About that “Atlas” study…

I had hope not to touch on this subject, since it always provokes some very tedious responses, but since my colleague over at No Cross, No Crescent has decided to talk about it, I suppose that I must.

I am referring to this recent bit of evolutionary biology that is supposed to disprove Ayn Rand’s views on the evils of altruism.  I find myself reading it with a certain amount of weariness, since it follows rule #1 of criticizing Objectivism: Never honestly and completely say what Objectivism is.  As long as you can leave out all the bits that don’t fit your criticism, and distort the rest, and hey presto!  You have your critique.

The meat of the article is probably the following section:

I’ll start this by clearing up some confusion of terms, especially altruism and selfishness, and how they are defined, how they are used, and why blurring different usages of the words is central to this shell game.

I’ll start with altruism.  The shell game get’s going because there is a more general use, which you can read here.  The relevant part is this first sentence:

Altruism is the principle or practice of concern for the of others.

But it goes on then to say:

   Pure altruism consists of sacrificing something for someone other than the self (e.g. sacrificing time, energy or possessions) with no expectation of any compensation or benefits, either direct, or indirect (e.g., receiving recognition for the act of giving)

Now it should be clear that this is an amalgamation of two different concepts.  Firstly, concern for the welfare of others.  What others?  I feel concern for family and friends.  What about strangers?  I’ve once had to intervene to stop a woman getting assaulted on the streets, I volunteer to help out coaching in addition to my work, and I’m a registered blood donor.  Who can object to any of this?

But mark the second statement.  A shift has occurred, from talking about caring about other people (which other people is a discussion for some other time), to calling for sacrifice.  What’s a sacrifice?  It’s giving up something, and getting less or nothing in return.  If I give up something I value less for what I value more, that’s called a trade.  To take my above examples again, do I get less or nothing back for any of them?  Not at all.  Not material goods, maybe, but I’m not a materialist, and neither is any other Objectivist.  To take the subject of coaching, if I see someone who really wants to study science and wants to make a go of it, it’s a big value to me.  I like seeing people succeed, and especially in the area that is my number one value.  Or to take the example of blood donation; I don’t particularly like needles, but I do enjoy giving blood, and I like the thought that a pint of my blood may save someone’s life someday.  Now, granted, it might save the life of someone I’d prefer to see die, but the number of people like that is vanishingly small.  In most cases, it is a case of a bond through a shared value; life is the ultimate value, and I’m happy to spend a little time to help someone struggling for theirs.  Again, it’s a powerful reward, but not a material one (though I’d be irritated if they stopped the tea, juice and biscuits afterwards).  Many people feel the same way; the NHS has never paid a penny for blood, and I hope it never tries to.  That would spoil things.

The example of blood donation allows me to draw this distinction between benevolence, kindness and solidarity (versions of ‘caring for the welfare of others’) which neither I nor Miss Rand object to, and which are very fine things, and the idea of altruism – the idea that it’s your primary moral obligation to help others, to sacrifice to others.  Taking blood donation as another example, imagine the NHS went around with huge publicity campaigns hectoring people to give blood, telling them they were worthless individuals if they didn’t.  Or, worse, sought a law demanding that people donate or else.  Suddenly doesn’t seem quite the same, does it?  I’d tell them to go to hell.

Is this just my invention, am I just giving a gloss on Rand’s words?  I’ve been accused of that.

From Atlas Shrugged, from the parable of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, based heavily on what she saw happen in Soviet Russia.  The Company has instituted the rule of altruism, of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” in its factory.  Every worker is paid according to what they need from the earnings of the pool, and everyone is expected to contribute as much as they can – and, remember, they cannot ask for anything by right of their work, as they are obliged to help others as their primary moral ideal.

  In the old days, we used to celebrate if somebody had a baby, we used to chip in and help him out with the hospital bills.  Now, if a baby was born, we didn’t speak to the parents for weeks.  Babies, to us, had become what locusts were to farmers…

That’s exactly right.  The principles of benevolence and of self-sacrifice are not two different aspects of the same thing; they are completely inimical to each other.

Is this some twisting of the term “altruism”?  Am I just “going to the extreme”?  No.  Let’s take the word of the man who coined the term altruism in the first place, Augste Comte.

Altruism (also called the ethic of altruism, moralistic altruism, and ethical altruism) is an ethical doctrine that holds that individuals have a moral obligation to help, serve, or benefit others, if necessary, at the sacrifice of self-interest. Auguste Comte’s version of altruism calls for living for the sake of others.

Now let’s take the man’s own words:

   [The] social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service…. This [“to live for others”], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely.”

 

Are alarm bells beginning to go off when you read this?  Do you begin to see what every society that has preached and practiced altruism has ended in slavery and slaughter?

Take an example under this hideous ethic.  When I interfered in that assault,  I did it because, amongst other things, the risk to me was slight.  I’m six foot three and was wearing my army gear.  As evil and irrational as that thug was, he was unlikely to start something with me.  On the other hand, I have a number of female friends who are, frankly, tiny – a head and a half, at least, shorter than me, and weigh about half of what I do.  I would not expect them to have intervened in that; if they had, they would have run the risk of being seriously assaulted and probably raped.  Anything beyond calling the cops from a safe distance would have been the most they could have been expected to do, and it would have been profoundly wicked to expect otherwise.

Yet, from the stance of altruism, in my hypothetical they should have, not just if there was a risk, but if there was a certainty of being raped and beaten.  What objection could they raise to that?  That they had a right to the sanctity of their own bodies, to their lives?  That doesn’t count for altruism; you have, as Comte says, no rights whatsoever.  All that counts is that someone else needs your help, and it’s yours to serve, regardless of the cost to you.  Anything else would be selfish.

Now, look back to the excerpt at the top of this article.

The term altruism can be defined as extra-familial generosity (as opposed to nepotism among relatives).

Generosity.  That’s it.  That’s the extent of this chap’s definition of altruism, which completely leaves out what it really means.  So his long, tiresome argument is against a case that Rand does not, in fact, make.

I have banged on about this at great length, because this is central not just to the ridiculous shell game that article plays, but also the way this hideous creed keeps succeeding.   It does so because people are, by and large, a decent bunch.  People go along with altruism because they do know the rewards that come from kindness, benevolence and solidarity, and they also don’t want to be a bunch of lying, cheating, stealing bastards.

Now mark the other half of this shell game.  You see, the article gives us an example of a “rugged individualist”.

 But one man, a rugged individualist named Cephu, had other ideas. When no one was looking, Cephu slipped away to set up his own net in front of the others. “In this way he caught the first of the animals fleeing from the beaters,” explained Turnbull in his book The Forest People, “but he had not been able to retreat before he was discovered.”

Clearly the sort of rugged individualist Rand would have approved of, right?  Er, not exactly.

From Atlas:

  [Rearden] remembered the time when, aged fourteen, faint with hunger, he would not steal fruit from a sidewalk stand.

Rearden is one of Rand’s heroes, and one of the most popular.  Not exactly like this Cephu.  It’s worth looking a little closer at what Cephu says in justification of his behaviour:

He felt he deserved a better place in the line of nets,” Turnbull wrote. “After all, was he not an important man, a chief, in fact, of his own band?

Once again, if you read Atlas or most anything that Rand wrote, these sorts of tribal chiefs come in for the harshest possible condemnation (something that still surprises many people: the majority of businessmen in her books are villains).  If you don’t believe me, go to youtube and look up any of Yaron Brook’s lectures.

In the same way something toxic gets smuggled through under the heading of “concern for others”, something toxic gets smuggled through under the heading of “selfishness”.  What people think it means is being a lying, cheating, stealing bastard.  That is, sacrificing others to yourself as the only alternative to sacrificing yourself to others.

But selfishness means acting in your self-interest.  Being a lying, cheating, stealing bastard is in your self interest, how, exactly?  It’s an incredibly self-destructive form of action.  First you’ll get caught, almost certainly, like Cephu and like, in our society, Bernie Madoff.  Second, you will live a horrible, neurotic, fear-filled life even before you are caught (again, see Madoff).  I imagine all of you have had the experience of lying at some time in your life; it’s horrible.  You are constantly worried about being found out, you constantly have the strain of remembering what happened, what you said happened, whom you said what to…  it’s a horrible, self-destructive course of action.   Truly doing what’s in your real self-interest is a lot of hard work.

I’ll let you into a secret: when it comes selling people on rational self interest, you find that it’s the “rational” bit that’s the tricky one.

Since I’ve banged on about solidarity, I think will bang on some more, since it makes my point.  Solidarity – derived from justice, and, yes, I can find the relevant quotes if you want, but this is getting gargantuan – is about sticking up for chaps who share your values.  Is that in your self-interest?  Let us cycle back to the nineteen-thirties when a group of German noblemen, clergy, army officers and other dissidents known as the Kreisau Gruppe sent a secret diplomatic mission to the Chamberlain government.  They said, “If you will guarantee that a move against Czecheslovakia means war, we will perform a coup d’etat and decapitate the regime, and put Hitler and his cronies under arrest for treason.  We will be able to tell the German people that we’ve saved them not just from tyranny, but from another bloody war.  But we need your guarantee that you will fight.”  They were told “Forget it”, a naked betrayal of the principle of solidarity, and you may remember how brilliantly that worked.  So, is solidarity in your rational self interest?  Hell yes.  I promise you that I may be being ironic, but I am not insincere when I refer to comrades.

I might add, in a same way the betrayal of the Kurds in 1991 by Kissinger and Scowcroft, of the Tutsis in 1994 by the UN and the Clinton administration, and of the Fur people in the last few years by the peaceniks and other creeps, have all sown whirlwinds that we will all reap in due course, mark my words on that.

So.  I have shown that this author doesn’t bother to state Rand’s point about selfishness and altruism accurately, and therefore his whole case is completely cockeyed.  There are just two other things to deal with, first of all the fact that it is certainly true that primitive hunter gatherer societies practice altruism in its true sense, and that altruism is normal and natural.   Here are a few other characteristics that are normal and natural: racism, xenophobia, leader-worship, the subjection of women, superstition, anti-gay hate, and dying at thirty from disease.  These are all part of the horrible pre-history of our species, what you might call our original sin, part of the darkness out of which we must climb.  My colleague made a point about the altruist societies of Sweden and Iceland, but let’s cut to the chase, and look at the societies really succeeded in instituting the concepts of altruism, i.e. self sacrifice, namely Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.  All of those were completely rotten with the idea of self-sacrifice, of suffering for some “greater” end, and, of course, of the denial of individual rights (Comte again).

The second is to do with the myth of Atlas, and of the related myth of Prometheus, of the one who brings Divine Fire to mankind and is rewarded with torture.  This is dismissed as “myth”.  I will expand on the list I posted in the comments section there: Alan Turing, murdered for his homosexuality after doing more to save Britain from the Nazis than Churchill, Giodarno Bruno and Mastro Cecco, burned alive for demonstrating heliocentrism, Gallileo Gallilee, threatened with torture for the same, Thomas Aquinas, persecuted for trying to resurrect reason, Joseph Priestly, with his laboratory smashed by the Church and King mob…  Oh yes, the fate of those who bring man divine fire has very often been torture.  Nor can the idea that the “financial” world is somehow different be sustained.  It takes eight hundred million dollars and incalculable man hours to produce a new drug that I can now get for a song and a wander down to the local chemist’s (“drug store” to you rebel colonists, I believe).

That is the final, evil legacy of the idea of altruism; it has spread this notion that another person’s virtue and ability is a threat.  That’s utter hogwash.  From the sober businessman who runs the corner shop down the road from me to the intellectual giants who make my field of research possible, my life is endlessly enriched by other people’s achievement and most certainly not by their sacrifice.

There!  Now this has taken me all morning to write, and is almost three thousand words long, so I’d like to make a few short requests.  First, please try to state what Rand’s views were accurately before arguing against them.  Second, please no boring comments that are deliberately trying to misunderstand (I know most of you won’t go for that, but the internet is what it is…).  And third, think about donating some blood when you have a moment.  It’s a relaxing half-hour, and you have the knowledge that you probably helped save someone’s life, which is a pretty cool feeling.