Arkadi

9thdoctor: Of course I believe in the rational selfishness of euthanasia! My problem is with that particular example.

Anthony: As far as I know, depression can visit one even if one does not serve anybody except oneself.

BTW, I personally know Orthodox Christians (including one bishop) who love to highlight m.Teresa's documented depression as a proof of her having no grace and thus no sainthood (which, of course, confirms their belief that "heretics"--R.-Catholics included--just cannot have any).

Anthony: Isn't depression, in most cases, just hormonal? (As an aside: Even Jesus felt abandoned by God on the Cross, as the story goes. Poor Jesus.)

Thanks. Now I recall that I actually did read it. Unfortunately, it confused the issue even more for me. E.g., "A genuinely selfish man knows that only reason can determine what is, in fact, to his self-interest"; and then: "If a man loves a woman so much that he does not wish to survive her death"--What has reason to do with this "not wishing to survive"??? Let's turn to his other example: "The boy accedes to his mother’s wish because he has accepted that such is his moral duty"--Now we've hit the heart of the matter. I am asking (see the topic of this thread): Has anyone actually met in person such a "boy"? In real life, I mean; not in some 19th century novel.

9thdoctor: No, I haven't read it. Thanks for giving me some glimpse of an answer. All too often I was advised to read a book in order to find an answer to a simple question, only to figure out, in the end, that it would have been enough to read one page.

Brant: I rendered you correctly by saying: "for the most part." And I brought in Rand's life as an example of this "for the most part" being much more than business transactions.

Anthony: I was talking of a situation in which quite a few individuals in the society do not share my values--e.g., as concerns the importance of the motivation for and availability of a high quality education to young people regardless of their parents' income.

Anthony: This is not collectivism until it remains my solitary effort (which cannot change anything on the large scale anyway). But as soon as I join other like-minded individuals and we try to implement our social vision through political mechanisms, it becomes collectivism, as we are imposing our values on the society at large, in which quite a few people do not care whether their co-citizens even know who was the first president of our country, but only that they are able to count money, so it is possible to do business with them.

Brant: "business being human interactions most generally"--I would consider it a meager and extremely low quality life if my human interactions were, for the most part, business transactions. Rand's life was full and admirable in my view not least because her human relations were far from being just that. She was emotionally and intellectually related with the cohort of like-minded people. And those connection were in the real wold (not just on an Internet forum)!

Brant: " wants to impose it on you" --did you ever experience this from an altruist? Thanks for telling me about your experience.

BaalChatzaf: Have you personally met M.Th.? If not thanks for considering the topic of this thread.

Brant: All these "-isms" are just abstractions, I do not see people living up to them. Of course, I am an individualist. But as an individualist, I value living among educated, civilized people, not among mobsters. So, I have a vested individualist interest in motivating young people to study and making a quality education available to them at large. In other words, it is of value for me that others have the same values as I do. But this is collectivism, isn't it?

Brant: But perhaps there are some "perks" that go together with being a "victim"? If there is enough value in victimhood for some people to go for it, how does it differ from other values? Some people buy tobacco and ruin their body with it. Aren't they also "altruists," then?

I mean, an altruist as defined by Rand, i.e., someone giving up a greater value in exchange for a lesser one. There are quite a few "altruistic" slogans floating around but whenever I had a chance to come across somebody actually living up to them, they turned out to be valuing more what they were getting (emotionally, at any rate) from their "sacrifice" than what they were "sacrificing". And frankly, I cannot understand how it can possibly be otherwise, assuming that people have free will. Why would anyone prefer anything other than what has a greater value (or, a lesser dis-value) in their eyes at the moment of choice? The answer: because they are "zombied" seems to beg the question, for, then, being brought up in a particular culture already means being "zombied", and it is, above all, through one's upbringing (and cultural experience) that one's values are developed. So, do altruists really exist? What am I missing?

Good. I came to this clearer understanding of that phrase as I had taken a fresh look at it, prompted by our conversation. (I heard of the Gorky Park but never read it; needless to say, it was not available in the USSR.)

"Far from a "message", praising them for 'preferring death to slavery'"--She is praising them for determination to risk death rather than be enslaved. Does this sound right to you?

And BTW, Anthony: If Rand, as you suggest, were meaning a conditioned "unwillingness" (like in: "I am unwilling to live in the town X but I will if I get a sufficiently paying job there"), why did not she mention any benefits of serving in the army? Why did not she say: "Guys, you are unlike those wretched sacrificial soldiers of totalitarian/"Kantian" states, but are being well paid and getting into a career at the cost of just a small risk of being killed"? Would it not be a more appropriate message, on your assumption?

Anthony: As I wrote earlier: "We...are to determine what situation we are, currently, in, and think accordingly." You're again and again violating this self-evident rule of thumb, trying to think the way helping one to cope with one's defeat, whereas you're not defeated (yet), as far as I can tell (but, of course, my apologies if you actually are).

"Do their lives cease to have meaning and purpose, except as human sacrifices for the good of others, or for Rand's "message"? Should a surviving soldier exist in guilt, for not dying in battle with others?" --No, to both questions. Again, thanks for demonstrating how different answers would follow from any of my statements (if this is what you meant).

Anthony: "I'm unconvinced this is not a 'glorious death', you see Rand as recommending."--Given that I told you that this is NOT what I see, what other "arguments" do you need to be "convinced"? "Why else should they "prefer death"?"--The question is invalid, for "else" implies that "glory" is an answer, whereas it is clearly not. What value could a dead person have from his "glory"?! Given that there is no person around any more!

"There is a sentimentality about the glory of war and sacrifice running through the thread; all from the premise of "Giving" one's life in battle. Giving: for whom, for what?"--Anthony: English is not my native language, and I dropped the unfortunate word "giving" long ago; continuing to pick on it is unfair. Thanks for citing any words of mine about the "glory" of war. If something is running through your head when you read the thread, it speaks, above all, of you, not of the thread.

"But if it happens, it doesn't mean my life is ended and I cannot work and apply myself to regain wealth."--Correct. There is a way to think so as to prevent the undesirable from happening; but this way of thinking makes sense only if it has not yet happened. And there is another way to think so as to cope with the situation if the undesirable has, unfortunately, happened. Naturally, given her situation, Rand presented the first way only. We, also, are to determine what situation we are, currently, in, and think accordingly.

"to prefer death over life in slavery"--is quoting me (and Rand); claiming that it implies anything about why soldiers enter the army--is ascribing.

Anthony: ""Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!" --That's the "glory" of self-sacrifice in war you plainly respect, Arkady."-- You are ascribing to me a view that I never held nor expressed, without even trying to show how it is implied by anything I said. I.e., just as you do with Rand, you're putting your words into my mouth. "You are being most literal: "unwilling to exist (live) under slavery" is (implicitly) why those soldiers entered the Army."--This "implication" is only in your mind, Anthony. The soldiers can enter the army for all kinds of reasons: from being in a desperate financial situation to aspiring to make it into college to willing to defend their civilization from external enemies. Rand's message was not about this but about the mindset with which to go into battle.