SkyTrooper

I read it too. My assessment was that he was a crazy enviornmentalist. His ideas wern't any different than the ones I was learning in my Environmental Engineering class or from "an inconvenient truth", but I guess he just had more integrity (if you can call it that) in implementing his credo.

I'm always skeptical of any "needs" explanation of behavior since needs theory is a huge part of why modern psychology is such a trainwreck. Saying someone joined a group because of a herding instinct or something like that ignores the fact that people are motivated by ideas. I think the only common denominator amongst terrorists is murderous ideologies. Islamism, Enviornmentalism, etc. The terrorist organizations are the natural result of people wanting to be around others that share their values. Look at any individual terrorist in an organization, and I would bet that you will see the ideology came before he joined the group. For example, Islamic terrorists have years of indoctrination in mosques before going all-out and joining a terrorist organization.

Ha that brings to mind Hank Rearden: “I regret that I shall be obliged to save your goddamned necks along with mine.”

What about individuals acting alone, like the unibomber? Are they motivated by the desire for "social solidarity"?

TIA Daily: http://www.intellectualactivist.com/ I also get the local paper and watch CNN, Headline News, CNBC, etc, on cable.. although cable news manages to get on my nerves fairly quickly.

I have to disagree with anyone who says that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu isn't one the most effective if not the most effective martial arts "in a real fight". For example, consider an effective jiu-jitsu move you can practice at 100% power with an opponent millions of times before having to use it in real life vs. some high-speed instant kill ninja move that you can only put to the test when you actually need it to survive (all jiu-jitsu moves can be practiced at 100% power), and remember that the vast majority of fights go to the ground (even without the help of a jiu-jitsu practitioner who is intentionally trying to get the fight to the ground where he will dominate). Some fighters will say they won't take the fight to the ground, but if you are taken by surprise, or if you are fighting an MMA or jiu-jitsu practitioner who has even a remote idea of what they are doing, you won't have a choice in this anyway. You might as well pick a technique where you can be comfortable on the ground. The US Army adopted a modified form of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu for combatives btw which is how I got in to it.. one of my first experiences was watching a 130 lb asian kid arm-bar a 250 lb guy and leave him moaning on the floor at the end of the fight. Of course "who has the best martial art" is an ongoing debate throughout the martial arts community which is in no way settled and you will need to make a first-handed assessment of this. Gracie Jiu-Jitsu

Go for Brazilian Jujitsu.. it's the best ground fighting technique (the vast majority of fights end up on the ground anyway), plus you can spar with all the moves at 100% without injuring yourself. Jujitsu dominates in MMA anyway so you might as well go with the legit version.

I've met quite a few Objectivists lately who have or have had very successful relationships both with other Objectivists and with non-Objectivists. I'm curious to know how you met and how things progressed. Although I am interested in this for several reasons, my immediate purpose is that I am considering writing a response to the "Pickup Artists" and would like more concretes to draw from. The more detailed the better (i.e. where were you when you met? what was your initial conversation about? what did you find attractive in the person and what did they find attractive in you?) I'm aware that this topic is somewhat personal in nature, but I would definitely appreciate any help. (btw. I have already read Piekoff's "Love, Sex, and Romance" etc, so I'm not looking for theory, just your personal experiences.)

I had a poster of this on my wall in college. It's a notice to totalitarian states everywhere: you'll need more than tanks.

Unless you are friends with the guy, you don't really have any kind of obligation to tell him. If you made it your mission to inform everyone who has been cheated on and not told about it you would have to close down shop for any other business. You should be more concerned with the character of your friend. Have you seen a pattern of dishonesty from her? If so, why would you want to be friends with a dishonest person? You have to understand the full context of the act, of course. Some situations, like Hank Rearden cheating on Lillian, strike me as entirely acceptable. If she see's it as a mistake, which you indicated, the proper response would be for her to condemn the improper behavior, make reparations (if possible), and work to understand the underlying psychological evasions that led her to engage in it... resolving never to make the same mistake again. Telling the guy that she betrayed his trust sounds like a step in the right direction.

Personality stikes me as a complex psychological question, but I think it's safe to say your personality type will depend heavily on your ideas and experiences. At the time I last took the test I was in what I think of as my "Machiavellian Period" where I generally considered most people to be irrational suckers provided by the universe for my amusement. I retained a lot of respect for reason, i.e. working hard in my engineering classes, but had a kind of Gail Wynard understanding of people. My readings at the time tended towards Machiavelli, Robert Greene, Nietzsche, et. al. Since that time I took philosophy classes, witnessed "new left" rallies, went through several relationships, completed college, attended a lot of military training, and watched peoples' ideas in action in the real world. Most importantly I read "The Fountainhead", re-read "Atlas Shrugged", and read basically the rest of Rand's fiction and non-fiction. This along with Piekoff's "Ominous Parallels" and "OPAR" had a huge impact on me. In short, my ideas evolved significantly. Not that I think that myers-briggs is the most accurate of tests, but saying I went from an ESTP "Promoter Artisan" with an adept ability to manipulate others to an INTJ "Mastermind Rational" adept at achieving clearly envisioned goals is a pretty fair assessment.

"I'm going to put a stop to this, once and for all." -John Galt "You're paid to do your job, not your best, whatever that is." -Dagny I'm having trouble finding where these are at. They are better in full context.

Just to clarify, since banging my head against a wall doesn't add much, the Libertarian party has little to nothing in common with Objectivists. Ayn Rand liked Communists more than Libertarians. Basically all you have to do to call yourself a Libertarian is mutter "I like liberty" (without having to define liberty) and you're in. That's why there are anti-abortion libertarians, "anarcho-capitalist" libertarians, etc. As such, the Libertarian party is a serious threat to liberty. Also, I'm sure this has been mentioned several other times in this thread.

INTJ. Strength of the preferences % I: 11 N: 75 T: 75 J: 67 Prior to getting into Objectivism, I was an ESTP.

I don't know if you realized this, but Gotham=Chicago. In Batman Begins there was some attempt to cover it up with CGI but this time it was almost all Chicago. The underground chase scenes were on Lower Wacker Drive, the boat scenes were on Lake Michigan, etc. To put in my $0.02, trivial film editing bs aside, the Dark Knight rocked.

Thanks.

Can someone expand on this? I don't get it.

If it was me, he'd have two in the chest and one in the head before he got done putting the bolt together. Likewise with Ahmadinejad et. al.

The same kind of "credit" that a bank robber deserves for successfully robbing a bank.

I think the criteria for armed resistance is best summed up here. Striking is a different matter, and I think justification for a strike is when you decide that you are in a position where you can't work without supporting your own destroyers.

Me too With clothing form follows function... which is why pilots look cool in Flight Suits, Soldiers look cool in ACUs and battle gear, bankers look cool in suits, and doctors look cool in scrubs. I disagree with others who say you should wear whatever. There is a whole science to fashion (e.g. if you're tall and thin you should wear light shirts), the ultimate goal of which is to look cool. Imagine Hank Rearden in a lame t-shirt or wearing a pink polo.. yeah right!

You can choose not to live. If you want to live, you need morality. If you don't want to live, you can make your choices in any arbitrary way you feel like and you will die. The choice to live is not within the realm of ethics, but ethics is the science that will help you achieve that goal. Just like how you can't use math to decide whether to do a math problem but math will help you solve the problem. If you don't want to play the game then no one forces you to. Clearly you consider life worth living or you would have killed yourself by now.

...the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.

Humans can choose to die. Examples of people working towards their own self-destruction are too numerous to need to list here. To choose life is the primary choice, and everything else in Objectivist ethics follows from that.