Part 39 (1/2)
Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once.... There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them-because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man.
[”The Nature of the Second-Hander,” FNI. 79; pb 69.]
It is fear that drives them to seek the warmth, the protection, the ”safety” of a herd. When they speak of merging their selves into a ”greater whole,” it is their fear that they hope to drown in the undemanding waves of unfastidious human bodies. And what they hope to fish out of that pool is the momentary illusion of an unearned personal significance.
[”Apollo and Dionysus,” NL, 80.]
Men were taught to regard second-handers-tyrants, emperors, dictators-as exponents of egoism. By this fraud they were made to destroy the ego, themselves and others. The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the creators. Or to harness them. Which is a synonym.
From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.
The creator-denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited-went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the individual against the collective.
[”The Soul of an Individualist,” FNI, 97; pb 83.]
See also ALTRUISM; COLLECTIVISM; COMPEt.i.tION; CREATORS; DICTATOR; EMOTIONS; FAITH; INDEPENDENCE; INDIVIDUALISM; LONELINESS; MYSTICISM; PSYCHOLOGY; REASON: SELF: SELF-ESTEEM; SELFISHNESS; SELFLESSNESS.
Self. A man's self is his mind-the faculty that perceives reality, forms judgments, chooses values.
[”Selfishness Without a Self,” PWNI, 60; pb 50.]
The self you have betrayed is your mind; self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. The ego you seek, that essential ”you” which you cannot express or define, is not your emotions or inarticulate dreams, but your intellect, that judge of your supreme tribunal whom you've impeached in order to drift at the mercy of any stray shyster you describe as your ”feeling.”
[(;S, FNI, 222: pb 177.]
Your self is your mind; renounce it and you become a chunk of meat ready for any cannibal to swallow.
[Ibid., 176; pb 142.]
The most selfish of all things is the independent mind that recognizes no authority higher than its own and no value higher than its judgment of truth.
[Ibid.]
See also REASON; SELF-ESTEEM; SELF-INTEREST; SELFISHNESS; SELFLESSNESS; THOUGHT/THINKING; VALUES.
Self-Defense. The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self--defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
If some ”pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolis.h.i.+ng evil, it would encourage and reward it.
[”The Nature of Government,” VOS, 146; pb 108.]
The individual does possess the right of self-defense and that is the right which he delegates to the government, for the purpose of an orderly, legally defined enforcement.
[”America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” CUI, 46.]
A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force.
[GS, FNI, 231; pb 183.]
Just as an individual has the right of self-defense, so has a free country if attacked. But this does not give its government the right to draft men into military service-which is the most blatantly statist violation of a man's right to his own life.
[”The Roots of War,” CUI, 40.]
See also DRAFT; FOREIGN POLICY; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LIFE, RIGHT to; PACIFISM; RETALIATORY FORCE; WAR.
Self Determination of Nations. The right of ”the self-determination of nations” applies only to free societies or to societies seeking to establish freedom; it does not apply to dictators.h.i.+ps. Just as an individual's right of free action does not include the ”right” to commit crimes (that is, to violate the rights of others), so the right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men by others). There is no such thing as ”the right to enslave.” A nation can do it, just as a man can become a criminal-but neither can do it by right.
It does not matter, in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force, like Soviet Russia, or by vote, like n.a.z.i Germany. Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). Whether a slave society was conquered or chose to be enslaved, it can claim no national rights and no recognition of such ”rights” by civilized countries-just as a mob of gangsters cannot demand a recognition of its ”rights” and a legal equality with an industrial concern or a university, on the ground that the gangsters chose by unanimous vote to engage in that particular kind of group activity.
Dictators.h.i.+p nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade n.a.z.i Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent ”rights” of gang rulers. It is not a free nation's duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.
[”Collectivized 'Rights,' ” VOS, 139; pb 104.]
A nation that violates the rights of its own citizens cannot claim any rights whatsoever. In the issue of rights, as in all moral issues, there can be no double standard. A nation ruled by brute physical force is not a nation, but a horde-whether it is led by Attila, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Khrushchev or Castro. What rights could Attila claim and on what grounds?
[Ibid., 139; pb 103.]
See also ”COLLECTIVE RIGHTS”; DEMOCRACY; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; FOREIGN POLICY; FREEDOM; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; NATIONAL RIGHTS; SACRIFICE; SECESSION; STATISM.
Self-Esteem. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason-Purpose-Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge-Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve-Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.
[GS, FNI, 156; pb 128.]
By a feeling he has not learned to identify, but has derived from his first awareness of existence, from his discovery that he has to make choices, man knows that his desperate need of self-esteem is a matter of life or death. As a being of volitional consciousness, he knows that he must know his own value in order to maintain his own life. He knows that he has to be right; to be wrong in action means danger to his life; to be wrong in person, to be evil, means to be unfit for existence.
Every act of man's life has to be willed; the mere act of obtaining or eating his food implies that the person he preserves is worthy of being preserved; every pleasure he seeks to enjoy implies that the person who seeks it is worthy of finding enjoyment. He has no choice about his need of self-esteem, his only choice is the standard by which to gauge it. And he makes his fatal error when he switches this gauge protecting his life into the service of his own destruction, when he chooses a standard contradicting existence and sets his self-esteem against reality.
[Ibid., 220; pb 176.]
No value is higher than self-esteem, but you've invested it in counterfeit securities-and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The grim joke is on you: that need of self-esteem, which you're unable to explain or to define, belongs to my morality, not yours; it's the objective token of my code, it is my proof within your own soul.
[lbid., 220; pb 175.]
Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. It cannot be replaced by one's power to deceive. The self-confidence of a scientist and the self-confidence of a con man are not interchangeable states, and do not come from the same psychological universe. The success of a man who deals with reality augments his self-confidence. The success of a con man augments his panic.
[”The Age of Envy,” NL, 181.]
The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind. Such a man is not malleable; he may be mistaken, he may be fooled in a given instance, but he is inflexible in regard to the absolutism of reality, i.e., in seeking and demanding truth....
There is only one source of authentic self-confidence: reason.
[Ibid., 182.]
The attack k on ”selfishness” is an attack on man's self-esteem; to surrender one, is to surrender the other.
[”Introduction,” VOS, xv; pb xi.]
Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
[”Philosophy: Who Needs It,” PWNI, 12; pb 10.]