Brant Gaede

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Brant Gaede last won the day on March 25

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About Brant Gaede

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Tucson, AZ
  • Interests
    All kinds of stuff

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  • Full Name
    Brant Gaede
  • Description
    Born in 1944 in Tucson, AZ. SF Aidman Vietnam combat veteran. Autodidact. Can drive the big rig. Hike and fly. Weep and write. Shoot and scoot.
  • Favorite Music, Artworks, Movies, Shows, etc.
    Rand novels, The David, Shane, The Ox-Bow Incident, Forbidden Planet, Things to Come, The Wild Bunch, Oliver, Star Wars, Charade, North by Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo, Red River, Empire of the Sun, etc. Music: only the good stuff--e.g., Lynyrd Skynyrd "Simple Man"
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  1. Brant Gaede
    What was published by Rand in her lifetime is primary for referencing her. What she wrote but didn't publish is secondary IF it's in the original form. Work edited to publication after her death is third tier at best and possibly much worse. I wouldn't trust ITOE unless it was the original printing. Esthetically speaking Leonard Peikoff putting his introduction into AS was an obscenity. Morally speaking, not so much. But they're integrated so the fish stinks regardless. --Brant
  2. Brant Gaede
    I'd say mostly right--and in spades. --Brant
  3. Brant Gaede
    If you quote Ayn Rand's "Journals" you aren't quoting Ayn Rand. Her unedited work is secondary Rand and for scholars, if available to them. It's not available to the polloi. That said I'm not saying she didn't write that bit on cosmology. --Brant
  4. Brant Gaede
    The world is full of competing religions many resorting to force if other means fail with any reason becoming rationalization. This includes the religion of the left, the imbedded moral superiority of which is so deep and integrated that the not left can be run over and flattened at will. This includes sundry genocides. Even the Nazis can be included with the left, but there was a problem: Hitler invaded Soviet Russia so the Nazis and fascists were thrown out of the left by the communists into the right and now advocates of freedom are described as fascists, racists, climate change deniers, etc. Businessmen are only good for selling the rope to hang them with, and, so, Trump drives them up the wall. He's blocking their main route to power and they have to get him out of the office the "deplorables" elected him to. It doesn't matter if you are a shitty two-bit journalist as long as you serve la causa. --Brant
  5. Brant Gaede
    Since tens if not hundreds of millions do it baffles me how anyone can believe reason can overcome that. Part of the answer, of course, is compartmentalization, something Rand never acknowledged or addressed. Her getting down to basics over-simplified the human organism. The reductionism was necessary but once into that binary hole she needed to climb out. Thus in her cosmology ideology triumphed over empiricism. Karl Marx made the same mistake. --Brant
  6. Brant Gaede
    Well, since I was raised by wolves . . . --Brant
  7. Brant Gaede
    They'll rebuild it and do a good job. There's enough Christian vitality left in the West to ensure that. In fact, it may have a salubrious effect on that vitality. --Brant
  8. Brant Gaede
    So much "Not ART!!!", so little time! --Brant
  9. Brant Gaede
    How about "If Kamhi says, 'It's not art!'"? --Brant
  10. Brant Gaede
    It's all or nothing. All that's needed is a statement of preferences, I prefer this to that, not that that's not art and this is. Then nasty Jonathan can't slice and dice you. Objectivity in art is from one's values, not existential criteria. That's objectivity off a subjective base. There's no contradiction for they are separated by the hierarchy. What is art? Whatever hoi polloi wants to say or any "expert." The same for the converse. Without this anarchy creativity goes into the garbage can and what's left is imitation. Ayn Rand had a great need to be in control and, naturally enough, it seeped down. You need to be in control when you're at war. She was always at war. --Brant
  11. Brant Gaede
    When you are surrounded by rot but you aren't rot the rot can destroy you. Your integrity is your biggest protector as in the character of Howard Roark. But Howard slipped up by his involvement with Peter Keating and could have ended up in the slammer. All that work he did that Peter put his name on was fraudulent, but the novel needed structure born out of contrast and conflict. Rand implicitly recognized this problem in AS by removing her heroes from society once they saw the light. This amounted to chopping down the whole tree leaving a few saplings behind. But you can only chop down the tree in fiction. --Brant
  12. Brant Gaede
    The tree of truth has many branches. Some are bogus. The trunk is reality and the branches are all human made. When you go out on the wrong limb it doesn't have to break off even if it's rotten and dead, but there your beliefs are, likely on public display, especially if you make a fuss about them. --Brant
  13. Brant Gaede
    I don't think Rand herself went quite so far respecting art. There seems to be some equivocation, an equivocation not found in AS which was art but not about art. She needed absolute certainty or there would have been no 13 years writing it. --Brant
  14. Brant Gaede
    The doctor collected data and made logical extrapolations. Additional data helped confirm. I assume Kamhi believes in AGW. Or should. --Brant
  15. Brant Gaede
    Dysdopian? --Brant