New member

[SirBillyWallace]

Just introducing myself. I'm a recent casual student of objectivism that is finding myself in it. I came upon this philosophy after the death of my father. I was dealing with long forgotten emotions and stirred up memories, mixed with hints of pending sibling conflict. As an adult in my 40's, a husband and father with an established career and an independent thinker/liver for as long as I can remember, I was struggling with rationalizing my feelings. I was considering cutting my siblings out of my life and doing some reading on the subject. I feel like I have been waiting all my life for this discovery! So many nagging thoughts were given a new, rational perspective that I had been longing for. Maybe it was the desire for validation (I know -- kind of contrary to a confident objectivist) but I felt like I had discovered a methodology in tune with my natural wavelength. I'm a police officer of almost 20 years, who's always had a philosophical mind I guess, and I find myself at odds with the thinking of many of my peers.  Anyways, hello. I hope to continue to learn and grow as a man through the lens of objectivism.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Welcome, Sir Billy!

I hope you enjoy OL as much as I do.

 

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

If you refuse to be a victim, which requires the courage of honesty, the victimizers go away.

--Brant

factualize, never mind moralizing

[Peter]

If you are coping with a recent death, Ayn Rand's stoic, main characters may not be the best examples for closure, but her philosophy of benevolence and accepting reality is. I think Rand dug into the psyche of the lesser characters better. And in real life Ayn Rand was very unlike the idealized, Christ like, John Galt. The laying on of hands story becomes the laying on of the bright shiny mind, which makes it more scifi than based on reality. Though she can certainly inspire, I am leery of people who glow with Rand's brilliance. These insights come to me after years of being the opposite sort of Randite.

[SirBillyWallace]

Thank you for your insight. I very much identify with the acceptance of reality. I am finding the objectivist philosophy useful in processing my thoughts more so than a follower of Rand in particular. 

 

[Peter]

And thank you Sir! I thought my "insight" might cause a negative backlash. 

[anthony]

18 hours ago, SirBillyWallace said:

Thank you for your insight. I very much identify with the acceptance of reality. I am finding the objectivist philosophy useful in processing my thoughts more so than a follower of Rand in particular. 

 

Hi there! The acceptance of reality as you put it, is the base of reason - in short, inducing and integrating one's own concepts/principles from a multitude of sense perceptions (observation and experience). Induction-integration is much harder to get right than simply making deductions from Rand's ready-made principles - from which comes Objectivism's common bugbear, 'rationalism'. But is also endlessly rewarding and fun.

Knowing the principles in advance is invaluable, of course, and they too can and often should be traced back to their concretes/situations in reality, as a sort of double check ("reduction").

Induction from observation is to what she ascribed her own thought processes, reputedly stating she couldn't have arrived at her comprehensive philosophy without induction. Advisedly, I personally view the main target as the O'ist constructing his own objectivist philosophy by the same method, ultimately 'freeing' oneself from being "a follower". (in her insistence on an independent mind, Rand woudn't have it any other way, I fairly safely assume: "Save me from my followers!" she did exclaim).

Cheers.