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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (42147)	9/25/2013 9:05:19 PM
From: GPS Info	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

I listened to the video several times and I tried to understand as best I could. I understood the idea of being a trader of efforts and not surrendering a sacrifice. I was indifferent to the ideas of love and I have more unease with the idea of love as a rational trade in particular. to continue from your other post: Because love is far more than a feeling. It is tending to the needs of someone you value. And thus making a rational trade--society is composed of a lot of users. Love is a rational trade? Is this meant prescriptively or descriptively? Love is a too open-ended word for me to discuss it in a useful way. I can try, but I probably won't do very well. I rationalize love as a bio-chemical process that evolved to create pair bonds long enough for progeny to reach adolescence or at least a minimum level of self-sufficiency. The fact that love can bring us happiness is just another perception of reality, that is 'love makes me happy.' If procreation and evolution can occur without love, then love is irrelevant; if they can occur without happiness then it is also irrelevant. Our genes don't care if we're happy, we just need to reproduce and survive plagues, wars, starvation or meteors. If we don't survive then our happiness was irrelevant. The earth will just restart evolution with whatever is left over. If we all lived with the sublime happiness of the Buddha and because of it we did not procreate, then happiness would be a really bad thing.<g> If Ayn Rand's views makes some of us more likely to survive a catastrophe then good on her and you. If her views lead to a collapse of social group then I hope only a small set of believers are affected. This is not a narrow criticism of Objectivism. I feel the same way about all economic systems and religious beliefs. I view these social constructs as a battlefield of ideas where there will be winners, losers and also-rans. If Objectivism makes people happy and they don't use force except in self-defense, that is a good thing. This is my view as an evolutionist.