Newbie Here, Hope I'm not screwing up

[Space Patroller]

Hello. What does one say for the first time? Hopefully, you can use my profile I first started with Rand in 1968. About Randism. Let me quote Miss Rand (from a remark about a drawing class) "I did not say 'this is for me', I said 'this IS me!". I do hope you peruse my domain I hope there are default format settings; using all those buttons and drop-down menues can get tedious. There is such a thing as too much choice

[gags]

Welcome aboard.

[softwareNerd]

Welcome to OO.net

[Juxtys]

Welcome to the boat. And also, it's Objectivism, not Randism

[EdSalti]

Hello. What does one say for the first time? Hopefully, you can use my profile I first started with Rand in 1968. About Randism. Let me quote Miss Rand (from a remark about a drawing class) "I did not say 'this is for me', I said 'this IS me!". I do hope you peruse my domain I hope there are default format settings; using all those buttons and drop-down menues can get tedious. There is such a thing as too much choice

Welcome. Another correspondent of the mature persuasion, I presume? I discovered The Fountainhead when I was 20 back in '61. There is a membership breakdown somewhere around here that shows we are a definite minority in this herd. You should find a much greater variety of subjects than you could ever keep up with. I shall watch for your posts. ES

[K-Mac]

I don't mean to hijack this thread (so moderators, please feel free to split as you see fit), but I'm just curious...why the focus on age? I'm engaged to someone nearly 13 years younger than me, so I've done a lot of thinking about age the past year or so. I've come to the conclusion it's just not important among consenting adults. In this largely irrational, immature and insecure world, I'm certainly not going to limit myself to people within my age group. If I can find friends or people online to associate with that are of value to me, their age is not important.

[Space Patroller]

You ask why the focus on age. I have two generations of time and evolution as a Randian objectivist behind me. By nature that evolution is threefold what a non-Randian would undergo. To me, "Randian" is to "Objectivism" as filet mignon is to ribeye or the Space Shuttle is to a Mercury capsule. I read much of what she wrote in The Objectivist when it was new. and I was 22-26. Also at that timeframe in a person's life the brain is finishing up development. You'll notice that the "learning curve" the ability to process new data drops off but the "thinking curve" goes up so that you can 'figure it out" a lot faster. I wonder if there isn't a similar brain restructuring in the 55-62 age range.

This kind of place is long overdue. Some of the places I've been to that call themselves Objectivist or Randian would put a chill in D'Ancona (my favorite Rand character).

I visited the Atlasphere but theyplayed a nasty little game. they had a "Free" and "Subscriber" level of affiliation. the Free only let you put a profile up and lok at the dating profile, not even browse the site. I have no problem with a paid affiliation level but it should be an elite level as is the case here. In short, you guys do it right

If we are to become the dominant philosophy then we need to give access. The Christians give away Bibles which is sort of a "try before you buy". If someone told me that they had a world-beating system and I said "show me" and they said "it'll cost you". I'd say "why should I buy a pig in a poke?" End of story.

If I ever told you what this philosophical system did for me, well....

[K-Mac]

Well, my comment was actually directed at Ed.

I'm not quite sure I understand your position though. (And perhaps yours is the same as Ed's?) Are you suggesting that because you read Rand's newsletter when it originally came out, it meant more to you then than it could possibly mean to me now at age 35 or more than it meant to my fiancee when he read much of Rand's stuff between the ages of 16-20?

I wasn't quite sure I understood the steak comparison either. Are young Objectivists flavorful ribeyes and older Objectivists tender filets?

[Space Patroller]

Well, my comment was actually directed at Ed.

I'm not quite sure I understand your position though. (And perhaps yours is the same as Ed's?) Are you suggesting that because you read Rand's newsletter when it originally came out, it meant more to you then than it could possibly mean to me now at age 35 or more than it meant to my fiancee when he read much of Rand's stuff between the ages of 16-20?

I wasn't quite sure I understood the steak comparison either. Are young Objectivists flavorful ribeyes and older Objectivists tender filets?

What I meant was that when I read the material in the Objectivst and The Ayn Rand Letter, The things upon which she was commenting were current events. I think you will get more out of the philossophical material at 35 than anoyone reading it in the age-range 16-20. Although I had become aware of Nihilism when I was 12 and it seemed absurd then but that only proves that grownups can pretzelate their minds in a way that a kid is still too honest to try.

My training leasds me to believe that there are at least 3 philosophies that would be termed objectivist. That is, having as the metaphysical premise that the world exists a priori to consciousness. Pure Aristotelianism, Thomism and Randism and that Ranksim is the supreme objectisist philosophy.

When I first encountered Rand's philosophy, I looked it up in a volume of an encylcopedia that came out between the late 1950's and early 1960's called the "Made Simple Encylcopedia", specifically "Philosophy Made Simple". what I found under "Objectivism" was no Reference to Rand, just the doctrine of the a priori existence of the external world. As I went further, including Providence College form 1973-75, where because of my Randian outlook, I was the hot property of the Western Civ (my Minor), Psych (my Major), Religious Studies and Philosophy departments, I gained deeper insight into the different objectivist philosophies. All of this made me uncomfortable with the idea of referring to the specific Randian philosphy by the name Objectivism: It would be like calling a Cadillac "Car" or "Automobile" and seems to full under the fallacy of "The substitution of the part for the whole" which we know as "The Frozen Abstraction"

[K-Mac]

What I meant was that when I read the material in the Objectivst and The Ayn Rand Letter, The things upon which she was commenting were current events.

I know what you mean, because as I read through her essays, I feel as though she wrote them yesterday. The Objectivist group that I meet with monthly never has a hard time coming up with current examples of what Rand wrote about. It's scary.

I think you will get more out of the philosophical material at 35 than anyone reading it in the age-range 16-20.

I don't know about that. In my experience, anyway, it seems like the younger the mind, the faster it's able to integrate the philosophy. They take to it like a fish to water. I take to it like a fat, old lady tip-toeing into a cold ocean. I'll make it, but there's a lot of bad crap in my head to get out and bad habits to undo.

[Space Patroller]

I know what you mean, because as I read through her essays, I feel as though she wrote them yesterday. The Objectivist group that I meet with monthly never has a hard time coming up with current examples of what Rand wrote about. It's scary.

I don't know about that. In my experience, anyway, it seems like the younger the mind, the faster it's able to integrate the philosophy. They take to it like a fish to water. I take to it like a fat, old lady tip-toeing into a cold ocean. I'll make it, but there's a lot of bad crap in my head to get out and bad habits to undo.

As I have said elsewhere, the learning curve is higher at 16-20 and the "figuring out" curve is lower, This is due to physical structure of the brain, lack of content (there is less there so more stuff is new) and lack of experince (no "been there done that got the...;very few persons have had to make the hard choices at that age, and it's especially true for most 'kids" who go from the sheltered home environment to a sheltered college environment then into the real world with no true reality-testing). I was not a happy camper when they dropped the age of majority from 21 to 18: There's no way in hell that an 18 year old is equipped to hanlde the needs of an advanced society, how else could you explain that persons are stressed out and having "self-esteem" proablems while living in Paradise (and if you doubt that compare the West to anywhere else on the globe and in time) while intellectually polluting that Paradise with the toxic equivalent of of nuclear waste, PCB's and mercury vapor being strewn around persons backyards and dumped into the drinking water (and the alleged champions of cleanliness are the maximum polluters)? Also I don't think a person should be allowed near college before they've worked for about 4 years and know the shape of the world and would know the leftist fantasy for what it is. I can speak to this from experience. In addition to having minimal eyesight (and adapting to working in a "sighted" world--gladly so; there are so many good things to see). I lost the equivalent of a father (it was the uncle who raised me and a good person) to a fatal heart attack a week or so after I graduated from high school at age 17. I grew up in a hurrry and it was 5 years of hell. However in retrospect, it was just a more intense version of what all 17-22 year olds go through.

The attitude is different now, when I re-entered Providence College at age 27. I chose a major in Psych (inspired by Branden's work with Ayn Rand before the breakup). Well, I found that I was looking at a 5-day-a-week Western Civ course and was abou to go "Oh....", just what I need; a huge non-major class to be a distraction". Right then I came up short and said "Hey. wait, I'm an Objectivist, my mentress was a history major; I should be able to chew this up and spit it out". Well, guess what; I did and what I spit out were nails made of Readen metal showing what a Randite is made of; A's throughout that course (the philosophy member of the team asked me to give my seminar address on Objectivism to his section of the other Western Civ class) which contributed to my intellectual attitude of "bring it on". Also there is another word. Psychohistory, which at the time consisted of using psychological techniques to study the loves of the big shots of history, like "Kissinger on teh Couch". Well, I learned to do it with whole peoples and times.

To get a good idea of what I'm like, use the link in my signature. The first thing I do when I encouter a person online is to try and get a look at the website. That shows you what a person is like in an existential way

Edited February 20, 2009 by Space Patroller

[Space Patroller]

Well, now that I'm getting squared away and settled in. I think I'll use this thread as my personal comments thread.

I am greadually filling out more and more of my profile and will avail myself of the decographical doodads here as time goes on. I believe in transparency. Understanding is the application of the Law of Identity to a person, place or thing. I have a large and solid ego from 40+ years of Objectivism. I plan, ceteris paribus, to expand my presence here. I might become the 800 pound gorilla.

I get disappointed when I look at profiles and see practically nothing. I'm of the belief that if you don't speak your mind, you have no mind to speak of. The means by which ones speaks one's mind here is the profile. If you look at mine, you know exactly with what you're dealing and what you're getting.

Here is the scenario of a cautionary tale (or tail, as the case may be):

"Granny, does the kitty scratch". "Why no child". Two minutes later: Rwwwffff! Rrrippp! "Waaahhhh!!! You told me the kitty didn't scratch". "Well, you DIDN'T tell me you were going to try to pull his tail off. Now did you?"

Edited April 11, 2009 by Space Patroller

[gags]

Forgive my ignorance Space Patroller, but given that you are legally blind, how does the whole computer thing work? You seem to get around this site incredibly well.

[Space Patroller]

Forgive my ignorance Space Patroller, but given that you are legally blind, how does the whole computer thing work? You seem to get around this site incredibly well.

Thank you for the compliment. If there were shame or anything needing forgiveness in ignorance then each of us would be a woefully shameful being since we have long passed the time when one person could know all the knowledge in the world. A question asked is a light being turned on in a dark area so that the Law of Identity can be brought to bear. This is a 3-part story

1) The type of disability is this. One eye is dead. the other sees but at 1/14th the size of things and with a somewhat restricted field so it's like a world in minature. I was born totally blind but got some eyesight at age 20 months so I am told. When a child turns 4, he can go one of two ways; remain a child or turn into a kid. To understand what I mean. If you can find it in ROMANTIC MANIFESTO, read what Rand had to say about children and building blocks. My blocks were worn out by the time I was 5. at the spacified time, I turned into a kid (by the time I was 5-1/1, I'd caught my hand in the wringer and nearly dumped a truck in a ditch both from imitating what I saw grownups doing. I loved seeing things that flew of their own accord, Airplanes were a joy to see. I remember when I was almost 4 when I would hear a plane, I would run out to see it. In the early Spring of 1952 at about age 6-1/2 I saw on a TV newsreel program called "Time Marches On" the now famous clip of the rocket taking off wht the camera pointed back at the Earth. This blew me away and gave me a bad case of the Space bug. then came Space Patrol and that's where we are when I turn 7.

2 Eyes on the Prize and Where there's a Will, there's a Way. I was reading but mostly large print and some regular print if I was motivated. Well, LIFE and COLLIER'S magazines were doing articles on space. Now one gets tired of FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS and NEW FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS as Dick and Jan'w world expands. But now we're taling serious Spaceman stuff. I used to have these cheap little plasitc maginfying glasses that were stronger than the big glass ones. I started by reading the text under the pix then the text of the whole page with the pix then moving to pages with no pix. By the time I was 8-1/2 I was comfortable with all-text pages and foind the mag glasses to be cumbersome and dispensed with them. The leitmotif of my life became self-development. Because of what was not known about me I was not taught the usual tings like catching a ball (at whicn I never got any good) but when I was 9 I could throw an object with deadly accuracy if I could see the target or enough of the target to discern where it was. My interest in science was as a means to an end.

3 If Galt can't Go to the Mountain, then the Mountain Must Come Tko Galt. The only problem I have with web pages is the black on white creates too much glare since the page is backlit and not using reflected light and the pointer matches the background color. In Bio lab back in 1972 I became aware of the Darkfield Microscope. Most microscopes pass the light from under the stage and through the slide and the specimen. Darkfield technology uses a black background and lights the specimen. This is to reduce eyestrain at medium power and long use. If I could duplicate that then it would be no problem. Well In FireFox and IE, there's Options/Internet Options in the Tools menu. Find Colors, uncheck use system colors and let page select colors (disable page background and text colors), then go to the Select colors, set the bacground to black, the text to whate and chose the link and visited link colors and there you are. If I want the page colors and backgrounds, which I use when writing a page I go into Tools, Options. colors and check Let page select its colors and when I'm finished I go back to my usual page setup. I can pretty much read regular text I use in text size 10 to 11 and font size=5 and I'm there. If you go to Productivity and the Space Patrol Power Console, worth having on its own mertis, and read the part about Accessibility you'd get better insight (a term which we must replace with some Politically Correct phoney word, since it is an implicit sightist slur against Persons of Blind:) ).

Edited April 12, 2009 by Space Patroller