Was the hero, John Galt, really a selfish character?
The first three separate Google dictionary definitions of the adjective “selfish" are”
“lacking consideration for others”
“having or showing concern only for yourself and not for the needs or feelings of other people”
“devoted to or caring only for oneself”
According to these definitions:
You can not be selfish if you have consideration for anyone else.
You can not be selfish if you have concern for anyone else.
You can not be selfish if you care for anyone else.
So if John Galt was selfish, he must have lacked confederation for Dagny, had no concern for Dagny and did not care for Dagny.
There is a contradiction here. Either John Galt was NOT SELFISH or the common definitions for “selfish" that most of the world uses are WRONG.
Can most of the world be wrong? Is that a rhetorical question?
“lacking consideration for others”
“having or showing concern only for yourself and not for the needs or feelings of other people”
“devoted to or caring only for oneself”
According to these definitions:
You can not be selfish if you have consideration for anyone else.
You can not be selfish if you have concern for anyone else.
You can not be selfish if you care for anyone else.
So if John Galt was selfish, he must have lacked confederation for Dagny, had no concern for Dagny and did not care for Dagny.
There is a contradiction here. Either John Galt was NOT SELFISH or the common definitions for “selfish" that most of the world uses are WRONG.
Can most of the world be wrong? Is that a rhetorical question?
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Sad thing is, most of the world would not agree with you. Even after proving a simple logical contradiction, most of the world won't care or is too irrationally arrogant to admit they could be wrong.
That is not what Rand meant by selfishness. Rational Selfishness are acts that rationally further your life. Going to church does not rationally further your life, voting for Obama does not rationally further your life, but people do these things consciously.
"The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment."
See the rest of Rand's explanation here:http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selfishness.html
Can a person that takes this kind of "selfish" oath have any consideration, concern, or care for any other person? The answer is an obvious, yes.