>From: "Sean Kenny" <sean@irvken.free-online.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Reforming Education]
>Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:30:11 +0100
>
> > Ayn Rand who wrote about the Virtue of Selfishness, didn't
> > argue with the
> > impulse people have to help each other. Instead she argued
> > that people should
> > help each other for perfectly selfish reasons.
> >
>Am I right in thinking that this book is just Max Stirners _The ego and
>it's own_ updated for the Californian crowd
>
No. As a fan of both Rand and Stirner, I can assure you that the messages,
while they contained some common elements, are very different. Stirner's
focus was totally on what he - the unique individual - was told he "should"
feel, versus what he did naturally feel once he had identified and rejected
the various "wheels in the head" that society teaches us. Rand's message
had more to do with identifying how values can be grounded in reality. One
common element was of course the idea that society, especially religion and
the state, have evolved some very powerful memes to trap us. I would tend
to hope that someone would read Rand before Stirner, so that they could
absorb the good things he had to say without getting lost in subjectivism.