Responsibility and morality

Sushil has a question: Why is a person who depends on another to survive less moral than one who is independent, given that
(a) the dependent is not unable to work but rather, unwilling and
(b) there is no element of coersion involved, the supporter is happy to keep the dependent alive.

The answer goes to the heart of Objectivism and touches nearly every fundamental aspect of it.

First, a definition of morality. It's very simple: whatever principle or course of action allows man to survive as a human being is moral. Of course, the key term is "survive as a human being" - as opposed to surviving in a brute-force, animalistic sort of way. The difference is that human beings survive through the use of their rational faculties - unlike in animals, human beings have a choice whether they wish to survive or not, and they have to make a conscious choice using their minds. The choices we make are rational or irrational depending on whether they lead to the survival of man as a human being or the destruction of man as a human being. Rationality means taking your whole life as a context for your decisions, rather than just the expediency of the moment or choosing that which gives you momentry pleasure but is ultimately destructive. Working to survive and serve your values is moral and rational, working to self-destruct is immoral and irrational. The extent to which we are rational, therefore, is the extent to which we are moral.

So then it follows that a producer who is able to survive through his own effort is more moral than a person who is dependent on someone else, because the producer rationally realises that his best chance of surviving as a human being is to be responsible for himself. The dependent guy chooses the momentary 'pleasure' of not doing anything productive over long-term stability and assurance of survival by counting on someone else to take care of him. (The reason why he cannot have a reasonable expectation of an assured future is that he can't morally expect the producer to proviode for him forever - we can't have the producer being forced to support someone he doesn't want to. So any time the producer changes his mind about supporting him, he (the dependent) is gone oredi.)

QED. Producer is more moral than dependent.

But Objectivism would also pass an unfavourable judgement about the producer who is willing to support the lazy dependent, because it would seem that the producer is serving irrational values by doing this.

The producer is giving up something that is of some value to himself (food, money). The only moral context in which one should give up something that is of value is when one is getting something of an equal or greater value in return. Value, of course, is subjective - a value exists only in the context of individuals. So the producer, in this case, values the survival of a lazy guy at the expense of his own hard earned money.

Why so? The only case in which this would be moral would be when the dependent is of great intrinsic value to the producer - there's love and caring and friendship or whatever involved. If it's a random stranger, the producer is doing something very immoral, because he's choosing to support this lazy bum over some honestly unfortunate and deserving chap. The producer is endorsing the bum's values and ethics (living off people, not producing, irrationality) over the ethics of, say, a paraplegic who *wants* to do all she can to survive, but can't. It's wrong to reward bad values.

So now we're down to the case of the dependent being of value to the producer. Now according to Objectivism, the choices we make in love and friendship also ought to be guided by rationality. It's morally wrong to love everyone regardless of who they are and what their values are - that's the same as rewarding bad values. Our choices in love and friendship ought to be guided by what values we hold dear; someone with values diametrically opposite to our own cannot be worthy of our love and respect. ('Values' in this context means fundamental principles like honesty, loyalty etc rather than stuff like favourite colours and food, which are morally neutral things.)

Since the producer's values are obviously diametrically opposite to that of the dependent, if the former still professes to love the latter, then the producer is guilty of loving irrationally. Now, I know the media really romanticises the concept of loving people without a thought to reason - but think about it. Isn't that worse than crazy - isn't it evil? "I don't care who you are, where you're from, what you do - as long as you love me" - it's an immoral ethic. Who a person is - their values - and what a person does - their actions - MATTER. These are the things that ought to guide us in making the choices of who we love.

Anyways. Shusheee, I hope that answers your question. Whew.