Love Selfishly

[David]

Hi all,

There will be no meeting this week, but we will meet next Thursday,
Feb 21st at 8pm. More details (where and what we'll be doing) will
come soon. For this week, extol the virtues of selfish love (and
practice them, too). There's an article on capitalismmagazine.com by
Gary Hull which gives a good argument against altruistic love, but no
one says it quite like Rand herself. From "The Romantic Manifesto":

"Love is a response to values. It is with a person's sense of life
that one falls in love--with that essential sum, that fundamental stand
or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One
falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person's
character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest
gestures, which create the style of his soul--the individual style of a
unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one's own
sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it
recognizes as one's own basic values in the person of another. It is
not a matter of professed convictions (though these are not
irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and
subconscious harmony.

Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process
of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a
reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one
of the most evil consequences of mysticism--in terms of human suffering--
is the belief that love is a matter of "the heart," not the mind, that
love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and
impervious to the power of philosophy. Love is the expression of
philosophy--of a subconscious philosophical sum--and, perhaps, no other
aspect of human existence needs the conscious power of philosophy
quite so desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and
support an emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration
of reason and emotion, of mind and values, then--and only then--it is
the greatest reward of man's life."

You can read more from Rand on love here: http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/love.html

For Dr. Hull's article: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4896

Happy Valentine's Day,
David