A Bold New Step for Objectivist Scholarship


Dennis Hardin

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Again, my apologies for this boring detour from the prior detour from the thread detour.

We return you now to the salacious pre-foreplay banter.

Thanks for your concern, but I don't think the sparks even made it off the anvil on this one. Idle banter can be fun for a while, however.

Ghs

"Idle banter is the Meaning of Life, if you ask me"

-Libby Gelman Waxner

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Ms. Xray:

Are you sure it was not the picture of Ms. Dorian Gray you are turning into?

Mr. Selene,

None of us are getting any younger, but what I can see in the mirror is still okay for me.

Plus, as opposed to Dorian Gray the mirror's reflection matches reality and therefore meets the strict Objectivist criteria: A(ngela) is A(ngela).

Getting older has advantages I never thought of when I was young, like jettisoning much of which I know I won't need it anymore. Very liberating!

Again, my apologies for this boring detour from the prior detour from the thread detour.

We return you now to the salacious pre-foreplay banter.

Thanks for your concern, but I don't think the sparks even made it off the anvil on this one. Idle banter can be fun for a while, however.

Ghs

George,

Maybe I'm "psychologizing" here, but the thought just occurred to me that the use of banter can also function as a defense mechanism against something else, and that "something else" here could be the tragic event your friend has to live with, a tragedy which we realize could happen to anyone of us, at any time. If nothing comparable has happened to us, we have merely lucked out so far. A moment of inattention on an individual's part can cost human lives, like e. g. falling asleep in bed with a cigarette still burning, or backing out of the garage and running over a small child one has not failed to notice Dealing with the tremendous feeling of guilt over such tragic acts is probably more than a person can bear, and frankly, I'm not sure if I could bear it.

So perhaps the banter strewn into a thread where a very serious issue is being discussed at the same time, is a subconscious attempts by the posters' minds to counter the feeling of pain, death and loss with "life" and "love"?

Just speculating of course.

What Love Asks Of Us

Nathaniel and Devers Branden

pp. 270-271

Nathaniel: A person once told me something that shocked me, hurt me, bewildered me, something that I have never been able to forget. “When a person we love dies, it is a tragedy, but it is also a gift, a gift that is very hard for us to recognize and accept. Suddenly new doors open, new possibilities emerge, and we are flung forward along a path we might never have found.” It was not easy for me to hear this, a year after Patrecia’s death.

Today, I know it is true.

What N. Branden said here hit me like a ton of bricks, and I know I will never be able forget it either.

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Months ago I stated my intention to post a review of the recent book published through the Ayn Rand Society of The American Philosophical Association: Meta-ethics, Egoism, and Virtue. Anyone interested can now read it here:

The Choice To Live Reconsidered

Technically, it is not really a book review. It is an integration of the material from two of the essays in that volume with my own previous 1992 essay on the the topic of “The Choice To Live,” also available on my webblog.

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