What are “egoism” and “altruism”, according to Mr. Schwartz?
“Sacrificing yourself for the needs of others is universally seen as the essence of morality. The tenets of altruism are widely regarded not simply as true, but as practically self-evident. …the doctrine… tells you to subordinate yourself to other people. It tells you that in any choice you make, your own interests should be less important to you than those of someone else.”
So described, “altruism” is the claim that you must sacrifice yourself, or your interests, to others, others’ needs, or others’ interests. Now, what are these needs for which we’re supposed to be making sacrifices? “…under altruism only one thing qualifies as a need: that which requires someone else’s sacrifice to fulfill.”
On this account, altruism tells us to sacrifice for the sake of having sacrificed. No one else has to benefit. That is of course not “subordinating yourself to other people” or sacrificing your interests for others’ interests. So altruism seems to be two very different doctrines. One kind of altruism would be self-destruction for its own sake. The other would be self-destruction for the sake of the well-being of other people. So let’s distinguish:
Altruism-1: the destruction of one’s interests
Altruism-2: the pursuit of others’ interests
Altruism-1 has never been held by anyone, ever, under any circumstances. What Rand and Mr. Schwartz are talking about is not a theory, but an alleged psychological condition. People with this (hypothetical) syndrome need clarification and guidance, not refutation and very definitely not condemnation.
Egoism, on the other hand, is supposed to prescribe “selfishness” which is “a concern with one’s own interests”. The two different kinds of altruism would then be two different ways of not being an egoist. So we have egoists who pursue their own interests, altruists who pursue others’ interests, and altruists who pursue no one’s interests.
Egoism (so described) contrasts with the two kinds of altruism in different ways. Altruism-1 is the negation of egoism. Egoism says to pursue interests; altruism-1 says to destroy them. That makes altruism-1 just a parasitic perversion of egoism. Egoism and altruism-1 would agree about what our interests are; they would just disagree about what to do about those interests.
Altruism-2, however, would have a more complicated relationship with egoism. Egoism tells me to pursue my own interests, and altruism-2 tells me to pursue others’ interests. Why can’t I just do both? Mr. Schwartz would rapidly point out that altruism is supposed to tell us to pursue others’ interests by way of destroying our own. But can I actually achieve anyone’s interests by destroying my own? Not really; other people benefit substantially more from my pursuit of my own interests than they would from my self-destruction. If altruism-2 demands that I destroy my own interests to pursue others’, which is doomed to fail, it’s just telling me to destroy my own interests, and would collapse into altruism-1.
Egoism and altruism-2 contradict one another only on the assumption that there are conflicts of interests. If there are no conflicts of interests between people, then, when I pursue my own interests, I am achieving others’ interests, and when I pursue others’ interests, I’m achieving my own. If there are no conflicts of interest, then there is no question for either egoism or altruism to answer. But Mr. Schwartz follows Rand in denying that there are conflicts of interests: “Among rational individuals, there are no conflicts of interest.” Why is the word ‘rational’ in there? Your interests are your interests; whether you’re rational or not has nothing to do with it. A rational person is liable to correctly identify his interests and an irrational person is liable to be wrong about them, but our interests don’t rely on our knowing about them. If there are no conflicts of interest, then egoism and altruism will always give the same advice. It’s hard to see what all of the fuss is about, then.
However, according to Mr. Schwartz, altruism creates conflicts: “It is altruism, by replacing desert with need, that generates continual conflicts.” That’s as may be, but those are conflicts between people, not interests. Our interests are our interests; neither egoism nor altruism has any answer to the question of what our interests are. They are supposed to be answers to the question of whose interests to pursue. If our interests are in accord, then there is no such question: pursuing the interests of either self or others would consist in exactly the same actions and so no decision must be made about whom to benefit.
Another peculiarity of Mr. Schwartz’s contrast between egoism and altruism has to do with the objectivity, or otherwise, of interests. “Under the code of egoism, the good is determined by what is objectively necessary for sustaining man’s life.” However, “By an altruistic standard, if your neighbor expresses an irrational desire, you should accommodate it; saying no would be selfish on your part.” In this case, ‘selfish’ is supposed to mean “non-self-destructive”. But altruism construed as the doctrine that I must pursue others’ interests is incompatible with altruism construed as the doctrine that I must serve others’ whims; others’ whims no more correlate with their actual interests than my whims correlate with mine.
The underlying problem is that Mr. Schwartz uses the word ‘interest’ ambiguously. When he defines egoism and altruism, he takes interests to be given independent of moral theories. Egoism is the pursuit of one’s independently-specified interests; altruism-1 is the destruction of one’s independently-specified interests; altruism-2 is the pursuit of others’ independently-specified interests.But when he claims that altruism creates conflict, he takes interests to be dependent on our beliefs about our interests. That’s because rational people’s interests can’t conflict, but irrational people’s can. That makes one’s rationality affect what one’s interests are. You can’t believe that interests are both independent of one’s (rationally accepted) moral theory and also dependent on one’s rationality (and the moral convictions that it leads one to adopt).
This is only one expression of Rand’s general failure to grasp the difference between the valued and the valuable, but more about that in another place.
Daniel Barnes said:
“Sacrifice” is another trademark Randian switcheroo in the above that Schwarz is merely parroting.
Rand defines sacrifice as “the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a non value.”
Whereas, say, Dictionary.com says sacrifice is “The surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.”
Which is of course what most people mean by it.
We see what she did there. Now the real question, as it is with the imaginary dictionary she appeals to with “selfishness”, is why she would do such a thing?
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ungtss said:
>”Rand defines sacrifice as “the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser
>one or of a non value.”
>
>Whereas, say, Dictionary.com says sacrifice is “The surrender or destruction of >something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a >higher or more pressing claim.””
there is no conflict between rand’s definition and the dictionary.com definition. to have a “higher or more pressing claim” is not to be considered of higher value by the person sacrificing. say i value my daughter, but my king has a “higher or more pressing claim” because he is king. were i to sacrifice my daughter for the king not because i value the king but because he has a “higher or more pressing claim than i do,” i would be sacrificing. according to both dictionary.com and rand.
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bregister said:
That for which you give something up is either higher or lower than what you give up for it. The king might sacrifice my daughter for the greater good, but since she is presumably the greatest good as far as I’m concerned, if I give her up for something, it wasn’t a sacrifice. It was sheer destruction.
The ‘sacr’ in ‘sacrifice’ is the same ‘sacr’ in ‘sacred’. Sacrifice was an investment in the high opinion of the gods. If the gods don’t actually exist or won’t actually reward you, then your so-called sacrifice wasn’t a real or successful sacrifice. Notice that we do have the phrase “he sacrificed in vain” — if the purpose of sacrifice were destruction of the sacrificed, rather than a return on it as an investment, then a “sacrifice in vain” wouldn’t be in vain.
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ungtss said:
i’m only focused on the dictionary.com definition, because that is the issue raised by dan. the dictionary.com definition does not say anything about “higher values” but rather a “higher claim.”
“claim” and “value” are critically different concepts. if you have a claim to my car, that does not mean i value your having my car. it does not mean that i value your having it more than i value me having it. it means you have a right to my car.
that is the logic behind the “sacrifices” of old. one did not sacrifice the virgin because you valued the god having it, or even because you valued the god. you sacrifice the virgin because the virgin is god’s in the first place. he has a “claim.” and you are giving him his “due.”
in the same way, christians believe jesus was “sacrificed” for their sins. this does not mean anyone valued him more dead than alive. it means god had a claim to our lives because of our sins, and jesus paid the claim.
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bregister said:
The god had a claim because he had given you something or was being asked for something; the sacrifice was your part of the trade. You could always stop sacrificing, but you could then expect the god to stop showering you with blessings.
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ungtss said:
in judaism, it was not a trade, it was an atonement. atonement is reparation for a wrong, or sin. it’s like the fine you pay for speeding, or the damages you pay a plaintiff you’ve harmed.
Leviticus 4:35
35 And all its fat he shall remove cas the fat of the lamb is removed from the sacrifice of peace offerings, and the priest shall burn it on the altar, on top of the Lord’s food offerings. And the priest shall make atonement for him for the sin which he has committed, and he shall be forgiven.
damages and fines are not “trades.” they are debts. you owe the fine because you sped. you owe the damages because you wrecked the car. there is no trade in atonement.
in aztec culture sacrifice was also payment of a debt, not a trade.
“In Mesoamerican culture human sacrifices were viewed as a repayment for the sacrifices the gods had themselves made in creating the world and the sun. This idea of repayment was especially true regarding the myth of the reptilian monster Cipactli (or Tlaltecuhtli). The great gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca ripped the creature into pieces to create the earth and sky and all other things such as mountains, rivers and springs came from her various body parts. To console the spirit of Cipactli the gods promised her human hearts and blood in appeasement.”
http://www.ancient.eu/Aztec_Sacrifice/
in both of these cases, the gods had a claim to the sacrifice in advance. no trade. in jewish thought, the claim arose from your sin. in aztec sacrifice, the claim arose from the gods’ having created the world.
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bregister said:
Paying a debt is part of a trade. If I were trying to give examples to support my point about religious sacrifice, I couldn’t have done better than the examples that you mentioned.
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ungtss said:
can you explain how paying a debt is part of a trade. if i wreck your car, and pay to repair it, what trade has taken place?
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bregister said:
If I buy something from you, I then have a debt to you, of whatever I’ve agreed to pay you. I can put myself in debt to you without your having agreed to take on the debt, as with your car-wrecking example, but if I make a trade with you, I thereby incur an obligation to pay you what I owe you.
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ungtss said:
in that case, the trade is “car for debt.” once that trade is complete, no further trading takes place. the paying of the debt is not a trade. you don’t get anything additional for paying it. you have to pay it. if you don’t pay it, he’ll take the car back and you’ll lose any payments you’ve already made.
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Lloyd Flack said:
Is Schwartz really describing as altruism something whose sole aim is the destruction of the altruist’s own interests? Or does he mean that to be described as altruism an act must involve the destruction of one’s own interests as well as the pursuit of other’s interests? This is does he regard the destruction of one’s interests to be a necessary criterion or a sufficient one for it to be altruism?
I would think that he probably regards it as a necessary rather than a sufficient criterion but has engaged in hyperbole and has phrased things carelessly so it is not clear what he means. I suspect that what he is claiming that something is not altruism if it is done in pursuit of another’s interests but at no cost to the altruist.
So the two possible kinds of altruism are
1. Pursuit of another’s interests at the expense of one’s own.
2. Pursuit of another’s interests not necessarily at the expense of one’s own.
I think most people usually mean the second kind when they talk about altruism.
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ungtss said:
option 2 contains two possibilities — pursuit of another’s interests at the expense of one’s own, and pursuit of another’s interests not at the expense of one’s own. i’ve never heard anyone describe the second as altruism. always emphasized is how much time, effort, and/or resources were “sacrificed,” how the altruist thought only of the beneficiary, and how he had nothing to gain.
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bregister said:
I agree. But if someone were actually following the advice to do what is best for others, and there are no conflicts of interest, then he would do exactly what he would do were he following the advice to do what is best for himself. If something counts as “altruistic” only if it serves others’ interests and only destroys my own, then altruism can exist only if there are conflicts of interest. Rand says that there are no such conflicts, so she implies that altruism instructs us to behave exactly as her version of egoism would have us behave. Without conflicts of interest, there is just no issue for either egoism or altruism to settle. (For my own part, I have no use for either of these alleged theories and I don’t think that talking about selfishness or selflessness or unselfishness or any of the rest of it has ever clarified any issue or helped anyone make any decision.)
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ungtss said:
exactly. if in fact there are no conflicts of interest among rational people, then there is no circumstances in which sacrificing self would actually benefit others. that’s why she believed altruism is not a logical or genuine position, but a fraudulent cover for the true motive, which is “destroy yourself for nothing.” the “death premise.”
psychology has made significant advances since she died into the death premise, and how it is inculcated through sadistic parenting practices. rand didn’t understand the causes of the death premises due to the limitations of her time and age. but it turns out there is a death premise, and it is a consequence of sadistic child abuse.
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bregister said:
It’s fine with me to think that there are people who are evil and desire to cause suffering for its own sake. My question is why we’re supposed to believe that calls to “sacrifice for the common good” and so forth all have that sort of hatred as their underlying motivation.
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ungtss said:
as a side note, i’ve noticed a pattern among objectivists — they tend to have disproportionately suffered from narcissistic child abuse as children, and objectivism appears to be a dramatic step in their healing process. i suspect this is why others typically fail to understand what she is talking about. either because they were shielded from it by having psychologically healthy parents, or because they are themselves narcissistic abusers.
an excellent book on this point is for your own good” by alice miller, which describes the process by which narcissistic abuse came to be normalized as “parenting” in the 18th century, and how the intergenerational cycle of abuse is still affecting people today. as it affected me and my family.
rand is describing narcissistic abuse in vivid detail, and offering a first step to a solution out for the victims of abuse. perhaps you have to be a victim to understand the words she’s using.
i think this also explains some of the bizarre behavior both of rand and of her followers. rand’s solutions were not complete — they did not fully resolve the complex PTSD that comes along with developmental trauma incident to child abuse. which means that although they ended up better than they started, neither she nor her followers fully escaped the trap of abuse.
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ungtss said:
“My question is why we’re supposed to believe that calls to “sacrifice for the common good” and so forth all have that sort of hatred as their underlying motivation.”
because there is no such thing as sacrificing your own good for the common good. even in war, as Patton supposedly said, “No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
and since (under normal circumstances) there is no such thing as the sacrifice of one leading to the benefit of all, rand (and i) conclude that talk of sacrifice for the public good is as fraudulent as sacrificing your children to repay the gods.
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bregister said:
What is your reason for thinking that those who call for sacrifice for the common good agree with you about the claim that such sacrifices are invariably in vain?
I believe that the good general was addressing the idiocy (which I’ve heard in class quite a few times) that a soldier’s mission is to die for his country, which is of course absurd. But a soldier’s mission might well involve risking death for his country — and, in some cases, might require that he just up and so something that will definitely kill him.
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ungtss said:
it is inferred by the same process victims of narcissistic abuse use to determine what their parents are really after. when people are making mistakes, they consider contrary evidence. when they ignore contrary evidence, and become evasive, defensive, and aggressive, they are not making a mistake. they are hiding their true motive. then to infer their true motive, you look at what their actions are actually accomplishing.
this is not radical thinking. this is how psychotherapy operates. psychotherapists work with clients who have all sorts of false ideas about why they want what they want. a psychotherapist’s job is to figure out what their client’s really want, by inferring it from the results.
for example, a woman who continually pursues emotionally unavailable men complains that she can’t find anybody. the psychotherapist’s job is to determine why she wants unavailable men. typically it is because she is ambivalent about intimacy. unavailable men allow her to live out that ambivalence by allowing her to both long for intimacy and not actually achieve it.
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bregister said:
We’re evasive for all kinds of reasons other than having had bad intentions to begin with. E.g., I buy into a pyramid scheme, thinking that I’ll make some money (and not grasping that it’s a pyramid scheme). Then I buy in more, but continue to not make any money. When someone points out that it’s a pyramid scheme, I might be evasive about that, but not because ending up poor was my goal to begin with.
Of course, what we’re really talking about in a Randian context is higher marginal income taxes on the wealthiest, to pay for basic welfare goods for the poorest. As that really does in fact help a lot of people, and doesn’t call for anything that is recognizable a “sacrifice” or loss of any kind from anyone, it’s even less likely that people calling for “sacrifice” for the common good are really just trying to murder everyone. Indeed, saying that raising taxes on very wealthy people is asking them to “sacrifice” is already to grant too much dignity to their wasted consumption.
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ungtss said:
“When someone points out that it’s a pyramid scheme, I might be evasive about that, but not because ending up poor was my goal to begin with.”
the question is, what do you do after you’ve been confronted with the facts? when i pull up 20 articles showing you in excruciating detail that it is a pyramid scheme and you’re going to keep losing money, do you buy in again? if not, it’s a mistake and you learned from it. if so, something else is at stake. usually a self-destructive impulse, which is very common and well-established in psychotherapy.
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ungtss said:
“If altruism-2 demands that I destroy my own interests to pursue others’, which is doomed to fail, it’s just telling me to destroy my own interests, and would collapse into altruism-1.”
that is exactly the point, and rand’s most valuable insight. altruism 2 (which is widely articulated) is just a cover for the true and unstated motive, which is altruism 1. “give for the sake of X who you do not value” is just a cover for “give so you don’t have.” but altruism 1 is considered acceptable so long as it is not seen that it is nothing more than altruism 1 in disguise.
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bregister said:
What is your evidence that calls for sacrifice are motivated by nihilism?
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ungtss said:
the strongest evidence is the fact that in practice, “destroying your own interests to pursue another’s interests” inevitably collapses into “destroying your own interests for nothing.” this is because under normal circumstances, destroying your own interests to benefit another does not in fact benefit the other. instead, it creates dependency in the other, which is not in the other’s interests.
if i am a mother who martyrs herself doing her son’s homework through high school, i tell myself i am sacrificing my interests for his. but in fact, i am simply making him dependent on me, which is not in his interest.
in the case where the mother is not acting against her interests, but is in fact helping her son learn how to read independent of hers, she is not destroying her own interests to benefit her son’s. she is acting in her own interest, which is to permit her son to become independent of her.
this is a personal anecdote that occurred in my family. my altruistic mother sabotaged my brother’s ability to function independently by “helping” him with his homework, which prevented him from learning to read, destroyed his confidence. this, along with many other altruistic acts committed by my mother, led to his failure in college, and ultimately becoming a gambling addict, an alcoholic, a fraudulent spouse, and a child abuser
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bregister said:
The mother who helps her son learn to read might well regard herself as making a sacrifice; the mother who mistakenly makes her son excessively dependent might well consider herself to be pursuing her own interests as a mother.
The argument that allegedly altruistic behavior usually hurts someone, therefore it must be intended to do so, doesn’t follow at all. (Even assuming that the premise is true. I’m extremely cynical, so I kind of suspect that the premise is true.)
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ungtss said:
this is where i think victims of narcissistic abuse have a perspective that others are unable to share. victims of narcissists understand that there is a surface intention, and a true intention. and the way to distinguish the two is to look at your victimizer’s reaction when confronted with cold hard facts showing that the acts do not support the surface intention. when you tell a woman she is hurting her son, show her the evidence and the research, and rather than considering what you are saying, she becomes evasive, defensive, and angry, you know her surface reason is not her true reason. then you look at what her actions are actually accomplishing to determine her real reason.
this process of motive interpretation is how victims of narcissistic abuse keep themselves sane.
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Lloyd Flack said:
Are you suggesting that Rand herself may have been the victim of a narcissistic parent? Someone who spouted altruistic words but had narcissistic motives. Some things that she said about her mother’s actions do suggest this possibility. And of course Rand herself was a narcissist.
Where Rand goes off the rails is when she starts seeing altruism motivated by narcissisism as nihilistic. I think it has more to do with seeking to feel virtuous and have others see you as virtuous. Seeing it as nihilistic can make the victim feel better about themselves.
But she then applies this sort of interpretation of behaviour to what most people mean by altruistic behaviour. And that is simply behaviour done out of concern for others, because you feel some sort of link, because of fellow feeling. These sorts of feelings were quite obviously weak in her case, She would not have tried to frame any acts of generosity in self-interest terms otherwise.
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Ungtss said:
Exactly, Lloyd:). Her whole life screams “I was raised by a malignant narcissist and half figured out what the problem was.” Her stories are elaborate projections of narcissistic abuse. Her view of the world is a projection of narcissistic abuse. Her treatment of her husband was narcissistic abuse — particularly the cuckolding. And she was then narcissistically abused in turn by her lover.
I suspect that much of her writing was an effort to split off and project the narcissistic elements in herself that she inherited from living in an abusive household. That said, there is enormous value to be drawn from those projections by people who have been groomed to be blinded to narcissistic abuse.
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Ungtss said:
At the risk of being pedantic, I’ll clarify splitting and projection. When a person finds a part of themselves too psychologically painful to acknowledge, they dissociate from the part. This can take the form of unawareness of that part, or a complete destruction of that part. Projection is the psychological process by which we convince ourselves that those dissociated, unacceptable parts of ourselves are present in others, real or fictional.
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Daniel Barnes said:
Um, here you assert a direct causal connection between helping someone with their homework and their later becoming a gambling addict, fraudster, alcoholic and child abuser.
This seems to be a rather unique psychological theory. Let’s see how it stacks up.
Given that most parents help their children with their homework to some degree, how do you explain the fact that most people do not grow up as the above?
But let’s expand beyond the evils of helping with homework. Given that almost all parents make altruistic sacrifices for their children of one sort or another, how is it that most people do not grow up as the above? Surely if Rand’s theory is correct that’s what we’d observe.
In fact I suggest we see the opposite. Where a parent pursues their own interests exclusively – the normal definition of “selfish” – and makes no sacrifices for their children, the logical consequence is that the children are neglected. Thus, under your/Rand’s theory, neglected children should flourish. If this theory were true, the sons and daughters of gambling addicts, alcoholics etc should not turn out to be the above, as such parents are usually too busy with their exclusive interests in gambling and or alcohol to do the stuff that yours/Rand’s anti-altruistic theory asserts really hurts kids, like helping with their homework.
Yet while there are certainly exceptions, it turns out kids who are neglected by such parents very often turn out like them too. This is unfortunate both for them, and this theory. So it seems almost certainly wrong, along with post hoc attempts to rationalise it by asserting “death premises”, “nihilism”, “social metaphysics” or whatever mystical jargon one might come up with.
And of course none of what you are proposing has anything to do with the work of Alice Miller, who focussed on cruelty in child-rearing, not altruism of parents doing things like helping with their homework.
Alternatively, your personal observation might simply have cause and effect mixed up. It could well be that your brother was born with a whole lot of unfortunate traits that were evident to your mother from an early age, and that her helping with his homework was one of the ways she was simply trying – in vain – to help compensate for them. I really have no idea, but it is certainly possible.
Now, there is clearly the phenomenon of “killing with kindness” – that is, like overfeeding a child (or yourself!) or disabling someone by removing their independence. But that’s quite a different thing entirely, and I don’t think the fact that you can have too much kindness is an argument against kindness itself any more than overeating is an argument against eating.
While I am obviously sympathetic to your family background, and agree that there indeed exists horrendous intergenerational cycles of abuse, I cannot see how your/Rand’s theory usefully contributes to solving this problem.
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ungtss said:
“Given that most parents help their children with their homework to some degree, how do you explain the fact that most people do not grow up as the above?”
because most parents do not actively prevent their children from learning to read. they do not actively take the books and do the work while their child is out with his buddies, so he can just hand it in.
most parents do not give their children counterproductive career advice, like telling a 22 year old girl there is no problem with taking 3 months off in the course of a 6 month paid internship, and that she doesn’t need to tell her boss, she can just do it. that is sabotage, designed to get the girl fired.
i could go on. as i said above, i think rand’s work requires a reference frame in narcissistic abuse, and i think it appeals disproportionately to the victims of such abuse. i think those who commit such abuse themselves, or who have been shielded from it, are unable to understand what she is talking about.
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Ungtss said:
“everybody agrees that selfish means “concern solely with one’s own interest.””
No, in fact they don’t. And that’s the fault in your arguments, you assert and/or assume much about other people which is not in evidence.
If I type ‘define selfish’ into Google, I get: “(of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.””
What is the substantive difference between “concern solely for one’s own interest” and “concerned chiefly with one’s own profit or pleasure?”
I see no meaningful difference at all.
“If I see a plate of free samples in the supermarket, and they look tasty and I’m a bit hungry, then if I take some, that is self-interested, but not selfish. If I take ALL the samples, because I have no concern over whether other people in the store get to try any or not, when my desire trumps getting along with the rest of society, that’s where “selfish” comes into play.”
That is a great example to explore. I argue that your interpretation of the act of eating all the samples at the grocery store fundamentally misunderstands the reason for the behavior, because it applies falsified, medieval views of human motivation.
Why would a person eat all the free samples at the grocery store? Possible reasons: 1) to provoke conflict with the sample giver; 2) to confirm a self-perception of being a rotten person; 3) because one is sabotaging one’s life by failing to earn enough money to feed oneself, such that one is dependent on free stuff; 4) to confirm one’s perception of dependence and helplessness.
There is one explanation that appeals only to people who lack an understanding of why people act as they do: 1) that one eats all the samples because one wants to eat as much as one can for free. That is not a reason one makes a hog of oneself at the grocery store. That is a mask one adopts to avoid seeing the real motives.
“Robin Williams’ suicide is considered selfish because at the moment he did it, his concern was for his own pain and misery, and any consideration for those who loved him and did not want to see him removed from the world was pushed aside. ”
As with the grocery sample example, this fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the misery that leads to suicide. The misery comes from a lack of love for himself, and a dependence on love, meaning, and attention from others. When that love is inadequate, and one is unable to provide enough self-love to bridge the gap, the emptiness becomes overwhelming, and one disappears oneself.
As you can see, this is not semantics. This is a fundamentally different understanding of human motivation in the context of dysfunctional behavior. And science, specifically psychotherapy, has proven that yours is wrong. It is a superstition of the past, on its way out.
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Daniel Barnes said:
I have always assumed Rand’s whole theory is a simple error of the “there is overeating, therefore eating is bad” kind. She sees evil in excessive kindness, but attributes it to the kindness, not to the excessiveness.
I think if we can have “benign neglect” we can inversely also have “malign care”. This seems to be the subspecies of the vague term “altruism” that she thinks is bad. Well, so would most people. So there is a grain of truth to her theory. But this is true of almost all false theories, and in the same way as above a grain of truth does not make something true!
I have also not touched on possible motives for “malign care”. One, for example, might be simple ignorance. Iatrogenics in medicine, where “the cure is worse than the disease” is a common example. One does not need to assume a “death premise”, merely that humans do not always understand the consequences of their actions.
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Lloyd Flack said:
I suspect that one reason why she focused on the kindness is that it makes for easier more clear cut decisions using her logic. Focusing on the excessiveness means that you have to make a judgment call and she wanted the certainty of black and white decisions.
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Lloyd Flack said:
I believe that for most people altruism is not putting others interests as above one’s own but rather regarding others’ as inherently of value and something that must be balanced against one’s own interests. I think that when someone is talks about putting others interests above their own they are turning morality into an area for ostentatious display. And if it is a matter of display you get more kudos and self -satisfaction from doing something that is harder. And of course a course of action which goes against your own interests is harder than one which does not.
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ungtss said:
after some clarification, i think you’re right. when most people think about altruism, they conclude that it is not a good idea. they then change their use of the world to mean something else. but the meaning of altruism is as inescapable as “selfish.” altr- is the latin root for “other.” altruism is “otherism.” it means a thing is good because it is for the other. that’s what comte intended when he invented the concept, and coined the term.
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bregister said:
This is a great reason to just stop using all of these words, because they contribute no clarity to any discussion.
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ungtss said:
yes, when your goal is clear communication, it is best to say “self-interest” rather than “selfish.” but rand’s purpose in analyzing the word “selfish” is to show how ingrained human depravity is in our thought process. there is great value in refusing to tack on a connotation of evil to a word that has no morphemes to support that connotation.
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bregister said:
Why not observe that the fact that ‘selfish’ means ‘evil’ doesn’t really say much for English, and then move on?
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Lloyd Flack said:
Again, the meaning of the word has drifted. The common usage is not what Comte intended.
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ungtss said:
yes, and the common usage reflects something about how people think.
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ungtss said:
“Why not observe that the fact that ‘selfish’ means ‘evil’ doesn’t really say much for English, and then move on?”
here is an article explaining how language affects cognition:
Click to access sci-am-2011.pdf
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CW said:
That link to the supposed paper gave my browser an “untrusted link” alert. I don’t know if that says anything about the quality of the article or the competence of Stanford’s IT department.
It seems apparent to me that Rand (and those in her footsteps) aren’t really interested in the honest and true meanings of words – because there are countless words that have drifted t6o some extent from either their root components or their original meanings, and do they fight for them all? Hardly. No, they just want to claim certain words, and it seems to be very Orwellian on their part. Instead of coining terms better-suited for the general public, they insist on correcting others as if they are trying to create morality from semantics.
“Being selfish is bad!” someone might say.
“No, selfish is good!” says an Objectivist.
What follows is then a breakdown of what the average person means by “selfish” versus what Rand meant by “selfish”, but what is soon lost to this dickering is whether the behavior the original speaker was referencing is, in fact, bad. I can’t help but think that’s the point – Rand (et al) wants to blur lines, not clarify them.
My little sister, in her early youth, when corrected on some error of fact, would often resort to “well, that’s not how it is on MY planet!”, rather than admit she was wrong. Rand insists on using words her way and then complaining when everybody else does not follow her to her own planet.
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Ungtss said:
Perhaps the link is untrusted because your browser does not trust direct links to PDF files. It is a PDF, rather than an html.
As to Rand’s motive, what method do you use to determine that her express motive is not her actual motive? On what basis do you dismiss what she says her motive is?
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CW said:
I’ll admit to not having the clearest idea of what Rand’s actual end motive was, only that the motive of “reclaiming” words like selfish does not seem to make any rational sense. For everyone else, the word has fairly common connotations. What purpose is served by trying to shoehorn the conversation into an uncommon set of definitions? Any benefit that I can see (hypothetically, I can’t really see any benefit) has to be offset by the confusion that this kind of thing generates. Is the definition of “selfish” really the hill that Rand, et al, wants to die on?
What we are left with is either sheer pedantry, or intentional verbal sidestepping. It is my suspicion that Rand, in insisting on her definition of “selfish”, is seeking for a way where when people say to her (or others like her), “you’re selfish!” as a criticism, she can turn around and essentially say “yes, I am, thank you for the compliment”. Of course, the weakness in doing so is that it doesn’t work unless everyone is familiar with (and accepts) the much-less-common definition that Rand would prefer.
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Ungtss said:
Rand’s express argument for why the word should be reclaimed was that language affects how we think. Specifically, the routine use of word composed of “self” and “ish,” to mean “bad” will cause us to think that the self is bad.
Therefore, the question of whether that position is rational depends on whether language does in fact affect how we think. If language does affect how we think, then she has a point. If language does not affect how we think, then she is in error
Since the last link did not open for you, I found another link that discusses the effects that language has on cognition, using concrete examples, including its effect on one’s ability to navigate, of all things.
As a polyglot, rand would have known from experience how language affects how you think. She did not, however, have research to substantiate that fact to the satisfaction of non-polyglots.
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Ungtss said:
Here is the link:
https://edge.org/conversation/how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think
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Ungtss said:
In case that link does not work, or is tl/dr, of particular interest is how the gender assignment of nouns in German and Spanish affects how people describe the nouns. When a noun is grammatically feminine, people describe it in feminine terms. When grammatically masculine, people describe it in masculine terms. The grammatical assignment does not directly assign an emphasis to those characteristics. Nevertheless, it affects what people associate with nouns.
Using “selfish” to describe being a jerk is much more dramatic than grammatical gender. I think this makes the point quite strongly.
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CW said:
“Specifically, the routine use of word composed of “self” and “ish,” to mean “bad” will cause us to think that the self is bad.”
Only, there’s no actual evidence to show that this actually happens. Who, in their routine life, thinks of their self as “bad”? In fact, I think quite the opposite is true: people who do things to benefit themselves at the expense of others often do not think of themselves as bad, and even if they recognize that society may frown upon their actions, they justify those actions to themselves to avoid self-critique.
The paper you cite does show some effect of word usage on how we relate to things, but I think it would be a stretch to say that it supports the notion that “selfish” makes the self seem “bad” to the average English speaker. (Plus in general it seems to be research in an early, formative stage, and one would be well advised to avoid jumping to conclusions based on this alone.)
“Self” and “ish” does not mean “bad”, as you put it: it denotes a particular type of behavior generally considered bad (and certainly not badness itself). The thing is, generally people do not parse a word down into its component parts in normal, non-academic conversation. While you, as a non-native speaker of English, may see the component parts of a word and note some variation in meaning, casual native speakers are not likely to do so, since the connotations are made naturally with little effort. When we say “piggyback”, for example, we might on occasion note the word “pig” embedded in there, and perhaps wonder in what way pigs might relate to the concept of carrying someone on one’s back (spoiler: they actually don’t), but in the moment we use the word, we know what we are referring to and the pig issue is irrelevant, we don’t somehow think of our backs as pigs from use of the word, and society chugs on pretty much unscathed.
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ungtss said:
“Only, there’s no actual evidence to show that this actually happens. Who, in their routine life, thinks of their self as “bad”? In fact, I think quite the opposite is true: people who do things to benefit themselves at the expense of others often do not think of themselves as bad, and even if they recognize that society may frown upon their actions, they justify those actions to themselves to avoid self-critique.”
the evidence from psychotherapy is exactly the opposite. people who behave narcissistically identify with a sense of badness, powerlessness, and weakness. an excellent source on this is “healing developmental trauma,” a book which describes the five “survival styles” adopted by children abused in different ways and at different developmental stages.
each survival style has an “identification” and a “counter-identification.” the identification is what you think you are, at a deep level. the counter-identification is how you act in an effort to counterbalance the identification. for the “trust” survival style, which corresponds to what you would call “selfish” behavior, the identification is weak and powerless, and the counter-identification is “i’ll be bad and powerful so none ever hurts me again.” of course, part of being bad and strong is refusing to admit to others that you are bad. that would be vulnerable. and vulnerable is unsafe.
“The thing is, generally people do not parse a word down into its component parts in normal, non-academic conversation. ”
not explicitly, but implicitly. as reference, i would point to pinker’s “words and rules.” kids implicitly learn linguistic rules, and infer meaning from them. this may be subconscious or unconscious, but it does happen.
as to piggyback, the etymology shows that that word developed based on a shift in pronunciation from “pick-a-pack,” through different accents. it was not a shift in meaning of a clearly defined word, but a shift in pronunciation.
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CW said:
And that pronunciation shift is, I’ll warrant, unknown and/or un-thought-of to the majority of people who use the word today. My point stands: the word only negligibly (if at all) influences our image of pigs and backs. Why then would we assume that “selfish” creates any significant negative influence on how people view the self?
It’s only that some people want to actively shift the accepted meaning of “selfish” to co-ordinate with their own philosophical stance that makes this an issue at all, and I’ve yet to hear any compelling reason for the public at large to adopt such a change.
As for the rest: there seems to some confusion with your insistence on bringing the idea of someone who serves themselves to the detriment of others in line with narcissism and only narcissism. I don’t believe that the commonly-accepted idea of “selfishness” is limited to narcissists; and while I’m certainly not versed in psychotherapy my sense of a narcissist embodies more than simple selfishness. Again, we seem to be moving into territory where you’re trying to define the terms as you’d like them as opposed to how they’re actually being used.
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ungtss said:
“My point stands: the word only negligibly (if at all) influences our image of pigs and backs.”
there is a key difference between “piggyback” and “selfish.” selfish has a connotation of “badness” that does not derive from any of the morphemes. “piggyback” does not have any connotations at all. it has a simple meaning — to ride or place on top. that is why “piggyback” does not affect our views of piggies or backs. because it does not carry any connotations, as selfish does.
the issue here is connotations. and to understand how and why movements reappropriate words to reverse their connotations, here is an article describing the process of “reappropriation”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reappropriation
reappropriation is the process of reclaiming a word that used to be bad, and turning it into an object of pride. For example, the LGBT movement has successfully reclaimed “queer” and “gay,” both of which used to be pejorative. they are now both objects of pride, while the previously preferred “homosexual” has gone out of favor.
this process of reappropriation was deliberate, systematic, and effective. it contributed significantly to the change in attitudes about gays that culminated this week. because a reversal of connotations affects how people think.
reappropriation happens all the time. the article i linked explains dozens of other examples. all were deliberate attempts to attack social prejudices linguistically. all operate on the same principle as rand, for the same purpose.
but for some reason, people get very upset about the reappropriation of “selfish,” but don’t get upset about the reappropriation of “queer” or “redneck.” why is that?
the answer, of course, is that people like for the word “selfish” to mean the self is bad, because they believe the self is bad:).
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CW said:
“selfish has a connotation of “badness” that does not derive from any of the morphemes.”
But there’s still no definitive indication that such a connotation leaks to the component, “self”.
As for reappropriation, consider that the difference between queer used pejoratively and as a badge of honor does not actually alter the meaning of the word all that much – just how one reacts to it in terms of offense or pride. You still refer to a homosexual. Plus, one assumes that using it pejoratively puts the user at the disadvantage of being a jerk, who by virtue of being a jerk, has less moral standing to claim any right to persist in using the word their way.
By contrast, Rand does not want to own the entire current connotations of “selfishness” as it stands today, she wants to edit out the parts she finds disagreeable or unfavorable. This isn’t reappropration so much as it is redefinition.
And really, I don’t think people get nearly as “upset” about it as you think, it’s just that for most folks, being told they ought to change how they define a perfectly usable word is a non-starter. Why should anyone? Who – besides Objectivists – does it benefit?
“people like for the word “selfish” to mean the self is bad, because they believe the self is bad”
Some people, perhaps. I think it’s an unfounded assertion to apply that to the wider public.
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ungtss said:
“But there’s still no definitive indication that such a connotation leaks to the component, “self”.”
a “definitive indication” is a pretty high standard in this context. i experience it. i also experienced a change in my attitude toward the self when i changed the use of the word.
“As for reappropriation, consider that the difference between queer used pejoratively and as a badge of honor does not actually alter the meaning of the word all that much – just how one reacts to it in terms of offense or pride. You still refer to a homosexual. ”
and in this case, you still refer to behavior that benefits the self. the only thing that changes is whether acting to benefit the self connotes good or bad behavior.
“And really, I don’t think people get nearly as “upset” about it as you think, it’s just that for most folks, being told they ought to change how they define a perfectly usable word is a non-starter.”
having used “selfish” this way for 15 years now, i find that most folks (outside anti-objectivist forums) are happy to accept how i use the word, and that i’m not asking anybody else to do anything with how they use the word, unless they see my point and agree with me. there appears to be some sort of totalitarian “you have to do this” being plastered onto this idea of rand’s. the first tenet of objectivism is that everybody has a right and responsibility to think for yourself. this means you don’t get to decide how i use the word, and i don’t get to decide how you use the word, and “reality is the final judge.”
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CW said:
“a “definitive indication” is a pretty high standard in this context.”
What sort of standard do you think others should require before they concede to your use of a word’s definition? Do you think your own personal anecdotal evidence ought to be good enough? Does that fact that you personally saw a benefit for you necessarily indicate that it would be a good idea for everyone?
The word is not going to change simply because a fractional portion of English speakers has a theory about its connotations. Either the word’s meaning may drift naturally over time, or people will have to make a conscious effort to shift its meaning. In the latter case, it’s going to require significant persuasion if the effort is going to become widespread, particularly if there’s no particular benefit seen by the average person to make the change.
“there appears to be some sort of totalitarian “you have to do this” being plastered onto this idea of rand’s. the first tenet of objectivism is that everybody has a right and responsibility to think for yourself. this means you don’t get to decide how i use the word, and i don’t get to decide how you use the word,”
Well, you might be surprised how many Objectivists in the wild are perfectly willing to condescendingly “correct” other people when the word “selfish” comes up. If there is any totalitarian stereotyping going on, it’s a result of Rand’s followers taking up the fight for the word, and other words she/they like to argue about. (cf “democracy”, “capitalism”, etc…) It would not even be an issue, I’d say, if not for Objectivist efforts to tell other people they aren’t using words properly.
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Ungtss said:
Who did the lgbt ask to “concede?” What standard of proof did they apply? None. When reclaiming a word, you simply reclaim it. Others are free to use the same word in self-destructive ways if they like. I am free to use the word as I like. Connotations drift because people make them drift. And the reclamation of “selfish” is actually working, and the connotation of badness is becoming less and less common.
I don’t know much about “objectivists in the wild” but I do know that people who join “movements” tend to be psychologically primed to rigidly adhere to movement doctrine. For such people, the doctrine itself is less significant than the us/them feeling they can manufacture by being doctrinaire. This behavior is not unique to objectivists. It is shared by “joiners” of all stripes.
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CW said:
“Who did the lgbt ask to “concede?” What standard of proof did they apply? None.”
Because they were not asking anyone to redefine the word. They simply refused to react negatively to the term. It required no action on the part of anyone else.
By contrast, if someone says, “that’s selfish!” and you reply, “no, that’s not selfish, you’re describing a destructive act and selfish is not actually destructive, you mean something different,” (which is essentially what I’ve heard from others), implicit in that exchange is that you want the other person to adjust their usage to suit you. Otherwise, you’d simply realize that the other person was using the word in their way, not yours, you’d take that into account when forming any reply, and the debate would proceed accordingly. Whose definition must give way in such a conversation? Should a less common usage be favored over a more established usage, and if so, why? The LGBT community merely took a word – as is – and made it theirs. They did not need to dicker about the word’s finer points or other definitions.
If you believe “selfish” is being successfully “reclaimed”, well, fine – I personally haven’t seen any such thing, but I’m sure we orbit different circles. And for me, to alter how I use the word will take a more compelling reason than any I’ve seen presented to date.
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ungtss said:
“Because they were not asking anyone to redefine the word. They simply refused to react negatively to the term.”
i think that rand was doing the same thing with “selfish.” selfish remains “concern solely with one’s own interest.” the only question is whether that is connoted as a good or bad thing. you connote it as a bad thing to be concerned with your own interests, because you assume that being concerned with your own interests means you will crush everyone else. i don’t assume that, because i don’t think my interests include crushing everyone else.
“By contrast, if someone says, “that’s selfish!” and you reply, “no, that’s not selfish, you’re describing a destructive act and selfish is not actually destructive, you mean something different,” (which is essentially what I’ve heard from others), implicit in that exchange is that you want the other person to adjust their usage to suit you.
i think there are two issues at play. the first is whether they want you to change your word use. the second is whether they find it significant that a word that means “concern solely with one’s own interests” should connote acts that are self-destructive. you are assuming they are concerned primarily with the former, and perhaps some are so pedantic. but the real issue that rand was concerned with, and which i am concerned with, is the second.
i remember reading articles about how “selfish” robin williams was for killing himself when so many people depended on you. “how dare you? we need you!” selfish to hang yourself alone in your room? according to people who think like you, yes, it was selfish. according to those who think like me, it was selfless. quite literally. he eliminated himself. and people called it selfish. i can think of no more evil thing than that.
psychotherapy is the process of helping people discover that the acts and attitudes they think are “selfish” are in fact “self-destructive.” patients typically arrive believing that they are doing things for their own benefit, because they do not understand the implicit self-destruction in their actions, because the self-destruction was programmed in early life. a person thinks he acts selfishly in his addiction. his family constantly reinforces it by telling him he needs to “think of the family.” when in fact, he acts self-destructively, based on deep, unacknowledged self-destructive impulses.
“The LGBT community merely took a word – as is – and made it theirs. They did not need to dicker about the word’s finer points or other definitions.”
everybody agrees that selfish means “concern solely with one’s own interest.” the question is whether that is a good thing, or a bad thing, based on assumptions about what our self-interest is. rand was not trying to redefine the word, but to make it hers, by attacking the connotations of “badness” inherent in “selfish.”
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CW said:
“everybody agrees that selfish means “concern solely with one’s own interest.””
No, in fact they don’t. And that’s the fault in your arguments, you assert and/or assume much about other people which is not in evidence.
If I type ‘define selfish’ into Google, I get: “(of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.”
The primary thing to note is that selfish does not commonly mean ONLY self-interest, it is self-interest to the point where no regard is given to others, where it could impact the lives of others. If I see a plate of free samples in the supermarket, and they look tasty and I’m a bit hungry, then if I take some, that is self-interested, but not selfish. If I take ALL the samples, because I have no concern over whether other people in the store get to try any or not, when my desire trumps getting along with the rest of society, that’s where “selfish” comes into play. As explained in the original post, commonly people do not AT ALL use “selfish” when referring to acts of self-interest that do not negatively impact others. If I eat an entire box of whatever the free samples were, a box that I bought at the supermarket and took home, that might be gluttonous, but few would consider it selfish.
The problem with saying someone “finds it significant” that “selfish” has a negative connotation is that such a statement is sheer innuendo. What does that even mean? And if that’s your true concern, what’s the point of all this typing you’ve done?
Robin Williams’ suicide is considered selfish because at the moment he did it, his concern was for his own pain and misery, and any consideration for those who loved him and did not want to see him removed from the world was pushed aside. Calling it “selfless” is another verbal play on words that ignores established uses of the word in favor of rhetorical arguing points.
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Ungtss said:
“everybody agrees that selfish means “concern solely with one’s own interest.””
No, in fact they don’t. And that’s the fault in your arguments, you assert and/or assume much about other people which is not in evidence.
If I type ‘define selfish’ into Google, I get: “(of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.””
What is the substantive difference between “concern solely for one’s own interest” and “concerned chiefly with one’s own profit or pleasure?”
I see no meaningful difference at all.
“If I see a plate of free samples in the supermarket, and they look tasty and I’m a bit hungry, then if I take some, that is self-interested, but not selfish. If I take ALL the samples, because I have no concern over whether other people in the store get to try any or not, when my desire trumps getting along with the rest of society, that’s where “selfish” comes into play.”
That is a great example to explore. I argue that your interpretation of the act of eating all the samples at the grocery store fundamentally misunderstands the reason for the behavior, because it applies falsified, medieval views of human motivation.
Why would a person eat all the free samples at the grocery store? Possible reasons: 1) to provoke conflict with the sample giver; 2) to confirm a self-perception of being a rotten person; 3) because one is sabotaging one’s life by failing to earn enough money to feed oneself, such that one is dependent on free stuff; 4) to confirm one’s perception of dependence and helplessness.
There is one explanation that appeals only to people who lack an understanding of why people act as they do: 1) that one eats all the samples because one wants to eat as much as one can for free. That is not a reason one makes a hog of oneself at the grocery store. That is a mask one adopts to avoid seeing the real motives.
“Robin Williams’ suicide is considered selfish because at the moment he did it, his concern was for his own pain and misery, and any consideration for those who loved him and did not want to see him removed from the world was pushed aside. ”
As with the grocery sample example, this fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the misery that leads to suicide. The misery comes from a lack of love for himself, and a dependence on love, meaning, and attention from others. When that love is inadequate, and one is unable to provide enough self-love to bridge the gap, the emptiness becomes overwhelming, and one disappears oneself.
As you can see, this is not semantics. This is a fundamentally different understanding of human motivation in the context of dysfunctional behavior. And science, specifically psychotherapy, has proven that yours is wrong. It is a superstition of the past, on its way out.
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CW said:
“What is the substantive difference between “concern solely for one’s own interest” and “concerned chiefly with one’s own profit or pleasure?”
I see no meaningful difference at all.”
That’s because you’ve ignored the whole “lacking consideration for others” part. That’s part of the definition given, not one of two definitions. And thereby you’ve conveniently ignored the entire point made.
“Why would a person eat all the free samples at the grocery store? Possible reasons: 1) to provoke conflict with the sample giver; 2) to confirm a self-perception of being a rotten person; 3) because one is sabotaging one’s life by failing to earn enough money to feed oneself, such that one is dependent on free stuff; 4) to confirm one’s perception of dependence and helplessness.
There is one explanation that appeals only to people who lack an understanding of why people act as they do: 1) that one eats all the samples because one wants to eat as much as one can for free.”
You will note that at no time did I mention motivations, and I CERTAINLY did not posit the one you’re trying to ascribe to me. I only argued that someone with no particular consideration for others would not balk at eating all the samples – if one does not value the well-being or good wishes of other folks, then what stops them?
The motivations why, in this case, are largely irrelevant. Even if I loathe myself somehow and that prompts me to grab all the samples, that only becomes an issue of selfishness if I ignore completely how it will affect the others I interact with.
That also applies to Williams, and your motivation only reinforces what I said: His pain, his misery, outweighed his consideration for the happiness of others who would have missed him. Arguing why ad infinitum is beside the point.
You are trying very hard to elide over this issue, as if papering over the whole “does not take others into account” business isn’t the entire point I was making about the definition. If Rand had just said, “I want what I want and to hell with everyone else, selfish is good”, I’d have far more respect for her than this jumping through hoops to “prove” that “selfish” isn’t actually how everyone else has been using it all this time.
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CW said:
Incidentally, your reliance on “the science of psychotherapy” can only take you so far. I’ll admit to not being studied on the subject, but what little I know suggests that it’s an inexact science at best, when it can be considered a science at all. I’m also pretty sure there are competing and contradictory theories and methods at work, and even the Wikipedia article carries the following quote:
“In 2001, Bruce Wampold of the University of Wisconsin published the book The Great Psychotherapy Debate.[83] In it Wampold, who has a degree in mathematics and who went on to train as a counseling psychologist, reported that:
1) Psychotherapy is indeed effective
2) The type of treatment is not a factor
3) The theoretical bases of the techniques used and the strictness of adherence to those techniques are both not factors
4) The therapist’s strength of belief in the efficacy of the technique is a factor
5) The personality of the therapist is a significant factor
6) The alliance between the patient(s) and the therapist (meaning affectionate and trusting feelings toward the therapist, motivation and collaboration of the client, and empathic response of the therapist) is a key factor
Wampold therefore concludes that “we do not know why psychotherapy works”.”
I would caution you about crowing too loudly about the science of psychotherapy and how it’s proven all the things you claim it has, lest someone actually take the time to check things out and find out what, if anything, it does prove.
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Lloyd Flack said:
What you don’t see is that lack of concern for others is not a connotation of “selfishness”. It is part of the denotation, the primary meaning stripped of implications. Good arguments can be made for coining a new word for self-interest in general. But attempts to redefine “selfishness” will be seen as attempts to render the unacceptable behaviour denoted by the word acceptable.
How did the meaning narrow so that it only refers to harmful behaviour? i think Bryan may be right when he suggests that it came about through people being more on the look out for harmful behaviour. That is part of human nature. However it happened attempts to change it back to its 17th Century meaning can only cause confusion.
When it comes to learning words native English speakers do not assume that they can know the meaning of a word simply by looking at its components. The components give some idea of what it is about but do not give you the exact or meaning. “Selfishness” obviously has something to do with the self but neither “self-interest” nor “self-centered behaviour marked by a lack of concern for others” is obviously the meaning. The meaning is learned separately from its components with the components only indicating the theme.
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Ungtss said:
“That’s because you’ve ignored the whole “lacking consideration for others” part. That’s part of the definition given, not one of two definitions. And thereby you’ve conveniently ignored the entire point made.”
You didn’t answer my question. The answer is, obviously, that there is no difference between those parts.
But Google adds another part to the definition: lacking consideration for others. Thus lacking consideration for others is consistent with being concerned primarily with one’s own profit.
That’s a moral lesson right there. One you’ve implicitly accepted. In reality, a lack of consideration is not consistent with concern for one’s own profit.
“Even if I loathe myself somehow and that prompts me to grab all the samples, that only becomes an issue of selfishness if I ignore completely how it will affect the others I interact with.”
You’re ignoring the motives. If I am making a hog of myself to provoke a conflict with the samples lady, I am not “ignoring completely how it will affect” her. I know exactly how it will affect her. It’s effect on her is my primary concern. I want it to make her mad at me, because I am living in a childhood game of “kick me,” in which I misbehave to get negative attention from authority figures. Her feelings and reaction to me are my primary focus.
But I don’t want anybody to know it. So I pretend it’s all about the samples.
As to my crowing abou psychotherapy, the only difference between us, I can refer to a professional field as a basis for my views, and you can only refer to “how everybody uses this word.” Psychotherapy may not be perfect, but it’s better than the basis for your views, which is nothing but your say-so.
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Ungtss said:
“What you don’t see is that lack of concern for others is not a connotation of “selfishness”. It is part of the denotation, the primary meaning stripped of implications. Good arguments can be made for coining a new word for self-interest in general. But attempts to redefine “selfishness” will be seen as attempts to render the unacceptable behaviour denoted by the word acceptable.”
Where in Rand’s work do you see her definition of selfishness including unacceptable behavior? Where do her heroes pillage and steal what rightly belongs to others?
Nowhere of course. Her concept of rational selfishness is strictly limited to behavior she argued was or should be acceptable.
I do not agree it is part of the denotation. Some dictionaries include it; others don’t. Some simply describe it as “concern for the self.” That is a proper definition, linguistically.
Assuming it arose in the 17th century, it arose in a cultural and moral context in which the self was explicitly viewed as immoral. Sex for pleasure was widely viewed as immoral. Profit too. The proper purpose of man was to serve God and King. To sacrifice self for worthy goals, like petty dictators’ narcissistic whims.
The results of that primitive philosophy of selflessness, which still exists widely today, is manifest. A living nightmare.
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Lloyd Flack said:
When people use the word they do mean “lack of concern for others”. That is established usage and you seem to be misinterpreting some dictionaries to impose a more general meaning. Trying to change the meaning of “selfishness” back to what it was centuries ago will only impede communication. Coin a new word if you must but to not try to interfere with the established meaning. That will be seen as dishonest because it will facilitate equivocation.
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Ungtss said:
“When people use the word they do mean “lack of concern for others”.”
Because they equate concern with their own interests with lack of concern for others. They think they can profit by being a jerk. They think they can counter a lack of consideration by countering profit. Those ideas are all implicit in their use of the word. And they shape how our society functions.
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CW said:
“But Google adds another part to the definition: lacking consideration for others. Thus lacking consideration for others is consistent with being concerned primarily with one’s own profit.”
You’re just making stuff up, now. I don’t even understand what logic you use to arrive at that sentence.
“You’re ignoring the motives.”
Yes, because they are irrelevant, a distracting sideshow.
“I can refer to a professional field as a basis for my views,”
But that’s just it: can you? You have a certain advantage in that I can’t easily confirm or deny any thing you might say about what psychotherapy “proves”. I do know that theories in psychotherapy come and go; Freud was once revered, but now much of his work is discredited. The fact that you keep bringing it up in this way, though, sets off my B.S. alarm.
The one actual source you cite to support a claim turned out to be at best inconclusive, and for the rest we’re just having to rely on your bald assertions. For all I know, you could be relying on the work of some branch of psychotherapy that has little empirical evidence to support it. I don’t know if you’re studying the theories of the Steven Hawking of psychotherapy or the Donald Trump of the same. In any case, while I’m aware that Internet arguing does not lend itself well to proper research and citations (and even if provided, who’s seriously going to spend sufficient time reading it?), repeated claims of proof that never gets seen tends to come off as just as much hot air as “my say-so”.
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Lloyd Flack said:
Being a jerk is short-sighted, yes. But being a jerk is the meaning of selfishness now and has been for centuries. Legitimate self-interest needs another word, I agree. Coin that. Objectivists’ attempts to change the meaning make them look ludicrous and dishonest. They are seen as trying to change the meaning of a word, not to clarify things but to win an argument by equivocation.
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Ungtss said:
“You’re just making stuff up, now. I don’t even understand what logic you use to arrive at that sentence.”
Your basis for believing I’m making stuff is that you don’t understand my logic. Think about that for a second. Is that a logical deduction on your part?
““You’re ignoring the motives.”
Yes, because they are irrelevant, a distracting sideshow.”
Motives are irrelevant to a discussion about the nature of “selfish” motives. Think about that for a second. Does it make sense that motives would be irrelevant to a discussion about a particular category of motives?
I’m going to drop the subject of psychotherapy, because you seem to think an unsubstantiated, non-specific attack on the basis of my views is a substitute for some basis for your own, and I can’t help you with that.
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CW said:
“Your basis for believing I’m making stuff is that you don’t understand my logic. Think about that for a second. Is that a logical deduction on your part?”
I’ll assume it is, until the logic is actually explained.
I’ll also note that your reply didn’t actually attempt to explain anything.
“Motives are irrelevant to a discussion about the nature of “selfish” motives.”
Only we’re not discussing that. We’ve been discussing how the word “selfish” is commonly defined, and whether a different definition ought to be adopted. Motives are tangential at best, obfuscation at worst. If motives are what you prefer to discuss, do say so – then we can consider the definition matter at rest and I’ll go do something else.
It’s almost as if you’re intentionally trying to engineer topic drift.
“you seem to think an unsubstantiated, non-specific attack on the basis of my views is a substitute for some basis for your own”
As opposed to an unsubstantiated, non-specific appeal to the authority of psychotherapy? Hey, if you want to argue some kind of specific, verifiable point, show some evidence, and either it will be analyzed or ignored. But if you want to just blurt out the equivalent of “psychotherapy says so!” as your trump card every other post, that’s going to get all the respect it engenders.
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Ungtss said:
“I’ll assume it is, until the logic is actually explained.”
It was explained. You just didn’t understand it.
There are two parts to your Google definition of selfish “primary concern for own profit,” and “lack of consideration for others.” Everybody agrees on the first half. The issue is the second part. In order for this definition to actually describe an actual thing, it must not be self-contradictory. In other words, if a word is defined as “a thing that is simultaneously a and not a,” it is not a thing. This definition says that there is such a thing that is simultaneously “primary concern for own profit” and “lack of consideration for others.” To use that word, therefore, is to assume that such a thing exists. It is to assume that it is possible to be primarily concerned with one’s own profit, and completely unconcerned with the interests of others. Otherwise the word would be self-contradictory. Therefore, using that word with that definition requires you to believe that one can serve oneself by having no consideration for others.
“I’ll also note that your reply didn’t actually attempt to explain anything.”
Because you didn’t ask me to. In healthy conversation, people express their concerns directly. In narcissistic communication, people expect others to read their minds and provide for their wishes without the necessity of identifying and expressing them.
“We’ve been discussing how the word “selfish” is commonly defined, and whether a different definition ought to be adopted.”
And my argument on that point has been that the behaviors you describe as motivated by a “concern for own profit and lack of concern for the feelings of others” are in fact motivated by a “lack of concern for own profit and an excessive preoccupation with the feelings of others.” In other words, that your definition describes these behaviors as exactly the opposite of what they are.
“As opposed to an unsubstantiated, non-specific appeal to the authority of psychotherapy?”
If you read the thread, you’ll see extensive and specific claims. A list of specific motives for specific dysfunctional behaviors, including the game of “kick me,” described in Eric berne’s transactional analysis to model. Citations to specific books, including “healing developmental trauma,” “internal family systems therapy,” et al. No one here has cited anything at all supporting a conclusion that people who eat all the samples at the grocery are doing it because they are hungry and cheap. We’re just supposed to assume it’s true.
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CW said:
“the behaviors you describe as motivated by a “concern for own profit and lack of concern for the feelings of others””
Only – once again – I said NOTHING about motivations. Motivations is all YOUR bugaboo, you keep introducing it. I’m describing the symptoms, not whatever the root cause might be. Can you for one moment discuss what I actually say and not what you (wrongly) interpret me to say?
” To use that word, therefore, is to assume that such a thing exists. It is to assume that it is possible to be primarily concerned with one’s own profit, and completely unconcerned with the interests of others.”
(repeating for reference’s sake)
“But Google adds another part to the definition: lacking consideration for others. Thus lacking consideration for others is consistent with being concerned primarily with one’s own profit.”
These two statements are different things. By using “consistent with”, the implication is that one part is an indicator of another, i.e., “these fibers are consistent with those of a flannel shirt”, or “this pattern of transfers is consistent with money laundering”. So your sentence was basically saying “being concerned only about one’s profit will result in one lacking consideration for others”. I seriously doubt that’s what the Google definition was trying to express, and I’m not sure how YOU arrived there. So your more recent statement makes more sense, and yes I do think it is “possible to be primarily concerned with one’s own profit, and completely unconcerned with the interests of others”, that’s the whole point.
I don’t know whether this is a “not your first language” problem or a “willfully misinterpreting and redefining things” problem.
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CW said:
Actually, you know what, now we’re arguing about what we’re arguing about. I’ll declare good faith out the window and bail on this one.
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Lloyd Flack said:
Ungtss, I think you have made a couple of valid points. I agree that extreme altruism or its display is usually the result of narcissism. And I suspect that you are right about Rand being a victim of that sort of narcissism.,
Like others here, I am very doubtful about any claims of nihilism or a death wish being behind narcissism, at least in most cases. It seems to be a completely unnecessary element and a piece of over-interpretation of evidence. Consider that it is a motive that a victim of narcissism could be tempted to attribute to their tormenter. It makes their tormenter someone completely unlike themself, a comforting belief.
But like Rand I think that you are over generalizing from your experience. At least unlike Rand, you have identified it as narcissism.
But altruism, as most use the term, is taking others into consideration and having acting for them as one of your motivations. For most it is based on fellow feeling, on caring for other individuals. As well, altruistic actions can be motivated by loyalty to the group of which both you and the beneficiary are part.
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Ungtss said:
Thanks, Lloyd. Here is an article in psychology today that describes the toxic shame underlying a narcissist’s pattern of dumping shame on others:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201201/shame-is-the-root-narcissistic-borderline-disorder
One other thought I’ve been toying with is that Rand’s very detailed description of narcissism’s roots and motivations may have come from her own personal experience as a narcissist, which was split off and projected. Put simply, she understood narcissism too well not to have been an insider. She did not describe it as a real life john galt would have. She described it as a real life Dominique Francon would have. Compared to her villains, her heros’ emotional lives are flat, unrealistic, and based on a misunderstanding of the origins of psychological health. Since she was a narcissist, and described her and narcissistic villains so vividly, perhaps those descriptions originated in her observations of herself that she came to hate, split off, and project.
One of the most fascinating patterns I’ve seen in narcissists is the pattern of passing on any perceived slight onto some perceived smaller victim. So for instance, I had a boss who called a meeting for the wrong month. Instead of acknowledging his embarrassment, he asks one person at the meeting some totally irrelevant, obscure question about a project that the victim couldn’t possibly have known, in front of the group. This made the victim feel stupid instead of him. It was an instance of “projective identification.” Make the victim feel your own unacceptable feelings.
The point is that although the action looks grandiose — embarrassing someone in public — it was plainly triggered by shame. To see what triggered it, you have to carefully watch what happens to the narcissist immediately before the offending behavior.
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Lloyd Flack said:
Interesting. What you said about her villains or some of them being narcissists makes sense. In particular it makes sense of Ellsworth Toohey. It makes sense of most of the behaviour that could be described as power lust on their parts.
It’s like she’s describing something that part of her understands and part of her does not. She described the behaviour of narcissists but would not have recognized them as that. She described the behaviour of people with a bloated self image without recognizing it as that. Her idea that self-centered is good acts as a blinder here I think. She wanted to see high self-esteem as good and was unwilling to see it as being bad under many circumstances.
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ungtss said:
Her idealization of selfishness in reaction to hatred of her narcissistic part is consistent with splitting, but only if we recognize that the arrogance of narcissism is a defense against deep and overwhelming self-hatred inculcated in childhood, usually by narcissistic parents. in essence, the narcissist feels chronically horrible at a young age, but does not know why. in large part this is because his narcissistic parents do not want him to feel worthiness, because any sense of worthiness on his part threatens the illusion of omnipotence they enjoy with respect to their children. they therefore crush any sense of worthiness he might stumble on, and blind him to the importance of feeling worthy so he cannot find it. they do this systematically, and repeatedly, to as many children as they have.
as a result, a budding narcissist feels chronically depressed and worthless at a young age, but does not understand it, and does not understand why. he just knows he feels terrible. then, usually by chance, he notices that he feels better when he makes others feel unworthy, and when he surrounds himself with symbols of worthiness like wealth, power, followers, and an arrogant attitude. he feels better because he is creating a temporary illusion of worthiness for himself, but he does not understand that. he just knows he feels better.
and the relief from his agony is so strong from this arrogant behavior that he becomes addicted to the behavior. arrogance and power become his self-medication. he cannot function without them, because as soon as his self-medication is gone, his overwhelming and drowning sense of worthlessness (inculcated by his parents, never identified, and never resolved) comes back and rips his soul to shreds. it comes back in his 50s, 60s, even 70s, unless he resolves the underlying crushing sense of worthlessness. until then, whenever he feels that terrible feeling, he’s off to the races again, looking for some other way to feel good about himself.
when one lives with narcissists for long periods on an intimate level, there can remain no doubt that narcissists do not in fact have high self-esteem. rather, their self-esteem is so low that they act as a caricature of a person with high self-esteem. a cartoon almost. and the worse they feel about themselves, the more cartoonish they come to act. and the older they get, the harder it gets to maintain the illusion, and so the more desperate they become to cling to it, and the more bizarre their behavior becomes.
given those cold hard facts about narcissism, i think it’s entirely possible that rand’s “blinders” to the dangers of pride are a counter-idealization of her split-off self-hatred. when one splits off a hated part of onesself, one tends to idealize the opposite. in this case, “self-hatred” is identified as all-bad, so “self-esteem” becomes all good.
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Lloyd Flack said:
I think that some of Rand’s villains such as Toohey and Ferris could be described as how a narcissist sees opposing narcissists. Her descriptions of the behaviour are more accurate than her descriptions of motives.
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eric johnson said:
“as a result, a budding narcissist feels chronically depressed and worthless at a young age, but does not understand it, and does not understand why. he just knows he feels terrible”
I have never really understood how such conditions ungtss describes as for the development of narcissism in children can produce such opposite effect in different people. On one hand the child grows up to feel that self-worth through making others fell inferior or through wealth and power. Then again, what he described was a text book definition for a Adult Child of An Alcoholic. So as to fulfill his need for approval, the ACAA will spend his life as a workaholic, placing others needs above his own.
It is as if Psychoanalysis does not have any basis in empirical fact, but is solely based of of conjecture. I know smoking crack is physically bad for me, but nowhere does medical science say it will produce the opposite effect in someone else.
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Ungtss said:
Hi Eric. Nice to hear from you again. The evidence for the origins of all addictive behaviors, including alcoholism, narcissism, and (as both of us know) religious fundamentalism, is very strong, but requires abductive reasoning to understand. It goes like this. “This person grew up emotionally abused and neglected, and is now narcissistic. What explains these facts?” You then posit a hypothesis: that the behavior compensates for a deep sense of self-hatred. You then test it through therapy, and find, consistently, that the subject uses very specific behaviors repeatedly, consistently, whenever something happens that threatens his self-perception. Somebody at work questions the quality of his work, and he instantly, automatically, attacks the source of the threat, or changes the subject to something he can be proud of. Or when his son outgrows him, he convinces himself that he is actually taller than his son, and insists that his son say it, and agree with it, or be punished. And when his son goes for higher education, he ends his relationship with his son.
The stimulus is an ego-threat. The narcissistic behavior follows immediately. From this, we infer that the most reasonable explanation is that the narcissism is a defense. You remain open to other explanations, but you find that no other explanations can explain the facts without contradiction. From that, you conclude truth.
This evidence is incredibly strong, but it does not take the concrete, obvious form taken by other forms of evidence. It is subtle.
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eric johnson said:
Which means that such evidence is based more off of the conformation bias of the person doing the “observation. ” The big benifit of which is that the evidence in question looks a lot like what you want it to look like.
Remember when Multiple Personalities were a thing? What happened to that big epidemic of sexual abuse that swept through the country, that explained all this hooey? Remember the Paterson Case in California?
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ungtss said:
every causal interpretation is subject to confirmation bias. that is why newtonian physics was considered “true” until new and more sophisticated evidence provided new and more sophisticated causal interpretations, which will doubtless someday themselves be replaced by something better. so disregarding evidence because it is subject to confirmation bias allows you to disregard all evidence.
as to whether multiple personalities “used to be a thing,” it is still a thing. it’s a recognized disorder under the DSM, now called “dissociative identity disorder.” its neurological mechanism has been explored, and there are many many thousands of documented cases.
it has also been making its way deeper into the culture, as therapists are discovering that all people exist on a spectrum of DID, leading to extremely effective schools of therapy like “internal family systems” therapy, or the more popularly named “parts psychology.” I have validated these theories myself, through personal experience. They have helped me a great deal in understanding the multiplicity of my mind, and of the minds of those around me. there is an enormous amount of value in the IFS therapy model.
rigidly rejecting any evidence outside a very limited scope is no different than how fundamentalists reject any evidence outside the very limited scope of “the bible.” the whole point of these very rigid paradigms is to prevent competing paradigms from even getting to the table. rational thought requires admittance of broader and more nuanced categories of evidence.
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eric johnson said:
Sorry, I ment the McMartin Trail.
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eric johnson said:
Newtonian Physics was replaced by a better system through a new therom based on objective sicentific observation that can be confirmed in a labrotory setting. Physics, Mathimatics, Biology and various other Scientific Disiplines have, at their core, fundemental truths that stand reguardless of the motivations of the persons doing the observation. Were this not the case, then Scientific Truth would be an impossibility which would render any attempt at a better understanding of the world meaningless and as such futile.
As for the tousands of cases of DID (or what ever these psycho-bable spouting quacks call it these days) I can only point to the thousands of sightings of Bigfoot and Nessy.
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Ungtss said:
I’m under no illusions that I can correct your misperceptions of science through blog comments. If you’re interested in learning the truth about how science progresses, I highly recommend Thomas Kuhn’s work — structure of scientific revolutions and copernican revolution. He goes in detail through how confirmation bias maintains a paradigm and that revolutions are driven by outsiders to the paradigm and often (as was the case with Galileo and Copernicus) but by evidence at all. Copernicus advocated heliocentrism not because of evidence, but because it was a more beautiful explanation. Gallileo’s model was less accurate than the Ptolemaic system in predicting the position of stellar objects, because he falsely assumed circular orbits and constant speeds. Only with Kepler did the heliocentric model become scientifically superior.
What you are falling for is propaganda, no different than fundamentalist propaganda. Physicists want you to believe they are truly objective, and free from human frailty. In reality they are human, subject to the same flaws as everybody else. Including confirmation bias.
Comparing DID to Bigfoot is pretty spectacular. You should read case studies or meet sufferers before talking so badly out of turn.
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eric johnson said:
2 + 2 = 4 nomatter whos is doing the calculation, which was the point that I was trying to make and also something that cannot be said about your beloved Psycho-Babal. If two experts in the field can look at the same problem and come to two radically different conclusions, you don’t have much of an objective science.
Two Astro-Physicists may disagree on the origin of the universe, but they both agree that the Earth orbits around the Sun. Psychology cannot even do that.
Let’s see what Dr. McHHugh of John Hopkins have to say about the MPD craze:
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Ungtss said:
2+2=4 is only true by convention. In a base 3 number system, 2+2=11. In modulo 3, 2+2=1. In binary, there’s no such thing as “2.” Number systems are mere conventions. We adopted base 10 from the Arabs, because it was convenient, and built it into our language. But binary and hexadecimal are more convenient when working with computers, so we use them in that context.
The idea that the earth revolves around the sun is also convention. Motion can be described correctly in any reference frame, but it is easiest and most convenient to describe it with reference to the most intense gravity field. Doesn’t make it true. Only easier to describe.
Einstein disagreed with quantum physics. A large number of climatologists disagree that climate change is human-caused. In many litigations you will find highly qualified scientists in hard science fields disagreeing as to basic principles.
Refusing to consider anything that some expert somewhere disagrees with is simply not a justifiable position. It does make sense that a person would feel that way after being jerked around by fancy-sounding fundamentalist liars. It would be natural to assume an overly conservative, consensus-based mindset to avoid being jerked around by more crazy. But that doesn’t make it right. What you need are criteria for belief that make sense. “I believe it if no expert disagrees with it” does not make sense.
Likewise, the fact that one scientist disagrees about the existence of DID does not mean anything except that he hasn’t seen cases he considers to be legit. That’s fine. Plenty of other people see it, and its less severe cousins, every day, without any therapist brainwashing. Science does not operate by consensus. It operates by evidence.
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eric johnson said:
Johnny has 2 apples. Billy has 2 apples. If Johnny and Billy put their apples togethor, then how many apples are there?
“State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” – T. Jefferson
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Ungtss said:
By convention, 4. Not be science. By convention. And if we all adopted a different convention, the answer would be different too.
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Lloyd Flack said:
There is a need for a word or phrase to cover the concept expressed by “self-interest”. There is also a need for a word or phrase to cover the concept expressed by the word “selfishness”.
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Ungtss said:
Yes. The question is, which words are most descriptive? I think that “selfishness” would be more accurately called “self-destructive,” “narcissistic,” “arrogant,” or “short-sighted” as the case may be. The word could be chosen to describe the origin and nature of the attitude.
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Lloyd Flack said:
But the victims of this sort of behaviour will not necessarily have the information required to divine its cause. Nor is that the most important thing from their viewpoint. Usually their main concorn will be with the effects and a wors that describes such behavoiur as seen from the victims viewpoint is useful. Selfish is just such a word.
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ungtss said:
if their concern is with the effects of the action, then “selfishness” is the wrong word, because the effect of the behavior called selfish is self-destructive. people do not see that of course. they think the bully is actually serving himself, and actually thinks very highly of himself. they are mistaken. he thinks very little of himself, and he is destroying himself. the word “selfish” contributes to that confusion, and therefore causes victims to contribute to and actually worsen their suffering. to really understand the effects of “selfish” behavior, you have to understand that it is self-destructive.
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Lloyd Flack said:
That is speculation about the effects and ultimate drivers of such behaviour. It is not obvious to nor is it of major concern to the victim. I would question whether it is true in most cases. From the victim’s viewpoint his interests are disregarded by the offender What he can see is that they believe that they are gaining from their action.
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Lloyd Flack said:
You are treating speculation about an offender’s motives as established fact.
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Ungtss said:
I am applying the evidence from modern psychotherapy, which has developed incredibly strong and consistent evidence that the cure to destructive, apparently self-benefiting behavior is to identify and treat the underlying self-destructive beliefs:). To believe that these behaviors are in fact self-focused is to dismiss 50 years of psychotherapeutic findings :).
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Ungtss said:
“But being a jerk is the meaning of selfishness now and has been for centuries”
And as we’ve agreed, words change connotations and denotations change with culture. As rational self-interest continues to advance as a moral philosophy, language will change too. My use of selfishness works seamlessly into my life, without endless squabbles. Once I explain where I’m coming from, people tend to respond with understanding, and we move on to more interesting topics. Some have even adopted it, because they see my point. Others, like the altruistic, child-sabotaging parents, fight it vehemently. That’s how language change takes place.
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Lloyd Flack said:
Whether rational self interest is a sufficient foundation for morality is very questionable. A necessary component,yes. But for most people morality includes things that are based on empathy, on fellow feeling for other people. And these ae not and I believe should not be framed in terms of self-interest.
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Daniel Barnes said:
I realise btw “malign” and “benign” are also morally loaded, perhaps there are better terms but I cannot think of them offhand.
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Daniel Barnes said:
Ungtss proclaims:
“selfish is not actually destructive, you mean something different”
Ungtss, like Rand, seems to regard himself as some kind of ultimate verbal authority, with the power to dictate to other people what the words they use “actually” mean.
Units, who died and made you the dictionary?
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Ungtss said:
It’s science now, Daniel. To believe that a dysfunctional apparently self-benefiting beliefs are actually self-benefitting is 50 years out of date, according to the people who are effectively curing us of these behaviors by helping us identify the underlying self-destructive beliefs that drive the behavior.
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Daniel Barnes said:
“units” is ungtss, damn you autocorrect…;-)
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Daniel Barnes said:
ungtss:
>rand was not trying to redefine the word, but to make it hers, by attacking the connotations of “badness” inherent in “selfish.”
But what you are saying here is that she was trying to redefine it by removing words like “excessive” or “sole”. Literally, as it happens, because she invented a dictionary definition that didn’t exist.
Shorter ungtss: Rand didn’t want to redefine “selfish”, she just wanted to use different words to describe it…;-)
Or do you also dispute what “redefine” means?
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Ungtss said:
On the contrary, I am saying that to be “solely concerned with one’s own interests” means to “not be a jerk,” because being a jerk is not in our interests.
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Lloyd Flack said:
That is in dispute. More than that people here are denying that the success of an attempt to serve one’s interests is relevant to the definition. Whether or not an act that most would describe as selfish succeeds in serving the actor’s interests is likely to be information that is not available to a victim or a bystander. It cannot be made part of the definition, only the intention perceivable at the time can if the definition is to be useful. Nor can information that requires psychoanalysis to obtain it.
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Lloyd Flack said:
Ungtss, an book that I would very strongly urge you to read is Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty by Roy Baumeister. It is the result of modern psychological study of the problem.
It finds the roots of evil in the failure to control commonplace motives. And what is especially useful is his description of the Myth of Pure Evil, the belief that those who do evil are fundamentally different from ourselves. That myth is very tempting and very self-serving for victims of evil.
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CW said:
There is a much shorter paper by the same author that I think gets the point across: http://portal.idc.ac.il/en/symposium/hspsp/2010/documents/21-baumeister.pdf
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ungtss said:
In support of his argument, he cites a paper by Baumeister, Boden, and Smart. This paper takes the simplistic view that “low self-esteem” or “high-self-esteem” cause violence. What that view fails to account for the role of defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are unconscious or conscious behaviors we engage in, to protect ourselves from psychic pain.
When a person faces chronically low self-esteem and self-hatred, there exist a plethora of defenses available to protect him from that pain. He may become a bully to experience himself as powerful. He may engage in the defense of rumination, which replaces the high-grade pain of explicit self-hatred for the low-grade pain of thinking repetitively about specific failures. He may become a workaholic in an effort to create a “niche” for himself in which he can view himself as good, shutting out all his other failures. He may commit suicide. He may attempt to earn a sense of value by serving others compulsively. He may dissociate into a fantasy world in which he can imagine he is a powerful wizard or avenger of justice. He may also dissociate into different subpersonalities, one of which absorbs the agonizing feelings of failure, and another of which adopts a persona of omnipotence.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of defense mechanisms by which he protect ourselves from the agony of feeling worthless. And this paper, as well as the source it cites, completely ignore them.
The reason this is significant is that the paper then looks to the defense mechanisms to determine the person’s true affect. This is as ignorant as saying a person who is compulsively washes their hands is just really concerned with cleanliness, or an anorexic is just really concerned with being thin. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth, or more harmful to people suffering from these defense mechanisms. “Body image” is the superficial mask an anorexic uses to cover up her real feelings – a sense of worthlessness, a desire to self-punish, and a desperate need to experience a sense of being controlled.
So the paper points to “violent, aggressive nations” believing themselves to be superior. Nothing could be further from the truth. Violent, aggressive nations are attempting to act in a way that will convince themselves, and others, that they are superior, because they experience themselves as inferior. That is why it was the impoverished, backward, agrarian, white south that focused on its supposed “superiority” to blacks. The actually superior, industrialized, educated northern whites did not need to convince themselves they were better than somebody, because they could look around and see it. Ignorant southern whites could not do that. They experienced themselves as inferior to northern whites, because they were. And that inferiority hurt so bad that they had to escape it through ideas and behaviors calculated to convince themselves that they were better than somebody else.
By taking these defense mechanisms as the true causes of people’s behavior, we reinforce them. That is why it is so important to look beyond the defense mechanisms, to the wounds that are driving the defense mechanisms. To look beyond the symptoms, to the disease.
That is why this issue is so important. Because even now, in citing these papers, you are exhibiting a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the human mind. You are looking to defense mechanisms to identify actual feelings. That is how defense mechanisms persist.
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Lloyd Flack said:
No, what is being claimed in not that high self-esteem causes violence but that challenged unjustifiably high self-esteem causes violence. Those with high self-esteem who can easily point to substantial accomplishment can dismiss those who disrespect them as fools. Those with high self-esteem who do not have something substantial to base it on are likely to find it challenged and not have a means other than violence to try to defend it.
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Ungtss said:
“Those with high self-esteem who do not have something substantial to base it on are likely to find it challenged and not have a means other than violence to try to defend it.”
The question is, why do they appear to have high self-esteem without any basis for it? Is it just random, arbitrary, or mistaken?
The answer is, they have adopted the defense mechanism of presenting an image of high self-esteem to compensate for their low self-esteem.
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Lloyd Flack said:
Can’t you come up with another mechanism? Try this, someone keeps getting told how wonderful they are but this is not linked to any good reason. They develop a high opinion of themself which gets easily challenged. I’d suggest that this is a much simpler and more likely explanation that the one that you gave. You’re trying to fit too much into your “narcissists actually have low self-esteem” model. I think that you are coming up with explanations that involve too much speculation about motives and are unwilling to question them enough. The rest of us are looking for simpler explanations and think that usually, not always, the obvious explanation is the right one. You are I think over-generalizing from your own experience.
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Ungtss said:
“Try this, someone keeps getting told how wonderful they are but this is not linked to any good reason. They develop a high opinion of themself which gets easily challenged.”
That is a great example, and one I have a lot of personal experience with. When parents praise you despite your not deserving it, and indeed make up accomplishments which you didn’t actually do, and cover up your failures, you infer that the real you — the muddled, confused, failing child — is not loved. And indeed he isn’t. The real you is so unloved that your parents can’t even admit he exists. They live to themselves, to him, and to everyone else about who their child is, because their real child is so shameful to them.
The child internalizes self-hatred from the fact that his parents plainly do not love him. And from then on, he looks for defense mechanisms. In the case of my sister, self-mutilation. My brother, alcoholism and gambling addiction. In my case, dissociation and passive aggression.
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Daniel Barnes said:
ungtss:
>“Body image” is the superficial mask an anorexic uses to cover up her real feelings – a sense of worthlessness, a desire to self-punish, and a desperate need to experience a sense of being controlled.
But this is more whimsical speculation and mind-reading in the guise of psychology.
How do you know what the “real feelings” of anorexics are? Vulcan mind-melding?
And note how these all-too-common whimsical speculations do nothing to solve the problem, but merely move it back a step – for now instead of trying to find the cause of the anorexia, we must now try to find the cause of “a desire to self-punish”, or “a desperate need to experience a sense of being controlled”. How is it that you can psychically detect these underlying needs and desires?
I put it to you that this is simple nonsense, unhelpful at best, and at worst damaging.
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Ungtss said:
“How do you know what the “real feelings” of anorexics are? Vulcan mind-melding?”
Two things are worth noticing here. First, Daniel is being passive-aggressive. Passive aggression is symptomatic of a perceived threat and a desire to harm from a position of invulnerability. It is used to put the victim down, reduce their sense of worth, thereby giving Daniel a temporary illusion of value. It means that Daniel is threatened by me and wants to hurt me without any risk that I will hurt him back. It’s also consistent with an effort to separate me off from the herd, in hopes that someone else will join him in despising me, giving him a temporary illusion of being an insider. It’s like emotional guerrilla warfare. Designed to hurt without risk of being hurt.
As to the substance of how anorexics feel, I’ve spoken with a number of cured anorexics. They were all cured because they all identified the true source of the problem, with the help of good therapy. several of them were very direct about how “body image” was just a diversion tactic.
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Daniel Barnes said:
Your speculative psychology about Southern and Northern Whites is similarly useless.
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Ungtss said:
More useful, and more substantiated, than your unilateral declarations. But I bet those declarations make you feel powerful, don’t they?
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Daniel Barnes said:
I am strongly criticising your speculative psychology. You are no more capable of psychically divining the “real feelings” of anorexics than you are of mass-mind reading Southern and Northern Whites.
You do not seem able to defend your theories, other than by attempting to psychologise me…;-)
This is just as unconvincing as your earlier efforts. It is, however, a very common tactic among Randians.
I can only recommend to you what I do for other Randians: to take a more critical approach to your beliefs.
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Ungtss said:
Asking someone if they learned what they claim to know by “Vulcan mind meld” is not a “strong criticism.” It contains no content at all, except passive aggression. Passive aggression is a Defense mechanism.
Then, when confronted with it, you attempt to delude me into believing that your passive aggression is a substantive criticism.
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Lloyd Flack said:
No, it contains exasperation at your treating speculations as if they were established facts and at your over analyzing available information so that you think you know more about others’ thinking than you do.
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Ungtss said:
There is more than one way to express exasperation. For example,
When i become exasperated at people who hold ignorant views that ignore everything about psychology and would be laughed out of a midterm examination in psych 101, I say things like “your ideas ignore everything about psychology.” When he becomes exasperated, he uses passive aggression, by saying “where’d you learn that, Vulcan mind meld?”
I’m beginning to realize the real problem here appears to be a lack of emotional self-awareness.
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Daniel Barnes said:
@Lloyd,
This sort of stuff about anorexia being a “desire to self-punish” etc is no more diagnostic than the old parody about the scholastic who explains the sleep inducing qualities of opium as being due to its “dormitive virtue”.
It does not explain anything. All it does is move the problem back a step, whilst adding a layer of blather.
Further to this purely logical criticism, ungtss has not, and cannot, explain how he is able to mind-read the supposed “real feelings” of anorexics, nor mass-mind read the thoughts of white Southerners and Northerners. Perhaps he has talked to some of the above: so what? Given his claims to be familiar with psychology, he should surely know that people are very often unreliable reporters of their own experience.
I have no idea how he claims to have transcended this common issue, but of course this is precisely what he needs to have done in order to make the claims he has.
If not, evidence-free speculation is precisely what this is. In which case the more self-critical approach that I’ve recommended is the right one…;-)
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Ungtss said:
In other words, “nobody knows anything to my satisfaction on this issue, so I can ignore everything that’s been said with an arrogant and dismissive superiority, despite having presenting no meaningful evidence.
Here is a personal account of the link between anorexia and self-punishment.
http://www.mentalhealth.wa.gov.au/mental_illness_and_health/stories/selfpunishment.aspx
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Lloyd Flack said:
Ungtss, you gave one example of anorexia as a reaction to a traumatic experience. I would be very reluctant to generalize from this. You are doing too much generalizing from anecdotal evidence. That and you are giving more complicated psychological explanations than seem to be necessary. That is the sort of reason why people are sceptical about your analyses.
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Ungtss said:
What is the reason that Daniel Barnes responds with passive aggression, bullying, social isolation, and “you’re not as smart as you think you are!” instead of with respectful disagreement and contrary facts? Has anyone asked themselves what would motivate a person to respond to alleged overgeneralizations with abuse?
No, we allow abuse to go unchecked, so long as it is subtle.
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Ungtss said:
As to whether it actually is an overgeneralization, that can be determined by whether there exists any contrary evidence. I haven’t seen any. Neither you nor Daniel have presented any. So for purposes of this discussion, the evidence 100% supports my position. You and Daniel can change that by bringing something to the table, but you prefer instead to simply attack my certainty.
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CW said:
Daniel Barnes, July 6:
“You do not seem able to defend your theories, other than by attempting to psychologise me…;-)”
Ungtss, July 7:
“Has anyone asked themselves what would motivate a person to respond to alleged overgeneralizations with abuse?”
Well, then.
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Ungtss said:
So the answer is, “no.” We don’t ask why a person might respond to an honestly expressed opinion with sarcasm with abuse. We avoid the question, while posturing as superior.
I’ve realized why I am so morbidly attracted to arguments like this. They replicate the psychological abuse I experienced as a child. I think I’m done.
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CW said:
We don’t ask “why” for several reasons. First and foremost is because it’s innuendo, a leading question designed to implicate the subject with some form of mental or emotional dysfunction. We further don’t ask the question because doing so is the very soul of “passive-aggressive”, a thinly-camouflaged insult couched in supposedly analytical talk, and if we’re criticizing others for being passive-aggressive, it’s poor form to engage in such things ourselves.
Finally, we don’t ask the question because the premise of an “honestly expressed opinion” is itself subject to some scrutiny – that is, maybe not everyone agrees that the situation described is actually what’s occurring.
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Daniel Barnes said:
Link for the above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion
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Daniel Barnes said:
So let’s summarise.
ungtss sounds as though he has a troubled background, describing various problems affecting both himself and his siblings.
This is unfortunate, and obviously he has my sympathy. In his search for answers to these problems I speculate he has come across Ayn Rand and her teachings on philosophy and psychology. Perhaps they have been of some personal benefit to him; I often think they can be helpful in a kind of inspirational way, as the Bible can similarly be helpful to people sometimes, even though many of its doctrines are absurd.
That’s all well and good. But other than a kind of powerful, highly personal inspiration, Randian doctrine is for the most part hopeless in practice; even destructive in the same way that a “lost lamb” who finds inspiration in some Biblical passages can become a raging fanatic. Turning to Objectivism can mean jumping out of the frying pan into merely another frying pan on simmer, and her laughable psychology is one of the worst parts of it. Rand gleaned what little she knew of the field from Nathaniel Branden, and seemed only interested in the subject insofar as it added obscure, intellectual-sounding heft to the endless stream of ad hominems that comprise her main arguments.
If ungtss is genuinely interested in learning about psychology – learning being something that Randians are discouraged from doing by the implications of their own belief system – he might start with some 101 like Rosenhan’s famous Being Sane In Insane Places. There is plenty in that study alone that explains what is wrong with his current theories should he choose to consider them critically. Given his citation of the anorexia case above, it’s clear that as well as the problems of generalising that Lloyd has pointed out, he also does not seem to read carefully – that anecdote mentions a constellation of personal problems as well as “self-punishment” – for example, depression – and the cause and effect relationships between them are entirely unclear.
Finally, as it happens I have a good deal of experience in understanding problems like anorexia nervosa, and while I will not further derail the thread on this side issue I can state with confidence that theories along the lines of ungtss’s are not only tediously trite and commonplace, they have almost zero usefulness in dealing with the issue.
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Walter Mathilde said:
If nihilism means don’t care about self or others;
and selfishness means care only about self and not others;
and altruism means don’t care about self and only others;
then there is a word missing for caring about both ourselves and others at the same time. Maybe that’s so normal, nobody thought it needed a word.
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Daniel Barnes said:
@Walter, that’s quite possible. The ancient Greeks apparently had no word for “blue”, hence the “wine dark sea” of Homer. There are far more things than there are words to cover them.
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Walter Mathilde said:
Which leads these Rand discussions on a merry-go-round of false choices. We argue btwn altruistic sacrifice, selfish appropriation, and destruction when almost everybody is into mutual support and system maintenance.
Bregister says somewhere on this blog, “stop using these words”. Good advice.
BTW, no dictionary says selfish is evil.
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Merjet said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest This shows the ordinary meaning of “conflict of interest.” Apparently Rand was not at all aware of the ordinary meaning.
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Daniel Barnes said:
@Merlin,
That’s another interesting example of a common trait of Rand’s writing. An acquaintance of Gertrude Stein once remarked that “Gertrude does not seem to know what words mean.” Reading Rand I am often and with no small irony reminded of this.
In response to Rand’s verbal confusions, Walter and Bryan propose we “stop using these words” like “selfish”. Tempting as this may sound, to my mind this puts us in danger of it becoming a debate over what words to use, a debate that has no definitive answer, and in that respect is no better than the first debate, and might even leave us with no words at all. Debates over words are generally a waste of time.
So instead I propose we simply agree on the common or dictionary meanings of terms, and for anything outside of that appeal to the nearest simple construct. For example, let’s just leave “selfish” be as exclusive or excessive concern with one’s own interests, just like most dictionaries define it. For contrast to that, we could have say “mutual self-interest” as something that covers a situation that favours both yourself and others. “Self-interest”, or even “normal self-interest” could cover the non-excessive usage. You get what I mean anyway.
That done, I’m not sure there’d be a whole lot more to discuss with “selfish”. I feel confident that few would defend excessive or exclusive concern with one’s own interests at the expense of others, few wouldn’t defend actions that are in everyone’s interests including your own, and few would argue that compromises between your own interests and others are always and everywhere a bad thing – in fact, that’s what “trade” usually means, even if Gertrude doesn’t understand that particular word either.
A quick parse of the critical passage in The Virtue Of Selfishness where Rand appeals to her imaginary dictionary reveals some other interesting confusions. For example, she somehow believes that the “popular usage” of the term is wildly divergent from the “dictionary” definition, seemingly unaware that dictionaries are compilations of the common usage of words, and are updated regularly to try to keep track of these usages as they evolve. So not only does Rand not know what words mean, but she does not appear to know how they get their meanings either.
Finally, I’m not sure even sure why Rand’s views on “selfishness” are worth further discussion now that we know she starts her argument from a falsehood – a definition that does not exist from a dictionary that did not exist. This is an utter disaster for her, really, as in effect she has had to resort to pure invention as foundation for her signature argument In doing so she has effectively put a forged document at the heart of her contract with the reader. We don’t need to know why she’s done this, although we can speculate. All that we know is that she has done it; and now we know this about her, we don’t need to debate it further; all we need to do is close the book and put it away.
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Lloyd Flack said:
And common usage for altruism is concern for others. That’s it. Whether you gain or loose yourself is irrelevant. What then usage was originally is irrelevant. And for those who still wish to quibble remember that people usually have mixtures of motives for their actions. An act motivated by altruism can also have self-interest as part of its motivation. You don’t always need to have a single word available to stand for a concept.
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Lloyd Flack said:
And you make an important point about Rand seeming not to realize that dictionaries are based on common usage.
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walter mathilde said:
One reason to point out Rand’s false statements is to prevent the mind numbing discussion. She builds the logical incongruity into the premises of her “argument” so when her fans use the vocabulary it leads us all into a thicket. Pointing out that her premises are falsehoods might cut it short.
“Discussion” is not the right word for the dipsy-doodle spaghetti noodle argument of Rand fans.
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Daniel Barnes said:
@Walter, you make an important point. One of the points of Objectivism having its own vocabulary, and somewhat lesser known, its own alleged version of logic, is that this essentially suspends all standards of debate. It makes it far more difficult to directly criticise.
You may be familiar with the term “thought-terminating cliches”, a term used to describe slogans used during, er, re-education in the Chinese Communist era.
Well, Rand has a bunch of these slogans which are very effective at terminating thought. “A=A”, “Existence exists”, “Consciousness is conscious” etc. They work rather well at numbing the mind both of her groupies and even her critics.
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