We have all heard it before.. “Don’t let your ego get in the way”….” Just keep your mouth shut if you have nothing nice to say”… “Leave your ego at the door”… “A big ego is the greatest problem there is with men”…Let me tell you why this is batshit crazy. 

When someone proclaims one of those statements, they are asking you to practice the altruistic virtue of “blanking out” the fact that your mind is of value. That you are of value. These statements generally come from those who proclaim there is no right or wrong, only moral greyness. These people are asking you NOT to think. 

Ego is derived from the latin word “I.” Your ego is YOU. Yourself. A man’s self is his mind- the faculty that perceives, forms judgements, chooses values. 

Now, let me go into this a bit further. The egoism that I practice is rational egoism OR  rational selfishness. Rational egoism is the principle that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes one’s self-interest. 

“The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.”- Ayn Rand

“Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egoist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.

Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative—and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egoism and altruism. Egoism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.

This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.

The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.”- Ayn Rand

This rational egoism should not be confused with those brutes who cannot admit they are wrong, when the facts of reality prove otherwise. It takes a man with high self-esteem to admit that he is wrong. Self-esteem will be a whole other post- I am working on it. 

Remember folks- we believe that you are designed to be extraordinary. We believe that life is enjoyment. We believe that you are of value. We believe your highest value is yourself. We believe that before you can say “I love you,” you have to say “I”= Ego.