Ayn Rand, in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, wrote some essays and her disciple, Nathaniel Branden wrote a few, include #5, Isn’t Everyone Selfish? Let me quote him on Page 66: “Some variety of this question is often raised as an objection to those who advocate an ethics of rational self-interest. For example, it is sometimes claimed: ‘Everyone does what he really wants to do—otherwise he wouldn’t do it.’ Or: ‘No one ever really sacrifices himself. Since every purposeful action is motivated by some value or goal that the actor desires, one always acts selfishly, whether one knows it or not.”
My response: This paragraph requires unpacking. My wife and I give money to the Red Cross, to the food shelf locally and to a family that has lost a loved one. As I examine our hearts, I think our motive is generous, altruistically motivated and self-sacrificing, and yet we want to think of ourselves as kind people helping those in need, so an egoist could argue that that any self-sacrifice is always selfish because the agent acting generously wants to be able to think well of himself or herself, and that criticism has bite.
Obectivist egoism, the rational egoism, practiced by the first-hander is largely selfish, but if all citizens took good care of his own affairs and responsibilities, then few Americans would require welfare or much charity in nonemergency circumstances, and that self-interested, self-sufficiency is good for each adult citizen, and is very beneficial for the community, a republic with free markets operating.
It seems obvious that enlightened self-interest blurs over into serving the interests of the self immediately, and indirectly serving the whole community. It seems equally patent that selfless acts may be good for the community and the needy, but it also makes the givers feel good about themselves, and that is a self-interested reward that might feed the whole charitable enterprise.
If the egoist is rational and reasonable, he is not selfish because he sacrifices his own immediate urges and temptations for the sake of delayed goals and self-improvement.
Goodness is love, and the love of others is best achieved by enlightened self-love, with the community ethos that all sane, healthy adults are individuators that let others have the time, resources, power, freedom, and opportunity to make something of their lives that pleases themselves and God, and that love of others is very poignant and profound.
Evil is hate and it is attacking and destroying the self, and then others, and joiners are very self-sacrificing and selfless but they are selfish and ruthless with themselves and others, tearing down themselves and allowing freedom and power for none away from group control and its pecking orders, favorites and scapegoats and sadomasochistic games and endless conflict between warring groups is the human fate. This is why Rand is right; roughly and most of the time, selfishness is virtue and selfless is vice. Perhaps it is clearer to moderately proclaim that self-interests (enlightened) are priority and virtue; and other-interests are of a lower priority, and easily turn vicious in egoistic treatment of the self, and altruistic interactions with others.
Branden: “To untangle the intellectual confusion involved in this viewpoint, let us consider what facts of reality give rise to such an issue of selfishness versus self-sacrifice, or egoism versus altruism, and what the concept of ‘selfishness’ entails.
The issue of selfishness versus self-sacrifice arises in an ethical context. Ethics is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and course of his life. In choosing his actions and goals, man faces constant alternatives. In order to choose, he requires a standard of value—a purpose which his actions are to serve or at which they are to aim.
‘’Value’ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what?’ (Atlas Shrugged) What is to be the goal or purpose of a man’s actions? Who is to be the intended beneficiary of his actions? Is he to hold, as his primary moral purpose, the achievement of his own life and happiness—or should his primary moral purpose be to serve the wishes and purpose of others?”
My response: I like how Branden poses these questions and concerns. If he maverizes and serves God, he is living out his potential in such a way to bring joy, happiness, cosmos, high value, prosperity, art, knowledge and a pattern of his power being put to good use, and that saves and fulfills his life, making him happy, and, when enough adults act similarly and impressively, their self-realizing will make them and him happy and this is how enlightened self-interest and enlightened other-interest reinforce each other positively and grow God’s kingdom on earth.
I would also add that good manners, the Golden Rule, treating oneself with courtesy, dignity and respect is how one should treat others, and demand and settle for no less than their conducting themselves towards oneself.
This takes the rough edge of crass, vile, low-resolution selfishness, whether it is individual selfishness or group selfishness. High resolution, enlightened selfishness, where all comport themselves with good manners and decency towards others and themselves is in the best self-interest and the best general interest.
Branden on Pages 66 and 67: “The clash between egoism and altruism lies in their conflicting answers to these questions. Egoism holds that man is an end in himself; altruism holds that man is a means to an end in others. Egoism holds that, morally, the beneficiary of an action should be the person that acts; altruism holds that, morally, the beneficiary of an action should be someone other than the person that acts.”
My response: Well said.
Branden: “To be selfish is to be motivated by concern with one’s self-interest. This requires that one consider what constitutes one’s self-interest and how to achieve it—what values and goals to pursue, what principles and policies to adopt If a man were not concerned with this question, he could not be said objectively to be concerned with or desire his self-interest; one cannot be concerned with or desire that of which one has no knowledge.
Selfishness entails: (a) a hierarchy of values set by the standard of one’s elf-interest, and (b) the refusal to sacrifice a higher value to a lower one or nonvalue.
A genuinely selfish man knows that only reason can determine what is, in fact, to his self-interest, that to pursue contradictions or to act in defiance of facts of reality is self-destructive—and self-destruction is not his self-interest.”
My response: No one knows, like the maverizer, what is his self-interest, especially the lecturing, hectoring nearby herd of group-living, unaware, lie-loving, conformist, nonindivduating naysayers condemning him as selfish for doing his own thing in a original, creative way. If he is writing new software, he must not be condemned. If he is planning his next conquest as a serial killer, then they can condemn and lock him up.
To live, to be happy, to love life and live well, in general the individual should maverize (this is implied in Rand), so he should not plot to destroy himself or others, or lie about reality, or live with contradictory assumptions (some of these are true and real).
Branden: “’To think is to man’s self-interest; to suspend his consciousness is not. To choose his goals in the full context of his knowledge, his values and his life, is to man’s self-interest; to attempt to live as a parasite is not. To seek the life proper to his nature, is to man’s self-interest; to seek to live as an animal is not.”
My response: Amen.
Branden on Pages 67 and 68: “Because a genuinely selfish man chooses his goals by the guidance of reason—and because the interests of rational men do not clash—other men may often benefit from his actions. But the benefit of other men is not his primary purpose and the conscious goal directing his actions.
To make this principle fully clear, let us consider an extreme example of an action, which, in fact, is selfish, but which conventionally might be called self-sacrificial: a man’s willingness to die to save the life of a woman he loves. In what way would the man be the beneficiary of his action?”
My response: atheists see this world and this life as their one shot to live well, so self-sacrifice of income, time or even one’s own life is a huge concession which they hesitantly concede. If one believes in God, one may be just as hesitant to make these same sacrifices, but one would at least be compensated or rewarded by perhaps being sent to heaven in the next world, and that is immediate altruistic giving, predicated on eventual otherworld personal gain.
Branden: “ . . . The same principle applies to a man , caught in a dictatorship, who willingly risks death to achieve freedom. To call his act a ‘self-sacrifice,’ one would have to assume that he preferred to live as a slave. The selfishness of a man, that is willing to die, if necessary, fighting for his freedom, lies in the fact that he is unwilling to go on living in a world where he is no longer able to act on his own judgment—that is a world where human conditions of existence are no longer possible to him.”
My response: these emergency motives in live or die, melodramatic scenarios, is either self-sacrifice, heroic resistance through suicide, or just plain suicide, and again the lines are blurry.
Branden on Pages 68 and 69: “ The selfishness or unselfishness of an action is to be determined objectively: it is not determined by the feelings of the person who acts. Just as feelings are not a tool of cognition, so they are not a criterion in ethics.
Obviously, in order to act, one has to be moved by some personal motive; one has to ‘want,’ in some sense, to perform an action. The issue of an action’s selfishness or unselfishness depends, not on whether or not one wants to perform it, but on why one wants to perform it. By what standard was the action chosen. To achieve what goal . . . If motivated solely by a sense of charity, compassion, duty or altruism, a person renounces a value, desire or goal in favor of the pleasure, wishes or needs another person whom he values less than the thing ne renounced—that is an act of self-sacrifice. The fact that a person may feel that he ‘wants’ to do it, does not make his action or establish objectively that he is its beneficiary . . . Advocates of the ‘everyone is selfish’ doctrine do not deny that, under the pressure of altruist ethics, men can knowingly act against their long-range happiness. They merely assert that in some higher, undefinable sense, such men are still acting ‘selfishly.’ A definition of ‘selfishness’ that includes or permits the possibility of knowingly acting against one’s long-range happiness is a contradiction in terms.”
My response: It seems clear that Branden and Rand define as virtuous and rational and egoistic the action a man choose that is consistent with or grow out of his values. If one acts irrationally in line with altruistic motives and values that are not his own, requiring his self-sacrifice, then it is selfless and immoral.
Branden on Pages 69 and 70: “It is only the legacy of mysticism that permits men to imagine they are still speaking meaningfully when they declare that one can seek one’s happiness in the renunciation of one’s happiness.
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