Ayn Rand and Special Needs Kids
Posted by richrobinson 11 years, 1 month ago to Philosophy
A customer just saw my Who is John Galt shirt. He said he wrote a paper in college called "An Objection to Objectivism". He said in an Objectivist world special needs kids would all be gassed. He objected to Rand only valuing those who were the best and brightest and not caring about the rest. He was clearly passionate about the issue so I respectfully disagreed and he said the books are interesting and that was his only objection. I was surprised and perplexed as to how he came to that conclusion. Any thoughts???
"To illustrate this on the altruists’ favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one’s own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one’s life no higher than that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a stranger to risk his life for one’s sake, remembering that one’s life cannot be as valuable to him as his own.)
If the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is greater in proportion to the greatness of that person’s value to oneself. If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one’s own life to save him or her—for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable."
I see nothing in the two Rand books I've read to indicate she was saying you must not help someone even if you want to. She was saying don't do it if you don't want to. These critics have a hard position to defend-- they're saying they want to force help from someone who does not want to give it.
In today's world, thanks to the destruction of those who think in terms of progressive education, unchosen duties and control over education, the need to deal with "special needs" students has become much greater. See Ayn Rand's essay "The Comprachicos" in her anthology Return of the Primitive. Anyone genuinely concerned with special needs children should look here first.
"In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons. It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut straight through it.
One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing these tracks. She apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.
But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying to pull the young woman's foot loose. No luck --
Out of sight around the curve a train whistled. Perhaps there would have been time to run and flag it down, perhaps not. In any case both men went right ahead trying to pull her free. . .and the train hit them.
The wife was killed, the husband was mortally injured and did later, the tramp was killed -- and testimony showed that neither man made the slightest effort to save himself.
The husband's behavior was heroic. . .but what we expect of a husband toward his wife: his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman. But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that's all we'll ever know about him.
THIS is how a man dies.
This is how a MAN. . .lives!"
-Robert A. Heinlein's address to the graduating class at Annapolis, "The Pragmatics of Patriotism"
There is a decent chance if you plant some questions he'll become a Rand fan within years.
You want to see the horrors of government? Try raising a child with special needs.
Many public school administrators actually hate special needs kids and their families.
Maybe by being persuaded by the enemies of objectivism who socially profess that respecting individual rights is a juvenile idea or John Galt is a serial killer or an objectivist's long term happiness is morally obtained by pulling up the life preserver when hundreds are drowning.
Until I read Rand, I thought Rand was just a tool in this stupid struggle of politicians stoking people's fear to get elected. It turns out Rand is about the OPPOSITE of that.
I don't recall ever making specific claims about Rand, but I recall telling people I didn't like Rand, which was foolish. I just believed things I had heard.
My reading of Rand is she would say if you're taking care of a special needs kids and you hate it but are doing it anyway for the approval of others or fear someone will hurt you if you don't, this is not right. You're not doing something positive for that child. You should find someone else to do it. Maybe someone else enjoys doing it, not out of an obligation or fear, but it's just what they like doing. They should be the one doing it. I'm curious if the Rand critic would say no one would want to do it without being forced, shamed, or cajoled into caring for the kids.
I also reject the claim about "only valuing those who the best and the brightest". If he reads Rand, he'll find she rejects having one authority on human merit. Her hero in Fountainhead designed houses that most people thought were ugly, and consequently his design firm could barely afford the rent on a tiny office. He had to do manual construction work to pay the bills. The entire establishment thought he was a joke for much of the book.
Contrary to what the guy who wrote the paper said, Rand values these special needs kids as much as anyone else, as much as the supposed "best and the brightest". Her villains, like Peter's mom, are the ones who say we should be obsessed with the supposed best and the brightest.
I would direct him to Fountainhead, in which the esteemed leaders of industry and public opinion are the antagonists.
If he's into helping people with special needs, he's probably met people who go into helping for the wrong reasons: Ellsworth Toohey, Peter's g/f at the end of Fountainhead, the religious women who refused to help James Taggart's wife when she was suicidal, and the sanctimonious little shrew who doled out other people's money at the motor plant.
I spend a lot of time hating her while buffing...
Personally I consider that NGO's would take care of that, and in that way welfare is a voluntary, and really valuable for once. Since receiving something that someone was forced to give you (welfare through taxes) is not moral and is basically robbery.
An objectivist world doesn't mean that everyone is an objectivist -you should tell him-, it just means that everyone is free to do whatever he wants with his own life, and that no one can force him into anything.
(I personally take part in a NGO because of personal motives (Learning, investigating, etc. about the poor people) )
Yes? What's the resultant crawl doing to the egos of the stultified bright students?”
When a “Social Studies” teacher assigns three pages of text, for studying every two days, in a sixth-grade class... whose precious, incompetent ego is being protected? And at what cost?
And what's with this “Social Studies”, anyway? They used to call it Geography, and History, and Civics, make it three courses and require that the students learn something, or get dropped back a grade.
So it's a painful shock to a child to be rejected from his group! So what? If he's earned it, why should not he get a boot in the rear? He's going to get some rugged shocks when he gets out of that educational system!"
-"Hyperdemocracy" by John W. Campbell
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/75...