-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The GOP hearts Ayn Rand. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and his father Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), all mention the works of Ayn Rand as being influential in their lives. Even Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas references her work as influence in his autobiography. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, is an acolyte of Rand’s thinking and knew her personally.
I would like to focus on one aspect of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, and its implications for Christianity.
Rand saw the role of any philosophical system as the understanding of reality. Reality (existence) and the ability to understand reality (consciousness) are at the heart of Objectivism. Considering existence (reality) and consciousness (man’s awareness of it), Rand assigns primacy to existence, “the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness).” In other words, “wishing doesn’t make it so.”
For Rand, consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists, “consciousness is consciousness of an object.” Eric Johnson, in a review of chapter one of Leonard Peikoff’s book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, wrote:
Since the nature (identity) of consciousness is to be aware of reality, existence is prior to, necessary for, and not subject to the control of, consciousness.
Consciousness cannot be conscious only of itself because you run into the chicken-and-the-egg problem. Consciousness requires objects to be aware of in order to create consciousness. Sensory deprivation does not validate the notion of consciousness without anything to be conscious of. Consciousness of objects, and their associated memories, were already formed before any experiments with sensory deprivation.
Rand’s primary axiom of Objectivism is the Primacy of Existence. In contrast is the Primacy of Consciousness, “the notion that the universe has no independent existence, that it is the product of a consciousness (either human or divine or both).” Rand’s Primacy of Existence is the reason for Objectivism’s position of atheism with respect to religion, especially Christianity and its “creator God.”
The Christian concept of God as a disembodied consciousness that created everything, except itself, is antithetical to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Objectivism provides a solid philosophical foundation for rejecting the Christian worldview.
The Primacy of Existence hasn’t received the media attention that it deserves, and I doubt that Rand’s fans in the GOP/Tea Party would understand its ramifications.
H/T: AlterNet, Anton Thorn, Dawson Bethrick, Objectivism Wiki, Ayn Rand Lexicon.
To Mike Spindell,
Ayn Rand, the subject of this discussion, holds much appeal for the addictive personality in that none of her precepts demand growth.
Any religion or philosophy that encourages the status quo or regressive thought instead of challenging the individual to grow is suspect. Addiction never promotes growth.
Growth is always uncomfortable. One answer always leads to the next question. Faith is sometimes correctly defined as spiritual apprehension in that one is constantly seeking answers and trusting that the answers will be found. Faith that is no longer tinged with apprehension is not really faith in the proper religious sense. Attempting to understand the phrase “a peace which passeth all understanding” requires a faith of great spiritual apprehension. In other words, a continuing growth that is both uncomfortable and exhilarating.
Tony, your jeweller was an unethical businessman. Someone gives me th wrong amount of change in my favour….I give it back. If a bank inadvertantly gives 10,000.00 to someone withdrawing 10.00….the law says the person receiving that money needs to return it or it is crime. If the bank doesn’t recognize their mistake, the law still falls against the person . And the bank would have been forced t accept the loss in any scenario where the money were not returned.
And I’ve enjoyed this thread but my little puter can’t load it well enough to follow anymore so…:(
…hope I don’t run into THAT jeweler IRL…
Gyges,
You are correct in stating we agree. I am engaging in clarification of the points I wish to make and not challenging the points you have presented.
Ritual is always part of the addiction. Any alcoholic will, during sober reflection, speak to the ritual of the addiction. It is often the loneliness for the ritual that will drive a smoker back to the habit long after the physical addiction to nicotine has passed.
Oops. spell that ‘Psychological’, TWICE.
@Buddha: It’s not fair that kids die of cancer…
I am arguing about fairness of choices, not nature (which isn’t fair in any moral sense).
Equity at law is not just about “personal fairness” of a transaction,
I am not arguing existing law, I am arguing about the pyschological foundations of law; and how people even decide whether something should be law or should be illegal.
I believe pyschologically that decision is rooted in their innate sense of what constitutes a fair voluntary action, and an unfair voluntary action.
I recognize you believe in a distinction between a crime that may entail imprisonment and a tort which may involve only monetary damages. What I am more interested in is the psychology of how we divide the offenses into these categories.
My opinion is that the distinction is whether somebody has shown whether they should be restrained from interacting with society. A man that breaks a contract because he incompetently underestimated his costs is fundamentally different from a fraudster, embezzler or armed thief. The latter are dangers to citizens in a way that an incompetent estimator is not.
@Woosty: what I see is that jeweler intentionally lied…
I don’t think so, he offered $10, and it was taken. This is the problem with crowbarring everything into ‘force’: The question, “Will you take ten for it?” isn’t a lie, it is a question.
Would it make a difference if he just asked the price, and the seller told him $10? Not to me; because the jeweler knows the value and the seller obviously does not.
I think the immorality of the jeweler is in knowing the seller believes a falsehood (i.e. the seller believes the rock is quartz) and purposely withholding this critical information, in this case for personal gain.
If I am a hunter gatherer, and I tell my tribe brother I am going to the watering hole, if he happens to know there is a lioness lying in wait there because he just spotted her himself, and does not tell me because he’d like me out of the way so he can take my woman, he has done the same with NO trade involved.
If I survive and learn he knew of the danger, I get angry, because he purposely withheld information that put my life at risk, and I am angry even if I don’t know why he did it. Because I think we both have a responsibility to each other to share critical information.
Suppose a man walks to the end of a dock, and sees a rope tied to a post and coiled on the dock. Then he sees a child thrashing frantically in the water. Does the man have a responsibility to throw the rope? (I think Rand says he can just watch the child drown for his own entertainment). Does he have a responsibility to enter the water and try to save the child? To call 911?
No words are spoken, no trade is involved, no request is denied, no lie is made: But IMO it is a crime to walk away and let the child die, when there was a risk free, cost free way to possibly save him: Throw the rope. The Rand idea that nobody is responsible for ever expending a single calorie on behalf of any stranger is just counter to human nature and psychology.
Tony C.
1, May 8, 2011 at 10:49 am
@Buddha: And a lie is really just another tool to force compliance, isn’t it?
…. that arises most often is not “force” but “fairness.”
————
But the it was the ‘force’ of the lie that created the unfairness to begin with. Still a function of ‘force’. I like your scenario with the jeweler….but what I see is that jeweler intentionally lied to effect(force) a change in the interaction from what could occur had the client been told the truth. It was a unilateral action, a unilateral decision, and it created (in Christian dogmatic terminology) a state of ‘sin’ for both client and jeweler. And that’s REALLY not fair…
I liked your post on the effects of addiction on the brain…may I ask what your background is?
Tony,
I won’t argue about fairness. Equity is a prime function of law and that a sense of fairness is innate to primates I’ll stipulate as scientific fact. However, force at its basest definition is a “cause of motion or change”. Lies can cause either a change of mind or a change in action depending upon the nature of the lie. In that respect, a lie is a tool; an agent of change. Force and unfairness though are not coupled. Fairness (or equity), as you noted, has less to do with force than it does with parity or near parity. Not everything is life that is unfair is illegal just as not everything in life that involves force is illegal. It’s not fair that kids die of cancer but it’s not illegal to kill someone in self-defense. Equity at law is not just about “personal fairness” of a transaction, but about “social fairness” and the costs to society that we willing to bear to make those wronged whole again through the operation of the judiciary – whether its punishing a criminal or a tortfeasor. That is why there is a distinction between crimes and torts – some actions mandate stiffer penalties to satisfy our senses of personal and social fairness and those actions are called crimes.
“Religious addiction begins when belief stops being about an evolving connection/understanding with God/Universe and becomes instead an attempt to control one’s life or to control God/Universe by behaving in certain ways. Addiction to a philosophy\religion is common.”
Jim Smith,
Not only couldn’t I agree with you more, but I am quite taken with the elegance with which you expressed this idea. In a brief paragraph you explain so much of the reason why many professing piety cause such destruction in their wake, primarily contrary to the belief they follow.
Those guilty of this range from religious leaders, to congregants, who focus on the “rules” rather than the experience of trying to emotionally fathom the meaning of their own existence, in the context of an infinite universe. Most of the revered religious prophets in history I believe would be disgusted by the manner that many of their disciples took their teaching in ways different from the content, or intent.
These become addictions in the sense you put it as I understand your point: The attempt to control oneself and others from doing that which would appear to be counter to the faith.
@Buddha: And a lie is really just another tool to force compliance, isn’t it?
No, it isn’t. We can disagree on this. From my point of view, this insistence on reducing everything to “force” smacks of dogmatic error.
I will talk about this from the standpoint of sociology and human psychology: Both in reviews of actual law debates and in surveys where subjects are presented with fictional hypothetical situations and asked to assess whether a behavior should be permitted or prohibited, the concept that arises most often is not “force” but “fairness.”
That is true across countries, cultures, and age groups from grade-schoolers to college professors and retirees. The fundamental judgement is not whether somebody was “forced” to do something by any means, but whether they were treated “fairly.”
For example: Suppose a jeweler attending a flea market comes across a table selling pretty but raw and broken quartz. The jeweler recognizes one of the stones as a 15 carat rough uncut diamond. Out of place in a quartz collection, but definitely a diamond. He successfully offers the jeweler ten dollars for the stone.
There is no force there, and such a transaction is legal, but many people still believe the jeweler ripped off the seller by offering so little, and owes him somewhere around half the value of the diamond.
The fundamental assessment people make is not about force, it is about what we all think of as “fair.” If the law is founded on force, IMO it is founded on a close-but-incorrect premise, and only an abuse of language (defining things that are not force AS force) lets people pass laws that are, simply, fair.
Jim,
I promise, we agree on the details and are just arguing semantics. All I’m saying is that it’s more accurate to say a person gets addicted to the chemical (nicotine, or adrenaline), not the source (cigarettes, or skydiving). Sometimes the ritual itself becomes a secondary addiction, but only as much as the body associates that action with getting that chemical. In some discussions this is a moot point, in others it is not.
@Roco: isnt the stuck at age a function of drugs or alcohol? Which does something to the actual functioning of the brain?
Actually, no. This de-maturing argument is a poor analogy for what physically happens to the brain.
All addictions (including religion, adrenaline, heroin, pot, nicotine, alcohol, self abuse like cutting or whipping, sexual, porn or masturbatory addictions, and on and on) have been shown in the lab to stimulate the same reward centers in the brain, and the alterations are occurring to reward centers in the brain.
I will also point out that learning anything does something to the brain; the brain is in a constant flux of adaptation. Brain actions (including memories) are encoded physically, they are not bits and magnetic fields in an unchanging substrate, like a computer. It isn’t even analogous to an magnetic tape that one can erase and record a new song over; it is more analogous to a punched paper tape that cannot be re-used, except by shredding the paper (cannibalizing the neurons) and using that resource to make new paper.
What changes the neurons is physical biological growth of axons and synapses. This is why learning a skill or trade takes so damn long, it has to literally grow like a vine in the brain.
Most of the major signals for forcing growth come from the emotional centers; and particular the reward centers. Behaviors that stimulate the reward centers, like orgasm, are ‘rewarded’ by strengthening the synapses that produce the behavior the memory asserts led to the reward.
It would be nice if behaviors that produced negative emotions weakened those bonds, but unfortunately the brain doesn’t work that way, and negative-result behaviors only strengthen other behaviors that the memory asserts could have avoided the negative result.
Ultimately this leads to the “internal struggle” of addicts, in which they want to engage in the addictive behavior for the reward and simultaneously want to avoid it. They want the cake, and want to stay on their diet, and if they eat the cake anyway they are regretting it as they do it, and if they abstain, they still feel a sense of loss or deprivation.
Addiction doesn’t age-regress a person, it simply creates an overwhelming and irrational demand for reward that leads to behaviors reminiscent of children that haven’t developed their frontal cortex (the reasoning, rational part of the brain); or of pubescent teenagers undergoing the myelin re-sheathing transformation that puts their emotions in overdrive and suppresses the influence of their frontal cortex.
As I have said in this forum before; rationality serves the emotions, in everybody. There are no Star Trek Vulcans here. Artificial stimulation of the reward centers by pot, nicotine, alcohol or poppy products or pills can range from mild to intense, and addictions are the result of the brain overriding the frontal cortex (its influence is easier to override in some people than in others) to engage in irrational, emotional decisions to maximize the rewards.
It is also possible to become addicted to natural phenomena like orgasm; and some addictions to music, religion, ideology, etc are literally orgasmic addictions. They may not be accompanied by the recognizable release of orgasmic sexual relations; but they produce the same pattern of excitement in the brain. There is a marker for it; a frisson; a kind of thrill that feels like it is the bones. People feel that listening to music sometimes, or in patriotism when listening to a politician (Chris Matthews of Hardball famously confessed to a frisson listening to Obama on the campaign trail), or in religious ceremonies when they feel the love of God. That is an orgasmic brain state product, and people can get addicted to it.
Addicts do not age-regress. Addicted lawyers still know the law, addicted doctors know medicine. Addicts do not even lose the ability to think rationally. What they lose is the ability to control their actions rationally. An addict can know full well they are risking their life, career, marriage, children, imprisonment and life savings, and still push the plunger.
Other than physical addiction symptoms, the determinative difference between a user and an addict is the level of rational self-control they can exhibit.
Jim Smith,
To borrow a phrase used earlier by culheath . . .
Sn-a-a-a-p!
And as someone with a Pentecostal preacher in the family, I’ll vouch that my anecdotal evidence from personal exposure backs your claims about the nature of religious addiction.
To Roco,
De-mature is an interesting term.
In order to discuss your point it is necessary to reaffirm the context in which the discussion began which is Ayn Rand’s philosophy, “I” as the center of the universe. Most young people flirt with that philosophy as it is close to the child/teenage-hood belief out of which one grows as one matures. I am suggesting that fully grown adults who still subscribed to that philosophy have failed to mature and are emotionally stuck at that young level to the point that Rand’s philosophy becomes an addiction that permits the belief system to appear normal.
I also suggest that religious addiction begins when belief or faith stops being about an evolving connection/understanding with God/Universe and becomes instead an attempt to control one’s life or to control God/Universe by behaving in certain ways.
Religious addiction does not have an age barrier but rather a faith barrier. Christianity is supposed to permit and support a believer’s developing, expanding, and on going personal relationship with God. Religious behaviors have the potential for mood alteration and therefore the possibility of becoming addictive. In the addiction mode one finds, over time, the need to engage in the behaviors more frequently with more intensity in order to achieve the same mood alteration originally experienced. If unable to do so, depression sets in creating the inability to maintain healthy relationships. In the addictive mode there is no “peace which passeth all understanding”.
Jim Smith:
isnt the stuck at age a function of drugs or alcohol? Which does something to the actual functioning of the brain? How would Christianity de-mature you?
Most born again Christians I know seem to be normal functioning adults.
To Gyges,
I would venture the opinion that you are addicted to sky diving if the consequences are bad yet you continue to do it, if your thoughts on it preoccupy your mind at all times, if you do it whenever you are depressed or angry or frustrated as a form of acting out, if you have rituals attached to it, and if you believe that sky diving can control your world.
If not, then sky diving is a form of entertainment that provides an adrenalin rush and not an addiction that controls your life.
My original post jumped off from your observations on addiction, with which I agreed, and carried it forward to the “I” as a center of the universe addiction which, if present in the fully grown adult, usually means having not matured out of the fantasy of child/teenage-hood. Your words that inspired my thought were: “I remember hearing somewhere that people who suffer from addictions tend to get mentally stuck at the stage of development they were at when they got addicted “.
In religious circles we call those who have gotten stuck at a particular point, usually the conversion experience (born again), in their development, infant or baby Christians. It is at that point where addiction is a real possibility.
Jim,
I’d say we agree more than we disagree. It’s largely a matter of how important you think the relationship of physical addiction (I need adrenaline) is to the nature of the fix (so I sky dive).
To Gyges,
As regards:
“Jim,
I’m not willing enough to say that people get addicted to a philosophy, maybe to religious experience, but not to the abstract thought involved in that experience. The furthest I’m willing to go is to say that the philosophy\religion could be used to rationalize behaviors that they’re compelled to commit.”
Response:
Marijuana is not considered addictive in the same sense as heroin, but the mood alteration can be very addictive. Mood alteration addiction explains why people become addicted to gambling, sex, work, exercise etc., even though no addictive substance is ingested. All addiction cyclic processes follow a similar pattern 1. Preoccupation 2. Rituals/patterns of behavior 3. Using/acting out 4. Aftermath/consequences 5. Return to preoccupation
Religious addiction begins when belief stops being about an evolving connection/understanding with God/Universe and becomes instead an attempt to control one’s life or to control God/Universe by behaving in certain ways. Addiction to a philosophy\religion is common.
@Mike Spindell: A very good summary of my position.
I would add that I reject Rand’s philosophy on the grounds that her first principles, that it is a crime for anybody to be coerced to do anything on behalf of others that is not in their own self-interest, makes any kind of modern society impossible.
If you can’t pay for police, you won’t have police. If you can’t pay your soldiers you won’t have soldiers. In the 1700’s you might raise a militia of citizens, in the modern world those militias get slaughtered by the professional career soldiers. If you want contracts enforced, you have to not only pay for courts but pay for the police to escalate to force when the court orders get disobeyed, and you can’t have courts, police and soldiers just selling out to the highest bidder.
The reason I was (inadvisedly) going to the definitions is because IMO the way Randians define “crime” to be just what they want to be crime is by abusing the language. But I’ll give up on that; it is up to them to defend their philosophy with a plausible explanation of how they can fairly pay for fair and impartial law enforcement.
Tony C.,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but to me your point while enmeshed in definitions, was really pointed to the 800 pound gorilla in the
Randian Room as displayed in Roco’s direct quotes from her and his own protestations. That ape is simply how does a society even support the necessary criminal/civil justice system required to ensure that these wrongs do not occur? It can’t be by taxation can it, because as Roco and on Randists constantly reiterate: taxation is theft. Voluntary contribution then? Not a chance.
Once you agree to the need for a criminal/civil justice system then many of costs are incurred if you want that system to be effective in protecting society. At first you would need a government to decide on laws, a court system to adjudicate both civil/criminal disputes. A Jury System with people “forced” to sit, thus affecting their work. LEO’s, Prosecutors etc. None of this is cheap, if done right and how does the governing authority decide the fair share each citizen will pay?
Now of course many Randist’s would say that these functions could mostly be provided by private contractors, but this is ridiculous on it’ face and still begs the question of how it is paid for. The ridiculousness is that if let say law enforcement was handled by private entities interested in profit, there immediately becomes an incentive to overreach the bounds, in the interests of growing profit.
What this devolves into, which I believe you are pointing out, is that Rand in essence makes herself the final arbiter as to what is coercion and infringement of individual rights. Once a political/economic system devolves into arbitrary judgments it is no longer a coherent system and become ultimately unworkable.
This is the failure of Objectivism and its’ failure is the model of Rand’s own un-self awareness that she was really justifying her own ego-centric, sociopathology.