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From: laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Reason gets misunderstood everywhere
Message-ID: <402@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Tue, 7-Jan-86 04:30:59 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.402
Posted: Tue Jan  7 04:30:59 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Jan-86 19:55:46 EST
References: <1538@hound.UUCP> <1671@cbsck.UUCP> <334@l5.uucp>
Reply-To: laura@hoptoad.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 44

In article <983@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>
>At this point I basically agree with you.  People are to be valued because
>they are wonderful, creative, and intelligent (in varying degrees), and many
>of them are kind and compassionate.  I just disagree with calling this
>selfishness.  Selfishness is valuing yourself because you are yourself.
>Valuing yourself because you meet some criteria, and you value anything
>which meets those criteria, is not selfishness.

I haven't heard this definition of selfishness before.  If *this* is what
selfishness is, then I am not selfish.  But I fear that most ethical egoists
that I know, all of whom claim to be selfish, are not selfish either. This
is going to make communication difficult...

As far as I have ever been able to ascertain, ``selfish'' is a word which
other people apply to people for a great variety of reasons, envy being
cheif among them.  Maybe we sould retire the word -- but I need *something*
to combat the moral position that you should see to everybody else's needs
ahead of my own.  *Those* moralists call everybody who does not adopt their
position ``selfish''...


>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>I also disagree with your political theories, not because I think the
>Libertaria you describe would not be a good place to live, but because
>I don't think it is possible.  You cannot get people, en masse, to behave
>the way you want them to behave; and if you could assemble such a group,
>it wouldn't stay that way in subsequent generations.  Who ever does not
>cooperate in common interests (such as defence) gains at the expense of
>those who do; if you force cooperation, you don't have Libertaria.

I don't think that I can get it in my lifetime, either.  But then I didn't
ask for that either.  The worrying thing is that if we do not move
closer to libertaria we may be saying that libertaria is impossible for
any generation.  And I do not think that this is the case.  When I take
a look at who benefits and who loses in this society I am not pleased --
increasingly I find that unless you value reason for its own sake, you
may never come to value it -- it is possible to be fantastically irrational
and still do well in this society.  This frightens me a lot.
-- 
Laura Creighton		
sun!hoptoad!laura		(note new address!  l5 will still
ihnp4!hoptoad!laura		 work for a while....)
hoptoad!laura@lll-crg.arpa