mrorville1

I may not be a parent,but I hope it does not end up like in the U.S where a 6 year old gets suspended for using a chicken strip as a pretend gun

Andrew ryan was the main antagonist of Bioshock. It is a video game where it is based off of Rand's ideals.

On 2/27/2012 at 8:24 PM, Stephen Boydstun said:

Hello, [omitted]. Welcome to Objectivist Living.

I gather you know that Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand. You will be finding the main parts of the philosophy in your book Atlas Shrugged. Rand once summarized the philosophy this way:

Quote

My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

I believe the overview of Rand’s philosophy to which you referred is the one here at OL, written by Will Thomas, which includes some links to subdivisions of the philosophy. I would like to point you to another, fairly elaborate, overview of the philosophy here.

But mostly I hope you have a lot of fun with your book.

I thank you for your help. You have already helped me alot.

What do you say to these arguements?

Rand's philosophies, basically coming to the conclusion that any practical implementation of Randism would inevitably devolve into anarchy. Ryan tried to set up Galt's gulch with all its intended advantages, all he got instead were imperfect human beings who played each other and ended up killing each other. Rand is a lot like Marx, living in pie in the sky fantasy land, that doesn't take into account that actual human beings have to run things.

and

But I'm still going to personally take it as an indictment of Objectivism purely on the grounds of my own personal dislike of the philosophy. I thought Rand had some interesting ideas until I realized that Objectivism essentially gives people an excuse to act like jerks and then pass it off as "I don't expect an unenlightened plebe like you to understand or approve of my more advanced stature."

I'm sure that not all people that embrace Objectivism are jerks but in my personal experience, I never encountered an Objectivist who wasn't mean, arrogant, condescending and answered any criticism of behavior with "You're not advanced enough to understand."

Would help alot more.

(NOTE FROM MSK on June 4, 2021: The personal information of this poster has been omitted in this thread by request. Anyone addressing him from here on out should use the name mrorville1.)

Hello, My name is [omitted], I am age 15 and my current residence is [omitted],and I have an IQ of 132. I like to consider myself a pre-objectionist. I atually got interested in the ideology through a game called Bioshock. It interested me enough to go online and see its ideology and found out it was based on Objectivism by Ayn Ran. Now I am currently reading Atlas Shrugged(from my poit of view it is a very good book and told in a very good way). But I wish to ask you something. What exactly is objectionism? I understand the overview but could I have a description of what it is?It would help me a lot (I am trying to convert my Anarcho-Communist friend).