The Objectivism Online Meta-Blog

Of all the events on the Christian calendar, there is not one so repulsive, so anti-life and so altruistic as Lent.

Lent is a 40 day celebration of suffering. While originally it was a period of religious fasting, today its participants tend to just give something up that they like - but the principle is the same.

Christianity, like all altruistic codes, is riddled with a love of suffering. The good, they will preach, is to harm yourself so that others may benefit. The belief that the pleasure of one man necessitates the pain of another leads Christians to believe it is good to go without, so that others can go with. Note how Christ, the figurehead of Christianity, is said to have died and suffered not for his own vices - but for the sins of everybody else!

Accordingly, on Lent they will find something that they enjoy, and stop enjoying it! Let's use a popular example, chocolate. They enjoy chocolate, they can (presumably) afford chocolate (both in financial and medical terms) - yet they choose to stop buying it. Subsequently, they experience less of what they like and the people they buy it from make less money - yet somehow this is good. Suffering in order to remember voluntary suffering is similar to making others suffer to remember torture. Suffering is a bad thing, any desire to make more of it is irrational, anti-man and altruistic.

I shall be indulging myself over Lent. I will produce more, make more money, work harder and enjoy myself more. Subsequently I will be a happier person, and the people I trade with will be more prosperous too: then after 40 days I can laugh at the first Christian who foolishly claims he has been more moral than me.