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Spiral Architect

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Everything posted by Spiral Architect

  1. You should also not compare switching to a non-rational animal. That is a whole different context.
  2. It would seem to me you are at the beginning of your journey exploring Objectivism. You are going to have to continue doing that and be prepared to check contradictions, which you will have when looking at your current philosophy while exploring a new one. We have all done this to one degree or another. Mine was pretty tough and it consumed a good chunk of the 90's. Even after that I spent another ten years really exploring the nuances from there when I can to the conclusion that I was an Objectivist. The good news is that you're in a good place to ask questions and get good feedback.
  3. God is a guy lives on his Mountain. He only breathes life into man and gives him the strength to do something about it. After that it is up to us and if we call on him he sends Dooms for failing to be a man. Tell me God is caring female who wants to coddle us when what we only get is the Riddle of Steel!
  4. I think the flat worlders, to paraphrase your analogy (but I wouldn't say that about you), would have discussed this on the other thread and simply don't understand why it's being revisited. But like I said above I suspect there is a context here in today's world we need to get to.
  5. I understand the motives of the characters and agree. I defend the rich because people do not say "the rich today in the context of cronyism" but simply "the rich" which is an egalitarian/Marxist false standard that needs to be shot down out of hand. If you are going to say you are talking about the rich due to government interference, say the Orren Boyles of the world to use an easy reference, then we have an agreement. The issue is no one draws that distinction thus I have to shoot down inequality as a standard, not a condition which is the only litigate argument. Inequality as the standard is false and needs to be tore down for the evil it is for the harm it causes. The only thing worse than that kind of egalitarianism is the militant environmental movement. As for land - I now suspect you are referencing something specific example wise in a mixed economy/welfare state and not how things should be, which is my standard for the same reasons I listed above. I'd be curious to know that that context is.
  6. Atlas Shrugged is fiction that is presented as fiction. The bible and the Qur'an are fiction that are presented as truth. Big difference. Atlas Shrugged is superior due to better character development
  7. You cannot satisfy a fantasy with reason? I agree. If a person wants to believe in a Walt Disney Fantasy Land any kind of attempt to bring them back to earth will fail unless they look at reality. When all other attempts to dismiss a fantasy fail, I can cling a fantasy to solve the problem for me? Here we disagree.
  8. Are you really trying to sell the whole land doesn't count as property argument again on this board? No one is buying the classic egalitarian "we didn't start out equal/earned so we can never so we can't have freedom" argument, which is what that boils down to. I get it all the time from my liberal friends over property rights, income, inheritance tax (ghoul tax), and even "social justice". This amounts to "if realty catered to my whims and we started out as X then I agree we could have liberty", which means we cannot have liberty since reality caters no ones whims so we can't start some place being free. Thus we perpetuate Government intervention to insure "justice" is kept.
  9. I think your over thinking what I meant by it, which is understandable from how I presented it actually. I was speaking in generalized forms of fundamentals. Post modern thinking is the home of skeptical and subjective thinking. Religion at least accepts that you can know something and that there are principles to be followed. How well or consistent they do that is another story. Trust me, I've made a career out of pointing out how badly they do it. For the purposes of my post I'm saying at least they acknowledge it which is better than the alternative which dominates thinking today.
  10. Sorry for the delay - Wanted to mull this one over. It would be illegitimate to claim that the parallels are equal. We are certainly not at the level of the Dark Ages so religion is not the only default entity providing glimmers of reason such as it can be when done on intristicism and faith. Today we have many other examples with religion, but certainly not on the level of religion. Objectivism for example provides a source Certainty and Principled thinking. Libertarianism provides this in various diluted forms in politics is another. I think one of the reasons we have the "Polarization of America" as pundits wring their hands over is not really about politics but the fact people are gravitating back and forth between Intrinsic and subjective thinking. It's just the deep ends of the parties are basically represented by those (but certainly not consistently). People realize that there are principles or that they can know something, but on the other hand pointing to the sky and calling it magic or just pulling the parents credo of "because" doesn't cut it and they drift back to subjectivism. Today, the loudest voice for Certainty and Principles is religion unfortunately. Without them the weight would pull them towards the subjective realm by default until fracturing and splitting in subjective camps (which now that I think about it would represent their epistemology). Without reason alternatives like Objectivism is just "extremism" to such a mindset.
  11. Please note that the above is also a rejection of Voltaire. Man will only look to the sky for answers and say "it's magic" if he is either unaware (before the scientific method) or to lazy (after the scientific method). Looking for magical answers to hard questions is not a virtue let alone and philosophic primary.
  12. I don't get what this void is that Objectivism or whatever is trying to fill. Whatever it is, the idea that religion, something unreal and un-provable, is the answer is certainly not valid. If such a void exists then what the person would need is something of real value to fill "the void". Religion, by definition, is not real and makes a virtue of the lack of unreal. Anything religion can provide that is real, like a local community center or even an ethic system, can be done via methods in the real world.
  13. Religion qua religion really is a relic of a past before people developed the scientific method. Faith is basically turning a lack of evidence into a virtue. Please note that I'm using faith in it's traditional sense, note to be confused with what amounts to educated guesses people also associate at it. Religion as a vehicle for small community cooperation and voluntary meeting however would continue but simply be replaced by a less mystic reason to associate. I will also add I like the idea of spiritualism being converted to a reason based artistic approach. We'd be there in Western Countries, or at least close, if religion would have stayed on it's trend from the enlightenment period. That being said I do think it serves a valuable purpose today by default in that it is keeping the concept of Certainty and Principles alive in an age of skepticism in much the same way it kept reading and writing alive in the Dark Ages.
  14. Ok - If we are going to go here we are going to do it right: The origin of Hamas-- with its radical solution of wiping the zinonist entity off the face of the earth-is obvious. it's all about the failure of moderates to force the zionists back to pre-1967 borders. In other words, the occupation of the West Bank. Reality check - Israel took that land in a war to defend itself from people trying to kill them. If giving land back to people trying to kill you is "moderation" then it simply proves Rand's point that you don't compromise with poison. This natural tendency towards extreme measures in the face of the failure of moderation is also present in American History, as well, with the Revolution and the Civil War. Really? You're comparing America's war for liberty with a bunch of thugs spending 50 years bitching because they tried to kill someone and that person defended themselves? Hamas has gained sympathy not only within the Islamic world but also that of Western democracies because it's now widely understood that the zionist entity was never serious about withdrawing in the first place. Nor should they. They should keep the land to protect themselves from people who want to kill them. Since most Western intellectuals don't understand individual rights it is understandable - They are the same idiots that think man is making the world warm or that a tribe in the Amazon Basin lives a morally superior life style. Again, the process since 1967 has been a sham delaying tactic to ensure more and more settlement. Again, they should. Putting someone in there who doesn't want to kill them would be a step in the right direction. It's sad we don't give them the moral support to just get on with it. *** Look, if I had a neighbor that threatened to kill me and actually stockpiled arms to do just that , I would take steps to take them out including buffer the land around my land as well. I'd do whatever it took to keep the killers at bay. Then you come along and say moderation is compromising with that person? I should appease the killers? Do what? Give them the land back so they can plot to kill me which he has demonstrated in writing? That isn't moderation - That is suicide. Since I don't want to die, on principle, obviously I'm not going to do that. This is what zionists have called 'on the ground reality': we'll negotiate peacemeal with respect to a developing reality of increased settlement. The Palestinian response is to rocket the settlements. Far from 'genocide', it's a simple measure to say that if you were not occupying our land to begin with, you wouldn't be at risk from the rockets falling on Palestinian land.
  15. Evidently trying to kill someone who admits in writing it is trying to kill you is genocide. The hits keep on coming.
  16. Please take this with a grain of salt as it has been 20 years since I did any reading on Buddhism and feel free to correct me. As I understand Buddhism one of the central tenants is the denial of self and the denial to want since both lead to pain of living in a material world, which traps you in the life-cycle of being reborn to the material world. The goal is to let go so you can become spiritual and break the cycle. In Objectivisist parlance I translate that to one should practice pure altruism and not gain values, which is about at 180 as you can get in those examples at least. That would tell me there is a lot to consider when trying to reconcile those two ideas on fundamentals and ethics. Also, you should delve deeper into what selfish and unselfish means from our perspective. I train people and my personal motto is to add value to others and I hardly consider that altruistic since A)I get paid to do it, I enjoy doing it. Selfishness is a measure of value exchange, not giving up values.
  17. Welcome! The Virtue of Selfishness is the best place to start and then expand from there based on how that goes. The people here pr friendly and will help out with any questions along the way.
  18. Or, you know, the people could not have appointed a political group to power that vows in their very charter to destroy the Government granting them self rule. Crazy thought, I know.
  19. Redress is embedded in a system of justice defined by moral laws, not public vote or mob rule. Social justice is a contradiction in terms. Markets are a fact of nature like any other scientific observation. They exist whether there is a Government or not. Economic laws are based on reality, not rules provided by someone arbitrarily. Two people make a trade and Supply and Demand happens based on economic forces we call the market whether Washington wants it to or not, and whether Washington is is there or not. That is like saying gravity needs a political system to support it. See my lemon-aid stand example. Obviously the kid can build the stand or I could have purchased the lemon-aid without the Government, and last time I checked I did do just that and no officials were in site. The economic forces that existed to make that work happened naturally due to scientific laws, not because the Department of Treasury was nice enough increase the supply of lemon-aid and increase my demand to be thirsty. With that in mind you can see how the idea that markets exists by permission and control of the Government is frankly a joke. You might as well go tell a boiling pot of water it will boil by permission, control, and oversight of the Government. So yes - You need to justify how economic principles and market forces are products of Government oversight.
  20. No - Inequality is not an issue no more than man made global warming is an issue or Intelligent Design is an issue. Reality does not bend to people whims. Just because people hold bad ideas and perpetuate them does not make them legitimate. They are to be treated for the nonsense they are. Or to put it a different, you don't argue with someone by climbing into their fox hole when clearly it is filled with BS.
  21. As for income inequality, it is simply a non-issue. If I get a promotion it does not reach out through the ether and hurt my fellow man and if I get a pay cut he is certainly not better off. I Income inequality is simply the old collectivist metaphor of everyone trying to share the same pie when of course the real purpose of life is to make your own pie so you can choose the flavor that suit you (purpose,happiness, etc.) Freedom = Equality before the law Tyranny = Equality after the law The former allows you to bake your own pie while the later smashes everyone into the same pie tin.
  22. So basically you exchanged one state of fascism for another. I'm not sure I'd call that a win. Obviously one special interest group was winning at the expense of another before, and the same state happened after, but that is simply a case of exchanging the special interests group getting privileges at the expense of everyone else. In other news: State power = Force Two people exchanging goods and services voluntarily = Market Saying State Power (Force) = Market (Voluntary Exchange) is a new one to me. I'd be more interested in what such a proposition is trying to justify.
  23. So now I can choose a different service, which means another Government to provide the service. This is the competing Governments argument of the anarcho-capitaists. Seriously - Abort mission. This what I was trying to prevent.
  24. Accessible? I have a choice to refuse? I can opt out? Is there competing agencies I can go to and have access? Trust me - This is a dead end. Stick to Government qua Government, not Government qua market.
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