Self-Made Man Sculpture

An anonymous Letter 

¨Romanticism is the conceptual art school. It deals, not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental, and universal problems and values of human existence. It does not record or photograph, but Create and Project.¨¹ According to Aristotle, it is about not of things as they are, but of things, as they might be and ought to be. The ideal. Romantic realism emphasizes in themes that evoke and celebrate moments of happiness, joy, and success, possible for man on earth. The elaboration of Self-Made Man sculpture was created by the artist Bobbie Carlyle, who states that Self-Made Man represents the man who carves himself and his future from the stone from which he emerges.

For one to carve one’s future, personality, and spirit, well-grounded values are required. The Self-Made Man sculpture reflects values such as reason, purpose, self-esteem, in addition to its three corresponding virtues, rationality, productivity, and pride.

You are the “Self-Made Man”, triumphant by his own efforts, it represents you:

First, for your rationality, which is a product of reason.

¨Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one only guides to action. It means one’s total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, to the maintenance of a full mental focus in all issues, in all choices, in all of one’s waking hours. It means a commitment to the fullest perception of reality within one’s power and to the constant, active expansion of one’s perception, i.e., of one’s knowledge. It means a commitment to the reality of one’s own existence, i.e., to the principle that all of one’s goals, values, and actions take place in reality and, therefore, that one must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one’s perception of reality. It means a commitment to the principle that all of one’s convictions, values, goals, desires, and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen, and validated by a process of thought—as precise and scrupulous a process of thought, directed by as ruthlessly strict an application of logic, as one’s fullest capacity permits.¨²

Second, your productivity, which is a product of purpose.

¨Productive work is the road of man’s unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values. “Productive work” does not mean the unfocused performance of the motions of some job. It means the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability. It is not the degree of a man’s ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind.¨³

And finally, your pride, which is a product of self-esteem.

¨Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned—that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character—that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind—that as a man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining—that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul—that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal.¨⁴

You are the generator who has improved his own life, following his own rational interests; and all thanks to the quality that your mind produces, carrying out your work with passion and ambition.

Surely you will see reflected in the sculpture more of your virtues, I have only mentioned the cardinals that I see embodied in you.

I hope this gift brings you much joy and inspiration.

I love you.

¹ Ayn Rand. (1968). ¨Introduction to The Fountainhead”, The Objectivist (p. 1). New York city, USA: The Objectivist.

² Ayn Rand. (1964). The Virtue of Selfishness: The Objectivist Ethics (p.25). New York, USA: New American Library.

³ Ayn Rand. (1964). The Virtue of Selfishness: The Objectivist Ethics (p.26). New York, USA: New American Library.

⁴ Ayn Rand. (1961). For the New Intellectual: Galt’s Speech (p.130). New York, USA: New American Library.