Roark's immortality

Psychology and Self Improvement
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Two passages from the Fountainhead that I’d like to understand.

 

You know how people long to be eternal. But the die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict – and they call it growth. At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanance which they have never held for a single momen? -Mallory, The Fountainhead

 

“I often think that he’s the only one of us who’s achieved immortality. I don’t mean in the sense of fame and I don’t mean he won’t die someday. But he’s living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with everyday that passes. . . They change, they deny, they contradict- and they call it growth. At the end there is nothing left, nothing unreveresed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they never held for a single moment? But Howard- one can imagine him living forever.” 

 

In the quest for intellectual, personal and professional growth isn’t it normal that some part of your self should be killed? Even I were morally perfect, I’d potentially still be capable of errors in reasoning which would then need to be changed. I call it growth - fixing all my errors.

Purpose of Objectivism
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This is the difference between Rand’s ideal, exemplified by Roark, and the real world in which we live. The system grows and perpetuates itself by slowly corrupting us over our lives. Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, student loans, and so on - government replaces free enterprise and makes itself necessary - progressives then deride you as a hypocrite when you argue for a better way. Everyone in the real world has a price - Roark did not, and that is the difference between fiction and reality.

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In the quest for intellectual, personal and professional growth isn’t it normal that some part of your self should be killed? Even I were morally perfect, I’d potentially still be capable of errors in reasoning which would then need to be changed. I call it growth - fixing all my errors.

Well she’s not talking about errors, she’s talking about ingrained character traits. And she’s talking about Roark, specifically. What did he need to fix?

And, on the flipside, she’s not talking about people who grow by fixing previous corruption, she’s talking about people who “grow” by embracing corruption.

P.S. One thing Ayn Rand’s novels never focused on, and perhaps they should have, is the kind of growth you describe, where someone who is able to shed some type of corruption. Her heroes never stray from the generally correct “path”, to begin with. They are of course wrong all the time, but deep down they are always pure.

I suppose that’s because she was preoccupied with presenting a philosophical ideal, and nothing else. I’m curious what her take would’ve been on a more realist/naturalist (meaning less idealist) storyline, where people don’t just discover new truths, but struggle with old falsehoods, and are able to find a positive influence that helps them shed character flaws.

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In the quest for intellectual, personal and professional growth isn’t it normal that some part of your self should be killed? Even I were morally perfect, I’d potentially still be capable of errors in reasoning which would then need to be changed. I call it growth - fixing all my errors.

She’s referring to something much more specific than that.

You’re talking about any sort of mental change, including learning (which actually encompasses every conscious moment anyone has, since every new memory expands your mental content).  That’s inescapable.  And since it’s inescapable, and you physically cannot hold your mind still (by its very nature), it’s a morally null fact; just like your dependence on Oxygen.

 

So we have mental change, as such, which isn’t good or bad; it simply must be.  But what she’s referring to in that quote (which I’m delighted you noticed) is a specific sort of mental change, which must be distinguished.

 

For example, a child may define “man” as a creature which speaks and builds space shuttles, et cetera; and later, when that child realizes that all of these defining characteristics stem from man’s mind, he may change his definition to “rational animal”.  The important thing to note is that “animal which speaks, builds space shuttles, etc.” and “rational animal”, although they are different definitions, are synonyms for the same thing; in a way they aren’t actually different, at all.

Which is why, when she explained this in ITOE, she said:

All definitions are contextual, and a primitive definition does not contradict a more advanced one: the latter merely expands the former.

So to change one’s definition from “speaking and innovative animal” to “rational animal” is not a contradiction; it’s only an expansion of the same knowledge.  From “speaking and innovative animal” to “thumbed animal” would be a contradiction, however, because thumbs are not what allow us to speak, invent, philosophize, et cetera; such ‘growth’ is the sort she was referring to because it contradicts and actually erases one’s prior knowledge.

 

Now, even purely within the realm of contradictory growth, not all such changes are bad.  I’ve had to contradict and erase quite a few of my old beliefs, in order to be who I presently am; that’s a good thing (just as Nicky pointed out).

But notice something about that.

 

Since “good” or “bad” require a goal, against which to measure the value of any alternative, when I say that “some of my self-contradictions have been good things” I mean that they were advancements towards being the person that I want to be.

And in order to know who you want to be (in order to know which changes to embrace or reject), you need an explicit moral code.  Much like Roark’s self-chosen architectural code; you must design a blueprint for the mind you wish to have.

 

And that is exactly what she demonstrated in the Fountainhead.

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Everyone in the real world has a price - Roark did not, and that is the difference between fiction and reality.

That statement is both factually and morally wrong.

If you had grasped the meaning of the Fountainhead then you would be ashamed to have made it.

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That statement is both factually and morally wrong.

If you had grasped the meaning of the Fountainhead then you would be ashamed to have made it.

 

How so?

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“Everyone in the world has a price” means that anything and everything is for sale which means one of two things. Either everyone’s ULTIMATE value is something beyond themselves (which smacks of altruism) OR there ARE NO ultimate values, which means that nothing actually matters beyond one’s next meal.

Contrast that with Howard Roark, who had no price- BECAUSE his ultimate value was something that nobody else could ever offer him; HIS OWN SELF-WORTH.

Your statement amounts to a declaration that there’s no such thing as honor, pride or integrity; that an individual cannot be of any value to himself.

This is factually wrong because, for starters, my wife and I are. We are raising our son with the hope that someday, he’ll be someone that we can admire- but most importantly, someone HE can be PROUD to be.

It’s morally wrong because it is a perfect opposition and contradiction of Objectivist Selfishness; it would be analogous if you had said that ‘everybody wants to eat babies, once in a while’.

It is a denial of the very possibility of selfishness.

If you’re rational then you’ll think about that- for your own sake.

1 Like
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I never said there was no such thing as human integrity or pride. The point is that it is found in all people to different degrees, but it has limits. Maybe your price is that you would trade your own life for your child’s, as many parents would. Maybe your price would be magnificent wealth, or power, or true love. Claiming you have no price is holding yourself out with god-like perfection. Human beings come with flaws, and flaws mean there are leverage points. You can still hold Objectivism as an ideal while confessing that nobody lives up to the ideal fully in practice. That’s just being honest, and when you acknowledge your weaknesses you can better avoid them.

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Human beings come with flaws?

 

That’s a religious concept, man is good by default. The only difference is whether he acted acording to reason or acording to racionalizations in his life, but that’s that.

 

What flaws are you talking about?

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Having flaws doesn’t make someone a bad person, just as telling a white lie to preserve feelings doesn’t make somebody a liar. Flaws only mean that we aren’t Perfect, which is the unobtainable ideal portrayed by Roark. We can be basically good while falling short of our potential and missing the mark some of the time. This isn’t a religious concept - it’s the plain reality that nobody has the 100% integtity of a fictional idealized hero.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJxqi090Yfc&list=RDWJxqi090Yfc#t=0

 

Live long and prosper.