Branden on Page 44: “(4) His life and self-esteem require that man take pride in his power to think, pride in his power to live—but morality, men are taught, holds pride, and specifically intellectual pride, as the gravest of sins. Virtue begins, men are taught, with humility: with the recognition of the helplessness, the smallness, the impotence of one’s mind.
Is man omniscient?—demand the mystics. Is he infallible? Then how dare he challenge the word of God, or of God’s representatives, and set himself up as the judge of—anything?”
My response: These two paragraphs are complicated to explain but here goes. Many Christians, altruists, do regard pride held by humans to be sinful, but, I would say that being proud of being tall, handsome, smart, more popular or being born in America is a false, empty pride. Dennis Prager decries identity group pride (Black Pride or Gay Pride) as empty sloganeering, because what group one belongs to, or what one is born as are given not merited by what one has done with one’s life or talents. The latter kind of pride is earned merited, but we always want to be modest but justifiably proud of what we have achieved, for it is discourteous to ourselves, to others and the Good Spirits, because bragging implicitly is building oneself up by putting down those around one, and that is discourteous. Good manners entail that we are modest, courteous, and quietly proud without making a big deal out of anything.
We should be proud that we can think, and wield power, and that we are worth demanding of ourselves that we be moral, creative, loving, and productive: we are proud individuals and expect this standard of behaving and performing. If one was a bank robber, and proud of being clever enough to get away from the authorities without being caught, that kind of pride in sinning and unlawful behavior would be a perverse, unacceptable display of warped pride.
Virtue does not require of us that we have no pride in ourselves, we need not humble ourselves before God: God wants us to be loyal and deferential, but not so intimidated that we debase ourselves as a sign of devotion; God is like Arthur at the round table, a first among near equals. That is as a living angel becomes in relation to God. God wants us to esteem and love ourselves, and then perform and be so as to be worthy of that high self-regard. That kind of pride is expected and demanded by the divinities. Humanist pride in human thinking, loving life here on earth, is pro-God, the divine individuators. It is only disrespectful if we openly compete with God, defy God, seek to overthrow God, insult God, or seek to live without God. That kind of defiant pride comes from followers of the Evil Spirits.
We want human as first-handers and blooming living angels to esteem and love the self, so as to be hopeful that one can make a difference in the world, that one’s life is significant but brief, that our minds are powerful and original if limited.
Altruistic mystics denounce any personal pride of intellect as rebellion against God, and God does not see us that way: God the scientists and intellectual wants us to question everyone and everything, including God Deself.
This issue of pride between God and man is almost hopelessly muddled so I have tried to explain it as best I can.
Branden on Pages 44 and 45: “Intellectual pride is not—as the mystics preposterously imply it to be—a pretense of omniscience or infallibility. On the contrary, because man must struggle for knowledge, precisely because the pursuit of knowledge requires an effort, the men who assume this responsibility properly feed pride.
Sometimes, colloquially, pride is taken to be a pretense at accomplishments one has not in fact achieved. But the braggart, the boaster, the man who affect virtues he does not possess, is not proud; he has merely chosen the most humiliating way to reveal his humility.
Pride is one’s response to one’s power to achieve values, the pleasure one takes in one’s own efficacy. And it is this that the mystics hold as evil.
But if doubt, no confidence, is not man’s proper moral state; if self-distrust, not self-reliance, is the proof of his virtue, if fear, not self-esteem, is the mark of perfection; if guilt, not pride is his goal—then mental illness is a moral ideal, the neurotics and psychotics are the highest proponents of morality, and the thinkers, the achievers, are the sinners, those who are too corrupt and too arrogant to seek virtue and psychological well-being through the belief that they are unfit to exist.
Humility is, of necessity, the basic virtue of a mystical morality; it is the only virtue possible to men that have renounced the mind.
Pride has to be earned; it is the reward of effort and achievement; but to gain the virtue of humility, one has only to abstain from thinking—nothing else is demanded and one will feel humble quickly enough.”
My response: Many of Branden’s points that the first-hander must feel pride, earned pride, based on effort, feeling intellectual pride after having used his mind to think and be creative. Where religious people would dismiss that pride as sinful, they are nonindividuating mediocrities and altruist out to lunch. The Good Spirits are always growing in art, love, power, and intellect, and if they were not proud of their status, earned and merited, grounded in their implicit understanding that they are worth such achievement, and then they must work to match that high expectation. We are made in their image and likeness, so this type of pride exhibited by secular humanists and sacred humanists (the latter believe that God exist.) is justifiable. The Good Spirits are not jealous or intimidated by such human efforts, indeed they expect it of us. The effort is to grow God’s kingdom of love, power, knowledge, extent and duration, and it is all hands on deck, and that s why humans of free will and powerful (achieved) intellect are put into this world by the Good Spirits. Our self-realizing and the ongoing self-realizing of the divinities all around us is not a competitive enterprise, but a cooperative one—we are on the same team.
All the Good Spirits demand of us as that we treat good divinities with courtesy and deserved respect and deference. We need not debase ourselves to honor them. If we become filled with overweening pride, whether we are a novice or non-functioning individuator or a highly accomplished and talented self-realizer, then that insulting kind of pride offends the good deities and we will be punished for that. We should be proud but never brag, instead exhibiting show friendliness and courtesy to deities above us and other humans and creatures lesser than ourselves. Part of handling pride in a moral and healthy mode is to not be a boaster or a hotdog strutter. We only esteem ourselves if we take pride in and work to not hurt the feelings of those around us, be they other humans or Good Spirits, but when we brag or put others down, we lower their self-esteem and our own, and that kind of pride is sinful.
Branden points out that we are born ignorant, and must work very hard to become smart, competent, and knowledgeable, perhaps even wise—if we achieve these aims, we can feel proud of ourselves, but need to express that state of self-satisfaction, quietly and modestly in the name of good manners.
Branden—and by extension Rand—insist that a humanist be proud so that he thinks he is worthy of the noble destiny of loving and esteeming the self, and then working to develop the self to match that standard of stated self-regard. This is great. The altruist standard of the individual’s life and worth meaning nothing unless one humiliates oneself by group-living and sacrificing all of one’s dreams and potential to reside forever in the herd as a nonindividuator—that lack of courage and effort is not admirable humility, but is a cop out, having never agreed to live and amount to anything.
Branden: “(5) His life and self-esteem require of man loyalty to his values, loyalty to his mind and his judgments, loyalty to his life—but the essence of morality, men are taught, consists of self-sacrifice, the sacrifice one’s mind to some higher authority, and the sacrifice of one’s values to whoever may claim to require it.”
My response: Well said.
Branden: “It is not necessary, in this context, to analyze the almost countless evils, entailed by the precept of self-sacrifice. Its irrationality and destructiveness have been thoroughly exposed in Atlas Shrugged. But there are two aspects of the issue that are especially pertinent to the subject of mental health.
The first is the fact that self-sacrifice means—and can only mean-mind-sacrifice.
A sacrifice, it is necessary to remember, the surrender of a higher value in favor of a lower value or a nonvalue. If one gives up what one does not value in order to obtain that which one does value—or if one gives up a lesser value in order to obtain a greater one—this is not a sacrifice, but a gain.
My response: this is a brilliant reminder that we should maverize, build up our mind and talent, the greater value, egoistically sought, and let go altruistically driven impulses to degrade the self by group living and nonindividuating, lesser values to which one sacrifices one’s mind and talent, and one loses not gains as such.
Braden: “Remember further that all of man’s values exist in a hierarchy; he values some things more than others; and, to the extent that he is rational, the hierarchical order of his values is rational: that is, he values things in proportion to their importance in serving his life and well-being. That which is inimical to his life and well-being. That which is inimical to his life and well-being, that which is inimical to his nature and needs as a living being, he disvalues.”
My response: the moral agent should value what is beneficial to his life and well being, but he could be on a date, and a bandit pulls a gun to shoot his girlfriend and he jumps in and takes the bullet to shave her life. Is this self-sacrifice beneficial to his life if he dies or ends up in a wheelchair. I would say yes, because simple pleasure or gain, divorced from our duty to protect vulnerable ones around us that depend on us, from harm, is good for our immortal soul, so dying as a self-sacrificing here may indeed benefit our immortal life and our moral soul.
These concepts can be tricky but Branden is right that the rational egoist should do what is generally consistent with his gain if the action serves his life and well-being.
“Branden: on Pages 45 and 46: “Conversely, one of the characteristics of mental illness is a distorted value structure; the neurotic does not value things according to their objective merit, in relation to his nature and needs; he frequently values the very things that will lead him to self-destruction. Judged by objective standards, he is engaged in a chronic process of self-sacrifice.
But if sacrifice is a virtue, it is not the ‘neurotic’ but rational man who must be ‘cured.’ He must learn to do violence to his own rational judgment—to reduce the order of his value hierarchy—to surrender that which his mind has chosen as the good—to turn against and invalidate his own consciousness.”
My response: I agree. I would point out that the rational person is normally mentally heathy, and the neurotic person is more irrational and illogical, but reason can sicken us, and feeling can make us better and know the truth sometimes—as always life is complicated, and there are exceptions to most maybe all generalizations.
Branden” Do mystics declare that all they demand of man is that he sacrifice his happiness? To sacrifice one’s happiness is to sacrifice one’s desires; to sacrifice one’s desires is to sacrifice one’s values; to sacrifice one’s values is to sacrifice one’s judgment; to sacrifice one’s judgment is to sacrifice one’s mind—and it is nothing less than this that the creed of self-sacrifice aims at and demands.”
My response: We can work this out: humans can be religious and yet not sacrifice their mind or happiness—indeed the Good Spirits are angels of powerful intellect and self-interested project completion, and they expect similar from humans, not mindless self-sacrifice.
Branden: “The root of selfishness is man’s right—and need—to act on his own judgment. If his judgment is to be an object of sacrifice—what sort of efficacy, control, freedom from conflict, or serenity of spirit is possible to man?
The second aspect that is pertinent here, involves not only the creed of self-sacrifice but all the foregoing tenents of traditional morality.
An irrational morality, a morality set in opposition to man’s nature, to the facts of reality and to the requirements of man’s survival, necessarily forces men to accept the belief that there is an inevitable clash between the moral and the practical—that they must choose to be virtuous or be happy, to be idealistic or be successful, but they cannot be both. This view establishes a disastrous conflict on the deepest level of man’s being, a lethal dichotomy that tears men apart: it forces him to choose between making himself able to live and making himself worthy of living. Yet self-esteem and mental health require that he achieve both.”
My response: Yes, self-interest is good more than not and to be free and self-motivated and functioning, one must control one’s mind and judgment. I disagree that an irrational morality is in opposition to man’s nature: I would counter that that nature is mostly evil, irrational, feeling driven and driven by selfish self-sacrifice in service to the herd that one group-lives in.
Branden is right that one be virtuous and yet be happy (Indeed they are the same for we do not esteem ourselves unless we are worthy, morally and spiritually wholesome.), idealistic and yet successful (knowing how to make a profit in the world without selling out one’s ideals), and he can choose to live as a practicing first-hander and that is living and that is what makes his life worth living. Self-esteem is mental health, and low self-esteems poor personal mental health.
Branden on Pages 46 and 47: “It holds man’s life on earth as the good, if he judges his values by the standard of that which is proper to the existence of a rational being, then there is no clash between the requirements of survival and morality—no clash between making himself able to live and making himself worthy of living; he achieves the second by achieving the first. But there is a clash, if man holds the renunciation of life, of mind, of happiness, of self. Under anti-life morality, man makes himself worthy of living to the extent that he makes himself unable to live—and to the extent that he makes himself able to live, he makes himself unworthy of living.”
My response: Man’s life on earth and his chasing after a life on earth is good, but praying and acting in ways that God favors, will also lead to his reward in heaven, and that is a greater good than short life on this mortal coil, but these two goods can be sought and acquired without clashing with each other. Otherworldly renunciation of life, mind, happiness, and the self here will lead to the loss of the state of grace for these same human dimensions in the next world. Yes, egoism is pro-life and altruism is anti-life, in this world and in the next. He should live his life fully in this world so that he will be worthy of heavenly reward in this world and in the next where he wants to live perhaps immortally.
Branden: “The answers given by many defenders of traditional morality is: ‘Oh, but people do not have to go to extremes!’—meaning: ’We don’t expect people to be fully moral. We expect them to smuggle some self-interest into their lives. We recognize that people have to live, after all.”
My response: Traditional morality does favor self-sacrifice to others as good, and self-interest or selfishness as immoral. If this was not confusing enough, I claim that people are mostly corrupt born, or selfless, but that they can learn to be moral by willing to so be and working hard at a life of self-interest as thinker-feelers, over a period of years.
People are born with some goodness or self-interest in their consciousness, but it is a weak, recessive aptitude. They need to move away from selfless sacrifice, nonindividuating and group-living—primarily but not entirely. The choice between living morally, rationally and motivated by self-interest, or completely by living immorally, emotionally, and selflessly is not how human nature is made, nor how people should live to be good. This is the law of ethical moderation at work existentially.
Branden: “The defense then, of this code of morality is that few people will be suicidal enough to practice it consistently. Hypocrisy is to be man’s protector against his professed moral convictions. What does that do to his self-esteem?”
My response: Hypocrisy, though unattractive and prevalent, need not be the only way that a person is egoistical and moral or altruistic and immoral. Both the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad, mix both egoism and altruism together often during the day every day of their lives, likely without thinking about it consciously. All we can do is try to be consistent, and moral goodness is being more egoistic than altruistic, but it is both, and the hypocrite is selfless, selfish and immoral, but he pretends to be moral for reasons of not being censured by others, or for worldly gain.
Branden: “And what of the victims that are insufficiently hypocritical?
What of the child that withdraws in terror into an autistic universe because he cannot cope with the ravings of parents who tell him his is guilty by nature, that his body is evil, that thinking is evil, that question-asking is blasphemous, that doubting is depravity, and he must obey the orders of a supernatural ghost because, if he doesn’t, he will burn in hell?”
My response: we are guilty by nature, and though our bodies are not evil, we need to be chaste and clean-living, not thinking is not good, that asking questions and doubting are noble, but deeper belief as an after-conclusion is desirable, and, yes, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and if we refuse to take orders from God, then we choose to obey the Dark Couple and burn in hell. Randians will hate me for this response to Branden’s paragraph above.
“Branden: “ . . . Or the businessman who suffers an anxiety attack because, after years of being urged to be thrifty and industrious, he has finally committed the sin of succeeding, and is now told that it shall be easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?
Or the neurotic, who, in hopeless despair, gives up the attempt to solve his problems because he has always heard it preached that this earth if a realm of misery, futility and doom, where not happiness or fulfillment is possible in man?
If the advocates of these doctrines bear a grave moral responsibility, there is a group who, perhaps, bears a graver responsibility still: the psychologists and psychiatrists who see the human wreckage of these doctrines, but remain silent and do not protest—who declare that philosophical and moral issues do not concern them, that science cannot pronounce value judgments—who shrug off their professional obligations that a rational code of morality is impossible, and by their silence, lend their sanction to spiritual murder.”
My response: God wants us to be prosperous; a rich person can be moral and decent, and a poor person can richly deserve burning in hell. To crave money is one thing, but to crave pure power is much more dangerous and wicked when one is an ideologue in the cause, or an administrator in a totalitarian state. As long as a rich person did not exploit or rip off people, then his being wealthy is not relevant to much of anything. Wealth is a tool not an ultimate end.
Jordan Peterson is right: life is suffering, but we can and should seek happiness and fulfillment in this world as well as in the net one; these options are both/and not either/or as Rand and Branden and their myriad Leftists critics assume.
He has a point about therapists siding with subjective, altruistic moral codes, rather than uplifting objective, rational codes of ethics.
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