So this is the mindset of the financiers who participate in and make our stock market: they rejoice when they learn about the Feds bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The idea that the American stock markets prefer less government intrusion is proving to be a myth. It appears that most stock market participants, having made their money recently because of the regulation that perverted incentives in the mortgage-lending market, are peeing their pants with glee at the prospect of greater government intervention. They think they've been proven right -- their philosophy of financial risk-taking based on the knowledge that the downside is all the taxpayers', seems in fact to have always been the way to go.
21 September 2008
12 September 2008
Enabling Environmentalist Terrorists
Nothing much to add to this headline: "Cleared: Jury decides that threat of global warming justifies breaking the law." Excuse me while I go vomit. R.I.P., property rights.
Here's appeasement for you. Greenpeace once again shows its true nihilistic colors -- and they get away with it.
Of course, appeasement's your only option when you've already conceded the moral argument. In this case the moral argument behind the Greenpeace thuggery is: humans destroy the environment, and must be destroyed in turn.
Our altruistic culture has already bought the anti-humanitarian principle that man's way of life -- that he must alter the environment to suit his needs or he will die -- is immoral. Greenpeace is just being consistent.
But here's the pièce de la résistance. James Hansen, the poster child for every environmentalist that wants to piggy back on the (squandered) prestige of NASA, was a witness for the defense. He defended Greenpeace.
(Via Overlawyered.)
Here's appeasement for you. Greenpeace once again shows its true nihilistic colors -- and they get away with it.
Of course, appeasement's your only option when you've already conceded the moral argument. In this case the moral argument behind the Greenpeace thuggery is: humans destroy the environment, and must be destroyed in turn.
Our altruistic culture has already bought the anti-humanitarian principle that man's way of life -- that he must alter the environment to suit his needs or he will die -- is immoral. Greenpeace is just being consistent.
But here's the pièce de la résistance. James Hansen, the poster child for every environmentalist that wants to piggy back on the (squandered) prestige of NASA, was a witness for the defense. He defended Greenpeace.
Hansen has now officially made it his position that he supports vandalism and terrorism as a supplement to argument for his position on global warming.During the eight-day trial, the world's leading climate scientist, Professor James Hansen of Nasa [sic], who had flown from American [sic] to give evidence, appealed to the Prime Minister personally to "take a leadership role" in cancelling the plan and scrapping the idea of a coal-fired future for Britain. Last December he wrote to Mr Brown with a similar appeal. At the trial, he called for an moratorium on all coal-fired power stations, and his hour-long testimony about the gravity of the climate danger, which painted a bleak picture, was listened to intently by the jury of nine women and three men.
Professor Hansen, who first alerted the world to the global warming threat in June 1988 with testimony to a US senate committee in Washington, and who last year said the earth was in "imminent peril" from the warming atmosphere, asserted that missions of CO2 from Kings-north would damage property through the effects of the climate change they would help to cause.
(Via Overlawyered.)
Twisted
I have only two things to say about 9/11, although I think many more.
First, it is atrocious that there's still nothing built there. It's seven years later. Terrorists have killed thousands of Americans, taken down an iconic symbol of American enterprise, and seven years later, they still walk the earth and a quick Google search gives them images to remind them of their enduring success at destroying a symbol of reason and freedom. Here's an image of Ground Zero from Wikipedia, taken March 8, 2008. It's still just a big, ugly hole in the ground.
First, it is atrocious that there's still nothing built there. It's seven years later. Terrorists have killed thousands of Americans, taken down an iconic symbol of American enterprise, and seven years later, they still walk the earth and a quick Google search gives them images to remind them of their enduring success at destroying a symbol of reason and freedom. Here's an image of Ground Zero from Wikipedia, taken March 8, 2008. It's still just a big, ugly hole in the ground.
Second, I think it's atrocious that the most apt physical description of the main building of Freedom Tower, meant to replace and be even better than what was there before, is . . . TWISTED. Here's a rendering of what Freedom Tower is supposed to look like, from the NYC Tower website.
Of course, others' opinions may vary. To me, this tower just looks like everything that is wrong with non-objective art. It looks like exactly the kind of design that was chosen so that the people responsible for choosing it could demonstrate their superior knowledge of current trends in architecture. If someone like me looks at it and says, "It looks all twisted!" their response can be, "Well, trust me, it's a cutting-edge modern design, it's the height of architectural sophistication." And then they can go back to their cocktail party and discuss the architectural ignorance of the unwashed masses.
This tower says to me that our answer to violent, terrorist theocrats isn't to promote and celebrate reason, but to engage in some smarmy, utterly irrelevant and ineffective argument from intimidation. We don't engage the terrorists; we demonstrate by our choice of a twisted monument that we support them in their fight against objectivity and reason.
Terrorist to America: "See how Allah proves his greatness by supporting our mission to wipe out Western civilization! We destroyed your towers, your symbol of hubris, and Allah has not permitted you to rebuild."
America to Terrorist: "We'll show you! We'll build a twisted tower as a monument
to what you've destroyed."
I am mortified.
09 September 2008
Elections and the "Crow Epistemology"
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has asserted that
Have you seen the Democratic and Republican Party Platforms? They're 56 and 67 pages long, respectively. There are 19 substantive issue areas featured at the McCain campaign website, and 23 on Obama's website. I mean, really, who could read all that stuff? And once you read it, how could you keep it straight in your head long enough to make a voting decision based on that information?
Ayn Rand often referred to a famous experiment that endeavored to see how high crows could count. Here is my (likely bungled) description of the experienment.
Researchers hid near a clearing frequented by crows. A man would cross a clearing and vanish into the trees, and then come out of the trees back across the clearing. When the man came into the clearing, the crows hid, and would not reemerge until the man retraced his steps back across the clearing. The same actions were repeated with two men, and then three men, and in each of these cases, the crows would hide and then reemerge only when exactly the same number of men who had crossed the clearing had retraced their steps. However, the crows could not accurately count above three men. Five men could cross the clearing, and the crows would come out of hiding after only four men had retraced their steps.
Ayn Rand said that men shared this same "crow epistemology," in that we can only hold so many concretes in our head at a given time. If we don't condense the concretes, we overload and lose track, and often simply shut down.
Conceptualization allows us to hold vast amounts of data in our head at one time, through the principle of "unit economy." But conceptualization is not automatic, and it's not easy. It takes effort, will power, thought -- in fact, it's downright taxing.
Every four years, the American electorate is bombarded with politicians' positions on issues. But not just one or two, as when they're polled and can come up with a ready answer. They're bombarded on every single issue. And their crow brains have a cow -- so to speak.
That's why a party's narrative is decisive. When Obama says that the American public expects candidates to talk about the issues, he's not wrong. Americans probably do think they want to hear about issues. But actually, dealing with the issues is too hard; it is literally too much to keep in our heads.
What we really need to hear from our political parties is their philosophy, reduced to a few clear sentences. That's clearly too much to hope for. But the Republican party grasps that the message has to be simple, simple, simple, and that simplicity is far more important than substance. There's actually a book out there called Don't Make Me Think. It's about web usability, but the point applies in presidential politics, too. The point is: DON'T MAKE ME THINK. Give me a pre-packaged reason I can sell to myself about why I should vote a particular way, so I can make my decision and be done with it.
For better or worse, the narrative's the thing that will make our king.
"[t]his election is not about issues. . . . This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."Of course, Davis is right, and not only for what I thought was the obvious reason. To me, the obvious reason Rick Davis is right was put most pointedly by Bertrand Russell:
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.The less obvious reason, I have come to conclude, is that people literally don't have the brain space to deal with all the issues they're asked to decide about in a given election.
Have you seen the Democratic and Republican Party Platforms? They're 56 and 67 pages long, respectively. There are 19 substantive issue areas featured at the McCain campaign website, and 23 on Obama's website. I mean, really, who could read all that stuff? And once you read it, how could you keep it straight in your head long enough to make a voting decision based on that information?
Ayn Rand often referred to a famous experiment that endeavored to see how high crows could count. Here is my (likely bungled) description of the experienment.
Researchers hid near a clearing frequented by crows. A man would cross a clearing and vanish into the trees, and then come out of the trees back across the clearing. When the man came into the clearing, the crows hid, and would not reemerge until the man retraced his steps back across the clearing. The same actions were repeated with two men, and then three men, and in each of these cases, the crows would hide and then reemerge only when exactly the same number of men who had crossed the clearing had retraced their steps. However, the crows could not accurately count above three men. Five men could cross the clearing, and the crows would come out of hiding after only four men had retraced their steps.
Ayn Rand said that men shared this same "crow epistemology," in that we can only hold so many concretes in our head at a given time. If we don't condense the concretes, we overload and lose track, and often simply shut down.
Conceptualization allows us to hold vast amounts of data in our head at one time, through the principle of "unit economy." But conceptualization is not automatic, and it's not easy. It takes effort, will power, thought -- in fact, it's downright taxing.
Every four years, the American electorate is bombarded with politicians' positions on issues. But not just one or two, as when they're polled and can come up with a ready answer. They're bombarded on every single issue. And their crow brains have a cow -- so to speak.
That's why a party's narrative is decisive. When Obama says that the American public expects candidates to talk about the issues, he's not wrong. Americans probably do think they want to hear about issues. But actually, dealing with the issues is too hard; it is literally too much to keep in our heads.
What we really need to hear from our political parties is their philosophy, reduced to a few clear sentences. That's clearly too much to hope for. But the Republican party grasps that the message has to be simple, simple, simple, and that simplicity is far more important than substance. There's actually a book out there called Don't Make Me Think. It's about web usability, but the point applies in presidential politics, too. The point is: DON'T MAKE ME THINK. Give me a pre-packaged reason I can sell to myself about why I should vote a particular way, so I can make my decision and be done with it.
For better or worse, the narrative's the thing that will make our king.
07 September 2008
Social Contract = "Might is Right"
A guest-blogger over at Freakonomics is going on about the greatness of the theory of social contract. Couldn't resist commenting on that one. I've reproduced my comment below.
Any time I read someone extolling the virtues of some variation of social contract, I observe the failure to address the parallels between social contract and direct democracy — and the widely observed dangers of such policies (The Federalist Papers comes to mind). That is — what if people agree on the wrong thing? Poll the people in Saudi Arabia and Iran and they’ll all agree that women ought to be stoned for marrying someone against her father’s wishes. Surely, when we pronounce policies like that one vicious, despite the fact that there is wide agreement about them in the polities affected, we are applying some standard of governmental legitimacy OTHER than mere agreement.
But if we’re applying some other standard, then we’re not conferring governmental legitimacy by agreement.
It will not do to reply that, well, we all agree on the standards by which we will judge our political agreements. Another commenter (#10) has already pointed out the he doesn’t see the Religious Right or the religiously environmental giving up their dreams of thought dictatorship any time soon. Nor does it do to reply that, well, we agree to limit our governments with constitutions and bills of rights and the like. To rely on “agreement” as the standard of everything, all the way down, leads to a reductio ad absurdam. The question remains: by what ultimate standard do we judge what it is proper to agree to?
Social contract is just another variation on mob rule — it’s setting policy by polling and forcing minority dissenters to comply, whether those dissenters have a legitimate beef or not. The basic philosophy of such a policy is: might is right.
I have two questions for Mr. Leeson. First, do you argue that just any old social contract is legitimate, by virtue of it having been agreed to? Second, if your answer to the first question is “no,” then what do you believe is the origin of the standard by which we ought to judge the legitimacy of any social contract?
06 September 2008
Destroying the Moral Status of Women
The "pro-life" zealots are celebrating the "choice" of Bristol Palin to have her child. The "pro-life" zealots are celebrating the choice of Sarah Palin to have her Down's Syndrome child.
At the same time, they want to bring about a state of affairs in which it would be utterly senseless to praise such choices -- because they want to eliminate the possibility of choice in those circumstances.
If abortion is outlawed, then it's no virtue to choose to carry a problem pregnancy to term. You're just doing what you're told. There's no free will. There's no possibility of choosing between alternatives, such that it makes any sense to approve the choice of one alternative over the other.
But, but, but -- isn't it the God-bangers' position that the Almightly gave lowly humans free will for the very purpose of demonstrating to God, through their free choices, that they are moral, and worthy of the eternal life promised only to those who choose to follow God?
So there ya have it. Outlaw abortion, and turn women into amoral robots who couldn't possibly receive any moral credit for carrying a pregnancy to term. Women will have the exact moral status as incubators for hatching chicken eggs.
Actually, this is of a piece with the whole theocrat thing. A theocrat can't face her incompetence when it comes to using her own brain to figure out the difference between right and wrong. So naturally, she celebrates any policy that eliminates the possibility of choice and moral responsibility.
Outlawing abortion is such a policy.
At the same time, they want to bring about a state of affairs in which it would be utterly senseless to praise such choices -- because they want to eliminate the possibility of choice in those circumstances.
If abortion is outlawed, then it's no virtue to choose to carry a problem pregnancy to term. You're just doing what you're told. There's no free will. There's no possibility of choosing between alternatives, such that it makes any sense to approve the choice of one alternative over the other.
But, but, but -- isn't it the God-bangers' position that the Almightly gave lowly humans free will for the very purpose of demonstrating to God, through their free choices, that they are moral, and worthy of the eternal life promised only to those who choose to follow God?
So there ya have it. Outlaw abortion, and turn women into amoral robots who couldn't possibly receive any moral credit for carrying a pregnancy to term. Women will have the exact moral status as incubators for hatching chicken eggs.
Actually, this is of a piece with the whole theocrat thing. A theocrat can't face her incompetence when it comes to using her own brain to figure out the difference between right and wrong. So naturally, she celebrates any policy that eliminates the possibility of choice and moral responsibility.
Outlawing abortion is such a policy.
05 September 2008
On a Mission to Outlaw Thinking
If Paul Krugman is right (and it would pretty much be ONLY about this), what we've been seeing in the Republican party since the days of Nixon is the politics of resentment.
If you want to know why I have focused more on the shortcomings of Republicans recently than those of Democrats, this observation by Krugman is part of the reason why. They have explicitly made a virtue of "anti-intellectualism." Now, I'm not saying that Democrat-style intellectualism is the way to go -- it's not. Democrat-style intellectualism is basically just nihilism -- there is no right and wrong, everything's relative, and if you're looking for value you ought to stop looking for it in the human race and look for it in polar bears and wilderness. But still, the Left at least pays lip service to the notion that the right course of action is discovered by using your mind, by thought.
The Right sees thought as a threat, and openly so. They don't denounce the Left primarily for thinking the wrong things, but for thinking as such.
The Right militantly embraces faith. They don't embrace faith in the manner of Buddists up on mountains contemplating their navels, or in the manner of Middle Age ascestics who stop flogging themselves only long enough to eat a piece of moldy bread and take a sip from a mud puddle. They openly embrace their faith just as Ayn Rand said faith ultimately must be embraced: with a steaming side helping of force.
One of the key insights in “Nixonland,” the new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, is that Nixon’s political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates’ resentment against the Franklins, the school’s elite social club. There’s a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew’s attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism” as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that not long ago surrounded George W. Bush — a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and made much of the supposed fact that the “misunderestimated” C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.So there you have it: hatred of the good for being the good elevated to a political strategy. One that works, which is depressing.
If you want to know why I have focused more on the shortcomings of Republicans recently than those of Democrats, this observation by Krugman is part of the reason why. They have explicitly made a virtue of "anti-intellectualism." Now, I'm not saying that Democrat-style intellectualism is the way to go -- it's not. Democrat-style intellectualism is basically just nihilism -- there is no right and wrong, everything's relative, and if you're looking for value you ought to stop looking for it in the human race and look for it in polar bears and wilderness. But still, the Left at least pays lip service to the notion that the right course of action is discovered by using your mind, by thought.
The Right sees thought as a threat, and openly so. They don't denounce the Left primarily for thinking the wrong things, but for thinking as such.
The Right is anti-intellectual and on a mission to outlaw thinking. Witness, the reason they embraced "W"; witness, the push for teaching "intelligent design" in schools; witness, the drive to formally elevate a clump of cells to the level of actual, thinking human beings. Witness, that to accomplish all of these things the Right is turning to the government -- which means, to the power of a gun -- to shove this crap down our throats.
The Right militantly embraces faith. They don't embrace faith in the manner of Buddists up on mountains contemplating their navels, or in the manner of Middle Age ascestics who stop flogging themselves only long enough to eat a piece of moldy bread and take a sip from a mud puddle. They openly embrace their faith just as Ayn Rand said faith ultimately must be embraced: with a steaming side helping of force.
03 September 2008
House of Cards
I think I like Peggy Noonan. At least, what she says and writes often makes me think.
She has a column today about Sarah Palin. Notably:
Over on the Right, where it's all mystical certainty, they're geared up for Jihad. Over on the Left, where it's all relativism and no one has even the most f***ed-up idea of the difference between right and wrong, they're so busy deconstructing her that they have no idea how to deal with the whole message she communicates.
And me? As another front opens up on the so-called "Culture Wars", I am aghast at the lengths to which people will go, on the Right and on the Left, to avoid knowledge of any fact of reality that threatens the irrational world view upon which their fragile self-image balances, teetering like the last card at the top of a house of cards.
She has a column today about Sarah Palin. Notably:
I think what we're witnessing here in the furor over Sarah Palin is the same old mysticism/skepticism split that explains so much in modern culture. (Leonard Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis is about this, to a large extent.)More immediately and seriously on Palin:
Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.
She could become a transformative political presence.
So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.
And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there. [emphasis added]
Over on the Right, where it's all mystical certainty, they're geared up for Jihad. Over on the Left, where it's all relativism and no one has even the most f***ed-up idea of the difference between right and wrong, they're so busy deconstructing her that they have no idea how to deal with the whole message she communicates.
And me? As another front opens up on the so-called "Culture Wars", I am aghast at the lengths to which people will go, on the Right and on the Left, to avoid knowledge of any fact of reality that threatens the irrational world view upon which their fragile self-image balances, teetering like the last card at the top of a house of cards.
01 September 2008
Stupid Like Me?
I’ve seen Sarah Palin compared by the blogerati to Dan Quayle, Tom Eagleton, Geraldine Ferraro. After listening to the beginning of her speech the other day, I think the most apt comparison is our current President, George Bush.
The CW is that as “just an average hockey mom,” people will be able to relate to her. People will like the idea that an average hockey mom could be the vice president.
That’s her primary qualification: that she’s average. She the perfect repository for the hopes of everyone in American with an inferiority complex. For those for whom the existence of someone accomplished is a threat, she reassures them that merit does not necessarily win the day.
Pathetic.
The CW is that as “just an average hockey mom,” people will be able to relate to her. People will like the idea that an average hockey mom could be the vice president.
That’s her primary qualification: that she’s average. She the perfect repository for the hopes of everyone in American with an inferiority complex. For those for whom the existence of someone accomplished is a threat, she reassures them that merit does not necessarily win the day.
Pathetic.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are you?
Are you a total right-winger?
Are you a Libertarian?
Since when are you an Objectivist?
Isn’t Objectivism a cult?
Aren’t Objectivists just selfish?
Isn’t it the case that the more you learn about Objectivism, the more you realize it has to be wrong?
Do you think people who can’t care for themselves should just be left to die? Shouldn’t a wealthy society care for those who can’t care for themselves?
How many Objectivists are there?
Are you happy?
Who are you?
I live in the Boston area. I’m a non-practicing lawyer with a law degree from Harvard. I’m recently happily re-married and I have a teenaged son. I have a day job that does not require me to have or reject any particular politics and is not related to the topics I blog about. In addition to blogging as Ms. Think, I also used to blog at NoodleFood. I am an Objectivist.
Are you a total right-winger?
Nope. I am a free-market capitalist who believes in strict separation of church and state, and strict separation of economics and state.
Are you a Libertarian?
Emphatically not. Objectivism holds that politics rests on philosophical principles, which must be explicitly defined. Objectivism rejects anarchism. Libertarians reject principles as the foundation of politics. Read more about Ayn Rand on Libertarians.
Since when are you an Objectivist?
For over 20 years. The self-confidence of maturity has simply made me more open about it in my old age.
Isn’t Objectivism a cult?
No. Independence is one of seven fundamental virtues identified by Ayn Rand.
Yes, absolutely. That means when an Objectivist says “I love you,” it’s because you are a source of selfish pleasure to her. It means an Objectivist will advocate for your rights because the Objectivist knows she can’t claim rights she won’t grant to others -- and the Objectivist has a very selfish interest in upholding and protecting individual rights. What it doesn’t mean is that an Objectivist thinks it’s in her selfish interest to use and abuse others, turn to a life of crime, lie, or otherwise act in a destructive manner. Do you think crime, destruction, and lack of respect for others’ rights is in your “selfish” interest? If so, take a hike. This is not the blog for you.
Isn’t it the case that the more you learn about Objectivism, the more you realize it has to be wrong?
You mean, why haven’t I grown out of it? Ayn Rand was once asked if she could describe the philosophy of Objectivism while standing on one foot. She did:
Do you think people who can’t care for themselves should just be left to die? Shouldn’t a wealthy society care for those who can’t care for themselves?
If an apple is lying on the ground and you are hungry, the apple won’t miraculously leap into your mouth. Houses don’t build themselves over people’s heads. If your appendix bursts, an appendectomy doesn’t spontaneously happen because you need it.
If someone cannot care for themselves, it is still true that the necessities of life do not appear by magic, but have to be produced.
I believe that the needy have every right to ask me to share or donate what I produce, but have no right to use the threat of force to take what I have produced.
“Society” is just a collection of individuals, and the only actions taken by a society are taken by the individuals it is composed of. When we speak of what a society should do, we speak of what the individuals in that society should do.
All individuals are free to engage in whatever voluntary charity, for whatever cause they see fit. No-one has a right to demand my financial support at gun point, however – not someone who is healthy, and not someone who is unwell. If someone who is sick has no right to demand I pay her bills, with a gun as the final argument, that same person has no right to ask someone to do the exact same thing on their behalf. Yet that is what it means to claim that society has a right to take my property against my will and give it to someone else.
How many Objectivists are there?
No idea. But Objectivists write for Forbes.com, hold endowed philosophy professorships, own banks, publish journals, and educate children. There are a lot of us. Check out the Ayn Rand Institute for more information.
Are you happy?
You bet! Life is good.
Are you a total right-winger?
Are you a Libertarian?
Since when are you an Objectivist?
Isn’t Objectivism a cult?
Aren’t Objectivists just selfish?
Isn’t it the case that the more you learn about Objectivism, the more you realize it has to be wrong?
Do you think people who can’t care for themselves should just be left to die? Shouldn’t a wealthy society care for those who can’t care for themselves?
How many Objectivists are there?
Are you happy?
Who are you?
I live in the Boston area. I’m a non-practicing lawyer with a law degree from Harvard. I’m recently happily re-married and I have a teenaged son. I have a day job that does not require me to have or reject any particular politics and is not related to the topics I blog about. In addition to blogging as Ms. Think, I also used to blog at NoodleFood. I am an Objectivist.
Are you a total right-winger?
Nope. I am a free-market capitalist who believes in strict separation of church and state, and strict separation of economics and state.
Are you a Libertarian?
Emphatically not. Objectivism holds that politics rests on philosophical principles, which must be explicitly defined. Objectivism rejects anarchism. Libertarians reject principles as the foundation of politics. Read more about Ayn Rand on Libertarians.
Since when are you an Objectivist?
For over 20 years. The self-confidence of maturity has simply made me more open about it in my old age.
Isn’t Objectivism a cult?
No. Independence is one of seven fundamental virtues identified by Ayn Rand.
Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.Aren’t Objectivists just selfish?
Yes, absolutely. That means when an Objectivist says “I love you,” it’s because you are a source of selfish pleasure to her. It means an Objectivist will advocate for your rights because the Objectivist knows she can’t claim rights she won’t grant to others -- and the Objectivist has a very selfish interest in upholding and protecting individual rights. What it doesn’t mean is that an Objectivist thinks it’s in her selfish interest to use and abuse others, turn to a life of crime, lie, or otherwise act in a destructive manner. Do you think crime, destruction, and lack of respect for others’ rights is in your “selfish” interest? If so, take a hike. This is not the blog for you.
Isn’t it the case that the more you learn about Objectivism, the more you realize it has to be wrong?
You mean, why haven’t I grown out of it? Ayn Rand was once asked if she could describe the philosophy of Objectivism while standing on one foot. She did:
I don’t see anything there I have any desire to grow out of! The more I learn, the more rationally convinced I am that she got it right.Metaphysics: Objective Reality
Epistemology: Reason
Ethics: Self-interest
Politics: Capitalism
If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.” 2. “You can't eat your cake and have it, too.” 3. “Man is an end in himself.” 4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Do you think people who can’t care for themselves should just be left to die? Shouldn’t a wealthy society care for those who can’t care for themselves?
If an apple is lying on the ground and you are hungry, the apple won’t miraculously leap into your mouth. Houses don’t build themselves over people’s heads. If your appendix bursts, an appendectomy doesn’t spontaneously happen because you need it.
If someone cannot care for themselves, it is still true that the necessities of life do not appear by magic, but have to be produced.
I believe that the needy have every right to ask me to share or donate what I produce, but have no right to use the threat of force to take what I have produced.
“Society” is just a collection of individuals, and the only actions taken by a society are taken by the individuals it is composed of. When we speak of what a society should do, we speak of what the individuals in that society should do.
All individuals are free to engage in whatever voluntary charity, for whatever cause they see fit. No-one has a right to demand my financial support at gun point, however – not someone who is healthy, and not someone who is unwell. If someone who is sick has no right to demand I pay her bills, with a gun as the final argument, that same person has no right to ask someone to do the exact same thing on their behalf. Yet that is what it means to claim that society has a right to take my property against my will and give it to someone else.
How many Objectivists are there?
No idea. But Objectivists write for Forbes.com, hold endowed philosophy professorships, own banks, publish journals, and educate children. There are a lot of us. Check out the Ayn Rand Institute for more information.
Are you happy?
You bet! Life is good.
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