The Philosophy of Freedom

by Caleb Nelson

  Watch any “National Geographic” television special and be witness to the laws governing the survival of life. Plants, insects, and animals all have fundamental natures that require them to engage in certain activities or find certain environmental conditions in order to live. Each animal has unique requirements for life. These requirements can’t be changed according to the animal’s whim or changed through a vote by its fellow animals. As is evidenced in both the death of individual animals and in the extinction of entire species, failure to meet the requirements of nature means death. Humans, on the other hand, do not live by major survival instincts—they have the ability to reason.

  We are not exempt from the requirements of existence merely because we are the only creatures on earth which must rely alone on rational thought. We can’t ignore these requirements for long before the natural consequences of illness, starvation, misery, and death set in. It is this very attribute of man—his mind—that becomes his basic tool of survival. While animals can get by on their instincts, man cannot. Man can’t live like an animal. There aren’t many animals man can chase down for food—he has no claws with which to make the kill, he has no fur to prevent him from freezing in the cold. Man’s only tool of survival is his rational mind which allows him to plant food, create clothing, find shelter, design and create weapons to hunt and tools to farm with, and interact with and learn from his fellow men. Man’s survival must be by conscious choice, not instinct. A man’s failure to think results in death, unless others think for him, in which case he is not living as a man, but as a parasite or a vegetable.

  Man must live by conscious choice. Animals adjust themselves to their environment; man adjusts his environment to himself. Ayn Rand contrasted this idea, “If a drought strikes them, animals perish—man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes, animals perish—man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish—man writes the Constitution of the United States. But one does not obtain food, safety, or freedom by instinct.”

  [16]

  All of existence is governed by principles, whether we know and understand them or not. The more we can align our life with true principles the more prosperous and happy we become. These principles do not change; they apply to every living person today, tomorrow, or millennia ago. They can be discovered by anyone who uses their reason to seek truth. Principles exist in the world, in the universe, in plain sight, operating in the broad daylight of perception. Knowing them and using them will make us happy and free.

  Review

  Q1: What is the primary truth about reality upon which all other principles rest?

  Q2: What are the laws of identity, causality, and non-contradiction?

  Q3: How can you discover principles?

  Q4: How can you know what is true?

  Q5: What is man’s means of survival?

  Q6: Can you name some principles that have helped you in life? Is there something you used to believe was true that you have come to discover was in error?

  Chapter 2: Morality and Self-Interest

  “Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, his sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. To remain alive he must think.”

  [17] - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

  THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

  There are a staggering number of people on this planet—billions more than the number of seconds in the oldest person’s life. In this context, you may feel like an insignificant drop in an ocean of humanity, but the number of people in your species does nothing to diminish the value of your life. You are a completely unique entity, different and independent from all the rest. And while your existence may not matter to the majority of people on earth, it matters to at least one person—you. Whether you live or die, whether you are happy or miserable, makes a difference to you. This is why you are here. You exist to be happy.

  Man’s life is an end to itself, and his enjoyment of it—his happiness—is the only moral purpose of it.

  Happiness is the moral purpose of your life. Your life is an end in itself, and joy is the highest achievement possible. Your life is yours; it belongs to you and no one else. No one can live it for you or make your choices. It is up to you to create the kind of life you want and have as much happiness as you choose.

  There’s good news and bad news that goes along with that, and it’s actually the same news: happiness doesn’t come by chance; it comes by obeying certain rules, or laws. That’s the good news because you can discover those rules, and by following them, be happy. That’s also the bad news because you now know that joy and fulfillment in life won’t come by wishing, hoping, and waiting for some big roll of universal dice for things to finally go your way. If you want to have the feelings of happiness, you must choose to perform the actions that correspond to the laws of the universe which produce those feelings. The same is true if you want to be wealthy, or respected, or have a loving, committed relationship, or a free and prosperous country. You must perform the cause to get the effect.

  Where did these laws come from? They have existed for as long as the universe has. They were not invented; they simply are, just as inertia is an inescapable fact of existence, just as trees need sun, soil, and CO2. These laws applied to your life are called principles. Some principles are the laws of causality applied to the actions you take. For example, the law would state: humans must obtain a sufficient amount of nourishment or die. The principle would state, if you eat enough food, you will avoid death by starvation.

  Law + action = principle.

  The principle is based on the law, and when you follow it, you get predictable results. Principles based on metaphysical truths never change (e.g. you will always need to food to live).

  Run fast and far from anyone who tells you your happiness is not your purpose, because they are likely going to tell you that the design of your existence is to be used instead for someone else’s happiness.

  Philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed this. He claimed that reason and choice were ineffective tools to be given to us by nature if man’s purpose was to be happy. He said that “by instinct . . . [we would have been happier] much more certainly than . . . by reason,” and that “our existence has a different and far nobler end, for which, and not for happiness, reason is properly intended.”

  [18] Happiness was not a noble goal in Kant’s view. He had other things in mind for the human race which we will discuss later.

  Immanuel Kant

  [i]

  While happiness is the purpose of your life, it is not provided by default of the fact that you’re alive. It does not come by doing whatever you want or whatever you feel like doing. It cannot be had by acting on every capricious impulse that floats through your mind. Our whims are rarely in our self-interest, and blindly following them is not the way to be happy. You might really enjoy eating an entire box of Oreos at once, easily mistaking the temporary rush of dopamine as happiness, but you would soon find it overshadowed by the later consequences. Your life isn’t better, it’s actually worse because your stomach hurts, you’re nurturing an addiction, your health is damaged, and soon your pants will not fit. In this example, you are basing your happiness on an external chemical substance, rather than on something internal and ongoing. It is artificial, temporary, and damaging, rather than natural, sustained, and healthy.

  How then do we find happiness? What natural and internal source will give us steady happiness and satisfaction? Happiness lies in achieving life-serving values. These values are not automatic, they must be deliberately chosen by strictly adhering to rational thought. You can have joy only in the achievement of your values. This can be called doing what is in your best self-interest.

  VALUES AND ETHICS

  A value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.

  Your life is a value and you take action to keep it. You do what you have to do to keep living. In
fact, your life is usually your highest value because without it, you are unable to gain or keep any others. If you’re dead you can’t do anything else.

  But, why should anyone act to gain or keep anything, be it a material value, such as a car, or spiritual value, such as love?

  Because the achievement of one’s rational values is the most direct, true, and sure way to achieve the state of mind called happiness.

  Without identifying values, there is no way to know how to determine what is important to you. Without values, you will go through life with no purpose short of entertainment. It is basically like sitting at home, waiting for life to happen to you. In such a state you’ll just drift through life. Without values, you will be aimlessly tossed about at the mercy of external events, wondering why you aren’t happy, thinking life is a lottery, and you are simply unlucky.

  Virtues: the actions, attributes, or skills needed to gain and keep values.

  Reason is a value; its corresponding virtue is rational thinking.

  A career is a value; productive work is a virtue.

  Self-esteem is a value; doing what it takes to gain and keep it is a virtue.

  [19]

  Knowledge and wisdom are values; pursuing education is a virtue. Without virtues, you have no way to achieve values.

  Principles, in this context, are the laws in which virtues are the cause and values are the effect.

  For example, if you decide that a healthy and trusting relationship with family and friends is a value you desire to have, then you must discover the principles that describe how to achieve the desired results, and then take the virtuous actions that will get those results. To obtain the value of a trust-filled relationship, you must follow, among others, the principle of integrity, which will require you to exercise the virtue of honesty.

  As another example, the same formula can be applied to weight loss. A healthy body is the value you desire, principles of good diet and physical activity dictate to you the virtues you must cultivate, such as the discipline and knowledge for proper exercise and nutrition.

  Virtuous actions conform to principles and lead to the achievement of values. This makes us happy. This concept can be expressed visually in a simple manner:

  How do we determine if values are good or bad? Are all values the same? Is there a way to judge which values should be held in higher esteem? Are there some deceptive “values” which are actually evil and lead to misery and destruction? Shouldn’t we just go with whatever society says is good or whatever feels good?

  Good and evil can be defined clearly and objectively:

  Good: That which is suitable to the life of a rational being.

  Evil: All that which destroys the life of a rational being.

  [20]

  Please notice that the standard used to judge good and evil is life—our ultimate value. Notice also that this standard is objective—existing independently of feelings and opinions. Life and its requirements are empirical; they are observable and discernible to any person with natural senses. Since life is universal to all people, such a standard of good and evil is also universal to every person.

  “Good” is that which is proper, by nature, to the life and joy of man—be it physical, mental, social, or spiritual values to support and sustain man’s life. It is focused on what is—in reality and not by whim—good or best for each individual (always in context, accounting for who he is and what is possible to him). “Evil” is that which destroys life or man’s ability to sustain his own life, or enjoy it, i.e. his ability to act according to his judgment in pursuit of his self-interest.

  It is a simple concept to understand, but it can be extremely tricky to apply. Acting morally requires having virtues and pursuing values—living according to principles.

  It is important to identify whose life is the standard of value: yours. You cannot be given happiness from someone else nor give it to them. (You may derive happiness from your association with another person, but they do not force you, it is still a choice.) You cannot tell someone what to value, nor have values forced upon you. It takes a conscious, rational, mental recognition to discover what kind of life is proper to man’s happiness, and to live that life. Even when you have found the values necessary to a proper life, you cannot require that others be forced to embrace them. While your knowledge allows you to live a principled life of happiness, it does not provide you with any authority to hold others to your standards and coerce them to choose your same values.

  IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

  There are many today who live under the opposite assumption that that which destroys life is good, and that which preserves it is evil. They will rarely say it that way because they don’t think in those terms. In fact, they employ all the evasion, rationalization, and mental blanking-out necessary to avoid ever having to name what premise and what morality are at the base of their actions and thoughts.

  To say that many would choose that which destroys life may sound extreme and absurd. It sounds unlikely and repulsive. Who would choose destruction over life? Most people who destroy life are well meaning, yet ignorant of some basic truths. Humans are notoriously bad at questioning their assumptions and considering the consequences of their actions—the seen and the unseen consequences.

  Cancer happens when a cell reproduces itself with an abnormality. The abnormal cell continues to go through the same motions of life its predecessors did, reproducing and growing. But as it takes nourishment from the body it is supposed to be supporting, it unwittingly sabotages its own existence. Such is the case with a false premise, which supports a false belief, which in turn leads to actions of destruction. Ideas have consequences. A false premise has terrible ramifications because of this progression from belief to action. It is compounded when the error is laid early in the foundation of cognition. An error laid at the bedrock of a person’s cognition has a devastating cascade effect because every subsequent thought is warped by passing through its filter. As if that weren’t bad enough, it destroys a person’s very ability to detect false premises!

  A poor foundation caused the famous “leaning” of the Tower of Pisa

  [ii] .

  Many people who destroy life today do so by attacking that which is necessary to support and sustain life—man’s mind and the product of man’s labors. Attacks on the mind are pernicious because they will often call into question the validity of our senses. They engender doubt that we possess the necessary faculties to make wise decisions and choose what is in our best interest.

  The process of discovering and defining what actions we should take is the purpose of the philosophy of ethics.

  Ethics: the third branch of philosophy which seeks to answer the

  questions: “What should I do with my life?” and

  “What code of values should guide my decisions?”

  Ethics is a term that most people often interchange with morality, but it will be used in this book in its philosophical meaning as the process of seeking and defining morality—a code of values.

  It is not within the scope of this book to detail extensively how these principles should be applied to your private life, rather, we confine ourselves primarily to the application of principles which pertain to your dealings with other people, mostly in the realm of politics. It will be enough for now to remember that life is the standard of value, and that any action which is destructive to your life, or another’s, is immoral.

  WHAT IS MORALITY? WHY DO I NEED IT?

  “Matters of truth and morality are not determined by consensus.”

  [21] - Craig Biddle

  Moral choices determine the purpose and the course of a person’s life. It is by a code of morality that we judge what is right or wrong, good or evil.

  Morality: a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions.

  Much of society today operates under a moral code which claims that man has no right to live for himself, that service to others is his primary reason to live, and that self-sac
rifice is his highest goal.

  You may hear that if you oppose the majority you must be antisocial or have some other varying degree of mental disorder.

  You may hear that the needs of the many are more important than the rights of a few, and that a little sacrifice is simply the price of living in a society, or the only way possible for civilization to exist. Such moral codes are not true because they are contrary to man’s nature and the requirements for his life. When most of mankind acts on a morality that is directly in opposition to the nature of their life and survival, the result is misery and destruction.

  Others today may say that there is no way to know for sure what to do logically or objectively, that “my truth is different from your truth,” but that people just need to go by what they feel. They say that morality is relative or subjective and changes with each individual and culture—and that one morality is just as good as any other.