Am I On The Right Track?

[tnunamak]

I am currently involved in an online discussion/debate on another forum, that evolved from my asking the question, "why is greed bad," into an elaborate discussion about morality and what people are entitled to.

It starts here, but what I am really interested in knowing is whether my logic is correct in this post. I am basically taking ideas from Objectivism and explaining why it is moral to be selfish. If anyone is willing to read through any of it, I would be very happy to hear your thoughts/comments. A lot of the fundamental ideas behind Objectivism are really starting to click for me, and I want to make sure that I am on the right track. <I am Nocturnal by the way, and I am debating with Visceral>

Although I would be suprised to find that my arguments were free of error, for anyone who has gone through the thought process of something like this for the first time, you know how refreshing it is to start seeing things clearly...

Edited November 8, 2005 by tnunamak

[JMeganSnow]

It's not the way I would have stated things, but you seem to be doing a decent job in putting things together. If you really have any erroneous views on any of the subjects you discussed, they will come out as you continue to discuss because one thing you think will contradict with another thing.

As long as you focus on resolving contradictions, your ideas will be as integrated as you can make them.

[RationalBiker]

I think one strategy that might be useful would be to break the argument down to concretes, and then distinguish between greed (which may be the motivation) and an initiation of force. I think you can easily demonstrate that greed itself is not the evil, it's the initiation of force that is the evil act. You can then point out that ANY motivation can be evil IF one engages in an initiation of force when acting on that motivation.

"Love" would be evil if one acted to achieve it by initiating force.

I would also attempt to illustrate that there is nothing intrinsically related to greed that means greed is the catalyst for corrupting men's behavior. Rather, any number of factors go into the destruction of a man's morality, if it was even there in the first place.

I think one of your opponents is trying argue that greed and all the other things that may come with it are a package deal. We know this is not the case.