The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 38

S.

Sacred. I will ask you to project the look on a child's face when he grasps the answer to some problem he has been striving to understand. It is a radiant look of joy, of liberation, almost of triumph, which is unself-conscious, yet self-a.s.sertive, and its radiance seems to spread in two directions: outward, as an illumination of the world-inward, as the first spark of what is to become the fire of an earned pride. If you have seen this look, or experienced it, you know that if there is such a concept as "sacred"-meaning: the best, the highest possible to man-this look is the sacred, the not-to-be-betrayed, the not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone.

["Requiem for Man," CUI, 303.]

[I use] the word "sanct.i.ty" not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of "supreme value."

[WTL, "Foreword," v.]

See also MYSTICISM; PRIDE; RELIGION; UNDERSTANDING; VALUES.

Sacrifice. "Sacrifice" is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man's virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less "selfish," than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one.

This applies to all choices, including one's actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible.

["The Ethics of Emergencies," VOS, 48; pb 44.]

"Sacrifice" does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious. "Sacrifice" does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. "Sacrifice" is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don't.

If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice; if you exchange a dollar for a penny, it is. If you achieve the career you wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice; if you then renounce it for the sake of a rival, it is. If you own a bottle of milk and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor's child and let your own die, it is.

If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to a worthless stranger, it is. If you give your friend a sum you can afford, it is not a sacrifice; if you give him money at the cost of your own discomfort, it is only a partial virtue, according to this sort of moral standard; if you give him money at the cost of disaster to yourself-that is the virtue of sacrifice in full.

If you renounce all personal desires and dedicate your life to those you love, you do not achieve full virtue: you still retain a value of your own, which is your love. If you devote your life to random strangers, it is an act of greater virtue. If you devote your life to serving men you hate-that is the greatest of the virtues you can practice.

A sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surrender of all values. If you wish to achieve full virtue, you must seek no grat.i.tude in return for your sacrifice, no praise, no love, no admiration, no self-esteem, not even the pride of being virtuous; the faintest trace of any gain dilutes your virtue. If you pursue a course of action that does not taint your life by any joy, that brings you no value in matter, no value in spirit, no gain, no profit, no reward-if you achieve this state of total zero, you have achieved the ideal of moral perfection.

You are told that moral perfection is impossible to man-and, by this standard, it is. You cannot achieve it so long as you live, but the value of your life and of your person is gauged by how closely you succeed in approaching that ideal zero which is death.

If you start, however, as a pa.s.sionless blank, as a vegetable seeking to be eaten, with no values to reject and no wishes to renounce, you will not win the crown of sacrifice. It is not a sacrifice to renounce the unwanted. It is not a sacrifice to give your life for others, if death is your personal desire. To achieve the virtue of sacrifice, you must want to live, you must love it, you must burn with pa.s.sion for this earth and for all the splendor it can give you-you must feel the twist of every knife as it slashes your desires away from your reach and drains your love out of your body. It is not mere death that the morality of sacrifice holds out to you as an ideal, but death by slow torture.

Do not remind me that it pertains only to this life on earth. I am concerned with no other. Neither are you.

If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a "sacrifice": that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty. If a man dies fighting for his own freedom, it is not a sacrifice: he is not willing to live as a slave; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of man who's willing. If a man refuses to sell his convictions, it is not a sacrifice, unless he is the sort of man who has no convictions.

Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to sacrifice -no values, no standards, no judgment-those whose desires are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered. For a man of moral stature, whose desires are born of rational values, sacrifice is the surrender of the right to the wrong, of the good to the evil.

The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immorat-a morality that declares its own bankruptcy by confessing that it can't impart to men any personal stake in virtues or values, and that their souls are sewers of depravity, which they must be taught to sacrifice. By its own confession, it is impotent to teach men to be good and can only subject them to constant punishment.

[GS, FNI, 172; pb 139.]

Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one's selfish interests. If a man who is pa.s.sionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a "sacrifice" for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.

Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. In the above example, his wife's survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.

But suppose he let her die in order to spend his money on saving the lives of ten other women, none of whom meant anything to him-as the ethics of altruism would require. That would be a sacrifice. Here the difference between Objectivism and altruism can be seen most clearly: if sacrifice is the moral principle of action, then that husband should sacrifice his wife for the sake of ten other women. What distinguishes the wife from the ten others? Nothing but her value to the husband who has to make the choice-nothing but the fact that his happiness requires her survival.

The Objectivist ethics would tell him: your highest moral purpose is the achievement of your own happiness, your money is yours, use it to save your wife, that is your moral right and your rational, moral choice.

["The Ethics of Emergencies," VOS, 49; pb 45.]

If the frustration of any desire const.i.tutes a sacrifice, then a man who owns an automobile and is robbed of it, is being sacrificed, but so is the man who wants or "aspires to" an automobile which the owner refuses to give him-and these two "sacrifices" have equal ethical status. If so, then man's only choice is to rob or be robbed, to destroy or be destroyed, to sacrifice others to any desire of his own or to sacrifice himself to any desire of others; then man's only ethical alternative is to be a s.a.d.i.s.t or a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 27; pb 30.]

The failure to give to a man what had never belonged to him can hardly be described as "sacrificing his interests."

["The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests," VOS, 67; pb 56.]

It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.

["The Soul of a Collectivist," FNI, 84; pb 73.]

See also ALTRUISM; "DUTY"; INTEGRITY; KANT, IMMANUEL; MORALITY; MYSTICISM; PRIDE; SELFISHNESS; SELFLESSNESS; STANDARD of VALUE; STATISM; ULTIMATE VALUE; VALUES.

Sanction. To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it.

["The Argument from Intimidation," VOS, 198; pb 143.]

One must speak up in situations where silence can objectively be taken to mean agreement with or sanction of evil. When one deals with irrational persons, where argument is futile, a mere "I don't agree with you" is sufficient to negate any implication of moral sanction. When one deals with better people, a full statement of one's views may be morally required. But in no case and in no situation may one permit one's own values to be attacked or denounced, and keep silent.

["How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?" VOS, 92; pb 73.]

To combat petty larceny as a crucial danger, at a time when murder is being committed, is to sanction the murder.

["Ant.i.trust: The Rule of Unreason," TON, Feb. 1962, 8.]

To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.

The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: "Judge, and be prepared to be judged."

["How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?" VOS, 91; pb 72.]

A forced compliance is not a sanction. All of us are forced to comply with many laws that violate our rights, but so long as we advocate the repeal of such laws, our compliance does not const.i.tute a sanction. Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom.

"The Wreckage of the Consensus," CUI, 235.]

See also APPEAs.e.m.e.nT; EVIL; MORAL COWARDICE; MORAL JUDGMENT; MORALITY; PHYSICAL FORCE; SANCTION of the VICTIM; SOVIET RUSSIA.

Sanction of the Victim. The "sanction of the victim" is the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the "sin" of creating values.

[Leonard Peikoff. "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 8.]

Then I saw what was wrong with the world, I saw what destroyed men and nations, and where the battle for life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality-and that my sanction was its only power. I saw that evil was impotent-that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real-and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan-so throughout the world and throughout men's history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collectivized countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values-the impotence of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by p.r.o.nouncing a single word in my mind. I p.r.o.nounced it. The word was "No."

[GS, FNI, 206; pb 165.]

Every kind of ethnic group is enormously sensitive to any slight. If one made a derogatory remark about the Kurds of Iran, dozens of voices would leap to their defense. But no one speaks out for businessmen, when they are attacked and insulted by everyone as a matter of routine. What causes this overwhelming injustice? The businessmen's own policies: their betrayal of their own values, their appeas.e.m.e.nt of enemies, their compromises-all of which add up to an air of moral cowardice. Add to it the fact that businessmen are creating and supporting their own destroyers.

The sources and centers of today's philosophical corruption are the universities.... It is the businessmen's money that supports American universities-not merely in the form of taxes and government handouts, but much worse: in the form of voluntary, private contributions, donations, endowments, etc. In preparation for this lecture, I tried to do some research on the nature and amounts of such contributions. I had to give it up: it is too complex and too vast a field for the efforts of one person. To untangle it now would require a major research project and, probably, years of work. All I can say is only that millions and millions and millions of dollars are being donated to universities by big business enterprises every year, and that the donors have no idea of what their money is being spent on or whom it is supporting. What is certain is only the fact that some of the worst anti-business, anti-capitalisrn propaganda has been financed by businessmen in such projects.

Money is a great power-because, in a free or even a semi-free society, it is a frozen form of productive energy. And, therefore, the spending of money is a grave responsibility. Contrary to the altruists and the advocates of the so-called "academic freedom," it is a moral crime to give money to support ideas with which you disagree; it means: ideas which you consider wrong, false, evil. It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers. Yet that is what businessmen are doing with such reckless irresponsibility.

["The Sanction of the Victims," TOF, April 1982, 6.]

See also APPEAs.e.m.e.nT; BUSINESSMEN; COLLECTIVISM; COMPROMISE; EVIL; GOOD, the; MONEY; MORAL COWARDICE; MORALITY; SANCTION; SOVIET RUSSIA.

Savings. Agriculture is the first step toward civilization, because it requires a significant advance in men's conceptual development: it requires that they grasp two cardinal concepts which the perceptual, concrete-bound mentality of the hunters could not grasp fully: time and savings. Once you grasp these, you have grasped the three essentials of human survival: time-savings-production. You have grasped the fact that production is not a matter confined to the immediate moment, but a continuous process, and that production is fueled by previous production. The concept of "stock seed" unites the three essentials and applies not merely to agriculture, but much, much more widely: to all forms of productive work. Anything above the level of a savage's precarious, hand-to-mouth existence requires savings. Savings buy time.

["Egalitarianism and Inflation," PWNI, 153; pb 126.]

Deferred consumption (i.e., savings) on a gigantic scale is required to keep industrial production going. Savings pay for machines which enable men to produce in a day an amount of goods they would not be able to produce by hand in a year (if at all). This enables the workers in turn to defer consumption and to save some of their income for their future needs or goals. The hallmark of an industrial society is its members' distance from a hand-to-mouth mode of living; the greater this distance, the greater men's progress.

The major part of this country's stock seed is not the fortunes of the rich (who are a small minority), but the savings of the middle cla.s.s-i.e., of responsible men who have the ability to grasp the concept "future" and to deposit one dollar (or more) into a bank account. A man of this type saves money for his own future, but the bank invests his money in productive enterprises; thus, the goods he did not consume today, are available to him when he needs them tomorrow-and, in the meantime, these goods serve as fuel for the country's productive process.

["The Inverted Moral Priorities," ARL, III, 21, I.]

Consumption is the final, not the efficient, cause of production. The efficient cause is savings, which can be said to represent the opposite of consumption: they represent unconsumed goods. Consumption is the end of production, and a dead end, as far as the productive process is concerned. The worker who produces so little that he consumes everything he earns, carries his own weight economically, but contributes nothing to future production. The worker who has a modest savings account, and the millionaire who invests a fortune (and all the men in between), are those who finance the future.

["Egalitarianism and Inflation," PWNI, 160; pb 132.]

See also CONSUMPTION; CREDIT; FINAL CAUSATI0N; GOLD STANDARD; INFLATION; INTEREST (on LOANS); INVESTMENT; MIDDLE CLa.s.s; MONEY; PRODUCTION.

Science. Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 50; pb 44.]

It is not the special sciences that teach man to think; it is philosophy that lays down the epistemological criteria of all special sciences.

[ITOE, 104.1.

The disintegration of philosophy in the nineteenth century and its collapse in the twentieth have led to a similar, though much slower and less obvious, process in the course of modern science.

'T'oday's frantic development in the field of technology has a quality reminiscent of the days preceding the economic crash of 1929: riding on the momentum of the past, on the unacknowledged remnants of an Aristotelian epistemology, it is a hectic, feverish expansion, heedless of the fact that its theoretical account is long since overdrawn-that in the field of scientific theory, unable to integrate or interpret their own data, scientists are abetting the resurgence of a primitive mysticism. In the humanities, however, the crash is past, the depression has set in, and the collapse of science is all but complete.

The clearest evidence of it may be seen in such comparatively young sciences as psychology and political economy. In psychology, one may observe the attempt to study human behavior without reference to the fact that man is conscious. In political economy, one may observe the attempt to study and to devise social systems without reference to man.

It is philosophy that defines and establishes the epistemological criteria to guide human knowledge in general and specific sciences in particular.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 11.]

See also ARISTOTLE; BEHAVIORISM; EPISTEMOLOGY; LOGIC; MYSTICISM; PHILOSOPHY; REASON; TECHNOLOGY; TRIBAL, PREMISE (in ECONOMICS).

Sculpture. Sculpture [re-creates reality] by means of a three-dimensional form made of a solid material.... Sculpture [deals] with the combined fields of sight and touch....

The so-called visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture) produce concrete, perceptually available ent.i.ties and make them convey an abstract. conceptual meaning.

["Art and Cognition," RM, pb 46.]

Compared to painting, sculpture is more limited a form of art. It expresses an artist's view of existence through his treatment of the human figure, but it is confined to the human figure. (For a discussion of sculpture's means, I will refer you to "Metaphysics in Marble" by Mary Ann Sures, The Objectivist, February-March 1969.) Dealing with two senses, sight and touch, sculpture is restricted by the necessity to present a three-dimensional shape as man does not perceive it: without color. Visually, sculpture offers shape as an abstraction; but touch is a somewhat concrete-bound sense and confines sculpture to concrete ent.i.ties. Of these, only the figure of man can project a metaphysical meaning. There is little that one can express in the statue of an animal or of an inanimate object.

Psycho-epistemologically, it is the requirements of the sense of touch that make the texture of a human body a crucial element in sculpture, and virtually a hallmark of great sculptors. Observe the manner in which the softness, the smoothness, the pliant resiliency of the skin is conveyed by rigid marble in such statues as the Venus de Milo or Michelangelo's Piet.

It is worth noting that sculpture is almost a dead art. Its great day was in ancient Greece which, philosophically, was a man-centered civilization. A Renaissance is always possible, but the future of sculpture depends to a large extent on the future of architecture. The two arts are closely allied; one of the problems of sculpture lies in the fact that one of its most effective functions is to serve as architectural ornament.

[Ibid., 49.]

The history of sculpture is a history of man's view of man-of his body and spirit, i.e., of his metaphysical nature. Every culture, from the most primitive to the most civilized, has held an estimate of man and has wanted to see the objectified reality of that estimate. Man has been the predominant subject of sculpture, whether he was judged to be an object of pride or of shame, a hero or a sinner.

A metaphysical view of man is projected by the manner in which the sculptor presents the human figure. In the process of shaping clay or wood or stone into the form of a body, the sculptor reveals his answer to three questions: Is man a being of free will or is he a helpless puppet of fate?-Is he good or evil?-Can he achieve happiness or is he doomed to misery?-and then mounts his answer on a pedestal and puts it in a tomb or in a temple or over the portal of a church or in a living room in New York City.

[Mary Ann Sures, "Metaphysics in Marble," TO, Feb. 1969, 10.]

Philosophy is the sculptor of man's soul. And sculpture is philosophy in stone.

[Ibid., March 1969, 16.]

See also ANCIENT GREECE; ART; DETERMINISM; ESTHETICS; FREE WILL; MAN; METAPHYSICS; PAINTING; PHILOSOPHY; PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY; VISUAL ARTS.

Secession. Some people ask whether local groups or provinces have the right to secede from the country of which they are a part. The answer is: on ethnic grounds, no. Ethnicity is not a valid consideration, morally or politically, and does not endow anyone with any special rights. As to other than ethnic grounds, remember that rights belong only to individuals and that there is no such thing as "group rights." If a province wants to secede from a dictators.h.i.+p, or even from a mixed economy, in order to establish a free country-it has the right to do so. But if a local gang, ethnic or otherwise, wants to secede in order to establish its own government controls, it does not have that right. No group has the right to violate the rights of the individuals who happen to live in the same locality. A wish-individuat or collective-is not a right.

["Global Balkanization," pamphlet, 14.]

See also DICTATORs.h.i.+P; "ETHNICITY"; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; NATIONAL RIGHTS; SELF-DETERMINATION of NATIONS.

Second-Handers. Isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison.... They're second-handers....

They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: "Is this true?" They ask: "Is this what others think is true?" Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friends.h.i.+p. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egoists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that s.p.a.ce which divides one human body from another. Not an ent.i.ty, but a relation-anch.o.r.ed to nothing. That's the emptiness I couldn't understand in people. That's what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It's everywhere and nowhere and you can't reason with him. He's not open to reason.

["The Nature of the Second-Hander," FNI, 78; pb 69.]

After centuries of being pounded with the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it in the only way it could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand. And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn't have conceived. And now, to cure a world peris.h.i.+ng from selflessness, we're asked to destroy the self. Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion-prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: "This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me."

[Ibid., 79; pb 70.]

[In Galt's speech, below, Miss Rand discusses the second-hand nature of the psychology of mystics.]

A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with the minds of others. Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the a.s.sertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the crossroads of the choice between "I know" and "They say," he chose the authority of others, he chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think. Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others. His surrender took the form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of understanding, that others possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever they want it to be, through some means forever denied to him.

From then on, afraid to think, he is left at the mercy of unidentified feelings. His feelings become his only guide, his only remnant of personal ident.i.ty, he clings to them with ferocious possessiveness-and whatever thinking he does is devoted to the struggle of hiding from himself that the nature of his feelings is terror.

When a mystic declares that he feels the existence of a power superior to reason, he feels it all right, but that power is not an omniscient super-spirit of the universe, it is the consciousness of any pa.s.ser-by to whom he has surrendered his own. A mystic is driven by the urge to impress, to cheat, to flatter, to deceive, to force that omnipotent consciousness of others. "They" are his only key to reality, he feels that he cannot exist save by harnessing their mysterious power and extorting their unaccountable consent. "They" are his only means of perception and, like a blind man who depends on the sight of a dog, he feels he must leash them in order to live. To control the consciousness of others becomes his only pa.s.sion; power-l.u.s.t is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

[GS, FNI, 200; pb 160.]

A [second-hander] is one who regards the consciousness of other men as superior to his own and to the facts of reality. It is to a [second-hander] that the moral appraisal of himself by others is a primary concern which supersedes truth, facts, reason, logic. The disapproval of others is so shatteringly terrifying to him that nothing can withstand its impact within his consciousness; thus he would deny the evidence of his own eyes and invalidate his own consciousness for the sake of any stray charlatan's moral sanction. It is only a [second-hander] who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting: "But people won't like you!"

["The Argument from Intimidation," VOS, 195; pb 141.]