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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!
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To: Dayuhan who wrote (27945)1/11/1999 11:14:00 PM
From: Father Terrence   of 108807
 
Steve,

Yet another response from the esteemed John Galt:

Arrant nonsense. Your right to detonate a bomb is superceded by the right of the public not to be blown up. Your right to dump chemicals in your backyard is superceded by the public's right to tap clean groundwater for their personal use.

There are no such 'group' rights, Steven. The severity of the infringement ought not be weighted by the number of victims. One victim is already too many.

Your denial of collective good is based on a semantic quibble. When a group decides that their individual interests overlap, and that a given goal is good for them, I call that collective good. You call it an amalgam of individual goods. What we call it is irrelevant. It exists.

There are complexities involved in evaluating what is 'good' that can only derive from a mechanism that can handle such complexity - the individual mind. What is regarded as 'good' in any collective must descend to its lowest common denominator. Know then that there is no such thing as a 'group mind' and, hence, there can be no such a thing as a 'collective good' . What can be regarded as a 'collective good' is really only business as usual.

For example, John Galt has evaluated murder as something not good and in so doing John Galt is good. Steven Snail has also evaluated murder as something not good and in so doing Steven Snail is good. But John Galt cannot 'see' Steven Snails' goodness nor can Steven Snail truly 'see' John Galt's goodness. Let us agree, then, that murder is a basic violation of one's individual rights. This should be regarded purely and simply as a business transaction and nothing more. A word of wisdom, Steven...never assume 'goodness' in a collective, because it simply does not exist.

Have you ever lived in a community? How would you define a community?

A business.

John (businessman) Galt
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