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Ayn Rand's simplicity

Posted by richrobinson 8 years, 5 months ago to The Gulch: General
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I am amazed and impressed with how Ayn Rand could make a point so quickly and simply. I was listening to the part where Mr. Thompson is trying to get John Galt to help fix the economy.

John Galt : I don't pay someone for my life.

Mr. Thompson ; That's not true! If you break your leg you pay a doctor to fix it.

John Galt : Not if he is the one who broke it


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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 5 months ago
    Talk about the power of words! I'd be willing to bet that those well honed, simple but powerful phrases were worked over, shaped and sharpened until they jumped off the page and gave the reader that surprised mini-revelation that we all experience when reading her stuff - especially the novels.
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    • Posted by ewv 8 years, 4 months ago
      The appearance of simplicity is the result of thinking in essentials. Compare the way Ayn Rand got to the essence in a logically structured manner with those who jump from one floating abstraction or equivocation to another in rambling rationalization. See her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology -- her explanation of concepts based on essentials.
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      • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 4 months ago
        I was learning music composition. In order to facilitate tha, I chose listening to Beethoven's string quartets. They seemed so complex and interwoven, until I read the music as well as hearing it. On paper it looked to simple, but the sound was as complicated as anything. I learned a lot about music, and life from that.
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  • Posted by $ rockymountainpirate 8 years, 5 months ago
    I agree. That's a great part. +1
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    • Posted by 8 years, 5 months ago
      It works on many levels. Why should we continue to let the government solve problems it created?
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      • Posted by $ rockymountainpirate 8 years, 5 months ago
        The definition of insanity is expecting the grubment to solve anything. That's not its intended function.
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        • 11
          Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 5 months ago
          Our Constitution was made only for a moral ... people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
          John Adams

          A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
          Woodrow Wilson

          A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
          Gerald R. Ford
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          • Posted by $ jdg 8 years, 5 months ago
            Goldwater said it earlier, but even he was probably not the first.
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            • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 5 months ago
              Don't remember that one, but Goldwater was inspiring at times.

              "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." 1960

              "My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." 1979
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      • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 5 months ago
        Money and power have become the touchstone of politicians, especially those who operate within the Beltway. A politician's job was originally devised to be a duty to be fulfilled by a patriot who wished to serve his/her country. It has since become the haven of weasels who like exercising power without responsibility and obtaining wealth without bettering the economy. I'm so glad that George Washington was not immortal in reality. Today's government would have proved to the founders that humanity is not ready to live with one another in freedom.
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      • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 5 months ago
        we don't LET government solve problems it has created we let them stew the in mess they have made with the problems they create. what we don't do is tell them to their faces the people of the congress as well as the president "what were you thinking when you did so and so". make them explain what they did, which when you hear the explanation if it ever comes will be unintelligent gibberish. on a separate subject; if I were to ask this producer Ruddy a question it would be are you an OBJECTIVIST? I'll bet the answer is no. reading Atlas and agreeing with it does not make one an Objectivist. doing a television series if he gets sponsors will possibly make him money and give Ayn Rand and Objectivism more exposure, but will the exposure give many people the desire to now actually study Objectivism? Maybe. of course the tv series will be watered down to the point reading the book will be a different story.
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      • Posted by plusaf 8 years, 5 months ago
        Rich, as long as the Electorate BELIEVES that our government IS THE Best Source of Solutions for our Problems, there WILL BE NO Change.

        "Why should we" is not the appropriate question to ask. If anything, it's "Why should THEY (or Anyone) Believe that?!" What can we do to Fix THAT?!
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        • Posted by 8 years, 5 months ago
          Good point. It starts with the public school system. Most people are so indoctrinated by the time they graduate high school it seems impossible to change their thinking. We need to get control of the schools away from the Socialists.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 4 months ago
    she had a wonderful way of making the complex simply apparent.
    I just wonder how many iterations it took for her to become
    satisfied with a statement like "show me the woman he sleeps with."
    I bet that there were drafts and drafts -- remember that she said
    that the process was "Killingly Difficult." -- j
    .
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 4 months ago
      I reaad your comment then dug out The Art of Fiction. There were as it turned out in one comment no 'final statements.' Her habit was to use some short five or six word description and form that give a one hour talk or lecture. The ability to say the same thing each slightly different addressing different questions and keep the participants engaged. speaks of multiple endings but another section rips the mystics whose mantra is "For those who understand no explanation is necessary; for those who don't none is possible." Dumbed down it becomes "You wouldn't understand or more simply duuuh. and she melted that into "I don't know why I don't intend to explain." We see that here far too often...still later If you have all the elements of tht which you wish to write about and fully understand them you will express exactly." She could do that in more than one language. I would 'guess' when I find more I will share it the goal of understanding clearly in advance of writing were the drafts and drafts of which you spoke. When it came time to write the final draft it flowed.k Then she went back to look for those jarring little inconsistencies or missing parts not more than once or twice. Her stated solution was to think over every aspect, anything relative, think it over 'until your mind exhausts itself then do it again and 'one morning you have the solution.....the scene comes to you and so do the words you need."

      I thought it would take a while to find the above turned out they first five pages. Hope that helps
      '.
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      • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 4 months ago
        I must read that book -- Thank You for the intro to it;;; I will
        order it tonight. . for me, Michael, writing is a challenge like math.
        if I can't do it in a few words, the reader won't get it. . and precision
        is absolutely required, no matter how the language
        has been perverted. -- j
        .
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        • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 4 months ago
          I just re-read the whole again. She has one part on subjective art which isn't versus objective art which is and writing is an art. Here is the actual quote I was looking for. p. 52 "I mentioned the complexity involved in writing a single sentence (what I put earlier) I said iyou could not figure out the sentence consciously.You sit down to write, the sentence comes out a "certain way, with editing you can improve it...." and a few paragraphs later goes in Concretizing Abstractions. So far that's it for editing as she said before editing is done best prior to writing. After is more a case of polishing 'white powdery snow had covered the landscape since yesterday's green vistas to white sugar coated snow.....' A contraction of her example.
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  • Posted by coaldigger 8 years, 4 months ago
    One of the true traits of genius, is the ability to see and communicate the core principles of complex issues. The too smart for their (and our) own good class sees the complexity but doesn't understand it sufficiently to boil it down for neophytes and they don't care because in their egotism do not think that others can hope to grasp the concept that eludes them. I am sure it was not original, but the chairman of a company I worked for advised managers that faced a knotty problem to explain it to and discuss it with their 8 year old daughter. If you can do this, you will come to a clear understanding of the problem without all the smoke and it is amazing how helpful this can be.
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 8 years, 5 months ago
    How did Hillary go from being a Goldwater girl, to being a Marxist tyrant? Oh, I think some minister was involved. What should seem so logically reasonable can be twisted and ignored, and create a liberal - I still do not understand. I fell like Mr. Spock sometimes.
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 4 months ago
      You framed the question perfectly as it turns out The puppet master is George Soros the billionaire behind progressive secularism. Along with another one Peter Lewis of of Progressive. The Minister an apt choice of words is George 'Yoda' Lakoff. http://Moveon.org is the hatchet activist group. ACLU is another Same Sex is one of their two recent successes. Recreational Pot legalization is another. The current strategy is posing as 'friends of the court' amicus curie with specific friendly Soros backed Judges and changing the Constitution without amendment by court order. Hillary Rodham Clinton is their principle handmaiden. George Clooney is their front man in the glitterati. If you want to know the definition of secular evil.. There it is.

      We regularly host their operatives, the exact word in this case, who under varying an changing names. attempt to influence conversations by posing as objectivists, libertarians, constitutionalists or seekers of knowledge. The technique is called 'Framing The Debate.'Lynne Stewart a radical leftist lawyer convicted of conspiracy for providing material support to terrorists, defrauding and making false statements.' is another of his group. Soros objects to US fighting terrorists Stewart an open advocate of violence had her legal bills paid by Open Institute another of George Soros's front groups.

      They are both of Jewish cultural heritage and descent but both are advocates and supporters of radical islamists.

      Soros survived WWII in Hungary and their were two ways to do that. The regular underground anti -Nazi movement and the Communist underground....The first have no record or memory of him under his original name.

      After the war he was soon in London in the School of Economics and fast became more than extremely wealthy. Now resides, banks and does business offshore but lives part time in New York City.

      Nothing secret about any of that I got it using Google for the most part. His non-US taxpaying business is in Curacao. Funny he wants to strip the rich but .......not where he is concerned.

      "I always wonder after the fall of the 'Evil Empire' if he had found a new controller or become the puppet master himself. That's just a theory of my own."

      Back to Lakoff who works out of SP Central UC Berkely provided the movements hand book Don't Think Of An Elephant, Know Your Values and Frame The Debate. See if you recognize from right here in the Gulch these points. "Never answer a question from your opponents point of view. Dodge questions and recite instead rehearsed answers.Everyone should read this book the dude is very open and the use of the book shows up here quite frequently.

      If you don't want to spend the tenspot for that book or his others I have it on Kindle and it should make for some interesting post questions.

      In the meantime I reframed the debate to my viewpoint and it's in New and Government under Define Not Divine and still a work in progress. Two parts the first comment is my opinion the rest is just condensed history.

      Neat package of information to answer your question. Now it's time for FOGs' to step in...Friends of The George's
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