'I Will Not Serve'

[June Russell]

Thomas

I agree with so much of what you say, especially re cultivating a 
> 'Beginner's Mind' which guards against the temptation to close off 
> to genuine possibilities - from laziness, fear, prejudice or 
> whatever - resulting in a fixed, static essence or identity.
> 
> Where you've got me pretty baffled though, is when you say the 
> process of dynamic self-overcoming requires a 'commitment' to 
> something outside the self.  I agree that when we explore areas 
> outwith our more fixed essences or comfort zones there's what you 
> might call a leap of faith - a faith that the exploration may be 
> beneficial.  However I wonder if there's a bit of a leap between 
> agreeing (with yourself) to explore and the idea that there's a 
> commitment to accept whatever is found?  Why would it be in any way 
> neccessary to accept what you find?  Perhaps if what you find is so 
> reasonable that it's utterly compelling, then there may be in some 
> sense a 'commitment' to accept it.  But I'm not sure that to 
> consent to act upon a reasonable proposition is the same as 
> 'serving' it.  And as philosophers have long observed, just because 
> we find something irresistably reasonable we don't neccesarily even 
> then award it our consent!  An 'is' doesn't automatically translate 
> to an 'ought' (was that Hume?).  I'm also baffled as to why what we 
> explore should necessarily be 'alien'?
> 
> I'm in total agreement with Nietzsche's argument that dynamic 
> self-overcoming should be perpetual. However I don't really see that 
> the imperative to overcome the ego is to 'commit to serve something 
> outside its boundaries'.  'I will not serve' needn't be a narrow 
> platitude.  Yes, an Ayn Rand hero/ine will rightly not serve others.  
> But nor I think will s/he serve or bow down to his or her own desire 
> for security, a comfort zone, status, the status quo, someone else's 
> idea of what is right, desirable etc.  I think in that sense, 'I 
> will not serve' has both exterior and interior elements.

Where I DO perceive danger for overcoming my own self is that I may - in my zeal - 
label myself as 'a person who does not serve'.  If I inadvertently calcify that
into in some sense a fixed essence, a static, constant thing then it's possible
I could behave in arenas of decision-making as I might believe 'a person who 
does not serve' might behave.  In other words, I would stand outside of myself, 
outside of the moment of decision making.  I would objectify myself and 
interrogate myself as to how the ideal 'person who does not serve' would behave.
and if I am no longer fully there in the moment, then in a very real sense I
might be 'serving' that idealised concept. 

In fact, I did occasionally get the feeling Rand was doing that.  Sometimes it
seemed she had a precisely developed concept of what 'a person who does not serve'
would act like (and, alas, for it has no noble function IMO, even what the person
would LOOK like!).  She then - I sometimes think - fashioned the thoughts and
behaviours of her non-serving characters according to what had become a fixed
essence.  I'm not sure about this - it's just a feeling I got when reading the
novels!

Look forward so much to reading more of your posts.

June 


PS I'm very happy to say 'I will not serve'.  Especially not self-serve.
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