AllMenAreIslands

What the best course of action is ought to be the same as what one's course of action should be, but this requires that you know by what (or whose) standard you are evaluating the choices open to you. Let's take an example. If your parents want you to become a doctor, and you want to study theatre, then the "best course of action" will be different depending upon whom you ask or depending upon whose standard of value you invoke when making the choice. Both courses of action are worthy, let's say, and both honorable in the right context. BUT - choosing to do what your parents want you to do when you would rather pursue another career would be immoral FOR YOU. The choices don't have to be between "good" and "bad." In fact they are more often than not choices between or among two or more equally good pursuits. The choice that is right for you must take into account your desires, interests and abilities. So in that sense going by "oneself" means one's own hierarchy of values. This is why the Law needs to be built on a proper base, i.e., one where the law prohibiting initiation of force is fully described and fully adhered to by all (or at least the majority) of the members of the society. You don't have the right not to repay a debt because that constitutes an initiation of force. Then you do not understand the connection between "rational" and "ethical." The rational is the ethical for man, because that is his nature. I think you are missing out on the bigger picture. The concept of what one ought NOT to do is in the context of interaction with others. When deciding what one ought to do given a set of options, figuring out which one is in your best interests is every bit as important and every bit an ethical question as understanding what you may not do. However, being open-ended, deciding what to do with your life is not something others ought to force upon you. Actually all we need in the form of government is a system that is ruled by objective law. Moral philosophy is not just about what not to do, but also how about how to choose from the array of options. It is not simply a matter of avoiding chaos but of choosing that which you deem as the one most likely to result in your happiness. Having rational government is simply the initial point - the achievement of an environment in which you can then proceed to make the most rational choices in life to benefit yourself and those you care about.

What are you basing this ridiculous set of assumptions upon? How would mooching be profitable or favored in a system of contract insurance? If two (or more) people enter a contract, shake hands on it, and conclude the contract successfully, there is no mooching. If the transaction runs into difficulties, the injured party can still sue (it would just cost more to do so.) The alternative is to lose out completely. It doesn't have to involve others. Perhaps you are thinking of police, armed forces to protect the country and so on. I think you under-estimate the value to the majority, who would elect to do something to contribute to the costs. Worrying about a handful of "moochers" who would not contribute even after having their lives saved by police is putting too much emphasis on such people. I think if you treat people as having the basic ability to understand the value of proper government services, the vast majority would want to do their bit to help cover the costs. Those who would never choose to do so are probably criminals anyway. Just because society today seems full of moochers does not mean that most people would behave badly GIVEN A CHOICE. Put it this way - the choice to pay for government services MUST be left to the individual citizens. There is no rational alternative.

Thomas, I wonder -- do you find yourself evaluating new people against the standard of that great friendship, perhaps wondering if this or that person could turn out to be the New Best Friend? Perhaps it will be harder to find that person simply because you have the memory of how marvelous the previous friendship became, and a part of you at least cannot help but draw comparisons, or look for "signs" that the new person will offer the same level of intimacy as your other friend did. I'd love to say "Of course you will find someone else," but there's no "of course" about it. The standard seems to be set very high, plus from what you've just told us, it wasn't an overnight kind of thing but rather something that evolved and developed over years. There must be a bit of reticence on your part, perhaps it is subconscious, which makes you more wary of having another friendship like that one, from the fear of losing the person after all the effort. Was this friend also an Objectivist?

I really liked your answer here, Matus, and especially the bit I bolded. I do agree with you about the use of the word "sacrifice" to denote what are either "costs" or "investments." I think there is a sinister motive behind the effort to smuggle the idea of making sacrifices into every discussion involving making choices. I think the purpose of the proliferation of the word "sacrifice" in those instances is to have people think of "sacrifice" as something good or noble or worthwhile, which has its payoff when the rulers decide it's time for war and "the ultimate sacrifice." Of course, whenever there is a choice of two or more options that are both/all worthy of his time/money, the individual will find the selection process more difficult without a hierarchy of values to refer to in evaluating which of the options will add the most to his life, short and/or long term. Why do people want to hang onto the idea of "making sacrifices?" Ironically, it may be easier to identify which is the "correct" choice to make by the standard of sacrifice, because it is the one you DO NOT want to select. Knowing which of the options is truly in your best interests feels like it is more work largely because it is, for most people. *** Thomas, I'm sorry to hear of your loss.

First of all, children are thinking individuals. Perhaps you are thinking of newborns, whose command of their rational faculties has only just begun and isn't yet noticeable to those whose development is more advanced. The point of drawing the line at birth is precisely to provide a way to protect children from abusive parents/guardians. The issue of children's rights needs to be reviewed and revised. At present I believe it is tied up with rights to health care and education as provided by some third party, rather than by one's parents. Since the market for education and health care has all but been completely taken over by government (in America that is; in other countries like Canada these systems are government-run), it is a muddy set of issues at best. It's worth reiterating: Newborns and children do need to have their lives protected from abusive parents and guardians. As infants develop, they quickly become adept at manipulating their parents - the point at which a young human being begin to work with the data provided by its senses would probably offer a multitude of thesis topics for post-graduate work. A child should have rights because it is a separate biological entity possessed of a rational faculty. Its basic nature of rationality needs to be respected by its parents even as those parents are required to provide for its upkeep and nurture during its developmental stages. The process of securing the rights of all individual human beings is part of the process of establishing true civilization. No, you are asking/demanding the right to force them to bring a child into the world because a child was conceived. These issues about bringing children into the world need resolution now, as we are on the verge of entering the age of more commonplace artificial birthing and DNA selection of characteristics. Delineating at what point the fetus moves from being a thing to being a human being with rights must be established to protect everyone involved. It's your personal problem if you're involved of course. But on a wider view, yes it is, just as any abridgement of rights is or ought to be of concern to a rational person. Well, it has to do with casual sex/prostitution quite a lot actually since it is often casual sex especially that results in unwanted pregnancies. Because these are acts that represent initiations of force, that is how I figure it is my business. I oppose all forms of initiation of force by one or more individuals against another. If a fetus has a right to life, a pregnant woman has no right to her life. This is why it is necessary to differentiate between human life that is unborn. Until it is born it does not have rights. It cannot have rights. Here's another issue - what about a fetus that is raised entirely in an incubator. At birth it acquires its rights, but who has the right to decide whether to keep the fetus growing or not? Okay. So, what is the point of forcing people to bear children they don't want? What's in that for you? Why isn't it enough for you to have the right to elect NOT to have an abortion (unlike, say, in China and perhaps soon in the United States if Obamaniac listens to the Envirotards and begins thinking that the population needs to be curtailed in America)? Supporting freedom and individual rights results in securing your right to have 16 children if you so choose, while at the same time securing the rights of others to elect to have 16 abortions. I see. So it's all the woman's fault, is it? She should bear the consequences of her actions and have that child to pay for the fact of having had sex. Again, I ask you - why do you want to force others to have children they don't want?

This thread is filled with wonderful posts from members of the site. Here is one which answers at least some of the questions posed in response to my previous post:

Chairman Maobama?

I've thought about this some more, JuleBrenner, and I would add this. For a goal to be fundamental it must be one that is a direct product of our natures. Our nature is that we must choose to be rational, to find one's happiness in being rational. As we know, generations of human beings have managed to "survive" and reproduce more humans but the survival mechanism often gets turned the wrong way round with irrational philosophy and religion. So people do not achieve happiness by rationality's standard. Such people have human form but not human substance, since they have not actively chosen rationality but instead allowing themselves to be dictated to by others. One might say the fundamental goal then is making the choice to be rational, and to seek to be happy rationally and rationally happy. It would follow then that every choice one makes in life can and should be rational, including the choice or not to eat or smoke or drink a given substance. Applying some thought to one's choices in life is all it takes to fulfill one's fundamental goal - it's really about knowing why you choose what you choose.

Terrific! There is indeed cause for hope.

Interesting thread, having read it all. What do you mean by "fundamental goal"? It sounds like you are referring to that oft-asked question, "What is the meaning of life?". One thing I learned early on in my reading of Objectivism is that the proper question to be answered is not, "what is the meaning of life?" but rather "What is the meaning of your life?" To discover one's meaning of life one must identify one's essential purpose in life. Such a purpose is simply what it is that you wish to do with your life. Once you identify that purpose I think it will become your fundamental goal, in that your happiness will become synonymous with its achievement, or at least with the knowledge that you are making progress towards its achievement. I do think the "fundamental goal" of humans is to achieve happiness. Easier said than done, of course, because achieving happiness requires a great deal of effort. One must identify as many possibilities of purposes as one can, and then select from them first which one wants to spend one's life working on, i.e., identify one's purpose in life, and then identify how to go about achieving that purpose.

Thanks, I signed up the other day.

Thomas, how about all the people who consider themselves "bad" on one level, for example, by the standard of their religion, or by the standard of environmentalism, but who by a rational standard of value would not be bad? Such less obvious cases are probably the more prevalent ones, too. There are too many "mixed value" people these days.

I haven't read him before. I found the article very interesting. What the article does make me realize is how big the obstacle is facing reason, Objectivism and rational government. The soil has been well prepared and Barack Obama is to be the lucky recipient of the largesse such as it is of the fruits of a nationalized America. I do not see how it can be stopped from happening.

I agree with anonrobt. The point of considering oneself good is to be able to enjoy the pleasures of human life. And the basic pleasure is the act of thinking. If a person can't enjoy thinking, learning, doing things with his mind, choosing a set of facts to focus on and going from there - then he is going to feel vaguely ill at ease with himself. The philosophies infecting various branches of philosophy all share altruism vs self-absorption, when life requires that individuals be able to focus on sets of facts separate and apart from himself in order to successfully navigate through life without doing himself an injury. Another important part of the fabric is the fact that coercion is legally permitted in all countries, to some extent or other. Coercion is the opposite of rationality. Anyone who supports the concept of taxation does deserve to feel ill at ease, so that may help explain why so many people do feel worried about their own goodness, and are so keen to turn to religion for reassurance that their lives will be worth the dirt their remains will become, coffin or no coffin. Unfortunately, relatively few people have even an inkling of what thinking is really all about. It's using one's rational faculty, in as many capacities and for as many interests as one can find, or stand, or have time/energy for. The essential human pleasure is thinking. All other pleasures that human beings have are shared and enjoyed to some extent by quite a few other species on the planet (not that I'm saying it gives those species rights, just stating the facts. Humans need to learn to enjoy the act of thinking, but in order to do so, the species first needs to acknowledge that there is a Law of Human Interaction, a proposition that actually does prove the truth of its contents, and therefore is self-evident. It is the law that no individual or group of individuals can have the right to initiate the use of force. Our dear Ayn Rand wrote that sentence and it is exactly the sentence the world needs to acknowledge, accept and abide by. By agreeing to live by this Law, and to formulate no laws in contravention of this basic Law. All law should be extrapolations from that basic concept. Any act that constitutes an initiation of force, for example by government or labour unions, would henceforth be prohibited from this day forward (and don't you wonder if there's a Latin phrase for that?) The act of thinking is the means by which men and women solve the problems of living. It's taking stock of a given situation, and putting together a plan to achieve first a basic then progressively more luxurious or whatever way of life. When people are busy focusing on their own day-to-day, and they know at the same time that NOBODY else has the right to initiate force, including the government itself, then there will finally be a chance for human beings to give birth to the first true civilization - one that flourishes without the initiation of force between or among human beings. Once again, being able to achieve this Utopia requires dealing with the problem of feeling good about ourselves to the point where enough of us say we deserve to have this Utopian kind of existence right damn now. How good about yourself do you feel?

You've missed the point. The criterion on whether the entity has rights is not based on its potential, but on its actual state. It is not because a fetus likely will develop into a normal human being, but rather the right of the mother to determine her life. She may not want a child at all. She may not want a child now. She may want a child but not want one with impairments. At any and every stage of the pregnancy she has the right to decide whether to carry on with the pregnancy. It is only once the child is born that it acquires rights, even though it is yet to become a fully formed thinking individual. It is only once it is born that the mother cannot decide to terminate the child's life. It is only once it is born that the mother, if she decides she doesn't want to raise the child after all, or her circumstances have changed, that her only option is to have the child adopted. I realize this concept is difficult for you to grasp if not impossible, but you must grasp it if you are to be part of a civilized society. You have the right to run your life. You don't have the right to dictate to others how to run theirs. Whether a person has one abortion or 20 - not your problem. Whether a person finds someone else to have sex with, or pays someone to have sex with - not your problem. How is it that you figure it is your business to tell others how to live? What a nerve.

For starters, I left the lights ON at work, when usually at the end of the day I turn off the lights in the room, and at the end of the week I turn off my printer, my monitor and usually the computer as well. At home, we had lights on, heat on, and we were busy with our computers going, the TV, and we were making a cake!! I love the idea of making a photo display next time. Apparently in Toronto there were some areas that experienced a power surge around 9:15 and the people were without power when they turned on their stuff at 9:30. I'm hoping that will change a few people's minds about whether they want to live permanently in the dark (which is what I think this is all about anyway.)

At the moment I don't have it. I'm just feeling attacked. I did not say that. And please. The possessive form is "its" - no apostrophe. We're fucked now in case you hadn't noticed. And I am saying that it's just more of the same - putting a percentage on it rather than offering value for value. And no, the open-ended, blank cheque concept has been abused too much for me to find value in it. I'd rather be buying a service or even having a million-to-one shot at a windfall. If you care to designate a percentage of your gross, your net or whatever set amount you wish, as the "proper" amount you would be happy spending on government, that's fine. MY point is that it's not something to be forced on people. Perhaps I'll feel differently when we actually have a proper government. At the moment I am sick to the teeth of war, and military and idiots wasting money they have no right to. I am concerned that the concept of making donations is more likely than not to end up being abused as well. And I happen to think that contract insurance is very under-estimated. Perhaps you would feel differently once you know that unless YOU provide a safety net for yourself, there won't be one. You might think a lot differently about your weekly grocery expedition. Every time you spend money you would think about the insurance, even if you didn't purchase it each time. In addition, you might find that buying a blanket coverage would work for most of your purchases. But in any event, thinking about these matters from the perspective of the single individual or even the single family isn't going to help you to see the bigger picture. Corporations - they will end up spending the most on contract insurance, and it will still be a huge reduction over the taxes they were forced to spend before. Those prices come with a hefty dose of tax built in. So I would not be basing estimates of the proper budget required to fund a proper government on today's idiotic prices.

I could see the new skin using Firefox this morning as well as right now using IE. It's not a Firefox issue. Generally, I really like it. It feels like springtime! The only thing I have an issue with is the dollar sign symbol used to denote new posts. The shiny glare or is it a cloud at the top of the dollar sign obscures it a bit and I couldn't tell what the symbol was. It looked like half a hammer & sickle (:eek!) Anyway, the color scheme is lovely in general and I just wonder if the dollar sign symbol could be tidied a little so it has a cleaner look to it.

At this point it's just a great name. It's one direction in which philosophy could travel and perhaps ought to travel, continuing from where Ayn Rand left off. Does it have to reject what Objectivism says in order to be the next step? It might just be a great name for a political party or movement. It might turn out to be a subset. Or it might become a whole proper philosophy. For example, is "selfish"really the best word to denote "one's best interests"? The suffix "ish" often implies an approximation as in the term "I'll see you at nine-ish." That means "somewhere around 9," not "9 on the dot." So there is room to improve on the concepts concerning self-interest, as well as the methodology for determining what is in one's best interests taking into account all that one knows and cares about. Perhaps a word like "self-hood" would be better, given as well the incredible amount of bad press "selfish" has gotten. We aren't going to change people's minds about the meaning of "selfish" - may as well accept it. My question is, should we keep trying, or should we instead find a more precise term? There's the whole area of developing hierarchies of value. At present it seems things are much more bad vs good, but what happens when people have more money and more decisions to make. Let's say the idea of limited government is finally accepted, and people are to be responsible for the decisions currently being made on their behalf by government authorities. Guidance in how to make those decisions - how to weigh up and choose among many good uses of one's time & resources. Being objective is just the start - one has to integrate subjectivity into the mix as well in order to make those kinds of decisions. That is something I think a philosophy of Individualism ought to address. And the idea that a single political party should be elected, which party proceeds to ram its views down everyone's throats - that would disappear but people need guidance on how to manage with a new system where nobody's views are rammed down anyone's throat. Developing the intellectual infrastructure of a free society is something else Individualism could do. There's no end to the evolution of philosophy.

But I'm not paying them to do those things! Why should they? My point is, I don't want to pay more for proper government services than I have to. I want value for money, and just the joy of knowing the police are there is not worth 10% of my income. It's not the way to go about it. Government in a laissez-faire economy should be striving to offer value for value just the same as any business. It won't hurt, that's for sure. I really do. Neither more important nor less. It has its proper place, and it's about time it discovered it. We have seen the results when government services are accorded more importance than anything else. They've been made so much of that they're the problem now. They're thought to be so important that the very lawfulness they are supposed to be implementing is being violated and destroyed for their sake. How does that even make sense? That's the irrationality, injustice and immorality of the tax system. The point of the analogy is not that I'm paying Bill to protect my home. It would be as if I would send Bill another $10 for my computer just because I love it so much. Loving freedom doesn't mean that you want to agree to pay 10% of your income to pay for it. You still want to get the best service for the lowest cost. You still want to get value for your money. Or you should. It's another reason that contract insurance is so brilliant. It sets it up where people can both buy something of value in the form of peace of mind from knowing the money will be there in the event it's needed, together with knowing that a portion of that premium is going towards the costs of proper government. That is how you achieve efficiency in government. I'd like to tell you it will take a few weeks to get going. And, I reckon it will. After however many years it takes to convince everyone here :lol

I'd rather buy a lottery ticket and purchase contract insurance. Just because you value having a computer doesn't mean you're going to send a cheque to Bill Gates (or whomever) each month as a donation. Would you add another $10 to your Bell Sympatico bill out of gratitude for having the Internet? Why take that tack with respect to proper government? I think there's room for all kinds of approaches once the coercive element is removed. If you feel happier making donations, go for it.

No, the real shame is that there are no viable alternatives being offered for people to vote for.

The biggest problem in fighting environmentalists is to bear in mind at all times that they think they are entitled to use coercion (i.e. to initiate force and/or advocate the initiation of force) to achieve their ends, no matter how vague or unsupported-by-facts those ends may be. Rather than launch into complicated arguments with people about whether the planet is cooling, warming, expanding or contracting, perhaps next time it would be interesting to see what happens when you cut to the chase and advocate a cessation of the initiation of force.

There is so much fault & blame to go around. I do wonder why Obama is making such a fuss over $170,000,000 when the rest of the bailout money is measured in the billions. Everyone is getting a piece of Bailout Pie, so why is it such a crime for the executives to get some too?

I agree with everything else you wrote, JM. This is the only area where I would debate the issue. I think that it would make more sense to have "a la carte" pricing for all court-related services, so that if someone had elected to go with a "handshake" deal, and then found the other party had reneged, the option to go to court would still exist, but would be much more expensive. One would be looking at "going rates" which people who had bought contract insurance would be covered for. To declare that the opportunity to sue is only available if you buy the insurance or pay a contract protection fee strikes me as more exclusionary than necessary. Making the system available and voluntary would serve to encourage more people to buy the contract insurance without leaving those without funds to buy insurance prohibited from going to court at all. This would also not preclude lawyers from handling cases on a contingency basis, which they assess as winnable, even though the plaintiff had not bought the insurance.