Hmm, "If every human were a Randian there would be peace and commerce and progress and life;" I wonder if there would not be interminable boredom as well? I am picturing something along the lines of the planet Vulcan to borrow from another sci-fi source. Belief, love, and passion are great motivators, but rarely rational. I wonder however if I would want to live in a world without them, could be just another form of the Alliance's better world.

Silence has enumerated another of the common myths about Randians and the results of rationality. Emotions may seem at first to be irrational, but this is not the case. Here is the big secret: Emotions are always based on values. If one's values are set up correctly, one's emotional responses are reasonable. Justified anger is a tremendous force, often for good. Far from being emotionless, Randians often are more passionate since they can be confident and not confused about the source of their emotions.

Consider this definition of love: Love is the emotional reaction resulting from the recognition of your values in another person. The results are incredibly powerful and potentionally earth-moving.

Thanks for the info Dagny. I will have to contemplate that a little. Seems like a valid point about moral and value based references for emotions.

John, thanks for taking the time to engage with me on this (I apologize in advance for the length of this comment, but you gave me a lot to respond to).

You accuse me of rejecting �choice and values� for �sacrifice and belief.� This is a false dichotomy. Sacrificial love and belief need not � indeed, should not � be opposed to choice and value (by which I take you to mean freedom and morality). However, they do present choice and value in a fundamentally different light than that of rational self-interest. I will attempt to explain this in a bit, but first a couple points need to be cleared up:

You admit that Mal�s �knowing glance� at Zoe implies an inconsistency between his responses to River and the man at the bank. But what is the difference? Not that River was part of his crew while that man was not, but that the first action was selfish, while the second was selfless. By taking River in even AFTER he had explicitly told her and Simon that they were no longer part of his crew � and after seeing just how dangerous she was � Mal implicitly rejects his earlier selfishness. Nothing about this action suggests rational self-interest, as is confirmed by his refusal to give River up to the Operative when he has the chance.

Even when the Alliance retaliates by killing Book and the rest, it was hardly in Mal�s best interest to continue to protect her (it certainly wasn�t in Wash�s!). Rather, their suicidal mission to discover and then broadcast the truth about Miranda, was for the sake of OTHERS, not themselves. The lives they saved were not their own, but those of the unknown innocents the Alliance might next try to experiment upon. Indeed, they had no reason to think that publishing that information would end the threat on their lives; it might have intensified it. After all, tyrannical governments don�t usually take lightly to treason.

You also object to my characterization of Jayne as a Randian. You�re right that his willingness to kill for spoil is clearly opposed to Rand�s Objectivism, and I�m willing to withdraw the comment on that basis (with my humblest apologies). However, in that case Mal is also no Randian, as he too is willing to kill even when he has not been attacked. The obvious example is the man from the bank. You might say it was this killing that Mal came to reject (and so became a true Objectivist). But how then do you explain the climax of the film, when he uses the Reavers to attack the Alliance? Neither this action, nor the previous, is in self-defense. But while the first is condemned as selfish, the second is selfless and is embraced as heroic. Killing aside, Jayne�s recognition that keeping River aboard is a bad idea is the closest Serenity comes to rational self-interest, and it is not the view advanced by the film.

But these are mere trifles, what concerns us is whether WE should be Randians, or �altruistic true-believers.� Is it not? This really boils down to whether we were created by God or not. If not, then the only rational response is to live for oneself, according to Rand�s philosophy or some other. But if God did create us in his image, then the only �rational� response is to live your life with his character as your standard of value. There is an objective truth here � God either exists or not � but reason cannot decide the matter conclusively. You must choose either to believe or not believe.

You object that I fail to offer a �sufficient alternative� to the film�s (lack of an) answer to the questions it raises about �belief, love, freedom and control.� It was not because I don't have one, but simply that it did not seem the place for a soliloquy on my personal philosophy. Perhaps this is still not the place, but I will say something.

You admit that pure self-interest is not sufficient for morality, but other than a rejection of killing (except in self-defense) you do not elaborate on what provides the objective grounds for this distinction between good selfishness and bad. Instead you simply assert: �If every human were a Randian there would be peace and commerce and progress and life; if every human were an altruistic true-believer there would be war and slavery and taxes and mass-murder.�

As Serenity itself depicts, misplaced belief can and has led to these results, but that is why sacrificial love is so important. True altruism means putting others first, and its practice should mean the rejection of all such evils. If everyone were a conscientious Randian, it might end war and mass murder, but self-interest by its very nature opens the door to slavery of various kinds, and it cannot help but lead to inequality. If the only justification for the rejection of violence is that a peaceful society is better for �everyone,� then what happens when those at the bottom can find no other way of surviving? There are fates worse than death. At its best, Objectivism might avoid these dangers, but I don�t believe it is best fit to do so.

The �alternative� is the golden rule � do what�s best for others, RATHER THAN what�s best for yourself. Why? Not because it�s rational � though if everyone accepted it, we would have the peace and prosperity (and mutual love and joy) that we all desire � but because the God who made us did the same. God on a cross is foolishness to the Randian, but if true, it is the most important thing that ever happened. It is also the perfect statement of human freedom and choice: even God did not force his will upon us, but created us free, free even to turn against him. Such sacrifice is the heart of Christian love � a passionate, extravagant, unconditional love � and it is the antithesis of rational self-interest, as well as all forms of fascism. Creation in the image of a loving God stands as the ultimate affirmation of the paradoxical connection between love, belief, freedom and value. For all its merit, Serenity only approaches, but does not reach, this truth.

Ken, the initiations of force by Mal that you refer to are in emergency situations. There is certainly nothing self-defensive about killing a man who's about to be skinned and eaten alive by monsters, but such an act of mercy is also consistent with Objectivism. In the second instance, provoking Rievers to attack Alliance forces is indeed an act of self-defense, as the Alliance is pursuing him and his with evil intent.

If you derived from anything I've said that "pure" self-interest is not sufficient for morality then you've misunderstood me. Rather than elaborate on what does constitute an objective code of morality I referred you to an introduction to Objectivism that states: When combined with a metaphysics of objective reality, the politics of capitalism, and an epistomology of reason, an ethics of rational self-interest is the highest moral purpose in a man's life.

The standard for this code of morality is life and happiness on earth. The things that are of value to a man are those that promote his continued life and prosperity and happiness and contentment. Now, others may come into a man's life and become important to him. To the extent that their life and happiness benefits him, it is just for him to contribute toward the benefit of THESE others. But the decision of who to include in this circle of "his" (and every right to revisit that decision at any time) belongs to him and him alone. It is the attempt to influence this decision such that a man will act against his own interests that I denounce so vociferously. The name of the code that propagates that idea, this "unearned guilt" is Altruism. Altruism is the code of self-sacrifice and, ultimately, suicide, not necessarily always resulting in physical death, but always resulting in death of a man's spirit.

Your attempt to associate RATIONAL self-interest with "slavery of various kinds" is beneath you. All incidences of slavery throughout history have been at the hands of gangs of thugs, not individuals. And inequality is not something that can be "lead to." Inequality is an inescapable fact of life. All past and future efforts to erase it suffer the same fate - failure.

The moral purpose of Objectivism is not to create a utopia for "everyone," it is to free men's minds to achieve their greatest potential. If you choose to devote your life to equality of the human race then as far as I am concerned, you are completely free to do so - right up to the point that you suggest to me that I "should" help because it is the "right" thing to do. I will not dispute that Jesus died on a cross for somebody's sins, but those sins were most definitely NOT mine.

My code of morality and life requires only that I follow it in order to be successful. Yours requires that EVERYONE follow or else it fails.

Not only is "God on a cross foolishness to the Randian," but the very idea of God itself, for in order for consciousness to exist, there must be something to BE conscious, and something for that first something to be conscious OF. Existence clearly antedated consciousness, not the other way around.

John, sorry about the delay, but it�s been a busy week.

As for Serenity: you�re still ignoring the sequence of events that led Mal to attack the Alliance at all. He could have, at any time, given River up and removed all threat on his life. His choice not to do so was at least partly altruistic, whether River was part of his �crew� or not. Moreover, the selfish motivation you attribute to him does not even appear in his speech prior to the attack. He doesn�t say: �If we don�t go after them, they�ll never stop hunting us� (a.k.a. Battlestar�s Commander Adama: �sometimes you gotta roll to hard 6�). Instead he says: �If we don�t stop them now, they will try this again.� Since it�s certain that HE wont be the one manipulated on an Alliance controlled world, his concern must be for the unknowns who would be. What makes him heroic is not that he pursued his own interests, but that he didn�t � he WOULD have been better off to just turn tail and run, but that wouldn�t have been much of a story, would it? (A similar situation occurs in the second episode of Firefly: �The Train Job.�)

As for rational self-interest, you seem to be equivocating. You, like Rand, want to have your cake and eat it too, despite all protestations to the contrary. You claim that rational self-interest is itself the �the highest moral purpose in a man�s life,� and insist that no one has an obligation to place someone else�s interests above their own (though they are free to do so if they choose). But you also claim that certain actions � slavery, force or fraud � are wrong even if they ARE necessary to one�s interests. With one breath, you claim that the only valid obligation on a man is the furtherance of his own life and happiness, while in the next you require that his life and happiness do not come at the expense of another, at least in certain situations.

What is the basis of this distinction? Either a man has an absolute freedom to pursue his own interests, or he does not. If he does, then the only valid reason for him to reject slavery, force or fraud is if they turn out NOT to be in his best interest, completely regardless of their effect on anyone else. If he does not, then how can he justify the rejection of the interests of others for his own, in ANY circumstances? In other words, is every man an end in himself, or only an end TO himself? If the former, then you cannot reject your obligation to some form of altruism (or at least utilitarianism � �the greatest good for the greatest number�). If the latter, then the whole concept of �obligation� becomes meaningless. You can say that everyone has a CHOICE to live only for his own interests, but you cannot say he has a RIGHT to do so, for rights imply a standard of right and wrong. Rand may define them as �conditions of existence required by man�s nature for his proper survival,� and think that removes the problem, but who then decides what qualifies as �proper� survival? And who decides that in some contexts, a man may ignore those rights in others? Unless ther is a standard of value above self-interest, we are left with relativism, not objectivism.

This is why my claim that self-interest risks slavery is not �beneath me.� If Rand�s particular brand of egoism (admirably) refuses to resort to violence, fraud, slavery, dishonesty or whatever else, it is not on the basis of self-interest, but in spite of it. I applaud you for taking that stand, but I fail to see how you can call this self-interest (rational or otherwise). This IS altruism, you have simply convinced yourself that it need only apply in certain �emergency� situations, without providing any justification for distinguishing these circumstances from everyday life. Either all men have an inherent worth that cannot be dismissed from any ethical consideration, or none do. You can pick one or the other, but you can�t have it both ways.

Perhaps the reason we both continue to see our own views in Mal, is that he himself is not consistent on this point. Indeed, probably none of us are, which is what makes him such an attractive hero � he�s not that different from us.