Brant Gaede

There wouldn't be a novel without Roark fixing up Keating's work, Dominique being flat-assed stupid, and blowing up the housing project. Etc --Brant and that was just an overture to AS

That house they repaired to might have been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, a picture of which appeared on the cover of Time magazine. I toured it in 1973. --Brant

Rand's three novels are so different they should be considered separately save one to another. John Galt had no place in the world of Howard Roark. When Rand wrote Galt's speech she essentially created Objectivism and it personally trapped her therein just as writing the novel itself trapped her in its world. This created the Rand trance which ensnared many people, some for the better some for the worse. All the betters transcended it through personal and intellectual growth. You have to forgive her for it; who regrets Atlas Shrugged? Not me, not a bit of it. --Brant

Wrong is the way to right. That makes Aristotle half right. Right? --Brant

Most of Aristotle is lost You needed precision equipment to measure the difference. He was pre-science. There was a fellow in Egypt way back then who used real scientific math calculation to determine the near circumference of the earth. Real science, real results. Math seems to have preceded science. So we have Archimedes. Newton will always be the greatest and most seminal mathematician and scientist. Nobody built on Archimedes. Civilization went to hell. You cannot refute Aristotle's value by refuting his scientific credentials. He was much more than that in that philosophy is what undergirds all human free-willed action. There is no refuting philosophy--the operating software of any physiologically normal mind ("brain" to you)--by refuting any or all philosophers and philosophies. But if refutation is your game what would you replace the refuted with? What is your better philosophy? Oh, didn't Aristotle write about logic? What is your replacement for that? --Brant

I went by my understanding of Roark depicted, not something Rand wrote decades later. And a "moral ideal" and moral perfection are not the same things. Striving for moral perfection is like striving for political perfection. You'll never get there, but that doesn't negate the morality of the striving. Roark never strived for this moral perfection. He had it from Rand Day One. Looking at Roark is like looking at water flowing downhill. It's looking at the inevitable. He is sustained by his matchless integrity, not the Rand several decades later perfection thingie. Moral perfection means never making wrong choices. That makes Toohey, who objectively makes all the wrong choices and subjectively all the right ones, much more interesting. Isn't The Fountainhead really all about the perfectly evil man? --Brant heh, heh, heh

He didn't help Keating design that housing project. It was 100 percent him. --Brant he didn't blow up the Cosmo Slotnick building

If Roark were morally perfect he'd never have helped Peter Keating. No novel. Roark had two big things going: his passion for architecture and his integrity. Rand's bias was for work. She was going to write great novels and she did. She blew up buildings. She consumed people. And herself. --Brant. uh, to some extent

You're saying what Rand said about her eventual death: it's the world that will die. You're also on the path to a universal definition of art, even if those Indians think it's "junk." --Brant but if you come with the definition the Mona Lisa won't be junk even if those who failed to get an education think it is

It's an altered state of consciousness. You segued from painting to fiction writing. --Brant

Ah, the triumph of epistemology over metaphysics is what makes art great art? And I thought it was the other way around and the augmentation of metaphysics with epistemology. Or, "Wow!" --Brant what is more real (in art) than the Mona Lisa?

Yes and no. Mostly no. --Brant lack of substantiation gets lack of substantiation

It's funny to be talked down to by a man who knows less about Ayn Rand and Objectivism than I do. I can't say that about LP. --Brant

The hand is better. --Brant

Hi! --Brant

Ayn Rand was so addicted to writing . . . Or was it John Galt and she wrote fiction until she found hiim? Devastating to those around and about her!? --Brant

If we start with the working premise that we all are addicted to various things, but some are socially unacceptable, we may have a better working foundation for this discussion. For instance sugar and alcohol, sex, work, heroin, basketball, etc. Howard Roark was so addicted to architecture he kept improving Peter Keating's work. He ended up blowing up a housing project killing Dominique in the process and spending the rest of his life in prison. Then Ayn Rand heard about him and retold the story giving it a happy ending. --Brant

I don't see why. RBG could be spending almost all of her time at home with no congress to speak of with other justices with her staff doing all the work, the idea being to outlast Trump. And just maybe her body is in the freezer laid out in the right posture for the after the election funeral. --Brant "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"

It's not them it's bringing in Michelle O. to get the nomination out of a brokered convention. --Brant

Reprise

The media is batshit crazy stupid. --Brant and fascist servers of corporate masters the corporation itself is essentially fascist; there is no room in libertarianism or Objectivism for public corporatism as opposed to purely private--the government is for criminal, not tort

I'm calling it batshit evil. --Brant

Douglas MacArthur: "So Roosevelt is dead; a man who never told the truth when a lie would serve him just as well." I thought this was a humorous thread. Now I'm sure of it. ---Brant

What is this apropos to? --Brant