New debate!
Basically, my brother is an Objectivist. A huge Objectivist.
Basically, he and my mother were having a debate that eventually was over the bettering of humanity. My brother believes that we as a species could reach our potential so much faster if we were less focused on things that he believes are slowing progress, like fundamentalism, pop culture, and, most notably, welfare and charity.
He says that we could basically make ourselves virtually immortal sometime in the near future with the aid of stem cell research, but in order to further that goal, many resources would have to be put into it, and since the basic rule of economics is that resources are limited, that would mean diverting resources from other things, again, like welfare and charity's.
He believes that those who are poor can work hard to try and change their situation, but if they can't, then that most likely means that they are not motivated enough, but even if they really can't change their situation by themselves, no matter how hard they try, then that still doesn't mean we should use resources on them.
He says, as did I, that if we made a difficult decision like that, then we would have less difficult decisions to make in the future.
While my mother agrees that doing something like that would greatly advance human progress, she thinks that not trying to help out those who need help would mean forgoing compassion, and compassion is one of the things that makes humans unique as a species. She says that it isn't worth it to let helpless people die in the name of progress.
Please note that my brother does not believe that the poor should all be killed, but at the same time, he thinks that if they can't contribute to society, even if they really want to, then society shouldn't contribute any resources to them.
I personally believe that my brother is right, and believe that his plan may just be what the world needs, but I, as an individual, am too compassionate to actually be able to help further this goal. I still think, however, that my brother's plan, while it disregards compassion, does not do so forever, as eventually, things would work out, the system would stabilize to the intense modifications, and then we could bring back compassion in large scale, but until then, we need to work more on progress, so that in the long-run, we better our situation here on Earth.
This is really a terse version of their debate, so I wasn't able to fit in as many details as I would like to, but basically, my question is,
How much would you be willing to disregard compassion if it meant making huge strides for the human race?