| | Hello everyone :)
It was a pleasure reading these posts, as I find the topic interesting, and the intelligence and curiosity driving all who contributed admirable and honest.
My discovery of Ayn Rand wasn't much of a discovery; she was delivered to me by means other than my own effort, however, it was an event that time is helpless to fog. I encountered her ideas barely over a year ago, and I mention this only to stress the fact that I am not an Objectivist Scholar, but a Curious Thinker. Shortly after I was captured by logic, I was accused of being dishonest at which was, properly, a highly transitional period; 80% of what I thought I knew was being challenged, and the integration of extremely abstract ideas is not a process that can be achieved overnight. I was at a point where I wanted to understand so badly that I would ask any question I considered relevant to achieve my end. In my inquiries, I was not challenging the individual, but my subconscious demons. Too often (not specifically on this site, but not excluding it either) I have seen others accused of stupidity or willful evil when, to me, it was obvious that they just wanted to understand. There are ideas I struggled with last year that seem so incredibly obvious to me now -- and I never forget that.
I apologize for the lengthy introduction, but considering the fact that this is an exchange of ideas, I wanted those who are aware of me to have an outline of my position, in order to prevent any misunderstanding of my intentions. Unwarranted attacks will not be tolerated; undeserved aggression will not be forgiven. Comprehension, as far as the exchange of ideas with those I consider (for the time being) my superiors, is my only goal -- with civil discussion being my only means.
Mr L W Hall:
Hello! I am Alias, and I enjoyed reading your posts because they compelled me to think of an issue from a perspective I had not yet considered. Your last post led me to the conclusion that although your questions had not been answered, you "threw in the towel" because the discussion took an awkward turn, i.e., the tone, I thought, was on the verge of becoming combative. Since I too am struggling with this, I thought that maybe we could talk! Here are some of my thoughts...
First, I considered the situation: A man finds his wife in bed with another man and decides -- for whatever reason by whatever means -- that his next move should be the act of eliminating her unretrievable awareness of existence. Now, if it was completely subconscious -- meaning, he did not consciously decide that this is what a man should do in this situation -- then he automatically responded to whim, allowing his rage to not only cloud his judgment, but confuse him enough to permit him to commit a despicable evil -- an evil that suggests much more than a minor lapse in judgment. Not only did this man act destructively towards his wife's awareness, but his own.
Something that I have heard time and time again that O'ism gave new clarity to, is: The most dangerous man is the man with nothing to lose. If a man does not value his own life, and it is true that life is the source of all other values, then his actions become unpredictable events that anyone within his reach should be concerned about. The man who submits to emotion in defiance of reason is a man I want far away from me.
Then I asked myself the following questions: How many times has this event (women caught cheating red-handed) happened? (I didn't think it was a stretch to assume it has happened numerous times.) How many men have actually killed their wives because of it? (For the sake of argument and due to lack of statistics, I decided it was fair to divide it 50/50.) What separates the men who killed from the men who didn't? (This is where it got complicated for me.)
I thought it would be too easy to say "Their degree of rationality was the deciding factor," but could that be the case? Maybe a generally rational man had an extremely horrible day and was overwhelmed with anger...But then I quickly discovered that no matter what kind of day I had, there is nothing that would make me sacrifice my life to destroy another human being for deceiving me, hence doing repairable emotional damage to my awareness. The conclusion I came to is that a man who commits murder outside of self-defense cannot possibly be a critical thinker qua critical thinker, and is as unstable as entities who submit to the laws of gravity only "sometimes."
Then I asked myself: If this man was living next door to me, would I feel threatened? Yes -- only not in the most direct sense, i.e., this man might kill me -- but in the sense that he might hurt someone, vaguely including me. To me, the issue is not: Is this man a direct threat to my immediate life? but: Is this man a threat to my sense of justice, my sense of life? Of course he is. Is it my place to take his life in return? Not after the fact, since the government should properly possess a monopoly on the use of retaliation; however, if for some reason (e.g., I hear a scream) I am present when the act is being committed, I think I have the right to stop this man, even if it includes destroying his life, given it proves to be a necessary preventative action.
Assuming this man is not going to turn himself in, along with the assumption that he did -- in some form to some degree -- love (value) his wife, what evidence do I have to believe that this man would not hurt someone he did NOT value? Granted the situation is highly sensitive to context -- i.e., one could say that the crime was committed BECAUSE of the value involved, therefore, those he does not value need not worry -- I still think that a man guilty of an evil so fucking disgusting and self-destructive can now be presumed to be capable of anything equal or lesser in degree of evil. (I think it's like stretching a muscle...once you reach a certain point you can reach it again, along with all the points preceding it.)
I would like to add that person "B" could possibly be my mother or one of my sister's, and it changes the context from "threat" to "attack" -- i.e., person "A" has directly attacked my values, as opposed to attacking them through objective abstractions.
This may be a tangent, but I think it is relevant: I once considered how I would "feel" if an adolescent thug, say 12-16, attacked me with a gun in a robbery attempt, and "forced me" -- i.e., if I want to live, I must destroy him -- to kill him. I decided that I would not allow myself to feel anything, simply because this child "forced" me to regard him as a "destructive entity" as opposed to a "human being." What kind of horrible, deprived, or unwanted life he had is irrelevant; however misguided he was should not be considered; all that matters to me is the preservation of my awareness, justice, and reason. In the movie The Village, there is a perceived threat, and a woman asks a man: why are you not afraid? And he says: I do not think of fear; I think of what needs to be done. I would like to make this quote appropriate to the discussion by saying: I do not think of fear, compassion, or probability; I think of what needs to (should) be done.
When it comes to moral judgment, one must consider many things; however, I think that when it comes to responding to an immediate threat, in action, men must regard irrational, destructive men in the same light we regard a flood, with the same indifference to that which we are fighting, with the same goal in mind: To stop it.
I think that whether one regards person A as a threat depends on their values; just because person B is not my sister does not mean I am indifferent to her destruction, and it certainly does not mean that the future actions of person A are of no consequence to me, my values, and my sense of justice.
Remember when Spiderman let a criminal escape because the crime was committed, not against someone he did not know, but a man he felt deserved it -- only to discover that that same man proceeded to kill Uncle Ben?
I could be wrong, but I think it was Ayn who said: "A man who has unjustly taken one life has waged war against all living things, everywhere." I agree. Absolutely.
I did not mean to come out of the bushes with such a long-winded post.
-Alias
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