inb4 Ayn Rand.
Rage at people sharing things.
@previous (Killer Lettuce !!iNo3FkiZx)
Here have some copypasta. There's more to it than this but I'm tired and that was the bit you are talking about.
We now move from the Mind Screw to the Flame Bait. Normally, this would be dealt with under ethics, but several of Rand's arguments against altruism were political in character. The issue of altruism is unquestioningly the area in which the vast majority of misunderstandings of Objectivism exist as well as the area where sacred cows are slaughtered.
Rand did not agree with altruism. She explicitly rejected the doctrine and considered it, essentially, a suicide morality that was advanced by power-crazed wannabe-dictators for the purposes of cloaking their Evil Plan in the robes of benevolence.
To most people, the charges she leveled at altruism wildly vary with what they have been told altruism actually means. To most people, altruism means (more or less) be kind to other people and refrain from being a jerkass.
This common definition of altruism is most emphatically not the definition Rand has in mind.
The word "altruism" was coined by Auguste Comte. He defined it as live for others and intended it to mean, basically, that a person can be called noble if the ultimate end of their actions is the benefit of others. In other words, the motive of service to others is intrinsically virtuous.
It is this definition of altruism that Rand was attacking. And Rand was not the only person to consider it insane. John Stuart Mill, a Utilitarian philosopher (not an ethical egoist like Rand), was quite shocked at the implications of Comte's definition. For more on this, please see Robert L. Campbell's
Altruism in Comte and Rand, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 357 to 369.
Rand argued that Comtean Altruism essentially results in a situation where the ends justifies the means with "others" as the end. As long as the intended end is the benefit of others, anything goes. For someone as concerned as she was with individual liberty, this is an understandable concern; Comtean Altruism can easily justify revoking the liberty of individuals if it is "for their own good."
Unfortunately, Auguste Comte's original definition was made much Lighter and Softer by many people that continued to use the word he originally coined to mean things much less severe than Comte originally intended.
This Lighter and Softer version of altruism has, unfortunately for Rand, had such an influence on ethical discourse that altruism became, in the minds of most people, a synonym for good. And if "the good" and "good for others" became equated, then it was only a matter of time before "good for the self" became equated with evil.
Rand's case against altruism is composed of multiple arguments. The first is that altruism does not actually define "the good", what makes an action good is the intended beneficiary of it (i.e. other people). This in turn is the basis for her aforementioned political argument; that the doctrine can justify revoking individual rights "for the good of others."
Rand also saw Comte's Altruism not as a new idea, but as a variant of a long string of very old ideas that she opposed. Altruism argues that the self must serve others, but there are many ethical traditions that argue the self must also serve something other than itself in order to justify the self's existence. For instance, monotheistic religions generally argue that individuals must serve God. Feudalism argued that individuals must serve their Monarchs. The common thread is that the individual must forego being concerned with their own interests and instead live for something outside themself; they must sacrifice themself for something else.
Rand assembled a very long list of traditions and ideas she believes to be related to, a cause of, or a consequence of, the basic belief that a human's highest moral duty is to serve something that isn't themself.
The idea she argued is the foundational cause of this belief is Original Sin. Original Sin is not merely the idea that Humans Are Flawed but that they are intrinsically flawed; to be evil is part of human nature. Objectivism rejects this idea because the nature of things is amoral; morality applies only in situations where choice exists and because a thing is what it is, it cannot choose its nature. Objectivism also argues that Original Sin is a belief from Platonic Realism in epistemology.
As stated before, Platonic Realism is the idea that universals, including "the good," exist in a transcendent realm of perfection beyond our world. An implication of this idea is our world is inherently flawed; it can only approximate "the good" and it can never match it. Original Sin is the application of this to human beings.
Because, according to this idea, humans are intrinsically flawed, they have to justify their existence. How? By sacrifice and service to something greater than themselves. Enter various codes of selfless morality, each promoting a different thing to serve; a tribe, a god, a king, a country... the Aryan race, the universal brotherhood of the proletariat, the list goes on.
In short, Rand argued that Auguste Comte's definition of Altruism is the best encapsulator of a long-existent moral tradition based in Platonic misanthropy, exploited by the power-hungry and used to control people. It is used to justify heinous acts and violate individual rights. Finally, it does not actually serve the function of an ethical code in the first place; it fails to give guidance on how to live: it essentially states that one must sacrifice their values/life to others (which in turn makes their life impossible/unbearable), in order to deserve the right to live. Likewise, if one chooses to instead live their life with their values, then they are denounced as evil and unfit to live by society. This simple contradiction makes Altruism, in Rand's eyes, a morality completely impossible to practice.
@233,175 (Killer Lettuce !!iNo3FkiZx)
There is a difference between sharing (which is the very base of capitalism) and giving things away without return (what trust-fund babies do to Haitians/Africans/whatever). One is a very good thing and the other is unsustainable and causes more harm than good.
While the ideal of reason governing things and capitalism and such being good, much of objectivism has become a cult of personality around Ayn Rand and her philosophies. Michael Shermer did a bit about them in his book, Why People Believe Weird Things.
all my experience with objectivism is from wikipedia and bioshock and it seemed pretty bad so you should probably kill yourself
Objectivism, or: how to rip off Greek philosophy and apply it to the Western world
@233,269 (hamfist !!snnYcROO9)
While there are some elements of Aristotle she borrows from, it's not a pure rip off of Ancient Greek thought. The concept of there being a "unified" school of ancient Greek thought is simply false by the way. The Parmenideans differed from the Pythagoreans, who differed from the Milesians, who differed from the Atomists, etc. And of course, there were discrepancies inside any individual school of thought as well.
@previous (hamfist !!snnYcROO9)
Admittedly, I am not as familiar with either Rand or Epicurus as I ought to be, but it is my impression that Rand was not a strict Epicurean/hedonist.
(Edited 12 seconds later.)