The Journals of Ayn Rand (114 page)

A man without self-respect cannot defend himself. A man without respect for his wealth cannot defend his wealth. But respect is an emotion which cannot be given or received as alms, which cannot be unearned and causeless. Respect is an emotion possible only to the trader—an emotion as ruthlessly just as the laws of gaining a profit. To respect his wealth, a man must know that he has earned it. To respect himself, a man must know that he has the capacity to earn and that he has translated this capacity into reality by producing a [value]. This is where the root of human virtues is tied to the root of human wealth.

May 16, 1949

Lillian makes a crack about Dagny being successful in business because she doesn’t care for “power over men,” because she is sexless, men are not attracted to her. Then Lillian wants the bracelet back—Dagny refuses.

Lillian says: “Do you know what your wearing that bracelet should mean?”

Dagny answers that it
should
mean that she is sleeping with Rearden—sex as admiration, as an answer to one’s highest values.

“Then any woman should want to sleep with my husband?”

“Any woman who values herself highly enough.”

“Then what do you feel for me as his wife?”

“I am answering your exact words, Mrs. Rearden: the most profound respect. You are, of course, the only one to judge whether that respect is rightly yours.”
[This last sentence was crossed out.
]

 

 

Man exists for his own happiness, and the definition of happiness proper to a human being is:
a man’s happiness must be based on his moral values.
It must be the highest expression of his moral values possible to him.

This is the difference between my morality and hedonism. The standard is not: “that is good which gives me pleasure, just because it gives me pleasure” (which is the standard of the dipsomaniac or the sex-chaser)—but “that is good which is the expression of my moral values, and
that
gives me pleasure.” Since the proper moral code is based on man’s nature and his survival, and since joy is the expression of his survival, this form of happiness can have no contradiction in it, it is both “short range” and “long range” (as all of man’s life has to be), and it leads to the furtherance of his life, not to his destruction.

The form of happiness which involves “a price” to be paid for it afterwards (“a price,” not in the sense of the means and effort to achieve it, but in the sense of a consequence which is evil to him by his own standards, such as the hangover the morning after a drunken orgy) is an improper form of happiness by that very fact, a sign that the man who finds enjoyment in it holds a destructive premise that must be corrected.

A man must, above all, be
proud
of his happiness, of the things in which he finds enjoyment and of the nature of his enjoyment.
This
is the difference between James Taggart and the strikers. The strikers find their joy in self-exaltation, in achievement. James Taggart finds
his
joy in evil—in cruelty, fraud, degradation of others to his own level. (For example, he takes pleasure in the fact that people are disgraced by paying homage to him, and he enjoys bringing them to this degradation.) His happiness is based on that which, by his own standards, is evil; his happiness
requires
evil. Man’s proper happiness
must not
depend upon or be derived from anything which is evil, low, contemptible, undesirable by his own standards.

The evil man is not the one who mistakenly believes that bad things are good and acts accordingly; this is only an error of knowledge, not a sin, not a moral flaw. The evil man is the one who loves evil
for being evil.
(The poor fool who indulges in sex while semi-believing that it is evil according to his church morality, is not wholly bad because he does not really believe that sex is evil. But this
does
destroy his self-respect and creates all kinds of miserable conflicts for him. The evil man is the one who, knowing that sex is good, takes pleasure in forbidding it and thus causing men to suffer.)

Man
does
exist for happiness; he
has
the right to seek that which makes him happy. But he is a being of free will, therefore a being who cannot exist without a moral standard (a standard of values). If he attempts to drop his own essence—
reason
—and to seek happiness in the irrational and the contradictory, if he evades his responsibility for his own emotions, if he lets his emotions rule him without thought as to where these emotions came from, permitting himself to be determined by his own feelings, which means by his own stale thinking, by his
arrested reason
—
that
is where he destroys himself and is unable to achieve any sort of happiness.

This is the key to the pattern of how men “suspend” their reason.

Another aspect: a man’s happiness must not include any evil as its
essential element. This is the point which disqualifies the alleged happiness of an altruist. His happiness depends, by definition, on somebody else’s suffering ; he considers this suffering an evil, since he finds it so important to relieve and eliminate it, since he makes that the paramount aim of his life. Therefore, his happiness is based on an evil, and requires that evil to exist. In a world of happy men, he could not be happy (which, of course, is one of the reasons why collectivists achieve horrors).

If it is said that suffering exists in the world anyway, permanently and essentially, therefore it’s noble to combat it—then that is the malevolent universe.
Man does not exist for suffering.
Suffering is an accidental, “marginal” part of his existence, which he must fight in order to be free to exist in happiness; [a part] which he must overcome as quickly as possible—and
not
spend his life seeking, thus making it the aim of his life. The suffering which threatens men from physical nature is negligible compared to the suffering he brings upon himself and others. If man functioned properly in the field open to him and determined by him—the field of his choice, his free will, his thinking and actions—he would eliminate most, and perhaps even all, of the suffering caused by the accidents of his physical nature.

The essence of suffering is destruction. By acting on the premises of self-destruction, man brings about suffering, his own and that of others. And he acts on a premise of self-destruction when he places
others
above self. He acts against his own nature and theirs. The suffering of others
cannot
be made one’s concern. It is not within our power of action. It is not within the function of our nature.

Help to others can, at best, be only an incidental activity and then only on a “trader‘s” basis—such as help to a loved one, where one has a specific, selfish, personal reason for wishing to help. Just as one cannot conduct one’s own life on the basis of trying to avoid pain and holding that to be a final goal, just as one must live for
one’s happiness
and fight one’s suffering as an incidental on the way, so one cannot live for the relief of the suffering of others, as a goal—only this last is infinitely more improper.

And neither can one live for the happiness of others—because that involves one’s own suffering as an essential, since one’s happiness is not automatic, but has to be achieved by one’s own effort, and that effort
is
the chief duty of one’s life (essentially, the
sole
duty). One’s own happiness
is
within one’s own power, and one’s whole nature is tied to the necessity of achieving it; the happiness of others is not.
This
is the point involving and illustrating man’s essential independence.

Note in regard to Christian morality:
The Christian moralists would accept the first paragraph of my statement here—but then, of course, the difference lies in the definition of the moral code involved. And
that
is where they would not accept the second part of my statement—the fact that one’s happiness must not include evil as its essential part. The Christian morality includes the most vicious evil as the most essential part of the happiness it advocates:
self-sacrifice.
This leads to all the vicious paradoxes of “be happy because you’re not happy,” “find happiness in suffering,” etc.

There is no conflict and no sacrifice
necessary when a man functions on his proper moral standards. Giving up a party in order to write a novel
is not
a sacrifice, but plain common sense, an acknowledgment of the impossibility of “having your cake and eating it, too” or of doing two things at the same time.
A rational man does not desire the impossible—and
, therefore, feels no pain in not having it, and commits no sacrifice. The sense of sacrifice is possible only to the emotion-ruled man, who
wants
or
feels
without thinking. The happiness of man’s proper morality does not require his own suffering.

The essential test of any moral code or teaching is the presence or absence of
the paradox.
A paradox cannot exist. It is only the result and sign of man’s errors in thinking. If one accepts a paradox as an essential part of one’s moral code—
right there
is the sign that one has accepted a code untrue to reality, that one is in the realm of the irrational, and, therefore, one has accepted destruction as a principle, and as a goal of one’s conduct. (Besides, a code based on a paradox
cannot
be practiced; so this leads to the “lip-service morality” of preaching what one cannot practice.) Destruction is the result of a departure from reality. Man’s destruction is a result of his suspending his means of survival and his tie with reality—
his reason.
By accepting any sort of paradox, he destroys reality in his own eyes, he destroys his control over reality, his means of knowledge, he destroys his mind—and his destruction can be the only result.

A point requiring a great deal of detailed consideration is that
the paradox is the chief symptom and the chief weapon of all the destroyers of man.

 

 

“So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever looked at the root of money?”

The root of money—production. The root of production—the mind.

Money is the material form of a spiritual achievement.

To
make
money requires the highest spiritual values. (America is the first nation that ever spoke of “making” money.)

Money is the tool of a society of free men—men as equals—money as the guarantee that the product of your effort will be exchanged for the product of the effort of others, that you are dealing with producers—not with parasites or looters. Money is the symbol of your dealing with men whom you can trust.

Money is the tool of freedom—it gives you choice of everything being produced.

Money is the tool of your values—the means to exercise your values.

Money will buy happiness—if you understand both money and happiness. Money is your tool of achievement and enjoyment. It will give you the enjoyment that you create; but it will not buy you the second-hand kind of enjoyment, the source of which is in others. Money is your passkey to the services of other men—your means of dealing with them, not through force, fear, or suffering, but through the good—through offering them a value, a means to the achievement of
their
desires, in exchange for what you want from them.

But money will
not
become a tool of evil. Money destroys those who attempt to [make it such a tool].

Money destroys those who defy its root. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool. It will not buy the admiration and respect of men who understand these terms—for the man who doesn’t deserve them. It stands as the best guard of man’s virtues—the virtues needed for “making” money. Money always remains an effect—and refuses to become a cause. It will not give the parasite what he wants most—its own source—the
unearned, undeserved
virtues of the man who
makes
money.

Money is the hardest test of a man—took at the heirs who are wrecked by it. No man may be smaller than his money. Money is the barometer of a man’s character—if he claims to despise it, he’s making it dishonestly; if he is proud of it, he’s earned it and deserves it.
[This paragraph was added later.
]

In the hands of the producer, money is the means of security. In the hands of the looter, money is the agent of his destruction (as in the case of the criminal). Whenever a society establishes criminals-by-right, whenever the looter is permitted to rob legally—his money is the attraction for other looters, who will get it from him as he got it, achieving nothing but general destruction and slaughter.

Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.