Embrace Morality

Lesson 3: Pursue Happiness (2 of 2)

We need to rethink morality.

What morality can and should offer us is an ideal—the highest vision of what is possible to us as human beings. An inspiring vision that renders life not a meaningless series of disconnected days, but a meaningful, adventurous, exalted sum.

Not morality without happiness or happiness without morality but a morality of happiness.

In my view, the most robust morality of happiness was developed by Ayn Rand. In the popular culture, Rand’s moral views have been reduced to “be selfish,” which in turn gets translated into: “Screw other people, get rich, and brag about your Lambo.” But Rand’s conception of what a person’s interests consist of is radically different from, and far richer than, the straw man her critics love to dismiss, attack, and mock.

Her conception is, at root, about selfishness of soul—about cultivating a reverence for your own life through a commitment to demanding virtues and deep, meaningful, material and spiritual values. “My philosophy, in essence,” she wrote, “is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

The symbols of Rand’s theory are not Gordon Gekko and Donald Trump but the intransigence of a Frederick Douglass and the curiosity of a Richard Feynman and the passion of a Steve Jobs and the courage of a Jackie Robinson and the adventurousness of an Ernest Shackleton and the independence of an Alexander Hamilton and the creative intelligence of a Maria Montessori and the ambition of a Jeff Bezos. It is, for those who have read Rand’s novels, Dagny Taggart, Howard Roark, Francisco d’Anconia, Hank Rearden, and John Galt.

Embrace Man’s Life as Your Standard of Value

Happiness sets the purpose of ethics: it is your ultimate value or ultimate goal. But a goal is not yet a guide. To translate that goal into actionable advice you need a standard of value to help gauge what will lead to happiness and what won’t.

Any time you’re pursuing a goal, you’re relying on some more or less well-defined standard of value. For example, when Domino’s Pizza launched, its motto was: “Fresh hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.” Every business decision was made in light of the question: Will this slow down or speed up the delivery of our pizza? The pizza’s taste and cost were secondary considerations. Speed of delivery was its standard of value.

Coming up with a standard of value for morality is challenging because it has to be general enough to encompass all the fundamental components of a happy life, but it can’t be so general that it’s devoid of content. “Do what makes you happy” isn’t a standard—it’s a bumper sticker.

Happiness, moreover, is an emotional state. As we’ve seen, emotions depend on our values. To say, “Do what makes you happy” amounts to saying, “You should value whatever you happen to value.” That’s not guidance—it’s a declaration that you don’t need guidance.

So what’s the solution? It’s to realize that happiness is intimately connected to successful living. Pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, are signals calling attention to the life-and-death stakes of our actions. We feel good when life is going well—when our needs are met or when we’re on the way to meeting them. “He’s so alive” we say of the happy person. By contrast, pain and suffering warn us that our life is going in the wrong direction, that we’re failing to meet crucial needs, that we’re heading toward death. “My life’s a mess,” we tell our therapist. Human beings are biological organisms and happiness is a biological signal. It is what the experience of pursuing and achieving life-sustaining values consists of. As Rand explains:

The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one’s own life as one’s ultimate value, and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one’s life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one’s life, in any hour, year or the whole of it.

To seek your own happiness as your ultimate value is to treat your own life as your ultimate value. This means much more than that you don’t want to die. It means that you seek the best possible state for your life: materially, mentally, emotionally. Just as a healthy marriage isn’t one that barely avoids divorce court, a healthy life isn’t one that barely avoids the morgue. It’s a life where you’re satisfying your most important needs and strengthening your capacities to meet tomorrow’s challenges. To treat your life as your ultimate value means being committed to growth and achievement in every aspect of your life and throughout your time on earth.

In grasping the connection between happiness and successful living, we now have an objective way to assess potential values: Does this further or undermine my life? And this, in turn, points us toward an objective standard of value for morality. We simply have to ask: Is there some basic thing human beings need to do in order to live? We already know the answer to that. As we discussed in Lesson 2, our basic means of survival is reason.

If you want to live, then you must live by reason.

Rand calls the moral standard reflecting this fact “man’s life,” or “that which is required for man’s survival qua man.” It means “the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan—in all those aspects of existence which are open to his choice.” She elaborates:

The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value—and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.

The difference between “standard” and “purpose” in this context is as follows: a “standard” is an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man’s choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. “That which is required for the survival of man qua man” is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose—the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being—belongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.

Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man—in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.

If man’s life is our moral standard, then what is the nature of the good? The good is anything and everything that is proper to the life of a being who survives by reason. What is the evil? Anything that opposes or harms the life of a rational being.

This standard will help us identify the human way of life, and so enable us to select a particular way of life that will add up to our own, unique, individual happiness.

The Supreme and Ruling Values: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem

If man’s life names “the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan,” then what are those terms, methods, conditions, and goals?

Altruists like David Brooks often define “self-interest” as the pursuit of money, status, and power. Their understanding of the values life requires is on par with primitive doctors who thought health came from balancing bile, blood, and phlegm.

Rand names three cardinal values “which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life”: not money, power, and status, but reason, purpose, and self-esteem.

Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.

Like all values, reason, purpose, and self-esteem are both means and ends. As ends, they are the realization of a human life—to live is to nurture reason, to act with purpose, to have self-confidence and self-worth. As means, they make possible everything else that you value, from your career to your relationships to your ability to put food on the table. If the goal of morality is to give you an ideal at which to aim, then a life of reason, purpose, and self-esteem is that ideal.

Reason

To value reason is to value your survival faculty. We often hear how important it is to value your health and to treat your body like a temple. To value reason is to treat your mind like a temple. It’s to recognize that everything you want and everything you care about comes from your ability to think, and so to devote yourself to the cultivation and maintenance of your mind.

Philosopher Onkar Ghate has analogized valuing reason to the attitude of a frontiersman or a soldier toward his gun. He knows that without his gun, he’s finished—and so he treats his gun with an almost sacred respect. Recall the mantra recited by the soldiers in Full Metal Jacket: “This is my rifle. There are many others like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.” That is the attitude a valuer has toward his rational faculty. Your mind is your best friend. It is your life. You must master it as you master your life.

In the next lesson, we’ll look in detail at how one gains and keeps the value of reason. Here we can simply say that to value reason requires not taking it for granted. Your capacity to think is given to you—but the development and maintenance of that capacity is a matter of choice. If you choose to live, then you have to work to understand what reason is, what its proper functioning requires, and then to devote yourself to the use and development of that faculty. To love your life requires loving your mind.

Purpose

To value purpose is to value the exercise of your free will. Whereas animals are programmed to pursue life-sustaining values automatically, human beings are not. Setting aside automatic biological functions like respiration and circulation, your actions are volitional and your default state is one of passivity. Valuing purpose means a commitment to act to gain and keep a state of full focused awareness across your lifespan. It means exercising the effort to conceive of the values that will sustain you across a lifetime and working to realize those values across a lifetime. As philosopher Leonard Peikoff explains in his book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand:

The principle of purpose means conscious goal-directedness in every aspect of one’s existence where choice applies. The man of purpose defines explicitly his abstract values and then, in every area, the specific objects he seeks to gain and the means by which to gain them. Whether in regard to work or friends, love or art, entertainment or vacations, he knows what he likes and why, then goes after it. Using Aristotelian terminology, Ayn Rand often says that this kind of man acts not by efficient causation (mere reaction to stimuli), but by final causation (“fines” is Latin for “end”). He is the person with a passionate ambition for values who wants every moment and step of his life to count in their service. Such a person does not resent the effort which purpose imposes. He enjoys the fact that the objects he desires are not given to him, but must be achieved. In his eyes, purpose is not drudgery or duty, but something good. The process of pursuing values is itself a value.

Valuing purpose starts with rejecting passivity. It means embracing the goal-directed activity life requires. That doesn’t entail ceaseless frantic activity. Rest is a vital component of an active life. It is purposeful, when used as rejuvenation. It is only when rest becomes an escape from value pursuit that it represents a default on purpose.

Purpose isn’t about stress or struggle (though it can sometimes entail these for short bursts). It’s about knowing what you want and taking responsibility for getting it. Take something as simple as being invited to a party. To act without purpose is to act on impulse. You say yes without thinking about competing obligations or what you want to get out of the party. You show up, wander around in a daze, carelessly stuffing your mouth with food or a few too many drinks.

Someone who values purpose, by contrast, doesn’t have to be a stiff who stays home or shows up with a party “to do” list. But before she says yes, she asks herself: What do I want to get out of this party? Will it give me a chance to unwind after a hard week at work? Will it give me the chance to have stimulating conversations with interesting people? If there is a potential value at stake, she’ll ask herself: Is this the best use I can make of my time?

When she arrives, she knows what she wants and goes after it. If she’s wants to meet new people, she won’t cling to the friends she knows, but will approach strangers. She might relax with a glass or two of wine, but she won’t get sloshed. Nor will she compulsively check her phone for work emails. She’s all-in on what she came for. She can be fully present because she knows why she’s there and has no divided loyalties.

Self-Esteem

To value self-esteem is to value yourself. Your need for self-esteem is rooted in the fact that you have free will. Because you shape your character and your life—and because on some level you know it—you can’t help but pass a verdict on whether you’re fit to live in this world—on whether you’re able to live and are worthy of happiness. That is self-esteem. To value self-esteem is to aim at a state of confidence and cleanness. Confidence is crucial motivation to pursue values; cleanness is what allows you to enjoy the values you do achieve.

To value self-esteem is to work to achieve self-confidence—not the localized self-confidence of being able to achieve some specific value, but a generalized self-confidence that comes from being able to deal with reality as such. Such generalized self-confidence can only come one source: confidence in your tool for dealing with reality, i.e., your mind. You build confidence by developing and exercising your basic tool of survival in the quest for values. You nourish self-esteem by nurturing the values of reason and purpose.

If you characteristically choose to think, you gain a sense of efficacy and control over your life. You learn that if you set your mind to the task of getting what you want, you can get what you want. Normally, this leads naturally to the sense that you are worthy of getting what you want. A farmer who plants and tends his crops doesn’t wonder, “Yeah, but do I deserve them?” He put in the work, he made the crops possible, they are his.

But this attitude toward life isn’t inevitable. You can accept wrong standards of self-worth. You can measure your worth, not by the extent to which you choose to think and take responsibility for getting what you want, but by things outside of your control. I’m worthy if I make the team; I’m worthy if people think I’m attractive; I’m worthy if I never make mistakes; I’m worthy if I never show vulnerability; I’m worthy if I’m richer than my neighbors; I’m worthy if I outperform my colleagues. Most damaging of all, you could embrace standards of worth that are at odds with personal happiness: I’m worthy if I set aside what I think and I want and do what God says; I’m worthy if I treat other people’s lives as more important than mine; I’m worthy if I’m selfless.

This is one reason why having an explicit, rational code of morality is so important. A rational code of morality puts the good on the side of your personal happiness, and it demands of you only what is possible to you. As we’ll see in detail in the next lesson, what morality demands is ultimately one thing and one thing only: rationality. Your choice to think does not simply make you able to live—it is that choice that makes you worthy of happiness.

Personal Values

Reason, purpose, and self-esteem are the supreme and ruling moral values life requires—but they are far from the only values life requires.

Moral values are fundamental, universal values that apply to every human being and pervade a person’s life. They are what shape your life and how you approach all of your other values. But many of your values will be concrete, specific, particular. Consider three of the most important personal values.

Career. Morality tells you that you need a career—a central productive purpose to organize your life around. But it doesn’t tell you which career to choose. That choice is up to you, given the unique context of your interests, abilities, and life situation.

Romantic love. Morality tells you that romantic love is a vital component of happiness and it tells you about some of the broad conditions of romantic love (for example, that it be based on mutual admiration, not codependency). But it doesn’t tell you which partner to choose. It doesn’t tell you whether they will be a man or a woman. It doesn’t tell you what body shapes are desirable or which sex acts are fulfilling. These are personal matters.

Art. Morality tells you that you need art to keep your spirit alive—but it doesn’t dictate what art should fill your life. Music or literature (or both)? Tool or Tchaikovsky (or both)? J. K. Rowling or Ayn Rand (or both)? These are personal choices that will flow from your deepest core beliefs.

As we’ll see in later lessons, morality is not silent on how you choose and pursue your personal values. It demands certain virtues—above all, rationality—that will shape how you make every choice. The point here is (1) you can’t deduce your personal values from morality, and (2) the fact that a value is personal does not mean that it is unimportant. Your life is your values, including your personal values. And your highest personal values can be so crucial to your happiness that you’re willing to die to protect them. I have two children, and I would not hesitate to throw myself in front of a car to save their lives. Not because I value them more than my life—but because my life is in crucial part the life of Livi and Landon’s father. My interests are bound up in theirs, and watching them perish if I were in a position to save them would empty my life of much of what makes it worth living.

What emerges from a morality that upholds man’s life as the standard of value is not a list of ethical rules but an integrated way of life: a harmonious constellation of values and virtues based in reason that work together to sustain you.

Existentially, this way of life keeps you in existence—psychologically, it leads to happiness, which is the result, reward, and fuel for living by a rational code of ethics. “Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.”

In defining a code of values to guide your actions toward life and happiness, Rand’s ethics unapologetically urges you to pursue your self-interest. This is not an “anything goes” approach to self-interest. It is not a predatory form of self-interest. It is not a misanthropic form of self-interest. It is, instead, a principled conception of egoism, which holds that your life matters and you have the right to make the most of it. You don’t exist to serve others, just as they don’t exist to serve you.

We now have our agenda for the rest of the book. In Lesson 4, we’ll look more carefully at the value of reason, and some of the virtues that living by reason requires. In Lesson 5, we’ll look at the value of purpose, and see how to choose and achieve a central productive purpose that fills your life with meaning. In Lesson 6, we’ll look at the value of self-esteem, and why it requires proudly embracing and practicing an ethic of Effective Egoism. Finally, in Lesson 7, we’ll see how an Effective Egoist can extract every ounce of joy possible from life.