Family Relations and Objectivism - A Response to Malini Kochhar

[Dante]

The Atlas Society recently published a blog post about Objectivism and the family, in response to a Salon article that referred to Objectivism as anti-family.  The salon article can be found here, and the TAS response here. This prompted me to read the original TAS article that the Salon guy linked to, found here. I found the account of Objectivism and family relations highly unsatisfactory, particularly as applied to sibling relationships, and I decided that I wanted to write up the response below.

 

In her article on family relations and Objectivism, Malini Kochhar attempts to lay out a view of familial relationships based on Ayn Rand's trader principle: "This principle holds that we should interact with people on the basis of the values we can trade with them - values of all sorts, including common interests in art, sports or music, similar philosophical outlooks, political beliefs, sense of life, and more. Trade, in this broad sense, is the only proper basis of any relationship—including relationships with members of our families."  However, in her application of the principle, she fails to consider several highly significant sources of value in family relationships.

 

I will focus mainly on critiquing her comments from the perspective of sibling relationships, although many of my comments also apply to the parent-child case.  In her article, she states the following:

There is a distinction between the family that we are born into and have no choice about—parents, siblings, relatives—and the family we can choose for ourselves—a spouse. Since the former relationships are unchosen, it would be a rare coincidence if we could truly love each member of our family for who they are. The likelihood of being born surrounded entirely by people with whom we share core values is not very high. Affection for our family members would be a genuine reflection of shared values only if we could imagine feeling this affection even if they weren't family.

 

The only familial relationship in which love is the norm, is one in which we have complete choice in determining who comprises our family: the person we marry. Since we can choose our partners on the basis of mutual love, this is the only relationship where it is natural and not a coincidence that the relationship is a positive one. Because the choice of spouse reveals the values a person considers important, it is usually an accurate reflection of his personality.

 

Thus, in her view, it would be extremely unlikely for one to have the same kind of deep relationship with a sibling that one would have with a very close friend. This is because we cannot choose our siblings the way that we can choose our friends, and therefore it would be mere coincidence if we happened to be close.  However, this is emphatically not the only possibly application of the trader principle to sibling relationships, and in fact it is highly rationalistic and ignores the most common factors that create strong bonds between siblings.

 

The core of many sibling relationships, including my own, is shared experiences. Growing up in the same household strongly lends itself to a high level of mutual understanding among siblings.  I have two sisters, and we all grew up under the same roof.  They've seen some of my worst moments, and some of my best.  They've seen my growth, all the way from elementary school to the person that I am today.  They understand me like almost no one else does.  In Objectivist terms, they provide me with a kind of psychological visibility that only they can.  Certainly, as we've moved out of the house and away from each other, we are no longer intimately involved in each others' day to day lives, and there are others who know aspects of me and my life much better than they do.  However, their particular understanding of me is extremely important to me.  And of course, this understanding runs both ways, with me providing this particular kind of understanding to them as well.  Thus, the value provided by this sort of understanding is mutual, as per the trader principle.

 

Despite this understanding of one another and our shared experiences of childhood, we have grown up to be very different people.  If you were to list our core values explicitly, you would probably conclude that we don't have many in common.  Our adult interests are extremely varied, and even as kids we clashed like only siblings can.  We each care about very different things, and even have quite different explicit philosophies (leading to some strong political disagreements).  In fact, if I were to walk into an Objectivist convention, I could probably randomly pick someone out of the crowd whose explicit list of 'core values' would be closer to mine than those of my sisters.  That kind of similarity is simply not what our sibling relationships are based on.  Nevertheless, they completely exemplify Rand's trader principle, in every aspect.  Unchosen family obligations play no part whatsoever.

 

This is the problem with clinging to 'shared core values' as the one and only indicator of a true and deep relationship between people. It overemphasizes explicit philosophical convictions and interests over other important aspects of relationships, such as mutual understanding and shared experiences.  It allows Kochhar to set up a false dichotomy between a relationship based on shared core values (which he describes as a 'rare coincidence' when it happens to occur among siblings) and a relationship based on familial obligation.  It is indeed unlikely that two people who didn't choose to be siblings would share the same explicit philosophical convictions or the same list of core values.  If this is the sum of one's measure of an appropriate relationship, then one is forced to describe strong sibling relationships as 'coincidence.'  If the relationship does not fit this description, it must then be based on a reification of blood relation and familial obligation.  But the value that I get from my relationship with my sisters is not simply a coincidence, and neither is it an expression of duty that we feel.  It is precisely because we are siblings who grew up together that we have this sort of bond.  It was their role in my childhood, and in my life since then, that is the source of the value that I gain from them, and them from me.

 

Now certainly, none of this is a necessary consequence of being siblings.  There are numerous situations where siblings will not have this kind of relationship (most notably, when they don't grow up together).  However, the factors that lead to such strong sibling relationships are much more common than Kochhar's 'rare coincidence' type of relationship will allow.  The trader principle's application in this case is much broader than he paints it to be.  It is sad to me to see Rand's trader approach to human relationships, which I believe to be the correct one, artificially limited by the kind of values that can be traded.  Doing so excludes some of the most important relationships in life, and gives credence to the viewpoint that Rand's philosophy as a whole doesn't have room to accommodate these relationships.  In my view, it does; when these relationships are healthy, they are indeed based on the trader model, where both people get true value from the relationship.  The limitation comes simply from an excessively narrow conception of what kinds of values are in play.

Edited August 15, 2014 by Dante

[New Buddha]

It would seem that a better way of looking at relationships is: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".

 

Any value that we pursue has a Cost vs. Benefit that is measured against (either a cardinal or ordinal) standard.  You need to ask yourself if a particular relationship's cost outweighs it's benefit to you.  And this can change over time.

[JASKN]

It's true that longtime sibling relationships can be a unique value. Shared sense of humor, remembering stories from 20 years of interacting, linking current behavior and mannerisms to those exhibited "since you were 5," etc. The time spent together alone makes the relationship deep in many ways.

 

That said, if siblings disagree on fundamental issues, spend less time together, and slowly turn into different people, it becomes harder and harder to maintain a relationship into adulthood. The early years together grow farther away, and new values become more important than old shared stories and humor, now from what seems like another life. Eventually, the new sibling relationship isn't that deep at all. The relationship may eventually stall, and become nothing more than a thing of memories.

 

I don't think this is unique to any particular kind of relationship, nor do I think that it's necessary that a sibling relationship must eventually "die" -- although change in relationships is necessary and unavoidable. So, even when siblings disagree on fundamental issues, they may, for example, still and forever laugh at the same things, which could keep them enjoying each other's company for the rest of their lives. It's then a new kind of relationship, which is maybe not as good as the old relationship when compared between the contexts of the two particular times in their lives, but which is still good and valuable, nonetheless.

Edited August 17, 2014 by JASKN