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Every post you've made in any of these inter-connecting threads is based on the premise that it is immoral to break the bonds that tie the abuser and the abused; that one adversary doesn't have the right to withdrawl from the other, but instead must continue taking abuse in order to teach the other why abuse is wrong. Especially if breaking those bonds would cause harm to the abuser. Consider that a kid at school takes my lunch money every day. According to you, I would not only have to continue to let him take it, but take the trouble to explain to him why it's wrong for him to take it -- the lesson being delivered, presumeably, through a bloody nose. Well look, it's not like my missing lunch money is breaking me; and I still continue to study and excel at my main goal, which is keeping up with my scholastics; and in fact when I leave school for the day I don't have him to worry about, and all in all life is pretty damn good. You would tell me: "Suck it up. You know how to live, he doesn't. Teach him, even as he pummels you." You also teach me that I am in fact responsible for the consequences of his own actions. What happens if I leave that school, and without my lunch money he starves to death? Or is malnourished to the point that his success is impossible? You would say "He needed your lunch money and you knew it: you starved him." What if I went further, and rallied my classmates to oppose bullying? Or if I went further still, and built my own school where there would be no bullies allowed? Then you would say I was purging the world of bullies, that I was a murderer and responsible for all the things that the bullies ought to have known, even as I taught them and they rejected the lesson.

And His Noodliness said onto his disciple Nicky: "Pasta al Pommodoro is probably the best. Hmmm, actually, I think it's even better with bolognese sauce. And for fuck's sake, if you're gonna use cheese, make it Parmegiano." One thing is a little weird though: His Noodliness the Spaghetti Monster seems to have the same exact tastes in Italian food I do. Is it possible that my quote is fake too?

I believe it's more accurate to say Ayn Rand identified herself as an atheist, but not a militant one, and she certainly wasn't 100% against Saint Thomas Aquinas. Likewise there are many who identify themselves as Christian, but not militantly Christian. There's also a distinction to be made between the philosophic aspects of religion, and revealed religion, which has more to do with ones sense of personal responsibility for their beliefs and actions as opposed to the blind acceptance of someone else's. In that respect, Objectivism has its share of faithful followers too.

They can and do, and will likely continue so long as a credible separation of church and state is maintained. Having been raised Christian and discovered Objectivism, I remain more impressed by the philosophic similarities than differences, and somewhat comforted by the arguments on ideology that arise within each camp independently of one another. As softwareNerd suggested earlier, I suspect people tend to adopt and reject aspects of both ideologies based on the trueness of their own individual experience. I believe in Nature's God, but I don't rely on faith to balance my checkbook.

I didn't know this forum was the right place to post speculative fan-fic.

I'm familiar with comparative advantage. You've mostly just provided an example of what I said... That's not empirically testable except in the loosest sense of the term. One can also draw conclusions about free economies being more successful than dictatorships, oranges being cheaper near the equator, or the Pax Americana that occurred after and because of the industrial destruction of world war 2 and the inflationary crutch created byt Bretton-woods agreement. True or not, this derived knowledge does not constitute indisputable scientific fact, otherwise all of the conclusions I have come to about the harms of regulatory burdens or the the massive opportunity costs of all of the government intervention which you support, would be obvious to you in a way which would not require argument. The same holds for what you are advocating. That you find the evidence convincing that a debt based currency is preferable is all well and good, but it is not supportable enough to lend you the pretense of certainty or disdain of those with views less popular in the company of professional economists. For the record, I don't share moralists views on debt on a personal level, but having leveraged debt at different times, I can certainly empathize with the peace of not having a stress-ridden nut to crack. As far as the US being better off because of our debt, however, or having lower than expected inflation I certainly take a broader perspective to come to my unscientific opinion and include Bretton-woods, reserve currency status, foreign purchases, and alterations in inflation and monetary measurement. The moral part though is that goods and services are produced by individuals and, regardless of any perceived overall benefit, the fact is that real wealth(goods and services) are taken out of the economy and transferred to the government through a combination of systemic fraud and force. No increased rate of gdp expansion can justify it.

Hairnet, do you realise that there, in a nutshell, is the entire reason for rational egoism? Not for the good times (only) but for the roller-coaster ride over a full lifetime? I'm not coming down on you, since I believe I've experienced similar. Maybe, we get too casual. Don't always concentrate our senses, and so lose perception of every little thing around. Then as a result our concepts could become to seem fragile and insignificant. Maybe we get caught in that difficault place between having a lot of knowledge, seeing clearly what's going on, and not yet knowing or seeing enough. Maybe, against the background of existence, our lives look puny, at times. "There is an enormous breach of continuity between nature and man's consciousness", Rand wrote. I think that each person has to bridge that breach for him/herself by acquired virtues and rational egoism. There is no 'purpose' for one's life, except the purpose one finds (as you know.) Nothing was 'meant to be', until you give it meaning. Life is very, very long if lived in focus - long enough, actually. Whoever lived previously and whoever comes after us is not our fundamental concern, and must not be - apart from a mental hat-tip of respect and acknowledgment. You are here, now, and can choose. I've been thinking about what I saw Helen Keller said: "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in reality." Realising it came from someone deaf and blind gave me perpective. Hope it does you.

This casual assumption of yours that others on this forum aren't interested in the practical implications of Objectivism, or aren't interested in actually applying it to their own lives, is arrogant, presumptuous, and one of the reasons you're getting such negative feedback from your posts here.

Again, shallow understanding. You conveniently left out the part where his disciples questioned him about it and he responded: ""If you stand by the side of men, and see it as men see it, it appears impossible; but stand by God's side, see it by His side, and all things, even the salvation of both rich and poor, becomes possible". Jesus also states many times how difficult it is for anyone to get to Heaven, rich or poor: This translation from Aramaic to English: "How narrow is the gate and strict the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it!" It helps not to have just read only the most glib and common quotes. Malachi also offers many justifications for prosperity ministry. I'm not arguing for Christianity here. But what I am saying is that many Objectivists use arguments against Christianity that are just as misinformed and uneducated as the arguments people use against Objectivism. edit typos

And like their other powers, their power to police the border must be kept limited by the proper function of that power. In this case, stopping poor Mexican immigrants because they are coming and taking our jobs is an abuse of the government's control of the border, much like locking up nonviolent drug offenders is an abuse of the government's legitimate power to imprison criminals.

I used to feel this way a lot (still do, sometimes, but not nearly as much). It's a generalization that you're drawing from the only data you have around--the way you feel about your own activities. You're waiting for the activities to give you a feeling of purpose or satisfaction, and when they don't, you conclude that there is no purpose or satisfaction to be had, and it's all pointless. The truth is, activities won't give you purpose or satisfaction, so suggestions on the nature of "go do something!" are, in a sense, futile. However, they do have positive effects in that they can help you find your own purpose and satisfaction in a secondary sort of way. A lot of people, when they try to determine what interests them, do this sort of self-meditation where they wrack their brains trying to find some a priori voice that'll tell them, "I love soccer!" or similar. The thing is, you aren't born with interests that are stuffed somewhere in your brain. You *develop* interests by doing things, enjoying them, doing them again, enjoying them more, etc. Most people generally do all of this while they're still young enough that they aren't consciously aware of the process, so when they get to the questioning stage (late teens early twenties), they already know what they like and what they want to pursue, so it's just a matter of examining their mental contents in an orderly fashion to decide which interest is the top interest. Everyone isn't like that, though. Some people, due to shyness, a compliant personality, whatever, arrive in their late teens early twenties still pretty much unformed. When they start examining themselves, all they find is a void waiting to be filled. They think there's something wrong with them. There's nothing wrong with you, it's just that you hit the self-conscious phase before you had enough material to work with to form interests. So now, instead of having it happen more-or-less automatically as you grew, you're going to have to build them manually for yourself. I found that a helpful first step is to say "my purpose, is to find a purpose". It won't fix things for you right away, but it does help to know that feeling no deep attachment to your few interests isn't some kind of hideous psychological flaw. But this statement that you have a purpose even if it isn't a single directed one can help you straighten yourself out. So, step two is to figure out what will help you find a purpose. Well, clearly if you're going to develop strong interests, you need material to work with. So you need to go and consciously try things. Pursuing more of the interests you already have is good, but don't be afraid to try other things as well. Don't sabotage yourself by over-evaluating and trying to search for some kind of emotional spark WHILE you are doing them, though. You already have a mental habit of suppressing or repressing your emotional connections to people/things. The only thing that will happen if you try to analyze while you're doing is that you will suppress or repress whatever emotional reaction you DO have. So just concentrate on doing it instead of dwelling on how you feel about it. Later, after you've done it a few times, you'll start feeling either that you want to keep doing it, or that you'd prefer to stop. THAT's when you pull out the analysis. But it shouldn't just be a "what am I feeling about this" analysis, you need to ask yourself, "what about this is causing me to feel X"? Maybe you joined a band, you really like playing the music, but you just HATE the bass player so you find you don't want to go to practice any more because that jerk will be there harshing your groove. It's not that you don't "actually" love playing the music--it's that you want a different band. But, if he WASN'T there, you'd totally love to go play your music. Voila, you've discovered your full musical interest! NOW FIND A NEW BAND. So, yes, you do need to make yourself do stuff. Don't ride yourself too much if you find it difficult, and definitely reward yourself for even the tiniest positive steps. Don't listen to people who tell you what you "ought" to be doing--if you don't know, yourself, they sure as hell can't know. And don't hassle yourself for being different or somehow less worthy than people who happened to pick up their interests more or less by accident when they were younger and not self-critical yet. Yeah, that way sure seems like it would have been a lot nicer, but at least this way you get to form your interests consciously. You won't have a mid-life crisis where you suddenly begin to question what the source of your interests really is. In a way, you're sorting out your mid-life crisis NOW. And don't fuss yourself over not having friends or people to connect with. The problem is largely that you are currently lacking the kind of material that forms connections. The friends will come once you build up the material. There may not be many, but they'll be much better than the kind of friends you just fall into in high school. It's also not a sin to withdraw from your family. You're busy. You got stuff to build, and sometimes they try to "help" and don't help at all. So if you find them oppressive, tell them, as respectfully as you can manage, that they need to back off and let you do your buildin'. It'll probably be the nastiest, most awkward conversation EVAR, but they'll appreciate it that you told them what was up with you and you'll feel better about your relationship with them. And they may even back off. (Don't expect an instant fix--stay respectful and polite. Stick to your guns, but don't fire.)