gammarayburst

Actually Ayn Rand does talk about the "ecological campaign" in this interview http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/speaking-freely.html about 13.20 minutes in, which is equivalent to todays global warming campaign. But on the topic of global warming, reading the introduction in the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming it's supported by the majority of the scientific community, and as they say, it's not refuted by any institution of national or international standing (it's referenced)..we take what science deems to be true for everything else, why not global warming? For myself, I do think that carbon emissions need to be reduced, HOWEVER not at our expense. I support finding alternative means of generating the energy that we need, but it is not the governments responsibility to force that upon us.

I know the feeling all too well. At the moment I have no friends that I can even remotely relate to on an intellectual (and emotional) level. The only "value" I get from them is our similar sense of humour, which I'm starting to out grow anyway. At times I find myself feeling so lonely because of a lack of quality friends, of friends that I can engage in an intellectual conversation, friends that don't merely act on the whim of the moment, friends that don't see their idea as "fun" by waiting for Friday/Saturday night to drink themselves silly to the point where they can't even walk properly, or friends that don't get some sick satisfaction when you fail at doing something...I could go on. I've got the most unbelievable mix of "friends": one of them is some ultra "left wing-socialist" who, despite my many attempts to explain it all to him, loathes Ayn Rand and the very concept of individualism (along with capitalism). The thing is, he totally misinterprets Objectivism. He likes to show himself as some "progressive" person who is "open to anything" yet he's also unbelievably conservative! If there's something that he disagress with (for instance, he doesn't like the short skirts that the girls wear at our local cinema), he'll say "I don't know, I don't like it, not one bit, something should be done about it, they can't do that." He's the type of person who doesn't even think properly the majority of the time. Some of the stuff this guy says is just unbelievable, and you can tell that absolutely no process of thinking was involved to come to any conclusion/statement that he makes. I don't mean this in an insulting way, but he's just stupid. He's a complete example of what it means to be "irrational." I don't want to ramble on about my other friends; they're not as bad as the other guy. But I have zero connection with them too, and even they despise Ayn Rand (I exposed them to her work) because, as they put it, "she thinks she's right about everything, when she isn't." Ok, fair enough, they don't agree with her philosophy, but they never even make an attempt to discuss just what they disagree with, it's always some loosely based "reason" followed up by a "but I don't know." I showed them the youtube videos of her, and that's what put them off, but they had the opposite affect on me: I was drawn towards her, I felt inspired when I saw this elderly woman talking so passionately and purposefully. You might be wondering why I even associate with these people, since they're so incongruent with my values. Well we've been friends since high school, just a small group of us, and whilst I always saw myself as being different from them, I still remained friends with them throughout our teenage years, and now after. But over the years, I've noticed just how different I really am from them (especially ever since I read the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged last year, which felt like a massive light bulb just clicked on in my head and everything made sense). I've always considered myself to be a rational person, I never drank alcohol as a teenager, nor engaged in any flimsy "relationships", and reading those books confirmed a lot of my original views/values/morals (along with supplanting others, such as the value of friends). I've often thought about just breaking ties with them, straight out ending any friendship that I know I won't be gaining anything from, but mindless conversations. Because now that I'm at this age (21), and having gained a lot more knowledge/wisdom/life experiences, I realise that these friends aren't for me. I just don't know anyone else who shares my views, my love of life, my self respect, someone whom I can say something of an intellectual nature to, and not get a smirk as a response. Is anyone else in the same boat? Or ever been?

Public education in my state is atrocious. I went through the whole system, yet after reading the Fountainhead/Atlas Shrugged shortly after high school, only then did I realise just how bad it really was. Junior high school was your standard stuff, analyse this, interpret this, read this etc. Senior high school was pure left wing dogma. We had a unit on "Americanisation" and had to write two essays on how Australia (and the rest of the world) was being "Americanised." We were basically encouraged to write a scathing essay on how American culture is eroding our "identity" and then we had to analyse some poem about how young kids wear nike shoes and such. Looking back to those essays, I'm truly ashamed to have written them. Another unit that I remember was us finding a piece of advertisement that objectifies women. Ok, I get it, they were trying to teach us that it's not "good" to look at people in such a way, but the whole thing wasn't even based around any reasoning, rather left wing garbage. Drama was the icing on the cake in terms of teaching young minds a self destructive philosophy. Two semesters were spent on ‘Existentialism’ (along with some play about teenagers and drugs, who suicide in the end, and of course something by Shakespeare), primarily “Absurdist theatre”, where we read and re-read End Game by Samuel Beckett. At the time I thought “wow, this is so interesting…my drama teacher whom I know is a very intelligent woman in her early 50s surely knows what she’s on about…” and the drama teacher that we had was apparently the most ‘qualified’ in the English/Drama department, so I had a certain respect for her too. Everyone knew her as a "feminist" and the content that we were taught showed it. We spent a semester reading the play "Eng Game" by Samuel Beckett, which she praised and couldn't stop expressing her love for. Every lesson we'd have a discussion about it, how it represents people trying to find meaning in their life, not finding it, dying in the end, hence "end game." After finishing it, we had to write an essay that analysed it from a (get ready for it): Marxist approach and Feminist approach. We were all urged on by the near hysterical screams of our teacher (she would literally scream hysterically when someone didn't finish writing their draft) and at the time I read into Existentialism and soon enough I develop an interest in it and somehow I get onto Solipsism and the entire time I’m just soaking it all up. I’ll spare everyone the details, but by the time I finished high school, I became a ‘sceptic’ in every sense of the word. Meanwhile she recommended that we also read "Waiting for Godot" (since we were going onto another play about how a teenager falls into a life of drugs and alcohol, then suicides), and that's just what I did. After we finished reading End Game, we sit down in our usual discussion circle, and she asks the class this: "Who here can confidently say that they are sure/certain of who they are?" Nobody raised their hand at the time but me. I did it because I was certain of myself back then. I had a moral code in progress (although I didn't realise it at the time), looking back I was a very rational person (compared to my year level) and ultimately I was a happy person, happy with myself, with my teenage life, with the summer job I had going. Yet the teacher ended up challenging me, she said something along the lines of "But how can you be so sure when you're so young? Don't be so sure of yourself because something might happen in your life that will make you reconsider" and bang, that's when I entered my self-doubt mode, that's when I was reading into all these different philosophies (shame I didn't run into Objectivism, that would have made all the difference), and that's when I started to take on the view "How do I know that this is reality? What's the point of this life? Am I just like those characters in End Game, waiting to die?" This continued on for a few years, I became so apathetic, I lost my motivation as a teeanger, I stopped being happy, and my life wasn't going anywhere. I finished high school with no idea what to do. Thank god I ran into the Fountainhead last year, and soon enough Atlas Shrugged. Those two books turned my life around and sometimes I can't help but to think "Damn, I wish I could go back in time and smack my 16 year old self with these books." The best analogy to describe the way I felt when I started reading the Fountainhead (then Atlas Shrugged) is: you know the feeling you get on a very hot day, how you're literally dying for a cold glass of water after running around outside, and when you drink that water, it's just so blissful? That's how I felt with finding Ayn Rand's work. It was so refreshing, just wonderful. I don't want to imagine in what apathetic state I'd be now if it wasn't for Ayn Rand. Sorry if it seems like I went into a rant but I just wanted to share that