The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 44

Nothing can raise a country's productivity except technology, and technology is the final product of a complex of sciences (including philosophy), each of them kept alive and moving by the achievements of a few independent minds.

["The Moratorium on Brains," ARL, I, 3, 5.]

The enemies of the Industrial Revolution-its displaced persons-were of the kind that had fought human progress for centuries, by every means available. In the Middle Ages, their weapon was the fear of G.o.d. In the nineteenth century, they still invoked the fear of G.o.d-for instance, they opposed the use of anesthesia on the grounds that it defies G.o.d's will, since G.o.d intended men to suffer. When this weapon wore out, they invoked the will of the collective, the group, the tribe. But since this weapon has collapsed in their hands, they are now reduced, like cornered animals, to baring their teeth and their souls, and to proclaiming that man has no right to exist-by the divine will of inanimate matter.

The demand to "restrict" technology is the demand to restrict man's mind. It is nature-i.e., reality-that makes both these goals impossible to achieve. Technology can be destroyed, and the mind can be paralyzed, but neither can be restricted. Whenever and wherever such restrictions are attempted, it is the mind-not the state-that withers away.

["The Anti-Industrial Revolution," NL, 145.]

If you consider, not merely the length, but the kind of life men have to lead in the undeveloped parts of the world-"the quality of life," to borrow, with full meaning, the ecologists' meaningless catch phrase-if you consider the squalor, the misery, the helplessness, the fear, the unspeakably hard labor, the festering diseases, the plagues, the starvation, you will begin to appreciate the role of technology in man's existence.

Make no mistake about it: it is technology and progress that the nature-lovers are out to destroy. To quote again from the Newsweek survey: "What worries ecologists is that people now upset about the environment may ultimately look to technology to solve everything ..." This is repeated over and over again; technological solutions, they claim, will merely create new problems.

[Ibid., 138.]

Whom and what are [the ecological crusaders] attacking? It is not the luxuries of the "idle rich," but the availability of "luxuries" to the broad ma.s.ses of people. They are denouncing the fact that automobiles, air conditioners and television sets are no longer toys of the rich, but are within the means of an average American worker-a beneficence that does not exist and is not fully believed anywhere else on earth.

What do they regard as the proper life for working people? A life of unrelieved drudgery, of endless, gray toil, with no rest, no travel, no pleasure-above all, no pleasure. Those drugged, fornicating hedonists do not know that man cannot live by toil alone, that pleasure is a necessity, and that television has brought more enjoyment into more lives than all the public parks and settlement houses combined.

What do they regard as luxury? Anything above the "bare necessities" of physical survival-with the explanation that men would not have to labor so hard if it were not for the "artificial needs" created by "commercialism" and "materialism." In reality, the opposite is true: the less the return on your labor, the harder the labor. It is much easier to acquire an automobile in New York City than a meal in the jungle. Without machines and technology, the task of mere survival is a terrible, mind-and-body-wrecking ordeal. In "nature," the struggle for food, clothing and shelter consumes all of a man's energy and spirit; it is a losing struggle-the winner is any flood, earthquake or swarm of locusts. (Consider the 500,000 bodies left in the wake of a single flood in Pakistan; they had been men who lived without technology.) To work only for bare necessities is a luxury that mankind cannot afford.

[Ibid., 148.]

See also ECOLOGY/ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT; ECONOMIC GROWTH; NEW LEFT; POLLUTION; SCIENCE; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY.

Teleological Measurement. In regard to the concepts pertaining to evaluation ("value," "emotion," "feeling," "desire," etc.), the hierarchy involved is of a different kind and requires an entir;ely different type of measurement. It is a type applicable only to the psychological process of evaluation, and may be designated as "teleological measurement. "

Measurement is the identification of a relations.h.i.+p-a quant.i.tative relations.h.i.+p established by means of a standard that serves as a unit. Teleological measurement deals, not with cardinal, but with ordinal numbers-and the standard serves to establish a graded relations.h.i.+p of means to end.

For instance, a moral code is a system of teleological measurement which grades the choices and actions open to man, according to the degree to which they achieve or frustrate the code's standard of value. The standard is the end, to which man's actions are the means.

A moral code is a set of abstract principles; to practice it, an individual must translate it into the appropriate concretes-he must choose the particular goals and values which he is to pursue. This requires that he define his particular hierarchy of values, in the order of their importance, and that he act accordingly. Thus all his actions have to be guided by a process of teleological measurement. (The degree of uncertainty and contradictions in a man's hierarchy of values is the degree to which he will be unable to perform such measurements and will fail in his attempts at value calculations or at purposeful action.) Teleological measurement has to be performed in and against an enormous context: it consists of establis.h.i.+ng the relations.h.i.+p of a given choice to all the other possible choices and to one's hierarchy of values.

The simplest example of this process, which all men practice (with various degrees of precision and success), may be seen in the realm of material values-in the (implicit) principles that guide a man's spending of money. On any level of income, a man's money is a limited quant.i.ty; in spending it, he weighs the value of his purchase against the value of every other purchase open to him for the same amount of money, he weighs it against the hierarchy of all his other goals, desires and needs, then makes the purchase or not accordingly.

The same kind of measurement guides man's actions in the wider realm of moral or spiritual values. (By "spiritual" I mean "pertaining to consciousness." I say "wider" because it is man's hierarchy of values in this realm that determines his hierarchy of values in the material or economic realm.) But the currency or medium of exchange is different. In the spiritual realm, the currency-which exists in limited quant.i.ty and must be teleologically measured in the pursuit of any value-is time, i.e., one's life.

[ITOE, 42.].

See also CONSCIOUSNESS; LIFE; MEASUREMENT; MONEY; MORALITY; PRINCIPLES; STANDARD of VALUE; ULTIMATE VALUE; VALUES.

Teleology. See Goal-Directed Action.

Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday. In spite of its religious form (giving thanks to G.o.d for a good harvest), its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers' holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. Abundance is (or was and ought to be) America's pride-just as it is the pride of American parents that their children need never know starvation.

["Cas.h.i.+ng in on Hunger," ARI,, III. 23, 1.]

See also AMERICA; CHRISTMAS; PRODUCTION; RELIGION.

Theme (Literary). The four essential attributes of a novel are: Theme-Plot-Characterization-Style.

These are attributes, not separable parts. They can be isolated conceptually for purposes of study, but one must always remember that they are interrelated and that a novel is their sum. (If it is a good novel, it is an indivisible sum.) ["Basic Principles of Literature," RM, 57; pb 80.]

A theme is the summation of a novel's abstract meaning. For instance, the theme of Atlas Shrugged is: "The role of the mind in man's existence." The theme of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is: "The injustice of society toward its lower cla.s.ses." The theme of Gone With the Wind is: "The impact of the Civil War on Southern society."

A theme may be specifically philosophical or it may be a narrower generalization. It may present a certain moral-philosophical position or a purely historical view, such as the portrayal of a certain society in a certain era. There are no rules or restrictions on the choice of a theme, provided it is communicable in the form of a novel. But if a novel has no discernible theme-if its events add up to nothing-it is a bad novel; its flaw is lack of integration.

Louis H. Sullivan's famous principle of architecture, "Form follows function," can be translated into: "Form follows purpose." The theme of a novel defines its purpose. The theme sets the writer's standard of selection, directing the innumerable choices he has to make and serving as the integrator of the novel.

Since a novel is a re-cr-eatiorr of reality, its theme has to be dramatized, i.e., presented in terms of action. Life is a process of action. The entire content of man's consciousness-thoughr, knowledge, ideas, values-has only one ultimate form of expression: in his actions; and only one ultimate purpose: to guide his actions. Since the theme of a novel is an idea about or pertaining to human existence, it is in terms of its effects on or expression in human actions that that idea has to be presented.

[Ibid., 58; pb 81.]

A cardinal principle of good fiction [is]: the theme and the plot of a novel must be integrated-as thoroughly integrated as mind and body or thought and action in a rational view of man.

The link between the theme and the events of a novel is an element which I call the plot-theme. It is the first step of the translation of an abstract theme into a story, without which the construction of a plot would be impossible. A "plot-theme" is the central conflict or "situation" of a story-a conflict in terms of action, corresponding to the theme and complex enough to create a purposeful progression of events.

The theme of a novel is the core of its abstract meaning-the plot-theme is the core of its events.

[Ibid., 63; pb 85.]

The theme of a novel can he conveyed only through the events of the plot, the events of the plot depend on the characterization of the men who enact them-and the characterization cannot be achieved except through the events of the plot, and the plot cannot be constructed without a theme.

This is the kind of integration required by the nature of a novel. And this is why a good novel is an indivisible sum: every scene, sequence and pa.s.sage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.

[Ibid., 74; pb 93.]

Those who may be interested in the chronological development of my thinking ... may observe the progression from a political theme in We the Living to a metaphysical theme in Atlas Shrugged.

["Preface," FNI, ii; pb viii.]

[We the Living] was published in 1936 and reissued in 1959. Its theme is: the individual against the state; the supreme value of a human life and the evil of the totalitarian state that claims the right to sacrifice it.

[FNI. 69; pb 60.]

[Anthem] was first published in England in 1938. Its theme is: the meaning of man's ego.

[Ibid., 73; pb 64.]

[The Fountainhead] was published in 1943. Its theme is: individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man's soul; the psychological motivations and the basic premises that produce the character of an individualist or a collectivist.

[Ibid., 77; ph 68.]

[Atlas Shrugged] was published in 1957. Its theme is: the role of the mind in man's existence-and, as corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest.

[Ibid., 103; pb 88.]

See also ART; CHARACTERIZATION; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); LITERATURE; PLOT; PLOT THEME; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY; STYLE; SUBJECT (IN ART).

Theory-Practice Dichotomy. [Consider the catch phrase:] "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice." What is a theory? It is a set of abstract principles purporting to be either a correct description of reality or a set of guidelines for man's actions. Correspondence to reality is the standard of value by which one estimates a theory. If a theory is inapplicable to reality, by what standard can it be estimated as "good"? If one were to accept that notion, it would mean: a. that the activity of man's mind is unrelated to reality; b. that the purpose of thinking is neither to acquire knowledge nor to guide man's actions. (The purpose of that catch phrase is to invalidate man's conceptual faculty.) ["Philosophical Detection," PWNI, 17; pb 14.]

See also PLATONIC REALISM; PRAGMATISM; PRINCIPLES; RATIONALISM vs. EMPIRICISM; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY.

Thought/Thinking. The process of thinking ... is the process of defining ident.i.ty and discovering causal connections.

[GS, FNI, 189; pb 152.]

The faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 12; pb 20.]

All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own ident.i.ty; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

[GS, FNI, 153; pb 125.]

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call "free will" is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

[Ibid., 155; pb 127.]

Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 13; pb 20.]

Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death.

[Ibid., 13; pb 21.]

Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think-not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment-on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not p.r.o.nounce the verdict "It is." Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say "It is," you are refusing to say "I am." By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: 'Who am I to know?'-he is declaring: "Who am I to live?"

This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, ent.i.ty or zero.

[GS, FNI, 155; pb 127.]

If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, n.o.bler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who a.s.sumes the responsibility of thinking.

[Ibid.]

Thinking is a delicate, difficult process, which man cannot perform unless knowledge is his goal, logic is his method, and the judgment of his mind is his guiding absolute. Thought requires selfishness, the fundamental selfishness of a rational faculty that places nothing above the integrity of its own function.

A man cannot think if he places something-anything-above his perception of reality. He cannot follow the evidence unswervingly or uphold his conclusions intransigently, while regarding compliance with other men as his moral imperative, self-abas.e.m.e.nt as his highest virtue, and sacrifice as his primary duty. He cannot use his brain while surrendering his sovereignty over it, i.e., while accepting his neighbors as its owner and term-setter.

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 334; pb 308.]

The concept "thought" is formed by retaining the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of the psychological action (a purposefully directed process of cognition) and by omitting the particular contents as well as the degree of the intellectual effort's intensity.

[ITOE, 41.].

The intensity of a process of thought and of the intellectual effort required varies according to the scope of its content; it varies when one grasps the concept "table" or the concept "justice," when one grasps that 2 + 2 = 4 or that e = mc2.

[[bid., 40.]

See also CAUSALITY; CONCEPT-FORMATION; CONCEPTS; CREATION ; EVASION; FOCUS; FREE WILL; IDENt.i.tY; IMAGINATION; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); IRRATIONALITY; LOGIC; RATIONALITY; REASON ; SELFISHNESS; UNDERSTANDING; VIRTUE.

Thrillers. "Thrillers" are detective, spy or adventure stories. Their basic characteristic is conflict, which means: a clash of goals, which means: purposeful action in pursuit of values. Thrillers are the product, the popular offshoot, of the Romantic school of art that sees man, not as a helpless p.a.w.n of fate, but as a being who possesses volition, whose life is directed by his own value-choices. Romanticism is a value-oriented, morality-centered movement: its material is not journalistic minutiae, but the abstract, the essential, the universal principles of man's nature -and its basic literary commandment is to portray man "as he might be and ought to be."

Thrillers are a simplified, elementary version of Romantic literature. They are not concerned with a delineation of values, but, taking certain fundamental values for granted, they are concerned with only one aspect of a moral being's existence: the battle of good against evil in terms of purposeful action-a dramatized abstraction of the basic pattern of: choice, goal, conflict, danger, struggle, victory.

Thrillers are the kindergarten arithmetic, of which the higher mathematics is the greatest novels of world literature. Thrillers deal only with the skeleton-the plot structure-to which serious Romantic literature adds the Hesh, the blood, the mind. The plots in the novels of Victor Hugo or Dostoevsky are pure thriller-plots, unequaled and unsurpa.s.sed by the writers of thrillers....

Thrillers are the last refuge of the qualities that have vanished from modern literature: life, color, imagination; they are like a mirror still holding a distant reflection of man.

["Bootleg Romanticism," RM, 124; pb 132.]

n.o.body takes thrillers literally, nor cares about their specific events, nor harbors any frustrated desire to become a secret agent or a private eye. Thrillers are taken symbolically; they dramatize one of man's widest and most crucial abstractions: the abstraction of moral conflict.

What people seek in thrillers is the spectacle of man's efficacy: of his ability to fight for his values and to achieve them. What they see is a condensed, simplified pattern, reduced to its essentials: a man fighting for a vital goal-overcoming one obstacle after another-facing terrible dangers and risks-persisting through an excruciating struggle-and winning.

[Ibid., 133; pb 138.]

What men find in the spectacle of the ultimate triumph of the good is the inspiration to fight for one's own values in the moral conflicts of one's own life.

[Ibid., 134; pb 139.]

See also LITERATURE; POPULAR LITERATURE; ROMANTICISM; VALUES.

Time. Time is a measurement of motion; as such, it is a type of relations.h.i.+p. Time applies only within the universe, when you define a standard-such as the motion of the earth around the sun. If you take that as a unit, you can say: "This person has a certain relations.h.i.+p to that motion; he has existed for three revolutions; he is three years old." But when you get to the universe as a whole, obviously no standard is applicable. You cannot get outside the universe. The universe is eternal in the literal sense: non-temporal, out of time.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 2.]

See also EXISTENCE; MEASUREMENT; MOTION; s.p.a.cE; UNIVERSE.

Trader Principle. The symbol of all relations.h.i.+ps among [rational] men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his body as fodder or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit-his love, his friends.h.i.+p, his esteem-except in payment and in trade for human virtues, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held them in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is the ent.i.ty they dread-a man of justice.

[GS, FNI, 163; pb 133.]

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.

The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relations.h.i.+ps, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange-an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.

In spiritual issues-(by "spiritual" I mean: "pertaining to man's consciousness") -the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friends.h.i.+p, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a s.l.u.t. 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 ["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 28; pb 31.]

The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of traders-for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as "selfish" and conquest as "n.o.ble."

["The Roots of War," CUI, 38.]

See also ALTRUISM CAPITALISM; ECONOMIC POWER vs. POLITICAL POWER; FREE MARKET ; FREEDOM; JUSTICE; LOVE; MARKET VALUE; PHYSICAL. FORCE; PURCHASING POWER; SELFISHNESS; SERVICE; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY; VALUES; WAR.