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Appeasement As Altruism

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ggdwill

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I recently re-read Rand's "Altruism As Appeasement" in The Voice Of Reason where she describes a specific type of mentality that, being intelligent, intentionally sacrifices the realm of values not for the purpose of avoiding independent thought, but in order to perform it. Of course, this is ultimately impossible - as she goes on to explain. The thrust of her argument is that to divorce intellectual independence from the purpose of that independence - one's own happiness - is to undercut both and invite both psychological and metaphysical destruction.

Since I agree whole-heartedly with every word contained in this work, I have been inspired to build upon it by focusing on appeasement per se. As Rand mentions, just as many who advocate altruism do so merely to avoid a greater perceived harm to their positions or their ambitions and end up losing both after all, I suspect that many who advocate appeasement - euphamistically known as "compromise" or "diplomacy" - will suffer the same fate. Basically I'm saying that appeasement (defined as intentionally incorporating delay tactics into one's strategy only in the hope that an actual evil will come to it's senses) is literally a form of altruism - and a particularly dangerous one at that.

Altruism is incongruent with man's nature and at odds with his survival. To allow for the irrationally optimistic possibility of the self-enlightenment of an evil person or nation means nothing more in reality than giving solace to evil at the expense of one's own happiness - that is, peace of mind - for however long the appeasement continues.

Have I defined my terms correctly?

- Grant

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