The following is an excerpt from "Fountainhead" that I truly cherish. It is something that in essence has stayed with me since the day I read it the first time because I found perfect resonance in it. Some people and their ideas ever so often make me want to revisit the idea and every time I do that I have only found greater and greater acceptance for it. The book fountainhead came to me, out of the blue, through a friend who was reading it nearly 7 years ago. The opening page of the book gripped me to an extent that I just went and bought the book. This was quite special at that time because being a college student I wasn’t loaded with finances but the book's hold was such that the one page I read was enough to hook me on. Since then, it was only a matter of time that I read most of Ayn Rand's works and so far I have not found a more inspiring philosophy in all my readings.
Here is the excerpt which proceeds as a monologue by the main protagonist - Howard Roark, in the novel "Fountainhead" as he is defending himself in the court of law, indicted as he was for the charge of blowing up a major constructional project which was designed by him.
"Thousands of year ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evil doer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gist they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could past an horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.
That man, the unsubmissive and the first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures - because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer - because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one, and that one paid for his courage.
Throughout the centuries there were man who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received - hatred. The great creators, the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The aeroplane was considered impossible, The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the soulful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an aeroplane or a building - that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits other derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.
His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit however is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.
The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power -that it was self - sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a prime mover. The caretor served nothing and no one. He lived for himself.
And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the thing which are the glory of mankind, Such is the nature of achievement....
Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it, To plant he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man - the function of the reasoning mind.
But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is the compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act - the process of reasoning must be performed by each man alone. We can provide a meal to each man but we cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of the body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.
We inherit the products of the thoughts of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an aeroplane. But all through the process, whatever we receive from the others is only the end product of their thinking.
The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival.
Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of the two ways - by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.
The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men. The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite liuves second-hand. He needs other. Others become his prime motive.
The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under ant form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.
The basic need of a second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.
Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self.
No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every percept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.
[How and why that came about is something I fail to understand because our need to create is so strong, I find it strange as to how it gets masked. The reason probably lies in the fact that we lack the confidence that comes from a very strong ego and therefore want the approval of other people who are not simply related to us. This is a rational way of living because you want to be loved and accepted for what you are not who you are. This noble intention however becomes a beast in its own as the self is lost and the opinion of others becomes the most important aim in life - What begins then is a vicious cycle where one becomes a slave to the society and loses a sense of self and then begins a downward spiral leading one to a second-handers' life!!
The man who lives for others is a dependant. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality - the man who lives to others - is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism.
Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
Men have been taught that their first concern is to relived the suffering of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. The man must wish to see others suffer - in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life, Yet the work of the creator has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive.
Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness is the ideal if virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is one who does not think, feel, judge, or act. These are functions of the self.
Here the basic reversal is the most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative - and no freedom. As poles of good and evil- he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifices of others to self. Altruism - the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other man and left him nothing but the choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal - under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud perpetrated on mankind.
This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life. The choice is not self sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon man is evil.
The egotist in the absolute sense of the word is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary manner. Not in his aim, not in his motive, mot in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man - and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men.
Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative, and persona love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard for personal dignity except independence.
In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship between equals. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner.
No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An architect requires a great many men ti erect his building. But he does not ask them to vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and each is free in his proper function. An architect uses steel, glass, concrete, produced by others. But the materials remain just so much steel, glass and concrete until he touches them. What he does with them is his individual property and his individual product. This is the only pattern for proper cooperation among men.
The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes provided his wish does not depend primarily on other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator.
A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule - alone. Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They are the province of the second-hander.
Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.
But men were taught to regard second-handers - tyrants, emperors, dictators as exponents of egotism. 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. Te contest has another name -the individual against the collective.
The 'common good' of a collective - a race, a class, a state - was the claim and justification of every tyranny every established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle?
The only good me can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is - Hands off!"
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This is a philosophy that is different to understand and appreciate and even more difficult to follow.
But, as I see it, a true egoist is someone whose sense of self is so high that he doesn't care for what the world thinks. He works of his own merit and creates what he wants for the sheer joy of it, not with an eye on what rewards or what awards he will get because of them. Public appreciation does not matter because his sense of self is above that and independent of the world. He does not dwell in the words, minds and hearts of others. He is his own person. Radical, Yes! Difficult to understand, Yes! Difficult to comprehend, Yes ! But it sure will be amazing to be able to live like that...
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