Avila

"So, these charities you volunteered at exist on the scale of SS, Medicare, and Medicaid, right?" I never claimed that they did. I don't know -- I'd have to look into it. But I will repeat: prior to the programs you mentioned, families and charities handled the problems of poverty. Were they perfect or completely successful? No -- but they are more efficient than a government program.

"The other criticisms seem plausible to me, but this criticism is incredibly expansive. Just because we got to wherever we are now incrementally doesn't mean we should do everything incrementally (even Rand said we should eliminate all antitrust immediately)." I never said that we SHOULD do everything incrementally: my point is that you need to talk about reality, not fantasy. There is NO chance that big changes will be made overnight. I see no signs that such fundamental changes are on the horizon. You can fantasize all you want, but that doesn't get you anywhere. "I'll say it again: these charities don't exist and couldn't exist in time for everyone to transition in the best possible way." Nonsense -- there are plenty of existing charities. I used to volunteer at a Catholic Charities soup kitchen, making chili and serving it to whoever needed it. Prior to the government's involvement with welfare, poverty was handled by charities and families.

"Rand said we should transition from the status quo to the tax-free non-government regulated society gradually (over a few years). I'm not sure why we should. Why not just do it overnight?" Because that's a dream, and bears no relationship to reality. The reality is that it took time and incrementalism to get us where we are now, and if there is to be change towards a better direction (and that is very much an "if"), it will only be achieved by time and incrementalism.

"I'm not sure why that would be a requirement. Why would that be necessary?" It might be that it's her personality, or the way she dresses, or some other trait that other people don't like, and not "blatant racism". (Frankly, I think that's a term that gets thrown out quite carelessly these days.) "Blatant racism" suggests that it's full-blown out there for everyone to see, but she mentions that her sister wasn't treated as badly as she was. So it's reasonable to ask: are there other people of Polish descent that have been treated as she is? Has she been denied employment because of her ethnicity? Has she been red-lined, and steered towards housing in areas with other undesirable Poles? Has she been told that, because she is Polish, she aught to set her career goals rather low because she is incapable of the intelligence necessary for a demanding career? "If only one or two people of a minority race or ethnicity live in an area predominately populated by another race or ethnicity, they couldn't be the targets of racism? That makes no sense." Of course they could be the targets of racism. Racism manifests itself in certain forms of discrimination(I mentioned a few above), the common denominator being a dislike or hatred for another race or ethnic background, which does not allow for the appreciation of the individual as a person. However, people can be stupid, cruel, or just plain nasty to individuals they don't like without it being necessarly racist, even if they employ derogatory terms towards that individual's ethnic background as an expression of their dislike. So, again, it's reasonable to ask: do these people treat all Polish this way? Or is this a case of an individual being disliked? "IF what she was saying was true, what advice would you give her to address her question?" I would say that it would make sense for her to either move to a different location, one where people of Polish descent were common (such as the Midwest), or, since she has internalized a lot of the negative comments and so is unable to let the comments of others not affect her, to go ahead and change her name. "Is there something her posting history that causes you to question her character or veracity rather than considering that she's accurately relaying her experiences?" Yes, the thread regarding her boyfriend's concerns over her having STDs raised some questions in my mind. It was pointed out (and not by me alone) that she was trying to "fix" her boyfriend, and that this was not healthy for a relationship. Her response was, essentially, "No, I'm not trying to fix him, but I just want him to change this and this stupid behavior and grow up". Sounds like fixing to me, but she is completely unaware of it.

Sorry...having difficulty withthe edit function

I'll ask again: where do you live? The situation you describe is one entirely foreign to my experience. I live in the Midwest, and Polish, Irish, German and Scandinavian ancestry is quite common around here. It is basically a Lutheran/Catholic religious mix, with no real problems between the two. I know of NO ONE who has experienced the kind of behavior you say you have had to deal with. Again, I have known of some nasty anti-Catholic nuttiness to come from Baptists, but since you're an atheist, it hardly seems, then, as if your ethnic background being Catholic is the real problem. I don't think you've made the case for "blatant racism", as you don't have other examples to give of other people of Polish background having the same kind of experience. You mentioned your older sister had some problems, though not to your extent: does it occur to you that your problems relating to other people might have another source other than your ethnicity? I think the charge of "racism" gets thrown about too readily: unless you can give me concrete examples of many other individuals of Polish extraction in your area having the SAME DEGREE of problems that you have encountered (separate from anti-Catholicism or anti-Orthodox as in the case of the Greeks), then you haven't made your case. Look, I don't want to dump on you, but as I noted in another thread, you come off as a very angry person. Perhaps you have good cause to be, I don't know. But I can tell you that an angry person who looks to blame others or who sees racism as the cause for their problems is not going to be highly regarded, no matter what their ethnic background. It might be that you have alienated many people, who then childishly get back at you by slamming your ethnicity. That's not the same thing as "blatant racism". Don't be a victim.

I would not call that art. It is attention-getting, pleasing to the eye, and presents an ideal of sorts, but it is all at the service of hawking a product, which is usually prominently figured. (Imagine the Sistine Chapel if Michelangelo had had his figures holding expensive perfume bottles or modeled the latest footwear....) I'm not saying that the photographers aren't skilled, creative, and artistic, but those examples definitely fall into the illustration category, not fine art. Nothing wrong with illustration, but it simply serves to sell a product. As for it being better than modern "art" -- hell, the contents of our kitty litter box is better than the crap that idiots call modern "art". (Better because it lacks pretension, the life-blood of modern "art".) Modern "art" is actually anti-art.

Where do you live? I have many Catholic friends of Polish background, and NONE have experienced what you claim to have experienced. I live in the Midwest, so perhaps there are some regional differences? I have experienced nutty anti-Catholicism from some Baptists, but obviously that's not a factor in your situation. I also would like to know if this is racism, as you claim, or merely the fact that not many people like your personality and thus are using any insult handy (in this case, your ethnicity) to express that. It would be important to know, then, if you know of other individuals of Polish extraction who have experienced the same unpleasantness to the degree that you have (apart from anti-Catholicism, which, as you have noted, infects some WASPs and Baptists).

"No, I'm not trying to fix him, I'm just letting him know if he doesn't stop being an immature drifter, I won't ever speak to him again and he'll lose his chance to be with me." You're deceiving yourself -- the conditions you lay out in the latter part of that sentence ("do this -- change -- or I'm outta here") is, in fact, a rather heavy-handed attempt at fixing someone, whether you want to admit that or not. You also come across as very angry -- I don't know why your potential BF would want that. And you mention his "racist attacks" --- I really don't understand what the two of you see in each other. This is not a relationship that is going to work, in my opinion (and I've been happily married for 25 years, so I know what it takes to make a relationship work). My sincere advice? Move on -- find someone whose views are more in sync with yours. I would not waste a second with someone who thought my views were stupid and immature.

"Some of those armed force people are just really F*cked up in the head. I should have spoken up and told him that if he wants to go that far, he'd better go get a condom, but he knew what he was doing." Well, so did you. Or did you not know that sexual activity can transmit sexually-transmitted diseases? I also have a hard time believing that "armed force people are just really F*cked up in the head" anymore than the rest of us. Trust me, ordinary non-military folks can be just as screwed up. Don't make blanket statements about the military, many of which are good and decent men and women serving their country. I was initially at least somewhat sympathetic to your plight, but the more you have written, the more I feel sorry for this boyfriend of yours. You are indeed trying to "fix" him, which is death for any long-term relationship. Let me play armchair psychologist for a moment: I don't think that your boyfriend is actually worried about STDs. I think that what you are seeing is a passive-aggressive response to your dismissal of his upbringing and his mores as "stupid". He's not man enough (yet) to actually challenge your attitudes about sex and any other modern notions you might hold that make him uncomfortable, but no doubt he can see the difference between his parents' and grandparents' more elevated view of sex, and your more modern attitude (his grandparents probably didn't have to worry about STDs -- you do).

My thoughts are similar to Greebo's: You seem determined to fix him. Your description of him as, "he's been in a confused, depressed state ever since I met him, but he is very handsome and his good traits shine through, even though he has some very annoying ones. What annoys me most is that he can't decide about anything and doesn't really want to, but that's really not his fault given how he was trained to think", really puts up the red flag for me. Right now you say that he is handsome and has some good traits, but, long-term, you will develop contempt (perhaps rightly so) for him as it seems as if his negatives are pretty substantial. Being handsome isn't going to get anyone far in a long-term relationship. YOU have to convince him to go to college and get a driver's license??!? Are you his mother or career counselor? You would be better off being with someone you can respect, and not try to fix.

"I would simply point out that physical laws are observed patterns of how the universe works. They are not "laws" in the sense of enforcing how the universe works in all contexts and at all times past/present/future." Agreed. However, this then negates your later statement that "if/when it is explained, that explanation will necessarily involve the interaction of existents to produce the observed effect" -- "necessarily"? How do you know that, when you've just said that physical laws may not be a factor in "all contexts and at all times past/present/future"?

I read "Atlas Shrugged" when 18 or 19. It made quite an impression on me, so I then voraciously read much of her non-fiction as well as her other novels (though I haven't read Anthem). I considered myself an Objectivist at the time, though I don't now. I discovered Aquinas a little over a decade ago and that had a similar impact on me.

"But if the love is there, don't fret it. You'll either feel compelled to learn about Objectivism yourself (which you've already shown to be the case), and/or he'll be compelled to help you to understand (also seems to be the case). Sounds like a good affair to me." I have to disagree with William here: love isn't enough sometimes. It might be quite grating to have someone trying to "teach" you (you're not his student), and if it's annoying at times while you are in the newness of the relationship, I can guarantee it will not get more bearable as the relationship matures. You need to be treated as an equal, not as someone he likes who unfortunately has "defective" or "unformed" views that he is going to fix. Much depends upon him. If he has the sense to back off and leave you to your own worldview, whatever that might be, then this ought not to be a problem. If he continues as you describe, then your prospects aren't very good. I've been happily married for 25 years. Neither of us is an Objectivist, but we have other areas where we are both passionate and are in agreement. It IS important.

Meaning infinite regress of causes.....Again, you have real problems, then, with the laws of thermodynamics (such as entropy).

"Aside from how you have chosen to grasp avila's law of causality (i.e. because man-made entities have man-made causes, the super, natural entities must have supernatural causes)" I never presented that as my "law of causality".

"Explain the problem with it. If you're going to argue that the circle needs a cause then you also have to argue that god needs a cause." I have to? Really? Gee, somehow I'm not seeing it.... A circle is a geometric shape. It's an abstract concept in one's mind, unless, of course, it happens to be an attribute of an actual existent (a marble, a basketball, etc. -- which are all existents with causes). The universe is not a circle (actually, it's sort of saddle-shaped). So just wtf does a geometric abstraction have to do with the cause of the universe?

"A first cause isn't necessary, a circle is proof of that. End of story." You're joking, right?

"Do you consider them to all be equally valid theories? Can they all be simultaneously equally true?" No and no. "That is not what is meant by the term "axiomatic" in Objectivism". And Objectivism has a different meaning than is generally used in philosophy for a whole host of words. I'm not saying that Rand didn't have the right to make up her own meaning for words (and her definitions are certainly accessible), but at some point, I have to wonder WHY she did that. Is it done deliberately so as to make discussing (let alone debating) Objectivism hard to do and confusing? Is it because she didn't really grasp the meanings of the words as generally used by philosophy? Or did she want to put herself above any other philosophy and create a new lexicon all her own, therefore distancing herself from what came before? After reading some critiques of Rand's philosophy, I'm tempted to think it's a combination of the last two. But that's another topic, I suppose.... ""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."" Agreed. "Given that there are 33 replies in that thread, would you mind citing the specific post you refer to?" I'll have to do that in a different post, as I'm not sure I can navigate away from this page without losing what I've typed. At any rate, it's about halfway through the thread -- I'll link to it or copy it. "The existence of alternative views is not an argument." Agreed. Each view has to be weighed on its own merits. My point was that theories should not be automatically considered axiomatic, especially if there are other alternatives that are reasonable. For example, I can't think of a reasonable alternative theory to "2 + 2 = 4". There are other reasonable alternative theories, however, to the theory that the universe is eternal, or at least has always existed up to this point. It's not axiomatic, and so when it's posited that "existence" and "universe" are synonomous, and then it's posited that existence has always existed and is not caused, then that would appear to imply that the universe has always existed and is uncaused, but I don't think that squares with the laws of thermodynamics, or with the prevailing model of the universe. , t

"This has been asked before." Yes, thanks for the link. I read the entire thread, but to be honest, there seems to be some ambiguity, or at least nuances that may or may not make some fundamental distinction between "universe" and "existence". Rand is pretty clear that they are synonomous, but someone on that thread clarified some distinctions in the use of the terms -- which, at least to me, meant that there were, in fact, some distinctions which would make "synonomous" a bit of a stretch. At any rate, the idea that the universe is uncaused is not one that is axiomatic, in the sense that "2 + 2 + 4", or "if A = B, then B = A" -- no one has an alternative answer to those propositions. The same can not be said of "the universe has always existed" -- there are many alternative philosophical theories.

"Not quite, because "existence" (in this sense, not others, which should not be conflated) is the sum of everything that exists" I thought that was the definition of "universe" -- are you saying, then, that "universe" and "existence" are synonomous?

"Existence cannot be said to be "tied to" existents, as there is no possible alternative by which existents could not have existence "tied to" them. It is not possible for existents to not exist and still remain existents." Yes, we agree here -- my point was, here on this thread I have read of "existence" as being somehow existing without existents. I'd have to back-track and find the posts...But if the statement "Existence exists" is simply synonomous with "existents exist" ("things that exist exist") -- well, umm, so what? It seems a bland, obvious statement that only a few fringe people (those atheists who are entirely subjective or determinist, who doubt that we can really know anything) who would disagree. It just seems odd that it has such an importance -- again, the phrase seems to suggest more meaning. Not that I doubt you -- I'm just puzzled by how it's used.

It's a small point, I suppose (and one that might be due to Rand's habit of making up her own definitions for words), but wouldn't it be more accurate, then, to say "existents exist"? "Existence exists" suggests something deeper -- "existence" (at least as commonly understood) is simply the condition or state of being, of existing. "Existence exists" suggests that "existence" has a life of its own, so to speak -- almost as if it were an entity (in fact, someone here on this thread said exactly that, which I find very peculiar) that was not dependent upon existents. "you should still understand why saying ''Something caused existence'' is a contradiction." No, I don't see that it's a contradiction -- every existent I see around me has a cause, including me: I was caused by the biological union of my parents. The house I live in was caused by a great many workman working with lumber (caused by chopping down trees), stone (caused by quarrying stone) and other materials, those materials, of course, having their own string of causes. Existents have causes. Since "existence" is tied to existents, it seems rational to conclude that "existence", understood as the state of existing, obviously is caused.

Aliva, the reason why it's invalid to ask, ''what caused existence?'' is because this question presumes the existence of some entity separate from existence (in order to ''cause existence''), i.e. something existing outside of existence. This is a contradiction." The problem for me here (I'm not explaining myself well, perhaps) is that this implies that existence causes itself to exist. How does something cause itself to come into being? If your answer is that existence has always existed -- well, as I mentioned before, this would appear to violate some of the laws of thermodynamics.

"Religion does mean a thousand different things in a thousand different contexts, but essentially, "religion" is synonymous with "supernatural."" I think that's reasonable enough, though "referencing the supernatural" would be more accurate, given Buddhism's atheism. ("Synonymous" seems too strong.)