Why do I love Objectivism? Because Objectivism shows how all
rights are essentially reducible to individual rights. Ayn Rand called Objectivism
"A Philosophy for living on Earth." Her philosophy holds that man's
greatest resource is his own reasoning mind, and that the means to secure
individual rights is achievable for each individual through the application of
reason. The greatest right of the individual is to be free in his life, his
property, and the pursuit of his own happiness. With Objectivism, Ayn Rand
properly recognized that happiness in life is derived by individuals pursuing those
things which they perceive to be of equal or greater value than their lives.
She called this productive achievement.
And there can be no sacrifice in productive achievement,
because sacrifice by definition is to give something of greater value, one's
life, to something of lesser value. To claim something to be a sacrifice, is to
demean both the subject and the object of the endeavor. The things that an
individual does which are worth the price paid in life, are properly called
virtues.
For example, if a mother defends her child it is because the
child is a value as great/greater than her life, not because the child is
worthless in comparison to herself. Ayn Rand called this the virtue of
selfishness. And when you think of it, when it comes to others, what better
compliment could you possibly give any endeavor, person or love - than to say
that you value them as much or more than your own life? It is because you value
yourself, that you learn to see the value in others.
Similarly, using an analogy from algebra, when you exchange
the placeholder of currency (C) for the labor (L) of a mechanic to fix your car,
you are exchanging your productive achievement (C), for the productive
achievement of the mechanic (L) in order to achieve a mutually beneficial
result (R); the mechanic acquires his valued placeholder of currency and you
get your car fixed. (Money is a tool of exchange, which represents the
intangible commodity of work.) This concept of mutually beneficial exchange is
called The Trader Principle.
By this logic, benevolence is implied. For an individual to
use force to obtain his desires, (with fraud being a form of force,) he must
first stipulate that he is incapable or unwilling to achieve with his own life
a value that is worthy of trading for the value he seeks. If such an individual
holds that the value in the lives of others is not worth respecting through
trade of equivalent value, then he is accepting that the value of no individual
is worthy of just compensation, including his own. So to initiate force against
one's fellow man is to justify the initiation of force against one's self. On
its face, properly understood, the initiation of force is irrational.
The basic premise of Objectivism is that the life of the
individual is the highest virtue, and that the mind of the individual is his greatest
resource for achieving value in his life. It holds that the virtues held in
value by the individual are the purview of the individual alone to determine
and defend for himself. Furthermore, it is in valuing one's self that the
individual derives a standard of value by which to value all others.
The brilliance of Ayn Rand is displayed in how she
demonstrated for these, and so many more, seemingly complex subjects, that they
are each reducible to individual rights. I have lived my entire life among
remarkable intellects, many of whom I perceive to possess in the aspect of
their minds, greater efficiency and/or greater capacity than my own, but even I
can hold the simple concept of individual rights in my mind, and with enough
rigor I can prove to myself its veracity. No one but you can deny to yourself
the right to think. And no one has to know if you defy their exhortations to
the contrary by doing so. The same rigor is possible to anyone possessing the
will and the discipline to exercise it. Nobody can do your thinking for you,
but Ayn Rand drew the maps.
My dream for myself and my dream for the world are
corollaries. And therein lies the answer to the question. Love is a value. Love
of self requires a system for determining that value. As a five-year-old child
I was warned off dogmatism by my mother, (a remarkable story in itself.) Because
of that I spent the next 17 years
exploring a myriad of religions and
philosophies, searching for something that made as much sense to me as my
parent's philosophy meant to them. Eventually, once I believed that I had reasonably
exhausted all other possibilities, I sought to comprehend that which my parents
valued. It turned out that they were right all along. However, this is not
about their achievement. It is in the soundness of my own judgment, and mine
alone, that I have discovered that Objectivism is the most ideal system I have
found for the service of the achievement of my values. I have no regrets. I
earned it.
I love Objectivism because I want to live in a world where
all individuals value self enough to value each other, where each man strives
towards his own productive achievement without the intent to in any way
infringe upon the productive achievement of anyone else, where men feel free to
be open and honest with one another without some inherent fear of reprisal,
where life is valued more than death, where the first question on everyone's
lips is not "For what are you willing to die" but rather "For what
is it that you live?"
In such a world the answer is clear, because the standard of
value is clear. I live for me. You live for you. And that's okay. In fact, as
the premise for the possibility of our healthy relationship, it is desirable.
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