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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (61491)	10/8/2002 9:28:31 AM
From: Bill	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 82486

This discussion has become needlessly protracted. Yet everyone here would probably agree with the Randian concept that self disinterest does not lead to a productive society.

To: Neocon who wrote (61491)	10/8/2002 11:12:36 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

It only makes sense to call it "self" interest if the object of concern is the "self"....... If a parent takes heroic steps to protect his child, does he do that for the child or does he do that for himself? If the child is dead, it's dead, beyond joy or suffering. It's the parent who has to live on regretting that he didn't protect his kid, doing without his company, not having grandchildren, or someone to look after him in his old age. Nah, no self interest there. ;)

To: Neocon who wrote (61491)	10/8/2002 11:40:23 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"It still comes back to this: just because we are interested does not make an action self-interested" But it does, Herr Neo. No one denies that reward and punishment, affection and ostracism, praise and condemnation, and other opposites are basic to fashioning the social mores within societies, groups, and families, and in creating a consistent and pragmatic moral structure appropriate to the particular group. But it is always the self which navigates through these arbitrary socially derived behavoural expectations. Otherwise morality and behaviour would merely be a matter of indoctrination. As I said: the conceptual self is inclusive of the entire environment. You need (well, not really) to make a distinction between self centeredness and self interest. Every act is an equation involving the self and something or someone in the environment. You cannot remove the self from the equation except by suicide.