A thread for stupid things to say which sound really smart
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I guess thats a fairly common thing, when you rebel against something established you probably end up going too far in the other direction. You have not only your ideals dictating where you end up, you also have this point of negativity on the map that youre trying to distance yourself from. I guess with something like Rands ideas the movement maybe went to far but it did leave the rest of us with a second point on the map, we can see theres probably a more optimal position somewhere between the 2 extremes.
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I don't really agree with the whole compromise approach. The conventional view of selflessness-as-virtue is a deplorable evil. This isn't to say there is anything wrong with giving on a core level, it's just that it requires discrimination (in the old-school sense of the word), judging those to whom you're giving, and taking responsibility for what it is your gift enables. It is precisely this discriminating nature of giving which the ethics of selflessness rejects, encouraging instead to "judge not" and implicitly: that any cause is a greater cause than one's own self. It is devoid of self-esteem and puts all its faith in those in decision-making positions, which is then almost universally abused. Altruism is the ethics of a slave.
A true philanthropist doesn't give, really; it's more accurate to say he invests in projects with non-monetary dividends. And expects results. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on May 10, 2016, 1:56:08 PM
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"Altruism is the ethics of a slave." Good for this thread, And apparently ethics of God, but ya know, we wont go there.
the ethics of a slave is to stay alive, to do what is needed to not be punished and stay alive. It is almost purely self-centered desire, but it is harshly imposed self-preservation. Or do you find in your exposure to slavery that the slaves are willing take the beating for others in an altruistic manner? Or rather that they cringe in empathy and celebrate another day that it isn't them? If anything you clearly meant altruism is ethics that lead to enslavement. But who is being the slave taker if everyone is acting altruistically? And anyways pure selflessness has been mentioned to be a terrible system of governance, so we agree, just not in your extreme distaste for the idea of doing things with no external reward to self. And if it isn't for the betterment of other, it isn't altruistic by definition. Being altruistic in your action does not depend on others doing the doing as that wouldn't be your action by definition. Your distaste is misdirected to altruism, imo, but I agree we could never by law force altruism, the very idea is already corrupting what altruism is. Hey...is this thing on? Last edited by LostForm on May 10, 2016, 2:06:48 PM
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"Although the continued enslavement of a people had always had fault-tolerance to deal with free thinkers, the perpetuation of slavery has always depended on this being a minority behavior. Small uprisings can be quelled; the uprising of all, simultaneously, would be overwhelming. As such, every society with slavery has depended heavily on the ethics which lead to enslavement, which continue to be just as valuable, if not more so, once slavery is in place. The system needs to give them a way to cope with their own acquiescence. This usually manifests as belief in an afterlife. Tell all the slaves what they do will ensure their place in Heaven, and the things the masters do will send them to hell. "If you altruistically gave something away, would it be possible to receive that same thing later, from another person behaving altruistically? It is difficult to create, but it isn't impossible to create a ring where all are slaves to all. Interestingly, I think that's what communism was actually trying to do. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on May 10, 2016, 2:32:56 PM
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When the empathy center of the brain doesn't know how to draw a line; when the well-being of others literally becomes your well-being. That, I imagine, is how altruists are made. The ethics thereof doesn't really enter the picture for me.
You won't get no glory on that side of the hole.
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" I personally don't think anybody can be purely altruistic, or even mostly altruistic, without being some sort of divine being sent unto us. Nobody can maintain pure altruism over time, eventually you do it for the feels or the benefit or because you of course are just a 'superior person' and are proving it. altruism to me are little things, pointing out the dropped dollar bill, letting that guy out of the intersection and not pulling up to block them in, not exploiting that legal loop hole that is ethically questionable. It doesn't have to be a goal of existence, it is more so just not exploiting every opportunity to look out for old numero uno. Hey...is this thing on? Last edited by LostForm on May 10, 2016, 3:24:01 PM
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Look, the whole sinister thing about the doctrine of altruism is how acceptable it seems, at first glance, to the typical, rationally self-interested person. "Man, it should would be nice if someone kissed my ass like that. I certainly wouldn't want to discourage someone from being nice to me like that. So maybe I should play along, just a little bit, nod at the right times... I wouldn't want these altruists thinking I'm not one of them. I'll talk the talk... and maybe even walk the walk a little..."
It's a doctrine so utterly susceptible to attempts to manipulate it, to turn it towards one's underserved benefit, that it actually uses that susceptibility as a mechanism to spread itself. The doctrine of altruism is carried almost entirely by people who don't really believe in it, or at the very least wouldn't ever dare to be that way all the time. They'll say it's good to be altruistic sometimes, but that's because that's the entire game, that people are altruistic just to appear that way. But a few do believe. The true believers are those whose lives have turned to such shit that the myth of the afterlife gives them the only hope in their lives. And thanks to the viral mechanism used to carry the doctrine throughout society, they give what's left of their precious fixed incomes to televangelists. In societies which are considerably more fucked up, onset may occur earlier in life. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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That is....cynical, but I can't say you are wrong on a macro level. But you have really never met someone that was 'willing to give the shirt of their back" and is well to do? Would you really and truly describe that person, assuming you met such a person, is a myopic in their giving, that they are simply playing the game for rewards later?
I luckily have met some and related to one specifically (a legitimate war hero and all around rock solid patriarch) that dispells that particular cyniscm in my eyes. Hey...is this thing on?
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Ok wrote this before I read the last bunch of replies, Ill post it anyway, bit of a tangent...
Spoiler
On a personal level I dont really see things in such absolutes tbh, I can understand altruism as an abstract idea but I cant equate it in a pure sense with any form of thinking I have ever experienced. It describes an aspect of thinking but I dont feel that it actually exists in isolation, certainly not in a way that I can understand. To me if you are truly altruistic it has to come from you right? If theres a gun to your head telling you to act that way then you are acting in your own self interest by obeying and not getting shot, thats what you want, to protect yourself. Even if that is a metaphorical gun you are pointing at your own head in some kind of deluded state. So you have to want to give, if you want to then it gives you pleasure, that pleasure is a selfish payoff... I dunno, I just see it as an abstract debate. The opposite, someone who truly has only selfish feelings, has no emotional connection to anything outside of themselves, there are mental disorders that would seem to produce such people. I just dont see either of these positions being a viable base to build anything on, be it a philosophy or a society. It think in a pure form one is possibly fictional delusion and one is a mental disorder, but an aspect of both exists in all sane people and an aspect of both has to exist in any sane foundation for such things. To me it seems like most people have a full deck, the selfish card, the giving card, the funny, the sad etc. When people are lacking cards you find people who only have the selfish and the funny card, are they a selfish person? Ya sure, but maybe another way of looking at it is that theyre someone whos missing the giving card. For me it feels wrong to look at it that having a selfish card is bad, or that cards are mutually exclusive. Its more whats lacking thats a problem, not whats still there. I have friends who would argue that it just doesnt exist, that there is only selfishness and delusion. If you give and that makes you happy, that happy feeling is the selfish motivation. If you give and it doesnt make you happy, you are under duress or youre lost in some sort of double knot tangle of half baked ideas and on some level you are selfishly self justifying yourself in an attempt to make yourself happy. Its one of those black holes i think, I mean what do you say to that? Theres no conclusion that can be drawn, I feel like if you subscribe to or reject that idea then youre maybe doing it because you want to believe one way or another and thats weighting the thought. And thats fine, its of no real consequence either way. I really have no response to such an idea and I dont think we need one to move forward. Can we judge happiness as a selfish reward? Its too complex an area and too simple a conclusion for me. If we were all in a room and I laughed youd smile, if I yawned youd yawn, the self, the individual, how separate are we? Are we even in the right frame of thought looking at the individual and their motivations as an island? Are we limiting our view of ourselves to fit our semantics? I dont know that its an adequate dichotomy to try and categorise human motivations, actions and emotions. Its like 2 flavours, well we can have either/or/both/neither, we can have other flavours instead/as well, Im not sure theres any need to judge a flavour in an abstract sense, removed from context. |
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" I think that deep down at it's very core, we are always looking out for number one. It's just that trough empathy, the border between oneself and other people becomes muddled, sometimes to the point were we might feel another persons experience (or what we can assess of it with our senses) as if it werre our own. We see someone who appears to suffer, so we might suffer too. We don't want to suffer so we see what can be done about it and in this case it might involve helping the individual out with whatever problem is causing the percieved suffering. What I am suggesting is that altruism (in regards to personal behaviour) is more about brain development and synaptic infrastructre than anything else. As neuroscientific research has discovered, there is an actual part of our brain that manages empathy and it seems the better it is at connecting with other parts that manages various forms of behaviour and personality traits, the more likely a person is to engage in altruistic antics. In contrast, people displaying psychopathic personality traits have empathic centres notoriously bad at connecting to other areas of their brains (if it even reacts at all). Of course, as with much else, there's a spectrum and I don't imagine the extreme ends to be very common. Anyway, I think that with this in mind, looking at acts of altruism only from the angle of morality and ethics is insufficient at this point when we have brain scans showing significant signs of a physical and biochemical process happening. It's not how we choose to be, it's how we're wired. ---------------------------------------- @Scrotie: This may be arguing semantics, but it's not really altruism if a reward is expected (like a good spot in the afterlife, or acceptance of the tribe or whatever), is it? You won't get no glory on that side of the hole.
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