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I regret very much the proliferation of legal threads (mostly my doing) that have little relevance to Objectivism.

Philosophy of law was a blank page in Rand's work, said to be an elaboration of ethics. Maybe what we should be discussing is whether she articulated a coherent theory of ethics? I like the virtue of selfishness, so that's not an issue for me, and I regard "evil requires the sanction of victim" as a profound achievement. But it's fairly clear that Rand and many of her most faithful acolytes (myself included) had miserable lives.

It gives me the heebie-jeebies to think of Peikoff as an example of Objectivist living.

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Interesting thread Wolf.

I can't speak for you, I have and had a great life.

Some might look in and say wow, life threw a lot of grief your way.

However, I do not sanction that.

Why do you Wolf?

A...

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It is way too harsh to say you should embarrassed. That punishment doesn't fit the crime--and I'm not so sure any crime has been committed.

Rand left a huge gap with her many references to "let the legal philosophers work that out," or words to that effect. This always--even before I became a lawyer and lived with legal challenges for the past 25+ years--seemed like a "punt" to me. She was a genius, but she left large swaths of her philosophy for others to figure out. The "others" have turned out to rather less than geniuses.

Here is what I have really never understood about "Objectivist living" (the idea, not the website...): Why all the bile? Why are Objectivish folks so harsh to one another? Why the presumption of bad faith, rather than good faith disagreement, or just plain disagreement without moral consequences?

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PDS:

Precisely.

"Here is what I have really never understood about "Objectivist living" (the idea, not the website...):Why all the bile? Why are Objectivish folks so harsh to one another? Why the presumption of bad faith, rather than good faith disagreement, or just plain disagreement without moral consequences?"

And I have never understood it either.

Wolf:

That is one individual bad actor...no?

A...

Let's keep the baby and see him as the bath water...

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Wolf,

I see nothing to be embarrassed about.

But then, again, I'm shameless.

:)

Seriously, though, wisdom starts with asking the right questions. You ask a ton-load of good ones, often implicitly. In O-Land, this process is too often reversed--people want to tell you what wisdom is before there is even a question in their minds about it. They got it from Rand and peer-pressure.

I know this when I see it because I used to live that way. Well... I didn't have to worry about peer-pressure in Brazil. However, I admit I would have succumbed to peer-pressure back then had I run in Objectivist circles.

There's a big problem with that mindset. When reality blindsides you, all you can do is stare helplessly, perplexed.

Why didn't it work the way Rand said it would?

That happens right before the blinding pain hits and obliterates even that.

There is nothing like doing your own thinking. Rand is a great foundation for jump-starting the process, but not a replacement.

I like the questions, explicit and implicit. I say keep them coming. They make people think.

Michael

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Thanks, Michael. I feel very much like my friend Brigid, an orphan adopted at birth, who to her great surprise from a DNA test learned she was descended from an ethnic group entirely unlike that of her adoptive parents and contradicted their account of where she came from:

I'm just going to sit here and think upon what we believe, and how fragile it is... I'll sit and look as the night approaches, pondering the nature of half glimpsed truths; of the mournful stillness of wanting to belong, of the little death of losing something that you never held.

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The current generation of Objectivists is getting around to it, as Rand hoped they would. The conference presentations at http://www.aynrandsociety.org/past-programs show several sessions on law-related topics from 2009 on:

- The Normative Foundations of Intellectual Property: Two Perspectives

- Rand and Punishment (unless this is about her kinky sex scenes)

- The Philosophic Basis of the Separation of Church and State: Theory and History

- Capitalism, Limited Government, and Morality

- Rand and Nozick: Moral, Social and Political Thought

- Ayn Rand's Theory of Rights

Most or all of these are in preparation for a forthcoming volume on political philosophy in the Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies series (http://www.aynrandsociety.org/publications). The big Objectivist names in this field are Adam Mosoff (http://www.law.gmu.edu/faculty/directory/fulltime/mossoff_adam) at George Mason University law school and David Mayer at Capitol University (http://law.capital.edu/FacultyBio.aspx?ID=22633). These pages link to publication lists.

(Rand also said that a serious theory of music awaited greater physiological knowledge. Has anyone heard of progress on this front?)

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I always benefited from at least a scan when not a full and focused read for criticism. Too many legal topics? Too many engineering topics? How could such a suggestion be possible. Now, too many Obama topics, that's easy.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I can never get tired of your Graphs Wolf!

leod-chart.jpg

Improved training, fitness, communication, and weapons -- that's the Happy Meal explanation by Police Chiefs magazine.

Personally, I think it's avoidance of duty in crime-soaked Chicago, Detroit, and Washington DC,

with lavish welfare spending and Game of Thrones celebrity chat rooms to stupify the rest of us.

20140918_comfort_0.jpg

Zero Hedge chart based on Bloomberg data

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