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Kind of an interesting read that sums up most of my criticisms of Randroid pseudo-intellectuals. I.e., fuckwits who watched Gordon Gecko's "Greed is good" speech in Wall Street and walked out of the theater thinking "Right on!"
(This is somewhat off topic but an interesting video explaining how said fuckwits are responsible for the current economic crisis can be found here.)
Anyway, I enjoyed reading this:
http://www.salon.com/2011/04/05/my_father_the_objectivist/
(This is somewhat off topic but an interesting video explaining how said fuckwits are responsible for the current economic crisis can be found here.)
Anyway, I enjoyed reading this:
Dad wasn’t always a Rand zealot. He was raised in a Catholic family and went to church every week. After he and my mother got married in 1982, they shopped around for a church. He was looking for something to live by, but he couldn’t find it in traditional organized religion.
Then he discovered objectivism. I don’t know exactly why he sparked to Rand. He claimed the philosophy appealed to him because it’s based solely on logic. It also conveniently quenched his lawyer’s thirst to always be right. It’s not uncommon for people to seek out belief systems, whether political or spiritual, that make them feel good about how they already live their lives. Ultimately, I suspect Dad was drawn to objectivism because, unlike so many altruistic faiths, it made him feel good about being selfish.
....
Our objectivist education, however, was not confined to lectures and books. One time, at dinner, I complained that my brother was hogging all the food.
“He’s being selfish!” I whined to my father.
“Being selfish is a good thing,” he said. “To be selfless is to deny one’s self. To be selfish is to embrace the self, and accept your wants and needs.”
It was my dad’s classic response — a grandiose philosophical answer to a simple real-world problem. But who cared about logic? All I wanted was another serving of mashed potatoes.
http://www.salon.com/2011/04/05/my_father_the_objectivist/
