The Moral Basis of Capitalism: Part 3

How can a system that promotes selfishness be a morally good system whereas a system that promotes helping the poor (socialism) be a morally evil system? Does that make any sense?

It doesn’t make sense if your mind has been indoctrinated with false notions of moral good and moral evil. Many people are taught through many different sources in society and culture, to look at anything to do with “helping others” as the ultimate good, especially if you do it at your own expense. Putting other people’s needs and interests above your own is seen as the ultimate standard of morality. Everything from the media to hollywood to church tries to put this thought into your mind. The people who are called “heroes” on CNN are those who have sacrificed a lot to help others. Someone who has left a good job to go and work among the poor or has donated his wealth to help sick people is always praised as a hero and an example of great virtue. But someone who is making billions of dollars is never ever discussed on the list of the good or heroic or virtuous. He is normally presented as the very opposite of virtuous: he is associated with greed, manipulation, theft, insensitiveness, and every evil term we can think of.

So, you can always see the stars of Hollywood going to visit the poor in Africa and other war-torn areas, donating things, speaking “on behalf of the voiceless,” adopting third world babies, and so on. They want to be admired for their “virtue” because all they have done is the “unvirtuous” thing of making money for themselves. Some of them even mean it sincerely whereas others do it because their publicists tell them this will make them gain the respect and love of the public. That’s because a wrong idea of “virtue” and “evil” has been implanted in the mind of the general public.

Barrack Obama himself tried to sell himself as the good man who sacrificed a potentially rewarding career on Wall Street for the sake of a community job working with poor people. His wife echoed his message many times, telling young women to choose a career in such philanthropic activities instead of a career on Wall Street.

But what if they are all wrong? What if in fact the man who creates products with his mind is much more virtuous than the man who sacrifices himself to help the poor in India? Is it possible that they are in fact spreading a message that looks good on first sight but is actually the most evil message ever presented to man?

In fact, it is. One of the main sources of this message in society is the church, whether or not most people are conscious of it. Once again, I suspect that the use of the Bible to spread this message of “selfless sacrifice” is only a distortion of the words of Christ.

As far as I know, Jesus Christ never asked people to become selfless (unless He was contradicting himself). His message could actually never attract a selfless individual, because this was a message about promising great personal rewards for those who lived by his principles; it had nothing to do with making “a better society,” it was something very personal. Even if someone believes that the message of Christ is just about the after-life, that is still a message that appeals to man’s very personal self interest, not his selflessness. Would you want to spend your future in hell or in a place that has streets of gold and a huge mansion waiting for you? That doesn’t sound like a selfless message to me!

Selflessness is evil. Most modern religious leaders, both in Christianity and Islam (and other religions), try to make people selfless. They want them to feel guilty when they do anything for their own self interest or when they enjoy some pleasure (read the catholic doctrine on sex: it’s supposed to be strictly for procreation and never for any pleasure – which is why any contraception is forbidden; imagine how many people feel guilty and go to confess before the priest every Sunday!). It’s designed to make the people always feel “humble” as they consistently fail to lead a truly “selfless” life. And it is in the evil interest of such religious leaders to keep people always feeling guilty and humble; that’s the only way they can continue exercising power over them. It makes their followers willingly submit to them since they claim to be perfect or at least very close to perfection (”selfless”).

But the truth is that no one is selfless, not even these “spiritual leaders.”

The reason everyone fails to be selfless is because it is actually against their nature to be selfless. Their nature, as Christ apparently recognised, is to be selfish. All moral appeals to man must therefore be made to this selfish nature instead of appealing to an impossible selfless state. A person can be honest primarily because it is good for him, not just because it is in the interest of other people. A person should have integrity because this is good for him, not because it helps other people. Morality should be built on self-interest, not selflessness, because selflessness is an impossible state. Of course it will also be good for other people when a man lives a moral life, but that should not be the reason he is doing it. He should be doing it primarily for himself, for his own good.

Not only is selflessness an impossible state, but making the attempt to be selfless is also dangerous, which is why I believe everyone who tries to make other people ’selfless’ is actually evil. The man who is led into this attempt at selflessness makes himself a candidate for manipulation by his “spiritual” leaders and even by other people because he is always in a state of guilt for failing to achieve something that he’s not even supposed to achieve in the first place. It’s like being told that in order to be a good man, you must never feel any fear even when a dangerous object or animal suddenly approaches you. It’s your nature to feel fear in the face of danger because you are designed to automatically protect yourself from harm. Any attempts to remove this natural part of you is actually dangerous for your life. Your fear mechanism is just as much a part of you as your selfish – or “self-interest”, if you like – mechanism. In fact, your self-interest nature is the most fundamental aspect of your nature, because it is the reason why you even have fear of danger. It’s because of self-interest that you feel afraid when something threatens your life, and it makes you act with greater focus and energy in such emergencies.

Now, just like some fears are actually irrational because there is nothing to be scared of, there are other acts of “selfishness” that can also be irrational because they are actually not in your self interest. Thus, some people think that a person is being “selfish” when he steals other people’s money. But he is not actually acting in his self-interest. It would be in his self-interest to develop skills to produce his wealth so that he would not have to steal from anyone. It is much better for himself that he makes his money without fear of being caught by someone one day. Making money for himself also gives him more pride because he knows he has an ability within himself to make his own money without stealing from or deceiving anyone. That’s a much better and much happier life to live and you can establish that through mere observation of people’s lives.

So, rational selfishness is good, and any attempt at selflessness is dangerous, and therefore evil. Systems like communism tried to survive through selflessness, by forcing people to share whatever they produced equally with others (”other” is more important than “self” and “yourself” therefore exists only for the sake of this higher thing called “others” – the community). They believed that this is how they would kill poverty from their societies. But as evidence has shown, this can only lead to human destruction, and it did. To maintain this impossible idea, the state had to murder millions of people constantly. And even the poverty only kept increasing.

But even in theocratic societies the result is the same, whether it is Muslim theocracy or Christian theocracy because they also try to govern by this impossible and irrational standard of selflessness. In Europe it led to the “Dark Ages,” a period of one of the worst states of human existence in European history, and as usual, the leaders had to use force against anyone who challenged their power or message. In the Middle East today, they have that same evil ideology fully in charge of their governments and societies, which is why they are so dictatorial and murderous. As I said, this ideology of selflessness (whether religious or atheistic) has the purpose of making a few leaders manipulate and control the “humble” masses, which is why it always leads to dictatorships when it is given government power.

The only moral system of political governance is one which allows man to promote his own life – to be rationally selfish, if you like. In short, the one that lets man be man. Government should exist only for the moral purpose of protecting such a man from being harmed by evil people.