Brant Gaede

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Everything posted by Brant Gaede

  1. 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
  2. Brant Gaede
    So much "Not ART!!!", so little time! --Brant
  3. Brant Gaede
    How about "If Kamhi says, 'It's not art!'"? --Brant
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. Brant Gaede
    The doctor collected data and made logical extrapolations. Additional data helped confirm. I assume Kamhi believes in AGW. Or should. --Brant
  9. Brant Gaede
    Dysdopian? --Brant
  10. Brant Gaede
    Objectivism is not a top-down philosophy like Marxism, though Rand wanted it to be but as in freedom. She correctly centered it on the ethics but those ethics are her hero's not the great unwashed. Hence the prevalence and perseverance of the Judeo-Christian ethics and conservatism with its cultural gravitas albeit intellectually bankrupt. On the individual level the philosophy must have liberated millions of Americans from guilt respecting the pursuit of self interest. If we take a standard human model his self interest is much broader and deeper than her model. Thus Objectivism fizzles as a cultural force. As for politics, this country has to die of old age or be destroyed before it can be reborn in freedom. That's because of entitlements. This doesn't have to happen soon. We are entering the age of empire, not in respect to foreign relations for we are already there but in respect to Americans. --Brant
  11. Brant Gaede
    I think you are quoting me. Aikido doesn't work on me. The Earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age. That's a true statement but has nothing to do with AGW which is getting a freebie ride off this undisputed fact. As for Canada? The perma-frost goes soft. BFD! This is your problem and won't be dealt with by AGW BS. Fossil fuels Regina! "Is the rest of the world warming?" has to do in the context of this yik yak with this century or the last 20 years. "Your arms are too short to box with me" or, apparently, with anyone else. And you know this. So you bring in bodyguards. --Brant let the methane (Kraken) out!
  12. Brant Gaede
    I thwarted him just recently by continuing the discussion on the next page he went too. I didn't generalize off that for I don't read much of his data and posting dumping. He lacks the courage of his own voice and substitutes innumerable other voices. --Brant
  13. Brant Gaede
    Some vaccines are desirable. In Vietnam I saw a baby in the death throes of tetanus. Polio . . . --Brant
  14. Brant Gaede
    Jerry, I'll watch this when I have sober time, but I want you to know I appreciate the pure guts of being who you are, which is not what afflicts you but helped make you, and all your posts here are blessed by that transcendent grace. --Brant
  15. Brant Gaede
  16. Brant Gaede
    The one thing, Ellen, over-shadowing Galt is reality itself. --Brant or, to be more accurate, Galt is perfectly congruent with reality--He came to Earth so we could transcend our sins through moral and esthetic appreciation or run from His presence like Robert Stadler did (all the way to Project X, which was John Galt in different clothes) Galt is reality and is to be respected, not worshipped, but Rand herself came to within 99 percent of worshipping Him calling it "man worship" and, in my estimation going off the rails Man worship is a female (Rand) thing but us guys think men thing or female worship BUT men defend the women who are in turn nurturing (protecting) the children So we need someone to write a novel the first line reads: "Who is Jane Galt?"
  17. Brant Gaede
    That was way too much, but it's indicative of a general Wikipedia problem. --Brant
  18. Brant Gaede
    Is the rest of the world warming? --Brant
  19. Brant Gaede
    Rearden doesn't quite make the novel. Like Dagny he was fighting incompetence with competence not understanding why he was losing. Finally it was just too much. I don't see a psychological arc but a philosophical one. --Brant of course the psychological/philosophical bifurcation is artificial
  20. Brant Gaede
    Of course Galt had no idea in college he was going to go on strike. With the passage of a fair amount of fictional time there will be character arcs else why have it? What's in Galt's head is explained existentially. AS is not a psychological novel. What we really have is story arc, not character arc. --Brant
  21. Brant Gaede
    I assume this thread will be copied over to the blog. --Brant .
  22. Brant Gaede
    Everybody's got a journey. The hereo's is merely to inform hoi polloi what's going on with an inspirational twist. --Brant
  23. Brant Gaede
    Serving your octopus. 1) don't tell the dinner guests prior to; it's gonna be a surprise. 2) once they've arrived lock the doors. 3) tell them it's only for the highest degree of gourmet sophistication. 4) serve. --Brant
  24. Brant Gaede
    Rand's man was the ideal man who for purposes of art was perfect. (Unfortunately she conflated perfect man with man in real life.) This made her heroic characters pretty one dimensional. Roark was mildly interesting. Wynand much more interesting. What was to be noted is how people and adversity bounced off Roark. His big mistake qua character was helping Peter Keating. That wasn't because he was a humanitarian but because he had to save Keating's architecture and because there wouldn't have been a novel without it. In Rand's Magnum opus the heroes who had seen the light didn't help those who hadn't save if they were salvageable. Thus they were more perfect than Roark. But all they did was show them that light or simply let reality do it with helpful explanations. Trying to live life as a perfect man or woman is impractical and stupid and posturing. The real trick is living a life of integrity. That makes Roark the best role model, at least for a start. ---Brant
  25. Brant Gaede
    Science is tentative. Models are tentative on steroids. Brad wasn't tentative. William pretends to be. When science isn't tentative we can end up with hysteria. Now when a giant asteroid is headed right at us science can tell us we're all gonna die on X date. This doesn't apply to the human injection of a trace gas into the atmosphere. --Brant