Virtue of Selfishness

Virtue of Selfishness

After reading the excerpt of Ayn Rand The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, there was only one instance that entered my mind and it was a tour I spent in Africa on the “Hearts and Minds” mission. I spent 6 months on a deployment to Africa traveling from country to country. I spent time in Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, Eretria, Tanzania, and Sudan. We would help the people build schools, drill water wells, and provide training and general education to the people. I know that this kind of sounds like a volunteer trip to Africa but it helped the United States gather needed intelligence and comradery throughout Africa.

That volunteer story is not where I believe that Ayn Rand’s essay ties into modern society. I was on a Rest and Recuperation time at a local hotel, where we could swim and relax and wind down just for the afternoon. In Africa the safety rules as I assume you can guess are very lackadaisical, and because of this there was a 5 meter and 10 meter high dive in the pool with no life guard or any safety signs what so ever. So we had been jumping off of the 5 meter high dive all day getting used to falling before you hit the water, to myself it was quite the sensation and I was not sure if I was ready for the 10 meter yet. Of course through a lot of we will call it encouragement from the fellow soldiers I climbed to the top of the 10-meter high dive and was just looking down. While we were standing at the top talking about who was going to go first, a female in her 20’s that was touring from England walked past us to the end of the high dive and jumped off. When she hit the water she was knocked out cold and started to drown, I think I was the only one who saw this and was paying attention. Well I looked down and I think a million things were going through my head at that moment the biggest one being I have no idea how to properly jump off this high dive but here goes nothing. So I jumped off and did...