Today's soundtrack is 21 Savage: The Slaughter Tape.
Today I'm starting Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It? I bought it after reading Atlas Shrugged, which blew me away. I wanted to delve further into her philosophy, and this seemed like the best way to do it.
The first chapter is "an address given to the graduating class of the United States Military Academy" in 1974.
Rand begins by comparing our transition from childhood to adulthood with being stranded in a broken spaceship on a strange planet with no hope of return. We have a choice: should we get out and explore? Should we check the ship's instruments? Or should we sit and wait for help to arrive, for someone to tell us what to do? When you see something approaching, you decide to wait in the spaceship, and you are devoured. That is how most men live.
Three questions that every member of mankind must ask but many try to evade: Where am I? How do I know it? What should I do? Only philosophy can answer these questions, says Rand. How successfully you can use philosophy to answer these questions dependson your epistemology (theory of knowledge). We can determine our environment and how we influence it through a study of metaphysics (the study of existence).
Rand tells the reader that epistemology and metaphysics are the foundation of philosophy, and ethics is the technology that defines the choices and actions that determine the course of a man's life.
So before we can establish our ethics, we must evaluate metaphysics by asking whether man is a rational being, whether achievement and enjoyment are achievable by man on earth. Then we ask the epistemological questions: How do we know what we know? How do we prove the validity of our knowledge? Do we acquire knowledge through reason or divine revelation? Is reason superior to other methods of receiving and processing information? Does reason process information gathered by the senses, or is the information innate? Lastly we can move on to the ethical considerations: What is good and evil, and why? Should we focus on attaining joy or escaping suffering? Should self-fulfillment/destruction be the goal in life? Should man put his own values before the interests of others? Should man seek happiness or self-sacrifice?
Only after ascertaining the above questions is man qualified to move on to the final two branches of philosophy: politics and esthetics (the study of art).
Here, Rand asserts that all people need philosophy in order to live life on earth. We need philosophy to integrate our experiences and process them so that we have information for future actions. This is what separates us from infants.
All people live by principles, but many live by inconsistent principles that contradict each other and come from poor sources. We must use philosophy to reconcile our principles with reality and integrate them into our daily lives. Without a solidified set of values, we are plagued by self-doubt. And though it is hard to hold to your principles, it is much easier to hold to them when your philosophy is clear and defines them.
Rand says that our mind is like a computer, given inputs by the ideas we accept, and giving hourly printouts in the form of emotions. We can only know the nature of our values and emotions by programming the computer with conscious thinking.
A man run by his emotions is in chronic terror of both the world around him and his own mind. He cannot read the printouts being spat out by his computer.
One of the most dangerous things a man can do is give someone else control over his morality. We must hold our own morality; we must use a consistent, confident philosophy to defend truth, justice, and freedom.
When studying philosophy, we must constantly ask Why and How. If something seems to be true - why? and How is it being presented? This is thinking in essentials.
The mind must be disciplined and controlled; it does not possess innate knowledge or confidene or serenity or reason. We must know our own philosophy and be prepared to blast the enemy's apart.
Rand calls her own philosophy Objectivism, a philosophy for living on earth.
