Flash Post #5
I don’t know. I was going to write about the Navy, and moving on from the Navy, but then I realized I didn’t care anymore. I guess that means, maybe, I really have moved on. So here are some disjointed thoughts about Ayn Rand and objectivism.
Objectivism
I used to have this idea that Ayn Rand was a terrible author and objectivism was a garbage philosophy. But as I familiarized myself with her works and watched some of her interviews, I came to realize that there is an… almost uncomfortable degree of overlap between her philosophy and mine. Enough to where I cannot discount hers without some level introspection. If I had to throw down a percent of overlap, I’d say I’m about… 75% in line with Ayn Rand’s thinking, but then the 25% makes all the difference. I premise that assessment–that particular percentage of overlap–on objectivism as outlined by an article Rand published in The Objectivist Newsletter, August 1962, “Introducing Objectivism” (here summarized):
- Reality is objective: facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings.
- Reason is the only path to knowledge.
- Rational self-interest and pursuit of one’s own happiness is the highest moral purpose.
- Capitalism, laissez-faire capitalism, is the best political-economic system. Economy-state separation should mirror church-state separation.
I support the notion that we should have a fact-based approach to understanding reality and draw our conclusions through scientific observation of the world around us and through reason, irrespective of what we wish to be true. I also tend to agree with the idea that people should be free to act according to their own self-interest, particularly in contrast to the idea (which Rand likewise abhorred) that people should be compelled to act altruistically. It’s why, for instance, I am opposed not only to military conscription (except perhaps for truly existential threats), but also vehemently opposed to any attempt to establish a system of compulsory service–federal, state, or local–for all but punishment for crime, even if alternative forms of non-military service are available. If people think service is such a great idea, they are free to settle on the form of service they would find most satisfying to themselves and volunteer for it, as I myself did for some years in the Navy. If people think “kids these days” are uniquely in need of a community service experience and cannot be relied upon–being “kids” and all–to seek out such opportunities themselves, then the parents of those children are free, whether they should or not, to compel their minor children to participate in such activities as the law would allow, and to seek to influence their adult children to do the same through any number of lawful means, up to and including making financial support in college or on moving out of the house conditional on their participation in such “wholesome” activities as military or community service. But I do find it somewhat disingenuous for wealthy parents–particularly those active in politics–to put their own children through college with no strings attached, to support them into adulthood with the substantial wealth they have accrued themselves or inherited from an earlier generation, and then go on to urge compulsory service for other people. If some form of military or community service–fulltime for a year or more as commonly proposed–is so beneficial to the individual that every young adult should have that experience before being free to live their life, then it stands to reason that no one advocating, in good faith, for such a thing to be mandatory should support their adult children until such time as they have devoted a good part of their life to service. But I digress. The point is, when it comes to reality, reason, and rational self-interest, I am generally in line with Ayn Rand’s thinking. With just a couple caveats…
Reality and Reason
The notion that people should base their understanding of the world and make decisions on facts and logic is so mundane as to border on the simplistic. Of course they should. And while I no doubt that there will always be some portion of the population that disagrees–that would positively assert the contrary, that our emotional state can influence the physical world or that something like faith alone might be a superior path–I suspect that people by and large will give preeminence to “facts and logic” as they search for knowledge. With one caveat: that’s “facts and logic” as individuals perceive them. Which isn’t to say that perceptions should matter more than reality, or worse that perception is reality, only that (as I’m sure Rand would agree) our understanding of the world must necessarily be filtered through our own senses, then subjected to our own fallible judgement, and that it is perhaps difficult for people to realize when their own judgment might be flawed, or their access to information insufficient to draw a firm conclusion.
It is one thing to adopt and hold sincerely to the position that “facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears” (as Rand put it) and that reason “is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.” It is something else entirely to actually achieve that level of dispassionate and unbiased discrimination of facts, and here too (as I am hopeful Rand and her present followers would agree) it holds that wishing alone won’t make it so: one can no more wish to be an impartial and dispassionate discriminator of the facts than one can wish that the facts be other than they are. Though one can certainly “feel” that their decisions are based on all the relevant facts and their judgement is beyond reproach, that doesn’t make it so. Further confounding matters where “facts and logic” are concerned is the extent to which any moral system, for it to be useful to actual human beings, must account for human emotion on at least some level. Which leads in turn to my second caveat…
Rational Self-interest vs. Altruism
“The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.”
Ayn Rand, in Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World
Altruism, as Rand narrowly defines it, seems to be at best a “philosopher’s definition” and at worst a strawman, propped up to be torn down with the slightest effort. Either way, it is not “altruism” as I have understood it, nor I suspect as commonly understood by most others. As an alternative definition, I might offer the following as a “commoner’s definition” of sorts:
altruism (noun) al·tru·ism | \ ˈal-trü-ˌi-zəm \
1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary
Taking Rand at her word, with an assumption of good faith on her part, I will simply say that I agree: going by her “philosopher’s definition,” altruism would be an utterly unbearable code to live by. I do not see how any human being could live only for others and still live, with “no right to exist for his own sake.” Which is probably why, as I posit, no actual human being apart perhaps from a certain school of philosophers would actually insist on caging altruism in such terms as Rand has.
So, when it comes to altruism as defined by Rand, I agree: it’s unlivable. Not only do I think people should not be compelled towards altruism, I think people should reject this “philosopher’s definition” of altruism as a virtue in their own lives. For if this “philosopher’s definition” were to be taken as a virtue, it must surely be self-defeating as those who would adhere most ardently to it would be given over so completely to the well-being of others as to cease to exist themselves: both figuratively through surrendering their agency to the will of others (including those perhaps less altruistic than themselves), and if they persist too long without recognizing their folly, then literally by working themselves to exhaustion and untimely demise. I just happen to think that when actual people–not philosophers who write thousand page treatises on morality, but actual people who these days limit their observations on philosophy to the occasional tweet or blog post–refer to altruism as a virtue, they do not mean it in the sense of this “philosopher’s definition.” Rather, they would distinguish between the selfish–which I grant my “commoner’s definition” would reject–and the self-interested, which leaves plenty of room for “commoner’s altruism” if one properly accepts that benefiting others may benefit oneself as well.
And so this leads me to the 25% “gap” in our philosophies, where common ground is lacking in no small part because I am so deeply committed to sharing the other three tenets Rand espouses. In brief, when it comes to capitalism—laissez-faire capitalism specifically—I think Rand has over-extended.
On Capitalism
Facts don’t care about feelings. Except when the facts at issue relate to how people will feel and the problem to be solved relates to how to minimize human suffering and maximize human well-being. A moral system should, and a utilitarian system intended for humans must, take into account human well-being, and feelings are a part of the overall well-being. Just as every conclusion drawn within an objectivist worldview, to be consistent, must be arrived at through reason and supported by objectively verifiable facts, so too must Rand’s assertion that laissez-faire capitalism is the best achievable political-economic system. While I would heartily endorse an unregulated free market economy if reality bore out the idea that such a scheme would bring about the best society (one where human well-being is at its maximum), I must reject the hypothesis as unproven at best, and demonstrably false at worst. Not only do I see no evidence that the unregulated free marker can bring about the best society with human well-being maximized; I further see strong evidence to the contrary in how the history of unregulated markets, when and where they have been allowed to arise, has played out. Dollars shouldn’t get more votes than people, and yet a government that will not regulate the market for common good will be only as resistant to the influence of wealth over votes as its least scrupulous members, and then only when caught. Bad actors in government and industry who are successful in their schemes–the rot beneath the golden gild–will thus be given license to co-opt the levers of power to their own ends.
To be fair, the end result, with the wealthy grasping the levers of governmental power for themselves, would not fit within the definition of laissez-faire capitalism as Rand would allow: the economy and the government would be anything but separate. But this can hardly be accepted as a valid defense of laissez-faire capitalism. Consider, by way of analogy, abstinence-only education: if the goal is to reduce teen pregnancy and STDs, and evidence indicates greater rates of pregnancy and STDs are observed among populations of teens subjected to abstinence-only education than more comprehensive sex education programs, then one cannot defend abstinence-only education programs by simply discounting the increased occurrence of teen pregnancy and STDs (what the program was supposed to reduce) by discounting all such instances as arising from a failure to properly adhere to the tenets of abstinence-only education. However we might feel about premarital sex among teens, objectivism would demand that if we seek to reduce teen pregnancy and STDs, then we should logically adopt the program shown objectively, through facts, to best achieve that outcome, damn the feelings. I would simply extend such an appropriate level of scrutiny to the fourth and final tenet of objectivism itself: that however we might feel about alternatives, before we settle on laissez-faire capitalism as an unquestioned good–a central tenet of our moral philosophy that we must cling to–we should first see that this is true. Through facts and logic. If the end result of every effort to implement a laissez-faire system of capitalism has led to corruption and co-mingling of state and economic actors, then the response cannot simply be “Well, they did it wrong, because corruption and co-mingling of state and economic actors isn’t laissez-faire capitalism,” the answer should be, as with abstinence-only education, “That system, as borne out by the evidence, does not bring about the desired results.”
Neutering the government when it comes to the market does not establish the conditions by which, as Rand would have it, people interact “not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.” Rather, it is a path to serfdom with extra steps. Making the government powerless to intervene in the market simply cuts out the middleman and allows those with concentrated wealth to access the levers of power directly, without even the minor obstacle of a weak and corruptible government to stumble over along the way. My position is simply that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is the best bulwark against the concentration of wealth that arises as a design, not as a defect, of a purely capitalist economic system.
Atlas Shrugged
Anyway, I want to close on a less critical note, and perhaps tie these disjointed thoughts I have about Rand in at least somewhat to my first impetus for this exercise: to write about feelings on moving on from the Navy. I like Rand’s metaphor of a shrugging titan, casting off the weight of the world. When it comes down to it, I reject Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy not because I think we should arrive at our conclusions about the world through anything other than verifiable facts and reason, but because I think objectivism’s pillars, extending as they do beyond mere endorsement of science and rational skepticism, are posed in fatal opposition to one another when it comes to economic theory.
But still, I find the metaphor of shrugging off the burdens of an indifferent, perhaps even unworthy, world appealing as it pertains to my once upon a time profession. So without adopting all the conclusions drawn by Rand, I find I appreciate certain elements of her philosophy, even as I think she poorly represents altruism and I reject her conclusion with regards to capitalism. We should look out for ourselves and act according to our interests within the reality that we navigate, we should not feel compelled to persist in assuming a burden on behalf of others–or, here, a profession–that will not further one’s aims. But then for some of us, our aims go beyond designing taller/more artistic/more expressive buildings or faster trains (that’s not a knock: I am a huge fan of high speed rail as an efficient means of traversing the country). For some of us, our aims extend to wanting to create the best society that we can, not for the economy to flourish, but for people to flourish, ourselves included. If that should include, of necessity, a mostly capitalist economy, then so be it. But alternatively, if capitalism, or certain unchecked degrees of capitalism, should prove fundamentally at odds with the overall well-being of the larger segment of the population, then so be it. After all, facts don’t care about our feelings.
If any of this “wanting to create the best” or even just “a better society” for people other than myself alone sounds like it is at odds with my earlier endorsement of pursuing one’s own rational self-interests (as Rand would have it), then I will here state explicitly what I hope most would have properly inferred by now: I am not a sociopath. The suffering of others is not without consequence to me, even if such consequences manifest only through the awareness of such suffering. Plus—and I have this on good authority—I hear that people who are overwhelmed by despair may struggle to be productive, even to the point they may neglect themselves, let alone society. So for my own sake, even out of pure self-interest, I hope to create a society that minimizes the suffering and maximizes the well-being of others. Because I am human, and humans are a social species. We evolved to interact in groups with wickedly complex interpersonal relationships. So while reality doesn’t care about your feelings or mine, our feelings are a part of this reality. Our shared, human reality. We discount the suffering of others at our own peril.
Anyway, I think I’ve made my peace with the Navy. Can’t say I’ll never write about it again–I almost certainly will–but the feeling isn’t there anymore. I’ve moved on.
“…then pick up a well-made oar and bear away with it to a land that knows nothing of the sea, that has not heard of painted ships, nor shapely oars that serve as wings. And let this be your sign, for you cannot miss it: on meeting another traveler, he will say you carry a winnowing-fan. There you must plant your oar into the ground, and make your peace with Lord Poseidon.”
– Homer, Odyssey 11.121–31
Songs of Babylon 