Thinking With Integrity

“You see, I'm never concerned with my clients, only with their architectural requirements. I consider these as part of my building's theme and problem, as my building's material—just as I consider bricks and steel. Bricks and steel are not my motive. Neither are the clients. Both are only the means of my work. Peter, before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity. I'll be glad if people who need it find a better manner of living in a house I designed. But that's not the motive of my work. Nor my reason. Nor my reward.”

I once read that artists are people who cares intrinsically *quality of representation*. Their primary motive is the quality of their art, and not by politics, nor money, nor status.

The artist and not-artist is dramatised in this novel: Howard Roark and Peter Keating respectively.

The novel harps on and on about integrity, and the consequences of men who work with and without integrity. Incidentally, what is integrity?

“And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn.”

It reminds me of an excerpt from The Status Game I read on twitter:

"Psychologist Dr Lilliana Mason writes, 'more often than not, citizens do not choose which party to support based on policy opinion; they alter their policy opinion according to which party they support. Usually they do not notice that this is happening, and most, in fact, feel outraged when the possibility is mentioned.'"

Are your political opinions similar to your friends? Can you truly say that this was a pure coincidence, or that your beliefs are not your own? Are your beliefs formed with integrity, or through groupthink?

Why are humans like this? The reason modern humans have outcompeted other primates (and other homo sapiens) is because we are bred to be submissive, to be programmable, to be deferent.

Why? A tribe with a strong leader at the top and the rest of the tribe following in lockstep probably had selective advantage over other tribes with too many chefs. Independent thinking is likely a maladaptation. Why should a man think for himself? If you deviate from the tribe, you will very likely become ostracised.

Wait, what's a chef? People who only follow recipes and stick with the existing methods by their given cuisine are *cooks*. Cuisines hinder the extent to which you can freely explore. Sure, it may suit your taste, but *chefs* want to try all the cuisines and take my favourite methods and ingredients from each and cook up their own cuisine. Reality isn't constructed out of cuisines, just different procedures to prepare different ingredients. You have to discover the possibilities (final dishes), by experimenting with all known ways, not a limited grouping of them.^[1]

The Fountainhead says that almost no one are cooks, and presents how difficult life is for a man with integrity, someone who thinks for himself. That they have to fight society every step of the way.

“A man like Roark is on trial before society all his life. Whom does that indict—Roark or society?”

Roark is resented because his way of doing things is so *different*, and it disgusts the Keatings of the world that he is 'anti-social', who does not care at all about what you, or anyone else thinks.

If you let the crowd dictate your aesthetics, then you have sold your soul. It makes you strictly a product of them, instead of existing as a being of your own power. You have an internal judge for whats good and bad. You have to be shamed and ridiculed and guilted into submitting to other people. Keating submits. Roark doesn't.

Anyways, I found the book relatively gripping (well. gripping enough that i gone through the whole thing which is a massive feat) though it does get a little tedious.

It's also prompted me to do some reflection on some of my motives for doing things. Like, do I even like music? When's the last time I really enjoyed practicing? I hate life.

I'll end with a dialogue (but just pretend it's a monologue by Roark) with parts I find particularly significant italicised:

“I think Toohey understands that. That's what helps him spread his vicious nonsense. Just weakness and cowardice. It's so easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is the strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”
  “That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: 'Is this true?' They ask: 'Is this what others think is true?' Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation--anchored to nothing. That's the emptiness I couldn't understand in people. That's what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It's everywhere and nowhere and you can't reason with him. He's not open to reason. You can't speak to him--he can't hear. You're tried by an empty bench. A blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. Steve Mallory couldn't define the monster, but he knew. That's the drooling beast he fears. The second-hander.”
  “I think your second-handers understand this, try as they might not to admit it to themselves. Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. By instinct. There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them--because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man. Look back at your own life, Howard, and at the people you've met. They know. They're afraid. You're a reproach.”
  “That's because some sense of dignity always remains in them. They're still human beings. But they've been taught to seek themselves in others. Yet no man can achieve the kind of absolute humility that would need no self-esteem in any form. He wouldn't survive. So after centuries of being pounded with the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it in the only way it could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand. And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn't have conceived. And now, to cure a world perishing from selflessness, we're asked to destroy the self. Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion--prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me.' Then he wonders why he's unhappy. Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven't even got a word for the quality I mean--for the self-sufficiency of man's spirit. It's difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they've come to mean Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once--and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.”
“I'm glad you admit that you have friends.”
“I even admit that I love them. But I couldn't love them if they were my chief reason for living. Do you notice that Peter Keating hasn't a single friend left? Do you see why? If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.”

[1] the analogy 'cooks' and 'chefs' comes from WaitButWhy's excellent mega-article explaining... basically everything here and more, in trying to answer "what makes Elon Musk special?"—because he's a chef. And why are people mostly cooks? And how do chefs function? (give it a skim. i didn't read it all either.) here