The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 12

[Ibid., 120; pb 100.]

The acceptance of full responsibility for one's own choices and actions (and their consequences) is such a demanding moral discipline that many men seek to escape it by surrendering to what they believe is the easy, automatic, unthinking safety of a morality of "duty." They learn better, often when it is too late.

The disciple of causation faces life without inexplicable chains, unchosen burdens, impossible demands or supernatural threats. His metaphysical att.i.tude and guiding moral principle can best be summed up by an old Spanish proverb: "G.o.d said: 'Take what you want and pay for it.' " But to know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.

[Ibid., 121; pb 101.]

See also ALTRUISM; "ANTI-CONCEPTS"; FREE WILL; KANT, IMMANUEL; MORALITY; MYSTICAL ETHICS; RATIONALITY; RELIGION; RESPONSIBILITY/OBLIGATION; SACRIFICE; SELF-ESTEEM; SELF-INTEREST; SELFISHNESS; SELFLESSNESS.

E.

Ecology/Environmental Movement. Ecology as a social principle ... condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men's return to "nature," to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands.

["'The Lessons of Vietnam," ARL, III, 25, 1.]

An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Biblical times-a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream-an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly-an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth-these do live with their "natural environment," but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother, whose child is dying of cholera: "Should one do everything one can? Of course not." Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars. ["The Left: Old and New," NL, 88.]

In Western Europe, in the preindustrial Middle Ages, man's life expectancy was 30 years. In the nineteenth century, Europe's population grew by 300 percent-which is the best proof of the fact that for the first time in human history, industry gave the great ma.s.ses of people a chance to survive.

If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States (from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company): 1900-47.3 years

1920-53 years

1940-60 years

1968-70.2 years (the latest figures compiled)

Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent "Thank you" to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.

["The Anti-Industrial Revolution," NL, 137.]

The dinosaur and its fellow-creatures vanished from this earth long before there were any industrialists or any men.... But this did not end life on earth. Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of "equilibrium" that guarantees the survival of any particular species-teast of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.

[Ibid., 134.]

Now observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists-amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for "harmony with nature"-there is no discussion of man's needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision-i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears....

In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the G.o.ds which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire.

[Ibid., 136.]

Without machines and technology, the task of mere survival is a terrible, mind-and-body-wrecking ordeal. In "nature," the struggle for food, clothing and shelter consumes all of a man's energy and spirit; it is a losing struggte-the winner is any flood, earthquake or swarm of locusts. (Consider the 500,000 bodies left in the wake of a single flood in Pakistan; they had been men who lived without technology.) To work only for bare necessities is a luxury that mankind cannot afford.

[Ibid., 149.]

It has been reported in the press many times that the issue of pollution is to be the next big crusade of the New Left activists, after the war in Vietnam peters out. And just as peace was not their goal or motive in that crusade, so clean air is not their goal or motive in this one.

["The Left: Old and New," NL, 89.]

The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of capitalism in today's mixed economy, and the establishment of a global dictators.h.i.+p. This goal does not have to be inferred-many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end.

["The Anti-Industrial Revolution," NL, 140.]

If, after the failure of such accusations as "Capitalism leads you to the poorhouse" and "Capitalism leads you to war," the New Left is left with nothing better than: "Capitalism defiles the beauty of your countryside," one may justifiably conclude that, as an intellectual power, the collectivist movement is through.

["The Left: Old and New," NL., 93.]

City smog and filthy rivers are not good for men (though they are not the kind of danger that the ecological panic-mongers proclaim them to be). This is a scientific, technological probtem-not a political one-and it can be solved only by technology. Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.

["The Anti-Industrial Revolution," NL, 142.]

See also CAPITALISM; MAN; NEW LEFT; POLLUTION; PRODUC-TlON; SCIENCE; TECHNOLOGY.

Economic Good. In order for a thing to become a good, three conditions must be fulfilled. Not only must it satisfy a human need, but also one must know that it satisfies one's need, and one must have disposal over it.

[George Reisman, "The Revolt Against Affluence: Galbraith's Neo-Feudalism," pamphlet, 6.]

See aGco MARKET VALUE; PROPERTY RIGHTS.

Economic Growth. "Economic growth" means the rise of an economy's productivity, due to the discovery of new products, new techniques, which means: due to the achievements of men's productive ability.

["Promises to Parasites Fail to Bring Results," Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1962.]

Nothing can raise a country's productivity except technology, and technology is the final product of a complex of sciences (including philosophy), each of them kept alive and moving by the achievements of a few independent minds.

["The Moratorium on Brains," ARL, 1, 3, 5.]

See also CAPITALISM; ECOLOGY/ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT; NEW LEFT; PRODUCTION; TECHNOLOGY.

Economic Power vs. Political Power. A disastrous intellectual package-deal, put over on us by the theoreticians of statism, is the equation of economic power with political power. You have heard it expressed in such bromides as: "A hungry man is not free," or "It makes no difference to a worker whether he takes orders from a businessman or from a bureaucrat." Most people accept these equivocations-and yet they know that the poorest laborer in America is freer and more secure than the richest commissar in Soviet Russia. What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.

The difference between political power and any other kind of social "power," between a government and any private organization, is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CUI, 46.]

What is economic power? It is the power to produce and to trade what one has produced. In a free economy, where no man or group of men can use physical coercion against anyone, economic power can be achieved only by voluntary means: by the voluntary choice and agreement of all those who partic.i.p.ate in the process of production and trade. In a free market, all prices, wages, and profits are determined-not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or of the poor, not by anyone's "greed" or by anyone's need-but by the law of supply and demand. The mechanism of a free market reflects and sums up all the economic choices and decisions made by all the partic.i.p.ants. Men trade their goods or services by mutual consent to mutual advantage, according to their own independent, uncoerced judgment. A man can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values--better products or services, at a lower price -than others are able to offer.

Wealth, in a free market, is achieved by a free, general, "democratic" vote-by the sales and the purchases of every individual who takes part in the economic life of the country. Whenever you buy one product rather than another, you are voting for the success of some manufacturer. And, in this type of voting, every man votes only on those matters which he is qualified to judge: on his own preferences, interests, and needs. No one has the power to decide for others or to subst.i.tute his judgment for theirs; no one has the power to appoint himself "the voice of the public" and to leave the public voiceless and disfranchised.

Now let me define the difference between economic power and political power: economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury. imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

[ibid., 47.]

Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.

["For the New Intellectual," , 44; pb 40.]

You had said that you saw no difference between economic and political power, between the power of money and the power of guns-no difference between reward and punishment, no difference between purchase and plunder, no difference between pleasure and fear, no difference between life and death. You are learning the difference now.

[GS, FNI, 236; pb 187.]

See also BUSINESSMEN vs. BUREAUCRATS; CAPITALISM; FREE MARKET; FREEDOM; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; MONEY; MOTIVATION hy LOVE vs. by FEAR; "PACKAGE-DEALING." FALLACY of; PHYSICAL FORCE; STATISM.

Education. The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.

["The Comprachicos," NL, 231.]

The academia-jet set coalition is attempting to tame the American character by the deliberate breeding of helplessness and resignation-in those incubators of lethargy known as "Progressive" schools, which are dedicated to the task of crippling a child's mind by arresting his cognitive development. (See "The Comprachicos" in my book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.) It appears, however, that the "progressive" rich will be the first victims of their own social theories: it is the children of the well-to-do who emerge from expensive nursery schools and colleges as hippies, and destroy the remnants of their paralyzed brains by means of drugs.

The middle cla.s.s has created an antidote which is perhaps the most helpful movement of recent years: the spontaneous, unorganized, gra.s.s-roots revival of the Montessori system of education-a system aimed at the development of a child's cognitive, i.e., rational, faculty.

["Don't Let It Go," PWNI, 261; pb 214.1 See also CONCEPTS; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); LEARNING; UNDERSTANDING.

Egalitlriarilsm. Egalitarianism means the belief in the equality of all men. If the word "equality" is to be taken in any serious or rational sense, the crusade for this belief is dated by about a century or more: the United States of America has made it an anachronism-by establis.h.i.+ng a system based on the principle of individual rights. "Equality," in a human context, is a political term: it means equality before the law, the equality of fundamental, inalienable rights which every man possesses by virtue of his birth as a human being, and which may not be infringed or abrogated by man-made inst.i.tutions, such as t.i.tles of n.o.bility or the division of men into castes established by law, with special privileges granted to some and denied to others. The rise of capitalism swept away all castes, including the inst.i.tutions of aristocracy and of slavery or serfdom.

But this is not the meaning that the altruists ascribe to the word "equality."

They turn the word into an anti-concept: they use it to mean, not political, but metaphysical equality-the equality of personal attributes and virtues, regardless of natural endowment or individual choice, performance and character. It is not man-made inst.i.tutions, but nature, i.e., reality, that they propose to fight-by means of man-made inst.i.tutions.

Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact-in defiance of facts. Since the Law of Ident.i.ty is impervious to human manipulation, it is the Law of Causality that they struggle to abrogate. Since personal attributes or virtues cannot be "redistributed," they seek to deprive men of their consequences-of the rewards, the benefits, the achievements created by personal attributes and virtues.

It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top-the aristocracy of non-value.

["The Age of Envy," NL, 164.]

To understand the meaning and motives of egalitarianism, project it into the field of medicine. Suppose a doctor is called to help a man with a broken leg and, instead of setting it, proceeds to break the legs of ten other men, explaining that this would make the patient feel better; when all these men become crippled for life, the doctor advocates the pa.s.sage of a law compelling everyone to walk on crutches-in order to make the cripples feel better and equalize the "unfairness" of nature.

If this is unspeakable, how does it acquire an aura of morality-or even the benefit of a moral doubt-when practiced in regard to man's mind?

[Ibid., 170.]

Of special significance to the present discussion is the egalitarians' defiance of the Law of Causality: their demand for equal results from unequal causes-or equal rewards for unequal performance.

["Egalitarianism and Inflation." PWNI, 146; pb 121.]

The new "theory of justice" [of John Rawls] demands that men counteract the "injustice" of nature by inst.i.tuting the most obscenely unthinkable injustice among men: deprive "those favored by nature" (i.e., the talented, the intelligent, the creative) of the right to the rewards they produce (i.e., the right to life)-and grant to the incompetent, the stupid, the slothful a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce, could not imagine, and would not know what to do with.

["An Unt.i.tled Letter," PWNI, 132; pb 110.]

Observe that ... the egalitarians' view of man is literally the view of a children's fairy tale-the notion that man, before birth, is some sort of indeterminate thing, an ent.i.ty without ident.i.ty, something like a shapeless chunk of human clay, and that fairy G.o.dmothers proceed to grant or deny him various attributes ("favors"): intelligence, talent, beauty, rich parents, etc. These attributes are handed out "arbitrarily" (this word is preposterously inapplicable to the processes of nature), it is a "lottery" among pre-embryonic non-ent.i.ties, and-the supposedly adult mentalities conclude-since a winner could not possibly have "deserved" his "good fortune," a man does not deserve or earn anything after birth, as a human being, because he acts by means of "undeserved," "unmerited," "unearned" attributes. Implication: to earn something means to choose and earn your personal attributes before you exist.

[Ibid., 133; pb 111.]

If there were such a thing as a pa.s.sion for equality (not equality de jure, but de facto), it would be obvious to its exponents that there are only two ways to achieve it: either by raising all men to the mountaintop-or by razing the mountains. The first method is impossible because it is the faculty of volition that determines a man's stature and actions; but the nearest approach to it was demonstrated by the United States and capitalism, which protected the freedom, the rewards and the incentives for every individual's achievement, each to the extent of his ability and ambition, thus raising the intellectual, moral and economic state of the whole society. The second method is impossible because, if mankind were leveled down to the common denominator of its least competent members, it would not be able to survive (and its best would not choose to survive on such terms). Yet it is the second method that the altruist-egalitarians are pursuing. The greater the evidence of their policy's consequences, i.e., the greater the spread of misery, of injustice, of vicious inequality throughout the world, the more frantic their pursuit -which is one demonstration of the fact that there is no such thing as a benevolent pa.s.sion for equality and that the claim to it is only a rationalization to cover a pa.s.sionate hatred of the good for being the good.

["The Age of Envy," NL, 169.]

See also ALTRUISM; ENVY/HATRED of the GOOD for BEING the GOOD; FREE WILL; JUSTICE; METAPHYSICAL vs. MAN-MADE; STATISM.

Egoism. See Selfishness.

Emergencies. It is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.

An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible-such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a s.h.i.+pwreck. In an emergency situation, men's primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire. etc.).

By "normal" conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysically possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emergency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish.

It is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers, if it is in one's power. For instance, a man who values human life and is caught in a s.h.i.+pwreck, should help to save his fellow pa.s.sengers (though not at the expense of his own life). But this does not mean that after they all reach sh.o.r.e, he should devote his efforts to saving his fellow pa.s.sengers from poverty, ignorance, neurosis or whatever other troubles they might have. Nor does it mean that he should spend his life sailing the seven seas in search of s.h.i.+pwreck victims to save....

The principle that one should help men in an emergency cannot be extended to regard all human suffering as an emergency and to turn the misfortune of some into a first mortgage on the lives of others.

["The Ethics of Emergencies." VOS, 53; pb 47.]

See also BENEVOLENT UNIVERSE PREMISE; CHARITY: POVERTY; SELFISHNESS; SUFFERING.

Emotions. Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is an automatic indicator of his body's welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death-so the emotional mechanism of man's consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him-lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.

But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body-the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.

Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are "tabula rasa." It is man's cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both. Man's emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program-and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses.

But since the work of man's mind is not automatic, his values, like all his premises, are the product either of his thinking or of his evasions: man chooses his values by a conscious process of thought-or accepts them by default, by subconscious a.s.sociations, on faith, on someone's authority, by some form of social osmosis or blind imitation. Emotions are produced by man's premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 23; pb 27.]

Your subconscious is like a computer-more complex a computer than men can build-and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don't reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance-and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions-which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values.

["Philosophy: Who Needs It," PWNI, 7; pb 5.]

An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions-provided he observes their proper relations.h.i.+p. A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relations.h.i.+p cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their pa.s.sive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow-then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction-his own and that of others.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 6.]