Speeches Three

Felt all the previous posts were on the lighter side. So decided to be serious for a change. This blog post is about 3 speeches that i came across in the recent days. Felt these speeches have an underlying connection. So here are my thoughts.

Recently finished the book "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand. It's a nice book to read and entertaining also.The book's protagonist is Howard Roark, and Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is delivered in his speech at the courtroom, which is the climax of the book.
Now what is objectivism?

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.--- Ayn Rand

Objectivism concentrates on the power of the individual and his greatness. This is a very tempting philosophy. I mean it makes sense right? Why should i live for others? My survival and my greatness is of priority. People are attracted by this proposition. Ayn rand blasts the very concept of Altruism. As Roark puts it,

“Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self"

Actually altruism is a concept that baffles the Evolutionary biologists. What is evolution? Simply put its "Survival of the fittest"; But the altruism shown in nature by animals seems to suggest a theory of Survival of the Nicest!


This worship of Individualism and Man as a great hero is overrated in my opinion. I may sound a bit nihilistic.But then why is objectivism, or more specifically individuality tempting and attractive? I guess its because we live in what we call as Democracy. As Douglas Adams
puts it, the problem with democracy is what the world affects the individual but the individual doesn't seem to be having an impact on the world.

In his speech on "Is there an Artificial God?" DNA says, there is a falseness in our perspective that the world and the universe was created for us and Man is great. Here is a very thought provoking quote on Money from the speech.

Money is a completely fictitious entity, but it's very powerful in our world; we each have wallets, which have got notes in them, but what can those notes do? You can't breed them, you can't stir fry them, you can't live in them, there's absolutely nothing you can do with them that's any use, other than exchange them with each other - and as soon as we exchange them with each other all sots of powerful things happen, because it's a fiction that we've all subscribed to.

And so drawing a parallel, the so called achievements of Individuality wouldn't make sense, if the so called Collectives didn't exist.


This does not mean we need to drop the individualist perspective. Looking further into Individualism we come to Capitalism and Socialism. At this point, we come to the third speech. This one is by Bill gates, made at the World Economic Forum. According to him, the least needy get the most improvement, while the most needy get the least improvement or none at all in some cases. The problem on missing out on the benefits is they will suffer from the negative effects of the benefits they missed out on. The effects of global warming will be biggest on people who have done the least to cause it.


As a solution, Bill gates proposes what is called as creative capitalism. He emphasizes on the need for changes that are based on market incentives. He acknowledges that profits are not always possible when businesses strive to serve the very poor. He proposes an alternative which is also a market based incentive- Recognition. His argument is that when a change is driven by market based incentives, you have a sustainable plan for change- because profits and recognition are
renewable resources. He cites various examples of creative capitalism in action. Overall a brilliant argument from Bill Gates.

I would seriously recommend going through all the three speeches. Your welcome to share your views on the comments section.

Howard Roark's Courtroom Speech
Douglas Adam's Speech-Is there an artificial God?
Bill Gates's Speech

Until Next post!