You have been posting your anti-Ayn Rand subjectivist pronouncements. including mystical religion, here for years. The text viewable at amazon is no better. You have a reputation. Your continued personal attacks and hostility are not excused by demands to read an entire "book" of the same Blarman. Escalating your posts here into a computer file does not make you an accomplished writer or intellect. Your claim to be a "philosopher" is false. You are an emotional internet warrior militantly imposing yourself and demanding to be taken seriously.

Again, coming from someone who hasn't even read the book...

No one said it is a "paean" to Ayn Rand or that it should be. Your snide sarcasm and hostility do not cover for the fact that your subjective religious thinking is no improvement to Ayn Rand, who already successfully dealt with the subject. You don't add to that; you contradict what is already known. This is not the place for you to be promoting that.

I didn't write this as a paean to Rand. It is my own derivation: the fruits of my own mind and thoughts.

There are a couple of angry conservative militants here on a crusade who systematically 'downvote' my posts regardless of content. The 'downvoters' aren't even voting in any intellectual sense -- just mechanically lashing out by rote in a personal vendetta.

They don't respond because they have no coherent answer, only a contempt for Ayn Rand's ideas (and me) that conflict with their conservative politics and religion. Lashing out in anger is all they have, whether by 'downvoting', or those like Blarman and Ashinoff who occasionally erupt in angry outbursts of snide personal attacks with false accusations, then receding again into sullen silence as they dramatically announce that they ignore what I post.

Too many conservatives have no idea what Ayn Rand's ideas are and don't care. They were attracted to some aspect of a novel or something she said in a video and treat it, falsely, as an endorsement of, and somehow compatible with, their own contradictory beliefs.

Ayn Rand was an intellectual who consistently and systematically organized her principles in a coherent philosophical whole making sense of the world and human thought and action. Recognizing the importance of ideas, ideas were here life and career., which made Atlas Shrugged and the rest possible. To like Ayn Rand is to like her thinking.

But the worst of the conservatives seem to regard her philosophy as some kind of secondary adjunct that is optional. They want some of the emotional results of Ayn Rand's thinking without the cause that makes it possible.

"There is far more to her work than predicting what communist dictators do."
I would like the user downvoting this write an alternate view, e.g. "actually if you look at Rand's predictions about not just communist dictators but also..." I'm making that up. We'll never know what you think if you just vote.

In the 1930s and 40s those years also provided living examples when she was fighting for individualist politics allied with some conservatives and exposing the Soviet Union. Likewise for the 70s and 80s when she was providing analysis of contemporary trends then.

She always provided unique philosophical analysis whatever the examples and time period, and did not like to revisit the same analysis for another example of it later. She expected her readers to learn it the first time without her having to repeat.

Many of her articles did not pertain to contemporary examples at all, such as the Objectivist Ethics and other theoretical ethical and political essays, and the whole Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

The notion that she "wrote for the 1960s" is truly bizarre and shows a real ignorance in his swaggering spouting off the top of his head.

IMHO, It seems to me the 1960s provided a lot of fuel for Rand's "American" fire in her non fiction works like "For the New Intellectual" (1961), "The Virtue Of Selfishness" (1964), "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" (1966), "The Romantic Manifesto" (1969), and for good measure you could throw in "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution" (1971). The novel "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) sure saw a lot of what the 1960s set up for things to come we are experiencing now. Although Objectivism as put forth by Rand is timeless, the '60s in America (and the rest of the world for that matter) was rich for the harvesting for Ayn Rand to use as living examples of her work - both good and bad.

No one can draw valid conclusions from writing that misrepresents philosophical positions, especially when the reader is unfamiliar with the material.

Rejecting the nonsense in Blarman's writing is a positive, not "negativity and condescension", especially when he promotes it on an Ayn Rand forum contrary to the forum's purpose. I give reasons and explanation when rejecting his evasive floating abstractions, not "mind reading", in contrast with his emotional outbursts.

Whatever he claims as his motives, his published assertion that I "helped" him is false. I have nothing to do with his book, and his own public reactions through false accusations, personal attacks, and lack of improvement in his subjective writing show that he gained nothing positive from me even indirectly. His own evasions and rationalizations as he reformulates the same fallacies to try to 'better' put them over are not any kind of "help" from me, and I have no interest in whatever contortions his mind went through in deciding what to write which he thinks are "instrumental". No one is "reading his mind", only observing what he writes and does.

Blarman should cease his snide personal attacks and false accusations here as he presumptuously gives sarcastic "suggestions" and pretentiously wraps himself in "honesty" while gratuitously and falsely accusing rejection of his thoughts and actions as "dishonest". His constant personal attacks and false subjective accusations are no defense of what he is doing.

I'd simply encourage you to read the book and come to your own conclusions.

Stop your personal attacks and false accusations. I respond based on what you have written, both here and in the text at amazon, not "personal animus". It is you are filled with personal animus in your repeated personal attacks and false accusations ignoring the content of what I write.

Who is or is not instrumental in the writing of my book is up to me and for my own reasons. (Even negativity and condescension can be learned from as examples of adverse behaviors.)

You can not read my mind and the real dishonesty is in pretending you can understand my motives or my mind - especially since you have never asked me anything honestly seeking the truth. You're too busy misrepresenting others' statements and impugning their character. I even address honesty in the book as the second core virtue - right after equality. I'd suggest you try giving either (preferably both) of those values a try. It's what I advocate everyone do because if everyone did that, we'd have a better world in every way.

Blarman is "religiously oriented". He misconstrues reason as rationalism and falsely claims he got it from "the playbook of the Objectivist". He does not understand Ayn Rand's definition of reason.

Ayn Rand explained value and purpose as objective, not subjective or intrinsic, in "The Objective Ethics". It precludes religious mysticism and the supernatural..

You've not even read the book, yet you feel compelled to pass judgement on it because of your personal animus toward me. But I guess when you live in the ivory tower of your own mind, you have nothing else to do but stare at your mirror and tell yourself how perfect you are and how erudite everyone else is because they don't accept you as king.

It is very easy to criticize others for perceived faults and seek to tear down. It is much more difficult to realize that value and economy come from mutual cooperation and that life is not a zero sum game. It requires taking people for who they are and what they have to offer rather than who you want them to be. It requires understanding and accepting that it is the differences in people which make an economy possible in the first place - that if we were all clones there would be no competitive advantage, no new ideas, no alternative products/services.

Go ahead and criticize. You bring nothing of value to the table.

If you do a Kindle search for In Pursuit of Purpose, you'll find two books, but only one has the full name as given. They are two different books, the other one being more religiously oriented.. I am starting to read the one with the full title as given here, and it is quite different.

In Pursuit of Purpose. The idea is that value is derived from purpose.

You won't if you try to get it out of his book. Descartes' so-called "cogito" is his famous "I think therefore I am". He tried to derive reality out of his head as a subjectivist and rationalist. Ayn Rand starts with reality, with consciousness as awareness of reality, not something that can exist by itself. Basically Aristotelian, she rejects the Platonist tradition of subjectivism, of which Descartes is a famous and prominent member..

Blarman not only misrepresents Descartes, being an avowed fan of Plato he confuses existence with his own speculations and equates Descartes with Ayn Rand, which are in fact opposites. He doesn't understand either.

If you decide to pursue understanding Ayn Rand's philosophy you will see the significance of all this.

"Contrary to his claim he is not a philosopher, and is quite ignorant of the field. He didn't even get the meaning of Descartes' 'cogito ergo sum' right"

I hardly think I'd notice the difference! Hahahaha. :D

Ayn Rand was primarily a novelist. She had to become a philosopher in addition in order to develop the principles for her idea of the ideal man. She formulated the "speeches" in the novel as part of the dialog that fit the fictional context.

The manner in which audio books were recorded are unrelated to the emotional impact in her writing. You should read the books as they were written.

Blarman's book will not give you a fresh look at these philosophies". Contrary to his claim he is not a philosopher, and is quite ignorant of the field. He didn't even get the meaning of Descartes' 'cogito ergo sum' right, and was completely wrong in equating it with Ayn Rand, whom he also gets wrong.

Ayn Rand's fiction and nonfiction from the 1930s to the 1980s invoked timeless values and principles. There is far more to her work than predicting what communist dictators do.

Ayn Rand's philosophical analysis did not "wave a finger" at anyone. She gave rational explanations with objective standards. So do competent scientists and engineers, but not the alt-science,speculation, and conspiracy mongering that some here promote. Subjectivists who demand an exemption from thinking and communicating with objectivity and rationality smear it as "cruel", "cold and hard", and "waving a finger".

There is no contradiction. Genius or not, facts or not, reality or not, it's the way inwhich she presents herself, presents the objectivist philosophy.

You and others may not view her as dry, academic or cold but I did and still do. I also stated possible reasons as to why that is...just look what she had to endure in those times.

I view her that way, that is my impression and you and other do not, that's ok and especially ok because we value her work.

" I see "human" to be much more than a species, much more than conscious of not or just having mutuality. My definition includes the behaviors and the use of emotions that categorize the concept of Humanity."

Carl, I think the more you are trying to specify what you mean by "human" the more you are getting stuck.

Maybe you want to provide a few examples how a "Human" should come across?

"I also see that when discussing a philosophy it can be viewed as a waving finger at you. This is it, it's definitive and don't question it. Not everyone is like that but that's the impression I get from Rand."

That is, again, is totally off the page. Rand was one of the geniuses who based her philosophy on facts. Not all of them do, in fact, most philosophers live in the highest levels of the thought process, bringing forward theories that have nothing to do with reality.

As you are saying it yourself in closing, Objectivism is a most humanly relatable philosophy, contradicting your statement made just a sentence before.