To conclude, or not to conclude: that became a question when, in writing the previous segment, I filled five paragraphs and got to my punch line without covering all the major ideas I had wanted to mention. What more do I need to say? Well, having relearned the value of honesty and self-respect from Ayn Rand's writing, I found many of her own pronouncements strangely at odds with the essence of one of her central philosophical conceits, as if she crafted an entire philosophy without understanding its wider implications.
After cutting myself free from the anchor of Christian fundamentalism that I had grown up with, I drifted for a while, and toyed with the idea that I didn't actually need a moral compass. Soon enough, and possibly as a consequence of that thought, a pair of low-level criminals who actually lived the reality of that idea would become part of my social circle. While I initially accepted them as new friends, it didn't take too long for me to decide that I didn't need or want to continue having any contact with either of them. At that junction, I discovered Ayn Rand's work, and reading her writings reminded me of the value of honesty and self-respect, as well as the connection between those two concepts.
Ms. Rand makes the point in her philosophy that a criminal lacks self-respect, and hungers for it, because his own mind tracks his actions and convicts him of his own wrong-doing, no matter how much he may try to cover that self-knowledge with rationalization and/or mind-altering substances. The thief knows somewhere inside his head that he is a worthless thief, and so he can never fully respect himself. I recognized this reality in the two criminals that had become acquaintances, and understanding this helped me to determine that I didn't really want these two jerks as friends. It also led me to ask myself about the worth of my own integrity, and to answer myself that I certainly valued it more than an extra handful of coins that a cashier might have given me by mistake. From then on, if the person at the register added in an extra nickel, I would give it back, and feel very good about doing so.
Cheaters never prosper, or so goes a saying that many children learn early in life. Expand that thought just a bit by considering long-term implications, and you have Ms. Rand's essential concept of enlightened self-interest. In this regard, it's truly not in a student's enlightened self-interest to cheat on an exam rather than to acquire the knowledge to answer test questions correctly.
However, in real life, cheaters not only prosper, but often outshine their more-principled colleagues. The cheater may score the undeserved high grade-point average, the unearned college diploma, and the unmerited highly-compensated cushy corner office. Then, those who suffer the fallout of the cheater's lack of requisite knowledge may very well be good, honest, well-meaning types who have the misfortune of finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who knows the degree to which professional incompetence played a role in, say, the recent oil spill near Santa Barbara? In the aftermath of such a catastrophe, incompetent management and the usual focus on maximum profitability seem neither enlightened nor self-interested, particularly when those factors often create the trigger for catastrophe. Yet, the cheaters of the petrochemical industry seem to prosper handsomely while the environment and those of us who have to live with the real-world repercussions of their short-sighted, unenlightened self-interest pick up the tab.
When I read about Ms. Rand's concept of enlightened self-interest, I pictured something quite far-reaching, so it surprised me when I read AR quotes that seemed to contradict the central principle of that written philosophy. In the real world, though, the kind of people attracted to such a catch phrase largely tend to relish the sound of the self-interest part but have little or no interest in the enlightened segment, and within that circle I would include the one who evidently originated the phrase. While I have actually heard the story of one Wall Street banker who walked away from a lucrative career out of concern for the long-term implications of the financial shenanigans that had become routine in his workplace, most of the members of the Wall Street gang focus their tunnel vision on quarterly profit margins, with no second thought for how their selfish greed may reap havoc and destruction on the financial system that serves them so well. They know plenty about self-interest but nothing about enlightenment. In most cases, the selfish ones, be they bankers, oil barons or some other species of greed-head, simply boil it down to "If it's self-interest, it's enlightened" with no further thoughts, and evidently, that's about as deep as the original objectivist got into it herself when she first put it down on paper. Not long after I tired of her simplistic philosophy, I came around to thinking that the more enlightened you are, the more you recognize that your self-interest aligns with the best interests of your entire community, or, as Jim Hightower and a few others have mentioned, "We all do better when we all do better.
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