I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask anotherman to live for mine.
John Galt, the main character in ‘Atlas Shrugged’, ends his speech with these famous words!! It is not just a speech made by a character in the novel; it is also the summary of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism.
Why ‘John Galt’ does say so? What did he mean by that? What Ayn Rand is trying to convince with this? Yes, her novels force us to think in a much different way than how we think now.
Ayn Rand was a novelist. But her thoughts and her views on life forced her to create her own philosophy. I call her genius. Not because she gave us a new philosophy to study. But it is because she fought with all other existing philosophers’ single handedly!! All philosophies differ from each other I agree. But they generally do not speak of other philosophies in general. They oppose others ‘softly’ (mostly by providing more facts to prove their own philosophy) but not as harshly as Ayn Rand did! She criticized Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Auguste Comte, Nietzsche, Jeremy Bentham, Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx stating Witchdoctory or/and Attila-ism being bases for their philosophies!!
While discussing ‘Language’ I put more stress on the point of using the language that most of the participants in the communication are comfortable with. But I did not discuss in detail of how the words we choose give different meanings to sentences having them. But I did mention that when man saw something for the first time he gave a name to it. And so language developed and in fact different languages emerged in different regions. But sadly even today we experience many feelings which we cannot express through the language. And when we try to do so different people bring out different meanings out of them. Oh…sadly this has lead to many great misconceptions, wars, debates, fights which we can observe throughout the history of mankind!! You must be asking why I am discussing this here. That is because I don’t see a philosopher who himself thought ‘bad’ for the mankind in any way. In Russia, a revolutionary movement which advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge and individual freedom as the highest goal. This is identified as Nihilism in which by rejecting man's spiritual essence in favor of a solely materialistic one, nihilists denounced God and religious authority as antithetical to freedom. So the goal of nihilism was indeed good! But here Nihilism had a specific meaning which explained the goals of the movement that was started. But then meaning of nihilism is taken by each different group in its own way. As per Nietzsche (with whom nihilism is generally associated with)
"Every belief, every considering something-true is necessarily false because there is simply no true world"
Well…again why and when Nietzsche did say what he said is a different question which is very much important to understand in order to get correct meaning of his words! Otherwise, as we clearly see, it seems dangerous…dangerous to the hope of all mankind!! Anyway…now the dictionary meaning of Nihilism is ‘A revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake’.
Even in Ayn Rand’s case objectivism is most debatable. Ayn Rand says selfishness is the greatest virtue and selflessness depraves man. If you go through her arguments you think, ‘it’s perfect! She is so right!!’ But does that mean those, who said selflessness is the greatest virtue, are wrong? I must say you cannot dare say that! Because we have countless examples where men preached the same and practiced the same. Jesus to Gandhi served men and they were happy doing that, weren’t they? Wasn’t that selfless service to mankind? Thanks to Ayn Rand, for she clears the confusion with below (from ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’):
In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment. Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests. This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.
Now the question, what ethics say about selfishness in its meaning being ‘concern with one’s own interests’? Using this meaning Ayn Rand puts her point of selfishness being the greatest virtue. If I am the most selfish man then how can I degrade myself (or in Ayn Rand’s words, how can I lose my - self) by doing anything that is unethical or immoral? It is only those who do not have a self (or selfless), who have lost their self and love for themselves who do unethical and immoral things!!
And when it comes to sacrifice, John Galt says to Dagny (from ‘Atlas Shrugged’)
you’re the one reward I had to have and chose to buy. I wanted you, and if my life is the price, I'll give it, my life - but not my mind.
Even the sacrifice that I make is because it is my choice, my necessity and not the other person’s need.
Some say customer is GOD, because you will not survive if there is no customer to buy your goods. No business can survive without customers. That is exactly why you should treat him like GOD. It is common sense, isn’t it? But some others oppose this view. They say ‘they come to me because I provide them what they wish for. Why would they come to me if they knew there are others out there who can provide a better service than me? They do not care who I am, do they? They do not care whether I am poor or rich, selfish or selfless do they? No. All they want is better service which they know I am better to provide. Hence they come to me. This is exactly why they come to me and not because they want me to survive on their mercy!!’
So we see…if we go by Ayn Rand’s terminology her statements look valid and correct. You will not get shocked when you hear ‘Selfishness is the greatest virtue.’ When everyone agrees that to try to make the society better and to wish for a better world is good and when everyone agrees to the point that the urge to work for that good should come from within and we should be happy to do so and it should not be felt as a burden and it should not be accepted because other men (however great they are) preach it, then, what difference does it make whether you call it selfishness or selflessness? When both think the same and give different shapes to their thoughts it doesn’t make their thoughts different. But yes, others might consider their thoughts to be different and in fact even twist the original meanings of both statements to give birth to a new meaning itself!!
Ok. But is this all about Ayn Rand’s objectivity? No, it is just one part. Let’s start discussing in detail now:
Ayn Rand was much influenced by Aristotle. Aristotle, as we know, was disciple of Plato who in turn was disciple of Socrates. Most of the ideas of Socrates are written by Plato and so we read them to understand Socrates better. In ‘Crito’ (by Plato) Socrates asks Crito,
In questions of just and unjust, fair and foul, good and evil…ought we to follow the opinion of the many and to fear them; or the opinion of the one man who has understanding? Ought we not to fear and reverence him more than all the rest of the world: and if we desert him shall we not destroy and injure that principle in us which may be assumed to be improved by justice and deteriorated by injustice;--there is such a principle?
True, isn’t it? Is it just if we consider the collective decision of all the men where most of them are not even aware of the subject? Isn’t it just to consider the decision of only the specialist/s in the concerned subject? Aristotle said that there is only one reality, the one which man perceives and it exists as an objective absolute that the task of man’s consciousness is to perceive, not to create, reality. That is A is A, and it cannot be B or any other. And Ayn Rand’s objectivity uses the same idea. Objective reality, individualism and capitalism are the important coins of the objectivism.
Objective Reality
Objective reality!! Is our existence real? As real as…what to say?! When our own existence is under question what else can I refer to as real?!! One of the logics goes like this - the things we see and perceive are not real. It is all part of some Maya. It is like a very big sphere inside which we live. So that means we ourselves are also a part of Maya. We think we are different from others (Man/Animal/bird/etc…) because of the subterfuge created by this Maya. We do not have a separate existence from others. Still we think that we all have different existence. But it is not the truth. And to understand this truth (that we are inside Maya and hence we cannot perceive the truth) is the only way to get outside of this Maya and unite in the ultimate. You will get hundreds of different versions with little modification in this logic. Objective reality rejects all this. It says ‘I exist and that is absolute. I breathe and that’s truth. I am different from others and that’s absolute. The earth, sun, universe, myself, living beings, non-living things all these exist. To put it in simple way ‘1+1=2’ and this is absolute.;
What difference does it make if anything is real or not real? Hmmm…it makes a difference. If what we see is not real then what is ‘real’? There must be something which created this ‘maya’ and we must try to realize the truth of being in Maya and then escape from it. So, Maya is created by whom? What exactly it is? You need to answer to all these questions if you believe in the concept of Maya. And to answer these we already have many complex descriptions. But you know what? All these answers, explanations are completely dependent on speculations and nothing else. You won’t find a bit of concrete proof to any of the explanations that one might provide. Again they argue that the reasons, proofs we look for are also inside Maya because of which they hold no value. But I ask one question, ‘If everything we think, analyze and experiment is not real and is just a product of the Maya then how did you realize that all we perceive is Maya? How can possibly realize the truth about Maya while you are inside Maya?’ Whatever reason they provide on their support will always be based on pure speculation only.
Ayn Rand called the men who deny objective reality and preach the things such as Maya are ‘witch doctors’ who try to conquer others. Witch doctors are basically parasites whose only means of survival is to conquer others who produce. So they preach something which does not exist and show that they are the masters of ultimate reality and others are not. Yes I agree that there are more people who take advantage of ‘non-existent’ mystic concepts to fool the others and strengthen their hold on them. But I cannot (or ‘must not’ because I am sure) say all of them are witchdoctors. Because you see many who believe in ‘Maya’ kind of concepts but still are honest, good and self respecting men by nature. It is almost similar to the case where you find people who believe in god and think (totally) that they have god given gifts which they must use to serve people. And there are people who take advantage of the concept of god and make people think they have god given gifts and control all the men!!
Let’s put an end to discussion on ‘Objective reality’ here as I see no point in stretching it when the point is clear (About this we can discuss in a separate topic later).
Individualism
One more interesting topic is ‘individualism’ versus ‘collectivism’. Is it ‘I’ or ‘We’? I need to live for the ‘society’ or just my ‘self’? Is ‘sacrifice’ really a virtuous act? When we take decisions should we consider the all the men or only a few? All these questions arise in the same topic of individualism vs collectivism. When it comes to individualism versus collectivism, I cannot forget the character ‘Ellsworth Toohey’ in the novel ‘The Fountainhead!!’Ah! What a character it is! I enjoyed it the most. The greatest villain I ever saw till now…He collects the souls. Because he learns that to have money does not provide greatest power, but it is the number of the souls you collect which determines the power you have. Because if you have more souls under your control you have the power over everything they have. He uses the collectivism as his weapon to conquer others. He destroys the individuality and integrity in men!!
As I said earlier individualism says ‘selfishness is the greatest virtue’ and collectivism says ‘selflessness is the greatest virtue’. Individualism says ‘use the most sacred word - I’ and collectivism says ‘use the most sacred word - we’. Though earlier we discussed about the way both ideally use the words ‘selfish’ and ‘selflessness’ there are few differences which if not discussed leave the discussion unfinished. And in order to discuss the differences best approach is to list the kind of men she discussed:
One is ‘the producers’ as Ayn Rand calls them. These are only few individuals who produce which all others consume. These are good men which mean, in Ayn Rand’s terminology, selfish people. They do not care what others say. They do what they think is right. Their love for themselves will not allow them to degrade themselves by any wrongdoing. They help others because those other men are capable and not because those other men are not capable. These individuals are ready to provide all the results of all their efforts to society because they will know it is the best to have and everyone should have it and because they cannot see something which is inferior to what they invented/produced being used by anyone. [We should note this point very carefully as many will miss to notice this and miss the Ayn Rand’s track!! Ayn Rand says when you have something which is better than any existing alternate then, if you are the selfish, how can you keep it away from society and see that inferior thing being used? If you know what you have is best you must be willing it to be used everywhere. This is exactly why Howard Roark helps Peter Keating in architectural designs. Because he wanted to see the best being implemented in as many places as possible. If you miss to notice this you are sure going to misunderstand Ayn Rand’s words! ] And they do not expect anything in return for their favor to the world. And yes, these individual producers are the heroes.
The second-handers!! These are self-less people. They do not have a self in them! So they can’t judge. They don’t go by reason. When any question arises they look at others for answers. They don’t ask ‘is this true?’, but they ask ‘Is this what others think true?’ If others say you are good and great they consider themselves to be good and great. A considered to be great man speaks in front of people (and says what he doesn’t understand/believe himself but thinks that is what people believe to be correct and great and ideal!) and when people like it he derives his self respect from that. And similarly the listeners like his speech because it is what they are taught to be the ideal and the speaker is a famous man!! They all derive everything (self respect, self recognition, etc including the reason to live!!) from others and hence are second-handers. They get feared when an individual with his individual thinking comes to them and speaks! Because what he has is what they have lost. What he thinks is not what they are taught to be right. In fact they are taught exactly the opposite. They cannot argue with him because he goes by reason and they are only concerned with other people. So they get feared and the feared men are the most dangerous men in the world!! How many great lives haven’t we lost by feared mobs?!
And the collectors!! These guys are the worst second-handers of all!! Even these are the men with no self. But their survival depends on the destruction of the self in others! They want power. And power means dependency of other men on themselves. They take decisions for others. They decide what is good for others. This power they are after is the only means of their survival. So if one looks only on the surface it seems only they have self and not others and they are the great personalities men can ever find. But the fact is they too do not have any self of their own!! If there is no one to obey them, listen to them then they too will vanish. They find their self in others. They, in reality, are dependent on others. So, in order to survive they realize the need for people who obey them. And In order to achieve that they need to destroy the individuality or self in the others. Toohey and Wynand in ‘The Fountainhead’ are the example of this kind of collectors. Though there were differences between the two, both belonged to the same group.
This is how Ayn Rand categorizes men in general. But when we particularly observe her novels keenly we get the point that all kinds of characters are not discussed. Or at least not all situations are considered. Let’s say in Atlas Shrugged there were no selfish good men like John Galt, Rearden, Frisco, Dagny etc. Then what would happen? Does that mean no innovation? Still, we would be having men like Dr. Robert Stadler for that. As per Ayn Rand that will definitely lead to destruction of the world because of moral and ethical crisis because that would mean giving the world in the hands of those who despise it. But do not you think society is very important for a man? Because if society is not there how a individual can survive? Can a man learn everything in this world and survive without the help of any other person? If there is no doctor then do you expect every individual to learn medicine and help himself? Do you expect every individual to build road for himself to walk? What if there are no farmers, where do you get your food from? What if you, yourself are expected to build a vehicle for yourself? Do not you wonder how much dependency you have on others? When you say working for a better society means helping yourself to get better living condition? Isn’t it common sense that better society means better life of individuals? Isn’t it commonsense that by collective work you can produce more? Isn’t it commonsense that removing poverty from society means reducing criminal activities and securing yourself from any criminal attacks? Isn’t it commonsense that it is better to work for the society rather than only yourself? So, does not this mean society at any given point of time important than a individual? These are the questions that collectivists ask.
Without society individual cannot exist. But if every individual is selfish and regards himself as the best, respects himself most and hence does not degrade himself by any unethical activities doesn’t society still survive? When the society would be better? To answer this question both individualists and collectivists differ greatly. Ayn Rand says, ‘if every person is selfish then naturally society will be better, and in fact it is the only means of making society better. Whereas collectivists say individual is not better than society or all other men. And they say to live for others is the greatest virtue. And they say you should obey to what all decide collectively precisely because that is what is going to be the right [opinion of many versus opinion of an individual]. But by saying that, they destroy individuality in man and make him dependent on the opinions of all where no one will be having his own opinion and looks at others for his opinion!! And this is what precisely destroys man and the society both.’ And the collectivists ask the same questions I mentioned in last paragraph and say, ‘It is common sense that society survives without an individual. But an individual cannot survive without society. So when we take decisions it should be in the favor of the society which itself implies favor of individual. If every individual looks after only himself we will soon find corrupted souls who take advantage of individual freedom and start doing unethical activities.’
It is quite a complex topic to discuss it in here. But the question of whether individual or society is synonymous to whether cell or body. Our body is made up of millions of cells. Who is important between these two, a cell or the body? A cell may not be aware of its position in the body. It may not know how it affects the body. Its only concern is its own survival through the work it is supposed to do. It cannot survive if it stops the work it is supposed to do. Not only that, it causes malfunction of many other cells surrounding it. And this in turn might affect the body in a bad way. Similarly if you take something (consider smoking and drinking), by the mere want of you, then it might impact the cells in your body in some bad way. And if cells get corrupted as so does the body. Basically the body cannot do as it wishes. And even cells cannot go on doing what they wish. Both cannot survive without each other. If one corrupts other too will get corrupted. But some might say how does it affect if a single cell gets corrupted? Let me remind you that it simply cannot happen that only one cell gets corrupted at any given point of time. Always you observe a group of cells getting corrupted and impacting the organ they are part of. [Cells die out naturally and new cells come in their place, that’s different than getting corrupted or malfunctioning. If it dies out naturally it will not affect the organ as new cells will be replaced in its place!] It is always like a corrupted cell impacts all other cells surrounding it and always a group of cells start malfunctioning. The body cannot work perfectly if any cells are not functioning as they were supposed to. Similarly the survival of cell depends on how responsibly the whole body acts. Such is the interdependency between a cell and the body. Yes, it is the interdependency and not the dependency of just any one of them on the other. Also there is one more point here. It is only through the malfunction of body that we get to know that something is wrong. It is only when we feel the pain and cannot digest food that we get to know there is some problem with the digestive system. And we take the medicines accordingly. The point to note here is that it is at the system level we take the actions. We do not catch the cell of subject and try to cure it. We only observe the impact on the system and try to cure it at the complete system level which automatically helps the concerned cell. It is not even possible to check or cure at the cell level. So, when it comes to taking actions it always happens at the system level. But again we cannot ignore that the sole purpose of it is to help all the impacted cells and nothing else! Below is what we can understand from all this:
-- Body and Cell have interdependency on each other.
-- A single cell cannot get corrupted at any point of time. Always it is a group of cells which gets impacted and affects the organ and body in turn.
-- For a body to function correctly all cells should work efficiently.
-- When it comes to taking actions it always happens at the system level and not at the cell level. But sole purpose of the action will be to cure those particular impacted cells and in turn stabilize the system through that.
This is how the relationship between the society and an individual is. When the relationship between the two is so intimate then doesn’t the question of whether society or individual look meaningless and absurd? Whatever point you have, you put it openly but never generalize it and say ‘society, hence is not important than individual’ or vice versa. It always leads to meaningless debates, fights and nothing else. Let’s keep it straight – both are important, let’s take actions to improve the society whose sole purpose would be to help individuals in trouble and to make individuals stronger in terms of integrity. It is the only way we have to lead. Let it be individualists or collectivists they need to work ‘TO improve the society FOR the individual’. Is there any other path to follow?
This is all about individualism vs collectivism here. The next one is capitalism.
Capitalism
As per Ayn Rand capitalism is the right economy to have. Capitalist economy is free economy. And Frisco, Reardan, Dagny Taggart were capitalists.
To understand why Ayn Rand supported capitalism is not very difficult. Capitalist economy is related to individualism in very very close way. I produce, I earn, I get profit, I invest. No one has any right to ask for a share in my profit. There is no other economy which can provide so much freedom. An economy where there is no profit and where production, distribution, investments are regulated so that others can get opportunity to get profited, deprives man of his freedom.
But, the question is do we have such capitalists today? Do we really think we have a big capitalist among us who has the qualities of an objectivist? May be we have a few here and there. But what has happened to most of the world? Capitalism is stinking at its best. The whole economy is in the hands of a few. They could destroy the world if they wish to. You don’t need a third world war, nuclear war, aliens, or some doomsday to come and destroy us. Just the wish of a few is enough!! Billions will die of hunger, Billions will go bankrupt, and countless nations will vanish from impacts of poverty-wars-international loans!! Don’t you believe it? Any idea why recession happened in 2008-2009? What was the inequality ratio a hundred years back and now?
Official figures as of 2007 say over 300 million Indians are below national poverty line and 456 million Indians, in the world about 1.4 billion people are living on less than $1.25 a day[extreme poverty] and about 2.5 billion people are living on less than $2 a day[very poor]. Looking at India 300 million people are below national poverty line, 450 million people[42%] are below international line[less than $1.25 a day] and 828 million people[76%] are living on less than $2 a day!! That is “official statistics” of very poor and extreme poverty cases. The exact count is much more than that. And almost all others would be belonging to middle class families. Only a few would be rich. Now, don’t ask me the data of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa regions. It is just terrible!! And at another side Indians have more than 50 billionaires with all their net worth of more than $250 billion.
This is one kind of inequality in a given country that you see. Another inequality is between the nations. How good it is to go for globalization when we have so deep inequality among the nations. It greatly disturbs the economy of poor country. When you have your own resources, national wealth and when you utilize them in a efficient way you will see a stable growth in your economy. But globalization destabilizes this stable economical growth in a nation when allowing a super rich, powerful competitor in its territory. Natives not only lose their market in their own territory, but the nation loses its national wealth, resources at a much cheaper rates.
An economy must follow certain rules as nature follows its own laws in order to be stable and evolve over time. Capitalism in the name of free economy followed a unregulated and uncontrolled path and caused great inequality that we see today. Capitalism started with a good intention, it brought forth much drastic developments that current society is enjoying. And the capitalists in the starting era were great men like the heroes of Ayn Rand. But now capitalism is not what we read in Ayn Rand novels. It has changed. It has changed for the worst of mankind. It happens with any other subject we take such as technology. When there is no law to regulate the development then it ends in a disaster. That happened with technology and so with economy.
There are people who say ‘we never saw true free capitalism that Ayn Rand mentioned. That has caused the disastrous economical issues we see today’. I ask a question: ‘Why?’ Why did not we see that capitalism that Ayn Rand mentioned? Why this transition from pure capitalism to so much stinking capitalism occurred?
Time covers the cloud covering the truth. It has done its part that already. We do not need further futile attempts to show capitalism has failed. The current uncontrolled and unregulated economy, in the name of free capitalism, lead us to so sad a stage where people cannot be happier. It is sad that everyday thousands of people die of hunger and the money that could buy all of them a day’s food is a rich man’s an hour’s time pass money. Who created poverty? Is it the poor responsible for their own poverty or the economical system we live in? People commit mistake and that is innate nature of human beings. But if we don’t learn soon enough and correct ourselves we will be doomed. Now we have reached a stage where capitalism cannot protect us. It cannot take us back to a point where we can correct ourselves.
The question we must be asking at this point is what kind of regulation we should have? What is the right economical system? What lessons we can learn from capitalist economy? How to transit to a new economy so that no one gets hurt but everything would be in right way?
Let us take a look at the economies in greater details at some other point of time.
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Friends, whatever beliefs we have, whatever emotional attachments we have, we need to accept truth. That’s the lesson we received from ages in the history. When we see a higher truth we must accept it. If we don’t, that’s the end of our life and growth. Let’s forget philosophers. Let’s learn what they taught. Let’s analyze the philosophies they taught us. Anything that enters our mind should first get analyzed and then persisted. That means when we believe in something it is harder to replace it with some other belief. So better we understand, analyze, look out at the possible future consequences and then at the end make it our beliefs...
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