I finished The Fountainhead at 03:00 last night, and you can see by when I am writing this that my sleep schedule is given up for lost.  Since finishing the book several things have been rolling around in my head, and I want to get them written down.  This will be interesting for at least one of you in particular.  I should preface this by saying that I know virtually nothing of the philosophy of Objectivism except what I have garnered from The Fountainhead and the brief guide at the end of the book.

There seem to be two relevant themes: That man’s highest purpose is to pursue his own creative goals and that all transactions (and possibly interactions) between people should take the form of an exchange entered into freely by both parties.  I don’t know a lot more about it, so lets just take those two things as given and see how they work with respect to the Peace Corps.  I recognize that potentially only one of you is an avid objectivist, and I don’t exactly know where I fall myself, but I find it useful to evaluate my life from different perspectives that I run across, and this is one of the more interesting ones.

Its the second theme that is directly related to the Peace Corps.  Ayn Rand comes down pretty heavily against aid of any form in her book, and at first glance as an aid organization the Peace Corps falls squarely into that category.  But the idea of the Peace Corps as a simple aid organization has bothered me since I began to apply, and its time now to have a write frankly about what the Peace Corps is and isn’t.

There is a misconception that the Peace Corps is a charity.  It isn’t.  In fact, I posit that it is an exchange.  In exchange for the time and cost of sending several thousand people to different countries across the world, we earn enormous goodwill from local people and from governments, we increase the breadth of understanding of our own population and of theirs.  It is worth noting that the Peace Corps’ three goals are centered around the idea of cultural exchange.  The United States government does spend money, not a lot relative to other expenses, but the question of the Peace Corps should be thought of in terms of whether you think what we gain is worth the cost, and that falls entirely within the idea of a free exchange.

On an individual level, it is naive to think that volunteers are being altruistic.  There are some volunteers in my stage who are here because they want to help people, but every volunteer is also here because they are gaining something.  For some it is a boost for graduate school or a career, for others it is learning French or living in a different culture or seeing Africa.  And the vast majority of volunteers are not operating under the illusion of altruism either.  It is quite simply an exchange.  We give up two years of income and our life in the states and in return we get a variety of benefits.  Many volunteers are also motivated by the idea of helping people who are less fortunate, but it is a mistake to think that that is all they are here for.

And our work does much more to avoid cultivating a culture of aid.  As volunteers we are given no money for our communities except in limited cases such as if we want to hold an event, in which case we can apply for a small amount of funding.  In fact, from the start it is suggested repeatedly that we should avoid giving money to anyone, that we are not allowed to give our medicine to anyone, and that even our bicycles cannot be loaned out.

Our work itself is often envisioned as an exchange.  We give knowledge and labor and we ask something from the people we are working with.  If you are teaching English, you will get better results and be happier if you require students to do something in exchange (such as attend a gender roles discussion group or plant a certain number of Moringa trees).  This is an imperfect and informal mechanism, but its hardly a donation. 

All of this, for me, means there is ample space for a Peace Corps volunteer to pursue their service as an active exchange of goods as dictated by objectivism.  I’m almost certain that is not the conclusion that objectivists  would usually come up with, but in The Fountainhead Ayn Rand discusses the tendency of revolutionary thought to become institutionalized, and I think it is quite likely that that has happened with her philosophy.

Having been here only a short while (already four months!), I can already see and have already written about some of the negative impacts of aid, especially aid that only pretends to be aid, or that is poorly executed.  It actually makes the job of volunteers harder, because we have to work against the expectation that we’ll be giving people access to money through us.  I have yet to see exactly what the outcome of my work as a volunteer will be, but I am quite glad to have seen first hand some of what passes for aid.

How does this all relate to me and what do I think of it on a personal level?  Much of my decision was prompted by the feeling that my life was rather quickly and uneventfully passing me by, and that I was going to wake up one morning after a significant number of years and wonder what I had done for all that time, rather like Guy Francon in the book. 

While I had no illusions from the start that I was being altruistic, and indeed I have very strong personal goals from my experience here, I do hope that my work here has a positive effect on some people’s lives, and I don’t think that makes me a bad person, even in the eyes of an objectivist (I’m playing fast and loose with words here, an objectivist might argue that there is no bad, only the people who follow their creative drive and those who pay more attention to what everyone else thinks of them).

I will go into more detail on my personal goals soon, I promise.