Dglgmut

Clearly Dglgmut is utterly confused. A and not-A using the same premise.It's not "A and not-A," they're the same thing with different severities. Why do you say this? What if you just pack your things (by property rights you own them) and leave? ShayneThere's nowhere to go. Property rights are not really an issue, but neither is being part of a collective. If you live in a dictatorship, you're forced to serve the dictator. If you live in a free market, you're forced to serve society. If society finds you worthless, you have no option of fending for yourself. What is a law that's not enforced? If people know the law isn't enforced, it's nothing. We don't have to enforce natural laws... People aren't entitled to property; not by nature they're not. What they are entitled to is the result of their actions. Freedom comes with responsibility, and vice-versa. If you take responsibility for something, as in, defend it, then natural law supports you. If you expect society to defend you, you give up part of your individualism. And I don't mean voluntarily protect you, because that's not what property rights are about... property rights are a binding social contract. It's very hard to get out of a social contract, even if it's based on voluntary compliance, for the same reason it's hard to organize a strike without a union, and the same reason nobody wants to be the first one to a party. I don't know if social psychology has a term for it, but you get the point. But, to be clear, I don't have a problem with property rights, I just don't think we should take them for granted. If one day, we don't need them anymore, that would be great.

I believe this too, but the fact is, all of these forms of government came out of anarchy. Power started with persuasion, and the first collectives were voluntary. As long as there are property rights, there's no option out of the collective. You do what you have to in order to survive, based on what society is willing to pay you for, NOT based on what you want to do. If you are forced to do a job in a communist country, and you have the freedom to choose which way you throw the dirt out of the hole you're digging, why is that not individualism? If you are forced to serve someone else, through necessity, where is the individualism?

Yeah. Well, here are some questions. Not arguments, but just some things I can't get my head around: Why do you matter? If everything we do is based in reason, what reason do we have for serving ourselves? If you don't understand something, when do you stop questioning it? To what benefit is your choice of subscribing to the Objectivist philosophy?

Xray, a dictator doesn't necessarily have to be hated by his country. The reason a dictator could be more efficient is that without fear of violating an individual's property rights, he could manage the country's resources in an effort to effect more efficient production within the country. The "good" part is only valid under the assumption that the production is aimed towards increases the standard of living based on general consensus. I don't actually think a good dictator is possible, but coordination is the most effective way to get things done... and good and respected leadership is the backbone of coordination 100% of the time. There's a ton of people that shop at Wal-Mart, but at the same time wish it could be shut down. The reason they shop there is because they can't control the situation as an individual, and the choice merely becomes about high or low prices rather than what they believe is right. With zero government intervention, the only way an unethical company could be rejected is by a much more challenging level of coordination... Maybe I don't understand collectivism. I consider a threat to our basic necessities on the same level as a threat of violence. Most people are forced to work for someone else, the same way they are forced to not murder someone... they know it's necessary for survival. And I don't really see the difference between someone born into an unfortunate family in a free market, and someone born into a corrupt communist governed country. The most important issues you could say I have are probably these: I believe in natural rights. I don't believe in an objective right and wrong. How can you tell a paraplegic he has the right to walk, then tell someone else they don't have the right to walk on the grass? I consider a collective to be any group of people with an obligation to each other, no matter how temporary. Would you say it's impossible to voluntarily join a collective?

Collectivism isn't part of nature, but we naturally have a lot in common, and so collectivism is a method of achieving our shared goals. Secrecy and misunderstandings are what lead to large groups of people contributing to causes they, as individuals, don't support. You have to give up freedom for security, and the same goes for privacy and information. If you want privacy, you give up a lot of information. We learn from an early age that it's not whether you do something "wrong" or not, it's whether you get caught. People complain about facebook invading people's privacy... How many kids have to be kicked out of college before we figure out that maybe these things should be encouraged to be out in the open, instead of pretending they don't happen? Laws are contradictory. Some people got together, said, "People can't be trusted. Let's force them to be good." How did the law get put into practice? Because the majority of people agreed with it... They didn't need the law if they were powerful enough to create it! So why'd they do it? Because they were afraid they wouldn't always be the majority...

I don't know if he ever approve of abortion, though. He could be consistent in saying you can't kill anyone, and everyone has the right to life. If you were raped, though, have the baby and the state ought to find it a home. On the other side of the argument, though, where do you draw the line? Should condoms be illegal?!

Voluntary following, like in religion, is what I agree with; not social contracts. We don't choose our "leaders" in this society... they are put into power because we have an old social contract that was put in place to attempt to help future generations. We are obsessed with progress and determining the future, and it doesn't help anyone. Like I said, groups get things done. Ayn Rand was a leader, was she not? People voluntarily followed her, but she wouldn't have had such a big effect if they didn't. Leaders and groups are only necessary when there are things to get done, though. Survival is hardly a challenge for humanity, and we should have outgrown group efforts by now when we finished building the last robot operated farm and hospital... Once necessities are taken care of for people, what else is left to do but create and innovate!? Voluntary creativity is the best kind, but we won't have much of that as long as we obsess over what's fair and how we can "help" future generations by entering them into social contracts before they're born.

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. And that happens. Not that you were arguing against that, but that it wasn't clear in your post. About power being supported by violence or the threat of violence: Isn't that what laws are? Threats? Do Objectivists disagree that right and wrong are subjective? Because who creates the laws if they aren't? Individuals don't get things done, groups do. If everyone was a leader, who would be lead? It's part of nature... We are social creatures and it is in us to serve our species.

It seemed to me that the implication of your question was that since I support Ron Paul, then maybe I support pro-raping-the-woman-a-second-time (I won't call it "pro-life" because it is anti-life and anti-rights to coerce a woman into having a child, she's not a farm animal). Shayne In the article I read, Ron was quoted saying that he would have circumstances such as rape considered exceptions...

Give me a break... I'm just saying that collectivism is something we should accept and do the best we can with, we shouldn't consider it evil... Should people be free to give up their freedom? Or is freedom relative, and must be balanced? I don't see a fundamental difference between freedom and power... Giving some of your power to someone else makes the other person more powerful in relation to others... People chose to work together, they chose to be lead, they chose to form countries and they chose to make laws... RIght? At best you could say there are different tiers of collectivism, but it is obviously unavoidable.

Actually, I've partly-apathetically considered myself pro-choice... but Ron had a good point. If it's illegal to kill a baby after birth, even if it's your own, why should it be legal before birth? Like-wise, it's a mother's obligation to look after her child after birth, why not before? Pro-lifers would be better off dropping the whole religious aspect of their argument and trying to make some sense... The only issue, I suppose, would be special cases like rape... If the state is going to force a mother to keep a child that she didn't create from her own volition, they shouldn't force her to take care of it.

Ron Paul is great. I think the state of the U.S. has finally gotten so bad they'll give something reasonable a chance. I hope he's just protecting his self image, but the only issue I have with him is his approval of intellectual property rights. But overall, he's pretty much the best candidate America could ever hope for.

Hold on a minute... Succeed? I take it you mean succeed in obtaining happiness. Well, I mean, if we can intend to do something, and successfully complete the act, and happiness doesn't follow... In what way did we fail? By following our intention? Or perhaps our intention failed us, and we just have to wait for a successful intention. Again, was Rand clear on her definition of happiness? In an interview she exemplified altruism by creating the scenario of a person sacrificing their lover's life for a neighbor's. Sacrificing for a lover does not meet her criteria for altruism, because the love itself is selfish. The only reason I can think of someone sacrificing their lover's life for a neighbor, that they didn't have much of a relationship with, would have to be that they saw the choice as more righteous. They would rather have the knowledge that they did the right thing, than to have their lover still alive and let the neighbor die. If all of our conscious actions are intentional, then how can they be altruistic by Rand's standards? You could call them misguided, but they are definitely intended to serve the self in the long run.

I'd say it all comes down to the fact that we don't know what will make us happy. Did Rand define happiness? I've heard her use the word a lot, but the context seemed shallow. Edit: Also, I don't want you to think I'm just criticizing Objectivism. Beliefs are not chosen, but discovered.

This was just a mis-understanding. I was referring to capitalism, but yeah, just a misunderstanding. I guess there are some fundamental disagreements we have on this issue. I would say that all desire is guided by self-interest. The ego is our sense of self preservation and guides everything we do. The only variable is our self identification. For example, we feel empathy when we see ourselves in others. Empathy is just as selfish and egoic as anything else. I think a truly free market would be the most democratic economic system that could be practiced, but it is clearly a form of collectivism. Compromise goes hand-in-hand with cooperation, and, to me, individualism is un-compromising, and therefor impossible to acheive within a group. A good dictator would be more efficient than a democracy, but obviously nobody would want to risk the probability of having a shitty dictator. As the saying goes, a camel is a horse designed by a comittee. Group decisions are innevitable, but right and wrong are subjective and so the most fair thing to do is allow the majority to speak for everyone. It is the lesser evil.

I'm sorry, I know you guys love Ayn Rand and that, but her whole philosophy is self-contradicting. We cannot make choices that we don't choose, and thus we are always being "selfish". Everything we do is voluntary, including the creation of taxes to support those with disabilities. This idea of individualism is delusional... Free market or not, basically every human being since the inception of specialization has been extremely dependent. We are in this together, whether you want to acknowledge that or not. Pure capitalism is still collectivism, just a self regulating system in which majority rules. People will always have limited freedom unless they want to abandon society and truly fend for themselves in the wild... Strong leadership has been the driving force behind every major achievement in human history. People voluntarily sacrifice their own power in order to contribute to a greater cause... the problem arises when the cause fades away and the power is still disproportionately distributed. I think we should just stop seeking out permanent solutions and solve problems on more of a case-by-case basis.

Assuming you know what the right thing is... That's the problem. You can't base your belief of what is true on your pre-existing belief of what is right. You can't sense awareness in other people, and have no reason to believe there's anything observing the electric impulses in their brains. There's no reason for you to believe it's not just happening on its own. Those chemical reactions are happening in other people's brains, and can explain all of their actions and behavior... so why not yours? Why must you be "in control" of your brain when you don't have to control the brains of others, and they function just fine?

Personal opinion seems to have taken over this thread, because people desperately want to believe they have free will. It's a lack of humility if you ask me, but that's just my opinion.

The way kids ask "why" so much, that's amazing. They aren't as fucked up as the rest of us. I'm sorry, if you don't think you've been completely manipulated by your experiences up to this point, you're delusional. Our way of life is pretty much insane... No, we don't know the meaning of anything... We may know what will happen as a result, but we don't know the meaning. Ask yourself what you would be without any memory what-so-ever.... That's you. You can experience it, and that is the closest thing to knowledge we can possibly have. I don't think anything is bad; it's just a cluster-fuck of whatever-ness... It's something to pass the time, and without context it's all incredible and can only be related, infinitely favorably, to nothingness.

It's not trolling, but I'll stop if it's that intolerable.

Every cell in the human body with the exception of some neural cells is replaced every seven years or so. We all have changed. Ba'al Chatzaf If you were your cells, you would have been completely disassembled by the end of that first seven years. If you were restoring an old bookshelf, and replaced one part at a time until every part was replaced, would you still consider it the same bookshelf? No. Different contents. The end state would be similar to the start state but still not identical. Cue to bring up the Ship of Theseus conundrum. Ba'al ChatzafSo we're not our cells? We are the product (an idea, I guess?) of their collaboration? If we are our cells, why are we only the ones in our body? What about the ones that leave?

Every cell in the human body with the exception of some neural cells is replaced every seven years or so. We all have changed. Ba'al ChatzafIf you were your cells, you would have been completely disassembled by the end of that first seven years. If you were restoring an old bookshelf, and replaced one part at a time until every part was replaced, would you still consider it the same bookshelf?

You are not your memory. Is that not indisputable? You existed when you were a baby... That was you, and yet it's nothing like how you see yourself now. Your memory has changed, but you have not.

Why do you pick it up? If you kept asking why eventually you'd realize you have no idea why... You do it for seemingly no reason.

I just mean we don't know why we do things. Like we cannot choose what we are, we can't choose how things make us feel. I figure all our actions are guided by what we assume will make us happy. If there were two people sitting on the same plane, one miserable, one happy, why should they have different emotions in the same experience? They don't necessarily assume what will happen in the future, but they assume how they will feel... If you think you are going to be happy in the future, you will be happy in the present. Isn't this true? And our memory allows us to assume what the future will be like by relating the present to the past and projecting.