Selfishness, Relationships, & Judging
In my previous post, I discussed the false dichotomy that the morality of altruism creates by showing that what is commonly meant by the concept of ‘selfishness’ is incorrect, and I argued that proper selfishness i.e. rational self-interest is something completely different from standard understanding.
In this post, I will make a case for why selfishness is a moral ideal as well as connect being selfish with relationships. I will close this post by discussing the necessity of making judgments as a selfish individual.
Before proceeding further, I offer my standard disclaimer and these words: fundamental to this discussion is the fact of free will. Free will means an individual has the ability to make their own choices. If one doesn’t have free will, then nothing matters because everything has already been determined by God or Genes or Government. Choice follows the laws of identity and causality; an entity must act in accordance with its nature [Identity] and every action results in some effect [Causality]. This applies to human choice just as well as it does to chemical reactions and anything else. Once a choice is made, then the consequence(s) follow; however, a single choices’ consequences can be negated [either partially or fully] by making a different choice, all that is required is for one to make that choice. Thank you
Selfishness has no moral standing, contrary to popular belief. Instead, selfishness deals with how one views oneself and how one acts; it is only those actions [conscious ideas, spoken words and physical choices made] that are the subject of morality. Hence the question to be asked is “Should an individual live for oneself or should an individual exist for the sake of others”?
Accepting selfishness means one would agree that one should live for oneself by acting in accordance with one’s nature as a Rational Animal i.e. one should use Reason to identify the values one wishes to pursue and then take the appropriate actions to attain said values.
This means that one holds one’s own Life as the standard by which one measures whether some action is good or bad i.e. one’s Life becomes an end in and of itself to which every action is designed to maintain, support, and/or improve said Life.
Embracing selfishness as a moral ideal enables one to cast of the baggage of the culture in which one lives by recognizing the collectivist-altruist-statist slogans, bromides, and demands as the irrational garbage that they are. One is able to discard all the unearned guilt by recognizing that it is right for them to pursue their own values, wherever they may take oneself. Choosing to embrace selfishness means accepting responsibility for one’s own life because it is in one’s interest to live the best life possible by using one’s mind [Reason] to its utmost capacity. This is what allows one to select which values to pursue and by which means one will pursue said values.
There is much more to be said about the various Virtues that are associated with living Selfishly; however, I would like to address the most common misconception about living selfishly, namely how one relates to other individuals.
Contrary to popular understanding, it is NOT in a truly selfish individual’s interest to act in a manner that violates someone else’s rights or in such a way that is objectively insulting/threatening/demeaning/etc. towards other individuals. This is because a selfish individual takes cognizance over the entire context in which they live i.e. they recognize that they exist in a complex human civilization in which one has the potential to gain value [low and high] by interacting with other individuals. The specific mechanism by which one individual deals with another is by means of trade. Trade means one offers value in exchange for value. The specific nature of the trade depends on the total context involved; however, the governing principles involved are: Choice, Rationality, and Egoism. Choice means one has the ability to select which value(s) to seek out and what means one will use to obtain said value(s). Rationality means using one’s conceptual faculty [mind] to guide one’s actions by selecting [Choice] the best path to achieve one’s goals. Egoism means one acts to gain values that make one’s life better.
As Rand puts it:
“There is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.
The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.
A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange — an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.
In spiritual issues — (by “spiritual” I mean: “pertaining to man’s consciousness”) — the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues.” (Objectivist Ethics)
To be selfish means to take responsibility for the task of living one’s own life. This means one doesn’t [outside of rare situations {even then, only to a certain extent!}] blame others for one’s own choices or shortcomings or what-not; rather, one takes responsibility, because one is rationally self-interested to live the best life possible, for oneself. Once this mentality is achieved, one then makes the necessary choices and takes the requisite actions to achieve one’s goals to the best of one’s ability given the total context in which one lives.
Conventionally, people think that a ‘selfish’ individual will exploit/violate/etc. others to achieve his/her own ends; however, this is not what a rationally self-interested individual actually does in the realm of interpersonal action. Rather, a selfish individual takes responsibility for themselves and recognizes that, in their own context, they cannot produce everything they value or even acquire certain values without interacting with others. Furthermore, a selfish individual would recognize, by a process of Reason, that to achieve their own goals, they must be willing to offer a value to attain another value.
In contrast, the typically selfish individual is only concerned with achieving their short-term goals while ignoring the long-term. They do this by foregoing concepts like ‘Reason’, ‘Rights’ and ‘Trade’. A truly selfish individual realizes that, in the context of a human civilization, to make a claim about their own individual rights, they must be willing to recognize those same rights in others; additionally, a selfish individual knows that, just as they would only invest their time in return for something of value [typically money], so they would recognize a similar principle should govern their own interactions with other individuals. This leads a rationally self-interested person to the principle of Trade.
As Rand describes it,
“ The symbol of all relationships among [rational] men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his body as fodder or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit — his love, his friendship, his esteem — except in payment and in trade for human virtues, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held them in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is the entity they dread — a man of justice.” (Atlas Shrugged)
Clearly, a rationally self-interested individual and a typically ‘selfish’ individual are nothing alike. The former uses Reason to select and pursue his/her goals/values across the totality of their life while recognizing that, in the realm of relationships, the only moral principle is Trade; whereas the latter relies on whims/emotions/cunning/etc. to achieve short-term goals without reference to moral principles or by committing evil acts to achieve said goals.
While true that even the most Rational individual is not guaranteed success in any endeavor they might undertake [including and especially in the realm of human interaction!], Rationality is the precondition for them to have any chance to achieve any long-term values.
Hence a rationally self-interested individual will interact with others according to the trader principle because that enables them to gain the most value over the course of their entire life; whereas a ‘selfish’ individual will do anything/everything to achieve some short-term ‘value’/whim at the cost of violating other’s rights and, in the long-run, attain nothing but self-destruction.
This brings me to the final, and most critical, point of all: forming, holding, and pronouncing judgment.
To form a judgment requires one to observe various fact(s) about something in reality and measure [evaluate!] those fact(s) against a moral standard. The standard one uses will determine the outcome or type of judgment one forms and holds. This process is long and complex, but the basic idea behind it is to observe, then measure, then analyze, and then conclude {judge} whether the particular fact(s) are good or evil. The final judgment of good or evil [or a mixture of both in a complex context] relies upon the moral standard one holds i.e. does one hold Egoism [rational self-interest] or Altruism [self-sacrifice] as one’s moral code? The choice of moral code provides an individual with a moral standard by which they can measure (Judge!) every action/fact that they do/encounter. From this judgment, the final choice to be made is whether or not to pronounce one’s judgment in some form. The reason(s) why an individual would share or not share their own judgment of some particular fact(s) are varied and complicated depending on the total context surrounding both the fact(s) and the individual involved. That being said, it is of vital importance that one hold the judgment in one’s mind, be willing to re-examine it based upon new information, and to be able & willing to share it in a situation where silence could mean one sanctions {agrees with} a position contrary to what one has concluded.
As Rand describes the process and necessity of judgment,
“One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment.
Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil.
It is obvious who profits and who loses by such a precept. It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men’s virtues and from condemning men’s vices. When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you — whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?
But to pronounce moral judgment is an enormous responsibility. To be a judge, one must possess an unimpeachable character; one need not be omniscient or infallible, and it is not an issue of errors of knowledge; one needs an unbreached integrity, that is, the absence of any indulgence in conscious, willful evil. Just as a judge in a court of law may err, when the evidence is inconclusive, but may not evade the evidence available, nor accept bribes, nor allow any personal feeling, emotion, desire or fear to obstruct his mind’s judgment of the facts of reality — so every rational person must maintain an equally strict and solemn integrity in the courtroom within his own mind, where the responsibility is more awesome than in a public tribunal, because he, the judge, is the only one to know when he has been impeached.”
And
“The precept: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged’ . . . is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself.
There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. 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.’
The opposite of moral neutrality is not a blind, arbitrary, self-righteous condemnation of any idea, action or person that does not fit one’s mood, one’s memorized slogans or one’s snap judgment of the moment. Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that ‘everybody is white’ or ‘everybody is black’ or ‘everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,’ is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.
To judge means: to evaluate a given concrete by reference to an abstract principle or standard. It is not an easy task; it is not a task that can be performed automatically by one’s feelings, ‘instincts’ or hunches. It is a task that requires the most precise, the most exacting, the most ruthlessly objective and rational process of thought. It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person. When one pronounces moral judgment, whether in praise or in blame, one must be prepared to answer ‘Why?’ and to prove one’s case — to oneself and to any rational inquirer.”
Before closing, I want to emphasize the importance of judging while differentiating what I am describing as judging from what I’ve observed & experienced others do that is called ‘judging’.
When people ‘judge’ what they do is skip over a critical in-between step between what I’ve described as holding and pronouncing a judgment; namely, one must analyze the total context and decide whether or not one should go from simply holding one’s judgment in one’s mind to actively pronounce it to whomever by some means. A rational person would use their Reason to evaluate the total context and determine whether they need to pronounce their judgment, and they would determine whether it is appropriate to pronounce their judgment before they actually do so. Furthermore, they would, to the best of their ability, control their body features [posture, facial expression, tone, etc.] so their judgment cannot be detected by those around them. As a general rule, one doesn’t pronounce unsolicited judgments nor does one make ‘snap’ judgments; rather, one evaluates and then decides whether to make a judgment known or not.
Important to keep in mind is the fact of human fallibility. Since one is not omniscient nor is one privy to the total knowledge surrounding a specific context at the point in time in which one becomes aware of said context, one must recognize that any particular judgment they make and/or pronounce could be wrong. If it is, then they should recognize this and make the appropriate adjustments because to be Egoistic means to use one’s Reason, but Reason means using one’s mind to identify and integrate facts of Reality. Hence a rationally selfish individual is Reality [Truth] oriented when forming, holding, and making judgments, and they control themselves and avoid making ‘snap judgments’ unless absolutely necessary.
In short, selfishness is a morally good mentality to have because it maximizes one’s ability to achieve one’s values in both intra-personal and inter-personal endeavors by recognizing the fact of reality that every individual is an end in themselves with a right to their own life. Additionally, being selfish means assuming responsibility for oneself and one’s choices by employing trade in the interpersonal realm to achieve their values while making choices that help them achieve their goals in the intrapersonal realm. Lastly, forming, holding, and making judgments is vital to living, and this is especially true if one adopts a rationally self-interested morality and way of life.
I thank you for reading this, and I trust you have obtained some value from what I have written. Thank you
As always,
Choices=Reality