Which is funny, because I put up with a lot of shit in my personal life because I generally find the pleasure so worth the pain.

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Of course, on a global scale you could argue either way. I guess its up to the individual to decide that.

If you had one wish, which would you wish out of the two options?

A. Removing absolutely all the horrible pain and suffering that goes on in the world, whilst leaving those who are already happy (including those who are only barely happy) the same.

B. Maximizing all the pleasure in the world that already exists, whilst leaving all those who are unhappy (including the extreme unhappiness of intense torture) the same.

I definitely choose the former from a moral perspective. Absolutely.

Selfishly I like to live and I'm not saying that I would necessarily have the courage to do away with both the suffering and the pleasure in the world (if I could in a completely harmless way) rather than keep both. But morally I do think that that would be preferable.

A, of course, as B is easily done with the help of narcotics.

A is the most moral, but are you asking to have it done by removing all tools that could possibly hurt someone?

Well, that wasn't my point, no. I'm drawing an analogy to show how wishing that something had not existed in the first place is not the same as wishing to eliminate it.

Because 'A' is more moral I think it would be morally better if the world had never existed in the first place, because all the pain in this world outweighs the pleasure. But that does not mean I wish an apocalypse on the world now that it already exists.

So likewise, just because I think that it would be better if the Bible had never been written, that doesn't mean that I wish that all Bibles should be burnt.

That's my analogy.

And so my point is, yes, I think the Bible itself has done harm in the sense that without it there couldn't have been any harmful interpretations of it (like there has been, very much so). So yes I resent it (as in I wish it was never written), but I don't think it should be burnt because I'm against burning books.

And although my original point wasn't to suggest removing all harmful tools... I do think that would obviously be ideal if it were possible. I mean, how would it be moral to have any weapon of any kind if not for defence against other weapons being used to cause even more harm? If no one had any weapons, and no one could have any weapons in future so there would be no reason for them to prepare themselves defensively, there wouldn't be a problem.

Obviously though, reality isn't like that. In the real world we can't be entirely moral idealists if we are to be moral, we also have to be moral realists. And by this I mean that, there's no point in subscribing something impossible. "Ought to" implies "can do" and since utopian ideals almost certainly don't (and may never) apply to the real world, a lot of moral ideals are more about what we want to move towards rather than actually aim for precisely. There's no point in telling someone that they should do "X" if they can't, but it's reasonable to say "Get as close to X as you possibly can".

(December 23, 2010 at 5:11 pm)GANIMEDE Wrote: As far as I know, Ayn Rand was a turncoat against her native Russia and an advocate of rip-roaring-predatory-capitalism, with a slavish worship of Americanisms and their various cults, including their Doomsday Cults and their "Manifest Destiny" docturine of world domination and genocide. Am I incorrect?

Honestly GANIMEDE, in this 'wiki' age...to start comment with...as far as i know...and get it so ass backward is inexcusable, if you're going to bother reading her books or at the very least reading the wiki entry then you set yourself up for ridicule when you feel the urge to jump headlong into opinion sharing. just admit that you don't have one...

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(December 23, 2010 at 5:35 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(December 23, 2010 at 5:11 pm)GANIMEDE Wrote: As far as I know, Ayn Rand was a turncoat against her native Russia and an advocate of rip-roaring-predatory-capitalism, with a slavish worship of Americanisms and their various cults, including their Doomsday Cults and their "Manifest Destiny" docturine of world domination and genocide. Am I not incorrect?

She was a parady of her own espoused beliefs - a loud mouthed self-absorbed clown pretending to her self to be the mother of all supermen.

Please sum up her beliefs...that she was meant to be paradying...

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(December 23, 2010 at 6:10 pm)GANIMEDE Wrote:

(December 23, 2010 at 5:35 pm)Chuck Wrote: She was a parady of her own espoused beliefs - a loud mouthed self-absorbed clown pretending to her self to be the mother of all supermen.

Beautifully put and how accurate!

Thank U Chuck!

it seems you and chuck are patting each other on the back for sitting in back of the class and commenting on the lecturers tie. fail! please sum up her beliefs...not the persona...objectivism

The right wing tea-partiers have appropriated Ayn Rand's ideology to provide theoretical support to the hard right's agenda of eliminating government, de-regulating business, and rationalizing their own selfishness.

Objectivism and libertariansim has always been a theology. Something that is believed on apparent reason but in actuality could never work in a practical application of the principles involved. Laissez faire capitalism, rational egoism, and the elimination of government would spell the end for whichever country foolish enough to adopt these principles.

So, what? Is this thread starting again?

(April 20, 2012 at 9:39 pm)mediamogul Wrote: The right wing tea-partiers have appropriated Ayn Rand's ideology to provide theoretical support to the hard right's agenda of eliminating government, de-regulating business, and rationalizing their own selfishness.

The tea-partiers are rationalizing, since they ignore all the core concepts of objectivism and cherry-pick the things they want to implement. Since they ignore the premises, they don't understand the limits of application of those principles.

(April 20, 2012 at 9:39 pm)mediamogul Wrote: Objectivism and libertariansim has always been a theology. Something that is believed on apparent reason but in actuality could never work in a practical application of the principles involved. Laissez faire capitalism, rational egoism, and the elimination of government would spell the end for whichever country foolish enough to adopt these principles.

Actually, neither has ever been a theology - which specifically refers to religious study.
Laissez faire capitalism and rational egoism have been accepted as ideals to achieve by different countries over to history and they are all still standing. And objectivism never calls for elimination of government.

(April 21, 2012 at 7:05 am)genkaus Wrote: So, what? Is this thread starting again?

(April 20, 2012 at 9:39 pm)mediamogul Wrote: The right wing tea-partiers have appropriated Ayn Rand's ideology to provide theoretical support to the hard right's agenda of eliminating government, de-regulating business, and rationalizing their own selfishness.

The tea-partiers are rationalizing, since they ignore all the core concepts of objectivism and cherry-pick the things they want to implement. Since they ignore the premises, they don't understand the limits of application of those principles.

(April 20, 2012 at 9:39 pm)mediamogul Wrote: Objectivism and libertariansim has always been a theology. Something that is believed on apparent reason but in actuality could never work in a practical application of the principles involved. Laissez faire capitalism, rational egoism, and the elimination of government would spell the end for whichever country foolish enough to adopt these principles.

Actually, neither has ever been a theology - which specifically refers to religious study.
Laissez faire capitalism and rational egoism have been accepted as ideals to achieve by different countries over to history and they are all still standing. And objectivism never calls for elimination of government.

The Tea-Party is certainly based upon a reading of Rand's Objectivism, granted a misreading, and the Bible. Rand no doubt would completely reject their ideological twist on her theories the same way that Marx stated "I am not a Marxist" after seeing how the Paris Commune butchered his writings. All the basics are there: significant reduction in government, de-regulation of business, "greed is good", the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor, the histrionics about "big government control over people's lives",

My statement that Libertarianism is a theology (which is borrowed from Thom Hartmann) simply means it is believed by those who hold it's principles as an established system of belief though it has never been applied in practice. Many people believe in it as though it were completely rational, time-tested, and practically proven to work. I think it has never been applied in practice due to the fact that especially the laissez-faire capitalism and also removal of the safety net programs would generate a huge stratification of wealth and seriously decrease the quality of life for most citizens.

Also, laissez-faire capitalism has never been accepted or put into practice by an industrialized nation. Libertarianism calls for, essentially the elimination of government. Only the police, military, and legislative branch (but cut down to bare bones) would remain in terms of government. Most other services would be privatized. Rand's theories say basically the same thing. Objectivism is one of those things that works in theory but in practice would be disastrous. It is a complete misread of human nature, market forces and "natural order" of things.