Altruism and Selfishness

          My first dabbling in philosophy was through the philosopher Ayn Rand for a college scholarship. She talked a lot on the conflict between the two concepts of Altruism and Selfishness. She claimed that it human nature that humans were selfish individuals, and she extolled this concept, claiming that mankind has become too altruistic and because of that we are worsening humankind by putting others welfare before one's own, neglecting ones own soul for the sake of others. She also said many other controvertial things, but she, in my own opinion, has at least a shred of truth in her philosophy in that Humankind is innately selfish and that society and humanity clash because of this.
        Altruism is put down by her though and that this concept damages humanity. But is it really wrong putting others in front of oneself every once in a while? How can one justify altruism if ones nature is selfish?

Faith and Truth

          My classmate Sam St. Pierre asked a very interesting question.  Is there ever an instance where faith transcends truth? In human society, is the truth within oneself more important than the actual truth? Faith and truth have always  been interesting subjects for me. What is truth? Does it even matter what is right and what is false? To answer Sams question however, I must say that faith has trumped truth many times in human history. Sometimes some people just force themselves to believe that truth, or certain theories are lies (example: The Flat Earth Society.)  But I believe that faith is more adaptable than that and often works in other ways. Most of the time in my opinion, Someone will change their belief so it matches up with the truth. (Example: When evolution came out and gained major scientific evidence, many Christians and others developed the theory of Intelligent design to allow both of these beliefs to exist without conflict.)
        As for Sams second question, I must say that this question depends on whether or not the individual would live a contented life not knowing the truth and holding whatever they believe to be the truth. If someone holds their beliefs very dear to them and the beliefs are not harmful to themselves or others, and they do not care to find out the verity of their faith, then by all means they should regard their own beliefs in higher esteem than the truth. On the other hand, if one does value making sure one's beliefs are correct and true, and is skeptical or curious, they should value the truth over faith.
 Could faith then be considered a subjective truth, or to take that even further, if there is subjective truth then how would it be different than objective truth? What would the impact of this be?

Family?

 So, I am really excited to start blogging again, because I remember how it was like last semester in art and philosophy. Despite how much it pained me staying up on s trying to squeeze out any old idea I could write about, I enjoyed forcing myself to think on these subjects. Hopefully in this semester I could do it again. Speaking of Art and Philosophy actually, I happen to remember this one theory we went over in that class that reminds me of the nature of human nature. I believe that this theory was proposed by a philosopher named White.  His theory compared how families work to what art it. For example, one might have the same eyes as one's father, but one's brother has their grandmas, but they both have their mothers nose. The overall idea was that just like how all families have related physical characteristics with some but not others, the same thing occurred with art. So some art had some things in common with others, while the others had things in common with other pieces as well. I was thinking perhaps that was how human nature worked too.
 Could it be possible that human nature functions like a family and their characteristics too?