Moral Obligation to Your Fellow Man

[Brown_Pride]

"Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None—except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and theirs demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice. It is only with their mind that I can deal and only for my own self-interest, when they see that my interest coincides with theirs. When they don’t, I enter no relationship; I let dissenters go their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs."
John Galts

What do you think of this passage? Do you agree?

Obviously from a christian perspective this is in stark contrast to what I believe.

This (Ayn Rand's) philosophy is used often to promote capitalism and the free market/less regulations.

IF you agree with that passage how do you NOT agree with much of right wing ideology?

 

[Habit]

Very egocentric point of view. I get what Ayn Rand is trying to say, she is arguing against self-sacrifice. But balance is still important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)

 

[Double Burger With Cheese]

"Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None—except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and theirs demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice. It is only with their mind that I can deal and only for my own self-interest, when they see that my interest coincides with theirs. When they don’t, I enter no relationship; I let dissenters go their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs."
John Galts

What do you think of this passage? Do you agree?

Obviously from a christian perspective this is in stark contrast to what I believe.

This (Ayn Rand's) philosophy is used often to promote capitalism and the free market/less regulations.

IF you agree with that passage how do you NOT agree with much of right wing ideology?

Just don't harm anyone or intrude on their happiness

 

[Habit]

Also...

In the end, Rand was destroyed by her own dogmas. She fell in love with a young follower called Nathaniel Branden and had a decades-long affair with him. He became the cult's No. 2, and she named him as her "intellectual heir"—until he admitted he had fallen in love with a 23-year-old woman. As Burns explains, Rand's philosophy "taught that sex was never physical; it was always inspired by a deeper recognition of shared values, a sense that the other embodied the highest human achievement." So to be sexually rejected by Branden meant he was rejecting her ideas, her philosophy, her entire person. She screamed: "You have rejected me? You have dared to reject me? Me, your highest value?"

She never really recovered. We all become weak at some point in our lives, so a thinker who despises weakness will end up despising herself. In her 70s Rand found herself dying of lung cancer, after insisting that her followers smoke because it symbolized "man's victory over fire" and the studies showing it caused lung cancer were Communist propaganda. By then she had driven almost everyone away. In 1982, she died alone in her apartment with only a hired nurse at her side. If her philosophy is right—if the only human relationships worth having are based on the exchange of dollars—this was a happy and victorious death. Did even she believe it in the end?

Two biographies of Ayn Rand. - Slate Magazine