I only got part way through the article because it makes grand claims, yet misunderstands Rand. Rand believed in individualist politics, and created these hero archetypes in her stories, but she also advocated for cooperation by free individuals. There's even a section in Atlas Shrugged where the protagonist tries to go it alone and finds it unfulfilling. Instead, the utopia in the book is one in which people voluntarily associate to form a society. The click-bait title doesn't help matters.
All these "individualism is trash and here's why" type articles do that because they're necessarily written by someone who fundamentally believes group association and/or groups themselves have some sort of inherent good so they have a massive ideological blind spot when it comes to seeing any benefit to doing something as an individual.
Worse than that the article is riddled with fallacious reasoning. It basically amounts to:
I am a scientist, a really awesome scientist, I slayed Rand because of my awesome sciencey authority, Rand was wrong. Oh BTW rand was right about fiction being a good conveyor of morality, because it suits my narrative. So I wrote some fiction with no science in it, to slay her for being wrong. Did I mention I am a scientist so that gives authority to my fiction, being fiction it negates my need to provide the sciency bits to prove my point.
It’s almost as though they actually believe there are no individuals, just group members. Or rather, that what we call an individual is more appropriately described as the intersection of a collection of group memberships.
Yeah, there's nuance here that so many miss. We can understand humans through a social lens when discussing psychology or anthropology. However, we might consider humans through another lens when discussing political theory. It would be entirely consistent to be an ardent individualist politically whilst also believing that humans are social animals who prefer close-knit units. I think the root of the problem is the naturalistic fallacy.
Not only that, but they see themselves as a leader in the group or imagine that the choices of the leader would always be consistent with their preferences.
> This inference became logically inescapable as soon as people began to ascribe to the state not only moral but also intellectual perfection. The liberal philosophers had described their imaginary state as an unselfish entity, exclusively committed to the best possible improve- ment of its subjects' welfare. They had discovered that in the frame of a market society the citizens' selfishness must bring about the sanic results that this unselfish state would seek to realize; it was precisely this fact that justified the preservation of the market economy in their eyes. But things became different as soon as people began to ascribe to the state not only the best intentions but also omniscience.
...
> A socialist advocates socialism because he is fully convinced that the supreme director of the socialist commonwealth will be reasonable from his-the individual socialist's point of view, that he will aim at those ends of which he-the individual socialist-fully approves, and that he will try to attain these ends by choosing means which he-the individual socialist-would also choose. Every socialist calls only that system a genuinely socialist system in which these conditions are completely fulfilled; all other brands claiming the name of socialism are counterfeit systems entirely different from true socialism. Every socialist is a disguised dictator. Woe to all dissenters! They have forfeited their right to live and must be "liquidated."
People misunderstand Rand because a lot of her ideas are irreparably contradictory.
I have found that her work has become a bit like the Bible: you can find a way to justify a lot of what you want to believe, and then you can discard the rest. Most of the Rand-lovers I know vote for Republicans and some vote for Democrats. Some (or all) of those votes must conflict with Objectivism, since so many of the parties' policies are opposite.
> Instead, the utopia in the book is one in which people voluntarily associate to form a society.
This is why I believe that governments should obsessively do two things: A) protect the rights and opportunities of children, who can't enter a social contract; and B) pay the costs of someone exiting the social contract.
For example, I believe the US government should offer people the cost to travel to any other country once. They would revoke their citizenship and their right to live in the US permanently.
After that, we can more honestly say that citizens have entered into the social contract and may be held to it.
I'm glad that the anarchist has the right to ask that.
The answer would be this argument:
1. Land on Earth is finite
2. Most people want a social contract (trading freedoms, like stealing, for benefits, like personal property)
3. Social contracts do not work unless they are geographically bound (ex: traffic laws only succeed if they are enforced consistently across a geographic area)
4. Through no fault of their own, some people (including anarchists) will end up inside of a geographic area where a social contract is consistently enforced (e.g. a state)
The anarchist must move not because is some cosmic or absolute justice at play, but rather because they are at the mercy of the people around them. If they choose to assert their rights to A) stay within that state and B) violate the social contract, the other citizens will impose consequences on them.
Between you and me, though, I think most anarchists are just people who are able to ascribe the drawbacks of social contracts without being able to ascribe the benefits. They think that less government means similar comfort with more freedom, and we know from history (and currently examples in feudal places like Afghanistan) that that is untrue.
> Rand described Objectivism as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute".
Cooperation seems to be means to achieve personal goals. Which brings us to the thesis of the article.
Why would objectivist care about climate change which will have effect in 100 years, but requires them to sacrifice something today?
> Why would objectivist care about climate change which will have effect in 100 years, but requires them to sacrifice something today?
Because one of the selfish personal goals of an individual is the thriving of their progeny. Heinlein defined love as the state in which another person's happiness is essential to one's own. Thus one can be utterly selfish during a single minded pursuit of another's happiness, because your own happiness depends on it.
It is typical of our species to sacrifice your own body's needs to achieve the intensely personal goal of making your childrens' lives better. This can be interpreted as a form of selflessness, but I see it as Randian selfishness, where the self is an extended phenotype that can encompass multiple organisms.
In this sense, altruism is about sacrificing to help others that you do not love.
How come that our policies and practices contradict the idea that people care about each other?
I see a lot of compassion and action on individual level. But at society we leave more people behind. And as people who are capable to act (those who have enough both mental, time and other resources) tolerate such way of things maybe it's aligned with their system of values (i.e. capitalism and individualism).
