Rdyson

Dear Jennifer, I am a member who has been away for some time but I find your questions intrieuging and would like to contribute. 1. I have in my life experienced an "existential" fear of death. The fear does not cause me panic or grief rather, it snaps me back from whatever activity I may me engaged in, at random moments in my life and I contemplate death. I accept death and understand death in the terms of biology but psyhologically death fascinates me. This fascination stems from the fact that I do not know the answer. Another important reason that I ponder the topic of death and at times feel a little apprehensive is becasuse I am only 26 and actively interested in the world around me. I also live with the chronic disease, Lupus so doctors, sickness, weakness, and struggle for a normal life is already a battle for me at times and at these times of battle the thought of death goes through me and repulses me because I am emotionally not ready. There are too many things that I want to do and so yes, the idea of death to me is unattractive. 2. I think I answered number two in question one. 3. What did I do about it. Well, I just went on living. I do from time to time analyze death as a concept and as a concept that pertains to me. On a lighter note, I continue to live my life, taking in each and every one of the small pleasures that populate my life. 4. I do agree with your conclusion of the fear of death. I do see similarities in that statement that relates to my resistance towards death. I feel my life is incomplete and have not accomplished all there is to accomplish. Then again, maybe in my own thinking has been distorted. On my death bed after possibly going through the spectrum of emotions that typically leads up to loss and death I may find that my lamentation is for not. After all, I am loved, I am educated, I have learned many fine skills in my life and have laughed, seen shooting stars, made love, danced, and dreamed with the best of them. Oh, well. I hope I am that collected when the time comes.

Ok, here goes. This semester it seems that in many of my classes the topic of raceism has come up. I generally welcome such stimulating conversation and feel no objection. However, the first time I really sat down and watched in my class a well -known video called, "The Color of Fear" I could not keep still. My body began to have uncontrolled reactions. My feet would stomp on the floor, My eyes would roll, and often I jerked my chair back and forth. I guess the truth was that what these men said made me angry, it made me disappointed, and seemed to solidify my belief that barriers are created in the mind no matter what age, gender, adn color you are. Some History... I am white, my ancesters came over on the Mayflower and George Washington can be found about halfway down on my family tree. This not to say that I am white as white can be but I am pretty white.So when I found my blood boiling over inside there was an immediate action to try and calm my senses but like most other times in my life my mouth would not remain closed. I was the first one to shoot my hand in the air anxious with questions. Why, I thought why. These people in this film were sitting around in a circel crying becasue they were frightened, becasue they were a different color, becasue they had grown up poor. They were telling each other and the camera that society had done this, that the police had done this, that "there parents had pulled on their boot straps until those dam boot straps came off". Another famous line was, "man when I see a black man in a suite walking down the side of the road I think, man I bet that man can't wait to get home and be a black man again." Watching the movie I clearly felt their anger, their resentment, and their frustration. As a developing counselor, I am keenly intuned to these feelings and naturally I ask why. It isn't as if I do not see that they are African American and that I do not see that they may be treated differently and that there was and has always been a natural and often tragic need by humans to form groups and discriminate against those that are feared, different, and who share different beliefs. I know I ramble but I love to write and it flows for me. Please hold in there with me. I guess what I am slowly getting at is, look at all this time these men in the video or wasting by crying, huddled in a therapy group. Look at their tears, look at the energy that could have been spent in some productive means other than self- pity and sorrow. No sooner than I had thought this my head began spinning and I knew that anger and sadness are just the first stages in recovery. Underneath all of that anger is sadness and underneat the sadness is light. Hopefully. At least that is what I had been taught but I have never witnessed this with my own eyes. Again I was spinning thinking what if under the men's anger was not sadness but just anger again? Wouldn't that statement be subjective and who made that statement? Thinking in this wild pattern I ended up right back where I had started, upset at the men's anger. What this long winded monologue boils down to is yes, people have hardship and many times that hardship is society induced and that yes, people of color have been and still are recieving disturbing racial messages. However, this issue is most deffienatly a two -sided coin. In my mind, experienceing the act of predjudice and internalizing it and allowing that ignorance and hate become a part of your life for any second is a crime as is the spreading of hate in any form. At what point do you realize that yes, you have been unjustly treated by others and yes, you will continue to move forward even if you are left without the use of your boot straps to pull on? How do Objectivists view this issue? I understand the hurdle of racism as; the man or woman who seeks intelligence and possess a natural curiousity and wonder about the world around him/ her, the person who builds him/herself to be self- sufficient, and loves themselves and in turn loves the world aroud him, will discover that racism will effect them less or not at all if he or she has the ability to reach complete self- actualization as proposed by Maslow. This is not to say that they will not go through hardship, unfairness, and sorrow when seeing hate before their eyes but instead that they will not let it stop them. Picture this, two people are being judged for the most complete and meaningful life lived. Now lets say that one man is white or European American and the other is African American. The white man begins and is carried by a strong wind. The African American man begins and is beat in the head by a violent rush of air. The white man may recieve a fine education, may marry and have children, he may be faithful to his wife or he may not, he may save for his children's education or he may not. At the end of his life as he lays down for his final rest he may look back on a span of time that was marked by nothing but mediocracy. Now let's look at our struggling black or anyb other minority man that the film was depicting as having to struggle by society's standards, fighting the wind, being knocked down again, fighting to remain courageous, and falling down in relapses. He may aget married, he may have children, he may be fired from his job for being a color or particular ethnicity or he may not. He may struggle daily with the injustice or he may encounter it every so often. At any rate he struggles to remain at his full capacity as a human. He has nothing to prove but his own strength and conviction to himself. At the end of this man' s life lets say that he collapses a little more than midway athrough the miles of the race and this man looks back on his life as a testimony to his unending conviction to live a life and love the life he lived. Who was the winner? With my confusing example I would like to mention that the tables can be turned to describe any race opr gender.

Hello, I just joined and submitted a thought. I want to thank those that read it and gave feedback. It makes me happy to have found a place that I can learn and share ideas. I am currently a student but am fastly becoming a writer. it is unstoppable and I love it. I know as a writer, in which I hope to one day become I will invariably be spreading my beliefs and views in my characters, in my scenes, in the mood. I want the people I represent, the stories I tell to have merit, education, conviction, and strength. I look forward to much learned through your insight and words. Oh and to the man who gave me that phrase. I wrote it down. I have one from the book in which I think is special and telling. spoken by a small shriveled tramp who wore a cap pulled low over his eyes, "He found the fountain of youth, which he wanted to bring down to men. Only he never came back." "Why didn't he?" "Because he found that it couldn't be brought down."

Hello all, My name is Rachael Dyson. I have discovered the Fountianhead. I saw it peeking out at me in a book store. Not knowing what it was about I bought it and read it. I fell in love and was sad when I finished it. I read a few more books in between just digesting it. I found myself in luck when I mentioned her name to my great Aunt. She had all the tapes, all the interview and a full two hour biography. She had even subscribed to her magazines which have since been discontinued. I sat fascinated in front of the television for hours as I watched her speak, watched her dodge flaming bullets from the press and public, and watched her live an amazing life. I am currently reading Atlas Shrugged and plan to enter the writing contest for college students. I am in a graduate program studying mental health counseling. I am naturally curious about people and I am going to be mixed up in the masses and I myself am part of the masses. I am on disability becasue I have SLE Lupus. It has rendered me incapacitated at times. This summer my kidneys failed. After reading Ayn Rand and forming my opinions and understanding of her and her way of relating to the world. I realized that I may fall shy of her standards. This distresses me and I wonder if there could not be an adaptation to her way of thought. What about the masses. How do we take what Ayn Rand has put forth and spread it to everyone. I understand there is a lack of knowledge, that many people are unaware of their own strength and given their power away to a God, to an ideal, to a corporation, and to an idea of the way they feel they must live their lives. Education right? But can we educate everyone and is it even our place to educate everyone? Are they even listening? Some people just aren't strong enough to be Roark or Dagney, or Fransisco, or Hank. I myself strive to be stronge, to be educated, to be right, and true. It to me it is a never ending battle and at the end of my life I just want to feel and know that I saw the world for the worlds sake, that I lived my life as Ayn did, as all our great minds did. Survival of the fittest. I know that sounds great. I would like to think that is how it should be and maybe it is, it is in nature but then I would have died a long time ago. My body is not strong enough to last in the kind of fight Ayn proposes, but my mind is and my will is and maybe I just answered my own questions. Please don't kick me off the sight for that. I am keeping it. Maybe it isn't your body that has to be strong but your resolution. I am proud of finding that so I am leaving it just the way it is. I actually tried out a bit of Ayn's thinking in my class last night. I do in my heart believe in her and those who follow her and feel that it is true for me as well. Yep, let me tell you, I was all alone out there. I didn't so much mind and in fact I just kept reaffirming my posotion and repeating what I had said for those who were hearing selectivly. I just kept telling myself, I should get used to being disagreed with. I want to bring her beliefs into the present. Not just in this forum. I want the art work at the top of the page to change. I want to bring our examples, our stories, our progress to this site and to people in the community. Lets move forward taking what Ayn has said, loving life, loving ourselves, loving what we as men and women can do and help to tell others. Don't get me wrong. I do not want to spend my life on the stand. I do not want to preach to a crowd about the virtues of loving yourself and holding no bonds. I want to someday be an author, I want to have children, to have a love, a dog, and many beautiful days in which I use my legs, arms, mind and heart. It's really simple and grand at the same time; I just want to live my life, have my practice, teach my children the virtues of selfishness and in my doing so be able to spread by example. I hope I do not get kicked off. I reviewed all the rules and understand about proof reading but I am just asking for flexibility. Flexibility so that I can learn and others can learn as well. I know I looked at another person's statement who may have been told to leave. He or she expressed regrett. I will answer my own questions next time if that is what you are after. I don't even know who you are.

I don't know what to say about that. It is not my view that Ayn Rand supported the church or even believed in God.