RoR: Forum

The hardest selling point when I talk to other people is the difference between the desire to help others and the obligation to help others.

What arguments do you guys find works best when people come at you with "you owe society" and all that jazz?

Sarah

Post 1

Friday, September 9, 2005 - 3:03pm

Ask them what or how much is owed, and according to whose determination.

Post 2

Friday, September 9, 2005 - 4:44pm

Sarah, I usually just tell them, "I don't agree with you," and get out. Some people won't listen to reason. Sometimes, I point out that I earn a living, I don't leech off of others, and I do not use others as tools or as prey. I once pointed to the scar on my forehead, which I had received in school at the hands of another student, and said, "I sure as hell owe society for this. Whose ass should I kick first? Yours, perhaps, since you dared to waste my time?"
(Edited by Matthew Graybosch
on 9/09, 4:48pm)

Post 3

Friday, September 9, 2005 - 4:58pm

What arguments do you guys find works best when people come at you with "you owe society" and all that jazz?

Ah, the good old-fashioned playing on the guilt thang. A good and moral person has no debt to society. If one wishes to contribute it is their choice, their money, their time and I am usually willing to pitch in, that is unless someone comes up with that "you owe society" or similar bromide. I am actually rather generous, but if someone tries to pry even a dime out of me by playing that card, they will get nowhere.

By what right do they have a claim against me.

Usually just saying "excuse me" with the proper expression and body language will get the point across. The closer you are to someone putting forth the jazz, the harder it is to argue, because you know they really do believe it is the right thing to do. I especially hate when the collection plate goes around at work. I am not a team player. When the United Way beg-a-thon comes around with the underlying peer pressure to "give until it hurts" I simply don't. It doesn't make me stingy, it is my choice. Do I ever give to charity. Yup, but on my terms. There are plenty of places to give if you want. When voluntary seems like mandatory, it takes all the joy out of giving.

Apparently, I look like an easy mark on the street, and I am constantly approached by panhandlers in Chicago, sometimes 3 or 4 times in one day. Usually I shake my head no and keep walking. These guys get aggressive though. I have had guys literally get out in my face shaking their cup and I have had to literally tell these guys off. "Get out of my face, I don't owe you damn thing" sometimes with a little brighter and more colorful language thrown in. Don't be afraid to tell them to fuck off. Someone has to. They have initiated force against you if they persist after you have clearly told them no. It's also rather amusing to see the way it makes people scratch their heads and wonder.

Kat
(who doesn't pay the kitty)

Post 4

Friday, September 9, 2005 - 5:40pm

As I remember it, Ayn Rand answered "No one will stop you."

Context:

The student who asked the question was wearing a star of David pendant (in those days not necesssarily a badge of religion, just an indication that people who did not wish to deal with Jews, as was sometimes the case, should not waste your time.) So the student was probably familiar with Maimonides' analysis of the relative effectiveness of different ways of helping the poor. According to Maimonides, the most effective way to help a poor person is to invest in a business that will give that person productive work. The second most effective way is to train that person in a skill that he can use to compete for employment, and so on.

The point was that by "regulations" that were hampering investment, by minimum wage laws that made it unprofitable to hire trainees etc, the "welfare state" was in fact stopping those who would follow Maimonides' advice from helping the poor in the most effective ways. "No one will stop you" means that those barriers to helping the poor in the most effective ways would disappear.

If the listener had been a Christian, with the idea that a poor person is best helped by giving him alms, Ayn Rand's answer would sound like she was dissing benevolence. But that is the Christians' problem, not Rand's.

Post 5

Friday, September 9, 2005 - 5:55pm

1. This strikes me as unwarranted mind-reading. How do you know what was on Rand's mind (if Rand's it was) or that she knew anything about Maimonides? She once quoted the Reverend Ike to similar effect, but I never saw her mention Maimonides.

2. According to Rand (Collectivized 'Rights', if memory serves), Barbara Branden is the one who said this.

Peter

Post 6

Friday, September 9, 2005 - 7:31pm

Peter,

My own memory of who was answering the questions is hazy - Rand was there, so I may have been under the mistaken impression that it was her answer. And of course I can't be sure of my interpretation, although that was the meaning I took away. It is also possible that I was at a subsequent session, at which Rand gave Barbara Branden's answer in better English. I am sure that the answer I heard was "No one will stop you," not Barbara Branden's "You will not be stopped."

I'm sure that Rand was exposed to Maimonides, since my own parents also were born secular Jews, also in the old Russian empire, just 4 years after Rand, when all members of the intelligentsia were expected to be familiar with their ethnic cultures. I don't know about Barbara Branden, but she is much more likely to have been familiar with Jewish ethics - which does not have a notion of alms, only of justice - than with the Christian counterpart.

(Edited by Adam Reed
on 9/09, 7:42pm)

Post 7

Saturday, September 10, 2005 - 6:55am

Sarah good question. I always get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomache when I hear that or another favorite, "giving back to the community". I imagine its the kind of feeling I would get if I were ever robbed at gunpoint.

And I am not sure I would try to answer the question beyond a imple "no".

John

Post 8

Saturday, September 10, 2005 - 8:42am

Peter and Adam,
In her article "Collectivized Ethics" on p. 93 of The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand said:

Once, when Barbara Branden was asked by a student: "What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?"�she answered: "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."

Thanks,

Glenn

Post 9

Saturday, September 10, 2005 - 1:38pm

John,

And I am not sure I would try to answer the question beyond a simple "no".

I agree with that. Unless I'm looking for an arguement, I am under no obligation to answer any other way.

Of course LOLOLOL works for me too!

gw

Post 10

Saturday, September 10, 2005 - 2:47pm

In light of the history and speculation that Reed gives us in #4 and #6, you have to wonder why Rand quoted a Christian clergyman rather than Maimonides to make the point that imparting productivity to people is a better way of helping them than giving them a handout. ( It was in The Ayn Rand Letter in the 70s, and the quote was the familiar one about giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish.)

In a review of The Russian Radical (http://www.objectivistcenter.org/navigator/articles/nav+jlennox_review-ayn-rand-russian-radical.asp), James Lennox made the point that could/might/must-have-known isn't adequate to establish intellectual influences; what you need is hard documentation that one writer cited the other. He gives the example of Darwin and Malthus. People supposed that Darwin learned from Malthus, but firm attibution had to wait until journal entries came to light. Closer to home, Wright's influence on The Fountainhead was clear enough to anyone who read the novel, but this wasn't for sure until Rand's letters and diaries were published. We don't have this for a putative Rand/Maimonides connection.

Occam's razor suggests that, if Rand quoted the Reverend Ike, she was thinking of the Reverend Ike and preferred his way of putting the point, rather than that [...psychobio mumbojumbo...gratuitous perverseness on Rand's part...] she was really thinking of somebody else whom she never mentioned.

Peter

Post 11

Saturday, September 10, 2005 - 8:26pm

Peter,

I am not trying to convince you - just reporting how I understood it, and how I thought the questioner understood it. I wonder, what interpretation would you consider more reasonable?

Post 12

Monday, September 12, 2005 - 10:48am

Sarah House wrote: "The hardest selling point when I talk to other people is the difference between the desire to help others and the obligation to help others."

A curious thought: where does that desire come from? What values trigger that desire?

I have not studied objectivism in all its philosophical details, so don't know if this question has already been answered/discussed.

Sanjay

Post 13

Monday, September 12, 2005 - 11:29am

Nathaniel Branden's Benevolence Versus Altruism, anthologized in VoS, is a good place to start.

Peter

Post 14

Monday, September 12, 2005 - 12:06pm

Or, if you want to look at it outside Objectivism, E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature and Dawkin's Selfish Gene talk about the development of cooperation biologically.

Sarah

Post 15

Monday, September 12, 2005 - 10:31pm

Coalton,

Great question of yours on helping others.

A curious thought: where does that desire come from? What values trigger that desire?

I have been doing a lot of thinking over time about human species-related emotions and drives. I believe that empathy is one of those.

It is an emotion and, as such, it is inherently good, but can be used for evil if it is taken as anything but an emotion. And, it exists in all of us.

Altruism is a philosophy, mainly ethics. It places human species concerns, especially empathy, over the individual human being as primary value. This brings collectivism to the metaphysical realm where it does not belong. (Don't forget that it is always only one single consciousness that perceives existence and integrates concepts per human being, thus individualism takes a certain metaphysical and epistemological precedence over species value-wise.)

I am leaning more and more in the direction of balancing species related emotions and drives with pure unadulterated selfishness - and even making them part of that.

I wish to flourish and "bloom" completely, both as an individual and as a member of my species.

This is a long subject and deserves a long treatment of it.

Michael

Post 16

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - 7:53am

Pity and benevolence are two different things, I believe. Altruism focuses on pity.

Post 17

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - 10:42am

Michael wrote: "I have been doing a lot of thinking over time about human species-related emotions and drives. I believe that empathy is one of those.

It is an emotion and, as such, it is inherently good, but can be used for evil if it is taken as anything but an emotion. And, it exists in all of us."

I don't want to sound like nitpicking, but how can an emotion be 'inherently good' (or for that matter anything)? It goes back to values, does it not? Perhaps, I am misreading what you meant.

Thanks to Sarah House and Peter Reidy for the references.

Sanjay

Post 18

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - 4:36pm

That is true - an emotion simply "is"... what it is emoted of determines the valuing...

Post 19

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - 8:58pm