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Illiberal Belief #15: Everyone Is Selfish – And That’s Bad – Article by Bradley Doucet

Illiberal Belief #15: Everyone Is Selfish – And That’s Bad – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
March 11, 2015
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Liberty is won and preserved not primarily with guns, but with ideas. Spreading freedom requires that we spread an understanding of the benefits freedom brings, that we explain to whomever will listen how freedom is really in everyone’s best interest. In making the case for a truly free society, however, we will inevitably come up against a wide array of illiberal beliefs that keep others from embracing our vision of a better world. The more we seek to understand those beliefs, the better we will be able to counter them and address the concerns that underlie them. In this ongoing series, I address some of the issues we can expect to face, along with brief outlines of the kinds of responses I think can be helpful.

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Is it true, as cynics believe, with some backup from certain schools of economics, that everybody is selfish? Well, no. But even if it were true, is being selfish really such a bad thing anyway? The answer to this question depends on what you mean by “selfish.”

The traditional view of selfishness, promoted by religion but maintained by many secular thinkers as well, is that it is bad. According to this view, a selfish person thinks only of his own interests, disregarding the interests of others. Such a person might steal from, lie to, betray, or at the extreme even go so far as to murder others in order to get his way.

But is this really a selfish way of acting? It’s a petty, criminal, malevolent way of acting, to be sure—but does a person really serve his own interests by stealing, lying, betraying, or murdering? It might serve one’s immediate interests to have more money, avoid responsibility for something, or do away with someone who stands in one’s way, but what about the longer-term consequences? Embracing a life of crime, aside from eating away at your soul, for lack of a better word, will very likely come back to bite you, landing you in jail or in an early grave. It’s not a great way to make friends, either.

A person who is selfish and rational takes the longer-term consequences of his actions into account when deciding how to act, what kind of life to lead, what kind of person to be. A rationally selfish person doesn’t cheat or steal, but instead works hard, learns about the world, respects the rights of others, and builds lasting, fulfilling relationships—the kinds of things that are actually in a person’s best long-term interests. This is the kind of view taken by philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand, who titled one of her collections of essays The Virtue of Selfishness. This kind of rational self-interest is not something to be lamented, but something to be celebrated, leading to greater wealth and happiness for all.

Those who moan that everyone is selfish have the first kind of selfishness in mind, the bad kind, but clearly not everyone is a thug or a cheat. True criminals are a tiny minority in any civilization. Most people follow some kind of moral code, however mixed up and unexamined it may be. They feel the need, not only to enjoy lives full of rewards, but also to deserve those rewards. They want not merely to have good lives, but to be good people. This simple, basic truth flies in the face of what the cynics out there would have us believe.

The economists who inadvertently lend some support to the cynics have the other kind of selfishness in mind, the good kind. Economists since at least Adam Smith have been unable to deny the beneficial side-effects of lawful self-interested action—though they have not, as a rule, been as unapologetically enthusiastic about it as Rand.

In an article entitled “The Denial of Virtue” published in the January/February 2008 edition of Society, sociology professor Amitai Etzioni takes on economists and other social scientists who are quick to explain away charitable behaviour as a way to get tax deductions, volunteer work as a way to meet other singles, or heroic acts as the result of “hard-wiring.” Etzioni tells us about experiments suggesting that many people do not “free ride” even when they think they can get away with it. He also points out that many people vote, even though they know the chances that their vote will make a difference are close to nil. In these and other cases, people plausibly report that their actions are motivated not by self-interest but by what they think is right, by what they think they ought to do.

I think Etzioni is correct, as far as this goes. The claims of economists and social scientists that all actions are self-interested—that whatever people choose to do necessarily reflects their calculations of costs and benefits for themselves—is belied by clear cases of people acting out of a sense of duty, either to god or society or their parents.

Where I part company with Etzioni is in believing that this sense of duty is a good thing. Etzioni can point to people doing good out of a sense of duty, but I can point to people disowning their natural desires for pleasure out of a sense of religious duty; sacrificing their rights out of a sense of national duty; abandoning a career or a mate out of a sense of duty to their parents. I do believe in virtue, but I believe that duty is its enemy. Duty ethics ask you to adhere to a set of rules, whereas virtue ethics ask you to live up to an ideal, which is a very different focus.

It is a good thing people are not all selfish in the narrow, petty way the cynics imagine them to be, but it is actually unfortunate that people are not all rationally self-interested in the way social scientists suppose. This kind of rational self-interest not only has beneficial spill-over effects, but is in fact a virtue—it leads people to act virtuously, to live fulfilling lives, and to be good people. As Dr. Nathaniel Branden wrote in “Isn’t Everyone Selfish?” published in the Rand book mentioned above, this rhetorical question, though intended as a cynical jab, actually “pays mankind a compliment it does not deserve.” Hopefully, more and more of mankind will deserve it as they increasingly embrace the virtue of rational self-interest and reject not only petty, narrow selfishness but also the heavy hand of duty.

Bradley Doucet is Le Québécois Libre‘s English Editor and the author of the blog Spark This: Musings on Reason, Liberty, and Joy. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness.

What the World Needs Now – Article by Bradley Doucet

What the World Needs Now – Article by Bradley Doucet

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What the World Needs Now

Bradley Doucet
March 11, 2012

So you’ve decided that you want to make the world a better place. And admittedly, despite humanity’s unprecedented gains in wealth, knowledge, wellbeing, and liberty over the past two hundred years, poverty persists in many parts of the world, ignorance and superstition fill countless books and broadcasts, needless suffering abounds, and everywhere men and women are still in chains. You want to feed the hungry, school the benighted, treat the sick, and free the servile. Noble goals all, to be sure, but what to do first? Where to focus your efforts? What does the world need now?

Perhaps a return to a gold currency standard in order to curb governments’ power to print money and fuel speculative booms and busts is the ticket. Or maybe you should do what you can to push for free trade, particularly in agriculture, and greater labour mobility across international and intra-national borders. Maybe ending wars and refocusing military resources and personnel on defence instead of offence is what is needed—and while we’re on the subject of war, ending the disastrous war on drugs, too. Perhaps fighting for lower taxes and simpler tax codes should be your priority, or fighting to simplify and reduce business regulations. Or again, you might think ending one-size-fits-all education and letting a thousand flowers bloom would bring about the most good, or maybe opening health care to greater competition and innovation.

Which of these goals should you devote your energy to accomplishing? Which would best promote the cause of liberty and hence lead to greater wealth, knowledge, and wellbeing for all? We could argue about it for days and not come to a definitive answer, but fortunately, we don’t need to agree. Indeed, as the above quotation suggests, to ask what the world needs is in fact to ask the wrong question. The world needs a lot of things, and any of the goals listed above is worth pursuing. But what the world needs most of all is more people who have come alive.

Love, Sweet Love

But hang on a second. Isn’t it selfish to spend your precious time and energy on what fills you with passion and makes you feel most alive? And isn’t selfishness one of the root causes of things like poverty, ignorance, suffering, and servility? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all gave more thought to the needs of our fellows—if, in other words, we were all a little less selfish? And isn’t it therefore wrong, even perverse, to call on people to be more selfish and claim that this is what the world needs?

The short answer to the first question is yes, it is selfish to concern yourself with what makes you come alive. But this is a case in which the short answer will not do. The problem is the persistent conflation of two distinct notions: petty, short-sighted, and ultimately self-destructive selfishness on the one hand; and expansive, rational, enlightened self-interest on the other. The man who rips off his clients, steals from his neighbours, cheats on his wife, indulges every stray impulse, and betrays his own deepest values is not doing a very good job of serving his own true interests. But the man who is honest in business and friendship, who weighs the future consequences of his actions and is true to his values will be more successful in the long run, which is to say that he will have a better, happier life. Happiness, in other words, is dependent on such virtues as honesty, rationality, and integrity.

There is another important distinction that helps to clarify the issue: the difference between duty and virtue. Whatever you may have learned from government schools or religious teachings, you have no duty to save the world, no duty even to make it a better place. This is no great loss, however, for the cold, grey hand of duty is a comparatively poor motivator in most cases. It breeds resentment and sucks the vitality out of existence. Happiness, in contrast, is a shining prize that feeds the spirit, a prize to be won daily and over the course of a lifetime through the exercise of virtue. And the kicker is that virtuous, happy, passionate people are precisely what the world needs.

Do What You Love, Freedom Will Follow

Even if you agree that you have a right to pursue your own happiness in a peaceful manner, you may still think the world would be better off if you sacrificed some of your happiness in order to work toward some other goal. Far be it from me to discourage you from pursuing a worthwhile goal if you want to pursue it. My purpose is rather to discourage you from pursuing a goal you don’t really want to pursue, a goal that will not make you happy.

If you sacrifice your happiness, even to further a goal that you value, you will squander your precious energy. Your unwelcome tasks will weigh on you, and you will feel depleted at the end of the day, and wake from sleep unrefreshed and unenthusiastic.

If, instead, you do what you love, you will have energy aplenty. You will tend to embrace your tasks, and you will feel good even when tired, and wake eager to greet the next challenge. Even if you spend your days in a manner that does not directly further the cause of liberty, as long as you do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, you contribute to making the world a better place through the positive sum game of voluntary exchange. You also set an example of the good life—a peaceful, productive, and happy life—that, if everyone simply emulated, would be sufficient to bring about a golden age overflowing with greater wealth, knowledge, wellbeing, and liberty for everyone.

There is one more indirect salutary effect that people who have come alive have on the world. In addition to benefiting others through voluntary exchange and through the productive and peaceful example they set, people who have come alive are not themselves easily ruled. They value their own freedom to follow their bliss, and will tend to guard it jealously, and so guard the freedom of others as well.

By all means, if you can directly further the cause of liberty in a way that makes you happy, I encourage you to do so. But don’t consign yourself to a life of misery because of some antiquated notion of duty to others. Instead, do what makes you come alive, and you will thereby contribute much to making the world a better place.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.