On Page 40 of this book Ayn Rand follower, Nathaniel Brand writes “A mind is healthy to the extent that its method of functioning is such as to provide man with control over reality that the support and furtherance of his life require.”
My response: I know little about psychology but being able to function out there in the world of reality so that one can survive seems reasonable. I would suggest that a moral and spiritual sound person also leads to good mental health.
Branden: “The hallmark of this control is self-esteem. Self-esteem is the consequence, expression and reward of a mind fully committed to reason. Reason, the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by the sense, is man’s basic tool of survival. Commitment to reason is commitment to the maintenance of a full intellectual focus, to the constant expansion of one’s understanding and knowledge, to the principle that one’s actions must be consistent with one’s convictions, that one must never attempt to fake reality, that one must never permit oneself contradictions—that one must never attempt to subvert or sabotage the proper function of consciousness.
The proper function of consciousness is: perception, cognition, and the control of action.”
My response: It would seem that if one has high self-esteem, in part a attitude, not denying or reveling in one’s sins or flaws, but to face the self as one is, and live with a plan to do and be better. The good self-attitude requires certain standards of behavior of the self to live up to and perform (Objectivists do not link self-esteem to the self-insistence that one has a strong, effective conscience that direct the self’s behavior.) in order to make stronger and more psyche-permeating the initial self-regard, so that one’s performance is consistent with, and even after falling off the wagon, how one is behaving. Self-esteem theory needs to be linked inextricably with a lifelong program of self-improvement and grow intellectually, morally, artistically. We do not want serial killers with high self-esteem ( I doubt it because to have such a vicious desire to hurt and kill is not consistent with self-love because the killer is so cruel to others, I would argue that if one esteems or loves oneself and one should, then one is kind to the self, but that is only true if one is kinds to others at the same time. Self-esteem leads to esteeming others, and esteeming others makes the self feel justifiably good about the self, no guilty conscience.)
Rand was unique if pushing reasoning as meaning self-esteeming, and largely she and Branden are correct. Reasoning is connected to the world as it is, and in terms of its potential and how one can actualize one’s potential, a way of intense focusing on being alive, perceiving, doing. I like that Branden demands that one’s actions are consistent with one’s convictions. We should never fake reality, but I do not know how we can avoid contradictions entirely, but we should minimize them by being as consistent, non-hypocritical and clear-eyed as possible. To function we must perceive, understand and then activistically act out our values and plan in the world, and from there it is a small step to my urging that all self-realize.
Branden continues on Pages 40 and 41: “An unobstructed consciousness is an integrated consciousness, a thinking consciousness, a healthy consciousness. A blocked consciousness, an evading consciousness, is a consciousness torn by conflict and divided against itself, a consciousness disintegrated by fear or immobilized by depression, a consciousness disassociated from reality, is an unhealthy consciousness . . . In order to deal with reality successfully—to pursue and achieve the values that his life requires—man needs self-esteem: he needs to be confidence of his efficacy and worth.”
My response: I like what see writes here. There is no doubt that without high self-esteem, one will not believe that one is worthy of living well and doing well, so why bother trying to grow and improve. Jordan Peterson has no time for self-esteem theory because he notes that we are born evil and are generally messes in our personal lives, though he does think people can clean up their rooms and turn their lives around. I argue for self-esteem because I link it to self-love, and love and moral and spiritual goodness are intertwined. We are born depraved and flawed, but, if we adopt good values, bring a little of God into our lives to shine an inner light on that divine spark that was always there submerged in a cavern of rot, much and hopelessness, in the pit of inner despair, the subconscious, and reason about good values to adapt and live in accordance with, the self-esteeming gives us the initial hope that we are worth improving and that this self-encouraging will give us the optimistic push that we can live well, and thus justifiably feel good about ourselves. If we esteem-ourselves, we discipline ourselves and neither mistreat others or suffer being mistreated by others. We know there is suffering and pain in the world, but our values, adopted by us, make us determined never to bring unnecessary pain upon ourselves or others, and that is what a moral person of self-esteem does and enjoys performing.
It seems to me that one cannot be a spiritually or morally good person unless one has high self-esteem: the Divine Couple are the lawgivers that gave us the Ten Commandments, the law of moderation, natural law,, and the golden rule and the imperative to create cosmos—helping the Mother and Father by creating and extending the cosmos in our own little spot through our self-realizing. Without high self-esteem, the will will remain weak, chaotic, addicted to its primal attraction to destroy, crush even kill, to itself, to others, to nature, to reality itself. If we esteem ourselves, we will will that our values are identical—as near as we can determine—to those of the Good Spirits, and the morally strengthened internal drive to esteem ourselves, demands of us that we conduct ourselves in a manner bring little unnatural suffering and much unnatural enjoyment to others, ourselves, and the suffering world.
Branden: “When a man of self-esteem chooses his values and sets his goals, he projects the long-range purposes that will unify and guide his actions—it is like a bridge thrown to the future, across which his life will pass, a bridge supported by the conviction that his mind is competent to think, to judge, to value, and he is worthy of enjoying values.
This sense of control over reality is not the result of special skills, ability or knowledge. It is not dependent on particular success or failures. It reflects one’s fundamental, relationship to reality, one’s conviction of fundamental efficacy and worthiness. It reflects the certainty that, in essence and in principle, one is right with reality. Self-esteem is a metaphysical estimate.”
My response: Branden and Rand are not existentialists, but, in a way they are: the first-hander is so focused on being alive, alert, sensitive to everything inside her, outside her, with others, above her and below her, and she is part-rational scientist, part-intuitive artist and part-God connected (This is my idea as a believer, that the Holy Spirit and the Good Spirits suffusing one’s consciousness fills one with a wonderful sense of esteem or optimism about all and everything despite suffering, disease and mortality waiting for us over the hill.) The first-hander or living angel is existing so that her values and life project are being instantiated and lived by her, and she has to do well and create well so that she is worthy of self-esteem that she has directed herself to earn.
Branden: “It is this psychological state that traditional morality makes impossible, to the extent that a man accepts it.
Neither mysticism nor the creed of self-sacrifice is compatible with mental health or self-esteem. These doctrines are destructive existentially and psychologically.”
My response: Yes, traditional morality, or altruism is really traditional immorality, or satanism disguised as love of others. Mysticism if reconfigured as I have done under Mavellonialism, characterizes our benevolent deities as existing, the fountainhead of egoist/altruist ethics, and being individuators and individualists more than joiners and collectivizing. We are made in their image, so we have a divine command to self-realize our enlightened self-interest, and the near pure and powerful love serve the common good exceedingly well.
We need to move away from self-sacrifice of the self to others, but show a sensible willingness to self-sacrifice or (self-discipline ourselves—delayed gratification of pleasure and ease today, for the sake of long term ends like thinking originally, or writing an powerful poem, or introducing a new AI brain to the world.
Branden on Pages 41 and 42: “(1) The maintenance of his life and the achievement of self-esteem require of man the fullest exercise of his reason—but men are taught, rests on and requires faith.
Faith is the commitment of one’s consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof.
When a man rejects reason as his standard of judgment, only one alternative remains to him: his feelings. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge.
To practice the ‘virtue’ of faith, one must be willing to suspend one’s sight and one’s judgment; one must be willing to live with the unintelligible, with that which cannot be conceptualized or integrated into the rest of one’s knowledge, and to induce a trance-like illusion of understanding. One must be willing to repress one’s critical faculty and hold it as one’s guilt; one must be willing to drown any questions that rise in protest—to strangle any trust of reason convulsively seeking to assert its proper function as the protector of one’s life and cognitive integrity.”
My response: Faith is not opposed to reason, and, I would argue as a rational theist, that reason is the largest aspect of one’s operating faith, whereas one’s instincts, drives, hunches, whims and innate sense are irrational but vitals ways of knowing and communing with God. Both thinking and feeling are tools of cognition, and both provide us with knowledge.
Branden: “Remember that all of man’s knowledge and all of his concepts have a hierarchical structure. The foundation and starting point of a man’s thinking are his sensory perceptions; on this base man forms his first concepts, then goes building the edifice of his knowledge by identifying and integrating new concepts on a wider and wider scale. If man’s thinking is to be valid, this process must be guided by logic, ‘the art of noncontradictory identification’—and any new concepts man forms must be integrated without contradiction into the hierarchical structure of his knowledge. To introduce into one’s consciousness any idea that cannot be so integrated, an idea not derived from reality, not validated by a process of reason, not subject to rational examination and judgment—and worse; an idea that clashes with the rest of one’s concepts and understanding of reality—is to sabotage the integrative function of consciousness, to undercut the rest of one’s convictions and kill one’s capacity to be certain of anything. This is the meaning of John Galt’s statement in Atlas Shrugged that ‘the alleged shortcut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.”
My response: Objectivists are monists and physicalists who deny contradictions are ever true or that they even exist. I as a moderate propose what I would call to be adopted is religious Objectivism, dualist ontology and dialetheism. We need reason and we need faith grounded in irrational sentiment so that we can best understand the world, and our place and function in it.
Branden on Page 42 and 43: “There is not greater self-delusion than to imagine that one can render unto reason that which is reason’s and unto faith that which is faiths’s. Faith cannot be circumscribed or delimited; to surrender one’s consciousness by an inch, is to surrender one’s consciousness in total.
Either reason is an absolute in the mind or it is not—and if it is not, there is no place to draw the line, no principle by which to draw it, no barrier faith cannot cross, no part of one’s life faith cannot invade: one remains rational until and unless one’s feelings decree otherwise.
Faith is a malignancy that no system can tolerate with impunity; and the man who succumbs to it, will call on it in precisely those issues where he needs his reason most. When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one’s consciousness—and one’s mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion.”
My response: Rand and Branden are badly mistaken here. Faith and reason can work together and must if we are to meet and describe reality met with accuracy and comprehension.
Branden: “(2) Man’s need of self-esteem entails the need for a sense of control over reality—but not control that is possible in a universe, which, by one’s own concession, the supernatural, the miraculous and the causeless, a universe in which one is at the mercy of ghosts and demons, in which one must deal, not with the unknown, but with the unknowable; no control is possible if man’s proposes, but a ghost disposes ; no control is possible if the universe is a haunted house.
(3) His life and self-esteem require the object and concern of man’s consciousness be reality and this earth—but morality, men are taught, consists of scorning this earth and the world available to sensory perception, and of contemplating, instead, a ’different’ and ‘higher’ reality, a realm inaccessible to reason and incommunicable in language, but attainable by revelation, by special dialectical processes, by the superior state of intellectual lucidity known to Zen-Buddhists as ‘No-Mind.’ Or by death.
There is only one reality—the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all. “
My response: Objectivists are atheists and material monists, so their atheist followers are not ruled by pure reason and without emotion.
Branden on page 43 and 44: “The soul result of the mystic projection of ‘another’reality, is that in incapacitates men psychologically for this one. It was not by contemplating the transcendental. The ineffable, the indefinable—it was not by defining the nonexistent—that man lifted himself from the cave and transformed the material world to make a human existent possible on earth.
If it is a virtue to renounce one’s mind, but a sin to use it, if it is a virtue to approximate the mental state of a schizophrenic, but a sin to be in intellectual focus; if it is a virtue to denounce this earth, but a sin to make it livable; if it is a virtue to mortify the flesh, but a sin to work and act; if it is a virtue to despise life, but a sin to sustain and enjoy it-then no self-esteem or control or efficacy are possible to man, nothing is possible to him but the guilt and terror of a wretch caught in a nightmare universe, a universe created by some metaphysical sadist who cast man into a maze where the door market ‘virtue’ leads to self-destruction, and the door market ‘efficacy’ leads to self-damnation.”
My response: Branden lays out all of the atheistic and secular humanist criticisms of faith, but rational religious overcomes all of the protests.
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