Why do the supreme values for living include purpose and self-esteem?

[Hazmatac]

I'm not sure of the exact quote, but it goes something like this: "To live, man must hold 3 thing as the ruling and supreme values of his life. Those values are reason, purpose, and self-esteem."

Now, I understand reason. If you don't go according to reason, you have no guide to action. Poison becomes edible. Gravity no longer is real. Etc. So, you need reason, otherwise you WOULD die.

The other two values I'm not so clear about in regards to living. My guess is Rand meant that you need these as mans life qua mans life, and not just qua living (simply eating and breathing). Man's life means all that you can get out of it, and you won't be fulfilled unless you have a purpose and self esteem.

So what is the answer? Why must you hold purpose and self-esteem as values to live?

[fountainhead777]

Do you know anyone who lives absolutely without purpose and is happy? Hell try and accomplish anything without a sense of purpose. The idea itself is a contradiction. Reason is just the tool or the method to get somewhere, you need the somewhere or else the method, reason, has no use.

As for self esteem, it is in my mind a check that you are in fact living correctly. for a rational person if you are living life fully you will naturally feel self esteem. I am not sure if it is the cause of a good life or the result or possibly they are inseparable.

Edited August 6, 2009 by fountainhead777

[softwareNerd]

Haz, if man does not follow a minimal purpose -- at least to hunt or gather food -- he dies.

For instance, you say you understand the value of reason. However, why would anyone need reason if they had no purpose for it at all?

As FountainHead777 indicates, the value of purpose/productivity is something that has to be induced by looking at all sorts of examples. Right from an extremely young age, one can see how purpose can bring happiness. Try to imagine a life with bare minimal purpose: where one sits in one's room, stares at the wall, goes down for meals received via charity, and then back to staring at walls. How long before one goes completely bonkers, or is very depressed?

Edited August 6, 2009 by softwareNerd

[bluecherry]

Reason tells you what is and what you can and can't do if you are to stay alive. You then will know also that there are many ways you can accomplish staying alive, but that you can't do all of them and if you try to just go at it randomly you're likely to end up failing overall utterly. Purpose is picking a path to unite and focus your efforts under so you can actually make some real progress and stand a much better chance of succeeding in attaining what you need to live. The need for self-esteem comes from justice. We rational people will treat things as we see they are. If we think of ourselves as being sufficiently low of a quality of person, we may know through reason what we need to survive and what will hurt us and damage our survival and just decide we don't care to do what we need or not, that we're just not worth it, or intentionally go for what will up our chances of dying or even try outright to off ourselves because we don't think we're fit for living and what is required to be done and had to live. However, self-esteem can be gained by doing well at being a human and that can be achieved by applying reason to to a purpose. The three are closely connected here.

[Hazmatac]

So it seems that purpose in this case means any purposeful activity, rather than a 'central life purpose.'

[bluecherry]

Well the point of having a "central purpose in life" is that if you can come up with a good one it helps further solidify what you should or shouldn't be doing as your way of sustaining your life. You do what you have to ultimately within rational limits to stay alive though, so if you decide like Roark you want to make your living and guide your life with the goal of being an architect but simply can't make the kind of money you need doing that yet, then hey, so you take that job working in a quarry for a while to tide you over until you actually can make enough money in architecture. The quarry job I don't think would necessarily count as deviating from the central purpose here anyway though, as if he just died on the streets that sure doesn't get you any farther along as an architect whereas doing something else for a while can keep you alive until you can get back on track more obviously toward your goal. A central purpose helps you figure out what particular lesser purposes would be good to pursue at any particular given time, to check and make sure your lesser purposes aren't going to become too conflicted and start undermining each other. It helps you plan and coordinate your purposeful actions longer range.

[woolcutt]

I think that the short quote "Life is the standard of value" is a nice way to put all three of those together.

Values are necessarily held by a valuer, yet to maintain one's life (the valuer) there are certain rational requirements that must be met (food, shelter, etc...). So one must hold one's OWN life as a value (self-esteem) if one is to avoid simply drifting by at the whim of the moment which may lead to making irrational decisions.