| | Neil Parille writes, in post 8, "I think the poor should be helped and if people don't help them voluntarily, the government inevitably will."
Dean Michael Gores replies, in post 11, "You disgusting pitiful hypocrite," presumably because he believes Neil will cut out Michael's tongue and give it to a rapist.
Later, in post 25, Dean Michael Gores writes of "people in the street . . . destroying things"; he then sketches out a scenario in which the jailed die of starvation . . . unless of course, Neil or some other evil, degraded being helps them out with a Happy Meal. Why waste the time/money incarcerating them for the 40 days required for death, why not shoot them in the street?
This brings to mind the flap over the ARI editorial, the one that seemed to say that Boxing Day Tsunami survivors deserve no aid in their emergency, that unaffected nations' governments should sit their asses on our coffers until all the survivors die of exposure, disease or starvation.
Sometimes it appears that objectivist leaders exist in a bubble, unaffected by advances in knowledge and understanding that do not emerge from the Randian canon. With regard to empathy, posters in this thread have recourse to cognitive science and findings in related fields.
I do agree with Dean Michael Gores' speculation that advances in neuroscience might one day allow us to delete/insert/amplify or otherwise alter an individual's emotional toolkit. It could very well be that future sociopaths might have empathy seeded and regrown into their frontal lobes. I for one, would glady join a cooperative fund to provide the dollars needed -- it would be in my own self-interest to have fewer sociopathic folk about.
In the same way, I selfishly give money to get people 'off the street' and support charitable efforts to help fellow humans with my own cash -- and I agree with Neil that if I don't, the government will inevitably reach into my wallet to do it (I am Canadian, so this is reality!).
WSS
(Edited by William Scott Scherk
on 2/10, 10:29pm)
|
|
