Jam Man

Concerning the longetivity of our species, first take ten minutes to listen to Carl Sagan: http://youtu.be/LDIo_SpFI60 If you're that terribly concerned with events that won't occur for billions (and billions!) of years, take some solace in the fact that, if we do become able to "soar through the lightyears", our descendants will have aquired knowledge about the universe that we cannot even begin to imagine to understand. Perhaps they will have the ability to jump from universe to universe, or dimension to dimension, or they will have mastered technology which actually prevents the end of the universe. Who can imagine? Who can know? Maybe we have it all wrong to begin with... maybe our understanding of the universe and its fate is as simplistic a view -- compared with what our far-flung descendants will understand -- as the ancient understanding that the Earth was flat. It makes perfect sense, until you know better.

"Those that really drove the economy were bringing it to an abrupt halt, throwing 'theirkind' off head first onto the pavement, plus any 'neutrals' as Galt called them, which I am assuming are children, babies, etc...." I was referring to Galt's capitivity in the hotel, when Mr. Thompson, Dr. Ferris, and such each confronted him tete-a-tete. Ragnar to Cuffy: "Mr. Meigs, kindly pull out your copy of Prior Analytics and define for me a syllogism, please?"

Dear me. I've committed a horrible error, then, if I assumed that "Galt, Ragnar, et al., are murderers who are purging the world of not theirkind so that they may rule it" is your main premise. And I've committed further errors still, if I assumed that "Galt, Ragnar, et al. ought to have picked up chalk and taught the world how to live rather than destroying it" was implicit in your main premise, and explicit in your posts. Are you not condemning them for striking? Are you not damning them for murdering the globe? Are you not pronouncing them guilty for wanting to live free? Are you not holding their retaliation to the use of force -- by forceful and non-forceful means -- as immoral is the initiation of it? But you do. Galt spoke with almost each one of them, and they each ran out of the room screaming when they heard what you wanted him to teach them. Just because they are helpless does not give them the moral sanction to rule men by force. Just because they have built their society to rely upon the sanction of the victim, does not mean that the victims are morally obligated to sanction such a society.

And post #11 wasn't rhetorical. Please do answer.

Every post you've made in any of these inter-connecting threads is based on the premise that it is immoral to break the bonds that tie the abuser and the abused; that one adversary doesn't have the right to withdrawl from the other, but instead must continue taking abuse in order to teach the other why abuse is wrong. Especially if breaking those bonds would cause harm to the abuser. Consider that a kid at school takes my lunch money every day. According to you, I would not only have to continue to let him take it, but take the trouble to explain to him why it's wrong for him to take it -- the lesson being delivered, presumeably, through a bloody nose. Well look, it's not like my missing lunch money is breaking me; and I still continue to study and excel at my main goal, which is keeping up with my scholastics; and in fact when I leave school for the day I don't have him to worry about, and all in all life is pretty damn good. You would tell me: "Suck it up. You know how to live, he doesn't. Teach him, even as he pummels you." You also teach me that I am in fact responsible for the consequences of his own actions. What happens if I leave that school, and without my lunch money he starves to death? Or is malnourished to the point that his success is impossible? You would say "He needed your lunch money and you knew it: you starved him." What if I went further, and rallied my classmates to oppose bullying? Or if I went further still, and built my own school where there would be no bullies allowed? Then you would say I was purging the world of bullies, that I was a murderer and responsible for all the things that the bullies ought to have known, even as I taught them and they rejected the lesson.