MOVC - Day 0 - "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"

“The Morality of Value Creation”

11/6/15, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”

Atlanta, Georgia

There lives a man by the name Yaron Brook.  He speaks with a slight lisp that makes him a little hard to get used to at first.  He is one of the smartest, most rationally thinking men on this planet.  He is Ayn Rand’s intellectual heir, the modern face of Objectivism.  He is a man of unbreached moral character in the view of the people who go to hear him speak.  To others, to the people who have no idea he exists, the people who do not believe in what he preaches, he would be considered the devil.

Who but the devil would call George Bailey the villain?  Who but the devil would say Steve Jobs might still be alive today if he applied the same principals from his professional life to his personal life?  Who but the devil would advocate against joining the military because they teach you to be selfless?  Well, the devil went down to Georgia, and I heard him speak tonight.  He is now on a plane to London, where he will continue to Belgrade and do an 8-country speaking tour of Europe.  Tonight, he was in Georgia.  Before I recount the details of the talk this evening, I would be remiss not to briefly recount the adventures of Day 0 that brought me to Georgia, including a flight from hell.

Reader, if you are only interested in the philosophy Mr. Brook offered, skip ahead a few paragraphs.  I knew that I had to leave work early to make my flight, so I intended to get to the office early or at least work an hour remotely from the cigar shop, having made up the night before from a nasty fight with my best friend from two nights before that.  Yesterday was the Fifth of November, and I celebrated Guy Fawkes Night in style with my oldest friend.  I only had two or three shots of whiskey, but it somehow left me feeling extremely hungover and unable to get to work when I wanted.

I lit up a Punch around 8 AM and made my way to the cigar shop.  My friend was there, and we shook hands and laughed off the fight from Tuesday.  I left the cigar there and picked up some coffees, including a Toasted Graham Latte for myself in a red Christmas cup and four bagel bites.  I finished the cigar and only eating three of the bagel bites.  I got some stuff done at work, and I had no appetite by the time I was ready to leave for the airport, stopping to buy some cigars on the way.  I took a taxi and was at LGA in short time, discovering en route that my laptop had no charge.  Apparently, I had not turned on the power strip when I charged it this morning.  That would fuck up the possibility of working remotely this afternoon, especially since there were no outlets on the plane.  My phone was also quickly losing charge.  It would be a long and boring flight.

Once I got on the flight, I started to get hungry.  I asked what food they had for purchase.  They didn’t.  They just had peanuts, pretzels, and cinnamon cookies.  Fuck!  She said I could have as many peanuts and pretzels as I wanted.  Four bags of pretzels and three bags of peanuts, for a total of 435 calories and 13 grams of protein tided me over until I landed in the Atlanta.  I went to do the crossword.  My pen wasn’t working.  I literally used the tip of the pen to scratch the answers onto the page and somehow managed to get all but two squares correct.  I stopped at Popeye’s to pick up lunch (at 4:20 PM) as I made my way to the MARTA station, eating en route.  I got a three-day pass for MARTA and made my way to the hotel.

I checked in, plugged in my computer and almost dead phone, and got to the hall just as Yaron Brook began speaking.  He was talking about how businessmen in movies and TV are almost always portrayed as evil, how something like 63% of murders in movies and TV are done by businessmen.  He spoke about how Steve Jobs pursued Objectivist values in his professional life, while he failed to live up to them in his personal life.  (Perhaps if Steve Jobs fought his cancer with the same ferocity that he put into inventing the next Apple product he might still be with us, Brooks suggested.)  He spoke about absolute honesty.

However, the crux of the talk was value creation.  Why should people like Bill Gates or J.P. Morgan feel guilty about the wealth they created, the value they created that led to so many jobs and improved the lives of so many people.  Why should they feel a need to “give back?”  Why isn’t the value they created enough of a gift to the world?  Kant would have a field day with this, but value creation through honest means is a highly moral act, no matter how much reward it brings to yourself.  In fact, the better for you, the more moral the act.  There is no need to give back.  These ideas of altruism and selflessness are social constructs that run counter to human nature, and people should not feel guilty for being successful.

The first question was about brutal honesty.  Brooks first said, in very Kantian fashion, that just because you have a moral obligation to honesty, you do not owe the truth to every person.  It depends on your relationship.  My moral obligation to honesty should not lead to me standing on a street corner giving brutally honest critiques to everyone who walks by.  If someone asks me if their hair is a mess, or if they have spinach in their teeth, then, yes, I should answer honestly.  He then addressed the classic example.

Reader, you know the example I mean.  A wife asks her husband, “Does this dress make me look fat?”  What Brooks said shocked me, and it caused me to give pause to my mantra of absolute honesty all the time.  He said that the wife is not looking for an honest answer.  She is playing a game, and the husband is obliged to indulge her in the game.  This is not the couple in the store the wife trying to pick out a new dress, in which case honesty is required.  This is not the wife asking for honest advice on a new hairdo.  No, this is merely a game.

The game can be played in order to preserve the relationship, Brooks argued.  This is the kid asking if Santa exists.  Does the kid want to believe that Santa exists?  If so, it is moral to indulge him.  Or is the kid asking for an honest answer, in which case one must be provided.  I had never thought about this way.  However, it is important to note, this not an endorsement of lying to avoid delivering a harsh truth.  If I ask a question, and I expect an honest answer, and you believe the truth will hurt me or create an uncomfortable situation, it is still immoral for you to lie.  The exception here is that the wife is expecting the lie, and that is the reason why the game is allowed to be played.

I asked a question about the businessmen in movies, since it is something I have frequently noticed.  Using the example of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I said that when we see the “evil” businessmen in the movies, for the first half of the movie, the businessmen usually doesn’t do anything that an Objectivist would consider “evil.”  He is ruthless and a shrewd businessmen, maybe even threatening the livelihood of our “hero.”  There is nothing evil about that.  It’s called good business.  However, we are meant to hate the “evil” businessman from the start.  Then, the businessman always does something that is truly evil.  He steals or lies or deceives the competition or initiates physical force.  The audience is already meant to hate him at that point, so why is that act necessary for the story?  Returning to the example of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” we are meant to hate Mr. Potter (at this point the whole audience was rumbling in agreement and Brooks let out an approving laugh), but he is not doing anything evil, not until he steals the $8,000 from Uncle Bailey.  Why was that necessary?

I knew Brooks would run with that example, and he did.  He first went on a rant against it, how George Bailey is truly the bad guy, how Bailey is a terrible businessman who doesn’t do what is necessary to make his business successful, how he trusts his uncle with the $8,000, only for him to lose it, how Bailey gives up his dream trip to Paris because a family member got sick.  Mr. Potter was the good businessman, up until the point that he stole the $8,000 from Uncle Bailey.  Brooks went on a further rant against Capra, saying this is a common theme in all of his movies.  He then properly answered my questions, again in a way I never considered.  He said that the film producers wanted to tie the idea of self-interest to the idea of evil.  In their mind, there is no difference between ruthless business practices and willful acts of theft, so they tie them together so that audience will associate actually acts of evil with self-interest.  Boom.  Microphone drop.

There was a later question about the military, and if someone believes he can do good in the military, is it okay to lie in his essays about selflessness.  Brooks did not want to discourage this young man from serving our country, but he seemed to argue against it, especially saying he would have to continue the lie to the men under his command, which would further the immorality of it.  It was then time for dinner, which came with wine.  I only had one glass, but it went straight to my head.  There was dessert and more speakers.  I went up to my room, where I soon met my roommate.  He went out, and I took a nap, waking up around 11 PM.  I got ready and headed down.  I found a bench outside, where I lit up my 2008 Christmas Pipe (‘cause ‘tis the season) and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close.  On another note, I am seriously concerned about my computer’s battery.  I charged it for 5 hours and have been using it for 1 hour.  It is now at 19%.