I think Rand was wrong to emphasize selfishness and egoism so much, instead of placing more emphasis on rejecting inherent conflicts of interest, seeking win/win solutions, aiming for classical liberal social harmony, etc.
I have been wondering about this recently. It seems like rational self-interest has two constraints, in terms of who benefits from your actions:
- your actions should be good for you
- your actions should be good or neutral for everyone else, who are not initiators of force
I guess Ayn Rand wanted to emphasize that 1 implies 2 but not vice versa. Is that why she emphasized selfishness and egoism so much?
Is the idea of win/win solutions more general than rational self-interest? Or are they equivalent ideas?
GOAL: React to the article. Provide questions and thoughts that might demonstrate problems encountered by beginners.
From the article:
I’m concerned that my society is too corrupt to help with e.g. a scientific breakthrough or to sell my brains to work on other people’s goals (e.g. working for a big company or government in a way that significantly and uniquely helps them, rather than in a job where I’d be easily replaceable with someone else).
Do you think society is too corrupt for the scientific knowledge and technology that it already possesses? I notice that you said that you are concerned that society is too corrupt but I don’t think you are making a definite pronouncement that it’s too corrupt or that you are really confident that you shouldn’t use your mind to help society. What are some things that would convince you more one way or the other?
If society is currently too corrupt, has it always been too corrupt to help with scientific breakthroughs or is this new? Should none of the scientists who discovered things have shared those discoveries? If all the scientists who shared were wrong, that would go against my intuition because it seems like the world has become amazingly better as a result of science. I might also guess that science has helped improve some moral ideas and new science might help improve morality even more. Some bad philosophical ideas, or their implications, have been shown to be demostrably false in more obvious ways as a result of science. I think that science helped some people learn some additional moral knowledge without learning much philosophy. I guess I’m saying that science has added a bunch of ideas that have become more or less common sense. So, the common sense worldview has improved by being infused with scientific knowledge. Could scientific progress be a path to more people learning philosophy?
An awful quote was brought to my attention that I hadn’t seen before. From Journals of Ayn Rand, one of many character notes for Howard Roark. I’ve provided the whole note for context and bolded the worst sentence.
Sex—sensuous in the manner of a healthy animal. But not greatly interested in the subject. Can never lose himself in love. Even his great and only love—Dominique Wynand—is not an all-absorbing, selfless passion. It is merely the pride of a possessor. If he could not have her, it would not break him or affect him very deeply. He might suffer—in his own indifferent way, a suffering that can never reach deep enough to obscure life.
His attitude toward Dominique is not: “I love you and I am yours.” It’s: “I love you and you are mine.” It is primarily a feeling of wanting her and getting her, without great concern for the question of whether she wants it. Were it necessary, he could rape her and feel perfectly justified. Needless to say, it is she who worships him, and loves him much more than he loves her. He is the god. He can never become a priest. She has to be the priestess. Until his meeting with Dominique, he has had affairs with women, perfectly cold, emotionless affairs, without the slightest pretense at love. Merely satisfying a physical need and recognized by his mistresses as such.