Hi Danny, welcome to the Gulch, Glad you made it! Don't forget to watch the final day of filming (for us Producers Only), Friday 2/14. It has been a hoot.
Learned a lot about the movie making business. Chat with other producers as they are filming live.
Hope to see you there or here in the Gulch.
Bill

Yes, Genez I appreciate your Comment. Sound Reasoning seems to have been the idea behind Ayn Rand's "checking your Premise" statement. WHY we believe is initially more important than WHAT we believe. Even if someone is Delusional, we cannot get anywhere with them until we enter their Delusion. WHY they believe it is all there is.

I agree with your point about the importance of why someone believes being more important than what they believe. I can respect someone that I totally disagree with IF they have come to that positioned by sound reasoning. However, for those that disagree with something of someone because it 'feels wrong' or it 'just isn't right' or some other nonsense, I have no sympathy or empathy...

Thank you, Mike. I have in my Assets the ability to operate amid many subjects I do not agree with relative ease and can generally de-escalate or disengage in peace. However, to my unpleasant surprise, a Liability that can nearly cancel it all out at times is my lack of ability with projecting that Asset into "texting" and sometimes I can really piss people off ASSUMING things are clear to them. I feel responsible for others receiving my Messages AS INTENDED and I often apologize for being utterly misunderstood. Obviously, Emoticons will not save me. I also feel it is more important WHY someone believes something rather than WHAT they believe. I am excited to have found and participated in this Forum and look forward to contributing and interacting within its parameters. Still, I am probably a Loose Cannon rolling about here. But I genuinely want to continue as long as my Welcome endures. Again, thank you, Mike.

Hi Danny. All of these posts are in your introduction section. To start a new thread go to the upper right corner and click "submit post". Choose "submit public post" and fill in the required fields.

I told my brother and a long time family friend whom is like an older brother to me once that I did not believe in Capitalism OR Socialism OR Anarchism. The friend admitted it is "survival of the fittest" and my brother was simply livid with contempt for what I had just stated. He is not alone. That is certain. The Plutocracy at Present is like "the Borg" in assimilating everyone and everything to service higher Classes, I feel, to use a "Star Trek" metaphor. There is an emergent Class Warfare driving much of what we see and hear. ANY President really becomes a Scapegoat for a System of Functionaries that have dominion. And the ONLY System of Government NOT tried yet in recorded history is World Government and the Universally unpopular but practical Benevolent Dictatorship. That is all. Plenty of words to bring down plenty of trouble upon me from every quarter

I know that older leaders of such groups from the highest levels have admitted the recruitment tools and racist theories they sell to young people are downplayed and even disavowed by some. I know that many of them have had the personal integrity of protecting some younger ones from the savagery of others as well. I acquiesce that their Separatist views have really been the Policies in place for some cultures since the beginning of time. Nelson Mandela, now deceased, spent his entire life battling Apartheid in South Africa.

Roger Waters' "The Wall," made with Pink Floyd in 1979 and made into a movie, album, concert experience and performance art includes the Neo Authoritarian "Hammers" symbolism and "black shirt and jack boot" theme that Skin Heads and Aryan Nation groups have adopted in recruiting young people into their Exclusionary Ideologies.

I am at a loss trying to define Ayn Rand's Objectivist Premise and how it relates to what I know. The Socialist Experiment set in my home State of Wisconsin and the 20th Century Motor Corporation, the Directive 10 289 that nationalized the Experiment in the end, and the eventualities of John Galt's Collective in "stopping the motor of the world" and the Functionaries that tried to break him and everyone else are disturbing images. It reminds me of my experience with an Holocaust Survivor who was in Auschwitz and other Camps as a German Citizen with the "wrong beliefs." He had a speaking engagement at the local high school and we went there to finalize it when some kid saw him and, knowing who he was, said, "Heil Hitler!" and saluted the Nazi way as he came in. It was an awkward moment. But I will never forget his blue eyes when he replied to a question of whether Totalitarianism of that magnitude could really return. He replied, "Never think it cannot return."

If you goto the ARI website you can read the winning essays.
http://aynrandnovels.org/essay-contests/...

On the ARI Website, leave your cursor hovering over Educators and another dropdown appears under "High School Teachers" for Essay Contests. That takes you off the site to Ayn Rand Education Essay Contests here
http://aynrandeducation.org/essay-contes...

At the left, click "Winners from Previous Years." You can read the topmost essay in each category.

They do award many smaller cash prizes for an array of runners-up.

It reminds me of how the story, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was adapted into the "Blade Runner" in 1982 and how the 2006 movie, "Children of Men" replied to the physicality of the flying police cruisers and Advertisement placement in LA of 2019 and 2020's. The 30 year difference in real time made a difference. The update of "Atlas Shrugged" and prequels of "Star Trek" and others using very different "vehicles" to reconcile their Timelines with real time AND the dynamic story lines is very interesting. If they were merely stories cast in stone they would not be discussed here.

In the context of "Atlas Shrugged," the dystopian future, near or distant, seems to have paralleled "The Hunger Games" and its Sequel in its subtle physicality of using the Railroad System as a vehicle in both a metaphorical and literal sense. I have not read "The Hunger Games" books, though.

Thank you, Will. I feel that most of the time I am flying without a license, blind, and without any instrumentation. I am truly appreciative for any Feedback you and others can provide now.

You are not interupting anything. This is an inroduction thread that you started. It is full of comments from you.

Now, how do I work this thing?

Again, Noam Chomsky's Linguistic background at MIT as Professor Emeritus at age 85 makes him a real asset and very articulate in defining the Roles of Media (Manufacturing Consent, 1988) and Power over the entire course of recorded time. Although Ayn Rand is not around, she "speaks" across the years from a very unique and interesting Premise.

I repost Noam Chomsky every chance I can get and most of the ephemeral stuff I write or repost is sentimental and dissociated from the zeitgeist (spirit of the times) that prevails. The electronic Media has washed out the information gathered by personally being Present face to face with someone in real time and space. I use some of it but I am frustrated and defeated by its anonymity.

It is the unpopularity and indifferent dismissive responses to Ayn Rand by most people that makes her Premise interesting. I personally cannot agree to everything presented, but that is the whole idea of an Argument; not to agree but to understand.

My father and another veteran of the second World War that was stationed aboard the Enterprise (the Carrier NOT the Starship) told me many horrendous stories. They were farm boys from Wisconsin taken as a Radio Man and Gunner aboard the recently decommissioned Carrier (2012) that at one time was the ONLY Carrier in the Fleet after the Hornet was destroyed. Amazing stories of amazing times. Still, they did not live to see and hear what we do.

The latter half of the 20th century in Wisconsin was perceived as a child. In 1962, I was six or seven months old when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred and the Soviets detonated the largest nuclear device ever, the Tsar Bomb, almost annihilating the World. How could I have known or understood that? i could not. We have this in Common here.

It seems the 20th century has been forgotten on some levels and only remembered in the same way someone would remember it by exploring their grandparent's basement or attic. So many profound experiences have been simply shelved in archives of redundant memory systems to allow the influx of Technology and other potentialities of the 21st century to take over currency. I am concerned.

Ayn Rand's parents had a business taken by the Bolsheviks "for the common and greater good" so you can imagine when she finally arrived in the United States during the 1920's Boom it was an impression of contrasting ideologies. "Atlas Shrugged" was the epitome of what she believed in when she wrote it between the 1940's and 1950's. The Director of "The Godfather" series had top actors ready to make it into a movie but Ayn Rand would not give up control of Production for the characters and he stated the Movie could ONLY be made after her death. That is my understanding.

Forgive me. I opened a "Moocher Account" for free and I don't know what thread of discussion I am intruding upon here. It is like a deaf and blind person has entered a room and is attempting Communication. I am certain everyone can see and hear this but in what Context I do not know.

The Introduction to Ayn Rand's book, "Atlas Shrugged" came several years ago when I was looking for Scholarships and there was an Essay Contest by the Ayn Rand Institute for $10k. So I read the book, which is quite long, and attempted to formulate an Essay. I'm still working on it, but I wonder whom had won the Essay contest and what were they looking for specifically. The movies themselves, of course, do not do justice to the Premise of the book, but are adequate for some.