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I would venture that the mind that builds Starships for self betterment and added betterment to the universe, was on an implicit level rebelling and being 'finished with fire' as it were, while being subjected to the consequences of being surrounded by poverty, especially an unjust poverty. Having been born in the US, I was blessed to not have been subjected to poverty. While never 'wealthy' or free of mundane monetary concerns , I nonetheless have never experienced existential want. The 'tie in' I'm looking for is a satisfying ontology that reduces the 'cause' or describes a fundamental base to the subjectivity of my awareness. Having become recently introduced to Vedic philosophies, I've been checking a whole lot of premises !!

It's possible, today in the US-C of A, to live healthily to a hundred or more. I, myself, have a healthy-hundred as my goal. At 74, I'm as fit mentally and physically, overall, as the usual 64 or younger (even with the poor start of my malnourished childhood in the poverty of Maoist China). Whatever one's age or condition, one could live more healthily and longer. See "The Five Doctors" and the Comment following it. The key to a healthy self and a longer life is to be healthy every day in every way for the rest of your life. A healthy self is integral to the continual betterment of one's life-long self-knowledge and self-realization. Could this help you to "tie in [your] selfish subjective experience/relation to . . . objective reality"?

Was the power he wielded evil? And so by wielding he became evil, or did he corrupt the wielding of a prior established power that was uncorrupted?

Not that Trump, I’m referring to the once and future president. Trump in office, as wielder of the executive power. I could care less about his real estate operation.

Trump the producer and creator of value, is evil on an O'ist forum ?

You know what I'm reminded of? "The operation was successful but the patient died". There's what happens when (total) context is dropped, and foreseeable consequences of actions ignored, and reality/real lives shoe-horned into pre-selected and usually inappropriate principles. I do not consider this is "acting on principles"

Subsequent to Rand, authoritarianism/intrinsicism has caused divisiveness among Objectivists. No, I don't take Brooks (or Peikoff) as 'the final word' (specifically, on applications - implementations of O'ism to reality).

It goes way beyond ‘interesting’, it enters the territory of morally imperative. There is a plain contradiction in Oliver’s position. The media (NYT) bears a responsibility for turning this personal discussion into a propaganda event, it then has carries that responsibility to defend the oppressed in the present case. (*Crickets*). Of course, that presumes that the purpose of the media is to objectively report facts rather than advocate a particular ideology. Occasionally, a rational commentator will notice one of these contradictions and will write about it, as Schwartz did. What should be said is that the NYT has a responsibility to put this very question to Oliver – unsympathetically, in the same manner that they address others whom they deem to be politically incorrect. Attention needs to be put on the media for its reporting bias. However, to be effective such attention would need to be itself objective. This then reminds me of a recent Gus blog where Gus interjects a comment that “Trump’s Supreme Court appointments eventually overturned Roe vs. Wade”, which is misleading (he appointed only 3 of the majority justices, and that statement carries the false and unsupported implication that this was Trump’s reason for those appointments). It’s fine to pick on Trump, but let’s see some actual facts, not just mystical divination about the mental state of voters and guilt-by-association reasoning. Now, hitting rather close to home, there has been a chorus of crickets over the fact that the Trump faction in the House at least temporarily limited some of the right-trampling power of the FISA courts. This action was taken with the full approval of Trump, and yet where is the laudatory commentary? So yeah, we can understand this in terms of a hierarchy of values. Truth is a value; but Trump is a greater disvalue; ignoring a relevant truth is less evil than making an false assertion or implication. Some media elevate the ‘Trump is evil’ axiom to the point that they will make literally-false statements, but that is not so common because of defamation law (though certain media are statutorily immunized against such actions). A safer bet is to rely on false implications (which can still be a cause of legal action, just easier to summarily dismiss). When silence is available, that is a completely un-actionable method of promulgating the viewpoint that Trump is evil. To be clear, Trump is evil, my point is that the philosopher’s job is focus on the logical infrastructure of political discourse, and to point out these contradictions. We cannot in all honesty demand adherence to logic if we also repudiate logic. The laughing-face emoticon is an exemplar of an intellectually dishonest tool, which should be obliterated from this forum.

Monart, By we in this context, I mean only the combination self and other. On day of birth one is already immersed in other humans around one. Indeed, before birth, one was already immersed in the human thing that is one's mother's voice. I reject the view, often put forward by classical empiricists, that one performs an inference to know there are other humans, things like oneself, with inner life. Although, at the beginning we have no language, so no articulation of any of that in mind (and we have only begun to develop powers of memory.) I'd have to look up when we get the idea of we. (We begin to use the personal pronouns "I, me" at age two.) But as adults or near-adults, we can examine our elementary episodes of consciousness and know there is a pronominal other in all of them, an element that is accessible if we turn to that feature in our consciousness, and by adulthood, we know the "we" in those episodes. This presence of other forming the we in all human consciousness perhaps contributes to many peoples' sense that God is with them. If so, that is just a mistake; the presence with themselves is other humans, taken in an open unspecified pronoun-type way. My viewpoint on this, I later learned, had been put forward by some existentialists last century. However, they were engaged in an archeology of subjectivity, whereas in my system, existence standing independently of apprehension and comprehension is the objective prize we are joined with by other. I'd like to mention also, concerning the Objectivist metaphysics, that it was not "Existence is Identity" that Rand posed as a corollary of "Existence exists." It was something else, something one could infer if one were making the statement "Existence exists." The thesis "Existence is Identity" can be argued to be something fundamental about Existence, and it can be shown that under Rand's various categories, looking to deny "Existence is Identity" lands in contradiction, and is therefore false. The thesis "Consciousness is identification" is also not a corollary, but a definition of what is the most fundamental sort of consciousness, with any others, such as in dreams or perceptual illusions, being derivative with respect to the fundamental consciousness. Philosophers of mind today have called success consciousness that type of consciousness Rand took for fundamental. Rand’s “corollary axiom” with “Existence exists,” you recall, runs this way: “Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists” (Rand 1957, 1015). The counterpart in my system: ‘Existence exists, we live’. The act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that things exist, including you and I conscious living selves, our consciousness being something alive and being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. Rand erred in omitting express, elementary knowing of aliveness of self and others in elementary knowing of consciousness. Rand did not omit altogether elementary knowing of aliveness in elementary knowing of consciousness in her mature philosophy, although that elementary nexus is not highlighted. Some sort of impossibility of mind without life is affirmed later in the speech when Rand writes of the alternative “your mind or your life” that “neither is possible to man without the other” (1957, 1022). Then too, when something she wrote in Galt’s speech “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept ‘Value’ possible” (1013) is joined with something else in the speech “A rational process is a moral process” (1017), it could be inferred that, at least in higher, rational consciousness, its aliveness is implicit in its episodes and this fact is reflectively accessible within such consciousness. Also, in oral exchange years later, Rand remarked concerning consciousness: “It’s a concept that could not enter your mind or your language unless in the form of a faculty of a living entity. That’s what the concept means” (ITOE App. 252).

Yeah, because my position, Dr. Peikoff's position, and Yaron Brooks position is a "floating" principle and the alternative has "worked" over the last 20+ years. Oh yeah, it hasn't and thousands have died, a dictatorship of evil has been appeased and passively had it's very immoral existence sanctioned when it has zero right to exist while enslaving its own citizens with the goal of enslaving the entire world and/or destroying it in the process while leaving the door open for the mass death of all 8 billion people on the planet.

Yaron Brook states my position and the dependence *only* correct and moral position on this issue here. No other positions are true or of value. https://www.youtube.com/live/KyTjUFpzYaI?si=DOjBYuy9g7DCxOFS

Some time back, I tweeted a Value for Value post by Peter Schwartz which explains how our culture's dominant ethical code, altruism, justifies supporting Hamas over Israel, despite the demands of justice to do exactly the opposite. Schwartz says in part:Certainly, a growing anti-Semitism is at work. But the more fundamental explanation is the one provided by a schoolteacher in Atlanta, as reported in the Nov. 5 NY Times ("Across the Echo Chamber, a Quiet Conversation About War and Race"). She posted the following message on Facebook, defending her unequivocal backing of the Palestinians against Israel: "The actual history of this situation is NOT COMPLICATED. I will ALWAYS stand beside those with less power. Less wealth, less access and resources and choices. Regardless of the extreme acts of a few militants who were done watching their people slowly die." She is stating the essence of a moral code that is accepted by virtually everyone today: the code of altruism. According to that code, need is the ultimate standard of morality. If others are in need, nothing else matters -- you have a duty to satisfy their needs.Now that Iran, a nation nearly ten times more populous than Israel, has more directly waged war against Israel, it would be interesting to quiz the above schoolteacher about which side she is on. I would not expect her allegiance to have shifted, despite the fact that Israel had enough help repelling that attack that it is a fair question whether it could have done so alone. Absent the ability to ask directly, we can get the answer by consulting a recent Brendan O'Neill article article at Sp!ked. It is titled "How Woke Leftists Became Cheerleaders for Iran," and I think the below is crucial to understanding why we're seeing mass "demonstrations" by people claiming to be in favor of this warmongering regime's "right" to "self-defense:"The left would say, Don't believe your lying eyes or mind about this evil man. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, license.)The Western left's blaming of Israel for everything, and its implicit absolution of Iran, is grimly revealing. These people seem to view Israel as the only true actor in the Middle East, and everyone else as mere respondents to Israel's actions. Israel is the author of the Middle East's fate, while the rest of them -- Hamas, the Houthis, even Iran -- are mere bit-part players with the misfortune to be caught up in Israel's vast and terrifying web. This is identitarianism, not anti-imperialism. A new generation of radicals educated into the regressive ideology that says 'white' people are powerful and 'brown' people are oppressed can only understand the Middle East in these terms, too. The end result is that they demonise Israel and infantilise Iran. The Jewish State comes to be seen as uniquely malevolent while Iran is treated as a kind of wide-eyed child who cannot help but lash out at its 'Zionist' oppressor. Israel is damned as a criminal state, while Iran's crimes against humanity are downplayed, even memory-holed. This is where wokeness leads, then: to sympathy for one of the most backward and repressive states on Earth on the deranged basis that its criminal strikes against Israel represent a blow against the arrogant West itself... [bold added]The whole idea that all of Israel is Caucasian or that the Islamic world is entirely brown-skinned is nearly as ridiculous as assuming that race determines character or as using white as code for oppressor and brown for needy or oppressed. If anyone needs disabusing of the notion that the left stands for racial equality or individual rights, what we're seeing unfold -- the use of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to excuse racially slurring Israelis as white (which is a racial slur coming from the left these days) en route to enabling their extermination -- should concern anyone with a grain of rationality or a sense of justice. By casting the alleged neediness of Palestine and Iran -- and Israel's well-earned strength -- as racial attributes, the left has excused making the mindless siding with terrorists in the name of altruism permanent. They're coming for the Jews now, and they will come for the rest of West as soon as is convenient. We're all "colonialists" now, according to the left, anyway. -- CAVLink to Original

Jon needs to be immediately banned. I did it once and it needs to be permanent. He is extremely evil, anti-intellectual and is against all that is good in the world. He is explicitly one of the most evil people alive.

Well said, @EC. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the matter.

Who is "allowing"? I'll first point out that Iran was not consistently, economically, financially, morally and intellectually, diplomatically and militarily isolated by the West -- as was e.g. their treatment of Russia, rightly - during - the Cold War (not after). I trust world leaders have now learned to not try to placate, bargain with and bribe ideologically-evil regimes "to be good". Nukes are out. Ground forces will not fare well invading that mountain terrain against a formidable army. . I've reminded before, that whereas Rand wrote any free nation had the right to invade a country and overturn its dictatorial regime - and also added, in effect, a "right" was not to be taken to be a (self-sacrificial) duty. The last gets forgotten. So leave it to Israel. Better (I think) the gvt. bides their time for now, and later hits a few Iranian military and nuclear installations. Israel has to live there and Israel must decide. The emphasis on ~defense~ by the US presently is the right one, I believe. (While they and their partners will have to face up to and eliminate the seaward provocations in the Gulf, this international initiation of force). For Israel: This is a long-term commitment, not about floating principles and the instant gratification of beating the foe.

The Saudis too https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/saudi-arabia-acknowledges-helping-defend-israel-against-iran-797201 "The best defense is offense", turned on its head. The exemplary manner in which the USN, USAF, the rest of the hasty coalition - and Israel's own defense systems responded, showed that robust defense plays a bigger role in modern war. The attack should have made plain Tehran's motives and methods to the world, how it operates through proxies sowing terror abroad, while playing the big innocent in diplomatic circles - and importantly, it will be less feared now by its neighbors. This stresses how swiftly the Abraham Accords must be revived. A consortium of "moderate" nations will feel more urgently empowered to escape Iran's grasp. The changes will adapt Palestinian minds to the new unity (feared by Iran) and proceed from there to serious negotiations with Israel. . ("Palestine", not the necessary *cause* and condition of M.E. peace, as Islamists and Israel-detractors have always deceitfully insisted - but an *effect* of peaceful national relations -- with Iran permanently cut out . . .

This. And whoever put a laughing emoji to Gus’s post needs a ban as a laughing supporter of evil.

I understand that there are a million details, but the point is that the principle of allowing a totalitarian dictatorship that is the principle creator of virtually all terrorism in the world to exist and continue its actions against anyone at any time, let alone semi-free nations like Israel and our nation, regardless of how it can be "defended against" is appeasement of evil and is why it ( 😉 proof of hacking domestic terrorism as I type this out, but don't derail) this has continued to occur and will continue to occur and get exponentially worse. Especially, a rights violating terrorist dictatorship like Iran potentially possessing nukes. Peikoff wrote after 9/11 that "states" that support terrorism need to be ended, we didn't do and things keep getting worse and will continue getting exponentially worse as a function of time. Ending totalitarian dictatorships that are the source of terrorism, mass death, and evil, while enslaving their own population while attempting to enslave and/or destroy the entire world is the only moral action especially when they start explicitly attacking semi-free free nations and/or threatening their existence not to mention the existence of the world itself.

Yes I wish Stephen as many good years as he wants!

Ayn Rand lived long enough to discover and present an immense system of thought as that guide you seek. If Stephen lives to a hundred, he may write a magnum opus to also help you further along.

My comment at Stephen's FB page: "Existence exists, we live." I follow your explanation of the inference from the former to the latter. Besides the corollaries of "Existence is identity" and "Consciousness is identification", I also know "Life iives", and "One is alive". What are other corollaries that lead from "one(self)" to "other" to "we"? Isn't the "other" an other "one", and "we", "more than one"?

Over the weekend and from its own territory, Iran launched a barrage of hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel, using Israel's attack on its "embassy" in Syria as an excuse. I recommend Yaron Brook's real-time reporting and commentary (embedded here). I was out running errands when I began listening. Any time I checked, I found him to be well ahead of other outlets both in terms of timeliness and quality of information. The whole thing was barely a blip in mainstream media, and even sites like the Drudge Report were somewhat late. At one point, Brook noted the issue with the most military significance at present: Iran doesn't have the nuclear capability it has been trying to develop. This attack could have been far worse, and harder to deal with if that had not been the case. And after this weekend there is no doubt that this scenario must be averted, in the minimal form of the destruction of Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. Ideally, the West also does whatever it can to topple the murderous, theocratic regime behind the attack and decades of terrorism and proxy conflicts. See also "End States That Sponsor Terrorism," by Leonard Peikoff. As became apparent during the podcast, the need to end Iran's nuclear capability is a point many in Israel seem to grasp, as the following, quote of former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett, tweeted by Open Source Intel would indicate:Some points regarding the overnight Iranian missile attack on Israel:Contrary to what pundits are saying, this wasn't designed merely as "bells and whistles" with no damage. When you shoot 350 flying objects timed to hit Israel at the same moment, when you use three fundamentally different weapon types -- cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and UAVs, you're looking to penetrate Israel's defenses and kill Israelis.The US administration is telling us: "This is a victory, you've already won by thwarting the missiles. No need for any further action." No, it's NOT a victory. Yes, it's a remarkable success of Israel's air defense systems, but it's not a victory. When a bully tries to hit you 350 times and only succeeds seven time, you've NOT won. You don't win wars just by intercepting your enemy's hits, nor do you deter it. Your enemy will just try harder with more and better weapons and methods next time. How DO you deter? By exacting a deeply painful price.It's incorrect to say "nobody got hurt". There's a 7 year-old Israeli-Arab girl called Amina Elhasuny fighting for her life. That's who coward Khamenei hit. The Islamic Republic of Iran made a big mistake. For the past 30 years it's been wreaking havoc on the region -- through its proxies. A terror-octopus whose head is Tehran, and its tentacles are in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Gaza. How convenient. The Mullahs send others to conduct horrendous terror attacks, and die for them. Other people's blood. Israel's strategic mistake for the past 30 years was to play along this strategy. We always fought the Octopus' arms, but hardly exacted a price from its Iranian head. This should change now: Hezbollah or Hamas shoots a rocket at Israel? Tehran pays a price. The enemy is the Iranian REGIME, not the wonderful Iranian people. The Iranian regime reminds me of the Soviet regime in 1985: corrupt to the core, old, incompetent, despised by its own people, and destined to collapse. The sooner the better. The West can accelerate the regime's inevitable collapse with a set of soft and clever actions, short of military force. Remember, USSR collapsed without any need for a direct American attack. Let's do this. Israel is fighting everybody's war. In Gaza, Lebanon and Tehran. We're considered "the small satan" by radical Islam. America is the big one. I'll be clear: if these crazy fanatic Islamic terrorists get away with murder by hiding among civilians, this method will be adopted by terrorists worldwide. We're not asking anyone to fight for us. We'll do the job. But we do expect our allies to have our back, especially when it's tough -- and now it's tough. Be on the right side and help us defeat these horrible and savage regimes.That army of useful idiots -- the ninnies who are worrying about "escalation" -- are ignoring what happened on October 7 and over this weekend: Iran has already escalated unprovoked twice, and is going to escalate again, anyway. Its threats of doing worse if Israel retaliates are superflous and should be ignored, because these theocrats plan atrocities, genocide, and tyranny regardless of what we do. This is war. We should fight it on our own terms. This attack on Israel is a proxy attack on the West by dogs that smell fear. Let's snuff out these animals while they are still weak. -- CAVLink to Original

The Iranian mullahs and their regime are undoubtedly state sponsors of terrorism, ie Hezbollah, Hamas ect, but the current US administration has recently lessened sanctions against Iran that some have described as basically' giving Iran billions in cash' , true or truish does that make the US complicit in their sponsorship? The US state department told Iran it would be best to inform Turkey of launching , what Iran calls reprisals for the attack on their embassy in Syria(?) that killed at least one senior Iranian military commander. The previous US admin killed an Iranian military official 'ex country' and admitted that they know the Iranians would retaliate will a strike but that the strike would be relatively 'minimal' and was allowed as an act of 'face saving'. So , basically, the big boys play at a game were strikes and counter strikes , tits for tats, are expected and warranted. With Jordan seemingly siding with Israel in this particular 'tat' , it looks like something closer to an Abrahamic Accord thingy forming against Iran , than a prelude to doomsday, no ?

Well, allowing an evil terrorist dictatorship that supports almost all terrorism and a large percentage of the evil in the world to attack a semi-free nation regardless of how "successful" without immediately leveling that illegal dictatorship either with conventional weapons and/or nukes means every principle of a moral free society has been tossed out the windows and civilization has already fallen. It will be an extremely short amount of time now until it completely falls into the abyss and ceases to exist. Evil/nihilism/immorality has now essentially won and the world's existence is now numbered and that number can likely be counted in mere days now as a result.

Stephen's mind and their products are one of a kind! Though the longer I contemplate objective reality , the more bereft I come to see no satisfying guide to tie in my selfish subjective experience/relation to all of It.