I can confidently say that the stupidest decision I ever made in my life was to go out and work for a missionary group in Louisiana. In my opinion I only did it with good intentions thinking that I would have a better view of the world. I thought I would experience different cultures of the world and do good things at the same time. The function of the group I intended to work with was to offer disaster relief through the provision of food, shelter and medicine, among other essential goods. The organization was run by a militant religious ideology in its approach. I believed that working with the group would improve my leadership and rebuke my actions. This ideological group offered the best training to enlisted men to deliver supplies to people in rural regions of the third world. To accomplish this goal, the team wanted me and others to go and offer training in the swamps of Louisiana. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The worst part of the tour was the lineup. The instructors placed rocks in our backpacks and marched us through the swamp with these heavy backpacks on our shoulders. Some members of my team would fall behind and our team leader would take their bag and add the burden to another member. Unfortunately, I was part of the group that had the most team members leave. Every person who quit added their burden to mine. I was pushed forward by the leadership, who was always yelling at us to keep going. Any sign of tiredness was met with ridicule and criticism if we stopped. Phrases like “let the team down” and “fail the team” were used liberally with us. Like a work mule, using sheer will and determination, I tried to push forward with the heavyweights. Eventually, I could no longer support the weight because it became too much. I stood still and my eyes were the only thing above the water. The pressure of the backpacks pushed me down, forcing my legs to dive deeper into the muck and mud. I was sinking and thought I had the last moments before witnessing my death. I had two options; continue the test with a heavy weight on my shoulders and die or take away the burden of living. I choose to live and free myself from the pressure and swampy swamp I was in. From my experience with altruism, I believe it's not that different from our culture's love of this idea. In particular, my generation's irrational adoption of this ideology shows how modern defenders of capitalism refer to it as a "common good" or "public good" rather than as the most rational response to the selfish need of man to survive and thrive. I think this gives a good reason why we see college students sipping their Starbucks coffee and tweeting to their friends on their iPhones about their socialist ideals. (This is a ridiculous event if it weren't so scary that you can't even see the hypocrisy in their actions.) Altruism is the idea that a baker doesn't make bread for his own needs but instead does so because it helps society (Batson, 161). They do it for the love of donating food for the common good but not because the baker needs to feed their families. They do not do it because they want to create something and make a profit for themselves or because the baker wants to live up to his own higher standard of living, but rather for the tribe, group and society and for the benefits of the social order. distilling altruism down to its psychological-epistemological core would be a simple equation. The equation would look like this:“bad” people = selfish/self-interested people. This is the main difference between Ayn Rand and the current altruistic moral ideal found in our culture. Ayn elaborates on this concept through her fictional work “Atlas Shrugged.” Atlas Shrugged explains what happens when altruistic intentions and collectivist reasoning bind society at large into a mixed economy. The book accomplishes this by providing a “what if” scenario. The “what if” scenario is what would happen if innovators, scientists and industrialists suddenly left a society that no longer values ​​their innovation and progress, but instead values ​​the morass of stagnation, public opinions and social groups . The world economy begins to collapse. People start losing their jobs and business opportunities start drying up. Many begin to loot and steal just to survive. All of Ayn Rand's heroes and heroines deal with this collective morass of altruism they've found themselves in. My favorite is Hank Rearden. It may be that we share some personality traits and shared life experiences with altruism. Rearden's speech to the Supreme Court made a big impression on me. Rearden said: “I don't want my attitude to be misunderstood. I'll be happy to say this for the record... I work only for my own profit, which I earn by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their gain at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my gain at the expense of theirs: I do not sacrifice my interests to them, nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent for mutual benefit - and I am proud of every penny I have earned this way. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I have (Rand, 480). I earned my money by my own effort, in free trade, and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with: the voluntary consent of those who hired me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of consent of those who purchase my product (Rand, 600). “The speech is much longer, but the absolute beauty of his statements breaks the essence of Capitalism from the mists of altruism. When Rearden said, “Mutual consent to mutual benefit,” he meant capitalism. If I want to get your money, social media likes word of mouth, among other things; I need to give value to value. The beauty of trade (if done ethically) is that it ends in a win-win situation for everyone. I have to respect the individual as a whole to receive what I want from that person. Rearden elaborates on this concept by saying “the voluntary consent of every man I have ever dealt with… the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who purchase my product” (Rand, 600). Capitalism is the system of self-interested mutual benefit that cannot be coerced by force unless a third party is involved, but can only be achieved through voluntary consensus among individuals and approval among groups of people. Capitalism occurs through respect for sovereign individuals. Ayn elaborates this idea further in her 1965 essay “What is Capitalism?” Man is a sovereign individual who owns his person, his mind, his life, his work and his products - or is he the property of the tribe (the State, the society, the community) that can dispose of him as he wishes, who can dictate his beliefs, prescribe the course of his life, control his work and expropriate his products? (Rand, 3) Does man have the right to exist for himself or is he born a slave, like an indentured servant who must continue to buy his, 332).