Violent tribalistic #protests as well as disastrous political ideas are the results of irrationality in our culture.
Key to cultivating a more rational culture is improving the quality of #education.
To that end, on May 18 The #AynRand Institute is officially launching the Conceptual Education Program to further promote rational ideas in primary and secondary education.
Your mind is your fundamental tool for survival as a human. Your individual right to life includes the right to use your mind for productive work and enjoy its results. That is the foundation of your #PropertyRights and of #capitalism.
Run away from anyone who offers you the false dichotomy between solitude and #collectivism. They do not recognize your right to hold them to their agreements.
Today 10 years ago Aaron Swartz committed suicide, after being arrested by MIT police and prosecuted by the then U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz for massively downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR. He was charged $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison. He was 26 years old.
He believed that, above anything else, information should be free.
Most professional philosophers boycott #AynRand and “wish the media would stop referring to her as a #philosopher.” Even when a journal or textbook is not hostile to her arguments, they consistently have little connection with her written texts because of parochial attachment to the frameworks Rand challenges.
This is simple #prejudice, and these professionals have yet to overcome their own biases. Can you?
Instead of the #Nazi - inspired #BookBans proposed by #MomsForLiberty (aka#MaterNazis ), have they considered adding 'Warning Labels', such as we put on cigarette cartons?
For instance, on the cover of any book by #AynRand we could put a sticker that says "WARNING! The Russian author of this book on #Objectivism , which glorifies self-interest, applied for #SocialSecurity and cashed all of her checks from the U.S. government!" 🤔
@AlSweigart As my former professor and Ph.D. Dissertation Committee Chair used to say, "Yeah, Ayn Rand sounds great when you're a selfish teenager or young adult, but if and when you finally (hopefully) grow up, you realize how toxic and antisocial her rhetoric is."
This is the stuff of the infantilized "me, me, me" people out there.
Example: Republican and former House Speaker Paul Ryan loves Ayn Rand, and has publicly expressed this in the media. #AynRand #Objectivism
So-called "Objectivism", the "philosophy" of Ayn Rand, is nothing but ableism thinly disguised as a philosophy.
A person's abilities and disabilities DO NOT define that person's worth. Thinking they do is putting the cart before the horse. Who cares what you can or can't do if it isn't useful TO someone? So answer me this: Are people valuable because they can do things, or are the things people can do valuable because they're useful...to people?
The value of all the things we experience comes from our experience of them. Our moral worth originates within us. It is primary, and is not derived, as the value of our abilities is.
G’day #Australia! Next month, #AynRand Institute president and CEO Tal Tsfany is embarking on a seven-date speaking tour on “The Moral Case for #Liberty”!
These in-depth historical, literary, and philosophical essays were originally included in a series of expensive #academic market #books edited by Robert Mayhew. They’re a tremendous educational resource that can greatly add to the public understanding of Rand as a #novelist and seminal #philosopher.
Watch "This Caused Dr. Jordan Peterson to Change His Political Thinking"
He is saying that be started seeing productivity as a virtue and that he thinks that the problem with those who appose socialism is that they don't have a well defined, explicit, philosophy.
Been a while since I've read any #philosophy. Ayn #Rand's #Objectivism is interesting so far re existence+identity+consciousness, but the rejection of the Kantian dichotomy isn't making sense as form vs object amounts to the same thing IMO. Or maybe I need to refresh on #Kant... 🤔