7 ms·

That is pretty funny, in the ironic sense. What it feels like to me is the leaders of the Objectivism movement are all narcissists and the followers are parado

by yapyap 2y ago

That is pretty funny, in the ironic sense. What it feels like to me is the leaders of the Objectivism movement are all narcissists and the followers are paradoxically not Objectivists because they’re following a philosophy instead of being guided by the self. Being a peak Objectivist would be to not care about being an Objectivist or not, basically making it impossible to be an Objectivist if you follow the philosophy, even at the top of it because you are dependent on your followers for influence, status and power. The irony of it all, turns out a philosophy based on self sufficiency is as big of a grift as a political movement trying to convince everyone that in this day and age self sufficiency is the best move, mostly cause they can’t fathom sharing. One of the _most_ ironic bits being that if everyone were truly self sufficient there would be no social hierarchy and no money anymore.

seanhunter 2y ago
Objectivism has many of these sorts of contradictions. Most famously, Ayn Rand herself collected medicare and social security as her health deteriorated towards the end of her life.
- lumenwrites 2y ago
  Is that really a contradiction? We all have our ideals, and we all fail to live up to them sometimes, because life can be brutal.
  - stevenAthompson 2y ago
    To be fair, Rand herself said (to paraphrase) that because the state took it from her against her will it was fair play to take it back and I think that was self-consistent. That said, she wanted to let the disabled starve to death so I don't think anyone really has to be fair to her at all. Empathy is only for the empathetic.
    - marknutter 2y ago
      Ayn Rand did not "want to let the disabled starve to death". What a ridiculous lie.
      - stevenAthompson 2y ago
        It is not a lie. She felt that the government had no right to assist, and that they should be left to depend on "charity" (IE - Begging). There are also tapes of her saying that the retarded should not "be allowed to come near children," and that children cannot deal with the "spectacle of a handicapped human being."
        mapontosevenths 2y ago
        Question from audience: [muffled audio which sounds like:] "...why is this culture..." [loud noise which sounds as if it represents a point where the tape has been edited] Rand: [mid-sentence] "...for healthy children to use handicapped materials. I quite agree with the speaker's indignation. I think it's a monstrous thing — the whole progression of everything they're doing — to feature, or answer, or favor the incompetent, the retarded, the handicapped, including, you know, the kneeling buses and all kinds of impossible expenses. I do not think that the retarded should be ~allowed~ to come ~near~ children. Children cannot deal, and should not have to deal, with the very tragic spectacle of a handicapped human being. When they grow up, they may give it some attention, if they're interested, but it should never be presented to them in childhood, and certainly not as an example of something ~they~ have to live down to." - Ayn Rand, The Age of Mediocrity, Q & A Ford Hall Forum, April, 1981 *EDIT* Youtube video: https://youtu.be/Q1HD8KXn-kI https://youtu.be/Q1HD8KXn-kI
        glenstein 2y ago
        Great pull, thank you for the quote and the link.
        try_the_bass 2y ago
        > Children cannot deal, and should not have to deal, with the very tragic spectacle of a handicapped human being. When they grow up, they may give it some attention, if they're interested, but it should never be presented to them in childhood, and certainly not as an example of something ~they~ have to live down to." There's an irony in here, since this is more of less a summary of the ideology that wants "safe spaces" in schools. Just, you know, with an entirely different set of things that proponents want to shield children/young adults from.
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    Socrates allowed himself to be put to death even though his supporters had bribed the jailer to allow him to escape. Given his philosophy of ethics, even though his trial had been unjust, he felt it was incompatible with his teachings for him to avoid the sentence that had been handed down to him. Some people believe that their ideals are important enough to live up to even though life can be brutal.
- MisterBastahrd 2y ago
  I don't agree with her worldview, but it isn't a contradiction. She paid into the system.
MadnessASAP 2y ago
> Being a peak Objectivist would be to not care about being an Objectivist or not, basically making it impossible to be an Objectivist if you follow the philosophy, even at the top of it because you are dependent on your followers for influence, status and power. So basically objectivism is the punk of the philosophical world?
- gopher_space 2y ago
  Punk is more about positive nihilism, from my perspective.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  If you have the extremist definition that says that nobody can actually be punk.
  - MadnessASAP 2y ago
    I don't define punk, punk is the absence of definition.
gnramires 2y ago
It should be noted: Rand's definition of objectivism doesn't exactly match what you expect from the common sense usage of the word. I think Objectivism fails because at least in part it doesn't establish solid enough foundations, and takes as fact unproven things that rely on mountains of suppositions and not always reliable evidence. For example, whatever you think of "laissez-faire capitalism" (as supported by Rand), it's very weird to make its defense part of a philosophy, more so as a kind of axiomatic statement. Imagine someone were deep into some math book, say a dense Algebraic Geometry textbook, and it was just declared out of the blue that "laissez-faire capitalism is an ideal system" or something like that. That could even be true within some context, but I think it's out of place. It also relies on so many assumptions and is far from conclusively proven (the way capitalism is implemented also varies considerably today, and I don't agree that being maximally "laissez-faire" turned out to be better, at least not obviously)[1]. I would even understand she divulged her political ideas, but kept separate from the basis of a philosophy. Also, like many philosophies, I don't think objectivism survives a closer scientific scrutiny. I suppose there was no firm grasp on what the mind was, or the nature of conscious (there is still some uncertainty, but much more clarity). I like how Dr Rachel Barr (a neuroscientist I follow on social networks) put it: old philosophies, specially about the human mind and soul, made great observations some of which unfortunately (such as that the 'Pineal gland is the principal seat of the soul' as regarded by René Descartes) can be "swept away" and basically definitely disproved by science from a better understanding of the nature of our brains and minds. Some assertions about perception and consciousness seem to be outdated. I particularly object (no pun intended) to the basis of ethics as individuals. As I've argued previously[2], we now understand the nature of consciousness to, in my view, not justify an ethics that is based solely on the primacy of self-interest. We are part of a giant network of interactions, and although the self seems like a very important concept for our society, metaphysically it doesn't make much sense to prioritize the self at all costs (even when this prioritization includes some strategic concessions for altruism), though I think it's important that we take care of ourselves for pragmatic reasons, because we basically are the ones that understand ourselves the most and live with ourselves 24/7. I think Objectivism (although again I am no specialist, I haven't studied it profoundly) has merits around notions of reality being singular and shared by everyone in one way or another, and (hypothesis mine) if everything derives from a singular reality, by understanding this singular reality we should be able to in a certain sense understand everything (including ethics, art and morality, which I think is highly counterintuitive) -- because our brains and minds which form the basis of such questions are part of reality, as well as any internal processes within those that enable subjective perception and subjective reality. I wrote more about this here[3]. Please take a look if you're interested. [1] Not to mention, we hardly got to try out 2 (or maybe 3) political systems in any serious way: capitalism and socialism (also perhaps social democracy), although there are a myriad of variations to experiment with as well (forms of voting, systems of regulation, the design of various institutions) that aren't considered when talking about "political systems". Who knows if something else could be better? I think a more general view of society as a whole as a kind of giant system is necessary to understand how to design better societies in general. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528352 [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1iv1x1m/the_meaning_of_life_an_assymptotically_convergent/ https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1iv1x1m/the... Please see the questions where I expanded a little upon those ideas :)

by yapyap 2y ago

seanhunter 2y ago

Objectivism has many of these sorts of contradictions. Most famously, Ayn Rand herself collected medicare and social security as her health deteriorated towards the end of her life.

lumenwrites 2y ago
Is that really a contradiction? We all have our ideals, and we all fail to live up to them sometimes, because life can be brutal.
- stevenAthompson 2y ago
  To be fair, Rand herself said (to paraphrase) that because the state took it from her against her will it was fair play to take it back and I think that was self-consistent. That said, she wanted to let the disabled starve to death so I don't think anyone really has to be fair to her at all. Empathy is only for the empathetic.
  - marknutter 2y ago
    Ayn Rand did not "want to let the disabled starve to death". What a ridiculous lie.
    - stevenAthompson 2y ago
      It is not a lie. She felt that the government had no right to assist, and that they should be left to depend on "charity" (IE - Begging). There are also tapes of her saying that the retarded should not "be allowed to come near children," and that children cannot deal with the "spectacle of a handicapped human being."
      - mapontosevenths 2y ago
        Question from audience: [muffled audio which sounds like:] "...why is this culture..." [loud noise which sounds as if it represents a point where the tape has been edited] Rand: [mid-sentence] "...for healthy children to use handicapped materials. I quite agree with the speaker's indignation. I think it's a monstrous thing — the whole progression of everything they're doing — to feature, or answer, or favor the incompetent, the retarded, the handicapped, including, you know, the kneeling buses and all kinds of impossible expenses. I do not think that the retarded should be ~allowed~ to come ~near~ children. Children cannot deal, and should not have to deal, with the very tragic spectacle of a handicapped human being. When they grow up, they may give it some attention, if they're interested, but it should never be presented to them in childhood, and certainly not as an example of something ~they~ have to live down to." - Ayn Rand, The Age of Mediocrity, Q & A Ford Hall Forum, April, 1981 *EDIT* Youtube video: https://youtu.be/Q1HD8KXn-kI https://youtu.be/Q1HD8KXn-kI
        glenstein 2y ago
        Great pull, thank you for the quote and the link.
        try_the_bass 2y ago
        > Children cannot deal, and should not have to deal, with the very tragic spectacle of a handicapped human being. When they grow up, they may give it some attention, if they're interested, but it should never be presented to them in childhood, and certainly not as an example of something ~they~ have to live down to." There's an irony in here, since this is more of less a summary of the ideology that wants "safe spaces" in schools. Just, you know, with an entirely different set of things that proponents want to shield children/young adults from.
- seanhunter 2y ago
  Socrates allowed himself to be put to death even though his supporters had bribed the jailer to allow him to escape. Given his philosophy of ethics, even though his trial had been unjust, he felt it was incompatible with his teachings for him to avoid the sentence that had been handed down to him. Some people believe that their ideals are important enough to live up to even though life can be brutal.
MisterBastahrd 2y ago
I don't agree with her worldview, but it isn't a contradiction. She paid into the system.

MadnessASAP 2y ago

> Being a peak Objectivist would be to not care about being an Objectivist or not, basically making it impossible to be an Objectivist if you follow the philosophy, even at the top of it because you are dependent on your followers for influence, status and power. So basically objectivism is the punk of the philosophical world?

gopher_space 2y ago
Punk is more about positive nihilism, from my perspective.
marcosdumay 2y ago
If you have the extremist definition that says that nobody can actually be punk.
- MadnessASAP 2y ago
  I don't define punk, punk is the absence of definition.

gnramires 2y ago

It should be noted: Rand's definition of objectivism doesn't exactly match what you expect from the common sense usage of the word. I think Objectivism fails because at least in part it doesn't establish solid enough foundations, and takes as fact unproven things that rely on mountains of suppositions and not always reliable evidence. For example, whatever you think of "laissez-faire capitalism" (as supported by Rand), it's very weird to make its defense part of a philosophy, more so as a kind of axiomatic statement. Imagine someone were deep into some math book, say a dense Algebraic Geometry textbook, and it was just declared out of the blue that "laissez-faire capitalism is an ideal system" or something like that. That could even be true within some context, but I think it's out of place. It also relies on so many assumptions and is far from conclusively proven (the way capitalism is implemented also varies considerably today, and I don't agree that being maximally "laissez-faire" turned out to be better, at least not obviously)[1]. I would even understand she divulged her political ideas, but kept separate from the basis of a philosophy. Also, like many philosophies, I don't think objectivism survives a closer scientific scrutiny. I suppose there was no firm grasp on what the mind was, or the nature of conscious (there is still some uncertainty, but much more clarity). I like how Dr Rachel Barr (a neuroscientist I follow on social networks) put it: old philosophies, specially about the human mind and soul, made great observations some of which unfortunately (such as that the 'Pineal gland is the principal seat of the soul' as regarded by René Descartes) can be "swept away" and basically definitely disproved by science from a better understanding of the nature of our brains and minds. Some assertions about perception and consciousness seem to be outdated. I particularly object (no pun intended) to the basis of ethics as individuals. As I've argued previously[2], we now understand the nature of consciousness to, in my view, not justify an ethics that is based solely on the primacy of self-interest. We are part of a giant network of interactions, and although the self seems like a very important concept for our society, metaphysically it doesn't make much sense to prioritize the self at all costs (even when this prioritization includes some strategic concessions for altruism), though I think it's important that we take care of ourselves for pragmatic reasons, because we basically are the ones that understand ourselves the most and live with ourselves 24/7. I think Objectivism (although again I am no specialist, I haven't studied it profoundly) has merits around notions of reality being singular and shared by everyone in one way or another, and (hypothesis mine) if everything derives from a singular reality, by understanding this singular reality we should be able to in a certain sense understand everything (including ethics, art and morality, which I think is highly counterintuitive) -- because our brains and minds which form the basis of such questions are part of reality, as well as any internal processes within those that enable subjective perception and subjective reality. I wrote more about this here[3]. Please take a look if you're interested. [1] Not to mention, we hardly got to try out 2 (or maybe 3) political systems in any serious way: capitalism and socialism (also perhaps social democracy), although there are a myriad of variations to experiment with as well (forms of voting, systems of regulation, the design of various institutions) that aren't considered when talking about "political systems". Who knows if something else could be better? I think a more general view of society as a whole as a kind of giant system is necessary to understand how to design better societies in general. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528352 [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1iv1x1m/the_meaning_of_life_an_assymptotically_convergent/ https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1iv1x1m/the... Please see the questions where I expanded a little upon those ideas :)