OCON 2025 - Application of An Idea #2
Independence from Altruism
To celebrate Independence week with hundreds of people who are Americans in spirit, there was no better place than the 2025 Objectivist Conference in Boston. In this series of five brief essays, I will bring home some of those ideas in reverse sequence of their appearance on the main stage. As the previous essay featured Greg Salmieri’s Conception of Value, this article will discuss some aspects of Ben Bayer’s “Independence from Altruism” talk that was given on the Fourth of July.
For me, an important quotation was near the end of Ben’s talk - and it was pulled from the Q&A session of Ayn Rand’s “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” speech at Ford Hall Forum:
One does not have to leave a society in the way the characters did in Atlas Shrugged. One does not yet have to break the relationship with society. But you know what one has to do? One has to break relationships with the culture. Meaning, while you live in this society, break all cultural relationships. Meaning, withdraw your sanction from those people, groups, schools or theories which preach the ideas that are destroying you.
What are those ideas that destroy? The ones that encourage self-sacrifice for the greater good – and Bayer described them in various ways. To paraphrase, Covid was an altruist’s dream – stay home, stop the spread, save lives. Sacrifice the young and health for the sick. And regarding those same admonitions from Atlantic magazine, “Shame only works if you share the same moral values as the Atlantic.”
Students of Objectivism know that altruism is not compassion or benevolence. In context, those can be healthy and powerful, but altruism is impossible. No one can sacrifice all the time and live very long. But for you to do it all means the destruction of your self-esteem. And Bayer stressed Ayn Rand’s thought: “Dependence on altruism generates evasion.” Taking it a bit further, “If you don’t choose real self-esteem, you’ll go for junk self-esteem.”
How does junk self-esteem manifest itself today? Looking through the lens of economics, there are many examples you may readily endorse: macro forecasts, irrational markets, perfect competition, externalities, money supply, trade imbalances, stimulus, minimum wage and community stakeholders. What they have in common is the common good – a worthless concept with one purpose – guilt. How does that work? As Ayn Rand said through John Galt, “denouncing it fills you with terror.”
Yet, most economic analysts and market strategists that prevail in corporate media and banking endorse all the altruistic economic policies listed in the paragraph above. And what can you do about it? Shrug. To learn more, please click this link:
https://www.amazon.com/Moneyball-Method-Middle-Class-Manifesto-Objective/dp/1696009111/