Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

  • °

    Objectivism Is The Everyman's Philosophy

    In the universe, what you see is what you get,

    figuring it out for yourself is the way to happiness,

    and each person's independence is respected by all

  • Rand's Philosophy in Her Own Words

    • "Metaphysics: Objective Reality" "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed/Wishing won’t make it so." "The universe exists independent of consciousness"
    • "Epistemology: Reason" "You can’t eat your cake and have it, too." "Thinking is man’s only basic virtue"
    • "Ethics: Self-interest" "Man is an end in himself." "Man must act for his own rational self-interest" "The purpose of morality is to teach you[...] to enjoy yourself and live"
    • "Politics: Capitalism" "Give me liberty or give me death." "If life on earth is [a man's] purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being"

  • Objectivism Online Chat

    Reblogged:A Prompt to Think About Tipping

    Gus Van Horn blog
    By Gus Van Horn blog,
    The Wall Street Journal reports that automated checkout screens are prompting for tips -- even for completely machine-mediated transactions. Amusingly to me, this raises a moral dilemma for some people:I agree that this can be irritating, but that's it because it might be an attempt at emotional blackmail. But in the end, it's emotional blackmail only if you let it be -- specifically if you subscribe to the idea, frequently mixed in with tipping, that the mere fact of having money puts you in

    Reblogged:Against Magical Thinking on Child Safety

    Gus Van Horn blog
    By Gus Van Horn blog,
    In a testament to just how mindless an age we live in, Lenore Skenazy has had to write a column titled, "Parents: Kids CAN Be Left Alone for a Few Minutes." Within, she addresses today's conventional "wisdom" that not directly supervising a child invites calamity. She opens with the story of a woman in Connecticut who let her six-year-old son browse in the library during her short trip across the street to buy him a snack. The librarian read her the riot act upon her return. Having dealt with

    Was the JFK assassination a coup d'état?

    Jon Letendre
    By Jon Letendre,
    Author, activist, physician and retired politician Ron Paul is saying that America suffered a CIA-led coup d'état sixty years ago with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. “I’m arguing the case that we’re in the middle of it and moving right along, that the revolution has been fought, there’s been a coup, we don’t have any resemblance to a government that believes in a Republic, we don’t have honest money, we don’t have integrity,” Paul said. He continued, “But I do believe there has

    Reblogged:Four Recent (Re)Discoveries

    Gus Van Horn blog
    By Gus Van Horn blog,
    A Friday Hodgepodge 1. Once a year, this beer snob takes a month-long "liver holiday," during which I avoid alcohol altogether. I usually do this between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but social obligations pushed it to January this year. And so I learned that Brits do a similar thing, called "Dryuary." This time around, my bored taste buds prompted me to rediscover teas, which were an especially welcome break from the bad coffee I was trying to choke down at the time -- before I realized my cof

    Rand and Kant Being Friends

    KyaryPamyu
    By KyaryPamyu,
    Confused? I'll summarize one of the main texts of the Kantian tradition. How compatible is the Kantian framework with Objectivism? You be the judge. The book is F.W.J. Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), a famous work that enjoys the same status in the philosophical tradition as, let's say, Beethoven's Eroica symphony does in music. (Also check out Boydstun's thread on the same book, and some of his other explorations of Kantianism. ---------------- What causes the cha

    Reblogged:Ayn Rand on Disney's Bootleg Capitalism

    Gus Van Horn blog
    By Gus Van Horn blog,
    Over at Slate is an interesting piece about the origins of the legal entity formerly known as Reedy Creek, which Ron DeSantis has been trying to commandeer ever since the Disney corporation had the temerity to exercise its free speech rights in a way he didn't like. Aside from the fact that it sheds light on how one of America's great captains of industry built an empire, the story is interesting for two major reasons. First, contrary to Disney folklore, it would appear that Walt Disney either

    Reblogged:MoonieWorld: Creating AI in One's Own Image

    Gus Van Horn blog
    By Gus Van Horn blog,
    Far from being just a cute play on words, the sentiment that man creates god in his own image conveys some truth: Individuals and cultures drop hints about themselves when they describe any gods they have: What does someone regard as important? Glorious? Frightening? Ideal? The big problem is that, as with religion itself, we have a tangled mess of things that aren't necessarily straightforward to lay out. Show me a man's god, and I can make some guesses about the man, and they might even be

    Zero-Sum Reasoning

    HowardRoarkSpaceDetective
    By HowardRoarkSpaceDetective,
    In discussing economics (broadly), there's always that famous zero-sum vs. positive-sum dichotomy (negative-sum, too, but it's not as relevant to free-market operations). I'm having trouble getting my mind around the proper way of thinking about where each stops and starts. Obviously, leftism exaggerates the zero-sum aspects of capitalism, but it would also be wrong to say that there are no zero-sum games in capitalism whatsoever. In terms of wealth in the long-term, I agree with Rand that "ther

    Saving Civilization

    Boydstun
    By Boydstun,
    Measuring Civilization (by Jay Friedenberg and other bright lights) I think the Morris book he takes up is THE MEASURE OF CIVILIZATION: HOW SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT DECIDES THE FATE OF NATIONS. Jay is a friend of mine. Another friend David Potts has introduced me to the thought of Joseph Henrich, whose book THE WEIRDEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD – HOW THE WEST BECAME PSYCHOLOGICALLY PECULIAR AND PARTICULARLY PROSPEROUS complements the one by Ian Morris.

    Reblogged:Study: Desire for Privacy Alive and Well

    Gus Van Horn blog
    By Gus Van Horn blog,
    Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. -- Ayn Rand *** The following headline from the Drudge Report caught my eye this morning: "Average Person Hasn't Spoken to Neighbors in 3 Weeks -- But Regularly Bash [sic] Them Online." The above quote by Ayn Rand immediately came to mind, although not because I have anything in particular against any of my ne

Portal by DevFuse · Based on IP.Board Portal by IPS
×
×
  • Create New...