Mindy,
Have you been following the news lately? As in, big-time swindlers right and left at the highest levels?
The fact is that materially speaking there is a real market niche for crooks. And some of them do quite well, in purely material terms. Then there are the sociopaths and psychopaths, such as Bundy, who was the most popular guy in every crowd he hung with. I personally have had the misfortune to know several sociopaths over the years. Ellsworth Toohey could have taken lessons from some of them. But are they really successful as human beings?
The issue that I believe is crucial to understanding morality and why people chose to be moral was outlined toward the end of Branden's "The Psychology of Self-Esteem." He called it the "muttnik principle," as he identified it as he was rough-housing with his dog by that name. Other people are mirrors to our deepest sense of who we are, and keeping that mirror clean is crucial to being able to thereby perceive who we fundamentally are.
As Branden pointed out, although we can easily survive by minimal effort, most of us in fact make huge efforts beyond that minimum. We build or buy houses and buildings, although there are places - such as Southern California - where one could live virtually for free in reasonable comfort (and some do), we master bodies of knowledge and strive to extend them, even as plumbers make more money, we struggle to preserve political systems, and on and on.
One could argue that this is merely evolutionary selection, and there is that factor to it, for sure, but there is clearly the need for us to see in the real world outside ourselves a reaffirmation of what and who we are. A professional architect of competence and integrity experiences a deep satisfaction when his innovative design is actually built.
Similarly, the value of real lovers or friends, who know us for real, is more the experience of self-awareness, via an uncensored interaction, than any simple convenience. One can see this exemplified in the experience of an orgasm. If it is self-induced via masturbation, it is clear that, like a microphone placed too near the speakers in a PA system, it is a process of positive feedback, in which our mental imagery is matched instant by instant to the physical touching we control.
The same is true when we do it with another person in the loop. However, if we have to conceal who we are to that person, or there are significant conflicts of values between us, then at some point we will experience a disconnect with them and basically shift from making love to masturbating with assistance. The quality of orgasm typically suffers as well.
One cannot have continuous sex (unfortunately), but the real emotional interactions with a loved one are the background leitmotif of which sex and orgasm are the crescendo, and diluting ones most pleasurable and meaningful interactions by having to live a lie is hardly selfish.
You might also check out Wilhelm Reich and the neo-Reichean psychologists as to how our natural needs are perverted and used to control us. For example, simply being gay was illegal in much of the U.S. for a long time. I recall that homosexual sex carried the death penalty in Georgia - or so I was told as a kid there. If being Gay, or Jewish, or protestant, or capitalist (e.g., China under the Red Guards) have to be concealed in order to simply survive, then one is forced into the position of living a lie, which undercuts this crucial capacity for self-awareness and pleasure in ones person and that of others.
Then the gangs, such as organized religion or the state, use that fact to bribe, seduce and coerce us into giving up our natural heritage, our capacity for real love.
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