Love defined in one sentence?

[BaalChatzaf]

Dominique was a victim?

That's not what I meant. Let's let it be what Rand said, herself in a bad mood.

Okay. I grok that. Then in a rational society Rand's first novel would have been the projected last one she didn't write.

--Brant

Sometimes I talk too much. This is going to be one of those times. I cannot abide watching TV and don't have it in the house, although I switch it on in hotel rooms occasionally because there must be something interesting on 50 or 60 channels, right? -- wrong! -- nothing but obscenity, violence, lies, and feigned hoopla. Same thing happens in libraries. Same basic assumption, there must be something interesting in 50 or 60 thousand volumes on the shelf, right? Hah.

Which brings me to Ayn Rand. Her entire output is about ten inches wide in hardback. Absent in most libraries. Daniel Steele has two entire shelves, and Barbara Cartland could fill an aisle in paperback. Biography? -- bah! You can browse an hour or two and see thousands of books celebrating the great and good in football, baseball, politics, war, used car marketing, cinema, finger painting, and ancient Rome. Nothing about Ayn Rand.

She wrote three novels and Anthem, a novelette. It took a lifetime to do that little. It means something to us, but it's nothing compared to Steven King, John Grisham, or Tom Clancy. Objectivism can be summarized on a 3x5 card. Kant and Marx have hundreds of thousands of academic instructors, two million scholarly papers, and books by the carload. Rand scholars are hilarious. Machan's crap is required reading for his students, a fat little cottage industry.

Anyway, back to Miss Rand. No one talks about Anthem or We The Living. So it boils down to two books -- a dystopian fantasy about justice, and a drama about recognizably real people and real situations that was picked up by Warner Bros. The 1949 movie grossed $400,000 less than its production budget. Critics yawned.

Not much to say about Roark, is there? An architect. How heroic is that? And Bob feels entitled to piss on Dominique.

-- oh, but Atlas! -- miles of discussion and analysis and pontificating about metaethical conjunctivitis and whether Eddie WIllers was a capable railroad executive (suitably portrayed by a hip black guy) or a sexless, tongue-tied Charlie Brown banging his head against the wall, smitten by the little Red Haired Girl. I'd feel better if Bob pissed on Dagny for being slow-witted. It took her a thousand pages to quit her job.

Like I said, I talk too much. Bottom line: The Fountainhead was Rand's masterpiece. It magnetized Branden.

I haven't yet seen the AS movies. Thanks for reminding me why.

If Bob doesn't confine himself to math and science he moves into areas as an Aspie--his kind of Aspie--he's totally incompetent in. I don't think he knows he just called Ayn Rand, not Dominique, "a flake and a semi crazy-lady [sic, sic, sic]" or that Dominique was Rand's most courageous character.

I'm not going to try to deconstruct the rest of what you wrote. It needs work but you're up to it or not as you please.

--Brant

Yes. I am aware that Ayn Rand characterized Dominique as herself on a bad hair day. To which I reply. If the shoe fits, let it be worn. If her rant over her one time lover Nathaniel Brandon was not crazy-lady par excellence, I don't know what is.

[Brant Gaede]

Dominique was a victim?

That's not what I meant. Let's let it be what Rand said, herself in a bad mood.

Okay. I grok that. Then in a rational society Rand's first novel would have been the projected last one she didn't write.

--Brant

Sometimes I talk too much. This is going to be one of those times. I cannot abide watching TV and don't have it in the house, although I switch it on in hotel rooms occasionally because there must be something interesting on 50 or 60 channels, right? -- wrong! -- nothing but obscenity, violence, lies, and feigned hoopla. Same thing happens in libraries. Same basic assumption, there must be something interesting in 50 or 60 thousand volumes on the shelf, right? Hah.

Which brings me to Ayn Rand. Her entire output is about ten inches wide in hardback. Absent in most libraries. Daniel Steele has two entire shelves, and Barbara Cartland could fill an aisle in paperback. Biography? -- bah! You can browse an hour or two and see thousands of books celebrating the great and good in football, baseball, politics, war, used car marketing, cinema, finger painting, and ancient Rome. Nothing about Ayn Rand.

She wrote three novels and Anthem, a novelette. It took a lifetime to do that little. It means something to us, but it's nothing compared to Steven King, John Grisham, or Tom Clancy. Objectivism can be summarized on a 3x5 card. Kant and Marx have hundreds of thousands of academic instructors, two million scholarly papers, and books by the carload. Rand scholars are hilarious. Machan's crap is required reading for his students, a fat little cottage industry.

Anyway, back to Miss Rand. No one talks about Anthem or We The Living. So it boils down to two books -- a dystopian fantasy about justice, and a drama about recognizably real people and real situations that was picked up by Warner Bros. The 1949 movie grossed $400,000 less than its production budget. Critics yawned.

Not much to say about Roark, is there? An architect. How heroic is that? And Bob feels entitled to piss on Dominique.

-- oh, but Atlas! -- miles of discussion and analysis and pontificating about metaethical conjunctivitis and whether Eddie WIllers was a capable railroad executive (suitably portrayed by a hip black guy) or a sexless, tongue-tied Charlie Brown banging his head against the wall, smitten by the little Red Haired Girl. I'd feel better if Bob pissed on Dagny for being slow-witted. It took her a thousand pages to quit her job.

Like I said, I talk too much. Bottom line: The Fountainhead was Rand's masterpiece. It magnetized Branden.

I haven't yet seen the AS movies. Thanks for reminding me why.

If Bob doesn't confine himself to math and science he moves into areas as an Aspie--his kind of Aspie--he's totally incompetent in. I don't think he knows he just called Ayn Rand, not Dominique, "a flake and a semi crazy-lady [sic, sic, sic]" or that Dominique was Rand's most courageous character.

I'm not going to try to deconstruct the rest of what you wrote. It needs work but you're up to it or not as you please.

--Brant

Yes. I am aware that Ayn Rand characterized Dominique as herself on a bad hair day. To which I reply. If the shoe fits, let it be worn. If her rant over her one time lover Nathaniel Brandon was not crazy-lady par excellence, I don't know what is.

Dominique acted logically off an impossible sometimes dumb psychology/philosophy. If you look at some of her actions you can say they're crazy, but not her because the actions were of a depressive--most depressives experience themselves as victims which is why they are depressives--but Dominique was not that kind of person. Even in The Fountainhead Rand over-weighted philosophy to psychology so she could take a character's simple mistakes in knowledge or analyses and build a character on those. That's Dominique. As for Rand, we know she suffered by her own admittance a severe depressive episode while writing The Fountainhead and her husband--so she said--talked her out of it and it never came back as badly (at least in the writing of that novel). But Branden's depiction of her as having major problems with depression after the pre and post publication of Atlas Shrugged hoopla died down--which is first-hand believable to me for I saw her autograph in The Fountainhead a young woman had gotten in 1960 or '61 below a short paragraph of depressive writing hoping for her to have a better future than that present. Fair to say Rand was something of a depressive who pushed it aside by writing. She did a lot of continuous writing. The continuity was lost when her magnum opus was done.

As for her conduct up to and following her break with the Brandens, she was entitled to blow her top. That's a sane person acting crazy attempting to re-establish her footing. I think she was likely also blowing off Objectivism and students of Objectivism as they and it came to being through Nathaniel Branden. She couldn't disown Objectivism, of course, but many people involved with Objectivism pretty much took it that way, if not immediately then in the next few years, plus especially when Peikoff went off the rails in 1986 when PAR was published.

--Brant

[anthony]

.

We were talking about you critically ad hominening a statement Rand made using Wynand. A statement she deeply and profoundly agreed with. You were all wrong. Instead of re-examining that you go off on another Kant rant.

You seem to see everything through what you imagine are Objectivist filters. It ends up in second-hand subjectivism and you've no clue.

--Brant

Why should Rand get a pass on that statement? "Love is exception making".

Still nobody offers a response to my remark, basically, that the idea (by the very nature of love) is self-evident, and not the most original insight of Rand's. Big deal over not much. Besides, it may imply sacrifice in the name of love; very unRandian, which could signify that perhaps she was pointing out Wynand's wrong premise also.

The irony is that anyone here can tear into Rand and has, and when one poster, a "Randian", criticiizes one small thought in one Rand book it is cataclysmic. I don't appreciate these double standards.

Somebody please make an argument contrary to my criticism - I have no need to "examine" it, I already made it.

The "filter", btw, is one of reality. Objectivism too, has to stand up to that scrutiny.

Kant's aesthetics can be seen for what they are, when contrasted to Rand's ideas. His sands of Sublimity look insignificant beside her rock of Identity. It's clear her art reflects and reinforces identity, identification and therefore, consciousness: Content in the art and also content of men's character.

So you say Dominique was Rand's most courageous character. And how.

But who wants to know WHY that is so? Nobody has shown interest in Rand's real motivation in Dominique's creation past some psychological analysis of her heroine.

Not examining Dominique, morally and cognitively, actually downgrades what she is -- and reduces what I or any reader inspirationally takes away -- and runs counter to Rand's intent.

I've pointed out several times - without response - that Rand's "volitional consciousness" is at the bottom of it, and of Dominique's strength of character and her final self-revival, which is the source of her abiding memory to readers. None are interested, it appears. Just leave our Dominique alone and don't question what makes her what she is. Feelings come first and take her as a 'given': which looks at least a little 'Sublime' and most subjective.

Then, who am I to try to extract the maximum from a Romantic novel? Amusing.

[anthony]

Dupe

[Wolf DeVoon]

I don't know what is.

Exactly. You don't know what is.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Fair to say Rand was something of a depressive who pushed it aside by writing.

Unlike cheerful Papa Hemingway who killed himself, Scott Fitzgerald who drank himself to death, Sylvia Plath...

Lemme think. Russian emigre. Not pretty. Lambasted for We The Living. Dragged the Fountainhead ms from publisher to publisher, nothing but rejections. Living with a nice, normal chump she married to stay in America, instead of getting kicked out and going back to hell, to end up like Kira Agrounova. Eating cheap food, wearing cheap clothes, even when The Fountainhead finally found a publisher. The movie bombed. Horrified at what was happening to America. Losing to Walter Lippman and Eugene O'Neill, Eric Fromm and Theodore Dreiser. All singing, all dancing Technicolor airheads.

Happy happy happy happy.

No rational reason to be depressed.

After Atlas?

One of Rand's private letters candidly admits: "I am becoming more anti-social than I was... I can't stand the sort of things people talk about."

[Brant Gaede]

Fair to say Rand was something of a depressive who pushed it aside by writing.

Unlike cheerful Papa Hemingway who killed himself, Scott Fitzgerald who drank himself to death, Sylvia Plath...

Lemme think. Russian emigre. Not pretty. Lambasted for We The Living. Dragged the Fountainhead ms from publisher to publisher, nothing but rejections. Living with a nice, normal chump she married to stay in America, instead of getting kicked out and going back to hell, to end up like Kira Agrounova. Eating cheap food, wearing cheap clothes, even when The Fountainhead finally found a publisher. The movie bombed. Horrified at what was happening to America. Losing to Walter Lippman and Eugene O'Neill, Eric Fromm and Theodore Dreiser. All singing, all dancing Technicolor airheads.

Happy happy happy happy.

No rational reason to be depressed.

Uh--let's call it food for thought.

Sure you aren't projecting some of this?

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

Uh--let's call it food for thought.

Sure you aren't projecting some of this?

--Brant

I think Ayn Rand wrote because she had something to say, and she kept after it, no matter what. It was important and difficult. She soldiered on, thinking that somehow she had to overcome the language barrier and win, because the world was at stake. Anyone who understood her and supported her was a godsend, like water to someone abandoned in the desert, dehydrated and near death. I can't be projecting some of this because I died on the desert long ago.

Mars Shall Thunder, Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,606,059 in Books

[Brant Gaede]

Zombie Wolf.

[Wolf DeVoon]

from the grave, on topic:

I'm not speaking of love, which is the sacrifice we willing make for another, or duty, which opens the heart to dignity and bequeaths a kinder, safer world to those who follow, if they have enough courage and perspicacity to earn it. Happiness is neither shared nor teachable, can't be bought or sold on the market. It resides in one heart at a time and only for the time remaining. It may be fleeting indeed, if one has outlived his welcome. I think this is part of the formula, that happiness costs nothing and not less than everything. Add equal parts of honesty, daring, and randomness. Indeed, it's a crapshoot that feels like a trainwreck. I mention this to put paid to all miscellany. Happiness is not mass-produced. It does not arise safely and securely, the cheery product of prudence. Your best interests, individual or collective, most certainly lay elsewhere in the lap of luxury, of certainty and shame. No happy man bows his head or knows what tomorrow may bring. Tomorrow is irrelevant. The old business of life goes on, but with a subtext that nothing can alter hereafter. Enemies have no power to steal it, however harrowing their threat of retribution. For it has always been exactly so, that happiness is a rebuke of some sort, a whole selfishness that sees no other good except Mine.

[excerpt, 'The Practical Problems of Happiness']

[ThomasHägg]

from the grave, on topic:

I'm not speaking of love, which is the sacrifice we willing make for another, or duty, which opens the heart to dignity and bequeaths a kinder, safer world to those who follow, if they have enough courage and perspicacity to earn it. Happiness is neither shared nor teachable, can't be bought or sold on the market. It resides in one heart at a time and only for the time remaining. It may be fleeting indeed, if one has outlived his welcome. I think this is part of the formula, that happiness costs nothing and not less than everything. Add equal parts of honesty, daring, and randomness. Indeed, it's a crapshoot that feels like a trainwreck. I mention this to put paid to all miscellany. Happiness is not mass-produced. It does not arise safely and securely, the cheery product of prudence. Your best interests, individual or collective, most certainly lay elsewhere in the lap of luxury, of certainty and shame. No happy man bows his head or knows what tomorrow may bring. Tomorrow is irrelevant. The old business of life goes on, but with a subtext that nothing can alter hereafter. Enemies have no power to steal it, however harrowing their threat of retribution. For it has always been exactly so, that happiness is a rebuke of some sort, a whole selfishness that sees no other good except Mine.

[excerpt, 'The Practical Problems of Happiness']

Interesting quote, who wrote that book? ;) Sorry, but I don't agree with it. Objectivism shows very clearly that love is almost the precise opposite of sacrifice; Valueing and keeping something at a gain. "Sacrifice" as you define it, can in your chosen context not be anything close to how it is defined by objectivists / students of objectivists or else your definition of "love" would be very irresponsible and indeed sad.

[Jonathan]

from the grave, on topic:

I'm not speaking of love, which is the sacrifice we willing make for another, or duty, which opens the heart to dignity and bequeaths a kinder, safer world to those who follow, if they have enough courage and perspicacity to earn it. Happiness is neither shared nor teachable, can't be bought or sold on the market. It resides in one heart at a time and only for the time remaining. It may be fleeting indeed, if one has outlived his welcome. I think this is part of the formula, that happiness costs nothing and not less than everything. Add equal parts of honesty, daring, and randomness. Indeed, it's a crapshoot that feels like a trainwreck. I mention this to put paid to all miscellany. Happiness is not mass-produced. It does not arise safely and securely, the cheery product of prudence. Your best interests, individual or collective, most certainly lay elsewhere in the lap of luxury, of certainty and shame. No happy man bows his head or knows what tomorrow may bring. Tomorrow is irrelevant. The old business of life goes on, but with a subtext that nothing can alter hereafter. Enemies have no power to steal it, however harrowing their threat of retribution. For it has always been exactly so, that happiness is a rebuke of some sort, a whole selfishness that sees no other good except Mine.

[excerpt, 'The Practical Problems of Happiness']

Interesting quote, who wrote that book? ;) Sorry, but I don't agree with it. Objectivism shows very clearly that love is almost the precise opposite of sacrifice; Valueing and keeping something at a gain. "Sacrifice" as you define it, can in your chosen context not be anything close to how it is defined by objectivists / students of objectivists or else your definition of "love" would be very irresponsible and indeed sad.

Yeah, see, what's happening is that you've started with what "Objectivism shows," and then you've now started to run into reality.

Rand didn't legitimately define or properly philosophically analyze what love is. Instead, she opined. She romanticized. She arbitrarily imposed her own limited tastes and ideals, and she tried, unsuccessfully, to redefine words with long-existing meanings.

"Sacrifice" is one such word. Contrary to Rand, it means to give up something of great value for the sake of even greater value. Parents who love their children make sacrifices for them, because they value them more than what they've given up to keep them warm and safe and dry. Chess players will sometimes sacrifice their queens in order to win matches, because although the queen is of immense value as a piece, winning is a greater value. In baseball, a sacrifice play involves allowing one of one's own team's players to be tagged out in order to gain a point, because the point is of greater value than the out.

Rand's great, but she made some thinking errors, and sometimes got tangled up in fictionalizing, romaniticing or exaggerating reality. She needs to be taken in the right doses, and supplemented with other sources. Better yet, she needs to have her own philosophy applied to her statements. Think for yourself, apply observation, reason and logic to Rand's opinions that you're citing here on the topic of love, and you'll see that they don't cut it in reality.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Rand didn't write too much about love as she didn't care to get into the feeling analytically as such, especially as personally experienced. So she went abstract.

--Brant

[PDS]

from the grave, on topic:

I'm not speaking of love, which is the sacrifice we willing make for another, or duty, which opens the heart to dignity and bequeaths a kinder, safer world to those who follow, if they have enough courage and perspicacity to earn it. Happiness is neither shared nor teachable, can't be bought or sold on the market. It resides in one heart at a time and only for the time remaining. It may be fleeting indeed, if one has outlived his welcome. I think this is part of the formula, that happiness costs nothing and not less than everything. Add equal parts of honesty, daring, and randomness. Indeed, it's a crapshoot that feels like a trainwreck. I mention this to put paid to all miscellany. Happiness is not mass-produced. It does not arise safely and securely, the cheery product of prudence. Your best interests, individual or collective, most certainly lay elsewhere in the lap of luxury, of certainty and shame. No happy man bows his head or knows what tomorrow may bring. Tomorrow is irrelevant. The old business of life goes on, but with a subtext that nothing can alter hereafter. Enemies have no power to steal it, however harrowing their threat of retribution. For it has always been exactly so, that happiness is a rebuke of some sort, a whole selfishness that sees no other good except Mine.

[excerpt, 'The Practical Problems of Happiness']

Interesting quote, who wrote that book? ;) Sorry, but I don't agree with it. Objectivism shows very clearly that love is almost the precise opposite of sacrifice; Valueing and keeping something at a gain. "Sacrifice" as you define it, can in your chosen context not be anything close to how it is defined by objectivists / students of objectivists or else your definition of "love" would be very irresponsible and indeed sad.

Yeah, see, what's happening is that you've started with what "Objectivism shows," and then you've now started to run into reality.

Rand didn't legitimately define or properly philosophically analyze what love is. Instead, she opined. She romanticized. She arbitrarily imposed her own limited tastes and ideals, and she tried, unsuccessfully, to redefine words with long-existing meanings.

"Sacrifice" is one such word. Contrary to Rand, it means to give up something of great value for the sake of even greater value. Parents who love their children make sacrifices for them, because they value them more than what they've given up to keep them warm and safe and dry. Chess players will sometimes sacrifice their queens in order to win matches, because although the queen is of immense value as a piece, winning is a greater value. In baseball, a sacrifice play involves allowing one of one's own team's players to be tagged out in order to gain a point, because the point is of greater value than the out.

Rand's great, but she made some thinking errors, and sometimes got tangled up in fictionalizing, romaniticing or exaggerating reality. She needs to be taken in the right doses, and supplemented with other sources. Better yet, she needs to have her own philosophy applied to her statements. Think for yourself, apply observation, reason and logic to Rand's opinions that you're citing here on the topic of love, and you'll see that they don't cut it in reality.

J

Jonahan, you magnificent bastard: there are no "points" in baseball, only "runs". Please try to avoid such jarring cold sores on your Mona Lisas from now on.

[Jonathan]

Okay, put a big "E" on my chart or my stats thingy or whatever.

J

[anthony]

"Sacrifice" is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser or a non-value".

No matter if one sees it as "greater value" to a "great value", the hierarchy holds. Relative values remain.

If one "sacrifices" something for one's love, then love is evidently the lesser value, and the "something" is the greater value.

In which case it must be questioned if that is any kind of love at all.

"This applies to all choices, including one's actions toward other men. It requires that one possesses a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible". [The Ethics of Emergencies]

(And the so-called "sacrifice" of a queen in order to win the game self-refutes that accepted and traditional meaning of sacrifice. Giving up the queen is the moral, non-sacrificial act).

[Brant Gaede]

from the grave, on topic:

I'm not speaking of love, which is the sacrifice we willing make for another, or duty, which opens the heart to dignity and bequeaths a kinder, safer world to those who follow, if they have enough courage and perspicacity to earn it. Happiness is neither shared nor teachable, can't be bought or sold on the market. It resides in one heart at a time and only for the time remaining. It may be fleeting indeed, if one has outlived his welcome. I think this is part of the formula, that happiness costs nothing and not less than everything. Add equal parts of honesty, daring, and randomness. Indeed, it's a crapshoot that feels like a trainwreck. I mention this to put paid to all miscellany. Happiness is not mass-produced. It does not arise safely and securely, the cheery product of prudence. Your best interests, individual or collective, most certainly lay elsewhere in the lap of luxury, of certainty and shame. No happy man bows his head or knows what tomorrow may bring. Tomorrow is irrelevant. The old business of life goes on, but with a subtext that nothing can alter hereafter. Enemies have no power to steal it, however harrowing their threat of retribution. For it has always been exactly so, that happiness is a rebuke of some sort, a whole selfishness that sees no other good except Mine.

[excerpt, 'The Practical Problems of Happiness']

Interesting quote, who wrote that book? ;) Sorry, but I don't agree with it. Objectivism shows very clearly that love is almost the precise opposite of sacrifice; Valueing and keeping something at a gain. "Sacrifice" as you define it, can in your chosen context not be anything close to how it is defined by objectivists / students of objectivists or else your definition of "love" would be very irresponsible and indeed sad.

Objectivism shows nothing about anything. The reader has to mix in his own data with the ideas. To say otherwise is to use a subtle form of tautological reasoning. The philosophy per se is outside the reality loop. Adding in reality for instance, adds in sundry professions as in professions of science, esthetics, law, plumbing, dancing, singing, you name it. Pure Objectivism is very simple. The philosophy of Ayn Rand, mistakenly called Objectivism strictly speaking, is that simplicity larded up with all her hard held convictions and opinions. For instance her philosophy sees man as an "heroic being." I for one would like a reference to her philosophical explanation of heroism. I don't think it exists. One can, of course, infer a lot about it from her writings. It's interesting how the depicted heroism is greater in her first novel than her second and even less in her third while the greatness of the novels goes up. There is virtually no heroism in Atlas Shrugged and what is there is mostly from the yet to be converted to the strike Dagny and Hank. No villains = no heroism. There is a somewhat different kind of heroism in the pure creation of something as depicted in Calumet K or the building of The John Galt Line. The heroism in going on strike by retiring from productive effort seems rather jejune compared with having to deal with company goons, private police and even soldiers.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Okay, put a big "E" on my chart or my stats thingy or whatever.

J

Can't believe you said "point." And I thought you were an American.

--Brant

[PDS]

Okay, put a big "E" on my chart or my stats thingy or whatever.

J

Can't believe you said "point." And I thought you were an American.

--Brant

He may actually be a Commie. This is a dead giveaway in most settings.

[Selene]

Okay, put a big "E" on my chart or my stats thingy or whatever.

J

Priceless, yes the stats thingy - fielding percentage.

and yes this might not be ruled an E because the fielder did not touch the ball...

Thanks PDS, I was going to mention it, however, did not want to appear to "picky" and would never have come up with the Mona Lisa metaphor.

Reminds me of something Mad magazine came up with years ago...I think...

A...

[Jonathan]

Okay, put a big "E" on my chart or my stats thingy or whatever.

J

Can't believe you said "point." And I thought you were an American.

--Brant

He may actually be a Commie. This is a dead giveaway in most settings.

Please, I like America!!!

Fancy schmancy! What a cinch! Go fly a kite! Cat got your tongue. Hill of beans. Betty Boop, what a dish. Betty Grable, nice gams.

I say can you see! I say can you see! I... I say...

Fuck Hitler. Fuck Hitler!

J

[PDS]

Okay, put a big "E" on my chart or my stats thingy or whatever.

J

Can't believe you said "point." And I thought you were an American.

--Brant

He may actually be a Commie. This is a dead giveaway in most settings.

Please, I like America!!!

Fancy schmancy! What a cinch! Go fly a kite! Cat got your tongue. Hill of beans. Betty Boop, what a dish. Betty Grable, nice gams.

I say can you see! I say can you see! I... I say...

Fuck Hitler. Fuck Hitler!

J

Not buying it.

If you travelled to the Berlin Wall you would also likely say "Ich bin ein Berliner."

[Jules Troy]

I love photography much more than I love my job.

Unfortunately at this point in time my job pays much better so I sacrifice my time doing that whereas I would rather spend that time going out taking pictures.

Who knows? I may very well end up doing the same thing until I have enough saved up to retire in order to devote 100% of my efforts. My thinking is probably within a few years that it will be a bit of both. As my portfolio grows and that aspect of the business grows, I will "semi" retire and just do projects of 2-3 month duration. Go on photographic tours, then cherry pick another project. (Maybe go pipelining during winter and visit the great bear rainforest in summer/fall or take a trip to Africa).

I can think of no better way to show my wife my commitment to our love than to be able to bring her with me doing something we both enjoy, instead of having to leave her at home while I work at my current job. Although sometimes when I'm out shooting shorebirds in a marsh she exclaims "no dear you go on out and enjoy getting mobbed by mosquitoes and being up to your armpits in that god aweful muck, I will just stay in the truck". Lol.

I don't think one makes "sacrifices" for ones children or a loved one. When one decides to have children you just do what needs to be done in order to do the best you can for them so that they upon reaching adulthood have the tools to thrive.

Some people who have lived and bonded together for so long in old age actually die very shortly after their spouse does.

I remember my mom telling me something rather profound shortly after my grandmother died. One day shortly before christmas her and my mom went through her address book in order to send out Christmas cards. Almost every single person in the book had already died of old age. Then her brother died, her last sibling, and within a couple months so did she (at 94). Yup she had some short term memory loss, but could tell you what day and who was over for Xmas and the temperature in 1939 but couldn't remember if she turned the stove off. She could out golf everyone and was in better shape than many people aged 60. I think she just died of a broken heart.

I don't think the word sacrifice was ever part of her vocabulary. She traveled and went camping and had a wonderful full life. We all loved visiting her, it was always the best of times going to see her.

[Jonathan]

"Sacrifice" is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser or a non-value".

Wrong. And not just wrong, but stupidly, irrationally wrong.

No matter if one sees it as "greater value" to a "great value", the hierarchy holds. Relative values remain.

The hierarchy is actually giving up a great value for a greater one. That's reality. You and Ayn Rand are not the arbiters of lexicography. We don't change the meanings of words at your arbitrary whims.

If one "sacrifices" something for one's love, then love is evidently the lesser value, and the "something" is the greater value.

In which case it must be questioned if that is any kind of love at all.

Yeah, that's typical of the way that it works with you. You start by believing Rand's messy thinking on a given subject, and then, rather than critically examining the possibility that she might have been mistaken, you try to impose the stupidity on reality, and you therefore come to the moronic conclusion that someone who claims to have made a sacrifice for his love must value his love less than what was given up.

You're off to a running start setting up straw men, psychologizing, and trying to bend reality to fit Rand's mistakes.

"This applies to all choices, including one's actions toward other men. It requires that one possesses a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible". [The Ethics of Emergencies]

(And the so-called "sacrifice" of a queen in order to win the game self-refutes that accepted and traditional meaning of sacrifice. Giving up the queen is the moral, non-sacrificial act).

Bullshit. Rand's dumb notion of "sacrifice" is not the "accepted and traditional" meaning. Hers is the opposite. She just made the shit up. It was one of her bouts of not thinking clearly, or of getting too deep into the romantic creative trance.

Get over it, Tony. She was wrong about some things. Occasionally she was even embarrassingly, ridiculously wrong. She had some brilliant ideas, but you don't honor them by defending her really stupid ones.

J

[Jonathan]

Please, I like America!!!

Fancy schmancy! What a cinch! Go fly a kite! Cat got your tongue. Hill of beans. Betty Boop, what a dish. Betty Grable, nice gams.

I say can you see! I say can you see! I... I say...

Fuck Hitler. Fuck Hitler!

J

Not buying it.

So, I did not shoot a touchdown? My pleas were not, how you Americans say, "convincing"?

J