The Journals of Ayn Rand (105 page)

The arrogance of the “common man”: he expects “to be convinced,” with no mental effort on his own part. When confronted with the most lucid and explicit speech, idea, statement, or book—he simply declares that “he is not convinced,” and this saves him from the necessity of taking a stand, of pronouncing an independent rational judgment. It saves him even from recognizing that the argument is unanswerable, so he must do something about it; he tells himself that since he’s “not convinced,” there must be something wrong with the argument, it’s not absolute, he doesn’t have to do anything about it. (So, of course, he will never let himself be convinced. Actually, he simply does not think at all and does not give the argument any sort of rational consideration.)

He wants mental food to be pre-digested and automatic. Also—he is firmly convinced that the main job of the thinkers (perhaps, the
only job)
is to convince
him,
to educate him. If asked how one could go about educating him (or making him understand anything), his answer would be: “I don’t know. That’s
your
job. You’ve got to educate me—both give me the right ideas and invent a way to convince me that they are the right ideas. I’m the aim of all society and all existence, ain’t I? You’re the strong, intellectually—I’ m the weak. Your moral duty and only goal in life is to help me. Well, help me.” (This is the “Adrian attitude.”)

An
extremely important point of the parasite’s philosophy:
the desire to exploit the creators and also make them take the blame for the moral evil of such a situation.

This is more prevalent and more vicious than I suspected. I have mentioned one aspect of it: the parasite’s demand that the creator, whom he exploits, must not admit that it’s exploitation; to protect the parasite’s feelings, the creator must fake reality. There are others. The parasite who accepts an unearned favor tries invariably to fake things so as to make it look as if it’s his benefactor who is accepting favors. This is always the case when a person moves into someone’s house, starts doing housework, then yells that the host exploits him (Monica). The parasite cannot accept a favor as a favor—simply and gratefully, as would happen between equals. The parasite resents the favor because he knows his own motive; it is not a plain favor, or a single incident, or a temporary condition—but his permanent way of living, which he knows to be exploitation. He does not help his host as a return courtesy; he does it to fool himself in his own mind, and to reverse the tables—to claim that the host is indebted to him.

The desire here is not to return a courtesy, but to make the benefactor evil or guilty; the motive is not gratitude, but malice. And it is not even a desire to gain self-respect, except most indirectly and viciously: not through raising himself, but through debasing the host.

In a wider, philosophical sense, this vicious reversal is shown in all the collectivist patter about the great men and geniuses being only the product (or voices, or plagiarizers) of the people (or the nation, or the era, or the race, or humanity). This makes the “common men” the creators or source of everything (in some manner which is never stated, explained, or defined), while the genius is only their creature, their mouthpiece—the robot directed by their power, fed by their “spirit.” Now, in fact, the exact opposite is true: the “common men” move and live on the ideas, discoveries, and mental energy of the creators, the originators, the geniuses.

(Perhaps the parasites, the collectivists, are conscious of this—perhaps they actually know and recognize the theme of my story—and those vicious theories of reversal are their answer, their protection. Perhaps John Galt’s accusation—and the awakening of the strikers—is what they dread most.)

This parasites’ psychology leads to the attitude which
I must blast
above all: “
It is not only your duty to serve the world, but also to suffer for doing it, to be tortured by those you serve, for the privilege of serving them.
”

This is what the parasite offers to the creator as the sublime virtue. “Virtue is all you’ll have, since you’re a hero, aren’t you? I’ll have everything else.”

Translated into the parasite’s morality, this is what it amounts to: “I need you, because you’re my superior. For that same reason, I hate you. If I can have the satisfaction of torturing you for the advantages you give me, I’ll have both satisfactions, the spiritual and the material; I’ll be happy—and you’ll be truly altruistic. You’ll let me exploit you—and absolve me of the moral blame. Evil must be paid for by suffering—so you’ll pay for my sin. You’ll do the suffering. In permitting me to hate you and torture you, you will save me from the painful knowledge of your greatness and my smallness, of your virtue and my depravity. You will feed both my body and my spirit—at the expense of yours. I am incapable of your kind of happiness and I cannot bear the sight of it, since it is a reproach to me—so you will renounce it for my sake. You are a creature of joy—and I, a creature of suffering. So you will choose suffering—for the sake of letting me have
my kind
of joy, the joy of seeing you in agony.
That
is the true self-sacrifice to an inferior.
That
is real pity.
That
is altruism.”

This is most important and requires special handling, in dramatized events, not just in implication. (Probably for Galt and “the man of pity.”)

 

Note on style:
Nothing must be over-detailed; I want it extreme, simplified, stylized, impressionistic—in main, abstract outlines only—like the drawing of a skyline in forms, without details. (Remember the picture of a stylized sky with long, straight bands of clouds.)

13

AR began writing
Atlas
Shrugged on September 2, 1946. This chapter presents the notes she made while writing the novel up to John Galt’s speech.

 

 

Note for last chapter
(philosophical conclusion): The strikers have won, not because the parasites have learned anything or because the parasites have collapsed physically, but because the last of the strikers (Rearden and Dagny) have learned the lesson that Galt wanted to teach the best brains of the world—the lesson of not supporting their own destroyers, and of the creators’ nature, function, and proper code. From now on, the exploitation of the best by the worst will never again be permitted by the best.

 

 

An important point to stress:
blast the fool idea that material production is some sort of low activity, the result of a base “materialistic” impulse—as opposed to the “spiritual realm” (whatever they think
that
is), which consists of some sort of vague, passive contemplation of something or other. Show that material production is the result of and comes from the highest and noblest aspect of man, from his creative mind, from his independent rational judgment—which is his highest attribute and the sole base of his morality. To exercise one’s own independent rational judgment is the essence of man’s morality, his highest action, his sole moral commandment that embraces all his virtues. Material production comes from
that
—it requires the
noblest
moral action (independent thought) as its source. It is the result of the highest morality, of the noblest courage,
of the best within man.
(Remember this for the last chapter.)

Never mind the weak little second-handers, of all degrees and variations, who coast on the thinking of the few geniuses, who make a great busy show of a “grossly materialistic” pursuit of
money,
who manage to amass fortunes through the “human,” rather than the creative angle, through the Peter Keating—second-hander‘s—politician’s method of using and exploiting
men,
not originating ideas. They are only the scum on the surface, the free riders on the flow of the genius’s energy. Who originates the ideas, methods, discoveries which they exploit? They are not the representatives of the essence of material production. They are not its sources. The genius is.

Material production is the result of the
highest spiritual quality
and activity. That the second-handers ride on it, push themselves to the forefront and often grab all the profit, is due to the geniuses permitting it, [which in turn is due to] the acceptance of the moral theory of altruism and the blindness of the geniuses to their own nature and function, to the actual principles of their own existence.

And, in degree, in regard to each particular man involved in material production, he succeeds only to the extent to which he functions on the principles of the creators, on his independent rational judgment; to the extent to which he uses the “social” method and functions on the principles of a second-hander, he fails. (In a free society, he fails personally. As society begins to get collectivized (controlled), he has a chance of succeeding in the narrow sense of keeping his graft, loot or profit—but then, and to the extent of his success in this, he destroys society and the whole economy. Material production is not the product of the second-hander and cannot be kept going on his methods and principles.)

Show that the real sources, the spark-plugs of material production (the inventors and industrialists), are creators in the same sense, with the same heroic virtues, of the same high
spiritual
order, as the men usually thought of as creators—the artists. Show that
any
original rational idea, in any sphere of man’s activity, is an act of creation.
Vindicate
the industrialist—the author of material production (John Galt, Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart).

Of course, that cheap snobbery about material production is based on a deeper philosophical error—on the vicious idea of “matter as sin” and spirit as its antagonist. And it’s logical that if one accepts that idea (which represents the debasement of man and of the earth), then one considers the activity of preserving man’s survival (material production) as low and evil. To be high, one must then starve to death—that’s “liberating the spirit.”

Tie this to the clear exposition of the fact (as
clear
as you can make it) that the material is only the expression of the spiritual; that it can be neither created
nor used
without the spiritual (thought); that it has no meaning without the spiritual, that it is only the means to a spiritual end—and, therefore, any new achievement in the realm of material production is an act of
high spirituality,
a great triumph and expression of man’s spirit. And show that those who despise “the material” are those who despise man and whose basic premises are aimed at man’s destruction.

For anyone who gets confused by the spectacle of second-handers “placing the material first”—show that these second-handers are not the creators, but the destroyers of material production. Show that to conquer, control, and create in the material realm requires the highest kind of spiritual activity and the highest type of “spiritual” man.

And, to go to the roots of the whole vicious error,
blast
the separation of man into “body” and “soul,” the opposition of “matter” and “spirit.” Man is an indivisible entity, possessing both elements—but not to be split into them, since they can be considered separately only for purposes of discussion, not in actual fact. In actual fact, man is an indivisible, integrated entity—and his place is here, on earth. His “spirit” is his mind—his control over the earth.

Incidentally, note that the good industrialists (such as I’ve met) are high types of men—whereas the artists (allegedly the “spiritual” men) are neurotic or depraved weaklings. The material producers deal in, with and through reason (they have to)—and look at the successes they have achieved. The alleged “men of the spirit” deal in emotionalism and mysticism, in the irrational (by having accepted the irrational or “inspirational” premise)—and look at the sickening state and centuries-long stagnation of men’s spiritual life (their philosophies, their morality, their state of misery, futility, and confusion). The industrialists are moral
because
they function on the basis of reason. The artists are the depraved types. (There’s the tie of reason and morality.)