[Ask the Gulch] What is the true morality of the collectivist?
Posted by LibertyPen 8 years, 2 months ago to Ask the Gulch
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IT"S HUMOR! Laughing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oUwx...
There is much morality in making choices for collectivism. Lack of morality is not what is wrong with it. Most people even welcome limited collectivism in there religious and other group activities where they are not physically forced to act without choice. Even Rand and her followers had a collective where psychologizing was done to change beliefs along with purges and near shaming incidents took place. Such belonging is not considered immoral or amoral. It is near impossible, with a functioning brain/mind to act in an amoral way.
What I wrote in its context is not nonsense at all. Morality has no function whatever without other people. A "code" is noting without other people. Laws are nothing without other people. All of those things without people have no purpose or relevance.
Morality is a societal construct to define behaviors in a group. Further, it extends itself into peoples actions and future action by validating the creation of laws (because the collective group accepts the communal morality). All religions are societal control tools predicated on one group knowing what is right and wrong and convincing others that they are correct.
She writes in Galt's speech: "What is morality, or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions -- the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code."
When I and she use the concept of 'code' we do not use it in a social-political way but, in this case, as an individually accepted mentally integrated set of existents for guiding ones actions, in this case essential existents toward which one acts by virtue toward furthering ones life. Of course part of the code, when living in a society or just dealing with other people, will require discovering things like rights, empathy, how not to piss off your church friends, etc., but a moral code is needed if one is isolated else one perishes.
Alone...hunger hits = you find food. Get to cold or too hot = you find warmth or a cooler place. This isn't a code, moral or otherwise, its simply acting out of necessity.
The individual, again alone, wouldn't bother to think out or even define his/her moral framework in that situation he'd/she'd simply be adapting to overcome the most pressing need. In that environment, mountain man/woman or hermit, the individual would live in the moment without the slightest thought to how he's/she's acting or with regard to what anyone thinks.
No morality. No code. Just basic necessity - complete self-interest as it relates to survival.
It is in those emergency situations where thought is imperative if the self is to survive. There are many who cannot even survive in society because they just do as you say, try to live without a moral framework with respect to themselves. They might learn, if they had grown up spoon fed and completely pampered, by accident that dirt does not satisfy hunger and that getting out of the wind might help with being cold, but what is learned in that circumstance can become moral knowledge for later action. Only a few humans are actually unable to not form a rudimentary selfish code of values. Those who do have some values can decide that they are being selfish and thus evil and spend a life being tended to by those who are selfish enough to seek life.
You must have a moral code which makes you selfish enough to believe your values and virtues are important enough for your own life that you choose to place your ideas of morality before some of the public? Or, is your direction toward gaining praise from others so that you get some kind of social worth to stand in for self esteem?
Self interest is interest in self and those matters critical to self. A simple self-contained statement convoluted by defining "terms", requiring the proper rosetta stone (or lexicon) to "understand".
I have a copy of VOS sitting 2 feet from me. I started it a while back, got about 30 pages in, and then was side-tracked. I'll pick it back up again once I finish the books I'm reading.
Even so, I generally don't put a book down unless its really poorly written (not suggesting it is) or it puts me to sleep more than once.
In a social context each individual has their own morality and each exercises that morality within the framework of that society.
“The Objectivist Ethics,”
The Virtue of Selfishness, 34
More here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/alt...
All selfless acts are by choice or at least the acceptance of risk of life.
Well done, well met.
I'm laughing here, folks.
Hildebeast smiles a lot, but there is true evil that lurks within.
The collectivist mindset is actually a natural human one, which works well for extended families and small tribes, which is how we lived for most of our evolution. When we started living in larger groups (nations) then we cannot know everyone personally, and the collectivist/tribal philosophy fails.
The objectivist / individualist philosophy is a more recent concept and works with groups of any size, but it has to be consciously and rationally applied. In that respect, collectivists are living unconsciously, but none will ever be enlightened by trying to make them believe they are themselves evil.
Alan Greenspan talks about this in the parts of Age of Turbulance where he praises Rand. He says resisting collectivism goes against human evolution and the moral values taught by religions of the world, but it's still the right thing.
"none will ever be enlightened by trying to make them believe they are themselves evil."
If someone's goal is to blame collectivists for his problems and to provide a thin intellectual reason to be mean, he actually does not want to see anyone enlightened.
"Liberal" on the other hand is virtually always restrictive 00 again opposite any rational definition. "Conservative" usually -- at least verbally -- reflects an effort to "conserve" the power of the government, but of course is never actually spoken in political circles that way. Getting back to the initial question, sort of, Morality -- suggests a fixed set of values; politics, almost by definition does not!
The true collectivist would seek for everyone to have the same privilege and share in the same opportunity as everyone else, knowing that the only real benefit to the community as a whole is a result of the improvement of the individual.
This post is an inspiration.
The term "groupthink" just jumped back into old dino's widdle brain.
It came, it lingered, it faded away and me dino has not even thought about it for years.
http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resou....
Groupthink ties into collectivism~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collect...
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sel... (second one down)
We've already established that politicians in Washington are only in it for power and money. That makes them immoral at the outset. The fallacy is to attribute any sort of morality to them. Oh yes, there are a few exceptions (very few). But as the old saw goes, the exception proves the rule.
Toohey - Quintessential Evil - He simply does not want people to follow the their dreams
Keating - His mom teaches him to seek reactions of others as purpose in life. His life becomes empty.
Keating's g/f, Catherine - After Peter Keating strings her along for a long time, she ends up being this weird empty shell of a person. I couldn't figure out why, but I figured her uncle Toohey plus Keating's dishonest treatment of her had something to do with it.
Gail Wynand - He's on a mission to be sure he runs things and idiots boss him around as they did when he was poor. Unlike Toohey, who is bothered by people following their dreams, Wynand is bothered by Roark's greatness because someone else being great puts Wynand a little closer to the peril of idiots bossing him around, an he has an irrational PTSD-like aversion to that. Unlike Toohey and and Peter Keating, Wynand appreciates Roark's art and realizes the emptiness of a life focused on owning the media, so he can influence public opinion, so he can be damn sure no idiots boss him around.
I'm interested if there is on thread of immorality tying them all together. They all seemed to have an unhealthy focus on others but for different reasons.