The Common Man and Christlike Presumption
In reference to my recent post on Advent, where I challenged heathens to live according to the precepts of Christian for a month, and chided my fellow Christians for failing to do so, Nostreculsus writes:
What about the opposite challenge? For one month, some nice Christian must worship the Dark Lord, cultivate the Lucifer Principle, and, in general, walk in the Shadow of the Black Sun. I realize, this isn’t very specific, but, possibly joining the Occupy Wall Street herd would serve. Or are those the sheep that are to be culled? I’m so confused.
It would make an interesting sitcom, though: Christian and Sorcerer swap places for a month. Wacky hijinks ensue.
My reply:
Thanks, but I am a convert. I used to be on the other side, not for a month, but for 35 years and more.
The hijinks consist mostly of misery created by being surrounded by a world of fools, and the only pleasure comes from the contemplation of one’s own wondrous and Promethean superiority. From time to time one meets a follow Prometheus, as lonely as oneself, alone in the cold and metallic knowledge that life is brief and meaningless, and that all the countless millions of present and past, everyone from Einstein to Aristotle, who thought there was something more, were fools and charlatans.
One develops a cool and ironic sense of bitter humor, as well as a bloated ego, and this personality characteristic is the defining trait of atheists ancient and modern. If there is a meek and humble atheist or sorcerer brimming with the milk of human kindness, I have yet to meet him.
Atheists of the Left reserve their pity for animals, atheists of the Right reserve their pity for supermen, geniuses and industrialists: both agree in being pitiless toward the common man.
***
Robert J Wizard, Objectivist, registers an objection to my characterization, not without some justice, and asks a few questions honor requires I answer in full.
***
Let me answer in order:
Q1. Was [egotism] your only source of pleasure?
A1: Yes.
Q2. You derived no pleasure from friends, spouse, reading, writing, work? Only from clenching in front of a mirror (speaking figuratively… I hope)?
A2 The question contains a false assumption. I did not say my only pleasure was egotism, I said my only source of pleasure was my ego. Friends and spouse and reading and writing were seen to be goods in so far as they served my good, and nothing was good in and of itself. (I should mention that, as a Stoic, I also held the position that there were goods in and of themselves, duties one should serve whether it afforded one pleasure or not, and that this second line of reasoning slowly, over years, drove out the first.)
Q3. On the basis of what did you affirm your own superiority?
A3 The question is a little tricky. I both pretended that I took no notice of where I stood in relation to other men, and I also considered myself to be an intellectual elite, smarter and more willing to face hard truths than the common lot of mankind.
Q4. By reference to other people and their beliefs that you judged to be inferior to your own?
A4 Yes.
Q5. If you suddenly converted everyone to your atheistic view, what would happen to your ego then?
A5 I would congratulate myself on having enlightened them. I converted several people to atheism, each time to my great satisfaction. I felt as if I have saved them from a degrading swamp of superstition.
Q6. Can you honestly tell me you thought Einstein and Aristotle to be fools?
A6 For believing in supernatural things? Yes. I took it to be proof that even men as wise as Merlin or Solomon in a given field could be as easily flattered and fooled by the poison of religion as Merlin by Nimue or Solomon by Sheba.
Q7. The choices are bloated ego or humility?
A7 Yes. The sin of pride and the virtue of humility are binary opposites, mutually exclusive, and exhaustive. Obviously a man can be arrogant about some things and humble about others, but for a given area of his life, that is the choice. Either you are NUMBER ONE, or you are not.
Q8. Is there a such thing as a healthy ego, or is it meek to blowhard?
A8 There is such as thing as gratitude, which is healthy, where you give thanks that your work and accomplishments have been bestowed upon you. Pride of workmanship is not the same as the Sin of Pride, which you call demanding the unearned.
Q9. Is it possible to have a healthy ego (and by that I mean a healthy assessment of one’s self) and be kind?
A9 A healthy ego recognizes the sad truth about oneself. Humility is honesty.
There is, of course, the pagan virtues of magnanimity and largesse and noblesse oblige. In that limited sense, one can be proud, and yet be kind and condescending, but only to lesser folk who do not threaten or challenge one’s ego.
Q10. Would you claim that any rational person would feel pity for Jobs, but not some child dying of cancer because Jobs was a “superman” and the kid didn’t contribute to society?
A10 My claim is that atheists of the Right regard the businessman and the superman as oppressed by the envy and mediocrity of the society around them, like Prometheus being tormented by vultures: and so they feel pity for them. I have not heard many expressions of pity from Rightwing atheists for Little Nell. That bathos is almost entirely the province of the Leftwing.
Q11. Why does the common man deserve no pity if something befalls him?
A11 By my values, all men deserve pity, for they are sinners condemned to die. By yours, my dear Objectivist, common man filled with a common amount of laziness and envy and a desire not to be disturbed by the ruthless energy of capitalism craves the material benefits of industrialization, but then also condemns his benefactors. That unambiguously is Ayn Rand’s depiction of the mass of the human race throughout human history. To be sure, she blessed bus drivers and fry cooks and manual workmen, but if and only if they share the ambition and rationality of the elite: Eddie Willers is the example of this, as is the nameless roughneck of Galt’s Gulch who did not wish to remain a truck driver.
The idea that a man can be brought low by mere misfortune is address in Ayn Rand’s writings only with the optimism that any such man, who is rational and productive, will work heroically to mitigate or undo the damage of the disaster, blaming no one, asking help from no one, except for such help as can be purchased by the exchange of something of equal value. No character of hers is reduced to beggary who then begs. Instead, he goes and gets a manual job as a laborer in a quarry or something of the sort.
So I am not sure how to answer the question. It is merely a blindspot in Objectivist thinking. There is no moral imperative in Objectivism to aid widows and orphans, or to visit the sick in the hospital or the prisoner in goal.
Q12. If an average schmuck with an average IQ, an average job etc., but an otherwise good fellow is struck by tragedy, by what standard does one say he gets no pity (F- him in other words) but the same befalling a “superman” does?
A12 Ayn Rand herself does not admit the possibility of tragedy in her world view. Your conclusions may differ from hers. She was primarily concerned with the harassment of the productive and rational superman at the hands of subhuman moochers, looters, and destroyers. The response to unforeseen disasters by rational men, according to her, is heroic attempts to repair the damage. Her characters are all perfect Stoics, unable to be broken-hearted by the random evils of blind fate. Only other men can bring them down and only if they themselves cooperate and consent to their own destruction. The Greek idea that great men could be destroyed by gods or fates or random chance is nowhere addressed in her writings: she regarded the possibility as absurd. Man was the master of his own destiny.
Q13. Are you claiming we should pity him because he is common?
A13Yes.
Q14. That would be presumptuous!
A 14 My arrogance is truly Christlike in its scope.
Q15. What is the criteria of “common”? A certain median of income, intelligence, skills, fame, hobbies – what?
A15 The poor, the weak, the miserable, the downtrodden, the helpless and hopeless men who live lives of quiet desperation, scraping from paycheck to paycheck, working with their hands or working petty dead-end office jobs, with no fame nor fortune nor future nor any hope of any such thing. I mean someone of what is now called the lower middle class.
Q16. Of course common man is simply that large collection of people who are not famous and don’t stand out in any particular way to your level of perception. Meaning they are people you do not know.
A16 Speak for yourself, friend. As a newspaperman and a GP lawyer, I met a lot more of the common man and his common woes and miseries than the common man has. He knows his neighbor’s problems. I wrote about the problems of everyone in the neighborhood, and the town, and the county. I rubbed shoulders with crooks and cops and petty politicians and guys who dug gravel for a living or hauled garbage, tobacco farmers and welfare moms and the struggling, uncomplaining owners and workers in small shops and restaurants, and the elderly living on so called fixed incomes which actually shrank year by year.
Possibility my attitude is somewhat darker than the norm, because no one calls the newspaper or their local attorney when things or going well, but I think I have seen life beyond the ivory tower of beloved books well enough to have an opinion.
I know them well enough.
*** ****
In the spirit of the season, let me give Mr Wizard the last word. He writes:
I have a couple follow-ups. But I have to go serve the common man his beer first.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
