Moral Stature At The Mercy of Others

"This, he (Hank Rearden) thought, was the final abortion of the creed of collective interdependence, the creed of non-identity, non-property, non-fact:  the belief that the moral stature of one is at the mercy of the action of another." Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

I have thinking a great deal over the last week and a half about the question of shared morality

This thought process started even earlier than that, after the Lockdown of 2020 was initiated.  At that time, the message trumpeted far and wide was that we were all responsible for each other, that my actions by staying home, covering up, potentially staying away from all public and private activities, were the correct and right ones.  My appetite for risk and my actions were putting others in the line of fire and I - if I did not change my behavior - would become the subject of societal wrath and shunning due to my moral failings to care for others.  My desire to go out was "selfish"; my staying in was "moral".

This has continued to extend into the world, now with people making assumptions - moral assumptions - about my wearing of a mask when I am out and about and my social distancing or lack thereof.  This is required at many business still - and being a respecter of the idea that you get to set the conditions for your business and I get to decide if I want to do business with you, I either adhere to the conditions or choose not to shop there.  But the underlying sense that my wearing of a mask or not wearing of a mask is a moral issue and allows moral decisions to be made about me -without knowing anything else about me - is alarming.

This has been building for years, of course.  If one did not comment about the critical issues of the day, one was uncaring.  We are rapidly moving beyond this phase to where if one does not comment on the critical issues of the day, one is evil.

Enter the quote above from Atlas Shrugged.

As you may recall, Hank Rearden (he of Rearden Steel) has been confronted by his family because it has been revealed to them that, after years of mocking him openly and being derisive of his philosophy and industry yet being completely dependent on him financially, he has terminated the allowances with which he had supported them for years.  His ex-wife, Lillian, in an attempt to disgrace him, shouts out that she had an affair.  At that moment, Hank thinks the line at the beginning of this post.

"The belief that moral stature is at the mercy of the action of another."

Here we find the core of the issue:  that others have not only have the right and duty to judge our actions, but they have the right and duty to judge our morality if we do not meet their expectations of our actions.

To be clear,  this ends very poorly.  At some point individuals like myself are going to be pushed away from people espousing these beliefs because given the choice to put my moral standing at the command of another - another who, for various and sundry reasons, will never see me as anything other than an immoral person unless I 100% agree with everything they say and therefore that I act "correctly" - I will come quickly and irrevocably to the decision that I do not need that person in my life and I am no longer willing to tolerate that behavior:

"They did not know it - and their panic was the last of their struggle to escape the knowledge - that his (Hank's) merciless sense of justice, which had been their only hold on him, which had made him take any punishment and give them the benefit of every doubt, was now turned against them - that same force that had made him tolerant, was now the force that made him ruthless - that the justice that would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil." - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

For me, of course, it will be nothing remarkable:  a pulling away, a disconnection, an establishing of relationships with like minded individuals who (to use the negative of the statement) do not put my moral stature at the mercy of their action.  As this happens, of course, I (and those like me) will probably find that we have been greater enabler of things than we had anticipated. Or as Rand has Rearden think:  "But he was through with granting respect to any terms other than his own."

Atlas is starting to shrug.  I wonder what happens when he drops the weight entirely.