phubbard

I had to leave out a lot of detail in my original post -- I tried a couple of drafts giving more detail about the situation, but they turned out absurdly long. Let me say that any attempt to keep things private almost certainly wouldn't succeed. Call it "small town politics." As for the idea that his going to therapy would be a good thing in the long run, well, first of all a crisis of that magnitude is not certain, not even the most likely outcome, just a reasonable possibility. But even if such a crisis were certain, Joe's response to the crisis would be completely beyond my control;

Since you bring the question up in an Objectivist forum, a pertinent Objectivist observation is that you'd be an altruist in the worst sense if you worried at this point about hurting him. He asked for it. Naah, I don't care in general about hurting him, and agree 100% that he asked for it. The issue to me is that of a disproportionate response. Here's an example to show what I'm getting at. Suppose a father, who owns firearms, is sitting in his home. His seven year old son is outside playing with some friends. Suddenly the father hears suspicious noises. He looks outside and sees t

Hello. I'm not a full blown Objectivist, but I do find considerable value in many of Ayn Rand's ideas. I'm currently facing an ethical dilemma ("ethical" in the ordinary, layperson sense of the word -- I'm not a philosopher and don't pretend to be). I've pretty much decided what my course of action is going to be, but I'd like to run this by you all and get your thoughts. I'm 48 years old, and have an acquaintance whom I'll call Joe. We're not friends, but were high school classmates (he's also 48), and we do still have friends in common and so I occasionally have to deal with him. J