One lives for his life and ultimate happiness, and happiness in life is his purpose and goal. A is A and existence exists.

If one chooses some other purpose to live for, then he's denying the reality of life or is accepting slavery offered or imposed by someone or something outside of himself.

Its not a difficult concept to understand.

ewv; Although many with religious beliefs attempt to portray atheism as something other than what it is and as a relatively 'new response' resulting from Objectivism, here's a recent study:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/...

Here's one excerpt:
“We tend to see atheism as an idea that has only recently emerged in secular Western societies.”

He suggests that atheism was not just common in ancient Greek or Roman societies, but rather it flourished more back then than it does now.

The "Age of Atheism" only he ended, he suggests, when the generally tolerant societies were replaced by imperial forces that demanded the acceptance of one true God.

He added: “The idea of a priest telling you what to do was alien to the Greek world.”

I don't disagree with what you state with the exception of Rand's authority.

Personally I don't see Objectivism as something that Ayn created. From my perspective, she took what already existed naturally and put it in words so anyone could read it and hopefully understand it. Of course she gave it the name. But maybe my belief is because I had many of these feelings long before I had ever heard of Ayn Rand or the word Objectivism. I simply see Objectivism as human nature, until someone teaches it out of them. Or maybe I just don't understand Objectivism as much as I think I do. :)

As do you Herb.

Definitely a different reality from the one we know. Fiction vs fact.

Myself and Objectivism in general, rejects belief, particularly beliefs based on religion, faith, or superhuman revealed truth, as a basis to deny reasoning and logical rational thought or to make life decisions or acts. The belief may in fact be right or wrong, but until objectively examined to determine the facts in reality of the matter, its no different than the 'imaginary friends of a child'.

I think it was AR that said (paraphrasing loosely), 'One may choose to deny/ignore reality. One cannot escape the consequences'. She also stated "Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration."

I only quote AR because as the originator of Objectivism, she is the authority of 'what it is', 'the concepts in it', and 'its meaning applied to life'.

The Force was totally about feelings. As much as I enjoyed a set of stories well told, there was not much thinking done by the characters, unless you count the scheming of the Emperor.

JB
Damn! You know, I never made that connection. It seems so obvious now. He was a shrink who was part of the shrink circle of Branden. So many things have been attributed to the arcane meanings of every word and situation in the 1st 6 Star Wars episodes that even the very practical attitude of getting it done successfully takes on mystical overtones.

RIght on, ewv. I am so tired of hearing the false
claim that atheism itself is a religion. And also the
demand that a negative be proven. If that were
necessary, what would become of "innocent until
proven guilty" in a criminal charge?

By George, you've got it!

When I feel put upon, I'll re-read something uplifting. Besides Rand, two of my favorites are The Desiderata by Max Ehrmann and Cyrano, the Brian Hooker translation. I've always found the pragmatic way inevitably leads to grief in the long run. It's giving a hemophiliac a Band-Aid.

It's good to see some Steve Martin humor once in a while! ;)

Well, excuuuse me!--
Sorry, I suppose more paragraph breaks would
be better. Sometimes when I start out, I don't real-
ize how long my writing is going to be.

She would have dressed him down, cut him up and cut him out. He'd know better than to be in her presence.

Do I really need to answer why it could be tempting to be inconsistent? The road to temptation is well-paved. The road to self-consistency has many obstacles, many of which are self-imposed.

I didn't downvote, but I have to agree with the comment "he takes it upon himself to rephrase and intentionally misinterpret what I (and others) say and pronounce his interpretations of my statements as authoritative on my behalf. If I have the right to the products of my mind as Objectivism claims, then he violates the very principles he holds dear when he attempts to hijack my posts."

One of the things that you need to learn, XenokRoy, is that AR's definition of atheism is not the one widely recognized by non-Objectivists. She chose to define a somewhat different definition, and with that definition, ewv is correct in that atheists do not have to prove that there is no god.

Sorry, I evidently did not explain myself clearly. What I was trying to say is that most people ('<=2SD of the norm' type normal) are not interested in philosophy of any kind. They just want to get on with their lives. We do not need to 'make' them care about philosophy, but if THEY want 'the kind of life they imagine' and WE want 'a life of freedom and innovation' then they need to vote for candidates who we regard as 'good'. The normal person will not do this because it is 'philosophically sound', he will do it because his favorite football player promotes a candidate or because the movies and TV shows he watches show capitalism and individual freedom in a positive light.

If you imagine a Bell-curve, the furthest right ~15% is who we are talking about. Right now, I think that most of those 'people who care about philosophy' are Socialist; we need them to be Objectivist. And we need media to portray Objectivist type values in a positive light...which will sway the ~70% in the middle.

Jan

OK. I misunderstood. I just filter all of my Gulch messages into a subfolder (called "Gulch", unimaginatively enough). This keeps them out of my primary Inbox, but I get a pop-up on the bottom right of my screen that alerts me when any email (Gulch or work or personal) comes in, so I get the needed nudge.

Jan

"Everyday safety and affluence is what Objectivism means to most people, and this is all that it needs to mean to them."
There is no "most people" in reference to Objectivism. Only a small number of people have heard of Ayn Rand and fewer of Objectivism. Those who read Rand's novels or other writings come in two opposite senses of life. I will call them the Ayn Rand and the Bernie Sanders senses of life types. I have found that those senses are distributed more in favor of the Bernie Sanders sense of life. So reading Rand's novels results in favoring the selfless characters who feel stepped on by society and feel that they are victims. I have two brothers of that type. One claims he did not ask to be born and thus society owes him a living. He has nothing good to say about Atlas Shrugged, for example. Another brother doesn't like her heroic characters because they think they are better than the rest of the people who are victims of the selfish ones taking advantage of them.
When Rand gave her Virtue of Selfishness lecture (I think that was the one) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the 1960s, I had never heard of her but did notice the hallway to the theater overflowing with students listening to load speakers. After reading Atlas Shrugged I found that it was best not to try to discuss it because of that Sanders type of sense of life where I would be dismissed as someone who was stupid for considering such stuff.
So you are right about most people but not about Objectivism having any influence due to a complete lack of them ever having heard the word 'Objectivism', let alone having ever decided to read or study about it.

I don't entirely disagree with you, but I do think you exaggerate the plight of people in the Middle Ages (as modern people often do). Yes, it is true the Church had a monopoly on thought, in the same sense that the government does today, but worse in the sense that they would punish heretics.

However, people like Dante and Thomas Aquinas didn't arise from a total vacuum. Illiteracy was common. But literacy was not unheard of. Peasants were often also educated by the monks, even if they did not intend to pursue a position in the Clergy. And Platonism, though mistaken, is still vastly superior to the anti-intellectual sophistry which has come to dominate contemporary philosophy.

Historically, it's true that bad philosophy led to the creation of the schools and not the other way around. But by the 1880's, once the schools were in place nationwide, and once Progressives such as John Dewey and his ilk were able to frame the narrative that went into them, there was a Progressive President in office within a generation (Teddy Roosevelt).

Now we have the task of teaching rational philosophical principles to people who can't read anything more challenging than Harry Potter novels, who probably couldn't understand the plot of a Shakespeare play, as illiterate peasants could in the Renaissance period, even if the language were somewhat modernized. Kids who, if they are intellectual at all, are worse than monks-- but instead they are democratic socialist, radical feminist, environmentalist militants. Maybe they don't believe in demons or original sin, but they do believe regular sexuality is patriarchical and mysoginistic, and the pursuit of wealth is exploitive and oppressive. So they end up being the same kind of superstitious Puritans that the religionists were, with nearly identical values in terms of the pleasures of This World being rooted in evil.

I agree the battle is ultimately philosophical, but it's not enough to simply publish the philosophy. We have to find a way to inject the ideas into the education system, as Progressives have been doing for 150 years. And that is going to be tough as long as the Marxist teachers unions dictate most every educational standard in the nation.

account inbox (NOT your email address)
I meant the "inbox" is not the inbox for your email address, but for your website account.

The way I wrote it was weird, sorry.

I have shrugged, unwillingly, and agree that peaceful effort should be made to restore liberty and free markets.

Perhaps I misinterpreted this: "On reddit (on which this site is based), whenever someone replies to your comment, you get a message in you account inbox (NOT your email address)." It sounded to me that a reply to a post would not go to email. (Which means I would have to sign on and monitor a forum account to see if someone replied to me...would it not?)

Jan, needs the nudge

Why would it be tempting to not be self-consistent?