3 Questions

... that Ashwin and Divya asked are answered in this post. Long, but read the answer to the first question at least. It's one of Rand's finest pieces of writing, and its impact is tremendous.

1. What's the definition of "living as a human being"?

I quote from Atlas Shrugged (Part III Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking") :

"Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch - or build a cyclotron - without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.

"But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you ... call 'human nature' ... is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival - so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think.'

"A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. 'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it. 'Value' presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value' presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.

"There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. ... It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

"A plant must feed itself in order to live; ... [it] has no choice of action; there are alternatives in the conditions it encounters, but there is no alternative in its function: it acts automatically to further its life, it cannot act for its own destruction.

"An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil. It has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In conditions where its knowledge proves inadequate, it dies. But so long as it lives, it acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and no power of choice, it is unable to ignore its own good, unable to decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.

"Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. ... An 'instinct' is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: ... fear of death is not a love for life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer. ...

"A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and to destroy his mind.
"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice - and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal, Man has to be man - by choice; he has to hold his life as a value - by choice; he has to learn to sustain it - by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues - by choice.

"A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

"There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man's Life is its standard of value.

"All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.

"Man's life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being - not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement - not survival at any price, since there's only one price that pays for man's survival: reason.

"Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man - for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.

"Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it."

2. In choosing people to love or make friends with, what percentage of a values-match is enough to rationalise the frienship? What if I adopt a child and love it despite the fact that the child brings me no emotional solace (i.e. the child doesn't love me) ?

As for the first question, simple enough. The extent to which you share values with a person determines the extent to which you love them and respect them. This, of course, is only applicable if you yourself have a rational set of values; otherwise the whole thing gets quite messed up. Self esteem depends on how much integrity you consider yourself to have, and if you serve an irrational code of values (see altruism below), you'll never be able to achieve anything close to your ideal, because your values contradict each other. So you'll probably end up with low self esteem: envying people of fine character, mixing with those like yourself whilst secretly holding them in contempt.

"Values" are fundamental values that a person truly holds: not values a person professes to have, not even the values one desires to have, but those which a person confesses to having through her actions. So if you have friends who supposedly believe in some religion and its teachings (say, Buddhism) but in real life do NOT practice its teachings (they don't work towards giving up their desires, don't take too many concrete steps to avoid evil materialistic pursuits, etc) they're hardly Buddhist, are they. Their true values would be much the same of any young person you will meet today in urban societies - more or less individualistic and liberal, with personal success being top on their list of priorities. So check again: how many people do you really know who have very different values from the ones you do? Chances are, not many. Because if their values were truly different, you'd probably not even come across them in the course of your daily life.

As for adopting a child - I should first say Rand said very little about children and parenting, so what I say here is an extrapolation of the ideas in her philosophy. Choosing whether or not to adopt a child is a morally neutral decision, because we are dealing with unknown quantities here and no value judgements are possible when values cannot be measured (or don't exist yet!). After you adopt a child, you will love him and try to inculcate him with the values you think are right - and if you're a better parent, simply allow the child to rationalise through his own observations and come to his own comclusions, making sure only to provide an environment in which honesty and reason are of supreme importance. As a parent, what you owe the child as he is growing up is sustainance, care and this environment. For most people, love also plays a huge part.

If the child grows up to be someone you respect and someone you share important values with, you love him. If the child grows up to be someone whose morals are mixed up, you cannot rationally love him. That's all there is to it. There is no such thing as a rational 'automatic' love for relatives - especially after they are grown up and are adults.

3. If I want to support someone for no other reason other than it makes me feel big and generous and stokes my ego, am I a moral person?

According to Objectivism, altruism is evil; but note carefully the exact meaning of altruism - to give up or give away something valuable when there is no value to be gained in return (you have no "ulterior motive" for doing this good deed.) The only kind of giving that is moral is when you simply wish to give out of benevolence and it involves no sacrifice on your part. Ayn Rand said many times that charity was fine as long as it does not get turned into a duty; that it was good thing but not a 'primary virtue'. When something is a fundamental moral or value, not practicing it makes you necessarily immoral. Not so with things that are simply 'good', like reading or being interested in music.

Analyse this closer: why is it that you feel like a big person when you provide for someone? It's one of two things: either you have truly accepted the philosophy of altruism, and believe that giving is the supreme good and should be everyone's ultimate goal; or else you want *others* to respect you as a generous person.

I'll handle the latter case first because it's faster: if you're the sort of person who derives her self-worth from what others believe, you're not much of a person, are you? It's what Rand calls a 'second-hand' existance - you don't *really* care if you are generous, you only want others to think so. If you had the opportunity to make a confidential donation somewhere, you wouldn't take it. Simply put, you're a fake.

But what if you really are 'daan shur vir Karna'? Ever analysed what it is that makes you believe sacrifice is the highest level of morality that can be achieved? It's been drummed into us, you know, through religion, the media, Mother Theresa and what not - constant onslaught from all sides that we must give up for the sake of the next person, that giving is the only virtue, that to want something for ourselves if evil and selfish.

In 'The Fountainhead', a character called Ellsworth Toohey says: "It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master."