The Weather Today

Metereologist and founder of The Weather Channel, John Coleman, has this to say about global weather:

[Global warming] is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

[HT: John Stossel's article in The Atlasphere.]

Morality in the Jungle

A moral code is a set of integrated, non-contradictory body of principles that guide man’s actions. This implies the existence of a volitional consciousness to which a moral existence is an objective value (regardless of whether this is recognized or not).

Because there is no such conscious entity as a “group” or “society”, moral codes cannot be premised upon a society or group. In other words, a system of morality is applicable primarily and directly only to individual human beings.

Only individuals have consciousness, and only humans have a volitional and conceptual consciousness; therefore, only individual human beings can act as moral agents. This is why a proper moral system should be concerned with how an individual must act in a given situation–regardless of how many other people he is surrounded with.

However, moral systems like altruism and utlitarianism are flawed at their very foundations because they ignore this simple fact: they are “other-centric” and collectivist at the fundamental level; they disregard the fact that societies or groups are not moral agents; only a single individual human being can be a moral agent. They construct their theories on the premises of “society” or a group of at least two individuals while ignoring the fact that morality is not concerned with how many people exist in any given situation to practice it.

Other-centric moral theories focus upon an individual’s actions in relation to another as the basic framework of a moral situation. A lone individual presumably has no need for a moral system to guide his actions.

It is illogical to confuse the fact that men live and function in society with the false assumption that moral codes have to focus on this social nature of man and be derived from it. A moral code offers a guide to a man’s actions—one man’s actions; each man’s actions.

More fundamental than man’s nature as a social being is his nature as a rational being. A fundamental quality is that which accounts for or explains the greatest number of that entity’s characteristics. Therefore, a moral code should be derived from and be harmonious with this rational nature of man because that is his fundamental nature; the morality of social interactions are secondary and derivative to this.

First, we must answer what is proper and right for a man to do in order to survive on this earth given the nature and identity of his being. The answers to this question also contain the answer to how each man should interact with each other.

Notice that the moral codes of altruism and utilitarianism provide absolutely no moral prescriptions to an individual in the privacy of his own mind, except with regard to his existence among others.

To illustrate, think of a man alone on a deserted island; altruism, utilitarianism, Kantian duty ethics, and so on are useless moral systems to an individual who chooses to live alone or finds himself marooned on an island, because they are divorced from the reality he is faced with. All such moral systems ignore the fact that an individual human being is the most fundamental unit of a moral framework and the only agent of any moral action.

On a deserted island, one must either choose to act to survive for one’s self or choose to do nothing and die. If one chooses to live, he has chosen (implicitly) to be an egoist; this is the first and most basic meta-ethical act of choice, a choice that makes all other ethical acts possible. If you choose to live, you now have to discover the best and most efficient way for you to ensure your survival.

Egoism is the only moral theory that focuses properly on the individual–and how each individual should live his own life. Egoism points out that you should primarily hold yourself as the beneficiary of your actions, because it is in harmony with your meta-ethical choice to live; your own happiness is your highest moral purpose in life; the pursuit of values is predicated upon the standard of what is life-sustaining; and reason is your only most competent tool for evaluating the prudence of your actions.

Alone in the jungle, you must use your reason to ensure your survival and protection from animals and the elements. In fact, it doesn’t–shouldn’t–matter where you live; insofar as you choose to live and act according to the objective requirements of a life qua man, you are acting morally–egoistically–whether alone in a jungle or in the middle of a bustling metropolis.

In other words, egoism is not only a moral system that can be practiced consistently anywhere and without mutual conflict; it is also the only moral system that is useful, sensible, and practicable both in a society full of people as well as on a deserted island by yourself.

The moral is also the practical.

[Of course, living in a society of productive individuals is an immense source of value for an egoist because of all the products, discoveries, inventions, and services that are introduced into his life from the division of labor, i.e., a capitalist society; therefore, an egoist properly finds it in his self-interest to support, encourage, and foster a society of civilized and rational individuals, a society of laissez-faire capitalism.]

Related posts: Moral Evolution; Altruism and Egoism; The Right to Life

Moral Evolution

My previous post discussed how altruism has come to broadly represent even the most general sense of benevolence toward others. Also, given this understanding of a badly defined and broad conception of altruism, biologists have been recently finding evidence for some kind of biological root to an “altruistic instinct.”

First, altruism is a conceptual principle, and as such, it is impossible for any concepts to have physical-genetic roots in the human body. The most sensible way of me to comprehend any possible genetic roots to the “altruistic instinct” is to consider it as a genetic tendency or rudimentary impulse–certainly not as a genetic predisposition like having the genes for black hair is.

Second, whatever genetic basis of “altruism-type” impulses that may have been discovered (I’m not conceding that they have been, yet), may be the evolutionary vestiges of the survival instinct in pre-modern man. Hunter-gatherers and nomadic men quite possibly evolved with instinctual motivations to live, hunt, and congregate in groups or tribes; early savages (uncivilized men) were faced with innumerable threats from other savage nomads, tribesmen, animals, and the natural elements. It makes sense that grouping (or roaming and living in herds) was a survival strategy for the early man, and over time, this grouping tendency became internalized as an evolutionary impulse for survival.

However, civilization is the process of setting men free from men; it is a progression from a nomadic life lived in the open spaces of a jungle to settlement in private and discrete spaces for individuals. The climb to privacy and the realization of individualism is the progression toward civilization.

Notice that the less civilized a section of society, the more public are their activities and general existence; economic wealth plays a peripheral role perhaps in how civilized a culture is–a rich man can also be highly uncivilized and mutatis mutandis for the poor man.

In this light, the impulse to be in groups or herds is an obsolete concern today. To borrow Ayn Rand’s insight, today we don’t protect ourselves from savages or tribes by ganging up into groups; we draft the Bill of Rights. Man’s nature today has evolved into being a conceptual and rational one. Reason is our most competent tool for survival–not groups, herds, claws, sticks, or clubs. The supremacy of reason and its efficacy in human life has been firmly established by the advancements following the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution.

Therefore, recourse to rudimentary, biological impulses of groupism or other-centrism should be properly evaluated by our faculty of reason to assess its validity and relevance in our present nature and conditions of living. Moreover, remember that what some biologists and altruists are eager to subsume under altruism need not necessarily be altruistic in the proper sense. Therefore, if biologists find that we have genetic impulses to gang up into groups or mobs, we must use our reason to evaluate the relevance and the moral status of these impulses before we choose to act on them.

Since we know that altruism cannot be practiced consistently, we must note that if the principles of reason are consistently applied to the problem of survival, egoism will be the only logical, rational, and moral outcome.

[Related post: Morality in the Jungle; Altruism and Egoism]

Indian Democratic Lawlessness

Last night on Indian national news, I was shocked and physically disturbed to watch the most gruesome video footage of mob and police violence in recent memory: a gang of savages–including two police officers–were most brutally clobbering, stomping, kicking, and beating an emaciated young man as punishment for his crime of trying to steal a necklace. I’m not posting the video here because it is too gruesome to watch; those interested, can follow the link to watch the video. 

According to some reports, the clobbering lasted for close to 30 minutes. In this wholesale celebration of savagery, tribalism, and sub-humanism, there were two enthusiastic police officers willing to take this extent of brutality to a higher level: one of the officers tied a rope around the man’s feet to his motorcycle and dragged him–bare-bodied–along the road for about five meters.

Further similar incidents involving law-enforcement officials (who make a farce out of that term) have occurred in various parts across India.

In November last year (2006), police constables in Mumbai mercilessly beat up a group of blind men. A group of blind protestors had gathered to demand better job opportunities for themselves outside the state secretariat - when the police used brute force to break up their agitation, mercillesly [sic] lathi-charging them and bundling them into police vans. [bold added]

In India, democracy has a new meaning—violence as the voice and medium of expression of a sub-human mob.

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Related posts:

Dangerous Democracy and Fundamental Freedoms
The Contradictions of the Indian Constitution
What Can Indian be Proud of?

Dangerous Democracy and Fundamental Freedoms

[I posted a modified version of this post earlier. But it warrants resurrection as we approach the day of India's independence.] 

Democracy can be a very dangerous thing. Indeed, Aristotle described democracy as a “necessary evil,” but an evil nonetheless. A democratic country can be a threat to its own citizens as well as to other nations. Consider the threat of democratic, nuclear-capable Iran; or that of the democratically elected Hamas government of Palestine; or even that of the largest democracy in the world–-India.

Democracy, translated in practice, means that the majority gets to decide what the rules of the game are. If the majority of Indians are not “comfortable” with legalizing homosexuality, for example, well then the human rights of the homosexual minority can and should be trampled.

As Farah Baria, a writer for the Indian Express, stated in her article on the criminality of homosexuality:

“Replying to a petition filed in the Delhi High Court by Naz Foundation, an advocacy, AIDS control and gay outreach organization, the Government claimed that Indian society was “not ready” for the practice of homosexuality. In fact the 42nd report of the Law Commission opines that society’s disapproval was “strong enough to justify it being treated as a criminal offense, even when adults indulge in it in private.” The penalty? Imprisonment for ten years or even life.” [emphases mine]

At some point in the future, if the majority decides that they do not like eating broccoli, they can simply pass a law criminalizing its growth and consumption. It would be a strong enough justification to treat it as a criminal offense.

Democracy is the political application of Utilitarianism–irrelevant of all its variations–as the greatest good for the greatest number–and they are both equally evil. Morality is contorted into a statistical game of numbers, where the standard of good is the number of people that can be gathered on any one side; thus, exterminating the Jews in a majoritarian Nazi society would have to be a good thing by such a moral code.

What is the better alternative to democracy then?

In my opinion, the democratic institutions in India as they currently exist are instrumentally causing the decline of liberty and the move towards the fascism of a vocal collective. These legal and democratic structures need to either be dissolved entirely or reformed radically. A new legal structure needs to be introduced—one that is based on the recognition and guarantee of fundamental human rights, not on the guarantee of a majoritarian democracy, a thuggish minority, or one that is based on the expediency of the moment.

One effective and immediate way to achieve this would be to introduce a constitutional amendment declaring certain laws based on objective, fundamental principles as off-limits to a democratic vote. For example, laws such as the guaranteeing of the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech and individual expression (including artistic expression or romantic expression between consensual adults), the strict separation of religion and state, and the repeal of institutionalized discrimination based on caste, religion, or race should be taken off the voting table regardless of popular opinion.

We must outrightly reject the current idolization of democracy as the “sacred” voice of the people. We must reject the current, long-winded Constitution that seeks to enumerate every application of law in every concrete situation; instead, we must call for and adopt a parsimonious moral framework based on objective, fundamental principles that are common to all applications of moral laws and human rights. The current judiciary system more often acquiesces to the laws created by the “representatives of the people” rather than examining the legitimacy and constitutionality of those laws.

Fundamental freedoms, rights, moral laws should be off-limits to the voting of legislators or the public. For example, the recent voting in the legislature based on caste, religion, and origin of birth–including on all the issues surrounding the disgustingly institutionalized terms of discrimination such as “muslim quotas,” “backward classes,” “other backward classes,” “scheduled castes,” and so on, should have been declared illegitimate by the courts and in violation of the right of an individual to choose and express his self-identity without having to be oppressed under the accidental identities of his birth. These are not matters to be put to vote–neither in the legislature nor in the general election. These do not fall within the domain of democracy. No man has the right to label another man as a member of a “backward class.” Man is a self-made being; he should have the autonomy, liberty, and right to not associate with his religion, his caste, his race, or his tribe.

In every election cycle across India, political parties campaign on explicitly religious grounds, with campaign promises that are religious-based (like building this or that temple). Such campaigns should be banned outright–without vote or debate–and such political parties should be barred from elections until their manifestos clearly reject all religious references. The principle of separating religion and state should not be a matter of debate or democratic vote. The government has no right nor any freedom to practice its own religion.

Similarly, in the areas of art, media, television, opinions, blogs, etc., the government has no right or duty to interfere. Any interference must be swiftly restrained by the legal system in order to ensure the principle of freedom of speech and expression. Likewise, the acts of consensual adults–homosexual or heterosexual–are not matters for a democratic vote. These are private affairs of the concerned individuals, and their right to self-expression and autonomy should be respected by the government, upheld by the courts, and protected by the law-and-order system.

Democracy can be a very dangerous thing if let loose in the hands of the majority. Without the restraint of fundamental, unchangeable, irreplaceable moral laws guaranteeing the rights of the smallest minority in the world–the right of an individual–a democracy can be a threat to human life.

John Stuart Mill derided the “tyranny of the majority”; indeed, democracy can be dangerously similar to fascism in that there is no one single dictator but an entire mob that collectively dictates the terms of the existence for the entire population.

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Related posts:

The Contradictions of the Indian Constitution
What Can Indian be Proud of?
Indian Democratic Lawlessness

The Irony Does Not End

This is so funny, really. I have a commentor on my blog insisting that my identification of “class distinctions”  and class identity as a crucial motivating premise and defining element of Socialism/Communism is false and a strawman.

At the same time, The Rational Fool posted on a Socialist/Fabian dinner guest who came over to the Fool’s house and argued the exact opposite of his comrade! Read this:

Fabian: I’ll not be satisfied, not until everyone is conscious of his or her class. Without universal class consciousness, we cannot achieve an egalitarian society. Increasing political awareness through education is the only means to create class consciousness.

Fool: Class consciousness towards what purpose? I suppose, it is the means to make everyone happy?

Fabian: No, material prosperity is irrelevant. Class consciousness is an end in itself. When the masses are made politically aware and conscious of their class and that of the oppressors — through peaceful and democratic means — then only they’ll be truly free!

Read the entire post–it’s really interesting. And read my own post where the commentor insists on contradicting the views of his socialist comrade Fabian.

The Class Distinction

The crucial motivating ideology behind Socialism and Communism is the elimination of class conflict; the Communist ideology is fueled by the struggle of the lower class demanding emancipation from the supposed oppression of the higher classes. Indeed, the accusation is that Capitalist societies foster the most brutal class distinctions, whereas Communism promises an egalitarian utopia of just one big happy family.

I find it rather ironic, then, that the lines of class distinctions should be so pronounced in India–a highly socialist country for more than 50 years of its independent existence–than in the United States–a highly capitalist country for all of its independent existence.

Any Indian will agree that the manner in which we interact with our colleagues at work, for example, is vastly different from the manner in which we interact with our maids, manual laborers, store clerks, bus drivers, and just about anyone on the street. Even members belonging to the same group–like say all college students in one class–make highly conscious assessments of each other’s status in social strata and behave discriminatingly. 

Indeed, the irony is only heightened when I consider how the Indian socialist governments throughout our history has officially sanctioned class distinctions in its laws, quota, education, and reservation systems and in the government-owned railways (our trains have First Class and Second Class coaches, for the rich and the poor, respectively).

In contrast, consider the United States–where capitalism breeds men of great wealth and huge income gaps. Yet, in the United States, even the lowly waiter, the bartender, the plumber, the carpenter, the bus driver, or the maid servant are accorded the dignity of their labor and treated with respect and congeniality.

Then, consider the changing economy of India and the advent of capitalist market influences over the past decade or so. Today, when I enter a crowded shopping mall, I do not see a consumerist, materialist symbol of moral decadence; I see crowded shopping malls as the great Indian class equalizer–I see people from across the social strata shopping, eating, and socializing at the same place, seeing each other eye-to-eye as equal trading partners; I see young men and women working at the stores in these malls being accorded with some dignity and respect; I see class distinctions blurring and the dignity of labor taking over.

Then, what credibility does Socialism and Communism have when their most fundamental motive premise of is undercut and contradicted by the reality of their application? It’s a rhetorical question: the answer is obviously clear–Communism has never been an ideology consonant with reality and human nature; indeed, it blatantly admits that human nature has to be forcibly contorted to fit its collectivist/altruist ideology–and therein lies its evil.

It Pays to Remain Poor

There is so much that is wrong with the new anti-poverty experimental program in New York being instituted by Mayor Bloomberg; even the one seemingly postive factor that the program will be funded by private money as opposed to tax dollars is actually not redeeming.

By private money, obviously, Bloomberg does not mean to indicate his own bank account but most likely that of large corporations, whose monetary support is actually extorted by soft coercion rather than fair and mutual benefit. [See end of this article for an instance of this soft extortion from corporations.]

The program works as such that selected poor people in New York will now be paid for “good” behavior like visiting the doctor and getting vaccinated; presumably, the monetary incentive is to encourage positive choices that will help the poor escape some kind of “vicious cycle” of poverty and improve their lives.

The theory behind cash rewards is that poor people are trapped in a cycle of repeated setbacks that keep them from climbing out of poverty. A person who doesn’t keep up with his vaccinations and doctor’s visits, for example, may get sick more often and struggle to stay employed.

Bloomberg, a billionaire Republican, said he believes paying people in such circumstances to make good decisions could help break those patterns. The program “gives New Yorkers in poverty a financial incentive to look ahead and make decisions that will improve their prospects for the future,” he said in a statement.

Among the possible rewards in New York’s program are $25 for attending parent-teacher conferences, $25 per month for a child who maintains a 95 percent school attendance record, $400 for graduating high school, $100 for each family member who sees the dentist every six months and $150 a month for adults who work full time.

So, for example, I get paid if I remain on a job that pays! But, what if all this payment coming in makes me reach a level of wealth just above the defined level of poverty, in which case I would lose all the incentives I have been receiving thus far! Hmmm… I think I have a *greater* incentive to continue remaining just below the threshold of poverty–now, that would be comfortable living!

And what about the rest of the folks who make decisions like visiting the doctor regularly, getting vaccinated, scoring good grades in school, staying on the job, etc., on a regular basis simply because this is the rational self-interested thing to do!? Do we get any monetary rewards to continue being rational? Why not?

The incentive to be rational is simply that it makes survival and living so much easier and pleasurable. Visiting the doctor and getting vaccinated just means (among other things) that I can more often avoid being sick and enjoy my health with friends and family. Having good grades in school just means I can get better jobs or better higher education to improve my prospects of earning a higher income. Staying on the job just means I will continue to have some disposable income that will enhance the kind of leisurely activities and vacations I indulge myself in.

Are these not incentives enough? Is the rational self-interested pursuit of happiness in life not a strong enough incentive for the poor (or ANYONE!) to make good decisions? If money–pieces of paper–is the incentive to make good choices, then one must ask–to what end will the money be used? Is money inherently pleasurable or is it a means to further happiness? If money is the means to happiness, then why is the *end*, i.e., the happiness, the achievement of values, not regarded as the proper incentive instead of regarding the *means* as the incentive to that end?

If you believe that the poor are “trapped” in some cycle of poverty beyond their control, then it would seem that never in the history of humanity–over all millenia–did any one poor person ever escape the shackles of poverty on their own accord. It implies that every poor man who climbed out of poverty did so with the help of some hand-out, some charity, some morsel thrown at them. It implies that man is incompetent, inefficacious, and the universe is malevolent and unresponsive to our rational actions–that no matter what actions we take to improve our condition, the universe (reality) is inherently antagonistic to our betterment (This is the “malevolent universe premise” identified by Ayn Rand). It implies that altruism is the only answer to poverty, that man can only hope to survive if someone else is willing to support their survival for them.

There is so much wrong with all of this. I could go on… but I won’t.

On the related note of soft extortion of corporations being asked to support causes and programs not related to their own benefit and at the point of the altruistic gun, see this article of a documentary film that is explicitly against consumerism and shopping.

The film follows the white-suited, big-haired Rev. Billy and his 35-member choir as they hit the road in two biodiesel-fueled buses in December 2005.

They invade shopping malls, megastores and Starbucks coffee shops with a message preached in mock-religious fervor that there is evil — a looming “shopocalypse” — at the heart of U.S. consumer culture.

The movie has received early praise.

But director Rob VanAlkemade said the movie’s message makes it a tough sell to potential distributors.

“Major distributors have backed away because Wal-Mart pushes half of their DVDs,” VanAlkemade said after a sold-out screening of the movie on Sunday at the Silverdocs documentary festival near Washington.

Starbucks — a frequent target of Rev. Billy which got a court order to keep him out of its California stores — pulled out as a sponsor of Silverdocs. The festival is presented by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel.

Festival spokeswoman Jody Arlington said Starbucks expressed discomfort with the movie and raised security issues, but it let Silverdocs keep the sponsorship money even as it withdrew its logo. [emphasis mine]

Swear to Socialism, or else…

S.V. Raju tried to register a new political party in India expressly oppossing Socialism and advocating free market economy. He wrote to the Editor of Mint telling what his experience was like:

I have been trying to register a party that is expressly opposed to socialism and that I have made very little headway. In fact, I tried to register the old Swatantra Party (there was no registration required in the old days) but my application for registration was rejected.

An amendment to the Representation of the People Act made when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister [of India] stipulated that the constitution or the rules and regulations of political parties should contain a provision swearing loyalty to democracy, secularism and socialism. The Election Commission sent me a form for registration which I completed and returned, accepting democracy and secularism but rejecting socialism, as the Swatantra Party was opposed to it in principle. The registration was turned down.

A friend and I filed a writ petition in the Bombay high court in December 1996. The writ was admitted. It has still to come up for hearing. This is the hurdle. Under current law, no party that refuses to accept socialism can get registered as a political party. So much for our democracy! [bold mine]

Lego Lessons in Collectivism

I had read about this story a while ago, but I was reminded of it now by John’s post. Basically, a private school in Seattle is teaching some of its kids that private property, ownership, and capitalism is evil. More specifically, the teachers are trying to get the kids to believe that property rights and individualism are the causes of social evils.

The children in the story ranged between 5 to 9 years old, and were involved in some Lego construction activity–the kids picked their own Lego pieces and constructed a sizeable Legotown, with airports, coffee shops, etc. However, as the teachers observed the children engaged in this building activity, they noticed some patterns of behavior that they found disconcerting.

From the article:

Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.

Given this concern, the teachers decided to simply ban legos for some time, because in their opinion, the activity encourgared capitalist tendencies toward inequality in the ownership of the lego pieces. The teachers wanted to shape the children’s understanding of ownership from a “perspective of social justice” before allowing the kids to return to constructing Legotown.

Thus, over a period of several months while legos were banned, the teachers began exploring political and moral issues of fairness, equity, social justice, etc., with the children. At the end of this period, the teachers decided to re-introduced legos and allow the children to rebuild Legotown according to the new principles of social ownership they now learned.

Some of the new instructions were:

“All structures are public structures”

“All structures will be standard sizes.”

“A house is good because it is a community house.”

“We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.”

“It’s important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building.”

Now, as the kids rebuilt Legotown according to the new framework they had been taught by their teachers, the children learned some new lessons:

Collectivity is a good thing; personal expression matters; shared power is a valued goal; moderation and equal access to resources are things to strive for, “we should all have equal houses. They should all be standard sizes.”

As teachers, we were excited by these comments. The children gave voice to the value that collectivity is a solid, energizing way to organize a community — and that it requires power-sharing, equal access to resources, and trust in the other participants.

With these agreements — which distilled months of social justice exploration into a few simple tenets of community use of resources — we returned the Legos to their place of honor in the classroom.

Children absorb political, social, and economic worldviews from an early age. Those worldviews show up in their play, which is the terrain that young children use to make meaning about their world and to test and solidify their understandings. We believe that educators have a responsibility to pay close attention to the themes, theories, and values that children use to anchor their play. Then we can interact with those worldviews, using play to instill the values of equality and democracy.

I shudder to imagine a world where all structures are the same standard size, where there is no private ownership and no personal accountability, and where every decision has to be arrived at by a consensus among a bureaucratic group or committee. In fact, I am witness to such a spectable quite regularly in the socialist style of housing quarters and housing societies in Mumbai, for example, the Bank of India housing society, the Air India quarters, etc. These are gated communities of exactly the same kind of structures, all of drab colors, unimaginative architectural design, and corroding bodies that are rarely mended due to the lack of personal accountability and endless bureaucratic processes.

Contrast this image with the spectacular skylines of any American city–bastion of free and private ownership, incredible skyscrapers–each proclaiming its pride and individuality–and breathtaking architectural achievements.

To end this rather disturbing post, I’ll quote John’s distillation of the matter in his simple rhyme:

I see a little Howard Roark,
Banned from building his own New York,
Held back from letting his towers rise -
All must be a standard size!

In Defense of Superiority

In a world where mediocrity is not only permitted but also defended on the grounds that this is the nature of life and reality, wherein the “common man” is the level of existence that all men must aspire to reach, where “warts and all” is considered the distinguishing trait of human existence, a voice that unflinchingly fights for and reveres human heroism, the human practical ideal, is sorely missing.

 

Notice, much of modern jabber is in apologetic terms; almost as if everyone wants to apologize to everyone else for whatever it is that they are, do, or say. And when one does state terms in black and white, unapologetically, and with conviction, they are derided as insensitive, rude, antisocial, naïve, or idealistic.

 

Notice, it is considered praiseworthy by society to defend the weak, the retarded, the disabled, and the poor: in other words, it is considered noble to dedicate your life as a social worker to “human flaws, lacks, failures, miseries, vices, and evils, to the morally, spiritually, intellectually or psychologically inferior–to those who lack value, with the lack of value as the claim and the incentive.”

 

Notice, here, that an act is made a virtue only if it is done in service to vice, an evil, a failure, a flaw, a lack, a zero. It is virtuous to help the retarded, the alcoholic, the drugged-out pothead, or the poor; whereas, society is indifferent to an act of kindness towards what a man actually values. There is indifference towards an act of kindness for a friend, or appreciation for a loved one, or praise for an achievement at work, or generosity toward a deserving man. These acts are not considered virtuous at best, indeed, a vice at worst: for what value is in it to love your friends. Love your enemies more.

 

Thus, the standard of evil is the self and the standard of the good is others. That which is of value to oneself is selfish and therefore must be avoided.

 

If a person were indeed “motivated by a love of values and a desire to relieve human suffering, she would not begin in the slums and with the subnormal: she would look at what our present society does to the talented, the unusual, the mentally superior children, in schools, in colleges, and in their subsequent careers; she would go out to fight for them and to help them, before they perish psychologically in loneliness and bewilderment.”

 

A social worker like Mother Teresa, whose entire adult life was dedicated to the weak, the flawed, the diseased, the disabled–has contributed nothing from a long-term perspective to the preservation of values and human life. Beyond the momentary range of her efforts (for which she heavily depended on wealth-producers), no lasting benefit has been derived for the advancement of humanity.

 

Society does not climb out of the jungle of primitivism and tribalism by the efforts of people like Mother Teresa. Humans do not achieve civilization by dedicating their lives to a valueless ZERO. So long as one advocates charity as a primary act of virtue among men, one promotes parasitism and poverty. Just as a trader needs another person to trade with, a giver needs and sustains someone to take what is given.

 

Human beings stepped out of the cruel existence of the jungle on the shoulders of men of superior intelligence who chose to think. “There is only one great debt that men owe others–and it’s not a material one. The only real benefit we receive from others is the benefit of the accumulated thinking of the men who preceded us, or of our own contemporaries who have superior intelligence. It’s the thinking, the ingenuity of the exceptional men who discovered and showed me better ways of doing things, which I would not have discovered myself.”

 

“The lesser man gives the genius only a material product; the genius gives him a material product–plus the knowledge of a discovery that adds to his, the lesser man’s, effort.”

 

“No man produces any extra material value for another man–except the man of superior intelligence and to the degree of that intelligence. Most men just carry their own weight. Some do not even do that. And some give an inestimable extra benefit–free–to all mankind: the thinkers, the new discoverers.”

 

These are the ones who invented the wheel, discovered fire, learned how to cultivate land, make weapons, build roads, erect homes, construct skyscrapers, travel at the speed of sound, study the universe, and create a unparalleled standard of living for generations past and those to come, here on Earth.

 

Rand’s life and work was to boldly champion and revere such men, and the greatness possible to man. She believed in human perfection, heroism, and the achievement of the practical ideal. Indeed, there should be no doubt that she herself stood as the best evidence of and a testament to the fact that such greatness was possible to man.

 

“In 1934, [Rand] wrote a letter to thank an actor she did not know, whose performance onstage ‘gave me, for a few hours, a spark of what man could be, but isn’t… The word heroic does not quite express what I mean. You see, I am an atheist and I have only one religion: the sublime in human nature. There is nothing to approach the sanctity of the highest type of man possible and there is nothing that gives me the same reverent feeling, the feeling when one’s spirit wants to kneel, bareheaded. Do not call it hero worship, because it is more than that. It is a kind of strange and improbable white heat where admiration becomes religion, and religion becomes philosophy, and philosophy–the whole of one’s life.”

 

*Note: All quoted text has been taken from “Letters of Ayn Rand.”

Self-Identity

I have always denounced holding any sense of identity that is merely accidental and not consciously chosen. For this reason, I reject automatic allegiance to nations, cities, ethnic groups, races, families, tribes, or any other accidental aspects of one’s existence.

Patriotism, jingoism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, casteism, and racism are particular identity-characteristics that I revile. If you are patriotic merely because you were accidentally born within a certain geographic location, I pity your mind; and if you are willing to fight and die for this accidental geographic location of your birth, I will have no words to express to you the tragedy of your decision.

In essence, the matter of assuming accidental identities is a matter of accepting unchosen values; indeed, the concept of an unchosen value is itself a contradiction because if it has not been chosen by the individual himself, then by what and whose standard can it be legitimately regarded as a value? Thus, it is utterly meaningless to claim love and allegiance for nation or family simply by virtue of the fact that you were born into them, without regard to their philosophic virtue and character. It undermines those objects of your choice that are indeed of value to you.**

Those who heckle you on the streets and condemn you for your lac