Back in High School I was first exposed to Ayn Rand. In college I had friends who were into her. It took reading her musings on selfishness for me to realize why I never got sucked into her orbit the way I was briefly sucked into Heinlein's version of libertarianism. His almost makes sense and is not so insufferable. I still love the term "grok" by which I get a sense of spiritual connectedness to other human beings. I'll always be a bit of a "stranger in a strange land." But I never will be comfortable in the world of Atlas Shrugged. You see....
I read her musings on selfishness.
Now, Ayn Rand was a typical "shocker" type. People who like to shock others take a view for how controversial it sounds. Usually one can dig into their views and come to realize that they are just playing word games and don't really mean it as radical as they sound. But with Objectivists the one thing you can say for certain is that their selfishness is radical and meant. It becomes a base argument from which they reach out to other conservatives. Other conservatives may not share the formal ideas of Objectivists, but you can see this discourse in their private musings. To me it is appropriate to talk about it around the time of Christmas. This is "Scrooge" objectified. All sources are from a website owned by the Objectivist collective:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selfishness.html
"The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment."
Now if these people were upholding "rational self interest" I'd be able to hold my ire, but they are upholding "rational selfishness", which is an objectification and rationalization of the subject. I guess to claim that selfishness is justified because it is rational is consistent enough for people rationalizing selfish behavior. But Even Ayn Rand isn't selfish enough to make her argument with a brutal good conscience. The author has to qualify the statement to distance it from "irrational brutes"
But this really doesn't work. Studies have shown that rape, murder, warfare, and looting behavior are all behaviors that are engaged in by beings that are both rational and brutes. Sociopaths turn out to be very rational in their behavior, they are the ultimate objectivists because everything they do is determined by rational selfishness without one hint of empathy or sympathy. [see http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.mealey.html for a discussion]
So this argument doesn't work. There is no way to distance oneself from claims that one is an irrational brute by claiming that one is a rational brute. Humans follow their desires in a very rational way, even when those desires lead to despicable, ugly, self destructive results. Moreover, she can't really say that industrial brutes haven't done their share of looting, raping and pillaging. The Behavior of Western Countries in Africa, of the Nazis in Poland, or the Stalinists who followed them, was that of rational brutes as well. If the contrast is meant to depict selfishness as an ideal compared to principles like self-sacrifice, altruism, or simple "win win" transactions, it doesn't work.
"The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone."
Personally, though I am no longer formally a Christian, I can't see how any Christian could entertain this argument, since Christianity is founded on the concept of the ultimate good of human sacrifice. However as a convert to Judaism I can see how she might hold this view. Still I do not endorse it. There are moral reasons why self sacrifice is sometimes called for. There is abundant evidence that individual sacrifice for the greater good upholds family survival and the success of the species.
Beyond that, I can half agree that no society should sacrifice others for the sake of the wealthy and powerful, nor expect others to sacrifice their rights to liberty, property and life so that others can enjoy an absolute right to those things. No man should be sacrificed on the altars of capitalism, corporatism, or socialism. Each person has a right to live his or her own life and make their own choices. People should not require others to make sacrifices for themselves.
At the same time we should be grateful to the many who give up lives of comfort and ease to comfort the sick, teach children, or defend their countries. Their sacrifices are not in vain.
"It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value."
Sure, Cain had no rational clash with Abel. Abraham and Lot didn't move their herds in different directions to resolve a conflict. And "Denial" is a river in Egypt only.
Any so called rationalist who makes the claim that humans never have conflicts of interests nor clashes does not understand the real world. While it might be an ideal to minimize the dangers and problems of conflict. To deny them is to deny reality.
However, Ayn Rand's whole economic philosophy is based on a fantasy interpretation of the history, practice and reality of business. This denial is almost as serious as her anti-democratic spirit, or her illusions about rationality in general, because it casts any group or individual who does come into conflict with others as somehow behaving irrational. This trivializes the difficulty of resolving human conflict and flies in the face of history. She says:
"There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level (see “The Objectivist Ethics”)."
Profiteers and Vikings
In my studies of history, I've seen that the fine distinction she makes is not a historical one. My own nautical forebears certainly included merchants, but that doesn't mean they didn't include privateers, slavers, and robbers as well. The Vikings started their raids on Europe looking to replenish their coffers for coin and because the only good source for money and wealth was in convents an monasteries. English merchants doubled as privateers during wartime, and pirates when they could get away with it. To deny that the making of money through loot and theft is rational is to deny reality. Yes, the robber is evil, and yes what makes the difference is that a legitimate and legal transaction is win/win for both sides and doesn't violate either sides rights. But on the contrary the sociopathology of robbery is in the question "what can I get away with." And that same sociopathology is present in risky business, fraud, and financial manipulation. Unethical behavior may be illegal, immoral and unethical, but it is very human.
And if rational selfishness is a man's guide to ethics, then the Vikings were making perfectly reasonable choices. I don't disagree with Ayn Rand's feelings about the Brutes who behave in unethical ways. I just disagree with her premise that their behavior is irrational.
And merchants can behave in ways that amount to unethical behavior without physically raping victims or outright theft. When a Company sells financial instruments with nothing backing them except promises. Those instruments are only as good as the word of the men running the company. People don't set out with the concept that they are going to behave in a subhuman manner, they de-evolve to that level as they make choices about behavior and the outcomes of risk in pursuing their ends. The only difference between a pirate and a sailor merchant is that the sailor merchant evaluates risk differently. A sociopath sees no harm in a 10% chance of getting caught.
JP Morgan claimed Henry Morgan as an Ancestor. He came to dominate US finance. His company still gambles with people's investments, as shown by the recent financial meltdown. This is a matter of calculating the odds. The Gamblers are playing with "Other People's Money." Individuals can be sociopathic and rational. So can groups.
The risk of life is that some people cheat and some people play by the rules, and most people chose which to do by calculating their odds of success. She's calculating that enough people will believe her arguments that she'll sell lots of books. Captain Morgan calculated that he could take Spanish Cities and get out of the Country before reinforcements arrive.
And again her argument is cheap. She divides the world up in a Mithraic fashion into white and black. Adds nuance to her Orwellian newspeak argument that greed and selfishness are good, while turning the counter arguments into pure bovine processed straw:
"If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man—a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites—that it permits no concept of a benevolent co-existence among men—that it permits no concept of justice."
People may get recruited to do things for others as useful idiots because they lack self esteme, don't have much in the way of resources, and/or the manipulator offers them a reward in heaven or money for the family, but otherwise this argument is bunk. Whenever has anyone taken the idea of altruism and used it to say that a person who isn't altruistic isn't also taking care of his family, proud of his doings, and self supporting?
Maybe some forms of Christianity (and Buddhism) take their notions of altruism to this extreme, but for normal affairs, there is room for gift giving and self interest side by side. There is no need to become poor to stop being scrooge. The concept of altruism doesn't deny self interest. It doesn't follow from the altruistic argument that people should be seen as either victims or parasites. Nor does altruism deny the concept of justice. None of this argument is even rational
Ayn Rand is making a faulty argument with false premises. She is pretending to reinvent self interest as selfishness and to justify selfishness as if she'd invented a new and different concept from the conventional meaning. But she fools no-one (at least not all the time) and at the core selfishness is just selfishness.
On the contrary, the concept of altruism proceeds from the same notion that is at the root of all major religions; that 'the sum is more than the parts." The mensche gives to charity. The good Christian gives to the Church. The Good moslem tythes. None of these people are expected to crawl through sand or scourge their backs.
Extremes are sickness even if they seem rational. Rational thinking based on faulty premises has an irrational core, but it still is rational thinking. Her rationalism seems rational but because it is based on false and faulty premises it is only subjective, faulty, and ultimately even more irrational than that which she attacks.
No a better argument is that it is in all of our rational self interest; collectively and individually to take care of both ourselves and others. To pursue our rational self interest where that is our best individual course, and to be altruistic where that will provide the most benefit long and short term; because what benefits those around us brings us individual joy. And what benefits our families benefits us.
I have more to say on the subject of the rationality of conflict and how to adjudicate it win/win, but that will wait for another post.
Posted by cholte at December 26, 2009 07:55 PM