Charles R. Anderson

Dennis, I figured that you were using definition 2. Admiring women who are intelligent, wise, and very good looking makes a lot of sense to me.

Linz should worry more about whether people with enough intelligence and wisdom to value TOC can find sufficient value for the investment of their time at SOLO Passion.

Paul, Given that you are often good at taking on the perspective of others and often believe it useful to be able to do so, I take it that you have rarely had such a strong response to an invading perspective. What I am trying to understand is why your response was so strong in this case. I can understand a strong rejection of an invading perspective which I view as evil. Here, I am talking about myself and not trying to apply this to you. If I were to think, because I was watching a movie about a murderer who was killing his wife, that I was in his role and was killing my wife, then I would have a very strongly rejecting sense of the invading perspective. Indeed, for this reason and others, I hate horror films. I will not watch them. But, I can watch two men make love and not feel a sense of invasion. This is the difference that I am trying to understand. Why for some men is this a threatening invasion, but watching a horror film is not? I really do not understand. There must be a reason and a perspective which is foreign to my own perspective. Why does this difference of perspective exist? Is there a biochemical component? Is there something very different in our experience of sex? Is there something very different in how we assess the value and companionship of others by sex? Are we simply differentiated by our ability to throw off society's taboos? I do not know. People do not talk about these things, so they are a puzzle to me. I know myself, but I do not know what really affects how other people percieve homosexuality and bisexuality. I believe there is a great deal of sexual tension on these subjects and a great deal of hidden interest. I believe that a great many people are hurt by the taboos. A great many people do not fully know who they are because they are unable to overcome the taboos and honestly think these issues through. Many want to experiment and cannot bring themselves to try. Of course, this is the purpose of the taboos. On the other hand, how many people have a core being that could not possibly make love to one of the same sex even if no taboos existed and what is it that makes them such a person? These are pretty fundamental questions about sexuality and yet we know little about them. Where does the "against me" come from in your case? I understand that this may be very difficult to answer, but it is the question that begs to be asked and answered.

Dennis, So what is your take on why you were called Attila? There was a physics professor at Brown who upon hearing of my discussions with some socialist physics majors, adopted the policy of referring to me as Attila when speaking to them. He never spoke to me about my ideas directly, but he clearly hated me for what he thought my ideas to be. He had a number of opportunities to do nasty things to me and did. One of the somewhat amusing things was to disinvite me to a reception with a well-known physicist Brown was trying to recruit who was a socialist and wanted to meet Brown physics majors. Less amusing was when he arranged to have my application for a program at Brown lost. For another, he asked me to give a talk to the Physics Club and I told him that I would, but that it could not be on one particular night. He scheduled me for that night on which I said I could not do it and told me about it the night before. Well, at least he was denied tenure! So, we have both been called Attila!

Barbara, PAR is a celebration of a real life. It was not about a mythological goddess. Your love of Ayn Rand and her ideas was your subject. Your love for both rests in the reality of both, not a dishonest fictionalization of either. Such dishonesty would be the cruelest blow possible to Ayn Rand and the philosophy she did so much to develop. To be successful as a way of life, Objectivism needs to be rational, rather than mystical. We owe you a great debt that you have fought for rationality and against mysticism. Thanks.

Dennis, OK, we probably will continue to have some degree of difference on when we would choose to wipe a city or town off the map, though who really knows, since we both would do so in some hypothetical case and we have not been able to establish where the boundary is. Maybe you just like talking tough, but you are no Hun. Who can tell? In other contexts you are quite sensitive and sentimental. The tough talk may just be to convince people not to mess with you, much as the refusal at the government level to rule out using nuclear weapons is mostly to create a healthy uncertainty in the mind of any country's leaders who are thinking about attacking us. I will leave this war discussion off now, since it has come as close to reaching a conclusion as I expect it will ever, unless the war enters a very new stage. We do probably agree that the management of the war should be done by Sec. Rumsfeld, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the generals in theater. Actually, I expect that the interference from the President is probably quite minimal. Concerns about critics in Congress and the press are likely having a greater negative impact. I would be reluctant to have soldiers going house to house myself. I prefer using missiles and guided ordnance whenever possible. Surrounding an area and simply waiting for terrorists to starve or surrender may work in some cases. I would favor cutting the hotspots off from the rest of the country and letting them stew in their own juices. There may be cases where much of the communications, electricity, and water infrastructure is to be found in the Sunni areas which are uncooperative, and these may have to be built up elsewhere. The Kurds and the Shia can pay for this with their oil. We should probably be concentrating on doing what we can to see that the oil will get to the market again and be likely to continue to do so.

Note from Administrator: The information in this thread is for the old domain and/or phpp forum software. It is no longer valid for the present program (Invision Power Board). Kat, Sorry, but I seem to be in a mode of thinking that all of my posts are worth duplication! Not really. Twice today upon submitting a post there was no response, so after waiting about at least 5 minutes and as long as 10 minutes, I returned to the Preview/Submit page and Submitted again. Each time I got a response, with my post duplicated. Earlier today, I tried to sign on to OL several times and was told that I was not authorized to access the server. Is the site so busy now that the server is overwhelmed, or is there a problem?

Paul, Many long hours at the lab and a trip to Rochester to pack up and bring home Katie's many worldly possessions and creature comforts now that her quarter at RIT is ending, have limited my hours posting recently. Most of my posts lately were expected to be short, though some grew beyond my expectations. I fully share this view. It is horribly wrongheaded to want everyone to be normal, rather than to enable people to realize their potential as thinking and happiness-seeking beings. The goal should be to enable people to rationally manage their own life. Sports give a child a great opportunity to analyze a complex situation and try out solutions in a reasonably protected and consequence-limiting sphere of action. Sports let us translate thoughts into actions in a challenging, but safe environment. Sports recognize that one will win and lose, but always rise to try again. This is one of life's great lessons. It is crucial to try and try again. Sports also help one to put physical danger and injuries in context. When the chips are down, the training of sports help one to learn how to concentrate on what must be done, rather than to worry about danger or the consequences of failure. There are many situations in which a man simply has to be able to focus on his goals. You cannot break down and cry when your daughter has a hole deep in the bridge of her nose and blood is flowing everywhere. You are too busy stopping the bleeding, calming her and preventing shock, and getting her to the hospital. You shake in your shoes only when it is over. I have not yet seen Brokeback Mountain. I shall have to do so, but I rarely go to movie theaters. They cost too much and I would rather put every penny I can into my lab! I am also not much compelled to be current and the first to have an opinion on a movie at the water fountain. Oh, maybe that is because we do not have one! So, I will not claim to know in any detail how I would react to the sex scenes of the movie. I tend to feel a bit of discomfort when viewing a man acting like a woman. I do have a kind of visceral expectation that a man should act like a man and a woman should act like a woman. So, I confess that men with high-pitched voices, limp wrists, excessively lilting voices, who gossip, and who are into cross-dressing are not my favorite company. I prefer guys who played tackle football and handball, who like hiking, and running and biking. I would expect that the cowboys of Brokeback Mountain acted like men, so I expect I could live in their company, unless their sense of life were bad. In my earlier post to which you were responding, I said that I found many of the girls that my friends would date in hopes of having easy sex were repulsive. That was not what I meant to say. They were not repulsive, it was the thought of having sex with them that was repulsive. Earlier, I had said that the pleasures of sex were so great that I truly hoped that a man or woman who could not enjoy sex with the opposite sex would be able to find rich rewards and pleasure in sex with members of their own sex. I do not find imagining or seeing them doing so repulsive. In fact, as with sex between members of the opposite sex, sex between members of the same sex can be quite beautiful. What makes the difference is the loving, the care, the enjoyment, and the playfulness, whatever the combination of lovers. Now, is my ability to see lovers this way due to some lack of a hard chemical wiring or not? I do not know. I really only know that many other people tell everyone else that sex between members of the same sex is repulsive, unnatural, and immoral. Others claim that homosexuals are homosexual because they have no choice and can only remember being attracted to and only imagine having sex with members of the same sex. Do I have to allow that these people might be biochemically hardwired or do I have to assume that they are simply deeply prejudiced due to some strange experience I never had? For now, I am willing to assume that biochemical predispositions may be at work and that for some people that biochemistry acts like a switch in one of two positions. Personally, my biochemistry is not in either of those two positions. I am sure that I am consciously in control of my own sexual attraction to members of either sex. I make the choice and the most important basis for choice is character, intelligence, sense of life, and rationality. Their sex is of secondary importance. So, not only do I not see the immorality of sex between two people of the same sex, but I suspect that many people are not hard-wired biochemically to find one sex repulsive as a prospective sexual partner. Historically, the widespread bisexuality of Greece and Persia, of Thailand, and of India, would suggest the same conclusion. We simply live with ancient taboos, such as the Jewish taboo not to waste one's seed. This might have made a kind of sense in the context of a hard-pressed tribe beset by enemies all around. They needed to give birth to as many warriors as possible and any male who was not prime material for defending the tribe was not so valuable. Hence, those who made up the religion of the Jewish warrior god, saw to it that he commanded only those acts they thought would strengthen the tribe. The Christians adopted this prejudice and made homosexuality and bisexuality taboos. India, after the Christians came to be in control became very prudish about sex. Of course, Greece and Persia were gone long ago. But, what rational reason is there anymore for such taboos? I do not know of any. It certainly is not the survival of the human race or of families. Anyone who thinks that homosexuality is actually a threat to the wide-spread attraction between men and women is nuts and otherworldly. Well, at least unless very nearly everyone is lying about their present attractions to the opposite sex! So much for my psychological shield. I keep my own perspective in many ways, but just as I can imagine the horror of losing my wife to cancer and being entirely broken up by a movie in which a good wife dies and leaves her husband and children alone, I can imagine making love to or having sex with a man. That thought does not horrify me at all the way imagining my wife dying does. I do see your point about learning to control your imagination. Given the taboos of our day, I have again given up all hope of running for the Office of the President! Oh well, I am too short anyway. Oh, and not religious enough. And too intellectually honest. Well, and there are probably plenty of other problems that would turn up.

Michael, I agree with your comments. Because Objectivists are focused upon their ideals in a way most people are not, they have a tendency to damn the good people who are less than perfect. They do this despite being surrounded by many people who are not nearly as good as those they condemn. In fact, it is as though they think it an affront that someone who can be rather good has not chosen to be perfect. There is also a great resistance to dealing with events and situations which are the results of irrational actions in a constructive manner. Rather than identify a way to improve the situation by enlisting the support of those who are better than many, but not perfect, they simply stand back and condemn. If we want to improve our nation and advance civilization, we must learn to work with others in a constructive way. This earns their respect and with their respect will come a greater willingness to listen to our ideals and our reasons for them. Our example in leading others to make the world better for thinking, creative men and in securing more and more the rights of the individual, is critical to gaining the influence we wish Objectivism to have. We also have to demonstrate that we care about widely and deeply held values with respect to family life, friendships, and loyalty to good causes and friends. In contrast, we too often appear disconnected from the real events of our society, uninterested in many of their values, including some good ones, and disinclined to give others any respect, even when they may be good people and productive. We damn the merely good along with the bad, rather than encouraging the good to be better. We refuse to compromise our ideals, which is good, but we confuse a compromise for combined action with others with a compromise of our ideals. We need to realize that we can hold our ideals securely in our minds and constantly strive to realize them in the real world, while we incrementally work with others to simply make the world a better place. Fundamentally, the greatest problem of Objectivists is their unwillingness to be anything but critics. We have to create, lead by example, and be willing to work with those who do not agree with us entirely, but will join us in a project to make society better for the individual's use of his mind and to increase his freedom to make the choices to manage his own life.

Hear, Hear Now, if I could only get clarity from you on your war views, I could figure out what we agree on and what we disagree on there! I really am interested to hear more about your idea for getting the Muslims to give us their oil for free! Am I right to expect that the plan will involve no American deaths? I must like you, to be playing with you so. Grin and bear it, my friend.

Dennis, Because you seem to want to be the critic but you do not actually want to offer any alternative, I am trying to draw you out as to what you really want done. Since you have opposed American deaths to try to minimize the deaths of Iraqi women and children, but will not tell us how many Americans died due to too much concern or how you propose to have American soldiers act differently and because of references to bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age, one naturally wonders if bombing is your solution to save American lives. In fact, you have referred to bombing quite a few times in this series of posts. If massive and intense bombing is not your solution, I am very puzzled about what might be. If our self-defense requires bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age, then I also favor it. It seems, however, that you believe we disagree and I am trying to figure out what it is that you actually want in terms of policy, other than a wish. If wishes were horses, the streets would be full of .... Now, I do not think that our interest is served by bombing Iraq into the Stone Age. I thought maybe you intended to destroy whole cities if a few terrorists were holed up in them. Apparently, you now think that destroying the infrastructure will destroy the terrorists. This is an interesting and very puzzling thought. On the oil wells we are getting somewhere. I was figuring they would stay in Iraqi hands, but turning them over to the oil companies might be interesting. How will they protect them? Will they call on the US Army and Marines or will they hire mercenary armies? Do the oil companies want them if they have to operate company armies? You seem to suppose that I said that Muslim countries will go to war with us. You get to make conditional statements and ignore my question about whether you really were trying to say something with some logic behind it in the context of your positions, but I do not get to say "may". Come on now. There you go again! #-o This "may" is based on the idea that a country is at war with us if they fund and train terrorists, as Syria and Iran are now doing. Are you sure that a tougher policy in Iraq will cause them to stop doing that? Can you be so sure of religious fanatics like those in Iran? Tens of thousands are an order of magnitude greater than thousands. By the way, would you close our borders to all Muslims and what will you do about Americans going abroad? So, should we demand ransom from the Muslim countries in the form of oil? Is that how you think we will get it free. Kind of an inversion of the Barbary Pirates! You are such an interesting guy, Dennis. I wonder why Dick Cheney never thought of that one.

LW, Thanks. Your approach seems balanced and wise.

Since we have been known to have the occasional disagreement, it is a great pleasure to tell you that I greatly enjoyed your last post.

Dennis, Ayn Rand's statements make it clear that we have the right to defend ourselves and that we should defend ourselves. They do not specify a policy on how we do that. She generally seemed to handle war a bit as she handled science. She was not too eager to get into the details. I do not know whether she would agree with TOC or not, but I actually find it hard to understand why any rational person would not agree with TOC. They speak of reasonable efforts to prevent the casualties of innocents. I thought we all agreed that Objectivists are supposed to be reasonable. Clearly, you and I disagree on the extent of what effort is reasonable. You suggest that if it would save one American life we should bomb Iraq into the Stone Age. Or did you say that? If I were managing the war, I think we would have many fewer casualties than we have had, but we would still have many more than one. In fact, if you took the approach of bombing Iraq into submission, you would have many more than one. Flying is itself hazardous and it is more so under combat conditions. In addition, there are still a number of Stinger missiles available on the market and many people unfriendly to us who would be eager to see them get into the hands of the Sunni Iraqis. Without troops on the ground, they would have a field day shooting at US aircraft. Would casualties be lighter than those we have had? Probably. But what would you have accomplished? Now, let us suppose that your policy of bombing Iraq into the Stone Age is followed. We kill tens of thousands of children and women. We totally write off getting any oil from Iraq and indeed none is available to anyone. World oil prices go up more. Muslims in other countries demand war on the US as their religious fanaticism increases. Many of their countries do not go to war, while some may. Tens of thousands of young Muslims decide to make it their life mission to act as suicide bombers. The US closes its borders to all Muslims. All Muslim nations refuse to sell oil to the US. Chavas, who hates us, joins them. Americans can no longer go abroad on business, since Muslims lie in wait for them everywhere. World trade plummets, much worse than anything the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act did to start the Great Depression. I am sure that Bush and his advisors have given some thought to such things. Have you? How would you handle these itsy-bitsy little nuisances? Maybe, in your theoretical world, you think you have some answers. But, please try to remember that most people do not share your theoretical premises and principles. How are you going to deal with that? Remember that the people who do not share your approach are both Americans and foreigners.

LW, I do not remember the context of that talk well enough to answer your question about what Ayn Rand thought. My approach on these things is to figure out what I think as a rational man. What Ayn Rand thought is of secondary interest. Generally, she agrees with me when I look carefully into a given topic, but not always. Please forgive me if I seem a bit irritated. Sometimes, ofttimes, I think we worry too much about what Ayn Rand thought and do too little independent thinking. We should try not to be imitation Ayn Rands, but rational people taking full advantage of our own minds and our own experiences. It is strange that she tried so hard to design a philosophy to promote the use of the independent and creative mind, but gave rise to a sizeable cult of the Ayn Rand personality. I see that you seem to have an independent assessment, but you also seemed a bit tentative. Go for it and use the mind in your head fully. That is what we are supposed to respect in other people, as we respected Ayn Rand for it.

Related to Jenna's post above: When we picked up our first Ayn Rand book, the person who read it was simply ourselves. Who evaluated every page of that book? Who checked the logic of her heroes? Who felt the emotions that it triggered? Who drew parallels between the world of The Fountainhead and our world or between that of Atlas Shrugged and our world? Of course, the answer is that it was us as we had developed to that time. Each of us had developed a complex and pretty comprehensive character. We had already learned a great deal from our parents, our siblings, our schooling, and our friends. We had already seen much of daily life and something about how people made a living. Some of us actually knew something of the history of mankind. Some of us knew something of science. Sure, we may have been too young to be experts at anything, but we carried enough knowledge, enough joy of life, and enough reasoning ability that we could respond to Ayn Rand's great work. We should never lose sight of the fact that we acted as judges to evaluate her work and if we are to be Objectivists, we can do nothing else but trust to our own minds, our own experience, and our own humanity to continually assess everything we learned from her or that we learn anywhere else. We learn from others and by ourselves. When we learn from others, we have nothing of value unless we have evaluated it carefully for self-consistency and consistency with our experience and that reported by others. Any claim to being an Objectivist that does not come from a confident, self-motivated, independent, self-valuing, and reality-focused mind, is a fraudulent claim.

First, as Ellen pointed out, my last comment before a flurry of responses, was only directed at trying to develop some understanding of Ayn Rand's naivety. Second, I agree fully with Barbara that Ayn Rand's To Whom It May Concern was so lacking in any substantiation of her accusations about Nathaniel Branden's character that it was dishonest. Other dishonesties seemed to flow from that. It also appears clear that Ayn Rand did rewrite history with respect to the character of other people and their contributions to her life with a very disturbing frequency. Ayn Rand's honesty was compartmentalized. In certain types of things, she was honest; in other types of things she was not. I suspect that she would have been honest about having a sexual relationship with someone else, as evidenced by her telling Frank and Barbara about the affair she and Nathaniel were having. Therefore, she could not believe that the man she had taken as a hero would be dishonest about such a thing. This fell inside her honesty compartment. I think we have all seen the phenomena of people who are scrupulously rational in their professional work, for instance, but not at all so in personal relationships or in their avowed philosophy. We have seen people who are pretty honest in their personal life, but think that the standards of their business allow them to be very dishonest when conducting business. I think Ayn Rand had a compartmentalized honesty. In some areas she was scrupulously honest, in others she was dishonest. These compartmentalizations are very common in people generally. It seems hard to accept the idea that Ayn Rand, who was so characteristically able to apply a broad integrating vision to complex issues not relating to her personal relationships, had so much trouble cutting down those compartments she had with respect to her personal relationships. The evidence is clear that she was unable to do this, however. The fact that Barbara made this clear, is a great part of why some people hate her so. I have known a number of people who have a remarkable ability for clearly remembering events from the past as they never were. One of my sisters has a great capacity for remembering things from childhood with great accuracy for some things and total reconstructions of other things. I once had a boss who would have a conversation with me about how the company we worked for had a mistaken policy. He would go to a meeting where the policy was discussed and when he returned he was totally reprogrammed to believe in the policy. He literally could not remember that one hour before he had thought the policy was wrong. I have known people who remembered a conversation with someone which had a truly ambiguous meaning with respect to how the other person thought of the rememberer. Their recall filled in all sorts of details that never happened but which substantiated their evaluation that the other person thought little of them. I had this happen to me a couple of times with work colleagues. In one case, I always thought better of my colleague, whom I was mentoring, than he did himself and was actually praising his work in the conversation we had. I mentioned one thing he could do better and he took it as a criticism, even though on that very issue, I had said what he did was good and would have been even better if he had done a bit more. I praised his work on several other things, but he only remembered that I had said he did not the best thing on one issue. In the other case, I had no real opinion of the woman involved, since I knew her hardly at all. Nothing in our interaction justified her interpretation of it. She had a very creative interpretation of our limited interaction and told me a great deal about my character, though she did not know me. All of these people are intelligent people. All of them are generally good people. None of them suffer from any great mental illness. In some things, especially relating to personal relationships, they simply cannot perceive reality. Yet, they are all functioning, independent people. They all had a sufficient number of compartments within which they functioned well. If we get over the idea of an idealized Ayn Rand, her paradoxical personality is not really all that unusual.

Ellen, I am delighted that you made such an effort to contribute this very interesting insight to the conversation Paul and I have been having. I have had problems figuring out what Paul meant precisely by nodes, though I had some sense of it. Your visualization is one that I fully understand and is fully consistent with how I do think. We are the product of a long development process in which our own individuality has complex components due to our history of experiences, our biochemistry/genetics, our interactions with others, and our personal decisions in response to these. We can generalize your great image of personal interactions to each of these other factors that affect us and then we can try to throw them all together. The result is beyond complex and that complexity makes us even more marvelously individual than does our simple biochemistry and genetics. Perhaps from the way Paul and I talk, it seems as though we see things more differently than I suspect we really do. I think we both understand how complex we are and that much of that complexity is due to an incredible complexity of interactions with others. I think we both greatly value the many advantages that those interactions have given us. He may be a bit more attuned to seeing things from other people's perspective, but I have a great propensity, at least compared to most Objectivists, to see other people as important in my personal life and broadly in a civilized country and world. Paul and I agree that we cannot truly see things from someone's perspective, though he may think he can come closer than I think I can come. I think that my ability is not too much greater than to put myself in their place in a somewhat limited time and situation. Those trailing roots and the many dendrites hanging off of them for every person are too complex for my meager mind to fully comprehend for anyone else. I admit to some struggle in understanding my own roots and dendrites! I loved your wavicles. Traditional quantum mechanics people seem to be stuck on wavelets. Wavicles sounds like a fun and playful alternative. Of course, maybe I am out of touch and Larry or something you have been thinking about in newer work deals in wavicles. Maybe the theory of wavicles explains charm. It would be fascinating to have you be more involved in our discussions. I would love to know much more about you and how you think. While what you produce on-line may be pale compared to what you can visualize, it is rich in insights. Your efforts to push your eyesight limitations are appreciated, though I am feeling a bit guilty (but what can I do about it?) that I am playing a role in tempting you to do painful things. I feel honored every time you comment on anything I have written. Thanks.

Dennis, First to return to an older issue, I was delighted that you would not yourself advocate shooting the Vietnamese villagers. The case was set in a rather extreme way because your favorable citing of the Brook/Epstein article left me in doubt. Their own suggestion that nuclear weapons might be used in the Middle East certainly leaves me uncertain about whether they have any regard for the lives of women, children, and non-combatants at all in the Middle East and perhaps in the down-wind areas such as northern India. I suppose you put benevolent in quotation marks because you do not quite, but maybe come close to, equating it with self-sacrificial. Of course, when we refer to a benevolent universe, we do not mean a self-sacrificial universe. Or maybe you put it in quotes because you think that I mean that we should adopt self-sacrificial methods to fight war. No, I do not. I advocate rational and effective methods to fight war, though I understand that you disagree with me on what is effective. Americans are upset for many, often conflicting reasons, about the Iraq War. A change of policy that resulting in the killing of many more non-violent Iraqis is not likely to bring on higher approval ratings. Part of the disapproval is because the American people are badly misinformed by the media about how effective the war and occupation have been in terms of the likely long-range impact on the Middle East. I whole-heartedly agree with all three of the quotes you gave by Ayn Rand. Of course we have a need for our soldiers to understand their cause, to have confidence in themselves, and to have certainty that they are right in their cause. Of course, we have every right to fight those who have used aggressive force against us. Of course we do not surrender our right of self-defense for fear of hurting someone else, guilty or innocent. I have the right to divorce my wife. However, that is a right that I choose not to exercise. It would be stupid of me to do so. So, in the exercise of our right to defend ourselves, we may exercise our right in ways that in varying degrees kill innocent people. In war, innocents will be killed. The rational man still places a value on the lives of innocent people and given a reasonable alternative in how he operates a war he will chose to minimize the deaths of innocent people. He does this because he values life and he does this because it may serve best to achieve the purposes of the war. In this case, we want to eliminate the yellowjackets and wasps, but we would rather not turn the honeybees into yellowjackets and wasps. There are something like 1.5 billion Muslims. It is simply wiser not to convince all of them that they wish to become suicide bombers. There are enough of those now, though they number maybe a couple of tens of thousands. We also know that there are large numbers of Muslims cheering the terrorists on. In Iraq, many people who once cheered the terrorists are now fighting the terrorists. The fact that the terrorist clearly do not put a value even on Iraqi lives has had a lot to do with this. Many of them see that the Americans value Iraqi lives much more than the terrorists do. I understand that you are furious that 2,450 American troops have died in Iraq. I am furious also. Somehow, you seem to be convinced that they died because the government has been too benevolent or too willing to suffer deaths in order not to kill innocent Iraqis. So, consistent with this belief, what exactly are the ways in which you would change the prosecution of the war? What fraction of the American lives lost would not have been lost had the government used your war-fighting methods? What would you have achieved and what would be the lasting consequences of fighting the war by Dennis Hardin methods?

Not for the first time, I read the first page of posts on a thread and failed to notice that many pages followed. So, the comments below refer back to posts by Ellen and Barbara on page 1. I came to this thread to follow up on a reference Paul made to it on an Article thread on Rational Men Must Be Tolerant of Others. Returning to the very interesting discussion between Ellen and Barbara about why Ayn Rand struggled so long with trying to understand Nathaniel Branden's actions, I may have a perspective on that from the standpoint of being a bit naive, a bit determinedly benevolent, and a bit lacking in some of the complete breadth of human emotions. Of course, I did not know Ayn Rand, so I am eager to hear any responses to these ideas that Barbara and Ellen may make. Actually, I think much of the naive nature of Ayn Rand may the result of a determindedly benevolent outlook and a lack of some of the meaner emotions that other people often have. In some respects, Ayn Rand may have been naive simply by virtue of the intense and all-consuming nature of her work, in which she spent many hours alone. Few people do this. Most people have jobs and after-work lives which they spend constantly interacting with other people. So, it is natural to suspose that a certain level of naivety might result from this. By Barbara Branden's account and others, Ayn Rand appears to have had a rather determindedly benevolent attitude toward others, at least when her philosophy itself was not under attack. She was nice to and generous with most of the people she encountered in her daily routines of life. On occasion, one might picture her as a bit abrupt as she hurried to finish something and get back to her writing, but she really did think the universe was benevolent and that one really should be able to live with others in a benevolent and mutually rewarding way. She loved Capitalism because it enables people to live harmoniously and without conflict. Now, once she felt sure and secure in the knowledge that Nathaniel Branden was her intellectual and emotional soulmate, such a person would have a strong natural resistance to believing that such a man would have values which were substantially less than hers. That would simply not be the benevolent perspective. Now, this is not nearly enough to explain her slow acceptance of the nature of Nathaniel's lost love for her. To find that, I think we have to examine the emotions she had been inclined to experience and those that she did not. Like me, Ayn Rand had an underdeveloped tendency to experience jealousy and envy. I agree with Ellen that insulted rather than jealous describes her reaction to Patrecia, but it is still instructive to examine her ability to feel jealousy. Barbara mentions a number of times that Ayn Rand enjoyed seeing beautiful women, even though she did not think herself beautiful. She does not seem to have had a hunger for a great many beautiful possessions. Most important, when she and Nathaniel began their affair, she told Frank and Barbara about it and seems to have expected that they, being good and worthy people, would of course not experience significant jealousy. Finally, she seems to have had no jealousy about Barbara remaining Nathaniel's wife and their remaining lovers. The important lesson here seems to be that she did not have the low emotion of jealousy, therefore she supposed that the good people around her also did not have this emotion. It appears that this assumption on her part seemed largely to be confirmed by Barbara and Frank. Honesty is the issue that needs to be examined as immediately important to Ayn Rand's effort to understand Nathaniel Branden's actions. Honesty itself is a virtue, but its constant practice builds up an emotional preference for honesty. We practice it and we feel good. Again, Ayn Rand was a very honest person. She has been criticized by some for not telling the world about her affair with Nathaniel, but her obligation really was met by telling Frank and Barbara. It was not the business of the rest of the world, though when asked about it explicitly, she should not have denied it. For Ayn Rand, honesty was an intense intellectual commitment. Just as she assumed that the good people in her life would not be jealous, because she was not, she was largely unable to assume that Nathaniel, the hero she had loved, could be dishonest. She eventually came to grips with this but agonizingly slowly. Finally, as Barbara noted, the paper he wrote eased her over the final bit of hill that kept her from realizing this. As Barbara noted, Ayn Rand had a super-developed self-esteem. This self-esteem also made it hard for her to imagine being thrown over in favor of Patrecia. It perhaps also conditioned her to assume that if she had loved Nathaniel then he must have been a great hero. Her self-esteem biased her in this direction. If he was a hero, then it was not conceivable that he would deceive her and it was not conceivable that he would prefer a sexual relationship with Patrecia. So, in a sense, the strongly developed emotional components associated with self-esteem and honesty both acted to prevent Ayn Rand from understanding what Nathaniel was doing. It seems clear that Ayn Rand had some difficulty in putting herself into the perspective of someone who experienced jealousy. Similarly, she had difficulty doing this for someone whose self-esteem and honesty were not as great as her own. Ayn Rand's highly developed self-esteem may have blinded her to the need for her to have told Nathaniel that their affair was over long before this agonizing wind-down. It should have been her saviour and allowed her to do the right thing without suffering too much personal damage. She should have told Nathaniel that she loved him and because she loved him, she was only going to be his friend and collaborator henceforth. Their sexual relationship was over. In not doing this, she let a man she loved down. She contributed to boxing Nathaniel into an impossible situation, given that he loved her even as his sexual attraction diminished.

Dennis, I do not think that massive attacks on cities in Muslim countries will have any beneficial effect on ending terrorist support. I am sure it will increase support for the religious fanatics who become terrorists. Clearly we have such different views of human nature and war that we will not likely resolve them in these discussions. In that I agree with you. I am sure we can both use our efforts to do something of greater value to each of us. This very hard-edged view of Objectivism that you and Brook-Epstein hold proves to be a major impediment to the general acceptance of Objectivism by Americans. We are by nature a benevolent people and malevolent perspectives will not gain much traction among us. It turns out that this long aside from your original post has been very enlightening in answering a significant part of why Objectivism has not been accepted. Valuing family, friends, associates, and most human life, understanding the purpose of war, and the need for cooperation are critical to civilized living. A benevolent outlook, which Ayn Rand largely understood, is necessary to facilitate the many benefits that come from living in a society, rather than alone in a cave.

Paul, You wrote that: I agree that we cannot and should not fully adopt someone else's perspective. We can in varying degrees try to figure out someone else's emotional or intellectual state. Of course, I can best do this when dealing with someone whose sense of life, values, and thought patterns are more like mine than not. There are emotions that I can empathize with readily. So readily in fact, that sad dramas in which the loved one dies at a young age leave me a wreck for 24 hours. I ration my watching such movies, because I have too much to do to be such a wreck. A Russian scientist once told me that I was a shallow person because I did not watch enough movie dramas. A man has to be sad to understand life, he said. But this man could watch such a sad movie and the feeliing left him as the credits rolled across the screen. For many years, I thought that I should go to the Vietnam Memorial, which is nearby. I did not go, because again, I did not want to go through that emotional wringer. Finally, I went to it with my family and I got through it better because they were with me. But, I was staggered by it. I had no problem thinking about how I would feel if my brother, my friend, or my child was on that list. Many were drafted like me and some volunteered. We shared a purpose and that purpose was given up by our country after they took so much from us. They took my liberty for 2 years, but their lives, and they did not allow us to achieve our purpose. There were many ways I felt this, but I know that there were many who saw much worse than I did in Vietnam who must have felt even more overwhelming emotions. On the other hand, I cannot empathize with the man who leaves the wife he has loved simply because she had an affair. He loved her before it and he loved her during it until he found out and then he hates her. That would be an emotional state I could never manage to imagine, especially if she told me that she still loved me. How do men do such things? I do not see how you so simply turn off a love of longstanding. I cannot understand this. Or reverse the roles and I still do not understand this. Jealousy of this scale is more than I am able to comprehend. Or, as much as I love making love with a woman, I cannot share the feeling of revulsion that some feel for men who love making love to another man. My empathy here is that it is a wonderful thing that a man should have someone to love and enjoy sex with. Life without love and sex is tragic. On the emotional level, my empathy is bounded by the emotions I know and my ability to imagine myself in someone else's place. This is a limitation, but within those bounds I have the ability to plunge myself deep into the feelings I would have in someone else's shoes. I may have somewhat more abilities in emotional empathy than I am inclined to fully realize. I came from a large family and my brother and sisters are all very different, yet we always found ways to get along well. They seem to think I was a great older brother, so my social skills are at least pretty fair, I think. I may have picked up some skills at such an early age that I am less aware of them than I might be had I had to struggle with them as a teenager. I always found it easy to resist seeing others from the perspective of a clique in school. That so many others did this always struck me as strange. I liked most people and treated them with respect and they largely responded in kind. Intellectually, there are cases where I can manager to put myself to a degree in someone else's shoes also. But, it is often difficult being as unperceptive as some people are. There are facts that seem so obvious to me that I have a hard time understanding how other people can ignore them when they are pointed out to them or in some cases, how could you live 30 years and not see this? Again, my ability for intellectual perspective has some decided bounds. Sometimes I can figure some things out, such as religion, by remember how I thought about it when I was 12 or 16. This is still only a partial empathy when trying to figure out how someone is thinking when they are 40 or 50 years old. I definitely have the impression that you have a greater ability in general to take on the perspective of others. You are no doubt less often as puzzled as I can be about how others act. In some ways, I have compensated for this by reading history extensively. At least in this way, I know that people have existed in large numbers who have various perspectives which I could not otherwise imagine. Very true. I will soon read the Social Metaphysics tread under Chewing Ideas to try to find Ellen's comments on reading Atlas Shrugged. She is a fascinating woman with an analytical mind and a database of knowledge sufficiently complementary to mine, that I could listen to her in many a conversation for many hours. That would be a rare treat. Sounds as though it would also be a treat if you were to get Shauna interested in joining in here. She is someone I would enjoy getting to know. Of course, with two children, she is no doubt very busy. No, wait, she is not any busier than you are because you help her, right? Well, Paul, as usual this note was very interesting and I have enjoyed myself in responding to it. The 2nd of your longer notes, I will have to get to tomorrow night. It is 3 AM and I have to get back into the lab for a bit and prepare a deposited film sample for further analysis.

Paul, It is very reassuring for my estimation of humanity, especially of the younger generations, that a man of your tender years can be so wise! Your last comment is entirely perceptive. I am about to get back into your longer and earlier comments, but the writing will take a while, so I am rushing this comment to press.

Ciro, Barbara has a rarely analytical mind, which makes her an unusual delight for men with analytical minds who hunger for conversation with women in analytical terms. This may give Barbara more male friends than most women have, but I don't know that it would imply that she has fewer female friends. Well, except maybe for some who might be jealous.

Another recommendation from the RoR archives of essays: On Gay Marriage Like James, I would like to see government recognize that it has no role in marriage, the spiritual bond of people in a union. Government's role is to provide a legal contract for the sharing of assets and certain responsibilities. This is a civil union contract and government should make no pretenses that it is providing more than this to anyone, even a union of one man and one woman. Those who wish a spiritual union may turn to a church, to others who share their philosophy, or simply to one another. All people deserve the same civil union contract or set of contract choices. Government is not to discriminate against any of its citizens on the basis of their religion or philosophical beliefs, on their race, or on their sexuality. Tell the churches and their religious followers that they will exercise greater control on the spiritual nature of the marriages of their members when people understand that they are going to the church strictly and only for that purpose. Tell them that this separation of church and state is actually for their own good. Afterall, the way politics is heading, without that separation being made more clear, it will not be long before government gets around to regulating the churches. Of course, this is mostly an argument to try to get the religious to give up on controlling who is allowed to enjoy government contracts for civil unions.