Ayn Rand ping. I’m not sure the author of this article understands Rand.
Big hitter, the Lama.
There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one “package-deal”: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.“Introduction,” The Virtue of SelfishnessAltruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.
The writer mischarachterizes Rand’s views on charity. She didn’t object to charity at all, she merely considered it of minor importance as long as it was not altruistic. In that regard, characterizing simple charity as altruistic is wrong. I wonder if the author even understands the word as used by Rand.
This author is making an error and misrepresenting Objectivism by equating kindness, good will towards others as altruism. Altruism is self sacrifice or living for the sake of others. To always put others before yourself and to give up something of greater value for something of lesser. For example if your wife who you love dearly gets cancer and a neighbor gets cancer then the proper thing for an altruist to do is to sacrifice his wife and spend all his time and money to save the neighbor.
If you help someone it should not be a sacrifice but a payment that the person has earned by the values and virtues that they represent such as a single mother working three jobs to get by and raise her child. An objectivist would feel compelled to help that mother and it would be selfish. That is the selfishness Ayn Rand was talking about.
Look at the heroes in Atlas Shrugged and ask yourself if all they cared about was profit. Hank Reardon for example risks his life and is prepared to give it to save Francisco D’anconia because he loves him. But it would not be a sacrifice because Francisco was the embodiment of all of his values. He would have given up his life and all the money he had ever made to save him and it would have been profoundly selfish. Values, not money is the root of objectivism.
In the end of the book all of the heroes put their lives on the line to save John Galt because he is a supreme value to them. Had they given their lives for the sake of James Taggert that would have been altruism. If all they were interested in was money they would have made deals with the government and gotten special favors like James Taggert but instead they gave up everything in their strike.
I don’t care if people don’t agree with Ayn Rand’s philosophy but I do care that it is so often misrepresented.
Altruism is not good according to objectivism. It is evil. “A love above and apart from one’s self interest is not only evil it is impossible” and that is what objectivism holds. And to hold that love apart from ones self interest is exactly what altruism demands.
Altruism is magnificent in theory, but is practically impossible in the real world. This is even understood in Buddhism in the concept of karma, but in the western sense, it could be looked at as a physical truth.
Call it “the capitalism of the universe”, in which if something is given, then something must be returned in some form or another, even if it is just gratitude or recognition of the gift. Credits and debts only end when they are concluded with a zero balance. But such credits and debts create movement in things, so have to be.
I read a good description, a thought problem, of how difficult it is to achieve altruism. It began with the arrival in a small rural town of a wealthy man, who wanted to bestow some of his money on the citizenry. But who to give it to?
At first, he decided to give money to the poor. But the poor had no experience with how to deal with a lot of money, so they quickly wasted it, leaving themselves just as poor as they had been, but also hungover, sick, their families unhappy and angry, and generally miserable.
So he then tried giving money to the wealthy. And while they accepted it, for them it was just marginally important, so they just invested it and forgot about it. It achieved little or nothing.
Then he tried giving it to the town’s middle class people. Small businessmen, mostly. But while they spent some and saved some, they kept doing what they had been doing, and their lives were also pretty much unchanged.
What did change, and in the whole town, was that soon everyone tried to become the wealthy man’s friend, in hopes of getting more money; and became somewhat resentful when he showed no sign of wanting to give more. So they annoyed him a lot, pestered him, tried to bribe or threaten him, and at one point somebody even built a small temple to him hoping to pray themselves some more money.
Eventually he decided to leave town, not appreciating their return on his efforts at altruism. But that was not enough, for they followed him for some distance, telling other towns that he was giving away money. Only with great effort did he finally escape their clutches, so he resolved to not do *that* again.
About the only lasting change was the guy with the temple, who still prays that he comes back someday to give him money. His prayers are not heard, but gives him some solace.
So in the final analysis, the rules of altruism are pretty stiff. That to be a real gift, it must be given without expectation of reward of any kind, even gratitude or recognition of the giver. It cannot be directed to someone with hope that they will do something with it, even that they will keep it and not just throw it away or waste it.
So an anonymous giver and an anonymous receiver.
An altruist must even sacrifice the satisfaction of giving, for that is a reward to oneself for being a “good, altruistic” person.
This is why it is far better to not even try to be altruistic, but instead make a generally fair bargain, an exchange, with no strings attached. This is the “capitalism of the universe” I mentioned. It is easier, simpler, more likely to achieve the desired result, and creates credit and a debt which are then resolved, so things return to balance.
The writer needs to read and think a little more...this is a straw man argument.
There's no way to be a "big fan" of Ayn Rand and be "puzzled" by her "hostility" to altruism. That's lama dung.