Objectivism? What is that?

[Spunk-a-doo]

Objectivism

Nosferateu9

Oh, okay! ^^ Is morality important in day to day life, then?

According to Dictionary.com, "morality" means: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. This being said, Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy fully accepts and embraces said morality.

But what is moral for those involved in thoughts of Objectivism? Morality, as said above, is choosing the right and avoiding the wrong. The true path of mankind is rational selfishness, that is, that no one should be sacrificing their own self for the sake of another, or asking another to sacrifice himself for the sake of the asking person. It upholds that the value of human life is to live a happy one, and to survive by the means of its own ways.

So yes, morality is the center of this philosophy.[/quote

We can live a "good" life and still be considerate of others. Even God doesn't want us to be doormats. But to live selfishly, self centered is to throw away love, mercy, kindness. Ever heard that it is better to give than recieve? Maybe that is a philosophy for those who have experienced pain, want, need and have felt kindness and love and thus can return it.

 

[bluecherry]

#1) Being a commonly said phrase doesn't mean in and of itself that something is correct. You'll need to do better than just repeating an assertive catch phrase to prove what it posits is true as far as the "giving and receiving" thing goes.
#2) Objectivism doesn't think anything where you are just giving or just receiving from another person/people without contributing an equal value in return is a good deal. All things should involve a trade of some sort, equal value for equal value as judged by and agreed upon by those involved in the exchange. Anything else is ripping off at least one party or another and unjust.
#3) Objectivism supports justice as a necessity for optimizing the quality of each and every person's lives. So yes, mercy is out the window, but that's because mercy is opposed to justice and therefore would be detrimental on the whole.
#4) Kindness and love are not thrown out AT ALL. As I mentioned, Objectivism supports the concept of justice. Therefore when a person has earned love and kindness by their actions, words, and general character, they get it from you. You treat people as they have earned. (Actually, it is getting off topic so I won't really get into it, but I don't think love and kindness are really possible, certainly not well at least, without justice. I think mercy is actually detrimental to love and kindness.)
#5) Objectivism does not support being an a*****e to people in general who haven't done anything to deserve it that you know of. It's unjust and is only going to make you enemies out of people who you could otherwise have had good productive and satisfying interactions with. Once you've done that, you'll likely be suffering the consequences when you're looking to, say for example, rent an apartment, but you find nobody willing to rent one to you because they don't want to have to deal with you later on and are worried you might also drive away other less offensive people from wanting to rent or continue renting rooms from them, thus costing them much more better business while giving them headaches.

 

[Kirika7777]

I have read the Wiki article (here in Poland they don't even mention objectivism to grad students, not to mention high schools - because this is a clerical country and Objectivism is atheistic in essence) - and quite liked the idea.

It seems that Ayn Rand created this philosophy as an escape from what she saw in socialism/communism when she was running away from Russia.

Sometimes I wonder if she understood the Holocaust or so...

even the psychologists say that you can't expect pure altruism from yourself because you soon will get burned out. firstly, we always care about ourselves. (even if it is unconscious, e.g. if we love somebody we tend to expect love in return even if we don't think it aloud sometimes...)

and that the society should not determine what path you take. because you can never satisfy everyone.  

[Taylor_169]

Everything is subjective, as we can only interpret through our senses which cover a quite thin pie piece of the spectrums we know of. Not to mention that our minds are clouded by prejudice regardless of whether it's against a group of people or firmly grabbing a glowing red piece of metal. Whether or not the bias is working to your advantage, it's there, therefore things are only what we interpret and we can never be sure that what we are sensing is 'real'. No, we don't have anything better to work from, but that doesn't change my point.

Explain now, knowing my beliefs, objectivism please?  

[Life Hath Immortality]

Wow. This is much too technical for me...  

[xX-Syntatic_Heartzbite-Xx]

i dunno