Chaoskouji

Arc 5 Chapter 2 - Big Brother

After we had finished at the now-destroyed shop, Kikyou and I parted ways. She was off to see a new movie with some friends, and so I headed back to my room with a 3000-point gift card in hand.

Nothing else had come up, and so I had nothing to do with my time but wait for the next semester to start.

As expected, the rest of the day passed in a rather uneventful manner. Holed up alone in my room, I smashed through a book I hadn't had a chance to read before, Atlas Shrugged.

It was a fascinating book to read, especially since it hadn't been included in the White Room's literature, which was both parts surprising and expected.

Atlas Shrugged was written around the philosophical system of Objectivism, created by the author, a philosophy that may seem radical to some. The system, and the story written to present the idea, focuses very heavily on the strength of the individual, and resistance to any over governing body, or even the rejection of the collective. Objectivism emphasises the individual as the most important individual, which is why it was so contradictory to the White Room.

That place had been created to prove that anyone could be raised as a genius, as a superior human, no matter their origins, a theory where everyone would work to make a stronger society, directly in conflict with Objectivism. The White Room presents humans as all equal in the beginning, and the benefit of the system they were developing to work for the beterment of society, directly in contrast to the view of Ayn Rand.

And yet, during the training, the instructors and that man only cared about the best, emphasising competition, and the strength of the individual. Each student was taught to fight for themselves, to work to improve themselves to beat those around them and become the best.

They trained us, raised us to focus on the individual, while using that data to devise a method of improving education for the collective.

The novel was also very heavily anti-government, something heavily frowned upon. The order to society was an important aspect in that place, and such a radical work would go directly against that line of thinking.

I wasn't at all surprised that works presenting this philosophy weren't present in the available literature.

Of course, I wasn't sure if I believed in Objectivism myself. The ideology was inherently selfish, to incite each person to work exclusively for themselves, putting their own desires above others. Whether that was wrong, I wasn't sure. Selfish, yes, absolutely, it was the definition of selfish. According to society, being selfish is a negative trait, as we are incentivised to work as a collective, which involves working for other people, but of course, it was entirely possible that society was wrong.

Who's to say that one way of thinking is really better than any other.

Rand described Objectivism as the concept of a man with "his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life". It may be selfish, but can it truly be wrong to work for your own happiness, to make that the main goal of your life? Many people would claim that utilitarianism, the desire for the result that contains the most 'good' is the best decision making framework, and simultaneously say that working for your own good primarily is the wrong decision.

People can work their whole lives for the betterment of others, and that's selfless, but to choose yourself over other people is selfish, and we humans have arbitrarily decided one is better than the other.

Of course, there is evidence, where working for the collective does provide more benefit, but humans are naturally selfish. The tendency of animals is to work for themselves, as a survival instinct, and that isn't something we have lost.