That’s your translation. But my translation of your translation is more along the lines of…
“If you did listen to what they said, then you would agree with what they said.”
Indeed, from my own experiences over the years, that is the first rule of “objectivist club”.
…or try what they suggest.
As I noted above, they are either able to convince me that their own particular self-help method is worth trying or they are not.
Just as I ask them to bring their own particular objectivist narrative out into the world of conflicting behaviors; and then to note how they are not down in the hole that I am in. They are either convinced this is worth trying or they are not.
Where the lines are drawn in the “how ought I to live?” world are always going to be problematic.
After all, look what is at stake: psychological equillibrium and emotional equanimity. Comfort and consolation.
Your idea seems to revolve around the assumption that how you think and feel about something like Communism is how others should think and feel about it in turn. Otherwise [it would seem] what they are thinking and feeling about it is wrong.
Typical.
News for you … if you are to get out of the hole, you have to think differently from how you are now thinking.
No, I have to be convinced that how others think is more constructive. Sure, if you reconfigured your argument and finally convinced me that how you think about Communism is the way I [and all other rational men and women] ought to think about it then, with regard to that particular set of conflicting goods, I’m up out of the hole. And it may well work for all the others too.
But what [in my view] you won’t acknolwedge is the extent to which you really do insist that those who don’t react to Communism as you do are just plain wrong.
What [I surmise] disturbs folks like you and folks who embrace Communism wholeheartedly, is a frame of mind [mine] that suggests there may well be no way in which to resolve this one way or the other. That, using components of both socialism and capitalism, the best of all possible worlds might be reflected instead in moderation, negotiation and compromise. Which, for example, in the welfare state, it is. For all practical purposes.
But I am no less down in the hole. At least as it pertains to my own nihilistic assesment of moral narratives and political agendas.
That’s your evaluation before you make any effort. You already predict the results without raising a finger.
Clearly then if it can be asserted that I am the problem here then this certainly lets you off the hook. You can embrace your tirade against Communism while blaming those who don’t think the same way about it as not really making any effort to.
That is the psychology of objectivism!
And, come on, there are hundreds upon hundreds of self-help techniques, life style changes, religious dogmas, spititual journeys, politcal spiels etc., which promise you one or another rendition of spiritual enlightenment or salvation.
Let me guess … you won’t try any of them.
Not until I am convinced to. But given all the moral narratives and political agendas I have abandoned over the years, I sure tried some of them that worked. Until they stopped working.
Why don’t you note in turn all of the arguments from others that you came to subscribe to – techniques and methodologies that changed your thinking and your behaviors over the years.
But only those who were down in the hole that I am in and managed to yank themselves up by using one of these contraptions are likely to convince me that I can do the same.
That’s like saying that only a doctor who cured himself of a disease can cure you of the same disease. You won’t go to a doctor who never had the disease.
Diseases are embedded in human biology. A doctor is either able to demonstrate that she had a disease in which she was able to cure herself or she can’t.
But how do doctors who refuse to do abortions on moral grounds demonstrate to doctors that do perform them that they ought not to?
But even then I will expect them to react in an intelligent and challenging manner to the components of my own frame of mind.
And the people who are trying to help you out are not doing that?
Not when they refuse by and large to take their own moral narratives out into the world of actual conflicting goods.
The components of moral nihilism revolve around the seeming fact that philosophers are not able to devise arguments that do in fact resolve conflagrations that have plagued the species going back now thousands of years.
Or, if particular objectivists argue that they have, then let them bring the components of their own assessments “down to earth”.
Of course you and others will insist that in fact you and they already have. But I am either convinced of this or I’m not. I merely acknowledge that just because I am not does not mean that this settles it.