Boydstun

A Man to Man

Trump Gag Order Is Partially Upheld in Jan. 6 Case

When visiting a big city or San Francisco, some people give alms to bums who come on with a really elaborate cock-and-bull story of their plight. The handout is for quality of the lie, not for human need. No creative, elaborate tale? then no handout. The dissemblances being put to this site, particularly in questions by "new members", should not win reward of Oz's need for running down the site by responses to faux often-banal questions unless they put on a really good dissemblance to the point of seeming closely like a real live person. For my part, I'll take a break from answering any questions.

I wonder: Did you feel a call to the ministry? Were you good at it? Were you able to help some people needing advice on personal problems? Do you still believe in God? If not, do you find yourself more benevolent towards all humanity more than ever? Do you have an interest in teaching math or science? Have you seen the movie First Reformed? (I like it a lot.) I suggest: If you don't believe in God any more, tell your wife and children, explain why you've changed your mind, explain that you cannot simply choose what your mind takes as true, that you love them as ever and will always love them, and that you want them together in loving spirit with you. Those relationshiips might continue to grow, in somewhat new ways of value. If you do still believe in God, and want only to leave the ministry, the adjustment for them is less colossal, I imagine, than the challenge of them having to accept that you are atheist. If you have become atheist, don't lie to your loved ones about it. Be square and definitive about it, but not aggressive and militant about it. Find in your own thinking What in secular, natural terms is correspondent with elements in what the religious folk treasure in religion. You be agape. Getting prepared to teach math or physical science might bring you some renewal of the old joy and love of these old friends. I bet you CAN restore this knowledge in yourself and even get farther with it than ever. Struggle and hope. Look to the future, not redo of the past, and look to organic unity from all good in your past to a future. Teaching math and physical science might have some joy of participation now in a goodness in the world even after you die. Growth and resilience are beautiful.

Wooden Spool Mother had fashioned of thick thread a harness for the summer locust, thread run through the hole of the empty spool, the locust to pull across the floor, the children to smile. None could know the invisible thread spool-full, the rough unwindings of tomorrows and dreams, tough rewindings, revisions. The older boy to marriage and break and poverty and roughneck and loss of one arm and women lost and wealth won and death by cancer at fifty-four. The younger boy to no woman, no child, to books and pen ablaze, to man life-love, from nineteen, same age, to that man’s death at forty-one. Orbits six more, to new man life-love. The young girl, alone Mother’s own child, to marriage, children, and theirs, to failed health, non-stop pain, and death at sixty-six. That summer, its locusts, that wooden spool a while more in the second boy alone still unwinding the invisible to visible.

US Diplomat Indicted as Spy for Cuba

KE, Any advance in understanding the world and one's place in it as the human animal is part of a person, and in that broad sense of the personal, I'd say that for me Rand's drawing out of a thing I'd somehow known but not explicitly was beneficial: that life is the final end in itself. In terms of benefit to understanding, I'd say also Rand's discovery that and how life—focally, individual human life—is the arena and ultimate basis of any value or meaningfulness. Also of personal benefit, in the broad sense of the personal, for me, is Rand's main timbers for metaphysics: Existence is identity; consciousness is identification (focally, of existents). This is a good frame for examinations of other wide frameworks in which I for one have a life-long interest in knowing, from the Greeks to the present. In the narrower and more usual sense of the personal, for me, that benefit came when I was a young man, about five decades ago and continues to old age: mental health. In particular, learning that (i) rationality in one's thought, values, and action suffices for authentic value, and (ii) the goodness of loving oneself, esteeming oneself. Concerning misconceptions of Objectivism, two come to mind: that it is primarily a political viewpoint, and that it can be adopted simultaneously with holding onto some belief in the supernatural. These are good questions, and I'm looking forward to what others at this site have to say on them.

EC, discussion at posting boards like this one have fewer participants than years back, I suggest, overwhelmingly because of what has gradually become on offer at Facebook for them. The participants I've joined with here have shown themselves through the years, to the present, to be worthwhile to communicate with, and I'm glad the owner now allows opinion pieces promoting non-Objectivist ideas here, which has led to some good discussions. The FB format and this one each have advantages. FB can have much visual material such as photos of people or text. The format here allows space for normal writing as in a journal or a book, and it is in such writing venues, paper or screen, that the most serious of human thought can be reached by the originator and carefully, precisely held to account by themselves and others. Also, at this site, but not Facebook, you can see how many hits something you posted has gotten, an important feedback. My experience is that the more work at information and thought I've put into a post, the more hits it gets over time. Following number of hits, by the way, suggests that for the handful of people who write anything here, there are about 20 times that many who do not post here, but who hit my more substantive posts.

Well, at least he or she seems to be an actual human, seriously engaged in a two-way flow of information, argument, and learning. Unlike that apologist for Putin who came on here a few months ago only to preach and indicate he/she/it had nothing to learn from anyone else writing here or from Rand's philosophy.

That post may have been a couple of hours before the one of yours, Tad, that I quote below, but it was not very far upstream of yours. Did you not see it? But don't you see that Israel was taken by surprise exactly because communications of Hamas could not be monitored because Hamas was able to use the tunnels for all communications among themselves with hardwire communication lines in the tunnels? As I said to you earlier.

What strikes me is that Objectivism could not exist in its current form without the emergence of the institution of money, of savings and lending, nor without the industrial revolution nor without the continuing (and even increasing) ideal of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. Rand's response to those things in our culture were rather unusual. There is not yet any complete convergence in the wide society (thanks to Ayn Rand) to a settled answer concerning the moral merit of self-sacrifice or the idea that each individual is an end in themselves and should be treated as such. Sacrifices made by humans for spirits and sacrifices of humans by other humans does have indeed a long history, and its convergence in modern religions and in the secular social organization is flatly at odds with the moral ideals of Rand. There is not agreement between Rand and the modern Judeo-Christian culture on whether Pride and Self-Esteem are good things. Nor Pity, nor Mercy. The goodness of what outcomes an idea has produced is not something agreed on by all minds. It is perhaps because religious wars were eventually thought by all sides to be worse than reinforcement of their religious beliefs that they all came to greater religious tolerance. And perhaps many sects came to accept the reasoning (civil peace and business prosperity) entered by Locke into the Carolina Compact that began legality of having many (non-Catholic) sects, Christian and Jewish, operating side by side in the colonial city of Charleston. But I think it implausible that the shifting away from, in every colony become a state in the Union, the Blackstone penalty of death by fire of homosexuals had anything to do with "outcomes" and a unison estimation of them. I think it had more to do with creeping humanism, a creeping change in hierarchies of values. That, I think is what also explains the US Supreme Court decision in 1986 letting stand State criminal law against homosexual acts being reversed in 2003, making same-sex relations legal throughout the land. A cultural revolution had happened. At its core, I think, was the humanism brought out and elevated in people seeing the horrible disintegration and death of the victims of AIDS (eg. Rock Hudson), who were mainly gays in this country. Gay guys became more fully human in more minds. Shared humanism in those minds, not bumping into outcomes with humanism set aside.

Surely part of that reality is human history and anthropology and the extent of free will and the degree to which rational people will disagree about what is right, what are the proper purposes of government, and so forth. That reality basis should also include and structure of strategic games. When many of us think of at the term reality, is firstly of the physical world. I just want to stress that the pertinent reality should not stop there and with an image of one's thought and action based simply looking to the physical world (an image making too small much human individual development and education—everyone's). The fully pertinent reality has to be human nature in both its natural and social surround. I notice too, that many others have based conclusions on reality so far as they got it, and reached logical conclusions for law and political organization. Some conclude: most right is classical liberalism, indeed a free-market economy. Where Objectivism is radical in the sense of fundamental is where some of those are fundamental (Spencer or Mill or Nozick or * ) in diving down for what truly is human nature and truly right ideals, rationally discerned.

PERSERVERANCE Mars Rover

Tad, —Lieber Institute – West Point I noticed also, on the offensive side (in the attack 10/7/23 on Israel by Hamas), the tunnels allowed for surprise because communications were by hardwire in the tunnels and could not be intercepted for indication of the mustering of an attack, even a large one. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Future helper

"The IDF say they have destroyed 500 'terror tunnel' shafts used by Hamas in Gaza, out of the 800 they say have been found so far." –3 December 2023

Transfixing Paint

Schelling (1775–1854) and Poe (1809–1849) Morella (1835) Poe's Knowledge of German Schelling and the New England Mind

The proper link is: http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Books/325.shtml

KP— Rand was continually and deeply at odds with Nietzsche, as shown in my Nietzsche v. Rand series. And surely any kinship in feeling she had with his outlooks went flat as she developed her philosophy. I have a favorite passage in Z, Before Sunrise, though only when I've stricken or bent some of that text. I read Nietzsche though I don't have any kinship to his spirit. Once I had studied him far enough, my overall feeling toward him was revulsion. In that I've some likeness with Rand's spirit. Indeed, I've much affection for her spirit. My feeling towards the spirit of Schopenhauer is some warmth. I see now that "Counsels and Maxims" is contained within my copy of volume II of his Parega and Paralipomena, which I've yet to study. What I've studied of him pretty well thus far are The Four-Fold Root of Sufficient Reason, On the Basis of Morality, and The World as Will and Presentation. I thought that he agreed with Kant in thinking that happiness and morality are regularly at odds, though he disagreed with Kant on what was the basis and content of right morality. I thought Nietzsche came to be at odds with Schopenhaur concerning the nature of the will and evaluation of the will. Certainly Nietzsche came to sharp disagreement with Schopenhauer on the rightness of indulging in empathy, compassion, and pity (starting at least by the time of Daybreak 133). He put Schopenhauer among those secularists still clinging to Christian virtues, which should be discarded, at least the ones distinctive of that religion. It's hard to think of Nietzsche thinking highly of happiness, his sights of blessedness being conflict and beings higher than we humans from which they, the higher, might emerge. Rand made enjoyment of life the purpose of morality (for genius and common person alike), unlike Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, it seems. Where Schopenhauer has the sensible goal for humans to be painlessness and not pleasure, Rand would spit, I'd think. And communion with Idea, Schopenhauer's redemption from life in art, is opposite the metaphysical import Rand sees in art. In quick sum, so far, I'm thinking you've got too much commonality among these three philosophers, at least in their mature views. Delicious topic. Stimulating. Thanks for sharing this.

Renewed link in the first sentence of this composition is here: link for my window into the book: I Am I.

They have selected Nikki Haley.

Restored link for Newman.

When I was a child being raised by my stepmother and my father, she had reason to impress on me the rhyme “Once a job is begun, never stop until it’s done.” Later, as a youth, I proved to be remarkably persevering for age 13 or so in projects taking a year to complete. As an adult, I can’t help but notice much stoppage in my papers requiring a long period to produce. I get distracted by new writing projects nested in, nested in, . . . . But I’ve still got that old perseverance. This composition “Dewey and Peikoff on Kant’s Responsibility” has gotten stopped short of completion; the most recent long stoppage has run for over a year now. To ensure some speed once I do return for the finish, maybe a year from now, I’m going to bank the resources for the remainder here. I have gotten hold of the needed materials, shown in the list below. This chronology I’ve put together should be a good help to me and to my online readers of the remaining work on this. 1914, July — WWI begins. 1915, May — Dewey’s book GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS (GPP). 1915, Oct. — William Hocking’s criticism of GPP: “Political Philosophy in Germany” and Dewey’s reply. 1915, Oct. — Kuno Francke’s “The True Germany”. 1916, Feb. — Dewey’s “On Understanding the Mind of Germany” (picks up Francke). 1916, March — Santayana’s book EGOTISM IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY (EGP). 1916, Dec. — Dewey’s “The Tragedy of the German Soul” (his review of EGP). 1917, April — US enters WWI. 1918, Nov. — WWI ends. 1938 — Aurel Kolnai’s book WAR AGAINST THE WEST. 1942 — Second edition of GPP with Introduction by Dewey bringing the old text to bear on Nazism and WWII. Dewey’s Introduction is titled “The One-World of Hitler’s National Socialism”. 1943 — Review by Leo Strauss of GPP second edition. 1947 — E. M. Fleissner’s “In Defense of German Idealism”. 1948 — Frederic Lilge’s book THE ABUSE OF LEARNING – THE FAILURE OF THE GERMAN UNIVERSITY. 1950 — Walter Kaufman’s book NIETZSCHE, chapter 10 “The Master Race”. 1964 — Leonard Peikoff completes Ph.D. dissertation under direction of Sidney Hook. 1979 — Hook writes Introduction to JOHN DEWEY – MIDDLE WORKS, Volume 8, which includes Dewey’s GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS (1915) as well as Dewey’s “The One-World of Hitler’s National Socialism”, which was the Introduction to the reissue of GPP in 1942. 1982 — Peikoff’s book THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, with Introduction by Ayn Rand. 1998 — Randall Collins’ book THE SOCIOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHERS, chapter 12 “Intellectuals Take Control of Their Base: The German University Revolution”. 2004 — James Campbell’s “Dewey and German Philosophy in Wartime”. 2010 — Stephen Hicks’ book NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS. 2019 — Wolfgang Bialas, editor of the book: AUREL KOLNAI’S ‘THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST’ RECONSIDERED. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Prof. Roderick Long: Have you read Thomas Mann’s 1945-47 pamphlets “Germany and the Germans” and “Nietzsche in the Light of Contemporary Events”? Here they are: Click to access mann-germany-germans.pdf Click to access mann-nietzsche-contemporary.pdf I assign these pamphlets as part of my “Nietzsche and Modern Literature” course (where modern literature is represented by Thomas Mann, André Gide, D. H. Lawrence, and Ayn Rand). Mann had been a fairly pugnacious German nationalist during WWI, and had even broken with his Francophile brother Heinrich over it. The rise of Nazism led Mann to feel abashed over his earlier views. These pamphlets represent his nonfiction attempt to come to grips with his earlier views; his novel Doktor Faustus (which we also read) does the same in fictional form. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thanks again, Roderick, for the papers by Mann. I see that Mann’s writings at the time of WWI on that war as well his writings relating to WWII after it finished are folded into Rudiger Safranski’s ROMANTICISM – A GERMAN AFFAIR. Several years ago I was in the book stalls at an APA meeting and purchased a book titled THE GERMAN STRANGER – LEO STRAUSS AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM (2011). The author is William H. F Altman, and the vendor mentioned to me that Dr. Altman had shifted from teaching at the university level to teaching high school, specifically the high school system where I live, here in Lynchburg VA. I finally began to study this book when I resumed this project. After coming down here near dueling-banjo’s territories, he has continued to compose more books. Two more of his arriving at our house next week for the present project are: FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE: THE PHILOSOPHER OF THE SECOND REICH (2014) and MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR: Being and Time AS FUNERAL ORATION (2015).

I wasn't saying that any real people are living a life by purely imitation. I was making a thought experiment. I don't know about Mormons in particular, stansfield, but all people have some way or other of responding to the circumstance that when anyone dies, that is the total absolute end of that individual. Only memories and presence in some minds continuing for a while after one, continue one somewhat for that while. Some people will do almost anything to avoid squarely facing that fact, including burning fellows at the stake for rocking the collective religious psychosis denying the plain fact of full death. Objectivists and the way they should assimilate their mortality is not enormously different from others acknowledging that the natural world is all there is. Except that, for one important thing, the Objectivist knows that it is only in the circumstance of being alive that there are such things as alternatives, aims, problems, health, bettering, or making worse. So not only does the Objectivist leave behind God's backing as source of moral standards (however correct some of those rules might be from a purely rational standpoint), the Objectivist has a particular natural source of values, aside other natural-value theories subscribed to by other secularists. The major virtues in Rand's moral philosophy are some usual ones at least in name. But when she defines them, they are often given a different, new meaning. And they end up having a stronger unity with each other than usual. Then too, some traditional virtues are rejected in this ethical theory. Along the roadway in front of a neighborhood shopping center near our home, there recently appeared some signs, presumably for some local organized charity, saying "Give good." If I understand correctly, the meaning includes a usual tying of giving to others less fortunate as of great moral significance. Actually, many people's notion of what morality is is most typified by such giving as in "yes there is a Santa Claus for children everywhere you find unselfish love." The Objectivist will dispute that such gifts are the core of what is the moral. It is unlikely these different, contrasting understandings result in no differences in actions. I don't think, however, that your search for radical differences in actions because of radical differences in morality is a reasonable expectation. Most human actions are overdetermined: multiple sufficient reasons are in play in the head of the decision maker for a given decision. Similarly, many variations among different individuals in accounts, radically different, of what is moral action in a situation need not be revealed by radical differences in actions. Moreover, as Rand conveyed in her Galt's Speech, any success and joy attained in any human life was on account of living in some accord with the moral code she was putting forth.