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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: "Doesn’t Life Require Compromise?" by Ayn Rand "Doesn’t Life Require Compromise?" by Ayn Rand Current mood: determined A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal. It is only in regard to concretes or particulars, implementing a mutually accepted basic principle, that one may compromise. For instance, one may bargain with a buyer over the price one wants to receive for one's product, and agree on a sum somewhere between one's demand and his offer. The mutually accepted basic principle, in such case, is the principle of trade, namely: that the buyer must pay the seller for his product. But if one wanted to be paid and the alleged buyer wanted to obtain one's product for nothing, no compromise, agreement or discussion would be possible, only the total surrender of one or the other. There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one's silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender - the recognition of his right to one's property. What value or concession did the burglar offer in return? And once the principle of unilateral concessions is accepted as the base of a relationship by both parties, it is only a matter of time before the burglar would seize the rest. As an example of this process, observe the present [1962] foreign policy of the United States. There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept "just a few controls" is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government's unlimited arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States. Today, however, when people speak of "compromise", what they mean is not a legitimate mutual concession or a trade, but precisely the betrayal of one's principles - the unilateral surrender to any groundless, irrational claim. The root of that doctrine is ethical subjectivism, which holds that a desire or whim is an irreducible moral primary, that every man is entitled to any desire he might feel like asserting, that all desires have equal moral validity, and that the only way men can get along together is by giving in to anything and "compromising" with anyone. It is not hard to see who would profit and who would lose by such a doctrine. The immorality of this doctrine––and the reason why the term "compromise" implies, in today's general usage, an act of moral treason––lies in the fact that it requires men to accept ethical subjectivism as the basic principle superseding all principles in human relationships and to sacrifice anything as a concession to one another's whims. The question "Doesn't life require compromise?" is usually asked by those who fail to differentiate between a basic principle and some concrete specific wish. Accepting a lesser job than one had wanted is not a "compromise." Taking orders from one's employer on how to do the work for which one is hired, is not a "compromise." Failing to have a cake after one has eaten it, is not a "compromise." Integrity does not consist of loyalty to one's subjective whims but of loyalty to rational principles. A "compromise" (in the unprincipled sense of the word) is not a breach of one's comfort, but a breach of one's convictions. A "compromise" does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil. Accompanying one's husband or wife to a concert, when one does not care for music, is not a "compromise"; surrendering to his or her irrational demands for social conformity, for pretended religious observance or for generosity toward boorish in-laws is. Working for an employer who does not share one's ideas, is not a "compromise"; pretending to share his ideas, is. Accepting a publisher's suggestions to make changes in one's manuscript, when one sees the rational validity of his suggestions, is not a "compromise"; making such changes in order to please him or to please "the public," against one's own judgement and standard, is. The excuse given in all such cases, is that the "compromise" is only temporary and that one will reclaim one's integrity at some indeterminate future date. But one cannot correct a husband or wife's irrationality by giving in to it and allowing it to grow. One cannot achieve the victory of one's ideas by helping to propagate their opposite. One cannot offer a literary masterpiece, "when one has become rich and famous," to a following one has acquired by writing trash. If one found it difficult to maintain one's loyalty to one's own convictions at the start, a succession of betrayals - which help augment the power of the evil one lacked the courage to fight - will not make it easier at a later date, but will make it virtually impossible. There can be no compromise on moral principles. "In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." (Atlas Shrugged.) The next time you are tempted to ask: "Doesn't life require compromise?", translate that question into it's actual meaning: Doesn't life require the surrender of that which is true and good to that which is false and evil?" The answer is that that precisely is what life forbids - if one wishes to achieve anything but a stretch of tortured years spent in progressive self-destruction. -Ayn Rand, 1962, from The Virtue of Selfishness
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
#2. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. People united by nothing more than "principle" can't tolerate deviation from principle. "Principled" societies are the least free.
Unless that principle is liberty, freedom, and the free will of the individual, and not that of the state.
#5. To: Lod (#3)
No, no unless about it. Because if that's ALL that unites them, they will then DISunite for OTHER reasons.
Further, if that's ALL that unites them, different people may nevertheless unite, at least temporarily, against a common threat to their liberty. A diverse "propositional nation" always has to spend a lot of energy finding, fighting -- and even creating, via agent provacetuers -- threats to that proposition, or it will break apart. It's no surprise that as soon as Americans decided anybody could be an American if they just subscribed to a set of propositions, America had to find threats to that set of propositions. Foreign and domestic. If patriotism is loyalty to a paltry handful of words, then treason obviously is questioning those words.
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