Granted that I am no expert on Objectivism, I still have been doing nothing but constant studying in the past few days.
To me, the systems core is valid and makes sense. But I think when applied to one's life, does it seem rather horrible.
It still works. It accomplishes it's goal. But were every human to follow it as Ayn Rand once predicted, then I think the Earth would be a rotten place.
The reason for this is that Objectivism holds the standards of morality as man's life. Meaning that anything that is placed as more important than your own life is wrong, and if it is harmful to you (even if it's beneficial to others), it's evil.
When I first read into that core, it sounded so great. But then I did further research and many hours of thinking.
Following Objectivism, one is encouraged not to make any sacrifices, because people will become dependent on your good will. But the ends do not justify the means, so if you're hurting yourself in some way (financially, physically, emotionally) then you are commiting an act of evil, and the victim of your charity will become dependent on your actions.
This, to me, is nonsense. If all humans were to act this selfish, we would never progress as a race. I understand how vital being an individual is, but also we need to understand how vital the collective is. We need a healthy balance of the two. Under Objectivism, the entire LGBT community is in the wrong because it is focusing on a group effort and not thinking in terms of the individual. This of course, isn't entirely true, as the whole reason we fight is so everyone, including each of our own self, can have the same rights as white heterosexual males do.
But Ayn Rand was vehemently opposed to any kind of homosexuality, including each category of LGBT, calling it illogical.
According to objectivism, we must think in terms of logic and reason, if something feels right but makes little sense, we shouldn't do it, according to Ayn Rand.
And again, at first this sounds valid. But that would mean solely focusing on what we need instead of our own happiness. We would essentially be a bunch of Vulcan's, rejecting emotion as any source of knowledge or guidance.
What do you all think? If you don't know what Objectivism is, look up objectivism 101 on google for more info.
Reminds me of a game not too long ago, would you kindly look at the video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XBBFok1mUY# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XBBFok1mUY#)
:D
The crutch of Rand's Objectivism is that humans would have to actively respect the rights of others, something I'm not seeing too much of. Rand claiming same gender attraction as bad itself is in a way illogical because it is imposing a (narrow) reproduction based societal view upon another person or group without full knowledge of the epidemiology of the behaviors exhibited by persons with a primary attraction to other persons identifying as the same gender as themselves.
(disclaimer: I'm a lesbinator :icon_eyebrow:)
Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism is coined by her.
Then you have John Locke who exercised a profound influence on political philosophy, in particular on modern liberalism.
Jeremy Bentham his utilitarianism, expounded in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.
Anything you choose that is logical depends on the values you use in the logic. Emotions can also have value.
The problem I have is that it's not objective to think in terms of "me, my, mine" and it's illogical to believe that "you" are more important than anyone else, in the long run.
As such, the whole system appears to be "mis-named".
(I'm a big fan of constant drive towards applying as objective an approach/thought as possible to as many things as possible.)
Rand completely misunderstands Hume's is-ought problem, so every prescriptive statement her philosophy makes is without justification.