by belkarx on 10/13/22, 5:44 PM with 58 comments
by ttfkam on 10/13/22, 8:02 PM
– John Rogers
by lukewrites on 10/13/22, 9:09 PM
This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the "freedom is slavery" sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her "philosophy," but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the "welfare" state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you're dumb or incompetent that's your lookout.
…For to justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. For one thing, it is gratuitous to advise any human being to look out for himself. You can be sure that he will. It is far more difficult to persuade him to help his neighbor to build a dam or to defend a town or to give food he has accumulated to the victims of a famine. But since we must live together, dependent upon one another for many things and services, altruism is necessary to survival. To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy. That it is right to help someone less fortunate is an idea which ahs figured in most systems of conduct since the beginning of the race. We often fail. That predatory demon "I" is difficult to contain but until now we have all agreed that to help others is a right action.
… Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life a right action is consideration for the welfare of others. In the one case, through a state which was to wither away, in the other through the private exercise of the moral sense. Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.
by jleyank on 10/13/22, 6:17 PM
I’m also far too lazy and unskilled to write satire and admittedly not really patient enough to read it.
by rufus_foreman on 10/13/22, 10:06 PM
-- https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its-decorative-gourd-sea...
by Mountain_Skies on 10/13/22, 9:01 PM
by tinglymintyfrsh on 10/13/22, 9:11 PM
by bjourne on 10/13/22, 9:31 PM
by jti107 on 10/13/22, 10:18 PM
might work if you're a hermit or lone monk.
by redbar0n on 10/13/22, 5:59 PM
I frankly would have hoped the argument was not a straw man and that he argued against the actual essence of the philosophy of Objectivism. Instead of taking the cheap way out to argue against a mere peripheral unfortunate potential consequence of it (when taken to an extreme).
by kderbyma on 10/13/22, 10:06 PM
the book inspires the idea of individual potential....which if you have no personal desire to achieve tends to enrage and put one on the defence, but for those who have a spark of fire they get inspired.
I like the book, and would love to have an honest discourse on its flaws that is equally willing to acknowledge the depths of its actual arguments and the strengths of propositions when taken into account the underlying presumptions that are at the heart of the novel. It is a novel after all and not an academic treatise which many liken it to because of the marketing.