Thank you very much. My being here is proof that I'm well past the worst of it. But at some point I'll have to return to "priestly" isolation if I'm to make any progress on the speech.

Ideally, I would be running my own language school on my own principles (based on actual linguistic principles rather than statistics, Ayn Rand's theory of concept formation and my love of inspiring drama and literature as the performance model: poetic monologue, dialogue on up to group improv).

Chamber music is "conversational" too and has lessons for modeling that linguists could learn from also. But they love their "corpus studies" because then they don't have to think.

Fair enough. I often evince more heat than light, but it's so hard to see through all the sophistry floating about these days. I want only to be a Firebrand like John Galt and Charles Tew because I am convinced that nothing less than mindful, purposeful "arrogance" will save us (in whole or singularly). But it's good to be at least peripherally on the outlook for any unqualified authority as well, to say in effect "put your proofs where your mouth is."

Well I've spent the last couple years trying to fit the Galt Address in "my mouth" but can utter only about a quarter of it, to paragraph 106. And I've actually been on hold for the past year while I try to pull myself back together after a serious illness.

So I'm doing my best to fight the Fire of doubt or fear With the Fire of my passionate pursuit of my contextually-defined desires: https://youtu.be/3FV2ILnnTa0

I really like that!

You are welcome, Stormi, to join my "John Galt Brigade" any time and fly into the eye of the hurricane.

When I was a kid I was being made by my dad to memorize the Ten Commandments and discuss theology and prophecy, that and athletic rigor and discipline were his two obsessions outside his passion for being a salesman.

But had he not "ghosted" me when I was 10 or 11 and left me with a mystically babbling, emotionalist and often absentee mother, I'd never have fallen apart completely at 13 and needed Ayn Rand to eventually provide me the means of putting myself back together again (from the age of 22).

I'm almost 47 now, and feel my journey has still just begun, only we're historically entering into dangerously precipitous and very "DIM" terrain (if you get the reference).

Ego-Priest of the
John Galt Brigade [GSS-106]

Thanks for asking. I've been at war with mysticism and authoritarianism since first reading Atlas Shrugged in early "94, before anything else (and primarily in my own subconscious, my own "issues"). The film Wild, Wild Country may give you some idea of my bifurcated childhood, Billy Joel's Nylon Curtain on the radio, Kahlil Gibran in the bathroom. Yes, that kind of "priest." Perhaps the biggest influence early on was the druidic Ric Ocasek of The Cars (his first solo album enigmatically titled "Beatitude") expressing an American Existentialism more sophisticated than Nietzschean Jim Morrison of The Doors, less cynically or sarcastically than Steely Dan (rest in peace Walter Becker).

So it is also something of an inside joke at my own expense (an inversion of my childhood and young adult insanity). It also has a lot to do with the arcane, stylistically druidic, way I write poetry expressive of my rational and wholly this-worldly egoism (tabula rasa, finite universe knowable only by reason, the works): e.g.,

"Cosmic barriers are cut and unfurled
by disciples of proof -- earthbound magic
spells marvels free of the mystical ruse." -Ego Priest (last name genera, first name differential)

And so from early on I was easily impressed with Andy Bernstein's way of coming at all the unjust cultural misappropriations of originally pagan, pre-secular honorifics (he has repeatedly stated his fondness for religious-sounding honorifics as cultural re-appropriation); and he took his lead from Ayn Rand herself who liked such expressions as God Bless America (as an expression of the best in man, a secular sense of the sacred in the sense of world-value, the beatification of "the ought."

You may call it "Franciscan Irony" (after d'Anconia not d'Assisi) but as a linguist (and one who has read all twelve volumes of Sir Simon Frazer's "The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion") I use the word priest in its original meaning connoting a wise man, a wise woman a priestess," or more specifically as an "elder advocate of a school of thought, religious or otherwise." (so high-priest of laissez-faire capitalism would not be amiss or imply a contradiction).

I am an atheist, a neo-Aristotlean Objectivist and do not even enter any longer into the hippiedom of Carl Jung or Jordan Peterson.

I also like the Lords and Ladies of Liberty terminology. I draw the line at the morally-nihilistic Game of Thrones however (much preferring The Princess Bride: "Objectivism...Objectivism is what bwings us two-gether...two-day. Objectivism, that bwessed awangement, that dweam within a dweam! LOL).

Yes, I love my moniker. I also like to refer to myself as a "Randista" (rhymes with Sandinista) especially to her detractors.

See? You get farther faster by doubling-down (and first with yourself). Before "94 my literary guru remained Ursula K. Le Guin (may she rest in peace, culturally, not literally).

In sum, "EgoPriest" is the one-in-the-many, a useful reminder of my earlier "primacy-of-autonomy," and, if you arrange the letters, it is inclusive of the Pre-Egoist, the acolyte or "potential" who having read Ayn Rand is beginning to grasp the axiomatic truth: That existence exists and ONLY existence exists, that A is A just like Man is Man."

I agree wholeheartedly. I am impressed with their Anthem Graphic videos and the Branden lectures on Objectivism (which I think were around the time of the split, while the book I have on Kindle and am slowly reading is from early "58, I think).

But given that, his voice during the hellish ordeal he instigated seems (understandably) wooden compared to my treasured recording of him reading the Galt Speech -- where he's thrilling (if you've read Valliant's "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics: The Case Against the Brandens," then you'll know where I'm coming from).

David Kelley has also done good work, and I have his Evidence of the Senses on Kindle but haven't read very much of it yet (Peikoff's argument being generally sufficient). And I've expressed my admiration for Stephen Hicks' brilliantly-reasoned books and lectures (despite some odd, right, verbal ticks, right...o-kaay). But I love him, even if he's not happy. A couple years ago when I first made his acquaintance, he struck me as Galt's character personified, but seeing interviews I see sadness and firmness (because he never did "go Galt" he's got one foot in Peterson's corner, or so it seems to me).

There may be other great lectures or book I'm not aware of. My only caveat is that these individuals do not speak for Objectivism, the philosophic system of Ayn Rand, however well they embrace the principle at the root of their own insights and achievements in applying those principles.

Another way of saying this (at the risk of going on far too long) is that, had I read and embraced The Fountainhead first rather than Atlas Shrugged, I would have started out "in the life" acquainted with the meta-ethical principles of psychological and meta-ethical egoism (with rational and political egoism strongly implied but not quite as explicated as in Atlas) and with not the metaphysical and especially epistemological principle as explicated either in the action of the novel.

So my commitment has always been specifically to >the philosophic system< that integrates that set of validated principles as a whole (and any other principles that follow). If you're familiar with Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology then you should know that the human mind, its ignition volitional, is a "motor of integration" that ideally follows a set pattern (when the choice to think is made) from sense-perception to concepts to principles to wider principles to to a whole philosophic culture and way of life in an constitutional, not anarchic, "Atlantis."

Yes, I was putting the horse of moral-agency back in front of the cart of static "authority" as it were (given the endemic culture-wide agnosticism/tribalism).

You are a very good man to admit it. I thank you and I happily withdraw the question of your honesty. :-)

Yes, we must each work within our existential limitations and aptitude to expand the "DIM Horizons" from within (and I am -- in some very important ways -- more limited than most). So I "capitalize" on what few strengths I still retain to be the best me I can be.

"Progress is perfection."

<|:)))--|--<

I respect that. If you're up for a challenge I would only ask that you go deeper into the meta-ethical foundation underlying your heroic loyalty to laissez-faire capitalism and the principle that "your life belongs to you."

For instance, did you know that Adam Smith was an altruist who conceded the meta-ethical argument of his "invisible hand's" moral purpose to Karl Marx a century before him? He gave the whole game away (not the whole game, because unlike Herr Marx, Mr. Smith was a champion of a this-world reason in his economic if not political or social theory).

The greatest book I can recommend to you in the area of your interests and mine would be George Reisman's "Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics," and his website (which I'd not be at all surprised you were already aware of) has a whole course you can take for free, ad libitum: https://www.capitalism.net

PPS -- And above all other potential disagreement:

"Who the hell am I?" -- I'm only the guy that started this entire thread (you may cry "click-bait" but nobody put a gun to your head and dragged you in here).

PPS And I also thank you for "entering the fray." (I think of Objectivism also as "Respectivism" (to whatever and whoever respect is due).

Justice is the key virtue or motor driving Atlas Shrugged's plot-theme or "meta-narrative." ("Ayn Rand told me so," lol.)

B-)

PS. But I thank you for having "Gone Galt" in your own way or for your own reasons, you are clearly a man of great ability (having just read your intro).

You did the second you renounce your own right to be as honestly forthright as I. You speak for your position against principled conviction ((a position I find morally offensive)) as arrogantly as do I that YOUR LIFE AND MIND ARE YOURS, AND YOURS ALONE (absolutely NOBODY has the right to censor you for holding convictions and arguing for them consistently, and I am NOT a social-metaphysician but an Objectivist ("by choice").

Do not be a second-hander, own your life and double down. The fate of our civilization hangs in the balance, and you need me to be fearful of being misunderstood!? But I will only yell it out louder and prouder than before: "And I mean it!"

This is passion but NOT mysticism, or if it is then so was John Galt a mystic, and so was Patrick Henry. And if that is your considered conclusion then all the more reason to proudly call myself Priest (i.e., Elder) Egoist, an absolutist for reason, life and freedom. (And, yes, to each their own once force is banished from human affairs completely -- but not a second sooner).

What "will work" must work first and foremost to keep one's own self integrated within a disintegrating world. Again, in a Randian Universe, no rational egoist has time in his life (i.e., his most precious possession) for mysticism: we do NOT exist forever, OR room for pluralism (our world is finite or it is nothing).

The more rational and benevolent your universe, the more true to your professed convictions you will be, the greater certainty with which you will hold them, the greater they will contribute to your happiness and flourishing (qualitatively if not quantitatively).

Benevolently yours,

Ego Priest,
Lord of Liberty of the
["it's only fictional"]:
John Galt Brigade [GS-106].

B-)

Actually, seeing as you linked the video that made me (poorly) state my position, i think we are on the same page.

You're trying to turn Ayn Rand into a skeptic, and I resent that enormously (more even than people trying to equate her metaphysics and subsequent philosophy with their pet form of supernaturalism).

She's not alive to tell it to you to your face, and I have to restrain myself from giving it you in as harsh of terms as she would and nowadays get her banned from every platform but her own (adults only echo-chamber).

You talk the language of the counter-inquisition but you "logic" is entirely misplace. You flat up disagree and are not an Objectivist but a "borrower" (to put it politely). And I resent what I see as a dishonest (and disintegrating) motive in that.

To paraphrase Patrick Henry, "If this be 'zealotry' you may make the most of it!' and of Martin Luther: "In an Objectivist universe I live and breath, and I can literally do no other."

When Ayn Rand said "And I mean it" as postscript to Atlas Shrugged, SHE MEANT IT, every word of it ("[she] never had to change.") She also meant it when she said: "I'm not brave enough to be a coward -- I see the consequences too clearly," (make of that whatever hyper-pragmatic psycho-epistemological "babble" of that you please),

I actually happen to agree entirely with the only truly & consistently "Modern" Philosopher ever: make what VALID applications you will, her Objectivism is all or (it plays into the hands of) it is nothing (the reification-of-the-zero-in-the-many poisoning human minds, eating away at the first fully human civilization in history >>from within<< (hers is your only "out," your only exit from isolation or self-alienation, either) -- eroding the civilization of the Enlightenment, and every achievement in statecraft, art and science that of which Aristotle is the Father, Aquinas his younger Brother, of Ayn Rand the pure and perfect Daughter (in that Enlightened Trinity).