Atlas Shrugged
I’ve been reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and it has really made an impact on my Philosophy of Life. The three main ideas that have become clear to me by reading this book are:
1) Charity can be unethical. I had a feeling that charity didn’t always work, and I knew that sometimes it could actually enforce negative behavior in its recipients, but it wasn’t clear to me how charity is often unethical. Seeing it clearly written in the book really helped because it had been so ingrained in my mind that charity was very ethical.
2) Competition fuels progress. Similarly, I had a feeling about this because I knew that I always did my best and tried my hardest when I was competing with others or with myself. And I had a vague idea that this is the reason why Capitalism has succeeded where Communism has failed. But it wasn’t so clear to me (even as a chess player, when I knew that it was always best to play and learn from stronger opponents) how much your competition helps you. I’ve always kind of thought of my competition as an enemy - but in a way they are your best friend.
This actually started to become clear to me about a month before I started reading Atlas Shrugged, because of an interview I watched with Milton Friedman. He spoke about the value of competition and how government run (non-competitive) institutions often suck (e.g. public schools). I started to think about different government run organizations that I have used and how they all sucked compared to privately run organizations. For example, I’m always waiting in extremely long lines at the post office, or to get a driver’s license, etc…
3) The ethics of earned and unearned wealth. This may be the idea that has had the most profound effect on me. Before this became clear, I didn’t know if money made people more or less happy. It seemed to do both, depending on the situation. Now I can see that earned wealth is ethical and brings happiness, while unearned wealth does not. Earned wealth represents productive achievement, while unearned wealth does not. It is possible that unearned wealth could make you happy, but not in the same way, as the owner of unearned wealth has achieved nothing for it.
This has had a huge impact on me because now I see little to no value in unearned wealth (another reason never to play the lottery), and a lot of value in earned wealth. I want to devote myself to earned wealth and productive achievement.
What’s nice about this is it explains and makes clear feelings I didn’t understand in the past. For example, I am more happy working from home because I only get paid for work that I have done. Before when I had a salary job, I would often go for long periods getting paid to do nothing.
Even though I’ve learned a lot from this book, I think you have to be very careful adopting a philosophy like Ayn Rand’s. For example, she promotes greed and ego. But like earned and unearned wealth, I think there is a difference between ethical and unethical greed and ego. If you are greedy for earned wealth and human achievement, that may be ethical. But if you are greedy for unearned wealth, it could lead to thievery and corruption. Similarly, you must be careful with ego. It may be right to understand the power that each individual contains within themselves, but it could be dangerous if you are unrealistic with your ego and believe you are superior when you are not. Also, if you are anti-charity, you could refuse someone charity in a situation where it is unethical to do so.
