Our Moral Code is OUT OF DATE?!! Ridiculous.

The following is an excerpt from an article on cnn.com today. It was written by Yaron Brook who  is president of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and a columnist at Forbes.com;  and Onkar Ghate who is a senior fellow at the center. Brook is one of the speakers at The Economist's "Ideas Economy: Human Potential" conference in New York. To read the whole article please visit http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/16/brook.moral.code.outdated/index.html?hpt=T2 (make sure you read the comments after the article...)

The parts italicized  in red are my own comments on the article. Feel free to ad your own. Also, feel free to laugh.

Ask someone on the street to name a moral hero; if he isn't at a loss, he'll likely name someone like Jesus Christ or Mother Teresa. Why? Because they're regarded as people of faith who shunned personal profit for the collective good. No one would dream of naming Galileo, Darwin, Thomas Edison or John D. Rockefeller. Seems like a good start right? I agree with this.

Yet we should. It is they, not the Mother Teresas of the world, that we should strive to be like and teach our kids the same. Alert. Alert. Are these fools serious?

If morality is judgment to discern the truth and courage to act on it and make something of and for your own life, then these individuals, in their capacity as great creators, are moral exemplars. Put another way, if morality is a guide in the quest to achieve your own happiness by creating the values of mind and body that make a successful life, then morality is about personal profit, not its renunciation. So, it's ok to just invent your own definition and meaning of morality and apply it to all mankind? Sure, sure....even though nearly EVERY civilization since the beginning of time has upheld the virtues of selflessness and coming to the aid of those less fortunate than ourselves as moral, good and down right saintly. Just for fun though lets say that this innate knowledge of goodness from the beginning of time is useless and lets make up our own. Puh lease.

Monetary profit is just one of the values you have to achieve in life. But it is an eloquent representative of the whole issue, because at its most demanding, as exhibited by a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs, making money requires a profound dedication to material production.The fact that earning money is ignored by most moralists, or condemned as the root of evil, is telling of the distance we must travel. My sarcasm fails me here because this is just too ridiculous. 

In effect, we need to turn the Billionaire's Pledge on its head. Can we turn Yaron and Onkar on their heads?

The world grants, at best, no moral recognition to Gates and Buffett for the personal fortunes they've created, but it awards them a standing ovation for giving their profits away. But the standing ovation belongs to the act of creation, the profit they brought into their own lives and anyone who traded with them. Saint Bill Gates, Pray for us. Start chiseling the statues.

If morality is about the pursuit of your own success and happiness, then giving money away to strangers is, in comparison, not a morally significant act. (And it's outright wrong if done on the premise that renunciation is moral.) It's NOT a morally significant act? Can you imagine if our morality was solely based on self preservation and looking out for number 1? Murder would be a moral good and mission work would be absolutely unacceptable. Helping the little lady cross the street would be a waste of your time and punishable by law. Why don't you just push her IN to the street? One less person to get in your way of success. 

Science, freedom and the pursuit of personal profit -- if we can learn to embrace these three ideas as ideals, an unlimited future awaits. Ugh.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate. And no other decent human in the world. Amen.