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  • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 12 months ago
    Or as Spock would put it, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one." To which Kirk responded "phhhht!" - that might not be an exact quote ;-)
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 12 months ago
    Nat Taggart said, "The public be damned." It must have been in this kind of context -- as 47% currently receive good stamps and enough on top of that are delusional, the majority are against the producers via government force. Give us your money or else! Flight 370 might have succumbed to the "black hole" which is D.C.
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  • Posted by wiggys 9 years, 12 months ago
    thank you for bring to light the quotes from Ayn Rand.. I have read them in the past but enjoy seeing them again. thank you again.
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  • Posted by khalling 9 years, 12 months ago
    I shared this on FB and wdonway had an interesting comment:
    Do you think that someone who uses the phrase "the public interest," believes that the public is an entity? Of course, a philosopher might be able to enter a trance in which he believes that, but when our fellow man speaks of "the public interest" isn't he asking us to accept a context? For example, the context of our town, where someone says, "It isn't in the public interest to permit homeowners to stack their garbage bags in an ever-growing pile in their front yard. The speaker would mean that individuals in the town generally perceive that stacking your garbage in your front yard just isn't going to work. It is not a rule that can be generalized. It won't fly. I think that is what most people mean by "the public interest." But, of course, the concept--and phrase--present a risk. Who SPEAKS for the "public interest"? Is this a poll or what? A vote? And if I happen to live in an orthodox Muslim community, then it is not in public interest for women to walk the streets unveiled--or alone at all. But, actually, in the Muslim community it IS in the public interest, exactly as not creating towers of garbage is in the public interest in Queens. It is in the public interest because most people in the community feel unable to tolerate a woman in public without a veil. WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! You mean that because a majority of people in a community have irrational, subjective, not to say vicious views on woman and sexuality that THEY dictate the public interest? Well, they do. Because it is very evident that that is the public interest because you will find only the rare individual who says otherwise. Oh, fine, then: you mean that majority whim has to rule? No, I mean that it does rule. In every society. Of course, in a society like America in the 21st Century there is a vastly broader landscape within the borders of "public interest" than in, say, an Iranian rural village. And yet, we all will appeal to the "public interest," whether or not we use that phrase, when any of a thousand contextual, parochial, often almost local norm of behavior are violated. What the HELL is the bottom line? I am thinking that the quotation from Ayn Rand, perhaps crucial in a certain context (politicians loudly proclaiming "the public interest" to advance their policies or whims, as Kennedy did when crushing United States Steel, the occasion of Ayn Rand's outburst), is nevertheless a dangerous unreality in other contexts. Will the young reader of Ayn Rand, like the devotees of Marat during the French Revolution, conclude that by sheer logic, from fundamental premises, he will decide all matters of human morality, all behavior, and that, that alone, will guide his life--and, he hopes, all lives? That there is NO "public interest," in any context, and his pure deductions will and must create a world from nothing but logic? If so, I would suggest to you, he is a terrifying presence, proclaiming there is no guide to life but my philosophy, deduced from timeless principles, immediate and immediately valid... There is no public, no history, no custom, no context... all must fall before me...
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    • Posted by Lucky 9 years, 12 months ago
      Yes, there are times when WD hits the nail on the head ..
      I think he is saying- there is unfortunately a concept ' public interest'.
      Even when you can identify it, it is best to ignore it.
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    • Posted by salta 9 years, 12 months ago
      Some very good points about context, notably about the politics at the time Rand made the statement.
      However, I can't help thinking the writer has misinterpreted the example of women being veiled. Does the majority of the Muslim community actually benefit ("interest") from the veiling? or is it just that very few of them would dare to speak out against it?
      If so, is that underlying fear really in the "public interest"?
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      • Posted by khalling 9 years, 12 months ago
        I think his point is context makes all the difference. Public good is both not an entity and completely different depending on the society. The public is also amorphous.
        http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20...
        (you need to click on the photo to begin)
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        • Posted by Lucky 9 years, 12 months ago
          kh- I know this is a side track but I have a soft spot for Persian culture and Iran. I have quoted ancient Persian poetry in translation on here.
          I looked at the link, at first sight there is nothing special, but then you realize how different it is today. Things were bad under the Shah, he had ideals, he thought he could improve the nation by force, instead the force led to dictatorship. When he was thrown out, things got worse. It is worth noting that the cause is not Islam, not that this is anything I like in the least, the problem is Islamism.
          Curious, a month ago I came across photos from Afghanistan also from the sixties and seventies. Things under the monarchy and the Soviets were bad, but there were improvements. Much as in your link, photos showed women in classes, waiting for buses, in labs, cafes and shops. Then the Taliban took over.
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          • Posted by khalling 9 years, 12 months ago
            I have an Iranian friend whose family luckily got out. She has visited other family in Iran and hates going there. She is struck by the changes in just her lifetime. In the early 80s I worked with another Iranian friend who was in school in the US. His father , who had a successful business, was imprisoned and his business dismantled. He was released from prison and I asked all the time about how they were doing. He confidently said-my father was a self-made millionaire. He did it once and he will do it again. Over the years I wondered whether my friend ever went back or got his parents out or ...
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    • Posted by ewv 9 years, 12 months ago
      In the statement quoted, Ayn Rand was talking about the meaning of "claimed or implied conflict of 'the public interest' with private interests", and its political consequences (in her essay "The Monument Builders").

      She was not discussing the epistemology of those who reify the concept of the public or misuse it as if it meant an entity. She relied on the normal common sense reader to understand why there is no such entity as "the public", which refers to "a number of individual", to show how "any claimed or implied conflict of 'the public interest' with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others".

      Discussion here of neo-Platonists who do think that "the public" literally means an entity -- such as in raising the question "Do you think that someone who uses the phrase 'the public interest,' believes that the public is an entity?" -- pertains to those who can't get as far as the first few words in her opening phrase of the quote.
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      • Posted by khalling 9 years, 12 months ago
        ah, and then you lose an opportunity. this is not an Objectivist website. Consider going beyond her first phrase in this quote for others here. What new insights have you added? If you have no interest in offering any, why are you here?
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        • Posted by ewv 9 years, 12 months ago
          You seemed to have missed the opportunity to read what I wrote. The "insight" is that the discussion here emphasizing only "the public interest" itself does not get beyond the first phrase in the quote to consider the consequences of appeals to a "public interest" _conflicting_ with the interests of individuals, which she emphasized. My post began: In the statement quoted, Ayn Rand was talking about the meaning of "claimed or implied conflict of 'the public interest' with private interests", and its political consequences.

          There is nothing wrong with discussion of the "public interest" provided it does not degenerate into rambling linguistic analysis, but there is much more to the significance of the quote, and paying attention to what she wrote shows that understanding the public interest as no more than the interest of a number of individuals does not say there is no such thing as the public interest.

          In addition, my first two posts were the first in response to the earliest two comments in the thread, which stumbled at the first words in the first phrase of the quote: They fallaciously complained that "the public" is an entity and that Ayn Rand's rejection of "holism" is a ''primary philosophical weakness". They didn't even get as far as a "public interest".

          Please pay attention to what is written, and avoid instructing others with insinuations of having a "lack of interest" and a "lack of insights".
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  • Posted by airfredd22 9 years, 12 months ago
    Ladies and gentlemen,

    I have read every comment posted on this site. I must say that it was a fascinating discussion ranging back and forth as to the meaning of Ayn Rand's comments regarding “public interests” and the meaning of “society.”

    In my understanding of Ayn Rand's writings, they mean that above all else, human beings must have respect for one another. The term “society” means only the understanding of that basic rule. All other forms of progress as a “society” can only follow if that rule is honored by everyone.

    Unfortunately, the desire for power of one man or woman over another takes precedence for many people, especially politicians.

    I believe that human beings are all born with a basic understanding of good and evil. I also believe that there are a few that are purely evil and will do anything to gain power over others and their property including intellectual property.

    I also believe that Ms. Rand's philosophy was in fact much more basic than many of the arguments I read on this site make it appear. She fully understood that man's value is in his intellectual prowess which allows him to accomplish anything his mind can conceive.

    Ladies and gentlemen, as Sigmund Freud supposedly once exclaimed, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Don't fall into the trap and over-think her philosophy in Atlas Shrugged. It is a simple love story based on respect and the monumental fight of good versus evil. The good are the individuals and the evil is the power of government gone awry.

    Fred Seckmann
    commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 9 years, 12 months ago
    What Rand was resisting is the misrepresentation of often questionable statistics as somehow reflecting a collective consciousness. Humans are as distinctly different in their view of life as their fingerprints, and they need to be reminded of that constantly. Groupthink is a trap that anyone who espouses individual freedom should avoid. I, for one, take immediate offense when someone tries to lump me into a crudely defined class or category. My individual opinions about problems and solutions do not fit collectively into any currently media-promoted group, and I think that's fine. If that limits my participation in social groups who demand submission to patterned thinking, so be it.
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  • Posted by $ sjatkins 9 years, 12 months ago
    Actually there is such an entity. There is such an entity as society too. Society that survives the life and death of any person therein and serves as a framework for supporting the freedom of its members and the preserving of wealth and knowledge across generations. It is patently not true that there are "only individuals" as some claim.
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    • Posted by khalling 9 years, 12 months ago
      I don't know why you are losing a point for having vigorous discussion. hmm. A society cannot preserve the framework of anything. It is not the fault of the US "society" that our politicians have eroded and ignored the US Constitution. It is the work of the individual. As well, how can a collective be tasked with the preservation of wealth and knowledge for its members?! Through tradition?
      The most efficient solution to your questions is of course the individual over their own wealth, their own knowledge, their own future generations. They individually choose to be a member of an institution or or a State. Too many for too long have relied on Society as you say and come up lacking. See Society has done nothing for you-there are only men who want power who claim that you must do something for it.
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    • Posted by salta 9 years, 12 months ago
      Society/public can be viewed as the sum of the connections or interactions between individuals. Even though its not a physical entity, it is real enough. Imagine the whole population standing apart, and unaware of the existence of every other person. The thing that is missing in that picture is "society", but it is not separate because it only exists as an emergent property of the individual's interactions.
      Rand was rightly saying that emergent property cannot have its own interests, separate from its individuals.
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      • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 12 months ago
        The problem with those who rely in "society" or the "public" is that they then exempt themselves from responsibility. Only the confluence of the actions of many individuals can bring about change and action that is needed. But by placing that responsibility on the "public or society" those people conveniently side-step their own responsibility to act.
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    • Posted by ewv 9 years, 12 months ago
      "Society" and "public" are abstractions, not physical entities. Look around and you see individual human beings, not "publics". The abstract concept of a group refers to the individuals in some relationship between them. It does not make "public" a physical entity, which is the fallacy of reification.
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      • Posted by $ Snezzy 9 years, 12 months ago
        Ever wonder why so many philosophers are so hard to read and understand? In many cases it's because they are treating abstractions as if they were concretes. If you pound the phrases into your skull long enough you can come to terms with the "collective consciousness of the German people" or the "will of the moral majority" or whatever the purported entity is, but by adopting reification you have lost part of your ability to think rationally.
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    Posted by $ Maphesdus 9 years, 12 months ago
    Ayn Rand's inability to recognize holistic patterns was one of her primary philosophical weaknesses. Reductionism has its place, but to totally dismiss holism is illogical.
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    • Posted by ewv 9 years, 12 months ago
      Rejection of the reification of "public" is not "reductionist". We start by observing individuals and then form concepts of groups based on relationships between them, not the other way around. Ayn Rand did not have an "inability" to "recognize holist patterns", she rejected collectivist fallacies of all kinds, including Hegel's mystical metaphysical collectivism. That is not a "weakness".
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      • Posted by $ Maphesdus 9 years, 12 months ago
        Yes, Ayn Rand rejected all forms of collectivism. That was one of the biggest problems of her philosophy. What I'm saying is that the idea of collective groups is still a valid concept, and the fact that one specific type of collectivism (i.e. Marxist Collectivism) ended up causing a significant amount of death and destruction in no way invalidates other types of non-Marxist collectives. Collective simply means group, and groups are a very real part of human society.

        You say, "We start by observing individuals and then form concepts of groups based on relationships between them, not the other way around," but in fact it actually can absolutely go the other way around. There's nothing wrong with starting from the individual and working up to the group, but there's also nothing wrong with coming at the issue from the other direction and working down to the individual with the group as the starting point. Both approaches are valid. Insisting that everyone conform to a single mode of thinking is the characteristic of a dictator.
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        • Posted by ewv 9 years, 12 months ago
          Rejecting collectivism is not a "problem" other than to collectivists. If you want to promote collectivism then instead of rejecting Ayn Rand as having "problems" on the basis of your false collectivist premises left implicit, just say what you are, which raises the question of why you are here at all.

          Here in the real world, holding _concepts_ of groups is not "collectivism". It is not "collectivism" to conceptualize a group, which is cognitively required to even talk about collectivism let alone reject it. Conceptualizing, talking about, and rejecting collectivism does not turn "the public" or any group concept into a physical entity. Regarding every concept as referring to an entity is Platonism.

          There is a lot "wrong" with inverting the logical hierarchy, claiming to start with a concept of some kind of group and "working down" to the individual. The order is not arbitrary. The concept of a group requires that there be a group of some number of _something_ and is meaningless without that. The attempt to invert the hierarchy of logical dependency in forming concepts results in subjectivist thinking in floating abstractions disconnected from reality.

          You can "conform" to any bizarre "mode of thinking" you wish. If you expect to be thinking and talking about the real world and communicating with those of us who live here rather than a Platonist substitute, then your thinking had better conform to reality and how we form concepts in a hierarchy based on perception of reality.

          Do whatever you want, but rejection of the fallacies of Platonism, subjectivism and collectivism is not "dictatorship". You don't understand that concept either. You are very confused.
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