I voted for the post, but I'm in total agreement with you here, that morality is the highest standard.
Morality, ethics, is so much more than just arbitrary or god given "rules" to live by. It is something entirely different to "duty". It is actually what guides how we live and how to make sure that we live well. It isn't isolated from practicality, even when it can of course seem so.
Here comes an Ayn Rand quote, so brace yourselves everyone...
Morality, to you, is a phantom scarecrow made of duty, of boredom, of punishment, of pain, a cross-breed between the first schoolteacher of your past and the tax collector of your present, a scarecrow standing in a barren field, waving a stick to chase away your pleasures—and pleasure, to you, is a liquor-soggy brain, a mindless slut, the stupor of a moron who stakes his cash on some animal’s race
She is speaking here of the false "Moral-Practical Dichotomy", that confuse the minds of so many.
Those are powerful fucking words. Who exactly is Ayn Rand? She sounds like a wise one.
She was a powerful fucking woman, through her many struggles. She created her own philosophical system, despised both by the left and right. She was a proponent of minarchist capitalism, but primarily of ethics based in egoism. (Egoism and selfishness, here not to be confused with any negative use of these words, such as "egotism" or "egocentrism")
There are many much more controversial, harder to understand and more ambigious quotes one could pull. She also lived quite an extraordinary and often chaotic life.
If you start getting into her ideas at any point, I would recommend staying away from her fiction books and the many left/right wing opinion pieces that have been written on her.