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Is life worth living?

Posted by $ jbrenner 2 years, 3 months ago to Philosophy
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In the past decade, but particularly in 2021, I have seen growing despondency amongst Gulchers. In response to a recent discussion, I was moved to write: "Who is John Galt?" implies a "Why bother?" attitude. Did Ayn Rand make a premise that life is worth living without even realizing it?


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    Posted by Dobrien 2 years, 3 months ago
    It absolutely is , To answer your initial Question Prof. I was intially confused about “Who is John Galt” in Atlas Shrugged. The fact that people from all walks of life would say it in response to another idiotic response to a problem. Was an interesting concept . I had never experienced an automatic verbal response to collectivism like that saying. That is until now. “Let’s Go Brandon” Is “The Who is John Galt “of my life time.
    Just another proof the Atlas Shrugged is now non-fiction.
    Regarding We the living (not the book) . My wife and I have consciously been living each day to the fullest, knowing that things can change in a flash, and we want to not have any regrets of the we should have could have. We try to live in a balanced happy state of mind.
    Regarding today’s incredibly corrupt satanic Globalist pedo-files, I have to say they are hell bent on destroying anything Good. They do it in a very Uncivilized manner. That’s why I say we are in the “Uncivil War” it is simply a war between Good and Evil or Darkness and light.
    I am very optimistic about our future, because for the first time the masses are awakened to the tyrannical Cabal and are rising up against it. Also Durham Investigation , Election fraud , Big Pharma/ Fauci fraud , big tech collusion with govt to censor . Epstien/Maxwell , Hunter and his laptop from Hell ,all these issue will come into the light for all to see. Truth always trumps propaganda. Good or light will prevail I hope, but if tyranny wins I will die on my feet before living on my knees!
    Peace on Earth ....Goodwill towards mankind!
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  • Posted by mccannon01 2 years, 3 months ago
    I'm not so sure Gulchers are becoming more despondent for themselves personally, but are showing a despondency for the great civilization in which we are living. I think Gulchers have a confidence in their own ability to weather oncoming storms and see their lives as worth living.
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    • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
      The civilization in which we are living is no longer "great". Individual Gulchers will remain great as long as they maintain their purpose.

      On a somewhat separate note, have you noticed how few of the Gulchers from a decade ago are still here?
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      • Posted by mccannon01 2 years, 3 months ago
        "...no longer "great". " Agreed in many respects. It seems from the beginning of the Constitutional Republic there has been many improvements making a realization of the "American Dream" obtainable for more and more citizens right up to the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s. A backward step was income taxes and a few other things at the beginning of the 20th century, but improvements were still being made. Then something happened in the '70s and a "creeping crud" started to ooze from the woodworks. Call it Marxism or some other name, but not the "American Dream" for sure. Edit add: I still think we have a great civilization, but it isn't as healthy as recently before. It's being bled out.

        The separate note: Yes. Some I miss (excellor sp?), others not (e-- sp?). I enjoy the company of those that are still here and those that breeze in and out.
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        • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
          To be "great", you must have a contrarian point of view. This critical element of the curiosity component of entrepreneurship is under unrelenting attack. What is different in the last few years is that the contrarian point of view is now limited by non-governmental entities.
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          • Posted by mccannon01 2 years, 3 months ago
            "To be "great", you must have a contrarian point of view." I have to contemplate this for a while. Thinking out loud... Contrarian like Galileo or Copernicus in their time, sure, but contrarian like Marx at any time, no way. Entrepreneurship need not be contrarian as it can be augmentation of what already is.
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            • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
              Augmentation to what already is = incremental innovation. This is entrepreneurial without being "great". To be great (in my mind), your invention or innovation must make such a mark in a field that people in the field can't list the greats without including that person.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 2 years, 3 months ago
    Y'all may have noticed me dino doesn't let all the despotic libtarded Schiff get me down.
    Have you noticed that one very important thing Progressive Marxists just can't can't stand is being made light of and laughed at?
    Or Trump supporters calling themselves Deplorables after Cackles Clinton The Evil Hag call us a "basket full" of those.
    The latest turn-about they can't stand is "Let's Go Brandon."
    I'll continue to post a Babylon Bee I think is funny, though someone apparently works hard striving to be first in line to tack a 0 on it. Guess we all need a purpose in life.
    I'd rather pursue my happiness.
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    • Posted by $ Stormi 2 years, 3 months ago
      Happiness and hope are infectious! Your find it in homor, I find it watching a squirrel eat or a deer pass through the yard. Either way it is invigoration to the soul and sends hope and encouragement.
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      • Posted by $ allosaur 2 years, 3 months ago
        Life is short. Of course, there are times to mourn a loss. Overall, strive to keep your chin up.
        The life expectancy of a corrections officer is 59. You can look that up.
        Me dino was known for cracking jokes during the 21 years I worked at a maximum security prison.
        Though being in extreme danger during a short riot that my rescuing coworkers put down, I'm now I'm age 74 going on 75 in March.
        Of course, I may drop dead today. Life is short. So do what I do. Blow your nose at that.
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        • Posted by $ Stormi 2 years, 3 months ago
          We are the same age, I will be 75 in Jan.! I have faced death, pneumonia and treatment put me in a coma at 7, I had the out of body thing. I had a different idea about death after that. My mom died when I was 15, too much booze and drugs, her. Never blamed her, but did not respect her choices either. My dad was a businessman with a great sense of humor, I respected him. Funny you alos mention the law enforcement system. I was the law enforcement reporter for several years, along with business and schools! I spent part of each day in the sheriff's offic/jail and police Dept. office, getting reports. On parole meeting day, I shared a room with the parole officer, who knew I was haring how he handled the guys checking in. Some would laugh wen he told them they failed the drug test, even though the had a wife and kids. I asked him how he did it, and he said they are like liittle kids, it had to be stressful. Somethimes they tried to draw me into the conversation, and i wanted to say, been there with an addict, you hare not being responsible, but I left it to the parole officer, telling thee, who was likely headed back inside, tht he should listen to that guy, he knew.I did feel for their children. It seems your humor may have spared you the early demise of some in that profession.
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          • Posted by $ allosaur 2 years, 3 months ago
            With a journalism degree, I started out as a general reporter for a weekly and wrote a lot of police stories. You could say I became the county crime photographer. Police wanted my photos and I wanted their stories.
            Thought I was coming up in the world when the managing editor of The Montgomery Advertiser in Bama's state capital used the word "guarantee" that I'd be the police beat reporter at the end of a hiring freeze. Two months later he hired someone straight out of college for a lot less money promised me. That was my "seeing the writing on the wall" moment. Nevertheless, I bagged a job in Mississippi with slightly better crappy money than at the weekly and was shocked when they wanted me to write crap about Ronald Reagan. And up until then I thought Mississippi was supposed to be even more conservative than Alabama. I resigned and found out I could make more money painting walls for a construction company. Now ain't that pathetic?
            Later I saw an ad about the Alabama Department of Corrections needing officers for two prisons being built and very long story short I now have a pension.
            I've had close calls too. If I had been sleeping, I would have burned up in a rented trailer due to an electrical malfunction directly under my bed, but I was away attending a college class working on my wonderful journalism degree that's now called "communications," which may explain a few things. I fell into rapids at Yosemite, stepped in quicksand beside the Cahaba River (promoted as the last wild river in Alabama) and even fell off a cliff, grabbing a bush like the Lone Ranger on TV. I climbed up a 60 degree (like on my protractor) incline by grabbing one bush after another. For grabbing that first bush, my right shoulder was sore for days.
            Two guys tried to kill me over a police story I wrote, but when one them chickened out so did the other. That's when I began to conceal carry for some funny reason.
            Today I bumped into a corrections coworker in a grocery story. She was surprised when I told her about a retired coworker who died that was about my age. I was surprised when she told me about another coworker way younger than both of us who died.
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  • Posted by $ katrinam41 2 years, 3 months ago
    In my case, jbrenner, despondency is not what I feel. The deepening anarchy and deception in the outside world is not something I can change, but I can prepare my mind and surroundings to withstand the coming pressure to give up, give in, go woke. I have too many books to read, conversations to have, hugs for my kids and grandkids, paintings to create, writing to do for any thought of giving up. Going Galt is not giving up. It is giving myself a long rest from running on a treadmill to nowhere. Ayn Rand believed in life with purpose, forward motion. So do I. My life is too precious to waste on stupidity, which is what the world has embraced with absolutely no thought as to what comes after. I used to enjoy all kinds of discussions with all kinds of people, but now I open up only in the Gulch. I frequently think of a quote from Atlas Shrugged. To paraphrase, "not one single brain left."
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    • Posted by dmshuler 2 years, 3 months ago
      You mentioned anarchy, katrinam41... I think I would prefer anarchy to the statist collectivism/communism movement of the "great reset." At least with anarchy I am in control of myself and the welfare of those in my care/family. The opposite of that scares the daylights out of me!
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      • Posted by $ katrinam41 2 years, 3 months ago
        I agree. Anarchy reminds me of the walking dead, while socialism reminds me of dead, period. You can't fight the dead, but you can fight the zombies. Just keep your powder dry and plentiful, and your supplies intact. My supplies include a lot of books in all different categories, non-electric hand tools, heirloom seeds and other important odds and ends.
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      • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
        Well, actually, we have both anarchy and the statist/collectivist/communist movement simultaneously, and often the anarchy immediately precedes the statism.
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  • Posted by coaldigger 2 years, 3 months ago
    Life is worth living in direct proportion to the degree it can be lived free. Itis never zero because in the recesses of individual's mind there can be fragments of freedom. Only in America have men devised a plan for organizing a society that can optimize freedom and we are falling into despair because we have allowed the most slothful among us to bend the system to reward those that contribute nothing by enslaving those that produce value. John Gault is the man rumored to know the secret for the producers to prevail but that seems so far fetched that we doubt he will ever show up. As an Objectivist, I know I only have this existence and I must be free to live it. If the only way is by staying out of sight, I will. If discovered, I will resist. I cannot secure freedom for others but I can optimize my own. I will contribute or not at my pleasure or at the point of a gun but I will not sanction the actions of tyrants.
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  • Posted by $ Markus_Katabri 2 years, 3 months ago
    I could write a small novel in response. But, it would be from a Markus based perspective. And would therefore have little value to anyone else. So, I’ll be brief and say “Yes” as long as YOU have things to live for that bring you satisfaction. The Collectivists have a long way to go before they sap that will to live from me. I have a lot of things to see and do yet. And if they do succeed they’ll have a whole other problem on their hands. Let’s just say I believe in “Net Wins” when it comes down to wars of attrition. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.
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    • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
      Ayn Rand keenly recognized the internal battle between a producer's intrinsic desire to produce and the extrinsic assignment by others (or lack thereof) of the value that a producer has created.
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  • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
    Of course she did. That was the whole foundation of her philosophy.

    A fairly good biography of Rand---I say fairly---is "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical" by Chris Matthew Sciabarra, which highlights the philosophical nature of her schooling.
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    • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
      Ayn Rand stated explicitly that life is worth living, but did she realize that actually is a premise? If she had been unsuccessful in leaving the Soviet Union, would she have thought that life was not worth living? The number of her characters who attempted suicide suggests that she probably did realize that life being worth living actually was an assumption predicated on under what conditions one "lives".
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      • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
        I believe she stated that AS A PREMISE". Remember she wrote in "For the New Intellectual":
        "When a man, a business corporation or an entire society is approaching bankruptcy, there are two courses that those involved can follow: they can evade the reality of their situation, and act on a frantic, blind, range-of-the-moment expediency---not daring to look ahead, wishing no one would name the truth, yet desparately hoping that something will save them somehow---or they can identify the situation, check their premises, discover their hidden assets, and start rebuilding."

        None of her characters who loved themselves, attempted suicide. She said, in "We the Living", concerning its autobiographical nature, that unlike Kira, she felt some "compromise" was necessary, as she needed to get out of what became the Soviet Union, in order to alert people around the globe of the very atrocity of Marxist/Leftist idiotology. Kira died attempting to leave Russia; Rand survived to write the story.
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      • Posted by $ Stormi 2 years, 3 months ago
        Yet the sky, the Earth and the plants are the same, just perspective of how you view them. There must be something worth living for in bad situations.If you do not fight for the individualism we already know, you have to live for the possibility of taking out the ones denying that individualism. I once had a Jewish psy. professor (former Israli Army) ask me what I would have done during the Holocaust, gone to the chambers or cooperate. I said i would have lived, with the hope of one day bringing the oppressors down. He also tried to hypnotize the class one day, and I was one of two who he could not go under. He asked if I did not trust him, and I told him I did not know him well enough to know, and trust is earned. I really did like him and we got on great.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 2 years, 3 months ago
    When you have your health, the challenges of life are much easier to respond to.
    That's why the tyrants are attacking the health of everyone with drugs that impede the body's ability to thrive.
    There are alternatives to the state's perverse vaccines.
    https://www.theepochtimes.com/outpati...

    Our health and our freedom are our responsibility to defend.
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    • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
      This is part of why I started my company. If interested, send me a personal message.
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      • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
        Thumbs up, jbrenner.

        However, since I've only read page one, I'm not certain of the duties the alliances are to have.

        For me, I figure I'm the only one who can decide what is good for me, and what isn't.
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        • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
          One of the great challenges in life stems from your statement, "I'm the only one who can decide what is good for me". Your statement is, of course, true for any Gulcher. The challenge is that you don't have time to be an expert at everything.

          With regard to health, one can look at cancer, disease, traditional medical implants, and even tissue engineering (my most recent field) as disturbances (in the differential equations sense). That means that one should look at them from a proportional-integral-differential (PID) control standpoint. I haven't met people who look at these medical issues the way I do. My current work at minimizing COVID risk will ultimately more than fund my tissue engineering work. I continue to have a self-generated purpose, modified by the short term opportunities (like COVID) that present themselves. The people who deny ivermectin and

          The key is in maintaining a purpose. If you read Galt's speech, you will see that purpose is one of three "supreme and ruling values" of one's life. If I no longer had purpose, in a time such as now, it would be very easy just to "shrug". When I "shrug" completely, I will die very soon thereafter.
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          • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
            You're a youngster, jbrenner.
            But I'm a proponent of a K-14 length of study. Not that that will help some people, but it might help others.

            I'm not an expert in everything, but I am a polymath. (When they told me that, I had to look the word up.) Anyway, when I come across something I don't know but need to know, I'll research it. I started out in the medical field, myself.
            I've never heard of tissue engineering, but the engineering part---and here I'm assuming it is a human manufactured activity---puts me off. Can you give me a purpose for it?

            You didn't answer the question: what are these "alliances" supposed to be doing?
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            • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
              I'm not that young anymore. I turn 55 in January.

              I used a program called Polymath today to simulate a differential equations part of a reactor engineering exam I wrote for next month today.

              Tissue (organ) engineering really is just science at this point. It will become engineering when I and others can control it. You probably would like to have a replacement organ when one of yours wears out.

              I didn't answer your question about "alliances", because I didn't propose any alliances. I did say that life presents challenges because you can't be an expert in everything (although my colleagues say that I come as close as anyone they know). You can verify for yourself what you have time to verify.

              Americans have often assumed (perhaps erroneously) that people who report findings are telling the truth. That is a premise that needs challenging. When The New York Times refers to "all the news that is fit to print", very few people realize that this really means "all the information we will let you hear". I have watched peer reviewed articles with many citations just disappear from the Internet because they tell a story that disagrees with the "narrrative".

              An alliance is only worthwhile if it creates value to all parties within the alliance.
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              • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                Tissue engineering: related to covid vaccines? I understand the covid "vaccine" targets actual genetic DNA coding in the chromosomes. If that's the case, then it is possible that somewhere else on that chromosome some other biochemical reaction can be taking place, unbeknownst to researchers. Similar to when a programmer attempts to fix a glitch in his program, and something somewhere else goes wrong. It happened to me once in a while, when I took programming courses.
                Do you know how many biochemical reactions take place in any one cell at any one time?
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                • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
                  My company is based off of a disinfection technology can treat MRSA and C. difficile in addition to all other viruses and microorganisms. What I have figured out partially is how to measure the immunological response of the body to several "foreign" inputs. I have to sell enough of my disinfection products to fund the research and development to properly control how to manufacture replacement organs because I refuse to be Dr. Stadler.

                  One challenge of going the National Institutes of Health route, even if I didn't have the philosophical and financial unwillingness to be a Stadler, is that Dr. Fauci disagrees with my intellectual approach and controls the NIH Allergy and Asthma institute that could fund such work. Thus, even if I weren't philosophically opposed, I wouldn't get funding anyway.

                  All diseases and vaccines inject genetic sequences into a cell's nucleus. Thus, they are by definition, potential carcinogens, teratogens, and mutagens. When one gets a vaccine, it is like getting one of the old Windows updates to "patch" a vulnerability. As the local nanotech guru, I teach students how to evade (cloak) and/or defeat the immune system to deliver chemotherapy and radiation therapy "smart bombs" directly to their targets. If I wanted to do so, I could modify a few arginine (one of the amino acids) sites to increase "infection". This is how one would do "gain of function" research, which Fauci and his colleagues have been successful in continuing despite objections.

                  Fauci is the real life Floyd Ferris. Francis Collins is someone I met once while I was a grad student at Michigan and he had just invented DNA sequencing. Dr. Collins is, while honorable for his achievements, he became Dr. Stadler.
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                  • Posted by kddr22 2 years, 3 months ago
                    A very apt description of both of these two. I have stayed in private practice in part so I do not have to go along with anyone's ideology that does not fit my own. A fascinating discussion.
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                  • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                    I had to think about what you said. Vaccines used previous to these covid things, affected the cells of the immune system, which is a completely different situation. But I need to review the cells of the immune system, the phagocytes and white blood cells, as my memory is short, and information (hopefully) has increased.

                    And this is something that is not well known yet.
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                    • Posted by $ Stormi 2 years, 3 months ago
                      Research by microbiologist in Texas showed the vaccine affects the nuclei of the cells and makes it impossible for the body ro repair its DNA. That is beyone the erasure of the immune system as announded by the head of the covid19 taskforce, unive of Mich. and European stuides, which nailed the rate at 5% per month from first jbab.
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                    • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
                      Actually, there has been very little public dissemination of new knowledge on the immune system. That being said, the key development in this area is a partial understanding of the importance of eosinophils. Eosinophils act as the reset button toward a steady state. That is largely not understood, but AstraZeneca totally got it, or else I would have gone forward with a patent application a couple of years ago. AstraZeneca bundled its increased understanding of eosinophils' role into Fasenra.
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                      • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                        As to your first sentence, j, referring to public dissemination of new knowledge, I believe I am given access to any "new knowledge" I require, through certain journal publications.

                        And now I must retract at least parts of my statements referring to lack of proper experimentation in today's scientific milieu, as I have found good experimental results in some of the papers I have read.
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                      • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                        As I said, I will need to review the mechanism of immunity, as it relates to a change in the DNA structure of leucocytes, if any. Seems I knew something about that, years ago.
                        Which brings me to something else. The immune process involved in the historic vaccines---smallpox, polio, etc., are a sort of "natural selection" on the part of the leucocytic mechanisms. The DNA engineering, like GMO, is a human manufactured CHANGE in genetic structure, more of an "artificial selection", like breeding animals.

                        In Vet school we found out that a consistent attempt at an artificial selection of cattle for a meatier, more compact animal resulted in dwarfism of the cattle. And here they weren't using a manufactured biochemical change in DNA, but only a selection based on phenotype in the young. DNA engineering through biochemical means must be more carefully studied before its widespread use in humans. And maybe even in GMO applications.
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                        • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
                          The natural selection process that you refer to is at least partly virus-induced.
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                          • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                            You are referring to the immune response? Then yes, of course.
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                            • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
                              Yes.
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                              • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                                What is interesting about this natural immune response to the vaccines researched prior to this covid thingy, is that the leucocytes "remember" the necessary change in their configuration, and I don't know if that is a change in DNA or where this takes place; but anyway sometimes for years.

                                For example, I worked with TB patients at Fitzsimons Army Hospital (Aurora, Colorado) in the late '60's, being careful to wear gloves and masks, of course. Since then I never tested positive for TB when they used---maybe it was the scratch test, not sure---UNTIL about 1992 or 1993, after a new type of test had been developed. The doctor told me this test would test positive for the TB bacterium, if even only one bacterium had entered my body THIRTY YEARS BEFORE. I did not have TB, an X-ray established that. What I had was an antibody to the bacteria, meaning I had been exposed to the bacterium in a way that stimulated an immune response. I think that is very interesting. How does the immune system "remember"? What is going on, EXACTLY?
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                        • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                          By a leucocytic "natural selection", I am referring to a natural response to an exposure to a similar antigen or viral candidate, as it relates to a "target" virus or antigen.

                          Smallpox was a virus similar to cowpox, an immunity to the cowpox virus stimulated a similar immunity to the smallpox virus. In fact, using the dried, decomposed material from the pustules of a person with smallpox also brought about a "natural selection", inducing an immunity to an active smallpox virus.

                          (I worked for an immunologist years ago. In the same laboratory as her husband, a pharmacologist.)
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                  • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                    I think you are wrong. In fact I'm pretty sure you are wrong. "All diseases and vaccines inject genetic sequences into a cell's nucleus", is not correct. Because if it were correct, any (body cell) progeny of the gene-corrected cell, and perhaps even the haploid cells, would carry the changed genetic structure. And this is simply not the case.

                    When I was at Colorado State University in the early '60's I had a job as a lab tech for a researcher who thought he could prove experimentally that something eaten by planaria could be passed on to its progeny. This is crazy. He went even further, and attempted to "teach" the worm how to get through a maze and thought he could prove that, too, would be passed on genetically.

                    These are impossibilities, and put the whole science of evolution at risk of discreditation.
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                    • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
                      How does the virus replicate? By co-opting the working cell's own reproductive capability. Viral diseases do inject such sequences, but not all disease is viral. On that point, I stand corrected.
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                      • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                        I know how viruses replicate; that is not my concern. The cells of the body invaded by viruses and whose DNA, and RNA, are involved in replicating the RNA or DNA of the virus do not, as far as I know, remain a living part of the host body.
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                        • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
                          Not all such DNA remains, but there is a lot of evidence suggesting that a surprising amount of DNA mutation has viral origins.
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                          • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                            Yes, I've heard that. Of course, that was back before life became more fully organized and complex. I don't think much of that is going on right now.
                            But I meant the cells invaded by the virus DNA or RNA fail to survive, once the virus leaves the cell, as far as I know.
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                            • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
                              Most invasive DNA, of course, does not survive, but that which does causes mutation.
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                              • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                                I checked it out, and yes the host cell does die once the virus is shed. Wikipedia gives a credible source for this information.
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                                • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
                                  The rare host cells that do survive the viral infection have the opportunity to become resistant. Such mutations are potentially beneficial, but sometimes with consequences. I am not someone who freaks out over genetically modified foods, but when one looks at the number of people with allergies now compared to many years ago, such "natural selection" almost certainly has resulted in mutations that may or may not be good from an evolutionary standpoint.
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                                  • WhoAmI replied 2 years, 3 months ago
                              • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
                                I'm saying the host CELL dies after the new viruses leave the cell. These dead cells of the host body no longer participate in the life of the host. If you have other information, let me know where to find it.

                                It is called "shedding of the virus". This is what occurs in Ebola, when the host begins to exsanguinate, and in smallpox, when the pox forms on the skin. Different viruses shed differently. I suppose in flues and colds the host sheds the virus through the lungs and its fluids.
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  • Posted by tutor-turtle 2 years, 3 months ago
    Your decision is being made for you.
    The rest of the world is being bull-whipped to get in line, unfortunately too many are knuckling under. America may very well be the last to face the fire, but don't kid yourselves, the Davos crowd (NWO) is running the global financial market. The Great Reset is coming. What America dose (you or I) will determine the fate of the planet. Our very freedom and sovereignty is at hand. The Tree of Liberty. The Blood of Tyrants. Some assembly required.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 2 years, 3 months ago
    At the heart of this query lies the values one builds his/her life on. And they are future-looking. If one has no future of promise and betterment to look forward to, then one loses motivation to do anything other than what they have always done. Malaise sets in. Despondency. Apathy. What drove the Producers in Atlas Shrugged? The desire to do better - to find new metals, to improve processes, to solve problems. If we give up on that, we become despondent, apathetic, and uncaring.
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    • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
      I agree with you, blarman. Once the risk, the challenge is removed from one's life, especially that of European white men, who thrive on challenges and risk, they become apathetic.
      Science, and the zeal for knowledge, replaced battle in the life of the Europeans, as a means of combatting problems. (Notice the use of the word "combat", here).

      Cervantes showed us in "Don Quixote" the lengths a man will go to, to accept a challenge.
      From the Quest for the Holy Grail, to tilting at windmills.
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    • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
      And what if we are "forced" to give up on them? At least forced to give up on our own independent, individual ways of attacking, or solving, those problems. What if the collective "forces" the "Great Men" to do it the way the collective wants them to do it, and not as the Great Man himself wants?

      Will Galileo's struggle with Urban VIII have been in vain?

      Will mankind, or has he already, gone back to a time centuries before Galileo, when someone in authority is to determine your reality for you?

      (Blarman, what do you think of Carlyle's Great Man hypothesis, in the light of Rand's Objectivism?)
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      • Posted by $ blarman 2 years, 3 months ago
        A What-if scenario can be played out any number of ways. I believe Rand posited one such in Atlas Shrugged (unless I totally misread the book).

        But can someone else really determine what Reality is for someone else? I don't think so. Reality determines itself and our perception of that Reality is incomplete and faulty due to our own limited knowledge and understanding. Just so with Galileo. He was persecuted for affirming Truth, just as many others before and since. Did that mean that somehow Truth was subject to the whim of the tyrant who called himself Pope? Not so. We may be inconvenienced, belittled, even put to death like the martyrs before us, but Reality will go on independently and without respect for such tyranny. Eventually, Truth will win out.

        As to the Great Man Hypothesis, I believe that we are all born with the possibilities of greatness, but that few posit the existence of that greatness and even fewer act to realize it. Ignorance and apathy are bane to self-actualization.
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        • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
          Blarman, look around you. Authorities of every stripe, every day, are determining your reality for you.
          You need to read the classic "Obedience to Authority", a famous study by Stanley Milgram.
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          • Posted by $ blarman 2 years, 3 months ago
            With respect, noone, ie. no individual determines Reality. They may attempt to shape another's perception of Reality, but they can not change Reality. Reality is an axiom. It is. That is why Galileo could assert the truth that the Earth revolved around the Sun and eventually be proven true despite the attempts of the "authorities" to shape the perceptions of others around him through persecution and incarceration. Do not make the cardinal error (pun intended) of attributing to man the power to alter the fabric of Reality. Unless you really can alter the gravitational constant or the speed of light... In which case, please share. ;)
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            • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
              See the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Q becomes Human and remarks that to stop a moon from falling all you have to do is change the gravitational constant of the universe.
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              • Posted by $ blarman 2 years, 3 months ago
                Love the episodes with Q! They expose what a paradox it would be - as pointed out by Plato in Republic to have a quixotic being with the power of a god.
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            • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago
              Yes, and even if you don't believe it, it is still true. End of my foray back into the world of null-Rand. Espousing Rand, but condemning individual thought. Using Rand as an appeal to authority is not independent thinking, and that, my friends, or rather, non-friends, is never what Rand wanted.
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 2 years, 3 months ago
    Life is worth living, else why would we fight so hard to keep individualism. If I start to head toward throwing up my hands, I get out in nature, watch the animals, who do not ask for "Fair" nor do they have a world gov. They enjoy life, as should we. Maybe it was early exposure to Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimation of Immortalit yFrom Recollections of EarlyChildhood." The pointing of ouf of being ever close to our original self and the original awe in God's creations. The call to avoid too much sophistication which puts layers of unreality unon each other, blinding us to reality and ourselfves. Maybe it was my Dad teaching me objectiviisn before i knew its name, a basic belifef in the self and making my own decisions, consequences and all. It is hard to accept woke, as it is the concept of dumb people wanting to conrol you. Stay close to your original self and your values, do not hive up. The fight is part of the reward.
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  • Posted by $ DriveTrain 2 years, 2 months ago
    To address a couple of points raised in the lead post:

    The despondency among Gulchers and non-collectivists of every stripe is a natural reaction to watching unfold before us the fruits of intellectual mass-poisoning of at least a generation of American (and European) kids via "educators." If we were all skipping around in a Pollyanna-ish frenzy I'd really start to worry. But no, Western Civ being in a death-grip by neo-Medievalist misanthropes needn't be an excuse to mope around dejectedly either. We have to break the death-grip and drive these humanity-hating scum back into the holes from which they slithered.

    Our starting point for that counter-offensive is - always has been and always will be - morality. As Peikoff once pointed out (presumably Rand too, but memory is hazy,) an idea presented as moral will ultimately prevail over an idea presented as "This works better" or any such pragmatic drool. Our philosophy is morally good - also factually true, efficacious and benevolent in practice - demonstrably; their philosophy is raw moral evil - capable of producing mountains of murdered human corpses and nothing more - demonstrably.

    We are seeing the abject fecklessness of Republican (and Libertarian) "leaders," Trump emphatically included, because with few exceptions they have utterly, infuriatingly defaulted on making the moral case for individualism, for human rights, for capitalism, for liberty. [A great single-issue example is the racial collectivism the Democrat Left unleashed in summer of 2020: Republican "leaders" couldn't locate racism's antidote - that single, simple word: individualism - with both hands and a GPS-synced road map. I don't remember the word being so much as uttered by a single worthless one of them, and I don't expect to. There are dozens of other examples of this default - pick an issue, any issue.]

    Rand's signature line "Who is John Galt?" is not an instruction to adopt a "Why bother" attitude, it's another of the brilliant tools she used - in this case irony - to drive home her theme. To the random man-on-the-street, the phrase is indeed an expression... not necessarily of "Why bother" but of "Who knows?" The brilliant irony - and economy - lies in the fact that that simple question and its answer are an extreme distillation of Atlas' theme: Knowledge - therefore freedom, production, abundance - is not automatic, and John Galt is the embodiment of the philosophy which answers all questions pertaining thereto.

    So I think Rand meant "Who is John Galt?" as a question that has two aspects, like sides of a coin. The crude, surface-level public meaning expresses the "Shrug" and the full philosophic-level core on the flipside expresses the "Atlas."
    .
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 2 years, 3 months ago
    Life is worth living. There's no doubt. For those without "faith" what else is there beyond life?

    "Growing despondency"...Reminds me of something my wife and I watched this morning. There is a plethora of violence at airports and on jet liners lately...all to be enjoyed on youtube from people's smartphone videos. I am blown away at what appears to be a huge increase in unstable behavior in the general public. That said...One can't help but see a vast majority of the violent offenders in airport terminals are African American people. What's gotten into all these people? Am I watching a society just completely unraveling?

    Is life worth living?...Reminds me that I want to read "We the Living" before the movie is released (if it ever is).
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 2 years, 3 months ago
    Very interesting, buddy. What I've been feeling lately is "OMG, I'm getting older faster! I need to really start having more fun!" That aside...I will think on this more and try to contribute here later. No doubt we are in some darker times. I feel so fortunate to have read Atlas Shrugged. Just this morning I was looking at Interstate 80 road conditions to see if a loved one can make the drive back to Commiefornia. Caltrans apparently is too understaffed to open roads anymore - roads that would normally get plowed and opened back up in these conditions. Imagine how tough that is for somebody who didn't read Atlas Shrugged. I see it and just go "oh...sure", and chuckle. Those roads are already in such bad shape they are just becoming more and more punishing on the undercarriage as each year goes by, in the best conditions. This is the way...as alluded to by the famous trader, Seykota. Rather than be bothered by such things I just look at them as the natural progression - like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
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  • Posted by $ WhoAmI 2 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There may be many other causes for the problems we are seeing in the health of Americans today. It could be the rampant sexuality prevalent in today's immoral or amoral climate. Birth defects could be caused by the same amorality as well.

    After all, to date it has been found that 27 types of viruses have been found lurking in human semen. I believe, that is, it is my hypothesis, that semen provides a safe environment from the leucocytes and other phagocytes that are involved in attacking and eliminating external life forms, because semen must provide a certain "safe space", if you will, for the more fragile haploid cells of the male of the species. And the immune system might judge these haploid cells an alien antigenic life form, had they no "safe space".

    I also think the state of science, insofar as it relates to immune processes, is somewhat confused. I find that in this comment of yours, but please don't take that personally. You are not a biochemist, I am presuming.

    By the way, the answer to the question I asked you concerning the number of biochemical reactions taking place in any one cell at any one time, is, according to a few of the sources on the Internet, about half a billion: 500,000,000 simultaneous biochemical reactions. What could go wrong?
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    • Posted by $ 2 years, 3 months ago
      I am a chemical, materials, and biomedical engineering professor, and have had to self-teach myself biochemistry.

      Semen is indeed a safe environment for viruses. There is at least one other "safe space from immune cells". I am forgetting it off the top of my head, but I think it is part of the digestive system.
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 2 years, 2 months ago
    I'm commenting on this post a little late, sorry! If the members of this forum were younger maybe a Gulch would be possible. In reality, for many of us, it isn't possible. Being self-sufficient or having the means to keep a roof over our heads, and enough supplies to weather changes that are happening to this country. I have gotten to the point that I don't want to watch cable news anymore it was making me very depressed. That's not how to enjoy life.
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  • Posted by NealS 2 years, 3 months ago
    I have a lot of feeling about this, but better not get into it. Especially around Christmas has always been a hard time for me. And now with the outright tyranny from our leaders, with little or no repercussions at all in this country, make it that much worse.

    Wow, 58 comments in under an hour on this issue.
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