Today is Ayn Rand’s birthday, her 108th to be exact, a day that has evolved into a holiday celebrated by the Objectivist community as Randsday. Randsday is a day to celebrate yourself —a day to indulge (rationally, of course) by buying yourself a gift. It is a day that exemplifies Rand’s ethics of rational selfishness, in essence, a day to recognize the love you have for your own life and to celebrate your self-worth.
It is quite appropriate that we shall celebrate Randsday in the same month we celebrate Valentine’s Day. You could say February is the month dedicated to the virtue of love; love of self and love of others.
However, before you can love another, you must first love yourself, that is, to respect yourself and to value your own life. To love others in not an act of selflessness, as we are constantly told, but an act of selfish-ness, a response to your values. As Rand explained, “Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut.”1
So to that I say Happy Birthday, Rand! And a Happy Randsday to all!
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1"The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness, 35
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