Introduction Thread

[Charles R. Anderson]

Hello,

I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in early 1965 as a senior in high school, subscribed to The Objectivist Newsletter and got all of the back issues. That summer I decided I was an Objectivist, though I had pretty much known that while reading Atlas Shrugged. But, of course, I was already an independent thinker with the highest regard for reality, reason, productive achievement, and Capitalism. Objectivism sure helped to integrate my knowledge, however.

I am also a materials physicist. This is not because of John Galt or Rearden metal, but because I decided to be a physicist when I was 10. Then the summer before I read Ayn Rand's works, I had attended a summer program at Brown University for high school students and decided that I liked the investigation of materials best. I have my own laboratory now where I love solving materials problems for industry.

It appears that the fine people in this forum have a genuine interest in learning and understanding things. I respect that. Our commitment is to using our rational faculty for that purpose. We will all make mistakes. It we do not, then we are not very actively trying to apply our minds to life. Mistakes are a part of the learning process. Philosophy is a tough subject, as is science. The real world is very complex. We just keep doing our best to understand it. We can all use a great deal of help in doing that. I thank goodness every day that I am not the first man trying to figure out how to use fire, invent the wheel, plant wheat and corn, make tread and cloth, understand the need for clean water, make many vaccines, make steel, railroads, planes, TVs, computers, SEMS, XPS spectrometers, and a million other things that others figured out and gave me for almost nothing.

Objectivism, as a philosophy for living, is not only about being able to live alone with reality. It is also about being able to live so much better because we live among civilized human beings. Some Objectivists miss the importance of this. I do not believe the good people here are ignorant of this.

So, from the start, you have my thanks. I expect to enjoy your company immensely.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Charles,

Great to see you here. You are one of the wise ones.

I really look forward to your posts.

Michael

[Kat]

Hi Charles, I'm very glad to see you here. Seems like you were MIA for awhile. We missed you. Please make yourself at home. I look forward to seeing you around here, too.

Kat

[michaelpatrick]

Hello Objectivists,

I am relatively new to the site. I signed up a few months ago but I have yet to really get my feet wet. Now is the time.

When I first came upon the site I was very relieved to see a forum with such a "casual" atmosphere. Since reading the first few chapters of The Fountainhead I have long wished to converse with individuals who truly understood the ideas being discussed in Rand's books. It seems that we finally have a place.

I have been familiar with Objectivism for about 12 years now. During college I was heavily engrossed in reading everything that I could about Rand and/or Objectivism. Since then I have varied my level of reading and discussion regarding the subject. I have maintained my level of personal commitment to the beliefs despite a lack of support and understanding from most of my fellow humans.

I look forward to being inspired by the ideas exchanged here.

Michael Perry

[Charles R. Anderson]

Thanks, Michael and Kat for the welcome. I have spent at least 12 hours trying to catch up on the content of this new site and I have barely made a dent in it. I am really enjoying it.

Thanks for the compliment, Michael. As you know, I think that achieving wisdom is the real aim of seeking knowledge. If I were the best materials physicist ever in this world (I am not), I might have precious little wisdom. I think of wisdom as knowing how to live life well. Having given this much thought, I am always finding that there is much more to think about. Life is very complicated.

One thing is certain: we either stand still in gaining wisdom, we go backwards with excessive theoretical analysis, or we risk the experiment to anchor ourselves to reality. In science, the experiment and the observation of reality is the reality check to going down many a false path in theory. The experiment proves a viewpoint to be right or wrong. Objectivists need badly to be more willing to be wrong. They need to be willing to do the experiment or to learn from history if the experiment has already been done. The chief experiment is our own life.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael Perry,

I'm glad to see you come out of lurking status. Welcome to the sunlight. And I'm very glad to see you. If it's good company, intelligent discussion and a warm fire on a cold day you want, you are in the right place. Also, nobody will take your head off if they disagree with you here.

Charles,

Objectivists need badly to be more willing to be wrong.

Amen.

Michael

[Charles R. Anderson]

Last night and tonight, my first effort to Log On was rejected, while my 2nd, identical entry, was accepted each night. Good thing I am stubborn!

Of course, the willingness to be wrong is meant to move one along the path to being more right. Given the complexity of life, this is always an on-going process.

Ayn Rand wrote many versions of Atlas Shrugged before she thought it was ready for publication. You have to write a first draft on any new writing project or indeed on any new idea and then you work to refine it and make it more right. This is also true of relationships such as friendships.

[L W HALL]

Hello Kat, Michael, everyone,

I am a 55 yr old male who has within the last yr or so become interested in the philosophy of Rand.

I have always had an interest in what made us tick and how we interact with the others and the world at large, but it was often sporadic in nature between raising a family, working and indulging in what was my favorite pastime for many years-drinking.

Although most of my pursuit has been to the esoteric side of theology and related fields of the mystics, I have always questioned the why and wherefore of how a system can be understood in a logical sense.

I was just a little familiar with some of Rand's writings from years ago as I had never actually investigated it and so when I came acroos someone posting some of her thoughts on another board a little over a year ago I was kind of surprised at how many of the ideas meshed with things I had already been wrestling with.

So through a winding course which took in ARI, ROR, SOLO, The Autonomist and now registering here I will say the journey is still in full swing and I am enjoying it immensely.

Thanks to everyone who make these sites possible through their work and effort.

L W

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

LW,

Welcome aboard. I have read some of your posts on RoR and I find that you are a person who takes ideas seriously. No hidden attempts at anything other than understanding and questioning.

This is always a joy because it makes us think. I hope we will make you think, too.

I look forward to your posts.

Michael

[L W HALL]

Thanks Michael,

You will find that we have mutual interests in applying objectivist principles to matters dealing with addiction as well. I have read the articles in the addiction forum along with what you wrote on ROR a while back and find them very insightful.

I have checked into this site off and on over the last couple of months but for some reason I thought I had already registered and had just misplaced my password.

As I was perusing the site last night I had this really great brainstorm; why don't I look at the membership list to see if I was on there. Well 'duh' I wasn't so I registered.

I look forward to my association with this site and the membership.

L W

[Mike Hardy]

Hello. I'm new here, but several of you have seen

me before.

I tried to upload my infamous August 1999 drivers

license photo, but it seems it's too big. It's that the

following URL:

http://www.math.umn.edu/~hardy/hardy.jpg

[Ellen Stuttle]

Hello. I'm new here, but several of you have seen me before.

Well, if it isn't...

How did you find us, Mike? Through the scurrilous mentions on other lists?

L. N. S.

___

[Mike Hardy]

Hello. I'm new here, but several of you have seen me before.

Well, if it isn't...

How did you find us, Mike? Through the scurrilous mentions on other lists?

L. N. S.

___

Satan, the Archangel Gabriel, and the ghost of Ayn Rand appeared

to me and informed me. (Maybe it was mentioned elsewhere on the

web, too.)

Ellen, I had the impression that you and Roland Pericles had gone

off to the remoter parts of the Himalayas together to hunt for the

Abominable Strawman. What else could explain the recent siilence

of that grate philosopher and alumnus of the Navel Academy, and

your own silence over on ATL2? (Or does Roland's silence explain

yours?) What can Jeff Riggenbach do for a living it he's not doing

Roland's spelll-checking? I was hoping Roland woud explain to us

why Franklin Roosevelt wanted a nude eel. Or his view on Ayn Rand's

article titled "Tomb It May Concern". Or any of his other profound

incites.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen, I had the impression that you and Roland Pericles had gone off to the remoter parts of the Himalayas together to hunt for the Abominable Strawman. What else could explain the recent siilence of that grate philosopher and alumnus of the Navel Academy, and

your own silence over on ATL2? (Or does Roland's silence explain

yours?)

Roland is in bondage in Texas, whereto JR has recently moved. I announced as a New Year's Resolution that I was shutting up on ATL2. Gotta keep abreast of the times, Dr. Hardy.

__

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mike,

Welcome to our home. You sure look like a live one and this looks like it's going to be fun.

Good to see you. (I have asked for Kitten to look at your picture and do her magic.)

Michael

[Kat]

Hi Mike and LW. Nice to meet you both. I look forward to interacting with you online. Mike, I sized down your photo and now you are one of the fabulous ones.

FYI, the avatar picture setting is 120 x 100 pixels. If anyone else is having trouble posting a pic, just email it to me at katdaddy@comcast.net and I'll set you up. I'd love to see everyone's pic up as it builds a stronger sense of community.

Once again, welcome to Objectivist Living!

Kat

[Mike Hardy]

I announced as a New Year's Resolution that I was shutting up on ATL2. Gotta keep abreast of the times, Dr. Hardy.

__

Roland might say that won mussed keep a breast of the times.

[Donna Knoke Cobb]

We are Donna and Danny Cobb and live the Objectivist lifeway. We both dream of a world where John Galt exists. We are producers and the following will offer a brief idea of what and who we are.

Our home is in Birmingham, Alabama so, we often feel like the lone wolves in a sea of leeches! ha ha! java script:emoticon('8-[')

Anxious

Danny is a safety specialist for an Alabama Power Company power generation plant and I am an archaeozoologist.

We are both cavers and have been exploring caves for over twenty years. We also love to camp, sail, are big into astronomy and bird watching. We are the humans for six cats and three tortoises.

We look forward to the discourse and meeting y'all!java script:emoticon(':D')

Very Happy

Donna

[Aggrad02]

Hello, and Welcome Donna and Danny.

Dustan

[Kat]

Hi Donna and Danny and welcome to Objectivist Living. We hope you enjoy it here. We are glad to have you here.

Kat and Michael

[Grinder]

I'm currently doing some reading on Objectivism, and am hoping I can pester the more knowledgeable here with questions as they occur to me. And as to "more knowledgeable" I can't imagine that that wouldn't include just about, oh, 100% of the posters here. 8) I have very little in the way of a technical background in philosophy, just a few courses in my undergraduate days. I've read all of Rand's novels and several of her other works. What I have NOT done is come up with any sort of a systematic approach to her work, and that is what I am fumbling around with at the moment. The weakness of being an auto-didact I suppose.

In any event, I joined a few weeks ago, and have lurked off and on since that time. In general I like the atmosphere here, though I am curious why so much of people's time and energy is spent discussing the chicanery going on on other forums and blogs. It doesn't seem like a very productive use of your time from where I'm sitting, though perhaps if somebody could give me a "Reader's Digest" of the history here maybe this would start making a bit more sense. In any event, I can certainly skip over those threads, since they're usually marked as such. Other than that, this seems like a great place with great people.

As to the rest of it, I'm a CPA living in CT, age 42 with a nine month old little boy. For the moment I'd rather not share my real name or picture.

Patrick

[Chris Grieb]

I am Chris Grieb. I live in Washington DC were I have been interested in Objectivism since the early 1960ths. I took courses at NBI in several cities including NYC. I will be attending the TOC Summer Seminar at Chapman College. Is anyone else going to be there. I look forward to hearing from all of you.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Patrick (Grinder),

Welcome to OL and make yourself at home.

Edit - Your attitude about the complaints of other sites is music to my ears. This is exactly the attitude I hope will prevail in the end. We have works to write, feats to achieve, friends to make, and good productive lives to lead - not sites or people to bitch about. Bravo.

Chris,

I look forward to meeting you at the TOC seminar. I am pleased to be interacting with you online.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; Thanks for the welcome. I'm looking forward to meeting and talking to you also.

[Chris Grieb]

I really like this site. I was just looking at Sciabarra corner. The other topics you deal with are done well. One further thought about Chris Sciabarra, my few dealing with him have always been very good. I think the book Russian Radical is a very good atttempt at a very important topic. I think Diana's attack on Chris could be predicted. Thanks again for the site.