Fortuny spent most of the weekend in his bedroom juggling several windows on his monitor. One displayed a chat room run by Encyclopedia Dramatica, an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore. It was buzzing with news of an attack against the Epilepsy Foundation's Web site. Trolls had flooded the site's forums with flashing images and links to animated color fields, leading at least one photosensitive user to claim that she had a seizure.
. . .
As we discussed the epilepsy hack, I asked Fortuny whether a person is obliged to give food to a starving stranger. No, Fortuny argued; no one is entitled to our sympathy or empathy. We can choose to give or withhold them as we see fit. "I can't push you into the fire," he explained, "but I can look at you while you're burning in the fire and not be required to help."
The epilepsy hack, of course, is closer to pushing someone into the fire than to watching them burn, but either way, the philosophy is repulsive. Ayn Rand got away with saying things like this because there was an underlying cultural, and perhaps evolutionary, imperative that ensured that they would never actually be acted upon. Normal human beings recognize that if you can pull someone out of a fire at little cost to yourself, watching them burn is the act of a pusillanimous craven. That understanding is exactly what allows us to declare that one has no legal obligation act.
But that imperative is built locally. People find it easy to tolerate pain that occurs out of eyeshot, and very hard to tolerate the pain of people they can see and hear, especially if those people are right there in front of them. And the punishment for deviation from those norms is shunning--effective if you are in a small community where the violators are few. On the internet, however, nobody knows that you're the weedy guy in the condo next door.
The internet has allowed the deviants to find each other, to construct a community with shared norms that tolerate, even celebrate, the pain of others. And it cloaks them in sufficient anonymity to get by in the outside world. If people knew what they had done, I doubt they'd survive two weeks--no one would sell them food, rent them shelter, or for that matter, permit them to merge into the exit lane. But no one knows.
I doubt that the solution is, as the author suggests, just to learn to live with it. Rather, I'd expect that countertrolls will emerge--hackers who put as much energy into harassing these people as they put into harassing us. Evolutionary biologists call people like that "altruistic punishers", and they serve an invaluable purpose in any society. It will certainly be interesting to see how deep the philosophical commitment to pure selfishness really runs--will Fortuny feel the same way if people exercise their right not to have anything to do with him, even sell him the food he needs to survive? I rather doubt it.
I think the opposite can be true when it is an animal in distress instead of a human.
For example, there was an injured pigeon at 17th and Columbia the other day. We watched as many people just walked by even though they noticed the pigeon was hurt. Then they pointed and laughed at my girlfriend as she tried to catch it.
The 'shunning' was directed at the helper in this case.
Ps. she caught the pigeon and brought it to a local vet who treats injured wildlife for free - it should make a full recovery.
Yes, the flashing screens are a direct, intentional assault. Any libertarian can agree with this.
There is a distinction to be made here. I would agree with the assertion that one is not entitled to aid. To assert otherwise simply leaves no clear line where your rights begin and another's ends. However, as Megan points out, this philosophy necessarily runs equally the other way in the process of shunning and social opprobrium- you are not entitled to not be shunned for your lack of good character.
Not to come off sounding like a troll, but there are some who would argue that pigeons are flying vermin who spread disease, and probably aren't worthy of any sort of compassion.
weev, arguably the most dangerous of the lot, isn't precisely an objectivist. He isn't intellectually sophisticated enough to be an objectivist. He's some mangled composite of objectivism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theory, apocalyptic eschatology, Introduction to Philosophy, and comparative religion. weev seems to think this is clever and unique, but his discourse consistently fails to do justice to any of the myriad sources he appropriates.
I won't link to his website, so as not to give him the traffic, but he maintains a livejournal page. Read it. Given the fact that he might well be able to do most of the things he claims to, it's kinda terrifying. (He doesn't seem sociopathic, but his morality is clearly warped.) But the intellectual posturing is just kinda cute. weev claims that Schwartz didn't sufficiently address the philosophy, reducing him to a "biographical footnote". What weev doesn't seem to get is that his "philosophy" is entirely impossible for an educated person to take seriously, at least in the terms in which he's couched it.
People have been constructing communities with norm that "tolerate, even celebrate" the pain of others for a very, very long time. Historically it's been the victims of group sadism who are shunned and blocked from participating in social life, rather than the perpetrators.
People have been constructing communities with norms that "tolerate, even celebrate" the pain of others for a very, very long time. Historically it's been the victims of group sadism who are shunned and blocked from participating in social life, rather than the perpetrators.
pigeons are flying vermin who spread disease, and probably aren't worthy of any sort of compassion
Some say the same about humans (except the flying part).
Megan,
Sorry, but you're grossly misrepresenting Ayn Rand's philosophy. It's true that Rand was opposed to altruism, the notion that we have an unchosen obligation to sacrifice ourselves to others. But this is not inconsistent with helping strangers in need, if one can afford to do so (which is exactly as you yourself phrase it):
"To illustrate this on the altruists' favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one's own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one's life no higher than that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a stranger to risk his life for one's sake, remembering that one's life cannot be as valuable to him as his own.)...
What, then, should one properly grant to strangers? The generalized respect and good will which one should grant to a human being in the name of the potential value he represents—until and unless he forfeits it....
It is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency—and only in an emergency...."
--Ayn Rand, "The Ethics of Emergencies," *The Objectivist Newsletter,* February 1963.
Your caricature of Rand's position is a common one, but unfair and reflective of not having read much Rand. Please take care to correct it.
NS
MarkT - What a remarkable story! Although I can completely believe in the reactions of the passer-bys who didn't help as I had a similar experience myself recently.
I was waiting for a train late one night here in the NYC subway when I noticed a rat on the tracks that seemed to have something wrong with it. I could see the train's lights coming down the tunnel but could tell it was still a ways away, so I seized the opportunity and jumped down to the tracks and swept the rat up into a loving embrace (the rat tried to lovingly bite me, but I was careful and only got some minor scratches and only the tiniest of love-bites) and hopped back up onto the platform.
Now I could see that the rat was clearly in some kind of distress, possibly it ate some of the rat poison that the un-feeling, un-caring MTA had sprinkled around its home. Well, I gave it mouth to mouth (carefully, of course, as the rat was still confused and kept occassionally trying to scratch and bite me off) until it seemed to be stabilized and then hurried it to an all-night vet.
Can you imagine? The vet at first refused to treat the poor creature! It was only after I offered to pay the full costs and claimed that this was my own pet rat that she relented and took the rat into the back to work on saving it.
She came back out a little while later with the sad news that the poor thing had died on the operating table, unfortunately, but I gladly paid the $500. Every living thing deserves a chance to live, after all, and I was only going to use that money for an iPhone, which I can easily do without.
But you should have seen the looks and heard the comments directed at me while I was trying to save this living being in the subway! You would have thought I was engaging in some kind of absurd idiocy instead of an act of pure altruistic kindness towards another living being!
Shocking. Sometimes I feel that animals are so much more sensitive than humans. Even though they often try to hurt me when I help them.
The thing I found most amusing in the NYTimes piece was Weev's holding his money in an off-shore account. So here's a guy who believes the end of civilization is coming and that he should be helping it along but at the same time claims to keep his money off-shore, some place that it would be totally useless without the trappings of modern civilization working near flawlessly.
Seemed kind of like cognitive dissonance to me: the kid who thinks the world should be destroyed and as proof structures his life in such a way that it would be impossible for him to survive if the world were destroyed.
Reminds me of a lot of the current crop of environmentalists who keep predicting the imminent end of the world yet live their lives in ways that make sense only if the world is not going to end.
The Phantom,
Please send my leg back to me.
Regarding your belief that causing a person pain is something most people will not do if the victim is in plain sight; you are mistaken, alas. There was an experiment done long ago--the 70's I think--in which the subject thought he was chosen randomly to administer electric shocks to a 'partner' who was really an actor. The subject was coached by a very official looking authority figure (lab coat, master-of-universe manner) on how much electricity to shock the actor with; whereupon the actor writhed and moaned with pain. The 'official' kept urging more and more electricity (of course--there was actually no shock at all) and the actor kept demonstrating greater and greater agony. Sadly, most subjects kept turning the meter higher and higher altho they could see with their own eyes that they were inflicting pain. The power of authority figures frequently trumps personal values and judgements.
MarkT:
I am happy to report that in a situation much like the one you described, the people of Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA really came together to help me catch the pigeon. One person got me a box and something to stuff it with, one person gave me her scarf to cover the pigeon with, and another woman simply gave me 10 dollars to defray the cost of whatever I was going to do with the pigeon.
That said, the pigeon was so unwell that it was euthanized when I took it to the animal rescue place, but we humans tried our damndest to help it.
Online "trolls" are simply an extension of every-day life "trolls" - otherwise knows as assholes. Assholes are ubiquitous in any society and the source of most of the world's problems. Much of the teachings of Jesus Christ concern with how we deal with assholes on a regular basis. Christ teaches us that when assholes cause us grief, we must turn the other cheek and defer to God's judgment, for hell is made for assholes and heaven for non-assholes. It was assholes who nailed Jesus to a cross. It was assholes who crashed planes into the World Trade Center. It was assholes who started and bungled the Iraq War. There will always be assholes and non-assholes will always be their victims. You cannot pass laws against assholes because assholes will simply hire lawyers, who are themselves assholes. I think Jesus was right. We have to wait until we die and hope there's an afterlife where assholes can be tortured in hell. At least when we die, we'll not have to suffer more assholes in this life.
Online "trolls" are simply an extension of every-day life "trolls" - otherwise knows as assholes. Assholes are ubiquitous in any society and the source of most of the world's problems. Much of the teachings of Jesus Christ concern with how we deal with assholes on a regular basis. Christ teaches us that when assholes cause us grief, we must turn the other cheek and defer to God's judgment, for hell is made for assholes and heaven for non-assholes. It was assholes who nailed Jesus to a cross. It was assholes who crashed planes into the World Trade Center. It was assholes who started and bungled the Iraq War. There will always be assholes and non-assholes will always be their victims. You cannot pass laws against assholes because assholes will simply hire lawyers, who are themselves assholes. I think Jesus was right. We have to wait until we die and hope there's an afterlife where assholes can be tortured in hell. At least when we die, we'll not have to suffer more assholes in this life.
Regarding your belief that causing a person pain is something most people will not do if the victim is in plain sight; you are mistaken, alas.
I remember this as well, but I also remember that people were less likely to do it when they could see the subject versus just hear them. The shocks weren't random either, they were administered when the person answered a question wrong. Most people needed heavy coaching from the official person in the lab coat about the need for science, the person is fine etc.
The study was supposed to show that Americans were fundamentally different than Nazis, in that we wouldn't torture someone if told to do it by an official. It ended up showing the opposite that an official could coax most people into torturing another person.
A Reader's Digest "Life in these United States" story from years ago quoted a taciturn New England storekeeper.
Someone in the store was being a jerk, and after he left, the narrator said to the storekeeper, "Well, I guess it takes all kinds." The storekeeper replied, "It don't TAKE all kinds, we've just GOT all kinds."
I remember that when I read about people who essentially go out of their way to be jerks.
Nathan says, "We have to wait until we die and hope there's an afterlife where assholes can be tortured in hell."
Now there's a Christian sentiment if ever I heard one! Plus, whoever is doing the judging might have a different opinion than Nathan does?
I'm not sure that your "altruistic punisher" idea works in this situation. Come to think of it, this sounds mostly like some kind of pipe dream, as opposed to a real prediction. Most websites lock their doors and don't invite in the raggy-looking types, so I'm not sure that the Internet really needs an altruistic punisher to police the free-speech freeloaders.
I completely concur with noumenalself. Your comments regarding Ayn Rand's Objectivist viewpoint reveal an egregious failure to know the validity of your portrayal of her ideas.
The religious and the leftists have been very busy promulgating such misconceptions of her ideas. Second-handers are happy to accept others' opinions rather than see for themselves. If a group of them get together, each gains support from the others, becoming even more convinced that they know the reasoned Truth. Of course, they do not. Some are so lame they even read Rand, but only absorbing phrases and events that match their preconceived notions. Thereby, they really convince themselves that they can see the 'flaws' in her thinking.
Like noumenalself, I hope you will take steps to correct that tendency. A good understanding of Rand will even help you improve your writing skills, because they follow from thinking skills.
The Phantom,
That wasn't a rat, dope! It was a South American Chihuahua. Might want to clear the froth off of it's little mouth next time you do mouth-to-mouth on one of those.
This is really just about perfect.
For example, there was an injured pigeon at 17th and Columbia the other day. We watched as many people just walked by even though they noticed the pigeon was hurt. Then they pointed and laughed at my girlfriend as she tried to catch it. The 'shunning' was directed at the helper in this case.
Your girlfriend was attempting to catch a bird that potentially had lice and unpleasant disease, in an unsanitary manner, in a fashion that scared the crap out of the pigeon, and apparently with an intensity that could have blindly sent her into harm's way (as well as the harm of someone else).
The "shunning" you speak of was society's attempt to help your girlfriend reorient her priorities.
From jlf:
I wonder how long and hard it would be to train a pigeon to play injured.
aMouseforallSeasons wrote:
"The "shunning" you speak of was society's attempt to help your girlfriend reorient her priorities."
Ayn Rand wrote:
Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action, and collective thought for the sake of what is called ``the common good.´´
I wonder if pedestrians walking in unison along 17th and Columbia would constitute collective action. And I wonder if it was the "common good," these pedestrians were collectively thinking when they were helping MarkT's, "girlfriend reorient her priorities."
AMouseforallSeasons: the next Objectivist Summer Conference will be held 2009 at the Seaport Boston Hotel and World Trade Center. I suggest that you attend. Meanwhile, if you really want to celebrate Indivudiality, may I suggest you sign your posts with your real name?
Ironic, those that think that to be a Christian is to be a wimp, are the same people that think that to be an Objectivist is to be a prick.
weev, arguably the most dangerous of the lot, isn't precisely an objectivist. He isn't intellectually sophisticated enough to be an objectivist... What weev doesn't seem to get is that his "philosophy" is entirely impossible for an educated person to take seriously, at least in the terms in which he's couched it.
Objectivism is entirely impossible for an educated person to take seriously too.
In fact, 4chan has been attacked, numerous times, and was thought to be permanently dead not too long ago. But it keeps coming back, and to my knowledge has been going strong for many years now.
I think there aren't many altruistic punishers here for two reasons: 1) 4chan is large and getting larger, due to its transformation from an anime image board to a cultural dump for any and every popular internet joke. Serious raids take a lot of people, and organization of such would require a website, an IRC channel, or some other internet gathering that would be susceptible to a larger counter-raid. 2) Lots of people who oppose the kind of trolling described above don't mind or even admire other kinds of trolling--Scientology and Emo Chin are easy to hate.
aMouseforallSeasons:
a bird that potentially had lice and unpleasant disease, in an unsanitary manner, in a fashion that scared the crap out of the pigeon, and apparently with an intensity that could have blindly sent her into harm's way (as well as the harm of someone else).
This seems like an overreaction to the potential risk. I think most diseases associated with pigeons are related to their droppings - certainly care is required when cleaning up large amounts of droppings.
Someone wrote:
"Objectivism is entirely impossible for an educated person to take seriously too."
How does that square with the approximately 50 philosophy professors in the Ayn Rand Society of the American Philosophical Association? I helped found that group in the mid 80s. I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, and have taught philosophy at Hunter College in NYC, the University of Texas at Austin, and elsewhere.
And how does it square with Cambridge University Press publishing Prof. Tara Smith's recent book, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics?
What part of Objectivism would an educated person find difficult to take seriously? That reality exists independent of consciousness? That sensory perception is valid? That reason, based on logic applied to perception, is man's only means of knowledge? That man's life qua man is the standard of morality? That the agent is the proper beneficiary of his own actions (egoism)? That rationality is the fundamental moral virtue? That man has individual rights, and the initiation of physical force is evil?
AMouseforallSeasons: the next Objectivist Summer Conference will be held 2009 at the Seaport Boston Hotel and World Trade Center. I suggest that you attend. Meanwhile, if you really want to celebrate Indivudiality, may I suggest you sign your posts with your real name?
I would rather not. One of them is French.
Someone wrote: objectivism is entirely impossible for an educated person to take seriously too.
Ad hominem argumentation. However, HBinswanger gave your sophistry credence when he listed the credentials of the Ayn Rand Institutes's brain trust. Good thing you did not insist that objectivism is incompatible with getting laid. We would have had to digest a plethora of pernicious PHD pornography.
At any rate, HBinswanger's counter-argument is equally fallacious for he falsely equates an instructed man with an educated man. Wasn't Bill O’Reilly also instructed at Columbia?
I digress. What is sad, however, is that instruction has led HBinswanger to believe that life can be reduced to Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics--within the artificial confines of a classroom no less! Sad indeed, when education should have equipped him with the knowledge that there is more to reality.
Face it HBinswanger: there are things on heaven and earth undreamt of by your philosophy.
Someone wrote: objectivism is entirely impossible for an educated person to take seriously too.
Ad hominem argumentation. However, HBinswanger gave your sophistry credence when he listed the credentials of the Ayn Rand Institutes's brain trust. Good thing you did not insist that objectivism is incompatible with getting laid. We would have had to digest a plethora of pernicious PHD pornography.
At any rate, HBinswanger's counter-argument is equally fallacious for he falsely equates an instructed man with an educated man. Wasn't Bill O’Reilly also instructed at Columbia?
I digress. What is sad, however, is that instruction has led HBinswanger to believe that life can be reduced to Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics--within the artificial confines of a classroom no less! Sad indeed, when education should have equipped him with the knowledge that there is more to reality.
Face it HBinswanger: there are things on heaven and earth undreamt of by your philosophy.
Megan states
"I have no idea if the trolls chronicled in the New York Times Magazine's article this weekend are objectivists, but they certainly sound that way:"
Like the Joker in "Batman Returns," a troll sows discord and mayhem by attacking values--any values.
Trolls are nihilists, not Objectivists. A nihilist is someone opposed to values as such. An Objectivist, or anyone with firmly held values is the opposite of a nihilist.
JohnMC, I think you are referring to the milgram experiment, performed by Stanely Milgram at Yale in 1961. In fact, the actor was in a different room; the test subject could not see the actor when they administered what they thought was an electric shock, but they could hear the actor shout in "pain" and demand to be released. While the results bring up interesting questions on blind obedience to authority, they can not be used to infer that people will cause others pain in *plain sight*.
Yancey - I take it from your comment "Please send my leg back to me." that you think I was pulling your leg.
Frankly, you're exhibiting exactly the same sort of callous indifference to suffering as the people who snickered and made retching noises at me when I was saving the poor creature's life with mouth to mouth. I don't know how you can live with yourself when you are so clearly a species-ist and prob. a sadist as well.
I'm certainly not going to share with you the apallingly casual muderous instincts I saw on display during a trip out west a few years back.
Suffice to say, after a rattle-snake had bitten a child some heartless fool actually shot the poor thing! (The rattle-snake, not the child.) You should have seen the reaction when I demanded a car to take the rattler in for treatment. The fellow actually joked that he was likely to shoot me too for my "foolishness"! Can you imagine?
Unfortunately, we lost the rattler. I seem to have little luck in saving these poor unfortunates. I do feel, though, that I'd have more if we didn't live in a poisonous society that flagrantly values the lives of children over innocent snakes. And values cleanliness and disease-combatance over the lives of pigeons and rats in the city.
Someday, maybe, enlightenment will become more common and folk like MarkT, his girlfriend and I will finally be able to do our good deeds free from pernicious and debilitating mockery.
I can only dream.
Until that day, I'll just keep on valuing all living thngs, even if my regard for "filthy disease-caring vermin" or "poisonous pests" is funny to most people. Frankly, I sometimes wonder if I'm showing the proper regard for the living things in the plant kingdom. They deserve our respect and consderation as fellow living things too, you know.
Damn it, there goes the other one! Looks like the wheelchair for me.
The poster above me seems to be getting trolled in a comments thread for an article about trolling. How meta.
Moving on, HBinswanger remarks:
"What part of Objectivism would an educated person find difficult to take seriously? That reality exists independent of consciousness? That sensory perception is valid? That reason, based on logic applied to perception, is man's only means of knowledge? That man's life qua man is the standard of morality? That the agent is the proper beneficiary of his own actions (egoism)? That rationality is the fundamental moral virtue? That man has individual rights, and the initiation of physical force is evil?"
A moral philosophy that is quite silly in its innovations does not deserve to be judged on the basis of what it has borrowed from older, more robust philosophies.
Face it HBinswanger: there are things on heaven and earth undreamt of by your philosophy.
Conversely, though, there are more things dreamt of in your philosophy than are in heaven or earth.
I have read no serious arguments against Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. I have read nothing but logical fallacies. So I would just like to point anybody that really wants to know what Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is about to her fiction writings "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" or her non-fiction writings of "The Virtue of Selfishness", "Philosophy: Who Needs It?", or "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". Give it some serious thought and check it's premises and your own and then you can make up your own mind whether it's lunacy or a truthful philosophy to live one's life by.
I have read no serious arguments against Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. I have read nothing but logical fallacies. So I would just like to point anybody that really wants to know what Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is about to her fiction writings "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" or her non-fiction writings of "The Virtue of Selfishness", "Philosophy: Who Needs It?", or "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". Give it some serious thought and check it's premises and your own and then you can make up your own mind whether it's lunacy or a truthful philosophy to live one's life by.
Steve Henderson:
I apologize for employing satire, absurdism, and humor to make my point. Having been to various objectivist seminars I should have known better.
Thus, once more onto the breach: objectivism is atheism for Right Wingers. Objectivist believe that Western Civilization is the only civilization in the World that has actively employed reason for its betterment. Paradoxically, objectivist also believe that Faith, Western Civilization's most basic evil, has plagued it since its inception. Thus, only when Western Civilization has forgone Faith has it enjoyed progress.
The nativist nature of the initial premise precipitates an erroneous of perception of reality. Ergo, garbage in, garbage out.
As for faith itself Objectivist, collectively collude to misdefine the word. Objectivist employ this intellectual legerdemain in order to denigrate and obviate Faith's accomplishments to Western Civilization. Thus, objectivist erroneously believe that Faith and Reason are in conflict, when in reality they have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship throughout Western Civilization.
Hence, Shakespeare's quotation: there are things on heaven and earth undreamt of by your philosophy.
In other circumstances I realize that it would be incumbent of me to provide examples, but realizing that Objectivist consider Faith evil, I consider it a futile endeavor.
Nonetheless, Deo ac veritati
"I have read no serious arguments against Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism."
Are you talking on just this comment board or in general? If you mean in general, that probably says more about you than the critics of objectivism. No philosophy is perfect or perfectly encapsulates how the world works, thus any philosophy will have holes in it. I consider myself a liberal, but I do admit to reading serious arguments against liberalism (in the American sense of the word). It does seem at times that objectivists have created some weird cult of personality around Rand and have used her writings to give a philosophical basis to acting like a jerk.