Objectivism and Children


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Therefore your point is NOT to exclude species values in one's promotion of individualism. To avoid a population decline. Have I understood?
Tony, No. You're close, but really far from winning the cigar. Michael

Now, Michael, I believe you are teasing. :tongue:

Alright, better tell me again.

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John,

You just provided the perfect reason why I said I don't think in terms of the trader principle for identifying human nature.

I only mentioned it because I have argued some of this stuff with some individuals (in the Objectivist-libertarian subculture) who only think in terms of trade.

For instance, they deny that the herding inherent in primates is part of the human psyche, and maintain that we all live in groups by conscious choice because each individual gains more advantages that way. This isn't my interpretation of their words, either. I've actually seen it stated at this level of clarity of meaning.

I find this to be a weird way of thinking because it excludes all the findings from the entire field of anthropology from the concept of human nature.

Michael

The premise of "conscious choice because of the trader principle" can be exposed as false because living in groups is biologically hardwired in us, as it is in our primate animal relatives. No one would speak of a chimp consciously choosing to live in groups, and the same applies to us.

The biological advantage is to ensure our survival, but to speak of 'conscious choice due to the trader principle' makes no sense here.

While the trader principle emerges from a biological basis (the 'give and take' one can observe in groups), it is not the basis itself.

The basis is biology. Hence to claim 'conscious choice' to be at the origin is putting the epistemological cart before the horse.

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The world suddenly seems so out of whack...

Suddenly?? The world has been out of whack since God invented dirt.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Tony,

You are in a strictly political frame of reference right now.

I have been talking about human nature.

The way I built my concept up goes like this:

Metaphysical observations plus epistemological observations. These two sit at the bottom of any concept.

You build ethics on top of them. If your understanding of metaphysics or epistemology changes, you have to align the ethics in order for your ethical concepts to be valid. You can't do it the other way around because metaphysics and epistemology are more fundamental.

Politics sits on top of ethics. If your understanding of metaphysics or epistemology or ethics changes, you have to align the political concepts that derive from them.

The division of philosophy into metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics is Rand's way of doing it. She later added aesthetics.

Rand did not make a division of philosophy called "human nature." She placed this between metaphysics and epistemology. So regardless of how you slice and dice it, human nature is still more fundamental to the concepts involving ethics and politics than the principles are. In other words, human nature is reality. We derive principles from reality if we want them to be valid, not the other way around. We do not derive (or deduct) reality from principles.

I have seen many people do this, but it is an error. Reality always comes first if you want to use your mind to identify it.

In the identification stage, you look at what exists and causality. You see that action XXX by entity YYY causes result ZZZ. You are not advocating anything at this point, nor are you concerned with principles. You are simply looking at what exists.

Now, if your understanding of human nature changes because you see something that you did not see before, you have to go into identification mode simply to get it right. And if what you see conflicts with treasured principles, you have to tell yourself, "I'll deal with that after I am clear on how this new understanding works."

If you come out in this stage and say, "Result ZZZ is collectivist, so it is wrong," your are not identifying. You are making a value judgment.

From this angle, John, who appeared to flat-out disagree with me, got it right. Look at what he said:

This is what I believed before I read Rand: That I have a *duty* to my country / society to have kids. That, despite not wanting kids, it's the moral thing to do *for the sake of society*. My motivation was not the love of my potential children, but the affirmation of this "collective" I had in my head.

Notice that he used actual identification of one part of human nature, "love of my potential children," as a corrective to a political principle (a very bad and dangerous one at that). This works and sounds totally convincing because human nature is more fundamental than politics.

If he has said, "my motivation was not individualism, but the affirmation of this 'collective' I had in my head," it would have been merely on the political level of Doctrine A (individualism) against Doctrine B (collectivism). That tells you nothing in fundamental terms in that statement other than you chose one over the other.

Now when you said the following, you are purely on a political wave, like my change of John's statement above, without grounding it in human nature.

Therefore your point is NOT to exclude species values in one's promotion of individualism. To avoid a population decline.

Have I understood?

The point is not to exclude species values in order to correctly identify human nature. It is not simply a tactic for "one's promotion of individualism" in order to avoid a specific result (like population decline).

I only brought up the trader principle thing because of many, many discussions I have had with people who do like this. Except some of them have been explicit in deriving human nature from the principles of individualism, rather than deriving the principles of individualism from human nature.

I have even seen people argue that an infant trades with its parents and should be cut off if it does not honor its debts (while still being an infant!).

So that "debt to the future" idea was not my own argument. I said so explicitly. I merely presented it to show how the logic works using the primacy of trader premise.

Once we have correctly identified human nature, all the other stuff I discussed (including population) comes later. My point is that if we exclude reproduction as a value and treat it merely as a necessary evil (which is basically Rand's approach--please look at those videos George posted), reality will punish those individuals with a population decline.

Those who include reproduction are awarded by reality in having more like-minded people in the world.

How we fit that identification to politics--how we derive political principles from that--is another matter.

Michael

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Michael:

It is interesting that you are looking at this issue.

I have been looking at David Goldman's arguments that have been expressed in his new book How Civilizations Die(And Why Islam is Dying Too) and I think you will find it interesting also.

The following is from the Forbes book review of his book and the link to the review is http://www.forbes.com/sites/leapfrogging/2011/09/22/book-review-david-goldmans-how-civilizations-die/

"For Goldman demography is almost destiny. He argues that demographics shed light on the rise and fall of nations, tribes, and civilizations. Goldman views the decision to have children as being a matter of religious faith, or at least reflecting optimism about the future. Where religions fail, fertility declines, and these civilizations fall into oblivion.

This leads him to one of his “universal laws,” namely, that “The history of the world is the history of humankind’s search for immortality.” A large part of the book is about the intricate ways in which this law interacts with demographic changes, and sheds light on national/tribal destinies from antiquity to our days.

According to Goldman, when a tribe or a nation suddenly realizes its demise into insignificance, whether defeated in war or leapfrogged by newcomers who accidentally stumble on better ideas, institutions, or technology, reproduction declines. When the fertility of the tribe or nation falls below replacement level, its civilization eventually disappears. At times, the tribe gradually dies out, literally speaking.

In other instances the tribes’ unique features disappear as its members emulate the leapfrogging civilization’s institutions and are absorbed in larger entities. These leave their tribal/national cultures behind for historians to explore the 'death of births.'"

Adam

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I have even seen people argue that an infant trades with its parents and should be cut off if it does not honor its debts (while still being an infant!).

I want to comment on this statement because something bounced around in my head and grew after I wrote it.

I made a slight exaggeration here. The way I have seen this argued (and I'm not kidding--someday I should look up the quotes) is not that the parents "should" cut off an infant for nonpayment of its "debt." Oh nooooo... that would be monstrous. Their point is that a parent who did that would be "morally correct" in cutting off the infant, although it would be icky. The reasons the give are the so-called debt.

In other words, if you take this to its logical conclusion, it is "morally correct" to starve an infant to death because it cannot pay for its food.

Then, as a response to this, because when you put it that way, it sounds even more monstrous (because it is), I have seen a debt-reversal argument for infants. It goes like this.

Since the parents put the infant in a helpless situation by choosing to bring it into existence, they have the moral obligation to care for it until it can care for itself. In other words, the parents have a debt to the infant they have to settle in order to be moral. This is a doctrine of inherent debt and I hold that it steps totally outside of what debt means.

How do you negotiate such a debt? Can you get a discount? How about trading the debt for something else? If you can't pay in the currency in which the debt was incurred (i.e. care for the infant), what can you give as a replacement that would have equivalent value? And on and on and on...

This is what happens when you derive human nature from principles.

How about just recognizing that humans care for their young--and love them--because reproduction is an inherent part of the species, just as much as having two legs and two arms are? Anyone can observe that.

If you start with that identification, taking it to the moral level is easy. You start here:

Things that encourage survival of the human species are good. Things that put survival of the human species at risk are evil. Things that do neither are morally neutral species-wise.

Sometimes this can collide with survival of the individual. But a good ethical examination will delve into it and put it in perspective with the rest of reality.

For example, another identification is that not all individuals of a species are the same, and some are not typical. For humans, we have to derive our ethics and principles--both on an individual level and on a species level--from looking at these folks, too. They don't fade out of existence, nor do they stop being human, because the way they exist doesn't fit a principle.

I hold it is a huge mistake to simply define everyone as an individual, cut off the nature of the human species to which all individuals belong from such identification--and, by extension, from all value judgments derived from that profile--then pretend we are talking about human beings.

This is a primary error of identification. The resulting ethics can be nothing but misaligned for human beings. Such ethics might be fit for Imaginary Man, but they leave out fundamental values for Real Flesh-and-Blood Man.

Fortunately, the way Rand did it, this is easy to correct. She gave the system. So the word "adjust" is probably better. You don't need to throw something out and replace it. You merely add the missing part and adapt the stuff that doesn't work with it.

But you have to follow the "identify correctly first. then evaluate" model of thinking. It won't work unless you are logical enough to know that you cannot correctly evaluate what you do not correctly identify.

And here's a by-product--one I have lived through. If you start with an absolute principle to govern human nature and place it above human nature (or pretend that it represents all of human nature), one which ignores the Law of Identity in parts anyone who looks can easily observe, you will feel under attack when a person points a finger and asks, "What about that part?"

When I first raised this concern, not in these words, though, it was known on the forums and blogs by the "lost baby in the woods" affair. I was called every name in the book for bringing it up and insisting that the argument make sense. As it never did, I never agreed. Because of my stubborn insistence, there are some people, even today, who would rather eat their shoe than look at me.

I admit, that experience was (and is) irritating, but I don't care one whit when the time comes for me to point my own finger at the incomplete identification and ask, "What about that part?. Are you just going to leave it out or what?"

Boy, people who deduce reality from principles can get really pissed when you do that!

But being pissed is never a correct identification. It never will be.

Michael

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And we all know Germans are kinky too.

[yes, I know, bad joke]

So was Rand; speaking of that, I already made a

about how fetishism neatly fits into the Objectivist picture. :-)
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Adam,

I just read the review. I think both authors talk around the issue--treating external forces like the plague, dictatorship, etc., as prime causes for attitudes toward human reproduction.

My point, like theirs, is that caring for children has to be part of a culture for it to survive. But the thing that most informs a culture for this issue is philosophy (or the philosophical parts embedded in religion). By this, I mean identifying what "man" is in general terms and determining what is good and evil for him.

For example, that business about adults not caring for their children in the Middle Ages because they were greater transmitters of the plague doesn't convince me. That might have been present. Seeing man as a servant of royally pissed-off God and children as carrying the germ of Original Sin makes more sense to me.

Ditto for the child as farm-helper. I believe the view that man was God's creation was far more important than simple survival of the adults. The kids worked all right, but I don't believe that was their reason for existence in the minds of the adults, nor the main reason they were to be cared for.

But fast-forward to now. The best nurturing environment I have seen for children so far is family. Public schools certainly ain't cutting it. I'm talking broad picture here, not specific exceptions.

So if we ground ourselves in a philosophy that treats the family as an unchosen unpleasant part of living, sort of like the need to build sewage lines, will it be any wonder if those who get caught up in this vibe decide to not have children? And will it be any wonder that this culture will depend more on converts than natural propagation for its growth?

And will it be any wonder if a philosophy (or religion) that celebrates family life and weds it to terms like honor, integrity, and so forth flourish and grow as a culture?

This is just common sense to me.

Just because you can be born into a dysfunctional family (I speak from experience), this doesn't mean that family life as a human condition is nothing more than a bad accident. If you include mirror neurons in your view of human nature, it's easy to see that family conditioning--by simple imitation alone--is one of the principal inputs in how you choose your values. Not the only input, of course, But you cannot eliminate it, either.

Doesn't it make sense to encourage people to build nurturing family environments and call that "the good"?

Granted, family love is not chosen love and, qua love, it is not an emotional response to chosen values. But it exists. An infant doesn't love its mother by choice. It certainly doesn't choose its values for a while. It grows to love its mother over time through her proximity and care--and as its awareness develops. And even more, I dare say, due to some prewiring in its brain. We are primates--mammals--after all.

My point is, you don't have to choose between becoming a creative genius or having a happy family environment. This is the way Rand typically presents the issue when she focuses on it. (There are some grudging exceptions in her writing, like the fatherly feelings of Dominique Francon's father for his daughter--but notice that Dominique was indifferent. Some of these exceptions are insinuated, like when Rand talks about a person's family being disrupted by government interference. The main No. 1 family illustrated in her work, the family she most fleshed out in detail, is Hank Rearden's family--and the members were all parasites.

Where was John Galt's family? Howard Roark's?

Doesn't that indicate a bias of some sort? :)

(Rand did like the idea of noble ancestors, but that is another story.)

I hold the following view. You can have both high individual achievement and a happy family if you work at them and your innate potential allows you to achieve them.

Having both is very, very good. It's a good thing to strive for both.

In other words, if you choose not to have a family after you grow up, that's OK. But you are choosing between good and good. You are not choosing between good and bad.

I think more needs to be written about this from an Objectivist or Objectivism-friendly view.

Michael

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But fast-forward to now. The best nurturing environment I have seen for children so far is family. Public schools certainly ain't cutting it. I'm talking broad picture here, not specific exceptions.

So if we ground ourselves in a philosophy that treats the family as an unchosen unpleasant part of living, sort of like the need to build sewage lines, will it be any wonder if those who get caught up in this vibe decide to not have children? And will it be any wonder that this culture will depend more on converts than natural propagation for its growth?

And will it be any wonder if a philosophy (or religion) that celebrates family life and weds it to terms like honor, integrity, and so forth flourish and grow as a culture?

This is just common sense to me.

Just because you can be born into a dysfunctional family (I speak from experience), this doesn't mean that family life as a human condition is nothing more than a bad accident. If you include mirror neurons in your view of human nature, it's easy to see that family conditioning--by simple imitation alone--is one of the principal inputs in how you choose your values. Not the only input, of course, But you cannot eliminate it, either.

Doesn't it make sense to encourage people to build nurturing family environments and call that "the good"?

Granted, family love is not chosen love and, qua love, it is not an emotional response to chosen values. But it exists. An infant doesn't love its mother by choice. It certainly doesn't choose its values for a while. It grows to love its mother over time through her proximity and care--and as its awareness develops. And even more, I dare say, due to some prewiring in its brain. We are primates--mammals--after all.

My point is, you don't have to choose between becoming a creative genius or having a happy family environment. This is the way Rand typically presents the issue when she focuses on it. (There are some grudging exceptions in her writing, like the fatherly feelings of Dominique Francon's father for his daughter--but notice that Dominique was indifferent. Some of these exceptions are insinuated, like when Rand talks about a person's family being disrupted by government interference. The main No. 1 family illustrated in her work, the family she most fleshed out in detail, is Hank Rearden's family--and the members were all parasites.

Where was John Galt's family? Howard Roark's?

Doesn't that indicate a bias of some sort? :smile:

(Rand did like the idea of noble ancestors, but that is another story.)

I hold the following view. You can have both high individual achievement and a happy family if you work at them and your innate potential allows you to achieve them.

Having both is very, very good. It's a good thing to strive for both.

In other words, if you choose not to have a family after you grow up, that's OK. But you are choosing between good and good. You are not choosing between good and bad.

I think more needs to be written about this from an Objectivist or Objectivism-friendly view.

Michael

Michael:

Ayn's bias against families is palpable. It has, as you concluded, to be written about from an objectivist friendly view. Essentially, that type of exposition can potentially increase the reach and respect for the ideas, especially now, when the state is continuing its progressive agenda to

destroy the family unit.

I agree with the distinctions that you make regarding culture, the family and children.

Of Ayn's characters in Atlas, Dagny's childhood is partially addressed in terms of developing her character. I remember the scene where her father's friend tells her father of his concern for her and her joy going out into the world.

I want to develop this further, but have to get going for family "duties" today, lol.

Adam

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If you watch the whole debate you'll see that this comes during the question period, and Peikoff didn't introduce the laundry motif, he just ran with it. He certainly has some good lines, parenthood isn't about breeding slaves, for instance.

It seems the whole debate is on YouTube, though maybe not for long. If you want to look up where the clip came from it ought to be pretty late in the program, certainly past the halfway mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbYTnFcnvPE&feature=player_embedded

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From the 1964 Playboy interview: http://ellensplace.net/ar_pboy.html

PLAYBOY: According to your philosophy, work and achievement are the highest goals of life. Do you regard as immoral those who find greater fulfillment in the warmth of friendship and family ties?

RAND: If they place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships.

So in Rand's judgment, people who don't place their own productive work first are "immoral".

Again, where is the "individualism" contained in this? This looks more like moral rigorism to me.

"whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships." (Rand)

Conflicts in human relationships can arise all the same for people who place their work first.

Often they are with spouses or partners who complain about them being 'married to their jobs'.

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.

The world suddenly seems so out of whack...

Suddenly?? The world has been out of whack since God invented dirt.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Even if one shaves off the god idea with Occam' Razor, the world looks pretty much out of whack very often - earthquakes, tsunamis, or just think of all those black holes in the cosmos swallowing up matter ... ;)

But since we are not going to settle down permanently in the world anyway, rolling with the punches has always been an option for me. Panta rhei.

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Panta rhei.

http://www.sdss.jhu.edu/~szalay/music/pantarhei.html

On this website you will find a collection of Panta Rhei songs in MP3 format. There were some problems with the encoding in the earlier version of this website. We believe that these have now been fixed, and the songs are now re-encoded with MP3PRO. Click on the song titles below to download.

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The world suddenly seems so out of whack...

Suddenly?? The world has been out of whack since God invented dirt.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Even if one shaves off the god idea with Occam' Razor, the world looks pretty much out of whack very often -

Since God invented dirt means ever since Way Back When. In realistic terms, about 4.25 billion years, not the Biblical 6000 years.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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There's a cultural issue involved that Rand never...

On one side is a mystical culture--with indoctrination from the cradle and strong maintenance habits for adults (like praying 5 times a day)--that values procreation and is popping them out like bunny rabbits, and on the other side is a culture of enlightened self-interest that currently makes light of family values and, percentage-wise for reproduction, is falling far behind the other. How long do we expect the individualistic ideas this last culture was founded on to be the controlling ones after the population numbers of the mystical culture catches up and passes? How long does someone expect a growing majority to be controlled culturally by a dwindling minority? This current form of thinking and acting about reproduction is cultural suicide. And Rand was at the forefront of promoting that way of thinking. This is one of the big holes in Objectivist thought. The results are observable and measurable. All anyone has to do is look. If anyone is happy to say let the whole culture or human race go to hell, let it become extinct, who cares?, I got mine, that's his or her choice. But that is not my choice. I move in a different direction on this issue. And I will be writing about it. I hold we are not just totally isolated individual things spinning on a ball that is floating about in time and space. We are individual members of a species. That last is what Ayn Rand consistently brushed aside in her view of human nature. (This, to me, is a scope problem. She got the individualism stuff right. But she left out the species stuff and extended individualism principles and values to cover the gap.) If we propose individualism as a contextless absolute, and this threatens to extinguish the species, I say a revision of that principle and value is in order. I don't see any other alternative than those two choices. Reality imposes it. So I'll take the revision over the extinction of my progeny. And I believe it is fully rational to do so. I don't even believe I would be acting selfishly as a an individual member of the human species if I promoted a philosophy that resulted in its extinction. OK, a culture is not a species. But this path starts with proposing an absolute value that allows a faith-based culture to simply out-reproduce the individualistic reason-based culture into submission and, ultimately, into extinction. There doesn't have to be a total reversal, though. Individualism is still the best thing going for the individual. But part of that concern needs to be devoted to preserving the species and the best cultures among us. Proposing a philosophy that results in cultural suicide because the members do not reproduce enough to pass it on to their offspring is simply not rational. Reproduction is a human value, not just a human condition. And ethics should make room for it. So I say rather than make the argument of individualism VERSUS species concerns, let's find a way to make it individualism PLUS species concerns. If you want to put it on a trader basis, we have a responsibility--a debt--to our species in exchange for our very existence and rights as individuals. The simple fact is that without the human species, not one of us would be an individual in the first place. We got our life and individuality from the species that came before us. We can settle that debt by making efforts to ensure the species continues after us. (I don't think in such trader-like terms for the metaphysics of identifying human nature, but the logic works.) Michael

Michael,

In short, if Rand has implicitly or explicitly raised mutual exclusivity between the ethics of selfishness, and man, as reproductive being - she was flat out WRONG.i.e. if you have children, you can't be morally selfish. Self-evidently, she did not intend this, I believe.

When I first caught tiny hints of her attitude to children (more like a non-attitude, really) way back when I first read her, it was no 'deal-breaker' for me.

I resolved it simply: without children, no adult; without adult, no philosophy - and no need of one.

Implicitly, our individual values and human nature will result in most of us having children with no compromise to our egoist morality.

As a by-the-by, I don't pay too much attention any more to Rand's weirder pronouncements. Without rationalizing, I view them as her embarassing or amusing lapses and excesses. My pet theory is that she induced so much of Objectivism, that she lost touch sometimes with what was subjective and personal to her: one just blurred into the other. This, coupled with her obvious desire to bring everything under the O'ist 'umbrella', led her out too far on a limb at times.

So, how much of these pronouncements about child-rearing matter? If one is an awestruck Randian, who has not learned the core tenet of Objectivist independence, they could be harmful. If one is a knee-jerk anti-Randian looking for any chink in her armour, well, here's another, folks. Make the most of it.

The nature of man.

I don't know how much you read of my posts, but I'm the one who is always banging on (and on) about the foundation of rational egoism, and emphasising its total grounding on all that is human nature.

Several times the 'hard-wiring' aspect comes up, and my position is that I think it cannot be ignored, or denied. But this is all contained within the ethics, as human nature: the M and E of O'ism.

But hard-wiring (or whatever you want to call it) only provides the impulse to DO 'something'.

It does NOT tell us what to do about it and how to proceed. Like emotions, it is never a guide to action.

For instance,I have the impulse to father a child: Who with? When? How many? Why? No answer.

The pure, selfish pleasure of creating and nurturing a new being, is hard-wired in me. My rationally-selfish ethics takes over:responsibility, and all other factors. One way or another, a choice is made.

To a large degree, I selectively over-ride the natural instinct, and limit it. As I would with the 'herd instinct'.

Unless one is controlled by every utterance by Ayn Rand, this integrates with my morality.

Independence of mind, first and always.

Species values.

In identifying man as reproductive creature, metaphysically - it does not follow to introduce an identification of man as 'species-value' driven, metaphysically, too.

We were hard-wired to father/mother the maximum amount of off-spring possible in our primitively short life, yes. That's where it stops.

Separately, any consideration of our culture, or philosophy dwindling and dying out is not metaphysical; it's cognitive, and rational. Just thought I'd be clear on this.

We, each of us, are not *hard-wired* to consider the survival of the species, or culture; we just want to make babies.**

Having concern for one's culture and species COULD be a chosen value, for a rationally-selfish individual. It's not high on my list, but if you, or any O'ist, or anybody else, want to publish and promote family values within Objectivism, AND, to oppose any lingering child/egoist morality 'false dichotomy' - great! Why not? Who'd stop you?

**Speaking of which, my daughter,an only child, (naturally!) will have her first child next month.)

Tony

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In short, if Rand has implicitly or explicitly raised mutual exclusivity between the ethics of selfishness, and man, as reproductive being - she was flat out WRONG.i.e. if you have children, you can't be morally selfish. Self-evidently, she did not intend this, I believe.

When I first caught tiny hints of her attitude to children (more like a non-attitude, really) way back when I first read her, it was no 'deal-breaker' for me.

I resolved it simply: without children, no adult; without adult, no philosophy - and no need of one.

Implicitly, our individual values and human nature will result in most of us having children with no compromise to our egoist morality.

As a by-the-by, I don't pay too much attention any more to Rand's weirder pronouncements. Without rationalizing, I view them as her embarassing or amusing lapses and excesses. My pet theory is that she induced so much of Objectivism, that she lost touch sometimes with what was subjective and personal to her: one just blurred into the other. This, coupled with her obvious desire to bring everything under the O'ist 'umbrella', led her out too far on a limb at times.

Excellent observations Tony! I completely agree.

If one is an awestruck Randian, who has not learned the core tenet of Objectivist independence, they could be harmful.
I

This is precisely why I will not call myself an Objectivist.

Unless one is controlled by every utterance by Ayn Rand, this integrates with my morality.

Independence of mind, first and always.

Yep!

**Speaking of which, my daughter,an only child, (naturally!) will have her first child next month.)

Tony

I am also an only child. I also have two (2) only children.

I remember a hilarious book called My Brother Was an Only Child by Jack Douglas http://www.amazon.co...d/dp/0671812319

He also wrote another comedic book called Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/B0007FAYMM

Jack Douglas was a funny man that made others seem even funnier. He was a joke writer for--among others--Johnny Carson. I read this one give or take 30 years ago and have never been able to get hands on a copy of it or of "My Brother was an Only Child" since. Jack's Japanese wife--she spoke no English and he no Japanese when they were married--was a real trooper--he called her Huckleberrry Hashimoto and their adventures as newlyweds was a first serious (yeah, sure-HO HO)effort at humor.

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Tony,

Let's put it this way.

If anyone wants to understand human nature on an identification level, I think it's a good idea to study it from many different sources.

Just thinking about it and taking Rand's word on it is not enough to get a good picture. I know this from trying to do it that way in life. My eyes kept telling me there was a whole lot more simply because a whole lot of what I saw didn't fit.

I hold that Rand got right what she did, but often erred in trying to extend a particular insight to include all of human nature. This is a different view than those who say Rand was wrong. No. She was right. She came up with some fantastic insights into human nature. The problem comes when she tried to extend them into areas where they don't work.

For example, on a big-picture level, her ideas are great for individual human adults during their productive years. They are not much use to a person at the end of his life and losing his capacities. This is a phase where focus on serenity and maybe teaching others what you learned over life--even if it's for free--would be a lot more useful, would result in much greater happiness, than productive work for pay that you are passionate about. Family and loved ones are extremely important here. This is an ethical issue ("code of values to guide man's choices").

Infant care is another area where there is a lot lacking.

Apropos, apparently we disagree about belonging to the human species being a part of human nature. (OK, that was a smart-ass way to put it. :smile: Still, we disagree here. Individuals can choose to extinguish the human species and I hold that to be really, really evil. Top-value kind of evil.)

A complete philosophy covers the complete human experience. Objectivism does not. It gives some lip service to phases and things that fall outside of the productive individual adult stage, but there is no real meat to it. This isn't just an armchair opinion or criticism. I have great familiarity with the Objectivist canon and I have actively sought these things in it.

So for the productive individual adult stage, Rand's ideas and insights are quite useful.

For the other stages of human life and other conditions of it, not so much.

Her clash with the reality of hardwiring in the brain is one of the few places where she was flat-out wrong. Buzz. Eliminated. No cigar. She went so far as to claim that humans have no instincts whatsoever. And she got nasty about it, too.

Well, proclamations and nastiness are no substitute for observation and predictable results.

(btw - You are not accurate, even by Objectivist meanings of terms, to include behavior from hardwiring under ethics right from the start. The role of ethics is to deal with volition--choice. Not the parts of existence you can't choose. It's true that you can choose behavior that can override hardwired behavior in many cases, and that's suited to ethics, but you don't blast the hardwiring out of existence by being able to choose other forms of acting when possible.)

On another point, there's a perspective I don't know if I can transmit to you since I see you often approach these things from the lens of defending against attacks on Rand. But I'll try. My view is to understand something, then worry about who said what or how to evaluate it. If I hold an idea, and what I see does not support that idea, I find this a good time to look at both the thing and at the idea to see what's wrong.

Nothing is sacred at this point. Am I seeing correctly? Let me find other ways of checking. Is my idea wrong? Or does it have a scope problem? Let me check better against what I see and let me look at the ideas of other folks on this.

Off I go barbecuing one sacred cow after another until I find a way to make it make sense on an identification level. This often pisses people off, especially people who own and milk sacred cows. :smile:

The Rand-defender perspective puts protecting her honor, reputation, whatever precisely in that spot and implicitly treats all observations that do not agree with her, or demonstrate her shortcomings, as attacks on her that need to be handled BEFORE examining the idea or observation on its own merits. Too often, this is not even before examining--it is in place of examining. (I speak as a former practitioner. And, believe me, you are not a basket case about it like I have seen with some other people, or even like I was. I see you shake it off at times.)

Now, on to the perspective.

A group is made up of individuals, but we have to derive our identification of the individual from looking at what the majority displays, align that with the exceptions in the group, and from that point we will start to find the fundamentals. This is a good identification habit.

Here is an example that always gets me in trouble and often pisses people off. (But what can ya do? :smile: )

When rights are brought up, I hold that rights come with the responsibility to enforce them. And that responsibility comes from character. If you do not have a majority of people who undertake and agree with the responsibility of enforcing rights, you will simply not have them.

Oh, there are the folks who say rights don't disappear just because people don't or can't practice them, but to me that is useless dogma and blah blah blah. It's great to know I have a right to free speech when I am in front of a lynch mob daring me to say one more word. Yeah, right.

Rights are chosen, not innate. They are principles of property and conduct and interaction with others derived from human nature. We choose to derive them that way. Other ways can be chosen, too. Religious folks say they are a gift from God (incidentally, I find that a dangerous way of thinking). Ironically, dictators derive their rights from human nature, too. Except their focus is different.

If a dictator holds enough power to kill off folks who want to rule their own lives, he will have rights over whoever is left and he will be able to enforce them. He will have rights over the lives of those who don't want to fight him or can't. That means the "right" to kill whoever he wants whenever he wants.

Like I said, his rights are derived from human nature--but a lopsided part of it. He focuses so much on power and physical destruction (which are parts of human nature), and enforces this with weapons, that he makes other parts of human nature (like the rational mind) meaningless when he establishes his rights over others.

So the example I give is if you take a bunch of convicts and let them loose on a desert island, but give them full instruction in freedom, individual rights, etc. beforehand, then come back one year later, what do you expect you will find? People practicing freedom and individual rights?

Heh.

Are individual rights derived from the human nature of those gentlemen?

Heh again.

You need people who want freedom and individual rights before they will become real. Meaning a right in practice and theory, not just in theory alone.

What's more, you need a majority who want these things. Otherwise, there is no way to enforce them.

Freedom is for enlightened good people of action. It doesn't work with people of bad character or savages or lazy folks. The enlightened good people must be in the majority and in control for people of bad character and savages and lazy folks to even have a place in a society like that. Otherwise, the bad guys and those who don't know any better or don't care will destroy it.

(Here in America, people have gotten lazy about this. And look what has been happening by steady creeping.)

Freedom comes with the responsibility of keeping the ideas of individual rights alive, educating the young in these matters, and constantly working on yourself to try to be a good person. It's not just about fighting off bad guys and making macho statements (although that is a part of it, too). Without enough people willing to shoulder these individual responsibilities, freedom and individual rights disappear from society.

That's not the way it should be. That's not the way it could be.

That's just the way it is. That's reality. The given.

It took an enormous amount of courage, thinking, working out morality, bitter bickering, and then a war to wrest the rights of a King over others from his grimy mitts and reassign them to each individual so that each individual rules his own life so long as he allows the same condition for others.

A new standard for rights was established: individual sovereignty instead of sovereignty over a group.

If you have to take something from a tyrant by that much effort and thought from moral giants and really, really good people, isn't it reasonable to assume that those who inherit it have a responsibility to maintain it on pain of losing it? And isn't it reasonable to assume that you need to have certain individual traits--ones that are similar to the Founding Fathers--in a majority to be able to do that?

So when I talk about individual rights, I extend them to everyone. But my context is enlightened good people running the show. Folks can say all they want that rights don't disappear under a brutal dictatorship. But that has the same cognitive dissonance to me as if you look at Jews in Nazi concentration camps in WWII and say that God loves them.

You can say it, you can pile syllogisms on top of syllogisms to try to prove it, you can mock me and call me evil, but I don't see it.

I use this same perspective method in looking at the scope of Objectivism. The application of Objectivism, just like rights, is conditional in order to work, not contextless. When I imagine applying it to different situations with different groups, I get different results. Not one-size fits all. For Objectivism to work, you need to focus on the productive individual in the adult stage of the human experience. It works really well there. It doesn't work so good outside of that context.

Michael

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A complete philosophy covers the complete human experience. Objectivism does not. It gives some lip service to phases and things that fall outside of the productive individual adult stage, but there is no real meat to it. This isn't just an armchair opinion or criticism. I have great familiarity with the Objectivist canon and I have actively sought these things in it.

So for the productive individual adult stage, Rand's ideas and insights are quite useful.

For the other stages of human life and other conditions of it, not so much.

I use this same perspective method in looking at the scope of Objectivism. The application of Objectivism, just like rights, is conditional in order to work, not contextless. When I imagine applying it to different situations with different groups, I get different results. Not one-size fits all. For Objectivism to work, you need to focus on the productive individual in the adult stage of the human experience. It works really well there. It doesn't work so good outside of that context.

Michael

Michael,

Plenty to take in - I've extracted only one extended thought from it.

No disagreement except for one thing: If anything, Objectivism is proving its worth more and more as I've got older. As a writer said, "Youth is the time for adventures of the body, but age for the triumphs of the mind."

On one level, I am increasingly gaining a world-view - without sounding dramatic I trust - of how everything fits.

It is a beautiful picture, which all here should understand the significance of - because here are a greater ratio of dedicated 'searchers' than in the general population, I think.

On another level, I am not just convinced that rational egoism is the basis of all good in my life, I'm beyond convinced (if that make sense.) It works. It feels good. It has stood the "test of time",by countless applications, and a million observations. When it lacks in people, the effects are apparent. I must add, that I had to fully understand it over years, and that involved much growth, and maturity.

There are many ways towards the big truths - and serenity, as you say - but the starting point plays a critical role.

When the starting point is thoughtful, conscious, rational selfishness - one's values in everything- and in all life, in whatever form - magnify immensely in weight and emphasis.

Amazing: you start out finding value in your self (selfishly) and end up valuing other people, too. Or, maybe, not so amazing, after all. You have just pulled them up with you.

A last thought about Objectivism not covering the "complete human experience".

I believe this is true... but isn't it a blast!

Each of us has the opportunity to work out the details for ourselves (and discuss them, and learn from the scholars).

O'ism provides a pretty good basic structure to stand on, and lets you do the rest.

That's all I want from a philosophy.

Thanks

Tony

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There's a cultural issue involved that Rand never...

On one side is a mystical culture--with indoctrination from the cradle and strong maintenance habits for adults (like praying 5 times a day)--that values procreation and is popping them out like bunny rabbits, and on the other side is a culture of enlightened self-interest that currently makes light of family values and, percentage-wise for reproduction, is falling far behind the other. How long do we expect the individualistic ideas this last culture was founded on to be the controlling ones after the population numbers of the mystical culture catches up and passes? How long does someone expect a growing majority to be controlled culturally by a dwindling minority? This current form of thinking and acting about reproduction is cultural suicide. And Rand was at the forefront of promoting that way of thinking. This is one of the big holes in Objectivist thought. The results are observable and measurable. All anyone has to do is look. If anyone is happy to say let the whole culture or human race go to hell, let it become extinct, who cares?, I got mine, that's his or her choice. But that is not my choice. I move in a different direction on this issue. And I will be writing about it. I hold we are not just totally isolated individual things spinning on a ball that is floating about in time and space. We are individual members of a species. That last is what Ayn Rand consistently brushed aside in her view of human nature. (This, to me, is a scope problem. She got the individualism stuff right. But she left out the species stuff and extended individualism principles and values to cover the gap.) If we propose individualism as a contextless absolute, and this threatens to extinguish the species, I say a revision of that principle and value is in order. I don't see any other alternative than those two choices. Reality imposes it. So I'll take the revision over the extinction of my progeny. And I believe it is fully rational to do so. I don't even believe I would be acting selfishly as a an individual member of the human species if I promoted a philosophy that resulted in its extinction. OK, a culture is not a species. But this path starts with proposing an absolute value that allows a faith-based culture to simply out-reproduce the individualistic reason-based culture into submission and, ultimately, into extinction. There doesn't have to be a total reversal, though. Individualism is still the best thing going for the individual. But part of that concern needs to be devoted to preserving the species and the best cultures among us. Proposing a philosophy that results in cultural suicide because the members do not reproduce enough to pass it on to their offspring is simply not rational. Reproduction is a human value, not just a human condition. And ethics should make room for it. So I say rather than make the argument of individualism VERSUS species concerns, let's find a way to make it individualism PLUS species concerns. If you want to put it on a trader basis, we have a responsibility--a debt--to our species in exchange for our very existence and rights as individuals. The simple fact is that without the human species, not one of us would be an individual in the first place. We got our life and individuality from the species that came before us. We can settle that debt by making efforts to ensure the species continues after us. (I don't think in such trader-like terms for the metaphysics of identifying human nature, but the logic works.) Michael

Michael,

In short, if Rand has implicitly or explicitly raised mutual exclusivity between the ethics of selfishness, and man, as reproductive being - she was flat out WRONG.i.e. if you have children, you can't be morally selfish. Self-evidently, she did not intend this, I believe.

When I first caught tiny hints of her attitude to children (more like a non-attitude, really) way back when I first read her, it was no 'deal-breaker' for me.

I resolved it simply: without children, no adult; without adult, no philosophy - and no need of one.

Implicitly, our individual values and human nature will result in most of us having children with no compromise to our egoist morality.

As a by-the-by, I don't pay too much attention any more to Rand's weirder pronouncements. Without rationalizing, I view them as her embarassing or amusing lapses and excesses. My pet theory is that she induced so much of Objectivism, that she lost touch sometimes with what was subjective and personal to her: one just blurred into the other. This, coupled with her obvious desire to bring everything under the O'ist 'umbrella', led her out too far on a limb at times.

So, how much of these pronouncements about child-rearing matter? If one is an awestruck Randian, who has not learned the core tenet of Objectivist independence, they could be harmful. If one is a knee-jerk anti-Randian looking for any chink in her armour, well, here's another, folks. Make the most of it.

The nature of man.

I don't know how much you read of my posts, but I'm the one who is always banging on (and on) about the foundation of rational egoism, and emphasising its total grounding on all that is human nature.

Several times the 'hard-wiring' aspect comes up, and my position is that I think it cannot be ignored, or denied. But this is all contained within the ethics, as human nature: the M and E of O'ism.

But hard-wiring (or whatever you want to call it) only provides the impulse to DO 'something'.

It does NOT tell us what to do about it and how to proceed. Like emotions, it is never a guide to action.

For instance,I have the impulse to father a child: Who with? When? How many? Why? No answer.

The pure, selfish pleasure of creating and nurturing a new being, is hard-wired in me. My rationally-selfish ethics takes over:responsibility, and all other factors. One way or another, a choice is made.

To a large degree, I selectively over-ride the natural instinct, and limit it. As I would with the 'herd instinct'.

Unless one is controlled by every utterance by Ayn Rand, this integrates with my morality.

Independence of mind, first and always.

Species values.

In identifying man as reproductive creature, metaphysically - it does not follow to introduce an identification of man as 'species-value' driven, metaphysically, too.

We were hard-wired to father/mother the maximum amount of off-spring possible in our primitively short life, yes. That's where it stops.

Separately, any consideration of our culture, or philosophy dwindling and dying out is not metaphysical; it's cognitive, and rational. Just thought I'd be clear on this.

We, each of us, are not *hard-wired* to consider the survival of the species, or culture; we just want to make babies.**

Having concern for one's culture and species COULD be a chosen value, for a rationally-selfish individual. It's not high on my list, but if you, or any O'ist, or anybody else, want to publish and promote family values within Objectivism, AND, to oppose any lingering child/egoist morality 'false dichotomy' - great! Why not? Who'd stop you?

**Speaking of which, my daughter,an only child, (naturally!) will have her first child next month.)

Tony

mazeltov Tony! I have 2 and 2/3s grandsons. The already born one is a magic footballer already at age 2. How about an\\arranged marriage here? I'm sure by the time they grow up, somebody will become rich.

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mazeltov Tony! I have 2 and 2/3s grandsons. The already born one is a magic footballer already at age 2. How about an\\arranged marriage here? I'm sure by the time they grow up, somebody will become rich.

Carol,

Sounds good. He/she is going to be born in England, and will grow up in Australia (the father), so we will have done good for the sake of unity of the Commonwealth. Gender might pose a problem to our dynasty, though.

Gr...gr..gran..grandfa..grandfather! There, I said it.

If I ever get used to it, is another story.

Adam,

Only child? Best kind: me too.

Thanks,

Tony

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mazeltov Tony! I have 2 and 2/3s grandsons. The already born one is a magic footballer already at age 2. How about an\\arranged marriage here? I'm sure by the time they grow up, somebody will become rich.

Carol,

Sounds good. He/she is going to be born in England, and will grow up in Australia (the father), so we will have done good for the sake of unity of the Commonwealth. Gender might pose a problem to our dynasty, though.

Gr...gr..gran..grandfa..grandfather! There, I said it.

If I ever get used to it, is another story.

Adam,

Only child? Best kind: me too.

Thanks,

Tony

That makes three of us. All the more reason to ensure the survival of our singularity!

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Mrs and I went over yesterday to baby sit the grandchildren ( a mere 9 mile ride). After hugs and kisses I just sat down to watch them play with each other (ages 8.5, 8.5 4.92). I did not say much. They were having fun which the main business of children. I just soaked up their joy. I was WONDERFUL!.

The big day is Wednesday when my youngest grand-daughter turns 5.00 years. On the very day she was born nearly five years ago her mommy gave me Julia to hold. I got just during open eye time on day uno. Truly one of the days I mark well. For those who don't have children but intend to, hang in there. If you live long enough you will get the Payoff (grandchildren and more). For those who don't intend to have children what can I say? You simply will never know what you are missing.

My one fervent wish (perhaps even a prayer) is that I live long enough in good enough health to hold a great grandchild of my flesh and blood in my arms. After that God does not owe me a thing. I will have completed my rounds.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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