What a sublime state of denial you've achieved.
You don't think that Ted Bundy's murder for pleasure would constitute the mindless self-indulgence, that Ayn Rand rejects in this quote?
History proves, from the growth of Rome to the birth of the United States, that the key requirement for any such endeaver is for men to adhere to a duty above and beyond their pursuit of personal happiness or even their lives. How else to understand and explain what it was that motivated our ancestors to die at Valley Forge or Guadalcanal than a sense of duty and sacrifice. How else to understand and explain what our forefathers did when they came here with nothing except the belief that their sacrifice would make for a better life for their children
Even Aristotle said that true happiness is gained by making the correct moral choices throughout one's life.But the conundrum lies in that making the correct moral choices sometimes entails the sacrifice of what you think will make you happy or even your life. Because in the end happiness cannot be pursued for itself. It will always lead to selfishness and seperation from others. True happiness can only be the end result of doing something else. Like sacrificing for a great cause. Or doing your duty to your children or your parents or your country.
The reason Ayn Rand never had children and was unfaithful to her husband is instructive. She lived her philosophy. In the end she was not a builder, she was a consumer. She consumed the seed corn better men than she had produced. How ironic.
What a sublime state of denial you've achieved.
You don't think that Ted Bundy's murder for pleasure would constitute the mindless self-indulgence, that Ayn Rand rejects in this quote?
To answer your question..."NO."
Look at the entire quote:
Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None—except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and theirs demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice. It is only with their mind that I can deal and only for my own self-interest, when they see that my interest coincides with theirs. When they don’t, I enter no relationship; I let dissenters go their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs.
Pu in context, clearly Rand's principle doesn't apply to Bundy.
Hardly. Bundy's decision to act without regard to the lives of his victims was cold and calculated. In that, he was a de facto Objectivist.