In a previous post, 'Social
Justice' Collectivism in American School and Culture, I highlighted a school principal’s collectivist/Left leaning
commencement address. It included terms like “social justice” and “renewable
energy” and a healthy dose of “community service.” These are Leftist agenda
items. But something more universal lies behind the Left’s political agenda.
Recently this principal “tweeted” this:
Not sure when the MeFirst Movement began, but I sure liked it
better when we put the needs of the community and others above our own
immediate needs.
Underpinning that lament is the age old
conflict, individualism versus collectivism, or egoism versus altruism.
The first question to ask this vice-principal (who I will heretofor refer to a "T"), is, Why not MeFirst (or self-interest or selfishness)? But more on that
later.
Let’s examine the second, collectivist portion
of T’s lament.
Notice, first, that the statement distinguished
between “community” and “others.” The reference to community is
collectivism--the group as the focus of economic, political, cultural, and
moral concern. The reference to “others” is altruism--the view that
self-sacrificial service for the needs of other people is the essence of
morality.
But collectivism and altruism are linked,
with Altruism being the deeper philosophical base of collectivism. A littlethought will tell you where altruism leads. If it is right to put others above
self, and if the principle is universal, then it is right to expect
those others to do the same--put your needs above theirs. Such a
standard of necessity must foster mutual dependency and mutual predation and
the enshrinement of the unearned as the essence of social life. This can only
undermine individual self-responsibility and ultimately lead to a breakdown of
respect and trust. For a complete critique of altruism, I defer to my QUORA
answer to “Is Ayn Rand wrong
about altruism?”
As to community above self-interest, that can
only mean submission to some ruling authoritarian. A community is not a conscious
entity separate from the individuals that comprise it. It is not an entity
capable of deciding what it needs. Only individuals are capable of conceiving
of and pursuing their needs. A community (or any collective) is merely a number of individuals. To say the needs of the community come before your
own is to say the needs of others take precedence over our own. Who decides
whose needs take precedence? A ruling political elite, acting through the
mechanism of government. When someone speaks of community over the individual,
they are speaking of whomever in the community gets himself into the position
of authority to speak and act for the community. We’re talking about the
supremacy of the state over the individual--i.e., some form of dictatorship. To
put the needs of the community above our own means submission to the interests
of some authority, and those who peddle community supremacy are setting society
up for some kind of statism.
Now, as to MeFirst, I did a little searching and
I couldn’t find any evidence of a formal movement. I did find a self-help
course by Andrea Crowder that she labeled The Me
First Movement, “teaching you about all our self-care rituals
that have helped us stay focused to slay our life’s missions”:
We’re going to give you unapologetic permission to be deliciously
selfish and by doing that, it’s going to empower you to be a better wife,
mom, employee, GirlPreneur … whatever titles you claim.
I’m not judging the course. That’s not the
point. But it sounds pretty benign.
Then there is Not
#MeToo, but #MeFirst by Jennifer Anju
Grossman for The Atlas Society. Grossman presents MeFirst as a means of
dealing with sexual harassment. Appealing mainly to female victims, Grossman
writes,
So what would a rationally self-interested -- #MeFirst -- approach
to harassment look like?
It would involve a focus on ourselves, and what we can do as
individuals to help prevent harassment, deal with harassment, and get beyond
harassment.
Again, constructive. What’s wrong with either of
these two MeFirst approaches to dealing with life? Why would anyone oppose
someone resisting harassment or working to be one's best at whatever goals one
chooses? Clearly, these two examples demonstrate that, at the very least,
MeFirst can be good for you. Why would anyone denigrate MeFirst on principle?
There is a motive--a sinister motive.
Which brings me to my third discovery--The Me
First Movement posted by Clyde
Kilough, editor of the religious website Life, Hope, & Truth. Kilough’s
subtitle; “Looking at the movement at the root of all the evils can help us
identify the only real solution.” Sexual harassment is among the evils, as is
lying and murder. The movement behind all of this evil? “Me First selfishness”,
started by Satan, the originator, according to kilough, of the MeFirst
Movement.
We have all fallen prey to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of life. These pulls have affected, and infected, each of
us! Satan’s Me First movement says indulge yourself, fulfill your desires,
pursue your pleasures, cast off restraints. He keeps repeating to us his
promise to Eve—all you have to do to be happy is satisfy your own desires—and
we keep believing it (Proverbs 16:25)!
But when that thinking takes hold, wicked things begin to happen.
When Me First takes over, it’s always at the expense and hurt of someone. We
have all been hurt, and we have all hurt others. That is ultimately the only
possible outcome of Satan’s way of thinking.
Notice that to “satisfy your own desires” as a
means “to be happy” is equated with evil. This is the view of selfishness that
dominates and corrupts our understanding of selfishness. “Me First” means “always
at the expense and hurt of someone!” [my emphasis] It means unthinking
whim-worship unconstrained by any consideration for consequences to others or
even one’s own long-term interests.
Where does that leave us as far as moral
guidance is concerned? If the moral choice is to hurt others or renounce
happiness, what is one to do? This is the classic, basic fraud perpetrated by
moralists; that our only moral choices are to run roughshod over others while
we indulge every immediate whim, or renounce the pursuit of personal happiness.
This view obliterates any possibility of a benevolent, respectful pursuit of
happiness.
Philosopher Ayn Rand identify the false choice
this way: Sacrifice others to self or self to others. Is that really the only
moral choice we have?
The most disastrous error (or fraud) in the history of ethics is
the moral diagnosis of criminal actions: traditional moralists claim that the
evil of a robber or a murderer consists of the fact that he acted for his own
“self-interest.” I claim that his evil lies in his choice of values, in what he
chose to regard as his self-interest.
Rand identified a third, benevolent,
non-sacrificial, non-criminal alternative--rational
self-interest and its social
corollary, the trader
principle. Trade is the basic,
non-sacrificial, non-exploitative way for good rationally selfish MeFirst
people to deal with one another. It is the voluntary, mutually beneficial
exchange of value for value, in which each person gives something another
values in order to get something he values more in return. Trade is the basic
MeFirst alternative to the lose-win of collectivism and altruism. Trade is
win-win--people getting better together. The trader principle applies to more
than commercial transactions. It applies to personal relationships, like
friendships and romance. Properly understood, Ayn Rand correctly identified selfishness as a virtue.
To repudiate MeFirst is to strip from each
individual the morality of self-governance and self-improvement. How cruel is that? The fact
is, no human can live without being selfish. No human can prosper, or support
his family, or engage in rewarding personal relationships with others without
being honest about what’s important to oneself, and respecting what’s important
to those whose associations we seek. MeFirst is the necessary ingredient of
social harmony. MeFirst does not mean disregard of others. As a universal
premise, it means respecting others, even strangers. To be against MeFirst is
to be against life itself--and guilt-free living.
The very act of self-reflection--of deciding
what values one needs to pursue, achieve, and keep so as to make one’s own life
the best and most successful it can be--is by definition MeFirst. To deny
MeFirst is to throw out the very selfish virtues one must learn and practice in
order to plan one’s life long term and pursue happiness; virtues like
self-esteem, self-motivation, self-discipline, self-respect,
self-responsibility, independent thinking, integrity, honesty, courage to stand
by one’s beliefs even if unpopular, to plan one’s life long-term, and so on.
Of course, collectivism and altruism have from
America’s Founding had some grip on the culture. Today, we are further along on
the tyrannical path back to “the needs of the community and others,” and
further from the freedom of “MeFirst,” than ever. That is, we’re moving away
from individualism and regressing toward tribalism. The slogan is an expression
of that regression.
The vice-principal says he’s “Not sure when the
MeFirst Movement began.” This, from an American educator! The Declaration of
Independence, the ultimate political expression of MeFirst, has served us well.
It has led to the most peaceful, just, and prosperous expression of true
brotherhood, the capitalist United States of America, that ever existed--in the
process sweeping away one age-old inhumanity after another. America—the nation built upon the universal principle that each and every individual possesses the inalienable personal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—is the ultimate expression of MeFirst. “Not sure when the MeFirst Movement began?” It began with the nation of the Enlightenment, America.
The fact is, T’s got it backwards. America was
never, in its original Founding principles, a nation that put the collective,
whether identified as the “community” or “others” or some ruler, over the
individual. The Declaration proclaimed that your life belongs to you; that
MeFirst is your political right. America protected the individual from the
tyranny of the tribe and its rulers. Americanism at its core holds that you--not
the community, your neighbors, or the state--but you have first claim on
your own life. Let me reiterate: Americanism is rooted in the ultimate political expression of
MeFirst, individual rights. “Not sure when the MeFirst Movement began?” What
does he think is meant by the words of the legal document that marked the birth
of the United States of America--the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness? The Revolutionary War was fought to establish every
individual's right--every common man’s individual right--to MeFirst.
On some level, the Founders seem to have
understood the moral significance of those words. Thomas Jefferson, the author
of the Declaration, proclaimed: “If we are made in some degree for others, yet
in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and
indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less right to himself than one of
his neighbors or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery.” [P. 54] Indeed, the Confederate slaves were slaves precisely because
they were denied their own MeFirst. When someone speaks of “put the needs of
the community and others above our own immediate needs,” they are speaking of
masters and slaves, with most of us being slaves.
To say to a young mind that his or her own life
should not be one’s highest value is downright cruel--especially from an
educator whose job it is, or should be, to give the young student the
intellectual tools, and thus foster the self-esteem, he’ll need to make his own
life the best it can be. To advocate OthersFirst as a moral ideal is plain evil.
It is a slave morality and a repudiation of Americanism and humanity. It is to instill unearned guilt for wanting to live where self-esteem should have grown. If we are to save America’s students from
a self-destructive or morally crippling life course, we must teach their moral right to MeFirst,
properly understood--not as a necessary evil, or as a matter of
practicality--but as a moral principle. He must learn that MeFirst does not
mean running roughshod over others for the sake of some immediate whim.
MeFirst, rational selfishness, is in fact the only basis for benevolent coexistence.
Because a person tends to project his own moral premises, he who believes in
his moral right to MeFirst will also respect that same moral right in others.
It means mutual respect. It means to self-confidently, righteously, and
guiltlessly pursue the values one rationally deems necessary to achieve a
flourishing life for himself, and its corollary responsibility to
respect the same moral rights of others.
The worst fraud perpetrated by moral theorists
is to equate self-interest with bad behavior. The choice is not be
self-interested, or be moral. The choice is in how you express your
self-interest; what you regard as in your interest, and how you go about
achieving it. We do need ethics, not as a commandment to put others first, but
to teach us the right way to pursue our own self-interest. It’s both good to be
MeFirst self-interested, and bad to regard it to be in one’s self-interest as harming
others. They are not the same thing and, in fact, are opposites. The choice is
not lose and be moral or be immoral in order to win, with each of us shifting
between the two. That is a false choice, a straw man. The choice is a life
among equals, each of whom respects others’ first claim on her own life.
A word regarding the vice-principal's use of the
word “immediate” (“one’s immediate needs”). I want to emphasize that there are
times when setting aside, for the time being, one’s immediate concerns for the
sake of others is appropriate
and consistent with rational long-term self-interest. But I’m taking T's entire statement as a general moral command,
not a contingency.
Why would anyone offer, as a moral
choice, slave or master? It serves the purposes of certain kinds of people. Run
like hell from anyone who tells you your own self-interest should be
subordinated to others. They intend to be “the others”--i.e., the
masters. What is the roadblock
to that would-be master? Anyone who declares “Me First” and is willing to fight
for his moral right to his own interests.The best way to respond to that
corrupt statement is to answer: I sure liked it better when most of us revered
the inalienable individual rights to our own life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness. The next step is to supplement that statement of political rights by
embracing its corollary, the moral right to, and virtue of, MeFirst.
Related Reading:
Of course, Rand was not merely against altruism. She was
primarily for rational egoism and its peaceful social corollary, the
trader principle.
Leftist intellectuals desire to exert influence and, in turn, feel
important. Their desires to re-make society can only realistically be brought
about through the existence of a massive government; a government in which
these academics will be able to influence, under the guise of academic
“expertise.” There is an inherent liberal bias favoring greater social control
by the state among academics in part because it’s the only avenue academics
have to become the social reformists they desire to be.
The allure of advancing a utopian vision combined with classrooms
full of highly amendable students proves to be a powerful magnet attracting
Leftist intellectuals to academic positions.
1 comment:
'terms like “social justice” and “renewable energy'
Like many leftist agenda items, both of these terms are oxymorons.
Post a Comment