Quote:
Originally Posted by Intuician
I disagree with the premise. I think a persons value is to others and not to himself. If you give service to others, you will have a high personal dignity.
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If only this language was less ambiguous, some concepts are more than just a single interpretation, in this case I believe you misconstrue the premise of Isotelesis.
The point of the quote is not to suggest that service to others does not create value and high personal dignity, rather that it must be a self-generated motive, not because somebody else told you to. Basically it was meant to suggest thinking for yourself is the highest virtue. I don't agree with all of Ayn Rand, but some of her ideas such as individuality and holding oneself to principles such as self-development and honor, are essential to human evolution. If everybody did things for big brother, we'd all be virtuous wouldn't we? You should do something because you think it's right. Service to others begins with service to self, through which you recognize that where one ends and another begins is nominal. Ultimately you're helping others more when you're acting consciously, the spiritual evolution of mankind will be more organic, you cannot engineer karma and get away with it. Rumi describes it quite eloquently. Hence, rather than collecting power at one end, fold it back on itself to create self-organizing, humanitarian, libertarian communities from within.