I was watching a documentary about Ayn
Rand and her philosophy of 'rational self-interest'. Her idea was
briefly that through rational self interest, when each individual
cares for it's very own happiness and not for the happiness of
others, a society would become stable and the economy would provide
wealth and well being for everyone, self regulating only through the
self interest motivation of each participant. The 'rational' within
this term can be referred to as 'based on common sense' and a
responsible and ethical attitude, which means that the only
self-regulation within that personal striving for self interest and
your own happiness would be to consider the consequences of your
actions for others in a way that your actions should not harm anyone
else or interfere with another's self interest. This self regulation
includes of course the rigorous rejection of any interference of that
kind in your own personal pursuit of happiness.
Very interesting aspects, but I will
not go into the practicality of this philosophy or discuss the
attempts to implement it into our capitalistic system in this blog.
My point is the reaction I had to the
words selfishness and self-interest.
I experienced during reading and
watching about Ayn Rand an emotional reaction towards the use of the
term 'selfishness' or 'self-interest' in such a, as I saw it,
'positive' way. I was surprised that it could probably be considered
that self interest and selfishness could lead to well being for all,
maybe even a society full of happy people without exception.
I was nevertheless totally aware of the
implcations how the terms are used and what is meant by 'rational
self interest', I am clear about the meaning and the considerations,
it is not even new, 'do your own thing', 'mind your own business', do
not interfere, sounds ok, no problem with that - but: is it even
possible? Who decides where the chain of responsibility starts and
where it ends? Is that my own business too? Then I am free to shift
the borders of my perception of my responsibility and consequence
whenever I like.
But we do live in a world that is
highly and deeply interconnected, many borders are merely existing on
paper, on the world market simple and seemingly meaningless
decisions can cause an extraordinary effect on whole countries far
away, each and every consumer decision in our society has
consequences reaching across the whole planet, can we even dare to
believe we could foresee the possible harm that our decisions and
actions can inflict on others? Or ist the term 'rational
self-interest' nothing more than an excuse, an attempt to avoid to
state the appearing inability of the human being to change itself, to
be trusted, to becöme a trustworthy, reliable, reasonable and
happy part of a functioning society and thus taking the bull by the
horns, saying: "let's do the only reasonable thing left:
everybody RUN!"?
Those were excerpts of my self
interrogations when I saw the documentary and read a little more
about Ayn Rand. So, this is obviously not an expertise. I just want
to make clear that I did not 'reject' the whole idea and stopped
investigating just because of my 'reaction' to the term 'selfishness'
and 'self interest'. I would have done that probably, many years ago,
when I saw myself more as an idealist, a young philosopher myself,
when I saw 'importance' in my personality and used any knowledge, any
reading, any debate as an extension for my own self-righteous
'character'.
So still I had this reaction and a
prejudices to tackle this philosophy with a suspicious mind from the
beginning. It was merly a slight tension, a slight feeling and when I
became aware of it I could literally face each single automated
program of my mind starting to block my view on what is really
happening. I could deliberately follow the attempts of my mind and
thoughts to judge the 'person' Ayn Rand, to make up images,
speculations about her past, history, trying to find suitable self
justifying interpretations of her mimic in the video which could make
her look untrustworthy and so on. My self-righteous Ego started to
straighten itself, thoughts of arrogant sarcasm and scornful comments
turned up.
As I said before, I could deliberately
follow those steps and initialised programs and I did not allow them
to determine myself. I know, as maybe everybody knows, how such
judgemental thought patterns take place and how they develop until
one is totally convinced that the thoughts, justifications and
judgements are absolutely real and true, while in fact one is just
blocking oneself from reality and betraying oneself just to defend
an image of oneself as a personality that one has grown fond of.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to charge the words selfishness and self interest
with a negative value.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to become determined by my emotional reactions
towards words that I have judged and charged with a positive or
negative value.
to be continued with self forgiveness
and self corrective statements...
Link to the original documentary:
Thanks Bastian, I have been looking at the same point exactly wrote about it in the Group Email, it was interesting to not discard her speech based on reactions that I too saw coming up but did not allow myself to follow and use to interpret what she meant but to instead see if I could just hear what she said, an epic achievement in my life
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