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Post by CtraK on Sept 26, 2011 13:23:15 GMT -5
The thing is with Atlas Shrugged is that, whilst I've never read it, I have heard the premise and several scenes described and quoted several times (the train scene sounds particularly repugnant), and of course, the question that emerges to a rational person regarding the end is:
If society has been deliberately allowed to collapse - putting aside the idea that able-bodied, healthy adults "deserve" to live in the ensuing mess - what happens to the disabled, the mentally ill, the elderly and perhaps most significantly, children?
Now, I understand that Rand herself did not care for children in general. That in itself is fair enough, but surely if you're working to create a better society, they have to factor in somewhere. You can probably do without lawyers or management consultants, but children are pretty central to the whole thing...
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Post by Old Viking on Sept 26, 2011 14:08:40 GMT -5
Her name is hard to spell. Especially her first name.
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Post by Tiberius on Sept 26, 2011 14:11:47 GMT -5
Well, she turned me into a newt!
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Post by MaybeNever on Sept 26, 2011 14:48:05 GMT -5
Sadly, I do not have an image or article stating that bookmarked, it's true, but I don't have a source immediately available for it. I find all sorts of things saying that income increases as an individual gets more education (and that education means a lower divorce rate, less people smoking, more volunteering, all that fun stuff), but not benefits like what you just described. Damn. It's been a few years since I saw it, but I'm reasonably certain that just such a graph exists, plotting the median education level of an area against median income for various education-level groups. But my own searches don't turn it up either. Possibly I'm wrong on that point. Regardless, the many other community benefits of education make the point moot.
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Post by Wykked Wytch on Sept 26, 2011 16:41:57 GMT -5
Randroidism is faked-up Nietzsche. The ubermensch may and must do whatever they want, for they are naturally superior in every way. The untermensch, being inferior, must obey. It's a two-bit fraud of a work of philosophy. * Objectivism is a silly term. It's overt propaganda, an attempt to emotionally trick people into believing it sub-rationally. That should give you an idea of the shallow thinking that went, and still goes, into this supposedly 'perfect' philosophy. Nonsense. Objectivism is as fair a description of Rand's beliefs as lovism or happyism is of mine. Quoted for truth. I don't think that objective bases for moral values even exist. So saying that selfishness is better than not being selfish is just as stupid as saying that being altruistic makes you better than someone else. There's no reason why the untermensch even has to obey. It's thinly veiled fascism, except instead of a psychopathic government controlling us, it's a psychopathic corporation. Which is even more dangerous because while governments at least have to try to enforce the law (along with whatever other goals they may have), corporations are just out for money. On a side note, even though I think Ayn Rand is a good writer, her philosophies are absolutely infuriating. There's this one boy in my class who quotes Ayn Rand as if she's giving the Sermon on the Mount, and he tries to look legitimate but secretly everyone knows he's an asshole. I have a theory that in every random smattering of high school debate club kids, there will always be one Randian who thinks he or she (usually he) is being edgy.
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Post by ltfred on Sept 26, 2011 17:40:02 GMT -5
I don't think Rand is a good writer (from the bits I've read). She's self-important, super-slow, wanky and hubristic. Then again, I don't think Hemingway's writing in the Bell Tolls is particularly good. So maybe I'm just wierd.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Sept 26, 2011 18:02:46 GMT -5
Professor Oak, I choose you!
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Post by Adeimantus on Sept 26, 2011 19:36:37 GMT -5
These are some good responses; MaybeNever’s in particular. Alright. I’ll say first that what I have to say is a product of my own reading of Rand and my own thinking about what she has to say. But to begin with, the most important misunderstanding people seem to be making is in regards to what Rand means by “altruism.”
Rand is not saying that it is evil to help others. She is not saying that helping others is unpraiseworthy or not worth your time. She is not advocating a view of others as sacrifices for the altar of your ambition; she in fact explicitly condemns this in Niestzche’s philosophy (whether she understood him correctly as saying that is another matter). When Rand talks about “altruism,” she is not talking about helping those in need, being kind to others, giving to aid someone else, or engaging in work whose primary goal is the benefit of another.
What Rand condemns in the term “altruism” are the ideas that the primary beneficiaries of your actions are others, that morality is about what you do to or for someone else rather than for yourself, that an action’s moral praiseworthiness is determined by the benefit received by others, and that the good of others is accomplished through the sacrifice of your own good, goals, values, and desires- and that, conversely, to be primarily concerned with your own happiness or success is “selfish” and wrong.
For instance, can’t you imagine a fundie telling you it was wrong of you to spend all those years in college when you could have spent all that time passing out tracts door to door, that you were too concerned with your fleshly, worldly desires rather than with the well-being of other men’s souls? Have you ever had a bum relative who mooched off of everyone try to make you feel guilty for having as much as you did, when he had nothing? Or imagine all the conflicts, political, religious, and racist, in the world in Rand’s time and even today-aren’t they all framed in terms of how some smaller ideological, religious, or ethnic group was a threat to the good of “the People,” “the Faithful,” or “the Pure?”
Ultimately, Rand’s hatred of altruism is a hatred of the idea that the individual exists to serve the group, and that his moral worth is to be determined by what others manage to get out of him, rather than what he himself is or has accomplished. She is not in the least saying you are wrong to work to help others: she is saying it is wrong anytime you surrender your own values and desires- which may include the desire to help someone in need- to the demands of others and the “duties” they presume to impose upon you. Consider: why do you want to help anyone? Is it because you, personally, individually, consider that person and their well-being or success to be of value and significance to your own happiness? Or is it because there is some rule or duty that says “you have to.”
What Rand is claiming is that altruism is the morality that presents you with “duties”: moral imperatives you are expected to fulfill without consideration for your own happiness or desires. Different groups impose different duties- it might be a religious group that expects you to surrender many hours each week to preach their message, regardless of whether you want to. It might be a political ideology that threatens to ostracize you if you disagree with how others purport to make use of your own wealth. It could be a parent who constantly reminds you of all they have “sacrificed” for your sake anytime you stray outside the confines of their beliefs.
Rand is declaring that you should live free of the arbitrary demands and threats of society and all its various groups and live your life for the attainment of your own happiness according to your own judgments and values- but she is not in the least advocating the abandonment of morality; on the contrary, she takes it quite seriously. All the most basic rules of morality- not killing, lying, cheating, or stealing, etc.- those are considered to be obvious: no “selfish” person, as she terms those who take their happiness as their ultimate goal, would ever see any evil thing, any harm towards others as being of any value to themselves. Besides that, as this “selfish” man is concerned only with acquiring the things he discovers to be of the most value to his happiness, he would never want to harm someone else: because people are precisely one of the things he “selfishly” values.
Rand calls this the morality of “rational selfishness” or rational self-interest. Your own life is the standard of value- but you can only achieve that value by thinking and living rationally, by understanding what the world and all the things which populate it are and how they work. This is where the “objective” part comes in. The world and everything in it are the way they are and no amount of quibbling will change that. Everything in the universe has a “certain, specific nature,” and the key to success is the ability of your mind to grasp that nature and respond to it. So Rand’s “selfishness,” far from being a blank check to run out and become a hedonist, doing whatever feels good at the moment, no matter the harm to yourself or others, demands a lot of work of you. And one of the things this rationally selfish man might realize about the world is that some people suffer through no fault of their own, and, angered by the evil of so great and magnificent a creature as a human being living in pain, he might decide to take the steps to see to it that the world is reshaped into the way he knows it should be and wants it to be.
Consider: who would you want to help you when you were down? Somebody who has been told his whole life about how he has a duty to others and who resentfully struggles to fulfill it? Or a man who has come to understand the value of what he works for and desires to obtain it?
I recall a quote I read once in a book: “Don’t ask what the world needs: ask what makes your heart come alive, because what the world needs is people whose hearts have come alive.” It is the people who manage, to one degree or another, to break free of the expectations and demands of others and act in pursuit of the things they love, the things which bring them joy, and live with understanding and wisdom, who make the whole world work. Those are the heroes Rand praises.
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Post by Vene on Sept 26, 2011 19:53:41 GMT -5
Rand is not saying that it is evil to help others. Only if it's in an emergency and you don't have to go out of your way, otherwise it is immoral. That is the whole point of her essay "The Ethics of Emergencies."
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Post by The_L on Sept 26, 2011 19:57:12 GMT -5
Adeimantus, do you even understand what you're saying there? Because I'm not sure you do. You sound like me, at 8, reciting "E = mc^2" because I thought that made me smart. Repeating things doesn't make you smart; it makes you a parrot.
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Post by mechtaur on Sept 26, 2011 21:26:51 GMT -5
Look, that whole essay you just wrote falls apart when someone doesn't see another person's well being as valuable. Look up the interview Rand gave, she explicitly praises a fucking rapist because he didn't care about the victim but didn't let the laws deciding rape was illegal stop him. Hell, the only reason I didn't throw my computer across the room was because my wife held me down.
She was a monster that spawned an entire philosophy that created even more, but with the ability to sound legit in their idea of it.
If you think that might makes right is a good philosophy, go live in the slummiest ghettos you can find for a year or two and tell me how advanced that culture is. Go live there and tell me how morally upright those people are and how well that little slice of society is functioning.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Sept 26, 2011 22:21:33 GMT -5
To this thread, to Fuhrer Rand, and to Addy, I have only this to say:
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Post by Thejebusfire on Sept 26, 2011 22:28:37 GMT -5
I have no problem with Rand. It's the people who take Atlas Shurgged too seriously that I can't stand. I view them the same way I view Twilight fanatics.
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Post by the sandman on Sept 26, 2011 22:29:49 GMT -5
I'm sorry, but that long-winded defense of Rand's "ethos" fails because of two things:
First, you seem to be unaware of the fact that many of us have not only read her books, but have actually bothered to do the extra legwork necessary to put them in context using the author's own words and interviews. We are fully versed in her foolishness.
Second, you do not seem to have done that legwork yourself, as your essay up there seems to have been written by someone who, while they may have read a bunch of stuff about Rand, has never actually read Rand's work itself. You seem utterly ignorant of basic aspects of her ideology that anyone who had actually read her work would be aware of, so I can only assume either deliberate or lazy ignorance.
Seeing as how it looks like you came here primarily to preach Objectivism at us, it seems odd to have such a tenuous grasp on it.
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Post by John E on Sept 26, 2011 23:09:50 GMT -5
Doesn't seem odd to me. Fundies of all stripes (assuming Adeimantus fits the label, I admit I haven't been paying close attention) often have a less than stellar understanding of the ideology they follow.
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