Smallness of Mind


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Dennis, your post #41 is really excellent. And in many ways:

1. You identify a deeper psychological cause that frequently motivates some of the more immediate causes of small-mindedness. 2. You make some really important points economically and powerfully {{ e.g., "When people are unhappy, they typically lack benevolence toward others. If you are miserable, you tend to lose the ability to treat other people decently", the general points you make about happiness and unhappiness in the culture, etc.}} 3. You cover a lot of thought-provoking ground. {I'm going to expand on points I agree with and explain some small disagreements elsewhere.} 4. Your writing is clear and simple 'abstractly' with enough examples to be understood.

,,,,,,,,,,,,

[Aside - On another thread I've made a point urging providing substantive *feedback*: I find giving feedback like this is in my self-interest. It's not 'charity' to praise someone for doing something well here. i) It puts a little spotlight of sunlight on that sort of thing or underscores it in my own mind, ii) makes it more important than things which don't rise to that. iii) It encourages me to effort myself. iv) And it allows me to underscore some 'tips' or examples of when something philosophical or psychological, areas of interest in my own writing, are well-expressed. You create the reality you offer feedback on.

Feedback on, being a critic of a bad post also has selfish value, but it is usually of a lesser level because it doesn't reach all of those four roman-numeraled results.

Thanks, Phil. I'll look forward to your follow-up.

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There is an enormous amount of unhappiness in the world, and people have become more aware of their own suffering in the past century under conditions of relative material abundance. When people are unhappy, they typically lack benevolence toward others. If you are miserable, you tend to lose the ability to treat other people decently. And so we have the widespread phenomenon of people taking out their unhappiness on others through various forms of attacking or belittling or insulting or otherwise malevolent behavior.

This rings very true.

I have been mainly lucky and therefore happy in my life, yet at times when I had a minor ache or pain, or just felt wildly irritated for nor reason, I have been rude or offensive to others. It had nothing to do with them. I didn't envy them, hate their philosophy, feel threatened by them or usually even know them as they were complete strangers. I was just hurting and needed to lash out and be mean.

Depression is even worse. You feel so unconnected with normal people, so inferior and unworthy even to be seen by them, that you spend most of your time trying to avoid human contact.

If misery is constant so will be incivility and anti-socialism. In a bad sense, Objectivists!

Good insight, Daunce. Your observations coincide with mine.

Conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager wrote a book titled Happiness Is A Serious Problem in which he argues that people have a moral obligation to be happy in order to be make the world a better place. Objectivists would say that our moral obligation is to ourselves—i.e., that each of us has the moral responsibility to make the most of the value that is your own life, and that the emotional state of happiness is the consequence of achieving that value. Objectivists would say that benevolence toward others is a by-product rather than the goal. But either way you look at it, I think we could argue that happiness and benevolence are moral issues.

And when I witness a malevolent pattern in others (e.g., the way some posters routinely mock certain other posters on OL), I tend to conclude that the ones doing the mockery are likely making a confession they would not care to see examined in the clear, remorseless light of day.

I assume you are talking about real mockery, with intent to wound. I spend a lot of my time here calling my good friends terrible names. You yourself have not been immune. There are few men who like you, could shrug off being equated with Donald Rumsfeld or the revolting David Hassellhoff. I respectfully credit the psychotherapeutic profession, which I have not always respected as I should.

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I respectfully credit the psychotherapeutic profession, which I have not always respected as I should.

Ah Ha!!

Now tell us about that bad couch experience you had which led to this deeply repressed trauma that caused you to passively aggress against the psychopathic oops psychotherapeutic profession.

Counting my referral commissions

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Jonathan,

Having been guilty of many of these things, I can say with 100% certainty that envy was not my motivation. I don't believe it was the motivation of the people you cite, either.

I think that envy is a part of their motivation, in addition to other things, including the "faith-story" concept that you've outlined.

Let me ask you this, MSK:

You say that you've been guilty of many of these things. Did you ever try to publicly destroy someone's reputation in the way that these zealots have? That's the characteristic that suggests envy to me. I guess that I just can't see you ever being as vindictive as Comrade Sonia was in going after TOC and Sciabarra, or Pigero going after Barbara.

EDIT: On reflection, I just realized that there is another component to the faith-story. A person who adopts it is always among the Privileged Ones in his mind as compared to the rest of humanity. He considers himself as a superior being to others who are not like him. This might be a form of vanity or conceit, but once again, it cuts so deep that I think it goes beyond this kind of superficial emotion.

Right. I think that zealots like Phil, Comrade Sonia and Pigero believe that they should be seen as occupying the upper echelon of intellectualism. When they don't get the respect or attention that they feel they deserve, they throw tantrums, and they go on the attack. And, again, that tells me that envy is a big part of it. These people are not the intellectual giants they imagine themselves to be, and the rage comes out when they are shown to be quite small-minded and petty. They personally attack and try to tear down those who are intellectually more capable.

J

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I respectfully credit the psychotherapeutic profession, which I have not always respected as I should.

Ah Ha!!

Now tell us about that bad couch experience you had which led to this deeply repressed trauma that caused you to passively aggress against the psychopathic oops psychotherapeutic profession.

Counting my referral commissions

Don't listen to him, anybody. He a confederate of intraterrestrial conman the Ninth"Doctor" and their lucrative cyberporn consortium is well known. What chutzpah to reference couches, their own supposed "therapy" spas are notorious, I myself survived a session billed as an "out-of this world-experience.". In fairness it was out of this world, he never told me the name of the planet. Or his own name as it turned out.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again until someone takes action. I was 106 when he took advantage of me!

I don't say the therapy was totally useless. I sort of see the point or 'ticket to Ride" now. And I' not 106 anymore.

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Did you ever try to publicly destroy someone's reputation in the way that these zealots have?

Jonathan,

When I first started posting online back on SoloHQ, I did like most primates do when learning. I imitated the leaders. But look who the leaders were! :)

I got to a point where I was totally unfair to people like Daniel Barnes and Nathan Hawking (now deceased) and some others--often without doing my research correctly. I reached a point where I couldn't stand me anymore, so I publicly eschewed that "KASS" scorched earth crap in a post to that effect, and went around and publicly apologized to every person I could remember.

(Incidentally, some of them did not accept my apology, but even knowing that, if I had to do it over, I would--without a moment of hesitation. Daniel did accept, although he can be maddening in his own right, and I was lucky enough to become friendly with Nathan Hawking before he passed away.)

Nowadays, I have been called spirited or feisty and, obviously, I can give as good as I get, but I am not like I was. Now I try to keep my facts in order and I try to think critically from different perspectives.

I have also learned to take great joy when others disagree with me, that is when they are not just playing games, but seriously have honest intellectual ideas that are different than mine. I now place a much higher premium on goodwill than I do agreement with any program. Before it was the contrary. It's embarrassing to say that, but facts are facts.

Character matters most of all. And I define the bedrock of good character as goodwill. It took me a long time to learn that, but I finally did learn.

Michael

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> I got to a point where I was totally unfair to people like Daniel Barnes and Nathan Hawking (now deceased) and some others--often without doing my research correctly. I reached a point where I couldn't stand me anymore, so I publicly eschewed that "KASS" scorched earth crap [MSK]

I'm glad you did so at least in those cases.

Lindsay Perigo was a wordsmith. He had a sort of genius for catchy phrases and quips that imitators have picked up like a fungus even on other lists and even if they dislike him. KASS, schoolmarm, flouncer are the ones I remember. Anyone remember any other frequent Perigoisms? Linz reminded me of a sensationalist talk show 'shock jock' or a jerryspringer who would do anything for ratings. But I think "KASS" is the worst of that group of three caricatures or cartoonizations.

I hadn't recalled 'kick ass' when I wrote this -->

(") 4. defense values --- "I'm a tough guy, I don't back down from any fight and I'll always get the last blow in and use any weapon in a knife fight" - in other words, the mean-spirited kind of personal or character attack or focus is justified because the guy can't allow his phony self-esteem of himself as a "tough guy" or a "realist" to be punctured or to feel himself weak if he backs away (") [Post #29]

--> but it's certainly a good example of a 'manhood' based image of contentious virility. {{I actually shouldn't say that as it with certainty about Lindsay as it would be psychologizing. Modify the preceding to insert this qualifier: it would be the defense given by someone who had a manhood-based psuedo self-image. }}

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> I got to a point where I was totally unfair to people like Daniel Barnes and Nathan Hawking (now deceased) and some others--often without doing my research correctly. I reached a point where I couldn't stand me anymore, so I publicly eschewed that "KASS" scorched earth crap [MSK]

I'm glad you did so in those cases. Lindsay Perigo was a wordsmith. He had a sort of genius for catchy phrases and quips that imitators have picked up like a fungus even on other lists and even if they dislike him. KASS, schoolmarm, flouncer are the ones I remember. Anyone remember any other frequent Perigoisms?

Linz reminded me of a sensationalist talk show 'shock jock' or a jerryspringer who would do anything for ratings. But I think "KASS" is the worst of that group of three caricatures or cartoonizations.

I hadn't recalled it when I wrote this -->

4. defense values --- "I'm a tough guy, I don't back down from any fight and I'll always get the last blow in and use any weapon in a knife fight" - in other words, the mean-spirited kind of personal or character attack or focus is justified because the guy can't allow his phony self-esteem of himself as a "tough guy" or a "realist" to be punctured or to feel himself weak if he backs away [Post #29]

--> but it's certainly a good example of a 'manhood' based image of contentious virility. {{I actually shouldn't say that as it with certainty about Lindsay as it would be psychologizing. Modify the preceding to insert this qualifier: it would be the defense given by someone who had a manhood-based psuedo self-image. }}

> I got to a point where I was totally unfair to people like Daniel Barnes and Nathan Hawking (now deceased) and some others--often without doing my research correctly. I reached a point where I couldn't stand me anymore, so I publicly eschewed that "KASS" scorched earth crap [MSK]

I'm glad you did so in those cases. Lindsay Perigo was a wordsmith. He had a sort of genius for catchy phrases and quips that imitators have picked up like a fungus even on other lists and even if they dislike him. KASS, schoolmarm, flouncer are the ones I remember. Anyone remember any other frequent Perigoisms?

Linz reminded me of a sensationalist talk show 'shock jock' or a jerryspringer who would do anything for ratings. But I think "KASS" is the worst of that group of three caricatures or cartoonizations.

I hadn't recalled it when I wrote this -->

4. defense values --- "I'm a tough guy, I don't back down from any fight and I'll always get the last blow in and use any weapon in a knife fight" - in other words, the mean-spirited kind of personal or character attack or focus is justified because the guy can't allow his phony self-esteem of himself as a "tough guy" or a "realist" to be punctured or to feel himself weak if he backs away [Post #29]

--> but it's certainly a good example of a 'manhood' based image of contentious virility. {{I actually shouldn't say that as it with certainty about Lindsay as it would be psychologizing. Modify the preceding to insert this qualifier: it would be the defense given by someone who had a manhood-based psuedo self-image. }}

Phil, you are going from strength to strength. To use the words ",manhood" and "Perigo" in the same sentence is challenge enough, and I am not talking about sexual preference here.

You have also used detachment and fairness.

Bravo.

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Oh, Bingo! Just what I was talking about. LP is not "a sort of genius", he is as you said, a wordsmith, a writer. Average intelligence, big need to be thought a revolutionary, great organizational skills. Really high self-esteem.

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Lindsay Perigo had a sort of genius for catchy phrases and quips that imitators have picked up like a fungus.even if they dislike him. KASS, schoolmarm, flouncer are the ones I remember. [Anyone remember any other perigoonianisms?]

I don't think that Pigero was the first to call you "schoolmarm." People have been calling you that for over a decade, long before Pigero did.

Anyway, as for other Pigeroonianisms, I always thought that his essay on having a good "belly laugh" created an annoying and embarrassing batch of copycats. There was a time on SOLO that all of Pigero's little followers were talking about how they had belly laughed over this or that. They should've just gotten to the point and said, "Please approve of me, Pigero! See how I'm using the language that you've told me to use?"

But I think "KASS" is the worst of that group. I hadn't recalled it when I wrote this

4. defense values --- "I'm a tough guy, I don't back down from any fight and I'll always get the last blow in and use any weapon in a knife fight" - in other words, the mean-spirited kind of personal or character attack or focus is justified because the guy can't allow his phony self-esteem of himself as a "tough guy" or a "realist" to be punctured or to feel himself weak if he backs away [Post #29]

--> but it's certainly a good example of a 'manhood' based image of contentious virility. {{I actually shouldn't say that as it with certainty about Lindsay as it would be psychologizing. Modify the preceding to insert this qualifier: it would be the defense given by someone who had a manhood-based psuedo self-image. }}

I don't see it as a "tough guy" or "manhood" issue so much as just pigheaded stubbornness. It's not a gender issue. Some of the people we're discussing on this thread are rather feminine, yet amazingly resistant to reality.

[edited to add:] Plus, they whine quite a lot when they get a little in return of what they've dished out. Remember how Pigero, after years of abusing people, was suddenly a poor little victim of evil "Linz bashing" when people began to stand up to him? Or how Newberry turned into a poor little baby after having his arguments blown out of the water? They start out guns a blazin', big Objectivist Cultural Warriors, but then instantly turn into wusses when shown to be wrong.

J

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... agree with what you wrote, however

Brant,

I am going to antagonize some people with this, but what the hell.

From all the screaming I have observed from scientists, I believe some of the most inflexible and irrational faith-stories I have ever witnessed come from that quarter. Some of that stuff gets weirder than Candomblé at its most primitive uga-uga.

Wouldn't it be great if philosophy were treated solely as a body of ideas about the fundamental nature of the universe and man from the top down, and science treated solely as specialized knowledge and inquiries into isolated parts of the universe from the bottom up?

But that's not to be. Not in my lifetime...

Michael

Doctors have something of the same problem, but they aren't so vocal about it. They do try to force it down their patients' throats using implicit appeals to authority--theirs. I know enough about medicine it doesn't work with me.

--Brant

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> Doctors have something of the same problem.. try to force it down their patients' throats using implicit appeals to authority--theirs.

???

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... agree with what you wrote, however

Brant,

I am going to antagonize some people with this, but what the hell.

From all the screaming I have observed from scientists, I believe some of the most inflexible and irrational faith-stories I have ever witnessed come from that quarter. Some of that stuff gets weirder than Candomblé at its most primitive uga-uga.

Wouldn't it be great if philosophy were treated solely as a body of ideas about the fundamental nature of the universe and man from the top down, and science treated solely as specialized knowledge and inquiries into isolated parts of the universe from the bottom up?

But that's not to be. Not in my lifetime...

Michael

Doctors have something of the same problem, but they aren't so vocal about it. They do try to force it down their patients' throats using implicit appeals to authority--theirs. I know enough about medicine it doesn't work with me.

--Brant

What exactly do they try to force down their patients' throats? Medicine maybe? I'm glad you know enough to resist, but I hope you never need your stomach pumped.

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Some responses to Dennis Hardin's thought-provoking post #41 yesterday [i'm starting with a 'snip' from two previous posts of mine that were the background]:

Subject: what causes people to have the attitudes, behavior, and personality they do

> Objectivism is a philosophy of reason...So why the plague of small-mindedness? [Phil, Post 27]

> 1. emotional hardening...2. excuses / rationalizations ...3. subconscious defense mechanisms...4. defense values... [These four resist change]..even when..change is warranted. [Phil, Post 29]

> Using Occam’s razor, we might look for the simplest common denominator among the various causes described—anger, neurotic defense mechanisms, envy, low self-esteem, et al—and conclude that, putting it very simply, people tend to treat others badly when they are unhappy. Conversely, people tend to treat others more decently to the extent that they are happy. [Dennis, Post 41]

This is a major, major topic (see subject title above):

I agree that unhappiness can lead to a whole range of "pathologies" or suboptimal behavior. [As an example well-known to us, Rand seemed to treat people less well, less hopefully, less positively as she grew older and certain personal and professional disappointments were less fulfilling than she wanted.] And that is widespread among "disillusioned Oists". That dropping off of benevolence is one reason I decided to do a talk on reaching and sustaining benevolence and how difficult it is at a summer TAS conference: (I offered a lot of material and ideas in that talk.) One aspect is the feedback loop nature of all this: People disappoint you and you respond with anger, hostility, suspicion which leads to disappointing outcomes which leads to even more....

However, I'm not sure unhappiness, envy, and low-self-esteem are as widespread a set of explanations for all the pettiness and politics of personal destruction and focus on demeaning the person -- either in the political and journalisic culture or in the Objectivist movement -- as the four things I mentioned. I see normal, well-adjusted, non-neurotic, happy, non-envious people who mistakenly get sucked up in these things. While, yes, I realize it can be carefully hidden, I actually sensea mean-spiritedness attributable to envy to be a lot less frequent (at least in the general public / man on the street) than Oists tend to think, than Rand herself seemed to think. They admire success, positive achievements.

But this is a bit of a quibble for the purposes of analyzing small-mindedness. It clearly has more than one cause and assigning them in rank order is interesting for the field of psychology perhaps.

I think Dennis's point -widens- the topic of the thread way beyond small-mindedness** and is therefore enormously interesting when the topic is: what causes people to behave neurotically or irrationally or non-optimally psychologically. Whether it be in the form of being mean, petty, and "small" about people and intellectual issues or in other forms.

**It's always great to see a thread widened once the original impetus or topic is exhausted, especially if the newly widened topic is interesting or productive in its own right. So I certainly welcome this.

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Phil wrote:

I think Dennis's point -widens- the topic of the thread way beyond small-mindedness** and is therefore enormously interesting when the topic is: what causes people to behave neurotically or irrationally or non-optimally psychologically. Whether it be in the form of being mean, petty, and "small" about people and intellectual issues or in other forms.

end quote

Birth order. Birth order can be proven to influence *who we are* nearly as much as free will. If you think I am “cracking wise” you are incorrect.

Our appearance. How we look. Ditto. Yes I am very serious. It is enormously important. A subheading of appearance is weight.

Early success and nurturing, and not just for the poor or the young in developing countries. (I support the Catholic charity “Plumpy Nut” whole heartedly because they provide minor home industries in poor countries and small packets of nutritious food that does not need to be refrigerated. IQ’s improve greatly when “Plumpy Nut” is consumed.)

Since we are talking about wider points I also want to bring up one of Msk’s points. The teen age years OR the secret society of teenagers where a new crop appears every year. They distrust or laugh at their elders and will later be the shakers and movers of society. The emotional and intellectual attachments they bind to in adolescents are extremely important.

Volition of course is the game changer. Yet some obstacles are so difficult to overcome.

Peter

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Peter, I agree that much of the premises and psychology we're talking about -- good, bad, in the middle or everyday or average -- starts to get set early and is harder to unravel later. Rand gives a taste of that with the energetic industriousness and relentless questioning of a Francisco or a Dagny and contrast that with the envy of their betters of James Taggart and the 'hosing' of a well-dressed kid of a Toohey. (Those are 4 extremes, obviously.)

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Phil wrote:

I think Dennis's point -widens- the topic of the thread way beyond small-mindedness** and is therefore enormously interesting when the topic is: what causes people to behave neurotically or irrationally or non-optimally psychologically. Whether it be in the form of being mean, petty, and "small" about people and intellectual issues or in other forms.

end quote

Birth order. Birth order can be proven to influence *who we are* nearly as much as free will. If you think I am “cracking wise” you are incorrect.

Our appearance. How we look. Ditto. Yes I am very serious. It is enormously important. A subheading of appearance is weight.

Early success and nurturing,...

Yes. Thinking my own life choices and events, these three factors are really dominant (more so because I am female? I wonder).

Of the three I think the birth order may have been most important.

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Yes. Thinking my own life choices and events, these three factors are really dominant (more so because I am female? I wonder).

Of the three I think the birth order may have been most important.

Folks:

FYI

http://www.blogthings.com/birthorderpredictorquiz/ Birth Order Predictor test - five (5) questions.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1673284,00.html The Power of the Birth Order

It could not have been easy being Elliott Roosevelt. If the alcohol wasn't getting him, the morphine was. If it wasn't the morphine, it was the struggle with depression. Then, of course, there were the constant comparisons with big brother Teddy.

In 1883, the year Elliott began battling melancholy, Teddy had already published his first book and been elected to the New York State assembly. By 1891—about the time Elliott, still unable to establish a career, had to be institutionalized to deal with his addictions—Teddy was U.S. Civil Service Commissioner and the author of eight books. Three years later, Elliott, 34, died of alcoholism. Seven years after that, Teddy, 42, became President.

http://www.haveanewkidbyfriday.com/BookTopicBirthOrder.aspx Dr. Kevin Leman - The Birth Order <<<<excellent book - He speaks from a Christian perspective - fair notice - lol

Adam

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I want to continue to build on four more key ideas from Dennis's post #41, adding my own views or elaboration:

(A.) > "As the problem of human material survival was more or less solved over the course of the last century—as the industrial revolution raised our standard of living to the point where all of our time and energy was not devoted to simple survival—human beings suddenly found themselves with more leisure time, and this free time naturally led people to become more aware of their overall quality of life." [Dennis, Post 41]

Intellectuals have often speculated on why certain sciences took shape in the era they did. Psychology and economics (along with other social sciences in many cases) took well-developed shape or became major areas of endeavor in very recent centuries. Physics, math, astronomy, etc. are millenia older: When you are preoccupied with physical survival and the sciences needed to ensure that, there is less energy and resources available to probe those areas of your psyche that seem less directly connected with life and death in the starkest terms. When you begin to realize that wealth and productivity vary enormously depending on the actions men take, that modern "enterprising" cultures achieve results which are historically unparalleled, then the scientific study of the causes and effects and mechanisms of this sphere of human action becomes of enormous importance - and also you begin to have a vastness of data (and scope of endeavor) to work with.

(B.) > "Achieving happiness is a major challenge...Happiness does not merely happen spontaneously when we no longer have to worry about where our next meal is coming from. There are certain objective requirements for happiness"

Once one is beyond the brute survival stage and physical needs or immediate pleasures, once one has a long lifespan, the issues to juggle and consider and challenges multiply. Just take the issue of finding a mate. In a tribal village, you are stuck with what the society dictates and whatever happiness there is gets 'fixed' to a large extent. But in a modern western society, if you don't develop insight into yourself, your tastes, your needs and if you don't develop perceptiveness and if you don't develop searching (and persuasion) skills and if you don't develop relationship and family skills -- and those are a lot of things to ask -- you will feel those effects across much or all of your remaining adult lifespan.

And we haven't even started to talk about the challenges of a successful career....

(C.) > Few people choose to deal with the issue of achieving happiness in explicit terms

With the newness of psychology as a science, we're still at an early stage either of developing the 'technology' to be happy or in getting people to understand which of the various clashing 'schools' is the most rational. Even on a website like this full of supposedly or hoping to be rational individuals, there are intelligent posters who pooh-pooh psychology, therapy, self-help as if it were all witch-doctery or charlatanism. Related to this is the unawareness of the complexity of the mind and the hopeful wish that psychological, emotional, and cognitive complexities ought somehow to sort themselves out. Or be automatic for a "rational" person.

(After all, Galt and Roark could do it all by themselves, couldn't they?.....And so could Ayn Rand. Whoops. Strike that!)

(D.) > There is an enormous amount of unhappiness in the world

Because it's not automatic. Because no matter how high your intelligence or how much philosophy or Objectivism you've read, you still have to work at it, to know how to apply all of that. Because life is hard. And challenging. Because mistakes and oversights are as perennial as the grass.

And that's just on your own personal level in terms of challenges *all of which* would exist in a fully rational culture and in a robust fully free society.

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Yes. Thinking my own life choices and events, these three factors are really dominant (more so because I am female? I wonder).

Of the three I think the birth order may have been most important.

Folks:

FYI

http://www.blogthing...rpredictorquiz/ Birth Order Predictor test - five (5) questions.

http://www.time.com/...1673284,00.html The Power of the Birth Order

Fun fact, Adam

You and I had nearly identical upbringings in terms of birth order and extended family, in addition our fathers appear to have been similar types.

That's probably why, as so many have noted, we are so similar in nearly every way.

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Phil wrote:

. . . much of the premises and psychology we're talking about . . . . starts to get set early and is harder to unravel later . . .

end quote

After I finished writing my last response I realized I was not explicit about what I meant so thanks for picking up on that.

Anger. Distrust. Envy. Belittling. Some cultures practice meditation. When agitated I sing songs to myself like, “Don’t worry, be happy.” We gave my two year old granddaughter a play guitar that plays a song from Nick Junior’s “Yo Gabba Gabba!” “Think thoughts, happy thoughts. That’s all you’ve got to do. Think thoughts, happy thoughts . . .”

Also from that show we have a video by the group Roots of an excellent children’s song from Jimmy Fallon’s late night band called, “Lovey love my family . . . ” It is excellent.

Unfortunately, a week or so ago Roots played a song on Jimmy’s show when Michelle Bachmann stepped onto the stage called “Lyin’ Bitch.” TV executives reprimanded them and Jimmy Fallon, assured them it won’t happen again. Neither Jimmy or Michelle had a clue what that song’s title was.

Peter

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Phil wrote:

. . . much of the premises and psychology we're talking about . . . . starts to get set early and is harder to unravel later . . .

end quote

After I finished writing my last response I realized I was not explicit about what I meant so thanks for picking up on that.

Anger. Distrust. Envy. Belittling. Some cultures practice meditation. When agitated I sing songs to myself like, “Don’t worry, be happy.” We gave my two year old granddaughter a play guitar that plays a song from Nick Junior’s “Yo Gabba Gabba!” “Think thoughts, happy thoughts. That’s all you’ve got to do. Think thoughts, happy thoughts . . .”

Also from that show we have a video by the group Roots of an excellent children’s song from Jimmy Fallon’s late night band called, “Lovey love my family . . . ” It is excellent.

Unfortunately, a week or so ago Roots played a song on Jimmy’s show when Michelle Bachmann stepped onto the stage called “Lyin’ Bitch.” TV executives reprimanded them and Jimmy Fallon, assured them it won’t happen again. Neither Jimmy or Michelle had a clue what that song’s title was.

Peter

I think your "happy thoughts" are a sort of cognitive therapy -- we all do that kind of self-redirecting if we can.

I have never been in any therapy myself but I probably should have.

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One of the tenets of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is that one’s “sense of life” can be reprogrammed. But can it be reprogrammed to think happy thoughts, or rational appreciation of the good, etc.? when you read the following notes, wonder about it, because she writes so well, even a “not yet proven” or dis-proven assertion seems to logically flow from her chains of logic.

I hope some of you will comment especially Ellen Stuttle with her Jungian background. What does the science of psychology say today?

Peter

Notes from The Ayn Rand Lexicon

Sense of Life

“Philosophy and Sense of Life,”

The Romantic Manifesto, 25

A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man’s emotional responses and the essence of his character.

Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value-judgments, experiences emotions and acquires a certain implicit view of life. Every choice and value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world around him—most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him. What began as a series of single, discrete conclusions (or evasions) about his own particular problems, becomes a generalized feeling about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion—an emotion which is part of all his other emotions and underlies all his experiences. This is a sense of life.

“Art and Sense of Life,”

The Romantic Manifesto, 34

If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction, and one would ignore it.

But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values—and one would experience a feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral category as the artist.)

The emotional response to that painting would be instantaneous, much faster than the viewer’s mind could identify all the reasons involved. The psychological mechanism which produces that response (and which produced the painting) is a man’s sense of life.

(A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence.)

It is the artist’s sense of life that controls and integrates his work, directing the innumerable choices he has to make, from the choice of subject to the subtlest details of style. It is the viewer’s or reader’s sense of life that responds to a work of art by a complex, yet automatic reaction of acceptance and approval, or rejection and condemnation.

This does not mean that a sense of life is a valid criterion of esthetic merit, either for the artist or the viewer. A sense of life is not infallible. But a sense of life is the source of art, the psychological mechanism which enables man to create a realm such as art.

The emotion involved in art is not an emotion in the ordinary meaning of the term. It is experienced more as a “sense” or a “feel,” but it has two characteristics pertaining to emotions: it is automatically immediate and it has an intense, profoundly personal (yet undefined) value-meaning to the individual experiencing it. The value involved is life, and the words naming the emotion are: “This is what life means to me.”

Regardless of the nature or content of an artist’s metaphysical views, what an art work expresses, fundamentally, under all of its lesser aspects is: “Thisis life as I see it.” The essential meaning of a viewer’s or reader’s response, under all of its lesser elements, is: “This is (or is not) life as I see it.”

“Philosophy and Sense of Life,”

The Romantic Manifesto, 27

A sense of life is formed by a process of emotional generalization which may be described as a subconscious counterpart of a process of abstraction, since it is a method of classifying and integrating. But it is a process of emotional abstraction: it consists of classifying things according to the emotions they invoke—i.e., of tying together, by association or connotation, all those things which have the power to make an individual experience the same (or a similar) emotion. For instance: a new neighborhood, a discovery, adventure, struggle, triumph—or: the folks next door, a memorized recitation, a family picnic, a known routine, comfort. On a more adult level: a heroic man, the skyline of New York, a sunlit landscape, pure colors, ecstatic music—or: a humble man, an old village, a foggy landscape, muddy colors, folk music. . . . The subverbal, subconscious criterion of selection that forms his emotional abstractions is: “That which is important to me” or: “The kind of universe which is right for me, in which I would feel at home.” . . .

It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as “important,” those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in a man’s subconscious and form his sense of life.

“It is important to understand things”—“It is important to obey my parents”—“It is important to act on my own”—“It is important to please other people”—“It is important to fight for what I want”—“It is important not to make enemies”—“My life is important”—“Who am I to stick my neck out?” Man is a being of self-made soul—and it is of such conclusions that the stuff of his soul is made. (By “soul” I mean “consciousness.”)

The integrated sum of a man’s basic values is his sense of life.

“Philosophy and Sense of Life,”

The Romantic Manifesto, 31

A given person’s sense of life is hard to identify conceptually, because it is hard to isolate: it is involved in everything about that person, in his every thought, emotion, action, in his every response, in his every choice and value, in his every spontaneous gesture, in his manner of moving, talking, smiling, in the total of his personality. It is that which makes him a “personality.”

Introspectively, one’s own sense of life is experienced as an absolute and an irreducible primary—as that which one never questions, because the thought of questioning it never arises. Extrospectively, the sense of life of another person strikes one as an immediate, yet undefinable, impression—on very short acquaintance—an impression which often feels like certainty, yet is exasperatingly elusive, if one attempts to verify it.

This leads many people to regard a sense of life as the province of some sort of special intuition, as a matter perceivable only by some special, non-rational insight. The exact opposite is true: a sense of life is not an irreducible primary, but a very complex sum; it can be felt, but it cannot be understood, by an automatic reaction; to be understood, it has to be analyzed, identified and verified conceptually. That automatic impression—of oneself or of others—is only a lead; left untranslated, it can be a very deceptive lead. But if and when that intangible impression is supported by and unites with the conscious judgment of one’s mind, the result is the most exultant form of certainty one can ever experience: it is the integration of mind and values.

There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.

“The Age of Envy,”

Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 130

A culture, like an individual, has a sense of life or, rather, the equivalent of a sense of life—an emotional atmosphere created by its dominant philosophy, by its view of man and of existence. This emotional atmosphere represents a culture’s dominant values and serves as the leitmotif of a given age, setting its trends and its style.

Thus Western civilization had an Age of Reason and an Age of Enlightenment. In those periods, the quest for reason and enlightenment was the dominant intellectual drive and created a corresponding emotional atmosphere that fostered these values.

“Don’t Let It Go,”

Philosophy: Who Needs It, 206

A nation’s sense of life is formed by every individual child’s early impressions of the world around him: of the ideas he is taught (which he may or may not accept) and of the way of acting he observes and evaluates (which he may evaluate correctly or not). And although there are exceptions at both ends of the psychological spectrum—men whose sense of life is better (truer philosophically) or worse than that of their fellow-citizens—the majority develop the essentials of the same subconscious philosophy. This is the source of what we observe as “national characteristics.” . . . .

Just as an individual’s sense of life can be better or worse than his conscious convictions, so can a nation’s. And just as an individual who has never translated his sense of life into conscious convictions is in terrible danger—no matter how good his subconscious values—so is a nation.

This is the position of America today.

If America is to be saved from destruction—specifically, from dictatorship—she will be . . .

“Don’t Let It Go,”

Philosophy: Who Needs It, 210

A sense of life is not a substitute for explicit knowledge. Values which one cannot identify, but merely senses implicitly, are not in one’s control. One cannot tell what they depend on or require, what course of action is needed to gain and/or keep them. One can lose or betray them without knowing it.

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One of the tenets of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is that one’s “sense of life” can be reprogrammed. But can it be reprogrammed to think happy thoughts, or rational appreciation of the good, etc.? when you read the following notes, wonder about it, because she writes so well, even a “not yet proven” or dis-proven assertion seems to logically flow from her chains of logic.

I hope some of you will comment especially Ellen Stuttle with her Jungian background. What does the science of psychology say today?

Peter

Notes from The Ayn Rand Lexicon

Sense of Life

“Philosophy and Sense of Life,”

The Romantic Manifesto, 25

A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man’s emotional responses and the essence of his character.

Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value-judgments, experiences emotions and acquires a certain implicit view of life. Every choice and value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world around him—most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him. What began as a series of single, discrete conclusions (or evasions) about his own particular problems, becomes a generalized feeling about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion—an emotion which is part of all his other emotions and underlies all his experiences. This is a sense of life.

“Art and Sense of Life,”

The Romantic Manifesto, 34

If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction, and one would ignore it.

But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values—and one would experience a feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral category as the artist.)

The emotional response to that painting would be instantaneous, much faster than the viewer’s mind could identify all the reasons involved. The psychological mechanism which produces that response (and which produced the painting) is a man’s sense of life.

(A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence.)

It is the artist’s sense of life that controls and integrates his work, directing the innumerable choices he has to make, from the choice of subject to the subtlest details of style. It is the viewer’s or reader’s sense of life that responds to a work of art by a complex, yet automatic reaction of acceptance and approval, or rejection and condemnation.

This does not mean that a sense of life is a valid criterion of esthetic merit, either for the artist or the viewer. A sense of life is not infallible. But a sense of life is the source of art, the psychological mechanism which enables man to create a realm such as art.

The emotion involved in art is not an emotion in the ordinary meaning of the term. It is experienced more as a “sense” or a “feel,” but it has two characteristics pertaining to emotions: it is automatically immediate and it has an intense, profoundly personal (yet undefined) value-meaning to the individual experiencing it. The value involved is life, and the words naming the emotion are: “This is what life means to me.”

Regardless of the nature or content of an artist’s metaphysical views, what an art work expresses, fundamentally, under all of its lesser aspects is: “Thisis life as I see it.” The essential meaning of a viewer’s or reader’s response, under all of its lesser elements, is: “This is (or is not) life as I see it.”

“Philosophy and Sense of Life,”

The Romantic Manifesto, 27

A sense of life is formed by a process of emotional generalization which may be described as a subconscious counterpart of a process of abstraction, since it is a method of classifying and integrating. But it is a process of emotional abstraction: it consists of classifying things according to the emotions they invoke—i.e., of tying together, by association or connotation, all those things which have the power to make an individual experience the same (or a similar) emotion. For instance: a new neighborhood, a discovery, adventure, struggle, triumph—or: the folks next door, a memorized recitation, a family picnic, a known routine, comfort. On a more adult level: a heroic man, the skyline of New York, a sunlit landscape, pure colors, ecstatic music—or: a humble man, an old village, a foggy landscape, muddy colors, folk music. . . . The subverbal, subconscious criterion of selection that forms his emotional abstractions is: “That which is important to me” or: “The kind of universe which is right for me, in which I would feel at home.” . . .

It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as “important,” those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in a man’s subconscious and form his sense of life.

“It is important to understand things”—“It is important to obey my parents”—“It is important to act on my own”—“It is important to please other people”—“It is important to fight for what I want”—“It is important not to make enemies”—“My life is important”—“Who am I to stick my neck out?” Man is a being of self-made soul—and it is of such conclusions that the stuff of his soul is made. (By “soul” I mean “consciousness.”)

The integrated sum of a man’s basic values is his sense of life.

“Philosophy and Sense of Life,”

The Romantic Manifesto, 31

A given person’s sense of life is hard to identify conceptually, because it is hard to isolate: it is involved in everything about that person, in his every thought, emotion, action, in his every response, in his every choice and value, in his every spontaneous gesture, in his manner of moving, talking, smiling, in the total of his personality. It is that which makes him a “personality.”

Introspectively, one’s own sense of life is experienced as an absolute and an irreducible primary—as that which one never questions, because the thought of questioning it never arises. Extrospectively, the sense of life of another person strikes one as an immediate, yet undefinable, impression—on very short acquaintance—an impression which often feels like certainty, yet is exasperatingly elusive, if one attempts to verify it.

This leads many people to regard a sense of life as the province of some sort of special intuition, as a matter perceivable only by some special, non-rational insight. The exact opposite is true: a sense of life is not an irreducible primary, but a very complex sum; it can be felt, but it cannot be understood, by an automatic reaction; to be understood, it has to be analyzed, identified and verified conceptually. That automatic impression—of oneself or of others—is only a lead; left untranslated, it can be a very deceptive lead. But if and when that intangible impression is supported by and unites with the conscious judgment of one’s mind, the result is the most exultant form of certainty one can ever experience: it is the integration of mind and values.

There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.

“The Age of Envy,”

Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 130

A culture, like an individual, has a sense of life or, rather, the equivalent of a sense of life—an emotional atmosphere created by its dominant philosophy, by its view of man and of existence. This emotional atmosphere represents a culture’s dominant values and serves as the leitmotif of a given age, setting its trends and its style.

Thus Western civilization had an Age of Reason and an Age of Enlightenment. In those periods, the quest for reason and enlightenment was the dominant intellectual drive and created a corresponding emotional atmosphere that fostered these values.

“Don’t Let It Go,”

Philosophy: Who Needs It, 206

A nation’s sense of life is formed by every individual child’s early impressions of the world around him: of the ideas he is taught (which he may or may not accept) and of the way of acting he observes and evaluates (which he may evaluate correctly or not). And although there are exceptions at both ends of the psychological spectrum—men whose sense of life is better (truer philosophically) or worse than that of their fellow-citizens—the majority develop the essentials of the same subconscious philosophy. This is the source of what we observe as “national characteristics.” . . . .

Just as an individual’s sense of life can be better or worse than his conscious convictions, so can a nation’s. And just as an individual who has never translated his sense of life into conscious convictions is in terrible danger—no matter how good his subconscious values—so is a nation.

This is the position of America today.

If America is to be saved from destruction—specifically, from dictatorship—she will be . . .

“Don’t Let It Go,”

Philosophy: Who Needs It, 210

A sense of life is not a substitute for explicit knowledge. Values which one cannot identify, but merely senses implicitly, are not in one’s control. One cannot tell what they depend on or require, what course of action is needed to gain and/or keep them. One can lose or betray them without knowing it.

Interesting. I would like to see Dr Presley's thoughts also.

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