Part 35 (1/2)
”Psychologizing.” Just as reasoning, to an irrational person, becomes rationalizing, and moral judgment becomes moralizing, so psychological theories become psychologizing. The common denominator is the corruption of a cognitive process to serve an ulterior motive.
Psychologizing consists in condemning or excusing specific individuals on the grounds of their psychological problems, real or invented, in the absence of or contrary to factual evidence.
[”The Psychology of 'Psychologizing,' ” TO, March 1971, 2.]
While the racket of the philosophizing mystics rested on the claim that man is unable to know the external world, the racket of the psychologizing mystics rests on the claim that man is unable to know his own motivation.
[Ibid., 4.]
Armed with a smattering, not of knowledge, but of undigested slogans, they rush, unsolicited, to diagnose the problems of their friends and acquaintances. Pretentiousness and presumptuousness are the psychologizer's invariable characteristics: he not merely invades the privacy of his victims' minds, he claims to understand their minds better than they do, to know more than they do about their own motives. With reckless irresponsibility, which an old-fas.h.i.+oned mystic oracle would hesitate to match, he ascribes to his victims any motivation that suits his purpose, ignoring their denials. Since he is dealing with the great ”unknowable” -which used to be life after death or extrasensory perception, but is now man's subconscious-all rules of evidence, logic and proof are suspended, and anything goes (which is what attracts him to his racket).
[Ibid., 2.]
A man's moral character must be judged on the basis of his actions, his statements and his conscious convictions-not on the basis of inferences (usually, spurious) about his subconscious.
A man is not to be condemned or excused on the grounds of the state of his subconscious.
[Ibid., 5.]
See also ARGUMENT from INTIMIDATION; CHARACTER; MORAL JUDGMENT; MYSTICISM; PSYCHOLOGY; RATIONALIZATION; SUBCONSCIOUS.
Psychology. The task of evaluating the processes of man's subconscious is the province of psychology. Psychology does not regard its subject morally, but medically-i.e., from the aspect of health or malfunction (with cognitive competence as the proper standard of health).
[”The Psychology of 'Psychologizing,' ” TO, March 1971, 5.]
As a science, psychology is barely making its first steps. It is still in the anteroom of science, in the stage of observing and gathering material from which a future science will come. This stage may be compared to the pre-Socratic period in philosophy; psychology has not yet found a Plato, let alone an Aristotle, to organize its material, systematize its problems and define its fundamental principles.
[Ibid., 2.]
In psychology, one school holds that man, by nature, is a helpless, guilt-ridden, instinct-driven automaton-white another school objects that this is not true, because there is no scientific evidence to prove that man is conscious.
[”Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” PWNI, 86; pb 71.]
Psychology departments have a sprinkling of Freudians, but are dominated by Behaviorism, whose leader is B. F. Skinner. (Here the controversy is between the claim that man is moved by innate ideas, and the claim that he has no ideas at all.) [”Fairness Doctrine for Education,” PWNI, 235; pb 192.]
See Conceptual Index: Psychology.
”Public Interest,” the. Since there is no such ent.i.ty as ”the public,” since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of ”the public interest” with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others. Since the concept is so conveniently undefinable, its use rests only on any given gang's ability to proclaim that ”The public, c'est moi” -and to maintain the claim at the point of a gun.
[”The Monument Builders,” VOS, 116; pb 88.]
So long as a concept such as ”the public interest” (or the ”social” or ”national” or ”international” interest) is regarded as a valid principle to guide legislation-lobbies and pressure groups will necessarily continue to exist. Since there is no such ent.i.ty as ”the public,” since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that ”the public interest” supersedes private interests and rights, can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.
If so, then all men and all private groups have to fight to the death for the privilege of being regarded as ”the public.” The government's policy has to swing like an erratic pendulum from group to group, hitting some and favoring others, at the whim of any given moment-and so grotesque a profession as lobbying (selling ”influence”) becomes a full-time job. If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.
Since there is no rational justification for the sacrifice of some men to others, there is no objective criterion by which such a sacrifice can be guided in practice. All ”public interest” legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down ultimately to the grant of an undefined, undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary power to some government officials.
The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity, cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle.
[”The Pull Peddlers,” CUI, 170.]
There is no such thing as ”the public interest” except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all men-all rational men-is freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of ”the public interest”-not what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundation-and cannot exist without it.
The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only form of ”the public interest.”
[”The Fascist New Frontier,” pamphlet, 13.]
I could say to you that you do not serve the public good-that n.o.body's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices-that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation -as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own-I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be d.a.m.ned, I will have no part of it!
[”The Moral Meaning of Capitalism,” FNI, 116; pb 98.]
See also CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; ”COMMON GOOD”; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LOBBYING; MIXED ECONOMY; SACRIFICE; SOCIETY; WELFARE STATE.
Public Property. When you clamor for public owners.h.i.+p of the means of production, you are clamoring for public owners.h.i.+p of the mind.
[GS, FNI, 208; pb 166.]
Since ”public property” is a collectivist fiction, since the public as a whole can neither use nor dispose of its ”property,” that ”property” will always be taken over by some political ”elite,” by a small clique which will then rule the public-a public of literal, dispossessed proletarians.
[”The Property Status of Airwaves,” CUI, 128.]
See also COLLECTIVISM; GOVERNMENT; PROPERTY RIGHTS.
Purchasing Power. Purchasing power is an attribute of producers, not of consumers. Purchasing power is a consequence of production: it is the power of possessing goods which one can trade for other goods. A ”purchase” is an exchange of goods (or services) for goods (or services). Any other form of transferring goods from one person to another may belong to many different categories of transactions, but it is not a purchase. It may be a gift, a loan, an inheritance, a handout, a fraud, a theft, a robbery, a burglary, an expropriation. In regard to services, however (omitting temporary or occasional acts of friends.h.i.+p, in which the payment is the friend's value), there is only one alternative to trading: unpaid services, i.e., slavery.
[”Hunger and Freedom,” ARL, III, 22, 3.]
See also CAPITALISM; CONSUMPTION; CREDIT; ECONOMIC POWER vs. POLITICAL POWER; FREE MARKET; INFLATION; MONEY; PRODUCTION; TRADER PRINCIPLE.
Purpose. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics-the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one's ultimate value, one's own life-are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride.
Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work-pride is the result.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 19; pb 25.]
A central purpose serves to integrate all the other concerns of a man's life. It establishes the hierarchy, the relative importance, of his values, it saves him from pointless inner conflicts, it permits him to enjoy life on a wide scale and to carry that enjoyment into any area open to his mind; whereas a man without a purpose is lost in chaos. He does not know what his values are. He does not know how to judge. He cannot tell what is or is not important to him, and, therefore, he drifts helplessly at the mercy of any chance stimulus or any whim of the moment. He can enjoy nothing. He spends his life searching for some value which he will never find....
The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose....
The man who has no purpose, but has to act, acts to destroy others. That is not the same thing as a productive or creative purpose.
[”Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand,” pamphlet, 6.]
See also CAREER; PRIDE; PRODUCTIVENESS; RATIONALITY; REASON; STANDARD of VALUE; ULTIMATE VALUE; VALUES.
Pursuit of Happiness, Right to. The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what const.i.tutes his own private, personal, individual happiness and to work for its achievement, so long as he respects the same right in others. It means that man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of another man nor of any number of other men. It means that the collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man's existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness.
[”Textbook of Americanism,” pamphlet, 5.]
Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness-not of the right to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make him happy.