Selfishness makes the world go 'round.
Based on everything I know I am the first objectively trained selfish person to come out of the closet and declare publicly that selfishness is good. I hope by writing this book I can encourage other objectively selfish people to come out too and provide moral support for all objectively selfish people who by their nature are so individualistic that the idea of a group of any kind supporting them is anathema their very existence.
But since their very existence is under serious attack by today's cultural mainstream --that is, today's cultural worship of materialism at the expense of spiritualism, environmentalism at the expense of individualism and animalism at the expense of humanism and/or substitute any non-selfish ideal you can think of into the formula and "mainstream cultural life goes on": the worship of the non-self as the means to actively forestall the growth and moral development of the selfish self, which is to say, of the individual. Because of all this, objectively selfish people might have to turn to their group --temporarily-- in order to withstand the onslaught of the aggressive stagnation currently creeping over our cultural horizons.
And Yes, by objectively selfish I mean an individual who has learned his or her selfishness from the Philosophy of Objectivism and/or any others who are just as --or more-- objectively selfish. I personally know of no other philosophy that teaches selfishness as well as Objectivism does, but I can't conclude that there are none. I suspect there are none, but I don't know this for a fact.
The individual versus the group is an age-old conflict and because of the nature of this battle --the individual is outnumbered by the nature of quanity: individual means ONE and group means MORE THAN one-- it periodically comes to pass that the degree and quality of the outnumbering rises to such a fevered pitch that it threatens the very existence of the individual, especially the selfish individual and super-especially today, the objectively selfish individual.
Yes, I assume there were objectively selfish individuals before Ayn Rand but "objective" in the sense of "Objectivism" selfish there were none. But there are now, and they as well as others who desire their own, individual, selfish happiness can use this book to sustain that desire as well as to help protect themselves from a mainstream culture that is hostile to their existence.
And as this book shows, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
And as this book predicts, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
The American culture is still hostile to Objectivism and hence to anyone who tries to practice its pro-selfishness tenets on a day-in and day-out basis. One ingredient of this anti-Objectivism, anti-selfishness stance is the rank refusal of the status quo protectors to acknowledge Objectivism and its many accomplishments. They do this by using every opportunity available to deny Objectivism and/or one of its most important accomplishments: the discovery of Psychology, The Science. That is, the discovery and development of Biocentric Psychology by the early Objectivist, Dr. Nathaniel Branden. For one typical example consider the article my local newspaper recently ran about Freud and his Psychoanalytic theories. The article discusses all that is wrong with Freud and then concludes: "…although many of Freud's theories have foundered, no one else has come close to providing answers about human nature that are as satisfying.". What about Ayn Rand and Dr. Nathaniel Branden? They have provided answers about human nature that are both satisfying and true. But to use an old Ayn Rand expression to answer the question: "What about Ayn Rand and Dr. Nathaniel Branden?"
Blankout.
Ayn Rand has recommended that one way to fight the hostility is for the objectively selfish to go on strike against any and all selflessness preaching cultures in which it finds itself. As a universal mandate this is impractical advice, hence, it is not a moral recommendation for all to follow. It has merit only as it exists as a literary device for the fictional story (Atlas Shrugged) in which it appeared. (Better advice would be to "seek" out and learn Biocentric Psychology, it is the science and the technology you need to survive a hostile culture and as such it represents one area in which Objectivism "needs" Biocentric Psychology. See Chapter 20.)
For those of us who are not professional intellectuals, to go on strike means to live in the street. When the "Professional Objectivists" are living in the street I will consider joining them in their "crusade", but in the mean time I seek other solutions to "life's" problems. Especially to "the problem" of running my own life and being happy.
Because of the danger of subconscious scripts running our lives --as same can be related to psychologically by us through an introspective connection to the (old) idea of "self-fulfilling philosophies"-- because of this, modern day Objectivists and/or Objectivist sympathizers have to make certain that everything about themselves is made as explicit as they can humanly make it. For example, come out of the closet as the selfish person that you are and/or desire to be and let the world know it. This way you will avoid the problem of subconscious scripts running your life forever rather than you consciously running your own life.
Dr. Nathaniel Branden --to repeat, the early Objectivist Psychologist-- calls this, living consciously and as part of his scientific psychology --i.e. Biocentric Psychology-- he counsels that "Living Consciously" is a really good thing to do. To my knowledge, "official" Objectivism does not disagree with this "living consciously" counsel and would whole heartedly support it if asked to do so.
I support it and I refer to it as making my implicit explicit. And if you try doing this and fail because you are afraid to use the word "selfish" directly and write and/or preach the "gospels" of "enlightened self-interest", and/or "egoism" as "euphemism" for "selfishness" then in the shadow of Objectivism that makes you a moral coward. Moral cowards are those who let their fear of others bad opinion --not objective reality-- dictate their actual behavior. Shakespeare has already told us how many deaths such types die.
So, come out of the closet and declare selfishness to be the virtue that it is.
As Objectivism itself does.
Objectivism is a powerful philosophy and since Ayn Rand has warned us that Objectivism is its own protector, it is incumbent upon on us to fully understand what this means.
It means one cannot absorb Objectivism --that is, automatize it and make it ones own-- without adequate thinking. Thinking is the only currency that can be used to buy Objectivism --conscious, volitional, "I-want-it" thinking. Anything less will result in "abandoning the project".
Nonetheless, since Objectivists and their sympathizers are people too they can't escape the "occupational hazards" of being human, especially the hazards of "authoritarianism" and of the downside risk of "automatized" tenets on how to live life. The downside of "automatizing" here is the opposite of a floating abstraction, it’s the hazard of the anchored concrete. By this last I mean, the hazard of attempting to apply the sources of one's abstraction, that is the concretes that gave rise to it, directly to the self rather than directly applying the abstract principle to the self. For example, when I decided I wanted to go back to College and get an advanced degree beyond my Bachelors Degree in Aeronautical Engineering, I was stuck for about 4 weeks on trying to convince myself that I wanted to be an Architect (for the interested reader, see Ayn Rand's novel, "The Fountainhead"). And I only came "unstuck" when it hit me that I hate Architecture as a subject to be intensely studied by me and I want to be a psychologist and get a degree in psychology. A near euphoric time for me as I happily thereafter proceeded to get my (Masters) degree in psychology.
The "automatizing" is the source of subconscious scripts and will prove to be --as I demonstrate in Chapter 20 -- the entry point for the science of "psychology" into the kingdom of "philosophy". To anticipate this demonstration let me say, "we" Objectivists and/or Objectivist sympathizers will live out Objectivism's essential events as much as any religious person lives out the essential events of their "holy" books, be it the essential events of The Bible or the essential events of whatever their particular "holy" book happens to be and how they idiosyncratically, qua individual, happen to "absorb" the how to live life tenets of their "philosophy". The major difference between "them" and "us" of course is that we know what is "happening" to us, they don't. For example, all true Christians end up being martyrs. Whether existentially --sacrificing self to "god" or to ones parents or spouse or children or all of the above or combos thereof or to any other non-self ideal-- OR psychologically --sacrificing self to a floating abstraction called morality-- OR tragically --be it sacrificed as antiquity's fodder for the Christian Crusades of the 11th Century Church Intellectuals or as fodder to yesterday's Professional Political Altruists in the Veit Nam War or as suicide fodder for the "cults of moral blackness": Guyana (religious moral blackness) or more recently California's Heaven's Gate cult ("guru-won't-you-please-think-for-me", cult moral blackness) to name but two.
If it is true --as Objectivism contends-- that religion is a primitive philosophy, then it could be just as true that it is a primitive psychology also. Consequently, modern philosophy (the objective kind) plus modern psychology (also the objective kind) is Scientific Religion --that is, religion without the epistemology of faith and with the plus of selfishness.* Hence, it is "easy" to see that the "philosopher" in each and every one of us is not exempt from the fact of human psychology. As humans we can pretend that we are "beyond all that" but we cannot escape the consequences of such pretense. We cannot escape the consequences of failing to understand ourselves psychologically. And by understand I mean, fully and completely all the way to and including the core of our being.
Human nature is at the core of everyone's being, hence, no one is beyond human nature and the need to understand it.
Human nature, by its nature as it is manifest in individual human beings is objectively selfish. In this sense Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Objectivism is also The Science of Human Nature and as such is its own proof of a statement made earlier. That statement is: this --our life-- is our one and only life and to sacrifice it to anything --including to a floating abstraction called morality-- is a sin. In fact this is the only way "sin" can be constructed so as to be meaningful: a sin is when you sacrifice your ultimate value, that is your own life to anything outside the objectively selfish self which is the natural center of that life.
For example, to sacrifice the self to any one of the current "anti human-volition" groups vying to take over the American culture would be a sin.
Will future historians, that is historians in the future, look back on this time in American history and refer to it as the attempted coup of the human by the anti-volitionalists?
Ironically, the anti-volitionalists are anti human-volition by choice. Animals --which do not have the power of volition-- are below humans on the evolutionary scale and as such are also below the anti-volitionalists. All humans are potentially better/more important and more valuable than any and all animals. But since human potential involves first and foremost human volition, that is choice, that is un-antecedently caused choice, it is up to particular humans which way they choose to develop. Animals on the other hand are animals and can't be anything other than what they are: non-volitional animals, possessing a non-volitional, non-reasoning, non-conceptual form of consciousness .
An anti-volitionalist then is one who tries to live as an animal, that is as one whose survival does not require a volitional, reasoning, conceptual faculty. But since those who try this are --inspite of themselves-- humans with the power to choose, they have a problem. They have a conceptual faculty that they don't want so they have to get rid of it. These modern "savages" don't need it "surgically" removed by others for one very simple reason: they remove it themselves --voluntarily (and Irony out does itself)-- because they believe: that is, they have been taught and they have voluntarily accepted the premise that the human capacity and ability for conceptual thought is a bad thing to possess.
So, the next time you see or hear someone say or write that "judging is bad… or worse, it's evil" and you THINK "if I am judgemental and they say I'm bad because of it, aren't 'they' JUDGING me? Or you hear someone say that "life is a penalty and death a reward" and you THINK :"bullstuff!", you are as close as you should care to come to one of these anti human-volitionalists.
They --the anti human-volitionalists-- are even more dangerous than those I read about yesterday in my local metropolitan newspaper. There I read that 8 out of 10 --and let me repeat this, 8 out of 10!-- Americans still believe that God performs and/or performed miracles. That is to say, they believe that "reality" is not a firm, unyielding, absolute "thing" and as such that it is impervious to "miraculous" modification. (For a refutation of "miracles" see the works of the preeminent contemporary Objectivist, Dr. Leonard Peikoff, especially his article entitled "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy", an article which I believe should be carved in stone since it is the best of its kind of thinking since before Moses.).
So, is believing in miracles rational? If it is, then it is in my selfish interest to also so believe, but if it isn't rational then it is likewise in my selfish interest to not so believe.
Reason is selfish. Those who damn selfishness as evil damn reason as evil. Yet reason is man's crowning glory.
A human being is one who worships the human good and especially the human capacity for reason and conceptual thought (two "things" which are very good) and the demonstrable idea --and the one demonstrated by Objectivism and Biocentric Psychology-- that the exercise of both capacities is volitional.
Those who enshrine selfishness as good enshrine reason as good. Faith on the other hand and contrary to "popular" opinion is not good for you. Be it faith in God or faith in Country.
The negatives associated with faith in God are numerically challenged only by the number of negatives associated with faith in Country. For me personally, the negatives associated with "faith in god" have been thoroughly purged from my soul so let's turn our attention to faith in Country.
Enter the bureaucratic arms of The United States Government as it embraces the "human".
The United States Government --via its bureaucratic arms-- is preaching, with all the wild gesturing of an old fashioned preacher, that human beings do not have volition.
And not only is the government preaching it, they are funding it.
They are preaching this and they are finding a receptive congregation for their message in the midst of what traditionally has been called The American Cultural Mainstream but which if we don't do something about it sooner rather than later will become "The American Bureaucratic Mainstay". A cultural mainstay currently being forged by as diverse a material as any the American culture has ever melted in its giant ladles and poured into individual pots.
So where are the real preachers? That is, where is The Church when you actually need it? As often as not "they" are off counting the number of angels they can stack on the heads of pins. That is, "they" are interested in understanding "angel nature" not Human nature.
It appears that in the age old battle between The Church and The State for control over your mind, The Church is loosing and The State is winning.
How can this be the case when you just said 8 out of 10 Americans believe God is more powerful than the State? (That is, no one yet --to my knowledge-- is arguing that The State too can perform miracles.)
Do you believe every statistic the media presents to you? That statistic was presented by a newspaper that is sympathetic to government controllers and religion, hence it is more than likely overstated so as to give religious people a sense of security, even if a false sense. Since both bureaucratic government and religion believe false is as good as true there is no (visible) "conflict" here.
And by simple observation it is easy to see that most people -- easily half and more than likely more-- accept the government as is because they keep working and sending them excessive tax-revenues. Further --if you listen to contemporary talk radio-- you get a false sense of peoples caring concerns: they "pretend" to care but in fact, in action they do not. What "they" like to do is "complain and blame" and pretend to care. (When the 1950's left the planet it did not take "pretending" with it.* )
The only thing here that makes sense about peoples action apathy is one or both of the following possibilities. One, some people, qua individual citizens, actually believe it is important to keep sending the government significantly more money than it properly needs so that it can preserve, protect and propagate the status quo as an end in itself (that is, divorced from the proper functions of government as same have been identified by The Philosophy of Objectivism). Two, the rest of the people are simply waiting around for their (assumed) ascension into their (projected view of) heaven. Though I fear you'll "shoot" me for it I'm going to deliver you the message anyway: outside of Earth there is no heaven. That is, outside of any place where human beings live and breathe and … bleed when cut, light up when praised and reject the pastoral worshippers and enshrine the producers … that is, outside of the human at its best there is no heaven. So, if you elect to wait around for your "heaven" to happen to you, such is your choice, as wasted as that choice can be.
The State, however, is not so erroneously waiting around and it is more than eager to accommodate the status quo seekers. Whether "we" like it or not The State is moving forward with its bureaucratic agenda.
Traditional religion --any traditional religion-- is no longer strong enough to fight The State for control over your mind.
The question is, are you? Are you strong enough to fight The State for control over your own mind?
The "reason" The State desires to control your mind is obvious: "they" view you as their tax-revenue, egg-laying golden goose. With the billions and billions and billions …and dare we say it?…trillions?!? of tax dollars you give them each and every year they can fund and take over any thing they want.
Anything.
And I repeat, religion can no longer stop them. For "fast-food" proof of this claim I submit any turn of the century American movie that has religion as its theme. Look at these movies and notice their appeal to impotence as the should be source of your mental strength for self preservation. Even the movie "Dogma" which tries to use humor as an anti-religion device is nothing more than an exercise in proving the futility of "aggressive impotence". On the other hand, if you are the kind of person who can find "fuel" in a movie like "End of Days" then this book might not be for you. I'm not even religious but as a member of the same species as those who are I find that movies religious messages embarrassing: do (some) modern day adult men and women actually still cling to the tenet that evil is a metaphysical force?!? It's just too hard for me to believe this. I don't refuse to believe it, but I mean, come on people lets get into the 21st Century…and sooner rather than later will be better.
Religion is a human invention for a human purpose, or stated differently: Do animals pray? Which is to say, based on my own terms I should worship religion. Well in this sense I do: I worship what religion is trying to fulfill, not how it attempts to fulfill it. Religion is trying to fulfill man's need --as a being of volitional consciousness-- to have a comprehensive view of the world and his place in it. And that is what I worship: actual human needs, not misguided attempts to fulfill them.
A human being is one who worships human nature even though at any point in time he may not know fully what human nature is. But what he does know is this: it is something and that part of his "reason for existing" is to figure out what that something is.
Another part of our reason for existing is, to exist.
And a third part is, to be happy.
The last part of this book deals more directly with the solution to the happiness problem. The first part of this book states the problem and provides background to show selfish people what is in store for them if they refuse to own their own selfishness and come out of the closet sooner rather than --not just later, but rather than-- after it's too late.
As human beings we are not born knowing how to do things. Our human nature starts out being extremely "selfish" in the sense it is geared towards --as in "programmed" by nature towards-- the preservation and enhancement of our own individual life (see the science of Biocentric Psychology and its concept of "..from programmed to volitional self-regulation…" for more on this and its implications for what it means to be an adult human being).
But since we don't automatically know how to be properly selfish any more than we know how to walk, we have to turn to "adults" to teach us how.
Adults as a historical class of human beings, have failed us miserably in teaching us selfishness. This is so easy to see that it seems obvious and beyond refute. Unless of course you are going to "argue" that true selfishness is self-less-ness. If you are an adult and advocate this then you are a member of the "all adults as a historical class of human beings, have failed us miserably in teaching us selfishness".
But, that phrase should be amended to read, "all except one.".
Ayn Rand, as author of "The Virtue of Selfishness" and the entire Philosophy of Objectivism is the obvious exception to this rule of all adult humans being woefully inadequate to the task of teaching their young how to be properly selfish, or what you might call, selfishly selfish.
Because of this human need to be taught the "ins and outs" of proper selfishness and because of many other human nature needs, eventually, we need Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Human Nature (which she has named, Objectivism) to teach us about true human nature and the proper way to be selfish.
Then once we choose to struggle to stay connected or, for those of us who dis-connected, to re-connect with our need to be selfish as our human nature intended, we immediately get in touch with our need to be happy. Our need to be happy is at one end of the need continuum of all human needs: happiness is the need that can go unfulfilled the longest without killing off the organism. Breathing air/Oxygen to the brain (or some such physiological need) is at the other end of the need continuum. This continuum or temporal urgency axis of human needs coupled with the failure to fulfill all needs on the continuum --including the end points-- defines what it means for humans to be human. Eventually ALL legitimate needs that are NOT fulfilled result in death of the organism. If not, then the alleged need is not a need in the scientific sense of the term. (Refer to Biocentric Psychology for more on this "temporal urgency" character about needs.). Just as Death is the ultimate penalty of need frustration, so Life is the ultimate reward of need fulfillment. This is why we say, life is conditional, and why psychologists --some-- are embarrassed when Freudians assert we have a need to die. But this "need to die" absurdity merely "proves" that none, not even psychologists are beyond the need for preciseness of thought.
No mind is any better than the precision of its concepts.
Developmentally, adult is the final stage for human beings. Unlike some of the earlier stages that are programmed by nature, the adult stage has to be achieved by choice, that is "earned". You earn the right to call yourself an adult human being when you worship the good in the human and damn the evil and know the difference when applying this "knowledge of good and evil" to you your self, that is, to that within you that thinks and feels and acts and…judges. One "method" for doing this is the one that I used and the one I deal with here. I call it pedactics.
Pedactics as I introduce the term now and use it herein --that is, selfish pedantics-- is good and is one coin that can buy Objectivism's selfishness and along with it a ticket to adulthood. However, I am not prepared to argue that it is the only coin. It is a coin. You earn the pedactics coin by being mentally selfish which is to say by being first and foremost "in your own mind", pro-your-self. That is, a pro-yourself-worshipper of the self and the self functions.
Self --to repeat-- is that within that thinks and feels and acts, and...judges.
Judging is so important to the self that it "makes sense" that those who want the self destroyed advocate that judging is wrong. "Judge not,[sic] that ye be not judged.", is one particular form of this with which I --as an ex-(King James version Bible) Christian-- am intimately familiar. Its colloquial form, "Judge not least ye be judged" is for all practical purposes the same thing: it means exactly what it says, abandon your mind.
In a later Chapter I introduce what I call a new spiritualism, it's not new age spiritualism nor is it ancient age, rather it's spiritualism for the 21st century and beyond. Its first principle is: "Judge and be prepared to be judged" (which is one of Objectivism's tenets). This too means exactly what it says: embrace your mind.
This new spiritualism --that I call, BiO Spiritualism-- is applied Objectivism AND Biocentric Psychology and by this I mean an "Objectivism" embraced by Biocentric Psychology and a "Biocentric Psychology" embraced by Objectivism.
BiO Spiritualism "says" you should embrace your mind, love your mind, worship your mind. Which is to say, you should earn the right to exalt your mind.
After introducing BiO Spiritualism I demonstrate why Objectivism and Biocentric Psychology need each other as well as why you and I do to (need Objectivism and Biocentric Psychology that is, not each other: the needing each other explanation is provided in Biocentric Psychology through the "Visibility Principle", so I refer the interested reader there for that.).
Most people seek to understand human nature so that they can learn to have more control over themselves and their life.
Some people seek to understand human nature so that they can control other people.
Both kinds of humans have a natural need for control, but only one seeks the proper goal of this need: self control, not other control.
As a human being of volitional consciousness with the capacity for "propositional speech, conceptual thought and the power of reason" and with all the needs that human beings do have, you are susceptible to control by others. But susceptible here does not mean as a victim. Rather it means as the only alternative left to you after you default on the primary need to achieve self control. Self control, that is efficacy as described by the science of Biocentric Psychology is the "holy grail" of the "spiritualist's" quest. And if you have lost (or never found) your "holy grail", you can't find it unless you search. And when you succeed in your search you will discover that what you have found is control over your own happiness.
Those who have control over their own happiness cannot be ruled.
If you don't yet desire or if you don't still desire your own happiness so as to be motivated by it, then maybe you desire to not be controlled by others and especially not by those anti-volitionalist others.
If so then pedactics and this book are for you. If pedactics is a coin, thinking is the first coin to buy you your independence from those who would control you.
Objectivism, as a formal philosophy, exists and must be studied and learned by you if you hope to save yourself from your 21st Century controllers.
Biocentric psychology exists too as a formal "psychology" and is there for you to read and understand and apply to you yourself as a form of self help for self control, which is to say, for self-efficacy.
The choice is yours.
Objectivism and Biocentric Psychology exist and are there for the taking.
My advice in this book is, take them.
In the following pages I plan to show you how to do this and what is at stake when you succeed.
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