Originally posted by Setarcos:
[QB]Thanks for the explanation and post, it was 2 in the morning here though and I decided it would be stupid for me to think about it at that time.
Unfortunatelly, on consideration, I disagree with almost all of it, heh
I am a determinist (though this doesn't matter much as from our PoV there is free will).
In reality (on the politics side):
I disagree with laissez-faire capitalism being put in place, but I might well be wrong (I can see how it might work if it was implaced globally).
As long as there exist numbers like the current >60 million starving / aids in Africa then I will believe that we need to think about others more (I think there should be a minimum standard of living we should all try and support worldwide).
I agree with setarcos. But personally the simple fact that she wrote a book called the virtues of selfishness having to do with capitalism is something I find moderately disturbing.
She sounds like an elitist to me that would support concepts that had detrimental effects on others. I've read several of her books "atlus shrugged", and "anthem". I think she had spectacular writing capability, but I personally don't subscribe to her pro capitalism philosophy since capitalism lends towards darwinsim, and social stratification, and one section of the population ends of being oppressed so the other more fortunate section of the population can enjoy undeserved preferential treatment, and priviledges. And I don't believe that the purely self serving pursuit of happiness is all that important in of it self.
And I think her ideas regarding productivity in relation to achievement just exposes how large her ego was. My philosophy is the exact opposite.
I think that helping others selflessly is absolutely necessary for the improvement, and spiritual evolvment of humanity. I think we should look for some fufillment ourselves, but also try to help others instead of apathetically ignoring their unfortunate plights.
I think the greatest joy a person can have in life is not productive achievement in the conventional sense.
But instead is accessed through the process of creating and physically manifesting something that initially started as a thought or a visualized end result you wanted to achieve.
I've always been happiest when involved in different projects.
Like painting, writing short fiction, theorizing,or writing poetry, or industriously studying new fascinating subjects.
I enjoy anything that consists of utilizing the analytical thought processes, and abstract reasoning abilities, and inductive or deductive reasoning capabilities.
Her idea of happiness was probably excessive amounts of money and unecessary extravagancies.
But since she was born in the soviet union I guess all the impoverishment she tolerated during her childhood there probably made her unreservedly embrace a more affluent lifestyle completely when she migrated to America.
From growing up in the Soviet Union and enduring poverty as a youth I think she developed a mortal fear of ever becoming impoverished again.
So she portrayed "do gooders" as incompetent imbeciles, and avariciously greedy individuals "hardworkers" with positive character traits, and attributes such as ambition, and high intelligence because she was afraid that a selfless mentality instead of a greedy one would probably bring her financial indigence again. So her perspective regarding the necessity of selfishnesses surfaced in her fiction.
[ 01 August 2002: Message edited by: SynapticSINergy678 ]