On Page 29 of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand talks about the virtue of Pride and how it influences her sense of the worth of self-esteem: "The virtue of Pride is the recognition of the fact 'that as men must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the virtues of character that make his life worth sustaining--that as man is a being, of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul.' (Atlas Shrugged) The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: 'moral ambitiousness.' It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one's own highest value by achieving one's own moral perfection--which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational--by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one's character--by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one's own self-esteem."
My Mavellonialist concept of maverization is very, very similar to her concept of moral ambitiousness, that one has pride and self-esteem earned by achieving individuator status, by never resting on one's laurels, by demanding ongoing moral perfecting of the self. One's positive pride, one self-esteem, requires that one live in such a way as to ever grow, ever self-perfecting, and augmenting one's talent in thought and performance.
This pride and self-esteem is never vain, cocky, arrogant or supercilious or boasting. The individuator is secure in his own skin. He never needs to bolster his self-esteem by embarrassing, degrading or slighting the self-esteem of others.
My rough take on the Golden Rule is: Treat yourself as you should treat others. Treat others as you should treat yourself. This loving approach to self, towards the Light Couple and towards others will raise and support positive Pride and wholesome self-esteem for everyone.
Two quick reactions to reading Rand. First, her standard is too high, too uncompromising, too totalistic. People are born sinners, weak, lazy, envious, self-loathing, frightened, cowardly, pack-oriented, followers and born asleep. They should be working towards these severely rigid, fanatically pure, high Randian standard of self-perfection, but Hoffer was wiser than her about people. He knows that we do not like people or get the best out of them if we set the bar too high. Hyper high expectations towards others can be an attack, a merciless demand that they immediately be perfect or else some elite will bitch slap them into shaping up. We always need to be patient with people, allowing them voluntary power to accept or reject our moral exhortations. It is the right way to act.
Note again that there is no moral compromise in her standard as she writes in the quote above: " . . . by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice . . . " People are irrational, depraved beasts in a social jungle conflict with all their neighbors for sex, rank, food and status. And, some irrational--not all or in a primary way--virtues can be dismissed with such finality. We should be more rational than feeling but both can be positive if the prideful egoist blends them in the right way while maverizing and serving the Light Couple.
On the bottom of Page 30, Rand claims that man has no innate ideas, but our consciousness surely has some Kantian categories of understand to make incoming stimuli from reality understandable and categorized. These could be construed as innate ideas. It seem apparent that Rand, a huge fan of free will, does not want to submit to the claim that the self is controlled by nature or innate ideas, nor determined by one's DNA or the environmental forces that nurtured one. An empiricists and realist, she conceives of the young person's consciousness as a blank slate, so that is roughly acceptable.
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