It appears to me that our human instincts are to dominate or to serve. I would like to suggest that we concentrate our critical skills upon seeking to focus attention upon synthesis.
When I read history I see primarily a dual human need exerting itself—we seem to have a two class social system; we have the few who dominate the vast subservient majority. The subservient take this roll both because humans crave order and stability and because such a roll is the path to power. Humans crave dominance and they crave order and stability. Is their a third way?
When we are dominating objects we are united in a common goal. Our unified goal is to dominate objects as much as possible and we have proven to be very good at it. When we try to serve both a roll as dominant and as subversive we appear to create a society that is constantly at war with it self.
Power is the siren song we all hear. We all want power and we get it by dominating or we get it by being subservient to power. Our newspapers abound with such stories daily of the struggle for power, i.e. power is the means to get what we want when we want it.
Acquisition of power is a human imperative. We can acquire and use power either rationally or irrationally. One of the primary motivating forces behind irrational behavior is considered to be human egocentrism, which is “to view everything within the world in relationship to oneself, to be self-centeredâ€.
To be rational in one’s desires is to use intellectual standards of thinking and to be irrational in one’s desires is to use egocentric standards to determine what to accept or what to reject as true.
Imp, I have read many of your posts. I have never addressed you in a thread because I am quite sure you would think I am on the “other side” and I am not here to take sides. I am writing to you this time because you will know what “ayn” stands for. I want you to be aware I read enough of the first part to know where the anthem was coming from and I read all of the last part to find out where it was going. When the anthem ended with the word “EGO” I was disappointed for up to that point the anthem, its length notwithstanding, had promise. In the end I wanted the authors to give me a vision of what the ego was suppposed to do.
In my view of life “I” is also of supreme importance but propably due to some philosophical deficiency I cannot separate the “I” from the “We”. I saw in the first part of the “ayn” anthem a description of what I suggest will happen if the "I"s continue to exercise our perceived right to, in my words, “fill the void in our own way”. I see “us” in the same self-destructive absolutely restrictive mass. Because the authors offered no specific direction in the last part of the anthem I see the “EGO” taking “us” back to the beginning. In the other possible ending of my ‘anthem’ I see the "I"s each exercising our right to “reach out the limits of our capacities, to others and to God”; and “us” becoming what we are capable of being.
At your suggestion Imp, I read the whole story. As I was reading through the middle of it I got quite excited because I thought Ayn Rand might be creating a metaphor for understanding. As I neared the end however, I once again became disappointed as I sensed Rand was indeed writing a manifesto justifying the absolute right of individuals to take everything they can out of life. Please tell me my impression was wrong. Also tell me where it is written, “not all are meant to be free.”
Thanks Imp. I read Ayn Rand’s short bio. I saw an aside entitled “Ayn Rand at 100; some good and not-so-good elements of Objectivism.” It seems not everyong agrees with her. I haven’t got time for Nietzsche now although that quote “not all are meant to be free” is probably in the one book of his I read in the early '70’s. I am going to spend the time I have writing about the possibility of living outside the box that contains Communism, Capitalism, Christianity, Islam, right, left and all the other theories that restrict our thinking, a place where all are free to “reach out the the limits of our capacities, to others and to God”. I could be wrong; but then, so could Ayn Rand and Nietzsche.
Talking to you was ok. I learned. Maybe we can do it again sometime.
I don’t believe we are ever without power. I suppose one COULD get it by dominating, if one thought that was what power was. I’m not inclined to think it is. I’ve known many “dominating” personalities who were really not at all powerful other than the impression they gave of being superior and having other people lap it up.
No, if anything we "give away"our power and “sell out” for illusions of what we think power is. At an individual level, we always have power.
As is evident in America, democracy is not doing a very good job of mitigating the urge for power; our problem is we have the few who dominate the vast subservient majority.
It seems to me that this urge is somewhat in our genes, as you have pointed out “You see much the same in a chimpanzee troop.†Is it not something that we can use our great rational abilities to mitigate?
As you say there are multiple layers of dominant/subservient behaviors. Each of us is dominant in some circumstance and subservient in others. Likewise such structure is necessary and productive in some circumstances but is destructive in others.
Our innate tendency is to view the world from our own self-serving perspective, i.e. egocentrically. The ego has its agenda and our degree of intellectual sophistication determines which side wins, the ego or the desire for reasonableness. It is never a total victory for either side but our general welfare is dependent upon the degree of success our reasonableness scores.
We have many ways of fooling our self into believing we are reasonable. We constantly seek validation and thus our ego is constantly furnishing us with justification. For example “I know I have a short fuse, but I can’t help it. I lose my temper just like my father did.†Internal validation brings comfort. We can often see a person quite comfortable with their constant lousy decisions because their ego tells them they are correct. The most despicable tyrant often sleeps quite easily.
IMHO, Ayn Rand’s philosophic take on what it means to be human is infected by her own sense of superiority, with its accompanying disdain for those she considers inferior. Enlightened selfishness is a good idea if, by the idea, one realizes that the strong are morally mandated to protect the weak. Of course this entails the objection that protecting the weak only produces more weakness, that only the strong can help anyone else, while the weak only drain resources. This is a Malthusian idea. Currently, the Earth has enough resources to feed every human alive. The problem is distribution. Industrialized nations, about 11% of the entire human poulation use over 50% of the Earth’s resources, use them to promote vanities of lifestyle, not life, and call the other nations "underdeveloped’!
Are we not evolved beyond the animal hierarchies of might makes right and survival of the fattest? Is not tough love often an excuse for inability to love at all? No human is born inferior to any other. The lead or serve mentality is only recognition of individal differences, which should never be estimates of human value.
I cannot comprehend the narcissism involved in such divisive opinions as “Christian slave morality”. Neitzsche presented this concept with ideas of how to move beyond it. i don’t see those here. Either we are all in this human condition or we are not. Either we are our brother’s keepers or we are not. Within our fragile biosphere there is the moral mandate that “we must love one another or die”. Try narcissism without bread!!!
Impenetent,
I will no longer respond to you on this topic. The Christain slave mentality concept is a hundred years old. It makes no distinction between regressive fundamentalists and progressive idealists. It cannot account for such as Albert Schwitzer (sp.?) or Mother Theresa, or even of a MLK.
It is, as an idea, musty, fusty, politically and spiritually irrelevant. If your ego must be built on contempt for those you consider inferior, go for it. Ecological realities and relationships with other human will grind you into the impersonal dust where you will find nothing to validate your existence.