The Journals of Ayn Rand (83 page)

The disaster of
Part II
is actually one single development in progressive steps. (Decide what it is that the steps must lead to.)

In Part I, there are three key points: the original trouble—the problems of Dagny and Winstow—the emergency when Dagny needs Danneskjöld’s help.

The pattern of the last emergency must be something like this: if (for a certain expected cause) TT doesn’t deliver the ore to a steel factory, there will be no steel; if so, there will be no trucks; if so, there will be no grain transported to farms; if so, there will be no wheat; if so, the country starves.

An important point:
The lesser man thinks he would be president of the company but for the better man. He’s wrong. There wouldn’t be any company. He thinks better men crowd him out of the better jobs—and all he has to do is destroy the better men, then the jobs will be his. But he destroys the jobs when he destroys the better men. They were not made by these jobs—these jobs were made by them. The lesser man can neither create the jobs of the genius nor keep them.
(There
is an important difference of viewpoint: the creator knows that he makes his own job—the parasite thinks that he can be made by a job prepared for him; the creator knows that wealth is produced by him—the parasite thinks that he is cheated out of his “chance” without the wealth which came out of nowhere. The creator
makes
his job; the parasite
takes over.)

Since the essence of the creator’s power is the ability of independent rational judgment, and since this is precisely what the parasite is incapable of, the key to every disaster in the story—to the whole disintegration of the world—is a situation where independent rational judgment is needed and cannot be provided. (Cannot—in the case of the parasites involved; will not—in the case of the strikers.)

Charity to an inferior does not include the charity of not considering him an inferior. (This is so by definition.) This is what is demanded by the collectivists now. If the inferior is to be helped on the ground that he is weak and you are strong—let him remember and acknowledge his position (and this is the premise of any voluntary charity).

But charity as a basic, overall principle of morality does lead to this
vicious
circle: if charity (or mercy, as distinguished from justice) is the conception of giving someone something he has not deserved, out of pure kindness or pity, and if this is considered good (a virtue, a moral imperative), then the collectivists are right and consistent in demanding that the principle be applied to the primary sphere, the spiritual, as it is applied to the material sphere, which is only secondary. If, in the material sphere, you give a man a loaf of bread he has not deserved nor earned, so his only claim to it is his misfortune and your pity; then the equivalent in the spiritual sphere would be the kindness of considering him your equal, a status he has not deserved, ignoring his actual worth as a man and handing to him the moral or spiritual benefits, such as love, respect, consideration, which better men have to earn, handing these to him for the same reasons that you hand him a loaf of bread—because it is a desirable possession and he is too weak to earn it.

The collectivists (and all parasites) now demand this kind of charity: give me the bread, because you’re strong and I’m weak, and also do me the courtesy of pretending that I’m just as strong as you are, don’t hurt my feelings by treating me as if I were weak, hand me an alms of the spirit as you hand me one in physical shape—else you’re cruel, selfish and uncharitable.

This is the ultimate logical conclusion and the ultimate viciousness of charity as an absolute principle.

Help to a deserving friend is not charity—by definition. First, you personally want the friend to succeed or overcome his misfortune, you have a reason for it, you consider him good or worthy or valuable, so you have a personal interest in his succeeding. Second, you consider that there is a just reason why the friend should have help—either because his misfortune is accidental, or greater than he deserved.

Charity
implies that its object does
not
deserve help, but you give it nevertheless, as a bonus; you are not being
just,
but magnanimous or merciful. When you help a genius in distress, you’re kind, but not charitable. When you help a bum from the gutter whom you loathe—
that
is charity. You help, not out of compassion for an equal, but out of contempt for an inferior—[you help]
because of your contempt.
And on this premise (which is the exact definition of charity) the collectivists are right when they demand the worship of inferior [men because] of their inferiority; then you do end by rewarding failure, admiring incompetence, loving vices—and penalizing success, achievement, virtue.

This is what happens whenever one attempts to depart
from facts,
i.e., to depart
from justice
(which is to depart from reality). [Regardless of] your motive, the result is still faking reality, evading facts—and the consequences will be those of any lie: corrupt, destructive, and monstrous.
There is no
good motive for lies. Nor for evading reality. There can’t be, by definition. What is
the good
in such a conception?
There is no good except truth to facts
—
which means, the rational method as an absolute.

There is the same kind of vicious intellectual sloppiness in the idea of “charity” as there is in the idea of brother-love. From the idea that you must love your brother men as a reward or recognition of merit or of lovable qualities (therefore you should love the men who exhibit these qualities, [because that] is only
just)
—it has become the idea that you must
love,
period, without cause or reason, just love everybody and anybody because he is born in human shape—and from that, it has gone “below zero,” into “love a man for his vices, love a man
precisely because he shouldn’t be loved.”

From the idea of: “When in doubt about the evidence, be merciful, lean toward giving a man the benefit of the doubt, be a little kinder rather than a little harsher when you are not sure of the exact justice”—it has become: “Be kind, no matter what the evidence, do not even dare to look at the evidence, just be kind”—and then: “Look at the evidence and be kind only to those who deserve the worst punishment; their evil is their claim upon your kindness.”

It’s like this: first, “Love the hero, hate the knave and be kind to the average man, giving him credit for such good as he does possess, and not hating him altogether for such bad as there is in him.” Then: “Love everyone equally and indiscriminately, their personal virtues or vices must have nothing to do with the love you owe them all without questions or reasons.” And then: “Love the knaves, because they’re the unfortunate ones and misfortune is the only claim to love. Hate the heroes—they cannot claim love, since they cannot claim pity or charity.
Love is a coin used only for alms, never for exchange or reward.
”

That is your logical altruism and charity. (And the parasites want it because it’s an escape from the responsibility of acquiring virtues to be loved for, an escape from free will.)

From the idea of respecting another man’s
rights
because he is a human being, and these rights are his by nature and not subject to your grant or sanction, therefore do not ever rob or cheat another man nor obtain anything from him by force without his voluntary consent, nor expect anything from him without earning it by a free, mutual exchange—it has become: “Give him the shirt off your back, if he wants it—he has a right to it, that is how you must respect other men’s rights.” From: “Do not take that which is not yours,” it has become: “Take nothing and give away anything to anyone who wishes to take it. Misery and misfortune are the only claim checks he must present.” (Nothing is yours—everything is everybody else’s.)

The idea behind this damnable worship of misfortune is the denial of free will. Men are not considered responsible for their fortune or misfortune.

Dagny’s and Galt’s attitude should be
a profound mistrust of suffering.
There is a difference between the way Dagny bears pain inflicted on her by others, bears it defiantly, never allowing it truly inside her, hating the idea of pain, in herself or others—and the way James Taggart, who is a “solid screaming pain” inside, [uses] his suffering to make himself a mortgage on better people.

(This aspect has to do with the final dilemma of the priest.)

James Taggart makes use of the idea of charity—on the receiving end.

On the giving end, it is the priest. But the priest cannot go to the depths of depravity which this idea demands. If there is room for it, I might have to have another character to exemplify
that
—a man going insane in the attempt to live by the idea of charity, which he has accepted as a basic premise and axiom, accepted intelligently and consistently, i.e., with all its implications. This would be a kind of Dostoyevsky.

Line for the “man of charity”:
he starts by loving Galt and hating James Taggart; then, to be charitable, he makes himself love Taggart as much as Galt, love them both equally—hating himself in the process and considering his own suffering as a sign of virtue. Then, to be more consistently charitable, he loves Taggart and hates Galt—at which point he commits one of the worst acts (against the strikers) in the whole story, one of the most irrationally twisted, corrupt, monstrous acts—and he ends up insane (and probably dies in some bloody horror which he has brought about).

Starting from hatred of suffering, and from his motive of pity for and desire to relieve suffering, he ends up by becoming a complete sadist.

The primary attribute of the parasite is his inability or unwillingness to produce.

Since all production rests on original thought and personal effort— these are the two qualities lacking in a parasite: he cannot produce an original thought and he will not exercise any personal effort.

In respect to thinking, there seem to be two different (though related) aspects of it: original thinking and assimilating thinking, i.e., the ability to discover new knowledge and the ability to understand a new thought discovered by someone else (not merely to memorize principles or knowledge, but to assimilate them through full rational understanding). The necessary rational process seems to be similar in both instances—the ability to grasp and connect a rational chain—but it is here, I think, that the degrees of men’s intellectual ability, the degrees of intelligence, become apparent: a great mind is able to make new rational connections, never made before by anyone else, from objective evidence; the lesser mind is able to grasp the connections made by others when these others present their conclusions to him. (He must be able, when an argument is presented to him, to know whether it is correct or not, rationally tenable or not, and accept or reject it accordingly; but he cannot initiate a new chain of reasoning.)