Marcus

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2015/0529/All-8-women-fail-Ranger-School-Some-Rangers-say-standards-should-change-video

100% fail rate (but are allowed to keep taking it over and over, unlike the men):

Ranger School, which grooms the Army’s most elite special operations fighting force, opened its doors to women for the first time this year. Eight of the 20 women who originally entered the school's first co-ed class were allowed to recycle through the program after they fell out in their first go-round. The Friday announcement confirmed this happened again. Three of the eight were invited to take the course over again in late June.

3 times!

Wolf deVoon what do all those statistics have in common? They display the masculine propensity towards risk taking and the feminine propensity to consume (not produce). Basically proving my point.

The tendency to take more risks and/or place yourself in dangerous situations is not the same as raw survival ability which is using your mind to solve problems under conditions of stress, which men excel at. It was enough of an evolutionarily advantageous trait that risk taking keeps getting passed down to males despite the fact it could heighten danger.

The fact remains there are only a handful of (billion dollar +), venture backed companies run by women. The vast majority of successful companies (especially in technology) are run by men, and have always been so. The "sky is blue", and men are risk takers.

(Some women, (Ayn Rand is one of them) are more masculine psychologically and they tend to be lesbians. Like men they have a propensity to hands-on, problem-solving, rough, or technical work. They are also probably more likely to be less attractive.)

Another story from the same source:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3040137/Bear-Grylls-new-fakery-row-producers-admit-spicing-TV-Island-extra-pigs-iguanas-crocs-water-coconuts-trees.html

They separated men and women on two separate islands where they had to survive (and cooperate) for 6 weeks. The women did'nt do so well. The men built shelters, beds, hunting parties, fishing lines and had a surplus of food. About half of the women were taken off the island and came near starvation on several occasions. Still they made it but they had help. A revealing quote:

On the women's island: 'a muddy pool was dug out and lined to provide a stable fresh-water source'.

Can they survive? Yes, maybe barely and not to the same degree. Many would perish. Men are more psychologically (and physically) adapted to the rigors of survival. That is fact. The very definition of masculinity is "strength". Men throughout history were responsible for the vast majority of productive, scientific and engineering advancements and this continues to be true.

It also, from an evolutionary perspective, might be the reason for the phenomenon we call "love". A woman forming an emotional bond to a strong, capable man might increase her chances of survival.

So um, can we talk about the original topic? Don't mean to come off as rude but we've digressed quite a bit here.

What are the parallels between the heroic fiction of Howard Roark vs James Bond? How are they alike? Not alike? I've already highlighted the fact that James Bond is a romantic style (i.e. Objectivist) hero. What are the "flaws" and "malevolent universe" Rand was referring to in that passage?

You don't get it, huh? Building for the sake of building, for a private purpose.

James Bond does the same in his own way, just to the bad guys.

You're right, I don't get how that is any less purposeful or private.

James Bond is what Howard Roark would look like if he wore a suit, found his charm and had a license to kill.

Nope. As important and cherished as The Fountainhead was to me personally, in retrospect I wish it hadn't been written or published. It's a story about building for the sake of building, at a time when men built privately for a private purpose. Doesn't exist any more.

While that is a touching personal narrative you've dove off into (lol), you have yet to explain why you thought my comparison was wrong.

As the 3rd (and final?) James Bond: Spectre sequel comes to theaters, I am reminded of "The Romantic Manifesto" and Rand's admiration of Ian Fleming's famous, charming assassin:

The social status of thrillers reveals the profound gulf splitting today's culture- the gulf between the people and it's alleged intellectual leaders. Th people's need for a ray of Romanticism's light is enormous and tragically eager. Observe the extraordinary popularity of Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming. There are hundreds of thriller writers who, sharing the modern sense of life, write sordid concoctions that amount to a battle of evil against evil or, at best, gray against black. None of them have the ardent, devoted, almost addicted following earned by Spillane and Fleming. This is not to say that the novels of Spillane and Fleming project a faultlessly rational sense of life; both are touched by the cynicism and despair of today's "malevolent universe"; but in strikingly different ways, both offer the cardinal element of Romantic fiction: Mike Hammer and James Bond are heroes.

- "Bootleg Romanticism" , pg 127

He shows clear Objectivist character traits and beliefs (high self-esteem, honesty, ruthlessness, objectivity, singular purpose etc), but psychologists (pejoratively) call it "selfish" and "exploitative":

the Dark Triad traits reflect a highly selfish social strategy. High level of self-esteem, extraversion, and openness, along with low levels of conscientiousness and anxiety, may be instrumental in enabling an exploiter to persist in the face of potential social rejection and retaliation.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201007/james-bonds-psyche

In psychology these traits are referred to as the "Dark Triad". In modern parlance, "selfishness" is a "dark" trait, associated with evil.

But what does James Bond do? His mission is basically to kill bad guys, rescue hostages, discover evil schemes, save the world. All the garden-variety hero stuff. But James Bond takes it further. He is devoted (strangely, psychologists call this "psychopathy"). Every action he pursues is in pursuit of his mission, and his mission is his life. He sleeps with women to discover what they know about his (evil) targets. He drives nice cars (equipped with missile launchers) to outrun his pursuers, not impress his friends. In short, he is a man of profound purpose.

James Bond is what Howard Roark would look like if he wore a suit, found his charm and had a license to kill.

Thoughts?

Marcus,

There is a distinction within Objectivism between basic sensory responses of pleasure and pain, and cognitive responses of joy and suffering. Our pleasure and pain responses are innate. They result from the stimulation of nerve endings in a particular way. We have no choice about our experience of sensory pleasure or pain and Objectivism doesn't claim that we do. Sex, at the most basic level leads to pleasure at a sensory level while hitting one's thumb with a hammer leads to pain.

It is the fulfillment or loss of our values that lead to the emotional responses of joy and suffering. Values are held at a conceptual level and are the result of a process of reason. A man who holds his life as his standard of value, holds those things that are conducive to his life as valuable and those things that are destructive of it as disvalues. Thus, an immediate sensation of pleasure or pain is not as important as the long term consequences of his actions in relation to the attainment of his goals. A man may be willing to stay up late studying though that will cause him to experience tiredness, fatigue, and possible muscle, joint, and other forms of pain if it helps him to achieve his goal of learning as much as possible and graduating with a high GPA. He may also forego the opportunity to experience the pleasure of sex with a woman if that woman has no value to his long term goals of running a successful business and having bright, successful children.

As for your last few points, they actually serve to undermine your original contention. You said that 80% of people are married or have been married by age 40. Yet, not everyone has been and it seems reasonable to guess that some of them have not been married because they do not value marriage highly. That is, those people have not chosen marriage as a value.

Now, if a high percentage of people do get married, it may be because marriage is objectively valuable to most people. Although people aren't always reasonable --- certainly most people are not Objectivists --- people tend to do a pretty good job over time of determining what is valuable to them --- to their lives --- and a high percentage of them have concluded that marriage would be beneficial to them. In other words, marriage is not an innate value, but rather an objectively positive value for most people. That is why it is chosen with such high frequency.

--- Darrell

That actually cleared things up quite a bit, thanks.

So basic sensory responses = pleasure, pain, sex, food etc

Values = joy, suffering, etc

I think it is wrong to consider sex as a whole, and I would rather judge every individual situation separately. Does it work towards your life or your death? If, for example, there is a high risk of catching a serious STD, it would probably not require a lengthy process of reasoning to conclude that it is a non-value. And as for happiness, do not consider the merely physical pleasure at the spur of the moment. The real measure is whether you feel good about it the next day.

If I remember a consistent theme from Ayn Rand's books, it was that sex is only a value when practiced with an equal partner. Only sex with a person whom you admire and respect is capable of making you truly happy.

You don't seem to get my overall point. What I am referring to is "innate values" (aka animal values) that are biologically set desires/responses to stimuli. There is research that indicates humans have some values that are not "chosen", a remnant of our ancient past. While it is true sex could be evaluated as a risk, that does not mean sex as such becomes a non-value. We still want sex, just not risky sex.

In 1954, the limbic cortex was described by neuroanatomists. Since that time, the limbic system of the brain has been implicated as the seat of emotion, addiction, mood, and lots of other mental and emotional processes. It is the part of the brain that is phylogenetic ally very primitive. Many people call it “The Lizard Brain” because the limbic system is about all a lizard has for brain function. It is in charge of fight, flight, feeding, fear, freezing-up, and fornication.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/where-addiction-meets-your-brain/201404/your-lizard-brain

We have a small part of our brains dedicated to 3 basic needs/responses: sex, food and danger.

No, there is no universal agreement of what art to value. I do not value the same art that you do.

I am not talking about whether we value particular kinds or styles of art, but art as such. Art is a human universal, found in all societies and throughout human history. We don't have a "choice" whether we value art or not, but only what type of art to value.

My glibness in the last post aside, I don't neccessarily disagree with Objectivist virtue ethics (though maybe with a little more moderation) the point of this thread is does Objectivism recognize or agree there are some innate values common to all human beings? Or does it reject this and follow to total "blank slate" path?

Pleasure is a killer (alcohol, drugs, porn, first-person shooter fantasy role play) and at best a rake's progress to sloth and penury. Work is called work for a reason. In simple language, I told my pre-teen daughter that it's harder to go uphill than downhill. But that's not the full extent of what value means. Pleasure is irrelevant to ambitious adult goals.

Values are abstractions: to love and obey God (Moses), to establish justice (Madison), to respect others (Kant), to win by any means necessary (Machiavelli). I won't urge you to pick any of these as your standard of value. But consciously or unconsciously, every one of us is seeking an abstract goal in life. Yours may be petty or profound, the result of fear or fortitude, knowledge or guesswork. [COGGIG, p.32]

So you are saying, in effect, that we should not expect our chosen career (work) to be pleasurable? Work is to be a a 9 to 5 endurance course until we drop dead? Am I wrong?

It seems like the other extreme of the hedonist/pragmatic viewpoint. (How very un-Aristotelian of you.)

(There are a lot of parallels between Objectivism and Japanese culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaman_(term)

Since it seems so important to you, why didn't you start out with Rand's definition of value instead of a paraphrase?

--Brant

I did start out with her definition, but here is it direct from the source:

“Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep."

- Aynranlexicon

The form in which we experience the reality of our values is pleasure (Rand). Since nearly everyone values sex, everyone finds it pleasurable. In a sense, we need "innate values" to help to tell us what is worth valuing in the first place. And sex is part of the reason we value a number of other things, such as beauty or marriage or even money.

Not to quibble, but pleasure is an idiotic measure of value, no better than pragmatic utilitarianism.

What makes it "idiotic" in your view?

Since it seems so important to you, why didn't you start out with Rand's definition of value instead of a paraphrase?

--Brant

I did start out with her definition, but here is it direct from the source:

“Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep."

- Aynranlexicon

The form in which we experience the reality of our values is pleasure (Rand). Since nearly everyone values sex, everyone finds it pleasurable. In a sense, we need "innate values" to help to tell us what is worth valuing in the first place. And sex is part of the reason we value a number of other things, such as beauty or marriage or even money.

One aspect of Objectivism I struggle to understand completely is it's theory of values. Mostly because it seems to contradict everyday observation.

According to Objectivism, values are chosen. A value is something you wish to gain or keep. There are no innate ideas. Since values are chosen, what we find "pleasurable" or "good" varies by individual.

The problem is, this flies in the face of observed facts about human nature. While it is true there are no innate ideas and while it is true there is great variation in personal likes and dislikes, there are observed constants in human behavior that do not change and don't seem to be chosen. I call them "innate values".

Nearly everyone for example, likes and values sex (barring brain injuries or psychological dysfunction). This is not really a choice and no "decision" is made about it at an early age, it's just there. The number of men between a certain age, who have never watch porn is zilch. Zero.

Nearly everyone, in every culture, values family and marriage (ex. 80% of Americans are married by age 40)

Art is another universal value. We all like sweets (chocolate etc).

There are gender specific values such as the male need for youth, fertility and beauty or the female need for physical strength, height or resources. Study after study has been done on this (and even sexual orientation doesn't seem to dent it).

What is see that Objectivism seems to take these "innate values" as the given.Throughout the Objectivist corpus these "innate values" are talked about in an assumptive tone. These are all things we wish to "gain or keep", but they are not chosen.

This raises some interesting questions about the nature of choice and what is and isn't available to choice. Some things apparently aren't.

Did I get something wrong or is Objectivism flat out wrong about values?

Ladies and gentlemen, Exhibit A:

http://www.salon.com/topic/ayn_rand/

(Incredibly, it's goes back 6 pages)

Out comes Salon, once again, like a dumb, flailing headless dog, thrashing about wildly at anything remotely Ayn Rand. This paper has published numerous (toohey-esque) hit pieces on Rand. It's an entertaining spectacle. What more can be said except "Here we go again!..."

And the prisoners won. Not surprised. I'd be willing to bet they on the whole have more real-world life experience, problem solving skills and common sense than the average Harvard college graduate. This is not to say that they are good people, but lets not dismiss their capabilities or creativity.

Focusing on one small point:

Like some kind of pest or insect (a blond louse?), you've managed to find your way here and inject your sillyness into my thread.

This thread is not about immigration and you're not going to derail it into one. Go "focus" on your nonsense somewhere else. And good riddance to you. Off you go.

Moving on....

Ok, maybe it is somewhat of a stretch to call him a "genius" but he is definitely highly skilled at rhetoric and also rhetorical strategy. On that point, he "looks" stupider than he is and continues to be underestimated, while continuing to surprise the public and rise in the polls or maintain his lead. It is clear that every aspect of his political campaign has been carefully measured and calculated to coincide with maximum rhetorical effect.

Observe for example, his skillful use of tragedy, especially in the tragic death of the woman in San Francisco who was shot to death by an illegal immigrant. Not long after the tragic news he tweeted via his Twitter feed, swinging at rival Marco Rubio:

".@marcorubio what do you say to the family of Kathryn Steinle in CA who was viciously killed b/c we can't secure our border? Stand up for US"

It was pure coincidence that her untimely death happened just around the time of his campaign, and with his opponent within easy swinging distance via Twitter, he didn't waste the opportunity to drive his political point home.

He also slowly and measurably releases his "platform" positions to the public at opportune times. Unlike the other candidates, he doesn't release all of his positions at the same time. He makes every position an event in itself with press releases, tweets and hearings, released exactly when he deems the time to be right (maybe with a drop in the polls). This is brilliant strategy. He makes skillful use of the press and turns on his "nice guy" to appeal to the masses. He has continued the dominate all election talk (even over Hillary Clinton) at this time of writing, since he announced his candidacy in April.

As I have said before, you can't spread good ideas without good rhetoric and presentation (every religion seems to get this except Objectivism). Donald Trump seems to get this intuitively. He doesn't "browbeat" his audience with facts, but dispenses facts while coming across in a casual, charismatic and approachable style in his speeches and public hearings. A consummate salesman, he has a "conversation" with the audience. He takes questions while deftly keeping the conversation within favorable parameters to himself. He doesn't allow "hecklers" or "disruptive" journalists to derail the conversation with sillyness, minutia or controversy (positioning him as the bad guy).

In short, Trump is a good example of the "rhetorical strategy" Objectivism (desperately) needs to effectively communicate its ideas to the public. The issue is not exposure to Ayn Rand (millions have read her non-fiction) , but the effective presentation of her ideas so that they 1) could be understood on a simple, easy to understand level 2) Do not come across as "negative" or "dry" but "positive" even fun and sexy.

This is the challenge of our time. And by seeing the good examples all around us, we can see the road ahead of us clearly and what it takes to win in this modern ideological battlefield.

Thoughts?

Too polemical. He treats his opinion as if its already proven. Then provides no supporting evidence for his assertions.

What scientific research/evidence supports his idea that competence comes before passion? Passion can be "created"? He provides none. Even his logic barely stands on one leg as is.

Mikee refresh your stale mind as to what an ad-hominem is, here I'll even Google it for you.

Merriam-Webster:

Definition of AD HOMINEM

1

: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect

2

: marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made

And back to you:

This is pure rot. You have the imagination and personality of a hyena. "I tolerate you" !?!? You arrogant asshole. You remind me of the idiot at the turn of the 19th century who claimed "everything that can be invented has been invented". In your case you believe all of philosophical history ends with your conclusions. Marks most offhand remarks are more interesting and insightful than the sum total of your pedantic and sycophantic ravings.

Like I said blah, blah. Ad-hominem. Blah.

It's fitting that your avatar is an open book. You clearly be mad. Too mad to even halfway form a proper argument. lol.

This is pure rot. You have the imagination and personality of a hyena. "I tolerate you" !?!? You arrogant asshole. You remind me of the idiot at the turn of the 19th century who claimed "everything that can be invented has been invented". In your case you believe all of philosophical history ends with your conclusions. Marks most offhand remarks are more interesting and insightful than the sum total of your pedantic and sycophantic ravings.

Translation: Blah, blah. Ad-hominem attack. Blah blah. Ad-hominem. Ad-hominem.

Is that it? lol.

This is not a contest of "who is most interesting", but if it was, judging by your lack of substance, you'd be losing.

^ In other words, the exact same thing. lol.

Btw "the horses mouth" = direct observation. Not some dead dude.

Brant, we should define our terms here. According to Google, the zoological (i.e. biological) definition of atruism is the following:

behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense.

Brant, since this is not a viable survival strategy for humans, it is not and cannot be a value other than for an irrational person. Altruism works well for ants, but not for men.

So like I said, Altruism *is* a non-value. It should not be "rescued". It should be left to die (cruel I know). Benevolence is not "another name" for it. It is a totally different, (superior) concept. One that does not require sacrifice. You can help others, even help others with no obvious gain (maybe psychological pleasure) to yourself, without doing it at the expense of your values. Benevolence is win-win. Altruism win-lose. I win, you lose.

To help me to understand, what do you feel, in your view, is the *value* of altruism?

Don't give me a vague platitude about the "social animal". We are social but being social is not our primary means of survival. Observe people who survive in solitary confinement for decades, even with no job or purpose which is arguably more deadly than isolation.

Wow Marcus thank you for enlightening us on the objectivish definition of altruism. We would be lost without you, having never read anything to do with Ayn Rand's works....

Jules, there is only one definition to a thing (a "table" has 4 legs, a "bike" has 2 wheels etc, etc). Basic epistemological rule. If your definition doesn't fit my definition then one of us is wrong.