ATLAS SUMMIT 2014 -- How would children be raised in Galt’s Gulch? Most Objectivist parents want to raise their children with as little coercion as possible, but lack the knowledge of how to do so: how to get children to eat vegetables, bathe, study and make safe choices, even as toddlers, without trickery, manipulation, bribery, punishment, or other forms of coercion. Parenting can and should be completely consistent with Objectivist values—there are no contradictions, just faulty premises. Join Roslyn Ross as she examines the most common mistakes Objectivists parents make and how to avoid them.
ABOUT ROSLYN ROSS: Roslyn Ross manages a philosophically sound day camp for children that also teaches parenting skills to adults. Ross also writes, speaks, consults, and produces edutainment on the subject of parenting. Ross graduated from Wesleyan University.
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:
- Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
- Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
- Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
- The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
- Ayn Rand