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Kat

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Gonzalo, welcome to OL. Very impressive for being so young, so curious, and so intelligent. I understand your English just fine. You'll do okay on this forum !! It's nice to have you here.

Angie

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Ciao, Gonzalo

I used to like Leopardi when I was your age.

The reason I liked him, as much as I can remember, is only because I felt sorry for him, but I never liked his sense of life.

Leopardi is the father of nihilism.

No one has ever figure out if he really loved Silvia or not.

I still have some papers about comments I had written in 1974 about

"Il Passero Solitario."

you write:Gabriele D´Annunzio (not so good...),

I agree, Gonzalo. He was a pig! lol

Welcome to OL.

I am sorry that Spain is out of the world cup. :(

Ciro D'Agostino

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Hello,

I am so glad because of this magnificent reception on your forum. I get really happy for the motive of Ciro´s response -and other people, I am very grateful-. I enjoy much reading the little text of a very nice people like Ciro (I must say him I don´t enjoy football enough... maybe tomorrow I will give him a detailed and extense response.). Now, I don´t have a lot of time because I am very tired and I think precise a rest. I am sorry. I need ask you about If I might publish -or post- some articles on a forum wich you chose.

Gonzalo Jerez

P.S.: I think so beautiful Miss Kat... :-$

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When I was your age I read nothing but Rand. Keep posting so I can find out what I missed.

Your English is fine - no mixups between possessive and plural, no "literally" when you mean "figuratively" and not a single "hopefully" or "homophobic."

Peter

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Hi Gonzalo and welcome to Objectivist Living. If it seemed a bit quiet the past week it is because many of us were at the TOC summer seminar and had limited time and internet access.

I am glad you are enjoying it here at OL and thanks for the compliments.

Kat

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  • 2 months later...

Dayaamm!!!

Hey Brant!

Good to see you!

As I said when you asked to have your account canceled a while back, the door is open to you. Outside of anything else, after all the free advertising you have given me (and Barbara), how could it not be?

I hope your "statements" include one or another for the OL audience at times...

And please read our Posting Guidelines and other threads in the section Purpose of Objectivist Living and Legal Stuff (please read) (they are very short) just so there will never be any misunderstanding.

Michael

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Hello, Brant.

Good to run into you again online. As a fellow Vietnam veteran, you are always a brother. There are not many of us in objectivist-related circles.

Indo-China is still as hot and humid as ever. It is noon ICT for me now, but when night falls I will raise a big mug of cold Chang beer while thinking of you.

Cheers!

-Ross Barlow.

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Thanks all for welcoming me here. I was pretty raw yesterday. Some of life's lessons are pretty rough. I didn't know I was living in a sea of rationalism where ungrounded ideas take flight and go crazy. I've got another situation that happened this morning, of a personal nature, and now I'm all wrung out the another way. I don't think I'll have much time for this online posting for awhile. Barbara, I hope I didn't hurt you too much; I never wanted to.

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Don Ciro Corleone,

I am very grateful for your protective feelings. I hold the same for you. I place high value on our friendship.

I have reams I could write about your question, but let me go for a brief answer right now - then maybe I will write something more extended later.

As Rand says, if you encounter a contradiction, check your premises. One of them will be wrong.

I appeal to the best in a man, not the worst. I don't care what he has said on another forum about me so long as he eschews belligerent obnoxious insulting behavior when he comes here. There are obvious limitations on this. For instance a person who is civil here but continues to grossly insult me or OL posters elsewhere is a case of falsity that would be demeaning to tolerate. Also those who have made and/or presently make a career out of smearing people I love are not welcome. But I have found that the general guideline of "leave your guns at the door" works beautifully, even with someone who used to be hostile.

Over time, living and interacting among decent people, a person who has made some very bad mistakes will make his own amends. This takes time, especially for Objectivists. (Isn't it funny that Christians make amends when they are wrong much quicker than Objectivists do?) It is ironic that a philosophy of egoism should produce so many fragile egos, but that is the reality I have encountered.

I allow this time for those who start seriously doubting their former behavior. I went through it myself and there is a trail of apologies in different places I have posted to different people after I made my own decision. I didn't post them all at once. I had my own time that I needed. Amends have to come from the heart and from a man's own thinking. Not from anyone else's thinking. From his. If you try to impose moral behavior from the outside by harsh public condemnation or intimidation like peer pressure, most people back up and never come around - at least not to you.

I am not interested in winning a contest with this. I am interested in people finding the right and the truth within themselves and living it. I wish there were an on/off button for these things, but there isn't one.

In short, I am not interested in condemning a specific act or other if a person shows signs of wanting to change for the better. That does not mean that I do not see what was done or approve of it. How can a man approve of being called foul names? However, it does mean that I value the change in the person far, far more than I value making an immediate demand for remedy. In other words, I appeal to the best within a person and leave it up to him to do the right thing when he knows it is time. This is a case-by-case call and sometimes it is difficult to evaluate sincerity, but I haven't been disappointed with my own choices so far.

There are several posters on OL who have grossly insulted me elsewhere in the past. We now interact with mutual profit in peace. We worked out our issues, mostly off line. Isn't what we now have much more valuable than the memory of bearing my chest in front of an audience, beating on it with a Tarzan yell, pointing a finger at him and screaming, "You are morally worthless, you dishonest evader!" and never seeing him again?

There is one thing I am condemning, though, and I have no words to express the contempt I have for it. It is an entire way of life - that infantile pseudo-macho obnoxious hating and ranting you find on SLOP and some other places on the Internet that is held up to the rest of the world as Objectivism. Pardon my French, but that is not Objectivism, it is pure bullshit. It is disgusting. It doesn't result in any changes in the world. It doesn't provide any happiness (just look at all the twisted unhappy people). It results in no wisdom. It is unhealthy. And it only attracts more twisted unhappy people.

The only good it provides for others is some low-level entertainment like professional wrestling or The National Enquirer. Is that a proper use for a magnificent philosophy like Objectivism?

I practice what I preach, too. If a man is unhappy with his behavior and wishes to try out the vision we live here on OL, I say, good. Welcome. I know he will need time to catch his breath and I know that some things will not change overnight. But he came to the right place if he came in good will. Even if he is returning. And the rules are clear. They will not change. His guns stay at the door.

Call this an Objectivist form of forgiveness (as opposed to altruistic). It takes full reality into account, both a man's soul and his actions, and there is a selfish value pursued.

I strongly believe that men are basically good underneath and can be convinced by reason and good will. My attitude is one way of living that conviction in reality and not just mouthing it.

But if I ever become involved in something of this nature that doesn't work out, Don Ciro Corleone, I will knock on your door and together we will make the guy an offer he can't refuse.

:)

Michael

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Michael, you are a very generous man, and I feel admiration for the things you've said in your post. I'm fiinding it difficult to be as generous, however. When someone I never knew, and therefore never considered a friend, is insulting and unjust toward me but then regrets it and apologizes, I can accept the apology, although I'll remain wary for some time. But when someone I considered a friend, or at least considerably more than a casual acquaintance, suddenly turns on me and joins a chorus of denouncers, I feel a sense of bewilderment and disbelief that is very painful. I have not the least interest in throwing stones and I don't feel angry, but I have no answer to the question of how I ever could know where I stand with such a person.

Brant wrote: "Barbara, I hope I didn't hurt you too much." You did hurt me, Brant. A lot.

Barbara

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Michael, you are a very generous man, and I feel admiration for the things you've said in your post. I'm fiinding it difficult to be as generous, however. When someone I never knew, and therefore never considered a friend, is insulting and unjust towward me but then regrets it and apologizes, I can accept the apology, although I'll remain wary for some time. But when someone I considered a friend, or at least considerably more than a casual acquaintance, suddenly turns on me and joins a chorus of denouncers, I feel a sense of bewilderment and disbelief that is very painful. I have not the least interest in throwing stones and I don't feel angry, but I have no answer to the question of how I ever could know where I stand with such a person.

Brant wrote: "Barbara, I hope I didn't hurt you too much." You did hurt me, Brant. A lot.

Barbara

Understood. Thank you for saying that.

I want people here to know that my coming here was primarily to sanction Michael's and Kat's Web site especially in juxtaposition to what is going on on SOLO P where posters are advocating mass murder as legitimate war policy, not to seek forgiveness for my sins. When I understand more clearly what's been going on I'll tell you. Then I might deserve to ask. When you find yourself in the midst of a collective insanity and rail against it and then ask yourself why are you in a place where you can't breathe or your sense be heard and understood by intelligent but nutty people and realize the essential nature of your mistake--that you actually share their premise at the root and that you are contradicting your bad premise but they are not and a big part of your world suddenly collapses and you see another world--well, you get pretty discombobulated. Remember what I said in my first post above: "People first, then ideas." I had got it backwards. This is partially a legacy of Ayn Rand; it is partially a legacy of youth, but youth is supposed to grow up. It is also partially a legacy of Internet culture where people start arguing and saying things to each other in a way they would not do if face to face. You may find yourself suddenly in the clouds ungrounded in the human reality below and not even realize it.

This is not my place. I'll be making some posts every now and then but they won't be casual. As for Barbara, she wrote a biography about Ayn Rand the human being and that made it great and transcendent. No one will ever take that away from her.

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Holy moly, Brant's shown up again here? Speaking of being "psychic," I was predicting last night, when I read the posts of his from SOLO that were quoted in the lepers thread, that he would get so disgusted there he'd come here.

Welcome, Brant, I suppose. I'd rather see you here than there. But in regard to your relationship with Barbara, I don't see how you could possibly expect that you didn't hurt her, "a lot," as she said. Sometimes, you know, you say too much in public about what's going on in your working out of something, and your whole public process about Barbara sure was one of those times.

Ellen

___

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Lot of healing going on at OL. That's kind of a consistent first as far as what I've seen over the years.

Glad you're here, Brant. I know you have a lot to offer, been seeing you on the boards forever.

Hope everything works all around. If that's "Ka**less," then, well, eff "Ka**less"-- it's a one trick pony anyway.

Best,

rde

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Dear Barbara Branden:

I'm sorry I hurt you. And I never knew I had the power to hurt you a lot or I never would have.

I apologize but do not ask for forgiveness because I cannot forgive myself. No one can make eggs out of an omelet.

The person I was then and the perspective I had made what I did logical enough. I didn't know I was so much a twit. We had a difference of opinion. So what?

You must have really liked me back then. I didn't deserve it. You thought I was more than I was. And then there is the Internet culture which encourages so much interpersonal nonsense where people overly intellectualize their electronic relationships.

I hurt you a lot, yes, I can't deny it. But if you had known me better you would not have been hurt half as much. Maybe not at all, but I think that's wishful thinking on my part.

I'm not here to disrespect or antagonize you or hurt you further. In fact I have much more respect for you and Michael and Kat than I ever did. It's deeper. As for the other stuff, the things I wish weren't--I don't think much of it now.

I'm sorry that at the age of 62 I still have to keep growing in order to grow up.

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I was reading this thread and it also reminded me a bit of what Victor did when he came over here. I don't think I've seen anything like this happen on any of the O-forums ever, and here we have two times where people have about-faced, fully knowing what they might be in for.

I suppose that snarky comments might be made elsewhere. All that will mean is that those who would do so do not grasp exactly how mammothly difficult real contrition is. Contrition doesn't come from weakness, it comes from newly found strength. It comes from a very honest place. I know what it is worth just from the fact alone of how incredibly difficult it is to do-- it is many, many times harder than most things people do socially.

Asking for forgiveness, of course, does not by any means guarantee receiving it. Sometimes, there has been too much damage.

But it still means something, it still has value. I know this because of things in my own life, and from seeing it happen in the lives of others. I learned a lot about tolerance and forgiveness from the Unitarian community, and trust me when I tell you those folks aren't pushovers.

I am still not sure which one is the hardest: asking for forgiveness or giving it. They both feel about the same for me. And if it works, the thing I noticed is that one is not left with a feeling of walking on air... it's a somber thing on both sides.

Edited by Rich Engle
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Rich: "I was reading this thread and it also reminded me a bit of what Victor did when he came over here. I don't think I've seen anything like this happen on any of the O-forums ever, and here we have two times where people have about-faced, fully knowing what they might be in for."

Props to Michael and Kat for not only recognizing the good in people, but also for providing a forum that allows for the good to rise above the bad. I sure like the Victor on OL much better than I did the Victor on SLOP.

Mick

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