What---if anything---can we learn from AYN RAND'S philosophy?

by Terry 93 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  leavingwt

  Collectivism

  Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group . . . and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force—and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.

  Having escaped WT, I'm sensitive to too much collectivism. Therefore, I mostly agree with what she writes above. I no longer value thinking of my actions as being selfless. My actions may appear to others as selfless, but I'm getting something out of it. What I "get" does not necessarily come at the expense or misery of others. My reward might be as simple as a feeling of satisfaction.
• 

  PSacramento

  Many times we FEEL we are being critical and using critical thinking, that we are open minded but in reality, too many times we are trying to find what we want to conform to what we want to believe, to our preconceived notions.

  If we go looking for soemthing, there is a great chance that we not only find it, but find all sorts of logical reasons for it, of course we see this because we WANT to and we disregard or downplay the rest because it doesn't suit us.

  We ALL do it and as such, critical thinking is not as possible, without bias, as many think it is.
• 

  THE GLADIATOR

  Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

  This is a sobering and helpful guide to what happens in our mind.

  Once we have identified something outside of ourselves that evidently exists, we can then claim consciousness of that thing. If however we claim consciousness of something that exists only in our mind, with no proof anywhere that it really exists, we are just using our imagination or day dreaming. It is a trick of the mind.

  So a feeling that something exists because we want it to or have been told it does, is not enough to claim that we know it does. Consciousness of anything, requires validation in the external world. In my own words, phenomena is required.

  Faithfully applying this rule would eliminate most peoples pet beliefs.
• 

  PSacramento

  Can we prove that we think?

  Our brain works, yes, we can see the activity, but do we think? can we prove we think? that we have thoughts? other than KNOWING that we do?
• 

  SixofNine

  leavingwt:

  C ollectivism holds that the individual has no rights,

  What exactly is she defining as "collectivism"? I'm not familiar with some larger, historical "collectivism" movement, but if it's as purely pulled-out-of-Ayn Rand's-ass as I suspect it is, then I wager it would be more accurate to say that "Ayn Rand holds that individuals have no right to practice collectivism".
• 

  THE GLADIATOR

  PSacramento

  If someone remains silent and does not move, then we have no proof that they are thinking. Your posts here are proof that you are thinking. You have responded to comments made on this thread that can be proved to exist.

  But thinking is not necessarily consciousness. Just because we can prove we are thinking does not automatically mean the conclusions we come to are correct. They have to be verified by fact. Consciousness requires truth.
• 

  mindmelda

  I'd say communism is an example of a political theory that needs to be discussed, and in theory doesn't sound too bad, but in application, stinks. LOL

  And has proven, ultimately, to be impractical and not very workable. But, we North Americanos sure spent a lot of time and energy being so scared of it that we did some pretty nasty things to ourselves and our own citizens because of that fear.

  All over something that really isn't very feasible as a reality. Sometimes, the wait and see approach is better than the "flinch before you're hit" approach, and this is a good example.

  One thing that happens when people latch on to a big sweeping unprovable belief that sounds just dandy but doesn't have a lot of thought or substance behind it is that they tend to clutch it like a baby monkey to a terry cloth "mother" when it offers nothing that will truly help them.

  We all know that's how cults and political extremists get their toehold. It all sounds so unbelievable that a man who looks like a bad Elvis imitator, Jim Jones can convince thousands of people he's Jesus, or that Islamic terrorists can convince young teenagers to run into an embassy with a bomb strapped to them and detonate it so all the world will become subject to Islam, but they can.

  It's frightenly easy when critical thinking is suppressed, even if the thought that comes out of it is unfeasible or inapplicable, at least the critical thinking function is encouraged.

  Ironic that some people believe that the way to counter cults or extremist political ideologies is REPRESSION or restriction of thought, when the opposite is true in practice.

  We tried that in the 50s with Communism, repress, repress, and did it stop communism? Actually, to some rebellious types, it made communism seem more exciting and forbidden. (You'll always get the "I must have the forbidden fruit!" bunch.)

  No, but when critical thinking dissected the system publicly and critically thinking writers related what it was like to live under and history itself proved it eventually unfeasible, that worked much much better.

  The only people afraid of commies now are people who can't actually define it two gud.
• 

  Open mind

  Terry said:

  Aren't you interested in ideas??

  Well, I did put it in bold in my first post, but I'll try again:

  The very simple concept that "my life" is actually mine was first reinforced for me by Ayn Rand.

  The idea is in bold. It's not rocket science but was/is very profound to me after years of WT indoctrination to the contrary.

  om
• 

  leavingwt

  What exactly is she defining as "collectivism"?

  I'm not very familiar with her writings.

  I clicked on one of Terry's links in his original post and copied the quote. The link is below.

  http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/collectivism.html

  I wager it would be more accurate to say that "Ayn Rand holds that individuals have no right to practice collectivism".

  That's an interesting point. Would she deprive people of their right to voluntarily practice it, or would she simply insist that she not be forced to participate?
• 

  PSacramento

  If someone remains silent and does not move, then we have no proof that they are thinking. Your posts here are proof that you are thinking. You have responded to comments made on this thread that can be proved to exist.

  But thinking is not necessarily consciousness. Just because we can prove we are thinking does not automatically mean the conclusions we come to are correct. They have to be verified by fact. Consciousness requires truth.

  Nah, there is no scientific way to prove that we "think", that we have thoughts.

  Posting here is proof that I can type, and such, but it is not proof that I or anyone else has thoughts.

  Brain activity is no proof of thought, just as lack of activity is no proof of no thought.

  Truth is subjective, just like reality is.