learnonline

“You know,” said Roark, “I haven’t thought of you at all. I thought of the house.” He added: “Perhaps that’s why I knew how to be considerate of you.” 

A great example of how a selfish desire can lead to altruism.

Personally I hated the fountainhead, precisely because of quotes like this

The metaphor of every piece of land or person having the perfect house to match it undermines the subjective nature of our values

I actually started learning more in depth about objectivism as a sort of a hate-learn because I felt like I must be missing something

But no - it truly as it is - Ayn Rand believed there is an objectively best set of values for every individual, and we should all strive to meet our ideal

Even if we entertain the premise of her metaphysical argument on why existence "predates" consciousness, and therefore there must be a set of values that is objectively good, the subjective nature of our existence (our senses bodies and minds heavily altered under different physiological circumstances)
means we can never access this objective reality in an objective way

"Rational selfishness" is not the answer. Neither is sacrifice. A sense of identity that integrates the world with the self is

I'm talking about how people understand their own identity

We take the ideas of individualism for granted, but upon inspection into different cultures it's seen that what people consider as part of their identity - "as them" - varies greatly

The example of this I like most is that in some cultures when a family member is sick, other family members sometimes say "we" are sick, seeing the sickness of their close one not as an individual circumstance, but as a circumstance of the whole family itself

So, by a sense of identity to integrate with the world, I mean for that identity to identify itself with something greater than its consciousness

To tie it back to my initial point and summarize, I think Ayn Rand's philosophy emphasizes destructive aspects of individualism that seclude us from one another, precisely with ideas like rational selfishness

What does it mean for a sense of identity to integrate with the world?