Have you had to cut people out of your life?

Questions about Objectivism
21

My mother is a woman of faith, but is not religious. She says she started off looking for god and religion got in the way. She has long known that I am an atheist and so long as I’m a good person she is happy, and that goodness doesn’t rely on scripture for her, thankfully.

I have found out that most people who talk like this think “religion” means an organized church. They assure you that they are not “religious” but they have a “faith.” But this is focusing on non-essentials. Even if don’t drag themselves off to a brick-and-mortar biblethumper compound every Sunday, they have all the epistemological baggage that we don’t like. (If she found a church that fit her particular beliefs and had people in it she was comfortable with, she’d go.)

Fortunately not everyone who is religious (in the way we use the word, which would include your mother) is so off the deep end they will condemn you for not being so.

22

I’m not sure it is non-essential. A person who subscribes completely to the doctrine of a Religion has a caged brain. Nothing that is outside of the scripture is accepted, every situation is controlled by chapter and verse.

Someone like my mom, although I have no disagreement with you about “epistemological baggage”, is working from a standpoint of moral premises. Sure they may be religiously inspired but they are applied with a strong helping of their own personal belief in what is right and wrong, not just the dictates of a book.

Will those morals always correspond to reason, well, no… otherwise they would not be able to believe in their particular form of spaghetti monster, but the fact that these people are not, for the most part, bound by dogma can hardly be said to be non-essential either for them, or for how they react to people like us…

23

You may have missed what I was trying to say, which is whether or not the religious person goes to a church or not is a non-essential. The other stuff I mentioned (and that you picked up on) is more important than that; yet they are at pains to say “I have a faith, not a religion” because of not belonging to a church.

24

I’m not sure it is non-essential. A person who subscribes completely to the doctrine of a Religion has a caged brain. Nothing that is outside of the scripture is accepted, every situation is controlled by chapter and verse.

Someone like my mom, although I have no disagreement with you about “epistemological baggage”, is working from a standpoint of moral premises. Sure they may be religiously inspired but they are applied with a strong helping of their own personal belief in what is right and wrong, not just the dictates of a book.

Will those morals always correspond to reason, well, no… otherwise they would not be able to believe in their particular form of spaghetti monster, but the fact that these people are not, for the most part, bound by dogma can hardly be said to be non-essential either for them, or for how they react to people like us…

Agreed. My Nana is a person such as this. She is religious, goes to church and such, but she knows I don’t believe in God and doesn’t have any problem with it. We are very close. If you ask her about right and wrong she is not going to start quoting Scripture, she is going to tell you what she believes is right and wrong, and many of her reasons will be practical inspiration from real life. Does she have some irrational ideas? Yes (mostly of the brothers’ keeper variety). Is she a good person anyway? Absolutely, and we will be great friends until she has to leave us (assuming she does first since she’s got about 52 years on me…)

25

You may have missed what I was trying to say, which is whether or not the religious person goes to a church or not is a non-essential. The other stuff I mentioned (and that you picked up on) is more important than that; yet they are at pains to say “I have a faith, not a religion” because of not belonging to a church.

Well, I agree that where they choose to believe is non-essential, and I agree that they are not rational in their belief (obviously) but the distinction between a faith and a religion is important. One allows some freedom, som toe hold for reason and rational choice, the other doesn’t… if followed to its totalitarian end.

26

I can’t say that I’ve found it necessary to cut anyone out of my life, but my life has never exactly been filled with people, anyway. I don’t *pursue* friendships on the same basis any more, and I’m more careful about delineating the *type* of relationship I have with someone. This is a great help because you respond differently to the statements of, say, friends vs. coworkers. I try to be friendly with everyone that I must deal with because this smooths things tremendously, but I make it clear whether or not we’re actually “friends”.

27

No, it’s unnecessary.

Being an objectivist ought to be similar to any other philosophical ideology/belief system. You can have it, and make an effort to not impose your views on others (lest you offend them).

:slight_smile:

28

I’ve cut my grandparents out of my life, completely, because I have found their strong belief in God and general irrationality to be completely evil.

Wait… seriously? I’ve distanced myself from old friends, but I’ve always given them the benefit of at least objecting when they did/said something that was oppossed to my values, so anyone that isn’t friends with me anymore knows why. I’ve told my enviornmentalist sister she is wasting her life using her engineering degree to work making computer models of “sustainable” 3rd world communities, and thats distanced us a lot.

However, the idea of cuting off members of my immediate family because of their beliefs is shocking to me. I hope your grandparents were on the level of Ellsworth Toohey otherwise that sounds like a big mistake. Just thinking of my own family, I know my parents made a lot of mistakes raising me. I also know they only wanted what was best for me growing up and did the best they could based on what they knew.

29

Wait… seriously? I’ve distanced myself from old friends,

However, the idea of cuting off members of my immediate family because of their beliefs is shocking to me.

It wasn’t a mistake. There is more to it then I stated here, and it was the right decision. And one I don’t even slightly regret.

To pretend to “care” about one’s family regardless of their flaws is intrincism and left over from religion. I can’t do that because I take ideas seriously and can’t stand people that are irrational.

30

To pretend to “care” about one’s family regardless of their flaws is intrincism and left over from religion.

I agree it’s fundamentally intrinsicism, I am not sure it’s necessarily religious in nature.

One of the things we have rightly beat up the “new atheists” for is some of the wierdass things they come up with to justify morality. Sam Harris is the worst of the three I’ve read, simply assuming that morality consists of reducing suffering. Hitchens seems to have been too much on the attack to actually come up with any sort of positive message. But Dawkins is a bit more interesting–he at least looks around at what we *are* to try to figure out where morality comes from, and then comes up with a wrong answer. (So if I were giving them an exam, Dawkins, unlike Harris and Hitchens, would get a score that although still failing would be higher than 0%. And this one ain’t graded on a curve!) Altruisim exists, according to him, because it is evolutionarily advantageous for us to help our near relatives–who have many of the same genes, including the one that supposedly makes us altruistic. And its being evolutionarily advantageous somehow justifies it as a code we should live by. It may be the case, in fact, that the behavior is completely *non* genetically caused, but that just brings the meme model into the picture, and it is a selection based model as well. (Note that he doesn’t use the word “altruism” properly.)

Clearly he is in fact trying to backwards-justify altruism–misunderstood, but I think he may have noticed something that is actually true.

I think he may instead have found, in evolution, the reason why we tend to value our relatives far more than they deserve to be. Think about it: why do we as people tend to value our close relatives so much that oftentimes Momma cannot see that her “baby” is actually a brutal raping thug who *deserves* the death penalty? I think it may be something that was evolutionarily advantageous, and that only now, when a certain subspecies of apes have evolved a rational faculty, has it become possible–although still unlikely–for this tendency to be overridden.

We are seeing it here. Upon someone expressing shock that someone could cut off their own immediate family, EC has assured us that the close relatives in question are thoroughly beyond the pale, due to issues he doesn’t wish to air. But I will be surprised if someone still does not disapprove, because, after all, they are family.

He’s right, though, it’s intrinsicist to value them “just because”.

31

Ultimately, as rational beings, we should choose our friends based on thier value to us. Same applies to family. Although we do not choose our families, we can choose to continue to associate with them past a certain point, or not, based on how they fit in to our hierarchy of values.

I choose to maintain close ties with my family. My parents are ambivilent towards religion, although they did attend church when I was a child, they never tried to force me into a particular belief system, leaving such up to me as I got old enough to think for myself, and have always been supportive of me in whatever I have chosen to do. As to uncles, aunts and cousins, they are pleasant people and lead productive lives. A couple are quite religious, but do not try to push thier faith on others, so it is a minor point, easily outwieghed by other factors.

The only family member I have cut off is a cousin, who lives in another state, who is basically a crack whore, and beyond redemption. I leave her to the fate she has chosen for herself.

32

I can’t do that because I take ideas seriously and can’t stand people that are irrational.

Given the fact that I’m pretty sure one can’t claim that the charateristic “rationality” is digital, what level of rationality qualifies as “irrational?”

33

Given the fact that I’m pretty sure one can’t claim that the charateristic “rationality” is digital, what level of rationality qualifies as “irrational?”

Irrational in their politics, ideas, morals, and most importantly how one arrives at knowledge. I agree their is a spectrum or “irrationality”, and most people’s irrationality I can tolerate to a degree, but when I disagree and/or disapprove of a persons statement nearly one hundred percent of the time, then it’s time to cut them from my life.

34

To pretend to “care” about one’s family regardless of their flaws is intrincism and left over from religion. I can’t do that because I take ideas seriously and can’t stand people that are irrational.

I disagree with the idea that automatically placing more value on your close family is somehow “religious intinsicsm”. My family has watched me grow up, has shared many of my experiences, sheltered and protected me before I was able to do so for myself (my dad even saved me from drowning in the ocean once as a kid), and helped finance my education. This means that family serves as both an enormous potential value and as the source of many of my current values. As such, family deserves more consideration and more energy to understand and change their bad ideas than any random stranger. To do otherwise and dismiss members of my family just because they believe irrational things which I don’t feel like attempting to correct would be a violation of Justice.

In addition, there is no significant cost to me.. its not as if debating with my sister is going to turn me into an enviornmentalist. As long as she doesn’t turn into an eco-terrorist I see no reason to even consider cutting her off.

35

Because of my interest in Objectivism, my immediate family doesn’t want me. To them, the fact that I was drawn to Ayn Rand’s books in the first place is just another piece of evidence that I’m a complete selfish cow (hence my choice of “real life” name to the left heehee.)

it’s a shame, really, but what can one do? Since they (mum, dad, sister & brother) are all in Australia and I’ve not seen them since 1981, there isn’t much chance of changing minds via email.

I’m happy with my wonderful husband with whom I agree on all the important values in life. He wasn’t raised atheist, but came to it after attempts by the Catholic school system to indoctrinate him.

And now I’m pleased to meet everyone here.

36

Irrational in their politics, ideas, morals, and most importantly how one arrives at knowledge. I agree their is a spectrum or “irrationality”, and most people’s irrationality I can tolerate to a degree, but when I disagree and/or disapprove of a persons statement nearly one hundred percent of the time, then it’s time to cut them from my life.

I think the key principle here is the trader principle. Proper social interaction with other people is based on the exchange of values, be they material or spiritual. Even significantly irrational people can provide real values in trade, if it is possible to ‘bracket’ their irrationality and thus delimit the relationship. Close relatives, in particular, can offer unique spiritual values because of the degree of intimacy provided by their long baseline of common experience. That means it can be worth putting more effort into preserving a delimited relationship with an irrational relative than with an equivalently irrational person pulled in off the street. Note that this kind of delimited relationship imposes restrictions on you as well. If you object to your (hypothetical) brother trying to convert you to Christianity, you can’t very well turn around and insist that it’s OK for you to try to convert him to Objectivism. Either those kinds of discussions are in-bounds for your relationship or they aren’t, and it cuts both ways.

That said, there are limits. Some people are not willing to have their irrationality bracketed – they insist on imposing it on you even in the face of your stated desire to the contrary, and they refuse to ‘agree to disagree’ and move on to areas where you can share values productively. In such cases you are generally better off to reduce or eliminate contact to whatever extent is possible.

Completely cutting oneself off from one’s parents is not a step to be taken lightly. I say that as someone with a couple of non-Objectivist friends who have done essentially that, for reasons I consider justified. Even in those cases I’ve seen what it cost them.

37

I have a friend who is a socialist and we really got into it several days ago. We’re all good now, but for a second I thought it could go down that road where we just weren’t compatible because of our philosophic ideas.

38

I have a friend who is a socialist and we really got into it several days ago. We’re all good now, but for a second I thought it could go down that road where we just weren’t compatible because of our philosophic ideas.

You’re compatible? If you are an Objectivist, you are advocating ideas that demand personal responsibility in every area of your life. The Socialist, if they are a true socialist, demands the exact opposite.

I’m curious. In what areas do you find compatibility?

39

I hung out with a lot of druggies throughout my early teenage life. I slowly just phased them out of my life, cause that isn’t the influence that I need.

40

You’re compatible? If you are an Objectivist, you are advocating ideas that demand personal responsibility in every area of your life. The Socialist, if they are a true socialist, demands the exact opposite.

I’m curious. In what areas do you find compatibility?

Well, I was mostly using a figure of speech. Misleading for sure. Apologies.

Something I forgot to mention was that another one of our good friends, who happens to be an Objectivist, got into it 3 years ago on the same subject. They are no longer friends because of that night when they got into a huge argument. For a second I thought the same thing was happening where he would not associate with me because of my personal convictions. We get along great otherwise, but on economic systems we are opposites.