Objectivists are working to save the world from tyranny--isn't that altruism?

Questions about Objectivism
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The Laws of Biology,

Ayn Rand made a small fortune writing on her philosophy of Objectivism

and integrating its principles and values in her fiction works.

She personally had a lot to gain from speaking truth that she held dear.

We Objectivists are not being altruists by wanting to promote her ideas.

It is in our own interests for others to be happy and lead good lives.

We take a sense of pride from promoting principles we deem to be sound.

The fact that these principles are helpful to others does not constitute altruism.

Ayn Rand always said it is not wrong to help people,

as long as you know that you are not morally obligated to

and that helping others is not the primary purpose of your existence.

Most people on this forum and in the institutions promoting Objectivism

work for a living,

or if they are young, plan on working for a living.

Sharing Objectivism with others is something that interests us on the side.

It is in our interest. Each of us has a selfish interest in helping others learn.

Otherwise, it would be impossible for an Objectivist to become a teacher.

As soon as you choose helping others as a value, it is in your interest to help others.

But that comes after your decision to live primarily for yourself.

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As far as tyranny is concerned,

I personally wish for the United States to never be tyrannical.

This is primarily because I myself do not want to be a victim of tyranny.

But I also value the freedom of others, not because I am an altruist,

but because I think it is right and just for others to be happy and free.

Why would we Objectivists want capitalism if it wasn’t capitalism for everybody?

Our interest in a free society comes from our adherence to the truth and beauty of the idea,

not because we value other people’s freedom more than our own.

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On 8/19/2021 at 11:12 AM, The Laws of Biology said:

I know you might say that Objectivists have a self-interested reason in saving the world from tyranny–that in so doing, they are also saving themselves from tyranny

I am not so sure that Objectivists are saving the ‘world’ as much as they are saving their own little part of it. It is difficult to argue that they are ultimately going to impact the ‘world’ with their thoughts and actions or their own expectations will be difficult to implement, but the only real intent is to control their own environment, knowing full well that without impacting the world, that environment is at risk.

The true intent is the contrary to what you present. The Objectivist acts in accordance with their own conclusions derived from their own philosophy hoping that enough other individuals will act in a way that will control the outcome. If successful, this will ensure that tyranny will not prevail. Without the use of force, what other actions would be considered legitimate?

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1 hour ago, Lone Cypress said:

I am not so sure that Objectivists are saving the ‘world’ as much as they are saving their own little part of it.

  • When I read depictions of how Ayn Rand often spoke to students or learners at her meetings, I get the impression that Ayn Rand was indeed trying to save those students from unreason.
  • She would strongly and passionately urge her students to “Check your premises!” for example.
  • Now, this is just an impression of mine.
  • Yet, I think it is reasonable to observe someone’s behavior and draw logical conclusions about what is probably motivating the person.
  • From these descriptions that I have read (from what I think are credible, accurate sources), I can’t help but conclude that Ayn Rand cared about the present and future well-being of her fellow human beings, men and women.
  • She seemed very passionate about saving people (“saving the world,” if you like) from bad philosophy, precisely because she did care about her fellow human beings and wanted to see them flourish, prosper, and be happy, rather than seeing them being enslaved, suffering, being the cause of unjust suffering in others, being abused, abusing others, being lied to, tricked, bullied, lying to others, grifting, mooching, being mooched on, and so on.
  • I speculate that Ayn Rand’s care and concern about the well being of other human beings is one of the things that ultimately led her to distance herself from the misanthropic, sadistic principles sometimes enunciated by Nietzsche.
  • But did Ayn Rand ever say, expressly and directly, that she valued and cared about the well-being of other human beings in a way that was independent of her calculations of her own self-interest? No, not that I know of.
  • So, I suppose I’m speculating that this was a dimension of Ayn Rand’s psyche of which she herself was not aware.  
  • So, in these comments, I am playing the role of a psychoanalyst (Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian, etc.), rather than the role of Aristotelian philosopher. 
  • Aristotelian philosophy is very logical in its own way. But there is a certain logic in the newer science of psychology as well. Even the name “psychology” breaks down into “psyche + logic.”
  • Blaise Pascal wrote in his famous book _ Pensees _: “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing”.
  • In much the same vein, Shakespeare has his Hamlet say, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
  • I can’t help but wonder what Ayn Rand would have learned about herself and her motivations, and about other people, if she had undergone psychoanalysis (Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian). 
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If one holds that Objectivism is a philosophy for living on earth, the question of ‘saving the world’ or ‘saving others’ should only come up in the context of what value the ‘world’ or ‘others’ have to you as an individual.

Living in a rational society provides benefits that could not be acquired living on an uncharted island or a struggle to be self-sufficient off the grid. Personally, I like growing a small vegetable garden, even though a portion of it often gets pilfered by the local wildlife. It reminds me of how convenient it is to have grocery stores that rely on professionals that grow much of the world’s food much more efficiently than I can on a modest suburban lot.

For what it’s worth, @The Laws of Biology, The Psychology of Psychologizing is available at the ARI Campus. It reminded me of how Hank Rearden offered Lillian (among others) the benefit of the doubt at so many steps along the way. It ties in with part of Galt’s Speech as well:

"While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem—I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality—mine. It is mine that they chose to follow.

Man, by the grace of nature, is a moral being. And with another H/T to Miss Rand, she saw it too when she expressed in her essay Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World:

There is a tragic, twisted sort of compliment to mankind involved in this issue: in spite of all their irrationalities, inconsistencies, hypocrisies and evasions, the majority of men will not act, in major issues, without a sense of being morally right and will not oppose the morality they have accepted. They will break it, they will cheat on it, but they will not oppose it; and when they break it, they take the blame on themselves. The power of morality is the greatest of all intellectual powers—and mankind’s tragedy lies in the fact that the vicious moral code men have accepted destroys them by means of the best within them.

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4 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

The Psychology of Psychologizing is available at the ARI Campus.

I clicked that link and found the text written by Ayn Rand. It looks interesting. I will study it this evening. Thank you. 

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47 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Living in a rational society…

  • The Ayn Rand Lexicon does have an entry titled “Subconscious.” So, Ayn Rand did recognize the existence of a subconscious part of the mind in the human mind, and so, in a general sense, did agree with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung on this point. 
  • The decision of an individual or a group of persons to operate only at a rational level, and to recognize as real and important only rational arguments, propositions, facts, and conclusions, seems to me to be arbitrary. 
  • I recently watched a lecture by a Harvard professor of psychology who stated that much of the general theory of the subscious as articulated Freud has been verified by repeated scientific experiments. 
  • Any Rand and others can dismiss the Freudian or Jungian theory of subconscious as “mysticism,” but while the reality of God, gods, angels, and demons, as found in religions, CANNOT be verified by scientific experimentation, the dynamics of the subconscious mind HAVE very definitely BEEN verfied by scientific experimentation. 
  • Again, one can decide to ignore or reject that science, if one chooses to. But that decision seems aribitrary.
  • Also, that decision may ultimately lessen one’s ability to survive, thrive, and to be an effective leader of others.
  • I can’t help but speculate that if Aristotle were alive to today, and if he had a chance to learn all there is know in the modern fields of biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, physics, and chemistry, he would not stand by his ancient writings on ethics and metaphysics. 
  • During World War II the U.S. government hired a psychoanalyst to produce a analysis of the psychology of Adolf Hiter, so that U.S. government leaders could make the best possible predictions about what Hitler might do in various scenarios as the war proceeded. As I see it, this was wise, and shows the value of recognizing that human beings operate at more than a rational level. 
  • As I see things, the value and necessity of rational ethics for producing and inspiring good behavior, success, self esteem, personal responsibility, social responsibility, personal produtivity, law-abiding conduct, etc., is not diminished by the recogntion and understanding of powerful irrational dynamics in every human mind (some of these dynamics having their origin in early childhood, when the boy or girl was unable to process events, needs, loves, desires, fears, traumas, relationships, etc., in the manner of Aristotelian logic)
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It is not altruism to care about others.  It is altruism to sacrifice oneself for others.

We should use reason alone to achieve knowledge and make decisions.  But in our reasoning we must consider every relevant part of reality, including our own feelings where relevant.

24 minutes ago, The Laws of Biology said:

During World War II the U.S. government hired a psychoanalyst to produce a analysis of the psychology of Adolf Hiter, so that U.S. government leaders could make the best possible predictions about what Hitler might do in various scenarios as the war proceeded.

There are irrational people in the world.  To the extent that they have power, it may be necessary to try to understand them for the purpose of judging what they are likely to do.  This is fully consistent with understanding that they should not be irrational.

 

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I can provide some earlier thought Ayn held on the nature of psychology from her first journal.

All instincts are reason, essentially, or reason is instincts made conscious. The “unreasonable” instincts are diseased ones. This—for the study of psychology. For the base of the reconciliation of reason and emotions.

As to psychology—learn whether the base of all psychology is really logic, and psychology as a science is really pathology, the science of how these psychological processes depart from reason. This departure is the disease. What caused it? Isn’t it faulty thinking, thinking not based on logic, [but on] faith, religion?

All consciousness is reason. All reason is logic. Everything that comes between consciousness and logic is a disease. Religion—the greatest disease of mankind.

[bracketed] were added in a later edit by someone other than Rand. She had also revamped her notion of religion from “the greatest disease of mankind” to “a primitive form of philosophy” along her way.

As to Rand’s position on the subconscious being carte blanch dismissed as mysticism, that does not gel with the fact of her recognition of the phenomenon, and such a hasty conclusion on your behalf might not be warranted on the matter at this time.

Given her track record, and the track record of those who interpret her, I lean toward trying to understand and integrate based on what is available from her and by her.

She went on to hold instinct as an automatic form of knowledge, but another passage that has caught my attention more than once over the years wraps up this May 16, 1934 entree:

Some day I’ll find out whether I’m an unusual specimen of humanity in that my instincts and reason are so inseparably one, with the reason ruling the instincts. Am I unusual or merely normal and healthy? Am I trying to impose my own peculiarities as a philosophical system? Am I unusually intelligent or merely unusually honest? I think this last. Unless—honesty is also a form of superior intelligence.

Things that could make one go “hmm?”

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LB,

Rand’s point is that whatever out-of-context desire, drive or motive the subconscious spits out, it will always get overwriten during the process of raising one’s awareness of the situation at hand, and noticing that the ‘drive’ will prevent you from getting something you want. It’s in this sense that mystic impulses and subconscious drives are basically the same principle.

Rand was a pretty good psychologist, going by the testimony of close associates that were helped by her. ‘The Romantic Manifesto’ is chock full of examples of how one’s childhood events, way of thinking and other factors influence one’s psychology. Except, she thought that one can identify the source of one’s mental disposition through meticulous introspection.

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19 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

I can provide some earlier thought Ayn held on the nature of psychology

All this is very fascinating. All this helps me understand Ayn Rand better. 

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18 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

Rand was a pretty good psychologist,

Yes. she was. And this comment provided helpful information.

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19 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

It is not altruism to care about others.  It is altruism to sacrifice oneself for others.

  • I suppose this is one of those occasions in which different people are using the same words/phrase to mean different things.
  • Yet, this whole activity of “philosophy,” whatever it really is, involves, necessarity, tedious and wearisome definitions of terms.
  • Didn’t Wittgenstein write something famous about how philosophy is all sort of word games and is ultimately, mostly meaningless?
  • And then there was that famous instance in which President Bill Clinton said, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
  • I’ve heard this all goes back to philosophical topic of “Nominalism” which may have its origins in Plato’s theory of forms in which there is, in the abstract heavens, a perfect, eternal, unchanging, unchangeable, ideal form of everything (justice; truth, the good; reason; beauty, honor, love, etc.).
  • But don’t trust me. I’m just some random guy on the Internet. 
  • But I will admit to liking lately the thought of Francis Bacon.
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Considering the OP

 

An important meditation of all Objectivists is “What does human flourishing consist of?”

Now, consider the entire “Sense of life” surrounding non initiation of force, the trader principle, the dire admonition of systems turning individuals simultaneously into Robbers and Victims on some horrid ladder, the strong sense that no one is to be sacrificed, neither oneself to others nor others to oneself.  And recall the comment Rand made about the leash having loops at both ends… And consider the virtues of rationality, justice, independence, and honesty.

 

Even if one were to surmount the extreme adds against its success, becoming a tyrant relies on the vices of others, as well as the vice in oneself, depends on injustice, dependence, dishonesty, irrationality.  It requires the repudiation of all that is admirable, and central to the ethics of Objectivism and its sense of life, which I mentioned above… it entails a direct dependence upon unreality, irrationality, and the worst in humanity… it embraces the essentials of what Rand would have identified as evil.

Is this what human flourishing consists of?

 

Show that, and perhaps you will sway some Objectivists to the merits of the predatory parasitism which tyranny is…  but I suspect it will be a difficult row to hoe with most.

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On 8/19/2021 at 11:12 AM, The Laws of Biology said:

But doesn’t the best and safest position, from the point of view of pure practicality (if we take survival and prosperity of ourselves and our small circle of loved ones as the goal of ethics and of life), lie in being one of the tyrants? Don’t we see that well-dramatized in the movies (and novels) “The Hunger Games” and Orwell’s “1984”?

While I would agree that survival and prosperity is the objective of whatever morality we can devise for ourselves, but the successful reality will determine if it was a rational one. One would have to define a tyrant in absolute terms. Normally a tyrant is considered cruel and oppressive, which would seem to preclude an Objectivist from such actions. Oppressive is usually closely affiliated with the use of force, which is, of course, unacceptable within Objectivism. The possibility does exist that the tyrant ‘could’ be a beneficent dictator but there is no way to ensure the perpetual existence of such a personality. Dictators by definition are made by way of force as well, so the beneficent version would be an exception and an outlier.

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5 hours ago, Lone Cypress said:

Normally a tyrant is considered cruel and oppressive, which would seem to preclude an Objectivist from such actions. Oppressive is usually closely affiliated with the use of force, which is, of course, unacceptable within Objectivism.

  • Just looking around the present world, and looking back at history, it seems that tyranny is far and ahead the dominant form of government.
  • Just today I saw a news report that a gov’t official in Russia had said that domestic opponents to Russia’s current war in Ukraine will be sent to concentration camps.
  • What was achieved in the USA in 1789 (when the U.S. Constitutioin was instituted) may be really anomolous and unsustainable.
  • Even in ancient Greece, in places like Athens, they had democracy from time to time, but I think more often they had tyrants, oligarchs, and so on, and eventually they got Alexander the Great (just as later on other locates got the various Caesars, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Putin, and so on).
  • Maybe tyranny just follows from the dominant human nature.
  • Thus, the January 6, 2020 riot at the U.S. Capitol can be viewed as a preview of the coming tyranny, oligarchy, or whatever you want to call it. (cf. Beer Hall Putsch of 1923)
  • Maybe the Objectivist conception of a better future is just a beautiful dream.
  • Maybe it is comparable, in a sense, to the very different beautiful dream a better future held by the Democratic Socialists.
  • Maybe. 
  • But, in any case, Ayn Rand is definitely a great novelist and a great philosopher.
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6 hours ago, The Laws of Biology said:

Just looking around the present world, and looking back at history…

Reality is absolutely unalterable by human wishing. On a desert island, if you don’t produce your necessities, you die; no positive thinking will alter this. Not surprinsingly, when there’s more than one person around, nobody wants to give their toil away for free. If anybody tries to take stuff away by force, there is the inconvenient aspect of self-defense. And if the attacked person is too physically weak to defend himself, his self-defense can take the form of pretending to go with the swine’s demands, and taking care of him while he is sleeping.

Two things would result from a widespread recognition of reality: productive competition, since innovation actually results in more profit; and widespread aversion to fraud, since nobody wants a smartphone that crumbles in the hand, regardless of who the producer’s aunt is. In other words, honest people would gang up on the frauds, because nobody wants that guy to mess their cosy life up.

There does seem to be a way out, however. The information of the senses is not enough to understand reality. If you see a flying stick, you have to integrate that sense data with memorized facts, such as gravity. This is the process of reason, and that process is voltional. Meaning, it’s like a TV set. You turn it on when you’re using it, turn it off when you don’t. And when it’s off, your ability to judge what’s in front of your eyes is impaired.

Fraud counts on this obliviousness. But this lack of awareness is not an absolute, and may always come up in the form of the victim’s ploys. The tyrant lives on the edge for when the sheep will turn wolf.

Incidentaly, tyranism is not the only expression of this drive. Modern art is like that as well. ‘I don’t like that art is challenging to make, I want reality to be such that anything I feel is good because I feel it’.

There is only one way for the tyrant, modern artist, religious clerk or philosopher to allegedly escape the ironclad laws of reality: cast doubt on man’s ability to know facts with certainty. Examples:

  • Words are conventions, and have no connection to reality (The nominalists, Wittgenstein).
  • You do not know reality, you only know how reality looks to you. The unknowable realm beyond your senses might have God and immortality (Kantianism).
  • Man can recognize that his choices will nuke him off the earth, but he has no choice. He can’t help it. His knowledge and his emotions are in conflict, because emotions are unalterable (Original sin, ‘human nature’).
  • Your genes/Freudian id brainwash you into thinking you are acting freely, when if fact you’re not. Knowledge of this fact does not give you any alternative, since when you are fooled cannot be detected.
  • You don’t get ideas from sense observation, your ideas are the blueprints that make up reality. Hence, for art you must look at pure ideas, not contingent nature.

LB, you don’t seem to suspect that the theory of gravity is infected by traces of the belief in Alchemy, even though Newton was an avid believer in it. In other issues, you seem almost obsessed with the idea that thinkers might be unknowingly influenced by a theory without their knowing. 

If its clear to you that man can peek behind the veil of his ‘programming’, you can identify what logically follows: that this fact is the decisive blow to any of the theories I mentioned above. Whether you are programmed or not, the ability to adjust your mind to act with full awareness of every piece of related information means that determinism and freedom both lead to the very same path: the paradoxical self-anihilation of determinism.

The fact that man is oblivious without enaging in volition is not a license to condone the mindless things that result from that: injustice, corruption, poverty, nepotism, anxiety, tyranism, genocide, misery and so on. Rand made a crucial distinction in this regard: the metaphysical and the man-made. The metaphysical is facts such as: hydrogen and oxygen turn to water. The man-made: historical contingencies of which countries had the most tyrants.

The man-made is not the fault of reality, but of men. Whatever is not right today, is the result of previous generations acting blindly. This is true regardless of the dishonest copouts that philosophers, pastors and Harvard professors might try to delude themselves with.  It also sheds light on what the business of philosophy is: the study of the facts which have the most implications for the most areas of your life. People like Wittgenstein, one of the richest men in Europe, can afford to act on his hatred of reality’s impartiality to his wishes. Rand, who had to flee for her life from a country that pillaged her father’s business and the welfare of everyone, knows better than taking those unalterable facts lightly, a pretty intellectual exercise.

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6 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

The man-made is not the fault of reality, but of men.

  • This whole response is very well argued and very well written.
  • I will have to study it and contemplate it further so that I may really grasp the flaws in my reasoning, in my data, or in my soul or character.
  • My initial thought is that Ayn Rand and Aristotle disgreed with Darwin and Freud on the matter of human nature.
  • Whereas Ayn Rand and Aristotle viewed human nature as essentially rational, just, ethical, and peaceable, Darwin and Freud viewed human nature as essentially and irredeemably irrational, injust, unethical, and aggressive.
  • The view of Ayn Rand and Aristotle can be seen in the 1949 movie “The Fountainhead” (based on Ayn Rand’s book).
  • The view of Darwin and Freud can be seen in the 1968 movie “Planet of the Apes” (written by secular humanist Rod Serling and the one-time Communist Party member Michael Wilson). 
  • I find it fascinating that Shakespeare has his character Hamlet express both views of human nature in this passage (and elsewhere in the play, too): “What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.”
  • But how shall any rational person decide, with integrity (and not arbitrarily, and not with mystical faith, and not with wishful thinking) between the optimistic and the pessimistic view of human nature?
  • I have always thought that modern science, and empiricism, as found in modern biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, is the way to decide with integrity. (I.e., lots and lots of data; and data collected and organized meticulously and analyzed mathematically and statisitically, as per the modern scientific method; I think here of Francis Bacon’s criticisms of those of his era who clung to the methods of Aristotle to reach their conclusions about phenomenon in nature and in Man)
  • Also, the modern story of the history of humankind is helpful. Our modern historians know so much more than the ancient historians (e.g., the historians who wrote in the times of ancient Greece and Rome). 
  • But isn’t there a danger that people with a pessimistic view of human nature will enact a “self fulfilling prophecy,” and thereby prevent the creation of a better future society due exactly to that pessimism?
  • Yes, that is a danger, and that danger is pointed out by the Ayn Rand Objectivists, and also by others, such as the Democratic Socialists, the Rosicrucians, the Catholics for Social Justice, Secular Humanists, and so on.
  • As for me, I feel torn, like Hamlet.
  • I want a better future. I want an ethical society. 
  • But I also want to shun delusions and noble lies.
  • I’m tired of being deceived and deluded by all sorts of utopian and idealistic promises of a better world, and I don’t want to join in movements and philosophies that deceive and delude others, even if doing so might be of some materialistic advantage to me. 
  • Furthermore, I tend to think that whatever better future is possible will be achieved by having leaders that shun delusions and noble lies, and who face and deal with the hard realities of existence for biological beings (in this vein, I think of Francis Bacon’s praise of Machiavelli’s book The Prince for reminding him of how men often or usually tend to act, even though Francis Bacon did not himself approve of cynical, dishonest, manipulative leadership). 

 

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Why, @The Laws of Biology, do I get the impression you tend to view man as a helpless plaything of natural forces beyond his control?

You posit some stark contrasting views, then leave them hanging as if they are unresolvable. You’re well read, but you seem to be adrift on your sea of information. 

Man is a moral agent. His mind need ascertain what is right and wrong, and not by a consensus based on the fact that not everyone uses language like the nominalist or the subjectivist. 

You are oscillating,at times, between a benevolent and a malevolent universe premise. 

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40 minutes ago, The Laws of Biology said:

  • But how shall any rational person decide, with integrity (and not arbitrarily, and not with mystical faith, and not with wishful thinking) between the optimistic and the pessimistic view of human nature?
  • I have always thought that modern science, and empiricism, as found in modern biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, is the way to decide with integrity. (I.e., lots and lots of data; and data collected and organized meticulously and analyzed mathematically and statisitically, as per the modern scientific method; I think here of Francis Bacon’s criticisms of those of his era who clung to the methods of Aristotle to reach their conclusions about phenomenon in nature and in Man)

The crucial reason history has worked out so badly so far is that people have had too little in the way of good ideas to guide them, and too much in the way of bad ideas.   Ayn Rand has provided better ideas which, once they become widely enough known, will make better results possible.

There is plenty of data about how people perform when the mysticism/altruism/collectivism axis of ideas dominates the culture.  How much data is there about how people perform when the reason/egoism/individualism axis of ideas dominates the culture?

 

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