JordanRHughes

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  1. Charles, But wasn't that what many of her followers did? Maybe you were unaffected by it, but from what I have read, many elevated her to guru status, for example started smoking because she advocated it, or hid their homosexuality because she thought of it as "disgusting". Your observation has some substance to it, especially among those best known because they tended to gather around her and seek her approval. But, we have to remember that most people who enjoyed her books and found value in her philosophy went about their lives and did not try to remake themselves in the image of one of her book heroes. This is not to say that their lives were uninfluenced, only that they had a sufficient appreciation for who they were that they did not necessarily try to reinvent themselves. I am sure many did find ways to improve themselves, however, due to things they thought about because Rand induced them to think about their lives somewhat differently. By the way, I have never smoked, because I always found the smell of cigarettes repugnant. As for homosexuality, there is no reason to hold it immoral or unnatural that I am aware of. Imo it is both. Isn't prescribing a "one set for all" of so-called "objective values" for "life proper to man" the very opposite of individualism? Other ideologies, be it catholicism or marxism - they too present a catalog of alleged objective values and claim to know exactly how "life proper to man" has to look like ... Rand simply tries to work out the core values she thinks man needs by virtue of the nature of life on earth for a being with the nature of man. The Catholic or the Marxist tries to do something similar, but the nature of man and the nature of earth differ dramatically. Rand examines the nature of man, while the Catholic looks to ancient texts and dogma about a god, while the Marxist imagines that history marches toward progress and man is consumed by envy and jealousy. The Marxist in particular eradicates individuality because no central planning authority can deal with the complexity of the individual. Catholicism forces man to have a relationship with a fictional god, who will simply decree to man what his values will be. Rand, on the other hand, believes man is capable of choosing his own values and of living his life competently in accordance with his self-chosen values. Yes, she has her ideas on what core values a man needs by virtue of the effort needed to survive on Earth and given the nature of man, especially his need to use his mind well to identify reality and to provide him the power to control it to give him security and joy in his life. But, she hews to the prescription that society will enforce few values. She wants a society which allows man a maximal range of choices, such as available in the free market of ideas, goods, and services provided by the Capitalist society. This society allows one to choose to be Catholic and it even, within a context, allows one to be a Marxist. Her society would surely allow 50 people to gather in New Harmony, Indiana and buy large plots of land and live in a commune. She just would not allow those same people to go out on the roads and kidnap people to put them into slavery on the commune. To be sure, she did not think highly of Catholicism, but she had no desire to burn any Catholics at the stake. She did not like Marxism, but she would not have sent those hypothetical New Harmony Marxists to the Gulag. As for Objectivism being anti-individualist, it seems to me that there are plenty of individualists at OL and there are plenty at The Atlas Society. Personally, while I admire and hold what I think are the core values of Objectivism, I have never felt any lack of elbow room with regard to choosing my own values. There are many, many to choose which are not inconsistent with Objectivism, but are right for me based on my independent thinking, my life experiences, and my unique DNA and biochemistry. I am unique, as I am pretty sure are you. There is no problem being unique and exceedingly complex within the scope of Objectivist principles as I understand them. For me one time was more than enough. I found plowing through it mostly tedious, with Galt's speech sticking out like a verbose 'atheroma'. In terms of the plot - although I was curious to find out where all these people vanished, when it turned out they had chosen the 'brave new world' of Galt's gulch, I lost every interest in it. For that 'Pleasantville-like' place populated by Galt clones was just too surrealistic to be true. Rearden, D'Anconia and Galt are odd birds too. Rearden obviously has problems sexually relating to women, either putting them on a pedestal or wanting to drag them down. Rand basically rehashed the old cliché here, where women are seen either as to be worshipped or dragged down, as "madonna or whore". 'Peeping John' Galt is very weird in clandestinely stalking Dagny for twelve years, and his following her every move made me think of a voyeur. Needless to say, Galt has no sexual relationship with any other woman during all these years, and (no surprise either) D'Anconia lives like a monk as well during all his 'playboy' years. So, despite their obsession with the heroine, in a way, all three are strangely devoid of sexuality. I found the people of Galt's Gulch to be quite interesting and I enjoyed every moment of being in their presence. They were such a relief from the helplessness and jadedness and the dullness of so many "real" people. I do not see them as clones and it did not offend me that they were capable and thinking people who greatly enjoyed one another's company. I want friends of like them myself and such people are so rare that in one's day to day life, I almost never get that kind of one-on-one personal interaction with such friends. This is a part of the book I have read many times. I should give myself the pleasure of reading it again soon. I cannot put myself into your mind, x-ray, and see them as you see them. I once again note that the only mind I really know is the mind I can know by introspection. Other minds are always a mystery, and some such as yours are more a mystery than most. Yes, there is no question that Rearden has problems relating to women. Guess what? Many men do. But, I admit there were times when I wanted to slug Rearden myself for being so slow in figuring out that Lillian was sad and evil and Dagny was a marvelously earthy goddess. You do not believe in God and neither do I, but when I find the best in the people I know, I do feel what I would want to feel in the presence of God, if he were as he ought to be. As for Rand seeing women as either to be worshiped or dragged down, that may be a recurring dramatic theme. Rand probably does view issues of love in more dramatic terms than I do. You seem to think this is a core Objectivist way of viewing love. I simply view it as Rand's way of viewing love. It is not uninteresting to me, but it is not so subtle as love really is. Rand was a dramatic novelist and drama was always a part of her life, by experience and by choice. Others may choose otherwise and still be Objectivists, in my opinion. Of course, this makes it clear that I do not see Objectivism as a closed philosophy. It is my job to fill the philosophy out to make it suitable for my own life. I expect other thinking people to do the same. There is no simple relationship between sexuality and a lengthy period of abstinence that I know about. Galt's not presenting himself to Dagny early is explained by the plot. Real life would most likely be different and that difference is what you are making your judgment on. When Galt makes love to Dagny, it does not seem to me that he was asexual. Frankly, when he carried the injured Dagny to his home after her plane crash, and many other times while she is in his home, the sexuality is very hot. Again, I can only see this using my mind. But isn't judging a novel in its own terms actually circular reasoning? This is what e. g. Jehova's Witnesses do when asked how they know what the Bible says is true. They then quote a Bible scripture as alleged proof of truth. Circle closed. They can't move out of their world. With some fervent Randites, one can observe the same phenomeneon. They quote from Galt's speech like theists quote from Jesus' Sermon on the Mountain. A wedding couple actually decided to use Atlas Shrugged instead of the Bible at their wedding ceremony. You do need to evaluate what Rand's purpose is and consider whether the form her novel takes is appropriate to that purpose. That evaluation should determine the value of her purpose in real life, but it is not necessary that the novel try to recreate all of real life. Dramatizations and black and white choices may be appropriate, or they may not, given the purposes being addressed. Or the themes, if you prefer. Her purpose is to help the reader understand some critical real life issues, but these are very abstract issues. In a way you are right about the Bible. It has a purpose and its value as a book is tied to how well it achieves its purpose. Many think it a fantastic book, so it does serve its purpose pretty well. But, when I evaluate the purpose and how that relates to the issue of man's ethical choices, I see many problems. Using Atlas Shrugged rather than a Bible for a marriage sounds fine to me. A marriage should be about sharing values and forming a partnership to pursue those shared values. A marriage is a spiritual bond. If you find that spiritual bond in Atlas Shrugged, use it. If you find it in the Bible, use it. It is not the central theme but Rand's theory of sex certainly plays a major role. The superman-like hero choosing as mate a heroine with equal "rational values", whatever Rand's idea of 'rational' was ... John Galt, AS, p. 1022: "Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but ratioal goals, seeks nothing but but rational values, and finds joy in nothing but rational actions." This statement implies that Rand considered considered sex as a 'rational' action. Yes, her ideas of love and happiness do play important roles. I found her ideas interesting and agreed with her in some respects, but I also depart from her in significant respects. Where I depart, it is not so much that I think there was something wrong with her understanding or desires, as that I believe my own understanding is more appropriate for who I am and want to be. Each human being is too complex to copy the lifestyle of anyone else and to then expect to achieve happiness from it. We have to tailor our values, goals, and dreams to our unique selves. Sexuality is especially complex for each unique individual. I did not expect to find the sexuality that was right for me in Rand's works. Frankly, I am still constantly working on figuring out and developing my own sexuality. If it is complex enough that that is the case after all these decades, then there is no way I am simply going to adopt the sexuality of someone else! In the John Galt quote above, he was talking about happiness, not sex. Huge difference. Even then, we need to note that happiness is likely to a more likely outcome to the rational man is what this is really saying. The rational man, may have an irrational moment, and if he is lucky, his life will not be ruined. But, if he makes a habit of being irrational, he will not achieve happiness. It remains possible that he will act extremely rationally and yet have an unhappy life. Suppose he his loving parents are killed by Visigoths when he is 6. He finds the woman of his dreams when he is 19, but she is killed by the Golden Horde when he is 20. Then the Turks move in and make him a galley slave for the rest of his life. Rational action and choices are the best route to happiness, but no guarantee. Now, Rand did think that one should only have sex with someone you loved. Love, she also thought, should be based on a rational evaluation of the character of the one considered for love. The rational man would then rationally choose the woman he would love and then he would rationally choose whether to have sex with her. This is not the same as saying that sex is rational. Clearly it may or may not be rational to have sex with a given person. In AS it says Rearden lost sexual interest in Lilian after one week already. If memory serves, it was the merely the 'challenge of the conquest' which made him want to marry her. What chance did Lilian have in such a union? None. Lillian should have wanted out of the marriage as much as Rearden should have. People should not usually stay in dis-functional marriages. There may be some lifeboat cases which may be exceptions, but usually marriage is too important in our lives to be tolerated when they really do not work. But Rand did claim realism, despite the surrealistic elements in AS. Like another poster said it so well, AS is a non-fiction treatise disguised as novel. Rand is dealing with many fundamental issue of real life for man in the real world. This does not mean that she re-creates the real world as such. The issues are abstract and complex and it takes a major effort to lay them out and resolve them. She has little time to describe the pine forest that Rearden and Dagny drive past in Wisconsin when looking for the motor. Throughout the novel, she has a tight focus on critical abstract and complex issues and to do that, she ignores more peripheral issues. There are times when she deals with the details, where those concrete details give the right feeling for the scene. But, her novel is not of the real life genre, with its everyday people and small themes. She presents complex ideas about life dramatically, leaving out many shades of nuance, which she assumes the reader should be competent to think through on his own. I can see your point. What sexually turns people on is their own businsess. But Rand did not did not leave it at that. She had an ideological agenda, presenting her heroes as man should be, which involved their sexuality as well. The violent sexual encounters described in AS outnumber those few encounters where violence is not present. The degree of violence is carried to the point of bleeding, it involves things like arm-twisting, elbows deliberately knocked in the face, etc., and downright sexual assault in The Fountainhead. I doubt that you are right about the number of encounters which are violent outnumbering the number which are not. But, there are more rough encounters than I would prescribe. Some rough sex may be quite appropriate for some people and there were no cases I know of between Rand's heroes and her heroines in which the heroines objected to the sex they had. They loved it. Where did I say that jealousy is a "virtue"? To avoid possible misunderstanding: My position is that there exist no objective values or virtues. One look at the many moral values and virtues thought of as "objective" in former times (virginity for example), is ample illustration of that. But, from the point of empathy, I can understand, merely by putting myself into Frank's and Barbara's shoes, that they would feel hurt, despite agreeing to it. One can agree to an arrangement and still be very unhappy about it. Frankly, who would just sit there and have no feelings of jealousy and pain when one's partner tells them they have a lover? In a hypothetical scenario, would you stay calm and say to your wife "I feel so happy for you?" Like Rearden and D'Anconia, who seemed to have no problem with Dagny discarding them for Galt? If you think there are no objective values, then what do you mean when you say Rearden cheated on Lillian? Or what does it matter if Rand and Nathaniel had a love affair? If Frank and Barbara were hurt, this is not necessarily sufficient to say that Rand and Nathaniel should not have been lovers. Frank and Barbara were and are good people and one should not want them to be hurt, but life does not always save us from hurt. I am neither an advocate of nor a critic of the fact that Rand and Nathaniel were lovers. I am a critic of some aspects of how they handled that love affair, but in the end, such things are too complex for me to analyze them too far from afar. Overall, I think Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Frank O'Connor, and Barbara Branden are all good people and I hope they have all had much happiness in their lives. As for my wife, I will only say that I love her and I want her to be happy. If she really did choose to leave me for a man she thought was better for her, it would hurt because I would miss her badly, but, I would handle it, probably much as Francisco and Hank did, especially if I agreed with my wife that the man she left me for was a better man for her. This is easily said when the situation does not involve one's own person. It sure was a problem for Barbara and Frank, who suffered a lot. Barbara B. spoke of an "ugly tangle of deceit and emotional savagery and pain" following the disastrous "arragement". Since they wanted to hide the affair to the public, they persuaded Frank to agree to the sexual encounters taking place in his own bedroom. Don't you think of this as a very humiliating situation for Frank? Frank never told me. I do not choose to speculate. Barbara has spoken ably for herself. While at the beginning of the affair, Rand announced that she would do just that, when the time came she seemed to have forgotten about it. That Rand was blind enough to present her wanting a sexual affair with NB as a "rational" decision reflects the problematic of the whole Objectivist philosophy: purely emotional decisions were called 'rational', and those disagreeing were accused of having 'irrational' arguments. The actions people take are not necessarily consistent with the philosophy of principles they have laid out. Ayn Rand's life was not the perfect example of how an Objectivist should live their life. Nonetheless, all in all, she was a remarkable woman who gave millions of people the benefit of her heroes and a very rational philosophy by which to guide their lives. You are a kind of inverse cultist. You want to make a cult of Ayn Rand and then claim that that cult is not suitable to an independent thinker or to you in particular. Well, no, an independent thinker examines the principles of Objectivism and chooses those he believes are rational and uses those to guide his life. He does not try to copy Ayn Rand in her daily living. It sure would be sad if we were all novelists! We need some doctors, bankers, farmers, steel makers, and dress makers too. Imo ITOE is a very chaotic and confusing work. For example, Rand believed that love can be 'measured', thinking that terms like 'affection', 'tenderness' etc. had comparable objective quality as degrees have on a measuring scale. Chaos? I do not remember that. I love four sisters and three daughters. My feelings of tenderness, for instance, towards each do vary with their character. I do not make a practice of trying to distinguish my overall love for each sister or for each daughter, but I do know that aspects of that love vary from one to another. Tenderness or affection are emotions based substantially on evaluations and shared experiences in a very complex way and it is not like laying a protractor down and measuring 25 degrees in one case and 45 degrees in the other. This, however, does not mean that there is no scale of measurement attached to each. The error bars on these emotions may be large, due to the fact that they are so complex an evaluation and matrix of shared experiences. The error bars on each may be in more dimensions than we can even visualize. Still, there is a scale attached to each and we can often make at least ordinal measurements of these emotional evaluations. For some, the input into those emotional evaluations is more rational and for others it may have little rational input. It is probably easier for someone with more rational evaluation processes to be able to have a decent sense of the scale of the emotional response to the person loved than for the largely irrational person. What?
  2. no doubt. That's hilarious and so true. Cheers. _______________________ jamaica Hotels
  3. Deep.... To paraphrase this, what Hitler did was legal and what the USA Founding Fathers did was illegal. Michael
  4. Awesome resources. I am so glad I found this site. Thanks for sharing. Jordan.