A.West

Still, I'm curious: Which thinker(s) in Eastern history made the eventual development of paper and gunpowder possible? Or did it owe to Western contact and influence? Now, I'm certain that the answer to the above is NOT "it happend over time, bit by bit." So, how did it happen? Inventions like those were the creations of individual geniuses, or small groups of more rational men, I would guess. Egyptians also developed paper under a theocratic slave-state, didn't they? I think the better way to think of it is that the geniuses who did invent those things were unable to simultaneously make an impact on Eastern philosophy, they were not the parallels to Archimedes or later, DaVinci, probably because of the suffocating atmosphere that the dominant philosophers. These are just the anonymous geniuses Ayn Rand spoke about in Howard Roark's speech. The east's stultifying philsophy, in effect, is what caused such inventions to have so little impact on the broader culture or economy. The first Chinese emperor, for example, was not one who would ever celebrate individual achievements of the mind, allow their creators fame, or even allow the communication of their ideas- he'd be more likely to bury his architechts, artists, and inventors alive, to accompany him in his continuing dictatorship over the dead. Which brings up the big thing that troubles me about "Hero" and China generally. The sad truth is that the "unified" China that the first emperor created, was a tyrrany, guided by the totalitarian Legalist philosophy, and was probably on par, morally, with Nazi Germany. That's a bitter pill to take for Chinese nationalists. Their founding father wasn't a George Washington, he was a Kim Jong Il or a Stalin. That's why the prefer to focus on the "unity" theme than any real values achieved by such unity (other than the "peace" of a prison camp). This may also be why Chinese people can violently swing between virulent nationalism and intsense self-doubt. The country started deep in the hole of tyrrany, and has never climbed out, thanks in part to the philosophies that helped found and then supported the state.

I'm attaching a paper I co-wrote on China a couple years ago. It combines business/economics/cultural analysis. It's not "Objectivist" but I included some points that would be meaningful to Objectivists. The "terracotta warrior" theme is disposable, imposed upon the students by a professor who demanded that kind of "thematic" background. There were a few items I disagreed with provided by my classmates, but I edited out most of them. chinaconsol_round_5.doc

Yes, Kant was knowingly diabolical, while Confucius was earnest in his teachings. However, Confucius was also a much smaller mind than a Plato. I honestly find Confucius intolerably boring. In his analects he's constantly lecturing this person or that how to behave in relation to this or that situation and person. He tells you to eat ginger with meals to improve digestion. He tells a farmer to be humble. He tells a son to lie on behalf of a thieving father. It's like listening to a busybody trying to tell everyone to behave according to plan. His focus is mostly on interpersonal relationships, I can't recall any serious metaphysical systematizing or real epistemology. I wouldn't call Confucious' Analects religious tracts at all, more like a whole bunch of Dear Abby columns.

I would not at all classify Confucious as Aristotle of the East. More like Kant of the East, though with much less explicit philosophy. Confucious is Asia's number one Duty promoter. I'd say the biggest effect he had was to focus men's thinking not on the world, but on other people. Confucious seemed relatively uninterested in the material world, but thought primarily in terms of how one person ranked in relation to another, how one person was supposed to behave to another. My wife, who grew up in China, after reading Atlas Shrugged decided that it was Confucious (Koontze) who most paved the way for Communism, though all elements of Chinese culture played a role, including Taoism and Legalism. The Emperor and The Assassin movie, while totally living in a malevolent universe (and living under the first Emperor would leave you feeling like you were in such a universe), took the opposite theme, that unity of the nation was not worth the misery and brutality involved in achieving it. One leftist reviewer of Hero approvingly cited the theme of the movie as being the necessity of sacrificing the individual for the unity of the state. That sounds about right and is 100% consistent with the Chinese Communist Party's number one propaganda theme of the past decade, which would explain why they provided extra funding for it. This review pretty well catches Hero's political point, I think: http://www.olimu.com/WebJournalism/Texts/Reviews/Hero.htm

I wrote a fairly in-depth report on China that reflects on business and culture. I think China's collectivist culture which doesn't see non-contradiction as a rule will ultimately limit its progress. I would not call its government stable, I'd call it brittle. I've watched investments in China over ten years now, and I've never seen an investment there that didn't disappoint in the long-term. China's primary tax-collection system is its state-run banks. Chinese people's savings are being treated like taxes, being directed to "welfare" by supporting failing state owned enterprises. In terms of size, the Chinese economy almost certainly has the largest dollar value of corruption. I suspect that China's economy could eventually face distress like Indonesia, and its political system could fall in the same way, except China is much more likely to go militaristic and blame foreigners for their crisis. China's not a communist country, and unlike the views of some libertarians, it's not capitalist, it's a fascist country. It has enough of a market to allow gains through trade in the short term, it has enough fascist elements to provide a long-term threat. Wal-Mart and most American shoppers would suffer mightily if trade with China were halted.

Great! Congrats on establishing the club. I think I was the one who first relayed the previous guy's subterfuge to someone at ARI.

Walker, Good to see that you're rehabilitating the NYU Objectivist club. When I was attending NYU a couple years ago the former creature running it morphed it into a "let's criticize Ayn Rand and ARI club" featuring Sciabarra as spiritual mentor. Please tell me Sciabarra's not still involved.

I'm an equity analyst at S&P (meaning that I evaluate stock investments, not that I measure "income disparities"). I earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation some years ago as well as an MBA from NYU's Stern School of Business. I consider myself a valuer, so valuing the worth of stocks is a good fit for me. I enjoy developing and applying novel quantitative and qualitative methods to enhance my analytical performance. (I've already seen two others on this list combining finance with math backgrounds, there may already be enough people to start a hedge fund right on this list). I have a lovely wife also fond of Ayn Rand who is Director of Internal Audit at Cadbury Schweppes Confectionery (North America), and a 3yr old daughter, Athena.