"You are living and operating on the assumptions of other worldviews. In fact the very ones that you love to hate."
Sorry! Wrong again!
"If we want to live, however, we must pursue life-serving values—and we must do so by choice."
"1) Only life makes values possible—since nonliving things cannot pursue values; and
2) only life makes values necessary—since only living things need to pursue values."
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"Ayn Rand demanded reasons for her convictions. So should we.
She set out to discover a rational morality—one based on observable facts and logic. Rather than starting with the question “Which of the existing codes of value should I accept?”—she began with the question, “What are values and why does man need them?” This question pointed her away from the established views—and toward the facts of reality.
Looking at reality, Rand observed that a value is that which one acts to gain or keep. You can see the truth of this in your own life: You act to gain and keep money; you value it. You act to gain and keep good grades; you value them. You act to choose and develop a fulfilling career. You seek to meet the right guy or girl and build a wonderful relationship. And so on.
Looking at reality, Rand also saw that only living organisms take self-generated, goal-directed action. Trees, tigers, and people take actions toward goals. Rocks, rivers, and hammers do not. Trees, for example, extend their roots into the ground and their branches and leaves toward the sky; they value nutrients and sunlight. Tigers hunt antelope, and nap under trees; they value food and shade. And people act to gain their values, such as nutrition, education, a career, romance, and so on.
Further, Rand saw that the ultimate reason living organisms take such actions is to further their life. She discovered that an organism’s life is its ultimate goal and standard of value—and that man’s life is the standard of moral value: the standard by which one judges what is good and what is evil. Man’s life—meaning: that which is required to sustain and further the life of a human being—constitutes the standard of moral value.
Now, the validation of the principle that life is the standard of value has a number of aspects, and we don’t have time to consider all of them tonight. For our purposes here, I want to focus briefly on just a few.
By pursuing the question “Why does man need values?”—Ayn Rand kept her thinking fact-oriented. If man needs values, then the reason he needs them will go a long way toward establishing which values are legitimate and which are not. If man doesn’t need values, well, then, he doesn’t need them—and there is no point in pursuing the issue at all. What Rand discovered is that man does need values—and the reason he needs them is in order to live. Life, she discovered, is the ultimate goal of our actions; life is the final end toward which all our other values are properly the means.
Granted, because we have free will we can take antilife actions—and, as we have seen, altruism senselessly calls for us to do just that. But the point is that we don’t need to take antilife actions, unless we want to die—in which case, we don’t really need to take any action at all. We don’t need to do anything in order to die; if that’s what we want, we can simply stop acting altogether and we will soon wither away.
If we want to live, however, we must pursue life-serving values—and we must do so by choice.
Free will enables us to choose our values. This is what gives rise to the field of morality. Morality is the realm of chosen values. But whatever our choices, these facts remain: The only reason we can pursue values is because we are alive, and the only reason we need to pursue values is in order to live.
This two-pronged principle of Rand’s philosophy is essential to understanding how the Objectivist morality is grounded in the immutable facts of reality: (1) Only life makes values possible—since nonliving things cannot pursue values; and (2) only life makes values necessary—since only living things need to pursue values.
Observing reality, we can see that this is true: A rock doesn’t have values. It can’t act to gain or keep things; it just stays still—unless some outside force, such as a wave or a hammer, hits and moves it. And it doesn’t need to gain or keep things, because its continued existence is unconditional. A rock can change forms—for instance, it can be crushed and turned to sand, or melted and turned to liquid—but it cannot go out of existence. The continued existence of a living organism, however, is conditional—and this is what gives rise to the possibility and need of values. A tree must achieve certain ends—or else it will die. Its chemical elements will remain, but its life will go out of existence. A tiger must achieve certain ends, too, or it will meet the same fate. And a person—if he is to remain alive—must achieve certain ends as well.
The Objectivist ethics—recognizing all of this—holds human life as the standard of moral value. It holds that acting in accordance with the requirements of human life is moral, and acting in contradiction to those requirements is immoral. It is a fact-based, black-and-white ethics.
Now, combining the principle that human life is the standard of moral value with the observable fact that people are individuals—each with his own body, his own mind, his own life—we reach another principle of the Objectivist ethics: Each individual’s own life is his own ultimate value. This means that each individual is morally an end in himself—not a means to the ends of others. Accordingly, he has no moral “duty” to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. Nor does he have a moral “right” to sacrifice others for his own sake. On principle, neither self-sacrifice nor the sacrifice of others is moral, because, on principle, human sacrifice as such is immoral.
Human life does not require people to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others; nor does it require people to sacrifice others for their own sake. Human life simply does not require human sacrifice; people can live without giving up their minds, their values, their lives; people can live without killing, beating, robbing, or defrauding one another.
Moreover, human sacrifice cannot promote human life and happiness; it can lead only to suffering and death. If people want to live and be happy they must neither sacrifice themselves nor sacrifice others; rather, they must pursue life-serving values and respect the rights of others to do the same. And, given the role of morality in human life, in order to do so, they must accept the morality that advocates doing so.
In a sentence, the Objectivist ethics holds that human sacrificeis immoral—and that each person should pursue his own life-serving values and respect the rights of others to do the same. This is the basic principle of rational egoism. And the reason it sounds so good is because it is good; it is right; it is true. This principle is derived from the observable facts of reality and the demonstrable requirements of human life. Where else could valid moral principles come from? And what other purpose could they serve?
We can now see why Ayn Rand said, “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.” Morality, properly conceived, is not a hindrance to a life of happiness; rather, it is the means to such a life."
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