Greed is good (for the shoulders)

I’ve got to fin­ish list­ing all the books I read last year before I can start writ­ing about this year’s books, and this one has been a tough one to write about. I’m very deeply ambiva­lent about *Atlas Shrugged*, more so than about *[The Fountainhead]([canonical-url:2008/07/05/second-handers-news])*. *Atlas Shrugged* is Rand’s lat­er work, writ­ten and pub­lished almost a decade and a half after *The Foun­tain­head*, and the scope is far grander. What­ev­er virtues and faults can be found with The Foun­tain­head will be seen to have mul­ti­plied for *Atlas Shrugged*.

As with *The Foun­tain­head*, I read *Atlas Shrugged* for the first time half my life­time ago. The ideas con­tained in these books stuck side­ways in my mind for years as I tried to rec­on­cile Rand’s ideals with those of oth­er sources. It’s almost not worth both­er­ing to rec­on­cile Rand’s phi­los­o­phy with that of any of the world’s reli­gions; she dis­miss­es all reli­gion and mys­ti­cism as a tool of oppres­sion, and per­haps with excel­lent reason.

There is a bill­board on Ninth Street I pass at least a cou­ple of times a week, which reads «Imag­ine No Reli­gion,» and each time I see it I feel a sim­i­lar ambiva­lence. This bill­board pro­motes an orga­ni­za­tion called the [Free­dom From Reli­gion Foundation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_From_Religion_Foundation). If you click on the link you’ll know more about the orga­ni­za­tion than I do; I’m not all that inter­est­ed in their agen­da per­haps for the sole rea­son that I don’t believe that in order to be free from reli­gion one needs be free of reli­gion. Here per­haps Ms Rand and I dis­agree. There may be places in the world where it is still true, but I don’t think the Unit­ed States is one of them, and even if it is San Fran­cis­co isn’t. This, after all, is a town where those of us who don’t care much about orga­nized reli­gion have to [fight to keep an his­toric landmark](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/05/MN81784.DTL) because some­one might be remind­ed of a religion.

Indulge me this digres­sion: cloth­ing is a human inven­tion, unnec­es­sary to our sur­vival in tem­per­ate climes. But our use of cloth­ing allows us to sur­vive cold weath­er, so it takes on a fur­ther mean­ing. As motor­cy­clists wear jack­ets and boots even when not on their bikes, peo­ple wear their shirts and pants even when it is not cold because some­thing basic about our human­i­ty is rep­re­sent­ed there. Fur­ther­more, the peo­ple of reli­gion have instruct­ed us to wear cloth­ing, osten­si­bly to keep us from check­ing each oth­er out all the time and get­ting dis­tract­ed from tithing and so forth. So some­thing that is both use­ful and sym­bol­ic has been used as a tool of polit­i­cal con­trol, at some times and in some places in down­right oppres­sive ways.

I can relate to peo­ple who expe­ri­ence a sense of free­dom in nudi­ty. I’ve done that at Burn­ing Man and yes, let­ting go of the pure­ly social con­ven­tion is free­ing. True free­dom, how­ev­er, means choos­ing by one’s own sense and rea­son when to use or dis­card a prac­tice. It means expe­ri­enc­ing that first blush of free­dom and then get­ting dressed again, not because one has to but because one wants to for the myr­i­ad rea­sons that may present themselves.

Reli­gion, it seems, is like cloth­ing. It is a human inven­tion (yes, it is. God may not be man’s inven­tion, but man’s rit­u­als and belief sys­tems most cer­tain­ly are) with both ben­e­fits and detri­ments, that some cling to blind­ly and oth­ers reject with the intox­i­ca­tion of the first-timer at the nude beach decid­ing nev­er to dress again.

Back on point then, Ayn and I will have to dis­agree about reli­gion. I take her point about it being a tool of oppres­sion, but I’m not will­ing to dis­card the good along with the bad when I can as eas­i­ly dis­card just the bad.

I am there­fore left with the task of either rec­on­cil­ing these oppos­ing sets of beliefs or reject­ing one. Rand wrote repeat­ed­ly that if one is pre­sent­ed with con­tra­dic­tion to check one’s premis­es. Both can­not be true.

So we have Bud­dhist thought claim­ing uni­ver­sal inter­con­nect­ed­ness, Jesus’ say­ing that the love of mon­ey is the root of evil, Lao Tzu’s writ­ing that self-ful­fill­ment comes from lack of self-inter­est, Kan­t’s ever-so-con­vinc­ing insis­tence that we must found our log­ic upon *a pri­ori* truths, all stacked against Ayn Rand’s phi­los­o­phy: that there is no con­nec­tion between indi­vid­u­als, that ful­fill­ment comes only from self-inter­est, and that there is no place in log­ic for things that can­not be proven.

Gödel burned down the idea that a con­sis­tent sys­tem can be defined entire­ly in its own terms, some­thing Rand was cer­tain­ly aware of when she wrote John Galt’s words, «No con­cept man forms is valid unless he inte­grates it with­out con­tra­dic­tion into the total sum of his knowl­edge.» It sounds good, but the sim­ple foun­da­tion of her phi­los­o­phy — the absolute of exis­tence — cou­pled with the absolute of causal­i­ty — gives it away. It’s an old ques­tion hard­ly worth pur­su­ing, but how can exis­tence come to be with­out a sus­pen­sion of the law of causal­i­ty? Noth­ing does not trans­form itself into some­thing. Nei­ther the Bible’s answer to this (it was God) nor Hawk­ing’s (it’s OK as long as even­tu­al­ly every­thing gets destroyed at the end so that the math evens out) are satisfactory.

I agree with Ms Rand about the neces­si­ty of accept­ing real­i­ty as it is and the impor­tance not to deny causal­i­ty. But giv­en these two things there must be some­thing beyond our ratio­nal under­stand­ing or else con­tra­dic­tions must exist. which, if you think about it, are the same thing.

Yet this is dan­ger­ous because Rand has rest­ed her entire argu­ment on the faulty (as absolute) tri­ad of exis­tence, causal­i­ty, and non-con­tra­dic­tion. If this breaks down, then the mys­tics (as she calls them) can come back and use my argu­ment to deny exis­tence and causal­i­ty, which would be wrong.

(Even if the absolute truth is found in the denial of exis­tence, on a *prac­ti­cal* lev­el, the aware­ness that life is an illu­sion can­not be an excuse to run away from life. The illu­sion is all that we’ve got. It is only by accept­ing the illu­sion as it is pre­sent­ed that we can hope to tran­scend it. So even if Rand is wrong, and there is no exis­tence, Rand is right, and we have to accept it as it is and strive to appre­hend it as clear­ly as we can. I’m not claim­ing there is no exis­tence; I just mean to show that belief in truth beyond what is known fails to inval­i­date what is known. The «less­er» truth we’re exposed to has to be a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the «greater» truth. So the mys­tic argu­ment against Rand fails. Quite sim­ply, even if there is no mean­ing, it does­n’t mean any­thing that there’s no mean­ing, and we might as well get back to work.)

For­give me for an overfine pars­ing of Ms Rand’s state­ments, but she insists on it. If «feel­ing» that she «must be» wrong does not suf­fice, then we have to get to the source of that feel­ing. Rand calls it mys­ti­cism and scoffs at intu­ition; I respect­ful­ly dis­agree. Being in touch with intu­ition is often the best way to lis­ten to log­ic. Grant­ed, if an intu­ition fails to be borne out by rea­son it should be dis­card­ed, but intu­ition is the voice of our implic­it assump­tions. Pur­su­ing intu­ition either brings us to truth or brings our faulty assump­tions to light. Either way is a win, but espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with Rand there is the need to pur­sue any intu­itive opin­ion to its source.

Is it clear that «deeply ambiva­lent» is per­haps an understatement?

In the end, I believe Rand is right about all of it as far as it goes, but there is more to the pic­ture than she lets on. There is a vol­un­tary social con­tract we live in, and yes, it is vol­un­tary in a place where we have a voice and a vote. For this rea­son I can’t accept that any and all actions of gov­ern­ment or even that any and all appro­pri­a­tion of funds by gov­ern­ment is auto­mat­i­cal­ly a coer­cive act. The police will show up with guns if you refuse to pay tax­es, but by refus­ing to pay tax­es, does­n’t one implic­it­ly reject the pro­tec­tions and ser­vices of the gov­ern­ment? Got­ta pay to play, right? As cit­i­zens do we not have the respon­si­bil­i­ty to pay for those things we have demand­ed our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives do on our behalf?

Vot­ing is a bit of a gam­ble that way. By vot­ing we also accept the author­i­ty of the voice of the major­i­ty. Rand rejects this author­i­ty in favor of that of a set of myth­ic fig­ures (Fran­cis­co D’An­co­nia, who invent­ed cal­cu­lus as a teenag­er with no pri­or expo­sure to high­er math and who hit a base­ball out of the field the first time he tried, is one exam­ple, but most of the oth­er pro­tag­o­nists had a sim­i­lar­ly effort­less claim to genius) who know best how to go about their busi­ness and are thwart­ed my the major­i­ty at every turn. She believed in mer­i­toc­ra­cy — or per­haps what is now called [doöcracy](http://www.communitywiki.org/en/DoOcracy) and that unfet­tered, the peo­ple of tal­ent would nat­u­ral­ly cre­ate inter­de­pen­dent rela­tion­ships which would result in great achievement.

It’s a great ide­al, and its absence in a moral code is unthink­able. I’m the last to say that peo­ple should not prof­it off of their own work and their own genius. I’m cer­tain­ly look­ing for­ward to prof­it­ing off my own work and genius. To an extent I have my whole adult life, but I ful­ly intend to increase that prof­it by increas­ing the ben­e­fit I pro­vide. How­ev­er, I can­not claim that my suc­cess­es are total­ly inde­pen­dent of the infra­struc­ture that oth­ers put in place before me, and nei­ther can I claim my suc­cess­es are or ever will be inde­pen­dent of the sup­port­ing work of con­tem­po­raries in oth­er fields.

Rand puts these fac­tors into a sub­servient role — or worse a detri­men­tal one — rather than a sup­port­ing and inter­de­pen­dent role. She’s right, but there’s so much more to the pic­ture than she shows.

Any­one who has­n’t read this book should. When I was flip­ping through *Atlas Shrugged* to check my cita­tions, a twen­ty dol­lar bill fell from between the pages. Maybe if you read it the same thing will happen.