The Social Virtues: Independence and Justice

Lesson 6: Honor the Self (2 of 3)

Jordan Peterson famously begins his book 12 Rules for Life with an extended musing about lobsters. Why lobsters? Because they shed light on the nature of social hierarchies and status games. The strongest lobster gets the sexiest lobster, which I guess is a pretty good prize for a lobster.

I have no doubt that you can make sense of a lot of human behavior by seeing it as a competition for social status. I’m thinking of the men who shake hands like they’re trying to break bones and of women who throw shade on the mom who can’t afford whatever yoga pants are in fashion this spring. I’m thinking of people who buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like. I’m thinking of parents who shame children for not pursuing “respectable” careers or marrying “respectable” partners.

But human beings aren’t lobsters. We don’t have to play status games—and we shouldn’t. We create values—we don’t compete for them. We bond over shared values—we don’t fight for the most reproductively fit partners. Status games are games played by losers for prizes not worth winning.

Your means of survival is reason, and to live rationally means having as your primary focus, not other people, but reality. It is to practice the virtue of independence.

Independence doesn’t mean that you ignore other people, detach yourself from them, refuse to learn from or cooperate with them. It means that you take responsibility for your own thinking and you take responsibility for supporting your own life. You want to know what’s true—not what other people think is true. You want to know what’s right—not what other people think is right. You want to live by the work of your own mind—not copy a routine created by others, or feed on the crumbs of their handouts, or get rich by defrauding and robbing them of what they’ve created.

Independence, in this sense, is hard. It requires effort to think for yourself and to support your own life. It requires responsibility: if you’re independent and you make an error, there’s no one else to blame or to pay for your mistakes. It sometimes means coming into conflict with the opinions and judgments of others—provoking their disapproval or animosity. But independence is hard only in the sense that working out is hard—both involve short-term discomfort that buys massive benefits over the long run. As the saying goes: “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.”

One of the most independent people I know is my friend Alex Epstein. In his late twenties, Alex became fascinated by the issue of energy. He had grown up with no particular interest in the subject and shared more or less the conventional view: that fossil fuels were outdated, that solar and wind were the energies of the future, that climate change was very likely going to be a major problem. But once he realized the importance of energy—that it is the industry that powers every other industry—he began questioning the conventional wisdom.

Why is it, he wondered, that we only ever hear negatives about fossil fuels, and we only ever hear positives about solar and wind? Don’t we need to take an unbiased look at the positives and the negatives of all the alternatives to make good energy decisions? Why was it that the media covered catastrophic predictions about the future from the same thought leaders who had made failed catastrophic predictions in the past? Maybe they’re right this time, but shouldn’t their track record at least give us pause? Or why is it that we talk about whether climate change is real rather than whether those changes would be catastrophic? Doesn’t making good decisions require precision?

It was this persistent questioning that led Alex to formulate a new environmental philosophy, and eventually write two bestsellers: The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Fossil Future. Later in his career, Alex would sometimes be called a stooge for the fossil fuel industry. But the funny thing is that, when he developed his philosophy, he didn’t know anyone from the industry. And even when he did, what he found—and I saw this with my own eyes—was that he was usually far more positive about fossil fuels than people who worked in the industry. They often accepted the conventional narrative that fossil fuels were a necessary evil. They didn’t shape Alex’s thinking—he reshaped theirs.

The image that best captures Alex’s approach to life came just before the publication of his first book. New York City saw the largest climate march in history. Hundreds of thousands of people stomped down the streets of Manhattan chanting, “Hey, ho, fossil fuels have got to go.” And Alex? He stood alone facing the oncoming crowd, quietly holding a giant sign that read: “I Love Fossil Fuels.” That is independence.

The need for independence is, like every virtue, rooted in the fact that you survive by reason. Reason is an individual faculty. You can’t delegate your thinking—not even to people who are more intelligent than you are—because they, like you, are fallible. Intellectually, dependence means: I’m going to follow others on faith, I’m going to obey them—and I have no clue whether they’re in contact with reality. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, maybe they’re evil, I don’t know—but I’m going to follow them rather than my own judgment. Existentially, dependence means: I’m going to put my life at the mercy of other people—of their generosity, their gullibility, their weakness. Dependence, in short, means surrendering control over your own life.

Contrast that with a truly independent person. She’s forming her own conclusions about what’s true and what’s good. As a teenager, she’s questioning: Do I agree with my parents’ views on religion? Do I respect the things my peers admire? What do I find sexually attractive? What kind of activities do I find engaging? What kind of career do I want? Is this true? Is this good for me? The independent person is building her own view of the true and the good. She’s cultivating a strong sense of responsibility: “I am in control of my mind and my life and therefore I’m responsible for my mind and my life.” She isn’t looking to be handed anything, but to earn what she wants. And, through this process, she’s developing a strong sense of self. She knows what she believes—and why. She knows what she values—and why. She forms a self by means of reason—and then sets out to achieve an integrated set of values that will constitute her life.

As the independent person proceeds on her quest for values, she will have to navigate a world of other people. People who have free will. People who can shape their soul into something positive, rational, and creative—or who default on that task. Potential allies in the quest for happiness—and potential threats. Here another virtue is required, one that will guide her in distinguishing the good from the bad, that will help her benefit from the best that people have to offer and protect her from the worst that people have to offer. That virtue is justice.

Justice, writes Leonard Peikoff, “is the virtue of judging men’s character and conduct objectively and of acting accordingly, granting to each man what he deserves.” Today being “judgmental” is stigmatized. You’re supposed to be tolerant—not just politically, not just in the sense of respecting someone’s right to live however they choose, but tolerant personally and morally. That is suicidal. The people you surround yourself with help shape who you are and how your life goes. To remain agnostic about the character and conduct of those people is the equivalent of drunk driving through life.

What makes non-judgmentalism plausible is equating judgment with irrational prejudice. Yet what justice demands is rational judgment. To hire someone based on his skin color, to refuse to hire someone because of her sex, to assume someone is dumb because he has an accent, to assume someone is honest because she is attractive—justice forbids such shortcuts. It says: judge people by rational standards and apply those standards with rigor and care.

And then, justice says: act accordingly. Treat people as they deserve. Admire those worthy of admiration. Ostracize those worthy of being shunned. Praise good deeds and condemn bad ones. Meet the good with rewards—withhold rewards and, where appropriate, dole out punishments to the bad. In Rand’s words:

The basic principle that should guide one’s judgment in issues of justice is the law of causality: one should never attempt to evade or to break the connection between cause and effect—one should never attempt to deprive a man of the consequences of his actions, good or evil. (One should not deprive a man of the values or benefits his actions have caused, such as expropriating a man’s wealth for somebody’s else’s benefit; and one should not deflect the disaster which his actions have caused, such as giving relief checks to a lazy, irresponsible loafer.)

Just as justice demands judgment so it bars mercy. Mercy is the view that a person should deny people what they deserve. It is to sanction unearned forgiveness, and thereby reward evil while callously ignoring evil’s victims. When atheists praise Christian morality, when Jesus is held to be a moral exemplar, what they ignore is the vile center of Christian ethics: the demand that we turn the other cheek, forgive, and love the evil. To love the evil is to spit in the face of the good.

“No, we don’t love the evil. We hate the sin, love the sinner.” This means nothing. Man is a being of self-made soul—you are what you make yourself. This is precisely what evil people seek to evade. Criminals often say of their crimes, “That wasn’t the real me.” Christians say: “Yes, you’re right.” A morality of happiness takes morality seriously—it says, to the rapist, the child molester, the thug, the dictator: “That is the real you—and you deserve to suffer the consequences of your immoral choices.”

Does justice allow for forgiveness? Yes. If it’s earned. To earn forgiveness requires more than an apology. Forgiveness is earned when a person has genuinely changed and proved that he’s changed. When he’s repaired whatever flaws in his character allowed him to conduct himself in an unworthy manner. For a trivial misdeed, very little is required. For a serious grievance, it may take years or even decades to trust someone again. For serious acts of evil—not only crimes, but even something like long-term, conscious deception—there is no path to forgiveness.

If all of this sounds too harsh, it’s because we forget the stakes. Justice is not ultimately about condemning and punishing the evil. It’s about praising and rewarding the good. The reason evil cannot be forgiven is out of fidelity and love for its victims. “[M]ercy to the guilty,” Adam Smith noted, “is cruelty to the innocent.”

The essence of justice, its heart and soul, is this: I’m on a quest for values, and I’m on a quest for those who are on a quest for values. Justice isn’t primarily about condemning the wicked. It’s about telling your kid you’re proud of her when she fesses up to a mistake. It’s about standing up for the victim of an online mob and letting him know he’s not alone. It’s about being an ally to the true and the good.

We have now grasped the essentials of self-interest. Your interests consist of living rationally, creating values, and dealing with others as independent equals. But valuing your own interests—valuing your life—does not happen automatically. Like every other value, it must be earned. How do you earn it?