Plaidophile

Just to keep things interesting, I've opened up this thread for posting by everyone on the planet. No registration required.

Ayn Rand was batshit insane.

DISCUSSION OVER.

And yet, some people believe in that.

(I am not stating my opinion one way or the other. I want to see well-reasoned arguments both agreeing and disagreeing with this excerpt first. It came up in a conversation earlier.)

Actually, I got a $10 gift certificate for Amazon the other day and blew it on a book about etiquette and such (Say Please, Say Thank You: The Respect We Owe One Another). Naturally, as I haven't received the book yet I haven't read it, but some thoughts:

Without defined protocols like TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP, FTP, etc., cats wouldn't be able to talk to each other on the internets; it would be babble, nothing would be understood. Computers don't have emotions (yet) but humans do (it's alleged). Nobody should like to impose a burden on anybody else, but if they must then they should be courteous and appreciative. Those being asked a favor should ideally make a reasonable effort to accommodate a request. I don't think Rand has merit. She believed that we should all only ever act in our own best interest, but it's in my best interest to have and foster good relationships with those I personally know, and for society as a whole. Without altruism I believe we would all be worse off.

Nobody respects an altruist, neither in private life nor in international affairs. An altruist is a person who keeps sacrificing himself and his values, which means: sacrificing his friends to his enemies, his allies to his protagonists, his interests to any cry for help, his strength to anyone's weakness, his convictions to anyone's wishes, the truth to any lie, the good to any evil. — Ayn Rand

The best answer is summarized in Matt Ridley's most excellent "Origins of Virtue" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140264450/

The short answer is the obvious one: it's in our own self-interest to be altruistic at times. This is why her political allies who want the same evil things she did just pretend to want to do so for other reasons. Rand says "noone respects an altruist"? Well, no one likes someone who only looks out for themselves, and those people (and countries, to follow her analogy) lose in life.

theantix:

The short answer is the obvious one: it's in our own self-interest to be altruistic at times.

Yes, and my belief is that there's no such thing as a true altruist, as people are motivated towards altruism by something, be it wanting to get a feeling of doing good, wanting to get in a deity's (or other individual's) good graces, or realizing that things which benefit society as a whole also benefit the self, being part of society as a whole.

At least, that last one is why I try to behave in an altruistic manner.

Rand (and the person who prompted this thread's existence) take the dictionary definition of altruism to a hyper-literal extreme and ignore that there's actually a motivation behind acting in the interest of others. It's not a complete lack of self-interest.

Incidentally (and related to mkilly's point) this came up on a MUCK that he runs, apparently out of the kindness of his heart, without charging money or trying to get anything out of it aside from conversation and friendship (and for a long time he wasn't even connecting to it). I don't think he realized the irony of it all.

fluffy:

Yes, and my belief is that there's no such thing as a true altruist, as people are motivated towards altruism by something, be it wanting to get a feeling of doing good, wanting to get in a deity's (or other individual's) good graces, or realizing that things which benefit society as a whole also benefit the self, being part of society as a whole.

At least, that last one is why I try to behave in an altruistic manner.

I think you are exactly right there, pretty much the same thing I was trying to get at. I happen to believe that at all times people act in what they see as their own self-interest, but also that at many of those times it is in their best self-interest to be kind, giving, generous, etc. It doesn't even have to be a calculation either, like "if I be nice to X, X will be nice to me and I will be happier" -- sometimes the self-interest payoff may be as simple as knowing for yourself that you did a good thing and that you will be a happier person for it.

Your example from the MUCK is a good one, because it shows that by doing something that Rand would consider "altruistic", there was a very obvious reward for this hard work. This the real defect in the thinking of Rand and her followers. I hesitate to call them "stupid" because that is too easy and simple -- but they refuse to acknowledge the complexity of life and resort to ridiculous all-or-nothing statements such as the one you posed in your original entry. As someone who (ashamedly) called himself a Rand follower for a couple years (late high school, early university), I think I'm appropriately able to comment on that knowledgeably.

Let's assume that Rand is correct about morality, that selfishness is the greatest good. Acting selfish in such a system, then, is altruistic. But altruism, per Rand, is bunk. Her moral system, therefore, is bunk according to her own standards.

The only thing positive I have to say about Rand is that she isn't Ron Hubbard.

A Randite would probably say that you were debating semantics by taking that position. Though I feel that a Randite is debating semantics by agreeing with the original quote to begin with.

Yes, and my belief is that there's no such thing as a true altruist, as people are motivated towards altruism by something, be it wanting to get a feeling of doing good, wanting to get in a deity's (or other individual's) good graces, or realizing that things which benefit society as a whole also benefit the self, being part of society as a whole.

If you give a homeless man on the street a hot meal because it makes you feel good to give, does it make the gift any less generous to the person receiving it?

That said, I don't believe that there are altruistic people, only altruistic acts. It's easy to be altruistic some of the time. Everyone is capable of that. Rand's mistake is in believing that altruism is purely black and white and that nothing exists between either extreme.

That woman must have been a real hoot in the sack.
/sarcasm

Try not to trust the word of someone who sees things only in the extream. There are very few things in life that can ONLY be defined by their polar opposites. In trying to understand the world around us, it is really tempting to partition things by label. The reality is, people often lose sight of the fact that it's just a label, not a real, litteral thing. Case in point: I have been labeled with Major Depression since 1994. I do generally fit into this broad catigory, at least most of the time. This doesn't make MD a real thing - it's only a label that is used to describe a fairly broad, common set of problems that are generally correctable with the same medication. We find it so easy to think that all people with MD are the same, because of the label.

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course.

It's the same way with Rand's take on (almost anything) altruism. Altruism is a label. Rand makes the classic mistake of believing the label to be more real than the people, or the type of action, it describes. Thus, everything that came out of her mouth (or her typewriter) on the subject, suffers from that mistake.

Plus, as noted earlier, she was batshit crazy.

It mostly makes me think of Matt Ruff's intensely bizarre Sewer, Gas & Electric, which is dedicated to Ayn Rand, and touches on many points mentioned here.

What has always amused me is that if you truly believed that selfishness was good and moral, and that you, yourself, should always act completely selfishly, then your best course of action would be to convince everyone else you were an altruist. In a sense, saying "I'm completely selfish" to everyone you meet (i.e. calling yourself an "Objectivist") is, itself, an altruistic act as it gains you nothing and discards an advantage that could be put to good selfish use.

ucblockhead:

What has always amused me is that if you truly believed that selfishness was good and moral, and that you, yourself, should always act completely selfishly, then your best course of action would be to convince everyone else you were an altruist. In a sense, saying "I'm completely selfish" to everyone you meet (i.e. calling yourself an "Objectivist") is, itself, an altruistic act as it gains you nothing and discards an advantage that could be put to good selfish use.

Funny! By that logic, Rand was being altruistic by telling everyone 'the truth'.

Pretty much the same argument BFI made earlier.

Similar but not exact. His implication was that about acting selfish in her system. My comment is that if you are truly selfish, you'd act selfish, but talk altruistic.

I found this song parody quite funny.

I am the very model of a modern Libertarian:
I teem with glowing notions for proposals millenarian,
I've nothing but contempt for ideologies collectivist
(My own ideas of social good tend more toward the Objectivist).
You see, I've just discovered, by my intellectual bravery,
That civic obligations are all tantamount to slavery;
And thus that ancient pastime, viz., complaining of taxation,
Assumes the glorious aspect of a war for liberation!

[Chorus:]
You really must admit it's a delightful revelation:
To bitch about your taxes is to fight for liberation!

...

Ayn Rand basically applied Smithian economic theories to social interaction - the invisible hand, the market pressures, profit-seeking bringing good to all.

Problem is, Adam Smith was wrong about that.

Reality is much more Nashian in nature: society benefits best when everyone does what is best not just for themselves, but what produces the most benefit to everyone involved including themselves.

Add to this the facts that society has complex feedback mechanisms and that you almost never find someone with only one motivation for anything, and basically reality and Rand were not on speaking terms.

You can 'digitally' model complex interactions, but you need more than one bit to do it. o O

Wow, a lot of people who have a lot more knowledge and experience than me discussing something I've barely even heard of. o.o;

Well, just to add my two cents, and because there's only been one example-

I often consider myself to be a bleeding heart. (Aka, an altruist.) At school, I'll find myself in situations with other people asking to borrow money. Now, often times, I need this money. Often times, these people are people I either know very well, and am already friends with, or people I don't know in the slightest, and don't really care if they like me. Unless I happen to be in a bad mood that day, or if I actually have no money at that time, I'll lend them the money. The ones I know well I'm already certain that they'll pay me back eventually. Such as my friend Buck, whom owes me $80, which I lent to him in twenty dollar bills over the course of a month so that he'd have enough money to pay for gas as he was summer-job hunting. He recently found said job, and I already know that he'll be paying me back, because that's the kind of person he is, and because he knows that I know where he lives and just what his major phobias happen to be. What confuses even me about myself, however, are the times that I lend money to people that I don't even remotely know. They always say that they will pay me back, and most of the time they do. But, what am I gaining from this? I lose something some of the time, (such as when they don't return the money) and gain something none of the time. (as I've never seen any of these people again, and never plan to.)

So, maybe I'm wrong, and there is some self-serving motive behind all this that I just can't notice. Maybe there really is such a thing as actual altruism. Or, maybe it's just another thing to chalk up to my (self-diagnosed) mild insanity. Who knows.

</two_cents>

And here I was afraid that comment posting wasn't working for some reason, and a spammer goes and proves me wrong. And reminds me I locked the thread within the last two months.