Eric Starnes

For the last several years i was an Objectivist(with a big O). Ayn Rands books took me to a world so inspiring and wonderful yet so real and seemingly attainable. I embraced so much of her "philosophy" without even thinking about it. When ever i was confronted with a moral, political or philosophical problem i would know the solution within minutes if not instantly by checking the rock solid reference points given to me by Ayn Rands writings. Either directly or indirectly Objectivism affected almost every aspect of my life. I am just now realizing how much i was affected by the ideas in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountianhead.

Only now i realize that objectivism is nothing more than a secular religion with no more basis in reality than christianity or islam. I now know that Ayn Rands "philosophy" is anything but. I also know how bad a person Ayn Rand was personally and i want nothing to do with anything remotely connected to her.

So now i am standing naked in the desert of the real and my compass is lying broken and shattered upon the rocks. I am now brought to my knees by the most trivial of moral problems. I have no moral compass, and all the landmarks were pointed out to me by someone who dosnt know the first thing about the terrain. I mean, i am serriously lost. I am currently taking a honors class about the holocaust; probably the most evil event to happen in all of history and i couldnt tell you why it was evil. I could tell you why Ayn Rand would say its evil, I know why a christian would say its evil, i know why a secular humansist would say its evil, i know how a unitarian universalist would say its evil. However ask ME why its evil and you might as well ask Bush to do algebra.

Does anyone have an old compass that i could borrow, or maybe just point me in the general direction? I cant stay like this.

Viti

Why do you need someone else's compass? Empathy is the best moral guide IMO...and you don't even have to study it.

captainpabst

I don't mean to trivialize your problem by being overly simplistic, but all I can suggest is the 'golden rule.' It makes sense (in most situations) to me. Empathy is helpful as well.

Philosoft

Eric,

When you say you have "lost your moral compass," do you mean:

a) You still have moral 'reactions' but do not know if those reactions are correct because you don't have an independent standard by which to judge

b) You no longer have moral reactions. You don't feel strongly one way or another about moral situations.

I suspect (and hope) it's 'a' because I think we can help you with that one.

Gurdur

Eric,

try this thread for more information which might help you.

Regards,
Gurdur

Undercurrent

If you need a basic direction, here are a few items I use as a moral basis:

We, in general, undrestand and share the "big" likes of most people. Most people like comfort (pretty much by definition). Most people like freedom. Most people like to fuck.

Similiarly, we understand and share the "big" dislikes of most people. Most people dislike dying. Most people dislike being stabbed. Most people dislike forced confinement.

A greedy goal of human existance is to have things you like happen, and things you dislike not happen.

One method to achive this goal is to be an asshole, greedily trying to make your likes happen and your dislikes not happen, possibly at the expense of making other peoples likes not happen and other peoples dislikes happen.

There are a lot of other people, though, and only one you. And if you get to making their dislikes happen, it becomes in their best interests to stop you from doing that, and if they can they will. Making them not able to interefere with your plans is very hard, because there are so damn many of them.

The naive greedy strategy for happiness attainment is, therefore, hard to implement (unless you're a dictator with a massive army at your disposal -- and even then you have to worry about not pissing off the massive army.)

An easier method is to seek actions that raise the happiness of all people uniformly, yourself included. Since most people have a lot of the same likes and dislikes, this is likely to be possible, and since everyone benefits, you don't get this overwhelming glut of other people wanting to stop you from doing it.

In fact, these actions often encourage other people to reciprocate, because they see benefit from your actions and it's in their best interests to encourage you, by making it in your best interests to keep it up.

Therefore, do things that make you deserving of love because if you do, you will be loved. And being loved has its benefits, not the least of which is making it easier to attain your own likes than being hated does.

AspenMama

Eric,
Welcome to the boards. I am uncertain if this is necessarily a Secular Life and Support topic, but unless you wish me to move it to philosophy, I will leave it here for now.

I am a life-long atheist. Amazingly, I've never read Ayn Rand-- something which most of my peers here find shocking!

Do you truly feel you need an organization-- xian, Humanist, etc-- or another individual, to tell you what is moral? To find my morals, I always consider what it is that makes society work well together and what encourages joy and health in our community. Do you have a particular issue that has come up in which you are having diffiuclties making a moral decision?

I think philosoft has posed an important distinction with his two questions.

Gurdur

Am I allowed to say that I find it endearing ?

Great advice, spot on.

seebs

I read Rand, thought it sounded great for a while, then thought it through, and rejected "Objectivism", which I have mentally binned as "same error as Communism".

Anyway, I dunno; do you have a conscience? If you do, you're set - there's your moral compass.

Morality is mostly a question of instinct, not reason, no matter how much we might wish it to be otherwise.

Steve K

I never liked Objectivism myself -- For myself, I always knew, or thought I knew, what was right; but then I would get nervous - how can I know for sure that this is right? For me, I find that Deontology works -- just asking myself how the world would work if everyone responded to a situation in a certain way.

I notice you reference the question of "why" something is evil. My personal opinion (read: crack-pot theory) is that more something seems to have hurt, the more evil it appears. In the case of the holocaust, the horrors are well known, and so it seems to be very evil. Stalin brutally murdered a lot of people too, but that's less known, and so the name "Stalin" often has less evil connotation than the name "Hitler". In general, my belief is that something that hurts people is often evil, although that probably opens a bigger can of worms than it closes!

- Steve