Forgive me; I don't really understand what you're saying. I really do not follow. Are you essentially saying virtue means self improvement?

One of my good friends is very similar to me in that he really challenges himself by challenging society; his girlfriend of many years is twice his size, unattractive by social standards and has not achieved much professionally or academically while he is attractive and a successful artist because – just like me – he believes in genuine love, that the concept of beauty is a social construct and so he chooses to follow his heart and not the herd. — TimeLine

To be honest, that sort of thing makes me sick. If he loves her genuinely, that's cool, but if he's dating someone just to go against mainstream expectations, he's still a slave to their expectations but in the reverse. He shouldn't even consider what others will think, that'd be genuine independence.

I do not think that beauty is a social construct, even if it is personally subjective. If I had to guess, I'd say it's 80% biologically innate, and 20% influenced by environment with in constraints. In my view, beauty is generally based on some kind of perceived harmony.

In my own case, I've always found certain things beautiful in a girl, even though oftentimes my friends disagree

I don't know you. How can I tell whether you decided to pursue objectivism because you met someone that had decided the same thing and you liked this person enough to trust that they must be thinking correctly that you would need to do the same; that, when you met someone else and they told you not to trust that you changed your mind because you now trust another person. And, when you meet someone else, and someone else... Where is the you in your decisions? — TimeLine

If I don't know someone I just assume they are generally rational and are thinking honestly for themselves. Why do you entertain a strange story about how I might be an irrational dope who can't think for himself? :P

There are some that believe the picture of Genghis Khan as a brutal and ruthless leader is historically inaccurate. — TimeLine

Really? He took over half the world by force. I don't think you do that by being a nice guy. Rape and pillage was their modus operandi. The mongols were stone cold savages on horse back. Some people gave into them rather than fighting that's how feared they were.

In the end, the pursuit of virtue by finding the mean toward the highest good will lead to happiness; happiness is personal, individual. Objectivism failed to understand the importance of virtue and the interconnection of all things in consciousness. — TimeLine

What is virtue and how do you prove it to be good? Objectivism has virtues.

What is the highest good? How do you prove it? Why will it make me happy?

I have looked into some virue ethics, but I'm interested to know your version. So far, I find it unconvincing.

No. I'm saying that I'm sure he felt happy. I do not think he would have ever felt any shred of guilt.

There's also the absurdity that I didn't grasp that if Objectivist ethics are necessary to be happy, then no one in history, except for Ayn Rand and those who accept her ethics, has ever been happy.

"Not really"

As she states:

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.

and then

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. If a man values productive work, his happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his life. But if a man values destruction, like a sadist—or self-torture, like a masochist—or life beyond the grave, like a mystic—or mindless “kicks,” like the driver of a hotrod car—his alleged happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his own destruction. It must be added that the emotional state of all those irrationalists cannot be properly designated as happiness or even as pleasure: it is merely a moment’s relief from their chronic state of terror.

It must be added that the emotional state of all those irrationalists cannot be properly designated as happiness or even as pleasure: it is merely a moment’s relief from their chronic state of terror.

So apparently Gengis Khan who had all the women and the power in the world, with no consequences ever for the killing and raping he did... was not really happy. Not really.

I understand that you initially thought it was spot-on but an Islamic fundamentalist believes it is spot-on to kill in the name of religion so that he can get shacked up with a bunch of ladies in heaven and what gives life to the hatred that ultranationalists promote. The point being is that now that you are aware that objectivism is flawed in some ways, what you should question is why you had believed it to be entirely correct in the first place; the flaw must be in you since you believed it. — TimeLine

Good question. I don't think believing a philosophy or a claim in its entirety is prima facie always wrong, but I do agree that if I was convinced by faulty arguments or convinced with insufficient evidence, the problem is within me for doing so, and I can learn from that mistake in future.

What I think you will causally find is that your decision may have stemmed from your doubts in yourself, of being capable of undertaking philosophical and moral decisions independently. — TimeLine

Perhaps, but I do not attempt to determine everything in any field, philosophy or otherwise, entirely on my own. I listen to a view and evaluate the reasoning and evidence.

The risk here is that if you don't abandon the idea that any system of belief - be it religious, cultural or philosophical - can ever adequately explain existence, all you will be doing is simply rearranging your prejudices, adopting and changing. — TimeLine

I think it's possible that someone has it all correct, but I do not expect it. I was never 100% convinced of everything Ayn Rand said. I disagreed on points, so it was not as you may have thought, me simply taking everything Objectivism said as undeniable truth.

Furthermore, my moral system, if I have one, is no doubt going to be influenced by my readings. I don't consider it prudent to just introspect and expect what comes to my mind to be truth. More than likely, I will find a great deal of wisdom from others.

In the past, I had been an ethical nihilist, until I found Rand. I suppose I was excited to find what I thought was an objective realist morality. The argument is quite convincing if you do not spot the linguistic slight of hand which I simply failed to spot.

In fact, up to a point, the ethics makes only reasonable statements of facts. The is-ought gap is by passed by the following:

Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course.

Her ethics is technically not a non-categorical imperative since it merely states:

If you choose to live
then you must adopt and practice these values
because these values are required for your survival

Now, most of her claims about what man needs for survival have some merit. Certainly, rationality, I agree with. Keeping your mind in contact with reality.

But you are left pondering what you should actually do in life. It's merely a guide to surivval, and it also doesn't tell why you shoudl want to live. or what the point of living is. The values of her ethics are egoist survival values. Some of which are valid as such, but that is all.

But to exist to exist... what's the point?

There is a scene in the movie "Equilibrium" that perfectly illustrates this point:



Also there's just the problem of 'values are chosen'. It's true in the abstract, but we never chose to enjoy chocolate, or to enjoy music, or to enjoy snowboarding, etc. We discover these values, because they give us pleasure, and why they give us pleasure is not chosen by reason.

I also realize now my failing to investigate evidence of human nature. Even though I sort of always had a belief that we had a nature, I still considered it reasonable that our desires are the result of our premises. What I failed realize was that I had already rejected Rand's view of sex for this reason, and that is a contradiction. I didn't spot that contradiction in my own thought. I didn't make the connection there in my belief. I suppose I am only human.

It was, in the end, me who spotted my own errors. It just took a long time, and a fair bit of mental suffering.

Well I initially believed it to be entirely correct, and so if I found difficulties in my own life, it was a moral failing, my fault, nothing to do with my nature. In this sense, it was a sort of trap. I didn't think, "this part doesn't make sense" but then decided to follow it. No, I actually thought it was spot on.

Over time, my own frustrations and discussions with a friend who is an effective altruist, lead me to accept pleasure as inherently good. He then pointed out some inconsistencies in what Rand said, and the threads started to unravel very quickly. Everything came to a crisis point in my mind and I could almost feel my belief system rewiring. Since I have always held truth and my own judgement as supreme over any particular belief, I will ruthlessly discard any idea, however strongly held in the past, as soon as I see clear reason to do so. Reason is the ultimate arbiter of my beliefs, and I am proud to have proven to myself once again that given evidence and reason, I will change my mind. Though it was somewhat psychologically uncomfortable, truth prevails.

I would say I do still appreciate and agree with many aspects of it. The need for a personal morality to me makes sense. The Greek's virtue ethics is of interest to me now. The pursuit of excellence in your function as a human sounds interesting. I'm looking to positive psychology research about happiness, and it's fascinating.

Most people only discuss social aspects of what we do in life, with no real discussion of how to live well yourself, and that's a mistake to me. I still agree with a base of egoism in a sense, but exactly how one does that I'm now uncertain. I've swung over to a sort of enlightened hedonism à la Mill's qualitative hedonism (but egoistic not collective), but with my own thoughts on the matter, and in terms of social morality I suppose I am on the fence about it. I'm somewhat ethical nihilist at the moment, or emotivist, in a meta-ethical stance, but it's clear that we need some pro-social behaviours to hold our society together which is in the end good for me.

Doing good for others has always been something I looked down on, but now I'm more open to the idea, but it has to be a luxury, ultimately. I'm reading widely on ethical theories so I may change my mind radically in the future. My current views are clearly very influenced by Objectivism, but the idea that all our values can be decided on by reason is just not cogent. I'm not exactly throwing out Objectivist ethics, but I reject it as the whole story, and I reject it as a motive force in my life. My life's value comes from the enjoyment of things in it, and I do not think what I enjoy was chosen, or chould be chosen, by reason. Given that there is some objective standard for that which is pro-survival for me, and that which is against it, if I decide I want to live, then any principles that help in that endeveour are useful, but they are not mroal obligations in my mind anymore. I can basically do whatever the hell I want, and at root all desires are biological and sometimes arbitrary artifacts of our individual natures. Some people dont like music, and it has nothing to do with their view of reality or their subconscious beliefs as Rand would assert. It's because their brains work that way.

It's hard to explain why I am harping on about what we like by nature if you haven't come from the Objectivist ethics that completely denies any human nature and asserts that we like what we value and we choose our values by reason. But as David Hume pointed out:

Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to [reason's] dictates. Every rational creature, it is said, is obliged to regulate his actions by reason; and if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought to oppose it, till it be entirely subdued, or at least brought to a conformity with that superior principle. On this method of thinking the greatest part of moral philosophy, antient and modern, seems to be founded; nor is there an ampler field, as well for metaphysical arguments, as popular declamations, than this supposed pre-eminence of reason above passion....

It is from the prospect of pain or pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises towards any object: And these emotions extend themselves to the causes and effects of that object, as they are pointed out to us by reason and experience. It can never in the least concern us to know, that such objects are causes, and such others effects, if both the causes and effects be indifferent to us. Where the objects themselves do not affect us, their connexion can never give them any influence; and it is plain, that as reason is nothing but the discovery of this connexion, it cannot be by its means that the objects are able to affect us.

Since reason alone can never produce any action, or give rise to volition, I infer, that the same faculty is as incapable of preventing volition, or of disputing the preference with any passion or emotion. This consequence is necessary. It is impossible reason could have the latter effect of preventing volition, but by giving an impulse in a contrary direction to our passion.... Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but a contrary impulse.... We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them
- David Hume

Thanks ^_^

I agree with this. Facts have no truth condition. They just are. Propositions have truth conditions.

The humanity restoration goes deep. I would not even pursue sex due to feelings of gulit. I kind of crushed all of my desires. Self moralizing and such was common. At times I wondered to myself if I was not pure evil. It's absolutely messed up now I think of it. I feel so free and excited at the idea of enjoying myself. It almost brings me to tears thinking about all the fun I can have now. It's so messed up.

I'm forming concrete goals that actually excite and inspire me for the first time in years. It is amazing.

Yeah. Even as someone who would have identified as 90% Objectivist, I could not get along with them. It can feel like a secular religion for sure. Internal schizms. Excommunications.

isn't that really your estimation? I'm sure many people disagree with this assessment, so I guess that's why they continue to study it. In any case, if you reject the whole thing, are you some kind of radical nihilist on every question? :)