Kevin Haggerty

Heya Victor, I accept your apology, gladly. Jeez, art is my all-consuming obsession, so yeah, deeply important. And truly, I recognize that this is the case chez Pross as well, so yes, I see a commonality there and always have. (I'd hoped for some direct discussion of my thoughts on Pollock in the other thread, but I totally understand if that moment has passed for you.) And yeah, I do try to keep my comments on this board at least conversant with what I know of Objectivism. My big problem with Rand's position as you state it here is summed up in this sentence: The equation of "sense of life" with a single "point" of view, that a human being has a single "sense of life," as if all one's art must express the same basic things over and over again, strikes me as needlessly one dimensional--even a little naïve, come to think of it. I have a more complex sense of self. As I've matured as an artist, I've learned to trust my subconscious to guide me when my conscious mind resists. Sometimes my art knows me better than I do, if you know what I mean. That there is no room for an aesthetic "minority report" in one's oeuvre, seems to invite denial and dishonesty. Rand seems to talk about one's "deepest values" as if it weren't a plural but a monolithic, unchanging singular. So if, say, I have some very nihilistic feelings at times, and recall with some sorrow and regret a time in my life when I was given over to them, I mustn't make art expressing it--or if I do, I must make it absolutely clear that I repudiate it. As a viewer or reader, I tend to find such art preachy and condescending, y'know? As an artist, I want constantly to challenge my charished beliefs as a way of getting the most honest work from myself that I can. I think art should respect its viewers enough to simply lay it all out there for them to draw their own conclusions. While we're on the subject of Rand, I'd like to make another comment about The Fountainhead. I know I am by no means alone here when I say that I found the character of Howard Roark fascinating and even inspiring as a portrait of an artist who will not be trifled with; an artist who's obsessive commitment to his genius is absolute. But I don't see him as the healthiest soul I've ever encountered. All that staring through people as if they weren't there is not a good sign. And his shock that he might be thinking about another person at all after having had violent sex with her, though it rings true to his character absolutely, gave me a chill. But I recognize that there is something slightly inhuman (or maybe just inhumane) about artistic obsession. At times artists can completely disregard our physical bodies or our relationships with "mere" flesh and blood humans. Surely, you can remember drawing for so long at one sitting that you damaged the nerves in your fingers or hand? Or perhaps lost 10 pounds in a few days time because you "forgot" to eat in the midst of inspiration? And what artist worthy of the name, hasn't been guilty of acting as if our closest friends or lovers are really inessential baggage from that annoying "other life" outside of art? Thing is, non of this would be too remarkable if it weren't for Rand's entirely extratextual insistance that Roark represents her "ideal man," that somehow Roark embodies human (not just artistic) perfection. So, interestingly, I think to her mind her novel would absolutely conform to her concept of art as being reflective of her "highest values" while I find that her novel conforms to my more pluralistic (if you will) sense of self and a more complex, ambivalent characterization of the artistic temperment. Put another way, I find a more "warts and all" approach to my "spiritual autobiography" more fullfilling than being the p.r. man for my "highest values." Perhaps this is why I find value in Abstract Expressionism where you do not. I recognize that I am at times confused, lost, chaotic--that my world and my self can be mysterious to me--and that out of these apparently negative states, artistic riches can be forged. I think confusion, loss and chaos are themselves worthy subjects for contemplation. I see in Abstract Expressionism a reflection of my own inner "creative chaos" and I am grateful to artists like Pollock and Kandinsky for having the self-discipline to capture it on canvas. -Kevin

Hey Ellen, Thanks for your reply. I guess the word "autobiography" has a certain "journalistic" connotation--"I was feeling glum so I made a glum painting," but I didn't mean to suggest that art is some kind of glorified diary entry. That was why I qualified it as emotional autobiography, to distance it from literal day to day happenings. Perhaps I could call it "spiritual autobiography" as long as folks trusted that I wasn't trying to import any christianoid nonsense into the discussion, because art properly connects us to our deepest natures. With respect to Beethoven, I would say that he indeed had to reach deep to come up with "cheerful" in the face of incipient deafness. One of the amazing powers of art is its ability to take our greatest pain and suffering and transmute it into beauty. And please don't mistake my use of the word "deep" to mean "ultra-serious" or "hifalutin"--a belly laugh comes from as deep a place in us as a sigh. As I understand it, art is a universal human need. Either we find the art we need in the culture around us, or we must create it ourselves. It is in its capacity as a reflector of our inner lives that I think of art as intrinsically autobiographical. When we say we love a certain work of art, don't we mean that it expresses some deep unspoken part of ourselves? -Kevin

Hey Brant, I doubt Victor's gonna be able to tell you where art ends and abstraction begins because these are not objective categories. Paint-on-canvas, and paint-not-on-canvas is an objective distinction anyone can make. But as it has been demonstrated with Mondrian's three "tree" paintings in the other thread, the supposed line between "the figurative" and "the abstract" can be as whimsical as whether the artist chooses to name the thing "apple tree" or "untitled #26." Victor has stated that FLW's stained glass windows were "design" and not "art" because they lacked figurative elements. But that begs the question, "What about designs and patterns that include figurative elements?" Would a kitschy little pink and yellow bunny and easter egg pattern on the border of a Hallmark card be considered art because design "by definition" is non-figurative? How 'bout this: what if we were to take one of FLW's stained glass designs and put a big smiling face of Bugs Bunny in the middle of it. As far as Victor has let us in on his objective definition, such a thing would have to be considered art because of Bugs's mug learing at you. Okay then, objectively speaking, how small could Bugs Bunny's visage be before the work ceased to be art? You think we could get an "official ruling" on how many centimetres across the figurative element within a graphic work needs to be in order to comfortably call the thing art? What about uncomfortably? Hey, I'm a artist, with oodles of experience, so here's my personal non-objectivist, but about as objective as I think the subject can bear, definition: All art is emotional autobiography. I mean this from the point of view of its creator as well as the point of view of its audience (the first audience for any work is the artist him or herself). When a work of art moves us, it connects with our own experience of life as we've lived it. It puts a name or a face to something we've known. And we honor the work with the title "art." If the thing doesn't move us, who cares what it is? It doesn't matter to us and we move on to things worthy of our time. And as for the artist who creates something that doesn't touch him deeply, he's a hack or a poser. I'm always happy when someone enjoys a work of art that I cannot, because I recognize that the vast majority of people in our culture who've chosen to live as artists, do so against great odds. Setting out to be an artist in the first place is usually an heroic action in itself, worthy of praise. Rand's The Fountainhead illustrates what I mean to a "T." Yes there are orthodoxies, and yes, untalented fools can attatch themselves to this or that style or movement and "rise in the ranks" like a Peter Keating, but Rand shows us the inner misery to which such choices invariably subject the individual. Peter is a perfect example of the would-be artist who chooses to create that which means nothing to him. Peter doesn't know himself or really care to--he has no self esteme--and that is why he is unable to create art--not because he has no talent or skill, but because he is shallow. What if I were to say that real art is deep and fake art is shallow? I think we could all agree that Victor's examples of post-modern gimmickry are shallow works. Our ability to create art is dependant on our ability to appreciate art. Our ability to appreciate art of any kind is the product of introspection, a product of intimacy with ourselves. One of the most exciting things to my mind about art, is that when we love a work of art, it makes us all aspiring artists when we make the effort to share our love for the thing with others. Art evokes aesthetic contemplation, and when we express our thoughts about a given work of art we are spontaniously formulating our own theories of art on the spot. I like this definition of mine, because anyone can easily apply it to any of the works we've discussed in this vast, viral multi-thread. We may disagree on how well a work reflects our lives, but I think the disagreements would make for rewarding conversation. Try it, it's fun! I'll start us off. My Bugs Bunny stained glass window idea, no matter how big his head is, would not qualify as art in my book. Of course, I could give it the title "Straw Man" and it might get some play in certain circles. ;) -Kevin

Hey Jeff, Haven't had much time to devote to your comments about my post #530. I'm frankly finding the constant activity on this thread a little overwhelming. Also, I was sorta waiting to hear from Victor after his surprising and hopeful statement here: But his subsequent comments, not the least of which being his umpteenth character assassination of Pollock in post #599, have left me little hope of it coming to anything, y'know, which is really too bad. I hope I'm wrong about this. (Victor?) So, anyway, another reason I have been putting off responding to you is that your comments about my post come across as, well, pretty dismissive actually (don't worry, I get that from a lot of Oists). The more thought I give to your post, the more simply annoyed I find myself getting at what looks like flippancy. Forgive me if I'm wrong. I put a great deal of thought into that post, and it actually represents at least a couple of decades of my personal investigation into Abstract Art and the nature of perception. And what you handed me was a short series of one-liners, dismissive quips and quibbling inversions. You act here, as many an Objectivist before you has acted, as a sort of conversational hangin' judge--you take a quick glance over my "case," and pronounce your sentence. Next! As far as I can tell, this is a natural consequence of the Oist fixation on logical argumentation as the one and only criterion for the validity of someone else's point of view (that and the fetishistic obsession with passing judgement as quickly and often as possible). Y'all can have your "sense of life" and your "stomach feelings," but the rest of us have to be forensic club all-stars. (OL is a shining counter example in online Objectivism--speaking of which, I gotta thank Ellen and Michael and Jonathan and Christian and Dragonfly for your very kind words: thank you!) You know how it goes, Jeff, if something doesn't make immediate and irrefutable sense to some Oists, then it must be spurious garbage, or an elaborate con job along the lines of The Emperor's New Clothes. Or if, reason forbid, the person you're talking to is unable to put his thoughts in perfect Randian terms, why then, he must be a Toohy or a Keating trying to destroy you all. (Oists will happily hand out pages of AR to read if you don't find their arguments compelling at first glance, but any attempt to tell an Oist that he needs to study up on a non-Oist approved subject is met with--well, you know.) And so Oists dismiss entire ways of life after the most cursory investigation--the whole of human experience has already been summed up for them by Miss Rand and she has supplied them with the master-shorthand for all discussions of all matters. Or, I suppose, they'd say it was Logic itself (channeled by its great prophet) that supplied them with the glorious power to dismiss countless points of view out of hand. Ok, so let's break this down. You're saying that our minds seek out visual order. I will agree with this part, and say it might have something to do with why you see order in this painting. It may be less the artist's intentions than it is your own head desperately searching for some type of order in that mess. You actually confess to exactly this later on. Also, if you ask a non-artist to draw an eye they draw...an eye? What doese an artist draw when they are told to draw an eye (supposing we are talking about a human eye)? It doesn't seem like there's a lot more to it than the shape, at least not as far as we can percieve. You apparently can't imagine that a visual artist's trained perception could be appreciably greater than--or meaningfully different from--yours; that such a difference in visual ability might give the trained artist information--knowledge--to which you have little or no access. This is exactly the kind of intellectual complacency I see again and again amongst Oists. They think because they've thought five minutes about a thing, they understand it perfectly and disarmingly, and far more clearly than people who've devoted their lives to the subject. If an Oist can't puzzle a thing out with his own imperfect mind at first glance, then it must be unreal or at least irrelevant. No, Jeff, eyes don't look like the CBS television logo, no one's eyes do--anymore than the human head looks like a yellow smiley face, or the human form looks like a stick figure. Not really. It's an abstraction, a symbol, a kind of visual shorthand, which, for the non-visually inclined, often stands in for the actual thing. A skilled artist like Picasso may render the eyes of his subject in such a way, but he does so to describe his own consciousness and frame of mind, his willingness to disregard the subject in front of him, to disfigure her even, in favor of his own genius. So what you're saying is that you can't actually see anything in it? That may be because there isn't actually anything there. No, Jeff, if I was saying that I would have said that. I was talking about what I call an "associative field." (Pet peeve # 4,345-a: writing lengthy posts in which I try to introduce a new concept for discussion, only to have my detractors glom on to one or two lines they think they can score off of.) Mere chaos and randomness is rarely very tantalizing as an image. But with the best Abstract Art, one's associations can go on as long as one looks at the work. The way the human mind works, as soon as it finds a hidden image, you can't not see it. It's like those picture puzzles we've all solved when we were kids of the "hidden in this picture are..." variety. Once you've found the image disguised in the tree bark, you really can't not see it. It's there, drawing your eye, undercutting the larger composition. This is exactly what does not happen in a great work by Pollock or Kandinsky. As you contemplate the work (and no, glancing at a jpeg on the Internet doesn't qualify as contemplation) your eye is drawn in so many directions, new relationships and interrelationships of form revealing themselves constantly. Forget for the moment whether it's Art or not, what the abstract painter is attempting to do is very difficult and very difficult procedures demand skill. But let's say one lacks imagination, or really doesn't like having one's imagination challenged in this way, there's plenty up there on the canvas of a strictly objective nature if you take a moment to understand the thing in context. Imagine yourself as a great detective and the work of art before you is your "clue" as to the whereabouts and intentions of the artist. When one stands before a painting like this, the astute observer recognizes the many hours of painstaking deliberation and choice that went into making it (however wasted you may believe those hours to be)--choices of color, of proportion, of technique, materials, tools, media (yes, Pollock actually decided to drip his paint onto the canvas, rather than use a brush--it was not an accident). A work of art, any work of art, is also at least a partial record of the artist's process during its creation. As a student of art, there is much to be gained from observing the artist's process refracted through the finished work. Pollock had a clear intention of bringing the viewer closer to his process. He called his paintings like Lavender Mist "action paintings" because they were a record of his actions while painting it. Where more conventional and naturalistic artists seek to disguise their techniques in favor of verisimilitude, Pollock celebrated the action of painting itself, the joy of creation itself. (I'm not saying that one can't see the artist's joy of creation in figurative art, but in a figurative work, it can never be the main subject.) Hey, there's a subject: the artist in the midst of the creative process--to an unskilled observer dropping into the artist's mind, the inner landscape might indeed seem equivalent to an "explosion in a yarn factory." Or imagine yourself in the midst of some all-consuming project at your desk; your mom comes in and sees what to her look like random piles of paper and broken-backed books and starts putting what she can only see as "garbage" in the trash, putting things back in "order." At such times we are in the midst of "creative chaos" which is really a highly ordered arrangement, albeit unconventional in the extreme and difficult for the unsympathetic observer to grasp. This paragraph is applicable to almost anything that doesn't have form. By saying this about anything that doesn't have an explicit form you can consider absolutely anything art. No, Jeff. Read it again. I'm talking about aesthetics. No one gets mad at a mere random pile of undifferentiated matter. A photo, say, of your "explosion in a yarn factory" would make no one want to lash out ('cept maybe the factory owner). It's only something another man calls "art" that elicits such a response from the man who doesn't understand it. In fact, this layman's ultimate put-down "I could do better" is not reserved for Abstract Art alone, but foisted on examples from all arts in all genres, and it is almost always an empty, extravagantly ignorant boast. -Kevin

I'm so ambivalent about posting in this thread. On the one hand, as an artist living and working among artists for most of my life, and someone who loves reason, I feel I have a stake in this conversation. On the other hand, Objectivists have such a powerful tendency toward strong opinions without a lot of personal investigation (I don't mean knowledge, I mean investigation) or (perhaps more importantly) any sympathy for people who have dedicated their lives to pursuits Objectivists tend not to have any interest in, I fear my insights will be wasted. On top of which, there are so many angles from which to approach the beast! But to get started here, I think I'll limit my thoughts to the issue of "skill" in Abstract Art. In my experience, good abstract work requires a lot more real skill and a far more sophisticated and individualistic "eye" to pull off, than good figurative work. I liken abstract art to jazz or free verse. Anyone can pick up a sax and start improvising, but not everyone can play like Charlie Parker. And anyone can write some sentences and arrange them haphazardly down a page in lines of varying length without giving the T. S. Eliots of the world anything to worry about. These forms, jazz and free verse poetry, are superficially unstructured, but that doesn't mean that all jazz and all free verse is crap. Certainly, many many folks without the dicipline to get a real music education or to study the full history of poetic form can ape the acheivements of giants and call themselves "artists." Seems to me that most of Victor's examples of crap are the works of Abstract Art's second handers and posers and psuedo-intellectual wags. But let's return to the father of Abstract Expressionism, Mr. Jackson Pollock and his infamous masterwork, Lavender Mist: I'm always very impressed with this work. How anyone can take a good look at it and not see a profoundly subtle, ordering mind at work, is pretty amazing to me. No, really, I'm not being fanciful in the least. To my mind a good piece of Abstract Art creates what I call a profound associative field. And that is extremely difficult to do. Let me explain. Our minds seek out visual order almost compulsively. Our brains are hardwired to make the visual data we receive comprehensible. Our minds are often so obsessive about creating order that it can be very difficult to simply see what is in front of us. Beginning art students usually have to "unlearn" the mind's symbolic visual language in order to be able to draw accurately what they simply see. Ask a non-artist to draw a human eye, for instance, and you will likely get a familiar image of a circle within an almond shaped elipse. It can take weeks of hard work for the student to be able to lay these compulsive symbols aside, but once he does, a whole world of magnicent complexity and mystery opens up. The whole world is new and unknown and must be drawn to be understood! So, to my mind, a great work of Abstract Expressionism like Lavender Mist is practically a master class in unprejudiced perception in a single work. Anyone can throw random slashes of paint at a canvas, but it takes an extraordinary eye to keep the image from resolving one way or another. One can stare at a cloud and see a face or an animal, but that's as far as you get with clouds. The associative field of a great piece of Abstract Art can seem nearly infinite--the moment you think you see something in it, the larger context of the work refutes it. There is no face or animal anywere in Lavender Mist--take a good long look at it and try to track the things you almost see in it. Is Lavender Mist flat, or does it express depth? Flat like a map or deep like a foggy morning landscape? Are there objects in the mist? People? Houses? Points of fire? A city? A battle? A line of monks walking slowly up a hill? And yet, like the beginning art student who doesn't really look at what's in front of him but instead looks for the symbols his brain is preconditioned to seek out, the too-literally minded viewer of Lavender Mist may become frustrated because his mind's attempts to deliniate and classify what he sees come to nothing. His inability to find the familiar and the known may cause him to lash out at the work, to try to domesticate it that way. What crap, he says. Meaningless chicken scratch! A child could do better. But what such a viewer misses out on, I think, is the opportunity Pollock grants him to experience the viewer's own creative soul. What meaning do we seek to impose on the work? What thoughts and associations, unbidden, arise within our own perceptive field? To look into Lavender Mist and really see the work, is to participate in the Artist's creative process. When we look at Lavender Mist on it's own perceptual terms, we are all artists caught in the moment of creation. What I find most troubling about this whole discussion, though, is the way it tends to make visual art over as a sub-genre of literature (and literature a sub-genre of philosophy, for that matter); as if the visual in art were merely the illustration of the artist's entirely prosaic thoughts and principles. As if there's nothing worth investigating on purely visual terms, with metaphors that have no relationship to the written word. Why paint an image if you can explain it away in a few paragraphs of text? Why would anyone want to do that? -Kevin

Hey Jeff, I'm very sorry to hear about the trouble in your house. I think Michael is right in focusing on this issue of you growing up and therefore, to some degree, growing away from your mom. It is an innevitable part of becoming a man. You and your mother both will grieve the loss of your boyhood in your own ways and for your own reasons. Hopefully, the two of you will find some common ground there at some point. But for now, AR and Oism, are in some ways the most obvious signs of you growing away from your mom. It may be that deep down, when your mom hears you talking about Objectivism, she hears you leaving. See what I mean? Rather than deal with the pretty overwhelming fear of losing you, she focuses her fear and anger on Oism. So I think Michael is spot on when he councels you to reassure your mom that you love her and that there will always be a place for her in your heart, regardless of whether or not she's an Objectivist. I suspect she's afraid that you may decide that since she is not an Objectivist that you might denounce her or otherwise "break" with her, just as AR broke with NB. Hey, Michael, maybe you could start a thread for people to discuss "Loving the Non-Objectivists in Our Lives." I'm sure Jeff isn't the only Objectivist here who has an important relationship with a non-Oist. It's remarkable to me that your mother wants what's best for you and that her actions make you all the more committed to studying Objectivism. You see how, subconsciously, the two of you are in agreement? She wants what's best for you and you believe that studying Oism is best for you. If we look past the surface, you can see that your mom is getting exactly what she wants! You know the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for..." -Kevin

You mean, like this?

Ridiculous. You cast disagreement as initiation of force. No, actually, I don't. You know, for a really smart guy, you sure do a lot of sloppy paraphrasing. I think communication requires an authentic desire to understand the other person's point of view. I see an emotional component to successful communication. Where people share mutual respect and extend the benefit of their doubts to the other person, communication tends to flourish. I find that certain emotions, like contempt, disdain and hostility definitely impede communcation (of anything other than contempt, disdain and hostility, of course). You don't show a lot of evidence of a desire to understand, Shayne. You have a way of arrogating near a priori knowledge of other people's beliefs and intentions. I have no doubt you have a thorough understanding of the writings of Ayn Rand, but that doesn't make you a good judge of other poeple, or their motives. You seem to be far more interested in demolishing other points of view than understanding them, owing to the fact that you've spent so much more of your time in this thread attempting the former than acheiving the latter. Time and again, you've painted another poster's argument as the most absurd crap and told them they don't know what they're talking about. No, Shayne. It is you who refuses to take the time to find out what the others here are talking about. If I wanted to say disagreement was force, I could have done just that. But I didn't, as anyone can see. How you can honestly imagine that someone coming to this board would hold such an asanine view as mere disagreement = force is beyond me. But I find your response typical of a lot of intellectual bullies I've known because they never take responsibility for their bullying behavior. I'm equating the attempt to force another person to accept your assessment of their inner state to be an innitiation of force. Of course, it's not force on the order of aiming a loaded gun at someone, but it is none the less force, pressure, an attempt to control and dominate. You give the person you're talking to no choice but to allow themselves to be dominated by you (at least to the degree that they must explain and justify themselves at your command) or to leave the conversation. One can disagree without discounting the other person's self-assessment. You don't seem to differenciate between disagreeing and attempting to dominate others. I gotta wonder how comments like this serve you. I wonder if you feel they contribute to the discourse in any positive way. To my mind, this is exactly the kind of dominating and bullying behavior I'm talking about. Such comments reflect very badly on you. But perhaps I'm missusing the idea of "force" or using it in a way that's inconsistant with AR. So could you tell me (or anyone here, for that matter) according to AR, is there any kind of force other than physical force? Is there no coersion or bullying without physical violence? I certainly wasn't talking about physical force. I was thinking more in terms of verbal abuse and manipulation, dominating and controling behavior. I think people retaliate in kind to that sort of thing all the time--and I think it greatly impedes communication and undermines mutual respect. I agree--but if the person's answers in contradictions you certainly can't give much weight to his account. You can't square a circle nor "communicate" with someone who makes no sense. We reach! (sorry, I was addicted to Star Trek when I was a kid and every now and then I have flash-backs. ) Glad to hear it. -Kevin

Hey Mikee. I think this is a fundamental tool of communication and respect, as long as there's a big ol' question mark at the end. It can be a little painstaking when you have to offer several paraphrases of a person's point of view before they agree with your assessment--sometimes you both end up trading paraphases of paraphrases and that could try anybody's patience--but when the person I'm talking to finally say, "Yes, that is what I was trying to get at" I find the process well worth the trouble. But as soon as a person asserts, "No, that's not what you meant at all, you don't know what you're saying, I'll tell you what you're saying..." any hope for an exchange of ideas is lost, because such a person has decided to innitiate force against the person they're talking to. The person has become an intellectual bully. Interestingly, often such folks do not perceive this, because they don't see the force coming from within them, but from our language itself. They believe it is logic which exerts the force; it is logic that forces the other person to conform to their view of things, they are but a passive messenger of the capital "T" truth. And just to make things as clear as I can for any would-be intolerationist out there: I'm not saying that it's "bad" to judge other people as being unaware of their true feelings or of the implications of what they say (plenty of us are!), only that if communication is your goal, then you must allow the other person to be the arbiter of what they meant and what they're trying to say. We are none of us perfect communicators, and it may take a couple goes at a subject before we've made ourselves clear. When I decide that a person is well and truly unaware of themselves and what the heck they're talking about, I understand that any further direct conversation with that person is a waste of my time and theirs. -Kevin

This is interesting, because I would say that the folks in your examples are specifically not acting on their emotions, that is, all their emotions. They're cherry picking, if you will, and cherry picking when it comes to reality is a real problem no matter what information you're trying to process. The girl feels a whole lot of pain and betrayal form being cheated on which she chooses to blank out. The guy who gets into fights likely lets one set of emotions (aggression, rage, low self-esteem) override many others (like fear, sorrow, and empathy). And so with any addictive behavior, the "high" outweighs the "low" because the addict has set his mind on removing the "low" and found a way to do it, at least in the short term. It is the addict's desire to avoid emotion, control it, remove what he thinks of as the "bad ones," that gets him in trouble in the first place. I would agree that such folk aren't being rational, but they aren't "being emotional" either. They're exercising very poor judgement. Judgement, not based on emotion, but judgement based on the false premise that the so-called "good" emotions they associate with their behavior, outweighs the "bad" emotions that innevitably follow. Relating to Victor's essay, it seems to me that, really, it's only certain emotions that do the majority of the "blinding." Interestingly, these emotions often blind the individual to other important emotions. I don't think the issue is whether a person is "ruled" by emotion or not. Everyone tries to be rational. They do. Seriously, drop the misanthropy and you will see that people are always making choices, always making judgement calls. Their actions make sense to them, the best sense they can make--"It seemed like a good idea at the time." Every action we take is preferable to some other, to our minds, less logical action. To the girl in your post it's not logical to dump her cheating boyfriend, because the benefits of being part of a couple outweigh the consequences--you gotta know she's tallying stuff up in her mind like that, it's how humans deal with problems. Man is a reasoning animal, reason is our tool for survival--which suggests that if we're surviving, we must be using our reason at least enough to keep us above ground. That's why the lady enjoins us to check our premises, it's our faulty premises (often fueled by emotion, to be sure) which mess us up, not our ungovernable emotional experiences. Healthy self-esteem is the emotional consequence of good premises. -Kevin

Well, they did a good enough job to have me fooled. Wait a minute, did I miss something? Weren't Mr. Jones talking about the Pre-raphaelites? Weren't he making a li'l jokey? Fra Angelico was in no position to "borrow" anything from Raphael unless he was a close up friend of Marty McFly. :bug:

Jeff, Shayne said in his posted response to Ivan "nothing's more vicious than an unsubstantiated attack." I thought he was saying that Ivan's remarks were unsubstanciated and constituted an "attack," ergo vicious to a degree that equals or exceeds all other viciousness. The reason is that the only certain knowledge we have of human nature is ourselves and our perceptions of other human beings. The only way that he can know that a particular person is "never" blinded by emotion, is to have working knowledge of their every moment. Hard to do, unless you're the person in question. He didn't say "it is possible" that a man might reach a point where he is never blinded by emotions, he said, "The truth is that *some* people are often blinded, some are rarely blinded, and some are never blinded." He knows this. I wonder how. Not if his statement is common to everyone's experience. Victor wasn't presenting a mathematical proof, he was generalizing. I doubt he was expecting anyone to come at his remarks from the angle Shayne chose. To me, nothing he said seemed at all outrageous or particularly question begging. Did it to you? -Kevin

Well you haven't said much other than to make a vacuous attack, so I'd think there's a lot more to say. Afraid of getting specific, or just don't know how to? Or, maybe you like tossing in non-objective criticisms of people who disagreed with you? That's the true irony here--tolerationists can't decide if they want to play nice or get even more vicious (since nothing's more vicious than an unsubstantiated attack--at least when I attack, I leave you the means to defend yourself). So calling your reaction to Victor's essay "strange" and characterizing it as "charged with emotion" constitute a "vicious" and "unsubstantiated attack" in your book? Seems to me, Ivan was making a pretty harmless observation, harmless unless you seek to deny having any feelings. Certainly, if he made such an observation of me, I would in no way feel attacked, only described, accurately or inaccurately as the case may be. There's a context here, Shayne, one of which it would seem every poster on this thread other than yourself is fully aware. Within that context which you deny, your original post seems strange to me as well. Your second post doubly so. Are you suggesting that your posts in this thread are not "charged with emotion?" Or is that an entirely irrelevant comment in your eyes--your emotions are not an appropriate topic for rational discussion? Or is describing someone as "charged with emotion" de facto pejorative? Or is it simply against the rules to discuss someone's emotional state, because it's ad hominem? The trouble is, Shayne, the topic at hand is our emotional states and their specific relevance to any discussion. Victor made the blanket statement that everyone is, from time to time, blinded by their emotions. You asserted that there are those who are never blinded by their emotions. That's quite an unsubstanciated statement of your own right there. The logical assumption is that you count yourself among that number. And thus, your own blindness or lack of blindness in the face of your emotions is specifically relevant to the discussion. If it ain't, then you need to substantiate your claim that such people exist, don't you? Where are they? Who are they? And how do you know they are never blinded by their emotions? -Kevin

Okay, Shayne, I've made my intentions clear and you continue to accuse me of being underhanded. You won't take my word for what my intentions are. You have that right, but the grounds you've given so far for your slander of me are slight and full of simple inaccuracies. You continue to ignore Rich Engle's post #3, which directly preceded mine. It was Rich who first spoke of "command and control" as anyone can read and it was Rich's post to which I replied. Rich's post is crucial, in my view, to the context of my post. This is a very active board. Like a lot of folks here, I don't have time to read everything posted, so I tend to read the posts of people who's ideas interest me. I read Rich's posts wherever I find them. That's why it is significant to the discussion that I don't know you and have no familiarity with your ideas. I glanced over your post, but didn't give it much thought. Rich's post, however, reminded me of who I used to be in college, so I replied--again, to his post with little or no reguard to yours. It seems clear to me that you didn't read Rich's post and now I wonder how much of mine you read before launching your salvo. I wrote: "The wonder of the Internet has made it possible for such otherwise miserable loners to find like-minded people and then band together in highly controled mutual admiration societies, fawning over each other and condemning the whole wide world at large." I didn't feel the need to specify what "highly controled mutual admiration societies" I was refering to. I expected that most people at OL would understand me perfectly. Rich Engle in particular, the man to whom my post was directed, certainly would. Far from making disingenuous retorts to you, Shayne, it turns out I inadvertantly left you out of the conversation when I assumed a context which you did not share. It happens. Now who's being disingenuous? Do you really expect a practicing Objectivist to take your snide comment at face value and think, "By jiggers, he's right! My values aren't Objectivist, they're Christian!" If you're gonna accuse an Oist of being Christian, you better have more evidence than this: How one can honestly get from a man acknowledging the human capacity for error to "he's Christian" I want to know. Explain it to me. And no, simply because A and B share one casually defined characteristic in common does not make them one and the same thing. Now here is where I suspect you are being disingenuous in spite of your being "blown away". Because as I said, I think it's clear from the progression here exactly why I thought you were replying to my point. Even if I suppose that you really were innocent and I made a mistake, I don't see how you can't see why I assumed you were responding to me. Your suspicious are misplaced. And, you got the progression dead wrong so any conlusion you reach based upon your understanding of the progression is dead wrong. And, your subsequent posts here serve only to confirm that you had a ready-made conflict which my comments to Rich triggered, and past which, you still refuse to see. -Kevin

Wow, Shayne. I want to answer your post as directly as I can. I'm a little blown away by it, to be honest. I try to choose my words very carefully, so I find it very disheartening when my intentions are so broadly misunderstood. I also feel a little hijacked, that you took my remarks and used them to fuel some old conflict you're carrying, the true context of which exists wholy beyond the scope of this thread. As Michael observed, I wasn't talking about you (I didn't even know your name was Shayne until just now). My personal reference, beyond my own obnoxious college persona (didn't I make that part clear, that I was speaking of my own intellectually disreputable past?), was the old SoloHQ. But more generally, I was speaking to this bizarre condemnation/banishment phenomanon in Oism throughout its history and to which we are daily witness now, in the antics over at ARI and the new SoloPassion, etc. My characterization of such folk may seem extreme to you, but I've never seen the kind of hostility and rage in print that I've seen in the past year or more of reading Objectivists duking it out online. But since I am talking to you now, I gotta make a couple observations: however logically you came by it, you conclude in your first post that Victor, a self-described objectivist of many years, is espousing Christian values. How do you honestly expect Victor to respond to such an accusation? Are you deliberately antagonizing him? If so, to what end? You claim to see my "true spirit" in my last post and imagine me snarling and call me vicious, my method "ad hominem." Were you intending to give me a dose, as you see it, of my own medicine? Because you seem to be perpetrating exactly what you accused me of. I think what happened is that you personalized my remarks. You imagined them as a "retort" to your own, when they were not. I think personalizing remarks that were never directed at us is a major cause of misunderstanding and a clear sign of emotionalism overwhelming reason. Now, I'm guessing you might accuse me of "ad hominem" for that last remark, as I clearly implied that you seemed to let your emotions cloud your judgement in your last post. But, seriously Shayne, when you set yourself up as an exemplum of humanity unblinded by emotion, don't you rely upon your own rational character as the crux of your argument? Haven't you yourself put it up for discussion? -Kevin

I agree that instructors allow artistic fashion/self-proclaimed iconoclasm to blind them to what's really going on in front of their faces, but I don't see that so-called "figurative art" deserves primacy. Just as Victor rails against the generation that came before him for it's arbitrary restrictions and dogmatism, so the modernists were railing against 19th century styles of denial and superstition. It's all very freudian to my mind--they're all just cutting off their spiritual fathers' balls.As I've said before, the artist is the last person I go to find out what his art is about. Modernist rhetoric is pretty meaningless outside its proper context of 19th century logical positivism and religious conservatism. As Ellen said, and I agree, abstract art often speaks to me about the nature of perception itself. Our minds produce "abstract forms" all the time, how cannot abstract form be a subject of art? I used to have nightmares about a white field hovering above me. It wasn't entirely white and it seemed to be alternately cloud-like and hard as marble. It terrified me more than any dream I can recall. It sat there floating, shifting, menacing me. I've painted it on several occasions. I've seen echoes of my menacing white field in several works of art, not the least of which is Pollock's Lavender Mist. -Kevin

I have never seen "command and control" work, though I've seen it tried time and time again. You know, I actually tried it myself for a while in college. I actually thought of myself as "a successful control freak" (at least I still had a sense of humor): just as it's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you, you can't be a control freak if you actually maintain control. Haha. The laugh was on me. The folk I've seen who claim to be "in control" of themselves (myself included), have proven upon closer examination to be miopic and hostile, extremely suspicious of disagreement, bringing their harshest condemnations out at the slightest sign of trouble--you know, trash first and ask questions later. This method is very successful at keeping you isolated, which makes it much easier to maintain your delusions of grandeur. The wonder of the Internet has made it possible for such otherwise miserable loners to find like-minded people and then band together in highly controled mutual admiration societies, fawning over each other and condemning the whole wide world at large. -Kevin

I gave my reasons in post #27.Y'know, I'm much more a psychology guy than a philosophy guy, so the question that keeps coming up for me in reading these threads on art is: Why do these folks prefer a narrow definition of art to a broad one? What does their stringent definition serve? What does it clarify? What evils does it prevent? Off the cuff, it seems to be simply elitist. Defining art as something I do, but Frank Loyd Wright, for instance, didn't do--lol--honestly, it strikes me as a tad egomaniacal. My grandma was fond of saying, "Anything done well is an art." That definition doesn't bother me at all. I find it encouraging, even enpowering and inspiring. If we bring our own creative power to our work we can make an art of it. But you folks are hunting some other game and I don't know why. Whenever I visit this site I think about the project of winning the hearts and minds of America over to Objectivism. How ya gonna do that by telling folks that most of what they consider to be art, just ain't? How about this: art is man-made beauty. And when I say man-made, I mean with intent--art is not made by accident, though accident is often a component of art as it can be in any endeavor. There are happy accidents. And as an artist, I've come to respect and trust my subconscious impulses. If I don't over-think things, wonderful things can happen. What the hell is beauty anyway? Does it exist, strictly speaking? Is it real? Is it important? I think beauty is about as important as it gets. To my mind, there is no higher calling than the project of increasing the amount of beauty in the world. -Kevin

I voted yes. We humans spend a good third of our lives (that's 30 years out of a life of 90) asleep and much of that time dreaming. I dare say, therefore, that what we experience in our dreams is important. I find something familiar to a lot of abstract art, something native to my awareness. It can put me in a very thoughtful frame of mind, as I think Michael mentioned in a different thread. "Yeah, but Kandinsky didn't say that that was what he was after," you may argue. And I say that the vast majority of artists shouldn't talk about their art. What the artist consciously intends and what the artist actually accomplishes are two very different things much of the time, and that's prolly for the best. I'd hate to read the obtuse and maudlin essays Shakespeare might have written about King Lear. Too much conscious control of one's art can easily lead to didacticism. By the same token, too much of the unintentional can simply fail to register in the viewer's mind as much of anything. And why does music get a pass here? Why aren't we puting Beethoven's synphonies up for ridicule? "Gimme car horns and cricket songs or it's just jibberish!" Look at a synphony orchestra, all these complex machines designed to render abstract (pure) sound, working together to creat vast abstract landscapes of noise. Why is that "art," and a Pollack drip painting a disgusting insult to human rationality? That infamous painting of Pollack's has always struck me as very musical. It's not a happy song it sings, by any means. It's painful and confused, yet full of longing and mystery. I look into that painting and I see a dark wood dappled with moonlight. I see a drunken man's insights blurred by the very thing that opens him to them. I see a man's pain transmuted into beauty, like in a Billie Holiday song. Have any of you actually seen these works? In person? There's no comparison. The first time I saw a Rothko first hand it moved me to tears. -Kevin

I've had dealings with cults. The Kung Fu school I attended for six years turned out to be a cult run by a "grandmaster" (I know, shoulda known right there) who considered himself the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. I had a friend bully me--ever so politely, of course--into attending some kind of recruiting party for Landmark Education. And in my Nietzchian college days I even went to work for Scientology on a dare--let 'em just try and brainwash me! The central problem I see with the phenomenon, from which all its other problems flow, is the cult's assumption of unique and essencial knowledge of reality. When a cult convinces you that they alone hold the key to essencial knowledge, you will do whatever it takes to stay connected to it. Then there's the way we humans tend to deal with epiphany. We tend to have such break-throughs so haphazardly throughout our lives that we can get really superstitious about them really fast. Say we've stuggled with low self-esteme all our lives and then we go to a Christian revival meeting and suddenly, inexplicably (at least for the moment) we feel loved and appreciated for ourselves alone. At this point our childish, superstitious, mechanistic/materialist inner-control-freak steps up and proclaims: "Ipso facto! It's the Christians that done it to me!" What is wrong with human beings? It's like a man stuck in a basement worshipping the stairs he used to climb out. So, to my mind, to the extent that Objectivism is a "closed system," it's cultic. To the extent that Ayn Rand is the unique source of Objective insight, she is the leader of a cult. To the extent that devotees of Objectivist doctrine try to bully me into believing as they do, they are acting as members of a cult. On the other hand, to the extent that Objectivism is acheivable spontaniously by anyone through personal introspection, it is simply a tool for improving one's judgement. To the extent that Ayn Rand is just a gifted fellow-traveler on the the road to truth, she is worthy of investigation. And to the extent that Objectivists simply state their ideas eloquently and publicly, encouraging outside opinion and debate--well, then you're prolly visiting the Objectivist Living website. -Kevin

Michael!!! From glancing at the title of this thread I assumed it was X-mas related, and since my honey-lamb and I are blissfully a-christmasical this, and most, years, I didn't read the body of your post! But back to the topic at hand: Yay and hurray and huzzah and splendid indeed! Congratulations! That is just the happiest news! I'm so happy you and Kat can wake up to each other every damn day of your lives now (if you so choose--what a great choice to have available to an heroic individual)! I'm really happy for you.

Casino Royale was my kind of James Bond movie, absolutely. The thing about Bond in the books was that he was something of a monster, my image of him was of a dog-faced killer as much as a handsome assassin. He was not someone you'd want over to your house. He was simply a dangerous person. Connery captured that as best he could given the constraints of late sixties-early seventies cinematic taste. One of the things I appreciated about Connery in the role was that he was never a pretty man--charismatic as the day is long, but never pretty. Connery's Bond was definitely a creature of earth, while the later Bond's always seemed to float by on a cloud by comparison. Of course the stories became more and more preposterous as the series continued, there was nothing grounding them to reality. Until now. Craig captures the same quality as Connery and adds a depth of character undreamt of in Connery's day. You never wondered about Bond's childhood or even his life before becoming a spy when Connery played him. He was simply Bond, always and forever: Bond Eternal. But Craig's performance oozes history, the sense of a man who has had to deal with tremenous consequences in his life. We see the costs of being Bond written on his face and though we may be in awe of his abilities we don't envy the man his life. It's not all dinner jackets and bikinis for this Bond. The best spy stories for me always have a profound meloncholy to them. The spy exists in the no-man's land between absolute loyalty and absolute cinicism. If they have greatness, it is utterly private, and they must keep it hidden as if it were their profoundest shame. Since Casino Royale is Bond's first story as a "double O," Craig is afforded the opportunity to show us how Bond learns these bitter truths about his chosen life and how he deals with them. An extraordinary performance really. As a Classics student, I can see in Craig's Bond echoes of Homer's Achilles. I hope Craig gets to continue in the role.

The story goes that I was drawing with crayons before I could walk (my mother's testimony). I don't have any of those drawings but I have (or had until it was lost in a move, several years ago) a cut-out picture of a blue tugboat on a blue sea against a pink sky my mother dated from when I was three. My memories tend to go back pretty far into early childhood and I remember making that picture. Though I got a certain level of support from my mother (she let me use her own scissors when I was still very young because the round edged scissors I was using just couldn't produce the intricate cuts I was aiming for), she was no art teacher. Neither of my parents gave me much encouragement, really; certainly not consistently. My mother was an alcoholic who would just as soon take a picture I drew next door to show it off to our neighbors as tear it from my hands and rip it to pieces right in front of me screaming at me to leave her the fuck alone. My closeted bisexual father feared that my every drawing was proof that I would grow up gay and responded to my pride in my accomplishments as an omen of impending personal doom. One summer they sent me to some old neighbor lady's oil painting "class" she held in her back yard where I learned nothing and wowed everyone. My few experiences with art instructors--the neighbor lady when I was in grade school, a high school teacher, a college professor--have all been marked by the teacher's weird envy and resentment and my own learning nothing. My father pushed me in the direction of academic performance and looked upon my art as a somewhat remarkable but freakish talent like tying knots with your tongue. As hinted above, my childhood was overshadowed by my parents' personal troubles and I chose drawing as my escape and my salvation. It's made my life as an adult professional artist (when I've even been able to call myself that) very difficult as I've had to learn--am still learning--that my creative power is a marketable skill and not a simple necessity of living, like eating and breathing (very hard to sell what you think of as "breathing"). There's an interesting analysis of the developmental process of drawing in childhood in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The book suggests that children first draw in symbols--the perfect almonds shaped eyes, the stick figures, the blue strip across the top edge of the picture to indicate "sky." As a child's mind develops, her perception grows beyond these symbols which leads to great dissatisfaction with her drawings until she gives up, telling herself, "I can't draw." I seem to have circumvented this model in part by simply making my symbols more and more complex as I grew up. Even as a gradeschooler I was obsessed with stylization. I remember choosing artists, notably cartoonists that I was particularly fond of (Albert Uderzo of Asterix and Obelix fame, Walt Kelly creator of Pogo, Maurice Sendak) and copying their styles. How would Uderzo draw Santa Clause? How would Walt Kelly draw the characters from Star Trek? I was always creating little worlds of characters in some particular style and working out how their world looked so it was all "of a piece." There was always some new style for me to crack so I never got frustrated with my limits. I remember often thinking as I drew, how much better I would be in five years, say. I remember wishing that I could go forward in time and bring back that ability to the present so I could be even better after those five years passed. From a young age I was aware of my drawing ability as something I was developing and perfecting over time. Where'd all this come from? For me, drawing is something that simply worked. It was something that I could wow people with seemingly from the word go. And it was something that never lost my interest. Something that I kept with in spite of constant discouragement from the people in my environment. For a lot of years I tried to focus my attention in other directions, but I always came back to drawing (and sculpting and painting), always returned to what I experienced as the native language of my soul. Thanks Victor for starting this topic and sharing your reminiscences with the rest of us. It's given me a lot to think about. -Kevin

Hey Michael, I'm sorry it's taken me several days to write this. If I had known what kind of reaction my remarks would get here, I wouldn't have posted them just before a major holiday weekend. (Major at least, around my house. Happy Celtic New Year, everyone!) At this point my desire to salvage the discussion has all but evaporated in the face of the crowd of well-spoken people who nonetheless seem hellbent on vehemently and harshly misjudging me. When people so self-righteously and flagrantly insult me as Jody and Victor have here, accusing me of a list of crimes I never even alluded to, I find it hard to justify answering them at all. But you are a different matter entirely, Michael. You and, of course, Barbara, though I have no apologies to make to her. I'm extremely grateful to Barbara for interceding so eloquently on my behalf. (Barbara, thank you so much for acting as my guardian angel in this thread--your honorary wings and halo are in the mail!) I'm so sorry you felt implicated in my remarks about Victor's article, Michael. You said my post was "one-sided" which is ironic to me, because I posted it in reaction to what I saw as a terribly one-sided discussion of intimacy and the Internet over which Victor was presiding. I found Victor's framing the debate as the true romantics vs. the nay-saying cynics and his high-handed dismissal of Ciro a little despicable really. I hate framed debates and my strong feelings thataway lead me, I think, to state my case too strongly. And I fear I hurt you and Kat. For that, I am very sorry. My intention was to present my point of view not as the One True Way, but as a third option to upset Victor's easy, self-flattering and false dichotomy. When I spoke of how I felt about the first time I say "I love you" to someone, it was a passionate statement of my values, not a denunciation of all those whose experience varies from my own. I never meant to imply that no one could fall in love after meeting on the Internet. Or that the process of falling in love couldn't begin over the Internet. I was of course well aware of where I was posting, well aware of your relationship with Kat, it's genesis, and your many eloquent tributes to Kat and to your relationship. I was laboring to speak to the nature of knowledge and the nature of reality; how and when do we know a thing? I suggested that Internet contact was not enough to give a person conclusive knowledge of reality outside the Internet. What makes us human is not reducible to Internet chat. You, yourself said that love found on the Internet needed to be tested. That's all I was saying. Without the test, you cannot be certain. You can be confident, you can take the romantic risk, but the truth of whether or not the love you feel between yourself and someone you correspond with online is real cannot be known until it is verified by real life contact. I meant to suggest that what "happens" on the Internet is, therefore, fundamentally theoretical--not as a way to denigrate what happens here, but simply to be accurate and give non-virtual reality its due. Some theories, after all, are very strong, very compelling, sound, reliable even, but theoretical all the same. Can that be so bad? I think taking a risk is one of the most beautiful things we can do. But risking is hard and it's scary as all get out. It brings us closer to the possibility of loss, and by implication, death itself. People find all kinds of ways to deny risk, to pretend to certainty that isn't there, security that can never be and so avoid the exquisite anxiety that life presents to those of us who can look it in the eye and keep breathing anyway. I think the more aware we are of risk, the more of life there is to savor. We needn't jump off an airplane to experience risk, we need only do what we are afraid to do. Right now. Whatever it is. The more mindful we are of our fears, the more triumphant our joys when they are realized. But Victor's reasoning denies the risk of trusting someone over this uncertain Internet. He speaks as if he risks nothing, that he has nothing to learn about Angie from meeting her face to face that could impact his love for her negatively--it's a done deal, the two of them click, it's as if they've known each other for years, everything's so natural and easy, etc. The Internet has circumvented reality and removed risk, removed the open-endedness of trust, removed the meaning of hope from this specific transaction--hope cannot enter the equation when the outcome is certain. "As if" has eclipsed "in fact." (And Jody calls me postmodern!) And, frankly, I don't believe Victor's certainty. I call it bluster. If he's alive, he's nervous as hell about that first meeting. And he's frightened of losing everything. If he's not nervous, if he's not frightened, then what the hell is all the fuss about? Thank you, Michael, for extending your good will to me in this uncertain world. I look forward to meeting you in person, and I hope and I trust that it will be a great day for both of us. -Kevin P.S. (to whom it may concern): You may be shocked to learn that I met the woman with whom I intend to spend the rest of my life right here, in cyberspace. We've been together for three years, so far, and we're very much in love. I've met several women on the Internet over the years. I'm no stranger to this stuff, and I've got nothing against it. I've had some very good and some not so good experiences here. I wish you the best, whoever you are.

I read Victor's article some time ago, but I've only now read the whole thread. The article bothered me at the time, but now that I've read the pursuing thread (including the shabby treatment Ciro got for his trouble) it bothers me even more. What Victor is suggesting is that the composed, fully discretionary presentation of self we participate in online is a sufficient substitute for reality when making our strongest value judgements about other human beings. He implies that one can from pictures and the written word know who a person is in every meaningful respect. I find that deeply disturbing. To me, reality is precious. It cannot be duplicated. And I naturally distrust anyone who would intend to replace or circumvent it. If someone were to confess that they were in love with me based upon our online correspondences, I would probably conclude that they were a little shallow. At the very least, they would be letting their enthusiasm for the small fraction of ourselves that we're able to share online get the better of them. When we communicate online or even over the phone, we are afforded the opportunity to edit our personae constantly. And we do. I would assume a deep and introspective sense of self would take that for granted. You're simply not going to get to know somebody, really know them--know them enough to be in love with them--online. Furthermore, there is enormous, near absolute safety in the distance afforded by the telephone or the internet. This safety allows us to express ourselves in ways we may not even realize we'd be too timid to express in person. How many face to face flame wars do you witness in your daily life, for instance? Victor declared that no one can prove that he's not in love, but I would counter that Victor cannot prove that he is in love with Angie. The best he could prove is that he's in love with her online persona, with her photographic image or with her voice over the phone. Proving love is a fool's gambit, anyway. I would contend that Angie is much, much more than her writings or her voice--much more than she herself even knows. And I would hope that anyone who wished to love her would keep that in mind always. The first time we say "I love you" to another human being romantically is precious and unrepeatable. I can't imagine not sharing such intimate words face to face. To share them at such a comfortable, impersonal remove as the internet or telephone prescribe would cheapen the moment immeasurably in my view. Nonetheless, people fall in love with fictional characters all the time. People fall in love with potential. Often, people's fantasies are symmetrical and they think they're falling in love with each other when really they're falling in love with mutually flattering fantasies. Even without the internet to forestall intimacy, people have been falling in love with illusions for as long as we humans have been able to dream and desire. The young Ayn Rand herself fell in love with a man's image, a man who looked like one of her fictional heros come to life. She was disappointed. Later, she fell in love with a man's words and was so shocked by the reality of her lover that she banished him from her side forever. I sometimes think the internet could be the worst possible thing that ever happened to the Objectivist movement (not always, but sometimes). The tendency among Objectivists to identify themselves with their minds and with their rational thoughts to the exclusion of all else finds its perfect expression in cyberspace. On the internet, talking your talk and actually walking that talk are indistinguishable. People can spend so much time here that they forget the difference. Having said all this, my sincerest wish is that things work out between Victor and Angie. Love has survived many worse obstacles than the internet. After they finally have their first meeting, I can imagine Victor confessing to Angie, "I said that I was in love with you before, but I was wrong. I'm in love with you now." That's what I'd call romantic! -Kevin