Randsday and the Month of Love

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

Happy Birthday, Jacques!

Jacques Benguigui (1931-1944)*

Today is my 23rd birthday, and although it’s one of my favorite days of the year–for it is a time when I get together with friends and family to celebrate my life–I always take a moment on this day to reflect on the life of an Algerian boy named Jacques Benguigui.

I was introduced to the life of Jacques in my 10th grade English class during a lesson about children of the Holocaust. I remember my teacher handing me his biography along with the picture above and instantly realizing we had something in common; we shared a birthday. I felt an instant connection to him and wanted to learn as much about him as I possibly could. Excited about this commonality, I continued to read his biography, hoping, perhaps, I could learn of an address where I would be able to write him to share my excitement and to learn more about what he endured during that horrific time in history. Unfortunately, after finishing his biography, I knew it would not be possible. Jacques Benguigui, just weeks after his 13th birthday, along with his younger brothers Richard and Jean-Claude, were killed in the Auschwitz gas chambers in May of 1944 (Read Jacques’ full story here).

Tragic. There’s no other word to describe it. Revisiting the life of Jacques caused me to take some time to reflect on what was going on in my own life on my 13th birthday. I was a 7th grader, and that day marked 7 months and 2 days after the horrific 9/11 attacks. I guess that means we share something else in common: we were roughly the same age when we witnessed the consequences of men accepting the premise that it is okay to initiate force against another human being, that it is okay to violate the rights of another. 

It is pivotal if we are to live as humans and not as animals, if we are to live a truly civilized existence and not one of savagery and barbarism, that we never violate these moral principles we call individual rights. 

So my birthday wish this year, in honor of Jaques, is that all men embrace reason fully, respect the rights of others absolutely, and that they find the courage to combat evil and rights-violators where ever they exist–lest these horrible events ever happen again.

Happy Birthday, Jacques! Gone, but not forgotten. 

*Photo Credit: The Museum of Tolerance