Anthony

Posted Friday, March 31, 2023

1y

INTJ

8

7

The Nature of Evil

The moral is the rational. The evil is the irrational. And remember that this means that the moral is that which is in accordance with reality, and the evil is that which attempts to go against the facts of reality. Within man’s consciousness, the issue of good and evil consists of a single choice, the only basic choice open to man: to think or not to think, to perceive reality or to evade the responsibility of perceiving it. To quote Galt: “Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice but struggle never to admit. The act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think, not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment, on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A, so long as you do not pronounce the verdict: “it is.” Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists. Reality is not to be wiped out; it will merely wipe out the wiper.” [Quotes added] All the evils which you see around you—the bewildering contradictions in people’s behavior, the dishonesties, the acts of cruelty, of destruction, of expropriation, of torture, of murder—proceed from, and are made possible, only by the evasions and blank-outs of the guilty parties, by their willful suspension of their minds, their blind surrender to blind emotions, the rejection of reason and existence. Evil is self-made blindness. In order to make oneself evil, one has first to make oneself stupid. All the values required for man’s survival have to be achieved by virtues. Food, shelter, clothing, happiness, and self-esteem all necessitate positive actions that man must perform: first the action of thinking, then the action of translating one’s thought into physical form. Virtue does not consist of a negation. It does not consist of passivity or resignation or renunciation or self-sacrifice. It consists of positive action, of self-assertion, of achievement. It is evil, not virtue, that is a negation. Evil is non-thought, non-reason, non-reality, non-effort, non-achievement, non-life. And the result of evil in reality is not creation, but destruction—not happiness, but suffering—not self-fulfillment, but self-defeat. Man cannot grow food by refusing to think. He cannot build a bridge by refusing to think. He cannot develop a new industry by refusing to think. He cannot cure diseases by refusing to think. He cannot achieve the conviction that he is competent and worthy to live by refusing to think. What can man achieve by refusing to think? Concentration camps and insane asylums. The error made by many people is the belief that any rebellion against the traditional mystical-altruist morality is automatically, and necessarily, practical. This is palpably false. Ascetic submission and blind surrender to faith in the will of God is not practical, but neither is hedonistic, whim-worshipping. Self-sacrifice is not practical, but neither is the sacrifice of others. Lying on a bed of nails and being fed by the charity of others is not practical, but neither is robbery and murder. Masochism is not practical, but neither is sadism. By what standard are all these things declared to be “impractical”? By the standard of life and happiness. In the deepest and most metaphysical sense, “virtue” means: efficacy. “Evil” means: impotence. By the standard of life, and that which life requires, the mystic who spends his time in a self-induced trance, the criminal, and the dictator are all equally impotent, all equally ineffectual, all equally incompetent to live. In judging the issue of efficacy and impotence, do not make the error of equating the power to create with the power to destroy. It is not by means of destruction that man achieves his survival. Would you wish to claim that a surgeon who saves a life, and a homicidal maniac who takes a life, are equally potent and efficacious? Would you wish to claim that a scientist who invents a serum to protect men against disease, and the barbarian who slaughters a whole village, are equally competent to deal with reality? Would you equate the power of an artist who paints a great canvas with the power of some hysterically envious rival who sets fire to it? Would you equate the efficacy of a businessman who creates a fortune with the efficacy of some hoodlum who robs him? You can hold these men as equally potent only on the premise that there is no significant difference between life and death. If it makes no difference whether a man lives or dies, then it is true that the creator and the killer are equally competent—except that without the standard of life, concepts such as “competent,” “efficacious,” and “potent” no longer have any intelligible meaning. Observe that man does not have to work hard to struggle and to exert the effort of thought, in order to achieve the state of impotence. He has merely to abstain from thinking. Impotence is not an achievement; it is the absence of an achievement. But efficacy is an achievement. It is the reward and the result of thinking. Man is not born efficacious. He is born only with potentialities that he must choose to actualize. To make himself competent to live, is man’s basic moral responsibility. Man must choose to think, and to discover the values proper to him. . . . Now, then, if evil is impotent, if by its nature it can have no power, the question which logically arises is this: How has it been possible for evil to win the victories it has won? Granted that all the irrational can achieve is destruction, what has enabled it to achieve even that on such a wide scale? The answer is this: Evil left to its own devices is powerless, but evil has not been left to its own devices. It has been able to survive by harnessing and placing the power of the good in its service. If for instance, a man who was totally irrational was left completely alone, he would perish. If he did not choose to think, to perceive reality, and to act in accordance with the facts of reality, if he did not choose to work and produce, he would quickly cease to clutter up the universe with his presence. There is only one way in which such a man could survive while remaining irrational: if he could somehow persuade an at least partially rational man to support him, to carry him on his energy—if he could somehow devise a means to drain the power of reason. But in such case, observe that it is still reason that the irrationalist needs, in order to remain alive. It is still the efficacy of reason that the irrationalist has to count on and ride on. It is still only reason that permits men to exist. . . . Observe how the same principle works on the personal level. If someone you loved turns irrational and, thereby, causes you pain, identify what gave him the power to cause you that pain. If you had not seen some sort of value in him, if you had not seen something which you considered good, you would be indifferent to his character one way or the other. If his flaws hurt you, it was his virtues that made it possible. A man who was totally and unequivocally evil would not be able to deceive you. You would not reach the stage of feeling love or affection for him, and so would not be vulnerable to shock and disappointment. Do you hear it said that “not everyone is black and white”? Well, that is true—and it is the people who are gray who cause most of the suffering in the world. There is another form, perhaps the most tragic one, of the manner in which the good supports the evil and makes the success of evil possible. These are the countless situations where men of virtue help evil not because of their own evasions, weaknesses, or flaws, but because of their own virtues—because of their own innocence, honesty, generosity, endurance, and sense of justice. Innocence is the key virtue in such cases, the virtue most viciously exploited. Men who are fundamentally rational are unable to conceive of the kind of motives that prompt the irrational. They do not understand the nature of evil and do not know how to identify its symptoms. Their own honesty makes them regard the wrong actions of others as mere errors of knowledge. Their generosity makes them feel benevolence towards others and reluctant to suspect the worst. Their endurance makes them willing to bear a good deal of undeserved pain, on the assumption that those who caused it didn’t do it intentionally. Their own sense of justice makes them unable to condemn others without understanding, and leads them to give others too much “benefit of the doubt” for too long. This is the error which Ayn Rand calls, “the sanction of the victim.” The “sanction of the victim” means: the willingness to let one’s own virtues be used by others against oneself. It means the willingness to bear injustice, to take actions which help others against one’s own rational self-interest, and to concede moral validity to the claims of one’s own destroyers. . . . Now, observe that the crucial cause of any instance of the sanction of the victim is the absence of moral objectivity—which is caused by the absence of an objective moral code. . . . When men do not have an objective moral code—a code that can be rationally defined, proved, understood, and applied—the result in all social relationships works to the detriment of the good and to the advantage of the evil. An honest, rational man will struggle to be just to others, with no standard by which to determine what is just—and this leaves the door wide open for every miserable little whim-worshipper, every sniveling faker of reality, every posturing evader, who will be only too glad to rush forward with his claims to the unearned and undeserved, without caring about any question of justice. A man of self-esteem would never want to take advantage of others, neither in spiritual nor in material issues, because he would not want to sink to the level of a parasite who takes the unearned in any form. When in doubt, he would accept a burden, rather than switch it to others. This suits perfectly the interest of those men who do not possess self-esteem and are not concerned with their own moral purity: the evaders, the moochers, the parasites. The morality of altruism, of self-sacrifice, is an institutionalized sanction of the victim. No one can ever accept it fully or practice it. But to the extent to which a conscientious man might attempt to practice it, at least in part, he becomes the victim who sanctions the evil of his own destroyers, of those who do not mind accepting the sacrifices of others. What altruism has actually accomplished is a state of moral agnosticism in human relationships, so that the best among men act on private, unidentified, common sense morality of their own, and are helpless against the evil of the worst among men. If you wish to avoid the trap and the errors of the sanction of the victim, you must learn to pronounce objective moral judgments. You must learn to distinguish, in any given situation, whether the fault is yours, or whether others are taking advantage of you unjustly. This is not always easy to determine, particularly in complex issues and relationships; but justice is a standard which you must learn to apply, if you want to arrive at the proper moral estimate. There are two principles to remember in such cases, two characteristics involved in all instances of the sanction of the victim: First, avoid granting anyone any double standard at your own expense. The immorality of using a double standard for your own advantage is generally recognized—as for instance, permitting yourself the kind of evil actions that you condemn in others. But this is a flaw practiced by men who are fundamentally immoral. What is not generally recognized, is the same flaw practiced in reverse, and for nobler motives, by men who are moral, the mistake of tolerating in others the kind of evil that you would condemn in yourself. Whenever you are able to say about some immoral action, with full rational knowledge of your reasons, “I would not permit myself to do this,” do not accept, tolerate, forgive, or sanction it, when it is done by others. Second, a characteristic attribute of all the situations that involve the sanction of the victim is the fact that you are made to suffer by means of your virtues, not by means of your flaws. If you are made to suffer because of your flaws, if you are blamed, denounced, punished, or hurt because of your own actions, which you know to be evil, this is merely justice; and a rational person will accept it as justice and will work to correct his flaws. But if you find yourself in a situation where the source of your pain is your virtues—where your honesty, fairness, or compassion, or consideration for others cause you suffering, a suffering you would avoid if you were dishonest, unfair, cruel, or inconsiderate—why, then, look out! Look for the person who is taking advantage of your virtues and using them against you, and do not hesitate to withdraw your sanction, when you discover the culprit. This does not mean that you have to abandon your virtues and become dishonest, unfair, or cruel. It means that you must not allow such vices to others. It means that you have to be just. (Nathaniel Branden; "The Basic Principles of Objectivism," Lecture 19)