Free Capitalist

That's really wonderful Carrie, a perfect example of a passionate value-seeker. By not only seeking values, but also by being passionate about the values sought, a great difference was probably made in your life, and yet another way in which you can transform your world for the better. It really addresses all of the important things in life -- really caring about your values, being pro-active in making sure your values flourish, and also, just as importantly, projecting a sense of efficacy, that you can and do affect the world in a significant and positive way. Btw, Burgess is great, I think we all are grateful to have him

torturedone, Well you should remember that the Persians chose to have 300,000 soldiers against Alexander's 50,000 at Gaugamela. Why? I mean of course, if some bounty falls from the sky then sure all soldiers can be dressed up in the best armor. But that's not the issue, the issue is choosing your form of warfare given the amount of wealth that your nation currently has. The Greco-Roman approach was to create a heavy infantry soldier, and organized him into a tight and coherent heavy infantry formation. Why? Because the Greco-Roman society was a society of citizens, men with rights to life, liberty, and property. So they, given their limited resources, chose to armor themselves in the heaviest armor, and organize themselves in the heaviest and most ordered formation. It was completely different for the Persians, so they given their limited resources chose to instead recruit hundreds of thousands of troops, and thinly spread the government money on as many men as possible. Even in the Roman Empire, after the Republic had collapsed, the government still chose just a few heavily armed soldiers, over hordes of lightly armed peasants running around. So economics are important in warfare, but still not as important as the moral factor of the soldiers themselves -- how they view themselves and the nature of war. Given limited resources on both sides, each side chose to allocate those resources differently, because of other factors. Besides, the Persian empire was enormous and enormously opulent, whereas the Greeks only had the money to outfit some dozen thousand heavy hoplites. So economics is still only secondarily important. Well if talking about the Persian empire for example helps understand the Chinese, why not? That's the only reason I'm doing it, because everything I say about the Persians is usually directly applicable to the Chinese as well, because their society and thus their military was built in a very similar way. Actually all legionaries did have a gladius, even in the Republic when they had to pay for it themselves. But the question you should ask yourself is -- how representative is the terracota army of the general Chinese troop equipment? For example the Persians did use chain-mail as Praxus said, but only maybe the Immortals, i.e. the 10,000 core soldiers, in an army of 200,000-300,000. The entire Persian army didn't really have chain-mail, or even a helmet. They just had a layer of clothes, a wicker shield, and a spear, usually. So these descriptions must be taken in context.

Persian army was not aimed for mobility, because if it was they would have had a lot more cavalry in their armies than they did -- what they had was a great number of lightly-armed levies plus a core armed force. An argument similar to the one you made could be said for the Roman Empire, which one would think would need massive numbers of cavalry to patrol their enormous border, and yet they had infantry troops patrol that border. So I would say that the primary factors that determine the choice of troops in the army are not some environmental circumstances, but first and foremost the moral outlook of the soldiers/generals, and secondly the economical corollaries of that outlook. For example, the Greeks and Romans chose a smaller-sized heavily armed force of infantry which was required to pay for its own equipment. That was considered the most worthy aspect of the army, not to shoot at the guy from afar, or to surprise him with ambushes, but to face him straight away, to stare him down during face-to-face combat under formation held only by extreme military discipline. The military roles of the very poor (skirmishing and archery), were despised, and the military roles of the rich (cavalry) were viewed with suspicion as being prone to impetuousness and lack of discipline. In fact very often, at least earlier in Roman history, the rich would arrive to the battle astride a horse, but would then dismount and fight with the rest of the citizens in united formation. The Greco-Roman army, then, was first and foremost an ideological army, the army of the men of property who had things to fight for. The poor were ostracized to shameful roles, and earlier in history outright excluded from fighting altogether. Now the Persians had no such compunctions -- they levied all men and forced them to fight. Plus based on the principles of who ruled and who was being ruled, the men of property were very few, and were part of the ruling class (with the king at the very top). So they had no reason to fight together with the rest of the army, and this explains a large degree of stratification in the Persian army. The rest of the soldiers were simply grabbed from the countryside, handed a wooden spear and a wicker shield, and ordered to follow. That is why the Persian armies were filled with low-armored levies, and the Greco-Roman armies were not. The Persian army was an ideological army as well, but of an entirely different ideology. Also think about this, the Greek hoplites chose a style of fighting that really relied on large flat plains -- a huge formation of tightly packed men, so tightly packed that any battlefield disturbances such as even a single tree could cause problems in the formation. The mainland Greece is extremely hilly and mountainous, and yet that is exactly the style of fighting they chose, despite all of that. By comparison, other people, living in other mountainous areas, chose a skirmishing/ambushing lightly-armed style of army rather than fighting their enemy hand-to-hand, face-to-face -- that choice being ideological as well. See for example Xenophon's description in Anabasis of mountainous guerilla warfare against the Kurds ("Carduchi"), who never chose to face the Greeks straight out, but instead inflicted heavy casualties through ambushes (book 4). The Greeks 'till the end never chose that kind of fighting. Persians chose infantry despite living on the steppes, and their neighbors the Parthians chose horse archers as their method of fighting. So it's not the environment that determines the layout of an army, but the way the soldiers view themselves and the nature/purpose of war. The same goes for how the Chinese, and every other people. P.S. The innovations of Alexander in partitioning his army are actually not his at all, but are his father Philip's, and in fact go back as far as the Athenian Militiades at Battle of Marathon, who divided the army into three semi-autonomous parts (the thin middle and two thick independent flanks). Alex's innovations lie in different areas, such as in how he personally led his army, quite unlike anything the world has ever seen before or since.

Well that's very refreshing to hear. Did you study Ancient Chinese history, because clearly you're not the "last" person to ask, knowing what you do know about them.

Adrian, I have been in a lot of historical arguments on Ancient Western vs Ancient Chinese military, i.e. "If Alexander hadn't stopped at the Indus River, could he continue conquering into China". I have not read many Chinese sources yet, which is why I've found it helpful to understand Ancient Chinese military in reference to Western and Middle Eastern (Persian) military history, things about which I do know about. So in the absence of time to properly investigate the sources themselves, I have come to my conclusions based entirely on the people I've had these arguments about. So far you're the only exception, because I have had these discussions with literally dozens of Chinese, or people aware of Ancient Chinese history, and have had many discussions with them regarding ancient Western vs Chinese military. And believe you me, I have seen far too many people who dismiss Alexander's chances in China out of hand, and portray the country as a land of invincible supermen, So far you are the only one who admitted that the country's military in the ancient era was largely similar to the Persian military (and thus, for instance, could be susceptible to the same flaws). So forgive me if I've made claims that are too hasty, and instead would like to ask you what you personally think about Alexander's chances going eastward (assuming you've read at least some of the four major ancient accounts of him), and also what you think about Chinese vs Western ancient military in general.

Adrian, My 'sneering dismissal' is based in part on the actual claims made by people (I've discussed Ancient Chinese history with many people by now, and you're the first to concede that their armies were basically like Persian armies), and also in part by the ideology of the Chinese government which, with its state-sponsored archaelogy and scholarship, promotes dominance of ideas which inflate the sense of power of the Chinese state, and encourages that sort of dishonest scholarship over something more conscientious. But also, let's not white wash the history of our discussion -- you still did claim that in one of the battles 450,000 casualties were on one side, and that is patently impossible, simply because of facts like us having a hard time supplying 200,000 troops in Iraq, and out of other considerations. I am inclined to support 200-300,000 man armies, with a small core of real troops surrounded by lightly-armed levies, and with death tolls of 10-15% -- statistics which are all attested to in the Persian empire as well. Also on the subject of the population -- in the Warring States period there were lots of battles, and therefore lots of people dying. So how can that period have as much population as after Chinese unification? It just doesn't make sense. I would say that the population during the Warring States would probably be 20-30% less than during the time when the 2AD census was taken.

As for King Arthur, I think that the evidence that links him with the Roman general in Britain is really fascinating. The movie King Arthur is based on this theory. There are records left that there was a Roman centurion who, after the Romans withdrew from Great Britain, remained there and that he led the Celts to successfully fight against the Saxons. And we know his name -- Arturius.

Adrian -- the thread is called "Are Greeks The Real Macedonians", so it doesn't matter if you feel like talking about Ancient Chinese instead. If you're going to write a detailed post, then start a thread devoted to that subject, because you are otherwise off-topic. For now the response I'll make will therefore be very short. Jennifer, Gustavus Adolphus did not live during the Middle Ages, having lived in the 16th century. Secondly when I googled for the battle you cited, I came upon the following quote (from here): That's hardly the 150,000 soldiers per army figure that you cite. Middle Ages armies were fraught with incompetence in organization and logistics, and therefore were in pathetically small numbers. At the Battle of Hastings, one of the most important battles in history and certainly of the Middle Ages, only 5-7,000 troops were the whole armies on both sides. So I wouldn't cite anything from the Middle Ages as constitutive of anything. I also don't understand why you compare the population or hygiene of Ancient China that of the Middle Ages. Why don't you compare it with the population and hygiene of the Roman Empire, which was unsurpassed not only in Europe but in the whole of the world, ever, until the 17th century? Same for the bureaucracy and organization -- if China is 'famed' for them, then I don't know what what books you read, because they're certainly not famed (although respected) in anything I've ever encountered in anything on ancient history. Now Roman organization and bureaucracy -- now that's famed. I don't really want to get into a contest over this, but 1) please don't compare China with anything Medieval, as the comparison will always be automatically in China's favor, and 2) words like 'famed' are inherently impossible to quantify, and thus are better off not being used by either side in the argument. Adrian, Ok, well the people that I've been arguing have been telling me that Chinese have fielded hundreds of thousands of heavy-armed infantry. I'm not an expert on Ancient Chinese equipment, so I took them at their word. However if they simply fielded levy peasants, then that makes their armies basically a lot like Persian armies (and we all know what happened to those). Really? I don't think so. If the population three centuries earlier is always comparable to the population now, then the world would always have had 6 billion people. Roman population in 1st century AD was, like Praxus said, 65 million only by conservative estimates (hardly inferior to Chinese population). So you can take that 65 million Roman conservative estimate, and compare it to 80,000 Romans during the censi taken in the 6-5th centuries BC, and you can see population growth. So no, I don't think China was exempt from this pattern. The population was not larger, and the Romans only introduced standing army of professionals in the 1st century BC, having a an army of citizen militia heavy infantry before that. But the social structure certainly was different, one being ruled by a republic and the other by autocratic monarchy. So I'm not surprised if the Chinese were fielding 200-300,000 men armies, because Persians did something similar, under that sort of autocratic rule. But the arguments I've encountered were of regular armies of 800,000 men, and all of these as heavy infantry -- and that still remains as ridiculous as when I first talked about it. Now please resist the urge to argumentatively respond to me in this thread. if you have the urge to discuss this further, then start a thread and leave this one on-topic. I will not reply to any further in-depth posts about China here.

Adrian, which bogus accomplishments are you referring to? If you hadn't noticed, I used the word 'achievements' in single quotes, i.e. "sic". As to the conscientious scholarship that indicates Ancient Chinese numbers to be bogus, my whole point is that conscientious scholarship is absent in China, which is what enables them to put forth these feel good stories as true history. And what facts lead me to believe that these numbers are most likely wrong? The economics and logistics. I won't get into it here, as that's off topic, but it is literally impossible to feed and command 800,000 men, and do so not only as the Persians might have done, but to armor them all in super-heavy armor similar to Greek hoplite panopaly? Please. If you'd like to discuss this further, please start a new thread on the subject.

Why it matters is: there are a lot of people and cultural groups who try to appropriate (and magnify beyond belief) past cultural achievements for themselves, to make themselves feel better. That's why, at the same time that Western scholarship would say that great ancient armies in Greece and Rome had 50,000-80,000 men, the Chinese will say they had great armies of 800,000 regularly clashing against one another (China has very little conscientious 'scholarship', so they can say whatever makes them feel good), plus they also like to point out at the list of 'achievements' that show their Ancient Chinese culture to be most superior. That's what's happening here as well, because it's not merely over being called Macedonians that these people are fighting about (who the hell cares), but over who can lay claim to Alexander the Great. Modern Greeks are doing something like this as well in their own respective ways, even though most of them are Slavs. [For a discussion on Chinese history, see the thread (link) that was split from this one.]

Why are you testing people? And no the Greeks were not the same thing as the Macedonians.

Goodness, how can you possibly have justification for saying any of that, based solely on this thread? As in regards to the apology I think you should have made, I won't go into a point-by-point response to your reasons for being rude to her. The main things she's said in this thread has been nothing but appropriate (even if I will not entirely agree with her use of the term 'environmentalism'). Especially considering the fact that when there will always be people to remind of the value of industry for us, it is very good to have people to remind of the value of nature for us. This she has done so extremely well, not to mention doing so from a rational framework of a scientist, i.e. someone who respects reason by definition. And like I said, you've been nothing but rude to her, making assumptions she's in this hostile camp or that. My view is that you should apologize to her, but of course what you choose to do is entirely up to you.

Yes, I do regard it being made out of context. Objectivism says that technology is good in principle, not that it is good acontextually and in every possible situation. The two are far from the same. I can still hold technology as good in principle, but reject to use it at this particular moment (i.e. regard it inappropriate at this point in time, when I want to use something else, say my body). T Yes I believe you are presenting it improperly. And where? In all of your arguments against the man who went out into the wilderness to live a simpler life. His entire course of action can be interpreted in the same way as my choice to use my hands rather than a machine to perform a difficult task. If it's ok in my case, why is it not okay in his? You assume that he rejected technology not only in that instance, but held it as bad in principle, and condemned him on that grounds. And because of this assumption, you have made a severe and hasty derogatory moral judgment upon a person who completely might not deserve it. I recommend you look at the thread Betsy Speicher started about the epistemology of judging people (here), which she started precisely because someone else had approached the task of judging people with a very similar mindset. The apparent meaning was that, "since Ayn Rand said that technology is good, in the same way as Ayn Rand said that money is good, the mountaneer man is bad." That was your syllogism. If you had meant something else, that's a different story, but I have read your post clearly, and so have some of the others, and the apparent meaning seems to be rather obvious (and quoting AR out of context all the way through, to corroborate this apparent and erroneous meaning). Then I hope you apologize to Liriodendron Tulipifera for judging her too quickly, and retract your condemnation of the mountaneer man until more information is available to corroborate your conclusion (and frankly, the little evidence that was presented in this thread points to a conclusion that is opposite).

Let me try to provide my own view in regard to environmentalism. There are two kinds of environmentalists -- the loud and explicit ones -- the intellectuals who make the talks and write the books, and the quiet, regular folks who nevertheless feel distaste about the modern world, and feel that nature without man is more righteous than nature with. So for those who really appreciate nature in the context of man, who value it not in how much it lacks man's interference, but in how much it can add to their own life and to the life of other human beings, I think those people will have a serious up-hill battle trying to reclaim the term 'environmentalism' from so many people who infuse it with such a bad meaning. Plus, considering the fact that the word was coined by hard-core anti-life people in the first place (Rachel Carson did a good share of the work), I would suggest not trying to reclaim the term in the first place, but going with what's in use already -- words like 'botanist', 'ecologist', etc etc. Nature is wonderful, please continue keeping it in good condition for the rest of us to enjoy it!

Inspector, I've read your posts in this thread, and I have to say that I very very strongly disagree not only with the concrete arguments you make here, but with your entire epistemology as such. That's why although you've taken to defend a good principle (environmentalists are bad) you've ended up attacking a woman who has made some amazingly perceptive points, and yourself have made statements that are really almost impossible to believe. Really. And where exactly does it say that "a rejection of technology is a rejection of life"? A full citation, with page numbers, please. If I want to uproot a plant in my garden, and can use a car to do it very simply, but instead opt to do it with my own bare hands just to feel the strength of my muscles and the virility of my body -- that's a rejection of life? What philosophy exactly are you living by? Because it certainly doesn't appear to be Objectivism. Oh goodness gracious. Money was invented in Asia Minor, in 700s BC. Does that mean that everyone who lived before that lived on the premise of rejection of life? I very strongly, in the strongest words possible, object to your misuse of Miss Rand's writing, and mis-excerpting what she wrote out of context. Yes this post is sudden, and yes it is out of nowhere, but after all a man can only take so much.

Well Scientologists are just nuts. I'm not talking about people who are positively crazy. I'm talking about regular average decent people, even some students of Objectivism, who come to think that everything can be done if they just will it. Resolving the mind-body dichotomy in oneself means understanding and accepting the proper role of both for one's life and happiness, not having the mind try to take over the body and then damning oneself when the attempt fails. EDIT: I want to add that, at the same time, those issues that do depend on one's mind -- this kind are usually extremely insiduous and difficult to fix -- and are fixed by consistent effort, provide an example of a tremendous kind of achievement. The answer then, is first identifying the problem (rather than assuming it to be of one kind or the other, volitional or non-), and then making the effort, sometimes an incredible effort, to fix it. Those that do, become wonderful people! (because by having to overcome the problem, they acquire certain exceptional traits that people not faced with such difficulties might not)

Right, what I said above should not be read as an endorsement of 'pill therapy' at the slightest instance, or at a drop of a hat. I am actually one of those guys who prefer to wait a bit with taking pills, to give the body a chance to react and to heal on its own, and would not recommend taking anti-depressant pills unless necessary. But at the same time, there is a certain segment of people who view everything as a volitional problem, and that can be really unhealthy -- both for them and for people around them such as yourself, LeoLover. So my point was -- just do what you have to do, focus on being healthy, and don't focus on the blame aspect that often comes when people view something as a philosophical problem. Even if it is philosophical, just focus on the good in life, on becoming better and healthier. Hold off on the blame and self-deprecation.

Oh my goodness! You hang out with the wrong people then! No Objectivists that I know would say such a horrible thing, and any that would say it I seriously doubt really are Objectivists in the first place. People who try to turn everything into a philosophical problem could themselves use some therapy. So, "LeoLover", if you suspect there's something wrong, don't mind those crazy people, just go and make sure you become healthy Best of luck!

The onus of proof lies on those who claim other people as the source for Objectivist ideas. Needless to say, those left-wing people who attribute her ideas to forerunners are completely ignorant of the philosophy they talk about. Ayn Rand has explicitly given credit to Aristotle for many of the fundamentals in Objectivism (discovering others herself), and John Locke for his political contributions, but much of Objectivism is new integration and new discoveries. Lastly, I will suggest that I would not recommend you to go around arguning for Objectivism if you don't understand it enough to be able to tell which ideas in it are original, and which are not. So, I'd recommend you devote more time to reading and studying of those ideas for now, and less time to arguing about it with others.

So Ariana, have you read these replies? Are you not replying any more because you were upset by what was said? I certainly would be upset too, because it's really easy to like Branden on the superficial level, from everything I know he's a very easy-going and laid back kind of person. But then again, I never said he wasn't.

Is formal mathematical notation really necessary for this thread? I mean come on, Harry Binswanger has had complicated posts on Calculus and mathematical infinity, without ever using any mathematical notation at all.

You could always post it on your website, and link to it... That's how Betsy does it with her essay on Humor for example.

Ariana, my response is twofold: 1) Have you read Atlas Shrugged? You say, Atlas Shrugged does say that. And it says so in a gentle, systematic, respectful, teacherly, patient way. You say that this sort of message doesn't come through in VoS, and if so, then there's a reason for it. Atlas Shrugged was the book where AR focused all her energy to show people at their best, how some people live it, and how others slowly and painfully arrive at it. VoS is a polemical book, as you said, to defend the ideal against the very, very, many people who would like to extinguish it. So, 1) the assertiveness and forcefulness of the book are part of the package, and 2) since it was written after Atlas Shrugged, it sort of assumes that the reader has read it already, and was exposed to all of the gentle and slow understanding of what Objectivism really is all about. The second part of my response, and one you'll probably definitely not listen to is, you are screwed if you have Nathaniel Branden in your circle. I mean it, you've got such an uphill battle because of his influence. Not only has he led a miserable life (why is he still incapable, at this late age, of finding and retaining a woman as his wife, for example), but his horrible vitriole and self-righteous attitude towards Ayn Rand and Objectivism has poisoned the minds of many who trusted his judgments, thus causing THEM to develop cynicism and unhappiness in their lives ALSO. If you could somehow detach yourself from his influence, which will not be an easy thing to do because he's an old man and appears to have a lot of wisdom on the surface, and then read Atlas Shrugged all by yourself, without input and comments by him or anyone else in his circle, you would be WELL on your way. But somehow I don't think you'll do any of that. P.S. I have read Nathaniel Branden too, watched an hour long interview with him, was even participating on his forum for a while a couple years back. What I can say with a very large degree of certainty is, his books during the earliest times, i.e. during and right after the Objectivist period, are some of his very best and brilliant works. As time goes on and his distance from the philosophy and its ideal grow, his intellectual output becomes progressively worse, less concrete, specific, precise, incisive, and more vague, unfocused, and bleak, until we arrive at the modern times when his intellectual output is NIL, when it should have been the highest. Take that for what you will.

Now that kind of advice I can really agree with

Metal music and gangster rap are examples of music designed with a view to "torturous reality that is crushing me." Jazz, even in its sad and melancholic moments, is still musical and pretty, so whatever the message of the saddest songs is, it still contains beauty and benevolence, insofar as it contains harmony, melody, and songs that touch the soul.