Maggie Flash

Hello Greg! Yes, definitely. One does not build a stable house on a shaky foundation, that much is for sure. I must admit I've been naive though, I figured that governments and the people at large were more flexible in their approach to challenges, and would not, in pig-headed manner, stick by one broken concept until the car finally speeds off the cliff. Does the dog really only know one trick? Here's an interesting thought: Wars have been started, the deaths of hundreds of thousands taken into account for much less financial gain than the money lost by a single country due to its virus response, and all purportedly to save a couple thousand thousand old fogies & already very ill. This is so perfectly logic-free that I can't help wonder if I'm just too stupid not to see the real reason for the governments of the world acting this way. I mean, since when do countries who freely genocide around the clock give two sh*ts about saving human life? Why the pretence? What's their motive? (And yes of course it's not just the governments. If everyone was Objectivist, the government would a.) be drastically shrunken and b.) could demand all the measures it liked in this regard, it would have no power to implement them, and they would be faced with a society of individuals making up their own minds about what response is suitable for themselves.) ps. It's funny, even for those sold on a certain degree of authoritarianism "because it's necessary for >insert reason<", surely, this phony and forced one-way solidarity couldn't really impress people into thinking it was true solidarity, even if one believed in the necessity and importance of solidarity.

Hello and thank you for the welcome! And oh yes, the old "Your mother" chestnut. Not worth an answer because it's completely beside the point and purposefully circumvents the underlying philosophical principle at play in the question, the exact thing someone should be >answering< to. As for compassion argument, it sure is more compassionate to generate 20 times the damage than was necessary, in trauma and lost jobs, in deprived freedom and life chances, than it is to even so much as suggest high risk groups at least be herded into some kind of quarantine away from everyone else to minimise the amount of people who must suffer. (Obviously not my favoured approach, but hell, even that makes more sense.) Can you smell the compassion! Compassion for some clearly means taking the horsewhip to one's own back and believing that if you flay hard enough, the god of Altruism will empty his cornucopia of blessings upon the world. The general hypocrisy on display these days needs some trumping, too. All of a sudden, any degree of self-inflicted suffering and loss is alright "if only one life could be saved by it". Give me a break. If that were so, would we not all have worn masks before, to "protect" the immunocompromised and elderly from the flu, say? I see nothing much in that kind of talk, save for hypocritical and half-baked justifications for the status quo, comfortable, an internalised acceptance in the face of something most people don't see in their power to change. And your point about the firm belief that self-sacrifice will somehow fix things, even where the evidence is all around us that it breaks more than it tapes together, is good! Then again, humans aren't rational often enough, and when whipped into fear, lose what residual clarity they might have had before. Cheers!

Hello there! New here, and though I don't have much time, I'd love to pop in from time to time. I find the discussions - what I've read of them thus far - very good, knowledgeable and in-depth. Forgive me if this first effort of mine is a bit "been there, discussed that" but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, even if y'all have written them down before. I'd like to discuss altruism, within the framework of debate with those who would subscribe to a non-objectivist form of it, and its offshoot, the solidarity demanded as a consequence of the ideology of altruism. My specific questions come toward the end of this wall of text. Background is the Coronavirus, with a death rate in the low single digits, in excess of 90% of severe cases being the very old and already very sick. In the name of solidarity with said groups (commonly known as "high risk") we have, through authoritarian intervention, already created; Joblessness and destitution in millions of people (young, able bodied, in their prime, and yes, I know this doesn't matter in an objectivist philosophy sense, it matters to me, though) around the world, and it is estimated that, by the end of this, over 1/3 of children will end up with symptoms of PTSD. (Austrian projections, valid only for Austria here.) Hundreds of thousands of able bodied people who would likely not have noticed even catching the virus are now destitute, all in the name of imposed solidarity foisted upon them by a government, without so much as a referendum or a single say in the subject.Yet nobody questions the fairness of it. The moral destitution that comes with the demand to run millions of capable people into the ground in a forced show of solidarity with those who, statistically, have but a few more years of life. It made Objectivism ring all the truer to me, for I cannot possibly conceive of anything more evil, more profoundly unfair than sending millions of young and able marching into the knife for strangers, losing their jobs and sacrificing their own children's mental health, all the while being expected to "eat sh*t and smile." Without a single say of their own. Hate the government for taking away from people their rights to assess the risks for themselves, and act in accordance to what they feel is right. (Be that voluntary self-isolation and organisation of provision if you are a high risk group who will not take the risk, or simply carrying on as ever, if you wish to take the risk.) There is, in my mind, no recent example of how wicked, authoritarian, and absolutely mental the ideology of Altruism truly is, in recent history / to my memory. I seriously cannot get over this. I'm constantly amazed at people's blind eyes and deaf ears to this, too. It seems like everyone's discussing the color of the furniture in their jail cell, as opposed to wanting out of it. Also, how do you guys cope with the unfairness of all of this in your day-to-day lives? And how have your argued this with people who are not objectivists? What has their reaction been? Looking forward to your input! Also, why do you think the governments of the world have chosen this insane path over the more rational, at least vaguely objectivist, one? (Thusfar, no statements have been given on this matter, save for a golden nugget from our President (Austria), which went as follows "Those who would suffer feel better knowing everyone's in the same boat." No, I shit you not, it was a live speech he gave, which was on our evening news.) I seriously don't even.