seymourblogger

Heh. You've got some things to learn about how OL works. You have no idea how I have handled the many trolls and crazies and bullies and preacher types, including a few nasty people purposely out to destroy this forum, who have appeared in the past. (And other problems, of course.) Yet look around. We have a pretty good thing going with a very high-quality audience. Before telling the owner why that is, I suggest you do some observing first. To put it politely, it ain't the way you speculate. I know what I'm doing. I learned it the hard way at the college of hard knocks, Screw U. That's why I'm glad you say you are opting for quality. (Let's see if you do what you say, but only time will tell.) And yes, that will save me a headache. But if not, no worries. I've dealt with people who have tried to hog the forum before so I assure you I can handle it without a whole bunch of "howling." Look at how you were received. I can almost guarantee that you have not had the treatment elsewhere that you have had so far here. There are reasons--and some of them are the reasons you want to post here. But I'm not going to teach them to you. All you have to do is observe and you will find them out for yourself. Carol, I've had to deal with several machine-gun posters in the past (including one serial plagiarist). They actually do make the audience leave. The first day or three there's a surge in interest since people like to gather to see the train wreck, but as the show gets monotonous, people move on. That's what the stats backstage have always told me (in addition to my own eyes, of course). Nowadays I try to nip things in the bud instead of waiting for the audience to leave. And it's always a treat when someone like that finally "gets" the spirit of the forum. (I'm thinking specifically about one who knows who she is and she ain't you or the current newcomer.) I keep an eye on these things because I like to make a comfortable, but challenging, environment for highly intelligent people to explore ideas--using our shared interest in Objectivism as a starting point, not an end. If you build it they will come. That's what's happened so far. Like I said above, I think we've got a pretty good thing going here. And there's something else. Over the years, I've noticed that many things posted here end up being raised and discussed at other intelligent places soon after. Come to think of it... Yo! You lurkers! Yo! Give yourself a hand! I mean it... You guys rock. Stupid people don't read OL too much. Intelligent people do. So guess what that makes you? Rock on... Michael Thanks Michael for explaining this. I am surprised that one-liners diminish audience, but I can see that dominant sniping by a very few would soon bore an interested reader. I have to say that it was in part the quality one-liners of regulars like Ghs. PDS, Brant and yes, you Adam, which lured me into joining OL. For which joining, I am STILL waiting for my T Shirt as thousandth member. I don't care what is printed on it, John Galt or the Blackhawks, size XXL please, I might invite a friend to join me in it, In the case of Seymour though I think you are wise to ask her to practise self-restraint in rejoinder. Her "caustic zaps" so far are just ill-tempered, mean-spirited, small-minded, childish reactions which zap no one but herself, not with caustic but with emollient, soothing her own feelings --which, I suppose, is the point, after all. If you like my being chastised for my caustic one-liners, then why do you keep baiting me? Does that mean you want more? Or is your thank you to Michael act as a "floating sign" saying you are glad he told me to stop but denying what you said and meaning the opposite, that you want more? Jes sayin'.

I’m not going to reply in the software any more. I lose comments too often. Questions are interrogations. Since I went through Foucault’s genealogy on Confession and the cuts in it that interfaced with questioning that turned it into interrogation, I fall into the trap of responding to content with full knowledge that I am being stupid to do so. I can’t help it a lot as you will see from here and my chastisements. Sex change is an interface with the body and technology. This is an important issue. I don’t think LP has been seeing films about it: eXistenZ, one of Tarkovsky’s (name?) and Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island. Sex change (plastic surgery etc) is one of the beginnings of cloning and complete cloning is less than 2 decades away now. And it will be done. Peikoff, one of the founders of Objectivism, is heartily criticized here, while others are not allowed a whisper of a hint that appears negative about them. I guess some are more equal than others. Peikoff has done something very impressive with Objectivism. He has kept it a closed system as much as he was humanly able to do so. Had he allowed it to open up, it would have been a disaster. It is a hodge-podge of philosophical constructs pasted together that would have been shattered into bits and laughed at long ago. Rand follows Nietzsche in relating everything to everything else, and as Sciabarra has shown, Peikoff preserved this relational aspect. This is what allows Rand to weave sex, economics, aesthetics into the pattern she named Objectivism. This is what allowed her to attack inroads that would have ruined what she was trying to do. Sciabarra is very clear on this. A question about sex change is not a question, but an interrogation as to the Objectivist moral position on it. What is the moral issue in changing your reality surgically, permanently? A difficult question that requires a thoughtful answer, not a ready-made. He did not have it because he had not been thinking about it. We can imagine what Rand would have said. But if she were here now, her reply might have been different from what it might have been then. That’s hard to say and we will never know. But Peikoff intends to keep Objectivism a closed system and although I have criticized him in the past for this when I thought psychologically, I can only now admire him for standing firm on this. Absolutely no one else in the movement could have done this. No one. And I applaud him for it. I am not saying I agree with him, only that his strategy is correct in preserving Rand’s work and the way she will be perceived as much as possible, in his lifetime. Afterwards I expect it to pretty much disintegrate. There will be no opposition. The dialectic will not exist and there will be endless interpretive ping-pong. The relational aspect of Rand's work following Nietzsche is what draws her into post modern thinking, and away from he said/she said. There are some very interesting comments in this mini-essay. An intellectual historian could take this and run with it pretty briskly. I remember in the mid 80's waiting (and waiting) for LP to finish the comprehensive opus that would eventually become OTPAR. This was before the myriad of little splits, but quite a while after the Big Split. You may be intuiting what took him so long. Peikoff is only ONE person. He cannot do it all. He has done a remarkable job so far. Can you imagine the untouchables being able to do what he has done?

Janet, What do you think Ayn Rand would have replied to that? Joan Baez handled that kind of comment perfectly in her early memoir Daybreak. Go read it and get your answer. Ms. Abbey: Rather than play the go find out yourself bitch game, perhaps you could paraphrase how Joan "handled" that order of question/interrogation. Adam Only since it's you: she was being interrogated on her pacifism. If she were driving down the road and a car was coming at her and there was someone in the way that she would hit if she swerved. So she responded that she would try to avoid the oncoming car and avoid hitting the person when she swerved. So then the question ante was upped. Well suppose you were on a two way road and there was a cliff on the side where you would go off if you swerved to avoid the car and the woman. Then she said I would probably go off the cliff and land on a farmhouse and kill all the people inside. I am paraphrasing but she upped the ante on the response to shut the questioner up. And this was exactly what was going to happen in the above example and I was going to have to spend all the rest of the day answering reasonably and logically, while the ante was upped. And then I would start my caustic one-liners and daunce would have another nail to pound in my coffin and the rest of them would jump in and and and....... Nope. Joanie had it covered.

If it has anything to do with Google stop using it. Using the Google spell checker on this forum will sometimes do it. I've not noticed it elsewhere. I'd guess the software that runs this joint and the Google software have some compatibility issues. --Brant I think I got it, I think I got it. What happens is I swish over something and it posts and then disappears for me. I just found it posted when I was looking for something else. I figured how to edit. I will say this Toshie baby is fast fast fast.

My logic is not in error. For the fact that not all patriarchal societies have such practices, does not alter the fact that if such practices occur, they are always patriarchal. Without exception. What you wrote in the quote below perfectly illustrates my point: Every single of the above points has patriarchalism at the root of it. Therefore without patriarchalism, no genital mutilation would exist. There do exist humanitarian organizations dealing with this problem, to which one can donate money. And they have achieved successes. Progress is yet small, but even a small progress is a progress. Also, the victims are beginning to speak up in public about their ordeal (as e. g. Waris Dire did in Desert Flower). This has raised a global awareness that just wasn't there few decades ago. And that global awareness will keep growing even more. First of all: you cannot know what I'm doing (or not doing) with regard to this problem. You cannot know if I care about it or not. Such basic epistemological blunders come across as pretty odd in a philosophy forum. For example, I might be regularly donating to human rights organizations that also deal with the problem. You cannot know any of this. Get my point? So please get your epistemological ducks in a row next time and don't present mere assumptions on your part as if they were statements of objective fact. I'm not interested in giving you any 'smart' answers. I'm interested in gettting - in the course of a mutual exchange - to the root of an issue AlI I'm asking for is preciseness. Also, I don't expect of you to 'resolve' anything. Discourses on philosophy forums are mostly process-oriented. Still they can be quite powerful because light is shed on certain issues, errors are unvcovered, etc. - all of which can induce change in the participants' worldview. For example, It was a discourse (a debate actually) I was having with an atheist which got me to rethink my premises regarding religion. Here's the ROOT of the problem between you and me. I'm not interested in giving you any 'smart' answers. I'm interested in gettting - in the course of a mutual exchange - to the root of an issue I am not in your Discourse. There is no origin of a problem and no idealistic horizon we are aspiring to get to. That is your Hegelian Dialectical Dominating Discourse. I am not in it. There is NO ROOT to this problem. There is only a genealogy of it. I am not going to spend the next couple of years doing that for you. Just accept the fact that I am not in your Discourse. The end of hermeneutics was accomplished by Foucault. And Susan Sontag in her 1966 Against Interpretation, which Foucault never acknowledged her for. Shit on you Foucault! She was first!

Janet, What do you think Ayn Rand would have replied to that? Joan Baez handled that kind of comment perfectly in her early memoir Daybreak. Go read it and get your answer.

If it has anything to do with Google stop using it. Using the Google spell checker on this forum will sometimes do it. I've not noticed it elsewhere. I'd guess the software that runs this joint and the Google software have some compatibility issues. --Brant That helps. sometimes it saves them and then I get self-confident only to get punked. I saved it on word while I was doing something else. Now it's in the wrong place but you get the idea. I’m not going to reply in the software any more. I lose comments too often. Questions are interrogations. Since I went through Foucault’s genealogy on Confession and the cuts in it that interfaced with questioning that turned it into interrogation, I fall into the trap of responding to content with full knowledge that I am being stupid to do so. I can’t help it a lot as you will see from here and my chastisements. Sex change is an interface with the body and technology. This is an important issue. I don’t think LP has been seeing films about it: eXistenZ, one of Tarkovsky’s (name?) and Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island. Sex change is one of the beginnings of cloning and complete cloning is less than 2 decades away now. And it will be done. Peikoff, one of the founders of Objectivism, is heartily criticized here, while others are not allowed a whisper of a hint that appears negative about them. I guess some are more equal than others. Peikoff has done something very impressive with Objectivism. He has kept it a closed system as much as he was humanly able to do so. Had he allowed it to open up, it would have been a disaster. It is a hodge-podge of philosophical constructs pasted together that would have been shattered into bits and laughed at long ago. Rand follows Nietzsche in relating everything to everything else, and as Sciabarra has shown, Peikoff preserved this relational aspect. This is what allows Rand to weave sex, economics, aesthetics into the pattern she named Objectivism. This is what allowed her to attack inroads that would have ruined what she was trying to do. Sciabarra is very clear on this. A question about sex change is not a question but an interrogation as to the Objectivist moral position on it. What is the moral issue in changing your reality surgically, permanently? A difficult question that requires a thoughtful answer, not a ready-made. He did not have it because he had not been thinking about it. We can imagine what Rand would have said. But if she were here now, her reply might have been different from what it might have been then. That’s hard to say and we will never know. But Peikoff intends to keep Objectivism a closed system and although I have criticized him in the past for this when I thought psychologically, I can only now admire him for standing firm on this. Absolutely no one else in the movement could have done this. No one. And I applaud him for it. I am not saying I agree with him, only that his strategy is correct in preserving Rand’s work and the way she will be perceived as much as possible, in his lifetime. Afterwards I expect it to pretty much disintegrate. There will be no opposition. It will deteriorate into ping-pong the way it has here and on solo.

Yes and no. Rand is observant about the problem of "the will" in her fiction. A sub offloads her will onto the dom. Baudrillard has said much about this offloading of the will. The western idea of "willing" taking responsibility for one's actions, determining one's life, blah blah is not a predominant fact of a culture or civilization throughout history. Many cultures offload their will and in that way can take responsibility for someone else. Ms. Abbey: There is a transfer of power between the submissive and the Dominant. The power exchange [TPE - Total power exchange] is not a one way dynamic. Unless I had a definition of "offloading," I would not find that descriptive of what occurs in a D/s power exchange. You make some salient statements that are applicable. The "will" of either party is never dissolved, rather it is enmeshed into one unitary entity for the duration of the exchange and the after care of the submissive. I will reserve any further commentary. Can you provide me with a definition, as used by Baudrillard? Adam If I sound abrupt it's because I keep losing posts as I can't figure out why. http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com/2011/05/problem-of-will-he-didnt-know-what-he.html This is one of the links you want. There are others on my other blogs as it keeps coming up. The error in your thinking as far as the post modern mode goes is that of power. Following Foucault power is always in a relation with knowledge. The power/knowledge grid. The two cannot be separated. Power lies in the interstices of the grid. Power cannot be had, given, traded, exchanged,taken, loaned, etc. Power is welded into this relation. Just as Desire/Lack are in a relation as Lacan has elicited. So instead of power Baudrillard uses "will" and "destiny" etc. If you follow the link it is explained. My intention is to disappear. To juxtapose texts that illuminate problems, not to add to the problems with my ego and interpretations. However I get sucked in when I try to communicate with someone in their Discourse. I see I don't have to do that with you as you are flexible enough to jump back and forth.

Yes and no. Rand is observant about the problem of "the will" in her fiction. A sub offloads her will onto the dom. Baudrillard has said much about this offloading of the will. The western idea of "willing" taking responsibility for one's actions, determining one's life, blah blah is not a predominant fact of a culture or civilization throughout history. Many cultures offload their will and in that way can take responsibility for someone else. I have used Rob Pattinson's unaware utterances on the problem of the will. When asked by an interviewer how he was going to play Edward Cullen in Breaking Dawn, he said he was just going to follow Kristen's lead as he had been doing all along. That she was the better actor. And interestingly enough he has taken responsibility for a few of his musician friends to include their work in Twilight and foster their emergence above the radar. People have gone to their concerts because Pattinson sang one of their songs recorded on youtube, or because he was in a small audience. The Hopi have a verb form called the "intentional". When you speak of someone or something you wish well of, yoou use the intentional form. It doesn't mean you have to do anything active, just that you have good feelings about it, that you wish them well. BL Whorf has an essay on Hopi in his book that I love. Dominique and Dagny both offload their will onto the man they are having a sexual relationship with. This is very much in the vein of post modern thinking. It doesn't mean that they cannot be achievers in all other ways, but it does mean that in sex they offload their will and the man decides. Much of Twi8light Bella/Edward fanfiction is of this nature. And much of fanfic is unconsciously post modern, written by girls and women who have never heard of post modern thought. It is incredibly erotic and is offered free. I suspect it is making a huge swath into the market of young adult fiction for girls and women. Other romances seem very pallid by comparison. I certainly enjoyed playing with this genre.

Pete: Yep. A classic example of submissive behavior. Dagny: "I propose to earn my room and board. By what means? By working. In what capacity? In the capacity of your cook and housemaid." For the first time, she saw him take the shock of the unexpected in a manner and with a violence she had not foreseen. Later, on the next page, page 702, "I shall cook your meals, clean your house, do your laundry and perform such other duties as are required of a servant ..." Adam A rather unfortunate scene in Atlas. I am trying to imagine an alternative but one does not easily come to mind.

I’m not going to reply in the software any more. I lose comments too often. Questions are interrogations. Since I went through Foucault’s genealogy on Confession and the cuts in it that interfaced with questioning that turned it into interrogation, I fall into the trap of responding to content with full knowledge that I am being stupid to do so. I can’t help it a lot as you will see from here and my chastisements. Sex change is an interface with the body and technology. This is an important issue. I don’t think LP has been seeing films about it: eXistenZ, one of Tarkovsky’s (name?) and Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island. Sex change (plastic surgery etc) is one of the beginnings of cloning and complete cloning is less than 2 decades away now. And it will be done. Peikoff, one of the founders of Objectivism, is heartily criticized here, while others are not allowed a whisper of a hint that appears negative about them. I guess some are more equal than others. Peikoff has done something very impressive with Objectivism. He has kept it a closed system as much as he was humanly able to do so. Had he allowed it to open up, it would have been a disaster. It is a hodge-podge of philosophical constructs pasted together that would have been shattered into bits and laughed at long ago. Rand follows Nietzsche in relating everything to everything else, and as Sciabarra has shown, Peikoff preserved this relational aspect. This is what allows Rand to weave sex, economics, aesthetics into the pattern she named Objectivism. This is what allowed her to attack inroads that would have ruined what she was trying to do. Sciabarra is very clear on this. A question about sex change is not a question, but an interrogation as to the Objectivist moral position on it. What is the moral issue in changing your reality surgically, permanently? A difficult question that requires a thoughtful answer, not a ready-made. He did not have it because he had not been thinking about it. We can imagine what Rand would have said. But if she were here now, her reply might have been different from what it might have been then. That’s hard to say and we will never know. But Peikoff intends to keep Objectivism a closed system and although I have criticized him in the past for this when I thought psychologically, I can only now admire him for standing firm on this. Absolutely no one else in the movement could have done this. No one. And I applaud him for it. I am not saying I agree with him, only that his strategy is correct in preserving Rand’s work and the way she will be perceived as much as possible, in his lifetime. Afterwards I expect it to pretty much disintegrate. There will be no opposition. The dialectic will not exist and there will be endless interpretive ping-pong. The relational aspect of Rand's work following Nietzsche is what draws her into post modern thinking, and away from he said/she said.

Sorry since I thought it was pretty mild of a criticism I wasn't aware it crossed your guidelines. I just won't mention her name again. Nada. My lips are sealed on that topic now. The problem is not in mentioning her but that you throw her into your stream of post-modernist consciousness without really careful regard for what you are saying about her in particular. So your choice is probably the best unless you want to change your overall posting style. I know you can dispute this but bottom line is what is read--by others--not what you think you are thinking. You might say this site is quirky about the Brandens this way, but Michael has special reasons and it's his site so that is that. Anyway, it doesn't impinge on much else here. --BrantThanks. I was working on a serious reply to you but it disappeared so I am redoing it on word and wil try again. I have been reading this site for over a decade - not new here really- and I do understand.

Sorry since I thought it was pretty mild of a criticism I wasn't aware it crossed your guidelines. I just won't mention her name again. Nada. My lips are sealed on that topic now.

Folks: This was in my NPR e-mail today...coincidence? In a recent public conversation with fellow rock bard Jarvis Cocker about the new recording Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen answered the younger man's suggestion that his songs are "penitential hymns" (a phrase Cohen himself employs in his new song "Come Healing") with jocular humility. "I'm not sure what that means, to be honest," Cohen reportedly replied. He continued, "Who's to blame in this catastrophe? I never figured that out." The catastrophe he mentions is life itself — a description Cohen probably picked up from a fictional character he admires, Zorba the Greek, who embraced the "full catastrophe" of a well-connected, joyfully physical existence. The Buddhist teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn has also borrowed it for a book title, which is relevant, since Cohen's writing is famously philosophical, connecting his Jewish heritage to years of Zen meditation and an enduring existentialist bent. But this spiritual master is a sensualist, too: His artistry is grounded in the careful examination of how the body and the soul interact. Old Ideas, his 12th studio album, was recorded after a triumphant world tour that had Cohen performing three-hour shows night after night — no mean feat for a man in his late 70s. It throbs with that life, its verses rife with zingers and painful confessions, and its music sounds more richly varied than anything Cohen has done in years. http://www.npr.org/2...&cc=es-20120129 I love Cohen so. Thank you for this lovely post and pic. What a happiness for my day. There are no coincidences. The Music of Chance - Paul Auster

Dominique's Nietzschean strategy is shown in the way she tells Gail she is with Roark. She spends the night with Roark in Monadnock Valley that he designed. The next morning she reports a valuable ring as stolen to the police. They come to get the report from her, find Mrs. Wynand in the morning with Howard Roark and it is obvious they have spent the night together. The police are forced to file the report and the papers get the story, The Banner of course is right there at the ready. Wynand is advised to publicly announce his plans to divorce her, which he caves in and does. She did not call him or see him to say she was leaving him, nor discuss it with him, she took an excessive action to smear herself and force him to divorce her. She left him no way out. No Exit. The way she married him, publicly in a huge wedding, dressed in black is a wedding that is more than a wedding, "worse" than a wedding to use Nietzsche's term. So the way she leaves him is to leave him "worse", even more so, publicly and making a scandal, worse than leaving, excessively worse. This is not psychological, nor does a psychological interpretation cover her actions. She is a Nietzschean strategist, Beyond Good and Evil.

Correction: I just realized I was mixing up a poster from SOLO with the ATL poster. I think the latter's name was Sandra Mendoza (sp?). (George, if you're reading this, does that name ring a bell? She posted a whole ton of stuff about politics, a lot of it pertaining to Israel and Ariel Sharon.) She said that she'd been an NBI staff member and had seen lots of goings-on the details of which she kept saying she would reveal, but the net amount she did say about what she'd supposedly seen was little. Ellen This thread had me thinking today about bio's. I love Houellebecq's on Lovecraft. He is not the "authorized" authority on Lovecraft. The authority says he can't stand to read him anymore. Houlellebecq says with such love, "How does he do it!" And he writes with such love and admiration and respect for Lovecraft. It made me weep. Of course there's the Mallon book. And what was the other one so delicious? Oh Nabokov on himself, Speak Memory. And Victor Herman's Coming Out of the Ice, a novice, his only book before he did the Gray People, not a writer, and yet there are passages of incredible beauty. There was one on Woodrow Wilson that informed me. Joyce Carol Oates on Marilyn, Mailer on Marilyn where he said if she had just waited a little longer for the 60's she would have made a marvelous director. And he said the movie she was born to make was one with Chaplin. Can't you just see that one in your head? Boswell on Johnson or is it the reverse? And Plutarch's Lives are wonderful: Alexander. Barbara has said one of her favorite books is Dean Koontz. Koontz for crissakes. One may read Koontz, but if you think of yourself as a writer, you don't list him as a favorite. Hemingway and his marveloussentences. Raymond Carver and his sentences. Confederacy of Dunces, the funniest book I ever read. PAR makes me cringe a lot in embarrassment.

I love the thought of Iris Murdoch doing a bio of Rand (though would she have wanted to, and besides she became ill in the 90s?), but I don't agree that BB's book isn't well written or that the stuff in it belonged on the couch. I think the great virtue of BB's book is the personal stuff, the story of which needed to be told as personal. Incidentally, re: Where did you get that? In conversation the afternoon you mentioned (here) visiting his apartment? Sounds to me like either he or you got it backward. Barbara tells the story of Rand becoming furious with her, Barbara, when Barbara criticized an early story of Rand's which hadn't been identified as such. Ellen Why does it have to be either/or. Why couldn't it have been both/and. The way Rothbard told it to me was that Rand got furious when Barbara's writing was criticized saying, "Mrs. Branden is a professional!" I remember that adjective he used. He also told me, and the others in the room, some pretty serious stuff that went on among those people. At the time I didn't think much about it, but now after all these years I choke on some of it. Rothbard was talking about his apartment and how cheap it was because it was rent controlled. I asked him how come he could live in a subsidized apartment and then espouse free enterprise, free no govt capitalism etc. and he replied that one should take all advantages possible from the state to weaken it. Good point. He also talked about his agoraphobia. At the time I had gone through it with my German Shepherd so I could have told him how to deal with it. But I wasn't thinking of myself as a clinician then and never even thought of it at the time. But I did know from animal desensitization and later worked with women who suffered from the problem. My own mother was one and she hid it all her life. They are very clever in hiding it. I also think Rand was and that she was hiding it, holding Frank's arm when they went out, taking him to lectures when he had Alzheimers. She just fits the profile, the woman who never goes out alone. What else did he say? No matter.

Yes. Islamic countries are within the Sacred Order not the Order of Production, not a Secular order. You cannot judge them from within ours, tempting as that may be. I presume you are talking about genital cutting among other things. Stoning because of adultery, etc. They are a culture that has a great fear of women. And women are the cornerstone of their culture /religion. Exchange and property. This is a total belief system. And I think you know about beliefs. You may suppress the behavior but you are not going to get rid of it. You may punish and try them as we do in the US, but thaat still is only going to suppress it, the belief will still be there. Maybe here after a few generations it will not happen. Ousmane Sembene's last film was on genital mutilation. He is a filmmaker, educated in France, from Somalia and has always done films on taboo subjects, exposing hypocrisy. It shows that other women in the village are the most adamant on the cutting, and the young girls want it as a ritual of feminine adulthood, otherwise they will not be marriageable and then what do they have if they cannot marry. It's complicated. Mothers often try to spare their daughters, but other women undermine them, grab their daughters and do it anyway against her wishes. Human rights belong to secular orders not sacred orders. Janet, The "Sacred Order" thing you posted prevented you from getting to the root of issue: for it is patriarchalism, not religion, which leads to such horrific practices like genital mutilation. And since many religions were founded in patriarchal times, it is no surprise that they reflect this patriarchalism. But patriarchalism is primarily not a religious issue, surely you will agree. It is a political issue. And since you yourself posted that "Human rights belong to secular orders not sacred orders", a violation of human rights like genital mutilation cannot be labeled it as 'inappropriate to be judged' because it belongs to a 'religious culture'. Sorry I just gave you a serious 30 minute essay on this and this fuggin software ate it. I am not redoing it.

Yes. Islamic countries are within the Sacred Order not the Order of Production, not a Secular order. You cannot judge them from within ours, tempting as that may be. I presume you are talking about genital cutting among other things. Stoning because of adultery, etc. They are a culture that has a great fear of women. And women are the cornerstone of their culture /religion. Exchange and property. This is a total belief system. And I think you know about beliefs. You may suppress the behavior but you are not going to get rid of it. You may punish and try them as we do in the US, but thaat still is only going to suppress it, the belief will still be there. Maybe here after a few generations it will not happen. Ousmane Sembene's last film was on genital mutilation. He is a filmmaker, educated in France, from Somalia and has always done films on taboo subjects, exposing hypocrisy. It shows that other women in the village are the most adamant on the cutting, and the young girls want it as a ritual of feminine adulthood, otherwise they will not be marriageable and then what do they have if they cannot marry. It's complicated. Mothers often try to spare their daughters, but other women undermine them, grab their daughters and do it anyway against her wishes. Human rights belong to secular orders not sacred orders. Janet, The "Sacred Order" thing you posted prevented you from getting to the root of issue: for it is patriarchalism, not religion, which leads to such horrific practices like genital mutilation. And since many religions were founded in patriarchal times, it is no surprise that they reflect this patriarchalism. But patriarchalism is primarily not a religious issue, surely you will agree. It is a political issue. And since you yourself posted that "Human rights belong to secular orders not sacred orders", a violation of human rights like genital mutilation cannot be labeled it as 'inappropriate to be judged' because it belongs to a 'religious culture'.I am not saying it can be judged. Perhaps strong disapproval is a better word. Yes it is a patriarchal society, but there are patriarchal societies that don't do that, so your logic is in error. Women are cut to Inscribe their bodies and their minds. it is torture. for more on this see Nietzsche's genealogy of morals and the genealogy of human consciousness. See Cosmopolis when Packer consistently notices signs of torture in the people he meets this las day of his life. Ask anyone with a tattoo when they had it, why they chose this or that design and they will tell you a story. The tattoo is to inscribe their body and mind for whatever reason. Women are inscribed - tortured - by this practice for particular purposes. 1. It will make sexual penetration painful to them for the rest of their lives. 2. It will go a long way to ensure that women will not seek sex in or out of marriage. 3. It will ensure a young woman is chaste before marriage. 4. Her virginity is important when she is exchanged in marriage. 5. The men gather together to decide who their sisters, widowed mothers, cousins etc are to marry. In other words the men gather to determine who is going to fuck their female relatives. Our practice in college locker rooms is not too dissimilar as jocks get together to talk about their mutual fucks. This is a sublimated homoerotic practice in both cultures. 6. Women who have children are sewn up after childbirth to make them "tight" again. Often when they have their menstual periods the blood backs up as it can't flow freely and it very painful. Yes it is a terrible practice. But it is so ingrained in the religious/cultural order - the sacred order - of the culture that human rights from our secular culture is just pissing in the wind when used to confront this practice. Their entire religious/cultural order would collapse if this were forbidden. This means it is not going to go away soon. Generations will have to die, women will have to live different lives for any change to occur. Rather than scream and yell and type away about it, better to work at ways to change their lives. If you watch Ousmane Sembene film Moolade on this topic, you will see that a few are trying to change, but within their cultural order they are "abnormal" if they don't deliver their daughters to have it done, if they seclude their daughters to avoid it, if they speak out against it, etc. They are going to have to do it themselves. And it cannot be forced by western or asian powers whose women dance in strip clubs, prostitute themselves, walk naked on beaches, etc as all these practices fill the middle eastern male and female with horror. To get liberated so they can live that kind of life! It's a very complicated practice and for you to run your mouth off about it when it is obvious you don't really care about these women, but it is fashionable and trendy to say negative things about their practices. If you really cared you might be over there building schools, teaching them, doing something to improve their lives. Sacred Orders and Secular Orders are different categories. They don't mix until their boundaries become permeable, and that doesn't happen until their orthodox attributes weaken. And now we can talk about objectivism and where that fits in. Is it a closed system or is it open? If it is open, does it survive? I have answered you at length, seriously. I do not expect smart answers in return. I cannot give you a happy solution because there isn't one. I do not now or ever intend to take an unequivocal stand on this without saying that Islam is the stupidest of religions, which I think it is. And Houellebecq was run out of France for saying the same thing I just said. only publicly in a book. And yet, some of the most beautiful and considerate people I have met traveling were muslims. And some of the most rabid crazies too. Same with christians I guess. Who can say. I full well know that saying this here will not settle anything. It will just feed the fire and there will be different interpretation, counter interpretations, counter interpretations of the counter interpretations. This is what is wrong with my above Discourse. It will never resolve a goddamn thing. But Michael and all you aggressive ones wanted a serious ansewer instead of my caustic zaps. Well, you just got one. Let's see what you do with it. I do hope you are satisfied and can take your nit picking somewhere else to someone else.

I sure would like to know that link. I remember some people there, but not all. Her name? You remember some people on ATL? I'm not sure what you mean by "that link" -- the link of my briefly being reminded, due to volume, dates, and age, of an ATL poster? Or do you mean a link to ATL posts? If the latter, there isn't one. Those posts are only available, unfortunately, in the personal archives of folks who saved them. (I'm speaking here of the original ATL, not ATL-2.) The first name of the person I meant I think was Sharon, and the last name I think was something like -- this is just phonetic -- Ragmouli. Although I saved most of the ATL posts, I threw out hers. They were taking up too much disk space. The computer I was using then was "primitive" by current standards. Ellen Thanks. I don't remember her or anyone named Sharon.

First thanks for your very reasoned response. I am familiar with the JARS and the Merrill book. I will repeat myself on that when I get to it. On the refutation of Epicurus, I have never read a better one than Solzhenitsyn's in The 12th Circle I believe. I don't think it's the beginning of the gulag, no I am right it's 12th Circle. The opening has the protagonist at a cocktail party discussing/arguing philosophy and Epicurus is debated. Shortly after he is taken, put in a holding cell in the Lubyanka and all of a sudden he knows about Epicurus and what he should have said at that discussion. How futile that philosophy. It may not convince everyone, but for me Solzhenitsyn is the real deal. I will listen carefully to anything at all that he says. I said listen. On the Apolla/Dionysian thing I go to Norman O Brown, and it's been a long long time but I never had any problems thinking about that problem after I read him, so it is obvious to me that he settled that for me, so I didn't have to think about it anymore. I refer anyone to Love's Body and everything else he wrote on this subject matter. Sorry but I do not want to spend weeks reviewing it just to regurgitate it here. If people are interested then they might want to read Brown. Because of Ayn Rand’s problematic moral labels on her characters, Gail Wynand, not Howard Roark, should be her true Nietzschean hero. Wynand meets the criteria of both the Nietzschean Superman and Rand’s Objectivism. Roark’s false integrity taints his greatness and improperly vulgarizes him as a Nietzschean Superman. Rand problematically wants her heroes to accept the greatness of the Übermensch, but reject his natural existence and will to power. Dominique Francon should be her true Nietzschean villain, because, unlike Ellsworth Toohey, she enjoys the painful destruction of herself and others This is a very loaded paragraph, full of land mines. Let's deconstruct it: Because of Ayn Rand’s problematic moral labels on her characters - Who says? Moral labels? I don't even know where that came from. Evidently someone (s) has problems labeling the morality of her characters. Is there a reason a character has to be labeled with a moral identification tag? BTW they are doing this with Duroy in Bel Ami and the feminists have done it to Lily Bart in House of MIrth. If we look at the characters as specks caught in the power/knowledge grid Foucault has so carefully constructed for us, teaching us to see it, we watch how much wiggle room they have. This appears to smack up against Sartre and Genet and Rand as far as existential choice. But Foucault in his work and in his life has taught us that wherever there is the power/knowledge relation, and it is always in relation, never separate, then there is always resistance, and that resistance is in the interstices of the matrix where power lies. Or at least the opportunity for resistance; the choice. Baudrillard will go on to discuss the silent resistance of the masses and how powerful a thing it is in its dumb animal stubborness. (This is Nietzsche within Baudrillard without his ever mentioning him.) Gail Wynand, not Howard Roark, should be her true Nietzschean hero. The assumption of this statement is that of course we are in the Dominating Discourse of the dialectic: hero and villian; good and bad; good and evil; masochist/sadist etc etc etc Here is the false dichotomy problem that Deleuze evades so well. He says, Not either/or but and, and, and, and,.........This is Repetition and Difference. Both Roark and Wynand are Nietzschean strategists, not heroes or villains. They are both/and. And let's add Dominique to the mix, also as a Nietzschean strategist:. Dominique Francon should be her true Nietzschean villain, because, unlike Ellsworth Toohey, she enjoys the painful destruction of herself and others Enjoys? Who says? This is an interpretation. Dominique has unfortunately, with Rand's complicity, (her screen treatment Journal letter to Patricia Neal on the character of Dominique) been labeled a masochist and as a masochist she has been known for 70 fucking years now. It is hard to dislodge it. It is part of the Dominating Discourse of lit crit on that novel. (At the moment I am trying to forestall Eric Packer in DeLillo's Cosmopolis from getting the same label pasted on him.) Dominique is following the exact same strategy Baudrillard recommends for destroying evil anywhere it exists. Take it to excess (Are you reading Nietzsche here? You should be.) Dominique is well aware of the marketplace of marriage and she chooses the worse one around her. She doesn't have to look very far, and it is Peter Keating. Her interactions with her husband are will less. Whatever you want, Peter. You want to talk? What do you want to talk about, etc. (The perfect analyst,eh?) When she can do worse, it is to whore with Wynand to get her husband the commission he wants. Keating agrees to it. BTW this sort of thing is done all the time. Just not openly and it's never thought of as masochism. Wynand is on to her, so he proposes marriage. For Dominique this is worse. (NIetzsche uses the term "worse than worse". Baudrillard uses it then elaborates on it for our time: excess, more so, hyper so as to move it into simulated reality.) This folks is not masochism. Masochism is unconscious. Freud's paper on Mourning and Melancholia goes into the masochistic gratification of excessive mourning. Wallowing in it for the pleasure it forces one to feel. Behaviorists think about it in terms of reinforcement theory. It does not give Dominique pleasure to destroy Roark. Her review in the Banner of his work is a "floating sign" praising what she is negating. She is following de Maupassant’s advice to Duroy in Bel Ami: Following Baudrillard in the instructions given to him for his journalism: Things should be hinted at in such a manner as to allow of any construction being placed on them, refuted in a manner that confirms the rumor, or affirmed in such a way that no one believes them. (BA 120 1910 ed) Not pleasure but it reinforces her world view of the world as evil. BTW this is exactly the world view the Catharists had. If the world is evil, then willing is useless.Baudrillard suggests this as a strategy so you are happily surprised when things turn out! It is also a widely held world view but not in pragmatic America. So we are always surprised by misfortune.(I don’t want to go there now.) OK now we are at Toohey. Who Rand through Dominique feels his pure evil, which Wynand denies and tells her to shut up about the subject of Toohey. Toohey’s strategy is to abolish all distinctions between opposites: good/bad; beautiful/ugly; moral/immoral; and uses the Banner to do this to the masses, to form their opinions on everything he wants, to brainwash them permanently. As Baudrillard will say, “to steal their reality from them in homeopathic doses,” The Perfect Crime. No body, no victim, no aggressor, no crime scene, invisible. This is what Baudrillard will define as evil, which is not the opposite of good BTW, the erasure of the reality of opposites. And when this is accomplished, what do we get? Simulated reality. When simulated reality is total, we are then in Virtual Reality, from which there is no escape. Only seduction, because seduction cannot be produced. So this is the evil that is Toohey, that Rand correctly identified, not as a villian, but as a philosophical statement, in fiction, 70 years before the non-fiction post modernist philosophers would catch up to her. Dominique, Roark, Wynand and Toohey are not heroes and villians in the dialectic. They are Nietzschean strategists, the possibility of future man, not Superman, but a possible future human being. A human being Beyond Good and Evil. Strategists. Beyond Good and Evil, There is a field. I’ll meet you there. Rumi – Persian sufi poet – 13th century

Seymourblogger, Did you know you posted about 120 posts since a few hours before yesterday? As of now there are 90 just within the last 24 hour period. Compared to the participation of the other posters, this is an imbalance that will drive our audience away. So I need you to post less. I suggest you forgo the one-worders and one-liners without any real substance of value for readers, like the two I just quoted. That won't solve the problem, but it will help a lot. The interest of OL's readership is more in the direction of quality, not quantity. Thanks. Michael From now on you will get quality. I started out here with quality. Some people couldn't keep up with me nor did they want to learn from me, except on their terms, and so they attacked. A bunch. Now when I zapped back I zapped each of them, so I ended up with far more posts than each of the pack members. They knew the rules here and I didn't. Gotcha! They used to do this on the ultra liberal site the dailykos, only they had the software hacked on their side. Well it's a metaphor for a gangbang. I did it, but so did he, and her, and x and y, not just me sir. It's a clever way of getting rid of someone on a site who changes the Discourse. A way of "killing" someone. A rather primitive strategy that unevolved people and animals use to pick victims and scapegoat on them. Well you do not have the sanction of the victim here with me. I did learn that lesson from Rand. The hard way, but I did recognize it because she taught me to recognize it. Are you aware of your participation in this charade? This bunch knows how to suck you in to make you do the dirty work. They are clever,eh. I didn't push her out. Michael did. You are willing to do this because I didn't suck up to you. Is that really what you want here? I can do that. Just tell me to and I will. As I said, you will get quality, they won't be able to keep up, they won't want to learn how to keep up, so they will attack. And, I will return the attacks. But this time I will make a collage of all of them and respond only once in a long one that will cover each one of them. That way I will only have one post instead of 250. This is for those who are bean counters. We all know another bean counter and his name is NObama. Will that work for you?

Saving a life takes higher priority than observing the Sabbath. An Orthodox Jewish doctor will immediately do his medical thing if he is the obvious person to save a life. Assume it is his special skill that is required. Then he will treat his patient first and worry about the Sabbath second. Ba'al Chatzaf Good to know.

I liked Day of Judgement much better than BB's. The description of the first time he met Rand, entering her living room is excellent. His eye for aesthetic detail and his disappointment was the same as I would have had from someone who writes of aesthetics as well as Rand. Heller's (I think) last descriptions of Rand when she was old and the apartment was dusty, but you could just see how it had been from former descriptions. I don't know. Sad. But no sadder than Nietzsche at his end. there are some moments in Branden's account which are perceptively wonderful. There were no moments for me in BB's. I read it when it came out and was rather contemptuous of it then. I have checked it since but not greatly as it makes me uncomfortable to read having admired her so excessively when I was young and to have read her here and at solo over the years to see that her thinking has not changed enough for me to even notice a change. All that has happened. Is she made of teflon. I guess this is what happens when you put someone on a pedestal and I certainly did.

He's average height. I'd say 5'10". I've met him a few times. He was beautiful and I imagine irresistible.