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human_murda

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  1. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from chuff in Is Dignity a Right?   
    Changing the conditions of your work in a way that is different from your contract could be construed as an initiation of force/fraud (and a contract is definitely needed in situations like these).

    And there would be legal issues associated with holding you ransom. You might say that the corporation didn't force you to stay there. But the issue of force is determined by the nature of reality. If somebody locked you in a room only they can open, you would essentially be held as a prisoner. By the nature of reality (i.e., by the constraints placed by the fact that you are physically unable to leave), the situation is very similar and legal issues can be involved.

    Also another thing: if this is the mentality, I doubt they would be the first to do anything in space. So situation is very unlikely as well.
  2. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from tadmjones in Origins of Kashmir Conflict   
    Here is the gist of how the Kashmir conflict started in India:
    British India consisted of regions that were directly controlled by the British as well as ~500 kingdoms that were subsidiary to the British:

    Myanmar was separated from British India in 1937. When they left, the British partitioned the regions that were directly controlled by the them into a Muslim majority Pakistan and a secular India (mostly Hindu but also included non-Hindu, non-Muslim areas). The ~500 kingdoms were allowed to join India or Pakistan or remain independent. In some sense, British India was divided into ~500 countries. However, almost all of these 500 kingdoms chose to join India or Pakistan except a few:
    - Gwadar (controlled by Oman, annexed by Pakistan)
    - Khanate of Kalat (annexed by Pakistan)
    - Hyderabad State (remnant of Mughal Empire, annexed by India)
    - Junagadh (annexed by India)
    - Goa (Portuguese colony, annexed by India)
    - Puducherry (French colony, annexed by India)
    - Jammu and Kashmir

    I think there were other smaller kingdoms as well that didn't join India/Pakistan. I'm from a region which was the Kingdom of Travancore. We initially declared independence, but joined India after threats of assassination.
    Declaration of independence by the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir was the most problematic, since it's located on the border between India and Pakistan. Jammu and Kashmir (or just Kashmir) was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious kingdom. Overall, it was Muslim majority, but had a Hindu ruler (Hari Singh). Kashmir also had a significant Buddhist population in the Ladakh region. This is what the kingdom looks like now:

    When the partition of India along religious lines was announced, massacres of Hindus and Sikhs in "would be Pakistan" regions started (with the opposite happening in border regions in India). After Hindus and Sikhs were massacred in Rawalpindi, the news reached Jammu and led to the "Jammu massacres" in Jammu under the rule of the king (Hari Singh). Hearing news of this, Pakistani tribesmen invaded the kingdom, which resulted in the king, Hari Singh, acceding the kingdom to India. By the time Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India, the kingdom had already lost a significant chunk of territory. The following regions are now controlled by Pakistan:
    - Azad Kashmir ("free" Kashmir) or AJK. Ethnically Pahari (similar to Punjabis)
    - Gilgit Baltistan or GB. Ethnically Balti (tibetic).
    These two regions are Muslim majority and want to be a part of Pakistan. However, Pakistan maintains them as semi-autonomous regions and claims that they support the Kashmiri independence movement and want to hold a plebiscite in the whole region (except the regions claimed by China). Since a lot of the other regions in Kashmir are Muslim majority, Pakistan also claims them as part of Pakistan. I think Pakistan also claims Jammu, even though it's Hindu majority.
    The rest of the kingdom became the semi-autonomous Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. Since legally the kingdom acceded to India, India also claims the rest of the kingdom that was invaded by Pakistan as a part of India. The regions controlled by India are:
    - Jammu: Hindu majority. Ethnically Dogri.
    - Kashmir valley: Muslim majority. Ethnically Kashmiri, speak Koshur.
    - Ladakh: around 45% Muslim and 40% Buddhist. Ladakhis are tibetic.
    Most Jammuites and Ladakhis want to be a part of India. Kashmiris from the valley want to be an independent country (neither India nor Pakistan). However, if they became independent, Pakistan will almost definitely invade them (or turn them into a puppet state).
    There was another region that India controlled that was part of the kingdom called Aksai Chin. The North-Eastern part of Aksai Chin was bounded by the Ardagh–Johnson Line during British rule. India inherited this border with Tibet when the J&K kingdom acceded to India. The border was originally drawn when Tibet was a separate country. After China invaded Tibet and the CCP took over Xinjiang, China invaded India in 1962. China also doesn't recognize the McMahon Line which the British agreed as the border with Tibet. China invaded Tibet (and stopped recognizing agreements made by Tibet), the British left and India has inherited that border dispute. China now controls the following region which was part of the J&K kingdom:
    - Aksai Chin. Almost no one lives there.
    China also claims Ladakh as a part of Tibet and threatens to invade occasionally, most recently two weeks ago.
    After Kashmir acceded to India, Pakistan started sending militants to Indian Kashmir to blow themselves up, which resulted in Indian Kashmir becoming increasingly militarized. This eventually led to an insurgency in the Kashmir Valley and increasing attacks on Kashmiri Hindus, who got kicked out in 1990. Recently (2019), India revoked Kashmir's autonomy, removing the separate constitution for Jammu and Kashmir guaranteed by Article 370 of India's Constitution. Kashmir and Ladakh were turned into Union Territories. Three weeks ago, India's supreme court upheld repeal of Kashmir's special status. This is a Scottish vlogger talking to a local Kashmiri Muslim who lived through most of this.
    India follows the Israel's West Bank model for governing Kashmir, to some extend. India bulldozes the houses of Kashmiris suspected to be terrorists. Reports of rape and torture by the Indian military are common. Mass graves (most likely of Kashmiri Muslims) were found in Kashmir that weren't identified or investigated. Local Kashmiri Hindus are still being killed by terrorists. The Indian government is subsidizing migrations of Hindus from poor states to Kashmir (some of these migrants are killed by terrorists).
    Insurgency in Kashmir is dying:

    Tourism and economic activity have picked up. Here is an interview of a former Kashmiri Muslim activist (Shehla Rashid used to be a "communist" student activist at JNU, but is now slightly more favorable to the Indian government). However, it's still the most militarized region on the planet. Pakistan and China are also involved and the issue isn't easily solvable, apart from recognizing the Line of Actual Control or LAC as the international border.
    Recognizing LAC is also not completely realistic. Pakistan's military controls their civilian government. Any civilian government that suggests the recognition of LAC as an international border gets "couped" by their military. Kashmiri independence also part of Pakistani nationalism and is a cause championed by Pakistan in international forums. The largest river in Pakistan (Indus/Sindhu) also flows through Indian Kashmir. China's belt and road initiative for Pakistan also goes through Pakistani Kashmir (so China is also interested in Indian/Pakistani Kashmir, apart from Aksai Chin and Ladakh).
  3. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from Boydstun in Origins of Kashmir Conflict   
    Here is the gist of how the Kashmir conflict started in India:
    British India consisted of regions that were directly controlled by the British as well as ~500 kingdoms that were subsidiary to the British:

    Myanmar was separated from British India in 1937. When they left, the British partitioned the regions that were directly controlled by the them into a Muslim majority Pakistan and a secular India (mostly Hindu but also included non-Hindu, non-Muslim areas). The ~500 kingdoms were allowed to join India or Pakistan or remain independent. In some sense, British India was divided into ~500 countries. However, almost all of these 500 kingdoms chose to join India or Pakistan except a few:
    - Gwadar (controlled by Oman, annexed by Pakistan)
    - Khanate of Kalat (annexed by Pakistan)
    - Hyderabad State (remnant of Mughal Empire, annexed by India)
    - Junagadh (annexed by India)
    - Goa (Portuguese colony, annexed by India)
    - Puducherry (French colony, annexed by India)
    - Jammu and Kashmir

    I think there were other smaller kingdoms as well that didn't join India/Pakistan. I'm from a region which was the Kingdom of Travancore. We initially declared independence, but joined India after threats of assassination.
    Declaration of independence by the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir was the most problematic, since it's located on the border between India and Pakistan. Jammu and Kashmir (or just Kashmir) was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious kingdom. Overall, it was Muslim majority, but had a Hindu ruler (Hari Singh). Kashmir also had a significant Buddhist population in the Ladakh region. This is what the kingdom looks like now:

    When the partition of India along religious lines was announced, massacres of Hindus and Sikhs in "would be Pakistan" regions started (with the opposite happening in border regions in India). After Hindus and Sikhs were massacred in Rawalpindi, the news reached Jammu and led to the "Jammu massacres" in Jammu under the rule of the king (Hari Singh). Hearing news of this, Pakistani tribesmen invaded the kingdom, which resulted in the king, Hari Singh, acceding the kingdom to India. By the time Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India, the kingdom had already lost a significant chunk of territory. The following regions are now controlled by Pakistan:
    - Azad Kashmir ("free" Kashmir) or AJK. Ethnically Pahari (similar to Punjabis)
    - Gilgit Baltistan or GB. Ethnically Balti (tibetic).
    These two regions are Muslim majority and want to be a part of Pakistan. However, Pakistan maintains them as semi-autonomous regions and claims that they support the Kashmiri independence movement and want to hold a plebiscite in the whole region (except the regions claimed by China). Since a lot of the other regions in Kashmir are Muslim majority, Pakistan also claims them as part of Pakistan. I think Pakistan also claims Jammu, even though it's Hindu majority.
    The rest of the kingdom became the semi-autonomous Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. Since legally the kingdom acceded to India, India also claims the rest of the kingdom that was invaded by Pakistan as a part of India. The regions controlled by India are:
    - Jammu: Hindu majority. Ethnically Dogri.
    - Kashmir valley: Muslim majority. Ethnically Kashmiri, speak Koshur.
    - Ladakh: around 45% Muslim and 40% Buddhist. Ladakhis are tibetic.
    Most Jammuites and Ladakhis want to be a part of India. Kashmiris from the valley want to be an independent country (neither India nor Pakistan). However, if they became independent, Pakistan will almost definitely invade them (or turn them into a puppet state).
    There was another region that India controlled that was part of the kingdom called Aksai Chin. The North-Eastern part of Aksai Chin was bounded by the Ardagh–Johnson Line during British rule. India inherited this border with Tibet when the J&K kingdom acceded to India. The border was originally drawn when Tibet was a separate country. After China invaded Tibet and the CCP took over Xinjiang, China invaded India in 1962. China also doesn't recognize the McMahon Line which the British agreed as the border with Tibet. China invaded Tibet (and stopped recognizing agreements made by Tibet), the British left and India has inherited that border dispute. China now controls the following region which was part of the J&K kingdom:
    - Aksai Chin. Almost no one lives there.
    China also claims Ladakh as a part of Tibet and threatens to invade occasionally, most recently two weeks ago.
    After Kashmir acceded to India, Pakistan started sending militants to Indian Kashmir to blow themselves up, which resulted in Indian Kashmir becoming increasingly militarized. This eventually led to an insurgency in the Kashmir Valley and increasing attacks on Kashmiri Hindus, who got kicked out in 1990. Recently (2019), India revoked Kashmir's autonomy, removing the separate constitution for Jammu and Kashmir guaranteed by Article 370 of India's Constitution. Kashmir and Ladakh were turned into Union Territories. Three weeks ago, India's supreme court upheld repeal of Kashmir's special status. This is a Scottish vlogger talking to a local Kashmiri Muslim who lived through most of this.
    India follows the Israel's West Bank model for governing Kashmir, to some extend. India bulldozes the houses of Kashmiris suspected to be terrorists. Reports of rape and torture by the Indian military are common. Mass graves (most likely of Kashmiri Muslims) were found in Kashmir that weren't identified or investigated. Local Kashmiri Hindus are still being killed by terrorists. The Indian government is subsidizing migrations of Hindus from poor states to Kashmir (some of these migrants are killed by terrorists).
    Insurgency in Kashmir is dying:

    Tourism and economic activity have picked up. Here is an interview of a former Kashmiri Muslim activist (Shehla Rashid used to be a "communist" student activist at JNU, but is now slightly more favorable to the Indian government). However, it's still the most militarized region on the planet. Pakistan and China are also involved and the issue isn't easily solvable, apart from recognizing the Line of Actual Control or LAC as the international border.
    Recognizing LAC is also not completely realistic. Pakistan's military controls their civilian government. Any civilian government that suggests the recognition of LAC as an international border gets "couped" by their military. Kashmiri independence also part of Pakistani nationalism and is a cause championed by Pakistan in international forums. The largest river in Pakistan (Indus/Sindhu) also flows through Indian Kashmir. China's belt and road initiative for Pakistan also goes through Pakistani Kashmir (so China is also interested in Indian/Pakistani Kashmir, apart from Aksai Chin and Ladakh).
  4. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    Arabs don't have the same rights as Jews. They don't have "Birthright Israel" (and related travel/migration rights), for example, even if they were actually born there and got kicked out. They also don't have the same experience with law enforcement as Jews.
    This is also a meaningless question. The Muslims who used to live in Israel and whose rights have been violated the most are not physically there, because they have been kicked out by Jews (1948 Palestinian expulsion). Just because they're not physically in Israel now doesn't mean that the rights of Muslims who had lived in present day Israel hadn't been violated. So yes, the property rights of "Israeli Muslims" have also been violated, but you won't find them in Israel.
    The reason you won't find as many "maltreated" Muslims in Jewish majority regions is because the Israeli Muslims whose rights were violated were also ethnically cleansed and no longer exist, not because they weren't maltreated. Acting like the rights of Muslims in Israel weren't violated is equivalent to saying that the rights of murdered (or deported) people weren't violated because they no longer exist (or exist in the same place). Just because these people don't have Israeli citizenship because of being Muslim doesn't mean they aren't from Israel or that their rights weren't violated.
     
    Where are Israel's borders?
    If you mean the Jewish majority areas with citizenship, there used to be Muslims there who got kicked out (1948 Palestinian expulsion). The rights of Muslims who used to live in Jewish majority regions still got violated, even if they're not physically there now (and don't have Israeli citizenship, even though they're from Israel). Jews took over homes of Muslims using laws such as "Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953)". This is a violation of rights "within Israel's borders".
    If you mean West Bank, Israel occupies it militarily. Israel is also continually expanding into the West Bank and Jews living in the West Bank have Israeli citizenship, but Muslims don't. Israel de-facto controls West Bank and still kick out Muslims from their homes, as of 2023 (these homes are then taken over by Jews who have Israeli citizenship with help from the Israeli police force and military). What's happening in West Bank already happened in "Israel".
    If you mean Gaza, Israel has no direct military control over it, but controls their economy and resources.
    Israel doesn't just practice apartheid. It's a mix of ethnic cleansing (in Israel, 1948), apartheid (in West Bank, ongoing) and imperialism (in Gaza, ongoing).
  5. Haha
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    The year is 2023. College kids and twitter posts have assumed absolute, dictatorial power. Guns, bombs and military aid have stopped working. Genocide by words is the new norm. Whites in the US and Jews in Israel are channeling their inner Dodo.
    - The Smartest Conservative
  6. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    I guess when you have room temperature IQ, it's easy to answer that Muslims having rights is equivalent to Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.
    And of course, Judeophobia never existed when Conservatives were chanting "Jews will not replace us", but Jews are virtually genocided as soon as some leftist says Muslims have rights.
  7. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    Keep being ignorant of social realities. Power structures and hierarchies exist and humans function within it. You're living in a fantasy land where you think people are, by their own moral failures, responsible for their oppression by others and deserve it.
    I don't blame you for your opinions. Not the first time you've echoed White nationalist (or in this case, the adjacent Zionist) talking points. You know what those evil "anti-racist" commies say: "Scratch a liberal and ... ".
  8. Like
    human_murda reacted to SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    Yes, how evil of me to ask Israel to sacrifice "higher" values such as oppression, systemic murder, property and land theft, racism, and religious discrimination to "lower" values such as justice, equality, and peace.
  9. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    Israel bombs Gaza (which has a population density similar to cities) indiscriminately and spins it as "Hamas is using civilians as a human shield". If they wanted to actually kill militants, they should send soldiers, not missiles.
  10. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    Dude, you think you're Aryan/Übermensch psychologically. You've been simping for Russia for the past year. I'm pretty sure I know who the fascist is.
    Aww. Did I rile up a rightie?
  11. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    You can keep cosplaying as Übermensch, will yourself out of genocides, own the left and do other White shenanigans. The rest of us will be out here doing our non-Aryan things in the real world.
  12. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    @whYNOT is a symptom of disgusting White people who have lived a privileged life, think oppression has no consequences, live in their own Aryan/Übermensch fantasies and think that Jews should have "pulled themselves by their bootstraps" in the middle of the Holocaust and should have simply "chosen not to be victims".
  13. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    And anyone who thinks that repression and victimization have zero negative effects and that every single person can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" no matter what happens to them (even in the middle of a genocide or bombing) is worse than a determinist. You believe in a mystical concept of human will and have no concept of morality.
    Keep riling up leftists and doing absolutely nothing to solve real world problems. That's easy when you pretend that the world doesn't have rules and you can solve everything by sheer human will.
  14. Haha
    human_murda got a reaction from Jon Letendre in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    @whYNOT is a symptom of disgusting White people who have lived a privileged life, think oppression has no consequences, live in their own Aryan/Übermensch fantasies and think that Jews should have "pulled themselves by their bootstraps" in the middle of the Holocaust and should have simply "chosen not to be victims".
  15. Haha
    human_murda reacted to SpookyKitty in Do Algorithmically Non-Trivial Definitions Refute Measurement-Omission Theory?   
    This is actually a very sexy calculation. I am impressed.
  16. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from SpookyKitty in Do Algorithmically Non-Trivial Definitions Refute Measurement-Omission Theory?   
    I don't think it matters to Rand's theory what quantities are directly measurable or not. Side-length is a measurement, average of side-lengths is a measurement, angles are measurements, sines and tangents of angles are measurements. These are all characteristics of a triangle, even if we might need to perform some computations to find them out.
    It's possible to restate your definition in terms of quantities that are "directly measurable": we just need the ratio of a triangle's side-length to its perimeter (which is "directly measurable") to be between 0.9/3 and 1.1/3. However, even here we need to "compute" the ratio (which isn't directly measurable). The measurement omission here is the fact that only the ratios matter, not the actual lengths.
     
    This isn't actually necessary. It was just the easiest way. Since we know for a fact that only the ratios matter, we can discard all length measurements as a first step (and instead just look at angles). Thus, even without computing averages, we can omit all length measurements (since they're just indicators of scale).
    Then, based on the law of sines, we can apply the following conditions:
    0.9/3 < sin(A)/(sin(A)+sin(B)+sin(B)) < 1.1/3
    0.9/3 < sin(B)/(sin(A)+sin(B)+sin(B)) < 1.1/3
    0.9/3 < sin(C)/(sin(A)+sin(B)+sin(B)) < 1.1/3
    Even after this, there are additional measurement omissions (only ratios of sines matter, not the actual values of the sines. The exact value of the ratio also doesn't matter and only a certain range matters).
    The idea that we need to compute averages before any measurement omission is incorrect. It's possible to get rid of length measurements first and then do other computations. However, calculating averages first is easier (and it honestly doesn't matter. The average is as much a property of a triangle as a side-length).
  17. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Cultural Parasitism   
    Despite the existence of Katie Dippold's twitter page, Paul Feig and Ivan Reitman are still men. Who are they taking revenge against? Also, the Ghostbusters movie is about women in media. BLM is irrelevant here and doesn't prove any point about women taking revenge against men (the director and one of the producers are men). Sure, there are women in the team but that's not relevant to the point that these movies are supposedly ways of taking revenge against men.
    And they could have written totally different and better stories with pansexual, brown, female leads but they didn't. It's easy to talk about how imaginary movies would have been better, but given how the 2016 movie was a lazy sequel, they would have produced a shitty movie with straight, white male leads. You are blaming the problems of the movie on the fact that they have non- straight, White male leads (or the politics behind it) when the actual problem is that they just used that as a selling point and did not try to be original. They tried to sell the movie with politics but the problem is not the politics, the problem is that they were lazy (and they would have been lazy no matter who the leads were).
    Similar stuff could be said about the recent Aladdin movie. It was a remake and wasn't that well done (from the Genie's CGI to the costumes looking home-made to the casting). Jasmine was specifically supposed to be Persian, but they did not cast someone Middle-Eastern (and she was probably the only famous Middle-Eastern character in Western media who wasn't a terrorist, apart from Jesus). Is this because the casting was done by the alt-right trying to make Jasmine whiter? No, it was because Naomi Scott (who doesn't look Persian) was more famous and could sing and because the film was a remake and kind of lazy. The film wasn't bad because Disney was infiltrated by the alt-right or because of politics. It was bad because it was a lazy remake.
    There are also examples on the opposite end of the spectrum, like Hollywood casting light-skinned actors to appeal to China. Has the alt-right infiltrated Hollywood?
  18. Like
    human_murda reacted to Eiuol in Cultural Parasitism   
    When has this happened? I mean, it seems like the Magnificent Seven remake was the forgotten one... And if the original was forgotten, it's not because it was canceled.
    The logic seems to go like this:
    1) companies that are rational make money
    2) companies that are not rational don't make money
    3) therefore companies that make money are rational
     
    4) since it is not rational to make parasitic movies, the companies that make such movies won't make money
    5) therefore the companies make these movies for reasons besides money
     
    1-3 is circular (Why they rational? Because they make money. Why do they make money? Because they are rational.)
    4 misses the fact that you can make money this way.
    5 indicates a hidden premise that no one who is irrational tries to make money or will always fail to make any money. 
     
    Sometimes it's hard to accept that companies can be manipulative. You can make money off of marks and do quite well. The progressives are the marks. 
     
     
  19. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from AlexL in Why Do Most Philosophers Not Know Of Noethers Theorem And Its Implications   
    There's nothing particularly quantum mechanical about Noether's theorem (it was proven just before quantum mechanics was widely accepted). It applies to classical mechanics too.
  20. Like
    human_murda reacted to Harrison Danneskjold in Immigration restrictions   
    Then we should make it easy to immigrate and become a citizen but very hard to gain enfranchisement.
  21. Like
    human_murda reacted to Doug Morris in The Case for Open Objectivism   
    Azrael Rand:
    You speak of "national self-interest".  What is important is individual self-interest.
    You have made it clear that you think our self-interest requires restrictions on immigration and letting race be a consideration in setting public policy.  But I don't see how you have proven this.  You have not sufficiently considered the point that we must think of people and treat them as individuals, not as members of collectives, whether defined racially or otherwise.
    When I spoke of rape culture I did not mean in the whole society or a whole university.  I was speaking of what might be called a subculture, a cultural attitude that seems to exist among some American male college students that encourages rape.
    If one-fifth of Africa's population (about a quarter of a billion people) decide to enter the United States in the next year or so, where exactly would they go?  No private property owner would have to let them onto his or her property.  Even owners who were willing to accept some of them would probably have a limit to how many they would accept.  If they are squatting on or clogging government property, the government would have the right to require them to leave, and if there is no place here for them to go, that would mean sending them back. 
  22. Like
    human_murda reacted to Alethiometry in Black Swan   
    The contrast between Lily's and Nina's character is not about "fixing" anything.

    Yes, going out with Lily did not help Nina. I'm not arguing that going out with Lily was a good thing for Nina to do, or that it should help Nina in some way. You are completely missing my point.

    Throughout the entire movie, you are beaten over the head with the differences between these two girls. Nina is mentally unstable and on a quest for perfection. Lily doesn't care about perfection, is hedonistic, but comes out looking more mentally balanced in the end. Nina ends up stabbing herself, Lily doesn't. Lily congratulates Nina on her excellent performance in the end and isn't psychotic.

    The connection between insanity and a quest for perfection is made because both of these elements are present in Nina's character. The connection between "balance" and mental stability is made because both of these elements are meshed together in Lily's character. These two characters foil each other: you get compromise and mental stability, or a quest for perfection and insanity.



    That's part of what's going on with this movie. But the other part of what's going on is that her quest for perfection is linked to her mental illness. The more she struggles to be perfect, the greater her mental illness.

    I do see a problem with showing this futile quest for perfection as the main characters struggle. In the Romantic Manifesto, Rand writes:

    "Since a rational man’s ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a lifelong process—and the higher the values, the harder the struggle—he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved. It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther. Art gives him that fuel; the pleasure of contemplating the objectified reality of one’s own sense of life is the pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one’s ideal world."

    What kind of man wants to see a film or a work of art where the plot revolves around a futile quest for perfection undertaken by a crazy person? Who wants to see a film that connects perfectionism to insanity, and compromise to mental health?
  23. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from Easy Truth in My senses fool me - How could the senses be self-evident?   
    The entire problem with your argument is considering the actual, the concrete to be an "appearance" while considering your abstractions to be "actual" reality (and somehow invalidates the former or relegates them into an "appearance"). This is easily resolved since abstraction, as such, do not exist.
  24. Like
    human_murda got a reaction from Uummon Beeng in Veganism under Objectivism   
    And need is a sanction to violate others' rights?
  25. Like
    human_murda reacted to Tenderlysharp in Why follow reason?   
    "You don’t think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. "-Ayn Rand, For The New Intellectual
    A living person is to parrot someone who has died... for a philosophy of life?  I don't believe any living Objectivist claims to be Ayn Rand.  Only you can direct the action you take to quote her.  If it were all quotes it would be like she was just here talking to herself... 
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