Review of In Defense of Selfishness

[Mikee]

I'm sorry Brant. Hope you feel better soon. A relaxed kitten:

You can get ten free guided meditation sessions (ten minutes) at headspace.com

I tried one. I liked it too much, I'm suspicious it could be addictive.

[i don't mean to be an asshole]

[anthony]

All OK, one has to have the heat to get the sparks... sometimes. Be well.

[Guyau]

It is for Rand both right and a right for individuals to live for their own sakes. The moral standard to be followed is for each individual to live as full and as complete a human life as possible. Each individual human being is an end in him- or herself and has no higher moral purpose. One is certainly not merely a means to the ends of others. This is what Rand meant by speaking of the virtue of “selfishness.” Her purpose in using a term that is normally thought of as a vice to describe her fundamental virtue was to indicate just how profound a paradigm shift is needed in order to defend liberty. The right to liberty will not long exist in a culture that sees the pursuit of happiness (and by “happiness” she meant something more like human flourishing than merely pleasure) as either unworthy or simply amoral.

—Douglas Rasmussen (2010)

[Brant Gaede]

All OK, one has to have the heat to get the sparks... sometimes. Be well.

It's kind of hard to process the idea I'm perceived as a maker of semantical arguments.

I have a solution: fewer and more substantive posts.

--Brant

going to try the OL "Blog" function

edit: naw, the Blog is no good; no one will know it to read it

grump, grump, grump

okay, you guys got to me with your making nicey--now please turn off the nice before I come down with diabetes and have to inject myself with rationality so my brain can absorb it

Edited August 6, 2015 by Brant Gaede

[Jules Troy]

While the altruists,pessimists and realists were locked in a heated debate as to whether the glass was half empty or half full I drank the water.

Signed:

The Opportunist.

[Brant Gaede]

While the altruists,pessimists and realists were locked in a heated debate as to whether the glass was half empty or half full I drank the water.

Signed:

The Opportunist.

Greg's water?

--Brant

you're screwed

[Marcus]

Brant, altruism is not a secondary value. It is a non-value. In Objectivism, Altruism means "sacrifice" of your values for the sake of another. Only a "self" can properly value anything. The self is the first and only consideration. All values proceed from your own selfish interests, including helping others, even if you merely derive selfish pleasure from doing so.

I believe the word you need here is benevolence (not altruism).

[Jules Troy]

Wow Marcus thank you for enlightening us on the objectivish definition of altruism. We would be lost without you, having never read anything to do with Ayn Rand's works....

[Marcus]

Wow Marcus thank you for enlightening us on the objectivish definition of altruism. We would be lost without you, having never read anything to do with Ayn Rand's works....

Jules, there is only one definition to a thing (a "table" has 4 legs, a "bike" has 2 wheels etc, etc). Basic epistemological rule. If your definition doesn't fit my definition then one of us is wrong.

[merjet]

Jules, there is only one definition to a thing (a "table" has 4 legs, a "bike" has 2 wheels etc, etc). Basic epistemological rule. If your definition doesn't fit my definition then one of us is wrong.

Earth to Marcus: table, run, bear, set.

[Wolf DeVoon]

selfish actions end up benefiting everyone

Most men hope to be celebrated and successful, remembered for achievements that made life easier for others. That was never my purpose. I selfishly sought knowledge and seized opportunities when offered. I repeatedly made life more difficult for others. [preface, COGIGG, emphasis added for clarity]

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, altruism is not a secondary value. It is a non-value. In Objectivism, Altruism means "sacrifice" of your values for the sake of another. Only a "self" can properly value anything. The self is the first and only consideration. All values proceed from your own selfish interests, including helping others, even if you merely derive selfish pleasure from doing so.

I believe the word you need here is benevolence (not altruism).

You seem to be referencing my posts 6, 12 and 18. (18 ends that sequence--nice while it lasted.) Good restatement of official Objectivism and thanks for bringing in "benevolence."

I generally do not represent Objectivism except in the most basic ways. This causes not infrequent conflicts for I keep tearing at the philosophy and its representations, especially by Ayn Rand. I am outside--deliberately outside--the Objectivism box. In that sense I could say I'm an "objectivist," but I can't give up the big "O" for esthetic and psychological reasons. Therefore, I don't call myself either but maintain what I am inside my head: a reality and reasonist. (A minor problem is when I go to parties--usually orgies [is there another kind?]--and say I'm one, no one knows which one or cares because of the limits of oral discourse, etc., heh.)

Randian-type explications are great and valuable, at least for starters and reference points, but they can be hard to travel. (I'm not going back and reread what I've already stated on this thread so I might here do some self-contradicting. No big deal. The reader can figure it all out on his way to "The Truth.") We keep going back and forth with each other about these formulations on an Objectivist site. Step outside and where's all the explicating? It's not enough to restate correctly selfishness vs altruism and hand it to the fellow next door. One needs hours of conversation about what it's all connected to--that is, the whole ball of Objectivism wax. I imagine that's what went on during meetings at Rand's home of the "Collective," all of whom had read or were reading as it was being written, Atlas Shrugged.

So I see value in doing it my way and presenting ideas in the context naturally occupied by hoi polloi. In her great novel the whole world had to collapse for the whole world--in that world--to get her point. All Galt's speech in the novel was for was to tell the still morally and intellectually salvageable what was what and to rub it into the faces of the bad guys. When "The Strike" started, about 15 years prior, it was already too late for the educate the world through the path of reason except to save the productive but ignorant heroes and to speed up the disintegration. (That's what Alan Greenspan did, btw, as the ironical head of the Federal Reserve: speed up history with his great "bubbles," but I have no doubt he thought he was doing an immediate and general good or he'd have been doing evil taking on something like the employment John Galt refused under torture.)

Here is where Objectivism's selfishness vs altruism works best (in ethics and politics): against the authority of religious leaders and all other leaders, especially the political ones seeking moral justification for collectivism and general human subjugation. Rand is engaging in moral warfare by throwing altruism back into their faces after stomping it well neigh unto death.

I have stepped outside that battlefield. I have become like that Matrix hero guy (but I'm not "The One") at the climatic fight controlling the entire environment with one hand and contemplating something entirely different with the other. (So I remember that part of the movie.) The guy contemplating bullets he froze in mid-flight is both Ayn Rand and the other guy is whoever/whatever--a fighter who doesn't need to fight suddenly realizing the real wonder of it all.

You see, the moral and political would-be rulers and controllers have ripped altruism out of the human genome and monopolized it and Rand fought back by attacking and trying to destroy altruism itself instead of rescuing it. Objectivism is the philosophy of individualism at its core for well arguable reasons and that goes into the philosophy through all its basic and integrated principles from A to Z. But that's just the philosophy as so far rendered. It's not human psychology. Rand fell into the academic philosophy-psychology divide and trap. There are strong reasons for doing this. For instance, in psychotherapy you have to be very careful as a therapist with how you use morality and refer to it in therapy, but morality is the most important part--the central part--of Objectivism. Nothing spikes effective psychotherapy more than implicit or explicit moral admonishment. Morality is basically about control. That's why humans have control. But it must be from the inside-out in a properly functioning person. Someone in therapy is supposedly not properly functioning. Objectivist psychotherapy in the 1960s seems to have had a lot to do with the therapist controlling the client--at least in the stories that survive. Giving that up was the major shift in the way Nathaniel Branden changed his approach after moving to California. (As he told one client, not me particularly but it was educational for all who heard it [paraphrase]: "You can say many things to me in this room I would react quite differently to if you said them to me on the street.")

The basic problem, getting back to The Matrix analogy, is the fight--the battlefield--is just an artificiality. You don't attack and destroy altruism, you rescue it. In your case by calling it "benevolence." Not good enough. You're still leaving "altruism" all manged up and dead, tangled up in the corpses of collectivism. Altruism commonly understood belongs with individualists, not the collectivists, who have run away with half of a human being's human being. Simply put we are all social animals each living in different places on the social continuum whose social needs vary in intensity and type. Gross abnormality means sociopathy or self-exile. (We can easily think of a sociopath as an individual. However, that's just one abnormal to be avoided human bookend. The other human bookend is the sociopath representing collectivism.) Simply put, again, Objectivism is individualism at the base or core with a too much undeveloped ethics, morality and real world social structure. That was fine with Aspie libertarians who grabbed the politics and ran away from the rest. It was ripe fruit for the taking but ripped off its philosophical roots it was only good for relatively recent consumption and even only in political philosophy there's not much left for them to eat, especially as they threw away their brain teeth.

To sum up: Selfishness is the primary with the two sub-categories occupying the space of reality that "selfishness" as a pure abstraction can not and does not. The first subcategory is what is selfish (you can call it "selfishness") and the second what is altruist (you can call it "benevolence"--I don't; I use that word more particularly as I think it ought to be). Mix them both together and you got a human. A real person. A real person is a sub-category to nothing tactile. A real person is the primary, not any philosophy and not that person the collectivists have ripped apart. You kill the collectivists, real or metaphorically, both ways is the best ways depending on whether they got guns or not--no guns, no killing fun, you talk 'em down. You don't kill altruism; you reclaim it. You have no choice or the collectivists you killed will come back as moral, flesh-eating and/or brain/cultural/political-dominating zombies. That's why the likes of Barack Obama can survive Ayn Rand--and with a laugh: Ayn Rand sanctions Barack Obama, his matrix. The President feasts on her philosophy as so far rendered. His bullets--the bullets of the moral-collectivist matrix--are still deadly. The ironic sanction of the victim--the real heart of all her philosophy and philosophifilings.

--Brant

[Marcus]

Brant, we should define our terms here. According to Google, the zoological (i.e. biological) definition of atruism is the following:

behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense.

Brant, since this is not a viable survival strategy for humans, it is not and cannot be a value other than for an irrational person. Altruism works well for ants, but not for men.

So like I said, Altruism *is* a non-value. It should not be "rescued". It should be left to die (cruel I know). Benevolence is not "another name" for it. It is a totally different, (superior) concept. One that does not require sacrifice. You can help others, even help others with no obvious gain (maybe psychological pleasure) to yourself, without doing it at the expense of your values. Benevolence is win-win. Altruism win-lose. I win, you lose.

To help me to understand, what do you feel, in your view, is the *value* of altruism?

Don't give me a vague platitude about the "social animal". We are social but being social is not our primary means of survival. Observe people who survive in solitary confinement for decades, even with no job or purpose which is arguably more deadly than isolation.

[anthony]

Rather than zoological definitions (and any definition attempting to make altruism more palatable or 'naturalistic') - I think one has to get the unadulterated version direct from the horse's mouth. i.e. Comte's, who invented the name.

"Live for others".

"The social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, our successors, our contemporaries.

After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service...This [to live for others], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty.

[Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely".

(Catechisme Positiviste, A. Comte)

[Marcus]

^ In other words, the exact same thing. lol.

Btw "the horses mouth" = direct observation. Not some dead dude.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jules, there is only one definition to a thing (a "table" has 4 legs, a "bike" has 2 wheels etc, etc). Basic epistemological rule. If your definition doesn't fit my definition then one of us is wrong.

Marcus,

This is incorrect.

There is only one definition to a concept, not to a thing.

A thing can be referenced by many different concepts depending on the context. (A table can have one central leg welded to the floor, or no legs at all if fastened to the wall, a bike can have four wheels if trainer wheels are attached, etc.) Precision comes from isolating a correct differentia and genus for the context. Thus, a thing might be the same for different concepts, but each concept will have a different definition. Different concepts that reference the same thing are often quite similar, but sometimes not.

I am sure you know the following, but for the reader's sake, a word references a concept and a word usually (almost always) has more than one definition. In other words, a word stands for several concepts and you discover which it is referencing from the context.

Just open any dictionary. Almost every word has more than one definition.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, we should define our terms here. According to Google, the zoological (i.e. biological) definition of atruism is the following:

behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense.

Brant, since this is not a viable survival strategy for humans, it is not and cannot be a value other than for an irrational person. Altruism works well for ants, but not for men.

So like I said, Altruism *is* a non-value. It should not be "rescued". It should be left to die (cruel I know). Benevolence is not "another name" for it. It is a totally different, (superior) concept. One that does not require sacrifice. You can help others, even help others with no obvious gain (maybe psychological pleasure) to yourself, without doing it at the expense of your values. Benevolence is win-win. Altruism win-lose. I win, you lose.

To help me to understand, what do you feel, in your view, is the *value* of altruism?

Don't give me a vague platitude about the "social animal". We are social but being social is not our primary means of survival. Observe people who survive in solitary confinement for decades, even with no job or purpose which is arguably more deadly than isolation.

"Altruism" reflects the social value built into the human organism as man alone is a dead man if exiled from a primitive tribe. Tribal existence is what his DNA has made him for. The more individualistic existence we associate with capitalism and "selfishness" is a modern luxury made possible by wealth and freedom. Individualism is the thinking autonomous mind. Individualism is the backbone of Objectivism. Even Ayn Rand, however, had a social existence throughout her life of various, changing sorts. Why is Enjolas, "the marble lover of liberty," on the barricades? Why was Ayn so taken with his character? If killed fighting for liberty--I forget if he was in the novel--would he have been a victim of altruism--of self sacrifice? I went to Vietnam to fight communism. The communists fired at me and I fired back. Me to greater effect. It was the wrong war fought in the wrong way--so I went home. I went there knowing I might be killed. I volunteered and it wasn't just to get away from garrison duty which I hated. I could have volunteered for Thailand and might have gotten it. Nice duty. Thai girlfriend possible. But I didn't go through all that training--18 months worth--to go to Thailand and have sex. WTF? (If I had to do it again starting where I was in the summer of 1966 "after all that training," I'd pray and beg for Thailand--or Panama. I'd rather have come home a lover than a killer. There are better ways of fighting communists than blowing off their heads.) But why did I hate the communists to the point of wanting to kill them if necessary? Why would I have hated the Nazis and fought them in WWII if I had been a generation older? Or the Japanese after Pearl Harbor? I'm a go in harm's way kind of person. I do not support from the rear. I would not have been an SF medic if I couldn't have carried a rifle. All this is rooted deeply into my male biology. B I O L O G Y. Call it "altruism" or not, but it's not acting from "benevolence" except maybe in the most abstract way.

Now this warrior DNA comes out of my male biology. Other guys may have more or less or even none of this, also out of their own biology. In my case it was re-enforced by my own military training and experience. It's a well-travelled pathway hardened into my mind and there's no getting rid of it. Depending on the circumstances I am an extremely dangerous human being in my learned competence. That does not mean I'm not a sweetheart to be around (who you are or aren't determines who I am or not respecting you)--that I'm not a nice guy. I usually am and am psychologically stable and "benevolent" with a great sense of humor. In a way I was even more dangerous before I learned what I learned in the army. Say as an adolescent male compared to an adult male. The latter likely much stronger and able than me. That means to protect myself I probably would have to make more use of deadly force or its threat of use. Many years ago in Texas a man suffered a home invasion and was down on the floor fighting with a man on top of him with a knife. His 11 or 12 yo son saw what was going on and ran and got his Dad's hunting rifle and killed the bad guy. That was his only rational action and I consider it a duty. The son put himself at some risk. He could have run out of the house and left his Father to his fate. Why didn't he? Was he an altruist? His Father was obviously of great value to him. Was I an altruist for going to Vietnam in 1966? The South Vietnamese were down on the floor grappling with the communists. I was an anti-communist. Communism seemingly was conquering the world or trying to. A country went communist it didn't come back. Those were the days. Freedom was and is a great value to me. Stopping communism was the first step to killing it. (Out of similar ignorance--ignorance is dangerous--I wanted to go to Cuba in 1958 as a 14yo and fight Batista with Castro.)

The supposition in the quoted definition of altruism is that the other's expense is too great an expense in the context of human valuing. Before Vietnam I made a calculation based on best knowledge. After a year there I had learned enough to want to get out and not come back and fight there any more. Another calculation. In both cases I was trying to be as selfish as I knew how but with different results. If we were really trying to win that war--if we were really fighting for freedom and not for presidential mendacity and incompetence--I'd have kept going back until it was won or I was in some way simply physically done. As I have learned more through the years and decades of my life, my subjective understanding and valuing have moved loser and closer to objective reality, but never getting quite all the way there for the simple reason that all valuing is subjective no matter how objective the perceived object of value.

You are entitled and cannot be described as "wrong" with your pristine and right philosophical definitions which are always necessary. I work off the same base. Then I let it go--deuces wild. I let it go but I do not abandon it; there is a tether. It's just that I have nothing to contribute if all I try to do is repeat what Ayn Rand said. I go out and explore. If I think it's interesting I don't care if it might also be nonsense. I have a safety line. I'm no Prometheus. That was Ayn Rand. I'm sitting around the fire cooking the meat wondering if there's a better way to cook it, like a modern electric range not having a clue about electricity. The idea for me is for you and I to talk about cooking meat and coming up with the idea of a wood-burning stove made of rocks, but we aren't. We are talking past each other. We already know how to make the damn fire.

As for me, I worship Prometheus. If I could find him I'd invite him into my bed just like I would Dagny Taggart. I'd make him gay or I'd make myself straight but I'm the dominant male partner in my mind. Even Ayn Rand knew that and accepted that about me though it was practically speaking impossible, for she was too old at 64 and I was too young at 25. She was barely young enough to get it on with Nathaniel Branden, but it was brains to brains and the bodies followed--as ordered. Qua affair, their romantic-sexual relationship was the most natural thing in the world, it just went on much too long.

(I threw in war and sex to avoid all accusations about indulging in "platitudes." The two are totally incompatible. Maybe I should call this rant War and Peace.)

--Brant

you give me philosophy, I give you reality--in spades, aka a trade?

[anthony]

^ In other words, the exact same thing. lol.

Btw "the horses mouth" = direct observation. Not some dead dude.

Very different from "behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense".

First and superficially, this denotes an animal, with instinctual and programmed traits, which it has no free will to over ride. Without wanting to get into this too deep, it is as common for a predatory animal to rip another helpless and weakened animal to shreds, than display 'altruism'.

Mostly, it is not one behavior, or a single act of 'altruism' (benevolence) that was Comte's dictate - it is a lifetime service to all those past lives, the living, and the yet-unborn.

----

The ideas of some dead dude, in his (or her!) own words, are still alive today. His words are as much open to "direct observation".

[anthony]

Another thought, by that biological definition Marcus, even to "benefit another" ~man~ "at one's own expense" -- is hardly or not necessarily altruist. A helpful and benevolent action also requires 'something' to be expended by one, without seeking gain or kudos: whether it's your thoughtful recognition, time, energy, money, or emotional engagement. This is the opposite of altruism by Comte's appalling, self-sacrificial view, instead it's rationally human. We are not in general disagreement on this, but I believe it's critical not to understate HIS altruism, in any way. We have to know the full extent of that impossible and immoral 'ideal', in order to appreciate how far it has sunk into people's minds and been blindly accepted.

[Jules Troy]

Math: the Marcus way.

Mathematics:

This comes from 2 math teachers with a combined total of 70 yrs. experience.

It has an indisputable mathematical logic.

It also made me Laugh Out Loud.

This is a strictly ..... mathematical viewpoint.. and it goes like this:

What Makes 100%?

What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?

Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?

We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give

over 100%.

How about achieving 103%?

What makes up 100% in life?

Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

If:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Is represented as:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:

H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K

8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

And

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E

11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But ,

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E

1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

And,

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G

1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty, that while Hard work

and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there.

Its the Bullshit and Ass Kissing that will put you over the top.

Now you know why some people are where they are!

[Brant Gaede]

BRANTGAEDE

2+18+1+20+7+5+4+5=62%

Explains a lot

BRANTPETERGAEDE

16+5+20+18+62=121%

That's better, but now I feel tired.

--Brant

[Jules Troy]

Lol!