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An Open Letter to Boris Spassky from Ayn Rand

Aug 20th, 2014
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  1. An Open Letter to Boris Spassky from Ayn Rand:
  2.  
  3. Dear Comrade Spassky:
  4.  
  5. I have been watching with great interest your world chess championship match
  6. with Bobby Fischer. I am not a chess enthusiast or even a player, and know
  7. only the rudiments of the game. I am a novelist-philosopher by profession.
  8.  
  9. But I watched some of your games, reproduced play by play on television, and
  10. found them to be a fascinating demonstration of the enormous complexity of
  11. thought and planning required of a chess player–a demonstration of how many
  12. considerations he has to bear in mind, how many factors to integrate, how
  13. many contingencies to be prepared for, how far ahead to see and plan. It was
  14. obvious that you and your opponent had to have an unusual intellectual
  15. capacity.
  16.  
  17. Then I was struck by the realization that the game itself and the players’
  18. exercise of mental virtuosity are made possible by the metaphysical
  19. absolutism of the reality with which they deal. The game is ruled by the Law
  20. of Identity and its corollary, the Law of Causality. Each piece is what it
  21. is: a queen is a queen, a bishop is a bishop–and the actions each can
  22. perform are determined by its nature: a queen can move any distance in any
  23. open line, straight or diagonal, a bishop cannot; a rook can move from one
  24. side of the board to the other, a pawn cannot; etc. Their identities and the
  25. rules of their movements are immutable–and this enables the player’s mind
  26. to devise a complex, long-range strategy, so that the game depends on
  27. nothing but the power of his (and his opponent’s) ingenuity.
  28.  
  29. This led me to some questions that I should like to ask you.
  30.  
  31. 1.. Would you be able to play if, at a crucial moment–when, after hours
  32. of brain-wrenching effort, you had succeeded in cornering your opponent–an
  33. unknown, arbitrary power suddenly changed the rules of the game in his
  34. favor, allowing, say, his bishops to move like queens? You would not be able
  35. to continue? Yet out in the living world, this is the law of your
  36. country–and this is the condition in which your countrymen are expected,
  37. not to play, but to live.
  38.  
  39. 2.. Would you be able to play if the rules of chess were updated to
  40. conform to a dialectic reality, in which opposites merge–so that, at a
  41. crucial moment, your queen turned suddenly from White to Black, becoming the
  42. queen of your opponent; and then turned Gray, belonging to both of you? You
  43. would not be able to continue? Yet in the living world, this is the view of
  44. reality your countrymen are taught to accept, to absorb, and to live by.
  45.  
  46. 3.. Would you be able to play if you had to play by teamwork–i.e., if you
  47. were forbidden to think or act alone and had to play not with a group of
  48. advisers, but with a team that determined your every move by vote? Since, as
  49. champion, you would be the best mind among them, how much time and effort
  50. would you have to spend persuading the team that your strategy is the best?
  51. Would you be likely to succeed? And what would you do if some pragmatist,
  52. range-of-the-moment mentalities voted to grab an opponent’s knight at the
  53. price of a checkmate to you three moves later? You would not be able to
  54. continue? Yet in the living world, this is the theoretical ideal of your
  55. country, and this is the method by which it proposes to deal (someday) with
  56. scientific research, industrial production, and every other kind of activity
  57. required for man’s survival.
  58.  
  59. 4.. Would you be able to play if the cumbersome mechanism of teamwork were
  60. streamlined, and your moves were dictated simply by a man standing behind
  61. you, with a gun pressed to your back–a man who would not explain or argue,
  62. his gun being his only argument and sole qualification? You would not be
  63. able to start, let alone continue, playing? Yet in the living world, this is
  64. the practical policy under which men live–and die–in your country.
  65.  
  66. 5.. Would you be able to play–or to enjoy the professional understanding,
  67. interest, and acclaim of an international Chess Federation–if the rules of
  68. the game were splintered, and you played by “proletarian” rules while your
  69. opponent played by “bourgeois” rules? Would you say that such “polyrulism”
  70. is more preposterous than polylogism? Yet in the living world, your country
  71. professes to seek global harmony and understanding, while proclaiming that
  72. she follows “proletarian” logic and that others follow “bourgeois” logic, or
  73. “Aryan” logic, or “third-world” logic, etc.
  74.  
  75. 6.. Would you be able to play if the rules of the game remained as they
  76. are at present, with one exception: that the pawns were declared to be the
  77. most valuable and non-expendable pieces (since they may symbolize the
  78. masses) which had to be protected at the price of sacrificing the more
  79. efficacious pieces (the individuals)? You might claim a draw on the answer
  80. to this one–since it is not only your country, but the whole living world
  81. that accept this sort of rule in morality.
  82.  
  83. 7.. Would you care to play, if the rules of the game remained unchanged,
  84. but the distribution of rewards were altered in accordance with egalitarian
  85. principles: if the prizes, the honors, the fame were given not to the
  86. winner, but to the loser–if winning were regarded as a symptom of
  87. selfishness, and the winner were penalized for the crime of possessing a
  88. superior intelligence, the penalty consisting in suspension for a year, in
  89. order to give others a chance? Would you and your opponent try playing not
  90. to win, but to lose? What would this do to your mind?
  91.  
  92. You do not have to answer me, Comrade. You are not free to speak or even to
  93. think of such questions–and I know the answers. No, you would not be able
  94. to play under any of the conditions listed above. It is to escape this
  95. category of phenomena that you fled into the world of chess.
  96.  
  97. Oh yes, Comrade, chess is an escape–an escape from reality. It is an “out,”
  98. a kind of “make-work” for a man of higher than average intelligence who was
  99. afraid to live, but could not leave his mind unemployed and devoted it to a
  100. placebo–thus surrendering to others the living world he had rejected as too
  101. hard to understand.
  102.  
  103. Please do not take this to mean that I object to games as such: games are an
  104. important part of man’s life, they provide a necessary rest, and chess may
  105. do so for men who live under the constant pressure of purposeful work.
  106. Besides, some games–such as sports contests, for instance–offer us an
  107. opportunity to see certain human skills developed to a level of perfection.
  108. But what would you think of a world champion runner who, in real life, moved
  109. about in a wheelchair? Or of a champion high jumper who crawled about on all
  110. fours? You, the chess professionals, are taken as exponents of the most
  111. precious of human skills: intellectual power–yet that power deserts you
  112. beyond the confines of the sixty-four squares of a chessboard, leaving you
  113. confused, anxious, and helplessly unfocused. Because, you see, the
  114. chessboard is not a training ground, but a substitute for reality.
  115.  
  116. A gifted, precocious youth often finds himself bewildered by the world: it
  117. is people that he cannot understand, it is their inexplicable,
  118. contradictory, messy behavior that frightens him. The enemy he rightly
  119. senses, but does not choose to fight, is human irrationality. He withdraws,
  120. gives up, and runs, looking for some sanctuary where his mind would be
  121. appreciated–and he falls into the booby trap of chess.
  122.  
  123. You, the chess professionals, live in a special world–a safe, protected,
  124. orderly world, in which all the great, fundamental principles of existence
  125. are so firmly established and obeyed that you do not even have to be aware
  126. of them. (They are the principles involved in my seven questions.) You do
  127. not know that these principles are the preconditions of your game–and you
  128. do not have to recognize them when you encounter them, or their breach, in
  129. reality. In your world, you do not have to be concerned with them: all you
  130. have to do is think.
  131.  
  132. The process of thinking is man’s basic means of survival. The pleasure of
  133. performing this process successfully–of experiencing the efficacy of one’s
  134. own mind–is the most profound pleasure possible to men, and it is their
  135. deepest need, on any level of intelligence, great or small. So one can
  136. understand what attracts you to chess: you believe that you have found a
  137. world in which all irrelevant obstacles have been eliminated, and nothing
  138. matters, but the pure, triumphant exercise of your mind’s powers. But have
  139. you, Comrade?
  140.  
  141. Unlike algebra, chess does not represent the abstraction–the basic
  142. pattern–of mental effort; it represents the opposite: it focuses mental
  143. effort on a set of concretes, and demands such complex calculations that a
  144. mind has no room for anything else. By creating an illusion of action and
  145. struggle, chess reduces the professional player’s mind to an uncritical,
  146. unvaluing passivity toward life. Chess removes the motor of intellectual
  147. effort–the question “What for?”–and leaves a somewhat frightening
  148. phenomenon: intellectual effort devoid of purpose.
  149.  
  150. If–for any number of reasons, psychological or existential–a man comes to
  151. believe that the living world is closed to him, that he has nothing to seek
  152. or to achieve, that no action is possible, then chess becomes his antidote,
  153. the means of drugging his own rebellious mind that refuses fully to believe
  154. it and to stand still. This, Comrade, is the reason why chess has always
  155. been so popular in your country, before and since it’s present regime–and
  156. why there have not been many American masters. You see, in this country, men
  157. are still free to act.
  158.  
  159. Because the rulers of your country have proclaimed this championship match
  160. to be an ideological issue, a contest between Russia and America, I am
  161. rooting for Bobby to win–and so are all of my friends. The reason why this
  162. match has aroused an unprecedented interest in our country is the
  163. longstanding frustration and indignation of the American people at your
  164. country’s policy of attacks, provocations, and hooligan insolence–and at
  165. our own government’s overtolerant, overcourteous patience. There is a
  166. widespread desire in our country to see Soviet Russia beaten in any way,
  167. shape or form, and–since we are all sick and tired of the global clashes
  168. among the faceless, anonymous masses of collective–the almost medieval
  169. drama of two individual knights fighting the battle of good against evil,
  170. appeals to us symbolically. (But this, of course, is only a symbol; you are
  171. not necessarily the voluntary defender of evil–for all we know, you might
  172. be as much its victim as the rest of the world.)
  173.  
  174. Bobby Fischer’s behavior, however, mars the symbolism–but it is a clear
  175. example of the clash between a chess expert’s mind, and reality. This
  176. confident, disciplined, and obviously brilliant player falls to pieces when
  177. he has to deal with the real world. He throws tantrums like a child, breaks
  178. agreements, makes arbitrary demands, and indulges in the kind of whim
  179. worship one touch of which in the playing of chess would disqualify him for
  180. a high-school tournament. Thus he brings to the real world the very evil
  181. that made him escape it: irrationality. A man who is afraid to sign a
  182. letter, who fears any firm commitment, who seeks the guidance of the
  183. arbitrary edicts of a mystic sect in order to learn how to live his life–is
  184. not a great, confident mind, but a tragically helpless victim, torn by acute
  185. anxiety and, perhaps, by a sense of treason to what might have been a great
  186. potential.
  187.  
  188. But, you may wish to say, the principles of reason are not applicable beyond
  189. the limit of a chessboard, they are merely a human invention, they are
  190. impotent against the chaos outside, they have no chance in the real world.
  191. If this were true, none of us would have survived nor even been born,
  192. because the human species would have perished long ago. If, under irrational
  193. rules, like the ones I listed above, men could not even play a game, how
  194. could they live? It is not reason, but irrationality that is a human
  195. invention–or, rather, a default.
  196.  
  197. Nature (reality) is just as absolutist as chess, and her rules (laws) are
  198. just as immutable (more so)–but her rules and their applications are much,
  199. much more complex, and have to be discovered by man. And just as a man may
  200. memorize the rules of chess, but has to use his own mind in order to apply
  201. them, i.e., in order to play well–so each man has to use his own mind in
  202. order to apply the rules of nature, i.e., in order to live successfully. A
  203. long time ago, the grandmaster of all grandmasters gave us the basic
  204. principles of the method by which one discovers the rules of nature and
  205. life. His name was Aristotle.
  206.  
  207. Would you have wanted to escape into chess, if you lived in a society based
  208. on Aristotelian principles? It would be a country where the rules were
  209. objective, firm and clear, where you could use the power of your mind to its
  210. fullest extent, on any scale you wished, where you would gain rewards for
  211. your achievements, and men who chose to be irrational would not have the
  212. power to stop you nor to harm anyone but themselves. Such a social system
  213. could not be devised, you say? But it was devised, and it came close to full
  214. existence–only, the mentalities whose level was playing jacks or craps, the
  215. men with the guns and their witch doctors, did not want mankind to know it.
  216. It was called Capitalism.
  217.  
  218. But on this issue, Comrade, you may claim a draw: your country does not know
  219. the meaning of that word–and, today, most people in our country do not know
  220. it either.
  221.  
  222. Sincerely,
  223.  
  224. Ayn Rand
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