The Form of Generosity

I was going through philosopher Dr. Leonard Peikoff’s book The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out (2012) this past week, and it just made me wonder about the Greeks, the Romans, and those who lived in the Middle Ages. In the book, Dr. Peikoff evaluates different periods in history according to literature, science, education and politics, but what were the people who lived during these periods really like? Were they hedonists, thirsty for thrills, without concern for anyone else, pursuing their own gratification? Or were they subdued, allowing themselves to be trampled on just so they could say they sacrificedm themselves in the name of altruism? The questions lead me to wonder about us, too. As I walk through the stores, looking at the winking lights, and see people tossing change into a kettle like a wishing well, I think who are we now?

In a word

The word selfish has been so used, abused, and misused through the centuries. The proper term is a positive one. American philosopher and author Ayn Rand described selfishness as rational self-interest, which is living for one’s own sake without exploiting others. At first glance, “selfishness” appears to be a vicious slur hurled at anyone who wants their way. President Donald Trump was called “selfish” by many during his four years in office, most of whom don’t really understand what it means. The concept of rational selfishness wouldn’t describe megalomaniacal figures like Trump.

Rational selfishness is the only way true gratitude can be practiced and realized. Generosity also flows only from people with well-developed egos, acting in their own rational self-interest.

It extends throughout the world like a cool breeze coming off of the mountains. It’s refreshing and invigorating to know that rational selfishness is the reason that we breathe, work, play and live.

In any instance where someone is accused of being selfish almost one hundred percent of the time it is because the person slinging the word around (wrongly) sees injustice. But the fact is that in these cases, rational selfishness isn’t the blame but self-destructiveness.

Selfishness during Christmas

My family exchanged gifts for Christmas 2020, which was a bittersweet time for most people. We gave gifts because we value each other, and take pleasure in seeing each other experience happiness and joy. If we saw each other as dirty, rotten scoundrels, we wouldn’t bother. But that’s precisely what altruism values. The altruist believes it’s good to give no matter what, even to the robber, the murderer, or the rapist. If they say a few words to the unknown and unknowable, somehow it’s alright, but that is a vicious miscarriage of justice, and self-destructive to the giver (unless of course they derive some sort of happiness from giving to people who haven’t hesitated to commit acts of evil and aggression against others who’ve done them no harm).

Rational selfishness is a trade. It permits both parties to offer a value for another value. When one is altruistic, that’s where terror reigns. To be a devotee of selfless philosophies is to surrender your mind, your very soul to the clutches of those who wish to only see lopsided trades. These are the bedrock to sacrifices.

Comedian Patton Oswalt proposed a theory in his 2019 Netflix comedy special I Love Everything that Jesus of Nazareth, the poster boy for suffering, bleeding, and dying, was about 15 to 20 different people whittled down to one guy in a world far different from today. Oswalt said “biblical times were horrible,” and he’s got a point. Just imagine all the robberies, rapes, murders and other crimes that occurred without modern investigators, advanced forensic teams, and surveillance techniques. Oswalt seems to recognize the problem when he suggests we consider how people would probably have been stoned to death and have their belongings stripped from them, especially if they were caught committing a crime. But then he suggests a false alternative: if people were not so cruel and vicious, he says, and actually cared more about others than themselves, this kind of barbarism would not exist, but we know that’s not true. Crime sometimes spikes in certain cities, and in regions around the globe, sometimes to extremes of violence and coercion, but the day-to-day perils faced by average people in most of the world don’t come close to what they were in the time of Jesus, but the improvement has nothing to do with people being more kind and compassionate, and everything to do with people loving themselves to have invented better justice systems, governance, and crime-fighting techniques over the ages!

Oswalt misses one crucial point: It is virtually impossible to love or to care for anyone more than yourself, other than your own child perhaps.

Who owns it?

But let’s say you were on the receiving end of love and care, wouldn’t you be rationally selfish to accept it? If we used the commonly understood definition of “selfishness,” that love and care might become hot potatoes no one would want to hold. How could you accept devotion gratefully without being “selfish?” The truth is, anyone who would accept love and care is acting to support their own self-preservation. As long as they’ve been honest about who they are, and why they’re interacting with the person providing the love and care, they’re being rationally selfish. So why do we damn these people who want to make their own lives better without hurting other people in the process?

I remember delivering meals to patients in a veterans nursing home. The trade was evident. They received their meals, and I got paid for it. The pay came in the form of gratitude. If it weren’t for their receptive spirits, I would have never been able to perform my work. But since they were always appreciative and thankful, I gladly cut up their portions and fed them. All the while, through the whole exchange, I received both spiritual and material payment. And without one you can’t have the other.

Most people view cash as filthy lucre, or dirty money. Sure they want billions of dollars like the next person, but seem to feel obligated to say they only want it so they can give it away to charity, as if admitting to wanting it for themselves makes them bad people. There’s nothing wrong with charitable giving of course. If an individual finds an organization that caters to their values (more rational selfishness), that’s admirable, but committing to giving to causes that hinder or damage their lives, or the lives of others they value, is an irredeemable vice.

The focus should be on how that money was created in the first place. Before it saw the account of a charity, it had to be produced. And that takes rational selfishness. Whether it’s for the welfare state or Wall Street warriors in the Empire State, wealth has to be created. Before money can buy food, pay utilities, build a new condo or addition on a house on the beach, producers have to produce the value people want to pay for. The dollars have to come into existence before they can be used by anyone, for any purpose, good or evil. Take Silicon Valley’s production for example; most people take their email, social media and search platforms for granted, but all of these were products of the minds of rationally selfish, even greedy individuals.

Big issues

How much irrational selflessness went into making Google? What amount of altruism was involved in creating Facebook? Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg (and company) all had to use their own wits to start their companies. In the process, like others, they became multi-billionaires. Now, of course they had to downplay their roles as rationally selfish “one percenters.” They evidently felt compelled to give their money away...which would have been perfectly okay, but for the fact they felt compelled by guilt to do it, as a kind of penance for the sin of creating massive wealth, generated by the value people found in their remarkable tools.

Probably the biggest name in giving is another tech giant, Bill Gates. This true mastermind built Microsoft with the late Paul Allen who, like others, started in a garage. Gates envisioned taking room-sized computers, and shrinking them down to sizes manageable (at first) for the average home office desktop, and ultimately small enough to fit into our pockets. His genius helped him amass a fortune in the billions, some of which he’s given away. Gates, like other tech geniuses, seems unable to fully embrace his rational selfishness. On the one hand, his own self-interest compelled him to build Microsoft, and his massive wealth, and on the other, his inclination to give away vast sums as if it would be shameful not to, shows he’s rapidly becoming a selfless shell of his former self. His Giving Pledge itself shows he’s even trying to spread the shame around, and it’s working. Almost everyone who has made extremely large sums of cash has felt compelled to contribute to it. It should be called a “Penitence Pledge,” because this money is not often given out of a sincere desire to see children get enough medical care to withstand malaria (for example), but rather as a means of assuaging guilt for the sin of making “too much money.”

Gates is too good a businessman, and seems to be too good a man to lower himself to the level of the true altruist, or self-sacrificing lamb, so maybe he’ll establish the organization as the Maker’s Pledge.

That’s on the macro-level. What rational selfishness requires of everyone (by choice) is for the soul to know its own powers. These powers of spirit are not related to anything mystical, but of this universe. They comprise knowledge of self and complete control over one’s actions. A rationally selfish person never seeks to transact a bad deal. That means for themselves and for the other party as well. The rationally selfish person recognizes the rights of others, and only wants to make their own life better when ethically interacting with other people. Good deeds will always have a place for the rationally self-interested, and those good deeds will forever play a role in the advancement of humanity. As long as rational selfishness is the primary motivator of mankind, there’s no need to worry about the road ahead. However, if we persist in punishing the rationally selfish, or mischaracterizing them as irrationally selfish purely because they are successful, we run the risk of returning to the barbarism and irrational world of injustice of the world that needed a “savior” like Jesus to maintain hope.