Life

What exactly is “a right to life?” If there is any such thing as a right, of any kind, it has to be what you would have if there were no other human beings. Nothing called a right can depend on the existence of other human beings. If there is such a thing as a right to life, it is the right to do what ever you can do to stay alive without interference from anyone else.

Many people seem to think a right to life means a right to have whatever one needs to stay alive. Their attitude is, “I was born, therefore society has an obligation to insure I stay alive. I need food, and if I can’t or won’t supply myself with food, it is up to society to supply it. If I get sick, I need medicine, and if I can’t or won’t supply myself with medicine, it is up to society to supply it. I need clothes, I need shelter, I need …, I need …, I need …, and it is up to society to insure if I can’t supply what I need myself, that I still get it.”

The relationship of society to an individual’s life is this: it is immoral for society to interfere with any individual’s pursuit of whatever the individual deems necessary to live. The right to life can only mean a right to live without having that life endangered or threatened by someone else. It can never mean a right to live at someone else’s expense. One’s right to life places a limit on the action of others toward one’s self, it never places an obligation on them.

The notion of a right to life is somewhat confused, because the notion of rights itself is confused. (See Politics.) The reason most people are confused about the right to life is because they do not really understand what life, for a human being, really is. They have no idea what life is, why they are living, or how they should live.

The idea that just because something, or even someone, is alive, it is a sacred entity for which all other things must be sacrificed is pure superstition. Life is a quality, a very special quality, but nothing has an intrinsic value, not even life. (See Values.)

Those who put nature and the lives of her wild creatures above the concerns and lives of human beings are very confused about life and its value, as well as about nature. Nature has no regard for life and ruthlessly slaughters millions of her creatures daily. Extinction is the invention of nature. More of nature’s creatures have become extinct than exist today. It is man that finds value in the creatures of nature. The only care any animal ever gets is man’s care, nature will do nothing to relieve any creatures suffering or to prevent it from starving or being eaten. If it were not for man, animals would only have the value nature puts on them, none at all.

The source of the value of all creatures, including man, is man. Only man is capable of comprehending purpose and meaning; only man is capable of having values. The only value any living thing has is the value man discovers. The only value anything has is its value to man. What has no value to any man in any way has no value.

But what about man himself. What value does he have? If he has value, he must discover it, and it must be of value to him. A value is always in relationship to some end or purpose. A man’s value will be determined by how well his life (his existence) fulfills the end or purpose of his life.

The purpose of your life is your enjoyment of it.

”‘Value,’” Ayn Rand said, “is that which one acts to gain and keep, ‘virtue’ is the action by which one gains and keeps it. ‘Value’ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? ‘Value’ presupposes … a purpose ….”

If there is no purpose, no objective or goal, there is no basis for a value. It is only relative to some purpose that anything has a value. If a thing accomplishes or advances a purpose it is good relative to that purpose. If a thing prevents or inhibits a purpose it is bad relative that purpose.

In an abstract way, Ayn Rand equated ultimate purpose with life, itself. “It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself,” she said; and in another place, “it is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil,” and again, “it is only the concept of Life that makes the concept of Value possible.”

She was mistaken about life being the only metaphysical entity that is an end itself. A flame is also a metaphysical entity which is an end in itself, as are some forms of plasmas. The real issue is not with what Ayn Rand said, but the impression it makes, that life itself is the ultimate purpose of all values. It is obvious that she did not mean life in the abstract, but life as a quality of particular organisms. This correctly makes values pertain to individual organisms, as opposed to organisms in general or, worse, collectively.

But it is not life itself that is the metaphysical foundation for values. Life doesn’t have values, and only man can see that things are of value to living things. Only man needs values, because only man must choose how he will live his life. No other creature needs values, because their instinct dictates they always live according to the requirements of their nature.

It is only man that has goals and purposes, and he needs values to determine both what those goals and purposes ought to be and how to achieve them. Values provide the answer to the question, for the kind of being I am living in the kind of world I do, what should I live for and how do I achieve it. Values provide the answer to the question, what is the purpose of my life, which is, as at the beginning:

The purpose of you life is your enjoyment of it.

Life consists of what you do, not what happens to you. Things happen to a rock.

Whether you do anything or not, you will have experiences. Of course, if you do nothing, your experiences will not be good, but they will not last long, and either will you. Experiences in life are of two kinds, those which are the result of things beyond your control, such as nature, other people, and the government, and those which are the result of your own choices and actions. Sometimes those experiences which come to you as a result of things beyond your control are good, but more often than not, they are not good and frequently are quite bad. Those experiences which are the result of your choices and actions are as good as you are willing to make them.

Success, which is fulfilling the purpose of your life, requires two things: 1. you must learn about both kinds of potential experiences so you can insure that most of your experience is the result of your own choices and 2. you must lean all you can about everything else to ensure you make right choices. All human failure is the result of neglecting one or both of these. Most failure is the result of neglecting the first, waiting to be discovered, to hit the jackpot, for their ship to come in, for the right job to come along, to get their lucky break, to get the inheritance. They are waiting for something good to happen to them, which is almost certainly will not. To insure good will happen to you, you must do the good yourself.

The measure of a life is not how long it lasts, but how much it did. In human terms, it is how much one produced, which means, how much one was able to enjoy their life by their own effort.

There is only one real joy in life, work. Work is our life. Watch any animal, whether it is grazing in a field, chasing down game, stalking a prey, caring for its young, building a nest, digging a hole, whatever the animal is doing, it thoroughly enjoys it. What the animal is doing is its work, that is, what it must do to live successfully.

Most people have an idea that work is what they do so they can live their lives, which somehow they believe is distinct and separate from their work and for most people this may very well be the case. But doing what we must do to live is what we are designed to do and what we are designed to enjoy.

There is almost no activity that some men do as work, and loath, that others do not do for recreation or as a hobby and love. Except for the exceptionally lazy, men generally enjoy activity, overcoming difficulties, accomplishment. There are things in everybody’s lives that interest them so much, or they desire so much, they will expend extraordinary effort to achieve or acquire them, and both the effort and its reward are thoroughly enjoyed.

The effort that must be expended to produce includes, in most cases, the endurance of pain. The pain may be nothing more than a nagging discomfort, but sometimes it is very great and enduring pain. Like everything in life, it is necessary to compare the cost of a thing with its reward. In this case, does the reward of accomplishment make the pain worth it? No great achievement is ever made without answering yes to this question. The more successful a life, the more often this question will be answered in the affirmative. Ironically, this means those who most thoroughly enjoy their lives are those who are willing to endure whatever pain they must to secure that enjoyment, while those who spend their lives attempting to avoid every discomfort, least enjoy their lives and actually suffer continually.

If life is to be enjoyed, we must make it last as long as we can, but we must never loose sight of the fact that it is our enjoyment of life that is its purpose. It is always wrong to sacrifice the enjoyment of life for its extension.

Everything in life involves some risk, and some of the risk is always the risk of death, however slight. It is impossible to eliminate all risk and it is true we cannot enjoy life we no longer have. This does not mean, however, we must live on a tightrope trying to balance between risk and pleasure. On the contrary, risk is the element over which we have no control. The risk is always in what we do not know, the unexpected, and that which we cannot plan for (except in the general way of planning what we will do in a given situation, buying insurance, and so on). We are obligated only to learn all we can to make the right decision, considering only what we can know about any possible danger and weighing that against the reward of proceeding. Only when the risk is so great the possibility of failure is more likely than success and one is not willing to accept the cost of failure should one choose not to proceed solely because of the risk.

To avoid the certain enjoyment of life to avoid a risk that has no certainty is to sacrifice life to a false and superstitious dogma, namely, that life consists merely in how long it lasts. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The correct statement of the purpose of life is:

The purpose of you life is your enjoyment of it, not making it last as long as possible.

Joy is the description of heaven. Suffering is the description of hell. To give up a short joyful life for a long life of suffering is to trade a short stay in heaven for a long stay in hell.

Since most government programs and public policy is based on the false doctrine that measures a life only by its duration, it is not surprising those same programs and policies are mostly directed against the individual’s enjoyment of life in almost everything, but particularly anything perceived to be in any way “life-threatening.” It is a continual shock to the social architects responsible for the current social system that so many people are willing to, “risk their lives,” to get out from under the government’s protective control. What social-planners do not understand is, people are not risking their lives, which are already lost under their joy-killing paternalism, they are trying to get them back.

At our current level of medical knowledge, it is quite certain that most of us are going to die. The only thing that is uncertain is when and how. Those who insist we need laws, and as many of them as possible, to protect us from harmful practices for our own good, and to save lives, are really trying to make sure people only die in ways and at a times they consider acceptable. If that were possible, people would do it themselves. The only reason they don’t, is because it is not possible. Of course that never deters the meddlers.

No law and no government program has ever saved a single life. What does it mean, anyway, to, “save a life.” The best it can mean is “to prolong a life.” Of course that doesn’t sound so good in a slogan, “these new safety devices will prolong lives!” Just doesn’t have that religious ring to it.

The only way to determine the effectiveness of any government program to save lives is to take a survey 150 years after the program is initiated to count all those still living, who were living at the time the program was but into effect, and whose lives the government has saved.

Where are they? Where are all the people whose lives government programs have saved all these years? Governments have had programs to save lives for hundreds of years. By now there should be whole communities of people whose lives the government saved 300 years ago, 200 years ago, even 100 years ago. Where have they all gone?

What? They’re Dead!? But, how could that be? If their lives were saved, they would still be alive. You mean, none of them really had their lives saved? Boy, they must be disappointed.

All those laws designed to keep people from harming or killing themselves are based on the principle that the way to keep what you do from some day possibly causing you to be unhappy is to begin doing things to make you unhappy right now.

Is there a single law meant to protect us harm, or danger, or death, that has made even one individual happier than they were without the law? That is a stupid question, of course. The purpose of all these laws to protect us from our own choices the government has deemed are “dangerous” or “harmful” is not to make anyone happy, but to make everyone the same.

It is called egalitarianism, and its purpose is to make everyone equally unhappy. Most people know how to make themselves happy, and will do it, if no one, like the government interferes in their lives to prevent them from doing it. The problem is, at least as the government sees it, some people do not know how to make themselves happy or, if they do, are too lazy or perverse to do it.

Since no one, not even the government can make anyone else happy, especially those who are bent on not being happy, like certain puritans, the only way the government can make everyone have the same level of happiness is to reduce everyone to the same level of unhappiness. That is the real objective of all protective laws.

The other name of this method is called socialism. It is the dominant philosophy of government, public schools and most large corporations today.