Robert_Bumbalough

Hello Mike, Pete, Bill

Nice to be able to chat today.  Hope all are well and prospering.

Please forgive that I disagree with Mike where he typed about the murderer's manifesto that //  I also glanced through his manifesto. Sick. Narcissistic and cheerful. //

I too skimmed a portion of it and thought it a grim warning and call to war based on internet conspiracy myths and Kant style group-think subjectivism rather than self-aggrandizement. But then again war is always sickening.  The guy's live stream of him shooting up the mosque showed him handling his weapons very proficiently; his guns, however, were covered with arcane markings that I speculate had occult significance in his distorted worldview.  As for the charge of his cowardice, lets call a spade what it is. Muslims don't integrate or assimilate into the society of a country to which they immigrate. Instead they wage cultural jihad for as long as it takes to dominate in a multi-generational effort of conquest as is happening in Europe. And don't ignore that Islam is as tribal and wack or more so than Caucasian tribalism.  The hope here is that Islamic State or Al Qaeda jihadist operatives remain in their mole-holes instead of retaliating against innocents. Meanwhile New Zealand allows the Mohammedans to invade their country and thereby kowtows to the Globalists oligarchs  acting in true cowardly fashion, for it is the purpose of the State to protect the rights of the citizens from force, fraud, invasion and so forth.

Anyways. Cheers and Best Wishes for Continued Success       

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

The blood of tyrants . . . 

Semantics--respecting what is and isn't "murder"--is a poor foundation for an argument. So, what they were doing to Galt was legal and therefore proper and what Dagny et. al did to them was illegal and improper?

There wasn't, btw, any state left to speak of.

You need more of a focus on morality. There is right and wrong respecting the law and right and wrong respecting morality. They need to be integrated prior to a more general evaluation. You jumped the gun.

--Brant

Good points Grant.Thanks. Without rule of law, one guys freedom fighter is the next guys terrorist.

//There wasn't, btw, any state left to speak of.//

In the fictional dystopian world of AS, there were States mentioned. In Part 3 C.10 there's the scene where Midas Mulligan is planning his investments in New York and Pennsylvania, so even at the end the story presupposed Federalism. The States still existed so did the Country and the question of morality is irrelevant. 

Dagny murdered the guard. Ragnar committed piracy and is depicted as a terrorist. It's a matter of fact within the story. Morality is thrown under the bus in the story. Rand borrowed from Howard and put a bit of Conan into Dagny and the Strikers. Ferris, Mooch and Taggert were acting outside the Law. But killing the guard was also outside the law as well as immoral. There was no self-defense involved. That Dagny had a thing for Galt's penis does not morality make.  Rand contradicted her principles and acted inconsistent. Denying that is to deny a fact. The moral thing for Rand to have her characters do was to file Habeas Corpus for Galt and plead for an injunction to cease and desist. The guards would have had to have honored the Court order, or else the US Marshals would have stomped on them using the proper power of the State.

//Semantics--respecting what is and isn't "murder"--is a poor foundation for an argument.// Actually it is a good argument. 

//So, what they were doing to Galt was legal and therefore proper and what Dagny et. al did to them was illegal and improper?// Nothing I wrote indicated that. In the story, Ferris, Mooch, and Taggert were acting illegally. So were Dagny and Ragnar and the Strikers.

Gosh I love chatting with you because you make me think. Me Thinks. 

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

The passage with Dagny shooting the guard becomes a bit clearer if we put the story in Nazi Germany and make the guard a concentration camp guard.

(And Godwin be damned.)

 

The way Rand constituted Dagny, she would have felt this intensely about it. What's more, the guard as Rand wrote him had the perfect mentality of the Nazi concentration camp guards ("I was just following orders...").

That ties into you point.

Michael

Well, in service of conversation I had to do my best to defend the protection of law and basal order of political bodies to facilitate interactions of juxapositioned Homo Sapiens some of whom may be Human or qualify as Man. Of course you're correct. The moral basis of politics once eliminated, renders protections of law of no effect or so I would think the dystopian fictional world of AS's United States would operate. However, in a fan fiction squeal I think using the idea of separate legal jurisdictions qua Federalism would lend literary gravitas to such a plot device as having the State police force be employed in hunting down Ragnar, Dagny, Galt, and their fellow conspirators. Perhaps the murdered guard's brother is a State Police station command staff officer, a Lieutenant, who wielding the respect of his officers can enlist them in an effort to bring the Strikers to Justice, for so doing will reward them with confiscated booty. Gotta love the Rico Act. See it might go sort of like if a family member of one of ship owners victimized by Ragnar's piracy or a relative of someone murdered by a roving gang of Maoists who blames Galt and was a Federal official who then deputizes the State Police lieutenant into US service.  Their trajectory would take them to capturing the Strikers and putting them on trial; the plot would advance due to the police characters interacting with the seized journals of Hugh Akston; tension between a patrol officer who reads and discusses with his suck-up Corporal who is tight with the Lieutenant and the Federal official. The resultant courtroom drama would be in the Randian tradition with a defense attorney urging them to throw themselves on the mercy of the court. Meanwhile the Strikers would steadfastly maintain they have an inalienable right to defend Galt by rescuing him from the clutches of the evil Dr Ferris and his renegade gang of thugs who were acting outside the authority of the United States. They'd be saved by the patrol officer finding a legal defense that would sway the jury while exposing his bosses as exploiting their power under color of law.

Defining the character of the State Police Lieutenant and the antagonist Patrol Officer and the process of how their psychological states develop and how the reader is informed of them without recourse to an omniscient narrator as Rand  blundered in AS would be a task for a master story teller.  (Oh look, there's a sign post up ahead: 'Next Stop: Character development'). 

22 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Unless you want to suffer a severe case of impotence from a massive attack of soul-sucking boredom, stay away from the attempted rebuttal by Valliant of the books by Barbara and Nathaniel. PARC is like watching paint dry while sharp fingernails scrape across a blackboard. Seriously. I've known men who have lost all feeling in their penis from reading it. One did recover after four years, though. But then he went mad and had to be institutionalized.  

A couple of women I knew fared worse, they committed suicide...

Oh Criminy! I must vote for this passage as best laugh of the week. 

On 6/9/2018 at 12:56 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

Like after sex, too. See the scene of the first time between Dagny and Hank...

Michael

Well back to why Peikoff had a heart attack upon learning that Branden and Rand had been banging each other. So if Peikoff thought of Rand as his mother, did he think of Frank as his father? And that Frank was a slacker must have bugged him? If so, then how could he not expect that Rand would have been playing the field to find what she couldn't get at home? And how did Branden hook up with Rand in the first place; he was just a kid during the War and wasn't old enough to buy beer when Rand was writing AS. Did she hustle him from some venue for young people? Was she out hunting for some young stuff? Or did they meet at the collage where Branden was a student?

On 6/9/2018 at 10:24 AM, Brant Gaede said:

Murder consequent to an act of war isn't murder. She killed an enemy combatant who would not submit. In real life there would be no conversation except if necessary to get close enough to kill the guard. But Rand believed in yammer, yammer, yammer.

At the end of We the Living the guard does the killing. So at the end of Rand's magnum opus it's reversed. That's no coincidence.

I do not have the slightest idea how to improve on how Rand handled Dagny's killing the guard. The whole novel is steeped in bigger-than-life artificiality. The same can be said about Galt's speech. The asseverating moralizing--lecturing--simply has to be done the way she did.it. And it has to be long.

--Brant

This is what I love about this message forum. You guys are way smarter than for which you give yourselves credit. Be that as it may, I'll take the bait. Dagny's action was a criminal act of murder because there was no act of succession or declaration of independence to form a new political body by the minions of Midas Mulligan's valley despite that they'd bugged out. Merely bugging out to the valley did not form a new country. Countries can only be formed by express declaration . They were still citizens of the dystopian disfunctional United States depicted in AS and hence still subject to its legal jurisdiction. There was no war. Just because a cop is an ass hole doesn't justify killing him even if he's doing something really bad. If you kill a cop, you go to death row. As you pointed out, the guard was just being stupid, and as satisfying as it sometimes seems to want to strangle the life of some stupid shit, doing so will earn one a long stretch or a place on death row. Of course Ayn Rand recognized that the moral ethical paradigmn of government is it's most important aspect. When a government losses the support of the people while robbing and enslaving them it losses raison d'etre; nevertheless, the guard's life was still protected by law, if not US law, then by State law, and if not State law, then the ancient English common law. Dagny should hang.  Galt refused the job offer. He could have taken Wesley Mooches job as economic dictator to impose laissez faire capitalism by eliminating harmful regulations and taxes, but Rand had him hold out for anarcho-capitalism. Let us conceptualize how fan fiction squeals might go.

The strikers in the valley would probably hire Ragnar Danneskjold to provide security. This mother fucker has pissed off a lot of people. In the wake of the collapse of the United States in an anarcho-capitalism social system, others would form security services using weapons obtained from the former US military. Some of those would want to see Dagny, Galt, and Ragnar swing from a gallows. They'd be keen to form alliances with those who hold Galt responsible for not saving the United States by taking the economic dictator job. They'd be able to use the sort of rhetoric the Bernie Bros use to gin up support for an attack on the folk in the Valley. The screen would no longer be in use to hide the strikers because they would be engaged in trade and barter. The people outside the valley would not have gold and their paper money would be worthless and useless without the FED or USG, so to get resources the strikers would have to barter. Their position would then be known, so the pissed off persons who saw then as enemies would have ample opportunity to put ordinance on target.  The families of the guards would want revenge on Dagny. The owners of the shipping sunk by Ragnar would want to see him rot. The socialists of the many People's polities would want to pillage the Valley. Internecine tribal war would almost surely break out. Eventually the strikers would be defeated.  Enter a Conan character to do a bit of the ole Gehghis Khan.

On 6/9/2018 at 9:33 AM, anthony said:

Yeah, shocking. Horrid. I get that it is unpleasant for squeamish pacifists or NAP'ers, that Rand could "kill" an innocent guard in a piece of fiction. Ha! Except, it's essential to abstract the act into a bigger picture: I.e., Everyone who even tacitly or actively supports a totalitarian regime is part-responsible for the results. A statist dictator doesn't just 'arrive', despite the people - but because of (many of) the people. Though not having read AS for over 20 years, I certainly think that illustrating this was Rand's intention. (A background the reader might infer, were the "oceans of blood" created by the Soviets and Nazis which were made possible by the "ordinary" guy who can't think and won't judge, just goes along).

So the "murdered" guard, who would whine - it's not his fault, he didn't know what was going on, he was only following orders - and so on, is culpable, too. He's on the immoral side of a moral war. He is also "a being of volitional consciousness" (the mainstay of Romantic Realism - from Rand) and each one's moral and immoral choices have consequences. But he chose to self-sacrifice his mind to others and to the Authority. And (in a fictional work), he gets his comeuppance. That infamous remark "To the gas chambers, go!" (in criticism of AS) and charges of sociopathy about AR were a total inversion of a fact: one import of Rand's novel was a searing condemnation of those dictators and 'ordinary' people who invented, built and filled concentration camps and the gas chambers. 

Hi Tony. Well it's June 16th and a week later. Thanks for your remark. It's a good one too, and reading it makes me feel guilty because the USA is much closer to a total police state than the ideal noted by Jefferson in his inaugural speech:

Quote

• "A wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

 Like John Galt who willing to kill himself to save Dagny from torture, perhaps a committed Objectivist  philosopher should think about pedagogy, but of course they do, so by extension those who willing to support in some manner their activities are less culpable.

Quote

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” 
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

Maybe that my enjoyment of chatting here on OL isn't an application the second handiness fallacy would lend to me a freedom to hang out more often, but then again if indeed the USG goes full on Stalinist, I'll be one of the disappeared or so I would hope he quipped as he whistled past the metaphorical graveyard of bad ideas. 

Piss me off some Randroids maybe did I. Bought I did.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LV0FX2S/?coliid=IEULYJTJI6IZ0&colid=2MMA4MVETAU5Q&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it 

On 6/3/2018 at 9:54 AM, william.scherk said:

This part sticks out, you evul sociopath:

Cool. $$$$ We earned it. 

So when Dagny murdered the guard at Project F while breaking in to spring John Galt, she was justified because there ain't no such thingy as "society" and those who initiate violence deserve to get some back. Oh justice me psychopath down. Yeah Rationality.  

On 6/3/2018 at 3:01 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Robert,

Good Lord!

 

I seriously doubt it. My impression is that Rand was like a mother to him, an intellectual mother, but a mother nonetheless.

So, unless you're a Freudian...

 

Michael

Hiya Mike. Well, since Branden did it, I was thinking maybe Peikoff was doing the competitive anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better thingy. 

On 6/3/2018 at 1:54 PM, william.scherk said:

Or at least that's my expert opinion on cognitive dissonance and the pain all around that came from The Affair.  

 

Thanks for an insightful analysis. I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged. Now I hope Branden didn't think or feel he had something in common with the archetype illustrated by James Taggert. Fictional character, yeah, and no goons of thugs working for totalitarian police states were injured in the writing of AS; still though, I loved the scene where Taggert breaks down after Galt tells the boys how to fix the electro shock torture machine. Besides, he wasn't really interested in banging an older broad, (Holy Fuck. The sagging wrinkles. Yuck.) but doing so in service of The $ is earning it baby. Screw Valiant and the Randroids. I gotta go build stuff  for which big money wants to pay.  Hey maybe I got something in common with Rearden after all. 

On 6/3/2018 at 12:32 PM, Peter said:

In fairness, I think you should give your critics the benefit of the doubt and not assume that their disagreements with you have anything intrinsically to do with your disagreements with Rand. It is not a matter of thinking "outside the square." Around here we construct our own squares. Meanwhile, our high regard for Ayn Rand, whether we agree with her or not, gives us a common basis for discussion -- a shared community of ideas, so to speak, that serves as a foundation for dialogue and debate. Ghs

Hiya Pete. Been away for a week, but got some work done; still though GHS writes good stuff. His atheism book helped my shake that God superstition. Witchdoctoring aside, I and the other riders on this mornings Green train lucked out. A crazy was triggered and pulled a honking big ass large caliber revolver. The gun was in a gunny sack and the dude held it over the top strap while pointing it a the guy who dared to speak and saying loudly 'It's your lucky day that I'm not as mad at you as God. But I'm going to give it to ya. You're gonna get it. God is mad at you.' and so on for about a minute. Dude wasn't too crazy though cause he backed out at the next stop before the DART cops troubled themselves to break away from their donuts and show up. Could have been worse. Yee-haw. Now if only I had the guts to make the big bet when Bitcoin crashes next.

7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

In other words, to Brook, Israel should have strong borders, the USA not. I guess that makes sense to him, but it doesn't to me.

Double standards drive people batty. I wish it could be blamed on water fluoridation so I could post a clip from Dr Stangelove where General Ripper is telling Lt. Mandrake about it's evils because Kubrick's mocking was an early manifestation of cognitive dissonance by Dunning-Kruger. Personally, I'd like the USG to make it policy to lean on Mexico and the Central American govs to permit Laissez Faire and to disallow illegals to get any kind of welfare or subsidy. But the powers that be don't care about what anyone thinks unless it gets them more power. Sadly the contrary path leads to empowering religious conservatives who also trust in altruism.

9 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

This loops back to Page 1, the initial post, where Randy argued that sex is appropriate only between lifelong monogamous partners, kicking off a discussion of how men and women are sexually different (forgive me, much condensed). I liked MSK's observation that Rand was true to herself artistically and personally. My own way of explaining it is that Rand the seeker was an immoral anarchist to the very roots of her hair, top and bottom. WRT to the quoted fragment by Bumbalough (can I use that as a fictional character name, please?) it was not the case that Dagny "bed hopped" in fiction nor Alice in her personal life. Not sure I want to discuss this in detail. The major premise is that lifelong monogamy is more a religious notion than a rational idea, sort of equivalent to not coveting your neighbor lady's ass.

Ayn Rand smashed the rule of received wisdom, uniquely so, in the modern context. She liked Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming for a reason. The idea of an alpha male was important to Ayn Rand, central to everything she wrote.

It became thematic in my own work.

Good points Wolf. A lifetime of crap thinking from a bunch of stuff from crap culture has left a me with a crap philosophical outlook. Having been raised as a child in a religious culture and having lived a life surrounded by those who accepted believed and practiced bogus associated ideas has inculcated a bunch of crap into my thinking. 

Nice work. Charity looks like a fun read. Thanks for the clue, and you can use my family name as a character, why not. There has to be a guy named Chris Cable somewhere. Almost everyone loves the sound of alliteration. 

Very nice.

I'm no expert, but I can't understand why anyone in O-land would find this AS video wrong/

29 minutes ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

It's all so ordinary and dull, if we call them Nathan and Alice.

This argument is so stupid. No wonder people blow off O-ism as silly crap. So what if the cougar lady scored with a hot young stud. Poor Frank had to have known. Why on earth he didn't divorce Ayn and go do the Frank Loyd Wright unique architecture thingy is beyond me. If my wife did me that way, I'd walk. I'd be better off living in a flop house motel eating potato chips, Twinkies, and Diet Coke than to walk around like a zombie cuck. 

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I'm my own man. However, my philosophical foundation was formed by reading Rand's works over a lifetime. I can't undo that even if I wanted to. Nowadays I disagree with Rand on some things (mostly scope), but that doesn't mean I disavow what I do agree with. And it doesn't mean that what I do agree with isn't foundational in my thinking. It is. Like all humans during all of human history, I need a label for something important, a label others can understand that doesn't require long explanations everytime I use it. This is just simple communication. Outside of the fundies, most people get what I mean when I say I follow Rand's thinking without being a fanatic. In that sense, I'm an Objectivist.

Profound thinking my friend.

---------------------------

// I've left the battlefield where people fight over the split. Ever since then, I've been able to see clearly that it generally boils down to money, sex and power with humans, including Objectivists.  //

One can't build a successful profitable business by pissing off their customers. Pollution Control Products jumps through hoops to keep their furnaces up and running for their clients. Market power comes from providing worthiness valued by those willing and able to pay which brings in the money that enables the wherewithal necessary to be the person exemplifying virtue. If one is such, then they'll be subjected to hero worship and maybe score while greasy and dirty.

// Jennifer Grossman  // Oh my, what a cutey.

// The entire ARI-TAS kerfuffle stems from Rand excommunicating the Brandens for feeling they rejected her. So she rejected them. //

If O-ism fans spend their time improving their products, sales and customer service skills, they'll make more money and live happier lives. I won't bring this topic up again. I was curious about Yaron's display, and your answer satisfies me. Now I know.

// Also, both Barbara and Nathaniel never hid their low opinion of him--they always called him some variation of crazy,// 

It might have been the Mullet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlJD0i_WwdQ&t=13s

// Peikoff never knew of Rand's affair with NB while she was alive. When he discovered proof in her papers after she passed away (he was her legal heir), he had a heart attack. Literally. It almost killed him for real. Although he has never said so, this is a form of rejection and I imagine it screwed with his emotions bigtime. Like or dislike Peikoff, a brush with death is an impactful event in the life of anyone. // 

Did Peikoff want to bed Ayn Rand? I thought their relationship was more like teacher and student or Wise Master and Grasshopper.

// Also, both Barbara and Nathaniel never hid their low opinion of him--they always called him some variation of crazy, so with the discovery of the affair and the terror of almost dying over it, I think his hatred of them went into white-hot mode and has burned steadily ever since. // Leonard has outlived the four of them, Frank Ayn Nathaniel and Barbara, so perhaps he's happy to get the last laugh. Lucky for the Brandens he isn't a lesser man, for if he was we might well have seen another murder-suicide story on the news.

// Notice that almost all major sins of the principals in O-Land in this split boil down to people refusing to hate the Brandens. In other words, the issue is not ideological. They all say it is, but it isn't. It's about relationships and rejection at root. If it were ideas only, the disagreements would be more civil and rational. You don't see a deep level of hatred of communism in their demeanor, for example, even though all self-respecting Randians consider communism to be evil. But notice how people involved in this inter-subcommunity fight get overly-emotional, mischaracterize the work of each other, etc. That comes from something other than ideas. From the way I figure, it comes from rejection by a loved one, and for the followers of that person, feelings of protection of someone who has suffered such rejection. People fight and the seed produces its toxic fruit. Thus, taking sides has become a precondition to making friends and this has nothing to do with the issues dealt with in Objectivist thought. //

I want to think that I'm above that sort of thing. All O-ism fans are my friends because I can do business with them because I can respect them. Frank, Ayn, Nathaniel, Barbara are all dead and Leonard will be pushing up daisies before too many years go by, so it'll all fade. Only the ideas will remain and those who can use the ideas to leverage a competitive advantage will be more like the Hank Rearden and the Strikers and will thus make more money and have happier lives. 

// See this post as an example. Why would that be? Well, I was part of the history of this one, so I know from seeing it up close. Perigo and Barbara Branden used to be tight. And Perigo always dreamed of being an Objectivist leader. With her endorsement, he was part way there. They ended up falling out (mostly vanity issues) and she ultimately rejected him. When a book critical of the Brandens came out, he embraced it and has been on a crusade against the Brandens ever since. //

This is like a daytime character drama soap opera. Gee, you could write a script that would sell. There are plenty of marketing companies that need good writers for product success story white papers and placement videos. Mike, you rock; I hope you're making plenty of money. 

// Also, Brook agreed to debate Perigo recently about immigration. Brook bowed out when it became clear Perigo would insult him to his face in public. So Brook rejected him and he has been on a nonstop rant against Brook ever since. From what I have read (and I don't read a lot of this stuff), some of the reasoning is justified. (I could go into it, but that's not the point of this post.) But much of it is just emotional hate-baiting based on being rejected. // 

Yeah, I got the same impression from Lindsay's posts.

// I wish there were some intellectual depth to all this, but there is very little, mostly none. // 

Stephen Boydstun's stuff works good for satisfying one's intellectual hunger. But then again, concepts are open to subsumming new integrations, so long as the new facts don't contradict those previously integrated, so even guys like us can add to the sum of knowledge thanks to its hierarchical nature.

//The ARI folks demand that Objectism be only what Rand wrote and, I agree, it is reasonable to make a classification of what she wrote as being what it is.// 

Okay. There's no profit in hurting their little fee-fees, so call whatever new stuff discovered that can be integrated without contradiction an addendum or something.

// But they want to erect an establishment out of this where they can control the speech and thought of others. They feel threatened when someone who doesn't think like they do calls himself or herself an Objectivist. Ultimately, they don't trust individuals to do good thinking on their own. That's the main reasoning behind ARI's current hostility.//

I love this bit from the AS part 1 movie. https://youtu.be/etzke3JW8O8?t=2m20s

// (Although I believe the driver is money, sex and power, but not all that much sex. They need to get laid more.) //

I think you're probably onto the right track. 

// The intellectual part of the issue boils down to a dictionary, believe it or not. Open any dictionary and you will see that almost every word in it has more than one meaning. When ARI folks use the word "Objectivism," them mean only what Rand wrote and don't want there to be a second definition. They claim they have the right to demand this. //

Hey no wonder they experience so much rejection.

// Also, I disagree with the worshipful rigidity of the fundies and, ultimately, don't think a society of people like that was what Rand was after at all. I know I don't want to be that--I don't want to be a fanatic or disciple within a closed-off tribe. //

How about this as a theme for short story. In a distopian future a descendant cult of Rand worshipers are at their wits ends living in a post nuclear apocalyptic landscape; they are stalked by a group of equally bad off Church of Elvis worshipers some of whom are afflicted with a zombie disease. A war is averted by a Romeo and Juliet romance between a Randian woman and a sequined body suit wearing Elvis warrior. Their love ushers in a Renaissance by a collaborative discovery of an ancient buried library discovered after a brutal battle against a horde of brain sucking zombies. By teaching themselves to read using Atlas Shrugged and Elvis's biography they come to understand the two factions have more in common and a basis for rationality. So they work together in a division of labor manner to start rebuilding civilization. It'd take some work to flesh out the idea. The place to start would be describing characters. But it'd be fun.

54 minutes ago, Peter said:

One more quote I find interesting concerning how O’ism can change your life. I will cease after this . . . for now. Peter

 

 

From: "William Dwyer" To: <atlantis Subject: ATL: Objectivism's values and virtues. Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:11:18 -0700. Very little if any mention is ever made on this list of Objectivism’s values and virtues, so I thought they might be worth a brief discussion for those who are not especially familiar with them.  There are three cardinal values and seven cardinal virtues in the Objectivist ethics. The values are: reason (as one's only means of knowledge), purpose (as the choice to pursue happiness), and self-esteem, (as the belief that one is able to achieve happiness and worthy of achieving it). The virtues are understood as the principled _means_ of gaining and keeping these values.  As Rand puts it, "'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it."  [FNI, 147' pb 121]  "Virtue," she says, "is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward... [Rather] _Life_ is the reward of virtue -- and happiness is the goal and the reward of life."  [FNI, 156, pb 128]

 

 

For Rand, virtues involve a relationship between existence and consciousness and therefore entail the recognition of certain facts. Accordingly, Objectivism's virtues are:

 

 

1) Rationality, which is the recognition that existence exists and that nothing can take precedence over the act of perceiving it;

 

 

2) Independence, which is the recognition that you must think independently and not subordinate your judgment to that of others;

 

 

3) Integrity, which is the recognition that you must remain true to your convictions;

 

 

4) Honesty, which is the recognition that the real is (and the) unreal can have no value and, moreover, that respect for truth is not a social duty but a selfish virtue.

 

 

5) Justice, which is the recognition that you must judge other people as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, condemning their vices and praising their virtues;

 

 

6) Productiveness, which is the recognition that productive work is the process by which your consciousness controls your existence, and that you must choose a line of work that is commensurate with your abilities;

 

 

and

 

 

7) Pride, which is the recognition that you are your own highest value, that a virtuous character has to be earned, and that the result of earning it is self-esteem.

 

 

The difference between pride and self-esteem may not always be clear and is admittedly a subtle one, but for Objectivism, pride consists of recognizing the importance of a good character and what it takes to earn it.  When someone says, "Take pride in your job," he is saying, consider it important enough to do well.  By the same token, when someone says, "Take pride in yourself or in your character," he is saying, consider a good character important enough to be worth acquiring.  Self-esteem, on the other hand, is the _consequence_ of earning a good character; it is the experience of efficacy and self-worth that comes from having earned it.

 

 

Of course, these virtues offer a very general guide for living one's life; they don't give a detailed blue-print, but they do provide an indispensable foundation for "gaining and keeping" Objectivism's cardinal values of reason, of purpose (defined as one's own happiness) and of self-esteem (defined as a sense of personal efficacy and self-worth). It should be noted that Rand gives a more elaborate definition of these virtues in _For the New Intellectual_, starting on page 157; pb, p. 128). -- Bill

Hi Pete, Thanks. Really good stuff.

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Robert, Have you the link, please? This I've gotta hear. And from Brook, too.

I don't understand, either - to continue the fight unto the next generation.

Hi Tony. Yaron discussed why he disapproves of the Atlas Society and Jennifer, the lady who now runs the show over there, and I get that he has a legitimate reason for strong disapproval given benefit of the doubt about who ever is posting on behalf of AS in their Facebook page. Yaron says that person is posting quotes of the villians from Rand's stories and attributing them as if they were part of Objectivism. Regarding David Kelly, I didn't get why he calls him a fraud who does bad scholarly work  on the first viewing. He states that Kelly's position that Objectivism is an open system allowing addition of any other ideas contradicts what Ayn Rand thought and so constitutes fraud.  Discussion starts at 1:09:24

Link.  

1 hour ago, Peter said:

 . . . and she taught me. ....  She was a Grinch.     

Hi Pete. How goes the battle? I'm delighted to be able to communicate with you. (Insert suitable exclamation!) I was unaware you had met and studied with Ayn Rand. How interesting. (Mike's description of the difference between her public persona and branding vs her private identity helped me understand why Rothbard wroter her off so that libertarians reject O-ism. )  What prompted my question and excursion into a bit of comedy was the Yaron Brook Youtube podcast last night. He railed against David Kelly, and I did not understand why. My apparently incorrect understanding is that the differences between ARI's presentation of O-ism and that of the Atlas Society were trivial fine points of epistemology and perhaps the way in which Oist ethics allows one to discover moral egoism. I thought that on the bigger foundation questions ARI and AS agreed. Brook's vehement condemnation of Atlas Society and David Kelly, however, gave me pause to question what I thought I knew. What's up with David Kelly, now retired, and why does Brook feel comfortable hammering his reputation?  

Hi Mike & Wolf.  Speaking of the end of love, I watched Yaron last night. He slammed David Kelly accusing him of being a fraud and fake intellectual. That, to me, seems over the top because:

Quote

Since Rand hid her affair with Nathaniel during the time it was happening--and after the split--the affair itself was not part of the legend she was creating. Monogamy and publicly holding Frank up to be a kind of Randian hero were parts of the legend.

Apropos, Frank seems to have been a wonderful person, but not a world-maker-and-shaker. According to the bios, Rand would excuse his modest achievements and ambition to people who managed to probe about it without getting their heads bit off by saying he was "on strike." I even think this is on tape...

Yaron knows this. Is he applying a double standard in giving Ayn Rand a pass on her use of herself as a medium for an artsy selective recreation of reality to what can and should be instead of standing firm for the virtues Galt broadcast to the radio audience in AS? Why does Yaron sear David Kelly? What's his beef? Is he bent out of shape because David disagrees on some minor points? Or is it something of which I'm blissfully unaware that approaches criminal activity?

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edit: This message brought to you by Equality 7-2521 Corp. thanks to the application of an artsy selective recreation of reality to what it could be given the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. I'm, perhaps in another universe, Equality 7-2521, and I approve this message. (No not really, but IFF the Wave Function of the Universe collapsed as seems to be self-evident. Existence Exists: waves arms about and says "I mean this stuff.")

Food has this effect on me. When I eat, my blood sugar goes up, and I get happy. Thus I throw out a joke once in a while in celebration of my joke life so unlike that of a Randian Ideal Hero unless Eddie Willers qualifies 

Yaron Brook discusses Ayn Rand's morality and why modern philosophers don't take her seriously.

21 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Robert,

I don't know why this reminds me of an old military saying I read ages ago. But here it is anyway.

Some scared soldiers are marching through a jungle infested with enemy guerilla fighters. One of the soldiers booms out, "Take heart, men. Take solace in the knowledge that the gun in your hands was made by the lowest bidder...."

Michael

Sadly the Reisling Sub Machine Gun wasn't up to the task of down dirty in the mud combat. Pity it was in some ways better than the M1927 Thompson and for sure less than 1/3 the cost, but alas it jammed easily when muddy.  One of my family's cousins was mortally wounded in a night Banzai attack on Guam in July of 1944; he passed two days later. But by then the Marines had eliminated the Reisling.   Nonetheless, when trolls argue O-ism fans can't be sure they're not brains in a vat or sims in the Matrix, I call upon David Kelly and Matthew McCormik to explain Kant's refutation of material idealism. I think Rand may have been perhaps somewhat influenced along those lines by some of his ideas. Certainly the ones she disapproved prompted her to think of ways to counter argue. But that's another story. 

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Robert,

I'm glad you enjoy this blog. For me, the guy write loooooooooong posts on things I have already thought through, but on skimming, he looks OK. It's a bit nit-picky, but I suppose anyone grappling with the Christianity niche the guy is critiquing will find value in it.

I want to comment on the existence exists thing, more specifically the axiomatic concepts. I didn't see your friend mention something, but I might have missed it.

You can tell if a concept is axiomatic if you have to apply it to the agent as a condition in order to consider it. For example, does existence exist? When I apply it to the agent (me or you or whoever is thinking about it), the agent has to exist in order to even ask the question. This goes for identity and consciousness.

If you want to observe existence in order to validate it with your senses and define it, Rand called it an ostensive definition and threw her arm all around and said, " I mean this." 

It's duh level. And to me, that's the proper place to start with philosophy. You can build on it.

Jordan Peterson once said everyone proves existence to themselves through pain.

And I got to thinking, that's true. Nobody in dire pain doubts the existence of it. The only thing they can think about is they want the pain to stop existing.  And that validates the idea that existence exists since something cannot stop existing if it didn't exist in the first place, and it couldn't exist if it didn't have the quality of existence in the first place.

So I found that observation a nice addition to the traditional explanations from Rand.

Now, for fun, imagine this Edward Feser guy with a severe toothache. Then imagine him with his jaw puffed out in inflammation, groaning, expounding at long length on how the concept of existence being an axiom trivializes philosophy because the proposition is or isn't... yada yada yada. I bet he couldn't go on for very long, could he? He first would have to deal with an unpleasant existence that was worrying the piss out of him before he could even think.  

Michael

Oh good Mike. I learned the hard way to not take trolls who deny the axioms or myself trying to convince them not to deny seriously. Honestly, I'd rather change the wax ring under the men's room toilet.  Dawson is long and thorough in his blogs. He's been at it for at least thirteen years, so he's dealt with plenty nutters some of whom were probably moocher rotters. 

On another note, reading Galt's speech makes me reevaluate my life. She was a hell of marketer. Trump needs someone like Ayn Rand to appoint as special trade envoy representative to solve the really stupid tariffs by causing everyone involved to stop an take a personal inventory of their minds. Steel and pipe fitting prices are on a rocket rally. Ouch. That's going to leave a mark.