Ayn Rand vs. the Pygmies
slate.com
slate.com
Would Rand think it is wrong to be an altruist just for your own family? (E.g. your family's survival).
John Galt chose to exit the corrupt society and start (a small) new society based upon his values. If I remember correct he was waiting (and actively helped for) society to implode so he could reboot it. He didn't do what the article claims: "He refused to participate in society and no one has seen him since."
What that means in the article is that if someone behaved like John Galt, they would not survive among our ancient ancestors. So a John Galt would have disappeared, that's why the article says that "no one has seen him since."
Galt was an altruist, by the modern use of the word.
The error the author makes is confusing voluntary sharing with theft (Eg: sharing at the point of a gun)... and they always make this error because they want to pretend like the theft is voluntary so that they don't have to face the fact that they are advocating violence.
The antagonists, far from being "collectivists" were actually compulsively selfish, even to the point of using collectivism as a means to advance their own selfish agendas (for an objectivist, why isn't subjugation of the masses a legitimate means to achieve personal fulfillment?)
Of course this is, in part, just good writing on Rand's part, the protagonist is supposed to at least garner sympathy, if not admiration. But in order to make the characters sympathetic or admirable I feel she compromised what was, supposedly, her vision (or maybe it is her vision that has been distorted recently, I don't know).
People who are exclusively self-interested don't try to contribute to the world. They do whatever gets them what they want (of course you can argue that Dagney Taggart wanted a successful transportation empire, but that seems like a pretty esoteric thing to lust after).
The fact that the heroes and heroines were outraged by what they saw in society means, to me anyway, that they weren't exclusively self-interested (and if they were, then they derived significant personal utility from the welfare of others, which is really the same thing as being tribal/social/collectivist). They were acting as collectivists.
Maybe I misunderstood the entire book, who knows.
The best outcome for society is for government to adhere to the principles laid out in Atlas Shrugged.
Collectivism has given us poverty, illiteracy, the 2008 financial crisis, etc.
Worse, whenever they screw things up really bad, they use the fact that things are screwed up to claim that they need even more power to exploit poor people and violate the rights of everybody, and they wrap themselves in the flag of "serving the poor" to sell it.
These people pretend like Rand was advocating self centeredness, and that they are advocating altruism, when the reverse is more accurate.
Rand is advocating freedom and liberty and they are advocating a form of slavery.
It may be derogatory but it's not false. Rational self-interest was the centrepiece of Rand's moral philosophy.
> The best outcome for society is for government to adhere to the principles laid out in Atlas Shrugged.
The most successful societies, by a wide variety of measures, manage to balance individual freedom, agency and entrepreneurialism with a foundation of civil liberty and social equity that provides the best opportunities for everyone to succeed.
> Collectivism has given us poverty, illiteracy, the 2008 financial crisis, etc.
Labelling the whole gamut of different forms of government under a pejorative ism has given us a legacy of dogmatic, wooly-minded incoherent political discourse.
> Worse, whenever they screw things up really bad, they use the fact that things are screwed up to claim that they need even more power to exploit poor people and violate the rights of everybody, and they wrap themselves in the flag of "serving the poor" to sell it.
Some of them do that some of the time, and one solution is to eliminate government, but that has not worked anywhere ever. What has worked - what is working today in many places - is to press for a better, more responsive government that forms policies based on evidence and respects human rights.
> These people pretend like Rand was advocating self centeredness, and that they are advocating altruism, when the reverse is more accurate.
The 2008 economic crisis, incidentally, was made possible in large party through deliberate state deregulation of the financial industry in the late 1990s, a catastrophic outcome that was predicted at the time but ignored by those people who were most loudly touting libertarian governing doctrines.
Most people who buy into Rand's philosophy essentially buy into this message, it is rather pointless to try to debate the more subtle points of her philosophy with them.
IMHO, human society is neither about collectivism or individualism but a dynamic balance of the two.
Fiction allows her to illustrate abstract concepts concretely.
Making the comparison to Scientology would be silly, since Scientology is a religion, not a philosophy.
By the way, I can assure you the author of this article (and every anti-Rand article I've ever seen from leftist publications) has not read Atlas Shrugged.
If you had read it you wouldn't ask the question, because the use of fiction to deliver the philosophy is extremely effective.
That and the fact that in the last 50 years so many of the types of events that seemed outrageous at the time have actually occurred in reality.
I will collaborate with the other hunters because I value their wellbeing and community and they can help me fulfil my own goals.
The altruist (in the Randian sense) viewpoint:
I will collaborate with the other hunters because the needs of the tribe supersede my own.
Rand and Objectivism never oppose charity or altruism at all. The "altruism" she opposed is when a group of powerful people (usually government) use violence to take money from people, or enslave them, and claim that they are doing it "for the benefit of everyone".
What she proved was that this was not for the benefit of everyone, but for the benefit of the politicians who are doing the taking. The science of economics bears this out as well.
This article is simple flamebait, and it fails to be honest in its premise.
If you have not read Atlas Shrugged, be aware that most of the time you see a mainstream article attacking Ayn Rand, they are usually being dishonest about what she actually said, as this article is as well. This is for political reasons (and that the left ideology is desperate to demonize her so that their adherents won't read the book and see the errors in leftism.)
Voluntary associations are not collectivism.