Hello Friends,
And happy Sunday!
A few weeks ago, I finished The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s first masterpiece and best seller. I did not find it as brilliant as Atlas Shrugged: the end of one of the main characters’ arc does not ring true to me. But still a thought-inspiring story with controversial characters which, especially after Atlas Shrugged, kept me thinking for many days.
The common theme between both novels? Heros who self-define their own values, and their own value. Not as reactionaries, but as absolutes. Writing the word “absolute” actually reminds me of the derisory then affectionate nickname one of Atlas Shrugged heroes, Hank Rearden, uses for a troubled young character who initially sides with the badies: “non-absolute”.
In Atlas Shrugged, at least two of the heroes, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, follow a transformative journey where they free themselves from the guilt imposed on them by society. At his public sham trial, Hank rejects this guilt in the following words, acclaimed by the audience to the strong disappointment of his judges:
I will not help you to pretend that I have a chance. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognized. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument. I will not help you to pretend that you are administering justice.
The issue with accepting a guilt that does not follow your own values is that it feels absolutely terrible. It feels wrong. It feels unfair. It feels sick.
The word for this - I learnt quite recently under other circumstances than edifying literature - is gaslighting. If you have ever been the subject of long-term gaslighting, you will recognise the feelings above very well. And if you are still struggling with some form of gaslighting in your life, whether personal or professional, I could not recommend this book, advised by one of my therapists, any more strongly: How to Solve Your People Problems: Dealing with Your Difficult Relationships.
There are several serious issues with accepting externally imposed guilt, and thereby values.
The first is that contemporary society / the authority of the day might be wrong. This point is as old as some of mankind’s earliest written stories. For example, 441 BC, Sophocles’s Antigone builds on the conflict between man’s laws versus the gods’ laws. Keeping to oneself the moral right to challenge unjust rules is what makes people and society better in the long term.
The second issue is that it feels wrong. Individual morality cannot be (fully) extraneous. It can be influenced by society’s norms, but it can’t be brute forced.
Stephen Fry, interviewed by Jordan Peterson in An Atheist in the Realm of Myth, explains it in those words:
That higher mode of existence is what your conscience tortures you for not attaining. You cannot create your own values. The values impose themselves on you, independent of your will.
[…]
That's what your conscience does and good luck trying to control it.
This is what powers the heroes of both of Ayn Rand’s masterpieces and gives them this internal righteousness: it does not matter whether they are right or wrong, what matters is that they live their respective lives according to their own values and accept the consequences. Especially in The Fountainhead, this is what gives the character of Howard Roark this palpable quality felt by the reader as an “I lived” cry, while the character of Peter Keating simply feels like a life wasted.
The third and last issue is that it does not embody the truth. This is linked to the other two issues above, but goes beyond: any combination of the above leads to not being true to reality and/or to oneself.
Interestingly, Rand chose a physicist, John Galt, as the character who would lead the mythical moral change of Atlas Shrugged’s dystopian society. An applied physicist. I.e. the literal incarnation of unveiling the fabric of reality. And that physicist derives his moral values from the laws of nature. From reality.
In my favourite book of all times, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a recurring setup illustrates the same premises: a young hero, Harry Potter-Evans-Verres, tries to unravel the fabric or magic reality armed (nearly) only with the scientific method. And his own values often do clash with the contemporary consensus of the magic society (think dementors). But what matters the most is his absolute refusal to accept anything below the truth, as quoted in the Litany of Gendlin:
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
It seems like we derived quite a bit from guilt and gaslighting, but we have not. A physicist like John Galt or Harry Potter-Evans-Verres cannot accept being gaslighted by anything inferior to the truth of reality. They both feel absolutely responsible for uncovering that truth and any errors in that journey, for their actions and reactions to the outside world, and for themselves.
This responsibility towards reality is the easier part, even if (too) many people usually avoid it. The most interesting part is that both accept also the ultimate responsibility for their own moral compass. And as Stephen Fry highlighted, this moral compass is not something they could lie to themselves about. Accepting that intrinsic morality despite (and against) some conflicting external circumstances and opinions is what makes them true to themselves.
This is probably the hardest way to live, but also the only one.
In many respects, I think I am still far from there, but I also believe it is the only thing to genuinely strive for in life as it defines everything and everything else.
What do you think?
Thanks for reading, and have a defining week ahead,
V
P.S. - cover generated by Chat GPT 4 based on “guilt”, “gaslighting”, and “architecture” prompts:
Another version with the added ask for it to be in tone & iconography of Ayn Rand’s novels:
Just… insane!