Actual Freedom – A Request from Konrad Swart

November 11 1998:

KONRAD: Most people are completely ignorant about ethics, and questions pertaining to the distinction between good and evil. Not everybody is aware of the fact, that Ayn Rand has given an objective basis to ethics, and therefore for an objective distinction between good and evil. I connect an explanation of her ethics which basically shows clearly that the difference between good and evil is grounded in the objectively existing difference between life and death. Life and death also connect ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’. Read it, and you will receive an introduction to questions pertaining to human conditioning.

RICHARD: I have eliminated the need for conditioning. I have no need for ethics whatsoever.

KONRAD: Ayn Rand was also a novelist. Her two best books are ‘The Fountainhead’, and ‘Atlas Shrugged’. Especially ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a very fascinating, although rather thick novel.

RICHARD: Back in 1985 I read every book that I could lay my hands on that Ms. Ayn Rand had written. I started with ‘Atlas Shrugged’. Her hero, Mr. John Galt, was personified as the archetype industrialist/ capitalist and Ms. Ayn Rand’s personal dislike of welfare recipients (possibly from her experience in the USSR) was patently obvious. She exemplified what is nowadays called an ‘economic rationalist’ of the ‘user pays’ ilk. With personal prejudices like that it would be difficult for her to think clearly ... as is evidenced by her complete ignorance of the fact that Mr. John Galt’s money to fund his community comes from a pool of millions of consumers desiring his invention. That is, not all of the 5.8 billion people in the world can invent something so desirable that other people’s buy it to the extent that vast amounts of money pours into their coffers. Capitalism is based upon some people being rich at other people’s expense. Her bigotry is particularly evident towards the end of the book in the fanciful scenes of the parasitical nature of welfare recipients. The book was an emotional appeal to what is currently evident in the world as ‘white male supremacy’ ... but only of the favoured few. It is an elitist position. Hence I have little regard for her further philosophising as you present it below.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘The first question is not: What particular code of values should man accept? The first question is: does man need values at all – and why?’

KONRAD: I see from your mail that this is exactly what you do and defend. You do not ask this question. Neither did I in the past, by the way. It is exactly this point that was so revolutionary about the understanding of the term ‘ethics’ as brought forward by Ayn Rand. I think that she was the first who had a clear understanding of the concept of ‘ethics’ in general. At least, she was the first who distinguished ‘ethics’ from ‘an ethics’.

RICHARD: This is because she needs ethics. Like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘Most philosophers have now decided to declare that reason has failed, that ethics is outside the power of reason, that no rational ethics can ever be defined, and that in the field of ethics – in the choice of his values, of his actions, of his pursuits, of his life’s goals – man must be guided by something other than reason. By what? Faith / instinct / intuition / revelation / feeling / taste / urge / wish / whim. Today, as in the past, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is whim (they call it ‘arbitrary postulate’ or ‘subjective choice’ or ‘emotional commitment’)-and the battle is only over the question of whose whim: one’s own or society’s or the dictator’s or God’s. Whatever else they may disagree about, today’s moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that the three things barred from its field are: reason-mind-reality. If you now wonder why the world is now collapsing to a lower and ever lower rung of hell, this is the reason. If you want to save civilization, it is this premise of modern ethics-and of all ethical history-that you must challenge’.

KONRAD: So Ayn Rand sees the ‘human condition’ as the result of taking rationality not seriously enough, and confusing certain irrational decisions for rational ones.

RICHARD: Nevertheless, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them? ‘Value’ is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept ‘value’ is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible’.

KONRAD: So the term ‘value’ can only have meaning for a being that is free to decide between different alternatives, and therefore is not automatically bound by any of them. Another aspect of value is that it presupposes both a particular aim and a particular individual pursuing that aim. This makes that a particular ‘value’ is not an absolute, for it depends on the individual, who chooses to pursue it. But it is also not completely relativistic, for it depends on what can be realized in existence. For, obviously, not every wish people have can be realized. Nature puts restrictions, because there are laws of nature, on what we can accomplish. This means, that Ayn Rand opposes both the absolutists, who assert that values should apply to everyone, and the relativists, who assert that values do not differ from the choices people make, because, according to them, it are only these choices that determine values.

RICHARD: This is because, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘An animal is able to learn certain skills to deal with specific situations, such as hunting or hiding, which the parents of the higher animals teach their young. But an animal has no choice in the knowledge and the skills that it acquires; it can only repeat them generation after generation’.

KONRAD: This is the level of Richard’s metaphysics. This is why I continued to say, that he has rediscovered ‘animal-hood’, and that he is ‘teaching’ us how to revert to the animal state. So I do not deny what he has found, but I deny that it is an improvement.

RICHARD: To think that humans are not animals is because, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil’.

KONRAD: This is the point I was making too. Only I worded it differently. I said: ‘Natural laws as such are not enough for life to uphold it into existence’. More is required, namely action, purposeful behaviour. In general an ‘action’ is a process that is not directed by natural laws, but by the information present in the information carrier, also called the goal of the life form. In primitive life forms this action stems from the DNA molecule, while in us it finds its source in our brains, and the information in it. Mammals obtain part of their actions from the DNA molecule, and part from that what they have learnt individually.

RICHARD: This denial of the real origin of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is because, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘Try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals’.

KONRAD: The important point of this example is, that such an entity does not have to undertake any actions to remain in existence. For the natural laws are enough for such an entity to enable it to exist. Life, however always requires some action to remain in existence as a life form. And this makes that every life form has to make use of its environment, that has either the things in it that make it possible for it to execute this action, or it has not. Therefore every life form is confronted with an environment that is either for it or against it. This does not apply to the above mentioned robot.

RICHARD: This is because a robot, unlike you, cannot get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner because they are not driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: a robot is not a victim of the human condition ... unlike you a robot is not encumbered by an identity that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘Mans sense organs function automatically; man’s brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically; but the process of integrating percepts into concepts – the process of abstraction and of concept-formation – is NOT automatic’.

KONRAD: What Richard calls: ‘Facts’, is what Ayn Rand calls: ‘percepts’. One of the points Ayn Rand makes here, is that even our ability to speak requires from us that you must move from the perceptual, factual level to the conceptual truth level. A step that is, next to this, also volitional. That language indeed is an acquired process, i.e. something that is learnt can be easily deduced from the simple fact, that there are many languages. If our ability to talk was innate, and therefore some ‘expression of the natural intelligence of our body’, as Richard’s vision implies.

RICHARD: Why are you so busy with what ‘Richard’s vision implies’? Why not get the facts of what Richard says straight first. You conceive a metaphysics – which you call ‘Richard’s metaphysics’ and then criticise it ... you criticise your own creation!

KONRAD: We would all have the same language. This was the thesis that Friedrich der Grosse was investigating with his horrid experiment with babies, and that had such an unexpected outcome. Note also, that both Richard and Ayn Rand agree on how the brains observes. For according to Richard the recognition of facts does not require thought and thinking.

RICHARD: Wrong ... Richard does not say that. You and I had a long exchange about the distinction between seeing the world and objects and recognising the world and objects. Recognition requires thought and memory. You simply do not read what I write, Konrad.

KONRAD: Ayn Rand agrees with this, for she says that the recognition of percepts is so fully automatised, that it is completely below the level of volition. I myself are not so certain about this. For I have experienced several changes in my thinking that were so thorough, that even the direct experience of the world has undergone a drastic change. Especially my studies on the theory of relativity have caused, that I experience the world different than before I had studied it. Even on the perceptual, or, as Richard calls it, factual level. Be this as it may be, there is a huge difference, however, on the way this level is evaluated. Ayn Rand considers the perceptual level a pre-human stage, while Richard considers this level to be a level that is higher than that of the level most people function on. I myself, of course, agree with Ayn Rand on this.

RICHARD: You see ... Richard does not consider the ‘perceptual level to be higher’ at all. Richard praises apperception, not perception. This is another example of you criticising your own metaphysics ... the metaphysics that you call ‘Richard’s metaphysics of Actualism’.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality-or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make’.

KONRAD: And this second thing is what Richard asks us to do.

RICHARD: You may think that this is what Richard is saying ... but it is not. I am becoming more amazed than ever at the extent of your misunderstanding of what I write. I can only consider that you are deliberately doing this ... no one can really be as dumb as you appear to be.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man-in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being-an unfocused mind is not conscious’.

KONRAD: So, according to Ayn Rand, Richard is not conscious in a human way.

RICHARD: This is so silly ... Ms. Ayn Rand does not know of me at all. How can you say this?

KONRAD: I agree on this, because he was unable to really understand my definition of I. He showed an inability to even understand this definition. Only when I insisted very strongly it began to penetrate somewhat. But even then he was unable to see that this definition was, abstractly speaking, in correspondence with his actualism.

RICHARD: Who are you talking to here? Is this an E-Mail to me? Or have you copied and pasted something you have sent to someone else? If so, did you copy and paste the exchange about your definition that you refused to reply to? Viz.:

• [Konrad]: ‘Now the rest is just definition. This thought is, by DEFINITION an ‘I’. Why? BECAUSE it controls the body’.
• [Richard]: ‘Just what do you mean with this throwaway line ‘now the rest is just definition’? Can you stop and muse about this for a moment before rushing on to your ‘proof’? Is there not something more to be done other than define a problem away cerebrally? What about these instinctual passions? No matter what intellectualisation you may come up with ... they remain firmly in situ, do they not? So, with that sobering thought held firmly in mind, we can proceed onto your second sentence: ‘this thought is, by definition, an ‘I’’ ... and you then ask why this is so? As there is a thought that is needed to act purposefully, you conclude that this thought is an ‘I’ that is controlling the body. Do you see the circular argument operating here? That is, the initial surmise is ‘proved’ by relying upon the initial surmise being a fact in order to do this sleight of hand ... or should I say: sleight of mind? Maybe you can see this if I arrange all of your sentences sequentially? Viz.:

Initial Surmise: ‘An ‘I’ is a controlling thought’.
1. ‘[Because] a thought is needed [for a body] to act’.
2. ‘This thought is, by definition, an ‘I’’.
3. ‘Because it [this thought] controls the body’.
Conclusion: ‘[Therefore] an ‘I’ is necessary to control a body’.

Now, I do not profess to be a logician ... but even with my limited training I find this to be a spurious deduction. If you wish to convince me with the logic of your argument you are going to have to insert one or more sentences between Nos. (2) and (3) ... because there is an implausible leap happening there where an other-wise identity-free thought mysteriously becomes an ‘I’-thought’. It is perhaps somewhat like that infamous theorem ‘I think, therefore I am’: it being predicated upon the initial surmise – ‘I think’ – being a fact in order to produce the conclusion ... ‘I am’. The initial surmise is faulty ... it should read only the fact that ‘there is thinking happening’. Thus the rewritten axiom now looks like this: ‘There is thinking happening, therefore I am’ ... which is – like your deduction above – nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity.

Konrad, will you send this to whomever this E-Mail was originally addressed to?

MS. AYN RAND: ‘Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts. A sensation of hunger will tell him that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as ‘hunger’), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food and it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow his food or how to make weapons for hunting. His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available-but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought. No percepts and no ‘instincts’ will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches. Yet his life depends on such knowledge-and only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it’.

KONRAD: Exactly the point I am making constantly. Actualists, and other mystics take far too much of all of the technology that exists for granted.

RICHARD: This is lying ... ‘actualists and other mystics’ is you deliberately ignoring me writing: ‘I have no religiosity, spirituality, mysticism or metaphysicality in me whatsoever’. You are now appearing to be a liar, Konrad ... and all to protect your intellectual position.

And I do not take technology for granted ... I praise technology. I directed you to my web-page a few E-Mails ago when you trotted out this line before – I even gave you the URL – so you could see for yourself where I stood in regard to technological thought and the benefits it brings materially. You are looking so stupid, Konrad ... and all your stupidity gets printed on my web-site at your request for anyone to see.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘Now you can assess the meaning of the doctrines which tell you that ethics is the province of the irrational, that reason cannot guide man’s life, that his goals and values should be chosen by vote or by whim-that ethics has nothing to do with reality, with existence, with one’s practical actions and concerns-or that the goal of ethics is beyond the grave, that the dead need ethics, not the living. Ethics is not a mystic fantasy-nor a social convention-nor a dispensable, subjective luxury, to be switched on or discarded in any emergency. Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of mans survival-not by the grace of the supernatural nor of your neighbours nor of your whims, but by the grace of reality and the nature of life’.

KONRAD: Note, that Ayn Rand is also clearly aware of the fact, that our ethics is the source of our emotions. Therefore she uses these terms interchangeably.

RICHARD: She has to think this because, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘If some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing. Such looters are parasites incapable of survival, who exist by destroying those who are capable, those who are pursuing a course of action proper to man’.

KONRAD: In other words, if that what is looted is not produced first, there is nothing to loot. Therefore the possibility of looting depends on the possibility of producing, but not the other way around. Since production is the product of our mind in the form of knowledge and action, this is more important, more fundamental than any question about what to do with it. This is also why social structures as such are not enough to solve the problems of scarcity.

RICHARD: Of course this completely ignores the ‘hunter/ gatherer’ lifestyles of so many people’s in the past ... they produced nothing. Yet there were still territorial wars for the food supplies that grew in the wild. This is also seen in those detailed National Geographic documentaries on chimpanzees in Africa, for example. Her use of the word ‘parasites’ here reinforces what I observed in her book ‘Atlas Shrugged’. She is simply down on welfare recipients ... whilst conveniently ignoring the fact that those recipients would have been working for a living if it were not for technology in the form of machines, computers and robots taking over their jobs. When industrialists talk of ‘down-sizing’ and ‘rationalising’ their work-force, they mean that they are going to throw their workers onto the welfare list ... and then criticise them for being ‘parasites’. The industrialists continue to get rich, of course, due to technology. It is such an elitist position ... and speaks volumes for their lack of egalitarianism. In Australia, such dispossessed workers are called by the rich the epithet ‘dole-bludgers’.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man-in order to achieve, maintain, fulfil and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life. Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep-virtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics-the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of ones ultimate value, ones own life-are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride’.

KONRAD: Are you still awake? Notice how Ayn Rand defends pride here as a virtue.

RICHARD: Aye, I am still awake ... and alert too. You see, I can think for myself ... I am not taken in by this elitist twaddle dressed up as wisdom.

KONRAD: Still, if you look very closely, you will see that it contradicts her definition of virtue. For she defined virtue to be the act by which one gains and/or keeps a value. Pride, however, is not an act. It might be the result of an act, or, better, an emotional response to an act, but it is itself not an act. However, it is clear what she tried to express. If you know how to accomplish your values, and you know that you know it, you get, from a rational ethics a positive emotional response. This positive emotional response is pride. There are many cases of such sloppiness to be found in the vision of Ayn Rand. This is, because she very often spoke from her emotions, and not from her mind, in spite of her assertion to the contrary. It is tragic to see, that this sloppiness of her has caused, in the Objectivist movement serious splits, disagreements, and even antagonisms up to the suggestion that some members, even those who have contributed for years to Objectivism should be killed. Fortunately these suggestions have never been implemented.

RICHARD: I guess you will know what my observation is going to be, eh? All this is because, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘The virtue of Pride is the recognition of the fact ‘that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining-that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul’. (Atlas Shrugged.) The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: ‘moral ambitiousness’. It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as ones own highest value by achieving ones own moral perfection-which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational-by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in ones character-by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of ones own self-esteem. And, above all, it means ones rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty’.

KONRAD: Here you see an instance of how Ayn Rand goes too far. Pride is the result of an action in accordance with your implemented action that is well done. It depends on the ethics whether this is good or bad. The man who gassed all of these Jews to death was very proud on the fact, that he had been able to kill so many Jews. I would not call this pride of him a virtue. On the contrary. The fact that he could be proud on such a crime shows that this is a very clear example of a pride that is a form of evil. So what does this tell us about pride in general? It is an emotion. You cannot say from a particular emotion whether it is either good or bad. You must first ascertain that the ethics the pride comes from is good in the sense of life promoting. Clearly, killing 5.000.000 Jews is not an act of promoting life. It is exactly the opposite. Therefore a pride emerging from such an act is evil, not virtuous. The fact that Ayn Rand was not always completely clear on this point explains also the many mistakes she has made during her life.

RICHARD: Pride in any form – especially humility – is just silly ... and it is designed to keep the identity in existence.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of the welfare of others-and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is mans highest moral purpose’.

KONRAD: See, how her discussion moves very gradually from ethics to the social domain. In effect she is wording here the principle of selfishness. For what she says here, in essence, is that every individual has the right to put his own interest above that of others. Not in the sense that he should consider others as means to his own purposes. On the contrary, everybody should recognize that he/she himself should first consider his/her happiness first, and should be cognisance of the fact, that this applies to everybody. In particular this means that you cannot lay any claim to the means and time of others without taking the wishes of this other into account. For as much as you should put your happiness first, you must also recognize that this principle applies to others, too. This causes you to always have consideration for your fellow man/woman. This having consideration for others is, according to Ayn Rand, the result of selfishness. Not in the form of egotism, but in the form of a general principle. Now many people confuse this form of selfishness as altruism. For is altruism not the same as being kind and considerate for your fellow man/woman? No, it is not, according to Ayn Rand. On the contrary. Altruism as a general principle means, that our lives should be put into the service of others. As a moral social principle it causes you to not only making your time and means available to others, but it also causes you to lay claim on the time, attention, and means of others, and to consider this to be self-evident. But this is exactly the opposite as kindness and being considerate towards others. As a moral principle it not only causes you to not being kind to others, but you are not even kind to yourself. For, whenever you become rich, you feel guilty. This is one of the points Bhagwan was also making. Only he did not make it as clear as Ayn Rand did.

RICHARD: Altruism is sacrificing what you personally hold most dear for the good of the whole. The only altruism that is truly effective is when ‘I’ willingly self-immolate – psychologically and psychically – for then ‘I’ am making the most noble sacrifice that ‘I’ can make for oneself and all humankind ... for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is ‘your’ moment of glory. It is ‘your’ crowning achievement ... it makes ‘your’ petty life all worth while. Thus ‘your’ ultimate altruistic sacrifice ensures peace-on-earth. Also, it is not an event to be missed ... to physically die without having experienced what it is like to become dead is such a waste of a life.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of ones values. If a man values productive work, his happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his life. But if a man values destruction, like a sadist-or self-torture, like a masochist-or life beyond the grave, like a mystic-or mindless ‘kicks’, like the driver of a hotrod car-his alleged happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his own destruction’.

KONRAD: In other words: emotions do not necessarily point to the correct things to do. It all depends on the original programming of the ethics that generates the emotions.

RICHARD: This fatal flaw in this reasoning is because, like you, she is not altruistic. Let the ‘process’ finish its job, Konrad, and you will see for yourself where both you and she have been going wrong.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘It must be added that the emotional state of all those irrationalists cannot be properly designated as happiness or even as pleasure; it is merely a moments relief from their chronic state of terror. Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment-so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences’.

KONRAD: This is not something Ayn Rand really could know. However, there is one point that can be brought forward. If your ethics, and therefore your emotions are geared to react positive to impossibilities, frustration will be inevitable, for the impossibility will become manifest. But if your ethics is geared to respond positively to that what corresponds to existence, and what can made to become actual, the emotional reaction will be positive from beginning to end. In fact, since the opportunities to create things that are feasible are limitless, both in number, complexity, and integration, there is no potential limit to the intensity of the positive emotional reaction you can create. I think that this is what Ayn Rand was trying to say.

RICHARD: All this is because, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold ones own life as ones ultimate value, and ones own happiness as ones highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining ones life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives ones life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself-the kind that makes one think: ‘This is worth living for’-what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself’.

KONRAD: So according to Ayn Rand, the question: ‘What is the purpose of life?’ is just as meaningless as asking the question: ‘What is the purpose of an orgasm?’ Both life, as depicted here, and an orgasm, are their own purpose and meaning. They both have in common that they are an end in itself. So what you must do to become happy is first implementing a realistic and rational ethics. One that makes you go after things that can be made real. And then, whenever you achieve a result that corresponds with this ethics, you will have a positive emotional response to this ethics. This positive emotional response is then not just very pleasant, but it is at the same time an experience, that is an answer to the question: ‘what is the meaning of life?’ This makes, that life, lived to the fullest, is the answer to the meaning of life. So the question about the meaning of life cannot be answered intellectually. No, it can only be answered existentially, by living itself. Now, according to Ayn Rand this is the proper way to end what Richard calls ‘the human condition’. Look, how the vision of Ayn Rand is the exact opposite of that of Richard. For Richard sees our capacity to feel emotions as the source of the misery of the ‘Human condition’, while, according to Ayn Rand, this capacity is the solution to this misery. According to Richard it is a mistake to have emotions. While according to Ayn Rand the only mistake you can make is having adopted, in whatever way, the wrong ethics. So her vision corresponds with both yours and mine.

RICHARD: You say ‘her vision corresponds with yours and mine’. It does not, just what is this nonsense? Are you talking to me ... Richard? Is this an E-Mail to someone else?

Can you not be bothered writing personally to me?

KONRAD: For both you and I assert, that it is the conditioning that is the source of the problem.

RICHARD: But it is you who asserts this ... not me! What is this lying all about?

KONRAD: Not the fact that conditionings produce emotions. This is what the both of us have in common.

RICHARD: You have been silly in the past, Konrad, but this silliness takes the cake. You and I do not have this in common at all.

This is nonsense what you are doing ... are you a complete idiot?

KONRAD: This is also, why I think that you probably find this article of Ayn Rand very interesting.

RICHARD: You are out of your tree.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessary make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take ‘whatever makes one happy’ as a guide to action means; to be guided by nothing but ones emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whims – by desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know-is to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by unknowable demons (by ones stale evasions), a robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see. This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism – in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective’.

KONRAD: Including that of Richard.

RICHARD: A cheap throwaway line ... you have asked me before about hedonism before and I have explained it to you. I am not going to copy and paste that exchange because it is simply a waste of time. You are going to continue to run the line that Richard is a hedonist no matter what I say on the subject. So be it. You are a fool.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘‘Happiness’ can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define mans proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that ‘proper value is whatever gives you pleasure’ is to declare that ‘the proper value is whatever you happen to value’ – which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play its deuces wild’.

KONRAD: Or, as Richard asserts, whatever ends misery.

RICHARD: Not so ... Richard does not assert that ‘whatever’ ends misery will do. I specifically state that it is only the demise of ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul that will do the trick. That is, ‘being’ ceases. This is very specific and is not ‘whatever ends misery’.

You lack intellectual rigour.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘When a ‘desire’, regardless of its nature or cause, is taken as an ethical primary, and the gratification of any and all desires is taken as an ethical goal (such as ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’) – men have no choice but to hate, fear and fight one another, because their desires and their interests will necessarily clash’.

KONRAD: This is, according to the ethics of Ayn Rand, the root cause of war. In effect she says, that if people are programmed in their ethics to behave in such a way, that they put the desires of others, or a collective that might include themselves above that of their own, which is in her eyes the same as altruism, war will result. This is why she sees altruism as an evil.

RICHARD: Well then ... why do you insist that I read this twaddle? It is so silly.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘If the frustration of any desire constitutes a sacrifice, than a man who owns an automobile and is robbed of it, is being sacrificed, but so is the man who wants or ‘aspires to’ an automobile which the owner refuses to give him-and these two ‘sacrifices’ have equal ethical status. If so, then mans only choice is to rob or be robbed, to destroy or be destroyed, to sacrifice others to any desire of his own or to sacrifice himself to any desire of others; then mans only ethical alternative is to be a sadist or a masochist’.

KONRAD: Notice, how Ayn Rand asserts here, that if you consider emotions to be irreducible primaries, as Richard does, and you base society on it, all of the conflicts of the world arise out of it. So the position of Richard is understandable, and can even be seen to be rational from the perspective of Ayn Rand. However, there is still a vast difference between Ayn Rand and Richard. For Ayn Rand does not look upon emotions as irreducible primaries, but as a consequence of the implementation of a specific ethics. Therefore both their solutions are different. Richard asserts, that the solution is a transformation that ends all emotions. But Ayn Rand says, that this is inhuman. For when you do that, no matter whether this is possible or not, you not only destroy your potential to be happy, but, and that is even worse, you destroy the only way that exists to experience through life itself the only answer that is possible to the question: ‘what is the purpose of life?’ And therefore this solution is not a rational answer to ‘the human condition.

RICHARD: This is because, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘In spiritual issues – (by ‘spiritual’ I mean: ‘pertaining to mans consciousness’) – the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another mans character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another persons virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as ones own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues. To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love-because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone’.

KONRAD: This is a part I consider to be too simple. It has, in fact, caused me to collide with the Objectivists, and to distance myself from them, no matter how sympathetic I am for many of their ideas. For if people take this part as their only base of interaction with others, (which they do, as I have experienced) it can make them believe, that you must represent yourself as no less than being perfect to others. So behaviour based on this piece of Randian ethics causes you to interact with others in such a way that you do not show your weak parts. But this is not a honest interaction. For, in true friendship you should feel free to be completely open. This includes showing both your strengths and your weaknesses, and also those parts that are not yet (fully) structured. For only then the other can form a realistic picture of you, and you can do the same of the other. And in this way both can talk in a way whereby there is a mutual exchange. If you only exhibit your strong parts, it forces the other in the position of ‘take it or leave it’. And that is not a real encounter with a fellow human being at all. I can add even something else. Ayn Rand herself was nicknamed: ‘The brilliant bitch’. This was, because she never admitted to have any weak parts, although the whole movement almost collapsed because of one of her weak spots. On top of this, she could never admit that she learnt constantly, and represented every new discovery she made as if she had always known it. Therefore her interaction with others was always putting herself above others. I think there is never an excuse for doing this, no matter how brilliant you are.

RICHARD: All this is because, like you, she would presumably still get infuriated and have to have emotion-backed principles in order to manage to operate and function in a socially acceptable manner even when driven by the instinctual animal urges of fear and aggression that blind nature endows all sentient beings with. In other words: her writing shows that she is still a victim of the human condition ... like you she is encumbered by an affective ‘being’ that needs to be controlled.

MS. AYN RAND: ‘The mystic theory of ethics is explicitly based on the premise that the standard of value of mans ethics is set beyond the grave, by the laws of requirements of another, supernatural dimension, that it is unsuited for and opposed to mans life on earth, and that man must take the blame for it and suffer through the whole of his earthly existence, to atone for the guilt of being unable to practice the impracticable. The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are the existential monument to this theory of ethics’.

KONRAD: So Ayn Rand was unaware of a form of individual mystic of the Bhagwan and the J. Krishnamurti kind. She was not even aware that another supernatural dimension could also be considered to exist and operative in someone while that somebody is still alive. In none of her writings I have seen any indication of her even considering the possibility. And I have read almost everything of her.

RICHARD: If this is so, then why do you want me to read all this? One has to be aware of the mystical dimension in order to understand where human beings have been going wrong. Let alone being aware of actuality. This whole exercise that you have dumped in my lap is just a waste of time. I have far better things to do with my time – like sitting with my feet up on the coffee table idly watching television – than having to wade through any old text that you can lay your hands on ... only to get to the end and find that it is all written by someone who does not know what they are talking about.

Why not think for yourself, Konrad?