Do Right! [SFI-8]

There is a common mistake made about the nature of freedom. Those who promote freedom are quite right to point out that every individual’s life is their own to live as they choose without the coercive interference of any other individual.

The mistake is in thinking that being able to do whatever one feels like is freedom, but freedom means freedom to choose, rationally and objectively, one’s every thought and action. Freedom means freedom to do what is right. There can be no freedom to do what is wrong.

If you do whatever you like, without knowing why you like it, you will not be free, you will become a slave to your desires and passions, and you will despise the results, which will be human misery.

If you do what you know is right, whether you like it or not, you will like the results, and you’ll know why you like it, because it is the reward for living as a rational being, choosing to do what you know what is right, no matter what, at any moment, you desire or feel. The result is called human happiness.

Because man is a rational volitional being, and conscious choice based on his best reason is his means to life, he must be free to think and choose if he is to live successfully and happily in this world. One’s own life, happiness, and self-interest are the objective of his reasoning and values, but they are not the basis of his values.

It is not one’s “self-interest” that determines one’s values, it is the reverse; one’s values determine what is in one’s self-interest, and it is only by means of reason and principles one’s self-interest can be realized. Nothing justifies choosing or acting irrationally, that is, on the basis of desire, whim, or passion. Nothing justifies evading the full context of all one knows to be right and true.

The road to freedom is self-control, that is, being consciously and rationally in control of everything one thinks and does. Freedom is not doing whatever you like, it is doing whatever you choose because you know it is right, because it conforms to the truth of reality and the requirements of your nature.

The independent individualist already knows this, and always seeks to do what is rationally and objectively right. There is only one danger to the independent individualist in his pursuit of his highest ideal, to live according to the truth of reality in all things.

Why Not Always Do Right?

If doing right means doing what is truly in one’s own self-interest, and doing wrong is a defiance of reality which can only produce unhappiness at best, or total destruction at worst, why would anyone ever do what is not right?

If one is ruthlessly careful in their objective reason when choosing what to think and do, they may be mistaken in their choices, but so long as all their choices are based on reason, even when mistaken, they are in a position to correct those mistakes by better reasoning.

By, “not doing right,” I do not mean making a mistake, I mean choosing to do what one’s own best reason convinces them is wrong, and acting in defiance of one’s own values and principles. The question is, why would anyone ever act in defiance of what they know is in their own best interest?

It is always some feeling or some passion one allows to influence their thinking and choosing that motivates one to choose to do what is not right. It is some whim or desire, not arising from ones best reason, but some irrational, and usually unidentified source, to which they surrender their rational self-control which leads to wrong actions.

The Individualist’s Vulnerability

It is ironic that the independent individualist is especially vulnerable to the influence of feelings. It is the independent individualist’s love of life, his understanding of what real values are and his ruthless pursuit of the highest in all things both physical and spiritual, his unlimited capacity to love the good, his intense sensitivity to injustice and evil that make him capable of feeling these things more than those who value little and pursue less.

What particular feelings or desires will tempt an individual to act irrationally depends on the individual and whatever circumstances give rise the feelings he must deal with. For some, it will be extreme anger with a cruel injustice done to them that tempts them to do something irrational irrational, like saying or doing something they know is wrong. In others it might be some rightly desired thing which they pursue but are prevented from having or achieving by the interference of others, a desire that is so strong they choose to have what they desire in a wrong way.

Like all other things in life, the independent individualist must find ways to deal with every reality, including the strongest of desires, feelings, and emotions.

How To Deal With Feelings

In my longer articles on “Feelings,” and “Desires,” and the shorter one, “Emotions: Their Importance and Control,” I dealt the nature of desires and emotions themselves, and how to have healthy emotions, which I am assuming an independent individualist will have. Healthy emotions does not mean all one’s feelings are pleasant or easy to prevent from affecting one’s behavior. Feelings of grief over a loss, frustration from an injustice, or strong desire for what is recognized as objectively good are all healthy emotions, because they are appropriate to that with which one’s consciousness is filled.

The mistake most people make about strong emotions and desires is in supposing they will be able to react appropriately to them, when they have them, without any preparation. It is very much like supposing one is going to be able to deal with a seriously dangerous situation when driving a car without learning how to handle a car in every situation.

When an emergency occurs while driving a car, that is the wrong time to figure out how handles such an emergency. When in the midst of experiencing strong emotion or desire that is the wrong time to learn how to deal with those feelings.

When one is experiencing strong feelings, it is much harder to think clearly, objectively, and in terms of principles. How one will act and choose in such situations will depend on the extent they have prepared themselves for such feelings. This is one of the things it means to take the long view. It means preparing for all those kinds of situations in which strong emotional experience is likely, and determining how one should think and act in such situations.

Some of those situations are common to us all. There will be loss of loved ones in our life. If you have children you better have it settled in your mind that something can happen to one of them that will be very traumatic. The time to think about what is really important, what your long-term view of such things ought to be is before such things happen. If one of your children should die, if something terrible happens to your husband or your wife, how should you deal with it? One thing to always keep in mind is, no matter how terrible a future disaster will be, in time its importance will diminish, because you will go on living and new important interests will fill your life. None of this thinking will ever make grief or sadness less, but it will prepare you to make the right choices and to take the appropriate action when such feelings rightly dominate your consciousness.

The kind of things that one needs to think and plan for are anything one hopes never happens but must in reality know can happen—a loss of a job, a disastrous fire or accident, or any event involving those you are close to that effects you strongly and emotionally. It is not a matter of dwelling on potential evil, it is being realistic enough to prepare for the unexpected in a way that will mitigate the harm of future evil.

Strong emotions are not only reactions to the bad things in life, however. Perhaps the most dangerous are those feelings of almost irresistible desire and passion to which we are all subject, especially when we are young and less experienced. The reason for such passions is just that short-sighted range-of- the-moment view that allows something to dominate our consciousness and “seem”like something we just cannot live without having or doing. The reason such passions are more common in the young is because most of us have had such desires, and have given into them, only to discover that the desired object or action not only did not provide the satisfaction we anticipated, but in many cases is shallow and disappointing.

Some of us learn from such experiences. Some never do. It would be better if we never had to make such mistakes, but at least the independent individualist will not repeat them. The object of the lesson is clear. Desire based on a clear and objective evaluation of a thing may safely be indulged, because with or without the feeling of desire, the object of the desire is rationally known to be in our own best interest to pursue. Without that clear objective evaluation, however, no matter how strong the feeling of desire, it is almost certain to be wrong to pursue, and unlikely to end in anything but disappointment and regret.

Freedom Is Doing Right

How we deal with our desires and feelings is like everything else in life. We must learn all we possibly can about them, what the source of them is, and whether our feelings are based on our values and principles, or only short- term impressions without any identifiable objective basis.

Doing wrong is always harmful, always self-destructive, and always a route to entanglements and problems that make living free impossible. The road to freedom is paved with doing right.

Doing wrong is always a surrender to irrational desires and feelings; doing right is always by choosing what one knows, in truth, is in one’s objective self-interest. Both courses result in a life filled with emotional experiences. The emotional experience of those who do wrong is dominated by regret and guilt; the emotional experience of those who do right is the continuous affirmation that their life is right, and it is experience as joy and happiness.