Philip Coates

> But, seriously, I have noticed that Objectivists tend to lean heavily toward the cerebral side. While it is certainly possible to find Objectivists who have accomplished heroic things, most seem content merely to espouse an ideology without really living it. Is that unfair? [Cortes] You're really making two separate points. Yes, Oists like those drawn to any philosophical-intellectual system are cerebral, often too focused on thinking rather than acting in general. The second point about living one's values, ideas, ideology is a common -human- problem. Not restricted to OIsts or even to 'eggheads'.

> I'm not feeling as angry or outraged... ...or maybe I'm just a BiPolar Bear?

I'm in awe of the intellectuuul ability of people here on Objectivist Lapdance to post cartoons and retouched photographs in every third post. Some of us less advanced beings still have to use words, complete thots 'n good spelling, and paragraphs....

> poke, poke--actually, he's not toooooo bad right now Never poke a sleeping bear, Brant. Right now (for some strange reason) I'm not feeling as angry or outraged** about the things that upset me about Oism, the movement, about OL, about being attacked, nobody apparently reading much or anything good.....yada, yada. I think I've just accepted a bit that's the way things are - and I'm just waiting patiently at the ice hole with my claws sheathed waiting for a steak dinner to pop up... Or maybe I'm on tranquilizers? If rape is inevitable, just relax and enjoy it. **of course, that could change in a heartbeat

> This is serious business, the examination and torture learning business a la Coates. I take advantage of his deep knowledge of and pioneering techniques in online torture learning, the endlessness and horror of its recurrent Lesson Plans, its mad divagations, pain loops and drills. There's a good boy. > the law being, if Phil Is Right, You Are Wrong, how is it to be applied? Bow down and submit.

Still no more impatient than the average bear at a frozen ice hole, waiting patiently for literary or or other Book Reading to emerge from the teeming multitudes of literate, knowledgeable OL posters. Perhaps from the ones who claim to have read? know more? have forgotten? more than I will ever know. I guess it was all troll- bluster and I've forgotten more really good books than ND and George will ever read. or have even heard of....

> some of us do not think about Swedish sex movies at 11 in the morning, you animal. 11:45 tops. Before that it's French sex movies.

> And surely laughing at something funny must be basic to human nature. Where would this feeling fit in the chart? [Daunce] Amusement is not an emotion or a cognition (purely). But it is a mental state or result or condition or "apperception".

Plotchik claims 8 (not 6) Primary Emotions Acceptance: "The act of accepting; a receiving of something offered, with approbation, satisfaction, or acquiescence; especially, favorable reception; approval" -- This is not really an emotion. It's an evaluation. Nor is it the same thing as "trust", which is not really an emotion either. So Plotchik is batting 7/8. In fact, I'm not so sure "surprise" is one either....the emotion comes an instant later when you decide if it's positive surprise or negative. It's commonly called an emotion: "an emotion excited by something happening suddenly and unexpectedly; astonishment; amazement." But I'm dubious about that. Certainly both acceptance/trust and surprise are basic in the sense that each is a very broad 'grouping' and has a lot of shadings and spin offs. But that doesn't make them emotions - it's true of cognitive states as well. (Aside: emotions and cognitions are two kinds of mental states or results but they are not the only mental states.) (So, if I'm correct on both..then Plotchik is 6/8 and "The Great Phil" is 6/6.....Coates wins! Coates wins! Coates wins!....I have no idea who the initials JS and PS stand for, but PS has a tie**.) **tiebreaker between PS and PC: which is the objectively best flavor of ice cream?

> I notice from the poll that no Objectivists have voted for "submission". (just sayin'...) > Submission is an action, not an emotion. Baal, I was making a joke.

> Or, maybe not interested in discussing them with Phil Coates. Little known fact: When you post, you are discussing them with everyone.

But, as compensation, this has gotten a lot better since I emerged from Plato's cave : "almost retarded in understanding what a glance meant. I often couldn’t have told if a woman was interested or what a remark meant unless I sat down and reflected on it laboriously for hours."

I notice from the poll that no Objectivists have voted for "submission". (just sayin'...)

Yes, and one Canadian walked in who didn't know how to count to four.

> Phil: do you still have the chalkboard/equation capacity? Very interesting. Tony, no, not much of it remains. Least of all the speed and fingertip recall, although I have been able to do a good job of tutoring or classroom teaching anything from algebra thru calculus and some differential equations and intro. physics. But I've needed prep time/recall time -- especially for the more advanced of those topics. In the sciences and technical subjects: software and computer programming skills are probably still half-there. But if I were asked to teach high school chemistry (as opposed to general science/middle school chemistry), that is almost totally gone: I don't remember how to "balance" chemical equations at all. And my best recollection of the periodic table is that it is an annual chart of when a woman is most fertile and least cranky. Am in the ballpark on that one?

Michael I'm very impressed with your post 183. (I was probably expecting anger and outrage at the challenge of my post 182.) > Even after going through all I did in life, I still had that blame-others-but-never-me-for-the-important-stuff attitude deep within me...It takes a lot of effort--painful effort--to identify which is which. The blame others attitude always makes me want to overlook the bad things I did and the guilt makes me want to overlook the bad things others did to me. And both make me want to overlook the good. Now, after a few years of reflecting and writing about such things, I don't feel any of these urges very strongly. A good dose of correct identification works wonders in defusing toxic emotions....But I still regret what I did back then. I hurt myself and I hurt others, even as others hurt me, hurt themselves and hurt each other. (Roark and Ragnar didn't hurt anyone, though. They were the true blameless victims.) It takes a large person to admit that they have to share any blame in such situations. Most people won't or can't. > Flipping it around, I did some really good things back then and so did the people I blamed for all my woes. It's also unusual (and a sign of being willing to look at reality) to see any good whatsoever in the persons who have deeply hurt you. > Blaming others and not looking inward to see your own character issues is the plague and boobytrap within Objectivism. I agree. (Or at least it's certainly an important one of them.) For example, Rand's idea that she never had a major emotion she couldn't account for was not possible to a human being. (Maybe the 'major' was a qualification - I don't have her exact quote.) > As to your question, I was an OK father and husband. I'm a good guy at heart, even when I'm an asshole. I was not abusive, but I was distant. Also, I regret how I acted and reacted back then. You're not supposed to say that within the Objectivist culture. People think they don't make mistakes or act irrationally because they read a few books and are suddenly transformed into paragons. With no struggle. With no effort. With no transition. > Forgiveness is a hugely underrated virtue in our neck of the woods. It's not even a contest between Objectivism and Christianity on that score. They mop the floor with us and that's one of the main reasons I believe Objectivism does not grow as a movement in the world at large and Christianity does. That was one of the points of my posts in "Spreading a New Philosophy - The Founding of Christianity". One of several things we can sometimes learn from the Christians. It's part of the wider issue of benevolence - putting things in perspective, proportion, and context and then moving forward is an aspect of benevolence toward yourself as well as toward others.

> Why should a person in their 20s need to introspect their early childhood? Carol, that's a really interesting question. I've never thought about in that way and I've been blaming myself for years that I didn't put enough of the right effort into therapy at that age. Yet for everything there is a season and perhaps on some level I had other things to concern myself with then and that was the time more for exploration, experiment, growth and less for trying to get in touch with things well in the past deposited under sediment that I didn't connect to till many years later.

Subject: Well-Read? Readers of entire books vs: magazines? t.v? the internet? cartoonists? internet videos? It doesn't look by this thread on current book reading as if Objectivist Living is chock full of people who are currently or recently (2011 perhaps?) reading many books. Or maybe not able to select the good ones perhaps, good enough to write a sentence about. ,,,,,,,,,, (Carol, wrt Mary Renault, I finished rereading "The King Must Die" just a couple months ago. It placed me into an entirely different world, into the mind of Theseus and the world of the Mycenaean Greeks. Lyrical and inspiring in places; heroic. I see why it fascinated me as a teenager. I'll reread a couple more by Mary as well. As an adolescent I remember also liking "The Bull From the Sea" but not the one you mentioned as much. We'll see. I've finished Gatsby and prepared a list of 14 questions about the book for monthly great books and am currently halfway through a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, "The End of Eternity". I alternate heavy and light and have three 'heavy' literary works coming up the rest of this month for annual great books conference before I can go all mickeyspilane on yo' ass.)

William, that's a very nice chart. I was trying to right click and ctrl-V copy it but it won't let me. Where is it from? (With the word 'groom' it looks like it's originally for chimpanzees or a relative?) What's useful is the -extended- causal sequence. Not just the usual Oist evaluation-leads-to-emotion that we're all familiar with from Oist psych, but instead looking at prior and subsequent steps in the chain: stimulus or event --> cognition --> feeling state --> overt behavior --> effect.

Pictures left to right top to bottom look like: row one = anger, fear, disgust row tow=surprise, joy/happiness/pleasure, sadness or wistfulness or longing I'm not sure I agree that those six are -the- basics though.

Dear Jiminy Cricket, > Now Phil’s thread will be infested by those strange bedfellows (or bedbugs), the Rational Anarchists. Hey, I'm just happy if they come and participate. Anyone is welcome if they are willing to talk about the subject of the thread and not go off onto anarchocap.....even if they use profanity...

dear Jiminy, damn right you are....

In my quest to start the new year off in a benevolent note, I decided to start this new thread. Entry number one ==> ------------- " Lexington man charged with making a fake $1 million bill and trying to spend it Winston-Salem Journal, December 31, 2011 ...A Lexington man is accused trying to use a fake $1 million bill to pay for his purchases at a Walmart. Michael Anthony Fuller, 53, of 3 Parker St., walked into the Walmart on Lowes Boulevard in Lexington on Nov. 17. He shopped for a while, picking up a vacuum cleaner, a microwave oven and other merchandise, totaling $476...When he got to the register, Fuller gave the cashier the phony bill, saying that it was real. Store staff called police. Fuller was later charged with attempting to obtain property by false pretense and uttering a forged instrument, both felonies...A warrant says of the fake million-dollar bill: "There is no such thing." The largest bill in circulation is a $100 bill. In 1969, federal officials discontinued the use of $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills because of lack of public use. The largest note ever printed was the $100,000 bill, which featured President Woodrow Wilson. The bills, which were not available to the public, were printed from Dec. 18, 1934, through Jan. 9, 1935, and were used for transactions between Federal Reserve banks. Fuller was being held Friday night in the Davidson County Jail with bond set at $17,500. He is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. Lexington police Sgt. Shannon Sharpe said the case is unusual. "It is kind of strange" ------------

Michael, I really like the first memoir and look forward to reading the second. It's has a great authenticity and your stylized names for the three women is much more effective than simply their given names. However, I suspect that if you are sinking into alcoholism and drugs you are going to have very understandable hostility and disenchantment toward you from your wife and relatives. This memoir only blames them not yourself for deteriorated relationships: Were you a good husband and father in your opinion?

Subject: Canyucking It Up > It is not to go out and vandalize your neighbours. Difference between Canada and the U.S. after a sports loss. Difference between bomb-throwing anarchistic newyawkish disrespecters of their "masters" and "betters" and "pee-ers" and lese-majeste conscious (note the preferable spelling: two *French* words, not one French followed by one English - talk about anarchy!) gawdsavethequeen head-bowed respecters of authority and of not stepping in between the cars on a moving Toronto subway. Lest civilization will fall. > the correct response when your goalie fails to stop a puck is to groan and scream and throw your beer cup and weep, then go home. The correct response when a "master" trips up or when you see something that is less than his best work or is less than an earth-shattering work of genius is to sob quietly, be aware of the social context and your own small expertise, and don't say anything lest you seem to be ridiculous since you haven't published as much as such a higher being has. Who obviously, being a professional, could never make mistakes on -basic- matters. Or at least none you could perceive. gawdsavetheking. After all, if you were in the inner circle of a thinker, a writer you wouldn't have the temerity to criticize would you? You don't have half her/his accomplishments and you'd just make yourself unpopular... So just be silent. Discretion is the better path; slink away. Ten years from now when you've published you will have earned the right to break your silence. If you remember what it was you wanted to say by then.