What's wrong with loving your fellow man?

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[robhaythorne]

To eliminate standards is either nihilism or pragmatism; therefore, nothing. Ayn Rand defends standards.

[raymondparnell]

A friend to everyone
Is a friend to none

[blaiswiener]

Love is an abstract concept making it contextual. What a beautiful mind.

[aldenho]

she's 100% correct. what you love about someone is their values and character. which not everyone has the same of.

[rajeev_kumar]

Very well said, Ayn Rand is the best.

[koitheawesome]

Love presupposes value. Value presupposes the answer to the questions: "A value to whom?" and "For what?" A value can only be a value for he (or she) who values. And it can only be a value as a benefit (and source of joy) for the valuer. Thus, to love a person is to recognize that other is a value to one's self. A value in what sense? Towards what end? In the sense of bringing happiness and excitement to one's life, and for the sake of one's own selfish pleasure.

To drop the context of value--or to otherwise remove one's self in any concept of love--is to be guilty of The Fallacy of the Stolen Concept. It is to smuggle in the concept value while, at the same time, dismissing, attacking, and rejecting the concept value upon which the concept love logically depends. To value means, necesaarily, to value according to one's own happiness and convictions. Value is that belonging solely to the ego and cannot be divorced from it.

Thus, was written in Ayn Rand's novel, The Fountainhead, you cannot say "I love you" without first saying the "I, " by which she means that to love, and to love properly, requires a sense of pride and self-esteem in one's self--an inviolable sense of self-appreciation, which is, fundamentally, wholly incompatible with the Altruist ethics of any kind or variety. It is the ego, and thus only egoism, which can make a man capable of truly feeling love for another.

[graces]

Seems like every student at the university of Texas needs to watch this and get a wake up call

[jessewallaceable]

One day the world is going to look at Ayn Rand and say wow, how did she figure all this out.

[fjohnson]

How can one love someone one does not know. That is like trusting someone that one does not know. Recipe for disaster.

[pyromanaic]

Christ says love your neighbor as yourself. Not greater than yourself. He also calls us to judge rightly.

[mannyvelizofficial]

You can love someone, but you love them based on their values and virtues, based on your judgement of whether they are good or not, for example, if someone treats you good, you treat them good, like a trade.

You’re friends with people who share similar values to yours, people who have something to give, and you are able to provide them with something in exchange, you love them based on their achievements, based on who they are, not based on unconditional love, which is an immoral concept.

[kdemetter]

I see Ayn Rand's point, but I don't see that as a contradiction with loving your 'fellow' man, though my interpretation of 'fellow man' is probably different from what Christianity means by it.

And perhaps I understand love to mean something different from what Ayn Rand means by, or I'm just confused.
Here's how I think about it :

Love is not a binary.

The people you value the most, you should love the most. People who destroy what you value are evil, and you shouldn't love them. So I don't believe in loving your enemies.

However, every stranger you encounter is a potentially value to you. You don't know beforehand if they are good or evil, but they have the potential for reason, for good.
Therefor a sort of baseline of love is warranted, at least until you get to know the person.

Love also doesn't mean you just let people get away things. Infact if you truly love someone, you should be harder on them when they do wrong, because you want what is best for them.

Also, just because someone did evil doesn't mean there's no path out of it ( it would just be difficult), nor would helping people get back on the path to reason/good be necessarily immoral ( it would depend on the reason for doing so)

For example, one could make it their life's work to help rehabilitate convicts, and that can be a completely selfish act. Infact Ayn Rand's works would be quite useful there

[markbarber]

Wallace is arguing for collectivism which is really odd considering 1959 Korean war and soon to be Vietnam war against collectivism aka communism

[yehudithyakobson]

Well we are not Jesus...at least she is honest

[johnchenoutstheworld]

Yo guys. Love that Christ speaks of is definitely not some fluffy agree with everyone and respect, it is to defend, build up, give to, clothe, feed, even rebuke, and help repent because of their potential and lack of knowledge of love. Love changes people. We love our enemies because God loved His enemies, us, by shedding the blood of his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. We are changed by love, just as MLK stated hate cannot overcome hate only love does that. Love calls people to higher standards and morals, just as Jesus called people to himself, his practical wisdom, and His way of generous self sacrificing love.

[extemporaneous]

That's woke philosophy in a nutshell. They claim to "love" everybody, everybody's equal, but in practice they do more harm than good.

[matbrudar]

asking a sociopath a rational question, good luck :)

[MrJohnnyDistortion]

Her eyes darting around like that torally freak me out.

[graywhiting]

The reason the love of Christ is so unique is that is it exactly the opposite of what she stated. The world needs the type of love pictures in 1 Corinthians 13. ““Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

[soyoucametosee]

"Regardless if they have any value or virtue". Everyone has a value or a virtue. Be it good or bad in your own judgement. Therefore you are making a disiccion of value or virtue. Therefore you are discriminating. Now you must choose how you will treat them.
Love in the english language is to broad a term.