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Hello Objectivism Online. Long time no see. And when I say "long time" I mean something like 7 years. I'm an Israeli. As I'm sure you all know, Israel is at war now, after a horrific massacre where 1400 people were murdered in their home or at a party, and 240 more were kidnapped. Israel needs all the support it can get, as it is facing a huge wave of anti-Israeli activism. I want to invite you to follow a project I've started, that could help you get a deeper grasp of the occurrences of October 7th, and get to know a little better some of those who were kidnapped. Starting 15 days ago, I've been drawing one of the kidnapped people; men, women and children of all ages, while including a few words about who they are, and the circumstances of their kidnapping, in each post. I'm sharing some of the portraits here, and would welcome anyone who'd like to follow the project on Facebook. Stay safe.

What meanings do the behaviors have to the agents? What is the understanding of the scope and context of the behaviors among people who all do the same acts such as deciding on what education they should pursue, acts such as making a living, acts such as driving safely, or acts such as being in and buoying a romantic relationship? Does not a more examined and self-conducted and understood life make one more alive? Is not human life with one's living mind among others more life than life of the wild animals? and are not the animals such as a fox or chipmunk more and higher life than plants? Is not "behavior" most fitting to actions of that middle group, the non-human animals? Who would want to imitate all the acts and whole arc of a human self-directed life and not instead be directing one's own acts and arc best one can? The former, the pure imitation, warrants focus on mere human behavior, the latter on a life that is actually human. I share the distinctive policy and practice you mentioned for yourself. Who cares about radical differences in such things in comparison to wisdom in such things?

I am no philosopher. I would characterize Rand as finally being wholly unbiased in operational orientation towards deduction or inference, and that certainly post maturation, her structures were girded by both, as the state of all prior knowledge and observation required for the particular bit of construction on the edifice of her philosophy. It may be that she leaned towards a deductive foundational approach in the early years, but I do not believe she leaned in any particular direction in the mature philosophy... A dichotomy is presented here which may not be necessary. what has not been provided is a third option... one which leans in neither direction.

I suppose first there has to be a “rule”. In my culture (the US), very few people use hanh phi in cooking and they don’t eat ugali, but that isn’t a “rule”, it’s a cultural accident that it isn’t a commonly-known option. It’s not really a “cultural rule” that people don’t have a Ph D or that you aren’t an accountant. There are cultural prohibitions against incest, theft, loud noises in the middle of the night. public nudity, using the N word, and so on. Any legal prohibition is a cultural rule against doing that thing. One other thing: norms for children are not the same as norms for adults, so we ought to limit the context to adult behavior. It is a cultural rule that a man stands up when a lady enters the room, however the vast majority of (male) adults do not follow this rule. Now, I’m old enough that I am aware of this rule, but I suspect that this rule was quietly repealed by the cultural legislators in the early 70’s. So it’s not entirely clear that there is any such a rule, and maybe we should say that it is a former rule. There is a new cultural rule of language that every adjective must be preceded by the adverb “super”. I refuse to abide by that rule. I know a number of people who don’t abide by that rule, but I don’t know if they are aware that there is this rule – in a few cases, I know that they are aware and they refuse, for the majority, they may be unaware that this is a rule. There is also a cultural rule regarding copying intellectual property without the permission of the owner. A considerable percentage of those who violate this rule do so willfully i.e. they refuse to follow the rule, but an even bigger percentage don’t follow the rule because they misunderstand the rule (usually thinking it only applies to copying for profit but not copying for personal use or the use of friends and family). In short, there are zillions of rules that most people don’t follow, mostly because they don’t know that there is such a rule, or believe that the rule has been repealed.