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Boydstun

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Posts posted by Boydstun

  1. Monart, so bottom line, if I'm understanding you correctly: we are not in a position to know that anyone has proven (in the appropriate sense of the word proven) that a SARS-Covid virus exists? Not that we should conclude that it does not exist, only that we should not be concluding that it does exist?

    I am personally not in a position to know by the dispositive physical evidence that any virus of any sort exists. I don't even have a microscope, and the reports are that even that would not do the trick. I don't have time to learn all things from the fundamental evidence.

    (In my apartment, I did once check out for myself what Newton had reported one would observe concerning the shape of the water surface in his rotating bucket-of-water experiment. He told true, and indeed, it was only after my own demonstration that I could understand perfectly clearly what he had been describing.)

    There is much I count as science and scientific medicine I take for true because I've had some science education and have formed for myself some maps to most reliable sources for solid science reporting. I don't have the background training or willingness to invest my time in virus science to understand adequately what you or those guys mean. My scientific doctor advises I get such-and-such medicine to take for such-and-such potential or manifest physical problem. I pay everyone and do it.

    I credit researchers in microbiology, and research of big pharma, and my doctors with having pulled me back from death bearing down from infection by HIV, and I still follow the guidance of those physicians to keep me alive even while I have that infection. (No one was ever successful in developing a vaccine for that virus, and so far as I know, no one ever claimed that they had done so.) My closeness to research on that virus and its hideouts and mutations is not more than from reading my Scientific American. I never got Covid. I took the vaccines. They make me a little sick for a day, but then I'm fine. I'll stay with my past social lines to scientific truth and sources of expert advice. I'll continue to think that there is that Covid virus and that it is an air-borne transmission and take sensible precautions against it based on that relayed science.

  2. Monart, are you saying these guys have it wrong? That you know they are wrong?

    We had a CDC when the Asian Flu hit in 1957-58 in the US. We knew it was coming in advance. A lab developed an effective vaccine. It was not being produced quickly enough to save many people, so Ike got funding for ramping up the rate. It hit children the most. In terms of today's US population, it resulted in the equivalence of about 200,000 deaths here. State and federal government did not opt to close schools. Many were closed by lack of attendance. If those governments had not ordered businesses closed during the Covid sweep, impact on family economies and the general economy would have been by private decisions and the course of nature, and there would have been no rationale for government to compensate people whom it had prohibited from production. Not that today most people think such a rationale is needed for a check from the Treasury. 

    I scoured the New York Times archive for its coverage of the Asian Flu (Indonesia) pandemic in those years. It was little mentioned, and the main concern was that it not impact readiness of our military. The revolution in communications technology since then was surely a factor, I'd say, in the drastic difference in how the Times covered the two pandemics. I was able to monitor day by day whether a friend of mine in a federal prison in Ohio had died from his case of Covid by using this information resource as tipoff for further search (this map).

  3. Not at all. I know nothing of objective correctness or incorrectness of the content of what I referred to as cultural brainwashing in childhood about a male or female sexual psychology. By using "brainwashing" I did not mean to put any negative valence on it, only an impressive strength of it. Sexual psychology with its purported differences as between psychology of men and women is more than simply what acts one likes to do, how one likes to appear, or whether one is more turned on by men or women in general. No, it is the sort of thing Branden wrote about, and the sort of thing we see in older films and in psychologies Rand puts into her characters. It's fine to put those psychologies into characters (and real children), but I think it is self-delusion to think you are just discerning and reinforcing a fact deriving from human biology.

    (This reminds me of how Murray Rothbard would try to pass off as natural rights, such as right specifications for ownership in land, that actually are rights shot through with inherited social conventions. Nothing wrong with such rights, only with the blindness or deception.) 

    The culture, no culture, commits a crime in implanting a predominate sexual psychology in the children. (I doubt the government has to be much involved except by way of protecting individual human rights.) And the idea that one or another or another, and always only one simple one, is simply on account of one's biological development is, I conjecture, the usual situation of people wanting the world and themselves to be simpler than they really are. That's most of any population.

    I have gathered, Tad, that you have not personally known anyone who is transexual, and you seem to have only a politics-sourced and -framed view of them, pretty distant from those real persons. I don't know a great deal about the subject, what I have conveyed does not seem much gotten by you or helpful to you, and it's not where I should be giving my attention. So I hope we can stop this tangent soon, interesting as it might be of itself at the level of beer-talk.

    Our political priorities, anyway, should be on who among candidates thinks what about the brazen State violation of the individual rights of women going on, the federal budgets in the red, (and as Jon has raised) who is a warmonger or a Chamberlain, who will or will not continue the upgrade of our nuclear defense, who will or will not subsidize or bail out private businesses . . . .

  4. 2 hours ago, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

    . . .

    Also, I'm curious about what you mean when you say "holding in abeyance", mostly because I don't hear that phrase often. Am I to take it to mean some kind of evasion, in this case of mortality?

    . . .

    Well, yes, it is an evasion, and a repression requiring continual reinforcement that has been going on since one understood that we each die. 

    My picture is that all people live under a terror of death once they learn solidly that each life ends. And it looks to me that an awful lot of people's behavior should be looked at as how they are responding, how they are carrying on, under that terror. How do they skirt around their eventual (or imminent) absolute annihilation? Or perhaps they face it squarely, brutally honestly, as I do. I've endured deaths of quite a few loved ones and family members (starting during the American war in Vietnam). I lived under a specific death-expectation horizon (2-year) myself for many years. I was with my first life-partner when he died, and I think about when I or my husband die and the other is left alone. I think about it squarely, and although some of my poetry is about death, there is no skirting it there either.

    I gather that not all religions are such a blatant skirt-around of death as Christianity. My conjecture is that all of them are importantly, if not wholly, about that mental coverup and relief. My relief is by getting as much correct setting of death in mind as possible, including not only recognizing that it is end of existence, but end of specific fundamental categories of existents. Sort of like cleaning better and better any stowaway remnants of existents and our conscious experience lurking in one's head in conceiving death.

    Rand apparently thought about her own death as ending of the world. I don't much like that perspective, even as some sort of metaphor. I keep my eyes set on the world as it continues beyond my death, not on me going out; set on the continuing existents, especially the human world, which is what I most cherish; then too, on where I got to in my work and remember my dear ones. Clearly, Rand didn't always think of her death that world-ending way; she prepared best she could to have her work remain a mark in the world after her life and find minds who would respond to it as others of us did while she was alive.

    The social element I notice in one's mind encountering the world has a spring for belief in spirits beyond nature, and this is not the social element Rand stressed in her 1957 composition concerning mystics of spirit. My take is here.

     

  5. 1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

    How would surgery and hormones change what sex a person is?

    When I first met the transexual who became our friend, his transformation had been completed. He just seemed like a man. He looks that way in facial hair patterns, and sounds that way in voice. He moves like a man. If told he was formerly a woman and you started looking for physical traces of that, I'd notice the fairly wide hips for a man. I have not checked out the thinness of his wrists. I have not seen him unclothed, and I don't know how the density of his muscle feels. I found a little online about the physical changes from woman–>man, and you may find more: 

    Quote

     

    The first physical changes you will probably notice are that your skin will become a bit thicker and more oily. Your pores will become larger and there will be more oil production. You’ll also notice that the odors of your sweat and urine will change and that you may sweat more overall. You may develop acne, which in some cases can be bothersome or severe, but usually can be managed with good skin care practices and common acne treatments. Some people may require prescription medications to manage acne, please discuss this with your provider. Generally, acne severity peaks during the first year of treatment, and then gradually improves. Acne may be minimized by using an appropriate dosing of testosterone that avoids excessively high levels.

    Your chest will not change much in response to testosterone therapy. That said, surgeons often recommend waiting at least 6-12 months after the start of testosterone therapy before having masculinizing chest surgery, otherwise known as top surgery, in order to first allow the contours of the muscles and soft tissues of your chest wall to settle in to their new pattern.

    Your body will begin to redistribute your weight. Fat will diminish somewhat around your hips and thighs. Your arms and legs will develop more muscle definition, with more prominent veins and a slightly rougher appearance, as the fat just beneath the skin becomes a bit thinner. You may also gain fat around your abdomen.

    Your eyes and face will begin to develop a more angular, male appearance as facial fat decreases and shifts. Please note that it’s not likely your bone structure will change, though some people in their late teens or early twenties may see some subtle bone changes. It may take 2 or more years to see the final result of the facial changes.

    Your muscle mass will increase, as will your strength, although this will depend on a variety of factors including diet and exercise. Overall, you may gain or lose weight once you begin hormone therapy, depending on your diet, lifestyle, genetics and muscle mass.

    Testosterone will cause a thickening of the vocal chords, which will result in a more male-sounding voice. Not all trans men will experience a full deepening of the pitch of their voice with testosterone, however. Some may find that practicing various vocal techniques or working with a speech therapist may help them develop a voice that feels more comfortable and fitting. Voice changes may begin within just a few weeks of beginning testosterone, first with a scratchy sensation in the throat or feeling like you are hoarse. Next your voice may break a bit as it finds its new tone and quality.

    The hair on your body, including your chest, back and arms will increase in thickness, become darker and will grow at a faster rate. You may expect to develop a pattern of body hair similar to other men in your family—just remember, though, that everyone is different and it can take 5 or more years to see the final results.

    Regarding the hair on your head: most trans men notice some degree of frontal scalp hair thinning, especially in the area of your temples. Depending on your age and family history, you may develop thinning hair, male pattern baldness or even complete hair loss. Approaches to managing hair loss in trans men is the same as with cisgender men; treatments can include the partial testosterone blocker finasteride, minoxidil, which is also known as Rogaine, applied to the scalp, and hair transplantation. As with cis men, unfortunately there is no way to completely prevent male pattern baldness in those predisposed to develop this condition. Ask your provider for more information on strategies for managing hair loss.

    Regarding facial hair, beards vary from person to person. Some people develop a thick beard quite rapidly, others take several years, while some never develop a full, thick beard. Just as with cisgender men, trans men may have varying degrees of facial hair thickness and develop it at varying ages. Those who start testosterone later in life may experience less overall facial hair development than those who start at younger ages.

     

    I enjoy being a boy. I've always been glad I was not a girl. In 2000 it was discovered that I had severe osteoporosis, and very likely I had it back 6 years to when I had broken a leg just by twisting it at age 46. The specialist at U of C told my doc to check level of free testosterone, doc did, and I was low (maybe plum out—I don't recall). So doc prescribed this testosterone gel you rub on your chest. Libido born again. I bet it has that salutary effect on straight guys also. Doc took me off of it when some patients started having some heart problems, but I think other docs are not so cautious as that and still prescribe it. Tell them Boydstun testified that it can have a very good effect on you. 

  6. Chapter 11 of John Richardson's Nietzsche's Values (Oxford 2020) is titled "Creating – Founding New Social Norms." Therein he writes:

    Quote

     

    Now that we have a fuller idea what's involved in "founding" values for a community, let's try to specify better what values Nietzsche wants to found. What kind of community does he hope for, held together by what norms, and by what kind of allegiance to norms?

    The ultimate point is to redesign norms to enhance humans' power—to favor most effectively its "growth in control." The highest such achievements will of course always be by a few individuals. . . . 

    We're concerned with improving a distinctively human kind of control—the distinctive form of power that our human history has been building our capacities for. One might perhaps have expected Nietzsche to think here of the kind of control that is surely our species' most blatant achievement—its enormous practical and technological power over its environment. One might have imagined his heroes of the future to be Ayn Randian wielders of the greatest instrumental (or political) power and that the new social norms would be platforms for them.

    But it's clear that Nietzsche has in mind a "spiritual" growth and power. . . . (455–56)

     

    It is pleasing to me to see this scholar taking notice of a big difference between Nietzsche and Rand complementing my treatment of it in "Locomotive Rand v. Nietzsche." But what I'd like to draw attention to for this thread is that in print an established professional academic philosopher (besides Rand-friendly Lester Hunt [Chapter 14] and Rand-devotee ones) should mention Rand at all. Ever since The Fountainhead and the film of it made a splash, there has been popular press simply identifying Rand with Nietzsche by a superficial association (for political smear): individualist-egoist, Roark-Superman, Nietzsche rerun, fascist. But the academic stand has been as in the book American Nietzsche (2012): do not mention the existence of Ayn Rand. Richardson's natural mention of Rand merits a hat-tip. 

  7. The facts about Manning are physical facts of his surgery, hormone injections, and consequent changes in its body. Also, its facts of action as charged in his criminal conviction. The facts in the charges against Assange will be determined by a jury from the evidence. Those facts are whatever they are already, but they will not be accepted legally unless he is convicted. We have designed that legal determination process such that some guilty people will be judged Not Guilty even though the alleged facts of the case as brought by the prosecution are indeed the facts of reality; so that fewer innocent people will be wrongly found guilty.

    Persons who have their sex changed by surgery and hormones are not the same as someone who senses they are psychologically a different sex without such a physical-alteration project (I'm not entirely convinced there are any such things as male versus female sexual psychologies, such as put about by Rand and Branden, that are independent of brainwashing of the children by the culture, i.e., there may well be no such distinct psychologies that are purely an outcome of biological nature). In official government documents, I'd think the proper pronoun or salutation for them is just as for those us who don't feel that way. Manning is in a different category: the category of having undergone the medical, physical alteration, last I heard.

    There is a marble sculpture of old of an hermaphrodite, which turns my stomach. Also, I dislike drag queenery. But the circumstance that such matters are top political issues for voters grossed out by such sculpture or human behaviors is bad for the future of our country. Such cultural issues promoted to political hay have gotten way out of proportion in comparison to the circumstances that people are having to pay so much for groceries or are having their life savings stolen due to government-driven inflation or, as could come in the future if the federal budgets in the red are not stopped, police protection and armed forces can no longer be paid.

  8. Tad,

    It was only a few days ago that I learned I am cisgendered. I had not heard that designation before. It changed nothing about me. It is a trivial aspect of me compared to my mind and character.

    I thought it a travesty that Manning was allowed to receive its sex-change while in prison. Here I use the pronoun "its" as an insult, because of the crime, the evil, against American persons, he did (in collusion, allegedly, with Mr. Assange). I understand that medical care of federal prisoners is lousy (by our modern standards). I understand that not receiving medical treatment or not being protected from physical attack by other prisoners is never part of the sentence of imprisonment that a judge hands down to a convicted criminal. The intended penalty of imprisonment is loss of liberty, not these additional negative incidents. (A long-time friend of mine was recently in federal prison for nine years. We visited him there, and by correspondence especially, I learned some about how things actually are there and how variable they are between locations. The vendors are making a fortune, that's for sure. At one of the prisons our friend was in, he and most everyone got Covid. Ten inmates died. At another prison, he was beaten up.) I don't know law concerning rights of inmates to medical care, but it seemed to me the procedure given to Manning was rather towards the luxury end of modern medicine.

    My hostility to Manning (and Assange) aside, Tad, it seems right that official government documents refer to individuals who are transsexuals by the gender pronoun most suited to the result of the sex change, not the past. So far as I know, the chromosomes are not changed, but there is a lot more to the biological identity of a human than that, and in our species, person and mind are paramount to all else. I have only one personal friend who is a transsexual (woman-to-man). We have never discussed it; we have the interests in common of work and love, which is usual and what we talk of. He is a bright and good and wonderful person. He has a husband and they've been together about thirty years. When people belittle transgendered persons, it is he who comes to my mind, and it's not rocket science to figure whose side I'm on.

  9. From The University of Chicago Press:

    How Life Works

    Wisecracks (by a good and gifted classmate of mine)

    The Culmination 

    (I'll try to do the rest of the presses tomorrow for this round of accumulation. It has been odd to me that no younger friendly Objectivist philosopher acquaintance ever asked if they could have my library when I have deceased. My collection is always more up to date than their own university library. I did find the right philosopher to whom I have by now bequeathed it: Prof.)

  10. 21 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

    I am not aware that Haley is a deficit 'hawk', . . . 

    Just click on the link I provided in that post.

    US Charges against Assange – I think US law should be enforced. If one thinks these laws are wrong, repeal them by our democratic process. (I happen to agree with the cause of American defense against foreign powers and these laws pursuant to that.) Mr. Assange, by the way is no Henry David Thoreau in the way of civil disobedience: the latter was willing to go to jail for the sake of his principle (and he actually had a principle).

    I'm with you on policy of high bank reserve requirements, fractional or full. And no bailouts (see that link). 

  11. The greatest threat to the future of America as a prosperous place and place of civil peace is continuation of the federal deficit budgets of the last 23 years. The federal government is stealing the life savings of Americans by inflation to cover the ongoing budgets in the red. Against continuation of that: vote for Haley against Trump. The choice between Haley and Biden or Phillips will be more difficult because the Democrats are squarely Pro-Choice. But the choice between Haley and Trump at this stage is easily Haley.  As Bastiat put it: Let us try freedom.

  12. On 10/6/2023 at 7:32 AM, Boydstun said:

    A paper concerning Ayn Rand's political philosophy will be presented in a session on the theme of Radical Liberalism at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophy Association in January 2024 in New York. The paper is titled "Ayn Rand's Novel Contribution: Aristotelian Liberalism." The author of this paper is Cory Massimino.

    I was able to attend this Meeting of APA and this particular session. Massimino's presentation shadowed his paper in the final issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies last summer. Abstract of that fine paper:

    The author argues Ayn Rand made a genuinely novel, but often overlooked and underappreciated, contribution in her synthesis of Aristotelianism and liberalism. Aristotelianism, a philosophy of flourishing, and liberalism, a politics of freedom, have been viewed throughout history as largely incompatible doctrines, often understandably so. The author discusses the history of these concepts, especially their tensions, as a backdrop to further explore and contextualize the work of Rand, who argued that Aristotelian ideas about flourishing and liberal ideas about freedom are natural allies, and in fact strengthen each other. Rand's "Aristotelian liberalism" is a fruitful synthesis.

    Other presentations at this APA session, which was organized by Prof. Roderick Long:

    "The Problem of Pervasive Historic Injustice" by Prof. Jason Lee Byas

    "A Radical Liberal Approach to LGBTQ Emancipation" by Dr. Nathan Goodman

    These presentations and their follow-on Q&A's were informative and incisive.

    Roderick organized another session Nation-States, Nationalism, and Oppression which I did not attend because in that time slot I was shopping.

    The Ayn Rand Society did not have a session at this Eastern APA meeting. Perhaps Greg and Jim will pull something together for Central (New Orleans) or Pacific (Portland).

  13. Original Sham – Rand and Nietzsche (continued, completed)

    I remarked earlier: "Notwithstanding his naturalism, Nietzsche comes up short of admitting the absolute, complete finality of the end of one’s one and only sequence of episodes of life, the life engaging one last week, yesterday, and at this moment." 

    On 11/28/2019 at 6:44 AM, Boydstun said:

    . . .

    Zarathustra lightens the load by stopping the climb, having the little monster off his shoulder, and spelling out what is the deep abyss drawing down his spirit: The present moment, and every present moment, is connected to an infinite past and an infinite future. Whatever occurs now must have occurred before in such an infinite past and must occur again in such an infinite future. Over and over, it goes (Z II “On the Vision and the Riddle” 2). “The knot of causes in which I am entangled recurs—it will create me again! I myself belong to the causes of the eternal recurrence. / I will return . . . not to a new life or a better life or a similar life: / —I will return to this same and selfsame life, in what is greatest as well as what is smallest . . . . / . . . / to once again teach the eternal recurrence of all things” (Z III “The Convalescent” 1).

    Zarathustra is teacher of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal recurrence (GS 341). This idea is false if taken literally (and I suppose Nietzsche took it literally; contra Williams 2001, xvi) because not all infinities are equally large. The fire in the fireplace yesterday is one among an infinite potential of particular fires-for-a-day. That infinity is larger than the infinity of infinite time. That fire need never occur again, even in an eternity. Indeed the chance of it is nil. But Nietzsche is under the gripping spell of the eternal recurrence. Let us follow his thought under this spell.

    In Zarathustra laughter is not only emblematic of Nietzsche’s general campaign against the spirit of gravity. It is emblematic more particularly of reconciliation with the chains of determinism and more particularly still with eternal self-returning determinism. There is a laughter to be longed for, the laughter of one “no longer human,” a being “transformed, illuminated . . . . / Never yet on earth had I heard a human being laugh as he laughed!” (Z III “On the Vision and the Riddle” 2; contrast my treatment of this passage in relation to Roark with the treatment in Milgram 2007, 31–32.) That laughter was only in a vision, in which a shepherd in the field wakes to find a snake has entered his mouth and lodged its bite in the his throat. The shepherd bites off the head of the snake, spits it away, and laughs the laugh beyond the human, the laugh so much to be hoped for.

    It was the laugh of a character in a vision, not the laugh of an actual overman. It was not Zarathustra’s laugh either. The abysmal thought of the eternal return continues to gnaw at him. “I have not been strong enough for the lion’s final overreaching and cheeky mischief. / [Abysmal thought,] your gravity alone was always terrible enough for me; but one day I shall yet find the strength and the lion’s voice to summon you up!” (Z III “On Unwilling Bliss;” further, Z IV “The Sleepwalker’s Song” and “The Sign”).

    In a still hour before sleep, Zarathustra has been told, by the clock of his life, when it drew a breath, that the one who is needed most by everyone is “‘the one who commands great things.’ / And I answered ‘I lack the lion’s voice for all commanding’. / Then it spoke to me again like a whispering: ‘The stillest words are those that bring the storm. Thoughts that come on the feet of doves steer the world’” (Z II “The Stillest Hour”). Later in the adventure, Zarathustra: “Here I sit and wait, old broken tablets around me and also new tablets only partially written upon. When will my hour come? / . . . / This is what I wait for now; signs must come to me first that it is my hour—namely the laughing lion and the swarm of doves” (Z III “On Old and New Tablets” 1).

    At the close of Zarathustra, his higher men have begun to learn to laugh against the spirit of gravity, and he has given them his song “One More Time.” His hour has come. His midnight of joy deeper than the deep pain of the world wants it all again, wants deep, deep eternity.

    Zarathustra lastly rises glowing and strong in the morning. His signs have come. His doves are a cloud of love about his head. His lion has come and chased off the higher men. Zarathustra’s last sin, his pity for the higher men, is gone. His lion is near to him. His day and work begin.

    The ringed determinism binding the human will is a very hard one in Nietzsche’s understanding. “If ever a breath came to me of creative breath and of heavenly necessity that forces even accident to dance astral rounds: / If ever I laughed with the laugh of creative lightning that follows rumbling but obediently the long thunder of the deed: / . . . / Oh how then could I not lust for eternity and for the mystical ring of rings—the ring of recurrence! / . . . / For I love you, oh eternity!” (Z III “The Other Dance Song” 3; see also I “On the Three Metamorphoses;” II “On Redemption.”) Nietzsche, loving life and the world, reaches yet for joy even with all the pain and heavy chains of necessity (Z IV “The Sleepwalker’s Song” 8–10; cf. BGE 9).

    . . .

    I suggest that Nietzsche's elaborate wrestling with an eternal return of the same is a self-deceit decked out in a Yes-saying to a false contrivance. (Contrast with the commendation by John Richardson in his Nietzsche's Values [2020].) The real gravity Nietzsche cannot get rid of is mundane and plain: his own death will necessarily occur, and that will be his complete annihilation. Some non-metaphorical and sensible lifting of that gravity is here:

    On 1/6/2024 at 3:38 PM, Boydstun said:

    Original Sham – Rand and Nietzsche

    I said the Original Sham was that death was not naturally inherent in life. A little-sister sham is misrepresentation in the thought that one’s death is one’s eternal nonexistence. The truth is that a nonexistent has no passage, no situations, and no character. Those are the fundamental categories of things in existence. Some traces of one’s existence from before its end—traces in existents continuing to exist, with their passage, situation, and character, beyond one’s own death—indicate to succeeding humans some of the particular passage, situation (and situating), and character that had been oneself. There is an eternal nonexistence of one before one lived and after one lived, but those do not belong to one. Talk of one’s eternal nonexistence is a lie if the eternity is insinuated to be something attaching to one or endured.

    . . .

    Nietzsche moved his pen to much upset of Christian doctrines. (His father was a Lutheran minister.) One erroneous view he failed to jettison in his own philosophy is the presumption (of Moses, Socrates, and many others) that knowledge of human constitution is the most important kind of knowledge for the human world, whether life of the individual or situation of the species. It is important, I say, though not most important and most-maker of humanity’s epochs.

    Knowledge more important in making the human world: how to make a spear and a bow for arrows; script for language; a wheel and its bearing; a plow; metals from minerals; irrigation channels; working animals; power from water wheels, combustion engines, and electric motors; computation, communication, and illumination from electromagnetism; and scientific medicine. 

    Rand championed such knowledge as that, but for her atypical miss of the productivity of the gardener in the myth of the Garden of Eden. “All work is creative work if done by a thinking mind” (AS 1021). Frankly, one is not going to have supper on the table or fire in the fireplace without some labor and some thinking mind preparing those results, and either there are going to be some sparkles of creativity all along the way or the required thinking and the result will not be attained.

    Rand held advances in science, mathematics, logic, and engineering to be exemplars of noblest human morality. That in man which makes those advances possible and actuated is identically moral goodness, both-and-one of which man should be rightly pleased and proud. “A rational process is a moral process” (AS 1017).

    Nietzsche disdained and belittled such knowledge. He fancied new epochs in the human world by new ways in new religions (viz., as when Christianity overran Greco-Roman religions) and new philosophies (for the future, particularly his own philosophy) bringing forth from man the following: higher, nobler, more active beings (who evidently omit working for a living) (GM I.10).

    Nietzsche thinks European fellows of his time are a value-dead, sorry lot much in need of new, exciting values now that God is no longer a live source of credible values. So far as I know, this claim of deficiency in his fellows and their consequent need of a solution is a fake, a sham. It remains an unfounded estimate concerning plebeians, folks in production and trade, nothing more.

    Nietzsche writes, plausibly, that he cannot refrain from philosophic thought, such as he conceives such thought, and its continual improvement in himself (GM I.2). He claims of himself a durable will to knowledge, but only knowledge of a sort he would enshrine as the purpose of scientific knowledge. Nietzsche was in fact an ignoramus concerning scientific, mathematical, and engineering advances of his own time, and what interest he had in them was for twisting them into bolsters for his psycho-dynamical speculations, his favorite activity.

    Nietzsche is awake to the existence of physical goods such as life on earth. He is awake to psychological goods such as the absence of suffering and unearned guilt. He knows to reject moralities of guilt, Sin, Original Sin, debt to God, and duty; moralities against sexual enjoyment (GM II.21, III.16, III.22–22). He and Rand, in their different ways, survey past moralities and expose their defects. Nietzsche failed to find any new, coherent morality corrective of the past ones and based in life and its enjoyments. Rand succeeded.

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