Michael Mitchell: Archive

"Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy -- a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer."

Ayn Rand

What does she mean by "achieving values that are real"? She means a billion dollars might make you happy and it might not, that you have to know what you want, you have to explicitly define what's important to you, and then you have to earn it.

There's no such thing as a value that isn't real. She has to overstate what she means because altruism, the dominant cultural morality, tells you the opposite, that you should live your life in the service of earning values for others.

Happiness is all about knowing what you want. Unfortunately, most of us were taught not to even think that way, so desire itself is evil to us, makes us feel guilty, and if you don't understand altruism well enough to consciously reject it, even if you get everything you ever dreamed of, you'll never be happy.