Ayn Rand waged a veritable intellectual war against altruism. Altruism was, according to her, the one idea which was the direct cause of the destruction of the modern world (Although she also argued that unreason was the cause behind the cause. Since altruism would never have been widely accepted if only most men had adhered with sufficient consistency to reason.)
 
The leading advocate of altruism in the modern world was the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Strictly speaking, Kant did not advocate altruism - rather he advocated sacrifice as an end in itself - for the benefit of no one (except for the sake of the fictitious - “noumenal self” - that is). But the effect of Kant´s uncompromising advocacy of sacrifice as an end in itself was to give the ancient morality of altruism a chance to survive in the modern world - in the form of collectivism. The intellectuals Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, for example, tread in Kant´s footsteps. And they were the fathers of modern nationalism and Communism (i.e. two major flavors of collectivism), respectively.
 
Ayn Rand once referred to Immanuel Kant as “the most evil man in history”, largely because of his advocacy of self-immolation as an end in itself.
 
So, Ayn Rand was absolutely convinced that altruism was evil. She believed that this “morality of death”, as she called it, was the destroyer of the modern world.
 
I agree with Ayn Rand 100% that the morality of altruism is sheer evil. I see a massive amount of evidence out there in reality that Ayn Rand was spot-on.
 
My own unwitting acceptance of this moral code almost got me killed - by my own hand. In addition to that the entire sweep of the history of mankind confirms the fact that altruism ultimately leads to death and destruction. I will just mention the fact that each of the worldviews of Christianity, Communism and Nazism advocated self-sacrifice with great vehemence. And every educated individual knows about all the starvation, the wars and the cruelty of man towards his fellow man which characterized Europe during the Christian Middle Ages, which characterized Russia and China under Communism and which characterized Germany under the Nazis. [see “The Ominous Parallels” by Leonard Peikoff, Stein and Day 1982]
 
1) THE EVIL OF ALTRUISM ACCORDING TO AYN RAND
 
So - what, exactly, is it about the morality of altruism, which makes it so evil?
 
Let us begin by defining our terms. Here is what Ayn Rand said on this subject, i.e. the subject of the meaning of the concept “altruism”:
 
“What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value.
 
“Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice - which means: self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction- which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.” (Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World, in Philosophy Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand, Bobbs-Merrill 1982 – emphasis in the original).
 
According to Ayn Rand – “Altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of value.” (from the essay The Objectivist Ethics, The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, Signet)
 
2) MY COMMENTS
 
These facts may not be obvious to everyone who accepts altruism, but they are inescapable logical implications of altruism. The colloquial conception of altruism is – “The haves should give to the have-nots.” So - morality consists of the giving up of values – by whomsoever who just happens to possess any value. And values are those things out there in reality which men need for the sake of surviving – money, food, water, medicine etc. And if men give up that which they need to survive – well then, they are not going to survive - are they? Is not that mere elementary logic?
 
A truly consistent altruist would give away all his food and water to others, who were hungry and thirsty, and then he would die of starvation and thirst himself. The only reason that people who accept the idea that altruism is moral survive at all is that they pass through their lives as hypocrites. They do not practice their altruism with ruthless consistency. For they do not give up all their values – they only give up some of them (usually only a few of their values). Hypocrisy is thus the altruist´s protection against morality.
 
And, according to altruism – “It is better to give than to receive.” Giving up a value is virtuous according to altruism. And gaining a value is not virtuous. But then, whenever a “have” gives one of his values to a “have-not” - is not the “have”, the giver, being morally good, and the “have-not”, who gains the value, being morally bad? Is not the morally virtuous giver of the sacrifice serving the morally bad taker of the sacrifice? Those who are, in reason, morally bad according to the standards of altruism, are supposed to profit at the expense of those who are morally good - according to those very same standards.
 
And does not placing morality in the service of immorality - which I just showed that altruism does according to its own premises - logically lead to the exact opposite of one key goal of a rational morality? Namely – it leads to injustice instead of justice? Altruism is, evidently, the very opposite of a rational code of morality,
 
Altruism logically entails selflessness. The very word altruism means “other-ism”. According to altruism, your purpose in life is to live for the sake of others. You are supposed to give those others – whoever they may be - your values. For those values are allegedly needed by them to survive. If people are starving in Bangladesh or Cambodia or Ethiopia – then Americans are supposed to send them food. If an unwed mother in some slum needs money for her rent – then she is supposed to get it from the government, i.e. from the taxpayers. If a bum needs a dime - then someone who works and therefore has some dimes is supposed to hand one over to him. So – those who have earned values are supposed serve whomsoever has not.
 
The goal of a rational code of morality must be to promote life. So, is it not logical to conclude then that the opposite of a rational code of morality, i.e. altruism, promotes death?
 
I know from my own experience that altruism is in fact the morality of death. Being taught the morality of altruism by the adults around me, at a time when I was too young to have much of a chance to question the judgments of those adults, led me to live successively more and more selflessly from the age of nine up to the age of fifteen. As I became more, and still more selfless, I became more, and more unhappy. Until I finally reached the point at which I was so severely depressed that I became suicidal.
 
It should not be controversial among mental health professionals that being selfless will lead to psychological problems. After all, it is common knowledge among psychologists and psychiatrists that the possession of a “strong sense-of-self”, i.e. a “strong identity”, is central to mental health.
 
But it is remarkable that the connection between the spread of the morality of altruism in the modern world and the subsequent rise in the frequency of psychological problems has not been noticed at all in the field of psychology. I say that because the connection between the moral code of altruism and selflessness ought to be perfectly obvious. After all, altruism says precisely that you should be “unselfish” – i.e. that you should not “think so much about yourself”. And not thinking about yourself – does that not by definition constitute just precisely the definition of selflessness? I.e. does not selflessness equate with having no strong, nay, not having any, “sense-of-self”?
 
Is there any connection between altruism and psychological problems? Well, my own experience indicates that there certainly is. Also, the increase in mental health problems in the western world during the last several decades is another indication of that connection.
 
Ever since the Second World War, at least, the standard of living in the western countries has been rising. Yet at the very same time the frequency of mental health problems has also been rising. Why this seeming paradox? It would be an understatement to say that it is, on the face of it, at least plausible that a major reason for the epidemic of psychological illness in the West has been the indoctrination of the young with successively more, and more virulent altruism as the modern era developed – in the schools and in the culture in general.
 
If the morality of altruism tells you to give up your values, i.e. those things which make you happy and even enable you to survive - to give those things up for the sake of others - then how can altruism be the advocacy of any “kindness towards others”? After all, the altruist who is telling you to give up those things which make you happy is not being kind to you - is he? No-sir-ee! He is destroying your happiness – nay, he is destroying your very life!
 
And if it is a virtue to give and a vice to receive - then are not those “others” – whoever they are - being vicious whenever they receive the sacrifices you make for them? How can a morality which says that the virtuous should serve the vicious be a benevolent code of morality? And if you are not going to be permitted by the altruists to enjoy your own happiness - then neither is anybody else going to be permitted to enjoy their own happiness either - are they? For, everybody is supposed to sacrifice for the sake of being virtuous, including all the others! So, how in the world can altruism equate with kindness? Nay - altruism is spiritual genocide!
 
And – what single fact of reality, even a tiny one, supports the idea that kindness consists of making sacrifices? Is it a sacrifice when a parent gives his or her children toys? Cannot a parent give his or her own children toys, merely because being kind to his or her own kid makes the parent him- or herself happy? And is it a sacrifice for a husband to give his wife some flowers? Not if he loves her. Is it even a sacrifice for a husband to pay for an expensive medical operation to save his wife´s life if she is ill and dying? Again - not if he loves her.
 
In fact, sacrifice is incompatible with kindness. Each and every time a man practices the morality of altruism in a serious way he will wind up becoming unhappy as a result of the sacrifices he makes. And - whenever a man becomes unhappy then he will also become bitter. And he will become nasty, nay even cruel, towards others. A good example of this is the fact that Mother Theresa, that icon of altruism, had a reputation for being a very nasty, unpleasant person in private. She was not at all a nice person to her associates and to her patients. And the leaders of all those numerous religions and ideologies which were founded on the ethics of self-sacrifice – i.e. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, the Popes of the Middle Ages, Torquemada etc. - they were all mass-murderers and vicious killers!
 
3) AYN RAND AGAIN
 
Ayn Rand exposes some of the many contradictions in altruism eloquently in Galt´s speech in Atlas Shrugged: “Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others? Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?
 
“The answer you evade, the monstrous answer is: No, the takers are not evil, provided they did not earn the value you gave them. It is not immoral for them to accept it, provided they are unable to produce it, unable to deserve it, unable to give you any value in return. It is not immoral for them to enjoy it, provided they do not obtain it by right.
 
Such is the secret core of your creed, the other half of your double standard: it is immoral to live by your own effort, but moral to live by the effort of others – it is immoral to consume your own product, but moral to consume the product of others – it is immoral to earn, but moral to mooch – it is the parasites who are the moral justification of the producers, but the existence of the parasites is an end in itself – it is evil to profit by achievement, but good to profit by sacrifice – it is evil to create your own happiness, but good to enjoy it at the price of the blood of others.” [Quote from chapter 7 of Atlas Shrugged.]
 
4) ALTRUISM AND PSYCHOLOGY
 
The widespread ignorance of the role of altruism in causing psychological problems in the mental health profession merely mirrors the widespread assumption that being altruistic is coextensive with being moral. If you tell a man on the street that altruism is evil, you will most likely be met with a blank stare, or else with a guffaw.
 
After ages of indoctrination with altruism most of mankind feels it to be completely counterintuitive that altruism could even possibly be evil. That altruism could be evil is inconceivable to them. And for this reason, apparently, i.e. because of the fact that this truth is counterintuitive and therefore “way out of left field” - virtually the entire mental health profession has up until now failed to even suspect the role altruism plays in causing psychological problems. The thought that altruism might be something other than good has simply never occurred to the world´s psychiatrists and psychologists.
 
Since I am not a psychologist, nor a psychiatrist, I have no clinical experiences other than my own which I can cite in support of my claim that altruism, when taken seriously, causes psychological problems. So, I will first just give some examples of how altruism can wreck people´s lives, without going into the psychology of it. As for how altruism wrecked my life in my teen years, I already related that in chapter One of this book.
 
Do you know of any examples of the ways in which the acceptance of altruism can wreck people´s lives?
 
Of course, you do! Think.
 
What about the young college student who has it in him achieve great ambitions - but who wastes his potential because he spends his young years on make-work in the jungle for The Peace Corps, instead of giving priority to his education? Or - what about the young idealist who wants to improve the state of the world - but who imagines that welfare programs are the means to that goal and who therefore goes into politics, as a leftist, instead of pursuing a productive career? Or - what about the young woman who marries a substance abuser out of pity for him - imagining that her love will save him from those drugs? Or - what about the young woman who considers the option of entering a demanding line of work - but who decides to get a cushy sinecure in the welfare department and who then rationalizes her cop-out of a career choice by telling herself that it is noble to “help the poor”? Or - what about the man who spends years and years working hard to build up a fortune - but who subsequently, due to the influence of altruism, only feels guilty about his hard-earned success instead of feeling happy? Or - what about the hard-working doctor - who is enslaved by the government because the influence of altruism permits some power-lusting gang of politicians to institute socialized medicine?
 
5) CONCLUSION
 
The world´s psychologists and psychiatrists must in reason see the negative consequences of the influence of altruism all the time in the course of their work. For the consequences of the influence of altruism on men´s psychologies are omnipresent.
 
The world´s psychologists and psychiatrists would therefore do their patients an enormous service if they, the former, would wake up to the evil nature of altruism and if they would begin to help their patients get over the morality of altruism. I am convinced that mankind´s mental health would benefit if mankind were taught to be selfish, rather than selfless.
 
The work of teaching men to be selfish is most of all the responsibility of the world´s philosophers and educators. But the world´s mental health professionals could at least contribute something to this oh-so-worthy cause. I urge all the readers of this book to check out the Objectivist literature which I present in the Appendix. A first step to helping your patients get over the influence of altruism would be to study Objectivism yourself - since it alone provides the philosophic foundation for the ethics of rational egoism.
 
And, does it not stand to reason that experts on mental health - which types of experts the world´s professional psychiatrists and psychologists are supposed to be – would be in an excellent position to teach men healthy principles of behavior?