Self-Sacrifice

 

Should we be primarily motivated to pursue our own self-interest, not sacrificing our interests for the sake of others, or sacrificing one’s immediate (self-deprivation) pleasurable desires for the sake of personal growth? This is egoism.

 

Or should our primary goal in life be to live to serve others, to sacrifice our interests for the sake of our family, our church, our community, our nation? This is altruism.

 

When we sacrifice ourselves, we are saying that our personal needs are of lesser importance than fulfilling the needs of the collective, of others, for their interests or needs are the greater moral worth, and our job is to live for others not ourselves.

 

Now, let me quote from an Ayn Rand Institute recording, a snippet from an Ayn Rand lecture at Yale in 1960. The recording is over two minutes long. I took notes on it and will comment on my notes, before returning to the questions posed above, of what is the ethical life, to sacrifice oneself for the interest of others, or instead to seek personal happiness and self-fulfillment as one primary or only moral obligation.

 

Rand: “What is the moral code of altruism? Man has no right to exist for his own sake. Service to others is the only justification of his existence. Self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty and value”

 

My response: I think she is more correct than not: that humans have a right to exist for their own sake, but service to others and the nation are important but secondary moral duties. Self-sacrifice to others is not his highest moral duty, for everyday living, his chasing after his own self-interest more than living for others is his highest moral duty. Self-fulfillment and enlightened self-interests are his moral duties, not self-renunciation in the name of serving others.

 

On the other hand, a hero or great soul in fiction like Frodo, St. George, or Harry Potter, will sacrifice himself for the sake of the community. The ultimate example of self-sacrifice in the West occurred as Jesus sacrificed his life by dying on the cross, taking on the sins of all people, and though purely innocent, dying to open the way to heaven for all people.

 

I would argue that heroic self-sacrifice by the soldier that die for his country, all the way up to Jesus is a rare type of self-assertion as her: at this personal junction self-interest, martyrdom, and heroism all merge, so the hero’s ego and his enlightened self-interest requires that he lay down his life for others, and he sees that as his personal fulfillment.

 

Ordinarily, though, Rand is correct. The moral life for the average individual in regular times is for him to go after his rational self-interest and not spend his life in service of others. If they are taking care of themselves and working then they are cared for and do not require his charity, subsides, support or rescuing.

 

Rand: “Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries but are consequences, and, in fact, altruism makes them harder to initiate. “

 

My response: Rand is a rational egoist and declares selfishness is virtue, but she is not as pure, egoist, though she seems to be, or claims to be, though she comes close, and is regarded as purely selfish by the world.

 

 She is still part altruistic, because above she mentions the salubriousness of altruistic consequences for good relations between people—kindness, good will and respect for the rights of others.

 

In my moderate ethical framework then, she is an egoist-individualist almost all the time in the hierarchy of moral duties—her selfishness is her primary concern, and occasionally she emphasizes moral decency in social relationships as consequences.

 

I am not quite so extreme on the egoist side high priority, and more altruistic than she on the need for more altruism as a secondary moral priority, but we generally track together.

 

Rand: “The irreducible primary of altruism: the basic absolute is self-sacrifice, which means self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, and self-destruction, which means the self is the standard of evil. The selfless is a standard of good. Do not hide behind such superficialities.’

 

My response: I concur with her 100% here. She and I insist ontologically, morally, and existentially—I would add spiritually but she the atheist and monistic materialist would not--that it is woven into the being of the world and human nature that selfishness (I prefer the less negative, controversial phrase, enlightened self-interest that comes from and builds self-esteem.) is good, and selflessness (With no self-esteem, the pure joiner is group-oriented, nonindividuating, emotional, fanatical, violent and wholly self-hating, and this hatred is the spring from which most of the  evil in the world flows from.) is bad.

 

Rand and I are egoists. We are both rational and normative egoists. I think that egoism is a progressive, reforming ethical code that must become universal across the globe for humans to survive, and, if alive, she likely would buy that.

 

We really believe that altruism as a primary, as the ethical code, (My idea is that altruism not only is no longer functional, actually holding people back from self-realizing as anarchist supercitizens.), is vicious and wicked.

 

 It is alright where Christians and others are generous, cooperative, peaceful and share, but this is outweighed by the endless clique-allegiance, endless game-playing, vying for rank and popularity to place in the social hierarchy machinery—a complete waste of talent, life and resources-the sadomasochistic acceptance of who is inferior or superior based on rank in the pyramid, the rank-based and elite-enforced, double standard (the social injustice in the pack as correlated to legal injustice for society) of rewards and punishment for favorites and disfavorites in the group, the pack as a scandalous refuge for allow people to hid and not get going as ordered to by the Good Spirits to maverize as living angels.

 

But the worst is revealed, as the group-livers conduct their sorry lives, nested and nestled in their slots of the local groupist hierarchy, where the ambient prominence of lies and immorality of altruism serving the hierarchy dwellers a steady diet of needless suffering. The group-livers are altruists enthusiastially promoting group rights and group identity, scheming and struggling to expand in group power against out group competing groups.

 

Worst is the advance state of cruelty and evil that is produced when cliques morph into active mobs of true-believing foot soldiers of the mass movement they partake of and serve, their holy cause needs extending everywhere. They are most willing to sacrifice themselves, even their lives for their cause, lives wasted to feed the egos and selfish desires of the totalitarian thugs at the top of the heap. These are all grave moral defects and malevolence is the gist of the nature of this dung heap, and it stinks all the way to high heaven.

 

I am a psychological altruist (People are naturally selfless.) and I think she might be, but I am unsure. We have some significant disagreements. I am a polytheist; she is an atheist. I believe people are born evil, and she thinks they are born good. I am a moral moderate and she is a moral purist or fanatic. I argue that the law of moderation runs through ethical determinations, and she likes the law of immoderation, that purity of definition and position taken, back up by strict, rigorous, all or none logic and stances is how to take a moral stand.

 

Rand and I would conclude that egoism is the morality of the future and altruism, though still partially useful (my moderate acceptance of it not Rand’s), is the backwards moral code to be deemphasized but not discarded completely.

 

Rand: “Should you or not give a dime to a beggar? This is not the issue. The issue is, whether or not, you have a right to exist without giving him the dime. The issue is if you have to keep buying your life dime by dime from any beggar that might approach you.

 

The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is if man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will say no.

 

My response: “I am not against charity, but I agree with her overall. People need self-esteem and work ethic so most of them can take care of themselves without help, so the need for charity largely becomes a non-issue.

 

Rand: “Altruism says yes. Now there is one word that can blast the morality of altruism out of existence. Why? Altruism cannot withstand why.

 

Why must men live for the sake of others? Why is that good? Why must you be a sacrificial animal? There is no earthly reason for any of this, and no answer is given in the history of philosophy.

 

My response: Again, overall, she makes sense.