[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timo', 'I')'m not sure i quite understand what you're getting at. Could you provide more insight to your cosmic utters?

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'a')t some point one should address morality as having an objective basis rather than just subjective.

[onlooker]

I actually also read parts of the books by Ayn Rand as my sister go into her. I came away with a train of thought which to this day I remember vividly. That is that she is heartless and cold as a fish. Her philosophy seemed to amount to rejoice in your selfishness for it is what makes the world go around. I wonder if she would think that if she were lets say born in some poor African country around the year 2000 or so. Old enough to comprehend that "boy I am forlorn".

[Timo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timo', 'I')'m not sure i quite understand what you're getting at. Could you provide more insight to your cosmic utters?

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'I') actually also read parts of the books by Ayn Rand as my sister go into her. I came away with a train of thought which to this day I remember vividly. That is that she is heartless and cold as a fish. Her philosophy seemed to amount to rejoice in your selfishness for it is what makes the world go around. I wonder if she would think that if she were lets say born in some poor African country around the year 2000 or so. Old enough to comprehend that "boy I am forlorn".

[onlooker]

At least Newfie you ground this view in seeing a goodness and a humanity to her. Now if you said you liked the fact that she was heartless and felt all people should be this or do this regardless of circumstances and if not they are worthless and that selfishness is the highest of virtues then I would have to say ummmm

[Pops]

Rand-y self-interest is justification for the "we built it" crowd to pretend their morals are actually as well developed as the average 20 year old - which is about the age most folks mature past Rand.

Actually the liberals in the universities who get all the grants to study such stuff say that self-interest is normal, until you reach maybe 6 or 7 when you begin to develop empathy. Teenagers though sometimes fantasize it would be great if they could just bump off the blue hairs and take their stuff, or maybe that a big slate wiper would come along and do the bumping, that would be objectivism at its finest, LOL

Rand's family lost all their stuff to the Commies in RU, can't blame her for being bitter about that whole notion. Strangely it was the inspiration for her to preach that capitalism should be just as brutal, except instead of the State, who the citizenry might be able to exercise at least some control over, it should be some self perpetuating plutocracy — "if you can't exploit or profit from 'em, piss on 'em" might be their motto and the birdfinger their secret salute.

No doubt capitalism is the better economic program than communism and central planning from the standpoint of figuring out how much of what should be available when at what price. Ditto innovation and certainly inventive resource extraction and disposal, there we excel. I can't guess but it seems like capitalism is a more fulfilling lifestyle too, at least as I have experienced it — even not including the confiscation part.

Of course if anyone thinks an idyllic, unregulated "free market" would be actually free they are way more deluded than any bleeding heart socialist, LOL. The only perfect market to an Objectivist would be one where he is in complete control, a monopoly in other words, if no one else can compete then screw 'em, I win, off to the Gulch!

That is what I think is funny about Randians, they all see themselves as the 5 or 10 people who bugged out to Galt's gulch, never as the sycophants who obediently voted the ownership's party line (against their own interest) yet in the end were left behind like all the rest of the useless eaters when JG and his pals cashed out the employee retirement fund and jetted. Ah, poor Randian Wannabes with their nose pressed against the bakery glass mumbling, 'let em eat cake...'

LOL, that cracked me up...

I'm not a redistributionist per sey, I don't want to tax the rich man so I can take his money and give it to someone else, I just don't want him to be able to use it against me or to take advantage of me, or harm me with it. No different than, say, my neighbor having guns, I don't care if he has guns, but I don't want everyone in the neighborhood to have high explosives in their basement and a .50 in the attic dormer either.


Oops, there goes another rather long narrative.

[Ibon]

When I graduated from the uni I spent about 5 years hitchhiking around North America (including Mexico) and doing extensive wilderness trips. 600km canoe trip on the Churchill River in Northern Saskatchewan was my ultimate expedition. Well, those years embedded in me a confidence because I saw everything afterwards in the world of society as a farce. I fully distrusted and held in disdain corporations, governments and churches. I knew a truth deep in the wilderness that surpassed anything created by human societies. It is what helped make me successful afterwards when I did enter into business because I had no ego invested in it because I recognized it all as BS anyway.

My conclusion in the topic of this thread is don't believe any of it. It's all BS.

The problem I recognize with time is that I was never a real participant in society. I was always on the outside looking in. It was the source of my strength and success but it also made me feel in exile to my fellow men. That is why it was so easy for me to create the concept of Kudzu Ape but it also explains my misanthropic tendencies.

There is a price you pay from the objectivity you gain from going deep in the wilderness. I accept that price.