I can see "self-preservation and self-promotion" as being the original pursuit of life but it can't be final. Using it as the final pursuit of life is very immature. It looks like an extremely easy trap to fall into, though, hence Ayn Rand's popularity, I guess.
Well said!
Ayn Rand is most popular amount young white males, ages 16-25. That is the time in life where most people have established their identity and have entered the intimacy vs. isolation crisis described by Erickson. It's a period in people's lives where they begin to form relationships and they have to learn that their identities will not disappear by becoming interdependent on others. Failure to do so results in isolation.
Ah, so that's what's eating Uberfurer!
Umm. Does not compute. That as self-promotion? Ick. 'Long term investment that most likely benefits you?' ick.
This doesn't sit right with me. Relationships like that... as investments... it just sounds too cold...
A business relationship is an investment. A personal relationship is so much more than that. There's something more intangible to it.
There might be more to it on an emotional level, but I've found this is how most people and societies function. When we receive, we give. When we give we expect to receive. When Jesus talks about doing onto others etc. it can be read as him confirming this is how people work, and ask people to invest in order to make them and their societies "richer". In my eyes we all operate in a large strategy game where we calculate cost/risk/reward in our transaction offers.
Example of transactions:
a) Talking with an old lady for a while for money.
b) Talking with an old lady for a while for a good feeling (feeling kind, feeling you're doing your duty etc.)
c) Talking with an old lady for a while for the potential of gaining new knowledge.
Often people do it for more than one reason, but it's still subject to a cost/risk/reward consideration. If you did it mainly for reason a) and someone stopped giving you money for it, you'd probably stop the transactions unless you'd found it was still worth it for reason b) or c). Or b) and you no longer felt kind or felt it was your duty, it'd be the same. Or you did it for c) and realized the chances of actually learning any useful from the old cow really weren't worth the investment and you didn't really didn't feel kind enough or feel obliged enough to keep doing it.
Since people value things differently, the investments of two people can give them both a lot more in return than they gave (or the possibility of gaining more in the future). You'll often hear people in a relationship say "he gave me X, while I gave him Y" where X and Y can be for instance stability and excitement. It costs a stable person little to give stability or an exciting one little to give excitement, and they get a lot in return. Saying "he gave me stability, while I gave him stability" however seems less likely, as you rarely trade X for X. ("I'll give you $1000 if you give me 1000$.") Relationships often experience a crisis if it started out with a transaction of X for Y and as one part develops he suddenly needs Z instead of Y. If the crisis can't be resolved, he'll start investing less in the relationship unless duty/feeling kind/other rewards still makes the investment potentially worth it.
Of course we'll come up with other explanations when things like this actually happens, as we don't want to sound like cold, ruthless economists, but if you look at the underlying patterns, you'll see that this dynamic explains quite a bit.