Pathways to Objectivism

Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 6 months ago to Culture
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The Ayn Rand Institute congratulates itself, but not without empirical evidence.

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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Most people may begin as 'selfish by nature' as a natural inclination, but discovering what is in fact in one's self interest and identifying the explicit principle of self interest as the moral standard with happiness as the highest goal -- not a "balance" of competing pressures and whims -- is an enormous achievement and does not occur automatically as "natural".
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  • Posted by $ sjatkins 8 years, 6 months ago
    When I was 22 and broken down by rather leftist hippie (I am that old) philosophy mixed with eastern mysticism, I found a copy of "The Fountainhead" in a bookcase. I read it and it blew my mind. It showed me a very different and much more vibrant and hopeful way to see nearly everything. I wished I had found it when I was 15.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    it's your view which is strengthening but the world which is crumbling.......
    in my humble opinion, Jan. -- j
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It's the same for Union Members. you want to work you pony up or you don't work. Coercion of course, We don't call it altruism that's the Union bosses, the military bosses, and the rest of the careerist secular progressive crowd. Statist, Corporatist and union leaders the three legs of socialism. I apologize if I missed anyone. Ah...yes....Sally Strothers.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes. Fortunately, once my father retired from the AF, I was no longer part of the "In Crowd'. This made me develop a sense of perspective of how that crowd manipulated people to conform with 'whatever was fashionable'. I did not like the Beatles, did not want to be a hippie, preferred AS to Socialism...

    No one is obliged to like me or agree with me. And vice versa.

    Jan
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    hasn't it been true since you were a kid, the peer pressure,
    the praise of conformity, the nasty consequences for
    "sticking out" of the crowd? . pisses me off. -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Oh Boy: "it's all sad, really, that our lives are so circumscripted by
    things which amount to hazing -- forced conformity which
    keeps us from being ourselves, from being free, from
    making value with our lives in original and creative ways."

    That deserves a thread of its own, johnpe!
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    well, at least we can have you in here despite your
    being out there. . I rang up an ask-the-gulch
    regarding patriotism. . we'll see how that goes! -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I'm expatria meaning out of the country. I consider myself to be a patriot of the United States of America under the Constitution. I am not a patriot to the USSA under the so called Patriot Act nor the current regime. No matter how they use the trappings of the former USA to hide behind.

    Where did those terms come from. Observers from the rest of the world who ask "What happened? Your country is such a fascist police state any more." A telling comment was "No matter how bad we could always count on the USA." I had nothing to counter those observations. I have nothing to counter those comments.

    Point being it depends on what the definition of patriotism means to you. To me it means being proclaimed an enemy and a danger of and to the current regime for having served the USA those many years. It's their country now. Not mine. Mine got lost in the shuffle by the citizens who sent us out to fight their wars. But citizens of what? Nothing I recognize.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    it's hard to describe the intimidation which an environment
    like the manhattan project can exert on employees. . while Oppenheimer
    didn't view secrecy like we do now, it is taken Very Seriously
    and this background evaluation is strong. . and they knew
    that I was an officer in the usaf, of course. -- j
    .
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    so, please let me ask the gulch about this::: what part should
    patriotism play in an objectivist's view of life? -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hey now. It wasn't us that dumped the constitution in favor of Secular Progressive's march to Socialism nor did we vote for the Patriot Act. I have to ask subversive against what? We vets for the most part have never been subversive against our country and our government...not quite sure what DISS's excuse is going to be other than "Mein Herr I vass only following orders! CLICK.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Unless the REMFs In Charge institute the shake'n'bake whip'n'chill program and put 90 day wonders in charge of two plus tour veterans patiently awaiting their promotion to match the job they are already doing. Although that did lead to some quick casualties. Give them enough rope they hang themselves - Gratuitously.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Well, I gave you a +1 for what I think I understood, but rather because it opens discussion that we should have here about The Military and Objectivism. Ayn Rand spoke at West Point and her lecture became the opening essay in Philosophy: Who Needs It? Myself, I was not prior military until I joined the Texas State Guard at age 65. In our basic training, I busted the minimum physicals for someone half my age or less. But I did not join to have a military career. I joined to be a Texan serving Texans. As a lifellong Objectivist, and short-time E-4, I have very many opinions, most of which I keep to myself. (See here: http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Allow me to suggest that you read a bit about Cardinal Desire-Joseph Messier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9.... His textbook is a perfect example of Catholic Scholasticism, the inheritor of the works of Thomas Aquinas who brought Aristotle to medieval philosophy, which at the time was Platonist. The language of Messier's textbook, when addressing Free Will, Reason, Natural Law, and the Nature of Government should be very acceptable to any Objectivist -- except, of course, for that God-thing that keeps coming up... But short of that, it is what one would hope all education would sound like,
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    well, Jan, I kept the concordance so secret that it left
    with the recycled mixed paper. . it reminds me of a reunion
    which I had in 87, with a high school friend whom I wanted
    to date. . as we were getting to know one another again,
    she decided one afternoon to bring out a little MJ to go with
    our drinks. . at that point, I had to choose, and decided
    to go with my "career" ... after apologetically declining
    the offer, I explained it to her. . it's just history. . I had to leave.

    it's all sad, really, that our lives are so circumscripted by
    things which amount to hazing -- forced conformity which
    keeps us from being ourselves, from being free, from
    making value with our lives in original and creative ways. -- j
    .
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    the Q started in 75 and ended in 08;;; like tea partiers
    and veterans are currently considered security risks,
    those insidious right-wingers who loved the John Birchers
    and joined Young Americans for Freedom were not trustworthy.
    knowing the real message which Rand implies in AS --
    the "forcible inducement" of change in the u.s. -- I was
    thoroughly convinced that the FBI, and later the OPM,
    would read me as a potential subversive. -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    a thumb for complete honesty and you 'may' do so. Just cause it's old doesn't mean no one is not out there lurking......for you.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I am a minimalist Christmas participant - do not like holidays in general. My friends generally send out lists of what they want with links attached. This makes buying a gift whole lot easier. I get together with about 5 friends, well after XMas to do the present pass-around. I sometimes buy a foot-tall tree to put on the mantel of my enormous living room, where it looks appropriately absurd.

    I have gotten very determined about not donating to charities. I will donate to things I use, such as Wikipedia and my classical music radio station. This is fair trade.

    How about you?

    Jan, no children! yay!
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  • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yeah, but I can at least whine about the fact that this has been the environment that we have had to deal with for many decades. I think that johnpe was talking about something that happened decades ago...

    It has not gotten better.

    Jan
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Found the answer! From the french word for others means live for others.

    Comment in quote by John Stuart Mills writings on Comte's Positivism. and only zero cents through kindle which is positive to me and makes me and other? Donation jar at the door.

    "M. Comte infers that the good of others is the only inducement on which we should allow ourselves to act; and that we should endeavour to starve the whole of the desires which point to our personal satisfaction, by denying them all gratification not strictly required by physical necessities. The golden rule of morality, in M. Comte's religion, is to live for others, "vivre pour autrui." To do as we would be done by, and to love our neighbour as ourself, are not sufficient for him: they partake, he thinks, of the nature of personal calculations. We should endeavour not to love ourselves at all. We shall not succeed in it, but we should make the nearest approach to it possible.

    Mill, John Stuart (2012-05-17). Auguste Comte and Positivism (p. 59). . Kindle Edition.
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