john42t

I apologize, my mistake.

Reminds me of a word Michael used in a recent thread. He said my sneering on camera doesn't help the "cause". And you use the word "participant" in the "ongoing battle for freedom and rationality". I defined in my recent posting in this thread what freedom means to me, but of course it's not a "cause" or anything I would "participate" in. That would be altruism. Doing it as a professional like Rand, Beck or Coulter is a different matter (it's again selfish), but I'm not a professional ideologue.

I would prefer you to explain, in order to get as much clarity as possible. Total freedom from what? And total freedom for whom? Total freedom for all rational men, which isn't everyone, but will eventually be everyone. Total freedom from the man-made bad, which roots in irrational ideas, which in turn root in the resentment against the better. There was a brief period in time in which the West, especially the US, was much more free that it was in the 20th century. That freedom was objective but apparently unstable. Before that, there was only ancient greece (and maybe what the Jews were having in their familiy lines). My prediction that freedom will eventually be total is only meant to say that this time it will gradually get better (more like it was in th 18th and 19th century and then even better), and there will be no more periods of decline. How are decisions made in that world? Just like in this one. Only that there is more private ownership and decision-making relates more to one's own business rather than a collective. We humans are competitive as well as cooperative. Competition and cooperation are both rooted in our biology as group beings. You don't have to mean it well to be coorperative. You just have to be selfish.

Yes, it's a secret plan between either me and George or me and Shayne. And no, the "prematurely" wasn't referring to my potential disagreement of your application of the posting guidelines. It was just a way of saying that I had something to add. If you weren't constantly looking for a fight you could have interpreted it that way. You decided not to answer on my question in the other thread lately after talking down to me twice without understanding my question. If you had an answer to it, I'd be honestly interested. (I want to know whether I'm wrong on this as I will surely make a video about it at some point.) Was it the other way round, you'd have gotten a "oh, ok, no, I'm not sure" as I've already done a number of times in my short while of posting here and I do on my channel.

Shayne started a thread that unfortunately got closed prematurely; here's what I want to respond to: Yes. I appreciate your defence when I was under attack after I joined the forum, so please don't interpret the following as an attack; I merely want to point something out that touches the recently discussed left-right (libertarian) issue in the other thread. I'm convinced freedom is coming rather soon, total and for good - I don't want to explain why but only what it will look like. It won't be a world full of nice people having rational debates. George does to you is going to *increase*. Rand has been praising the 19th century Zeitgeist. That was a much more elitist one in those circles of the world that did best. A Zeitgeist in a free society is elitist, like the one in Victorian England. People sniping at each other is the hallmark of ambitious people who rest their confidence in their ability rather than in "being liked". If man is set free from man, this is the result. The opposite is a classroom where you start being mister nice guy as soon as the teacher comes in: Because under such circumstances knowledge and reason is nothing, and behaving is everything. Civilized behaviour is in the interest of everyone, but friendliness is not. Do you know Dr. House, especially Season 4? Total competition, applicants seeking to screw each other over. Everyone rational but no one nice. That is one fundamental difference between right and left winged libertarians: The left-winged ones feel like the liberals and believe those just failed to understand something. A right-winged libertarian like myself thinks that no one in this world "means it well", no matter how abstractly. As a rule of thumb: *Everyone* but yourself is a mystic, take their bullshit seriously and you are damned.

I had no idea that this was what you were claiming Rand did not notice. My question (the one you answered to this time) was ambiguous (although I don't believe the previous comment was), and this time I have to blame myself that you misinterpreted it (although I think the first time it was your fault). I don't mean the reason why the wrong kind of professor gets elected by government interference and how this creates an intellectual establishment. I'm familiar with this article. I mean the motivation of professors to be drawn to the wrong ideas, especially the collectivist ones: Did Rand ever accused the professors *as per net-tax-receivers* of being marxists because they are essentially the precursor of the bureaucrats that are dominanting society in Communism? That is very well said. And let me tell you that you will never see me reject a valid argument or even not acknowledging its validity no matter how condescending or hostile you made it. And the level of your condescension is rather mild. As for my being a potential "Rand critic": I don't have any beef at all with anything she said. On those few issues I disagree with her (Russel's maths being my best example) I see *why* she came to her conclusions and I know I would have concluded the same given only the information she must have had. In that sense Rand appears to be a perfectly rational person. I admire that woman more than any human being I know of.

That's only as I know her. No mentioning of a motive. The only motive I know from her is "hatred of the mind". While I believe this to be a good metaphor or first approximation, I think the deeper reason is: Give me your life, I don't have my own - subconscious parasitism explainable with selfish genes switching the mind into self-deception mode. Where did she make the connection between professors being paid for by the state and their opinions? Not in the bit you quoted. And you don't have to condemn a profession in order to make that connection. Except you think being provided for by a collective is part of a definition of a particular profession.

I completely agree with rational being healthy, or simply better, superior. I hope I don't come accross as condoning anything immoral. It's just that when I look at *who* is irrational in my own life (where I can be rather sure of the motives as I know their life situation), then it's not the stupid or the one raised by crazy religionists. It's those who maneuvered themselves into a dead end: Got a job in the government and being confronted with conformism, studied something breadless and seeing no future, etc. Those people are irrational *when* they enter that situation. They are reasonable before that and I'm sure they could get reasonable again. But as long as they are trapped somewhere where they see no way out (without their ego hurt significantly), they go mystic. If it was only by whom they are raised or what they happen to decide regardless of outside factors, why are these people so often teachers, professors, media-people, wifes of accomplished men and those living on welfare or being securely employed in union-infested companies? What do all of those people have in common? They all are not in control of their existence. They all have reason to fear freedom. Who are the most extreme of them? The students, who often enough deluded themselves into a vision of earning so-and-so-much but face a future scrubbing the floors as they see their education was in fact worthless. So they are, in fact, egoistical - only not consciously and rationally so. It also matches with my own feelings over the course of my life. That doesn't excuse them, of course. But it provides the answer to the problem: Get rid of the schools and universities, employee protection, alimony laws, feminist family laws, and mysticism will be greatly diminished. And, surprise surprise, that's exactly what these people would hate to happen the most. Michael: You are probably right that I departed quite a bit from the Rand's view of human nature. I can't see that I disagree with anything she said, but what she didn't say is very telling: She never said "you professors believe what you do because it suits you - after all you could never pay your bills in a free market", as far as I know, which I find very odd. Isn't that rather obvious? Was Rand just another appeaser, after all? An good girl that wanted to be liked by everybody? :-) As for the quotation: I agree with intelligence being a property of social species and I don't object to anything in the excerpt. I'm merely suspicious about the selection of only mentioning nice reasons for being intelligent. The distrustful cynic in me hears the authors saying: "And so if your not nice, you're not intelligent/healthy/normal, see?" Mystical con-jobs are everywhere.

Have you met any such people? No, I merely inferred that from what I've read about the Objectivist movement. Godess of the market is my primary source plus various forums on the net. I'm living in Germany, so in fact I haven't even met anyone yet in real life who even heard about Objectivism. I may have committed an error here. It could actually be that all people who alienate themselves thoroughly (this bit is not disputed, is it?) still do better than if they've never come accross Rand. Impossible to say.

Fankly, I muddled two things into one that should be separate. There's the conscious outwitting of peers that is also seen in some other higher animals such as crows - I believe that could be what got animals their rational faculty. If that is so, then the outwitting oneself must have come later: Decepting yourself has only an advantage when used as an instrument to deceive others (because conscious lies are expensive to maintain, a matter of unit economy in Randian parlance) because you can only deceive somebody (on the level of ideas) who's already rational to some extent. So more precicely, my working theory is that "social metaphysics" (conscious plotting against others) made life intelligent, and has the side effect of making animals more adaptive towards nature (the Randian hero). Since all healthy ecosystems know parasites, these then develop on this new level (genes for self-deception become more frequent in the gene pool to allow for good hypocrites). That new parasitism is Rand's mysticism. And it's not in one set of people but not in others. It just *shows* in a set of people who are in such as situation that being a hypocrite is more beneficial to their genes. By and large: net tax receivers and people who feel they have nothing to offer. In my heretical opinion that's also many Objectivists behave like Randian villains. If it was only about knowledge or "meaning it well", you would think that reading Rand should make everybody well-meaning and compatible to every one else who understands her. It doesn't work because even when you understood Rand, you still need to feel you have something of value to offer in order for you to remain on the "good side". Those that feel they've lost it will have those genes for mysticism make them be consumed with hatred. No matter what they know or how smart they are, they'll going to find a way to deceive themselves. That would also explain a lot of the Objectivist movements dark sides: People read Rand, alienate themselves from society, fail, become mystics for said reason, outsiders see this and are reinforced in their delusion of Objectivism being a cult of sociopaths.

Interesting. Here's where I depart with Rand (or "extend" her if you will) - I explain the root of mysticism with the Selfish Gene Theory. The purpose of irrationalism is parasitism. If men wasn't a social animal but still rational, evolution wouldn't have shaped him such great self-deception powers. These people don't want to die, they don't know how to live properly. A lot of the times, irrational ideas serve them better than to utilise the limited brainpower they have honestly. And I mean it, it really *does* serve them better. They live better, have more sex, procreate more, get older, etc. Of course they consume their hosts energy, but in the short run, it doesn't matter, and their offspring doesn't have to assume the same ideology or the parasitic role in society - and it's the genes that are selfish, not the man (or even the species). It wouldn't surprise me if that's actually how the human species (or any species with some intelligence) got intelligent in the first place: Not by defeating nature but by outwitting peers. That's my primary reason (plus personal experience with irrational people) why I'm convinced they are all true believers.

On a very deep level, yes. But it's so deep, I'm sure it doesn't trouble him. I think Michael Moore sleeps like a baby in his self-righteousness. I bet even when he's already in a forced-labor camp he's still going to believe that it was just bad luck that the wrong kind of person "abused" the movement. This is probably one of the most crucial things that I took from Objectivism: How utterly irrational people really are. Here's some personal experience in that direction. I used to be close with a group of old school colleagues. One of them is a homosexual ex-muslim. So he's in for the death penalty in Iran for two independent reasons. Still, when I said something against Iran, he got mad at me. Of course he knows all the facts I do, but that's immaterial. As a (clueless) immigrant from the middle east he feels profoundly alienated by German society and projects any insult of Iran onto himself. I believe it's simply this: Most people think they can't win with reason. Michael Moore doesn't know what other kind of movie he could make money with. It's the only shot he's got. My ex-friend doesn't know what to do with his life or why anybody should be his friend, only that people don't like the countries his ethnicity comes from. So that's what he blames. All man-made bad comes from the irrational. And they win in a climate of intimidation and shame in which they can be seen like the altruist or the victim. People will pity or admire them and that's the game they play - and the only game they can play. That's why my advice is: Glorify arrogance, pride, selfishness, ruthlessness. Michael: That's why we don't get along.

To me, a ~relevant~ bad habit, is the tendency of too many libertarians to crawl in bed, based on a non-essential common value, with those who want to destroy the basic values libertarians hold dear. It's all well and good to hate the way ~some~ people became rich. But to make common cause with those who hate ~all~ rich people, regardless of how they became rich, is not going to accomplish anything of value, and in fact is aiding and abetting those who want to destroy what freedom we have left. The enemy is not rich people. It is statism and it is those looters (government officials) who want to hand out privileges and taxpayer dollars to parasites, whether rich or poor. It's not fashionable to bad-mouth the non-rich moochers, but anyone who doesn't want to shoot himself and liberty in the foot needs to take on these people, too. I disagree strongly. The enemy isn't the looters/moochers/statists, the enemy is the irrational ideologies that are their power base. That's why I also disagree with Shayne's view that fascism/corporatism is a problem. It's not, it's a symptom. The problem is the do-gooder teacher in public schools, the mother who teaches her children to "be good", the professors who come up with one irrational piece of crap after another explaining why we should all be ashamed of ourselves and should stop trying. *Those* are the enemy. Obama, corporate leaders, corrupt bureaucrats, they are symptoms. Tell every kid on this planet that their parents are merely playing a con game on them to look good to others, tell them that schools are designed to prevent them from earning more than their teachers ever could, tell them that professors are losers who couldn't get a real job, tell them that Bill Gates doesn't help the poor because he's good, but because he's no longer good. And all of the rest is going to disappear.

Are you serious? I'm pretty sure that every single do-gooder that is really active believes what he says. Few people are conscious in their hyporcrisy, that's why Rand called them "mystics". In Michael Moore's case I'm especially sure, I can't believe he's acting. He actually believes he's fighting for the good. That's what makes these people so dangerous and that's why you can't convince him that another course of action is in his better interest, he doesn't consciously care about his interest. He cares about his cause with which he identifies.

I wasn't aware of that, and it's weird indeed. In fact I see more heroism in Ballmer than in Gates on the superficial glance I took, when it comes to Microsoft. However, note that not only Apple, but also Google (Page Rank was there before they made profit or had any business model at all) and Microsoft now follow the "Roark-principle". If more people could understand the beauty, scope and ambition of the .NET strategy, all those slashdot-hippies who whine about how Microsoft only goes where the money is would shut up. I don't know who that is within Microsoft that drives this forward, but the notion of this company making money with "market abuse" is now becoming absurd even for those who still believe there is such a thing.

I'm from Germany too (haven't seen the video yet) - what "similar secular phenomenon in Germany" are you referring to exactly? I mean the extraordinary popularity of Thilo Sarrazin in harsh contrast to his condemnation by all the state media, politicians and intellectuals. There are many differences, but in both the US and Germany there is an increasing division between net tax payers and net tax receivers (intellectual / political establishment). Actually the division was always there, that's what the hippy revolution was about. But now the "conservatives" (in the net tax-paying sense) are back in both countries. There's common ground between Sarrazin and Beck/Coulter if one looks at it in a very abstract way. It's just to abstract for those individuals (or their fans) to see, as the former is still very statist and secular, the latter are extremely minarchist and religious. But in their respective contexts they have a similar role in the debate individual vs collective and the debate itself follows similar patterns. Do you have to Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in mind here? Yes, that's what led me there. It changed my view on religion fundamentally.

You have a link/title for George's material? I found his profile, but I'm not sure what you're referring to. I'm German. And curious, what diction would be Scottish?

<p> </p> <p> </p><div> </div> <div>I'd not be the effete attention whore I am if I was to leave so soon - also, I didn't find a way to remove my account.</div> <div> </div> <div>My take on your question: Original, Catholic Christianity has been quasi-Marxist, and Marxist churches are growing and eventually Christianity will be what it once was and what Rand said it has to be (anti-freedom).</div> <div> </div> <div>But in the reformation John Calvin came up with a pro-individualist reinterpretation of the bible, which is actually fundamentally opposed to Christianity (that's what the fuss in the 30-year-long-war was about), that set the individual free for everyone who wanted to believe in it (mostly more virtuous people in the cold north of Europe, who are likely to have hated the leftist establishment). I believe that this brought man into modernity. Many secondary virtues have survived in Christians up until today although few of them were and are actually explicit Calvinists. The actual doctrine of the bible is now pushing them towards what they've been before, hence the effect you are describing.</div> <div> </div> <div>You see this pro-capitalist aspect only in countries that had a reformist past (population-wise, of course).</div> <div> </div> <div>So in effect I believe that it was religion that brought about reason and the enlightenment.</div> <div> </div> <div>Or more precisely, a religious anomaly. Such anomalies are not stable as they can be attacked by atheists.</div> <div> </div> <div>There's much more to say, and maybe I write it down properly as well making a video later.</div> <div> </div> <div>But videos are such much more fun. I love the snarky sneers and smug-ass rambling so much.</div> <div> </div>

John, If you are seeking blind agreement, I agree with you. You will not find that here. EDIT: If you don't think there is merit in my observations, keep an eye on your view count. Michael There's merit in all observations, hostile and friendly alike. And if it was anyone but the host of this forum I wouldn't have cared. But I can only deal with hostility by fighting back - I see no point in pissing on your lawn for the fun of it. If the rules allow me to behave the way you did I take no issue. Then again how does the criticism of not introducing myself in another fashion stacks up to not addressing me but rather talk about me in the third person right away from the first post? As in a coffee shop where a guy with leaflets is immediately attacked by the host for how tasteless they are designed - directed to his colleague. Are there any rules or do you want me to leave this forum? I don't mind either way. Just don't tell me what you did was constructive criticism. You don't seriously believe that good manners contribute to a high view count.

That's true - there are some upsides too though. I especially like the nature of YouTube itself - all ideologies are present there in one forum and if you quote people (in videos), audiences often know the other YouTubers. Objectivism is rather underrepresented though, at least on the topics I'm interested in. In the vid I quoted I point to parallels between the (Christian - Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, etc.) Tea Party and a similar (secular) phenomenon in Germany. I believe there to be a reason why the American Christians are (curiously) largely in the role of being defenders of capitalism which has to do with the reformation (which is a heritage of both the US and Germany, only in Germany it has secularized away). My intention was to attract people to those ideas that I want to roll out more in the future. Thanks for being nice, I'm out of here anyway - clearly I'm in the wrong place. John

Hello guys, I just signed in, my main objective is to attract Objectivist-leaning people to some ideas I articulate on YouTube, like my latest video, about .I know I could also just write articles and post them here or a different community platform, but I found the visual method to be more fun. As YouTube is a mixed forum, I'd like to post links to the videos when I think it's appropriate. Do people here object to that or, if not, in what way (linked or embedded) and in which forum should this be done? Thanks everybody and have a nice day, John PS: There's something wrong with the avatar photo mechanism, it always gives me an error when I try to change mine.