Rinku

It just strikes me that any form of 'mass worship' is collectivist. This includes not only churches but also things like sports gatherings, and those teenage night club things where everyone pushes into eachother. The Objectivist equivalent of a church would have to be the polar opposite of what most churches are like in many respects. The Stoddard Temple was kind of a start -- the very building would need to be different, to make people seem larger and not humble. In Ancient Greece, they had temples for specific gods, where that god alone was worshiped. Could we not do the same thing, for very creative people -- temples where particular historical heroes are honored? We already have something like that with the Abraham Lincoln memorial, that giant statue of him sitting in a chair. Anyway, I think a better idea would be for each person to construct a temple for themselves -- a room where they have all their greatest achievements and creations, etc., a place where they could dwell on and worship themselves. If collectivist religions requires worship of one god, wouldn't it make sense that an 'individualist religion' would require worship of one god per person?

I've heard of the lecture but not been able to afford it since I'm poor. Also I have trouble discriminating spoken words so lectures that don't have transcripts would be hard to attend to. For epistemology right now I'm working on figuring out what conceptucal common denominators (ccd's) are, whether they are related to concepts in general and if so how are they arrived at (for example, whether circular-ness is a ccd or not and if so how was it arrived at), on how percepts and objects work (for example, whether 'a stack of pennies' can be an object/percept or not), and also on figuring out the relationship between grammar and epistemology (for example, which elements of language are required by any communicatable language (a 'to be' verb, verbs and nouns in general) and which elements aren't or are optional (adverbs?)). The last one is probably the most important of the ones I'm interested in because my interest there isn't just academic, I'm working on a game that has a 'conceptual conversation system' (you talk to other characters by selecting picture-words and arranging them, similar to scrabble but with words instead of letters) and want to figure out how epistemology applies to such things as sentence construction, what are the most important words/concepts to include, arguments/debates, etc... Basically, Ayn Rand laid a good basis for epistemology with her theory of concepts, distinction between meaning and definition, and so on, but what I want is a theory of 'epistemological linguistics', an explanation of what all the different parts of speech mean cognitively -- even such things as punctuation -- such as the dash thing I am using now -- are those concepts? How about a period, an explanation mark, or a question mark? After I figure some of this out, I'll be able to make the game better. What books I am reading: right now, mostly Russian writers (since the abovementioned game is set in Russia), Dostovesky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.

I would say that the government has no right to intervene even in the lack-of-feeding and lack-of-curing-disease type thing, but a child has a right to choose another guardian and a guardian can't guardian a child against their will. So say for example that a child doesn't like how his parent is treating him. He can then find someone else to parent him, either another relative or a friend or some charity orphanage organization. This seems to work only for later ages though, for a 1-year-old there is no opportunity to do this when the child isn't being fed. So the above doesn't really solve the problem. ...Wow, I'm stumpted. I can't think of an easy way to solve it. Okay, how about this: "Mis-parenting" could be defined as 'a non-criminal action which relieves a person of the right to parent the child in question, but is not a punishable issue otherwise', and this would include not feeding a 1-year-old, not seeking treatment for their cancer rationally, and so on. This would have be more strictly defined and guideline principles developed. The child would then select another guardian (if it is old enough to), or a reasonable choice made for the child, subject to the child's later ammendment (subject to the the new guardian's or charity orphanage's acceptence).

Right now, 1) the mechanics and nature of free will / volition and its relationship to causality; 2) how Objectivism as a whole works as a system (its organization and 'organics'), and 3) the parts of epistemology that Ayn Rand didn't get to finish writing about.

Well, there was Ayn Rand herself -- she was as close to a real life John Galt of anyone I know of. I think the category is 'someone who makes both great intellectual change in the reaml of ideas and great physical change in the realm of concrete reality'. If that is the category, then there are a number of examples. Jefferson and Paine and a couple of other founding fathers might fit. I do think it's very possible that such a person, and maybe more than one of them, exists today. He or she may just be preparing for the right moment? Remember, no one knew about John Galt until he wanted them to know about him.

I like primarily Japanese composers (for videogames, anime, etc.) -- Yasunori Mitsuda, Michiko Naruke, etc. My favorite classical composer is Prokofiev, also I like Faure, Beethoven, Alkan, Brahms, Bach, etc. I don't like any music with lyrics but that just may be due to me having a difficulty in understanding spoken/sung language, so most lyrical music sounds like gibberish to me unless I am reading the lyrics while listening to it. Oh, and both my father and brother are music composers and I do like some of what they write.

Hello to this messageboard's members. -I am a video game designer, and plan to do that professionally. As of yet I've made next to no money from it but still consider myself in the learning phase of it. I've been designing games in some form or another for over a decade, and have run several online game design magazines. I went to Rutgers University where I studied biochemistry and psychology. -I found this community via danielshrugged/ishalltriumph, who I've known on Livejournal for some time. He's been greatly valuable to me in the process of coming to understand Objectivism. -I'm most interested in the Objectivist aesthetics (which makes sense due to being a game designer), but the other parts are great too.

Yes, after posting that I did think about it a bit more and thought that performance was the wrong word, since they don't actually use their body to perform in the sense of a singer, music instrument player, dancer, actor, etc. I agree that they would be in the same category as the conductor and choreographer, but that together the 'performance artist' category and the 'director artist' category together have more in common with eachother than the 'primary artist' category. both 'performance artists' and 'director artists' take some blueprint made by a 'primary artist' and then actualize it in its final form. so perhaps 'secondary artist' would be a good name for that category. (Re introductions: will do.)

People differ in the age at which they can understand philosophy -- I was earlier than most, I was thinking about free will and 'what can exist outside the universe' at about 9. So I'd say philosophy could be taught to very advanced students in elementary and high school (by very advanced I mean students who obviously can think at the highly abstract level) -- either that or studied apart from school on their own, or via a private tutor. But apart from those few who are actually *curious* about philosophy and think about it on their own, I don't think it should be a school requirement. If it were made one, either the class would be so difficult that no one would pass, or be not philosophy at all but a watered down repeating of material without understanding. I don't know whether everyone needs to know philosophy or not. Even without learning it explicitly, a person does have it in implicit sense of life form. It does help a person think more clearly and make better decisions and is a great protective device against irrationality but there are people who get along well and can be perfectly rational and moral even without studying it explicitly. So I'd say that those who will gain significant value from philosophy in their career, such as teachers, scientists, artists, writers, politicians, lawyers, ceo's, historians, and the like, should study it as soon as they are able to do so and have an interest in it, and that it should be optional for everyone else. Also, I don't think that someone could fully understand philosophy in high school, even with four years of it, it's too broad a subject and requires a lot more mental work than most other subjects do. It would be like trying to go from addition to calculus in a couple of years. I'd say if a single class in it existed it should be on basic logic (the syllogism and its extensions) and the identification of fallacies in argument rather than a more topical study of the issues of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc.

A director (of a film, etc.) can be looked at as a performing artist. He enables the art by organizing its elements, editing, and so forth. The director often also does add some artist content -- many directors do write some or most of the screenplay, for example. But even if he didn't add any artistic content at all, he would still be a performance artist in the same sense that a dancer, actor, and so on, are. Namely because: the director makes the final decision in what is and isn't presented in the artwork. He is the final editor, and he makes those editing decisions on an artistic basis, i.e., through his knowledge of aesthetics. (Oh, and this is my first post here, hello. I found this forum through DanielShrugged/Ishalltriumph's livejournal)