Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: GPS Info who wrote (42148)	9/25/2013 10:50:02 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Interesting post. Let me just speak to some of the ideas that occurred to me as I read your post. Morality can be appraised from both the evolutionary or instinctive level and secondly from the rational level. It all begins with the family and the helplessness of our young. And here, also, we have your oxycotin and other hormones. There is always a 'we' and a 'them'. 'At first, 'we' is the family. the overriding need is safety, and the first moral instinct is to be wary of other species and to distrust strangers. When families come together as a group, it is for the same reasons--to be safe from strangers and to increase the chance of survival and meet other basic physiological needs such as food, water, shelter, etc. If this tribe becomes strong where safety is less problematic, they can address higher order needs. To fully benefit from cooperation, the tribe must at some point extend the sphere of the tribe to strangers (other individuals as well as tribal groups). Tribes can continue to treat other tribes with distrust and practice avoidance or war. War is also used to increase resources of land, food, supplies, etc. In all of this, it is all about EVOLUTIONARY SELFISNESS. Survival through meeting needs. The important point is how encompassing does the individual's sense of self and self interest become. From the individual to the family to groups of families to tribal confederacies. The Iroquois Confederacy of the Long House is a great example of tribes moving beyond avoidance and war into enlarging (as it were) the family structure into a Nation of tribal families. 400 years after the Iroquois Confederacy formed, Ayn Rand writes Atlas Shrugged. This book does not deal with attachment theory or Maslow or any of the sociological or psychological or instinctive theories of social interaction. It speaks directly to philosophy and to how individuals ought to treat one another for survival and for happiness. There is no more tribal needs or wants, no more racial distinctions. There are only individuals. We have moved from discussing psychological theories and mysterious workings in the genetic code, and have entered the realm of philosophy. Rand understands instincts. She understands we have hormones and drives and feelings. But she is honoring the one thing that (apparently) makes us homo sapiens--our ability and our capacity to Reason. And because we live (according to Rand) by the mind...our behaviour needs to be mediated by the mind. So when you speak of oxycotin and other fascinating things that happen in our bodies to promote Evolutionary success--you address important issues which are not, however, any part of "Philosophy" as Rand saw it. Rand is only interested in what reason dictates we should do as individuals if we wish to promote our survival and happiness as individuals in one world. The beauty of Rand's philosophy is that how we (ought to) act boils down to one great moral imperative: Use no force on anyone except in self defense. This is indeed how people can live and trade in the world and how mankind can be unified to face whatever dangers may be out there in the solar system. Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal "Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control." What about those who have seemingly nothing of value to trade? I guess we are back to the family?! Because let us face the truth: When government redistributes our wealth, we don't really "care" about the actual people it is or isn't going to. We don't even know them. But well, we are bombarded every day about how good it is to give our money/labour away for others. And we do want to be good... Self interest encompasses more and more people as individuals improve as people, as cooperation expands, and as reason and good behaviour predominates. In a sense, cooperation leads to a type of dependency or need--at least where the group is small and the scope of interactions is limited. Is there anything in Rand's philosophy to prevent any individual from helping one or more people in any way they choose? Not that I know of. In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny becomes fairly helpless for a time after her plane crashes. But she gets plenty of help. Well, these are just some of my thoughts... Oh, one more. If people are indoctrinated to believe something is good and that they will benefit in this or the next life by doing that thing (perhaps converting someone to their religious beliefs by first feeding them and winning their confidence), then they will feel happy and righteous by doing that thing (especially if they do it as a group where they can reinforce to one another how good they are and how blessed and happy they are and will be). Or if a group believes that their way of honoring their god demands that they convert the entire world to the obedience and worship of their god, then they can feel exhilarated and especially good by flying planes into buildings to take innocent life. So which do I prefer? A world where people DECLARE what is good through a supernatural belief which cannot be countered except by another supernatural belief and which can be resolved only through war and death...or a world where a little Russian Jewess ,who survived Communism and the most irrational and almost unimaginable uses of force says, "Check your premises, do not use any force, and own your mind and your values?"