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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 10:57:05 AM   
xssve


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Status: offline 		Well it's interesting that you should bring up Thanksgiving, one act of altruism I bet the Native American wish they had never performed, they've been paying for it ever since.

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 10:57:38 AM   
supragenius


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quote:

I'm not sure where the Oxford came up with this somewhat insistent "disinterested and selfless" part. It seems to exclude the evolutionary aspect of social behavior, but then maybe that was their intent, to further isolate and confine one specific behavior and consider it apart from wherever it may  derive.


lmao yeah wtf oxford

yuo should write them a letter tell them you got a better definition get yuor voice heard oxford dont know shit with their little fly by night dictoinary!

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 11:08:29 AM   
PeonForHer


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quote:

ORIGINAL: xssve

Here's a good one.

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2011/09/20/massive-corruption-in-the-u-s-border-patrol/

Rand worldview is overly simplistic, economic activity simply does not and cannot exist in a vacuum, it's a social activity.


Exactly. This is why the much-vaunted ultra-free market that neoliberals keep on about is idealistic and unrealistic. *Real* individualism, egoism and selfishness don't play by the rules of the market.

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 11:09:02 AM   
Yachtie


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quote:

ORIGINAL: xssve
Well it's interesting that you should bring up Thanksgiving, one act of altruism I bet the Native American wish they had never performed, they've been paying for it ever since.


Altruism of the natives or an later end result of the abandoned collectivization that had been the norm?



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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 11:59:37 AM   
tweakabelle


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quote:

Altruism as a basis for society is a perfect ideal suited for a perfect world which does not exist. Unfortunately its counterpart does exist in both definition and reality, and to a much greater extent. I'd say that is a distinction Rand is getting at. It's not that collectivism does not work under all circumstances, but that its success diminishes as size increases. The Israeli Kibbutz and the nuclear family is one form of success, whereas the collectivist activities of the original settlers in the US is one of failure till abandoned and the settlers flourished (thus we have Thanksgiving)


It seems to me that Rand is saying a lot more than the miminalist interpretation being advanced here. Rand talks about altruism as a “moral value” which acts as a “poison in the blood of Western Civilisation". That sounds like a lot more than a matter of mere scale. It seems clear to me that she regards altruism as a monstrosity, something requiring unequivocal denunciation.

My understanding of Rand is that she had a horror of what she called collectivism. As she regarded altruism as the moral basis for collectivism, she could scarcely have regarded it with anything less than horror.

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 12:04:54 PM   
Edwynn


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quote:

ORIGINAL: supragenius

quote:

I'm not sure where the Oxford came up with this somewhat insistent "disinterested and selfless" part. It seems to exclude the evolutionary aspect of social behavior, but then maybe that was their intent, to further isolate and confine one specific behavior and consider it apart from wherever it may  derive.


lmao yeah wtf oxford

yuo should write them a letter tell them you got a better definition get yuor voice heard oxford dont know shit with their little fly by night dictoinary!


Your spelling indicates that you have yet to avail yourself of a dictionary of any sort, so I'm puzzled by your comment that would imply familiarity with the Oxford version in particular.

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 12:51:57 PM   
Musicmystery


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Status: offline 		Edwynn, as the profile indicates, that poster's entire mission is to mess with the forums.

Ignore it from the start.


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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 1:02:57 PM   
Edwynn


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I missed that, thanks for the heads up.



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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 1:42:12 PM   
Moonhead


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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery
The problem you and Rand posit is a false dichotomy.

The best, sustainable, most satisfying approaches serve both the interests of the individual and the interests of others. They are not separate, at least not in the long term.

I think that Bentham made a similar point, but he has less of a cult following among greedy sociopaths than Rand, for some reason.

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 1:44:47 PM   
Moonhead


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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
My understanding of Rand is that she had a horror of what she called collectivism.

That's all there is to say about the woman: she had a chip on her shoulder about collectivism because those nasty bolsheviks seized her daddy's land, freed the serfs* and forced him and his family to flee the country.

*(Not really, but however unfree they were, the ones that used to be her daddy's property weren't his to boss about anymore)

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 1:57:27 PM   
PeonForHer


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead


quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
My understanding of Rand is that she had a horror of what she called collectivism.

That's all there is to say about the woman: she had a chip on her shoulder about collectivism because those nasty bolsheviks seized her daddy's land, freed the serfs* and forced him and his family to flee the country.

*(Not really, but however unfree they were, the ones that used to be her daddy's property weren't his to boss about anymore)


She became much more intelligent and sensible after 1982, though, as a result of a profound change in her life.


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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 2:00:52 PM   
Moonhead


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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 2:50:53 PM   
Marc2b


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Status: offline 		First, it should be noted that I have never read Ayn Rand... what I know about her ideas comes from what others have written or said about her.

One of my personal philosophies is that you will rarely ever find the answers to anything at the extremes (and it is only my distrust of absolutes that makes me say "rarely" instead of "never"). On the subject of altruism, Rand represents the extreme of one end - no altruism ever. This is self evidently stupid. It may even be impossible. As I noted in the other thread, doing a good deed often had the return benefit of allowing ourselves to feel good about ourselves. That is an emotional benefit (although, feeling good about yourself may yield physical health benefits) but an act that appears to be done with no expectation of a physical return may in fact do so. Save someones life and that person may someday become the doctor that saves your life.

Based upon Ayn Rand's extremism, we should abandon newborn babies to fend for themselves. After all, the baby only consumes what I must work to provide and gives no physical benefits in return. Hell, women should never get pregnant in the first place... it's nothing but a lot of extra expense and discomfort for no profit at all. Unless of course the kid grows up to invent the next big thing and become a billionaire or is simply successful enough to provide for her parents when they are elderly... that's a definite return. This extreme position fails to understand that people, not resources or marketable products, are the greatest source of wealth of all... and that's not even taking into account our emotions, especially love, which is the primary reason why parents care for their children and adult children care for their elderly parents. Clearly, the extreme of "no altruism ever!" is unworkable.

The opposite extreme would be to act altruistic all the time, in all circumstances. If someone is dying of cancer and can't afford the treatments then I could sell all of my possessions to raise the money for the needed treatments (if there is any money left over, obviously I should give it to a poor person). This of course would leave me with standing in the middle of the street, naked, and with no home to go too... so now I am the one who depends upon the altruism of others to prevent me from freezing to death. and who will help those who destitute themselves to help me and the other naked, homeless people standing nearby. This extreme is as obviously unworkable as the other.

As in most cases the answer lies somewhere in between. Where do we draw that line? I'm not really sure but do know that it is the question everyone is debating in just about every political issue. Where do we draw the lines? Where do we find the proper balance between altruism and self interest, between social cooperation and individualism, between government authority and freedom?

These debates have been going on for thousands of years and I doubt they will stop before the human race itself comes to an end.

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 3:16:20 PM   
farglebargle


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead


quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
My understanding of Rand is that she had a horror of what she called collectivism.

That's all there is to say about the woman: she had a chip on her shoulder about collectivism because those nasty bolsheviks seized her daddy's land, freed the serfs* and forced him and his family to flee the country.

*(Not really, but however unfree they were, the ones that used to be her daddy's property weren't his to boss about anymore)


Which is hilarious when you consider that Objectivism is just thinly repackaged Marxism...

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 3:19:29 PM   
Moonhead


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Status: offline 		I don't think any philosophical analysis of Objectivism is very helpful, to be honest. If somebody's only a member of something on the guru's say so (which Rand was always very vehement about), then it's a cult not a philosophy, and doesn't deserve to be treated otherwise.

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 5:11:01 PM   
Edwynn


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OK then, how about we critique her as a novelist?

...........................................


Not that one either, eh?

Tough crowd here.

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 5:14:05 PM   
xssve


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Yachtie

quote:

ORIGINAL: xssve
Rand worldview is overly simplistic, economic activity simply does not and cannot exist in a vacuum, it's a social activity.


Concerning your statement only - Yes, it is a social activity. But should it be controlled as collectivist? Two people can make a deal. That's social. Groups of people can make deals. That's social too. But what happens when the deal is made for them by others (collectivist) not directly party to the deal in the first place?

Being a social activity, it is by nature collectivist, since it's all interconnected everybody has a stake in it, i.e., in order to make any money doing anything, you need labor, and business does not produce it's own labor, the community produces, feeds, and educates the labor that makes up the labor market that business needs to do business, making things and selling them back to the labor force!

All that rugged individualist stuff is bullshit, at best it's just first once first serve when it comes to exploiting primitive capital like minerals or natural resources - a lot more to do with a lack of competition than anything, but when it comes to a whole economy, it's all pretty synergistic, there is no one person that can claim to be indispensable to the process, even minting a common currency accepted as a universal medium of exchange is a collectivist process, but wealth is created by labor.

In all that, with the right moves, you can funnel some of that surplus labor into your bank account, but you didn't create it, you merely facilitated it's creation.

In the current situation, the entire financial sector is pretty much being carried by consumer debt.

Henry Ford was perhaps the first industrialist to recognize that labor not only creates the things you sell, but they're the ones that buy it to, converting into the liquid form of cash - fuck labor and you fuck yourself, and that is a statistically demonstrable phenomena if you look at income levels during the last three or four recessions - the rich get poorer too, they just recover faster.


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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 5:27:05 PM   
xssve


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn


OK then, how about we critique her as a novelist?

...........................................


Not that one either, eh?

Tough crowd here.


Well, let's see: in the Fountainhead, Howard Roark is a ditch digger till a wealthy publisher altruistically gives him a leg up, he's hired to build a development which he dynamites when somebody has the gall to put balconies on the fascist, inhuman monument to his equally monumental ego, and instead of throwing him in jail and throwing away the fucking key on this psycho, they altruistically give him even more money to rebuild the thing all over gain his way.

The publisher then, in a final spasm of terminal altruism, altruistically blows his own brains out and gives his company and his wife to Roark.

Thing is, Roark doesn't' really anything in this whole fucking book except rape the publishers wife - everything just fall into his lap, he basically sits back and benefits from everyone else's altruism: he's a fucking psycho, a total skate and a bloodsucking leech, which may be the real lesson of the book.

Which is: there's a sucker born every minute - P.T. Barnum beat her to it by a century.

< Message edited by xssve -- 4/14/2012 5:31:20 PM >

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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 5:45:11 PM   
PeonForHer


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Marc2b
The opposite extreme would be to act altruistic all the time, in all circumstances. If someone is dying of cancer and can't afford the treatments then I could sell all of my possessions to raise the money for the needed treatments (if there is any money left over, obviously I should give it to a poor person). This of course would leave me with standing in the middle of the street, naked, and with no home to go too... so now I am the one who depends upon the altruism of others to prevent me from freezing to death. and who will help those who destitute themselves to help me and the other naked, homeless people standing nearby. This extreme is as obviously unworkable as the other.


I don't see the problem. If you don't have any money to look after yourself, then others will provide it, because they're altruistic. If that then leaves them destitute, it won't be a problem for them because others will provide for them, too. Why shouldn't people depend on the altruism of others, if it exists everywhere?

Actually, I think being altruistic is quite a good thing, really. I suppose I'm stubborn: every doctrine that's supported the notion of selfishness as either desirable, or unavoidable because it's 'natural' - whether it be economic, political, social or psychological - has struck me as childish at root.

Altruism is what grown-ups do and I do think we could organise grown-up sorts of societies if we were to put our minds to it. I recall the quote attributed M K Gandhi, when asked by an English interviewer, "What do you think of western civilisation?". His reply was: "I think it would be a good idea".


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RE: Ayn Rand and altruism - 4/14/2012 5:46:31 PM   
PeonForHer


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ORIGINAL: farglebargle

Which is hilarious when you consider that Objectivism is just thinly repackaged Marxism...


What??? Where did you pick that up, Fargle?

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