An Analysis of Egoism and Altruism


merjet

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Thanks for the link to your very interesting essay. Here's a point worth discussing:

Despite Ayn Rand’s many polemics against altruism as a moral ideal, it is not the case that she totally rejected altruism in the practical, concrete sense. For example, the following is from John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged. “Do you ask if it's ever proper to help another man? No—if he claims it as right or as a moral duty that you owe him. Yes—if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle” (AS975).

The problem with the ethics of either altruism or egoism is trying to make it fit the real world. The altruist has to contend with such questions as "Why don't you quit college now and give all of your tuition money to the hungry?" If the altruist is clever, he can finesse his answer in a manner such as, "I can do more good for a needy world with a college degree." Or: "An altruist like me needs certain creature comforts such as a nice home in order to recharge the body and thus be better able to solve the problem of inequality."

A by-the-numbers egoist would say "yes" to the question, "Is it immoral to give your very last morsel of food to another human being?" But the more thoughtful egoist realizes that the family, which is indispensable to the survival of our species, requires innumerable exceptions to strict egoism. Thus sophisticated egoists like Rand argue along the lines that it is not altruistic to make yourself less well off if it gives you "selfish pleasure" to help others.

Yet by that logic, everyone can be called "selfish." Even Mother Teresa, who has frequently been a target of Ayn Rand's followers, can be said to be "selfish," if we define "selfish" as pursuing things which make one happy.

Those who argue Teresa was not truly selfish because she valued the life of another above her own, run up against Rand's ideal man, John Galt, who declares with regard to Dagny Taggart, "If my life is the price, I’ll give it."

Nathaniel Branden made an attempt to grapple with the "we are all selfish" argument and produced a muddle:

The basic fallacy in the "everyone is selfish" argument consists of an extraordinarily crude equivocation. It is a psychological truism -- a tautology -- that all purposeful behavior is motivated. But to equate "motivated behavior" with "selfish behavior" is to blank out the distinction between an elementary fact of human psychology and the phenomenon of ethical choice. It is to evade the central problem of ethics, namely: by what is man to be motivated?

By what is man to be motivated, asks Branden. By our "own selfish pleasure," of course.

How does the Objectivist respond? It is selfish to love an attractive young railroad executive but not an unwashed child in Calcutta?

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Thanks, Francisco.

It's pretty clear from Branden's "Isn't Everyone Selfish?" that he thought of egoism and altruism solely as moral ideals, which makes a good fit to practical concrete reality difficult.

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A little too practical, I think. Beginning at the physical actions (regarding 'for oneself vs. for others'), is probably the wrong end of the stick.

The key for me making sense of it, was a statement of Rand's:

"The true enemy and opposite of altruism is not selfishness, it is independence". Aha! There, stated clearly, is the direct diametric opposition, indicating both implicit, and explicit altruism - and the basis of egoism.

If one takes "independence" to indicate the entire range of independence, from the physical, psycho-epistemological to the 'spiritual' (that is of one's consciously-held convictions) -- it's clearer that the first are fully dependent on that last. i.e. independence of mind, by chosen commitment.

The 'doing' is preceded and presupposed by the volitional commitment to a principle, one's autonomous 'thinking'. Which provides the clue to answer Branden's (rhetorical) question:

"By what is man to be motivated?"

So the political and social realms - and doing for others, coercively or not - is not the full explanation of altruism in Rand's sense. They are only the explicit consequences of what Rand also called self-abnegation, by which she primarily meant surrender of consciousness -the Self- I think.

It well puts in perspective, charity - voluntary and sincere help to others - as not that big a deal, if it's of selfish and considerate value. Besides, neither egoism or altruism is one, single act, but more of a continuous state, I believe. (Aristotle's "Excellence then, is not an act but a habit" - comes to mind.)

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. . .

The key for me making sense of it, was a statement of Rand's:

"The true enemy and opposite of altruism is not selfishness, it is independence". Aha! There, stated clearly, is the direct diametric opposition, indicating both implicit, and explicit altruism - and the basis of egoism.

. . .

Tony, Rand did not say that or think that. Whether or not it is right thinking, it is not what Rand expressed. You are thinking of Fountainhead. She contrasted independence to the dependence behind sacrifice of self to other and behind sacrifice of other to self. So your memory is right that she contrasted independence to altruism (not to be confused with benevolence). But she certainly did also contrast altruism to selfishness (in the sense of the latter term she distilled in Fountainhead).

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. . .

The key for me making sense of it, was a statement of Rand's:

"The true enemy and opposite of altruism is not selfishness, it is independence". Aha! There, stated clearly, is the direct diametric opposition, indicating both implicit, and explicit altruism - and the basis of egoism.

. . .

Tony, Rand did not say that or think that. Whether or not it is right thinking, it is not what Rand expressed. You are thinking of Fountainhead. She contrasted independence to the dependence behind sacrifice of self to other and behind sacrifice of other to self. So your memory is right that she contrasted independence to altruism (not to be confused with benevolence). But she certainly did also contrast altruism to selfishness (in the sense of the latter term she distilled in Fountainhead).

Hi Stephen: Most likely from Rand's "Letters", but I have to search there to establish it. I do know it must have been a reputable source, or it is very unlikely I'd have entered it in my reference notebook.

Still, it added emphasis to her other better-known writings (for me) such as: "The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is *self-sacrifice* -- which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction--which means: the *self* as a standard of evil, the *selfless* as a standard of the good."

And Galt's Speech: "It is your *mind* that they want you to surrender--all those who preach the creed of sacrifice..."

Boiled down, for me, it is the independence of mind that leads the way in opposition to altruism and sacrifice, with egoism closely aligned. I can't see any conflict between her purported original quote I gave, and the full body of her work.

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In a brief search the closest I found Rand came to saying what Tony alleges is:

The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. (link)

By "domination" she meant sacrificing others. Nevertheless, dependence does not imply self-sacrifice or sacrificing others. Spouses and co-workers depend on others in various ways. A business depends on its suppliers.

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Thanks for the link, Merlin. It is to a portion of Roark’s courtroom speech, and it includes:

Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. . . .

This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetrated as fundamentals of life.

The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence.

Would you agree, Merlin, that even though Dagny has dependence on suppliers and on consumers to succeed in running a railroad and in making a living at that, there is yet a sense in which she has independence that her brother James lacks? What is that sense? Is the dependence that is contrary to this independence not necessarily sacrificing of others, but a moral failing in some other way? I expect a look at Rand’s paragraphs on independence as a virtue, in Galt’s speech and in her “Objectivist Ethics,” along with N. Branden’s “Counterfeit Individualism,” will tell quite a bit on that.

It seems the dependence of Keating on Roark does not sacrifice Roark, or if it entails sacrifice of Roark, that is not the main thing wrong with such dependence. The really bad thing I think of about Keating’s dependence is that it is symptom of his lack of good relationship with the world (in contrast to Roark’s originality in creations and Roark’s joy in existence) and with other people (because he is not much of a self, notwithstanding his colloquial “selfishness”).

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A business depends on its suppliers.

Have you ever been in business? Apparently not. You have it exactly backward.

"Every producer in mainly occupied in producing what others want, and not what he himself wants, and it is desirable that he should

always be able to find, without effort, without delay, and without uncertainty, others who want what he can produce." [bagehot]

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Would you agree, Merlin, that even though Dagny has dependence on suppliers and on consumers to succeed in running a railroad and in making a living at that, there is yet a sense in which she has independence that her brother James lacks? What is that sense? Is the dependence that is contrary to this independence not necessarily sacrificing of others, but a moral failing in some other way?

Yes. She was an independent thinker and more than self-supporting. Unlike James.

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Have you ever been in business? Apparently not. You have it exactly backward.

"Every producer in mainly occupied in producing what others want, and not what he himself wants, and it is desirable that he should

always be able to find, without effort, without delay, and without uncertainty, others who want what he can produce." [bagehot]

Yes, I have. But apparently you don't know the difference between a supplier and a customer.

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Wolf,

I'm not clear on your point. Are you disputing that production depends both on suppliers and on consumers? I know all about the imputation of value from consumer to producers, but there is also the obvious causal dependence of production on supplies. Right? Merlin was giving some examples of innocent dependencies, and not an exhaustive list of them.

Stephen

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In a brief search the closest I found Rand came to saying what Tony alleges is:

The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. (link)

By "domination" she meant sacrificing others. Nevertheless, dependence does not imply self-sacrifice or sacrificing others. Spouses and co-workers depend on others in various ways. A business depends on its suppliers.

Merlin,

Thanks; that's close - though still pivotal is how one reads "independence". To my mind it is 'physical/material independence' with 'mind independence', as effect and cause, combined. Rand could and did group concepts this way, as you know. It's like, as with altruism, she immediately understood the Comtean core of obligatory service, its cause and its ill consequences - all in one glimpse. And called the whole ball of wax, "altruism" still.

I rather think those instances you mention are - what? Interdependence? Finding common cause with a group, a team, a chain of other people for that marvellous outcome of greater creativity, efficiency and production, than one alone can attain? Always though, in each person's self interest, and of some delimited scope and time period (excepting one's spouse, that is!)

Thank you for your essay. It's stimulating more thoughts, and I will continue looking for that quote...

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"Midas depends upon close relationships with suppliers of certain automotive parts, equipment and raw materials" (link).

"The Company [Analogic] depends on its suppliers, some of which are the sole source for certain components, and its production could be substantially curtailed if these suppliers were not able to meet the Company’s demands and alternative sources were not available" (link)

“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” - Mark Twain

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Wolf,

I'm not clear on your point. Are you disputing that production depends both on suppliers and on consumers? I know all about the imputation of value from consumer to producers, but there is also the obvious causal dependence of production on supplies. Right? Merlin was giving some examples of innocent dependencies, and not an exhaustive list of them.

Stephen

It's unhelpful to isolate "suppliers" and "producers" and "consumers," as if any of them exists as a distinct class in a free society. Take the simplest example of an unskilled laborer. That's how I started. I supplied productive labor and earned the right to consume. Later on I was able to earn slightly more than I consumed, obtained commercial credit, and opened a small business. Now I was a purchaser, employer, producer, supplier, and (privately) a consumer. When that business enterprise failed a year later, Eastman Kodak did not collapse, Bell Telephone didn't fire anyone, my employees didn't starve to death, and none of my customers committed suicide. The only guy who went backward (temporarily) was me. I had to start over as a laborer.

Now, consider what happened at Enron. Tens of thousands of miners, suppliers, contractors, employees, investors, lenders, shareholders, fiduciaries, and customers -- all of whom were also individual consumers -- were adversely affected when Enron failed and Arthur Anderson collapsed. Losses ran into tens of billions. Yet all of the power suppliers, coal mines, barges, and pipelines survived. People found new jobs. Bad debts were written off. No single firm, no matter how large, can sink a competitive free market economy.

In 1950, RCA employed 10,000 people at its Camden NJ plant. It spawned two national radio and TV networks, the Whirlpool appliance company, had a near-monopoly of TV broadcasting equipment, radar equipment, ship-to-shore, satellite communications, phonographs, TV sets, and tape cartridges. In the 1960s and 70s, RCA acquired Hertz (rental cars), Banquet (frozen foods), Coronet (carpeting), Random House (publishing) and Gibson (greeting cards). And where is this great industrial conglomerate today? -- gone -- bankrupt in 1983, assets sold off, many abandoned as worthless, and RCA dissolved.

Same thing with AT&T. Once a great innovator and near-monopoly industrial giant, directly employing 322,000 people, in 1950 it was the largest corporation on earth. Today -- gutted and gone -- sold for pennies to a "Baby Bell" for its iconic trademark -- long after Bell Labs, Western Electric and its copper landlines were divested and leapfrogged by wireless devices and broadband cable decades ago.

In a competitive free market economy, no person or group can consume more than it produces, and we are all simultaneously both, with no lasting guarantee of raw materials, suppliers, bank credit, or customers. Government can destroy. It can loot and burden -- but it cannot "create" demand by looting and burdening and multiplying a Free Shit Army of unproductive "consumers" and soviet Wet Nurses.

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Midas Muffler, 700 employees, 1 plant.

"Midas purchases products for resale from various suppliers through contracts that generally range from one to three years in duration. These raw materials and products are available from multiple suppliers." [MDS 10-K]

Net profit margin -0.92% Operating margin 3.22% Return on average assets -0.75% Return on average equity -6.58%

Analogic Corporation (ALOG) designs and manufactures medical imaging and security systems and subsystems that are used primarily in the healthcare and airport security markets. ALOG gets F’s in Earnings Growth and Sales Growth. The price of ALOG is down -16.4% since the first of the year. [investorplace Portfolio Grader, "5 Stocks With Crummy Earnings" July 17, 2014]

Has nothing to do with their suppliers, everything to do with sales and earnings.

a4.jpg "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

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To get a better handle on altruism/selfishness look at it from the top down--the top being occupied by religious and political power lusters and their minions. The purpose of morality is control. In a state of political freedom that is self control. For the topper-downers, that is control of you. Proper governance is only control and supression of criminals of which there are two types, foreign but would-be domestic and domestic.

Altruism and selfishness as might be found in any person is complex, reflecting nature and nurture plus the role of one's consciousness respecting self nurture or lack. It cannot be gainsaid, however, that what might be thought of as one or the other respecting whatever in a person are only sub-categories of a more basic selfishness where it exists alone--or it is selfish to be altruistic and that is not selfless. Selflessness is the impossible and unreal category which Rand tried to put flesh on in the person of her fictional Catherine Halsey in The Fountainhead. In her the altruism-selfishness ratio merely weighted so much to one side as to be grossly unattractive, playing the little victim. The purported altruists in her life fed one side and choked the other and she weakly went along for the ride, but also the payoff of that ride. She got what she wanted, afterall. So did not a little boy who asked for more gruel in another novel. What maybe she should have wanted is another subject--a subject that has more to do with critical thinking and what one does with one's conclusions than mere choices.

There is another problem and that is the one of being confined by definitions, especially any that might be ascribed to altruism. Right now, at least, it might be better considered descriptively--that is empirically or investigated as part of the campaign of learning about humanity instead of just giving it orders. Objectivism is a muddle about the real nature of selfishness and altruism which it has been defined into. The former reflects the thinking being and the latter the social one. In a real person they are integrated. The four basic principles of Objectivism are all of the thinking and the altruism comes off that in ethics and somewhat less in the politics--properly done, that is. Metaphysics and epistemology are all about the thinking. In the politics the social aspect is sharply delimited by individual rights theory and cannot be used to justify their violation. In today's world, however, that theory cannot be used merely to radically just set things right right away, making omlets out of eggs, but it can be used to justify moving a society toward greater and greater freedom over time. Psychologically that is 90% of what is needed for a champion of freedom. Today, that's not yet happening. The luxury of moral purity in intellectual thought is the luxury of sleeping well at night and not doing anything, which was also the luxury of the non-heroic heroism by the heroes in Atlas Shrugged and their passive-aggressive "strike." The idea behind the novel was much too good for the author to pass up, but in real life it's just giving up without the salubriousness of a contrived world where the heroes get on a lifeboat leaving the rest of humanity to its deserved fate.

(Objectivism is mostly a deductive philosophy in spite of claims to the contrary. Not much of what can be referred to as empirical work ever went into it. It was through deductive reasoning that Rand got her great intellectual power and absolutism, forcing out most critical thinking that might go contrary and leaving her unchallenged by followers at the top of her intellectual-cultural contrivance.)

The virtue of selfishness thus is the basic selfishness and the selfishness it supports plus the altruism. There is no virtue of selflessness for virtue is an aspect of self--or value even to a dictator who only says underneath the verbal rubbish that it's selfish of you to let him rule you and aren't we all happy, happy, happy?

--Brant

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Removing the Sanction of the Victim (by going on strike) is "passive-aggressive"?? Please explain!

They didn't remove the sanction of the victim by going on strike. Instead they sanctioned what was going on. Various hell holes around the world have demonstrated rulers really don't need productive citizens to maintain their rule. The lights in Atlas Shrugged went out in New York City. I imagine they were still on in Washington D.C. 50 years ago Ayn Rand said in her Playboy interview that economic sanctions would lead to the collapse of the communist Cuban regime. Didn't come close to happening. AS was actually effective in liberating people psychologically from the state respecting their pursuit of happiness, but they still pay their taxes or at least the taxes are still there to be paid. AS has still failed to head off socialism here. That makes me think other approaches are needed.

If you read AS carefully it was the state that collapsed--could there be a reason for this similarity to theorectical communism?--not its altruistic underpinings except in the minds of the readers. This collapse is not in the novel. Just the state collapses for being out of fuel. But did it really? So James Taggart went nutso. Did Mr. Thompson? The inversion contradicts the altruistic foundations of tyranny. It is turning out technology has more to do with freedom than attacking the state which can't keep up with progress. The federal American state is now 85% entitlement spending. Soon it will be 100%. The rest will be financed by deficits. Rules and regulations will get the run around. Note how in AS every time a new regulation came down those affected stopped dead in their tracts. Such power! I say, what a bunch of wuzzies.

--Brant

Galt's Gulch was a retirement community; all that was missing were the shuffleboard courts and the SS checks and the clubhouse

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I don't think those hit by new regulations "stopped in their tracKs." As I recall, they were paid a visit by Mr. Galt, who told them that the enemy was too large for them to fight, that they would be ground under by the state, and that if they valued their lives, they would stop allowing them to be drained away to support a parasitical society.

Again, going on strike and leaving the system is not passive-aggressive. And it is not sanctioning the state. If a marauding band comes into town, shooting and looting and killing, and I don't have sufficient weapons to fight them, I get the hell out. That is not sanctioning their evil. It is valuing my own life..

When a system's sickness has metastasized, it is too late to save it. Heroic efforts are misplaced and futile, and only prop up the system for a while longer, at the cost of the health and happiness of the person making the heroic stand, and forestall even longer the system's returning to health.

This has happened on a smaller scale with boom-bust cycles. Before the Fed started preventing recoveries in 1929, it usually took 9-18 months for the recession to clear out all the mal-investments and employment and productivity to return to normal. The recession right after World War I was the last time the federal government refrained from trying to "stimulate" a recovery and the fairly rapid recovery was allowed to happen.

But propping up those malinvestments with bailouts and money supply tinkering has caused the recoveries to take much longer. And we're in a stalled recovery right now, following the most massive bailouts and monetary tinkerings in history, which may just not get going again.

In my opinion, we are seeing both the smaller (economic) scale and the larger (societal) scale converging, with a final collapse looming just ahead. I will be very happy to see it not take place, but I don't know what will prevent it. Not the quasi-Wyatt's Fire happening in North Dakota. Not the electronics and internet industries. Not pumping up consumer demand with a higher minimum wage. Not with bailouts and zero interest.

Do you have any ideas?

REB

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Galt's Gulch was a retirement community

In fiction in 1957, yes, that's a fair statement. Rand's thesis was that a few key men and women support an entire society. If they went on strike, it would bring down everything, like removing the keystone from a heavily-trafficked, overloaded arch. Maybe that was true in 1957. Maybe a rigorous blockade of Cuba in 1957 would have brought down Castro.

The problem of Galt's Gulch today is something to which I've devoted a great deal of thought. It was much easier in 1957 to switch identities and/or create multiple identities. It can still be done, if one has enough ingenuity, working from an offshore tax haven, like the recent CYNK Technology scam that was valued at $6 billion before trading was halted. Or it could be as simple as entering the U.S. as an undocumented alien or masquerading as one. I was able to modify my legal identity several times, simply by making small changes on government forms, although that was before intensified DHS data collection and interagency cooperation. That's why offshore travel is good. There are nearby jurisdictions where graft still works and you can become someone else.

Establishing or joining an enclave is not impossible, but I think the essential business is to get lost. It pertains especially to the young, and we have an opportunity (I won't say it's a moral duty) to pass along the notion of freedom, which is something to be won by decisive action, ripped from the claws and teeth of predatory government. Most of us are too old and settled in our comfortable ways to bother about liberty but who else will pass along its call to morally upright treason contained in "the sanction of the victim"?

It's unimportant to me whether Snowden was a traitor or hero. We each get a vote in life, to spend that life or sacrifice it, waste it, sell it to the highest bidder, or knuckle under and obey the politically correct plurality of unchosen nagging neighbors. One of my fondest memories of life outside the U.S. was disconnection from its idiotic "news" and profoundly ugly, vicious entertainment. If the good life is individual, it makes sense for a youngster to get as far away as possible, to life life first-hand and free.

I think the question is plain enough. Does anyone honestly believe that we can salvage a dead society?

US debt and unfunded liabilities are $1,260,000 per taxpayer and rising at $70,000 per year. Good luck, collecting all that was promised to you by your friendly government that has been buying billions of bullets for homeland security. Kotlikoff has US debt and unfunded liabilities at more than $2,000,000 per taxpayer and rising at $100,000 per year. [comment at Zero Hedge]

We owe it to our children to repudiate slavery, encourage them to scram.

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Going on in the vein of independence as the "enemy" of altruism, altruism can be seen as the credo of total dependence. At first reckoning, it's no matter who is dependent on whom, giving or taking. 'Dependence' is all.

I guess Comte identified and admired it, to the point of asserting in some writing that a baby is born to automatic duty (my simplified paraphrase), based on the utterly false view of metaphysics, man made and given, that "you didn't make this!" Every aspect of human endeavor you see was built by others, so you can start paying back, as soon as you're able. Determinism by virtue of birth, actually. Of course you didn't "make" it. But then who did, and why? And why is there underlying guilt for that fact of reality?

It's interesting that isolated from Europe and America, a tribal concept evolved in regions of Southern Africa: 'Ubuntu'. Roughly, it has been explained to mean "you are, because of others". Even that visionary, Mandela accepted its premise. So, additionally to the imported ideologies of (fairly benevolent) Christian altruism, and Socialist altruism, we have a home-grown, rawer product. The fact that it's local in flavour, is all the more lauded, in this time of growing disdain and loathing for anything smacking of "Eurocentricism" here. Educated liberals of all races have increasingly touted it in speeches and tracts. Its premises and meaning have never been challenged by anybody that I have heard. Nothing new, one wants to tell them - you are beating an old drum, one that has the most ugly of consequences, and derived from the ugliest view of man.

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Going on in the vein of independence as the "enemy" of altruism, altruism can be seen as the credo of total dependence. At first reckoning, it's no matter who is dependent on whom, or when. Dependence is all.

I guess Comte identified and admired it, to the point of asserting in some writing that a baby is born to automatic duty (my simplified paraphrase), based on the utterly false view of metaphysics, man made and given, that "you didn't make this!" Every aspect of human endeavor you see was built by others, so you can start paying back, as soon as you're able. Determinism by virtue of birth, actually.

It's interesting that isolated from Europe and America, a concept evolved in regions of Southern Africa, 'ubuntu'. Roughly, it has been explained to mean "you are, because of others". Even that visionary, Mandela accepted its premise. So, additionally to the imported ideologies of (fairly benevolent) Christian altruism, and Socialist altruism, we have a home-grown, more raw product. The fact that it's local in flavour, is all the more lauded, in this time of growing disdain and loathing for anything smacking of "Eurocentricism" here. Educated liberals of all colours are increasingly touting it in speeches and tracts. Nothing new, one wants to tell them - you are beating an old drum, one that has the most vicious of consequences.

Your remarks are important stuff, especially the notion "that a baby is born to automatic duty."

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