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Monday
February 6, 2006

Altruism Against Freedom by Joseph Rowlands

Politics is a branch of ethics. It is defined by the ethical system at its root. You can't just pick and choose ethical standards and political systems. Some are necessarily incompatible, and others are mutually reinforcing. The combination I want to focus on is the political system of liberty and the ethics of alt... (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (372 messages)

Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 3:30pm

Hong,

Somehow, I knew you would respond by saying something ruthless, and then, something wonderful.

Once again, you did not disappoint!

;-)

George

Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 4:44pm

Luke,

"You conflate "the refusal to help" with "aiding and abetting crime."

Only in the context of the hypothetical situation. I imagine a child found starved to death in the woods. There is an investigation, followed by the discovery of an individual that found the child alive, and walked away, allowing it to die. Later, the child is found to be a kidnap for ransom victim. Would the person likely be charged themselves with the kidnap and murder of the child? There are many reasons that it would be in your self interest to feed the child.

You are right, I do not know you. Is it possible for you to gauge what your reaction would be if you DID NOT have this cold dark rage inside of you? I'm reminded again of NB's insight in "The Psychology of Self Esteem" that we can only seek to understand human psychology in the laboratory of our own minds. A philosophy based on human nature needs to be based on what is truly human nature. Thus, the value of introspection.

Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 4:49pm

Michael Moeller,

Imagine you paid several thousand dollars to take a class on the history of the Civil War. You show up for the first class, and the professor starts lecturing about Pop Tarts. Maybe you humor him, but he does it again in the next class. And the next. You get angry, and go and ask for your money back. The girl at the administration office says no, and she says that you should not " treat knowledge as if it is contained in hermetically sealed bags, but rather to grasp the *interrelationships* among different bodies of knowledge and to examine those relationships on many different levels." Yes, there is a connection between Pop Tarts and the Civil War, if you look hard enough. Clearly there are errors in the way you approach Rand's paradigm!!!

Seriously, though. The reverse is true. Anyone who can't see a problem with the hypothetical lectures is unable to grasp degrees of significance. There may in fact me a relationship, but it's ridiculous to treat it like every other.

And so it is with esthetics and politics. Your own example is very weak, especially given that Rand rejected the government's ability to censor or judge what is "artistic". But even if you want to emphasize that connection, wouldn't it be the case that every branch is then derived from government? After all, governments pass laws about the other branches as well.

Now let me ask you whether you're being serious here, or hypothetical? Are you trying to make a broad point about the interconnectedness of knowledge, or are you really arguing that esthetics is more tightly coupled with politics than it is with any of the other branches?

Luke, Jason Q, and George, excellent posts. Thanks for defending Objectivism from those that would distort it into its opposite.

Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 5:03pm

Mike Erickson, you posed:

I imagine a child found starved to death in the woods. There is an investigation, followed by the discovery of an individual that found the child alive, and walked away, allowing it to die. Later, the child is found to be a kidnap for ransom victim. Would the person likely be charged themselves with the kidnap and murder of the child? There are many reasons that it would be in your self interest to feed the child.

Yes, but only because of our imperfect criminal investigation system. A perfect system that had omniscience to look backward into any time and place would easily see that I did not perpetrate that horrible crime. Furthermore, a variant of the odd phenomenon of "Munchausen by Proxy" might actually drive a kidnapper to abandon the child and then act as "rescuer" by "finding and saving" the child. So feeding the child and getting further involved offers no guarantee that I will "look good" to the authorities.

I have said it already and I will say it again: I would most likely help the child. I just have no desire to authorize the government to punish me for not doing so. As George Cordero noted, my position resonates with Objectivism.

You also asked:

Is it possible for you to gauge what your reaction would be if you DID NOT have this cold dark rage inside of you?

I think others would take even more advantage of me than they already have. I need my rage. It represents my lifetime accumulation of "lessons learned."

Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 5:07pm

Excellent post Luke.

I'd elaborate but I'd just be taking a chance of blurring the clarity of your post.

---Landon

Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 6:47pm

Mike,
I think Luke has made himself perfectly clear to us.

Luke,
Indeed I didn't know you. I was thoroughly surprised at your revelations, though I probably shouldn't have.

Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 9:20pm

I agree with what Luke has said so far on this thread. This is not a popularity contest. Why do I sanction him?

Luke is saying that he does what he determines to be in his own self interest, and I'm pretty damn confident that Luke's goals and self interest is in harmony of interest in mine. Even though Luke may decided not to help people that I wish he would help, it does not make him a despicable person, instead it just may be a revelation that he is less beneficial to me than I had first expected.

Hong, what does Luke do? Are you bringing him justice? Who exactly do you want him to help? Does he help those people or not?

Edit: who are you to determine how he uses his resources? He made them, not you. You are not a leech, are you?

Edit: hmmm... Luke works for NASA, he uses value forced from others to use in ways that they probably would not have done if they had full control over the products of their own labor. I'd prefer that Luke stopped working for NASA, let it fail, and let people vote that no more stolen money goes toward a failure project. Yet Luke is also vocal in promoting many ideas and values that I like. What Luke says is consistent with what I want. I'm not sure if the net results of his actions are consistent with what I want, I don't know him well enough.

Edit: oh yea, NASA enables the US to be able to lift all sorts of information gathering technologies into orbit, so that the US/US government can make the best decisions possible. I don't know all of what NASA does, nor do I know what Luke's job is.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 2/20, 3:58am)

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 5:50am

I don't believe all this. NIOF used to justify starving a baby to death. Gimmee a break!

I'm going into Mike Hammer mode (which is fully compatible with Objectivism) with an article I wrote yesterday:

Where principles and rights break down

This is going to be one of the shortest articles I have ever written.

If some evil son-of-a-bitch wants to starve a child to ill health or death on purpose, irrespective of the reason, he better not do it in front of me or near me, because no principle or right on earth is going to keep me off him.

Michael

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 6:06am

MSK wrote:

If some evil son-of-a-bitch wants to starve a child to ill health or death on purpose, irrespective of the reason, he better not do it in front of me or near me, because no principle or right on earth is going to keep me off him.

No one here never said he would starve a child "on purpose" as a goal, an end in itself, a purpose. You keep equating positive actions with negative ones, a thought process totally at odds with objective reasoning. You keep twisting Objectivism into a way to rationalize your unexamined emotional responses rather than properly employing it to reprogram your responses to correspond to reality.

You are an intelligent man and can still change. I encourage you to do so. There is no breakdown of principles and rights here. There is only your own refusal to break your own emotions down into their components for your own rational examination, control, rearrangement, and reassembly into fully valid responses consonant with objective principles and rights in full context. Gain control of yourself!

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 6:34am

MSK claims: "I don't believe all this. NIOF used to justify starving a baby to death. Gimmee a break!

There is a difference between starving a baby to death and allowing a baby to starve to death. The first would involve preventing others from feeding the baby. It would involve removing from the baby any food he may have acquired. It would require doing something.

Starving a baby is an initiation of force. Allowing him to starve is not.

Whether or not allowing him to starve (in a particular context) is in someone's self interest is an entirely different question. Whether allowing him to starve (in a particular context) is moral or immoral is an entirely different question.

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 7:00am

Michael,

This conversation has had some truely ridiculous moments. I doubt that anyone here would let an abandoned baby they found in the in the woods starve. The whole issue is somehwhat silly. It's always important to understand the difference between force and freedom and what people can do and what they must do. Picking out quotes to support your argument is not reasonable. Theists pick quotes from holy books to defend actions and ideas. If you are an Objectivist, you must think and understand.

Let me say that again: you must think and understand.

I'm still learning all the ins and out of Objectivism, because understanding takes time, at least if you're me. If you don't understand something then you are simply left with quotes and rules-of-thumb which will never work.

I can't fathom your wailing about letting babies starve. You seem to have a bone to pick with people here, especially Joe. Perhaps you're on a recruiting drive, I don't know. This whole "Objectivists kill innocent babies dead" thing is just sickening. You seem so hell bent on the conclusions you have reached that you're missing the whole point of what people are saying. Blank-outs? All-or Nothing? Not on this side of the issue. All these cries of "I'll stick with Rand" and the crap about baby killing ick ick are just smoke and mirrors. You lost this one a long time ago, and now it's time to own up and understand why. I'm not going to call you a facist though. I'm just going to tell you that you are wrong on this and you've been mischarecterizing the argument and those involved quite unfairly. I pride myslef on admitting when I'm wrong, I would hope you'd do the same.

Frankly, the negativity of so many discussions around here is depressing me.

Ethan

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 7:11am

Ethan,

Sorry. I ain't going for it. I live my philosophy, not just talk about it.

People claim that they aren't really talking about starving babies to death, then start saying that they have some metaphysical right to do just that.

Hypocrites.

The baby's got a right-to-life. Not just the good intentions of adults. Ain't nobody gonna starve no babies on purpose around me. There's no justification for that at all, moral or otherwise. Period.

Wanna see NIOF break down? Just let some evil son-of-a-bitch try that around me.

I'm dead serious.

Michael

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 7:27am

Michael,

Sorry. I ain't going for it. I live my philosophy, not just talk about it.

Yes. I see that you do live your philosophy. It just isn't Objectivism. I'm sorry that you still insist on hiding behind the smoke-screen statements. It's not worth argueing with you, as you aren't arguing. You're raving at things that aren't even there.

If I wanted arguments like this, I'd listen to the republicans and the democrats spinning their lies. I'm not here to listen to that type of thing. See me sadly shaking my head and turning away. Very sad.

Ethan

Edited to fix to grammar errors.

(Edited by Ethan Dawe on 2/20, 7:49am)

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 7:36am

Ethan,

We disagree, so we are just going to disagree. You can have the last word.

For the record, my way is Objectivism.

Blanking out the right-to-life of babies is not Objectivism.

Michael

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 7:59am

This is intended to be a PM.

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 2/20, 8:02am)

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 8:25am

MSK has yet to understand what right to life means.

The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life. — Ayn Rand, Man's Rights

Someone who is disadvantaged by age is no more entitled to someone else's property than someone who is disadvantaged by health, intelligence, circumstances, or physical prowess.

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 8:59am

Man, am I getting hot to blow the lid off of the evil that has taken root in this kind of thinking. Here's how the syllogism works, for anybody who has trouble following it:

BEING THAT: My inalienable right to my own life is the good,

AND: Standing around watching a child who is not related to me starve to death in the wilderness while I have plenty to eat is in essence the exercise of my inalienable right to my own life,

THEREFORE: Standing around watching a child who is not related to me starve to death in the wilderness while I have plenty to eat is an exercise of the good.

Don't be fooled by people saying that this is not what they mean. This is precisely what they mean. Also, anybody want to guess what has been massively blanked-out here?

Michael

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 9:02am

Michael, I don't think anyone would disagree that allowing a baby to starve would be an immoral thing to do (the result would most likely be worse than anything the legal system can dish out. It's amazing what objective punishments can be rendered through freedom of action outside of the legal system by thinking people), the question is whether or not allowing a baby, that isn't one's own, to starve is a direct act of aggression and a violation of rights.

You say it is, but don't support or reconcile that conclusion with Objectivism's fundamental principles. Luke belongs only to himself. He does not belong to a foundling. You're saying we all belong to any foundling, under any circumstance, starvation being the most extreme. This suggests that no one is truly autonomous, which is in direct contradiction with Objectivism.

I understand the frustration and anger that can lead to conclusions such as yours, but it's still a mistake.

Let me extend your conclusion to a far less obvious set of circumstances that happened in reality to me a couple of years ago:

I was trying on some shoes in a very crowded store on a Sunday afternoon. An adorable 6 year old girl approached me and asked if I knew where her mommy was. I sure didn't, but asked her to stay with me until we found her mom. She obeyed, and we found her frantic and grateful mother a few minutes later.

Now, given you're positive rights position with regard to any child, I would be violating that child's rights if I had instead told this foundling to look for her mom by herself, watched her wander off to another stranger who may cause her harm, and if they did cause her harm, culpability would also be mine.

How far does your take on the principle of positive rights go? Reporting the mother to the authorities for possible neglect instead of just returning the girl to her? Who knows what kind of monster she may really be?!? The idea of positive rights extended to a child not one's own has f-a-r r-e-a-c-h-i-n-g consequences that aren't being examined. You're just clinging to the emotional result of an extreme example, but not extending it out to it's logical ends.

Where would autonomy begin and positive rights end with regard to any child?

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 9:15am

Teresa, you just asked:

How far does your take on the principle of positive rights go?

I stated that earlier - it goes as far as the example under discussion - a child discovered in the wilderness (but implicitly within the confines of our society).

Just as our capacity to use force is delegated to the government, thus granting it a right (and this is Objectivism 101 - see AR's essays on rights and government), so the responsibility of a parent to preserve a child's life in an emergency becomes delegated to another adult if (a) he is the only one available, and (b) he does not have to sacrifice (or endanger) his own life.

Context is very important in analyzing this. Passing a child begging on a busy city street (where there are many adults) is not the same as coming across one in the wilderness, where you will be the only adult around him for days, starving him to death while you eat.

That is a crime anyway I look at it.

Murder.

Murdering a kid by starvation is evil.

Michael

Monday, February 20, 2006 - 9:22am

"THEREFORE: Standing around watching a child who is not related to me starve to death in the wilderness while I have plenty to eat is an exercise of the good."

NO ONE HERE HAS EVER MADE THIS ARGUMENT YOU PATHETIC PIECE OF SHIT.

- Jason