Shouldering Your Own Burden
by Joseph Rowlands
I once knew a guy who borrowed tens of thousands of dollars through loans, credit cards, and a car payment he couldn't afford. The debt continued to accrue over time as he borrowed more to pay the minimum monthly payments. Eventually, nobody was willing to loan him any more money. Standing under this crippling debt, he declared bankruptcy.
This article is not about whether declaring bankruptcy is theft. I think there's a more important issue at stake here. Why did he do something like this, and would an Objectivist do the same? How does Objectivist ethics (ignoring Objectivist politics for now) guide us in avoiding this kind of action?
Let's think about this in a different way. When someone else finishes a task, accomplishing something he's worked hard on for some time, do you take credit for his achievement? Obviously no. His accomplishment is his own, not yours. If you contributed to a successful project, you could be proud of your contribution, but the pride would be in proportion to the importance of your contribution. Even if the project was started by you, the accomplishment is not wholly your own. To really earn the self-respect that comes with a job well done, you have to achieve through your own actions. You have to practice the virtue of independence.
Independence is a virtue that provides you with the tools you need to be able to rely on yourself. By acting and thinking independently, you better enable yourself to live your life. But independence also allows you to fully own your accomplishments, and to feel genuine pride in them. This is true even if others help. For instance, if you hire someone, you know that you've traded value for value with them. You've still earned the achievement.
This is true for your life as well. Looking back on your life, you can look back and feel pride in how you've lived it. But this is impossible if the accomplishments and achievements were not your own. If, in order to succeed in some accomplishment, you needed to steal from another to do it, the accomplishment isn't really your own -- you didn't earn the accomplishment, you stole it. This can affect how you view your whole life. If the foundations of your life were gained inappropriately, the rest of your life is sullied.
Imagine that in order to get into the college of your choice, you cheated on a critical exam. After that, you found that going to that college opened up new doors for you. People were impressed that you attended the school, and you got your first job due to it. You may then go on to do your job well, advancing fast in your career. But you'll always look back on your achievements and see that one exam. You may comfort yourself that you've proven that you could handle that school and job, so the ends justify the means, but still it'll always be there.
Objectivists uphold independence because it is a requirement for happiness and self-esteem. We don't rob from others because we think we'd get caught. We don't do it because it's the unearned, and we don't want that. We want to be able to honestly look at our lives and say, "I'm proud! I did that!".
The trader principle exemplifies this idea. As Rand said "A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange -- an exchange that benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others."
This principle certainly covers more than just theft. To really own your accomplishments, the costs must be yours. This means that you need to incur the risks, not others. A good businessman will not risk other people's money where he won't risk his own.
An Objectivist takes his debts seriously. Not because defaulting on them would be an initiation of force, but because it is the price he pays to really own his life. Similarly, when an accident happens or he fails at some task, he will voluntarily incur the cost. If he screws up and causes harm, he will work to amend it. If he makes a promise, he will keep it. All of these and more are examples of him taking control and responsibility of his own life, and earning his pride and happiness.
We shoulder our own burdens, not out of fear of reprisals or due to an ethics that upholds others as more important than ourselves, but out of the most selfish reason possible. We want to bask in the glory of a life well lived.
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