Human Courage Triumphs Over Fear and Why Saving this Plane Wasn't Voluntary

The attempted terrorist attack of Northwest Flight 253 was countered by Bush's Patriot Act and Homeland Security agencies.....err, maybe not. In fact it was the actions of courageous passengers and crew feeling compelled to place the safety and the lives of others above themselves which thwarted the attempt. This was a classic case of the rejection of Randian thinking on the most basic of human instincts: self sacrifice. Had these people not taken action their lives and those of the other passengers would have been lost. There are a few ways to view this story; one of which is philisophically: the triumph of objectivism and rational self interest occured or the leftist view that team-work was necessary in order to thwart this attack. Let's look at each theory and decide which philosophy best fits.

Objectivists (or hard righties) believe all actions and decisions should be left to the individual and to the individuals self-centered desires; there should be no such thing as compulsory charity or government programs such as welfare. Objectivists believe every person is imbued with the right to choose only for themselves and should never feel compelled to act in a group unless it personally suits them to do so. This is what's meant by "voluntary action"; all motivation should all come from a stand point of "self interest"; whatever the motives may ultimately be. This belief transcends morality such as "do unto others as they'd do unto you" or belief that helping others is the reward itself rather than motivation for personal acclaim. Objectivists of course deny the fact that human success has always come from common cause and empathy rather than from rational self interest alone.

Leftism is the idea that we're all in this world equally together; we fail or succeed based upon our ability to help and communicate together as a society rather than act in personal sovereignty. Leftists promote the idea that any large task requires at least two people working to be carried out successfully and stresses team-work over individual success and rewards. Leftists realize not everyone was raised with helping others in mind and they realize also that realistically some compulsion toward self-sacrifice is necessary; taxation to feed the worse off and sustain poverty-stricken families through welfare and free (fully subsidized) medical care are some very basic means to alleviate human suffering. Objectivists seem either too self involved or indeed oblivious to the fact that cooperative programs which grant basic needs allow everyone to pursue rational self interests; they instead take such compulsion as acting against their own personal liberty and consider need-based people to be parasites. This viewpoint is extreme and seems to be at the center of the modern right's view of needy people; they cannot do for themselves so they deserve to die.

Back to the act of great courage on Friday, what drove these disparate people to act as a team? A case can surely be made that rational self interest consisting of the desire to not lose their lives was the prime motivation and there may be some evidence to merit to this conclusion abstractly, however, I think such thought misses the deeper, larger issue. Human beings naturally self-sacrifice to help others in need and personal considerations rarely figures in to the equation. In the context of human society we're actually compelled to by our own understanding of each others basic worth as people rather than buffeted by egotistical self aggrandizement. This point alone demonstrates that such self-sacrifice does in fact carry a reward well beyond personal or individual desires; it sustains us as societies and as a species. Rational self-interest by its mere wording implies cold deduction and self centered logic rather than emotional attachment to others; in fact such attachment to objectivism is both weak and immoral.

Mental conditioning in America is becoming predicated ever more toward emphasizing the good of the self alone and "looking out for number 1". It is this conditioning that I think is the real rot in American society; families and communities no longer exist; everyone is an individual commodity to be bought and sold. Fundamentalist capitalism and objectivism fit this perception like a glove and their continued primacy in "Conservative Christian" morality along with social conservatism and consumerism which places a price on what's considered the REAL worth of a human being: wealth. These ideals will continue to diminish this society over time. In fact, it's become so endemic that even the mere suggestion of a compulsion to serving others is greeted by misinterpretation and by reactionary philosophical hard-liners as collectivism.

Of course, if as a people we did abandon such service entirely the question would be: who'll want to serve in the military, the police, nursing or teaching or any other thankless career in which service and taking care of others outweighs pay and personal acclaim? With a constant and ever-dangling carrot of personal rewards (which would render such services TOO expensive and would require tax increases; objectivists wholly oppose such measures) these important service would go cease and our society would crumble; thus the belief of individualists that service should only be voluntary and based upon selfish considerations does in this way expose the major flaw in their philosophy: self-sacrifice and selfless behavior. This also view also harms capitalism itself; capitalism to really function must be tempered by human empathy and the idea that we're all equals who belong to a community. The objectivist notion of each of us embodying a "country of one" can only lead to harm if it is replicated on a mass scale. The collapse of French Feudalism provides a final and lasting testament to the logic that moral principles such as cooperation and community ethically succeed outweigh notions that selfishness and greed can succeed as a pervading ethos