What are some counter-cultural rules you live by?

[stansfield123]

By "counter-cultural", I mean that the vast majority of people in your society don't live by that rule. I don't mean that it's frowned upon, I just mean that most people don't follow it. No reason to restrict this just to stuff people openly disagree with. Anything people refuse to live by is "counter-cultural", whether they claim to agree with it or not.

[DavidOdden]

I suppose first there has to be a “rule”. In my culture (the US), very few people use hanh phi in cooking and they don’t eat ugali, but that isn’t a “rule”, it’s a cultural accident that it isn’t a commonly-known option. It’s not really a “cultural rule” that people don’t have a Ph D or that you aren’t an accountant. There are cultural prohibitions against incest, theft, loud noises in the middle of the night. public nudity, using the N word, and so on. Any legal prohibition is a cultural rule against doing that thing. One other thing: norms for children are not the same as norms for adults, so we ought to limit the context to adult behavior.

It is a cultural rule that a man stands up when a lady enters the room, however the vast majority of (male) adults do not follow this rule. Now, I’m old enough that I am aware of this rule, but I suspect that this rule was quietly repealed by the cultural legislators in the early 70’s. So it’s not entirely clear that there is any such a rule, and maybe we should say that it is a former rule.

There is a new cultural rule of language that every adjective must be preceded by the adverb “super”. I refuse to abide by that rule. I know a number of people who don’t abide by that rule, but I don’t know if they are aware that there is this rule – in a few cases, I know that they are aware and they refuse, for the majority, they may be unaware that this is a rule.

There is also a cultural rule regarding copying intellectual property without the permission of the owner. A considerable percentage of those who violate this rule do so willfully i.e. they refuse to follow the rule, but an even bigger percentage don’t follow the rule because they misunderstand the rule (usually thinking it only applies to copying for profit but not copying for personal use or the use of friends and family).

In short, there are zillions of rules that most people don’t follow, mostly because they don’t know that there is such a rule, or believe that the rule has been repealed.

[Reidy]

Shirts on the left, sorted left to right from least to most recently washed. Pants on the right, sorted in the same sequence. Continuing to the right, around the corner: washed but not ironed, then worn but not yet ready for the laundry, neither in any special order.

[stansfield123]

When I said "rule", I meant that YOU have a rule which you consciously set up, for yourself, to go against a cultural trend. Not that you go against a cultural rule. Frankly, I don't think popular rules mean much, because most people are neither rule followers, nor rule makers. Most people just follow their culture by default (by virtue of an absence of thinking about rules).

Just to give a simple example of a rule I have: I noticed, in my youth, that many of my peers got into debt by spending on consumer goods. So I set up a rule for myself: never buy consumer goods on credit. Note that these other people, who got into debt, weren't following any societal rule. They were in fact not thinking about rules at all. They just sensed, intuitively, that it's culturally permitted to buy a big TV on credit, and they wanted to have a big TV. That was the extent of it. There's no societal rule for or against buying consumer goods on credit. I'm the only one with a rule, in this story. No one else has one.

The reason why I ask is because Objectivism is considered, I would say by most, to be a counter-cultural movement. A "radical" belief system, which implies that it's radically different from other belief systems. Even Rand herself embraced the "radical" label. And I'm not as convinced that it is, in fact, that different. In fact, I think Objectivism is, first and foremost, a coherent synthesis of ~10K years of accumulated human knowledge. So, about as traditional as it gets.

I think one of the ways to determine just how radical Oism is is precisely by asking Objectivists the above question. To see if people who live by Objectivism do actually live in a way that's radically different from the way everyone else lives.

Because truly radical ideologies do produce a radically different life style. If I walked into an Amish community and asked this, they would have a long list of rules they live by, that make their lives fundamentally different from the lives of everyone else. Same if it was a radical marxist, a radical environmentalist, a neo-nazi, a radical whatever the Unabomber was, etc. Radical means different. And I'm struggling to see how Objectivists are different...myself included. We're (hopefully) a bit more deliberate in our actions and decision making, but does that actually produce a DIFFERENT LIFE? Doesn't seem like it does. Rand's life wasn't really different, was it? She lived like a typical successfully self employed woman of her time would live ...

Edited November 22, 2023 by stansfield123

[Boydstun]

1 hour ago, stansfield123 said:

. . . 

I think one of the ways to determine just how radical Oism is is precisely by asking Objectivists the above question. To see if people who live by Objectivism do actually live in a way that's radically different from the way everyone else lives.

. . .

What meanings do the behaviors have to the agents? What is the understanding of the scope and context of the behaviors among people who all do the same acts such as deciding on what education they should pursue, acts such as making a living, acts such as driving safely, or acts such as being in and buoying a romantic relationship? Does not a more examined and self-conducted and understood life make one more alive? Is not human life with one's living mind among others more life than life of the wild animals? and are not the animals such as a fox or chipmunk more and higher life than plants? Is not "behavior" most fitting to actions of that middle group, the non-human animals? Who would want to imitate all the acts and whole arc of a human self-directed life and not instead be directing one's own acts and arc best one can? The former, the pure imitation, warrants focus on mere human behavior, the latter on a life that is actually human.

I share the distinctive policy and practice you mentioned for yourself. Who cares about radical differences in such things in comparison to wisdom in such things?

 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Boydstun

[stansfield123]

2 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Does not a more examined and self-conducted and understood life make one more alive?

Of course it does. But this isn't a radical idea. This is just the age-old definition of a (true) intellectual.

I'm suggesting that this is what Ayn Rand was, and what she urges us to be as well: a true intellectual. She was a great one, and greatness is certainly unusual ... but it doesn't mean radical. Radical doesn't mean great, radical means different. Usually, in a bad way. Radical usually means someone who isn't willing to learn from the lessons of history.

I think Objectivism is great, but not that different. I think it's mostly the result of a 10K year long process of incremental improvement. It's not a radical kind of greatness, it's a traditional kind of greatness.

Quote

Who would want to imitate all the acts and whole arc of a human self-directed life and not instead be directing one's own acts and arc best one can? The former, the pure imitation, warrants focus on mere human behavior, the latter on a life that is actually human.

You say "imitate". But is it possible to produce good outcomes through mere imitation? Without the core ideas being present on some level, within that person living a good life?

People who never read Rand do have good lives, all around us, do they not? Are those lives not the product of good ideas? The same kinds of good ideas that we hold?

If let's say a Mormon or (religious) Jewish neighbor lives a life similar to yours, doesn't that mean his life is based on similar ideas to yours? Perhaps less clearly, but those ideas are still a part of him, and are still the cause of his way of life, are they not? It's not just imitation: surely there are degrees of clarity and understanding, not just "imitation vs. understanding"?

[Boydstun]

I wasn't saying that any real people are living a life by purely imitation. I was making a thought experiment.

I don't know about Mormons in particular, stansfield, but all people have some way or other of responding to the circumstance that when anyone dies, that is the total absolute end of that individual. Only memories and presence in some minds continuing for a while after one, continue one somewhat for that while. Some people will do almost anything to avoid squarely facing that fact, including burning fellows at the stake for rocking the collective religious psychosis denying the plain fact of full death.

Objectivists and the way they should assimilate their mortality is not enormously different from others acknowledging that the natural world is all there is. Except that, for one important thing, the Objectivist knows that it is only in the circumstance of being alive that there are such things as alternatives, aims, problems, health, bettering, or making worse. So not only does the Objectivist leave behind God's backing as source of moral standards (however correct some of those rules might be from a purely rational standpoint), the Objectivist has a particular natural source of values, aside other natural-value theories subscribed to by other secularists.

The major virtues in Rand's moral philosophy are some usual ones at least in name. But when she defines them, they are often given a different, new meaning. And they end up having a stronger unity with each other than usual. Then too, some traditional virtues are rejected in this ethical theory. 

Along the roadway in front of a neighborhood shopping center near our home, there recently appeared some signs, presumably for some local organized charity, saying "Give good." If I understand correctly, the meaning includes a usual tying of giving to others less fortunate as of great moral significance. Actually, many people's notion of what morality is is most typified by such giving as in "yes there is a Santa Claus for children everywhere you find unselfish love." The Objectivist will dispute that such gifts are the core of what is the moral. It is unlikely these different, contrasting understandings result in no differences in actions. I don't think, however, that your search for radical differences in actions because of radical differences in morality is a reasonable expectation. Most human actions are overdetermined: multiple sufficient reasons are in play in the head of the decision maker for a given decision. Similarly, many variations among different individuals in accounts, radically different, of what is moral action in a situation need not be revealed by radical differences in actions.

Moreover, as Rand conveyed in her Galt's Speech, any success and joy attained in any human life was on account of living in some accord with the moral code she was putting forth.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Boydstun

[EC]

Radical doesn't mean "different".

"Those who reject all the basic premises of collectivism are radicals in the proper sense of the word: “radical” means “fundamental.” Today, the fighters for capitalism have to be, not bankrupt “conservatives,” but new radicals, new intellectuals and, above all, new, dedicated moralists."

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal “Conservatism: An Obituary,”

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 201

[DavidOdden]

You are correct that Objectivists do present Objectivism as being “radical” in some sense (in fact: it means "root" at least in Rand's usage) , but that is a contingent truth, not a defining property. In a cultural context where most people adhere to Objectivist principles, we would drop that characterization.

As a rhetorical device for summarizing our stance in relation to others, the term “radical” is more appropriate than “conservative”, “traditionalist”, or “liberal”. I am not personally invested in defending the sound-bite use of the term “radical”. It is true and accurate to say that Objectivism does not support a wide range of popular beliefs and practices, and perhaps we could talk about what those “counter-cultural” beliefs are. The system is radically different from all other previous systems, although individual statements with which we agree and have even adopted can be found historically over the past 2,000 years or so (extending this back 10,000 years is too much of a stretch, or too little, since humans learned how to make fire much further in the past, and learned how to hunt even before we were humans). That is, the system is more than just the individual parts, it is the logical relations between the parts. The system has been sorely lacking, historically.

We don’t have long lists of rules, because we have a system, whereas the Amish (perhaps) have long lists and no system. The principle of “simplicity” is belied by the fact that they have clothing styles that are 400 or so years old – not 10,000 – that they use domesticated animals, metal chisels.

The most productive way that I know of to understand the practical application of Objectivism is to focus on a comparison of why you act the way you do, and how that differs from how other people act. The actual behavior may be same for Objectivists and non-Objectivists, but the chain of reasoning that leads to a choice will differ. Objectivist reasoning is not rooted in “the greater good”, whereas most people reduce their choices to some kind of social benefit.

[Doug Morris]

Objectivism is radical in its ideas, not necessarily in concrete behaviors.  Most people have enough grasp, on some level, of their true interests and of various rational ideas from various sources that they can come up with mostly decent choices and actions.

Objectivism protects us from various errors others can fall into, such as feeling or thinking that giving and/or helping is an obligation for them, feeling guilty because they supposedly haven't done it enough, confusion about where their interests lie, thinking that business is fundamentally immoral or amoral, buying into collectivist and statist ideas, or thinking that mysticism is necessary in order to have morality.

 

[Eiuol]

On 11/22/2023 at 3:17 PM, stansfield123 said:

but does that actually produce a DIFFERENT LIFE?

Well, even in your examples, people lead different lives relative to the beliefs they hold. To the extent that I believe similar things as people around me, I am like other people. But to the extent that people adopt their own code, the less they will fit into a specific "mold". You don't need a different analysis than that. 

[stansfield123]

On 11/23/2023 at 3:53 AM, Boydstun said:

So not only does the Objectivist leave behind God's backing as source of moral standards (however correct some of those rules might be from a purely rational standpoint)

That's just the thing though: "God's rules and values" don't come from this fictional God. They come from men. A long list of men, who refined those rules over the centuries.

And the reason why Objectivist values are so similar to "God's rules" is because Rand's work is in fact rooted in 10K years of recorded history. 10k years of iterative improvements. Trial and error. Not a linear process of improvement, by and stretch of the imagination. There have been many setbacks, many dead ends, many dark ages along the way. But then the old was re-discovered, and improved upon again.

And "God's rules" (Judeo-Christian beliefs, rituals and traditions) are one of the most important bits of that history.

I don't see how Objectivism could exist, in its current form, without that 10K recorded history ... including Judaism and Christianity.

Quote

the Objectivist has a particular natural source of values

Yeah, this is the distinction I'm challenging:

"God's rules" are the result of men observing reality and reaching conclusions about it. Not in a perfectly organized, 100% logical manner, but the source is exactly the same (reality ... what other source could there be?), and the methodology used is roughly the same.

If it wasn't, the outcomes wouldn't be the same either. Judging an idea based on the outcomes it produces is the ultimate test of it, after all.

Furthermore: Objectivist values aren't something Rand came up with from scratch. The reason why Rand's ideas and "God's rules" are similar, and produce similar outcomes, is because they are closely related.

Quote

including burning fellows at the stake for rocking the collective religious psychosis

That's an excellent example of a very different outcome. Clearly, the result of a very different methodology. The Christian Dark Ages were one of those many setbacks I mentioned above.

But western Christians stopped burning people at the stake. Now, they live roughly like us. Their methodology is producing roughly the same results as ours ... because it's roughly the same methodology: their beliefs are the result of looking at reality and drawing mostly logical conclusions about it. Just like we do.

They are clinging to illogical ideas too, to some extent, but, obviously, not enough to make a significant difference. If it was enough, their outcomes would be significantly different too, just as they were back in the Dark Ages.

[edit]

Re David's comment: I should probably try to explaing the whole "10K years of history" thing. I'm using 10K very roughly, and somewhat arbitrarily, in reference to the start of settled human life (as a result of agriculture). I suppose I could talk about 200K years, or even 1 million years, of human history, but that seems off, because a. we don't know much about it, and b. the little we know suggests that it was roughly the same, for the first 190K years: an often nomadic, hunter-gatherer life style.

Alternatively, I could use 6K, to only talk about written history, but it makes more sense to draw the line with large-scale agriculture. That's where this process of cultural development started in earnest, imo. Writing was of course very important, as well, because it allowed people to rebound more easily from going down the wrong path (by re-discovering old wisdom). Probably second in importance to large scale agriculture, which, again, happened ~10K years ago.

Edited December 4, 2023 by stansfield123

[stansfield123]

On 11/23/2023 at 7:01 PM, DavidOdden said:

The most productive way that I know of to understand the practical application of Objectivism is to focus on a comparison of why you act the way you do, and how that differs from how other people act. The actual behavior may be same for Objectivists and non-Objectivists, but the chain of reasoning that leads to a choice will differ. Objectivist reasoning is not rooted in “the greater good”, whereas most people reduce their choices to some kind of social benefit.

I can't agree with that. When people's reasoning is rooted in "the greater good", we see dramatically different outcomes. We see the Dark Ages, we see the Holocaust, we see the Soviet Union, we see Hamas and 9/11.

We don't see people living the same as we do. When people live like we do, it has to be because their reasoning is quite similar to ours, no? Not exactly the same, not as explicit, but with reasonably accurate (so ... logical) methods of drawing conclusions from observable reality.

Edited December 4, 2023 by stansfield123

[stansfield123]

delete please

Edited December 4, 2023 by stansfield123

[necrovore]

2 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

"God's rules" are the result of men observing reality and reaching conclusions about it. Not in a perfectly organized, 100% logical manner, but the source is exactly the same (reality ... what other source could there be?), and the methodology used is roughly the same.

If it wasn't, the outcomes wouldn't be the same either. Judging an idea based on the outcomes it produces is the ultimate test of it, after all.

"Judeo-Christianity" doesn't root itself in reality, it roots itself in divine revelation. It's essentially believing that abstractions come from God, that God handed the correct abstractions to Adam and Eve, and that those ideas have been passed down through the generations ever since.

Maybe long ago there were a bunch of elite high priests who thought that if they passed off their rational conclusions as divine revelations, and encouraged the little people to obey them blindly without asking pesky questions, then everything would work better. (There are people in Washington DC who think that way today.) However, things do not work better that way: society fares better if everybody knows how to think, just like it fares better if everybody knows how to read. The high priests often end up not being any better than anybody else, and sometimes they are worse (because criminals are attracted to positions of power).

Divine revelation can succeed through plain Darwinian evolution: if your civilization's divinely revealed ideas just happen to be correct, your civilization will last longer, and be able to spread more, than if they are wrong. However, if you root your ideas in divine revelation, the correctness of those ideas cannot be checked and is just a matter of chance, and bad or mixed ideas can be "enforced" just as easily as good ones. Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's right; the bad ideas may survive as parasites on the good ones, and very old civilizations can still have bad old ideas which cause unnecessary problems, but religious societies will refuse to change bad ideas, even if reality shows them as such, unless a divine revelation comes along that they will accept.

The idea of deliberately basing conclusions on reality has existed in the West in various forms ever since Aristotle. At some level people need it in order to survive, but sometimes it is counted on without ever being formulated as an idea at all. (I suppose in that case it is not deliberate...) When it is formulated, it is apparent that it is not really a religious idea, and in most periods of history it has been unpopular and derided, especially as a means of working out highly abstract ideas (which are the most important). The most common objection seems to be that people are too stupid to figure out reality on their own and therefore should give up the attempt and trust the high priests.

This is where Objectivism is radical: it takes the idea of deliberately basing conclusions on reality to its logical conclusion.

Edited December 4, 2023 by necrovore
clarification (what else?)

[Boydstun]

4 hours ago, necrovore said:

. . .

This is where Objectivism is radical: it takes the idea of deliberately basing conclusions on reality to its logical conclusion.

Surely part of that reality is human history and anthropology and the extent of free will and the degree to which rational people will disagree about what is right, what are the proper purposes of government, and so forth. That reality basis should also include and structure of strategic games. When many of us think of at the term reality, is firstly of the physical world. I just want to stress that the pertinent reality should not stop there and with an image of one's thought and action based simply looking to the physical world (an image making too small much human individual development and education—everyone's). The fully pertinent reality has to be human nature in both its natural and social surround.

I notice too, that many others have based conclusions on reality so far as they got it, and reached logical conclusions for law and political organization. Some conclude: most right is classical liberalism, indeed a free-market economy. Where Objectivism is radical in the sense of fundamental is where some of those are fundamental (Spencer or Mill or Nozick or * ) in diving down for what truly is human nature and truly right ideals, rationally discerned.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

7 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

. . .

I don't see how Objectivism could exist, in its current form, without that 10K recorded history ... including Judaism and Christianity.

. . . Judging an idea based on the outcomes it produces is the ultimate test of it, after all.

. . .

What strikes me is that Objectivism could not exist in its current form without the emergence of the institution of money, of savings and lending, nor without the industrial revolution nor without the continuing (and even increasing) ideal of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. Rand's response to those things in our culture were rather unusual.

There is not yet any complete convergence in the wide society (thanks to Ayn Rand) to a settled answer concerning the moral merit of self-sacrifice or the idea that each individual is an end in themselves and should be treated as such. Sacrifices made by humans for spirits and sacrifices of humans by other humans does have indeed a long history, and its convergence in modern religions and in the secular social organization is flatly at odds with the moral ideals of Rand. There is not agreement between Rand and the modern Judeo-Christian culture on whether Pride and Self-Esteem are good things. Nor Pity, nor Mercy.

The goodness of what outcomes an idea has produced is not something agreed on by all minds. It is perhaps because religious wars were eventually thought by all sides to be worse than reinforcement of their religious beliefs that they all came to greater religious tolerance. And perhaps many sects came to accept the reasoning (civil peace and business prosperity) entered by Locke into the Carolina Compact that began legality of having many (non-Catholic) sects, Christian and Jewish, operating side by side in the colonial city of Charleston.

But I think it implausible that the shifting away from, in every colony become a state in the Union, the Blackstone penalty of death by fire of homosexuals had anything to do with "outcomes" and a unison estimation of them. I think it had more to do with creeping humanism, a creeping change in hierarchies of values. That, I think is what also explains the US Supreme Court decision in 1986 letting stand State criminal law against homosexual acts being reversed in 2003, making same-sex relations legal throughout the land. A cultural revolution had happened. At its core, I think, was the humanism brought out and elevated in people seeing the horrible disintegration and death of the victims of AIDS (eg. Rock Hudson), who were mainly gays in this country. Gay guys became more fully human in more minds. Shared humanism in those minds, not bumping into outcomes with humanism set aside.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Boydstun

[Doug Morris]

The rise of capitalistic behaviors, starting several centuries ago, pushed everything, including religion, in a more rational direction.

"The greater good" is a very vague term that could be interpreted to mean almost anything, from horrors like the Holocaust to something that looks superficially a lot like Objectivism, but without the foundation provided by Ayn Rand's philosophy.

 

[Eiuol]

12 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

The reason why Rand's ideas and "God's rules" are similar

What are you talking about? There is no similarity when it comes to things like pride and self-interest. If all you want to say is that people build on ideas over time, sure, that's right. 

12 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

Their methodology is producing roughly the same results as ours

12 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

When people's reasoning is rooted in "the greater good", we see dramatically different outcomes. We see the Dark Ages, we see the Holocaust, we see the Soviet Union, we see Hamas and 9/11.

You are literally explaining to us how it is that any reasoning based on irrationality or religious dogma leads to bad things happening, and even how Rand's ideas are different. What matters is the extent people adopt that thinking. The most you are saying is that people in Western society at least generally adhere to a common sense notion of rationality, despite contrary ideas in the culture as well. Rand defends Western civilization wherever it explicitly preaches rationality, while utterly excoriating Christianity for exactly the bad things you are referencing. 

 

[stansfield123]

On 12/5/2023 at 12:29 AM, Boydstun said:

There is not agreement between Rand and the modern Judeo-Christian culture on whether Pride and Self-Esteem are good things. Nor Pity, nor Mercy.

There can't be "agreement with Judeo-Christian culture", because Judeo-Christian culture doesn't speak with a single voice. The Bible, for instance, is not a single voice, it's hundreds, if not thousands, of different voices. And the rest of it is even more spread out ... with extreme, yet quite inconsequential voices usually louder than the mainstream.

So that's not a good standard to judge the culture by. At least, not in isolation. That's why I'm suggesting that we look at outcomes, rather than try to make sense of the multitude of voices within the traditional/conservative western culture. The outcomes can tell us what the mainstream believes, deep down. What's behind all those different voices. If the vast majority of Christians act in a selfish manner ... doesn't that mean they believe in the parts of the Bible that preach selfishness, rather than the parts that preach altruism?

[stansfield123]

 

On 12/4/2023 at 6:34 PM, necrovore said:

Maybe long ago there were a bunch of elite high priests who thought that if they passed off their rational conclusions as divine revelations, and encouraged the little people to obey them blindly without asking pesky questions, then everything would work better.

That theory explains how Scientology came about. It doesn't explain old religions.

It's incredibly simplistic, and never how things worked. The Jews never lived in isolation. Judaism isn't the product of one tribe, it's the product of a variety of inter-connected cultures, going back many centuries. Same is true for all other religions.

Judaism is the product of a process of evolution: it consists of fundamental values, myths and stories which survived the test of time. Its values, myths and stories weren't chosen by any elite group, they were chosen by populations. Different populations, in different cultures, over many generations.

Same is true for all old religions, not just Judaism. Not only are they not the product of any elite group, they're not even the product of a single culture or age. A major religion is the distillation of not just one culture, but many. And it is the result of a process of cultural evolution which is fairly similar to biological revolution. Culture produced by such evolution is almost as much a reflection of reality as our biology is. Our bodies are the way they are for objective reasons, and, to a great extent (admittedly, far less perfectly), our cultures, including our religions, are the way they are for objective reasons as well.

 

Quote

Divine revelation can succeed through plain Darwinian evolution: if your civilization's divinely revealed ideas just happen to be correct, your civilization will last longer, and be able to spread more, than if they are wrong. , and bad or mixed ideas can be "enforced" just as easily as good ones. Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's right; the bad ideas may survive as parasites on the good ones, and very old civilizations can still have bad old ideas which cause unnecessary problems, but religious societies will refuse to change bad ideas, even if reality shows them as such, unless a divine revelation comes along that they will accept.

Don't call it "divine revelation". Call it religion. That's what we're talking about: religion. We're all in agreement here that there's no God. So calling anything "divine revelation" is just gratuitous mockery.

Religious ideas did succeed through a process fairly similar to "plain Darwinian evolution". Yes. And, once you admit that, you can't then turn around and say "However, if you root your ideas in divine revelation, the correctness of those ideas cannot be checked and is just a matter of chance.". That's a contradiction: Darwinian evolution isn't an arbitrary process. It's not rooted in "divine revelation". On the contrary, it's a process that works sublimely well. The products of Darwinian evolution far surpass any technological achievement we have. A human being is a far more impressive mechanism than the most advanced computer or the fastest race car in the world.

So let's not dismiss evolutionary processes as inferior to rational thought just yet. They work far slower, so, obviously, we shouldn't just sit around and wait for our culture to evolve through blind trial and error, we should use reason to make progress. But we also shouldn't mock what such processes produced over thousands of years as "divine revelation". It's not divine revelation, it's evolutionary revelation. Which means it's based in reality.

Quote

The idea of deliberately basing conclusions on reality has existed in the West in various forms ever since Aristotle.

Yes ... and with varied results. Communism, for example, is an attempt to deliberately base conclusions on reality.

The reason why it's a really poor attempt is because it's an attempt to start from scratch. To dismiss thousands of years of human history as "superstition" (and various other cheap labels), and just come up with a totalitarian ideology that explains everything. All on its own.

That can't be done. I think the reason why Objectivism is nothing like Communism is precisely because it doesn't just dismiss what we already have. It embraces it, and builds on it.

Edited December 26, 2023 by stansfield123

[stansfield123]

On 12/5/2023 at 12:29 AM, Boydstun said:

But I think it implausible that the shifting away from, in every colony become a state in the Union, the Blackstone penalty of death by fire of homosexuals had anything to do with "outcomes" and a unison estimation of them. I think it had more to do with creeping humanism, a creeping change in hierarchies of values. That, I think is what also explains the US Supreme Court decision in 1986 letting stand State criminal law against homosexual acts being reversed in 2003, making same-sex relations legal throughout the land. A cultural revolution had happened. At its core, I think, was the humanism brought out and elevated in people seeing the horrible disintegration and death of the victims of AIDS (eg. Rock Hudson), who were mainly gays in this country. Gay guys became more fully human in more minds. Shared humanism in those minds, not bumping into outcomes with humanism set aside.

Okay, but if I may for a second direct your attention to this "cultural revolution" at present time ... you'll note that it's off the rails: the "gay rights" movement has become a tool to suppress free speech and freedom of religion, to destroy women's sports, and, even worse, justify sex change operations on minors.

Perhaps, if society was a bit more suspicious of "cultural revolutions", and placed a bit more value on 2-3000 year old religions (and 2-300 year old constitutions too, of course) ... we could've repelled those discriminatory laws without going overboard?

edit: Just to clarify where I'm coming from: I agree with you that the gay rights movement is part of a cultural revolution. But I disagree with your description of it. I think it was never motivated by any classical humanist/individualist principles. It was always the same thing it is today: part of a larger neo-marxist movement. A movement which isn't aimed at producing social freedoms, it is aimed at wiping out EVERYTHING, and replacing it with totalitarianism. Those social restrictions on homosexuality it happened to wipe out just happen to be part of EVERYTHING. And, as you can see, having wiped those restrictions out, it is now busying itself with replacing them with restrictions and horrors of its own.

Edited December 26, 2023 by stansfield123

[DavidOdden]

2 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

There can't be "agreement with Judeo-Christian culture", because Judeo-Christian culture doesn't speak with a single voice.

It is true that the roots of Objectivism can be traced back some three thousand years (not ten), but the soil that it is rooted in is found in Greece. Western philosophy has been influenced by numerous Asian streams, however Aristotle cannot be said to have been influenced by Christianity or Judaism. Centuries later, the Romans welded Plato and Jesus together to create a still-living hydra monster, but we cannot generalize these secondary developments as “Western philosophy” thereby tainting Objectivism with improper Christian underpinnings.

It is also true that Objectivism has a normative trend – there are “rules”. Rules are not a recent invention, indeed they substantially predate the evolution of humans, or mammals. Obviously rules in the sense of explicit moral codes are the exclusive property of humans because only humans have language, the tool for encoding explicit moral codes, and we may presume that such rules have been around for over 100,000 years. Mostly they would have been in the form “Give me your stuff or I’ll kill you”, or “Touch my stuff and I’ll kill you”. The dominant putative authority for moral rules across the globe has been the supernatural, except that the ancient Greeks sought to devise moral rules deriving from nature (as did the Cārvāka of India, who vanished), and this is the essence of Aristotilean and Objectivist ethics.

If Objectivism were a synthesis of 10 millenia of world philosophy, it would be incoherent as Christianity is, especially in its modern instantiations. It is very clear from the historical record that Rand eliminates millenia of prior “synthesis” to find the Aristolilean core, then developed and perfected it into Objectivism. Identifying that philosophical root is what makes Objectivism radical. I don’t deny that in the 60’s the leftist movement redefined the meaning of “radical”, but I also don’t care.

The reason why we should not just look at outcomes is because inspection of outcomes is vastly inferior to an understanding of actual causation. We now have rampant outcome-based systems of pseudo-knowledge on our computers that threaten civilization because they are based in a neo-religious interest in superficial behavior (outcomes) rather than what causes behavior. Outcomes are just the raw data that we call on to understand causation.

It is meaningful to ask what are the principles that define Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, and Roman Catholicism. We can even ask what distinguishes Calvinism from AME-ism. The fact that there is a difference between AME-ism and Syrian Orthodoxy does not invalidate the unity of Christianity as a body of religious principles. Even within a single church (literally, a building not an institution) individuals can disagree. Because man’s behavior of chosen and man is free to choose between alternatives, we face a real quandry in characterising any philosophy or other kind of volutional behavior by humans. The integrationist viewpoint looks for the underlying principles that guide men’s choices, the disintegrationist viewpoint emphasises the diversity of behaviors.

In order to judge a culture, you have to first identify the culture, meaning that you have to know what its causal principles are, and what essential properties distinguish it from other cultures. It is not an essential property of Christianity that Shabbos is on Sunday, even though that is a property distinguishing SDA from other Christian sects. That is one sense in which Christianity “speaks with many voices”, and we can multiply Protestant disunity by noting many other non-essential differences such as abstinence from alcohol, abjuring homosexuality, belief in credobaptism, doctrines regarding sin, the essentiality of sacraments etc. The question should not be whether you can find differences between individuals, the question should be whether a particular concept is valid in the first place, and if so, what are its defining features.

I am lightly skeptical about the validity of the concept “modern Judeo-Christian culture”, as opposed to “Jewish culture” and “Christian culture”. Rather than defining the unity in terms of religion, I would define that unity based on geography: western civilization. As it happens, Christianity spread along with other aspects of western civilization, and the Judeo-prefix is a recognition that western culture is not exclusively Christian in religion. I would prefer the label “Religious western culture”, which is distinct from “atheist western culture”, but still similar in being “western culture”. Then any reference to “modern Judeo-Christian culture” simply directs our attention to the religious aspects of western culture. By inspection of the texts and behavior, we can identity a certain “Judeo-Christian” unity, even thought here there are measurable differences that should be omitted.

If there are professed (purported) Christians who act selfishly, you should not ask whether they believe in some part of the Bible that seems to teach selfishness, you should ask whether they simply reject the principles of their nominal religion without embracing that rejection. Crossing the line from agnosticism to atheism is extremely difficult, and I believe that many so-called Christians are only social Christians, who are unwilling to openly declare their atheism.

[Doug Morris]

2 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

On 12/4/2023 at 11:34 AM, necrovore said:

Maybe long ago there were a bunch of elite high priests who thought that if they passed off their rational conclusions as divine revelations, and encouraged the little people to obey them blindly without asking pesky questions, then everything would work better.

That theory explains how Scientology came about.

Are you sure about how Scientology came about?

 

[tadmjones]

2 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

 

 

 

 

 

Religious ideas did succeed through a process fairly similar to "plain Darwinian evolution". Yes. And, once you admit that, you can't then turn around and say "However, if you root your ideas in divine revelation, the correctness of those ideas cannot be checked and is just a matter of chance.". That's a contradiction: Darwinian evolution isn't an arbitrary process. It's not rooted in "divine revelation". On the contrary, it's a process that works sublimely well. The products of Darwinian evolution far surpass any technological achievement we have.

 

 

From an atheistic or physicalist frame , how is it one can claim 'Darwinian evolution' "works", or works well, sublimely even?

Random genetic mutations are practically the extreme example of the arbitrary or blind chance. Shouldn't the idea of evolution be tied to the idea that 'it' is an explanation of change in biologic lineage? The evolutionary 'pressures' that instantiate in creatures exhibiting 'higher amounts of fitness' are not an end of the means of the 'process', unless the 'process' is goal directed.