It's well after midnight and I'm still up, taking trucker pills with coffee to help me stay awake all night. I've been up since 6 AM yesterday, reading and scribbling notes, taking only three breaks - once to eat lunch, once to play poker with the guys, and once to get foresaid coffee. I asked myself: Why am I doing this? Why don't I just go to bed and let tomorrow hit me like a slightly speeding minivan? The answers that I never expected to receive, apparently, have been staring me in the face from the guise of my own sloppy notes.
"A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving."- Rand (Atlas Shrugged, pg. 506, xiv)
So apparently, my will to power dictates my ability to achieve, and the only thing stopping me from being the King of America is my own lacking drive to succeed. Is my tired conscious pounding me into the ground so hard that it is actually sabotaging my abilities? That's an absolutely horrifying prospect. Apathy is a character flaw, and one that I could not possibly force myself to give up in a day, let alone one long night of studies. However, I have taken my first step to rectifying the problem, which is identifying and acknowledging that it exists. So what next? More philosophical drivel from a Soviet capitalist who died at her type writer? Yes, to a degree. According to Rand, I will know my place in society (whether I'm a saint, a worker ant, a maverick, or a leader) by stating and evaluating my goals and priorities. Already being a very checklist oriented person, this comes easy to me, considering that I make mental objectives every morning. Usually it goes something like, shower, teeth, hair, clothes, class, don't die, etc. Now, however, I must make a very different and a much more reflective order unto myself.
Although it may sound petty, my pride is at the top of my list. I want my family to be proud of me, and it makes me more content than anything else whenever I get good news to share with my family. For example, because of my performance last semester, I'm being shipped out to Austrailia for a "diplomatic mission." Not bad, eh? This could very well be converted into a huge driving mechanism for me, my pride. My will to make my father proud of what I am achieving in my classes is what is keeping me up at such strange hours, and if he is proud of me, I will be happy. This happiness again causes me to reflect on a quotation I have in my own breed of illegible-to-others short hand:
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values."- Rand
This means that pride is the core of my values. But doesn't that seem vain? Doesn't that seem to be such a flimsy and corruptible foundation? It seems to me that my pride could cause me to do unscrupulous things that waver against my faith, such as lie, cheat, and steal. Again, according to Rand, this is fine.
"The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity."- Rand
To do something society would consider immoral to seize a profitable opportunity, therefore, would lead to my own success and pride. Again, my pride is my highest value as an individual. Herein lies the problem with moral relativism: It has no place in the real, physical world. Rand was an entirely rational human being, whose God was reason as much as it was Jehova, and her only "moral values" were her own individual values which caused her to be the controversial champion of Reagan era capitalism. She did not submit herself to the will of the people as the Soviets did, and instead defined civilization as man rejecting society in favor of individual freedom, not in embracing peaceful coexistanc and social equality.
Do I really share those same values? As shocking as it was to me as I reflected upon this, yes, I do. I immediately began berrating myself with questions. How could I ignore the plight of the oppressed and down trodden in favor of my own abundance? How can I permit the destruction of my fellow human beings with a silent voice? How could I ease back in my comfortable two hundred dollar leather chair without sympathy for the thousands dead in recent tragedies, not shedding a tear? How can I be the only person with a student government position in the political science department who has not donated a red cent to the tsunami relief efforts?
"If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject."- Rand
As brutal and heartless as ever, she is, again, correct. She later speaks of choice - how a person is free to make their own choices, but are not free from the necessity of making them. Are my choices steering me towards being an evil human being? No. They are steering me towards becoming my own man, an individual who could find victory in any scenario, even in unwinnable debates of the superiority of communal virtue and the moral relativism that, again, is as non-existant as it is unimportant. Living in as wonderful a country as America, it is a simple thing for me to say that I could succeed in situations others could not with my newly aware mentality, but do I really believe that someone who has lost everything in the tsunami could survive and prosper on their own, without my help? If they believe that they can remake their crippled life without my help, I do, too. If they do not, I wish them well, just not at my own detriment.
I have my own happiness, my own pride, to worry about. Make no mistake, there are no shades of good or evil here, only the inescapable choice of the black and white of success and failure, winning and losing, trucker pills and sleep. As an aware individual, I have made my choice and have found my motivation. It is not something that can be embraced in one night, so I do plan to go to bed at least three hours before class starts. However, this new way of thinking has engaged me, and I do intend to embrace it as far as my own set of moral values will take me.
