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Well, I read "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" in my arrogant Teen Angst years.

In short a universal morality is extrapolated by observation and reason with man’s happiness as a rational being as its highest ideal

Like most Objectivists, you like to say reason, yet I don't really think you know what it means.

"Man's happiness" is a useless abstraction, any moral system will be at the expense of someone's happiness. If your moral system stated it was bad to kill senselessly, you are infringing on a serial killer's happiness. If you say killing is okay, some guy is not going to be happy when he gets butchered for no particular reason on the street.

You might say the serial killer above wasn't being rational but then you have to define what being rational is. Usually it boils down to, they believe what I believe. You can't reationally prove killing is wrong, just like you can't prove that killing(even yourself) is okay. If you knock yourself off rest assured there are grieving families out there, and even if not that you have no idea what awaits you once you're dead . For those who say there is no life after death it is just as dogmatic as there is life after death.

If you haven't noticed, moral systems in a society change by people who, for the most part, are trying to change moral norms so as to create an environment in which they are happier, universally at the expense of others. How do you create a universal morality out of that?

You could say the greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people. Then you have to somehow quantify happiness, and, if you could manage to do that, you would realize that the this is impossible to do because greatest happiness and greatest amount of people are mutually exclusive goals and don't line up, kind of like the greatest wealth for the greatest amount of people.

As a side note, trying to find universals out of observation uses induction, a useful but fatally flawed mechanism. If you see the sun rise every day for your entire life you could think that, out of observation, the sun will always rise, though that is not true. David Hume really ripped inductive reasoning apart if you want to read his stuff.

There's my semi-coherent rant, It's times like there I really wish I was more fluid in getting across my thoughts on the subject.

Rand is a lightweight, I recommend you read Kierkegaard(Fear and Trembling) or Aquinas sometime.

""Man's happiness" is a useless abstraction, any moral system will be at the expense of someone's happiness."

With all due respect, I need to stop reading you right there. You didn’t even read my last short post to you carefully. You’re making one of the common errors that most first time readers make that I referred to.

I qualified “happiness” with “as a rational being”. Maximizing that is incompatible with mankind living as serial killers and probably every other abhorrent behavior that you can imagine. I’ve taken the time to reason through this misunderstanding on FR with a couple of people, but it takes time and a committed effort on both sides. I’m not inclined to do so with the attitude in your first few sentences.

Also, one can no more understand Objectivism by reading AS and TFH than understand Christianity by seeing “Passion of the Christ” and the “Ten Commandments”. The phylosopy itself is outlined in a little 110 page book called “The Virtues of Selfishness”, but it’s so abbreviated that few catch all the qualifiers like the one that tripped you up so most still walk away with misconceptions.

Regards.

(Oh, I just read your last sentence as well before hitting the “Reply” button. With your anger, you’re not in a place to have this discussion with you. Don’t bother writing me back. I won’t read it.)

You claim

Man's happiness" is a useless abstraction,

Our rights to life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness have served our Republic well. Claiming otherwise has only served socialism.

any moral system will be at the expense of someone's happiness.

False. Life is not a zero sum game. I respect your life, you respect mine, we both win.

If your moral system stated it was bad to kill senselessly, you are infringing on a serial killer's happiness.

'Happiness' at senseless killing is insane. It is sane to kill an insane killer.

You go on to claim that you believe:

-- "you can't rationally prove killing is wrong,

It is not 'wrong', in that we all must kill other plants & animals [and our human enemies] in order to live.

just like you can't prove that killing (even yourself) is okay.

No need for 'proof'. Every day some men sacrifice their lives for the sake of their peers.. It stands the test of reason that this is OK.