Marcus

And the alternative is....Hillary? I'm not quite sure I'm seeing the point to your argument. You're sitting here wailing away at Trump but ignoring the elephant in the room (err donkey in the room). What do you hope to accomplish by that?

43 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

This is an invalid form of rehtorical argumentation.  The burden of proof is upon the party who asserted the proposition.  If you say you would be willing to bet on something  then  we should take you at your word.   You raised the question: "What percentage of commercials have 'same race' couples?".  That is a question and it can neither be proved or disproved.  Only declarative meaningful propositions are either true or false.  Questions are neither true nor false. 

The burden of proof is on he who made the initial claim. That is, a vast "conspiracy" to promote interracial couples in the media. Thus, you are wrong. Extraordinary claims as such, require extraordinary evidence.

Now, allow the fool to make his answers.

Quote

........to wake the fuck up and do something about crime and incredibly dumb mandatory public day care and higher ed taught by millions of females, gays and negroes.

Whew! What a clunker of an article! Holy wall of text. 

I fail to see the actual problem. Are you arguing against gay, female and black teachers?

A few questions Peter (I'll humor you just this one time for my own personal amusement, then back under a rock you go). The truth is, you have no clue what constitutes "science" or even the beginnings of a logical argument. It's just your biases applied to a surface level grasp of cherry-picked facts. This myopic mentality is typical of racists. Indeed it almost defines them. You are part of the problem this thread addresses. A kind of live case study. 

In what alternate universe is showing interracial couples constituting "racism"? They show one or two commercials with a white and black person and suddenly its a campaign to promote "race-mixing" right? 

Second, has there been an actual study showing that blacks make up 50% of all commercials or do you pull these numbers out of your scientific ass?

What percentage of commercials have "same race" couples? I'd be willing to bet it is over 90%. Prove me wrong.

South Africa the rape capital of the world? And you believe this, because it is black yes?

Logically, all African and majority black countries should all be rape capitals? Why are they not?

These are all important questions to answer so I can make sense of your babble. Doing so will also shed light on the racist mind for all to see and study, so answer them as carefully and thoughtfully as you are capable. Purposely evading or dodging any of them would constitute admission of wrong.

I don't really respond to clowns who think singing groups of black people in a car commercial can be characterized as "thugs". You are part of the problem this thread addresses but are just too dumb to see it. Go away and stop responding.

13 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

In the case of Trump University his gain was at the expense of students  who should have been more careful about believing sales pitches. 

Trump's  "let's make a deal"  approach has its limits.  Trump is a blunt instrument and I would not expect too much intellectual subtlety or nuance from him.

Trump is actually a shrewd and brilliant man, very adept at calculating moves like a master chess player. He talks that way for a reason. He acts the way he does for a reason. Notice how he strikes a different tone in his policy speeches as opposed to his public rallies. He sounds much more measured and rational. 

Whats my point? Trump understands economics well and good. More than most people (after all, remember he's a billionaire). But he also gets how clever and cunning other countries (like China) are with respect to trade. The truth is we do not currently do "free trade" with China. They can buy our companies, yet we can't buy Chinese companies or land. Everything is on their terms. They must have full access to our IP and tech in order to do business. They can raid and shut down US companies with impunity (Google, Uber). That, frankly is sheer theft and thuggery, not trade. 

So lets keep things in context here.

Interesting article about a real problem:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-black-entrepreneurs-downplay-ownership-bsi-20160414-story.html

If Howard Roark was black would he have to use covert tactics like the people in this article (in the year 2016 btw) to build his customer base or would he languish in obscurity and poverty?

I'd be interested in the responses to that question. And they don't have to be predictable responses.

Quote

I think Terror Management Theory has provided some of the best evidence on self-esteem and on the source of our anxiety.

People (i.e. primitives) who have no basic understanding of the world, natures laws, etc will invent religious explanations, gods, cosmic rituals, etc in order to make sense of the world around them and reduce their anxiety? You need "double blind" studies to confirm this?

Well...duh.

This is not a refutation of Nathaniel Branden but actually a reaffirmation of his point. A point you fail to see. This is exactly Nathaniel's point in his work. It's called "motivation by fear". It is a sense of overwhelming anxiety i.e. helplessness. The "self-esteem" of TMT is not real self esteem but a device, a mental trick humans devise when they have no other way to deal with the world around them.

But we know humans are not helpless ciphers pulled this way and that by random currents. Rationality is the tool by which we make sense of our world, grasp it's workings, and survive and thrive.

Since 1800 the "march of progress" that you apparently deny has been indisputable and overwhelming. Life expectancy has risen dramatically, increased wealth, income, living standards and medical technologies have eliminated or reduced the previously incurable. In your worldview this is "delusion" but cave shamanism is "real".

Quote

There's extensive literature on hunter-gatherer religions. It shows that they were were deeply religious people, and had a very cosmic sense of self-importance.

ISIS are also deeply religious. Self-important (by cosmic proportions) too. Allah sends them 70 virgins to await their glorious exit.

Quote

We have over 30 years of evidence coming from Terror Management Theory to show that when Homo sapiens gained self-awareness, s/he also gained an end-of self awareness: an awareness of his/her animal insignificance and finitude. This led to a crippling anxiety that in turn led to the creation of culture as we know it: to beliefs and activities that would provide individuals with the illusion of being persons of value in a world of meaning - usually by inflating the significance and meaning of tiny slivers of invented reality, so that we wouldn’t have to face the insignificance and meaninglessness of our place in the big scheme of things.

The bolded above is the source of your wrong-headed reasoning. 

Primitives invented "rituals" and religious models of the universe because they could not make sense of it otherwise or the resultant anxiety they felt (being unable to understand or control it) not because of "self-awareness". Religion and ritual served as an "anxiety alleviation" device to better cope with their ineptitude and ignorance. It was a pre-rational invention.

What Nathanel Branden (and Rand) said is that self-esteem results from basic competence and self-respect (i.e. dealing with reality). You are essentially arguing against reason itself. You have only look at the world around you to see where reason has led us and continues to do so exponentially. We are much better off than the primitives by orders of magnitude and reason is quite obviously superior to ritual.

Peter is on ignore. I don't have a high tolerance for racists nor do I treat them well. It's probably better that I don't see his posts or it would probably end badly for everyone involved (including those who like my posts). 

Back on topic...

Quote

I let you start a hot button thread to bait people with racism without saying anything. I even thought it might be interesting to see where it might go. 

The premise of this thread is not to promote or bait people with "racism", it's simply presenting the story from another angle so as to get people to think about it's implications to the story. It's a creative thinking exercise, an experiment. Provocative? Maybe. I tend to make threads that do that. 

Quote

 "Fuck you" is not a welcome form of interaction here.

Peter is lobbing the equivalent of a big "Fuck you" with his racist diatribes. Do you think that leads to polite discussion? It's equally as offensive to blacks as any statement made about gays, probably more. But I guess it's "ok" to trash blacks on OL, just not gays? Those are the official rules?

I will not retract my statement whatsoever unless you also call him out on it. 

51 minutes ago, 9thdoctor said:

Not a peep?  What did you think Penn Jillette was shouting about?

I stand corrected. You are pretty the only exception (and another guy via PM). Everyone else including the admin, apparently didn't see the irony.

Mike, the fact is he blatantly slurred blacks in multiple posts and not a peep from anyone. Quite a double standard.

Check your premises. Mine are fine and where they should be. (i.e. the side of justice).

Quote

On another point, I'm not into PC language so I let a little flexibility flow, but please be aware that there are many gay members on OL. After a certain point, if your bursts of anger (or passion) continue to include gay slurs, I will have to step in. There is no reason in my mind why these people should be disrespected as a habit. 

Well he did "disrespect" blacks are you going to ignore that and pretend gays are the only ones aggrieved here? Blacks can be dogged out, called stupid, "negroids", averaged out criminals, etc but when someone makes a one-off gay comment the gauntlets are off?

Interesting.

1 hour ago, Peter said:

Is my shit together yet, Marcus?

*Cue wall of text*

You can't even put proper sentences, paragraphs and arguments together. I won't bother to read most of what you've posted above.

Look, Peter. This thread is not about "racial averages", whether blacks built pyramids (heh), whether race exists or any other irrelevant points that typically concern racists. 

The question (that you are evading) was simply to the effect of "If Howard Roark was black and that was the only difference, how differently would the story have gone?"

If you have no real thoughtful, answers you have no real business in this thread. Fuck your "averages". Fuck your criminal statistics (Howard Roark blew up buildings after all). Most of all, Fuck you.

You won't derail my thread with non-sense.

P.S. And no I won't read your gay-ass book written in 1994 using questionable data. 

Moving on....

I didn't know it could be done but "Random Useless Quotes" Peter managed to stumble and bumble even further than Roger Bissell. Quite an achievement.

1 hour ago, Peter said:

Grrr. Different angles? Hmmm?

So, if Roark is black does it still work? It assumes Howard Roark does not have the average IQ of negroids which is 80 in America (fudged up to 85 by Progressive manipulation), and 70 in Africa, (in spite of Black Psychologists going to Africa with IQ tests designed to improve test scores), nor does it include the less than good, average, basic lifetime choices of blacks, nor the criminality found in blacks which is six time the rate of any other race.      

So it appears the only angle you can somewhat perceive is through the lens of racial prejudice. "Negroids"?

I suppose you didn't (or couldn't) realize the glaring irony of saying "black psychologists" in the same sentence as "blacks have low IQ". lol.

In any case what does pulling out IQ stats out of your ass have to do with the central point of this thread? Do you think Howard Roark had an IQ of 80 in the original story? Was he comparable to the "average" in any way? Obviously the hero of the story was not "drawn upon averages". The "average" white person has only a high school education in the US. The "average" working class white in certain parts of the country is an alcoholic, drug abuser and porn addict. Bad lifetime choices indeed.

You are a clown.

Get your shit together and come back when you've got it all figured out.

18 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

 

 

???

Your puzzlement is justified as you haven't the slightest clue what a contribution to this thread consists of. Either you are too stupid to get it or too ignorant to let the truth get to you. In any case I can't really help you. Off you go.

21 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

 

BTW, does he get to keep the orange hair?

Yes . 

Everything the same except his race.

2 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

If Roark had been black, his courtroom speech could have been much shorter, and he'd have had people demonstrating outside the courtroom with signs saying "Black architects' lives matter." And Loretta Lynch would have intervened saying his civil rights were violated by their changing his building design. I think it would have been a very entertaining book, especially hearing it snap, crackle, and pop after I threw it in the fireplace.

REB

Thanks for your non-contribution Roger Bissell. I'm sure you have other threads to troll or else pick another e-fight with Jonathan. Please do so now and lets get on with the real responses.

My focus is on the hero and main focal point of the story, not the supporting characters or romantic interests, and how if circumstances were changed (such as being black) how then do you think would *he* react differently to it. Since the hero embodies all of the objectivist principles, it is an interesting thought experiment no?

I present to you a moral thought experiment similarly along the lines of "what if Jesus was black?"

If Howard Roark was black:

Would he have been able to practice architecture in the first place? Let alone get commissioned work?

Would Dominique, his true love, have found him attractive? A potential suitor?

How would then then inform his worldview (i.e. ideas on manipulation, work, relations with men etc)? Essentially the whole surrounding society would be effectively acting as a "Ellsworth Toohey" against him, whereas in the story it was just one person. This IMO is profound. 

My purpose here is you to see past the basic assumptions you make when looking at a character and to see things from different angles to see if it "still works". I'd be interested in the responses

to this.

Thoughts?

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Marcus,

Rand wrote a letter to Hickman?

This is the first I have heard of it.

I've read her journal entries about him, but I have not heard anything about a letter she wrote to him.

Could you please give us your source?

Thanks.

Michael

My mistake, she never wrote it. I've since corrected it in the OP. 

Quote

.

That's a far cry from Rand herself writing to Hickman. btw - Is this where the "bad boy" theme in the OP came from?

The "theme" came from a spontaneous connection I made a few days ago. The hickman thing is just part of the puzzle. 

15 minutes ago, jts said:

The part about Hickman is exaggerated, mis-information repeated all over the internet. On the subject of Ayn Rand and Hickman, you should believe nothing except Ayn Rand's own verbatim and in context statements.

 

It's kind of beside the point, but yeah, it wasn't a "love letter" but she was intrigued enough by him that she wrote him a letter. The point was'nt to smear Rand, but to highlight the facts of what she did as it related to my original post.

- The hero blows up a building because it doesn't conform to his standards.

- Hero brazenly enters the room of a woman, has passionate sex and leaves. Then barely remembers it the next day.

- Hero calls a strike, gathers only his closest friends and waits out total disaster. Not a single f*ck is given as the world burns.

- The hero is being tortured, during the process gives the torturer instructions on how to do his job. Not shedding a single tear.

Stunning examples? They are all scenes of either Howard Roark or John Galt in their respective novels taking action. A clear pattern is set: A total refusal to bow down or even compromise. A defiant, rebellious character. Some would call them rascals, rapscallions and rogues. Wild men. In America we call them "bad boys". Men who, as the stereotypical depiction goes, ride Harley's, get tattoo's and cause trouble. They are "rebels without a cause" so the saying goes. You could call O'ist heroes "rebels with a cause", they are profoundly purpose driven, but this is just the stereotypical depiction. I've seen bad boy's with a productive purpose (i.e. rockstars) so that is not an essential difference.

Why this connection has not yet been made is interesting in and of itself. But the connection is there. It's a fun connection to explore. The author herself gave clues to her love affair with bad boy's throughout her writings, personal or otherwise. (Rand had a raging boner for men on the extreme ends of independent thinking, she even once penned a journal entry admiring the traits of a particular serial killer).

What's also interesting to note is they O'ist heroes and bad boy's share the almost total disregard for the concept of status or prestige (they also tend to come from lower-class backgrounds). A person's bearing, stock, class or pedigree holds little of interest to them, except as a vehicle for mocking or a show of defiance, and (correctly assumed) is not metaphysically important. Ironically through mocking status ("traditional power" as I call it), they gain a kind of status of their own.

Are Objectivist heroes the epitome of "bad boy" archetype? Is this accidental or deliberate? Thoughts?

6 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

  It is my belief that once the person can be considered good by Objectivist standards (ie. fixing emotionalism or evasion problems, etc.), then it is some virtue within him that is being taken advantage of.

 

I quote:

Quote

If and when a man's honesty can becomes a weapon that kidnappers or other wielders of force can use to harm him, then the normal context is reversed; his virtue would then become a means serving the ends of evil. In such a case, the victim has not only the right but also the obligation to lie and to do it proudly. The man who tells a lie in this context is not endorsing any anti-reality principle. On the contrary, he is now representative of the good and the true.

- OPAR, p. 275

Objectivism apparently solves this problem by reducing virtues to vices when others use your virtues against you. In which case then, it becomes a virtue to deny evil the values it seeks. Thus like in my "tax manipulation" example, his "productiveness" is being used against him (he has to pay more taxes), thus he finds a way to deny the government tax revenue through clever use of the tax code.

This goes back to defiance as a tool for Objectivists to "stick it to the man" so to speak ("The Man" usually being the government in some capacity).