Some of my best friends are communists
What makes a "good" person or a "bad" person is (no surprise) personal: within the individual. That is usually hidden from external view and judged only by actions and words in the world. That judgment is also personal: it depends on the person making it.
Consider John D. Rockefeller. Most people who care to know anything about him dislike him. Objectivists admire him, but dislike his having been a church-going Baptist. Would Rockefeller have been a better person as an atheist? You only have to look at Edison to think more than twice about that question.
That is not to say that "one hand washes the other." I believe that the final balance is, indeed, a balance, of admirable qualities versus failures.
What is the essential characteristic?
A productive person will admire the productivity of others. Consider Thomas Edison, Sandra Lerner (Cisco Systems), or Martha Stewart. Edison was not a nice guy, but that is not the essential judgment. None of them were or are paragons of Objectivist virtues - some producers seem to have had no special virtues outside of their work. Consider how we wring our hands over Bill Gates. Yet, Microsoft cannot be denied. I admire
George Soros for his success as a trader. Haters take a different view.
You can find producers and haters in any population, just like short and tall people, no matter how short or tall the group. It is an assumption in social science that however defined, differences _within_ groups are greater than differences _across_ groups. Thus, I have had many friends who were political progressives and born-again Christians, while I have suffer through many libertarian or Objectivist meetings.
Consider John D. Rockefeller. Most people who care to know anything about him dislike him. Objectivists admire him, but dislike his having been a church-going Baptist. Would Rockefeller have been a better person as an atheist? You only have to look at Edison to think more than twice about that question.
That is not to say that "one hand washes the other." I believe that the final balance is, indeed, a balance, of admirable qualities versus failures.
What is the essential characteristic?
A productive person will admire the productivity of others. Consider Thomas Edison, Sandra Lerner (Cisco Systems), or Martha Stewart. Edison was not a nice guy, but that is not the essential judgment. None of them were or are paragons of Objectivist virtues - some producers seem to have had no special virtues outside of their work. Consider how we wring our hands over Bill Gates. Yet, Microsoft cannot be denied. I admire
George Soros for his success as a trader. Haters take a different view.
You can find producers and haters in any population, just like short and tall people, no matter how short or tall the group. It is an assumption in social science that however defined, differences _within_ groups are greater than differences _across_ groups. Thus, I have had many friends who were political progressives and born-again Christians, while I have suffer through many libertarian or Objectivist meetings.
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This is the real reason I got sent to Conventry. I fought back.
Why don't you guys go pick on Moslems or Wiccans or Scientologists.... just for a change? This song is getting so old.
Stupid is such a convenient place-holder for a wide range of more accurate adjectives!
I can pretty much guarantee there'll be more people at Bill Gates' funeral than there will be at mine...
Sometimes not even then. You sound so much like the Democrats who proclaim every one of their candidates, no matter how stupid, to be "intelligent".
So, I figure it's a safe bet you wouldn't be interested in talking to Stephen Hawking?
Seriously, it's annoying when one tries to talk down to people.
Don't cop out and tell me to read the thoughts of other people. Don't cop out and tell me I don't 'get' Objectivism. I 'get' the parts that are based in common sense. I don't 'get' the parts that taste like a cult of personality. I don't 'get' the parts that are used to make some people feel superior. I don't 'get' where people who refuse to think all the time condemn others for not thinking all the time. I don't 'get' why people who on the one hand want Objectivism to be the dominant philosophy in the world wanting to isolate themselves from the world on the other. I don't 'get' why they think the world can be Objectivist without including all those who can't or don't agree with Objectivism, or who can't or don't think all the time.
""Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill al! the blood it required."
Are you planning on killing or just letting the rest of humanity who doesn't 'get' Objectivism die off? Who's going to bury all those billions of bodies?
"At our last meeting, Ivy Starnes was the one who tried to brazen it out. She made a short, nasty, snippy little speech in which she said that the plan had failed because the rest of the country had not accepted it, that a single community could not succeed in the midst of a selfish, greedy world—and that the plan was a noble ideal, but human nature was not good enough for it."
Btw, the criticism represented by the quotes cited above aren't criticisms of Objectivism... they're criticisms of people right here in the gulch.
Check out the posts "What is Objectivism?" and "The Blind Men and the Elephant".
Here, let me explain it in an analogy you can salivate over:
"psst... I would say most Christians don't really understand human nature..."
In the real world, John Galt wouldn't be up against straw men.
What *am* I doing here? Hmm... look for a posting titled "Apologia", you might figure it out.
So, the gulch is just an echo chamber, or is it Jonestown, Colorado?
The guy who shovels my walk seems to agree with my positions but he's most definitely on the very low end of the intelligence scale. On the other hand, the 89+ year old man that I described in another post is extremely intelligent but a hardcore progressive.
Some want to take the Francisco speech and say that any pursuit of money is moral. Then what about Bernie Madoff? That was his pursuit and he was clearly evil.
I define a good person as one who continuously improves him/herself through hard work and education, who takes nothing from anyone else and harms no one. (very short)
"As long as Christians do not try to impose their beliefs on me legally, there's no problem."
That's more accurate. Thanks for pointing that out.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0940931...
~ Thomas Jefferson
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