ThomasHägg

Tony: when you say that chess is "win or lose", you are saying that there is an objective outcome to the choice(s) at hand. There is a philosophy that makes more or less the same claim: it goes by the name of Objectivism. Nobody "deliberately" exposes his king in chess: the king's exposure is inherent to the game. There are only 64 squares, after all. It thus occasionally becomes necessary to "sacrifice" your queen now and then. . . . and this is not the kind of "sacrifice" that Ayn Rand and Objectivism is opposed to. "Sacrifice", as very well explained by Rand, is done at an absolute loss and is not a matter of giving up something in order that one might win something that would objectively be worth more, or required by mans nature, but rather it consists of choosing what rationally is worth less to oneself when a choice is avaible or giving up what one rationally values the most. In the exact words of Rand, from "The Virtue of Selfishness"; "Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. On the topic of love, it feels like this thread has already been answered as well as it could. But anything quoted from this page or its original sources should be quiet enough. (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/love.html)

This is the part that is problematic and why Ayn Rand reconstructed, but never changed the essentials of the definition and still opposed it. Sacrifice is something which can be immediately physically beneficial in the short term, such as under a serious external threat, but never "moral", "good" or beneficial in the long term, according to objectivism. It should be very clear (at least other than possibly in the quoted definition above) that to "sacrifice" is not at all the same or part of a rational trade, where you only trade in order to gain what you value more than your expected cost. As in the case of love, it doesn't need to be a strictly monetary gain or cost of course. It seems a lot of people in this thread hold strong opinions of Rands writing either without having read it or without fully comprehending its implications. To claim her philosophy clashes with reality is one thing, but to do so on simple anecdotals when one can not show one has even understood why she chose her definitions is riddicilus. You are starting to "philosophize mid stream", just like she warned you not to do. Not that this actually proves her writing. Question; Do you whom oppose her definitions also disagree with the implications that her philosophy would have in the context of if her definitions were accepted? Do you find there to be logical coherence then ? whyNOT makes several good points I think.

Interesting quote, who wrote that book? ;) Sorry, but I don't agree with it. Objectivism shows very clearly that love is almost the precise opposite of sacrifice; Valueing and keeping something at a gain. "Sacrifice" as you define it, can in your chosen context not be anything close to how it is defined by objectivists / students of objectivists or else your definition of "love" would be very irresponsible and indeed sad.

I agree.

No. I didn't intend that sentence to be taken literal. My point was that Dominique showed signs of irrationality. Ayn Rand was more rational than Dominique though. At least seemingly. I will suppress a chuckle... So you think is was "more rational" to have the husband and wife of the respective parties openly condone and agree with an arrangement that was probably destructive to all of the parties involved? A... Go ahead and chuckle, that's why I edited my comment just before you replied ;) I don't have the insight to judge Ayn Rands life with such detail. At least she was incredibly productive. Was dominique productive "to her ability" as well? I don't know.

No. I didn't intend that sentence to be taken literal. My main point was that Dominique showed signs of irrationality.

This was what I thought at first, but then again the "broken, trampled" doesn't necessarily mean absolutely broken or fataly hurt. It can just be a way of illustrating selfishness and the acceptance of selfishness on the part of her lover. Not even necessarily rational such. (And just like you say, Dominique is probably not a perfectly rational woman at all times. Allthough if I remember it correctly, Rand did say that Dominique was "like [her] on a bad day".) If enterpreted as a rational statement I propose it could mean, then it can absolutely not be supposed to "hurt" you more than you gain from it, so it is not quiet a sacrificial form. This is of course the only reason why it being "self-chosen" or not even matters.

Being "broken, trampled" etc, all of those things may of course be ok to some degre, if by it there is also some gain and it is self-chosen. On the other hand, if it leads to ones total destruction, including if it leads to the destruction of ones morality in general, it is clearly immoral. So, the problem here is not calling love an "exception-making", even if the exception is accepting a treatment such as she describes, but rather doing it as a "sacrifice". - “Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less “selfish,” than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one. This applies to all choices, including one’s actions toward other men.

I disagree. To quote Rand, real love is this - To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love—because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. - One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of [what or whom] one loves. Of course "love" in a much more general traditional sense or rather "a feeling of love" is due to appreciation as well, but is not necessarily accompanied by apreciation of rational qualities. In this more much more general sense, one can be said to "love" a drug or a poison. Real "love" can be a source of "exception-making", but never as a sacrifice, only as the best available choice in order to keep or protect what one loves. - Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness Kindly, Thomas

Right, that's what I thought. By the way, does anyone have a suggestion for which browser this website is viewed best on? I'm currently using Chrome for most things, but there seems to be quiet a few gifs/java pieces missing for me. I'm not a programmer so I couldn't provide you the specifics of what is missing more precisely, only for example I can't preview most smileys and there seems to be a missing picture below profile pictures in threads.

Sorry, not sure I understand, but if this was meant for me then my answer would be that the I use the word "we" for many different groups of which I can be said to be a part, wether I like being part of said group or not. For example, I am a "Swede" wether I like it or not. It doesn't mean that I define myself as "Swede" first and foremost, but that the word "Swede" is defined as such a person that I am. I "belong" to said group, yet I don't "belong" to anyone. - Nonetheless, "we" (the swedes) have a political problem on our hands here. Trump, I see. Many "libertarians" and others seem to like him. I can see why, but I also know that I personally would not support him given the conditions surrounding him. I think he could very well make a mess for you that you would come to regret; Like sucessfully making all his bad qualities law and all of his good qualities not making it past the senate and /or the opinion of the majority of americans. He is more of an egotist, than an egoist of course and this might cause him to do some things no matter what the majority says, but I'm not sure that is necessarily a good thing... Twisted Sister, of course. Legends all over the world. "Dee Snider"? Didn't remember that was his name, but now that you mention him... Yeah, when I get through my huge(!) pile of books, that I have ordered such that the most important topics are the ones closes to the top, the first book I will read should be one of Trumps business books I think. I better order it now and place it under the rest of those books, just so I don't forget My place is actually much more ordered than it probably sounds like at this point. I might write a few things about Sweden here/other thread in the future, if asked to or if anything I feel could be of interest should happen. Not promising anything, because I have a tight schedule at the moment, but I sure would like to. I will remember to ask about the U.S. (/America means the U.S. in everyday conversations I guess?) if there should be anything! I've never visited, but I've got some relatives over there like everyother Swede of course. And I'm also very active online when it comes to content from The U.S; watching video, live broadcasts, reading news, looking into statistics & studies, reading message boards, watching and discussing on Youtube and so on.

I would like to answer that I'm all of those things of course Right now I'm studying on my own outside of the public education system (which is normally the only accepted one here in Sweden). But I'm expecting to set up my new business in the coming months. ......................... My upbringing in Scandinavia has taught me that there are things we do bad here, but there are also some things which while they should not be done by government, our government does better than most governments on this earth. (And this is objective fact, not some partiotic nonsense that we all get to hear about our greeat great mother lands.) The numbers don't lie. Long term poverty in countries like the US is hurting society at large. In contrast the lack of long term poverty in Sweden is good for society. (Poverty here not to be confused with "inequality", which will always be needed) If a society at large is not functioning properly this increases the risk of harm to the individual sooner or later. That of course doesn't mean that we shouldn't be selfish, but that we need to take care enough about the world we live in, in order that we may live more well. /ThomasThomas: Great points. This last summer allowed me to spend ten days at the NJ shore and we had a young Swedish girl stay with us since she was the girlfriend of one of the family's adopted young Vietnamese boy, who I have gotten to know quite well over the last two years. Therefore, I got to talk with her quite a bit about Sweden, school and life there. She comes from well to do folks in Sweden, as does her boyfriend. So, it appears that there are two distinct Sweden's, one that is the settled society you speak about and the other is the one we "see" in our media which appears to have an "immigrant" problem. Now I know that I could do that easily in any state in this country because we have a very diverse and sparsely populated country with pockets of concentrated humanity that are amazing beehives of energy and constantly in flux. However, we have a serious problem with the invasion of our nation. Is the same change occurring in Sweden? A... Thank you. That's interesting. Sure, "immigration", or rather the socialized version of it, is a huge problem, especially now with a lot of people coming from Syria etc. Though I don't want to negate your "invasion" I think that is a rather harsh term, if talked of an "invasion of immigrants" etc. This wording makes the hordes of people already living in a country think that what is to be feared are the bulk of the immigrants themselves. When comparing The US to Sweden, we actually have much higher immigration and usually take better care of them in general even though the state handles this. States rights, Federal budgeting and the specifically American fear of "socialism" as being total Stalinism confuses and makes your sittuation much worse of course. But just meassuring the ammount of immigration, we have a much more serious issue at our hands. The city that suffer the most from the problems associated with immigration today is probably Malmö. The law is not constructed to handle immigration on this scale and the politicians, nationally and locally, handle the issue very badly. Not to mention they of course grab for power much in the same way that US politicians do after any terror attack or other catastrophic event. But theres been nothing like indefinite detention here so far. I think politicians are not that stressed out. After all, almost noone even reacted when EU membership was written into the constitution, despite a rather large percentage of Swedes at the time objecting to much of what the EU stands for. It simply didn't make enough headlines, so it passed us by. I remember back when most folks here thought "Sweden Democrats" (their name sounding much like the always very popular party "Social Democrats") wouldn't be able to get into parlament. I used to tell people that thought they were just another racist party that "there are in fact problems with immigration right now, that we need to fix before they get into parlament. Otherwise they will continue to grow even after that. And while the party heads are seemingly not explicitly racist but rather condemn it in very general terms, their core members and voters are and this could cause all kinds of problems!". Well, what do you think happened? Did anyone listen? No. Of course not. And people still don't. They think constantly attacking and trying to riddicule these new "underdogs" will make their voters feel ashamed, stop them from voting and force the party into submission. And no other party wants to work with them of course, because that would so far be political suicide. But isolation from other parties and their constant failures, just keeps the Sweden Democrats growing stronger and stronger. They are now polled at 20 (!) percent of all votes! This would make them the 3rd largest party and, as you can see in this link, puts them very close to both of the 2 larger parties. Also, a lot of previously immigrated vote for The Sweden Democrats as well, mostly due to their own hatred of muslims/fear of islam that usually doesn't come from any deeper intellectual work, but rather from their own Christian roots. So now we have a party that while it is constantly called "far-right" is equally socialist to everyone else, only they demand "tougher" laws on "crime" and other things. They want to ban the burka etc. (may not be their openly stated policy anymore, but that is just a front) They are rather "French" in their thinking I would say. It could be a lot worse of course; The party used to be openly racist back in the days, complete with some party members wearing Nazi uniforms and saluting during party meetings. The current party leader was a member at the time. Today their existence spurs on more socialist thinking in all parties, in the German/Italian style, while at the same time openly denouncing "socialism" and "the left" for destroying "our great country". The social "liberal" parties follow, but still don't want to be associated with the Sweden Democrats. It's a farce. Just now the government stopped "all" immigration (not really all to be honest), but because of the this year already arrived 150 000 seeking asylum, we now have at least 30 000 and counting that are currently hiding from the authorities. - I wonder what line of work they will be in? What kind of living conditions they will have apart from being wanted, and due to the strict regulation of bussinesses we have here, almost fully unable to participate in the legal economy? And if they would report a violent crime if they saw it? Meanwhile it seems (Marxist) Anarchists are making the news more and more often. Though their waving flags never gets mentioned because the news achors of course have got no clue what they actually mean, they are clearly visible at rallies against Nazis as well as Sweden Democrat's rallies. Things seem to be heating up for the moment. Well anyhow, I guess rant complete. I'm going to stop whining for now. I know we all have got our problems to deal with. But this I think is a very fair assessment of Sweden in it's current state, in regards to the ongoing politics. Everything is influenced by immigration right now. I hope my text is readable and this answers your question well, despite any bad grammar that might have creept in there. Spell check marks almost every word for me because it is not Swedish...

I guess this is where it gets really (and I mean very) hard to explain my exact thinking. I am still struggling to put it down on paper for my own sake in any spare time I get. My ideas are slightly different from most anarcho-capitalists I have yet to encounter. I don't think there is any way so far today to produce a lasting anarcho-capitalism. Welcome to OL...are you a student, business person, or, worker? It may be an assumptive problem that you're creating about framing it as a "lasting" anarcho-capitalism. By the very nature of groups of folks banding together in reality implies a changing dynamic. Nothing lasts forever. A... I would like to answer that I'm all of those things of course Right now I'm studying on my own outside of the public education system (which is normally the only accepted one here in Sweden). But I'm expecting to set up my new business in the coming months. Nothing lasts forever as you say, but there is still a certain level of stability that i would like to see in a society. I would like to see that there is something constant that pulls it in the direction of objective morality and I would like it to last for as long as possible. To Rand, this was governments role, but ultimately I would like to see something different. "Capitalism" at the level that at least many anarcho-capitalists currently theoreticize about it, I don't think will be sufficient to pull it. There is no denying that with such capitalism there is likely to be some poverty and this could very well promt another bolshevik run or national socialism if uneased. If we are able to prevent such catastrophy, I think we should. Not by limiting capitalism as most nations do today, but by working as "social" agorists within capitalism itself to achieve new great solutions to these problems. These are problems that are human as much as they are economical and more than they are in specific due to capitalism, even though they can show as "poverty" under it. My upbringing in Scandinavia has taught me that there are things we do bad here, but there are also some things which while they should not be done by government, our government does better than most governments on this earth. (And this is objective fact, not some partiotic nonsense that we all get to hear about our greeat great mother lands.) The numbers don't lie. Long term poverty in countries like the US is hurting society at large. In contrast the lack of long term poverty in Sweden is good for society. (Poverty here not to be confused with "inequality", which will always be needed) If a society at large is not functioning properly this increases the risk of harm to the individual sooner or later. That of course doesn't mean that we shouldn't be selfish, but that we need to take care enough about the world we live in, in order that we may live more well. /Thomas

Thanks Michael! Good to be here There certainly are obstacles. But the main obstacle is immorality itself and I think there comes a point with every form of technology when people have to choose what they want. "Nuclear power won't go away because I want it to. So do I also want global nuclear catastrophy or would a global nuclear stalemate be a better choice?" - If such a stalemate never arives or there is no apparent reason to avoid "snitching" and similar cultural problems, then well, we could experiene something really bad. There is no denying that. But there is also no denying that we will not be able and we should not seek to stop technological development. I will admit to that. But I think even theoreticals can be of huge benefits. These days I think it is mostly just the style I am the most comfortable writing in, but I will try to resolve this in the future and make more arguments from objective knowledge in the actual text. For someone that made it from Christianity and a few different Socialist views to (at least a more than previously) Rational Selfishness, I still remain mighty proud of my achievment. It took a lot of work and it is clearly an improvement. I also think I might have made other "minor" errors in my claims, but I will be choosing wisely how to spend my time here and put it to use elsewhere than correcting and rewriting. My post was made to encourage further discussion and make my overall thinking clear, both of which I am happy to see succeeded. I guess this is where it gets really (and I mean very) hard to explain my exact thinking. I am still struggling to put it down on paper for my own sake in any spare time I get. My ideas are slightly different from most anarcho-capitalists I have yet to encounter. I don't think there is any way so far today to produce a lasting anarcho-capitalism. It is theoretically possible to achieve it momentarily, but that doesn't exactly make me want to get rid of the state right now as you might see. The question is what it would take to produce an enviroment where anarcho-capitalism would be enough of an obvious choice for how we conduct society. I don't have any exact answers and I don't pretend to. When there is an "objectivist" laissez-faire government, we might know more. My primary argument for anarcho-capitalism remains the moral. If we want to take another example from Rand her self, it should be obvious for anyone who read Atlas Shrugged (not really a favourite of mine) that Galt's Gulch was in direct defiance of the socialist government. But we don't need to.

Who knows... I might be able to revive this thread. =)

After having read your post, I decided I would create an account so I could answer it. First of all of course, the government is nothing close to a family, but let's leave that aside for a moment because there actually are some similarities between the two and so this enables us to use the family as an example. I would argue, when any person (such as the child you speak of) mature to the point that they become capable of providing for themselves unless actually prevented by others, if they then would rather choose to work for their own income, leave their (perhaps unloving) family behind or choose to start their own family, they should be absolutely allowed to do so. There is no magic age where all of this is supposed to happen and so naturally it currently differs even between western nations. In the same way, if an individual born into a state or otherwise, should want to choose to create new courts, police and defense against an invasion without changing the basic premise of working for his own income and without breaking ethical code, he should be absolutely allowed to do so. The basic code of Objectivism empowers you to do so. "But then by whom should he be allowed to do this?" you may ask and "Who would protect the right to do so?" This is a great question. In fact, I might even call it "the perfect question". Of course, as Rand herself emphasized, a liberty is not a liberty (even though it might be the only moral option) unless it is protected as such. This right should be protected by whom ever is currently superior, be it A single individual - This would probably be an absolute dictatorship and the dictator would obviously be highly unlikely to ever accept this new right. In such a case, such liberty might have to be taken by force in retaliation against the current tyranny if the dictator can not be tricked or played. A group of individuals - This would be a) A government (for example a democracy) - The above may still apply, but voting may be better if it can be done without risk for ones life. b) An already established network of such private defense agencies. Could such a systems exist? Actually, Yes. (Science and History) The main obstacle in/with/too Anarcho-Capitalist (free market policing, -courts and -defence) I think is actually slowly going away. As long as we can keep some capitalist element alive in our current world society, we will be outgrowing it. Technology in all areas is actually starting to catch up to political philosophy. (Worldwide communication in less than a second is possible. Even to people within absolute dictatorships, though it may be risky. Medicine moves forward, IT moves forward, (Civilian-)Robotics move forward. Few people these days are actually able to keep up with the development that occurs because of the speed it is now reaching. It is monstrous. It is riskfull. It is almost unavoidable. It will be used for both good and bad of course. But mostly it is absolutely beautiful. In a few years perhaps, there can begin to be made available computer simulations of how and to what degree different kinds of societies would actually work. Then perhaps, purely theoreticaly, in the next 5 decades or so, smaller "experimental" societies can be created all over the world, in part still perhaps within the already existing boundaries of the dominant nation states... But still!) I will cut my message short here for time saving purposes. Kindly, Thomas