The Age of Selfishness Read online

  The Age of Selfishness

  By Robert Villegas

  The Age of Selfishness

  By Robert Villegas

  © Copyright 2015 by Robert Villegas

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any way without written permission from the copyright holder.

  ISBN-13: 978-1517540371

  ISBN-10: 1517540372

  Library of Congress Control Number 2015919607

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedicated

  To

  William

  Acknowledgement

  The author of this book would like to acknowledge a philosophical debt to the works of Ayn Rand whose philosophy Objectivism has been the subject of years of study. However, the author takes full responsibility for any ideas or conclusions expressed in this book. He is neither a spokesman for nor representative of the ideas of Ayn Rand.

  Table of Contents

  Genesis

  Should You Be More Selfish?

  Views of Altruism

  The Age of Selfishness

  Being Rationally Selfish - What Does It Mean?

  Self-Reliance

  Anti-self – Part 1

  The Benefits of Being Selfish

  The Injustice of Altruism

  Types of Selfishness

  Benevolence versus Charity

  Anti-self – Part 2

  Anti-man

  A Primer on Rational Thought

  Existence

  Consciousness

  Identity

  Metaphysics

  Epistemology

  Ethics

  Selfishness and Narcissism

  The Ideology of Anti-Greed

  Is Altruism Practical?

  Why Altruism Destroys

  Conclusion

  Genesis

  There are two reasons why someone might pick this book to read. First, the reader might think the title implies a view about how selfishness harms modern society. By this view, you might want to learn how man’s acquisitive nature causes him to devastate the lives of others. You may want to know about pride, greed and profit-seeking in order to convince yourself that the problems in our world are due to selfish actions. After all, this is what most people think.

  Or secondly, you might want to investigate the conflicting views about man’s nature as a being of action. You may seek to learn about what is wrong in this world and about how selfishness is involved. You may even be wondering what all the fuss is about; why do people hate and discriminate against pride and selfishness?

  This book is written for the second person, not the first. It is written as a declaration for selfishness. I would actually like to see men “convert” to a new mindset that could make the coming years into a new “Age of Selfishness” that inaugurates a new peaceful style of living. Some people might think this is a preposterous notion, but I submit that most people don’t understand what it really means to be selfish. I hope to show them a different perspective on selfish living.

  My purpose is not only to declare that selfishness is superior to altruism, the philosophy of anti-self, but to declare a more correct view of self-love as the proper source for morality. My goal is to declare, that altruism has had its day and has been found wanting and that it is time to consider a paradigm shift away from altruism and toward new moral premises and political systems. Altruism is dead and it is time to try selfishness. It is time for the Age of Selfishness.

  It is time to sweep aside the traditions of anti-self, anti-greed and anti-mind, and declare that these views are wrong and deadly. They are responsible for millions of minor injustices every day as well as for many major calamities, most of which were falsely blamed on selfishness.

  Why not try a new system of morality? What do we have to lose? What devastation could possibly be as bad as what we are experiencing? Wasn’t the idea of self-sacrifice the very idea held by the people who murdered people in the millions? Wasn’t self-sacrifice the idea behind our massive and burgeoning debt; behind excessively high taxes and unemployment? Why not try the only idea that created the greatest nation in the history of the world? In fact, our nation is great, not because of altruism, but because of selfishness, because of freedom and the pursuit of happiness and property rights.

  Most people think they see a direct link between selfishness and some of history’s major catastrophes. I submit that these catastrophes did not happen because of selfishness but because of a lack of selfishness. Millions of men throughout history have been told they had a duty to sacrifice for others and it is these very men who joined the lines leading to the killing fields and death chambers. They were told the “Big Lie” that sacrifice was good; and their believing this lie caused their unnecessary deaths.

  In fact, the practitioners of sacrifice wrote the history books and the one issue they refuse to consider is that the murderous atrocities they write about happened, not because of selfish men, but because of men who sought to force sacrifice for the “common good”.

  Tellingly, the one thing they refuse to criticize is the idea of sacrifice. They look at the atrocities and damn selfishness; yet the atrocities sought to eliminate selfishness. They damn individual rights, they damn self-sufficiency, they damn reason, they damn capitalism but they never consider the possibility that it is altruism that caused the atrocities.

  Their solution to the senseless slaughter? They tell us that men must sacrifice so this does not happen again. The idea that caused the murders is then given as the solution to stopping the murders. Even today, we hear the spokespeople of irrationalism declare that man’s goal in life should be to live for others. Soft, peaceful sounding voices declare love for man and tell him that the way forward is to be self-sacrificial, love God, love man, love life and love sacrifice. This soft voice mesmerizes people, causes moral transformation, changes lives and moves people to walk dutifully into the next line toward the proverbial furnaces. Agree with altruism and you become the next sacrificial victim who leaves a spot open for the next sacrificial victim.

  The genesis of this book is the election of 2012. In that year, the leader of our nation had been given a mandate, he thought, to further enslave the productive citizens of our society. In the subsequent years he has taken many actions that had terrible consequences for independent individuals. Each of us has had to ascertain, not only how to survive, but also how to thwart oppressive government. There is much that can be done; but the effort against the oppressive state takes more than blind activism; it will take a philosophical battle for the right principles, an effort to develop the intellectual arguments that will save human lives and enable people to be happy.

  Recently, another event made me realize that the last 2000 years have been the “Age of Altruism”. This event was the visit of the Pope to the United States of America. With this visit, I saw the crude primitivism of human sacrifice offered as a panacea to a society created on a foundation of individual rights. To me, this visit was an atrocity.

  I watched television and saw the spectacle of politicians and average citizens clinging to ancient ideas gleaned from ancient texts. I noticed the glazed-over eyes and the transfixed expressions of people and it reminded me that we continue to be overwhelmed by the same anti-mind, anti-greed and anti-self ideas that have brought much evil to the world. We cannot have a proper future building our government on spirits and incense floating toward the sky. Magic just won’t do it and believing in magic will only create minds incapable of understanding the consequences of their ideas.

  Indeed, the Pope’s words were deceptive. He ignored the damage and destruction that have been imposed upon the true saviors of mankind, the intelligent, productive and independent individuals who pursue their rational self-interest.

  Indeed, the Pope’s words were uniquely “political”. A politician tends to tell you only what he thinks you need to know and, like a politician, the Pope did not openly criticize “sinfulness”. Instead, he brought a newer, kinder altruism that is bereft of the anger and vitriol that past altruists have expressed toward reason and individualism. Had he been an old-style altruist he would have rained down criticism of selfishness and its “evil” wherever he went. This time, he only talked about the majesty and glory of sacrifice for others. A true politician knows you can’t bite the hand that feeds you.

  In response to the unquestioning acceptance of altruism in today’s world and in the hope of averting another historical disaster, I’m almost tempted to ask believers to continue being faith-based and emotion-driven but to stop only the baseless demands for sacrifice; to give self-interest a try for at least 100 years to see how that works out. After all, they accepted altruism, mysticism and collectivism without a semblance of reason; why not accept self-interest on the same terms just to try something new for a change and to see how that works.

  Then I realized that these people would not be able to pull it off. Armed with all of the negative assumptions spouted for thousands of years, they would probably get it all wrong, choosing to use their freedom in a fruitless quest to be predatory, acquisitive and without values. Because of their views on practical action, they’d become just like the villains they admonish. They’d destroy any possibility of actually creating a new “Age of Selfishness.” It would be a big gamble to hope that a true understanding of what it means to be rationally selfish would come out of their merely turning off their demands for sacrifice.

  Needless to say, the temptation only lasted a few minute
s and I realized that the task was more difficult than that. Only reason can justify individual rights. Only reason can expose mysticism and altruism and dictatorship. It may take only a frivolous decision to live by one’s “heart”, but living by reason requires much more thought and independence. We need to raise people to think rather ask them to just believe. My mind is straight on that now.

  If we are to have an Age of Selfishness and save mankind in the process, I submit that people must take a stand for man’s right to be selfish, and more importantly, our understanding of what it means to live a moral life must change. We can no longer go on thinking that the only alternatives for man are to live for others on the one hand and to persecute and exploit people on the other hand. That is a false choice.

  To defend himself against the demands for sacrifice, the truly moral human being must have an intellectually defensible love for high values and especially a love of reason which will lead him to a love of individual rights, liberty, human cooperation, trade and capitalism. Man must learn to be so ambitious for life that he will righteously dissent when told that he should sacrifice his values. We are not there yet.

  In an age of rising taxes, massive debt, increasing regulations, government entitlement programs, "shared sacrifice" and growing mysticism; the rational individual today must arm himself with the tools necessary to survive. Yet, the factors that enable survival are more than mere economic or financial principles. A whole host of philosophical issues impinge on the individual today and these issues, when answered by reason, will arm him (or her) with the tools necessary to achieve success. This will take a long-term approach, but the struggle must begin now.

  Being selfish is not something one can do easily. It is not about striving to win over others. It is not about treachery and deceit. It is not about hating others and seeking to win at their expense. Those are easy things to do and require no thought. Being selfish is about using reason and being convinced that the best way to achieve values is to engage in honest living. Being selfish is about understanding what knowledge and integrity demand; that you know how survival depends upon the virtues of rationality and production. Being selfish is about the mind and doing the thinking necessary to develop a solid foundation of ideas that lead you on the straight path toward understanding your worth and how to live in a proper society.

  Being selfish is about enabling effective action in the pursuit of high values. It is about knowing your chosen purpose in life and being free to take the actions that will achieve that purpose. Being selfish requires a lot of work.

  As we watch events in other parts of the world, it is becoming increasingly clear that bad times are ahead for the USA. These coming times can be averted to a certain extent by the things you do for yourself now. How can you protect yourself, your money, your energy and your rights? What can you do to ensure that your freedom to live and thrive can be maintained or recovered? The solution I suggest is that every American should be selfish in the highest meaning of the term which means he should seek the highest use of his mind. He should begin to solve the problems of society by solving the problems of his own life.

  There are essentially two obstacles to the emergence of self-interest among Americans. They are skepticism and mysticism. These two fundamental movements have had devastating impact on the lives of individuals and they have been the foundation of the leaders who are responsible for this state of affairs (progressives and conservatives). Skepticism keeps men bound by the ropes of concrete-bound thinking and makes them incapable of drawing the wider abstractions necessary to ascertain reality. Mysticism is infected with rationalism and imprisons the mind by insisting that all ideas be deduced from floating abstractions. These "bad" philosophies leave the field of human thought vulnerable to the deadly consequences of altruism and collectivism. They literally “make the way clear” for irrationalism by creating a docile “average man” who has no answer against the arguments that he is owned by the state and that the state can do whatever it wants to him.

  One goal of this book is to remove the stigma associated with the idea of living for oneself. I’d like to show that being selfish is good and that it represents some fairly fundamental issues such as reason, survival, morality and thriving. Secondly, the idea of being selfish has been denigrated to the point of nearly destroying society and it must be reclaimed if society is to avoid the coming abyss.

  I think Ayn Rand gave the perfect answer when she was asked “Why do you use the word “selfishness” to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?"[1]

  Her answer:

  “It is not a mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word "selfishness" is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual "package-deal," which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.”[2]

  “In popular usage, the word "selfishness" is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends; a person who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims he indulges in any immediate moment.

  “Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word "selfishness" is: concern with one's own interests.

  “This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one's own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man's actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.”[3]

  This book is a private endeavor. I’m not going to create an organization and ask you to join a community. I’m not going to ask for donations or spend lots of money creating services that might (or might not) make me rich. I am only going to write about ideas and the actions that will help you protect yourself against the violation of your rights.

  - October 15, 2015

  * * *

  Should You Be More Selfish?

  "There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first.” – Margaret Thatcher

  There are two differing views about the essence of the concept of selfishness. The first is that selfishness means predatory behavior and a lack of concern for the wellbeing of others. This “extreme” view concludes that selfishness is evil and every act taken out of selfish considerations is necessarily evil because man is an acquisitive and evil brute by nature. You find this view everywhere; in church, in politics, in entertainment, in speeches, in schools, at home and in town hall meetings. It is a foregone conclusion that anything done out of self-interest or for the sake of profit is automatically immoral.

  The other view about the value of selfishness, or the counter-view, is that selfishness is about putting one’s rational self-interest ahead of any consideration regarding others, that a consideration for others puts a selfish act outside the realm of morality and makes morality impossible. A rationally selfish person does not “think of others” first, his judgments are only about himself because he is only about himself by nature. This view holds that when men live in society, they should be free to trade value for value and to be morally correct in all ways; in thinking, in acting, in loving, in career, at home and in town hall meetings. Being selfish means trading value for value, desiring to get the most out of life intellectually and existentially by seeking one’s highest value and enjoying life. By this view, man is not a predator, he is not acquisitive at the expense of others; he is instead, a thinker and a doer and a trader of value. He is a good citizen, a good father, a good husband, a good thinker and a good producer.

  When a word is being used incorrectly to convey a distorted meaning, the solution is not to create a new word but to reclaim the word and teach people to use it properly. For instance, the statement, “You’re just being selfish,” is commonly heard today. It is often uttered when one person seeks to “guilt” another into doing something he does not want to do (such as pay higher taxes or give to charity). Most often, the accused gives in because he or she wants to be liked.