Wolf DeVoon Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 47 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said: If there is evil in the world, then there is someone who either did it or allowed it to occur. I guess I'm an orthodox Objectivist. Evil is the refusal to think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said: The resolution is simple. Bob, God or no God, actually the problem isn't simple. One view of evil is religious and mythological, of course. There's the Good Dude in in the sky and the Bad Dude. They fight, we suffer. But other views include evil being inherent in human nature, evil being banal (Hannah Arendt was a big proponent of this one), evil being chaos, etc. It's an interesting field of inquiry and I'm glad I took a course in it. Evil, albeit not studied as much as other ideas, is an essential component of a world view. No philosophy, religion or culture should be without one. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted January 12, 2017 Author Share Posted January 12, 2017 1 hour ago, wolfdevoon said: I guess I'm an orthodox Objectivist. Evil is the refusal to think. He who refused to think allowed it to occur. Allowance can be by action or omission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 14 hours ago, wolfdevoon said: Hahaha -- like the Bible isn't a relic of the dead past... The wisdom of the words written the Bible concerning the moral accountability of man is timeless. If you followed them you wouldn't be such a failure, Wolf. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthony Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 30 minutes ago, moralist said: The wisdom of the words written the Bible concerning the moral accountability of man is timeless. Greg "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul". There's great Biblical wisdom - applicable to secularists too, in the objective sense of "soul". One can't enjoy what one gets if there's little "you" left to enjoy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 57 minutes ago, anthony said: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul". There's great Biblical wisdom - applicable to secularists too, in the objective sense of "soul". One can't enjoy what one gets if there's little "you" left to enjoy it. Absolutely, Tony. Belief in God is not necessary to enjoy the personal rewards of following the moral wisdom found in the words of the Bible... ...you just won't know Who to thank. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolf DeVoon Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 3 hours ago, moralist said: The wisdom of the words written the Bible concerning the moral accountability of man is timeless. If you followed them you wouldn't be such a failure, Wolf. Sure. I went back to see how this began. You said Atlas Shrugged inspired you to build your own Galt's Gulch. Then you quoted Genesis. Quote The Jews are God's chosen people. They have blessed my life in uncountable ways, and I consider it an honor to serve them. That's the nice thing about common law liberty -- you know, that dead past American Revolutionary War of Independence legacy you dissed -- we're free to walk away from the tribe, price no object. "All things noble are as difficult as they are rare." (Spinoza) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 9 minutes ago, wolfdevoon said: Sure. I went back to see how this began. You said Atlas Shrugged inspired you to build your own Galt's Gulch. Then you quoted Genesis. That's the nice thing about common law liberty -- you know, that dead past American Revolutionary War of Independence legacy you dissed -- we're free to walk away from the tribe, price no object. "All things noble are as difficult as they are rare." (Spinoza) There's a big difference between how we each relate to the dead past, Wolf. You just quote words... ...while I live by them. And that's the difference between failure and success. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolf DeVoon Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 I'm scheduled to do a radio interview Saturday. I'll mention your notion of success, serving the tribe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 7 hours ago, wolfdevoon said: I guess I'm an orthodox Objectivist. Evil is the refusal to think. Wolf, There's that. But when I mentioned St. Augustine, I was thinking about some other Rand quotes. A few of them are given on the Ayn Rand Lexicon page: Evil. Quote Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us. . . . I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. . . . The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. The first two are from Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged and the last from “The Anatomy of Compromise.” This is almost identical with Augustine's evil is the absence of good--a non-existent that somehow exists, but never in its own right. They disagree on much else, of course, but not on that as a fundamental aspect of evil. Even the "refusal to think" is based on this characteristic. Without that refusal, that absence, according to this form of thinking, evil does not exist. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolf DeVoon Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 MSK, no quarrel, except to say that Kent Lansing in The Fountainhead left a lasting impression on me, the psychology of a pretzel: "The shortest distance between two points is a middleman." If it weren't for Archie Ogden, putting his job on the line, there would have been no Fountainhead, no movie money, no bidding war for Atlas Shrugged won by Bennett Cerf, no NBI. Evil is the refusal to think, to wallow along in the wake of conventional or fashionable pap, like Augustine, subordinating reason to faith. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 1 hour ago, wolfdevoon said: ... like Augustine, subordinating reason to faith. Wolf, I would agree with this perspective if St. Augustine lived today. However, at the time he lived, he elevated reason, not above faith, but about as high as he could get it. There's a reason Rand adopted his thing about evil. But back to him, all there was was faith back then. And if you think his Manicheism, then Christianity was something, you should see the shit the Romans were into. btw - My favorite quote of his is a prayer he made in his youth. It's in his Confessions: "Lord, grant me chastity – but not yet." Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 4 hours ago, wolfdevoon said: I'm scheduled to do a radio interview Saturday. I'll mention your notion of success, serving the tribe. Don't bother, Wolf. You'd only be quoting someone else's words you don't live by. Mention your own instead. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 2 hours ago, wolfdevoon said: MSK, no quarrel, except to say that Kent Lansing in The Fountainhead left a lasting impression on me, the psychology of a pretzel: "The shortest distance between two points is a middleman." If it weren't for Archie Ogden, putting his job on the line, there would have been no Fountainhead, no movie money, no bidding war for Atlas Shrugged won by Bennett Cerf, no NBI. Evil is the refusal to think, to wallow along in the wake of conventional or fashionable pap, like Augustine, subordinating reason to faith. My grandfather was a personal friend of D.L. Chambers the head of Bobbs-Merrill who tried to reject The Fountainhead. Bobbs published almost all his books and likely made no or little money from them. They included one not so good novel, Friendly Cove, which I enjoyed until it petered out toward the end. --Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 20 hours ago, wolfdevoon said: I'm scheduled to do a radio interview Saturday. I'll mention your notion of success, serving the tribe. Is this it? Radio interview 1/14/2017KFAR 660 Fairbanks, Alaska 10 am Pacific / noon Central Patriots’ Lament 9am-Noon “Wolf DeVoon talks about his latest novel, A Portrait of Valor, and discusses his radical libertarian nonfiction books ...” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolf DeVoon Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 1 hour ago, Mark said: Is this it? Eeek! -- three hours? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 Looks like the Patriots’ Lament show lasts from 9-12 pacific time, and that you start at 10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthony Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 On 2017/01/12 at 9:01 PM, moralist said: Absolutely, Tony. Belief in God is not necessary to enjoy the personal rewards of following the moral wisdom found in the words of the Bible... ...you just won't know Who to thank. Greg I've only hazy recall of OT and NT school Bible study Greg, and I'm sure there are many more profound words. They were thought and written by *men* (Kings, prophets, disciples and so on, and many unknowns) who can be called philosophers or historians or "reporters". You'd say their words were Divinely inspired I guess, I say they were often factual, sometimes existence-inspired and life-valuing. Or not. ;) The "lose his own soul" insight (Matthew, Mark?) I find remarkably congruent to Rand's ideas of sacrifice of self, or giving up the greater value (an independent consciousness) for the lesser value/non value of "the whole world" - power for the sake of power, unearned wealth, superficial veneration by others, social prestige, - etc.). "Self-abnegation"(AR) . It relates to the quote you have liked: No man may be smaller than his money. This idea speaks of individual merit - and more: of staying true to oneself and not lowering and sacrificing one's rational and moral standards - to anybody, for any thing - while rightfully gaining wealth as well, naturally. Except that Mark was thinking of the eternal soul and materialism... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolf DeVoon Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 4 hours ago, anthony said: not lowering and sacrificing one's rational and moral standards - to anybody, for any thing - while rightfully gaining wealth as well, naturally. Huh. Didn't know Thomas Paine and Robert Morris died rich. Scott Fitzgerald and Herman Melville, too, I suppose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthony Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 1 hour ago, wolfdevoon said: Huh. Didn't know Thomas Paine and Robert Morris died rich. Scott Fitzgerald and Herman Melville, too, I suppose. The quote is "No man may be smaller than his money". Which also means, some men will be bigger, and a few immensely greater, than their money. There's no guarantee of wealth (we know) specially for thinkers, innovators, writers and artists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolf DeVoon Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 Morris went broke funding the American Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(financier) Quote Morris personally paid £1,000,000 to pay the Continental troops under Washington. This helped to keep the Army together just before the Battle of Princeton. He subsequently paid from his own funds the troops via "Morris notes" to continue Washington's ability to wage war as the US currency had no value Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthony Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 9 minutes ago, wolfdevoon said: Morris went broke funding the American Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(financier) Okay. He clearly thought the cause was worth more than his million quid, so it wasn't a sacrifice by him and one can still say he was bigger than his money. Going back to artist-types, I have known some who made money, went broke, made more, went broke again. You have to be smart enough to hold on to it too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolf DeVoon Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 6 minutes ago, anthony said: You have to be smart enough to hold on to it too. Nods in agreement. Reminds me of the housekeeper joke. Marry the right guy, divorce him, and keep the house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 10 hours ago, anthony said: You'd say their words were Divinely inspired I guess, I say they were often factual, sometimes existence-inspired and life-valuing. Or not. ;) Whenever anyone acknowledges reality by speaking truthfully about it or acting in harmony with it, they are Divinely inspired because God is the creator of objective reality. Knowing that we are Divinely inspired is completely optional because only our behavior matters... ...as the end result is exactly the same regardless of motive, intention, or belief. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 9 hours ago, wolfdevoon said: Marry the right guy, divorce him, and keep the house. The fish always matches the bait. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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