Be SELFISH to Conquer the “RAVANA”

Dussehra is one of the most important Indian festivals. It is said that it symbolizes victory of good over evil and triumph of truth over deceit.

I am neither a religious person nor my concept of God matches with any mythological character. However, few of the childhood stories narrated to me from our epics indeed carry a great moral value. These stories relate to a different era when sons left their palatial comforts and heartily accepted a hard life for years to keep the word of their father, these days hotels have to give discounts so that sons are encouraged to take their parents and grand parents for comfortable outing once in a while.

Everywhere one turns, from wars, death and killing, to exploitation and greed, to corruption and misuse of power, in all the negatives we can find our folly at work. Good and evil have always existed but what has truly changed is the perception of human towards self. In those stories of our epics people took the responsibilities for their mistakes and punished their own self unlike our times when putting the blame and finding the mistakes in system culminates our war against demons of all evils. We are too consumed by reactions that we forget to respond and act. Most of us  don’t even react because somewhere in our heart they know that they are part and parcel of system that  represents evil..

Was Ram a sacrificer ? No, He was not. He is called “Maryada Pushotam” because “Maryada” (the ambit) refers more to self esteem than it does to sacrifice.  On his principles for life, honoring word of his father meant more than worldly comforts. This is high time that we begin to learn the true meaning of self and selfish. Let us be selfish, let us try our bit to eliminate the miseries of world because they bother us and not because to do so is in accordance with established code of altruism. A person who does service to humanity to gain applause or acceptance can never be called noble. Let us do it because in the night when we close our eyes to ponder over our day we see some acts that justify our reason for existence. Let us to do it for our self esteem and not under the pretext of helping humanity for shoddy altruism.

These things were very well projected by Ayn Rand in many of her books .Though, I am great admirer of her work but I feel characters of her books are too haughty to be humble, understanding and compassionate as these characters in their pursuit of excellence begin to look down on fellow men with scorn..They begin to forget that answer to one profound truth can be another truth .

In my opinion ,objectivity is a great philosophy which is based on reason and not on faith.. It is based on scientific method which accepts facts and rejects opinions. I honestly feel objectivity combined with spiritualism is a beautiful way of life. Objectivity raises our self esteem and teaches us to prepare our self to do everything for our need not under some pseudo tag of service to mankind or altruism but for the satisfaction of our need for self actualization . It teaches us that at center of all acts is conscious , subconscious and transcendentally conscious 'I , the self.', combined to this spiritualism teaches to look within and not to point fingers and denounce.

Let us recognize that everything either good or bad starts with self . so instead of blaming the world , let us do our bit whether or not we get any credit for it , let us do it because within us we feel it should be done .Let us do it with selfish motive  governed by inner motivation that for some flowery pretext of mild of human kindness  .Only better individuals and better citizen can pull us out of despair or we will continue to celebrate symbolic Dussehra midst the sorrowful shape of mankind in an age of great prosperity and knowledge equally along side sorrow and despair.

Altruism is pseudo word

Ayn Rand’s writings are more misunderstood than understood most of the times. Extremity suits the human nature because it is more comprehensible than the kaleidoscopic intermediary. This is the reason why most of the people think in terms of black and white and ignore subtle shades of grey.

By the established norms of morality, altruist is the person who does great work for the benefit of other people and society in general even if it causes him discomfort and misery. The question that Ms .Rand raises is why does he do so?
Doesn’t he do it for his own moral, religious or mental satisfaction?
Is there not always a personal need attached to it?
If so then the basis of every activity is Individual’s own social, financial, mental, physical emancipation. Nothing is ever done for the sake of charity. Society always benefits from the contribution but the doer always does every act because he feels good about it. When you do well to others don’t you feel good about it?

Most of the time we want to portray this as an act of kindness but deep down it is our own fulfillment. Will you call this selfishness or an acknowledgement that deep beneath it all boils down to 'I'.

We have only to imbibe what we identify with and try to practice that at least in our way of life without trying to change the whole world according to our view point. I think that is where Ms. Rand being a very impressive and revolutionary writer, goes wrong.