penalty”
of choosing to obtain a is not
obtaining b, the “joy” of obtaining a clashes with another one of your
values, namely, the value which indicates the desirability of b.
For instance, a man is faced with a choice: buy a sugary
chocolate bar which he loves the taste of, or buy a healthy and nutritious
fruit and nut bar which he doesn’t particularly like the taste of. Let us
assume that the two bars cost the same amount of money and are available at the
same location. Pursuing the pleasure of tasty things versus ensuring bodily
health, these are the two values at stake, values which most people hold to a
greater or lesser extent. Rand implies that one cannot obtain ‘true happiness’
from either choice. The two values are in many cases contradictory, one must
often choose between them. What is the poor seeker of “a state of
non-contradictory joy” to do? Either way, he cannot obtain his goal. And this
is the case for a great deal of the day-to-day choices facing human beings.
Thus, I think that we must reject Rand’s exacting definition of happiness, and
stick with the subjective/personal definition of it.
Rand: “To take “whatever makes one happy”
as a guide to actions means: to be guided by nothing but one’s emotional whims.
Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whims – by desires whose
source, nature and meaning one does not know – is to turn oneself into a blind
robot, operated by unknowable demons ( by one’s stale evasions), a robot
knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses
to see.” 20
Brian: Oh no, apparently I am a blind robot
with stagnant brains! The reality which Rand refuses to see here is that one
cannot just determine what will make one happy and what won’t according to some
external standard. Imagine that a devoted Randian is determined to make his
happiness ‘rational’. He decides that he will henceforth only attain happiness
from things which objectively advance his life. Anything that is good for his
material prosperity (material means of sustaining life) or for his bodily
health (bodily means of sustaining life), he determines, will henceforth make
him happy. Anything that conflicts with these goals, he determines, will
henceforth make him miserable.
Before, he was somewhat of an artistic and literary type, arts
and literature made him happy and he wanted to do something in those fields for
a living. Now, he realizes how misguided he was: he could make far more money
as a chemical engineer! Thus, he determines that henceforth, anything that
makes him a better and more qualified chemical engineer will make him happy. He
enrolls in the chemical engineering program at his university. He slogs through
the courses, determined that they will make him happy. And yet: they really don’t.
He finds calculus, scientific experimentation, and engineering design tasks to
be dreary and dull. He tries to convince himself that since these things will
lead to a more prosperous future for him, they really should make him happy.
But, no matter how hard he tries, he simply does not derive any enjoyment from
these things, and secretly longs to return to his novels, poems, plays, and
history books.
While this was going on, our devoted Randian also decided
that he would eat healthy foods and exercise regularly to maintain his bodily
health in top condition. Before, he derived great enjoyment from eating sweet
and greasy foods, and didn’t particularly care for physical activity, doing
some every now and then only begrudgingly. No matter, he resolved that he would
henceforth derive as much happiness from eating healthy foods and from
exercising regularly than he had before from eating unhealthy foods and from
his more passive leisure activities. And yet: despite his resolution, these
things really didn’t make him happy. While trying to derive enjoyment from
eating plain chicken breast with broccoli and quinoa, he secretly longed for a
Big Crunch Sandwich from KFC. While trying to derive enjoyment from vigorous
exercise, he secretly longed to sit in front of his television and marathon-watch
the new season of Game of Thrones.
Why did our Randian fail? Why couldn’t he transform useful things into enjoyable things? It would make everything so much easier for him
if he could have! But alas, like it or not, happiness is ultimately based on “emotional
whim”. This doesn’t mean that man’s conduct must be guided by every spur-of-the-moment
whim that happens to come to his mind. Man has the ability to choose useful
things, things that are expected to produce happiness in the long-run, over
enjoyable things, things that are expected to produce relatively immediate
happiness in the short-run. More future-oriented people will tend to choose
useful things over enjoyable things more often that more present-oriented
people. But not even future-oriented people have the power of transforming, on
command, something that involves a sacrifice of some short-term happiness in
exchange for a greater amount of long-run happiness, into something that is
both enjoyable in the short-term and good for the long-term. If you can prove
to me that there are people that can do this, I would really love to know how
they do it, for such an ability would make life incalculably easier. Alas
though, I am dubious that such an ability exists at all.
10. Collectivized
Ethics
Rand: “If a man speculates on what “society”
should do for the poor, he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men’s
lives belong to society and that he, as a member of society, has the right to dispose
of them, to set their goals or to plan the “distribution” of their efforts.” 57
Brian: That is only one possibility. The
other possibility is that the man is an egoist who would derive personal
enjoyment from the poor of his community being helped, but who is unwilling to
fully pay the cost of this himself. He resorts to advocating for ‘societal’
coercion for the sake of his own well-being. He doesn’t think that he has a ‘right’
to dispose of the property of people within his community, nor does he think
that they have a ‘right’ to retain their property for themselves. The egoist
doesn’t deal in ‘rights’, but in expediency. Is it likely that, through
advocating for a certain form of government coercion intended to help poor
people, the egoist’s goal of seeing the poor people in his community helped could
be advanced, at less cost to himself than if he had undertaken the task by
himself and without advocating for coercion? If so, he will advocate for the
coercion, if not, he will not. Determining whether this is the case will
involve a complex calculation of costs and benefits of the advocacy, some of
them short-term, some of them long-term. Detailed knowledge of economics,
politics, and sociology would help make this decision an informed one. But
these kinds of complex calculations are the ultimate foundation of egoistic
political decision-making, not the (sometimes useful) short-cut of saying that
people either do or don’t have a ‘right’ to do something or other.
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