Which is really not the question here. The question is, should you fell empathy even if you sacrifice your own interests, considering the person in question is honest and did not cause it’s own miserable situation. Else she just states the obvious and we do not think that, do we?
It depends on all 3 things together. If the beggar is an alcoholic, and I give him money that I know he’s going to buy booze with, then wouldn’t that be immoral? What if it also causes my own kids to go to bed hungry? I mean, I suppose in some circumstance you might say it isn’t, but can’t you agree that in many cases it would be immoral?
Debatable. It’s not IMO. You need alcohol to survive on the street and I personally do not have problem with that (btw: I do not drink).
Yes, there are situations where it could be immoral, like spending the dollar on booze for a beggar when someone else is starving. But does this really help the discussion? This, again, is stating the obvious. If there is nothing more to Rand’s philosophy then this, then it’s useless.
After years and years of such discussion, I have found that the main difference between Rand devotees and others is that they tend to reject the idea of a social contract as something centrally important to the functioning of a complicated society. They resent the social contract and see it as limiting their own personal freedom which they hold to a much higher value than anything else. They are far more self centered than non-Randites and tend to view everything through the prism of rugged individualism and personal choice. They resent and reject the power of the state as coercive and negative.
There is really no middle ground between the communitarian viewpoint and the Rand viewpoint.
But see those are distinctions you are making, not distinctions Ayn Rand made. In Ayn Rand’s philosophy, if I give up some of my possessions to help another I am immoral. Regardless of my circumstances or theirs.
I’m not arguing against paying my fair share of taxes. That is not a “sacrifice”. I am indirectly paying for the services that I use. I also provide a benefit to society through the work I perform.
Some people will produce shelter and find sources of food and water. Others will sit around waiting for someone to rescue them.
I should point out that most of the main characters in Atlas Shrugged ultimately sacrificed nearly all of their businesses and material posessions for their ideals. Dagny showed compassion to what initially appeared to be a transient vagrant on her train. Rand (at least not in AS) does not advocate compassionless society. What she believed was immoral was that the starving family either on their own or through agents of the government has the right to steal a loaf of bread from you because of their need.
I suppose you would consider me immoral if I hired the same starving family to paint my appartment?
Really? Because we have not been debating her for going on 7 pages now.:rolleyes:
The amount of disapproval in this thread is impressive. I haven’t been on the SDMB long, but I’d have to guess only threads on religion and Republicans showcase more contempt. Which really surprises me, as I had hoped that this board of all places would sustain an interesting debate. A few have been debating in good faith, but the others that are threadshitting are quite a letdown. I enjoyed Rand’s ideas (but not her prose especially; I am well aware of her shortcomings as a writer and acknowledge that she really, really needed a better editor) and think that Objectivism details some truths and is worth considering.
The basics of her theory - as I understand them, and once again IANAO - seem both noble and “right” to me, and don’t think many would argue against these:
Men and women should be free to live their lives as they see fit. Productive work should be celebrated, as should the people that succeed. Rational thought should lead our decision making: wishing something to be so cannot make it so. A person’s happiness should be their highest goal. None of these ideals allow one to harm another person, or take from them. We should all be traders.
I would go further and say that people should not be beholden to the needs of others. No one should have a claim on what one produces, beyond providing a few essentials for a community: defense, courts, police, etc.*
No of these ideals seems that outlandish to me. All I see is Rand offering a defense of them.
To clarify: I enjoyed AS, think it contains some good ideas, but am not an objectivist, nor a sociopath. What have objectivists or fans of Rand done lately to merit such scorn? Hell, there have certainly been other moral or political philosophies practiced by people that resulted in terrible results (I’m looking at you Marx; what’s the death toll up to now?). But I don’t consider all Marxists insane or bloodthirsty.
- Yes, I realize this is a gray area, and I am advocating for taxes to support what I consider essential but disregarding other expenditures. But I don’t pretend that some philosophy has the answers for everything; as others have argued in this thread, life is messy.
Like the energizer bunny, I see this thread is still going…
Um…no. Again, perhaps you should either read the books, finish them or maybe go back and re-read them carefully, because you are wrong here. Rand never said that it was immoral to give up possessions…or even to give up ones life. Where do you guys get this stuff (well, ok, I know the answer…that being that many of you never read the friggin books, or started them and gave up, etc etc). What she objected too was being FORCED to give up possessions or ones life. It’s a recurring theme throughout her books…society or the government demanding sacrifice from people. In Atlas Shrugged the main characters repeatedly risk their lives for each other and for the cause. Hell, Galt is TORTURED for his beliefs, and he willingly goes to that torture because he feels what he’s doing is right and he’s willing to sacrifice even his life in that cause. In the Fountainhead, Rourke is willing to sacrifice his career and even go to jail to do what he thinks is right.
What Rand thinks is ‘immoral’, as you put it, is forced sacrifice, or demanded pity…something that doesn’t come from you, but is imposed on you from outside. The core of her belief isn’t selfishness (as has been repeatedly stated by folks in this thread who have probably never actually opened one of her books), but about attempting to be the best self one can…and by everyone doing so, making society a better place through raising the entire human race, instead of bringing everyone down to the least common denominator.
In the end her philosophy is as unworkable as Marx’s, because people just don’t work that way. People are messy, and while I think that the heroic lurks in most of us, it’s often obscured behind all of the mess and clutter we each have in our lives.
But it’s interesting and thought provoking…well, to those who actually bothered to read through entire books (I know, it’s asking a lot of some folks in this thread to be able to concentrate that long) and actually engage their minds. I slogged through The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, even though both are not exactly in line with my own philosophy…and while I disagreed with much I also found things that were thought provoking. I also slogged through several versions of the Bible and even a copy of the Koran, even though, again, they aren’t exactly in line with my own philosophy. But this is apparently too much for some in this thread to do with Rand’s own books, even though they don’t hesitate to comment about the books and the philosophy in such disparaging terms. Luckily, except for the anti-Rand faithful, I think most realize that speaking from ignorance on a topic, even if one speaks VERY LOUDLY, does not an argument make…
-XT
from A. Selene
Sorry, but I would take issue with the first statement. people are not free to live their lives as they see fit. Maybe if they live on a self sufficient island and they are the final authority there, sure I can buy that. But the rest of us live in a society of other people who have a right to form a government and make laws and rules for all of us to live by. And those rules go beyond the very bare bones “don’t hurt anybody”.
We live in a community where our individual interests are not paramount compared to those of the larger community. Balance must be achieved.
The devil being in the details on exactly where that balance point should be, and exactly where individual rights are trumped by societies needs. Since Rand was writing fiction in order to tell a story AND to attempt to make a point, I think that her stories are deliberately exaggerated in order to emphasize the points she was trying to make.
-XT
Where did ‘productivity’ come from? Where did I say that productivity was the critical measure? You do know that productivity <> economic growth, right? Productivity is simply GDP divided by number of workers.
It’s entirely possible that productivity is higher in France simply because France has labor laws which punish employment, and therefore companies make due with fewer employees and therefore work them harder. It could also be higher because France may on average have an economy more focused on less labor-intensive goods. In short, it’s a dishonest measure of overall governmental success.
This is a country where a good day is one in which less than 100 cars are burned in the streets by disaffected citizens, and which has had a growth rate in the 2000’s hovering around 1%. I don’t think you really want to use it as a model.
Absolutely. And in France, the labor regulations are so stringent that employment growth has stalled. And because it’s next to impossible to fire someone, taking on a new employee is a huge risk. That means young people have a hell of a time finding work because they don’t have an existing job history, and immigrants especially have trouble finding work. The result was unemployment over 20% for young people in France before the worldwide recession.
That was from 2006, before any of the economic downturns hit. Riots in the streets, burning cars, and 40% of young women and 36% of young men in urban areas unemployed. That’s what France’s stringent labor regulations bought them.
Which is probably why, when the John Galt’s of France go on strike, they move to America. 
-XT
Um…no, right back at you.
First of all, it’s not as I put it. It’s as Ayn Rand put it. She is the one who injects the idea of selfishness as “moral” uprightness. “Moral” is her word. (Honestly, have you even read her work? I can’t tell.) (Wheee! Isn’t condescension fun?!)
Here are Ayn Rand’s words again:
Note the injunctive. Man must not sacrifice himself for others, but must exist only for his own sake. Note that this injunctive is couched in moral rather than philosophical terms. (Which is why Rand’s brand of “philosophy” seems more like a religion to me.)
So yes, Ayn Rand would regard it as “immoral” for you to give a can of your beans to your starving neighbor, thus “sacrificing” yourself to him. If you contend she believed otherwise, show me where. Give me a quote to counter mine.
Here’s a hint: sacrificing yourself for “your principles” doesn’t count. We are talking about making a sacrifice to help someone else. Show me a quote or passage that demonstrates that Ayn Rand didn’t find the very idea abhorrent.
What, in any of my posts, supports or even suggests this?
In other words, how’s that straw man working out for you?
For sure. Which is one reason why it is extremely dangerous, not to mention intellectually disingenuous, to found a real world political philosophy on a fictional work of such meager depth and obvious bias.
Rand would have a problem with this. Rand’s thing was that moral behavior comes from using reason and logic to engage in productive behavior. Her biggest problem with libertarianism (or so she said) was that it ignores the part about productive achievement, and focuses only on being left alone. Rand hated hedonism. People who simply exist for their own amusement are flawed in her world view. Hank Reardon’s family in Atlas Shrugged, for example. They weren’t taking from government, they were living off money freely given by Reardon. But they did not seek productive work, and were basically parasites. So yes, it takes more to be moral in Rand’s philosophy than simply ‘living for yourself’.
I guess this speaks to Rand’s notion of the social contract. A citizen in her society is expected to contribute, but to do so by engaging in productive activity that aligns with their own interests, guided by their own reason.
So where does that leave recreation? Obviously Rand believed that recreation was fine - she engaged in plenty of it herself. Her characters enjoy the arts. I guess it comes down to balance - work first, play later. That sort of thing.
So no, I don’t think Rand would consider buying a luxury to be immoral, or spending an evening dancing. What she would find immoral would be doing those things exclusively, without engaging in the productive activity needed to pay for them - even if someone else is voluntarily paying.
It’s important to note that in Ayn Rand’s world, ‘immoral’ doesn’t mean sinful, and it doesn’t mean behavior that should be punished. She didn’t believe in God, and she certainly believed that you had a right to drink yourself into oblivion or otherwise destroy your own life if you wanted to. In the context of her philosophy, moral acts are those which she believes represent the best of man, and which will lead to the greatest personal and societal happiness. They are acts to be encouraged. Rules for living to give our children that will lead them to the best possible life.
Again, in the real world we recognize that people are flawed, and all of us blow off work on occasion or play when we should be working or studying, or spend too much money on things of transitory value. But the whole point of a moral code is to help us recognize when we’re going off the wagon - not to send us to hell for doing so. Rand’s rules set out the path best traveled, and it’s up to us to stay as close to it as we can within the limits of our own human failings.
She may very well believe that. While you think you are doing some good sacrificing to help your downtrodden neighbors, in reality you are unintentionally creating disincentives for them to find work and rewarding unproductive behavior. Soon they may come to expect those cans of beans and even come to resent you if you try to encourage them to find their own source of income and food.
Not that I necessarily agree with that. While unemployment checks may encourage people to stay unemployed a bit longer than they might ordinarily, taking away those checks doesn’t create jobs.
Well, how nice of you to insert an extra word “only” that’s not actually there. It does change the meaning somewhat. There’s no need to poison the debate by altering the quote.
You have caricatured her quote into a meaningless stance. With your exaggeration, one could say that opening the door for someone behind entering behind you at the grocery store is “sacrificing” because that person “sacrificed” some of his calorie expenditure for others. I think your parsing of her quotes look ridiculous.
And, um, no right back to you again. You have to read the whole quote, not cut and parse as you are doing…and we have to read it in context, and also in the light of the other things she wrote. The quote you provided does not say that ‘if I give up some of my possessions to help another I am immoral’. Read it again:
A man (or woman) exists for their own sake, not the sake of others. Check. Nothing about it being immoral to give up possessions. He doesn’t sacrifice himself for others, nor ask others to sacrifice for himself. Check…he is not REQUIRED to sacrifice himself for others, nor is he requiring others to sacrifice for himself. This does not preclude the fact that he can CHOOSE to give up possessions or life itself. See the next sentence…‘The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life’.
My emphasis. If a man or woman’s ‘own rational self-interest’ is furthered by their own CHOICE to give up life or possessions, then there is no contradiction. The crux is the term ‘sacrifice’, which has connotations of a requirement. THAT would be in opposition to Rand’s philosophy, or ‘immoral’ as you put it.
Note the caveat…‘The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life’. Read it in the context of the rest of her writings, and it’s fairly clear what she is getting at. Trying to quote snippets of text from anyone’s writings (especially when the someone in question has written a great deal), you can pretty much twist things any way you like, especially if you don’t bother to read any more than those snippets.
No, you are quite wrong, and no, I’m not going to give you a one stop shop quote. If her philosophy could be boiled down to one liners then it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as it actually is…just like Marx and Engeles. I again urge you not to debate on this subject since it’s fairly obvious you haven’t bothered to actually read her works and are resorting to twisting one liners to say what you THINK she meant, while not actually understanding what she was getting at.
Here’s a hint…they are all inter-related. In the Randian universe ‘your principles’ are one of the most sacred aspects of one’s self, and they certainly DO count. Even a cursory understanding of her philosophy would lead you to understanding this. Principles are more important than things…even than life…in Rand’s world.
No, you are talking about that. I’m talking about willingly giving up ones life or possessions for something an individual finds more important. In both Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead the main characters do this and show a willingness to do this repeatedly. They don’t ‘sacrifice’ themselves or their principals for others, they are willing to give up their lives or possessions (but not their principals) for themselves, in their own self interest, or in a cause that is entwined with who and what they are. In Roarke’s case, for the ideal of architecture…in Galt’s for his vision of what the world should be.
But you make it so easy for me to be condescending, since it’s fairly obvious you don’t know what you are talking about. It’s been the major issue I’ve had with this thread…people attempting to talk about a subject they obviously find distasteful AND are ignorant of. I don’t understand why…there are plenty of REAL things one could discuss negatively concerning Rand’s works and her philosophy…for those who have actually bothered to read and attempt to understand what she was getting at. But so many in this thread have come in here to huff and puff about Rand when they quite obviously are totally clueless about her books and her philosophy, or have some half baked/half read take on what she wrote. There are plenty of books that I have started but never been able to get through due to dislike of the subject or of the writing style of the author…but I don’t attempt to then interject my opinion about that book or author in a discussion like this. A better forum for that kind of opinion would be if the OP was asking ‘what did you think of X?’, or ‘How do you like author Y?’.
-XT
Or, she might just be dumb enough to believe precisely what she says.