Chapter 12. The Simplest Thing in the World

Rethinking Two Words

Words as used in everyday discourse are tinged with connotations from the culture’s prevailing morality, which is altruism. Ayn Rand saw through the depth of this prevalence and showed that some ordinary words, to unsuspecting speakers and listeners, are in fact laden with unjustified moral judgments. They may even inhibit rational doers from acting on practical truths. Two of these words are found in her short story, “The Simplest Thing in the World” (TSTW), in The Romantic Manifesto; and they are “ruthless” and “unscrupulous.”

The Idea of "Ruthlessness" in the Culture

ruth: a feeling of pity, distress, or grief [for a person]. (MacBook Dictionary)
ruth: compassion for the misery of another. (Merriam-Webster)
ruth: (archaic) a feeling of pity. (Wiktionary)
ruthlessness: the quality of having or showing no pity or compassion for others. (MacBook Dictionary)
ruthlessness: the quality of having no pity [for others]. (Merriam-Webster)
compassion: sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings and misfortunes of others. (Origin: Middle English via Old French from ecclesiastical Latin compassio(n-), from compati ‘suffer with.’) (MacBook Dictionary)
pity: the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others. (MacBook Dictionary)
self-pity: pity for oneself. (Merriam-Webster)
mercy: compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. (MacBook Dictionary)
mercilessness: the quality of showing no mercy or pity [toward others]. (MacBook Dictionary)
pitilessness: the quality of showing no pity [toward oneself or others]. (MacBook Dictionary)

In this context, Rand writes, “You can’t make a success of yourself unless you hold onto your one goal and drop everything else. When you have a great devotion to a goal—people call you ruthless.” (TRM “The Simplest Thing in the World” 179c)

To characterize someone as ruthless, as above, connotes an attitude of heartlessness, an attitude of not caring for the pain and misery of others in the person’s conduct. The emotional implication is that the person’s driven actions are somehow tainted, that that which he has achieved has been achieved at the cost of not stopping or slowing down along the way to help alleviate the suffering of others, and that he may have contributed to their misery. An imputation of ruthlessness toward some third-party individual renders the side judgment: don’t you be single-mindedly driven like that if you want to be moral.

The Idea of "Unscrupulousness" in the Culture

scruple: a feeling of doubt or hesitation with regard to the morality or propriety of a course of action. (Origin: late Middle English from French scrupule or Latin scrupulus, from scrupus, literally ‘rough pebble,’ (figuratively) ‘anxiety.’) (MacBook Dictionary)
doubt: a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction [about an idea or thought]. (MacBook Dictionary)
scrupulousness: the quality (in a person or process) of being diligent, thorough, and extremely attentive to details, very concerned to avoid doing wrong. (Origin: late Middle English (in the sense ‘troubled with doubts’) from French scrupuleux or Latin scrupulosus, from scrupulus (see scruple).) (MacBook Dictionary)
unscrupulousness: the quality [(in a person or process)] of having or showing no moral principles; not honest or fair. (MacBook Dictionary)

In this context, Rand writes, “And when you work harder than anyone else, when you work like a freight engine while others take it easy, and so you beat them at it—people call you unscrupulous.” (TRM “The Simplest Thing in the World” 179c)

To characterize someone as unscrupulous, as above, connotes that he has an attitude of carelessness, an attitude of not worrying about the quality of workmanship either in the products made or in the services delivered, along with an attitude of skimping on the fine details or of not being punctilious, of not being precise. The emotional implication is that the work done is somehow, inexplicably deemed superior, that only someone with immoral motives and principles could succeed in passing off such work as superior, and that stark superiority in end result is improper and morally suspect. Calling someone unscrupulous renders the side judgment: don’t you go surpassing beyond the best efforts of others if you want to be moral.

Rethinking Their Connotations

It is apparent, therefore, that Rand accepts the original concepts as valid but rejects the connotations as they currently exist in the English language. Unlike the prevailing view within altruism, which considers them vicious, she considers “ruthlessness” and “unscrupulousness” to be virtuous qualities, albeit minor qualities, in the service of productiveness.

Here is an attempt at redefining the terms with proper moral connotations.

Toward an Understanding of "Ruth"

From the above, “ruth” is synonymous with “pity,” which, as newly interpreted, is a species of “compassion,” and is coordinate with “sympathy.” That is, toward anyone or any creature, one may feel compassionate in either a sympathetic way or else (exclusively) a pitiful way. (The opposite of “compassion” is “indifference.”) The key difference between pity and sympathy is not in the variety of suffering but in the cause of suffering.

Why is there suffering in the world? It occurs only to conscious living beings able to feel it. What are its causes? Causes refer to action; action pertains to entities that act. Proper actions yield pleasure, efficacy, happiness, survival. Improper actions yield pain, inefficacy, suffering, death.

Among entities that act, there are nonliving entities that act, and there are living entities that act. Living actions can be divided into the nonconscious, the animalistic, and the man-caused. When these actions befall on them negatively on their nature, conscious living beings suffer.

But what distinguishes “pity” from “sympathy”? Since befalling external actions don’t fully explain the difference, let’s look now at self-generated actions of conscious living beings. Self-generated actions of living entities are either vegetative, automatic, or volitional. Volitional actions require either acquired or else automatized knowledge, and furthermore, volitional actions subdivide into rational and irrational.

When conscious living beings act vegetatively and suffer, we sympathize with them, because it could happen to us. For example, when a puppy loses a baby tooth and it aches, we feel sympathy for it. When they act automatically to befalling circumstances from automatized knowledge and fail because of the limit of their awareness, we are sympathetic to their suffering. For example, when a deer gets trapped in a mud slide, unable to run away, we feel for it. When human beings act volitionally to befalling circumstances from their knowledge and fail, we too are sympathetic to their suffering.

What is new at the volitional level, however, is that the befalling circumstances may be caused by human volition. If the human agent acts from error, he may suffer as a consequence. We sympathize with him, for it could happen to us. But if the human agent acts not from error but from willful evasion, and the befalling situation can be traced to his evasion, then we do not sympathize with him. Likewise, if the human agent acts against his own well-being, acting immorally, and the consequence is disastrous to him, we too do not sympathize with him; he deserves what he himself has gotten. Thus, if he suffers through his willful evasion or through his own evilness, then no sympathy in justice is due him. Yet, it is possible that someone somewhere unjustly may still have compassion for his suffering. Since one cannot identify that compassion as sympathy without destroying the latter’s moral essence, one must designate an unjust compassion differently, in a separate category. That category is identified therefore by “pity.”

For example, two ambulances arrived at a hospital, each carrying a man bloodied and near death. It is learned from eyewitnesses that A accosted B at a supermarket and shot B with a gun. Stray bullets ricocheted and shattered glasses which pierced A’s vital organs. Now both lay in intensive care ready for operations. The doctors, abiding by their Hippocratic oaths, tried to save them both. The nurses however would naturally be sympathetic to B but not to A. Who would be compassionate to A? It would be the visiting nuns and priests who would show pity to A. Moreover, any altruist, which means nearly everyone in today’s culture, would take pity on A.

Here is another contrasting case. A pair of Siamese twins walked a long marathon to raise funds for a surgical operation to individuate themselves. Those who gave them money acted from sympathy, knowing that this congenital condition could have befallen them. By contrast, at the end of the marathon sporting event, where runners and walkers gathered to celebrate their triumphs, there lined a pair of filthy beggars panhandling for spare change. By their own demeanor, they confessed moral failure. Those who gave them money acted from pity, not from sympathy; for the act of giving to this pair morally negates the act of giving to the other pair.

Toward an Understanding of "Scruple"

And from the above, “scruple” is a feeling pertaining both to doubt with respect to an item of knowledge and to hesitation with respect to a course of action. Both doubt and hesitation, when combined, refer to either an outright lack of morals that drive action, or a deep uncertainty of the proper values and principles to sustain a course of action. In other words, one experiences doubt and hesitation whenever one has no clue as to what one should aim for or how one should accomplish it; and any action one undertakes must necessarily be halting, uncertain, and slow. One also experiences doubt and hesitation whenever those moral values and principles one has acquired have not been fully verified and justified with respect to some objective standard.

Thus, “scruple” is primarily a feeling about one’s assessment of one’s state of moral knowledge. The connotation of someone without moral principles as somehow being driven and unhesitating, therefore, is unjustified and is actually incorrect. If we have free will, and we do, and if we don’t have any proper moral guidance, then our actions necessarily are going to be unsure and unsteady. It is only on the assumption of determinism that one can err in thinking that human action absent of moral knowledge might flow automatically and unhesitatingly. Therefore, if “scrupulous” pertains to either a state of uncertainty about morality or an outright lack of such propriety, then its proper opposite, pertaining to the state of full certainty and unhesitating confidence of the rightness of one’s actions, is “unscrupulous.”

Why It Matters to Think Rightly

== ruth == pity
== ruthlessness == pitilessness
pity: a compassion for the guilty. ( based on TRM “Bootleg Romanticism” 131a)
sympathy: a compassion for the innocent or the involuntary. ( based on TRM “Bootleg Romanticism” 131a; cf. “compassion” in TARL 79d-80a)
compassion: a deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it. (Wiktionary)
mercy: an unearned forgiveness. (OPAR 290b; Tara Smith “Passing Judgment” Lecture)
ruthlessness: the quality of having no pity for oneself or others, resulting from a great devotion to one’s goal, and resulting in doing everything necessary to achieve it responsibly. ( based on TRM “TSTW” 179c)
scruple: a feeling of doubt and hesitation with regard to a course of action from a lack of moral certainty. ( based on TRM "THSW" 179c)
scrupulousness: the quality of having doubt or hesitation with regard to the morality or propriety of a course of action, resulting from lacking rational, moral certainty, and resulting in a belabored thoroughness and sluggish exertion to avoid (often unsuccessfully) doing wrong. ( based on TRM “THSW” 179c)
unscrupulousness: the quality of having no doubt or hesitation with regard to the morality or propriety of a course of action, resulting from having rational, moral certainty, and resulting in a sustained exertion of great effort. ( based on TRM “THSW” 179c)

From Rand’s unobstructed view of reality, the secret of success reveals itself simply: Be one-track-minded and hold nothing back. More abstractly and eloquently, in the form of a principle: If you want to succeed in life, do what you love and do it without reserve, without ruth or scruple.