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Jim A.

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    I'm fifty years old, live in Washington but have lived in California (Sacramento) most of my life. I was in the Navy for seven years, though never on a ship (my first ship was the Voyager of the Seas while taking the Cordair Arts Cruise!). I love literature, movies and music. Favorite writers are Ayn Rand and Jack London. Favorite films are CHOCOLAT and THE STRANGER (1946, with Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles and Loretta Young). Favorite composers are Rachmaninoff and Chopin.
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    At an assisted living center.
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    Nursing Assistant

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  1. At the top of my "Atrocity List" of philosophically corrupt movies (of the ones I've seen) is (drum-roll, please): 1--The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. The basic message of this film seems to be that the rich--even if they've never hurt anybody--should be brought down, not by a peg, but by about forty storeys, quite literally. Just because they're rich. If you see the film you'll know what I mean about the forty storeys. I was very angry with the writer and the director of this film after I saw it. Then: 2--When Worlds Collide (1951), directed by George Pal. It's very entertaining, but there is a supreme act of moral injustice in this movie. Someone--it happens to be a crotchety old rich man in a wheelchair--is promised his life if he contributes money to the building of a spaceship that would carry 40 people off the earth to another planet to avoid being destroyed by a planet on a collision course with Earth. Watch how this financier is betrayed. It is truly appaling, though the act of betrayal is presented as virtuous. 3--It's a Wonderful Life (1946), with Jimmy Stewart. The villain of the movie is one Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), yet another crotchety old rich man in a wheelchair. He does all kinds of dastardly things to people of lesser means, apparently because he's rich. 4--Fly Away Home, with Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin. A man endangers his little girl just so she can "fly" a flock of parentless geese in his airplane south to where they would normally migrate to: some little pond hundreds of miles away from the girl's home. Let's all just sacrifice to nature.
  2. Jim A.

    De-Baptisim

    One of my favorite comedies is the film Ed Wood, with Johnny Depp. In one part of the film, Ed Wood can't find anyone to fund the making of his movie Plan 9 from Outer Space. As a last resort, he turns to the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills. They agree to give him the money, on one condition: that the entire cast and crew of his upcoming "masterpiece" be baptized! One of the people in line for baptism is played by Bill Murray. When he is about to be immersed and the pastor asks him "Are you prepared to renounce Satan and all his evils?", Murray replies: "Sure!"
  3. Since I have not read the majority of works by any one science fiction writer, I can only say which writers whose works I've liked the most so far: Jules Verne, Fredric Brown, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells. As far as best works I've read in the sci-fi genre: Novels: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (sure would love Peter Jackson to direct a film of this one!) 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (despite its anti-military-technology premise) The Time Machine by H.G. Wells The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham Novelettes: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (this work has an anti-intellect premise, but it's fascinating to read as you witness the transformation of a mentally retarded man into a genius through gradual spelling and grammar changes in his diary) Short Stories: Arena by Fredric Brown Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw
  4. My favorite is probably "Can You Read My Mind?", as sung by Maureen McGovern. The music is from the movie Superman, but the song is never sung in the film--the lyrics are spoken, by Margot Kidder. It works quite well in the movie; nevertheless, it is wonderful to hear the words sung. Here's the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYZidVGhQqc. (Incidentally, when the words read out on the screen and they say "...a god or a fool..", I believe McGovern actually sings "...a god...I'm a fool".)
  5. Hi, Nicholas, and welcome to the Objectivist Online Forum. It sounds like you enjoyed Atlas Shrugged. Out of curiosity, was there any particular character (or characters) you identified with?
  6. I wrote a short story a couple of years ago in which Objectivist aliens do play a part. I don't give them that name, of course, and the aliens are definitely not human, but nevertheless their philosophy would be considered Objectivist. Entitled "The Engine", the story is one of my first attempts at writing fiction of any kind--and it shows; the story is pretty bad, however on re-reading it I still find the story of the aliens very intriguing. It is one of my fantasies in life to hear about the discovery of an alien civilization that just happens to be consistently rational, all the way down to the root of their thinking. Here is the link: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgjr99hw_0s8cp3. The story starts off as a Nineteen Eighty-Four-type story, but still the aliens have a part in influencing the events, even though indirectly. You'll have to tell me if the existence of such a civilization as I describe would actually be conceivable.
  7. By the way, from the previews it looks like the new Day the Earth Stood Still has alot of green light in it, as if the moviemakers are trying to say something about being Earth-friendly. Is that true? Recently, I wrote a (rather awful) short story that presents aliens I would like to meet and would have the proper attitude toward us--and themselves. I welcome any criticisms (I'm pretty new at storytelling, and it shows), and any of them would be helpful to me. The story's called "The Engine": http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgjr99hw_0s8cp3.
  8. I'm 51. Sometimes I feel like I'm 101, sometimes like I'm in my thirties, and very often I behave like I'm 12 years old!! (I and my friends at work are pranksters to some extent.) I've met people who are in their 20's and act like they're 12 years old; throwing tantrums and the like. I've met people who are in their 20's and have the maturity of a 51 year old. And I've met people, both exposed to Ayn Rand at an early age and those who don't know who she was, who have become cynical in their later years, who laugh and have a "good time" with people but who feel threatened by anyone who has a rational, sunlit, joyous, benevolent, "can-do" sense-of-life. I do not want to become one of those people. And I am working on getting rid of the fear of aging I've had over the last 5-10 years. I want to feel, no matter what age I am, that I am happy to be that age, just as I was happy to be 20, 30 and even 40. Frank Lloyd Wright expressed the attitude I want to achieve, and that I think everyone should have, no matter what their age. On the Mike Wallace Interview program in the late 50's, he was asked by Wallace about his feelings regarding aging. He replied: "'Young' has no meaning for me; it's something you can do nothing about. But youth is a quality, and if you have it you never lose it." He was 88 when he said that, and still designing buildings.
  9. Has anyone seen some of the stabs at Ayn Rand on YouTube? There's one video where some guy is gleefully burning a copy of Atlas Shrugged (so I guess he would advocate government censorship of any "dangerous" books), and another where some heavy metal "musicians" perform a song called "i hate ayn rand" (the "music" consists mainly of someone screaming and other people thrashing their guitar strings). I didn't bother to check out any others.
  10. The only Dostoevsky I've read are Crime and Punishment, The Possessed (aka, The Demons), Notes from the Underground and a few shorter works. I'd like to read C&P again, but, for me, The Possessed will require a second reading; I had practically no idea as to the significance of the characters' actions and dialogue in the book. But then, when I first read it, I was expecting an experience like I would get from other Romantic novelists: one of exaltation and uplift. It looks to me, however, that one does not read Dostoevsky for the experience, though his work may be artistically integrated (I believe it is). That can give a reader an experience, but of a different kind. It seems Dostoevsky is mainly to be read for his insight, particularly into the nature of human evil, and that can be of tremendous value. For instance, with C&P, the value to me is understanding how a criminal mind--a mind with the premises Petrovich spots in Raskolnikov's crime essay--responds to his circumstances and his environment. For The Possessed, it is grasping the process by which a nation or culture allows itself to be corrupted by outside influences (Stavrogin and his friends are all educated abroad, mainly in Switzerland, as I recall). For NFTU, it's observing how someone's constantly second-guessing himself and self-suspicion can drive him insane. One doesn't "enjoy" Dostoesky--one learns from him. (Incidentally, Woody Allen's "Notes from the Overfed", his parody of NFTU, can be found in his book Getting Even.)
  11. Tenure: If you haven't read it already, you have got to read Woody Allen's short piece, "Notes from the Over-fed", which Allen says was inspired after reading Dostoevsky and a copy of Weight Watchers magazine on the same flight. Hilarious!!
  12. I am fifty-one years old. I did not seriously consider Objectivism until I was twenty-eight. But by then, because of the ideas I had allowed myself to be brought up on and accepted, I had so seriously damaged my life that even today I have to deal--daily--with the consequences of those ideas and of acting on them. It's a long story that I won't go into. I'll just list the most deadly ideas I used to hold before the circumstances they created forced me to start checking my premises: --There is an after-life. There is a kind of "consciousness pool" from which everyone's consciousness (or soul) comes from when born and to which it goes after death. Thank you, Plato. --It's all right to be mystical. After all, everyone else is. Almost everyone I knew believed in a God. --Act on your feelings. Feelings are the guide to action. --There can be more than one universe. --The good is to contribute to society. One's existence is really not justified unless he or she contributes to the world, to society, to other people. --Some capitalism is good, for sure; but we need a little socialism. --Industry is destroying the environment, even though we need industry and technology is good. --A great work of art is one that exalts the opposite of one's beliefs and values (!). That makes a truly daring work of art. --One must experience everything before he or she dies. --Be "open", and be "open-minded". I accepted these ideas, mostly subconciously and by default, in my younger years. But if I am a victim (I do not think I am, because no one forced these ideas into my head), then I am a victim of what I would call "soul-tampering". Said tampering has many mostly unwitting agents--teachers, ministers, parents, classmates--but the mastermind can only be the same one who has been tampering, centuries after he was published, with the rest of us: a certain philosopher from Konigsberg, Germany, who's been dead two hundred years.
  13. There are a number of ideas on basic, fundamental issues that I think have "screwed-up" people's heads. One is the idea that A does not necessarily have to be A. Another is: "But what's reality? What's reality for you isn't necessarily reality for me." Another is: "But whose reason? What's rational for you isn't necessarily rational for me." But there are a couple of ideas that first come to my mind as two of the foremost ideas involved in "screwing-up" people's minds: One is the idea that there is an after-life; after all, what better idea to give people the excuse to defer the pursuit of their highest, most precious values to some later time--say, the time after they die and no longer have to struggle to achieve any values; Another is the idea that the Universe had a beginning. Think about it: if the Universe had a beginning, that presupposes it had a cause. That cause, therefore, had to be something before and superior to the Universe. And if there is anything "superior" to the Universe, then its laws of existence would supercede those of this Universe. If so, that "other", "superior" universe can be appealed to in times of crisis in this one; someone can "talk" to that "other" universe--or that "person" who controls this Universe. One can wish--or pray. A person in this Universe does not have to rely on his or her own effort to think, act, struggle and survive. This person does not, therefore, have any real incentive to engage the primary involved in this process--thinking. Over the years, lack of rigorous exercise of rational thought can have only one result: insanity. I don't remember who said it, but it is certainly true: "The sleep of reason breeds monsters." (Was it, of all people, the painter, Goya?)
  14. I have not seen this film; perhaps I should. But it seems to me, from the things I've heard and read, that this motion picture uses Romanticism to attack and destroy (or "de-construct") the concept of masculinity. As I say, perhaps I should see it. I think it would have value if it attacks the idea that the standard of judging one's sexual "orientation" is what the community says or thinks. The 1960's film The Children's Hour hinted at this. It showed how a small town's prejudice and hatred of anything so alien to it as homosexuality (in this case, lesbianism) destroyed--in essence, killed--a young woman, bringing her to take her own life. "Community standards" are nothing but collectivist evil, because they use the "community" as the standard of judgment, rather than reason. I like how Edgar Rice Burroughs' title character in A Princess of Mars phrased it: "...the evil idea of community..."
  15. Oh--and may I add a few of my own?: "Philosophy is what makes people tick--and sometimes they tick like a bomb." "The lowest kind of coward is the man who's terrified of living in a universe of absolute laws." "These are the 'End Times'--if you want them to be."
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