[Note: This is a work in progress. No chapter can be considered complete. Titles for chapters that I have not yet started writing are enclosed in square brackets.]
Last updated: 2010-08-03.
A young man rode his bicycle down a forgotten trail through the hills of Pennsylvania. The brilliant spring sun warmed him like a conscious caress. The leaves and trees and rocks called to him of the hope and promise of life on this earth. Alone in the wilderness, he felt the fresh wonder of an untouched world, where joy and reason and meaning were not only possible but a natural human birthright.
Some wondrous music of exaltation played in his head, the self-contained joy of endless variations on a theme spun out by the laughing creative force of an inexhaustible imagination. Yet in his life so far he had found precious few words or deeds or thoughts among the acts of men that could match the meaning of that music. Not the work of man as a degradation of nature, but as an organic creation that improves upon given materials by fulfilling the potential of the earth. Not masters and slaves, but a free and independent life of mutual respect and voluntary interaction, without pain or fear or guilt. Not happiness and achievement served to him by others, but the simple sight of joy and reason and meaning made real, which would inspire in him the courage to create his own happiness and achievement.
He could give no name to the thing he sought.
He yearned for an exalted experience of life — but he was told that exaltation is reserved for things not of this earth.
He wanted human activity to be a higher step, something noble that he could respect, even something sacred that he could worship — but he was told that the only nobility and the proper objects of worship exist above and beyond the sphere of human activity.
He longed to witness a spark of the divine in his fellow man, and to nurture that spark in himself — but he was told that aspiring to a share in the divine is the height of arrogance.
He hoped to find a way of living that would be animated by a natural reverence for man and this earth — but he was told that the only path to spirituality lies in turning away from this life toward a supposed life after death.
He wished for some sign of what he sought, some guidepost on the road to joy and reason and meaning — but what he sought seemed perpetually just beyond his grasp.
The boy pedalled on through the quiet hills, revelling in the solitude and wondering about his future. On the trail ahead he saw a blue hole of open sky where the ridge ended and a valley began. He closed his eyes for a moment, suspending his sense of reality in the strange hope that at the top of the ridge he would find unobstructed sky above and below him. But when he reached the edge he opened his eyes to the most wondrous creation he had ever seen — a valley dotted with small homes that honored the earth and improved upon it by growing naturally out of the ground, completing the unplanned beauty of the hills with an even greater beauty of human achievement and fulfillment.
Only after a long while did he notice a man sitting nearby — the man who had made this place real by designing the homes in the valley. Little did the man know that he had given the boy something beyond mere stone and glass: the courage to face a lifetime.
I was the boy on the bicycle.
Perhaps you were, too. Perhaps you, too, rode your bicycle down a forgotton trail through the hills of Pennsylvania (or its equivalent), wondering if you would find joy and reason and meaning in life. Perhaps you, too, sought out the solitude of your own company, treasuring each quiet hour of reflection in a noisy world, breathing in the irreplaceable singularity of your own personhood like great gulps of free fresh air, hungering for all the outstretched possibilities of what you might become — yet daunted by the enormity of the gap between your present and your future, and therefore seeking signposts on the road to the kind of life and character you could in the end look back upon with the pride and honor of a job well done.
Perhaps in your seeking along that lonely path you came upon a novel called The Fountainhead. For a few days or weeks or months, it changed everything. You read the book again, perhaps a few times — challenged in your thinking, stirred in your emotions, deflected onto a new course, imbued with a burning sense of purpose, transported by a comprehensive vision of life as it might be and ought to be.
Perhaps, after the blinding flash of your first encounter with The Fountainhead had mellowed to the warm glow of enhanced awareness, new questions and challenges arose. Is this vision real? Can it be achieved in a world where joy and reason and meaning seem all too rare and elusive? Can I integrate these insights into my own life without submerging my individuality under a flood of ideas and abstractions that, however compelling, were created by someone else?
I, too, have asked these questions and faced these challenges. After more than thirty years of reflecting on The Fountainhead, I think that I have finally gained some hard-won wisdom regarding the search for joy and reason and meaning in life. I have tried my best to distill and condense that wisdom into this short book.
That I have done so through a set of variations on a theme from The Fountainhead no more makes me a spokesman for Ayn Rand than the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini made Rachmaninoff a "spokesman" for his Italian predecessor. The theme here is Rand's, but the voice in the variations is my own. Indeed, the model for this work is not the orchestral extravagance and lush harmonies of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody but the single instrument and contrapuntal austerity of Bach's Goldberg Variations.
This introduction, a paean to joy and reason and meaning, is the songful aria that sets the tone. In what follows I explore over fifty variations on that theme; yet, as with Bach, the variations do not re-use the melody of the sarabande but instead build upon the prosaic, unnoticed but foundational bass line, with canons and fugues and arabesques sometimes taking the music far from the original notes. After these harmonic discursions, the aria reappears in a brief reprise of the theme: a hymn to metaphysical joy and love for existence.
I have worked to maintain a light touch at the keyboard, serious but not preachy, because it is not my place to tell anyone what they "should" or "ought" to think or value or do or feel. Indeed, The Tao of Roark is presented entirely in the first person because I have written it almost purely for myself: to determine how I want to live my life, to clarify for myself what I mean by a philosophy for living on earth, to select the values that I deem most important, to create and enjoy something beautiful and exalted in a world that is too often ugly and small. Perhaps you, too, will find some wisdom in these pages.
Howard Roark laughed.
When faced with expulsion from engineering school and the end of his dream of becoming an architect, he didn't whine or complain. He didn't get angry. He didn't blame his misfortune on the government or the schools or the culture. He didn't plead with the dean for reinstatement. He didn't worry or fret. He didn't collapse in fear or despair over his career prospects. He didn't even start thinking and planning about what to do next.
No.
Instead, he went for a long walk to his favorite swimming hole, took off his clothes, and dove down into the cool deep waters to enjoy himself and relax.
And, because he wanted to, he laughed.
Working like a convict in the unbearable heat and dust and noise of a granite quarry in midsummer, Howard Roark glanced up to see the incongruous sight of an elegantly dressed worman on the cliff's edge above him. Their eyes met and immediately he knew with intimate, wordless, flagrant understanding that he meant more to her than any man she had ever met, that he caused in her an overwhelming feeling of both shame and pleasure, and that she wanted him to take ownership of her in the most masterful, degrading, scornful way possible. From that first glance, they shared a secret, unspoken understanding that she was openly inviting him to rape her.
This may be many things — passion, fire, drama, force, power, will, intuition, insight, projection, mania, lust, intoxication, infatuation, madness. But it is not reason.
Reason is what Roark displayed in his buildings: their logical economy of plan, their organic integration with the site, their crystalline efficiency, their comprehensive integrity of design. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to build those qualities into one's relationships and one's character than into stone and glass.
Howard Roark and Gail Wynand walked together at the crest of a hill on Wynand's estate in Connnecticut. Roark took a thick branch from one of the trees, grabbed both ends, and bent it slowly into an arc. And he said: "Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That is the meaning of life."
Wynand, seeing Roark's wrists and knuckles tensed tightly against the resistance of the living green wood, recognized immediately the meaning of his life. So he asked: "Your strength?"
But strength and power were not the meaning of life for Roark, whose singular focus was to create uniquely original and integrated buildings that would change the shape of things on this earth, for himself and for no one else. So he answered: "Your work."
In her marriage to Peter Keating, Dominique Francon was perfectly selfless: she displayed no initiative, no desire, no independence, no will, no self, no soul. But what is the self or the soul? Dominique and Peter decided that it is the thing inside you that thinks, values, makes decisions, and feels.
Roark knew this, too. As he phrased it in his courtroom defense, the functions of the self are to think, to judge, to act, and to feel.
Thought, choice, action, feeling. In these four capacities, properly understood, can be found a complete philosophy of living. This insight provides the fundamentals for my harmonic explorations — the bass line upon which I shall build my variations.
The power of thought is the ability to use my mind to understand reality.
Thought involves perception, focus, clarity, objectivity, independence, honesty, integrity, a firm foundation in the facts of reality, the passionate pursuit of passionless truth — yet also empathy, understanding, patience, and the ability to grasp another person's context.
Thought is not only logical, intellectual, or mathematical — it can be musical, literary, visual, spatial, mechanical, organizational, social, interpersonal. It builds upon curiosity, imagination, creativity, foresight, looking forward as well as looking back, and focusing clearly on what is present before me. It results not just in knowledge but in experience, in perspective, in wisdom.
The power of choice is the ability to direct my energy and attention toward what I find interesting and important in life.
Choice means taking responsibility for my own thoughts and actions and feelings, directing the course of my life, having and pursuing my own purposes, relying on my own perception of the truth, bowing to no one's will but my own except through my own free assent, honoring the absolute sovereignty of others, and pursuing only voluntary interactions in my life and in society.
Choice implies self-respect in the deepest sense: honoring what I hold to be important, having strength of will and the courage of my convictions, giving my attention to what interests me, devoting my life energy to what matters most, trusting in my own evaluations, spending my precious time in ways that are consistent with my values, doing what brings me happiness, concentrating my activities in areas where I can create significant value in the world, focusing on what is under my control and ignoring what is not under my control, and never letting go of my vision of what is possible in life.
The power of action is my ability to create value in the world.
The domains in which I can create value and achieve something good are many and diverse: my work, my family, my health, my character, my friendships, and my avocations are primary among them.
Achievement, too, takes many forms: I create value not only if I am a great innovator but also if I incrementally improve an existing technique, if I add to the stock of human knowledge and culture, if I provide a valuable service, if I raise good children, if I strengthen the bonds of mutual respect in my friendships or community or society, even if I only preserve and maintain values created by others; indeed, I can gain or keep value in relation to any object, product, service, process, relationship, art, technique, or field of knowledge.
Further, the good is almost infinitely variable, because any positive value is good: whatever is useful, pleasant, efficient, competent, skilled, masterful, beautiful, elegant, logical, clear, comprehensible, healthy, clean, helpful, humane, kind, wise, loving, courageous, independent, rational, honorable, respectful, dignified, tasteful, joyous, exuberant, passionate, spontaneous, creative, inventive, intelligent, honest, direct, strong, fearless, voluntary, free, innocent, blameless, or integrated is, all other things being equal, good and valuable.
The power of feeling is my ability to experience the emotional meaning of my thoughts, choices, and actions.
Yes or no, for me or against me, positive or negative, life-enhancing or life-threatening, pleasant or painful, a benefit or a cost, a source of joy or of suffering — at root my capacity to feel is a unique source of feedback about how I live my life. And I can find that awareness only through my emotions, because my life is irreducibly individual. The knowledge I gain is a result of how I use my power to think, the directions I take are a result of how I use my power to choose, the value I create is a result of how I use my power to act — and these achievements have a direct effect on how well I succeed at the task of human living, which is measured fundamentally by my enjoyment of life. Thus joy is not merely a surface phenomenon, but deeply serious: it is the value that all my efforts go to pay for, the "cash value" of honoring my true interests in thought and choice and action.
Yet holding joy as an ideal does not imply that I refuse to acknowledge painful facts or experiences. Life can hurt, and the reality of loss is all too often with us. The capacity for joy is but the most positive realization of the capacity for feeling and emotion, and I must nurture that more fundamental capacity if I am to find the greatest joy. The actions and creations that I value most highly exhibit an openness to the emotional experience of life. At its best, that experience is positive; but being open to experience means not shrinking from the negative, either.
Further, my emotions are not only positive or negative, on or off, white or black; they can be tremendously subtle. Consider the differences of intensity, depth, and energy between being calm or serene, cheerful or exuberant, satisfied or fulfilled, involved or engaged, interested or passionate, happy or ecstatic. If emotions are a form of awareness, then attending to these subtle differences can create a profusion of color in my life.
Roark's rule of building is this: "Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and that idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose."
Yet the integration Roark describes is more literary or aesthetic (make my life a work of art) than human or practical (be successful at human living). What form of integration is possible to a human being?
The most fundamental integration I can achieve is the harmony of thought, choice, action, and feeling.
Integrating thought into choice, action, and feeling means that my knowledge is not an idle curiosity or an end in itself, but that I use what I understand about the world and myself as a strong basis for the choices I make, the directions I take, the things I attend to, the activities on which I spend my time and energy, the areas in which I focus, what I judge to be within my span of control or influence, even what feelings and emotions I consider to be healthy and justified.
Integrating choice into thought, action, and feeling means concentrating my efforts at learning and understanding in areas that are congruent with my nature and my interests, taking seriously the responsibility to use my mind and weigh the evidence of my senses and draw my own conclusions, focusing my time and energy where I can have a significant impact, taking an almost scientific approach to realizing my values and decisions in action, evaluating what I know and do and feel in the light of what is important to me (and adjusting my directions in life accordingly).
Integrating action into thought, choice, and feeling means tying what I learn and know back to the practical concerns of living, always preparing myself physically and emotionally for the realization of my ideas and choices in action, studying methods for becoming more productive and creative, increasing competence and mastery in my chosen profession and the other pursuits that matter to me, actively investing in friendships and relationships that might bring me joy, choosing values that I can realistically achieve, cultivating thoughts and feelings that lead to successful action and pruning those that don't, focusing my energy and attention on the value that I want to create in life.
Integrating feeling into thought, choice, and action means attending carefully to my emotional reactions, honoring my emotions as a form of awareness that yields evidence about myself and my values, using the possibility of joy as a great motivator for action, valuing the immediacy of my feelings as a true indicator of how successful I have been in my thoughts and choices and activities, learning to enjoy that which is good so that my ideas and values and feelings are a seamless whole.
This depth of inner harmony is hard enough to achieve without introducing the notion of integrity as a single theme or purpose that sets every detail of my life. Thus I pursue that which is humanly achievable, not that which is impossible to me.
Objectivity is hard.
To be objective is to recognize the many ways I can stray from the track of truth: that I am drawn to evidence that confirms what I already believe, that I seek out those who agree with me, that events can prime me to accept ideas that might be in error, that I am overconfident about the extent of my knowledge, that I jump to conclusions, that I succumb to the power of symbols, that I am tempted to hew to party lines and cave in to peer pressure, that fads and fashions are all too easily followed, that I overvalue the ideas of those within my group, that I want to believe things that are beautiful or exciting or consistent with the rest of my beliefs, that the seductions of ideology can blind me to the facts, that I desire knowledge without process and insight without effort, that few things are more difficult than honoring the considered judgement of my own mind.
To be objective is to know that these snares and traps and idols apply to everyone, but that I above all am not immune from them, so I must expend great energy to resist them. It is to immerse myself in facts: in science, in history, in statistics and numbers, even in art as a created object. It is to pay close attention to these things, to really see and hear and know them, to think clearly about them without preconceptions.
When I am objective, I track the truth, I recognize its faintest signs in the undergrowth of reality, I quietly attune myself to its voice and music and rhythm through all the noise and chatter of society, my fingertips can feel its finest textures, I can even sense when the lack of it smells wrong or leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Many are the subtleties of truth, and by turns I must be subtle, direct, serene, or bold to grasp them.
[To follow.]
Objectivity about myself is hardest of all. Its many meanings are captured in the phrase "Know Yourself", inscribed at the ancient temple of Delphi and part of the core wisdom of the classical civilization.
Know my measure, my limits, my powers, my abilities, my special talents. Know my place, my role, my context, my calling. Know what I can and cannot do. Know what I can and cannot be. Know what I know and do not know, the limits of my knowledge and wisdom. Know my strengths and weaknesses. Know my soul, my real and true self. Know what I truly want in life. Know human nature. Know divinity.
And know, finally, that it is hard to know all this because self-deception is the easiest thing in the world.
How to attain self-knowledge? There are many paths: history, anthropology, psychology; philosophies and religions; mentorship and teaching; love and friendship; experience, observation, experimentation, action, cooperation; novels, drama, poetry; meditation, reflection, solitude.
I walk as many of these paths as I can. They are tools that can help me gain objectivity about myself, but I know that it is harder to be honest about myself than about anything else in the world.
Responsibility is hard.
To be responsible is to be held answerable and accountable for what I do, because a full, objective account of what has happened needs to include what I did or didn't do.
To be responsible is to understand and accept myself as a cause of what happens in my life. Not necessarily as the only cause, but certainly as one of the causes. It can be difficult to remain objective about the degree to which I am a cause for any given event or its consequences. Human beings tend to attribute their successes to themselves, and their failures to others or to vague circumstances.
To be responsible is to own my thoughts, my choices, my actions, my feelings. Thus responsibility is a form of self-ownership.
Responsibility looks backward at what I have done, but it also looks ahead — for if I am responsible then I shall choose and act with the expectation that I might need to answer for what I do. Thus a sense of personal responsibility induces deliberation, caution, prudence, consideration, careful planning, and good manners.
When I am responsible, I walk a consistent path and I have a consistent aim in life. I have integrity, constancy, solidity, coherence, harmony, wholeness. By being true to myself and my principles, I become someone who is worthy of trust, honor, and respect.
[To follow.]
Just as I am the easiest person to deceive, so I am the hardest person to trust.
To be trustworthy inside and out, I must have great command of myself, great mastery of my emotions, great loyalty to my principles, great constancy of purpose, great internal discipline. I must keep straight, guide myself, monitor myself, point myself in a consistent direction, set my own path in life, live up to my ideals, and aim for the greatest excellence I can achieve.
To be trustworthy inside and out, I must have a strong moral compass inside me, and not merely respond to pressures and sanctions that come from outside myself. I must choose my own principles and command my own laws, for myself alone and for no one else. I must be sovereign, autonomous, and a more strict governor of my own actions than any external force could ever be.
To be trustworthy inside and out, I must do what I want. As Peter Keating observed, this is not the easiest thing in the world but one of the hardest: to know what I truly want and what is best for me and what is consistent with my highest potential — and then to have the courage of my convictions by working hard to achieve that in my life.
To mine own self be true — this requires deep self-knowledge and great self-discipline. Self-respect, self-esteem, self-consideration, self-love — these are secondary effects, of which a hard-won self-worth is the cause.
I must not confuse the cause and the effect.
Productivity is hard.
To be productive is to create or preserve what is valuable and important, to achieve something significant in my life.
If am to be productive, I must focus on my priorities, concentrate on high-value activities, channel my values and choices into concrete actions, and be disciplined about my time and my life -- for there is no self-direction without self-discipline.
When I create something of value, I close the gap between wish and fact, between the ideal and the real. By no means does this happen all at once; depending on what I want to achieve, it can take months or years to realize my goals, to make my values real in the world -- with many setbacks and obstacles and challenges along the way. Patience and persistence are essential to success.
Productivity is not a duty, but a desire for something higher and greater in my life: a matter of aspiration, constructive passion, and positive energy applied to the task of making my values real on this earth.
The creation of value is not always a solitary pursuit -- indeed it is, more often than not, a collaborative effort. Such collaboration takes two primary forms: the projects to which I contribute and the relationships in which I am engaged.
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The first integration I can achieve is an inner harmony of thought, choice, action, and feeling. The second integration I can achieve is a harmony between my inner life and my outer life.
My inner life and my outer life are two aspects of the same achievement. To consistently track the truth implies that I am equally honest with myself and with others, that I equally seek knowledge of reality, of other people, and of myself. To consistently choose my own directions in life implies that I also honor the directions that other people have chosen for themselves. To consistently create value implies that I create value in the world through my work, that I create value in my relationships with other people, and that I create value in myself by improving my own habits and character. To consistently experience meaning implies that I am passionate about my own life and compassionate about the lives of others.
If I am to recognize and respect the power of thought, choice, action, and feeling in myself, I must recognize and respect it in others. Those I interact with, those I work with, those I befriend, those I love, all are thinking, choose, acting, feeling people. I must respect their intelligence, autonomy, experiences, activities, emotions, perceptions, insights, choices, and freedom. And further: I have a great opportunity to learn from those I come to know well.
The same principles apply whether I am facing inward or facing outward.
This great integration is the harmony of the inner and the outer.
Understanding others is knowledge; understanding myself is enlightenment.
Mastering others is power; mastering myself is strength.
In knowledge there is power, but in enlightenment there is strength.
Being selective about others is preference; being selective about myself is simplicity.
Experiencing others is pleasure; experiencing myself is seriousness.
In preference there is pleasure, but in simplicity there is seriousness.
Knowledge, power, preference, and pleasure are signs of desire; enlightenment, strength, simplicity, and seriousness are signs of purpose.
Desire is the path to dissolution and dependence; purpose is the path to integrity and autonomy.
The power of thought is a great power. But sometimes greater power comes from not thinking.
Sometimes I have thought everything I can think for now, as when Howard Roark went for a swim at the quarry instead of planning the next phase of his life.
It is more productive to think about what is within my span of control than to worry and fret about things that are outside my span of control. Worrying is not a form of thinking.
It is pointless to think and plan beyond the horizon of my lifespan. History can provide valuable perspective, but I cannot change the past. Envisioning the future can help me navigate my directions in life, but the most of the future will change so radically by the time it arrives that I am better off learning to be flexible than becoming attached to the way I think things will be.
Much of what happens in the world is not worthy of my attention. Fads, fashions, celebrities, news, propaganda, advertising, politicians, and the like are mostly meaningless ephemera. I focus instead on what is of more immediate importance in my life.
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Howard Roark was not an Objectivist. To live successfully, he found it necessary to balance thinking and not thinking, choosing and not choosing, acting and not acting, feeling and not feeling — to balance what Chinese philosophers call the yin and the yang.
The yang is that which is more rational, Apollonian, objective, public, open, well-known, bright, scientific, logical, explicit, lucid, clear, hard, dry, powerful, active — that which is related to the sky gods, to high mountains, to Olympus.
The yin is that which is more emotional, Dionysian, subjective, private, personal, unknown, shadowy, perceptual, implicit or tacit, opaque, soft, wet and watery, earthy, yielding, passive — that which is related to the gods of land and water, to things that are earthy and oceanic.
To think clearly and rationally, to choose my values and focus on what I find important, to create great value and reshape the earth in the image of my values, even to be passionate about life — these, for Rand, are facets of the yang. Yet the yang is not everything. There are aspects of life that are irreducibly yin — the kinds of things that are hard to put into words but that instead must simply be experienced: music, painting, sculpture, dance, architecture, gardening, nature, manual labor, athletics, exercise, physicality, sensuality, breath, yoga, introspection, reflection, contemplation, reverence, awareness, observation, perception, the senses, beauty, adornment, pleasure, relaxation, spontaneity, friendship, love.
These phenomena, these manifestations of yin, have their philosophies, too: Taoism, Buddhism, Epicureanism, aestheticism, gnosticism, neoplatonism, organicism, naturalism, yogism, spiritualism, and more. These philosophies and practices can provide important insights into the meaning of life.
The great challenge is to find unity in diversity, to achieve a harmony of opposites within myself, to attain a balance among the forces and qualities represented by the yin and the yang. This is not easy; indeed it is one of the supreme challenges of living. Yet I cannot climb that great mountain of wisdom if I am the hedgehog who knows only one big thing; instead, I must be the fox who knows many things — and who has many ways of knowing. I must be open to experiencing life, to recognizing what I truly want even if it seems at odds with the yang-like philosophy of Ayn Rand.
The newspaper caption beneath a picture of Howard Roark standing before the Enright House reads: "Are You Happy, Mr. Superman?" The irony is that Mr. Superman is happy; because making his values real by bringing beautiful buildings into the world is, for Roark, a source of the most exalted pleasure one could imagine.
This level of joy is not mere fun or pleasure, but a deep alignment between my values and their realization in the world — a kind of metaphysical joy or love for existence. Yet is joy found only in the highest creations of the human spirit? Does joy require in all instances a feeling of man-worship or a heroic sense of life? No. For me, joy is the word that best captures a certain kind of deeply positive, constructive, humanistic approach to life, work, love, art, family, friendship, and the pursuit of wisdom. This approach to life is predicated on the assumption that man is born to glory and that happiness is my sacred birthright.
Does honoring the power of thought require me to live up to an explicitly rational view of man and the universe in everything I think and do, or even to forsake passion? No. I live a life of reason when my actions are clear, intelligible, integrated, open to the fundamental human power of understanding myself and the world. But the power of understanding includes perception, imagination, and introspection as well as explicitly conceptual thought. As Jacob Bronowski wrote in his poem The Abacus and the Rose, we must "reject the feud of eye and intellect"; reason's hand, far from being cold and clammy, provides the touch that enables both light and heat, both thought and passion, both deep understanding and deep emotion. Joy and reason go hand in hand.
Can meaning be realized only the loftiest abstractions or most cosmic goals? Does the search for meaning mandate that I take an explicitly philosophical approach to every aspect of my life? No. Meaning emerges through an interaction between my choices and my actions, in the self-directed achievement of what I have chosen as good or important. But the good and the important are not mere abstractions: they can be as particular as the smile of a friend, the scent of a flower, the sense of a phrase. Individualism extends that far; and meaning is found not merely in the cosmic and the universal, but also most directly in the concrete, the particular, and the deeply personal.
The architecture of happiness is built of many materials: work, love, family, friendship, health, hobbies, nature, culture, wisdom.
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In the Tao Te Ching, te is self-nature, raw personhood, character, intentions, quality, worth, individual actuality or singularity -- good or bad, positive or negative, it's what you are. By contrast, tao is human nature, the one path, the great way, a constraining track, an endless course of forward motion, even cosmic unity or potentiality. The tension between self-nature and human nature, between actuality and potentiality, between what I am and what I could be, is one of the great themes of life.
In The Fountainhead, the most dramatic conflict is not between Roak and Keating or Toohey or Wynand, but between Roark and Dominique. She is like te -- raw, strange, unconstrained, unbridled, singular, Rand herself in a bad mood. He is like tao -- self-consistent, unified, integrated, unstoppable, a force of nature. Here also there is great tension between the two, an inexplicable violence that I find uncomfortable and mystifying unless viewed metaphorically.
Yet at the end of the novel, Roark and Dominique achieve a white serenity that is the sum of all the violence they have known -- just as the tension between te and tao, the struggle between my self and the great way, the sometimes difficult dance between my individuality and the underlying track of right living is harmonized through experience and reflection, action and understanding.
What is the alignment between te and tao but philosophy, the love of wisdom made real in my life? Philosophy is not a dry subject for bookish learning, but an ongoing relationship that I have with wisdom and insight and right living and the one path to being successful as a human being.
Roark is uniquely different because he honors above all the fountainhead of human progress: the individual person whose self-nature is aligned with the four human powers of thought, choice, action, and feeling, and therefore who has the courage to independently understand reality, focus on what is important, create value in the world, and experience the emotional meaning of life.
There is something primal and eternal about this fountainhead -- it is an ever-flowing spring of upward movement, the ultimate source of human ingenuity and happiness, an inexhaustible well of energy, the life-force that has raised humanity in its accelerating ascent from savagery to civilization.
Although this fountainhead is often obstructed and redirected, it can never be fully suppressed because it is latent in every human being as a divine spark of curiosity, a sacred fire of passion, a focused beam of attention, a molten source of energy. These qualities might sound sophisticated, but in fact they are utterly natural: for I am born into the world as a thinking, choosing, acting, feeling being, and when I grow up into the world I cannot help but wonder about what I see, turn my attention toward what interests me, care about some people and things more than others, and act to fulfill my needs and desires.
The question is not whether I will think and choose and act and feel, for they are as natural as moving and breathing. The question is whether I will honor those innate powers in myself and in others, whether I will live a life of freedom, dignity, depth, and beauty, whether I will align my character with what is best in human nature, whether I will find joy and reason and meaning on this earth, whether I will live up to my highest potential and transform the latent fountainhead within me into a living reality.
Roark said that thought, choice, action, and feeling are the functions of the self. In order to live a successful human life, I must be independent in my thinking, my choices, my actions, and my feelings. It is this independence that Roark possesses but that Keating lacks.
This independence gives me ultimate power over my own life. Not power over others, but power over myself: power to understand reality, to direct my energy and attention, to create value, to experience meaning.
To be independent in this way is to be a sovereign individual, to be a law-maker for myself, to be a self-governor.
This supreme independence makes me free.
Supreme independence makes me free. But free for what? Is it enough merely to be free, to be without ties to the world, to govern myself in solitude and inactivity?
Roark's way of life says no.
Independence is but a precondition, which makes me free to create great value, to make something that is an improvement upon nature instead of a degradation, to produce a higher step that would not be possible without human action. It is this fundamental creativity that Roark possesses but that Toohey lacks.
A higher step is respectful of nature, just as Roark's structures respect the sites upon which they are built. It knows that nature has its own beauty, and it strives to add further beauty that even nature could not provide.
The principle of the higher step is a difficult taskmaster. It is much easier to blast away the granite of a mountain than it is to work with and around that granite to build a Heller House or a Monadnock Valley. It is, too, much easier to blast away the foundations of my personality and remake it in the image of Rand's philosophy than it is to engage in the more delicate task of self-improvement.
Is my work a higher step above what I inherited from nature and tradition? Are my relationships higher steps above what my family and earlier generations bequeathed to me? Is my soul a higher step above what nature and nurture provided to me?
My independence makes me free to create great value. It is up to me whether I make that potential real.
Why create value? Does the world deserve that effort from me? Doesn't creating great value place me at the mercy of the world? Wouldn't it be easier to seek power over the world so that it cannot harm me?
Here again, Roark's way of life says no.
In his job interview with Henry Cameron, Roark says he doesn't like the shape of things and that he wants to change that shape through his own efforts, through the application of his own powers — and not through power over others. This work, expressed in architecture, is the great task of his life. It is such a great task of value-creation that Roark possesses but that Wynand lacks.
Is it realistic for me to have the goal of reshaping the world in the image of my values? Not directly. But then all Roark did was design some buildings — it's not as if he reshaped the entire world. Instead, he made his values real in the world through the limited yet still significant scope of what was possible to him.
The ethical issue here is not the relative extent of what I can achieve in life compared to famous inventors, scientists, or artists, but the absolute extent based on my interests, my talents, and the energy I can realistically expend on various projects and relationships during my brief span of life on this earth. And in that context I too am capable of completing great tasks.
I am capable of great things. But it takes enormous discipline to truly understand the world and myself, to focus my energy and attention on what I find interesting and important, to create value in myself and my relationships and my projects. It would be much easier to skate through life and depend on the achievements of others.
Yet to do so would be unworthy of a true human being. If I abdicate my responsibilities and do not live up to my potential, I forsake the birthright of a glorious, successful human life. Deeply positive thought, choice, action, and feeling are right and becoming to a noble soul — and if I do not strive for such nobility, why am I here?
In the final scene of The Fountainhead, Dominique visits Roark at the construction site for the Wynand Building. Riding the elevator to the top, she passes the pinnacles of bank buildings:
My life is more than finance and economics, more than my career, more than the money I earn.
She crests the crowns of courthouses:
My life is more than law and politics, more than my interactions with others, more than my contributions to society.
She rises above the spires of churches:
My life is more than religion or philosophy, more than my adherence to a system of ideas, even if that system was created by Ayn Rand herself.
And then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark:
My life is mine to live and enjoy, my individuality is the only untouchable constant of my existence, joy and reason and meaning are not an impossible ideal but a natural way of living that is mine to discover, mine to choose, mine to achieve, and mine to enjoy.
That way of living is what I call the Tao of Roark.
THE END