Zoso

Okay, here's a good way to explain my view. In A Time to Kill, the guy bursts into a courtroom and kills the two guys who brutally raped his daughter and left her for dead. What he did was justified and was not immoral. However, if the system is to maintain any legitimacy it should convict him. So, while I believe that vigiliantism is morally permissible, the criminal justice system should treat vigilantes like any other criminal because, unless they are treated as criminals, society would break down into social anarchy.

One of the co-creators of Spiderman the comic book, or the movies?

I'm talking specifically about stuff like you see in comic books. Guys like Batman who hunt down bad guys and take care of them, because the justice system failed to do it.

The Final Fantasy series definitely has the hero archetype, but FFVII in particular seems rather liberal. The first third, or so, of the game is all about defeating an evil corporation who is destroying the environment. Chrono Trigger is all a Biblical allegory. And the part in Zeal, there seems to be a rather anti-Capitalist message, in which the Earthbound ones represent the proletariat and the Enlightened ones represent the bourgousie (sp?). I may be reading too much into it, but I tend to do that anyway.

I don't know if this belongs in here and I don't know if there are enough young people in here to know what I'm talking about. However, now that I'm on Christmas break, I've gone into a video game playing binge. I've been playing some of my all-time favorite games, like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII. I haven't played them in years and, now that I'm more educated, I'm starting to see how incredibly anti-Capitalist they are. It kinda pisses me off, because I love these games and it bothers me to see how offensive they are to my world view. Has anyone else noticed any games like this? Are there any games which seem to promote individualism?

The closest thing I have to a litmus test is the stance on Affirmative Action. I have some friends who are pretty liberal and I won't cut people off for having views that are wrong, but they lose any intellectual respect that I might otherwise give them.

I'm pleased. 1. Aristotle (100%) Click here for info 2. Ayn Rand (96%) Click here for info 3. Aquinas (86%) Click here for info 4. Nietzsche (84%) Click here for info 5. Spinoza (82%) Click here for info 6. David Hume (75%) Click here for info 7. Stoics (74%) Click here for info 8. St. Augustine (73%) Click here for info 9. Jean-Paul Sartre (67%) Click here for info 10. John Stuart Mill (67%) Click here for info 11. Cynics (65%) Click here for info 12. Jeremy Bentham (65%) Click here for info 13. Epicureans (64%) Click here for info 14. Kant (59%) Click here for info 15. Plato (59%) Click here for info 16. Thomas Hobbes (56%) Click here for info 17. Ockham (37%) Click here for info 18. Prescriptivism (26%) Click here for info 19. Nel Noddings (25%) Click here for info

How does Spiderman 2 praise altruism? For a good portion of the movie he is torn between wanting to help society and wanting to live his own life, so he chooses to live his own life. Later, he decides that he can have both. I see nothing at all wrong with this. Individualism does not rule out helping others.

I asked the same question a few days ago. The general consensus seems to be that you have to accept all the premises of Ayn Rand's philosophy.

lol, do you go to SHSU or something?

Thoughts? My personal opinion is that justice should be left up to the state, unless justice fails. If it fails, I think it is more than morally acceptable to take justice into your own hands, provided you don't cause anarchy in the process.

Please tell me she didn't pose for Playboy. Didn't she think pornography was disgusting? Seems odd that she did that interview.

I have every album Led Zeppelin ever released, on CD...and I have Zoso on LP. Yes, this was a superfluous question. I love Black Sabbath too.

Schwazenegger can't be VP because he's foreign-born. And I really hope Giuliani gets the nomination, but I think Republicans will be hesitant to nominate him b/c of his pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-affirmative action stances.

Here's hoping it doesn't suck ass like the last two.

I say f*ck Palestine. Blow them back to the stone age. Does that mean I'm a Nazi now? I sure hope not, because I'm part Jew.

Harrison Ford as Rearden? There's a trend with really great movies, in that none of them have superstar actors. Can you name me the last movie that came out that had a superstar actor? All great movies wind up not having any really big name actors. Look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Awesome movies, with a bunch of unheard of actors. I'm not saying get all no-names, but there shouldn't be any superstars in there. Anyway, here would be my picks: Dagny: Jodie Foster John Galt: Christian Bale (great job in Equilibrium, a very Objectivist-leaning movie) Rearden: I would say Russel Crowe, but he's too much of a star...I'm gonna go with either Kevin Spacey or Sam Neil Francisco: Ray Liotta (from Goodfellas)

Ecoterrorists never had any to begin with.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'd actually planned to read that book, eventually. But, since I'm in school right now, it's better that I not try to write a book. I'll probably wind up never going through with the whole thing, but it feels good just to get some of it on paper. And, yes, I had quite a vew Objectivism-leaning views as I grew up. What paragraphs, specifically, do you think I should condense.

Okay, this is my first attempt at writing the first chapter of a book called "Testimony of an ex-Christian." I've never attempted to write anything other than school-related assignments, so it probably sucks, and that's one of the reasons I'm putting it in here. It's mostly biographical in nature, but contains explanations of why Christianity started to piss me off. I'm attaching it as a word file, because it's about 20 pages long and I don't wanna cut/paste into a thread. So...if you have the time to read it and would like to offer some suggestions, I'm more than willing to take advice Chapter_1.doc

Thanks for the welcome.

I'll buy that. It's not an issue of innate ideas, it's an issue of innate personality. I still think there is a large "nurture" component to personality, though.

The only reason I hesitate to post it is that it isn't really particularly philosophical. It's mostly biographical in nature.

Am I the only person who thinks they should rebuild the WTC exactly the way it was? At least, to where it looks exactly the same, but minus the structural flaws. That would be the ultimate way to say "f*ck you" to the rest of the world.

I don't know if this describes my sister or not, b/c she doesn't really get into politics, but she does strike me as being a hippie, and I know she voted for Kerry. I love my sister to death, but don't think I could have a political conversation w/ her without ripping her head off. Is that last statement sort of antithetical to Objectivist epistemology? I agree with the Lockeian view that there are no innate ideas. We have innate mechanisms that allow us to form ideas...that's one reason why some people are smarter than others--they have better cognitive mechanisms. But that doesn't mean that they are born with better ideas...just that they are born with better abilities to discover those ideas.