Ladies and Gentlemen,
Someone once said:
‘Determine what specific goal you want to achieve. Then dedicate yourself to its attainment with unswerving singleness of purpose, the trenchant zeal of a crusader.'
Let me tell you about three examples of this sort of dedication.
I'm sure you've all heard of Fred Hollows the eye doctor, who dedicated his life to restoring sight through cataract surgery. Since 1992, the foundation he set up has worked in 28 countries and restored sight to over a million people. So dedicated was Dr Hollows to his work, that in the last few months of his life as he was dying of cancer, he even flew to Vietnam to continue his surgery.
Another example of great dedication to work was the father of flight, Lawrence Hargraves. During the 1880s and 90s he constructed 18 machines, so determined was he to build a machine that could fly. His attempts at flight were ridiculed by academics, and he commented in 1892: 'The people of Sydney who can speak of my work without a smile are very scarce' . To persist in the face of such public scorn, and so many setbacks, is the epitome of dedication.
Another great inventor was the American Edwin Land (1909-91) who registered 535 patents, but is best-known for his invention of the Polaroid camera. He arrived at the concept after his 3-year old daughter asked him why they had to wait for photos to be developed. He later joked: “Strangely by the end of that walk [a few hours after his daughter’s question], the solution to the problem had been pretty well formulated. I would say that everything had been, except those few details that took from 1943 to 1973.”
The quote that I opened with was by Paul J. Meyer, inspirational speaker and author. These three are obviously the sort of people that Meyer had in mind when he gave that advice.
But in order to dedicate yourself with the trenchant zeal of a crusader, you must be able to see the goal of your work as a wonderful, shining, achievement. Curing the sight of millions with a simple procedure, inventing a flying machine or an instant camera certainly qualify, but do you see your business career as the most worthwhile thing you could do - as the most meaningful thing you could do - as the most fulfilling thing you could do?
For most people developing this sort of enthusiasm for a business career is very much an uphill battle.
Why is this? Conditioning! We've heard it in the home. We've heard it in the classroom. We've heard it from the pulpit. We've heard such statements as ‘the love of money is the root of all evil’, ‘it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of the lord.’, ‘businessmen are capitalists – they exploit their workers and rip off their customers’, and ‘”business ethics”’ is an oxymoron’.
Let’s face it – for most people business by its very nature conflicts with their deepest values.
But have most people heard of probably the greatest defender ever of the business world?
Have most people heard of the 20th century thinker who has shown us how to refute these claims – who has shown us how to see a business career as a noble undertaking?
Can you imagine what a huge effect this knowledge has on one’s motivation? I can vouch for it from personal experience.
Before I outline to you her reasoning, I would like to tell you about her widespread influence and inspiring achievements.
See if you can guess her identity from what I’m about to say.
This writer’s greatest work came second to the Bible in a Library of Congress survey of most influential books in America. There has been a stamp made in her honour, and a documentary about her that was nominated for an academy award. There are more than 50 universities in the US with courses based on her work. The former chairman of the American Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan said that she was:
‘instrumental in significantly broadening the scope of my thinking and was clearly a major contributor to my intellectual development, for which I remain profoundly grateful to this day.’
Jimmy Wales (co-founder of Wikipedia) said of her philosophy Objectivism:
“It colours everything I do and think.”
In Australia Ron Manners, former chairman of mining companies and the Australian Mining Hall of Fame stated:
‘... [her].. writings are of great benefit to a corporation. Her code of ethics contains the principles that lead to commercial success, and enables us to see a commercial enterprise as a worthy endeavour.’
Bill Collins, awarded an Order of Australia for his services to film and television called this writer one of the greatest women of the twentieth century, and the most brilliant thinker. And I know of at least 3 members of the BRW rich list who have great admiration for her.
This writer’s name was Ayn Rand. But who was Ayn Rand?
Ayn Rand was born in Russia in 1905, but spent most of her life in America. She was determined from an early age to be a novelist and worked hard to acquire a good education and develop her writing skills. She studied history and philosophy at university, where she was an excellent student.
After the communist take-over she became more and more despairing of life in the Soviet Union and had great difficulty in controlling her outrage at the great injustice of the Soviet regime. Assisted by her family, she finally managed to leave Russia alone at the age of 21 in 1926, and sailed to America, where she had to learn another language - English - well enough to write novels. Her novel The Fountainhead, described by an editor as ‘containing genius in its power of expression’, and by a reviewer at the time of publication as ‘a hymn in praise of the individual’ , is about an architect who holds onto his integrity through years of struggle. It was rejected by 12 publishers but when finally published it was a great success and was made into a film starring Gary Cooper.
Rand's novel We the Living, a partly autobiographical novel set in the Soviet Union, was made into a film in Italy without her knowledge during the war. The film was enormously popular, but was then banned by the Fascist government, who saw the power of its anti-collectivist message.
Atlas Shrugged, a novel about a heroic female railway executive, an inspiring steel industrialist and inventor, and much much more, was her greatest work. Before she could write it she had to properly work out her integrated philosophy, covering the 5 branches, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. She then had to weave this into a suspenseful plot. So difficult was this process that she re-wrote each page on average 5 times. Due to its radically challenging nature, Atlas had some very poor reviews and initially sales were low, but through word of mouth the book had reached the top 10 in the New York Times bestseller within 2 months. There it stayed for 18 weeks. This was the novel found by a Library of Congress survey in the early 90s to be the most influential in modern America. Ayn Rand's books continue to sell at the rate of 500,000 per year, and can be purchased from most large bookstores in Australia.
So Ayn Rand’s personal life and achievements were very inspiring. But her legacy is of much greater value. Someone once said that ideas move man and man moves the world. I think you will find that if you take the trouble to understand Rand’s ideas they will indeed move your world.
Ayn Rand was a great novelist but also a great philosopher.
Most of you probably think of philosophy as the useless work of ivory tower dwellers – intently staring at their navels and then writing theses in attempts to prove that their navels don’t actually exist. In short you probably think it has as much relevance to your lives as the dietary habits of the pink fairy armadillo.
And given the state of most philosophy today you are justified in thinking this. I majored in philosophy at university and can vouch for the dismal decline of modern philosophy. But Ayn Rand is an intellectual descendant of that giant of ancient Greece, Aristotle, the re-discovery of whose works led to the rescue of the world from the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. Her ideas cut through to the real meaning of life, and provide powerful guidance to achieving happiness.
Dr Harry Binswanger, who lectured in philosophy at the City University of New York, and is now professor of philosophy at the Objectivist Academic Center of the Ayn Rand Institute, has described her achievements in this way:
"In future ages, historians will teach that the science of philosophy began with Plato, was set on the right foundation by Aristotle, and then - after a long period of stagnation and darkness - was built into a towering edifice by Ayn Rand."
So how do Rand’s writings help us to see a business career as a noble undertaking and so allow us to develop this crusader-like dedication?
Let’s start by asking why it is that traditionally we have not seen profit-making in this light? What standard have we used to judge the world of business?
We have used the standard of value of traditional morality, which holds selflessness as a great virtue. So an action or goal or value is good only if it benefits other people. If we give away our mansions, our BMWs, and renounce our lavish lifestyles, in order to help the poor, we are to be praised for our selfless actions. If on the other hand we work hard to build a comfortable and enjoyable life we are selfish and morally flawed – we are infected by affluenza - and we will find it very difficult to enter into the kingdom of the Lord - as we’ve already heard.
This is why people like Mother Teresa are held up as the moral ideal. This is the reason that our culture sees business activity in a poor light. This is the reason that businessmen are so often suspected of villainy. How can an activity concerned with the selfish pursuit of profit be good?
Ayn Rand examined this standard of value and found it sorely wanting.
She did this by going back to the roots of morality, examining why we need values.
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She showed that it is only life that makes the concept of value both possible and necessary. That it is only life that provides a compelling ultimate reason for pursuing values; and for that reason it is only life that can act as an objective standard of value.
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Many of you probably think of morality as something you heard about at Sunday school, and it conjures up images of Miss Goody Two Shoes determined to repress any natural desire to enjoy life. This is a very mistaken view of morality – one that has come about as a result of the Mother Teresa standard of value, the view that selflessness is the hallmark of morality.
Morality does in fact serve a very important function – it is essential to our ability to live successfully and happily. Why is this so?
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Now back to the question of why we need moral values.
To summarise the explanation so far:
• We face many choices in our lives and we need a set of values to guide us in those choices. We need moral values to help us to make decisions as to the most effective way to attain our goals and attain happiness.
• Just as we need physical values (food, water, shelter) in order to live, so we need moral values in order to live.
Therefore the purpose of a code of values is to help us to live effectively. If this is the case, then what does this say about the sort of values we should choose? Obviously we should choose values that further our lives, not hinder them. Our lives become the standard of value – the standard by which we choose and judge values.
Thus the good is anything that helps us to live effectively, while the bad is anything that threatens our lives.
For example, we live most effectively by producing the goods that we need or by trading what we have produced for these goods. So by the standard of life, of a flourishing human life, productiveness is a moral value.
In fact, Ayn Rand identified 3 supreme values that we need to hold in order to live effectively.
“To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason – Purpose – Self-esteem. Reason as his only tool of knowledge – Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve – Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These 3 values imply and require all of man’s virtues…”
She identified 7 virtues as the actions or policies required to gain and sustain these values: rationality, productiveness, pride, independence, integrity, honesty and justice.
Notice that what Rand advocated is principled egoism - acting in a principled way in one’s own rational interests.
So what does all of this say about a code of morality that condemns business activity as selfish, and instead exhorts you to give away your possessions?
Does it make sense? Will your life be furthered by giving away your values – or by keeping them? Does this morality not breach the warranty implied by consumer protection legislation – that it should be reasonably fit for the purpose for which it’s required?!
It is time to base our moral outlook on reason, logic and the facts. It is time to reject traditional morality and to embrace a life of principled egoism.
Why is it that we shy away from this?
I know when I first saw the title of her book ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’ back at university, I thought ‘who is this evil woman?’ This of course was before I was exposed to the power of her rational arguments.
• All our lives we have heard at school and read in novels and seen in movies and read in the papers that selflessness is the moral way. The conditioning is enormous and difficult to counter.
• We think of those so-called selfish brutes who trample over others in their quest for success. But Rand makes it clear that the enormous benefits of co-operation with others can only occur when everyone's rights are respected.
• We think of behaviour that is unfair and inconsiderate. But are these really in our long-term interests? How long would your husband and wife continue to love you if you like a spoiled child always demanded your own way? Instead you must respect his/her right to enjoy his/her own values.
• We also worry about coming across as cold and uncompassionate - but acting in one’s own interests does not rule out charity. When we are successful and have provided well for the future, we are naturally happy to help those who are genuinely in need.
• And can we reconcile love with this? My own experience is that the Objectivist ethics are enormously helpful in producing a wonderful marriage.
Is Rand's code of rational self-interest practical? Witness the impressive record of Capitalism (which after all is the system that allows individuals to pursue their rational self-interest) of bringing into being a wonderful array of machines and processes from agrarian improvements, domestic labour-saving devices, and computers to medical technology and disease-curing pharmaceuticals. These have allowed us to enjoy enormous increases in leisure time and have freed us from much illness and early death. In pre-industrial England - in the early 18th century - one in two children died by age 5. Today we lose only 1 in 2000 before the age of 5. When we see human life as the standard of value, we start to appreciate the wonderful gifts bestowed on us by the business world, and what an enormous virtue is the productiveness of a Bill Gates, a Bing Lee, a Richard Branson.
I urge you to understand Rand’s proof that the objective standard of value is the flourishing life of a rational productive being, and that principled action to advance your life is the moral way. I urge you to read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and be inspired by Rand’s rational and supremely productive heroes, as so many people have before you.
So then when you hear that the love of money is the root of all evil you will know by the objective standard of value that principled work to maximise your profits and improve your life is the most moral way to spend your time.
So then when you hear that you should be working for a moral cause, you will know by the objective standard of value, that your business purpose is your moral cause.
So then when you hear that business ethics is an oxymoron, you can answer that actually the contradiction in terms is the morality of sacrifice.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Rand’s essay ‘The Money-Making Personality’.
"behind his grim expressionless face, the money maker is committed to his work with the passion of a lover, the fire of a crusader, the dedication of a saint and the endurance of a martyr.''
Go out and be that money-maker – see your business career as a moral, even heroic undertaking. Dedicate yourself to it as the most worthwhile thing you can do. In that you will find passion and fire - and the motivation to reach for the best.