I share with you today a philosophy that has become the guiding torch of my life. I share it with the selfish want for you to attempt to understand the ethics of this philosophy:
Objectivism.
The ethics of objectivism advocate you to live a life guided by reason. Man’s whims, wants and desires must not guide his life. Reality is not an outcome of your wants but your actions. We are all the products of our own actions and its consequences and no one else’s. Your path in life must be guided by reason and not faith or whim. These reasons must help you live a life of trade where you treat everything as a trade with the world. This trade, in essence, must be mutual and with mutual benefit. If all of us live a life of mutual benefit and mutual consent, everyone benefits. Not all benefit in the same proportion because not all trade with the same ability, competence and resources. If something does not involve mutual benefit, it is charity. Charity equals begging and hence, is immoral. One must not expect free lunches, neither accept them, even if they are on offer. Mutual benefit is derived from the universal and natural laws of demand and supply. These are not just laws of economics but are also laws of nature. The worth of nature stands true to its supply against its demand. A man who either gives or takes without mutual benefit is an immoral man. A man who looks for mutual benefit as means of trade is right. This benefit need not be in materialistic terms. When a mother gives birth to her child, she gains the pleasure of watching her child grow and evolve over time, thus benefit need not be in material terms, it can be the pleasure a mother gets in providing for her child or the pride a man feels when he works as a soldier or the satisfaction one gets in an accomplishment.
While the word ‘selfish’ rings synonymous with the word ‘evil’, what we miss on is the exact meaning of the word ‘selfish’ which means being concerned to one’s self interest. A selfish man works for his own pleasures and his own interests. A selfish man weighs his interest above others because he believes that no one else has the right to his life or any part of it except himself. We have been taught that a life lived for others is a moral life. I ask now, “By what standard?” Why must we live a life for others? Why must I work for someone else’s happiness and not mine? Why and for what reason? There exists no reason that can justify a man’s existence for the purpose of someone beside himself. Any man who weighs someone else’s happiness above his own believes his self-worth to be unimportant or lives in denial, such a man is immoral. We must start weighing our decisions and our life on reasons and not faith or desires before we all turn into sacrificial goats. While you hail the selfless man as a humble servant of God, I ask, “What is wrong with being selfish?” The altruistic man might be ready to give away his life for the weak and the unfortunate, but I ask, “Why does the weak have a right over the strong?” The philosophy of Altruism asks you to be selfless and sacrifice yourself on the altar of one weaker than you. So basically we are taught that the weak have a right to our strength because they are weak. Their vice is held stronger than our virtues. However, Objectivism asks you to never be or be the means of the sacrifice of ability in exchange of inability. The only thing in this world that we have a right to is our mind and its immense potential and ability. It is one’s ability and not one’s inability that must determine his worth to himself and to others. The major reason why Altruism has succeeded in existing even today is because of our faith in not questioning what is told to us by a class of people. Altruism owes its heinous origin to the places of God, where we are taught from beginning that we must show faith without questions and reasons. That unconditional faith and devotion will lead us to a better and holier place. However, faith performs no miracles. The only faith one must have is in reason. It is not faith that will buy me bread when I need to eat, it is work and action that will feed my stomach. A man of faith lives without questions because he lives in denial. For those leaping up with arms flailing that a thief and murderer might also work for his selfish pleasure, I would clarify that a man who uses his ability to destroy someone else’s ability is an immoral man as well. Here is where the laws of nature determine your survival, a man of constructive ability competes while a man of destructive ability ends up destroying himself. Destruction leads to self-destruction.
A man is born only with ability of his mind because ability is the only key and tool to a successful life. Only a man’s ability guides his survival in this world. Not every rich man is born rich. It was their ability and potential that led them where they exist today. A man’s wants and desires has nothing to do with his accomplishments, its his efforts, judgement and work that gets him those accomplishments. Men of ability rule the world. The men of action are the one’s who bear the burden of the world on their shoulders; the one’s capable of moving the world. However, our world today has become an ode to the crippled minds and figures not the men of ability. Hence, instead of contributing more towards the one’s that live by their inability and non-productivity, we must start contributing towards the cause of the genius and the perfectionist. We must recognize and encourage the strong-willed, not the weak-minded; the genius and not the parasite; the realist and not the pretender; the intelligent not the foolish-headed. Instead of focusing on the weak in the world, we must shift our center of attention towards the capable person. This does not mean that the ones not on top of the world are unimportant. It is man’s ability that guides his reason for a life. A man working in a mill is just as moral as the executive in its board meeting, provided that both work on grounds of objective reality and perform their roles to the best of their ability.
Objectivism stands to look at reality objectively; without emotional or sentimental hang-ups. Not from a “certain” point of view, but from an objective view. When we look at reality from an objective point, we see it for what it is, not what it means to us or what it would lead to. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong. Anything is either black or white but never both. Objectivity helps you trace the white out of the black in the so-called gray. In life, there does not exist a gray or middle ground. It only exists when we look at situations from our own or some other viewpoint and not an objective one. A life lived by reality, in all its honesty, is a moral life. The one’s who pretend or help anyone else to pretend are the one’s escaping the reality and what it stands for. The one who pretends is the one wishing for reality to be different and wronging oneself in the process.
Man must stop existing and start living. Happiness is the only moral code. But unearned happiness is the original sin. Even through the centuries, we have been taught this. Eve was punished for eating the apple without doing anything to deserve its bite. She believed that her mere existence in the garden granted her the right to its fruits. However trade, benefit and happiness needs to be earned and deserved, not asked or wanted. Your wanting or desiring something does not entitle you to its ownership. The world moves by your ideas, converted into actions and not your desires without any effort. Therefore, stop asking for things and start working to deserve them. Birth does not entitle you to a life.
