john42t

The most receptive audience for Objectivism appears to be adolescent boys, as is suggested by her biographer Jennifer Burns (and others I presume). I think the nerdy, alienated Objectivist youth is also a cliche. I'm not convinced that Rand is ultimately always healthy for them (not conviced of the opposite either, just saying), but: That's your receptive target group. People who are happy in their job have no reason to make an effort. People who are unhappy in their job but believe they have nothing to offer will hate her. It's people who are burning with dreams and ambition and are lost in confusion - most of them are adolescent boys. A simpel idea would be to translate Rand in other languages (there is no German version of her books still in print). More ambitious would be more of it, movies, series, etc that bring Objectivist ideas across. Burns called Rand the "ultimate gateway drug to life on the right". You don't need a movement, you need more gateway drugs.

It's undefined.

I tried to figure what you mean by the term. What do you mean by it? You, who keep using it as if you had a precise meaning in mind?

Only Israel has individuals with rights (in that region). I don't live in the Gaza strip myself, but I'm quite sure that there are no rights to be found there. If I would, I'd have reason to pray that Rand's reasoning would be understood by the West: It would be my only chance of survival save fleeing.

You just said you don't know what the word is supposed to mean. Now you argue that you understand it's premises? You're the one who introduced the term to begin with, if I recall correctly. What a word "really" means can be controversial, but I can't understand why people actively use words and don't even know what they themselves mean by them. It makes communication impossible. To me, it's a meaningless term by which people can intimidate those interested in evolution.

That's not the argument. The argument that the "a person" in the piece I quoted from you isn't one: A tribe isn't a person. I'm not hair-splitting here, this issue is fundamentally Objectivist and it's similar to the altruism issue that many people seem not to be able to grasp. I'll explain with an example. Put yourself into the position of a Palestinian in the Gaza strip: You might wish to pursue a career, associate with people you admire, etc., but you can't, you're trapped. You can't even utter your own opinion freely. You're a slave to the group. Now a leftist in the West laments your misery, but not in any way that would help you: He talks about the misery of *the* Palestinians, not yours. And who speaks for *the* Palestianians? The Hamas and their collectivist power base. Which is exactly why they won't allow you to utter your opinion. They need to be the sole representatives of the collective in order to have the West's leftists support. That's why you can't steal land from the Palestinians: The only Palestinians who can meaningfully own any land are Israelis - only Israel as individual rights and objective law. I chose that example because it's easier to relate to it, but the same argument holds for any tribe or collective. Morality depends on abstract thinking.

That's one possibility. Another theory I'm very fond of is that there are simply vastly different sexual preferences. If there are people with a more promiscuous sexuality and people with a more quality-orientied sexuality then the latter might be naturally more "prude", the former naturally more "filthy". So if the Zeitgeist was dominated by the latter group for some reason and the hippie revolution changed that, it would be logical for the porn industry to produce only filth. Just an idea though, I'm not certain at all on this one.

The group can own something if it's a voluntary association of free men. Native tribes don't fall into that category in regards to the land - there was no rule of law. Here's what I could google, from some leftist site: "Now, I don't care to discuss the alleged complaints American Indians have against this country. I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you're a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn't know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not. Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights--they didn't have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal "cultures"--they didn't have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. It's wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you're an aggressor and are morally wrong. But if a "country" does not protect rights--if a group of tribesmen are the slaves of their tribal chief--why should you respect the "rights" that they don't have or respect? The same is true for a dictatorship. The citizens in it have individual rights, but the country has no rights and so anyone has the right to invade it, because rights are not recognized in that country; and no individual or country can have its cake and eat it too--that is, you can't claim one should respect the "rights" of Indians, when they had no concept of rights and no respect for rights. But let's suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages--which they certainly were not. What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched--to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen. Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it's great that some of them did. The racist Indians today--those who condemn America--do not respect individual rights." The source isn't reliable, but I can easily believe she said this. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I first read it. The argument is important as it also applies to the middle east conflict.

I'm wondering: What do you think about Rand's argument that no land could have been stolen from American natives as they had no concept of private property?

Don't know much about this except that Japanese-Americans were temporarily detained. Was also property confiscated from them and not given back after the war ended? My grandma is such a case.

In life-boat scenarios it might even be rational. In rational, civilized societies however, the legal system makes criminal careers unattractive. If you have a choice, it's rational to chose these societies over the less civilized one. That is why a strict, principled legal system is so important to rational men.

I don't believe that at all. Viruses are natural and they are very bad. Why what Nazis (and others) called SD is absurd doesn't require Objectivism, even Darwin himself could have told them. But then people usually don't care what makes sense and what doesn't, they care about what's useful in the range-of-the-moment. The Nazis used Darwinism, made it fit on the surface and derived a flawed moral code to combine it with other already flawed moral codes. You introduced a lot of new topics here and I don't think it's worthwhile responding to those in detail when you honestly believe that what I said is where collectivism or even Nazism is. EDIT: Progress in a discussion can only be possible if we're narrowing it down to the premises we disagree on. For example, do you believe you are not a life form who struggles to exist? That's a very low premise one can talk about. Terms such as SD can mean everything and nothing.

This statement in and by itself is simply a correct assessment of how things are. I, as a life form, struggle for existence. Just like any other life form. I do so as an individual, I'm not part of a collective, so it's often competitive. To deny that is absurd, and if there mere acceptance of this fact makes me a social Darwinist, then that's what I am. I'm very sure Rand would think the same about this. So has atheism. I'm still an atheist. I would have expected wikipedia to say something like that. It merely reflects what people feel about the term. But then you now what they feel about Rand. I can't really answer your question when the definition isn't exact, and like with most morally loaded terms, it's extremely fuzzy. Of course Nazis *also* thought they were life forms struggling for existence. And of course some religious people don't. I still don't think I'm a Nazi because I'm not a collectivist: It's individuals making the decisions for their lives, not the state.

There is more woes than getting the wrong language if you're in Germany. With YouTube, you often get: "Unfortunately this video isn't available in Germany, as it might include music the local guild socialists have not been paid for." (liberal translation mine)

This was a delicious joke.

There's also cooperation (within a species) and symbiosis (accross species). Also, human beings eat a lot of other animals. They just don't eat members of their own species, which is a behavior that most other higher animals show as well. I wouldn't say that men lives less to the "detriment" of other life than other animals. Actually, man is by far the most predatory of them all. Do you promote vegetarianism? *Your* survival (and the survival of those you love, which is related) should be *your* highest value. By no means should you desire the survival of someone else over your own for deeming him fitter. *That* would be the ideology of Social Darwinism (if we're talking about Nazis, if not you need to explain what you mean by that term). I'm with Rand on the matter of moral absolutism.

I'm curious: What is it that you see in Rand? (Or do you post here for an entirely different reason?) EDIT: I mean, in the context of this quotation. Rand wanted a rational, just, healthy, orderly world and has been called right-wing (and probably fascist, although I don't have a quotation) for that very reason.

And I suspect that I'm all of these things, even though I can't be sure as I don't know what you understand under these terms.

Yes, of course. [EDIT: Rest of the post deleted, I leave it there.]

I'm actually optimistic as far as the world is concerned. As in: The world in 100 years will be very rational, orderly, just and healthy. But that's not because most people are rational. It's because those few that are rational won't allow the rest their undeserved "freedom" anymore. As it used to be in the West of the 19th century.

I disagree strongly. The program in all life is designed (by natural selection) to promote life. Consciously chosen values have to have that end as well or else they are evil. It's why I'm very fond of "the animal kingdom". Morality roots in biology, in our nature as survival machines, in the struggle for existence. It does *not* root in do-gooderism/idealism/deontology. (Which is what I always suspect in others when I sense opposition to biological analogies.)

[The lone wolf] OK, got it. That's the trouble with metaphors... Isn't what you are contrasting basically Nietzschean egoism? which says that whatever the act - rational or irrational - it must be good if it is for one's own benefit. I guess loners don't necessarily have to be egoistical in any sense. They just don't like company. There's many strawmen, but the one I meant was the socially inept nerd. As I said above, that isn't necessarily selfish.

It's the reaction to Ayn Rand that shadows the benevolent universe view. I remember how exited I was to find her, discounting "mystics" as something unusual and rare, full of optimism I could at least convince some of my best friends who I held in high regard. I didn't talk to them about Rand or Objectivism, I saw the futility long before that. It's a cruel joke on Rand. All her life she wanted to proove to everybody that man is rational enough to be free, and at the end of all she did, the vast majority showed: See, we're not rational enough to be free.

Bees have alternatives of action. Every lifeform does. There is no connection between the following concepts: 1) Not liking company. 2) Pursuing ones own values rather than that of the tribe or state. The second is individualism, the first is a strawman of individualism (the "mystical individualism").

I thought so, but I really disagree. If that's individualism,I don't want to be an individualist. Bees are self-replicating machines, just like human beings. The difference is consciousness. Values are a property of life, not of consciousness.