Ayn Rand and Objectivism--Part of It


Brant Gaede

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In recent posts I too simplified my understanding of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand and Objectivism as such.

I compensated by saying there was Objectivism and Objectivism "applied"--that the further away from rock-hard principles in the metaphysics, epstemology, ethics and politics the more tentative it all became and that one person's Objectivism could not therefore be another person's outside those basics in spite of any great overlap. (Actually, I'm throwing in that "overlap" thingy now for the first time absent any "senior moment.")

But Rand always mixed everything up.

Let's consider one example: "Man is the rational animal."

No, that is Objectivism Applied and some wishful thinking at best.

Man is the conceptual animal (Objectivism) who should be rational (Objectivism Applied). The first case encompasses what man "is." The second, what man "should be."

"Is" is factual. "Should be" is moral.

We can say "Man is the moral animal." That's factual for the conceptual mind demands choice making and all choice making implies morality.

Take your pick; I think both "conceptual" and "moral" are congruent with her exposition on definitions in ITOE, but not "rational." That's a step too far. My fav is "conceptual." If we want to buff it up with words, we can say something like, "Man is the would-be, should be rational animal," but that's more descriptive than definitional. My own understanding is "moral" is best, but I prefer how my own choice sounds. Beauty before reality, or me and my romanticism. Tell me I can't get away with it!

Conclusione Supremo: "Objectivism Applied" is part of Objectivism but that part frequently melds into what isn't and should be understood as such. Thus the philosophy embraces absolutism--as in the absolutism of reality--and tentativeness--as in the tentativeness of knowledge. Knowledge backwashes onto the philosophy, but not finality.

--Brant

Objectivist Esthetics is not Objectivism Applied so the "Objectivist" use here needs to be dropped; esthetics backwashes onto reality only, not reality brokered by a philosophy; the same is true for any profession for each profession has rationality built into its structure and becomes atomistically self-sustaining--if it doesn't, it's garbage, like fortune-telling

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In recent posts I too simplified my understanding of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand and Objectivism as such.

I compensated by saying there was Objectivism and Objectivism "applied"--that the further away from rock-hard principles in the metaphysics, epstemology, ethics and politics the more tentative it all became and that one person's Objectivism could not therefore be another person's outside those basics in spite of any great overlap. (Actually, I'm throwing in that "overlap" thingy now for the first time absent any "senior moment.")

But Rand always mixed everything up.

Let's consider one example: "Man is the rational animal."

No, that is Objectivism Applied and some wishful thinking at best.

Man is the conceptual animal (Objectivism) who should be rational (Objectivism Applied). The first case encompasses what man "is." The second, what man "should be."

"Is" is factual. "Should be" is moral.

We can say "Man is the moral animal." That's factual for the conceptual mind demands choice making and all choice making implies morality.

Take your pick; I think both "conceptual" and "moral" are congruent with her exposition on definitions in ITOE, but not "rational." That's a step too far. My fav is "conceptual." If we want to buff it up with words, we can say something like, "Man is the would-be, should be rational animal," but that's more descriptive than definitional. My own understanding is "moral" is best, but I prefer how my own choice sounds. Beauty before reality, or me and my romanticism. Tell me I can't get away with it!

Conclusione Supremo: "Objectivism Applied" is part of Objectivism but that part frequently melds into what isn't and should be understood as such. Thus the philosophy embraces absolutism--as in the absolutism of reality--and tentativeness--as in the tentativeness of knowledge. Knowledge backwashes onto the philosophy, but not finality.

--Brant

Objectivist Esthetics is not Objectivism Applied so the "Objectivist" use here needs to be dropped; esthetics backwashes onto reality only, not reality brokered by a philosophy; the same is true for any profession for each profession has rationality built into its structure and becomes atomistically self-sustaining--if it doesn't, it's garbage, like fortune-telling

I am told that True Blue Objectivists do note make a split between "is" and "ought". (They deny what David Hume has to say)_ Is this truly the case?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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No. Rand distinguished the 'metaphysical' (which we can't change) from the 'man-made' (which we can). The very word 'Objectivism' implies a recognition of this difference. She said contra Hume that you can get 'ought' from 'is', which isn't the same as refusing to distinguish them.

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[....] But Rand always mixed everything up.

Let's consider one example: "Man is the rational animal."

No, that is Objectivism Applied and some wishful thinking at best.

Man is the conceptual animal (Objectivism) who should be rational (Objectivism Applied). The first case encompasses what man "is." The second, what man "should be."

"Is" is factual. "Should be" is moral.

I can agree about Rand always mixing everything up.

However, she did not, as you indicate she did, engage in "wishful thinking" by considering all humans "rational." To the contrary, she thought that not all humans are "Man." Only some humans are "Man," according to passages in Galt's Speech (also passages in "The Objectivist Ethics"). Those humans who choose to think are "Man." The rest... See the last paragraph of this excerpt:

Excerpts from Galt's Speech,

pp. 146-151, original 1961Random House hardcover,

For the New Intellectual

[bold emphasis added]

[....] To remain alive, [man] must think.

But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call "human nature," the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically [...]. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival--so that for you, who are a human being, the question "to be or not to be" is the question "to think or not to think."

[....]

Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

[....] Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice--and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man--by choice; he has to hold his life as a value--by choice; he has to learn to sustain it--by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues--by choice.

[....]

No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything else--and the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you, the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.

Take your pick; I think both "conceptual" and "moral" are congruent with her exposition on definitions in ITOE, but not "rational."

She explains briefly in ITOE that:

("Rational," in this context, does not mean "acting invariably with reason"; it means "possessing the faculty if reason." A full biological definition of man would include many subcategories of "animal," but the general category and the ultimate definition remain the same.)

[....] My fav is "conceptual." If we want to buff it up with words, we can say something like, "Man is the would-be, should be rational animal," but that's more descriptive than definitional. My own understanding is "moral" is best, but I prefer how my own choice sounds. Beauty before reality, or me and my romanticism. Tell me I can't get away with it!

I think that "symbolic animal" is best - but of that another time.

Ellen

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Only some humans are "Man," according to passages in Galt's Speech (also passages in "The Objectivist Ethics"). Those humans who choose to think are "Man." The rest...

This explains a great deal about Rand's thinking. If only Man has rights, then we need not concern ourselves much with those who are "no longer human."

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As I recall, Ellen, Aristotle had it that man without his reason is less than the brute. However, man without his reason is still man, a haywire one, not a species of brute or lower species.

Similarly, for Rand early and late. Kira is more fully human living, more self-making than Victor, but the latter is still a living man. Roark is similarly related to Keating, but the latter is still a man. Victor, Keating, and James Taggart are held up as part of what is possible for a man.

Brant, in Rand’s mature view, as we see in the quotes provided by Ellen, man is either rational animal or suicidal animal. That is her descriptive view of man. She stressed the importance of the volitional levels of human consciousness, which is the region of rationality, and the conceptual level as you say. She stressed that such are volitional in certain ways. This much is still all descriptive, not prescriptive. Then she put forth an argument that choosing rationality, choosing human life, not its alternative, the suicidal, the anti-life, is good. It is with this move that norms appear.

When Rand speaks of man's definition being rational animal, as in ITOE, it takes only a drop of generosity to suppose she includes the volitional character in rational and includes the default suicidal alternative for this animal in its concept (indeed within its essence I would say).

There are times when Rand capitalizes Man in the old-fashioned way, and as I recall, this is always signal of normativity, signal of man in his general ideal form. This was tied in her intellectual development to her speaking of "Man, not men" as what is most precious, an idea and phrase she shared with Ortega y Gasset. (It has kinship also to Nietzsche [and his Emerson], with profound differences, but I've said much on that elsewhere and anyway can spare only a few minutes for this post.) That does not imply, nor even insinuate I would say, Ellen, that any individual man is not a man. Rather, it is to object to regarding any individual men, however fine or base, as mere bricks for purposes of total states.

"By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man---every man---is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose" (AS 1014).

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That's a very nice stand up for Rand's definition of "man," Stephen. The implication of volition is extremely important. It's weaker with "conceptual." I don't know if if could be blatant without being merely descriptive, however. Her philosophical definition is much, much better than the anthropological one--that is, unique foot, upright posture, opposable thumb and "tool making." I concede hers is a better definition than mine. I give little way for the anthropologist, though.

--Brant

chastened (I can't stand to be wrong and wishy-washy too, but that's my fate ~sob!~)

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That's a very nice stand up for Rand's definition of "man," Stephen. The implication of volition is extremely important. It's weaker with "conceptual." I don't know if if could be blatant without being merely descriptive, however. Her philosophical definition is much, much better than the anthropological one--that is, unique foot, upright posture, opposable thumb and "tool making." I concede hers is a better definition than mine. I give little way for the anthropologist, though.

--Brant

chastened (I can't stand to be wrong and wishy-washy too, but that's my fate ~sob!~)

The anthropological description of man is factually correct. What is it about factually correct that you object to?

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Only some humans are "Man," according to passages in Galt's Speech (also passages in "The Objectivist Ethics"). Those humans who choose to think are "Man." The rest...

The linked post quotes material from Galt's Speech on the less-than-humanness, according to Rand, of those who fail to choose to think

The subject came up earlier on a thread where possibly no one would expect to find it, "Objectivism Online run by hypocritical babies?"

In the next two posts, I'll quote some material from that thread, and also Rand's "missing link" speculation.

Ellen

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That's a very nice stand up for Rand's definition of "man," Stephen. The implication of volition is extremely important. It's weaker with "conceptual." I don't know if if could be blatant without being merely descriptive, however. Her philosophical definition is much, much better than the anthropological one--that is, unique foot, upright posture, opposable thumb and "tool making." I concede hers is a better definition than mine. I give little way for the anthropologist, though.

--Brant

chastened (I can't stand to be wrong and wishy-washy too, but that's my fate ~sob!~)

The anthropological description of man is factually correct. What is it about factually correct that you object to?

Nothing. Now, about a definition . . .

--Brant

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Choosing to be Man, 1

post #52:

"The Objectivist Ethics"

[bold emphasis added]

Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn his life into a brief span of agony - just as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But he cannot succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhuman - as the ugly horror of the anti-rational periods of mankind's history can demonstrate. Man has to be man by choice - and it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like a man.

[....]

I.e., those who haven't volitionally activated rational consciousness are not human according to Rand but instead sub-human.

post #55:

[From "The Objectivist Ethics"]

When man unfocused his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man - in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being - an unfocused mind is not conscious.

Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death.

post #58:

And of course the logical question is, "How can someone who is not focused -- not conscious -- choose to focus?" Apparently Rand didn't choose to focus on that obvious question, or chose to unfocus her mind in order to avoid dealing with reality? If so, was she subhuman at that moment? Did she remain subhuman for as long as she didn't focus on the question of how an unfocused/unconscious person could choose to focus, or did she become human again when focusing on other issues?

Branden addressed that question, sort of - not in the way you frame it. I'll find what he said. Later.

Can a person be mostly human because she generally deals with reality in a focused manner, but just partially subhuman because she evades and unfocuses about certain subjects? Or is it all or nothing, black or white? If a person is subhuman, wouldn't that mean that they don't have human rights, and that it's okay to initiate force against them, treat them like cattle?

Seems that, yes, it's possible to be partially human and partially sub-human and to vary in percentage. Again, later.

I don't recall anything directly addressing the rights issue. Taking the Indians' land was ok because the Indians were savages and had no conception of property rights. Shooting the guard because he wouldn't think was ok. There are some other nebulous hints.

Ellen

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Only some humans are "Man," according to passages in Galt's Speech (also passages in "The Objectivist Ethics"). Those humans who choose to think are "Man." The rest...

The linked post quotes material from Galt's Speech on the less-than-humanness, according to Rand, of those who fail to choose to think

The subject came up earlier on a thread where possibly no one would expect to find it, "Objectivism Online run by hypocritical babies?"

In the next two posts, I'll quote some material from that thread, and also Rand's "missing link" speculation.

Ellen

It's not if you think, of course, but how well. While Galt's Speech fits the novel literarily and philosophically and length-wise, I find it very hard to read today.

--Brant

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Choosing to be Man, 2

post #178:

"The Objectivist Newsletter"

Intellectual Ammunition Department

Vol. 3 No. 4

April 1964

With regard to the principle that man is a being of volitional consciousness, does not a man have to be thinking already in order to "choose" to think?

[....]

I quoted the Branden piece in full. Click the link to read it. I also discussed, in posts which follow that one (and in sporadic other posts on the thread) the differences between the way Branden framed the volition issue and the way Rand framed it.

There's also Rand's peculiar - I'd even say bizarre - speculation about "the missing link" in a piece by that title she published in May 1973. I've quoted this passage a couple times before (see).

Here it is again:

THE MISSING LINK

Philosophy: Who Needs It, pg.45

Originally pg. 5-6 of Part II

May 21, 1973

Vol II, no. 17,

The Ayn Rand Letter

[bold emphasis added]

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only a hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between man and all the other living species. The difference lies in the nature of man's consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man's consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon - a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for the effortless "safety" of an animal's consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve.

For years, scientists have been looking for a "missing Link" between man and animals. Perhaps that Missing link is the anti-conceptual mentality.

Ellen

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Choosing to be Man, 2

post #178:

"The Objectivist Newsletter"

Intellectual Ammunition Department

Vol. 3 No. 4

April 1964

With regard to the principle that man is a being of volitional consciousness, does not a man have to be thinking already in order to "choose" to think?

[....]

I quoted the Branden piece in full. Click the link to read it. I also discussed, in posts which follow that one (and in sporadic other posts on the thread) the differences between the way Branden framed the volition issue and the way Rand framed it.

There's also Rand's peculiar - I'd even say bizarre - speculation about "the missing link" in a piece by that title she published in May 1973. I've quoted this passage a couple times before (see).

Here it is again:

THE MISSING LINK

Philosophy: Who Needs It, pg.45

Originally pg. 5-6 of Part II

May 21, 1973

Vol II, no. 17,

The Ayn Rand Letter

[bold emphasis added]

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only a hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between man and all the other living species. The difference lies in the nature of man's consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man's consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon - a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for the effortless "safety" of an animal's consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve.

For years, scientists have been looking for a "missing Link" between man and animals. Perhaps that Missing link is the anti-conceptual mentality.

Ellen

I'd say that Rand's missing link--nothing to do with common understanding and usage--is found in human speech--the development of the voice box. Supposedly this gave modern humans a decided advantage over the Neanderthals. Regardless, there is no "enormous breach of continuity" wherever you seek the "link." Life as such does not need any great intelligence to evolve and succeed. Humans need it. No dinosaurs walked on the moon leaving behind artifacts.

Rand saw the future she wanted to see justified in moralistic terms. But the ongoing and coming battle is the conflict between constructive and destructive with the constructive being destructive to the destructive. If speech gave the brains the advantage then technology will do the same as brains/for brains in the next thousand or so or more years from which the survivors' descendants will look back 100,000 years from now and wonder where all the Muslims went if they even have Muslims in their heads.

The consequence of future human evolution will be genocidal and that so bad as to make Hitler's Holocaust look like a hiccup. Some John Galt with his head screwed on backwards will push a button and most of it will be over in 24 hours. The weapons have already been invented*, and even war delared, but the evolution is lagging. The brainiacs have yet to arrive. We are not the brainiacs but some have started to think of putting tools into their heads. When this is done biologically it will be off to the races.

--Brant

*a 30 megaton nuclear device exploded at 30,000 feet will incinerate everything in a circle surrounding both Boston and Washington, DC

a billion people here, a billion people there, pretty soon you're talking about a lot of people

ALTERNATIVE ENDING: Everybody gets smarter; everybody happy with their smarts; smart mobs take over the world; no stupid genocide

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A “subhuman” having choice to become humanly conscious is still a human. (And so is a sleeping man, even though his choice to wake up, and not too soon, is feeble at most.) That humans proceed rationally is not only morally good (and descriptively explanatory), as in Rand’s view; proceeding rationally is usual, as for example, in driving an automobile, operating a chain saw, or preparing supper. Some slide back and forth from rational animal as descriptive and as normative is understandable, though regrettable.

Species and subspecies in genus-species hierarchies locating humans need not be always about biological taxonomy. It appears Rand was straddling about that at times, just as she was straddling about descriptive/normative meanings of man at times. Thanks for the additional pertinent quotes, Ellen.

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What Rand complained about may be the inability to think long enough to come to rational conclusions as to the consequences of one's actions. Some kind of attention deficit disorder. The fix for this could be much easier than ramping up raw brainpower. There is also the matter of an education with its current jejune emphasis on thinking.

--Brant

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't like the term "subhuman," even coming from Rand. I never have. In fact, if you go through my writing, online and off, I don't think I have ever used the term to describe another human being.

"Subhuman" is used in bigotry and cult formation because it is a powerful tool and it works. It's purpose is to mentally remove human status from a target so you don't have to think too much about such people when you condemn them.

Ironically (when talking about Rand), it inhibits rational thought based on observation by turning off the observation and the thought. It's a mental template that throws a rhetorical monkeywrench in the epistemology works and jams things up.

From the meaning I have gotten from reading a ton-load of Rand's works (many several times)--as a follower at that, to me it is clear she used the term "subhuman" in this manner a lot. And her essay "The Missing Link" was--at least partially--an attempt to justify this habit.

Michael

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Just speaking personally.

The choice of life or death is in front of me daily, hourly, from moment to moment (except when sedated for a medical procedure). As a lucid dreamer, sleep is half filled with an awareness of conscious choice. As a writer, each word matters and the satisfying rhythm of a sentence or a passage takes time and trouble to compose.

It doesn't bother me that I'm a shallow writer. I'm okay with life on life's terms, and there's ample proof I have a second-class brain.

We distinguish human rights as a set of natural liberties belonging in justice to mankind, and only to mankind, because the human understanding is a function of individual effort and a long series of self-determined choices in the conduct of one's life. These rights belong in strictly equal measure to every man, woman and child in proportion to maturity because the capacity and responsiblity of free choice exists equally for the intelligent and the stupid, rich and poor, native-born and alien immigrant. An intelligent man faces more complex questions, perhaps, than a slower sibling, but with no more or less responsibility to exercise his powers or let them fall into disuse and sloth. [Laissez Faire Law, p.10]

Liberty and responsibility are obvious. That's not the problem. The problem is choosing to carry on in the teeth of failure, overwhelming opposition and practical danger. Nor is my station in life the worst possible maelstrom. Ali Massoud, one of the few men who saw merit in my work, is an apostate; that's a death sentence in Islam. He lives with practical danger every second, undoubtedly dreams nightmares about it every night.

Contrast the heroism of lesser men with the happy cocoon of wealth in brainpower, youthful vigor, or inherited privilege. As Fitzgerald said, the rich are not like you and me: "She took all things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter." [The Beautiful and Damned]

The subhuman are not the ignorant, unwashed, uncivilized and powerless savages we customarily pity or fear.

It is surprisingly cheap to buy a man’s soul. Offer him a clean house, the chance to do white collar work or to tinker with a cyclotron, and he will work gladly for a monarch ... If you are a willing laborer for the Public Servant ruling class, you get a piece of the action – a very small piece if you are a peasant; a much larger piece if you clean toilets for Goldman Sachs. But all must serve New Rome on the Potomac, or starve. [COGIGG, p.70-72]

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Just speaking personally.

The choice of life or death is in front of me daily, hourly, from moment to moment (except when sedated for a medical procedure). As a lucid dreamer, sleep is half filled with an awareness of conscious choice. As a writer, each word matters and the satisfying rhythm of a sentence or a passage takes time and trouble to compose.

It doesn't bother me that I'm a shallow writer. I'm okay with life on life's terms, and there's ample proof I have a second-class brain.

We distinguish human rights as a set of natural liberties belonging in justice to mankind, and only to mankind, because the human understanding is a function of individual effort and a long series of self-determined choices in the conduct of one's life. These rights belong in strictly equal measure to every man, woman and child in proportion to maturity because the capacity and responsiblity of free choice exists equally for the intelligent and the stupid, rich and poor, native-born and alien immigrant. An intelligent man faces more complex questions, perhaps, than a slower sibling, but with no more or less responsibility to exercise his powers or let them fall into disuse and sloth. [Laissez Faire Law, p.10]

Liberty and responsibility are obvious. That's not the problem. The problem is choosing to carry on in the teeth of failure, overwhelming opposition and practical danger. Nor is my station in life the worst possible maelstrom. Ali Massoud, one of the few men who saw merit in my work, is an apostate; that's a death sentence in Islam. He lives with practical danger every second, undoubtedly dreams nightmares about it every night.

Contrast the heroism of lesser men with the happy cocoon of wealth in brainpower, youthful vigor, or inherited privilege. As Fitzgerald said, the rich are not like you and me: "She took all things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter." [The Beautiful and Damned]

The subhuman are not the ignorant, unwashed, uncivilized and powerless savages we customarily pity or fear.

It is surprisingly cheap to buy a man’s soul. Offer him a clean house, the chance to do white collar work or to tinker with a cyclotron, and he will work gladly for a monarch ... If you are a willing laborer for the Public Servant ruling class, you get a piece of the action – a very small piece if you are a peasant; a much larger piece if you clean toilets for Goldman Sachs. But all must serve New Rome on the Potomac, or starve. [COGIGG, p.70-72]

I agree with much of the above. Laissez Faire Law is a bit pricey, but you've sold "The Constitution of Government in GG". That quote describes my greatest fear, that hired technologists of various stripes keep humanity in chains for ten thousand years. Not a fear for myself but for humanity. I suppose you'll call that altruism. I prefer Kindle books, I like being able to carry a library around with me. Cheaper too.

We are alone, each individual. We are as distant from each other as galaxies. That is how is should be.

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people get married so they won't be alone

Depends who you marry and why, I guess.

"People think and grow in different directions, because no two human beings are identical in spiritual-intellectual constitution. The closest we get to seeing ourselves in another is romance and intimate friendship, yet in both we are shocked at the discovery of insurmountable discords. The best way to keep a buddy or a lover is to maintain a wide zone of privacy and tolerance." [COGIGG, pp.42]

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We are alone, each individual. We are as distant from each other as galaxies. That is how is should be.

That's depressive as hell. That's why people get married--so they won't be alone.

--Brant

“There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men (pg. 101).”

Ayn Rand, Anthem

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