Why Society Needs Self-Interested Individualists

A visitor to DrHurd.com writes:

Dear Dr. Hurd: In your argument for promoting rational selfishness against self-sacrifice, your comments like “choosing to have children or not to have children is selfish” indicate to me that you have missed a major ingredient in your thoughts.

Your concept of self-sacrifice doesn’t seem accurate with what I’ve experienced. Your comments indicate that anything “self-sacrificing” which people do is really done with their own interests at heart.

I find it hard to agree. I know many people who sacrifice money, time and energy in the name of serving their fellow man, with no aim for reward or pleasure from it. It seems that your view would step in at this point, and state that they would do it because they know they will feel good about it in the end, and because of that, they are selfish. Am I reading you right here?

 

My reply: Let me make sure you understand exactly what I mean by “selfish.”

What I mean by the term is just this: acting in your own objective, rational interest. I maintain that it is a good thing for people to act in their self-interest; it’s good to be selfish, in this rational sense, when making life decisions.

If a person is financially and emotionally prepared to have children, for example, and he very much wants to do so—then he’s acting in his self-interest by having a child. This is a good, proper thing to do. It is wrong and unhealthy to have children if you don’t want to, if you’re not prepared to do so, or if doing so would undermine other goals that you judge as more important to your life and well-being.

I’m sure you’d agree that many people have children for the wrong reasons, or before they are ready. I believe the world would be a much more benevolent place if people approached having children (or other responsibilities) with a thoughtful, self-interested standard instead of the usual platitudes such as, “It’s just what one does” or, “It’s your duty whether you like it or not.” Duty breeds resentment; and resentment causes parents to be less than nurturing, or even abusive, towards their children.

There should be no unchosen obligations, other than those imposed upon us by reality. It should be an individual’s conscious, deliberate choice and absolute moral right to judge what is or is not in his own self-interest—so long as he does not impose physical force or fraud on somebody else.

No, I don’t believe that people who sacrifice themselves are necessarily doing so with their own interests at heart. Some, no doubt, really do mean to sacrifice. They think it’s proper to sacrifice and they do so proudly, no matter how much pain and misery it causes them and their loved ones. They live the lives of martyrs, thinking martyrdom to be the ideal instead of the miserable neurosis it actually represents. My psychotherapy practice includes many people caught in the martyrdom trap.

Still others, no doubt, merely pretend to sacrifice because they’ve been taught it’s the “right thing to do”—but then behind closed doors they do whatever they feel like, regardless of the consequences to themselves or to those whom they allegedly care about.

Such people have, correctly, rejected the idea of self-sacrifice. But they don’t possess the honesty or the courage to identify a new moral code. Instead they collapse into a nihilistic, impulsive life of acting on their whims. This is the typical understanding of “selfishness,” but there’s nothing self-interested about it.

Sooner or later, the sacrificer feels compelled to reward himself with pleasure. What kind of pleasure? Usually mindless, impulsive, self-destructive pleasure of one sort or another. Drug and alcohol abuse, compulsive shopping, compulsive sex, or gambling addictions represent only a few examples.

As the consequences of the self-destruction build, a tension to return to “the good old days” of self-sacrifice grows. Like the pendulum in a grandfather clock, prevailing moral codes (within either an individual or a society) swing back and forth. Yet our presumed choice—between nihilistic impulse-worship or self-sacrifice—represents a completely false alternative.

You mentioned that you know people who “sacrifice money, time and energy in the name of serving their fellow man.” If they are truly acting against their own interests, I would not canonize them. On the contrary: I would condemn them for wrecking their lives and any chance at earthly happiness. If they marry someone they don’t love purely out of pity; or if they choose a career they know they don’t want merely to please a parent; or if they deliberately suppress their intelligence so as to appease the envy or low self-esteem of others—all of these selfless, sacrificial acts are dead wrong.

Selflessness is not a virtue. It’s a vice. Otherwise suicide—the ultimate act of self-sacrifice—would be the highest virtue of all.

Some people claim to be sacrificing when, in reality, they are not. A young woman might give birth to a child, for instance, and then resent the child for all the unanticipated responsibilities it causes. Another woman might choose a difficult career, and then resent the business world for all the burdens it imposes upon her.

If she had the child, or chose the career, out of selfless duty—not because she wanted to but because she felt she had to—then she did indeed make a sacrifice. All she can do is acknowledge that she acted on the wrong moral premise, and switch as best she can to a self-interested course of action in the future.

If, on the other hand, she consciously and voluntarily chose to have the child (or the difficult career) because she really wanted the pleasures or rewards associated with the added responsibilities—then she needs to work on reminding herself that her responsibility was a chosen, self-interested one. “I made my bed,” she can tell herself. “So why don’t I try to enjoy it?”

In the realm of ethics, human beings have really botched things up. We have it all backwards. There should be no unchosen obligations. If you allow unchosen obligations into your life, you had better make some changes—and fast! Otherwise you will end up, as so many people do, feeling like you are a victim of others—when, in reality, you victimized yourself because of the senseless code of sacrifice you allowed yourself to accept.

As for people selflessly “serving their fellow man”—you seem to take it as a self-evident truth that this is a good way to be. I totally disagree, even from my own selfish perspective.

Personally, I would much rather go to a doctor or a surgeon who passionately loves his work, as opposed to one who chose it solely as a sacrifice to please his mother, “society,” or the government.

Wouldn’t you?

If I were a child, I would much rather be raised by parents who wanted and freely chose the responsibility of parenting—a responsibility they treat as a rewarding challenge rather than a selfless duty to be despised and resented.

Likewise, I sure hope that the architect and the elevator inspector upon whose talents I depend to safely lift me to the thirty-second floor were motivated by rational self-interest—and not hateful, resentful self-sacrifice. The same goes for the airline pilot who flies me across the continent, the captain of the cruise ship who takes me through shark-infested waters, and the car mechanic who fixes the brakes on my car. Don’t you agree?

I know we are all trained to think that selflessness represents the ideal, while self-interest is intrinsically evil.

Yet if you carefully study the facts of reality, including the particulars of your everyday life, then you will find that precisely the opposite is true. Self-interest is not only best for the individual; it is best for society as well.

The “morality” of self-sacrifice is the greatest and most vicious lie ever propagated. The only end it serves is the motive of those who want to control and dominate you. After all, somebody has to collect the sacrifices. It is an ethical code for slaves and masters—encouraged by those who are more than happy to be your masters (paraphrasing Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged here).

Ten minutes of clear, honest thinking wipes out centuries of falsehoods.

I reject the great lie that sacrifice is “virtue”—and, if you value the quality of your life, so should you.

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