Selfishness, Ayn Rand,Excellence, Mediocrity (Or you tell me a better title)

Power and Context of Rand

Rand is hated not because she argued for power or against altruism; I hate (well- hate is not the best word, I know) her because I am convinced she is plain wrong logically and scientifically. Her observations and philosophy harm and retard social and (even) individual growth. We'll talk this in detail towards the end of this write-up.

A major line of reasoning that was brought  up by Lissome and others to question the relevance of analyzing Rand now was about the time when Rand produced he work .This point can only be valid. Ayn Rand was a product of her time (well, most ideologues are, for that matter), for sure. But if Ayn rand's ideals had a shelf-life and were indeed fugacious, we had better abandon them without ever taking any serious notice at them in this day and age. Most of us would agree that's hardly the case. If we believe that we need to be contextually conscious when dissenting Rand's thoughts, we need to be so as well when we are ready to get worked up in defense of her views.

The question of selfishness vs. altruism has been timeless, and it was Ayn Rand who raked it up before global psyche, colored it with standoffish political passion and disseminated this debate over generations.

Rand is more powerful than most of her epistemologically rigorous predecessors for just one reason ' she wrote fiction, she spoke through her characters. It doesn't matter much that she was just one of the last and latest in a line of like-minded ideologues, as long as John Galt is more influentially potent than a Nietzsche or a Schopenhauer.

Rand is here to stay.  In a world that is getting estranged from painful quests for truth for truth's sake, a swell-head's dream dressed-up dissemblingly in storybooks naturally finds more takers than any tedious treatise can do.

Selfishness: How 'natural'?

The question of selfishness driving altruism is only as valid as the argument that I posed in my article- that altruism drives selfishness in the same degree, if not more. But this is not very obvious unless we sit down and think hard. One point among the winsome set of arguments of my friend who got me write this article goes : 'Even something as basic as reproduction and continuity, with the responsibility and labor pains it entails, would have found few takers, had it not been for the instinct of selfish orgasmic pleasure. Therefore, selfishness does rule us in basic and altruistic endeavors.' Let me see how much I can agree here. Though science have moved on a bit since it related the drive for genetic continuity directly with amatory affairs (some life-forms that have to settle for less exciting asexual reproduction do indeed take even more trouble to immortalize its DNA), for its logical compulsiveness, let's take up point to reflect on. Yes, nature can't do it more foxily: to first please a life-form for bearing the offspring to compensate the inevitable trouble and trauma for getting it out. But subscribing to nature's bliss is not selfish, even in the most banal or brutally twisted selfish semantics. That the pleasure is on the individual side of house doesn't qualify it selfish either. I am not for this propensity of using individuality, instinct and selfishness - all interchangeably, as customized concern to tackle diversity and fragmented plurality as promoted by nature is at the diametric end of selfish tenets.

Back to the question of 'natural' selfishness. In my last post, I have left a few mentions as to how Darwinian genetics is 'conveniently mistaken' by ratifiers of selfishness and elitism. As Andrew Brown puts it:

“Selfish”, when applied to genetics and biology, doesn’t mean “selfish” at all. It means, instead, an extremely important quality for which there is no good word in the English language:

Nature is not hell bent on selfishness, as it is well aware how an organism is benefited of being good with others.

Let's pause a bit and do some elementary math:

Take this scenario. I am some cute herbivorous species (think Bugs Bunny), on my day out to nourish myself.

Ha ' there! A clump of 8 carrots, smiling at me!

Wait a minute ' I am not hungry enough to have all of them myself, I can eat 3, at best.

Let me see how I can quantify my benefit from eating up my share and keeping mum about my finding from the rest of the world.

For calculation's sake, I randomly attach a factor of 6 per unit.

           So my payoff value if I stay selfish is,

            3*6 = 18          à (1)

Now let's see what happens if I decide to do an altruist and plan to share 8 carrots with me and those around me. Who are all out there in this neck of the woods? I can see my brother, my cousin and some sucker who is a total stranger in town.

We sit together and the feast is on. Each of us grabs 2, which makes the value of each share to be 2×6 =12. When I munch it down, I get full payoff. But my brother shares only half my genes, so the genetic payoff from my point of view when he eats them is ½. My cousin is genetically distant to me by 1/8. Our good old stranger is a genetic alien ' so zero benefit.

            Here is the total altruistic pay-off:

             (1×12) + (1/2×12) + (1/8×12) + (0*12) = 19.5            à(2)

Definitely a higher than the selfish number 18 - that too, when we had assumed no returns at all in giving a share to the stranger. But then, when this chap stumbles upon a catch next time, chances are high that he shares that with me. So payoff fraction of him would always be greater than zero, making the altruistic payoff even greater than 19.5.

Did someone say genetics is just certified selfishness?

Excellence and Mediocrity

I doubt if Mediocrity can qualify to be the product of any sort of conspiracy that Ayn Rand's characters keep whining about. Nor is it a manifestation of an ideology or a 'thought-school' based on interests of collective. Mediocrity is just a state an individual is doomed to find himself or herself in when s/he falls short of certain benchmarks of expected excellence. (Mediocrity striving for excellence will still be mediocrity until it meets this benchmark; so striving doesn't make it any prettier either.) Benchmarks are works of society, of collective. It is the collective that conceptually give birth to this disputable abstraction of 'mediocre individual' and so, if there is any conspiracy on the part of collective at all, it is not for or by mediocrity but against it. The world never fends for chickens.

Mediocrity has huge constraints in hatching a plan up, devising a blueprint and orchestrating its systematic execution. Well, if it can ever do that, it ceases to be mediocrity.

The pertinent face of mediocrity is never one of a cunning conspirator, but of a hapless henchman or wretched slave. By all means, smarties can conspire more; they can raven more. Yes; excellence doesn't always transmute into power, and power into predation, but excellence can invariably drive power to its corner of benefit. Authority fueled by excellence can manipulate and deceive much effectively than mediocrity can ever dream of.  Excellence, as much as it propels the world forward, can stamp down the lives of the dim ones and can keep them in eternal darkness without letting them realize it ' ever. Here is when conscious selfishness dons its diabolic tunic and casts its foggy shadow over the pleasant lines that separate of excellence from authority and predation.

So what does that mean?

Intellects the world over have two choices:

            One - to live a life that's best suited to the milieu of the world that made them

            Two- to live a life that's tuned to their own interests

When talents turn selfish, they tend to neutralize - if not annihilate - each other rather than complimenting them. This can be uglier than any unrest on the part the so-called 'mediocre section' of human race for meager existence. It's something like this: if a superpower gets on a war with another, the ruins would quite predictably be far above the ground than a bow-and-arrow scuffle between two rivaling tribes in deep Africa. Well, well, I know 'healthy competition' is a good phrase; what I am saying is that it's not the best. The world has never got a chance to taste anything like 'supreme co-existence' yet. But that's the problem of the world, not of co-existence. The trouble is that we have no way of measuring what we have been losing without collaboration; all we have are certain yardsticks to gauge our gains by way of competition. If each physicist gets exposed to every other's researches as and when they happen, the scientific community would have reconciled theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity decades back and come up with TOE. I am not sure who is going to win in the battle of nerves between Microsoft and Google; but I know this much that, if they ever collaborate, there will be three predictable winners: Microsoft, Google and the world.

Now talk me about results!  With a mixed-up mind in a vainglorious façade, selfish brilliance would always find it hard to fit their work in the picture of larger interest that fails their comprehension. This dodging of things end-to-end doesn't help much in the way of value of your output. Again, selfishness also results in a sort of a baffled sagacity, when you find yourself busy filtering your friends from foes all through the course of your work. There can't be a worse distraction! To say it short, if half the time is to be spent in calculating the curvature of your pocket alone, believe me ' you are in for a botched business. 

Now, do you think it's easy? Do you think working for something more than yourself is a cakewalk? It takes real cast-iron balls to give yourself up when  To cocoon to your shell and call out how cool you are is kid's play. It's this shell that's the 'refuge' of a feeble dreamer, and not mediocrity. Though none of us in flesh and blood is as schizophrenic as Rand's characters, we all have a capability to think up a Galt or Roark inside. We are hard-wired to identify with this ilk. How many of us have never at least once tempted to think the world around to be unfair with us?  How many of us don't have this inward looking secret admiration that we are among those handful of honorable goodies that are not treated highly enough for what we are? I think I am qualified to be Roark; you think but it is you - even when we both hold diametric views and interests. In performance appraisals, the employee who got the plum rating and the one got the lowest would both feel himself to be Roark - the former thinks he is passing through the vindication-stage of his life and the latter, the persecution-stage. We all, as these multifarious organisms as we are, carry a certain baggage of narcissism interlocked in persecution mania.

That's precisely why Rand is a hit. She titillates our ego, helps forget our obligations, amplifies our misconceptions and pampers our escapist self - all so subtly. It's a clever, psycho-emotional trap - at best. This approach presents us with some charmingly skewed versions of reality that potentially helps us overlook our genuine flaws quite a bit. If Roark couldn't sell an idea the way wanted, it's because that nerd of an architect was a bad negotiator. Face it.

Finally, the pick is between intellectual cannibalism and intellectual symbiosis in a world dabbed with diversity. Preserve your uniqueness, but bear in mind we are here to paint the destiny of world rather than pompous self-portraits; the world doesn't want them. Excellence is incomplete without an open mind, a broad worldview, an appreciation of plurality, histo-political consciousness and contextual prudence. In the world of excellence, purpose is king. I am not. You are not.

Tailpiece Dreamlet

2050, a pleasant Valhallan morning.

I walked into the majestic silence of memorial park.

Sunbeams mopped the mist off his tombstone:

+

R.I.P.

Here sleeps Howard Roark , the impossible.

The-go-getter-turned-'go-get-a-life'er

Died of Paranormal Narcissism

- Architect-

(Specialized in: Castles in the Air.)

Hey , Howard ; Let me give it back to you:

I don't think of you.