madame_zora said:
Peikoff and Rand exchanged several letters in the "Letters of Ayn Rand", he probably had as clear an idea of her philosophy as anyone. My main objection to Objectivism is that it's not as completely fleshed-out as I would like, as in this instance.
Also, she goes on to say in a letter to someone who I can't remember now, she condemns her critics for saying that pure capitalism would lead to monopolies, which she claims hasn't been proven. I think by now we can see that it is true, her main flaw, for me, is that the doesn't recognise the greed aspect of human nature. The philosophies read well, but in practical application they lose ground.
Yes MZ, you said it succinctly. That is the fatal flaw. The elegant simplicity of Objectivism is its main attraction, but simplicity doesn't guarantee anything when it comes to social systems. If the success of it depends on people creating and adhering to moral principles of their own, we know right away that it can't work all by itself. My fake court case is representative of what would happen in all spheres of behavior. Self interest seems to dominate no matter what utopia you attempt.
This suggests to me that the problem isn't with the legal system as much as it is with human propensity towards self interest.
[Rant]This is why Jesus suggested that the only hope for reducing misery and suffering in the world is to instill a personal value system that places the interests of others above the those of one's own. We tend to think of the Good Samaritan parable as a kind of Hallmark Card of a homily about being nice to people. When in fact, it was a crushing indictment on all utopias in which compassion and the interest of others are not the main concern. The Priest and the Levite who walk by the half-dead guy represent the epitome of Pharisaic utopia. By avoiding contact with the half-dead guy, they were obeying proscriptions laid down in Leviticus where the utopia is strict adherence to the Jewish Purity Laws. Their goal was to please God with their holy behavior and bring about his Kingdom.
We usually lack the cultural context of this so we don't realize that the Priest and the Levite would be seen by the audience as "very good" holy people instead of inconsiderate bad guys. In fact they are named as Priest and Levite because the audience would immediately identify them with the highest level of religious perfection. The audience would nod in assent to the notion that the holy men were walking to the other side.
We also lack the cultural aversion to the Samaritan who represents the most ungodly person Jesus could possibly name. Being a Samaritan he is immediately identified by the audience as a totally unclean Godless heathen and an outright religious enemy of the Jews. In 50 BC or so, the Samaritans defiled the Jewish temple with pigs blood and stuff in a kind of religious terrorism. In typical countercultural Jesus logic, though, he stands the whole problem on its head and raises the Samaritan up as a model for behavior and denigrates the holy men. Selfless compassion for the interest of others trumps all utopias, even those that are religiously motivated for the pleasing of God. I am sure his audience was dumb-struck by this. No wonder he was nailed to a tree.
Its no coincidence that he tells this parable after answering a question about what he thought was the greatest commandment. This is an undeniably a moment when he is establishing an important and revolutionary priority of Love over Law.
So this suggests that individual rights is not a fundamental principle for a social system. Not that its not noble, but its too simplistic. A better principle is the minimization of misery and suffering in a complex world full of moral ambiguity and human imperfection.
A good example is the practice of medical triage, where the goal is to maximize the benefit of whatever limited resources and capabilities you have towards minimzing misery and suffering. Its messy and there are no absolutes. Some people will simply die because you decided it was a better use of resources to treat another person.
When considering abortion, Jesus' parable suggests that all utopian pronouncement about the absolute sanctity of life of the fetus, or the absolute rights of the mother, etc. will end up in an inferior outcome when compared to a more practical application of compassion which seeks to reduce misery and suffering. Its much better to consider the potential for suffering of the mother and the baby and the community in a kind of triage tradeoff.
The irony is that Christian Fundamentalists get this entirely backwards. They are in fact, modern Christian Pharisees. Their claim for the absolute sanctity of life of the fetus from the moment of conception is just like the Priest and the Levite's ritualistic aversion to contact with the impure half-dead guy in the road. In both examples they are more concerned with "pleasing God" than reducing misery and suffering. This kind of thinking leads them to think that the morning after pill taken to prevent a handful of cells from taking root after a rape is far more evil than forcing the 14 year old victim to carry the baby to term and possibly have to raise it in abject poverty. (Or worse, to criticize the use of condoms!)
Similarly, the claim for absolute sanctity for the institution of marriage leads them to lobby for the one law that would prevent same sex couples from forming a legal lasting and meaningful relationship.
Equally utopian is the notion that the mother's rights are sancrosanct over all other concerns. This is the other side of the utopian coin and it leads to another kind of evil. It leads to the type of situation suggested in my fake court case.
So my opinion is that our current abortion laws are on the right track. The best we can do is make an educated guess at a good point in fetal development to declare it a viable baby. Abortions before that point are legal, and abortions after that are only legal in cases where the mother's health is threatened and it can be shown that sound professional medical triage concerns have been established. As medical science moves the threshold age of premature birth survival back we should probably adjust the legal abortion threshold accordingly.
Although this sounds so pragmaticaly Godless, as if we are playing God, this is exactly what Jesus is recommending in the parable. Reducing overall misery and suffering always trumps trying to please God with dogma-driven ideals or behavior. Gut wrenching compassion will always make the better choice even in when faced with moral ambiguity (perhaps especially when faced with moral ambiguity.)
Forgive me for my late night Christian rant, but I need to do this every so often to purge my frustration that Fundamentalist have made Christianity into something at best silly and at worst despicable. I am not proseletyzing. I just happen to find some of this 2000 year old wisdom to be extremely profound in the light of the human condition.[/Rant]
JustAsking