Objective Objectivism
One should not love another for their faults, but for their virtues. One should not befriend another because the other needs a friend, but because the other, by virtue of his character, has something to offer. Just as with material objects, one should not devote time and effort and emotional investment into another person unless that person has some kind of value with which to repay. One should only trade value for value.
The mesolimbic system is activated both by monetary reward and donations. OFC-limbic networks, which play key roles in social attachment and aversion in several animal species, enable humans to link values to abstract social causes. Phylogenetically recent sectors of the anterior prefrontal cortex are further recruited by evaluation of protracted goals and social outcomes when decisions involve sacrifice of immediate material interests.
Greedy monkeys… your time has passed.
Related Posts:
- Uprooting Nationalism (October, 2005)
- Something very unusual in here… (October, 2005)
- Social Costs (November, 2007)
- “A Group is its Own Worst Enemy” (November, 2008)
- Yield/Stop (March, 2008)
May 11th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Sounds like their time passed several tens of millions of years ago, if not earlier. All hail the rise of the socially conscious robots!
July 21st, 2006 at 3:09 am
That is the worst attempt at an argument I have seen in a while. You took vauge language about how people brains are able to value social causes and acted like that is in some way a response to the view that one should trade value for value? Objectivists are not greedy bastards, rather they are people who try to determine what it is they value and should value. From there they try to protect and achieve those values to the highest degree.I think Objectivists do value some social causes like defeating terrorists and the protection of people’s natural rights. Objectivists are selfish but i don’t like the conotation that comes with ‘greedy’. An Objectivist would never steal or cheat someone (what i think of as greedy). Rather they want things and try to earn them.