In Defense of Selfishness: Explaining the nature sex and relationships
Peter Schwartz from the Ayn Rand Instituted has been doing good publicity for his latest book released on June 2 titled In Defense of Selfishness: Why Self-Sacrifice is Unjust and Destructive. I thought the title odd as the word selfish has been so mischaracterized in our culture that it comes across as a negative. But Peter knows that and calculated that the opposition cast at him would set the trap for his philosophic argument—which is the point of the book. Schwartz has been successfully collecting the bounty of that trap with many interviews and making his point well.
I am of a mind that something really terrible happened in the pre-Deluge days of human history. What we have been told was sinful and wretched behavior may in fact have been translated by an insurrectionists revising historical perspective in a dominating need to rule over others. Somewhere in that struggle the word selfishness was destroyed of its meaning and the word “altruism” became synonymous with the word—“good.” All the religions that sprung forth from this period embraced altruism while they chastised self-interest forcing human beings to admit by their very birth an inclination to sin as defined by the quantity of self-sacrifice a given human being is willing to make on behalf of the greater good. Later this mentality would evolve into movements of communism and socialism, but the stage was set in religion.
However, for thinking people there are cracks into that façade which allow us to peer back into a time when such philosophic notions were not yet forged in such a destructive way and reveal a more sophisticated approach to pre-Socratic philosophy that has been defaced by the more recent translation in order to protect a desire to control the masses like sheep set to slaughter. It is on this stage that Peter Schwartz released his book described on his website as such:
In Defense of Selfishness is a cultural analysis of a deeply ingrained idea, one that influences our most important personal and political choices. The book makes the case—a sober, meticulous case—against the tenets of altruism. It shows that what altruism demands is not, as many superficially believe, that you respect the rights of your neighbor and refrain from acting like Attila the Hun, but that you subordinate yourself to others. Altruism entails not benevolence and cooperation, but servitude. Whether you are told to sacrifice by liberals in order to provide for the medically uninsured or by conservatives in order to preserve your community’s traditions, the code of altruism insists that the needs of others take precedence over your own interests. It declares that whenever you have something others lack, you have a duty to sacrifice for their sake.
The book asks why the fact that someone needs your money makes him morally entitled to it, while the fact that you’ve earned it, doesn’t. It explains why altruism leads to the opposite of social harmony: continual conflict. It scrupulously demonstrates, in theory and in nuts-and-bolts practice, the injustice and the destructiveness of self-sacrifice. And it offers a rational, non-predatory alternative.
People generally view the alternative—“selfishness”—as personified by conniving, murderous brutes, who embrace a do-whatever-you-feel-like-doing philosophy. People believe that our only choice is: sacrifice ourselves to others by being altruistic or sacrifice others to ourselves by being “selfish.” In Defense of Selfishness rejects this false alternative. It rejects the entire premise of sacrifice, under which one person’s gain comes only at the price of another’s loss. Instead, it proposes a true alternative to altruism, whereby people deal with one another not by sacrificing but by offering value for value, to mutual benefit, and by refusing to seek the unearned. This is an alternative, based on Ayn Rand’s ethics of rational self-interest, under which individuals live honest, self-respecting, productive lives. Because the truly selfish person lives by the guidance of reason, not by mindless impulses, he repudiates the unthinking, short-range mentality of the crook, the fly-by-nighter, the drug addict, the playboy, the drifter—all of whom are acting in contradiction to their self- interest.
http://peterschwartz.com/in-defense-of-selfishness/
To prove the merit of Peter’s theory all one needs to do is look toward the human activity of sex to understand. In sex those good at it understand that the selfish needs of their partner must first be met if they would like a return experience. Sex is largely driven by self-interest—it’s something that someone wants to do with—or to—someone else because of their selfish desire driven by animal impulses. Men known as bad lovers are those who do their business with a partner then the moment of their objective are no longer able to continue on. Men known as good lovers will make sure their partner reaches that point before they do so that the partner will want to do it again. The man is making a self-interested investment not only in the present but into the future by ensuring that his lover gets what they want as well.
The modern trend at three-way and group sex—along with the pornographic desensitizing of sex by cheapening it with a barrage of sexual addiction purely focused on imagery is a social attempt at the communal aspects of sex as opposed to the property rights of self-interest. The word “my” in such relationships is replaced with “we” or “us.” Instead of that being “my” wife or girlfriend, it becomes “our,” which then becomes an altruistic self-sacrificing practice. The woman who has miserable sex with a husband who is too busy thinking about other things to see her satisfied is an example of the religious sacrifice to a larger institution above her self-interest to enjoy herself. She will give him what he needs because the Bible tells her to ignoring her needs for the sacrifice of the Biblical laws of conduct. The corrupt man who is the bad lover is then in the power position to take advantage of his dedicated wife in the same way that a congregation might fall to the whims of a church leader of any denomination. The origin of the villainy is in the belief that altruism is the higher moral premise even in spite of the body’s desire for the needs of its terrestrial interests.
A happy couple will acknowledge their needs to one another and will tend to keep those needs within the self-possession of their relationship. Once those needs are met they can resume some other activity freely, and contentedly knowing that they will have another opportunity with a willing partner at their wish. That is because the needs of both parties are met—just like in a free market society. Sex and capitalism are very much applicable to the same moral premise. Orgies and swinging parties are indicative of progressive politics that lead to socialism because their emphasis is on the collective whole, and not their individual needs. The ecstasy of such an experience is on the social assimilation instead of the merit of an individual.
For instance, at a rock concert when a woman flashes her breasts to the stage or to the swarming hoard, she is declaring her sexuality to the group as a kind of sacrifice. When a woman holds the sight of her breasts to her chosen lover, she is giving him a gift intended for his possession in trade for a gratifying sexual experience. If she gives such a sight to many the effort is cheapened when in the privacy of a bedroom—because everyone has seen them. So there is nothing special in the exchange. It could be argued that breasts are breasts and are merrily sacks of fat—but in our culture they have meaning related to sex—so are symbolic of the exchanges made during such physical activity.
It is for this reason that we don’t have open topless beaches in a society that is overtly capitalist. It’s not because of religious origins, it’s because of the value of the one on one exchange with a sexual partner. In France where topless beaches are common, if a woman is topless with a male partner she is still advertising herself as either not in possession of a lover, or open to a new one if one happens by. She is a product of society not her individual sanctity. Society might declare her a liberated woman not afraid to show herself in public—but her sexual power has been marginalized because she will have less erotic capital with her potential mates because their self-interest desires to have a woman worthy of their efforts as individuals—not every guy who has found their way into the woman’s bed. There is nothing special about such a woman—that’s why men call such whores. Men may want first to take care of their needs, but they want the object of their desire to have some value. When sex is shared with many the capital investment of potential suitors is far less.
These are just examples that are easy to understand because everyone has sex who is human. So the correlation is easily assimilated. But the same mentality could be rolled over into virtually everything that involves value—for which money is but a symbol. Yet we have been taught the opposite in our culture, that money represents selfishness, and that communal activity is superior to individual merit. Thousands of years of communal investments have proven to be wrong at their very core and that this whole mess started sometime after the Biblical Deluge. The entire philosophy of perhaps six thousand or more years has proven to be totally incorrect and in drastic need of revision. It is upon that foundation of thought that Peter Schwartz is making his argument. Selfishness is a dirty word in a culture that has been trained that altruism is far superior. However, to truly understand why altruism is a grand lie, just look to the satisfaction of your sex life and what works and doesn’t and apply those same values to everything else. It will then be discovered that Peter Schwartz is far more correct than Plato or Kant. And that society needs to reset their philosophy to a time before Moses built an ark during a world-wide flood.
Rich Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
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