About Objectivism

Objectivist Center ^ | 2/2002

[liberalnot]

reading rand's "new intellectual" changed my life. she had those berkeley-types pegged in the early '60s, long before most americans knew what was happening.

i remember a ph.d. candidate in philosophy telling me not to be seen with that book in the department!

it was then i realized that american academia wasn't so open as they would like others to think.

my only regret is not finding her sooner.

[Kevin Curry]

You people worship the writer of potboiler pulp novels, where every page is preachier than a Billy Sunday sermon.

[RJCogburn]

Yep, Kevbo, you are clearly not interested.

[Lurker]

" It sets a moral standard,"

You mean like Bill Clinton?

L

[Lloyd227]

"You would need to ask those who think ...."

But I was asking you. You made the statement, now can you back it up?

or is your post the "unsolicited drivel" to which you were referring?

[Cultural Jihad]

Indubitably, the failure of anyone to adhere to the kindness of religious morality in no way diminishes its excellence in furthering life and fostering happiness.

[Sebastian]

Ms. Rand was wrong. She sounded right because she advocated freedom of thought, expression and ones control over ones activities. But she was wrong because she rejected the collective (the concept that the group is more important than the individual) with objectivism (the concept that the individual is more important than the group). Neither concept is true. However, what is true is that the individual finds within the group an identity and purpose. He finds within history lessons and debts that can never be repaid. Moreover, the individual discovers that in order to be fully human one must adopt some purpose larger than himself. This is why objectivism has failed and conservatism has not.

Sebastian

[Cultural Jihad]

As usual, the conservatives talk ideas, while the self-professed ideologues talk personalities.

[Hank Kerchief]

Practices which are harmful to the practitioners, as well as society, should not be encouraged. Such practices should be frowned upon, and not allowed.

So, if you happen to believe in a religion that teaches anyone who is not saved, in terms of your religion's teaching, will suffer forever in hell, what could be more self-destructive that that than rejecting your religion. They should be forces to adhere to your religion, because the practice of denying your religion would be the ultimate self-destruction. (I'm not saying this is your religion. It's just an illustration.)

It would be cruel to allow people and society to suffer. We have no problem decrying the harmfulness of tobacco. But not sodomy, and other sexual perversions. If people choose practices and lifestyles that are self-destructive and cause them suffering, it is their business. No one appointed you, or anyone else, the protecter of all mankind.

What is cruel is to force decent people, who use all their resources to improve the lives of themselves and their loved owns, to pay for cleaning up after those who ruin their lives. Why should a decent hard working, productive parent be forced to pay for government programs that will force those too evil or too stupid to live their lives decently, to behave they way the government thinks they ought to.

You want to ease the lives of the perverts and indecent at the expense of the normal and the decent.

In an objectivist society, anyone who wanted to help these perverts straighen out their lives would be allowed to, but no one would be forced to.

Please come back when you have your moral principles straigtened out.

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

...brassy exhalations of a well-worn whoopee cushion.

Thanks for the example.

Hank

[Cultural Jihad]

I suppose we could try to resurrect Thomas Jefferson and importune that he rewrite the Preamble of the DOI in order to please the humanist social-Darwinists: "... among which are an early death, slavery to vice, and the pursuit of unneeded suffering..."

[davisfh]

"Well, I see the Rand-haters have already shown up, just as I predicted. Only took him 5 minutes from the time you posted until he had a cyber-hissy fit."

Yep! Interesting and predictable, isn't it? Ayn Rand has always been a favorite of mine.

Were Ayn Rand alive today, she would be appalled at the tail spin that this nation is in. While I am somewhat enthusiastic about the goals of the current administration, I sense problems down the road. And, I understand that Rand would be incensed at many of the policies that this administration has instituted and particularly those policies concerning the fourth amendment guarantees against the invasion of citizens' rights to privacy.

[Anamensis]

What on earth does Ayn Rand have to do with sodomy? Her attitude toward gays was about the same as Dr. Laura's. I don't get it, are you taking the standard Libertarian point of view as representative of Rand's writing?

[Anamensis]

You people worship the writer of potboiler pulp novels, where every page is preachier than a Billy Sunday sermon.

And for some reason, you just can't pull yourself away from this thread. Hmm....

[Anamensis]

Indubitably, the failure of anyone to adhere to the kindness of religious morality in no way diminishes its excellence in furthering life and fostering happiness.

Communists feel the same way about Communism.

[Anamensis]

As usual, the conservatives talk ideas, while the self-professed ideologues talk personalities.

This from a CHRIST-ian, the ultimate in cult of personality.

[Hank Kerchief]

Rand ... was wrong because she rejected the collective (the concept that the group is more important than the individual)...

Your are right, or would be, if Rand actually said this. In Rand's philsophy, the group has no importance at all. Importance pertains to one only class of existents in this world, beings capable of having purposes and ends, and all importance relates to the significance of things as they relate to each individual's purposes and ends. Groups have no purpose or ends, only individuals do, unless, of course, you are a cow, then the herd (group) matters.

Hank

[B-Chan]

Miss Rand was right about a great many things. She was wrong about a great many more. Objectivism itself, for example, is based upon the premise that sensory impressions + Western logic = universal objective reality. This may be true, but it is a statement of faith, not of objective fact, since it is impossible to demonstrate its truth without reference to other (subjective) sensory impressions. A flirting acquaintaince with Skepticism (Descartes, et al) -- or with courtroom testimony -- will soon bear out the fact that "objective" reality ain't all that objective. Rational men believe in it, of course -- but there's no way to prove that "objective reality" exists at all. As Descartes pointed out, this could all be a dream; we'd never know the difference.

Miss Rand was a religious zealot. To her and her disciples, there was no god but Self, and Ayn Rand its sole and infallible prophet -- and those who dared disagree were ruthlessly made anathema. Like the Bolsheviki she hated, Rand established an iron-fisted personality cult centered on the Great Leader (herself) and coldly neutralized any comrades who strayed too far from the party line. (Radical individualist Jerome Tuccilli writes hilariously of the antics of Rand's avowedly anti-collectivist "Senior collective" in his picaresque history of post-Cold War American anarchism It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand.) Like the Soviets she detested, Rand had no problem purging her ranks of deviationists, roaders, and other enemies of the people: Whim Worshippers and Muscle Mystics were pitilessly banished to philosophical Siberia, with Rand's inner coterie of True Believers acting as a sort of coat-and-tie Cheka to her self-interested Stalin. Read the memoirs of Nathaniel Branden; It's no fun being Trotsky when the Great Leader decides you've got to go.

While I admire Rand's romanticism and her love of progress (and of railroads), her "virtue of selfishness" is in reality no virtue at all. "Devil take the hindmost" may be more practical that "Love thy neighbor", but more virtuous? By what standard? Surely not God's; Rand's hatred of the Deity was coequal with her hatred of Communism. Objectivism's atheistic individualism of the Right merely reverses the mistakes of the aetheistic collectivism of the Left; any individualism that deifies the Self to the exclusion of the common weal is as fundamentally flawed as a collectivism that deifies the state to the exclusion of the individual. In the former case one worships at the altar of the Supreme Self; in the latter, at the shrine of the State Almighty. In both cases, a false god is set up to replace the real thing -- with predictable results. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."

Objectivism is like Star Trek fandom: of immense impact in certain rarefied circles, and possessed of an immense literature, but ultimately not to be taken seriously by ordinary, socialized adults. Let the flames crackle!

[Anamensis]

I suppose we could try to resurrect Thomas Jefferson ...

What was that earlier comment about ideologues talking personalities?

[BlazingArizona]

More unsolicited drivel. Objectivists would rob people of their right to decide what kind of a society they are to live in, and that makes them anti-freedom.

Mmmm - that boot leather tastes mighty good now, don't it?