Why I Don’t Like “Enlightened Self-Interest”
November 26, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 1 Comment
This is a follow-up to my last article, wherein I write that I prefer the term “submission” over the term “enlightened self-interest.”
My aversion to the term “enlightened self-interest” comes from its common usage in economic and narrowly practical terms. In other words, it doesn’t go far and deep enough for what I wish to convey with “submission.”
And, once again, understand that this is written from my understanding of Christian epistemology and doctrine. You may take issue with my interpretation/understanding, but if you reject Christian epistemology, then we have no basis for debate.
Enlightened self-interest largely has its roots in Adam Smith’s concept of “the invisible hand,” as found in Wealth of Nations, wherein he writes:
“By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
Ayn Rand’s term for this is “rational selfishness.” In The Virtue of Selfishness Rand writes:
“The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness — which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man — which means: the values required for human survival — not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the ‘aspirations,’ the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.
“The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash — that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.”
In either case, we find self-interest to be grounded in the material world, confined to a mental, or rational, sphere, and narrowly defined in terms of economic exchange.
Adding the spiritual element, according to my understanding, changes, or at least broadens, the whole picture. When animated by a spiritual connection with a Supreme Being, people do things that may appear to be irrational — at least to those who place the mental realm as the highest realm of existence. Furthermore, they may do things that may appear to have no or limited economic value, in the strictest of terms.
For example, Christ’s willingness to take upon Himself our sins and weaknesses is ridiculous and irrational to the atheist/strict Objectivist. (Per Rand’s statement, “In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues.”)
His sacrifice, borne of submission to His Father, was not calculated to bring him money, or to prosper in narrow economic terms.
Mother Teresa didn’t run her orphanages for the purpose of exchanging her labor for money for herself. She didn’t start out thinking of “promoting an end which was no part of [her] intention.” She actually intended to achieve altruistic ends. The good she did in the world wasn’t a mere by-product of pursuing her own interest solely — it was the target, the conscious goal.
Washington didn’t suffer through Valley Forge because of rational, mental, self-interested, economic-based calculations. Left to himself, Washington would have been a quiet farmer his entire life. But because he had submitted to God, not only did he sacrifice, but his sacrifices actually got him closer to his true self-interest than not making them could have. (Of course, this is an assumption based on Christian epistemology and an eternal perspective.)
Submission: The Highest Form of Applied Self-Interest
Enlightened self-interest is not, in my estimation, the highest form of applied self-interest. While it definitely is much more preferable to selfishness, or “irrational selfishness,” it doesn’t go far enough to describe my understanding of Christian doctrine. It’s predicated upon mental calculations intended to bring us the best returns. And, as I wrote previously, since we can’t have full knowledge of what is in our best interest at any given time, we must rely upon an external source — God — to guide our calculations.
Submission to God seems to me a much better term for the highest form of self-interest. God doesn’t ask us to be irrational brutes; He merely asks us to have faith in Him. We’re not to shut off our mental calculations; we’re simply to trust that His recommendations (revelation) — no matter how difficult or “irrational” they may seem at the moment — supersede our calculations and will lead to our best interest.
He may ask us to choose a lower-paying job over a higher-paying one for reasons that we don’t understand. He may ask us to do things we don’t like (e.g. Washington). He may tear our heartstrings — as He did with Abraham — in order to expand our compassion and understanding. His revelations and guidance may lead to our suffering and death (e.g. Joan of Arc, Christ’s original apostles).
Without a belief in and relationship with God, we may never perform the sacrifices that would have led us, in actuality, to our highest self-interest. Even with a relationship with God, our self-interest can still be limited if our actions are based upon what we see in any given moment. If we can’t see how an action will benefit us immediately, we’ll choose a different (lower) path.
To conclude, I don’t prefer the term “enlightened self-interest” because it’s become, through common usage, limited, narrow, and defined strictly in terms of economic exchange. Submission is my preferred term to describe the highest form of self-interest.
It’s expansive enough to include the concept of “losing our life to save our life.” It implicitly presupposes an omniscient Being to whom we must submit, a Being who knows far better what is in our self-interest than we ever can. It doesn’t discourage nor negate rational thought; it expands and deepens it. It transcends the physical and mental realms and opens the door into the spiritual realm.
And by the way, I don’t even pretend to be a good example of what I’m describing. I echo Seneca who said, “I persist in praising not the life that I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling.”
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Opening the “Self-Interest” Can of Worms
November 24, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 1 Comment
In a past article, John Robertson takes issue with “the idea that self-interest is somehow a vice, a detriment or a critical flaw” because it is “a denial of one the most most fundamental truths of nature…”
Allow me to clarify. First, understand that my perspective is based on Christian epistemology (at least my version of it), which means that if we do not share that epistemology there will be little, if any, grounds for debate. I only write this to clarify my position, not to persuade non-Christians, agnostics, atheists, and/or Objectivists that my perspective is right, nor do I write to initiate debate with them.
The Real Flaw of Self-Interest
It’s undeniable that we’re hardwired to pursue our self-interest. Put in different terms, we seek pleasure, joy, happiness, and fulfillment and strive to avoid pain and sorrow. The pursuit of self-interest is not a “vice, detriment, or critical flaw.” The real flaw, or limitation, of self-interest isn’t the pursuit of it; it’s simply that our knowledge of what is truly in our self-interest is limited at best.
Any parent can see the self-evident nature of this. A child, pursuing her self-interest, is drawn towards the flickering light of an open fireplace. We as parents, possessing greater knowledge, steer the child away. A self-interested teenager pleads to go to a party, one that we as parents know will be harmful. A child complains about having to work in the home, wanting instead to play, watch TV, or play video games. As parents, we understand that it is in the self-interest of the child to learn how to work, although the child does not.
In short, self-interest must be guided, or enlightened, by a source external to us, a Source with greater knowledge than us, a loving Source that has our best interest at heart, a Source with the wisdom to know when pain, sorrow, and sacrifice may be to our long-term benefit. Parents serve this role for children. In a larger sense, as a Christian, I obviously believe this Source to be God.
This type of self-interest has been referred to as “enlightened self-interest.” If that term works for you, by all means use it. I shy away from it because over time and with wide usage the meaning becomes diluted. I prefer “submission” instead, which will be explored later. First, we must understand epistemology.
The Relevance of Epistemology
In the simplest terms, epistemology is how human beings determine what is true and untrue. It deals with the questions, “What is knowledge?”, “How is knowledge acquired?”, “What do people know?”, “How do we know what we know?” There are a number of epistemologies including, but not limited to, reason, empiricism, tradition, authority, and revelation.
Epistemology is fundamental to self-interest because it is the foundation of how we determine what is in our self-interest, or what is opposed to it. If tradition is my epistemology, then following tradition, cultural or otherwise, is in my self-interest. If reason is my epistemology, reason will dictate what is in my self-interest. On the other hand, if revelation is my epistemology, then what God tells me determines what is in my best self-interest.
My personal epistemology is what I call “reveleason,” which is the combination of revelation and reason, with revelation being the ultimate authority on what determines truth. God created us with the ability to reason, which we are expected to use to our advantage. However, He also interacts with, enlightens, and expands our reason and knowledge through revelation. Again, since our knowledge is limited, we must seek the guidance of an external Source.
“Man Alone” Vs. “Man With God”
Assuming it’s true that we are children of God, then there are two ways to live: with or without God. Man Alone depends on epistemologies other than revelation. Man Alone does not seek the guidance of metaphysical or spiritual sources to make decisions. At worst, Man Alone degenerates into unchecked hedonism, exploitation of others, greed, and harmful selfishness. At best, Man Alone is a good citizen living far below his potential.
When it comes to sacrifice, Man Alone either fails to see any virtue in sacrifice, or what sacrifices he does make are limited to very practical, earthly terms. For example, Man Alone using reason as epistemology may sacrifice time and money to go to college in order to earn more money. But this same person may fail to see any virtue in or purpose behind Abraham’s sacrifice.
Man With God, however, seeks the will of God in the pursuit of his self-interest. His self-interest dictates that he obey the laws of God — whatever he believes them to be — and even when he does not understand them fully. Man With God is uplifted to achieve far greater things than Man Alone because he follows the will of One who knows what he needs to progress.
Man With God understands the virtue in sacrifice. He understands that God only asks him to do things that are ultimately in his self-interest, although he may not understand why or how at the time he is asked to sacrifice.
In short, Man With God submits his will to the will of God. He lays his uninformed self-interest upon God’s altar and trusts God’s judgment of what is in his best self-interest. It doesn’t mean that he’s not self-interested or that pursuing his self-interest is a vice; it means that his self-interest is guided, enlightened, enhanced, and expanded by a Source external to Him.
One might say that he is pursuing God-interest, rather than self-interest, although the more he submits his will to God the more those two merge into one.
It is precisely this faith that gives him the desire and ability to sacrifice perceived personal benefit and endure hardship. It’s what the Founders referred to as Public Virtue.
Examples of Submission
Every great man and woman that I revere in history has displayed the characteristics and habits of Man With God. They have sacrificed and endured hardship because they submitted their self-interest to God.
Jesus Christ
When Christ retired to the Garden of Gethsemane, faced with the awful burden of suffering for our sins, he prayed, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42)
John 5:30 records, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” John 6:38 explains, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.”
Christ submitted his self-interest to the will of His Father, who led Christ to do excruciating things that were ultimately in his (Christ’s) self-interest.
George Washington
We’re familiar with Washington’s struggles to keep an inexperienced and undisciplined army together facing extreme shortages of food, clothing, shelter, and ammunition. We know of his countless sacrifices for his country and posterity when his greatest desire was to live a quiet life of farming in Mount Vernon. But he sacrificed so much because he had submitted to God.
His prayer in Valley Forge, as recorded by Reverend Nathaniel Randolph Snowden, an ordained Presbyterian minister, graduate of Princeton with a degree from Dickinson College, in his “Diary and Remembrances.” He details the story of a Mr. Potts, who stumbled upon George Washington praying in the woods near Valley Forge. Mr. Potts recounted:
“It was a most distressing time of ye war, and all were for giving up the Ship but that great and good man. In that woods pointing to a close in view, I heard a plaintive sound as, of a man at prayer. I tied my horse to a sapling & went quietly into the woods & to my astonishment I saw the great George Washington on his knees alone, with his sword on one side and his cocked hat on the other. He was at Prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with his Divine aid, as it was ye Crisis, & the cause of the country, of humanity & of the world. Such a prayer I never heard from the lips of man.”
“I felt much impressed,” Reverend Snowden wrote, “in his presence and reflected upon the hand and wonderful Providence of God in raising him up and qualifying him with so many rare qualities and virtues for the good of this country and the world. Washington was not only brave and talented, but a truly excellent and pious man of God and of prayer. He always retired before a battle and in any emergency for prayer and direction.”
Washington also sheds light on his faith in his own words. A Reverend Israel Evans once delivered and printed a sermon to American soldiers. Washington received a printing of the sermon, and wrote to the Reverend and assured him that, “…it will ever be the first wish of my heart to aid your pious endeavors to inculcate a due sense of the dependence we ought to place in that all wise and powerful Being on whom alone our success depends…”
Was Washington self-interested? Of course. Yet his submission to God led him to make sacrifices that most never make. He allowed God to lead him — through revelation — beyond uninformed self-interest to a much higher form of self-interest.
More Examples
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for her sacrifices. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated for his beliefs and efforts, as was Gandhi. Mother Teresa devoted her life to serving “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.” The signers of the Declaration of Independence challenged the greatest military force on earth in order to secure freedom for themselves and their posterity.
The list goes on. The point is to say that Men (and Women) With God think and act differently than Men Alone. They willingly suffer and sacrifice more — not because they’re not self-interested, but because they submit to God and allow Him to guide the pursuit of their self-interest. They thus achieve and enjoy more.
Conclusion
We are hardwired to be self-interested. It is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of our nature. Desiring self-interest is not a flaw or a vice of human nature. It’s not wrong to pursue self-interest. The problem is that our self-interest is uninformed because of our limited knowledge.
In order for us to achieve our highest potential and do the most good in the world, both for ourselves and for others, we need an external Source to guide and enlighten our self-interest. Without this external guidance, our lives and contributions are degenerate at worst, and limited at best.
We must submit to God, who, through personal revelation, asks us to sacrifice temporary benefit in order to fulfill long-term self-interest. Submission requires faith, faith that submitting our will to God is ultimately in our best self-interest.
The goal, then, isn’t to stop pursuing self-interest. Rather, it’s to pursue a much higher form of self-interest than can be found without submitting to God. It’s a Divine Paradox. “For whosoever will save his life,” taught Christ, “shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”
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Changing the World…
October 17, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · 6 Comments
…One comic at a time.
Look on the bright side of our economic crash, at least now we can see where we are! What do you see? Maybe it takes a crash to get a better view of the world around us. Now lets climb down and start heading in the right direction.
Attacks always come from where you least expect it. Being big and tough to the rest of the world doesn’t mean we can’t destroy ourselves from the inside.
The reality is that as a nation we are in dire need of change, real change. We are on the fast track to a dangerous and unstable times. If you don’t like the reality of our situation you can always choose not to accept it.
Or, you can help begin a revolution against apathy and ignorance. Don’t be selective about the reality you accept. Accept reality for what it is and allow your action to change it.
Need I say more?
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
I heard it on…Princess Bride?
October 4, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · 1 Comment
“Do you always begin conversations this way?”
The most humorous conversations are peppered with quotes from the classic movie Princess Bride. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading and go watch it. Like any good classic it gets better and more applicable each time seen.
What can we learn from this classic? Let me point out a few lessons that I think fit perfectly with our times.
1. When I hear our presidential candidates use the word “change” every couple of minutes, unfailingly Indigo’s voice comes into my head saying, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Change is not being in Afghanistan versus Iraq, or visa versa. It is getting out of foreign nations we shouldn’t be in.
Change in education is not working on “No Child Left Behind” as was suggested in the VP Debate. Change would be getting the Federal Government out of education and and giving that power back to the parents and states.
2. As for the bailout just passed in Congress;
“Think it will work?”
“It would take a miracle.”
One senator, after changing his vote to yes on the economic bailout, said that the fear on Wall Street was going to affect Main Street.
Maybe it is time that Wall Street be afraid.
As a nation we cannot continue on in our current economic situation. We have become a nation that consumes more than it creates, spends more then it earns, and takes more then it gives.
Wall Street does affect Main Street, so let us start the process of changing our economic strategies as a nation. Having the government there to catch business when it falls only prolongs and extenuates the long range problems we will face.
3. Longfellow said our nation was a “ship of state” and that all humanity hung upon its fate. If that is the case where is the watchmen crying, “Look! The cliffs of insanity!”
4. I always get a funny feeling when I hear someone in government make statements about easing the burdens of the American people, having the government look out for the middle class and defending the common workers of America. For as the Dread Pirate Roberts said, “Life is pain… Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.”
It is human nature to tend to fall into a trap of wanting things to be easier, to not have to think about problems and to let someone else do the dirty work for us. But it is better to do the work then buy up the services of the government and let it run our lives.
In closing, “Let me explain — no there is to much — let me sum up.”
First, understand that the current debates between presidential candidates are not about change in policy; they are about change in approach.
Second, as uncertain as the future of our economy is right now, “bailouts” aren’t going to help. Ronald Reagan once said that you can talk to a child until you’re blue in the face about spending — or you can cut their allowance. Giving more money isn’t going to cure the mismanagement of it. Our $700 billion dollars is only a band aid on a gaping wound.
Third, lets listen to people who are telling us we are headed towards disaster.
Fourth, now is the time to reclaim the responsibility of self-governance and watch over our nation and communities. Lets stop abdicating our responsibility to others in exchange for convenience.
And next time you watch Princess Bride, think about government — I promise you’ll learn a lot.
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Do You Hate Oppression, Or Love Liberty?
September 10, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 4 Comments
And why does it matter? Is there a difference between the two?
Truth and freedom are synonymous with happiness, for as man aligns his thoughts, speech, and actions with eternal, immutable truth, he discovers personal freedom and is therefore happy; one cannot be free and unhappy simultaneously. Understanding this, we find that mere political freedom is simply one level of freedom on an infinite scale, and is not the ultimate goal of the pursuit of happiness — the former is merely a framework to facilitate the latter.
Many of us make the mistake of pursuing political freedom before internalizing personal integrity. In the pursuit of happiness, the question one must answer is, “Do I love freedom, or do I hate oppression?” On the surface level, these questions appear to be a redundancy, yet what naturally flows from the answers to each are worlds apart in their long-term consequences.
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