ucation so that others may go. Parents who spend a fortune to save their dyingchild are helping another person, but true altruism would demand that theparents spend their money to save ten other children, sacrificing their ownchild so that others may live. The second confusion is to confound selfishness with brutality. Thecommon image of selfishness is the person who runs slip-shod over people inorder to achieve arbitrary desires. We are taught that ``selfishness'' consistsof dishonesty, theft, even bloodshed, usually for the sake of the whim of themoment. These two confusions together obscure the possibility of an ethics ofnon-sacrifice. In this ethics, each man takes responsibility for his own lifeand happiness, and lets other people do the same. No one sacrifices himself toothers, nor sacrifices others to himself. The key word in this approach is earn:each person must earn a living, must earn the love and respect of his peers,must earn the self-esteem and the happiness that make life worth living. It's this ethics of non-sacrifice that forms a lasting moral foundationfor individualism. It's an egoistic ethics in that each person acts to achievehis own happiness. Yet, it's not the brutality usually ascribed to egoism.Indeed, by rejecting sacrifice as such, it represents a revolution in thinkingon ethics. Two asides on the topic of egoism. First, just as individualism doesn'tmean being alone, neither does non-sacrificial egoism. Admiration, friendship,love, good-will, charity, generosity: these are wonderful values that aselfishness person would want as part of his life. But these values do notrequire true sacrifice, and thus are not altruistic in the deepest sense of theword. Second, I question if brutality, the form of selfishness usuallyascribed to egoism, is actually in one's self-interest in practice. Whim worship,dishonesty, theft, exploitation: I would argue that the truly selfish manrejects th...
