but wouldn't you also lose any ground for, say, the banning of child labour or sexual harrassment, predicated as these measures are on the idea that we all share certain needs and characteristics?
Well if we're going to talk about individualism we can't do it without talking about Ayn Rand. It's funny because Dan mentioned her not too long ago. Watchmen hinted at this (MassX?). Ayn Rand lived during the Soviet scare. She had a fist hand accounts of what communism can do. This obviously shaped her views on individualism. Reading her stuff in College crystallized many thoughts I've had for a long time. Especially recently after going back and thinking about this stuff in greater depth.
What makes Ayn Rand a notable proponent for individualism because there are many. Is the fact that she is one of the few maybe one of the first that talk about altruism and morality.
Her argument was that Altuism is what feeds this sort of dangerous group think. She made a very convincing case that altuism is immoral and that for superior morality to prevail you have to make moral decisions with a self centered mindset. That is not the whole argument, it's just the outline of those ideas. I still can't find a flaw in this logic.
I would go one step further and state outright that it is absalutely impossible to make altruistic moral decisions. I beleive that every decision we make is based on logic or based on emotions that are selfishly engineered by nature. The closest thing to altruism is logic and reason. Emotional responses are the furthest, even if you have altruistic intentions.
If we're going to define altuism we need to define morality. First some backstory: From the age of 5 years old my mom decided to put me in a Catholic school. I didn't know what religion was but the views that I would be indoctrinated with were already waiting for me. By the third grade I've seen enough of Christianity in "religion" class (it made me sick), I'm only ten years old and I'm already understanding how this shit warps minds. I had to battle my mom to be taken out of "religion" class. Finally in ended with me throwing out all my school supplies and throwing out any papers any of my teachers would give me. This game lasted less than a week before my mom caved. I don't know how things work in the UK but in Elementary school where I live the alternative to "Religion" class is "Moral" class. I didnt even know what "moral" class was but at first it was a breath of fresh air. After years of taking Moral classes and seeing the subject being butchered by unequiped teachers, by the time I'm in HS I felt like I was replacing one religion with another one, albeit much less retarded and dishonest.
I feel like the concept of morality is bullshit. Here's why: The idea of morality to me has always been to idea of building logic and reason in order to have a system ready to help one predict the favoralbe outcomes over the less favorable outcomes. The idea of evil vs. good is exactely the same as saying favorable vs. not favorable. Of course these are subjective ideas. The things that I find favorable are not what you may find favorable. This in itself is not the problem I have with morality. The problem I have with morality is that human being have a terrible capacity to predict the consequences of our actions. This is a problem with intellect more than intention. And the fact that in every moral class i've been tought about good intention as opposed to critical thinking shows just how misunderstood the concept of morality realy is.
Some things are obvious in the very short term. But the consequences of our actions do not stop as far as we can predict. For all I know the pizza I just ate will cause a car accident. Maybe the lady whom I bought a drink for the other night was an alcoholic stuggling to quit. Maybe the kid that was bullied in High School grows up to be a millionaire.
The fact is there is no way to predict even 1% of the consequences of our actions. I have zero reason to believe that a good action is more likely than a bad action to have favorable consquences, and vice versa. I can't even be sure of what others consider favorable.
The final blow to morality is when the concept of free will comes in to play (or should i say lack of freewill). I would like very much if someone could show evidence of this idea. I'm a materialist, freewill does not fit in a natural Universe. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Someone who wants to promote the idea of good morality should look towards promoting individuality and reason. If these two things prevail people will see the benefit of the favorable laws such as protecting children against child porn. The reason is that we have a natural instinct to protect children. People with children have an especially vested interest in promoting laws to protect laws. Not to mention the fact that we were all children once.
Every "moral" decision is a compromise. There is no ideal solution otherwise it wouldn't be a dilema in the first place.
Lets apply this to speed limits. On one hand we have the favorable idea of preventing deaths. We achieve this by lowering the speed limit. On the other hand we have individua freedoms (which is valuable in itself) and things like the economy and the value of personal time of the other hand.
Now if we over valued lives we would lower the speed limit on the highway to 20KM/h. Lets assume you didn't have mass rioting and everyone played along, all of a sudden your 20,000 automobile deaths each yeatr would shrink to say 1,000. This however is not a favorable solution. No one wants highways with 20KM/h speedlimits. The economy would slow down, it would hurt many people and quality of life would decline. It might even cost lives. Having a generous speed limit is the middle gound. The other extreme would be to have a high minimum speed. that would cost more accidents which may even slow down traffic. The question isn't what should the speed limit be, it's how do we prevent accidents without changing the speed limit? Automated vehicles might be the inevitable solution. But even here the compromise will be the cost of implementing such a system. Of course it will pay for itself in the long run. Traffic would speed up and accidents will drop significantly. Logic is the only sane approach to moral questions.