Posted on 01/15/2005 6:44:14 AM PST by billybudd
One thing I liked about Ayn Rand is that she didn't do bullshit. If she had a position, no matter how unpopular, she defended it without compromise. The same can't be said of her successors at the Ayn Rand Institute in the wake of their tsunami PR disaster. Can anyone make heads or tails of this hairsplitting quote?
That's a loaded statement. It's the same mindset that governments apply when they take private property from one person and give it to another because the second party can generate more taxes for the government entity. And it's the same mentality that drives School to Work - that the state should drive the educational process to maximize the tax revenue that the peons will produce. Hardly a concept which Ayn Rand would expouse. So in their effort to take Rand's anti-altruism to new levels, these twinkies ended up in the same philosophical camp as the socialists Rand despised.
At the end of the day, a key aspect of human social development has been a desire to care for the afflicted - and that isn't just pure altruism, it also is self-interest - that if we create such a society, then if we are in need, such as after a tornado or flood, then we will get helped as well.
About a week after the tsunami, I researched the effects of the devastation on the coffee and teak industries (Sumatran coffee and Indonesian teak are favorites of mine). Unfortunately, information about both was lacking. These products, and the people who harvest and produce the finished goods are extremely valuable worldwide.
Well, one isn't supposed to use such words as per posting guidelines, still the claim is quite humurous.
What you refer to as no Babs is all Babs all the time.
It all seems to me like scientology or phrenology or some other nutcake early 20th century scam pseudofad.
Heh, I meant it as "she didn't mince words." As to the quality of her philosophy, that's an open question...
What do these people have against "altruism"?
The objectivist position is that you shouldn't value other people for their own sake ("altruism"). You should only value them if they bring some benefit to you. ARI is trying to water down their position in response to negative publicity, with this ridiculous distinction between "benevolence" and "altruism". They now define selfishness as recognizing "potential value that another human being represents" - this is so nebulous as to be meaningless.
That was one of my big problems with objectivism. I figure that most altruism is partially out of a selfish desire to feel good about oneself. "I've given, therefore I'm a good person."
On a more practical level, it's an attempt to set up an informal, reciprocal system: "If I give now, it's more likely that other people will help me, should I find myself in similar straits."
To me, objectivism is pretty good on the diagnosis end of things, but insufficient or, at least, overly-narrow, when it comes to prescription.
Hmm, objectivists turning on each other over the most inane minutia. How rare...
ARI starts to look a lot like the Communist Party in the last days of the USSR. Both are sclerotic institutions chained to rigid ideologies that ignore some basic facts about human nature. It's not so surprising since so much of Rand's thinking was shaped by her experiences in revolutionary Russia. In both cases, great theses about the way the world works are no substitute for more patient observation and more modest conclusions.
A lot of things can get justified in the name of a larger and more "enlightened" concept of self-interest. When catastrophe's strike we offer relief to others at least in part in hope that they'll do the same if we are afflicted. We contribute the common defense, and over time, people's ideas of just what is necessary for our protection change. Governments will be pressed to provide relief for disasters. Successful societies will feel a pressure to spend on public projects of one sort or another "for the general good." Such a movement away from radical individualism is inevitable given that we don't live forever and can't be entirely independent or act wholly according to our own impulses.
What Rand seems to be saying is "Look at the horrible results this idea of altruism produces when taken to extremes, therefore my idea of selfishness is correct, taken to extremes." The first part is true -- try to run your life and those of others according to complete altruism, and you'll create a hell on earth. The second part is far more questionable. In an age of polarization, such a creed may win adherents, but others will recognize the folly in going to extremes of either self-abnegation or self-aggrandizement and avoid such radical alternatives.
A good summation of the issue of selfishness being a virtue. (And altruism a vice). I agree with a lot of Ayn Rand, like I agree with libertarianism to some degree. When you get right down to the real world, all utopian ideas leave something on the table. (Mainly whether they will attract enough adherents to survive as a movement.)
Objectivism certainly wins in a battle with communism or socialism, the idea that the individual must be allowed the freedom to florish is what is most hated by the left. Of course forced altruism is the "feel good" aspect of liberalism that Rand is speaking against. I believe any withholding of support for Asia's victims should be based on the idea that scammers are skimming off the top and Islamics are throwing us out for our support of Israel etc. That said, they must be worried about images of US soldiers helping victims so helping out is a good thing.
I’m not sure if “extreme” altruism or rational self interest is the correct description of the failings of either.
I think it’s simple short sightedness that cripples both of them. When altruists fail to recognize that they can best help others by helping themselves or when objectivists fail to include benevolence and generosity in their default behavior for their own social wellbeing, they both damage themselves and the credibility of their ideology. I’ve seen examples where both ideologies will result in similar behaviors and policies when practiced effectively even if the principles vary foundationally.
Objectivism makes the point (I think, considering my very limited study of it) that by working in our self interest, following our dreams, creating new concepts and inventions and creating wealth, we do far more to help others and raise living standards than all the altruists in the world combined. IMO, that is a really very good point, although not one that originated with Rand (I believe it dates back to at least the early 18th century among English thinkers).
But my opinion is that her denial of the value of human altruism is false. Altruism, according to Hayek (he's right, IMO) is instinctive in humans, it helps ensure survival of the species.
Just heard a commercial on the radio asking for help for tsunami victims. As soon as it began talking about "the children" I wondered if I was listening to an ad from a leftist org. Because leftist groups typically use various charities and callls for altruism as levers. Reform Judaism even defends high income taxes in the name of charity. I don't know if Rand was referring to this practice at all, but it does fit in rather well with objectivism.
The Ayn Rand Institute has an edge?
I read most of Ayn Rands books and a lot of Nathaniel Branden's analysis of her work (done while he was still on her side).
My problem was she made altruism and sacrifice to be evil words per se, instead of qualifying her usage of the words. I wish she had used the phrase "mindless altruism" to describe the object of her justifiable critism (the leftist concept that anyone who has more should be willing to give it away to those who have less, just because they have less).
Likewise, I wish she would have used the term "mindless sacrifice" to describe the tendency of some to sacrifice higher ideals to lower ideals. Her broad use of the term sacrifice tended to indict, even if unintentionally, those who would shed their own blood for a higher ideal, such as freedom, loved ones, or even just fellow platoon members (the soldier who throws himself on a live grenade, for example), where "sacrifice" can be objectively noble.
My other complaint was her willingness to lump all religious belief systems into the term "mysticism," making all religion on a par with witch doctors. She gave no credit to those who arrived at their beliefs by logical means. Instead of criticing faith per se, I wish she had identified "blind faith" for criticism instead. After all, even objectivists have to have faith in some things unseen. Isn't the extension of credit a form of faith? Even Midas Mulligan couldn't have known for sure that all his loans would actually get paid back.
But times are different now, and the alternatives aren't quite as stark or polarized. The 21st century may look very different from the 20th. I can understand that some people still want those radical alternatives, to keep us from tumbling down a slippery slope in the wrong direction. But the argument that human nature or moral law demands that we choose between a narrow conception of self-interest or a rigid and self-destructive altruism looks flawed to me.
You might want to look at the symposium I linked to earlier. In spite of the title it's not a simplistic what works vs. what's right dichotomy. A lot goes into trying to figure out the relationship between an idea being morally right, its being in conformity with human nature, and its bringing positive results -- a trickier question than it might at first appear.
That was something that I’d been mulling around lately and was happy to have a chance to put into words.
Your link looks interesting, but I don’t follow those discussions too much anymore.
I remember Freedman from his posts on the humanities.philosophy.objectivism news group 6-7 years ago. He kind of lost me when his utilitarian principle taken to the extreme got him cornered into defending the “prudent predator” concept - that it's moral to act criminally when success was guaranteed. He argued that if it was successful then by definition it had to be moral. I remember chiming in that even promoting that behavior lost him my trust and probably that of many others, so it was already against his self interest.
I see that he’s involved in the morality of anarchy seminar and the other seminar was on the plausibility of a morally ideal anarchist government. Wouldn’t the former dependent on the later? (Just ignorantly commenting without reading the lectures on my part.) Anarchism may be a more elegant equation, but if it’s not plausible in a democracy, then isn’t something wrong with it requiring it as a ideal to be reexamined?
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