Rational Men Must Be Tolerant of Others

[Charles R. Anderson]

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.

When I was on a path toward counselling psychology I was not really interested in a focus on correcting unhealthy development. I was more interested in how to strive for personal potential. I wasn’t interested in how to make someone normal. I wanted to know how to help someone to reach optimal. I found healthy and integrated a better standard than normal. This seems to align with your interest in human nature. I tend to agree with your assessment of many of those who become interested in the psycho-therapy field. They can tend to be more a part of the problem than the solution.

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.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Charles, you wrote:

*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.*

I think about these things the same way. I have said similar things. Bottom line: if a soul can find a mate it’s a good thing, regardless of the sex of that mate. I do not find imagining gay sex repulsive at all. That’s why, despite reservations about seeing the movie, I thought I would have enough spiritual flexibility to process the experience. I was shocked by the intensity of my reaction. Again, there was no moral element to it. The best way I can describe it is to say that the core of my being was rejecting the empathic perspective I had adopted which was producing an experience fundamentally against the authentic perspective of my being. It was not just imagining the beauty of two people caring for one another and making love. It was sinking into the perspective of a gay man making love to another gay man. My core rejected the virtual reality of experiencing gay sex through an empathically generated gay lens.

Rand and Branden talk about the basis of emotions being the existential alternative of “for me” or “against me” experienced at the core of one’s being. “Against me” was the experience at the root of my reaction to Brokeback Mountain. The way I interpret it, much of the apparatus of my brain– much of the elements of my psyche– were occupied processing my experience of the movie. There was not much room for the expression of my authentic perspective in that moment. There was a conflict between the emotions in me that were the result of the empathically generated experience and the authentic expression of the responses of my core. The tension between these competing experiences was expressed in my body as a tension in my stomach and a feeling of aggression. The aggression was not aimed at the movie or the characters. It was aimed at the foreign perspective inside me that was displacing the expression my authentic response. It was aimed at breaking the connection.

I think one reason there was no moral element to my reaction was because I was aware it was all taking place inside me. I knew the cause of my tension and aggression was how I processed the information. The information itself was morally neutral. Information about the world just “is.” Two men experiencing passion for one another is moral because it is in their self-interest. Two men experiencing passion for each other was not the cause of my reaction. I was!

Paraphrasing Rand’s view of causation: who and what I am determined how I reacted. It could only be the assumption that an outside force determined my reaction which would lead to the assumption that 2 men experiencing passion for each other is immoral because of how it made me feel. Interpreting the world through an action-to-action causal lens is at the root of moralistic gay bashing, as well as much other misplaced moralizing. (Think of the psychology and the causal intuition behind the requirement for women to cover their bodies and faces in Muslim countries.) This lens tends to produce a sense of victimization, places the locus of control outside the self, and places the object to be controlled outside the self. Taking the locus of control back into oneself inevitably leads to attacking the perceived cause in the outside world. Interpreting the world and the self through an entity-to-action causal lens, on the other hand, views the cause of one’s behaviour to be within. This lens tends to produce self-responsibility, places the locus of control inside the self, and places the object to be controlled inside the self.

So there you go. Now I’ve made a link between the prevailing intuitive view of causation– action-to-action– and the culture of self-proclaimed victims, who use their victim status to claim a right to someone else’s energy, we see around us. And it is by seeing the world through a causal lens of entity-to-action that self-reliance and self-responsibility emerges.

That’s enough free flowing intuitive thought for one night. Sleep is important.

It’s good to talk again Charles.

Thanks,

Paul

[Charles R. Anderson]

Paul,

“Against me” was the experience at the root of my reaction to Brokeback Mountain. The way I interpret it, much of the apparatus of my brain– much of the elements of my psyche– were occupied processing my experience of the movie. There was not much room for the expression of my authentic perspective in that moment. There was a conflict between the emotions in me that were the result of the empathically generated experience and the authentic expression of the responses of my core. The tension between these competing experiences was expressed in my body as a tension in my stomach and a feeling of aggression. The aggression was not aimed at the movie or the characters. It was aimed at the foreign perspective inside me that was displacing the expression my authentic response. It was aimed at breaking the connection.

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.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Charles,

I started to write a response a few days ago but my thoughts took me into some fresh territory. I'll post when I can pull my thoughts together.

Thanks,

Paul

[Charles R. Anderson]

Paul,

I understand the need to chew on ideas when pushing into new territory. On some of the issues we are talking about, I chewed for many years with no one to talk to about them. Having someone to talk to sure can stimulate new ideas and provide more perspectives, to speed the process up.

On the other hand, I also understand that some aspects of this conversation are becoming sufficiently personal that it would be understandable that you might not want to share some thoughts here at all. I do not share all of mine.

If it makes more sense to discuss some things in personal correspondence, feel free to do so.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Charles,

*...I take it that you have rarely had such a strong response to an invading perspective.*

This isn’t quite accurate. To suggest it is an “invading perspective” is to suggest it is unwelcome and occurs not of my choosing. I see it as a sign of my maturity to have learned to control this process. Allowing a foreign perspective inside is, nowadays, an act of choice. Although it was not always so. I have noticed a number of perspectives, or rather a number of personality styles, that I automatically shut out before they get in. I do, however, tend to let people in until they loose my respect. I was talking to Shauna about this the other night. She tends to be guarded until she comes to trust someone. I tend to trust someone until I become guarded.

You are right about it being rare to have such a strong response to a foreign perspective. I think anytime an empathic experience requires me to experience myself as something I’m not, I have a strong negative reaction. If a stranger sees me and treats me as someone I am not, I loose respect for his perspective and shut him out. There is no emotional investment, no anger, no energy required on my part. If, in a given moment of negativity, Shauna sees me and treats me as someone I’m not, it takes a lot of energy to shut her view of me out of my soul. Normally, she gives me great psychological visibility; she sees more of me, and more deeply, than anyone else I know. She, meaning her perspective, is allowed all the way down to my core. However, in certain negative moods she can abstract qualities from my lesser attributes and create a distorted, negative caricature of me. If I am alert, I see what she is doing and defuse it by identifying it. If I am not alert (if I’ve been spending too many late hours reading and writing), the negative caricature can be absorbed all the way down until it reaches my core and conflicts with my authentic self-image. In moments like this I have a very strong reaction, generating great emotional energy, and even anger, to push out the malignant self-image. Thankfully, between mine and Shauna’s self-monitoring, mutual consideration, and objectivity, this seldom happens.

*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.*

I see my response as being so strong because the particular primary orientation of my consciousness is very open to adopting another’s viewpoint; because of how deeply I tend to let myself experience a foreign perspective; and because my sexual identity could not coexist with the conflicting adopted identity. It was not a matter of good or evil. It was a matter of the adopted perspective being fundamentally contradictory to my authentic perspective. At the deepest level of my soul, I am not just a human being, I am a heterosexual male human being. My sexual identity is in my biology as well as my psychology. It is at the deepest levels of my self-image. When, through empathic experience, a fundamentally contradictory self-image reaches my core, it is rejected with vigor.

To generalize this thought, I see other people as having their sexual orientation encoded in their biology and psychology also. For most, it is not a choice. However, I think this encoding may be tilted to greater or lesser extremes for different individuals. Some might be more biologically encoded towards an ambivalent orientation. They may have more of a choice in the matter.

As to rejecting a perspective that I would consider evil, for the most part, I’m not an absolutist when it comes to evaluating another’s perspective. Reality is absolute. Perspectives of reality are not. They are relative to the observer’s biased physical, philosophical, and psychological position. I like to try to understand what a person's biases are rather than pass absolute judgements that cause me to dismiss his or her value.

One orientation to have when considering another’s actions is to take the position of remote observer, break the other person’s behaviour into objective elements, and categorize the behaviour according to its assumed underlying causation and some absolute standard– good or evil. This orientation tends to treat the other person as something “out there,” to be identified, classified, labeled and evaluated. This has value in its capacity to organize phenomena, to compare phenomena, to evaluate phenomena, and to keep oneself spiritually remote from phenomena. It can have a psychologically insulating effect, maintaining (bulletproof) self-esteem in social contexts while still producing a powerful understanding of reality. There is no danger of losing oneself in another’s perspective with this orientation. As long as a person holds this very objective/absolutist orientation, he will maintain a position of relative remoteness, process information about the world through a fixed causal filter, and process information about the assumed causation through a black and white evaluative filter. This is not my primary orientation, though I think it might be your primary (though not only) orientation, and I’m quite sure it was Rand’s.

My primary orientation would be better labeled as a subjective/relative orientation. By subjective I mean that the primary focus of my consciousness tends to be inward, not outward. It’s interesting, I have noticed I can be engaged in something as outward as playing soccer and, while the information of my senses is being processed into perceptions automatically, my awareness is focused, not on the objects outside of me, but on a projection of those objects I see with my mind’s eye. I am paying attention to a flowing experiential model of my world rather than the world itself. The advantage of this approach is the amount of information and the breadth of vision one can hold in one’s awareness. Have you ever wondered how a good quarterback is able to read so deeply into and react so quickly to such dynamic, rapidly unfolding events? They see the whole field in their mind’s eye. They are focused on a flowing experiential model of the game’s events in which they are able to apply causality as a principle to instantly project possible outcomes to their action alternatives. I didn’t play football but I played a similar role to a quarterback in soccer. Unlike most, I learned to pay attention to the internal processes that made my understanding of the game and my control of the game possible. I would call these causally intuitive processes.

This inward focus on a flowing experiential model of the world that is informed by the senses can be applied in many contexts other than just sports. An important point to note is that this “flowing experiential model” is not just a copy of the world experienced by the senses. It is a copy that is fleshed out with causal understanding. Paying attention to WHY things behave as they do is of paramount importance to this orientation. This being my primary orientation is why I am so focused on the subject of causation. this flowing experiential model, fleshed out with causal understanding, allows us to connect the causal dots. It allows us to, in our imagination, trace back to a previous state or to project forward to a future state of events. In the context of understanding why people behave as they do it becomes important to understand their perspectives. This is accomplished from the subjective orientation of consciousness by empathically generating an approximation of another’s state of consciousness and focusing on a flowing experiential model of his/her interpretive framework and motivational biases. This produces a self-esteem in social contexts based on psychological flexibility and understanding rather than the "bulletproof" self-esteem based on inflexible remoteness.

This orientation of consciousness makes it really difficult to view another person’s behaviour in absolutist terms. Implicit to the act of understanding another person’s perspective by approximating it within oneself is the idea that his perspective, his being, is as intrinsically valid and valuable as one’s own. In the subjective/relative orientation all perspectives are perceived as relative in validity and value, with one’s own being special only because it is one’s own. It is hard to view someone as evil when viewed from inside the causation of his own identity. Causation, as such, is not good or evil. It is only when action is set relative to an absolute standard that there can be good or evil.

I find I switch to an absolutist perspective only when I see a person treat someone else (or myself) with a fundamental disrespect for his intrinsic value. That is what I consider evil. Also, it is not the person I consider evil. It is the behaviour. This distinction is very important. Actions can be wrong according to an objective standard of what is personally and socially healthy. Perspectives can be wrong according to these standards. But a person's character is only wrong if it is fixed in these perspectives and actions. This is not necessarily so.

The objective/absolutist orientation places one’s own view at the focal point of the universe; a point in absolute space, in absolute time, in absolute reality, in absolute morality (for some that might be in Texas ). All other perspectives are measured relative to the absolute point which is one’s own perspective. (This is definitely how I understand Ayn Rand’s orientation.) This is where we find evaluations of good or evil. Good and evil is what I say it is from my absolute perspective.

Rand based good and evil in her understanding of human nature and the relation of “is” to “ought.” What a thing is determines what it ought to do. If someone acts contrary to Rand’s view of human nature, and the “ought” that follows from that nature, she could, depending on her biases towards that person, assume the action to be an indication of flawed character to the point of evil. Or she might assume that person to be naive, mistaken and innocent. The difference in judgement is to be found, not in the other person’s character as Rand assumed, but in Rand’s biases.

I think, if we are to get to the bottom of why the Objectivist movement is not what it ought to be, we have to get inside the causation of the character of the movement. If we are to get inside this causation we need to get inside the causation of Rand’s character, of how that influenced her work, of how that influenced the culture, and of how her work and her influence on the culture of Objectivism has interacted with the various types of characters who have been attracted to Objectivism, or not. I see Barbara is starting to take steps in this direction here. This is important.

Paul

[Charles R. Anderson]

Paul,

I have been desperately busy at the labs. We tend to have busy seasons and slow seasons. January through March tends to be slow, then things heat up in April, usually. Then July and August are usually slow and September through December is furious. Well, we had a late spring speedup this year. My specialty of surface analysis became really busy only in late April and other parts of our business heated up through May and June. I remain incredibly busy even now in July, but I am commited to making my annual family visit to Oklahoma this weekend. I hope to have some time on vacation to post here during this coming week.

I should have posted this note long ago, but I was afraid to even come to this very addictive site for the duration.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Charles,

I was afraid to even come to this very addictive site for the duration.

I had a hunch. It's something I have been struggling with also. It's good to know you are well.

Paul

Working on discipline and balance.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Paul,

It is about time I got back to you on this discussion!

You observed that you tend to trust someone until you become guarded and Shauna is guarded until she comes to trust someone. On this I am more like you. This is a natural thing that is likely related to my being from a large and loving family and having generally good experiences with most people from a young age. It is also a choice. If I have to become guarded in my relationship with someone, then it is harder to find values to share and/or trade with them. If that is the case, the best thing is simply to minimize contact with said person. I have better things to do.

You observed that in certain negative moods, Shauna will "abstract qualities from my lesser attributes and create a distorted, negative caricature of me." I thought that was simply a wifely duty to keep us from acquiring heads too big to squeeze into a Texan's ten-gallon hat! My wife does the same thing. Loves me one hour and swells my head with the pride of her love, then smashes me with a comment that I never do such and such, when, yes, I every now and then forget to do such and such. Isn't this just one of those womanly duties we men will never understand, especially since the Feminist Age? I hardly ever forget the context of my love, but women seem to do this easily.

I expect some blasts from the women here in response to this comment. I allow that I may be over-generalizing. Your response will better calibrate me on how many women are brazen enough to claiim to be an exception! I am teasing you a bit, but only a bit. Any real exceptions will be greatly appreciated. It really will be wonderful to know that you exist. Of course, it might be a frustration given that my wife is not one of such a rare breed of woman. My daughters also complain about this trait of hers, but then they often exhibit it themselves.

One orientation to have when considering another’s actions is to take the position of remote observer, break the other person’s behaviour into objective elements, and categorize the behaviour according to its assumed underlying causation and some absolute standard– good or evil. This orientation tends to treat the other person as something “out there,” to be identified, classified, labeled and evaluated. This has value in its capacity to organize phenomena, to compare phenomena, to evaluate phenomena, and to keep oneself spiritually remote from phenomena. It can have a psychologically insulating effect, maintaining (bulletproof) self-esteem in social contexts while still producing a powerful understanding of reality. There is no danger of losing oneself in another’s perspective with this orientation. As long as a person holds this very objective/absolutist orientation, he will maintain a position of relative remoteness, process information about the world through a fixed causal filter, and process information about the assumed causation through a black and white evaluative filter. This is not my primary orientation, though I think it might be your primary (though not only) orientation, and I’m quite sure it was Rand’s.

Paul, I agree that people do this, but it is not the only alternative to your empathic, subjective/relative orientation. I can be an observer of another person, but not be remote in the way that many people are. I am more remote than you in that I never lose the perspective that they are a different person. I am aware of that to the point that I allow that I cannot put myself completely into their position/experience/mind. I understand that I am different and that when I try to take on their perspective, I am at best simply blending it with mine. I can feel something of someone's joy or despair, but it is never the completely genuine article they are feeling. I recognize that another human being is likely to be sufficiently complex that I cannot break their behavior into fully understood objective elements, which leads me to be very careful about speculating about what the cause of their behavior was or is. I am willing to understand the limits of my understanding. There are many human actions which are not easily classified as good or bad. There are many actions which are simply an expression of the individual, who may have many personality traits which are neither good nor bad. It is not bad to be an introvert or to be an extrovert. It is not bad to prefer poetry to novels or vice versa. It is not bad to enjoy sales or to be a physicist. There are some things that are bad to be and to do. I try to be sparing in naming these things, but there are many human actions which are despicable and which are dangerous to others. For the most part, while I do not applaud self-destructive behavior, I do not tend to condemn it much. A person has the right to self-destructive behavior. So yes, I have the perspective of an observer, but it is not the perspective of one who is eager to classify every act as moral or immoral and it is not all that distant. As I have observed elsewhere, I have to be careful about watching tragic movies. They drain me emotionally to the point that I ofttimes cannot function well for a day afterwards. When the hero loses the lovely, spirited, intelligent wife to cancer at an early age, I lose my wife as well. This perspective is not so psychologically insulating.

So I understand that some people do as you are suggesting, but others need not be so remote, "process information about the world through a fixed causal filter, and process information about the assumed causation through a black and white evaluative filter."

Your observations on the "flowing experiental model of a game's events" were very interesting. I have just been reading an article in Scientific American about ideas of how the minds of experts work. They especially have examined the minds of chess masters. The description of how they are believed to think seems to contain aspects of what you are talking about in your soccer playing and which you, rightly I think, expect is true for a good quarterback. The article is The Expert Mind by Philip E. Ross in the August 2006 issue. I developed some such abilities playing football, basketball, handball, and racketball, though had I played each game with similar intensity longer than I did, I expert that sense would have been much better developed.

This produces a self-esteem in social contexts based on psychological flexibility and understanding rather than the "bulletproof" self-esteem based on inflexible remoteness.

The objective/absolutist orientation places one’s own view at the focal point of the universe; a point in absolute space, in absolute time, in absolute reality, in absolute morality (for some that might be in Texas biggrin.gif ). All other perspectives are measured relative to the absolute point which is one’s own perspective. (This is definitely how I understand Ayn Rand’s orientation.) This is where we find evaluations of good or evil. Good and evil is what I say it is from my absolute perspective.

Again, you are not being fair here to many of those who recognize the otherness of others. We can be a great deal more understanding and much more puralistic than some who you are characterizing here. You empathic people sure can get on your absolutist white horse and condemn those who recognize that many acts and many characters are gray, but still other than themselves! I hope you can see that I have some right to tease you here. And watch out for the yellow rose of the Center of the Universe. That yellow rose is perfect and you are not to sully it in any way. That rose never wilts, they have those ten-gallon hats to water it with! Since their heads will not fit in the hats, it is good that the hats have good use as watering vessels.

At the deepest level of my soul, I am not just a human being, I am a heterosexual male human being. My sexual identity is in my biology as well as my psychology. It is at the deepest levels of my self-image. When, through empathic experience, a fundamentally contradictory self-image reaches my core, it is rejected with vigor.

Fair enough. I am sure that some people are biologically either pure heterosexual or homosexual. Since I am comfortable with my sexuality and however much I may be able to imagine myself in different sexual modes, I never really lose my identity, I do not experience this as you do. I would not care to imagine being something I thought was evil, but I do not think of heterosexuality, bisexuality, or homosexuality as evil. They are simply one of the many variations that give humans a rich individuality. I think this is a wonderful thing, when we exclude the use of force from among us. I can sense the joy of others in experiencing their sexuality fully, as I wish to experience mine fully. Furthermore, I believe that individual sexualities are much more varied than most people seem to think they are when it comes to human nature. Far too much of the modern view of sexuality has been dictated by the Judeo-Christian and Muslim religions. Quite frankly, they have a pretty sick view of sexuality. Before these religions took hold, there was a much freer expression of human sexuality in many cultures. These religions largely corrupted human ideas on sexuality and it is very hard to escape that in our society. I think we as rational people need to make a very concerted and courageous defense of the variety of human sexuality and the earth-bound pleasures that its expression and development can provide people. Far too few people actually know much about their sexual potential.

The exception is those people at the Center of the Universe. They are totally on top of their game.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Charles,

Despite youre response to Paul right now, here is your post to him from July 17 that got lost in the July 17-27 black hole. Kat had printed it out for reading. You can thank Tina for retyping it.

Michael

Paul,

I found reading about your perspective on others to be very interesting. It was a pleasure to see how you have thought about how this perspective operates and what its consequences are. Yours is an interesting mind.

You are right that my perspective is partially like Rand’s, but at the same time, I see people as complex and varied. I do not see them as myself or as of less value or as evil simply because they do not share all of my values. I do treasure their differences and I respect how those differences enrich everyone’s life in the context of a civilized society. Oftentimes, I see someone else’s perspective and principles are so different from mine that I cannot really understand them and I cannot predict how they will react in some situations with a reasonable certainty. Sometimes, if their different principles might enable them to become violent when I am sure they should not be, I will condemn them as evil and a danger. Then there are the more ambiguous cases in which someone may be very happy to use force against others by proxy, usually by turning government agents into thugs to do their will, that I become quite mistrustful of some people. But, even such people are often productive in many ways and may be very nice and helpful in one on one situations.

As I hope I have made clear, I do relish many of the differences to be found in people. I see value in those differences. At the same time, I do not necessarily understand the many different ways that others think or what their perspective is. I am not too eager to declare them evil, however, simply due to differences. Like you, I mostly reserve that declaration for those who use force against others and even there I make some allowance for the general confusion of the day when well-intentioned people are too ready to rely on government as a simple way to achieve goals of uplifting the less able people in society.

The fact that I many not understand another person’s perspective fully or very substantially is not a reason to condemn them. Indeed, I simply do not expect to have such an understanding of people in many cases. I have plenty of empirical data that I do not. There are often many particulars in which I have some understanding of a given person, but they usually retain the ability to surprise me!

Personally, the greatest affront that I feel from others is that so many others are happy to substitute their thoughts of what is vest for me and/or for society that they are perfectly happy to use force to make me live according to their perspective. Other than that, I am pretty much a live and let live person. If someone has a perspective that is too far removed from reality, but they are not violent, then I simply have little to no reason to associate with them. We have nothing to trade that would be of mutual interest to one another. In addition, such a person is usually simply boring to me.

I do think it is fine to discriminate on the basis of this Trader Principle as to how I should spend my time and effort. There is nothing so finite in life as one’s time and even one’s energy is finite. There may be people with perspectives so different from my own that it is simply too big a project to take on to try to understand them. Of course, there may be exceptions, such as a person of unusual intelligence whose perspective is sufficiently interesting to justify the effort.

On the issue of sexuality, it is fine to allow one’s own biology to affect one’s own exercise of sexuality. Actually, I am sure it is important to do so. But, the power of abstract thinking allows one to understand the pleasures of making love from one’s own perspective and should allow one some ability to superimpose those pleasures upon one of a different sex from one’s own orientation, I would think. Or maybe I am simply wrong. How can I know how much more strongly polarized someone else may be than I am? In my perspective, the power of abstraction can fuel the imagination. That being the case, I do not find it disgusting to imagine two good men finding great pleasure and solice in loving one another. Maybe, I am too protected by a tendency to abstract thinking, but that abstract thinking can be pretty detailed and even erotic. Or maybe, there are ways when I can better put myself into other’s perspective than you can. After all, does it not require a great deal of abstract thinking to adopt someone else’s perspective?

Well, dawn has long since passed me by. It is time to sleep so I can be up in a while to help my parents with some chores it is now hard for them to do. My Dad is now pretty blind and I have been thinking a great deal about how being blind would affect my perspective on life. Fortunately, a recent operation may help him in time, but for now he cannot see his food on his plate. This is especially difficult for a naval aviator. Even for one who lives in Oklahoma, rather than the much more vaunted Texas!

[Paul Mawdsley]

Thanks Michael & Tina. My and Charles' discussions are very valuable to me. I appreciate your efforts.

Charles, as if I have not been busy enough. I am in the process of starting a new business venture right now. I naively thought working for someone else would be easier than working for myself. It turns out, I don't tolerate fools well. Especially when those fools are in control of my pay cheque and a big chunk of my time. I have also been spreading myself a little thin again across various subjects on this and another message board. My enthusiasm is getting ahead of my discipline again. I'll respond to your post soon.

Paul

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Rational Men Must Be Tolerant of Others

On June 29, 2007 a poster named Aeaeae sent me pdf backups of 23 threads he had on file. I offer my most heartfelt thanks to him for allowing OL to recover the present thread that was previously lost. I am posting this thread as a series of image files since extracting the text from the Acrobat file would entail an enormous volume of work. For easier file handling due to size, I am giving one Acrobat page per post (sometimes more).

In the present case, the entire thread was not lost, but some of the posts were. I have only posted the lost ones with a couple repeats from before to give the starting point. Now the lost ones are restored.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

[Michael Stuart Kelly]