Michael Mitchell: Archive

"Once men have accepted the idea that self-sacrifice is good, they have accepted the idea of sacrificing others, too."

--Ayn Rand

Imagine you're on a date and you want to impress someone so you pretend to like something they like but you really don't like it. Are you putting their interests first or your own? What is it you're actually interested in?

You could think you just want sex, that no long term commitment to the lie will be necessary because you're just going to kick this person out of bed in the morning anyway. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Imagine you do the same shit to get a raise at work, though. Now you have to keep living that pretense even after you get what you really wanted, and you thought of that when you weighed the cost and decided it was worth it to fake an interest in something. You thought the reward was worth the effort.

Now imagine you do this with your family and friends. That's just how it is, you think. Everyone's just pretending to be interested in shit in order to get whatever they're really interested in.

This is collectivism. Psychological dependency leads to self-sacrifice leads to physical dependency. The self-sacrifice just happens there in the midst of all the bullshit. Physical dependency is the real goal -- not having to earn shit, which is not the same as free shit -- and the price you pay for it is your self-worth. The theme of The Fountainhead, according to Ayn Rand, is: "Individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man's soul".

How is it self-sacrifice when you're getting what you really want? Because you're living a lie, not actually getting what's good for you, what's in your rational self-interest. A sacrifice is when you trade a greater value for a lesser value. Even if you get what you wanted, such as love or money, it's not really worth being dishonest. It's not real love and you didn't earn the money. In your mind, you're thinking faking a shared interest is worth getting what you're really interested in, but you're wrong, and you don't see it until it's too late, until you're relying on your own bullshit just to survive, pretending to be someone you're not. Beyond survival, the love and money are worthless to you, and it turns out happiness is what makes life worth living. In an attempt to cheat reality you thought you could use people to reverse cause and effect, but reality is reality. Oops.

You see, most people are just pretending to be selfless, to put other people's interests first. They think it's a con game and everyone's in on the con, but they're not actually conning each other, they're conning themselves, and that really is selfless. In order to get what you want secretly, you have to publicly act as if you want something else, and you can't sustain both "selves".

There are also people who really believe that shit, like saints, who openly sacrifice their own interests for others as a virtue, but that's a lie just the same, a betrayal of the self. Note also that there are very few saints.

A lie is when you put someone else's perception of reality above your own. Dishonesty is when you fake reality in your own mind. You think you get away with the lie simply if the other person believes it, but you also have to keep track of two versions of reality. Over time, as the lies pile up, you can't keep track of it all.

Some people will say you can't lie to yourself, which implies that lying is merely for whomever you're lying to, so if you fail then you're simply busted. "Wiser" people will say you can lie to yourself, that people evade reality all the time, such as addicts who won't accept they're killing themselves.

Lying to yourself, however, is not the same as believing something that's false. That's just a mistake. Lying to yourself is believing something you know is false. That's why most people think it's impossible. They only see the short-term.

The truth is whether you're lying to yourself or not is always just a matter of time. The longer you live a lie the more you ignore the truth, because you're seeing from the wrong perspective, you're choosing what other people think over what you think, putting their perception of reality above your own, until you can't tell the difference. Addicts aren't directly lying to themselves, for instance. They really believe their own bullshit. It doesn't matter if you do it deceptively or openly, you're at war with reality. You're practicing dishonesty as a virtue, and that doesn't lead to the achievement of values, even though you may be surrounded by the material products of your efforts, because the valuer (you) has been sacrificed, traded for a lesser value: prestige (others).

(A form of lying to yourself also happens with what we mere mortals mistakenly think of as having too much pride, when you go on a winning streak or whatever, start believing your invincible, and then reality gives you a wake up call. Athletes and rock stars know what I mean. That's not pride. That's bullshit.)

People versus reality is the actual issue, your perception of reality versus theirs. It seems small if you're just lying to get laid, but what if you're an atheist in a big family of Catholics? We're very understanding about freedom of religion today, in the more civilized parts of the world, at least, but the accusation alone, that you don't believe in God, could get you killed nearly everywhere on earth just a few hundred years ago. Living a lie was a practical necessity, but it still couldn't be done without wrecking your "mental health". People really believed a lot of mystical nonsense during the "dark" ages.

Ayn Rand said civilization is the process of setting man free from men. That's an invaluable, almost unbelievable, insight into human psychology. Civilization brings people together, right? If you stood on a mountain and looked down on people living in the world -- as if they're just animals (or statistics) -- almost everything you'd see would appear the opposite. It looks like everyone's in harmony, or trying to be, and that's what most philosophers and preachers and politicians and other leaders will try to maintain or achieve.

How did she see the truth? She didn't, not the way you'd think. It's really not necessary to infer it from other people's behavior, although it's very easy to see that most people on every class level are miserable. She was just being honest. She wasn't looking down on anyone at all, just staying true to her own interests. The value of political freedom is only difficult to understand if you're in thrall to collectivism. The more honest you are, the more individualistic you are. The more dishonest you are...

"Better the whole people perish than that injustice be done."

--Immanuel Kant