The Journals of Ayn Rand (116 page)

Rearden’s problem about sex is:
he was bitterly disillusioned in his early experiences, and he resented the fact that he felt a violent physical desire that seemed to be independent of and in contradiction to his rational will and spiritual code of values. He concluded that sex is purely physical, and as such he hated it—it was a surrender of his will, a degrading necessity that held such an immense power over him, created such a violent desire, yet had no spiritual meaning.

He learns that the
capacity
of sex is physical, a mechanism for the use and expression of his spirit, the means of expressing in physical form one’s greatest celebration of life, of joy, of one’s highest self-exaltation and one’s highest moral values in regard to man—that is, in regard to himself and the woman of his choice. He learns that sex is the means and form of translating spiritual admiration for a human being into physical action—just as productive activity is the translation of spiritual values into physical form, just as all life is a process of conceiving a spiritual purpose, based on one’s spiritual code of values, then giving it a material form—which is the proper, moral, and
complete
cycle for man’s existence, for the relation of man’s spirit to physical matter. The spirit sets the purpose and uses matter as its tool, as
material;
the spirit gives form to matter. Just as pure “spirituality,” divorced from physical action, is evil hypocrisy—so is the materialism which attempts to have matter give man purpose, value, and satisfaction. Just as “Platonic love” is evil hypocrisy—so is purely physical sex, which is an evil destruction of one’s values.

He thinks that his guilt is that while admiring Dagny as the highest woman, he wants to degrade her by making her a tool for the satisfaction of his physical need. He thinks it’s evil that his response to the highest is sexual desire. He learns that
that
is precisely the high, moral quality of his desire for her. His desire is a response to his highest values. He learns that evil consists of the attitude of other men who are attracted, not by the highest, but by the lowest they know—by a mere body, with no regard for a woman’s character, or by a woman they consciously despise, this giving them a sense of their own elevation by contrast; the rotten self-fraud of men with an inferiority complex, men who try to acquire self-esteem by triumph over a woman they have estimated as worthless.

The wrap of blue fox, and the roadside restaurant in winter.

The conversation about the “kept woman”: the realization that
they
are much more capable of enjoying this than the drunken “playboy” at the next table. Dagny remembers the “reversal” at her first ball. He remembers her words at his party.

The flowers.

The cup carved of chalcedony.

The crystal glasses—and the way he holds the glass when she serves him the drink.

In contrast to his love of luxury: the way he enjoys nature, a sensual enjoyment, his body stretched on the ground in slacks and short-sleeved shirt. It is, of course,
not
a contrast, but the same thing—spiritual enjoyment of material nature.

Rearden as the man who is the master of physical nature, whose
spirit
is the master of matter—in factory, countryside, or luxury.

The evening when, on his way to her apartment, he feels loathing for the whole world, the shrinking feeling that he doesn’t want to touch anything : he has no sexual desire, no trace of it; then the sight of her against the city brings back
his
feeling of the world, the world in which he
wants
to act and work, and with that his sexual desire returns. It is an act of celebration—and he feels consciously that it is a great achievement of hers, a value, not a degrading sin, when he feels her experiencing pleasure and knows that she is capable of it, that she is celebrating life as he is.

The incident when he has an affair with her in her office—the deliberate contrast and “impropriety” of it.

His “sadistic” touches of this kind.

The way he runs his fingertips down the skin of her arm—here an example of the fact that he never indulges in the physical as such, i.e., merely as contact—the purely physical in this sense is meaningless to both of them—it is not the contact that arouses pleasure in them, it is the contact
when
it is an expression of their spiritual attitude toward each other at that particular moment. (Such as: their first affair as result of the train ride and the triumph which it represents; the way he takes her the next morning; their first scene in her apartment, the broken shoulder-strap.)

 

 

Note:
The reason why people consider sexual desire insulting to a woman is, in the deepest sense, the fact that to most people sex is an evil, low, degrading aspect of man’s life. Since most people, in their philosophical premises, have damned themselves and life on earth, their sex desires and actions
are
an expression of evil (this is clearest in the case of desire for a woman consciously estimated as one’s inferior). On such a premise, sexual desire is insulting to the woman who is the object of it. Conventionally, the man is supposed to redeem this insult by the so-called higher,
spiritual
implications of marriage; but, if marriage is not involved, sexual desire is supposed to be insulting.

The twisted element of truth here is that sex has to have a high spiritual base and source, and that without this it is an evil perversion. But the actual relation of sex and spirit is not the way they believe: they believe that sex is evil as such, and that the spiritual aspects of marriage serve to redeem or excuse it, or make it a pardonable weakness which has no tie with and is opposed to the spiritual elements of the relationship. They do not suspect the
essential,
unbreakable tie between sex and spirit—which is the tie between body and soul.

On the
right
philosophical premise about sex, on
my
premise, it is a great compliment to a woman if a man wants her. It is an expression of his highest values, not of his contempt. In this sense, a husband would feel honored if another man wanted his wife; he would not let the other man have her—his exclusive possession is the material form of her love for him—but he would feel that the other man’s desire was a natural and proper expression of the man’s admiration for his wife, for the values which she represents and which he saw in her.

It is on the above ground that
Galt
feels no jealousy and no resentment of Francisco and Rearden in Dagny’s past. His reaction when he hears about Dagny’s affair with Rearden is simple, non-malicious envy—merely the shock of learning that another man has what he himself so desperately wants. It is also the shock of the possibility, which he has kept in mind all these years, that Dagny
may
love another man and he, Galt, may never have her, not even after she joins the strike. But it is not the conventional fury against the thought that another man degrades Dagny by possessing her.

Note how dreadful the general attitude on sex is: since all [the accepted] philosophies damn man, his life, and the earth—men’s attitude on sex is a degrading, ugly, corrupting evil, in all the many variations. And this is another proof that sex
is
the expression of one’s entire philosophy and attitude toward life. Since most people’s philosophy is a hodgepodge of contradictory bits, so is their attitude on sex. But man
cannot
exist without a basic philosophy, from which all his actions, emotions and desires will come.

The cheap little schools of “free love” attempt to glorify sex on a silly sort of materialistic basis—simply glorifying physical joy, considering themselves “vital as animals.” They are unable to discover a
moral,
spiritual premise to justify sex—so they try to enjoy it without any morality, and, of course, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t bring them any sort of spiritual happiness, and not even much satisfaction.

This is the same mistake as that of the materialists who—in protest against mystical morality—declare that existence on earth has nothing to do with and requires no morality. This attitude merely drives people back to church, to mystical morality—and people drag themselves back to it regretfully, reluctantly, knowing that it is unsatisfactory, that it cannot work—but knowing also that they cannot exist without some form of morality, some code of values. This is another example of the vicious cutting of man in two—and setting his spirit against his body.

My most important job is the formulation of
a rational morality of and for man, of and for his life, of and for this earth.

(No wonder the advocates of religion are so insistent that “there can be no morality without religion.” They seem to know their danger point.
There’s
my main job.)

The basic issue, of course, is the standard of values. Good and evil—why? By what standard? Their standard is an arbitrary, “revealed,” unprov able “categorical imperative”—as they jolly well have to admit—and it rests on
their
conception of God, and is then translated into indefensible nonsense in regard to conduct on this earth. (For instance,
why
should charity please God as the highest virtue? Why should
He
be that unjust?) The standard supposedly is in another dimension, opposite and contradictory in nature to ours—yet we are supposed to live by it on earth, in
this
dimension. A rational morality starts with a standard of values (of good and evil) based on man, his life, and the earth; it starts with the fact that values are possible and necessary
only
to a being of free will who has to function through choice and purpose.