Friday, December 14, 2018

Caring vs. ‘Wanting’


The following was posted on a  Facebook page titled “I’m just sayin’. . .”


As an Objectivist, it immediately struck me as corrupt. Not for the concern for others: Who would not want those things? But for the moral inversion implicit in the hierarchy of “I WANTS”.

The first principle of caring for one another is to respect other people’s moral right to live by their own judgement, for their own sake, in pursuit of the values that can make their own lives the best they can be. These are the only lives any of us will ever have. One’s primary concern should be to make one’s own life the best and happiest it can be, without guilt and apology. There could be room for concern for other concerns, of course. The first moral principle is to achieve one’s own wants, and that principle should be reflected in how one treats others. To say otherwise is to foster envious, predatory exploitation. After all, what does it mean to “never have to worry about food and shelter and heat?” Those basic necessities don’t grow in the wild, ready to be picked. They must be produced by human work. Can we imply from that “I want” that other people owe me those things so I don’t have to “worry” myself about them?

So count me out. The implication is that it’s more right to put other people’s needs above our own. This has the fingerprints of Judeo-Christian ethics all over it, and I find that moral premise cruel and inhumane and a reversal of cause-and-effect. Judeo-Christian ethics holds that morality has nothing to do with self-interest, but concerns only your actions as they pertain to the benefit of others. What you need to do to make your own life good deserves no moral guidance, say the Judeo-Christians.

Don’t believe me? I was watching a segment of Fox News. The subject was private businesses aiding victims of Hurricane Harvey. One guest said the self-interest of the businesspersons drove their benevolence. Another responded that self-interest is not enough: It must be grounded in Judeo-Christian ethics. In other words, one must pay penance in terms of self-sacrifice to atone for the sin of self-interest. The other replied—and I’m paraphrasing from memory—“No. Self-interest is enough. The businessperson doesn’t need morality”[!] Well, why isn’t a self-interested motive moral? This is the corruption of Judeo-Christian ethics at work. (Both, by the way, are advocates of capitalism and regulars on Fox News. No one challenged their implicit assumption that the self-interest of businesspersons, as such, is immoral, or at best amoral. But that’s a subject for another day. In the meantime, I suggest Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal and The Capitalist Manifesto.).

But there are all kinds of decisions that require an answer to the question—good or bad for me. Should I do recreational drugs—or not; what kind of career best suits me; how do I balance the need to financially support my family with their need for my time and attention; the list is open-ended. Yet Judeo-Christian ethics tells you need no moral guidance—that you need to “tame” your self-interest with “doing good”—self-sacrificially serving others. Self-interest, we’re told, is a necessary evil. It is something low or dirty or sinful. True, they say, you have to be self-interested to live. But that is man’s original sin.

I couldn’t disagree more. “Good or bad, right or wrong?”: Why does that moral question only apply to others, but not to oneself? In fact, Judeo-christian ethics implies a corrupt moral inversion: that living off of others is the good, but self-support is immoral. Think about it. If being moral means the unrewarded duty to serve others, then it stands to reason that others must live for you. Who wins? Obviously, the moocher. One “jus’sayin” correspondent captured the essence of the corruption: “All those things you want just happen to be what I need, when can I expect them from these people who care?”

Of course, nothing about self-interest—the real kind, rational self-interest—forbids good will, compassion, or charity toward people or causes that are consistent with one’s capabilities and values. There are all kinds of self-interested reasons for doing “good works.” But the good of others is logically not, and in reason should not, be the moral standard for our life choices. The sooner people recognize that and respect that in others, the better our world will be. Experience has shown this to be not only good morals, but good practically.

Self-interest is the driving force of life and flourishing. It is self-interest—“I WANT -I WANT -I WANT”—that drives people to work and produce to enrich their own lives. And self-interest has a wonderful derivative effect; through trade, we enrich the lives of others. Self-interest fosters win-win relationships, with people getting better together, each in pursuit of her own self-interest. “I WANT” leads people to become doctors to heal the sick; to achieve the affluence to satisfy their WANT to adopt orphan children; to become farmers and grocery store owners to provide food; to become builders and tradesmen to provide homes; to seek a career in energy production to provide fuel for heating systems. It is the “I WANT -I WANT -I WANT” that incentivizes people to work in a field of choice to be able to buy all of those. There is no dichotomy of “I WANTS.” With everything you buy, you are benefitting from the self-interest of someone you don’t even know seeking to fulfill the “I WANTS” that helps him flourish. Self-interest is all around us. It should not be a guilty endeavor. Judeo-Christian ethics, a.k.a. altruism, requires lose-win—someone must lose, that the other must win. Self-interest is built on win-win; people getting better, not at others’ expense, but together. It is the greatest good.

Self-interest is integral to human nature, as it is in some sense for all life forms. All life forms, including the most simple and primitive, must act to gain the values their lives depend upon. People are no different. To live, people must act to gain values. Self-interest is not a necessary evil that must be justified by cheap slogans—especially slogans backed by compulsion of government welfare that forces others to pay for the luxury of those wants (where’s the “care for one another” in that?) The goods we need to live and flourish don’t just happen. They must be created by effort. When you hear someone say “I WANT” and is willing to work for it, you have encountered the most virtuous type of person. This is a person who doesn’t fantasize about living in some Garden of Eden where every need is miraculously provided for. Nor does he expect others to provide it. The virtuous person does worry about how he will fulfill his needs and wants, because that is what his nature and responsible living demands. He doesn’t fantasize about a world where “people . . . never have to worry about food and shelter and heat” and everything else life requires, because he knows that such a world doesn’t exist.

Self-interest is a vital good—and by logical extension the foundation of a free, progressive, prosperous, benevolent society of win-win relationships. Self-interest is life. Anti-self-interest is anti-life. I am pro-life. So I won’t repost this. As I said at the outset, the first principle of caring for one another is to respect other people’s moral right to live by their own judgement, for their own sake, in pursuit of the values that can make their own lives the best they can be. And that principle should be reflected in both our private lives and in our politics.

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