The Ethics of Martyrdom

[Hazard]

Rand's ultimate value in morality is life and her virtue is "one's own life," correct? Which begs the question, does Rand view certain cases of Martyrdom and/or sacrifice as moral? For instance, if I throw my body on top of a grenade in a bunker to save my comrades, am I evil? This action certainly does not sustain my life; however they do sustain my values (what I act to keep and hold as important) such as the life of my fellow soldiers. So how does Rand (and the rest of you) view giving up one's life for what one believes in?

Also, this sounded like a contradiction to me when I first heard it: I remember the point in Atlas Shrugged where everyone from the valley risk their lives in an attempt to save John (I recall the passage saying something to the effect of: If we had failed, the rest of them were prepared for a fully-armed assault); and later when they are returning to the valley in the plane they claim that it was a completely selfish motive. I just don't buy that. Realistically, they were concerned for John's interests and willing to give up their lives for his safety and survival. So, if selfishness is "concern with one's own interests," they certainly were not being selfish.

Jordan

[Chris Grieb]

Hazard; Two quick thoughts come to me. I think the strikers believed correctly that their lack of numbers was more than made up by their intelligence. I think they believed that they would win and save Galt. I think the strikers thought correctly that Galt's life might be worth risking their own.

[Christopher]

I've always felt dying to protect one's own values is not consistent with Objectivist ethics. This is not to say that risking one's life is immoral. Rather, entering into a situation where the absolute certainty of death is 100% (not 98%, not 99%... but 100%) is illogical. The explanation is quite simple:

Man's life is the highest value.

Man's life is the source of all other values.

To die with certainty in support of a value is to kill one's value system.

In killing the value system the values themselves are lost, in essence killing the value attached to that which was valued.

Therefore, death in support of a value is equally death of the value.

Equally, death of self is death of the highest value (with man's life actually being represented by the sum of all lesser values within the value system)

However, risking death changes things since awareness is not known. If I have two values, A and B, where A is hierarchically superior to B by about a factor of 10, then I am willing to take action to support A over B even with a risk of 9/10 probability of failure. For example: if I'm trapped at a prison camp of unending servitude, the totality of my value experience is: B * 100% (probability) if I choose to stay there, where B represents the value-experience of my life. If I attempt to escape, the value experience of my life rises to A, but I only have a 50% chance of surviving an escape. Therefore, my potential value experience is A * 50%. Since A = 10B, risking my life to escape has an average life-value benefit of 5B, whereas staying in the prison has a life-value benefit of B. In other words, probability suggests that an attempted escape will increase my life-value by a factor of 5 on average, so the risk is worth it.

This is a simple example, and I use mathematics as a logical device to demonstrate that risking life when death is not certain has value-merit, whereas sacrificing life does not.

At the same time, this does not reflect the human attachment-relational-"altruistism" motive, which would make my life a permanent experience of suffering if I hesitated in protecting my children for my own sake. Therefore, sacrifice to save a loved one might actually have life-benefit compared to survival by eliminating negative life-value of suffering. We could also take this from a universal perspective of life, situational ethics be damned, and argue that throwing oneself on a grenade has more integrity to the abstract value "life" than protecting one's own life. I guess it's all how you look at it.

Chris

Edited July 29, 2009 by Christopher

[Christopher]

In specific response to the two grenade situations:

1. To not throw yourself on the grenade has a total value of "supporting life when not covering grenade" * "probability of survival when not covering grenade"

2. To throw yourself on the grenade has a total value of "supporting life covering grenade" * "probability of survival covering grenade"

Magnitudes are as follows:

Probability: probability of survival covering << probability of survival not covering

Value-expression: supporting life covering >> supporting life not covering

Therefore, throwing yourself on a grenade significantly decreases your probability of survival, but since you are magnificently acting on the life value, the value of your action (should you survive) is so great that the risk might be worth it.

Edited July 29, 2009 by Christopher

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jordan,

Bearing hardships for your vision of the world, even if it means forfeiting your own life, is no sacrifice (in the Objectivist sense).

Doing so for someone else's vision, when that vision is not your own, is a sacrifice.

So throwing yourself on a grenade to protect others who are fighting the same fight you are is truly moral and heroic. Even if you do that with innocents because in your vision of the world, you don't accept the fact that people can throw grenades into crowded rooms and inflict damage at will, it is a very heroic thing to do.

If you can't stop the bad guy, you at least stop his force, if even for a moment and if even at the supreme cost.

Is there anything more noble than to fight for a human existence where bad guys have no say?

Michael

[Hazard]

Ok, I see what you are saying. I even remember Rand saying something about sacrifice, so i suppose that giving one's life in that manner wouldn't be a sacrifice after all. However, that would imply that you hold certain values above that of your own life. In The Virtue of Selfishness Rand wrote that life is the value and one's own life is the virtue as I stated above. So, I'm slightly confused about the virtue/value system here. Does putting one's child's life above that of your own violate her theory or not (regardless if it is a sacrifice)? Or, is giving up a value for something else wrong if and only if it is a sacrifice? For instance, A>>B so giving up B for A is not a sacrifice, but giving up A for B is.

Jordan

[Reidy]

In #6 you identify life as the Objectivists talk about it with physical survival. The latter is at best a necessary condition and, in the extreme cases we're talking about, not even that. If they were identical, you'd have a contradiction here, but a life worth living requires more. Branden made this distinction in an Intellectual Ammunition Department item in The Objectivist Newsletter which I hope somebody out there will identify for us.

[Christopher]

Reidy, you refer to Objectivist Newsletter April, 1964:

The man who makes terms with the rulers of a dictatorship, the man who delivers his wife and closest friends to destruction, in exchange for being allowed to survive - does not hold man's life as his standard of value. His motive is terror of dying, not passion for living. He is willing to sacrifice every value he had ever found, he is willing to live without values - and to surrender that which had been their root: his mind, his independence, his judgment, his love - in order to gain the 'security' of a caged animal... The man who, in any and all circumstances, would place his physical self-preservation above any other value, is not a lover of life, but an abject traitor to life.

I wouldn't regard my logic as an antithesis to Branden's. Rather, we both support man's values. Physical life is the environment in which values exist, therefore sacrifice of the self physically for a value is to at once destroy your value while supporting your value - a contradiction. (This does not mean the value here is physical survival per se, since physical survival as a value-end entails absolutely no risk-taking under any circumstances.)

On the other hand, if you give up your wife in terror of being killed, you're killing your value just the same. In this case as Branden points out, you're giving up your mind. To give up one's mind towards achieving a value, such as occurs in sustaining codependent relationships, is a contradiction.

If I sacrifice my body, emotional awareness, or reason towards the achievement of a value, I sacrifice the environment which sustains and gives meaning to the value I seek to achieve. In these cases, I undermine the value in pursuit of the value... a contradiction.

Here's a little more of what Branden had to say on the subject:

The pursuit of values entails a struggle - and struggle entails a risk. The pursuit of values necessarily involves the possivility of failure and defeat... To choose to act for one's values only when no risk is involved is to forsake values; and to forsake values is to forsake life.

Risk is not an absolute. If I knew I was absolutely going to die, I wouldn't risk it. If I knew I was absolutely going to sacrifice my mind, I wouldn't risk it. Sacrificing one's mind is generally a probability of 100% since we ourselves are responsible; but escaping from a prison entails a chance of survival, so we choose to risk escape. If there was no possibility of escape in some special condition, then to attempt escape under those circumstances would be worse than futile, it would be anti-life. That's why we always wait for the opportune chance

----- Addendum

Jordan, just to answer your question: choosing to act on a lesser value at the cost of not acting on a higher value is a sacrifice. It is necessary though to take into account the probability of achieving one value over the other. The less chance there is at success of a higher value compared to a lower value, the less likely an action towards the lower value is a sacrifice since probability rules the higher value is really not available in the given situation.

However, your question regards discussing the premises of value systems themselves (such as survival). Therefore, it's a bit more tricky. The value system is >> more important than any individual value. Rand and Branden are essentially asserting this when they place man's mind as a value. Man's mind is a value because it is the system upon which values are built.

Edited July 29, 2009 by Christopher

[Christopher]

You know what, I'm addicted to this question Jordan. You're talking about values, I can't help myself.

Regarding the mother-child instance, we have to take into account a very real, very natural, very objective fact that in close relationships, there is some fusion between the self-identity and the other person. In essence, this leads a person to perceive both mentally and (more importantly) emotionally that the other person represents in effect a part of the self. A mother who doesn't help her child experiences it as a personal threat. Here's what a paper on self-identity suggested:

"Instances where a parent accidentally or via life circumstance is forced to act in a way that might hurt the child (as, e.g. when parents divorce) therefore should be highly stressful." -- So we're not just dealing with values in relation to the self, we're also dealing with variances in self-perception as well. Hence, a mother "sacrificing" for a child is subjectively viewed by the mother as "protecting herself." And that's the human organism for you. No wonder we're all crazy! (and no wonder we survived through evolution)

[Dragonfly]

Regarding the mother-child instance, we have to take into account a very real, very natural, very objective fact that in close relationships, there is some fusion between the self-identity and the other person. In essence, this leads a person to perceive both mentally and (more importantly) emotionally that the other person represents in effect a part of the self. A mother who doesn't help her child experiences it as a personal threat. Here's what a paper on self-identity suggested:

"Instances where a parent accidentally or via life circumstance is forced to act in a way that might hurt the child (as, e.g. when parents divorce) therefore should be highly stressful." -- So we're not just dealing with values in relation to the self, we're also dealing with variances in self-perception as well. Hence, a mother "sacrificing" for a child is subjectively viewed by the mother as "protecting herself." And that's the human organism for you. No wonder we're all crazy! (and no wonder we survived through evolution)

It's just a simple example of kin selection, it's in our selfish genes that cause altruistic behavior.

[Selene]

Chris:

If you have children, the thought that you would take the sole assailant over the cliff to save your child's life is a simple decision. On the way down I would worry about using the piece of garbage as a buffer with the ground.

I once fell about 25 or 30 feet to a slate ledge which if I had not kept myself really calm and bounced wrong would have headed down another 50 feet which would have had some real bad outcomes. However, I can tell you that the entire fall was in super slow motion and my vision was hyper-precise. When I hit and did not bounce, I realized that I still had my Nylon 66 rifle in my hand.

It is amazing how phenomenal the human body is.

Adam

[ginny]

I want to live in a society where value their values enough to fight for them, and, if necessary, die for them. Our forefathers fought for this country knowing it would mean casualties. I don't think they have any regrets. A free society isn't a given. Fighting/dying for same is as far from martyrdom as I can imagine.

Ginny

Edited July 29, 2009 by ginny

[Selene]

As Chris has informed us - Amen Ginny!

[rhartford]

Martyrdom in the cause of freedom is not necessary, but effort is. I closed my Free Minds ’09 presentation, “A Political Standard for Absolute Political Freedom,” with a warning in the spirit of Patrick Henry:

Is comfort so dear; or tranquility so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of the shackling chains of government control on our time, effort, health, and property? – Forbid it, my fellow citizens – reduce government to its proper role, support American value principles, not the value principles of the collective or the commune.

Support the American value principle of economic freedom, not the commune value principle of economic equality.

Support the American value principles self-responsibility, equality under the law, and justice, not the commune value principles of dependency, the forcing of some to be keepers of others, and injustice masquerading as fairness.

The time has come for wealth creators to proudly proclaim their right to their wealth and to use their time and talent in the service of political freedom.

The time has come to scare and starve the politically power hungry by giving them less to expropriate and redistribute.

The time has come to righteously state that it is morally wrong to steal, and it only compounds the moral abomination when the government is used to do the stealing.

I know not what course others may follow, but as for us, give us Liberty or feel the power of our advocacy and activism for our birthright of Freedom.

I encourage all, especially “older” Americans, to put aside “comfort” and “tranquility” and join a growing coalition of friends of freedom. Support each individual’s right to freedom of action in pursuit of life and condemn any individual, group, or government that would violate that freedom and force an individual to serve the wishes of others. The coalition can be large if members exercise social toleration in the name of a united political intolerance for violations of political freedom.

For Patrick Henry’s words in 1775, search for “give me liberty” in the document on the web here.