LutherSetzer

I recommend consulting the work of a professional cult exit counselor: http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecente...ticles/BITE.htm Does Objectivism fit the BITE model -- control by others of Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotions? Clearly it does not. Many multi-level marketing (MLM) organizations, however, are another matter! The movie Believe offers a hysterical view of this. I highly recommend it.

See my article "Experiencing Objectivism through Quicken" for a complete system to tie every financial transaction to deep spiritual values.

http://www.beachbody.com My before and after pictures: http://www.milliondollarbody.com/LRSetzer

You might also want to consider joining a local Toastmasters Club to learn to speak more clearly and confidently in a supportive environment. They have helped countless people across the world to improve public speaking skills, and yes, some of the notable members have overcome difficulties like yours. Visit http://www.toastmasters.org to learn more and to locate a club near you.

This is what my wife and I do and it works well because it follows natural laws. "Our" expenses get paid from "our" accounts while "my" expenses get paid from "my" account and "her" expenses get paid from "her" account. This makes managing cash flow far easier and assures that necessities like utility bills get paid while leaving other, personal bills the responsibility of the individual. Quicken software makes all this a snap. See my article "Experiencing Objectivism through Quicken" to learn how to link your core values to your financial expenditures. I found this exercise and discipline quite revealing. I am not a Libertarian but I confess sympathy for the "personal sovereignty" viewpoint of finances Harry Browne advocates in How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. In his words: I should add that what little I have read on asset protection suggests that one ought to structure his finances in a way to maximize asset protection from lawsuits. This could mean individual or joint titling or even titling to land trusts or other instruments depending upon the laws in your state. Mark Warda elaborates on this in his book Complete Guide to Asset Protection Strategies.

I cannot top the wonderful responses thus far posted. Given the natural human craving for meaningful social bonds, however, (in contrast to the destructive superficial ones that gave you such grief), I can suggest these articles that might shed light on human relations from an Objectivist viewpoint, especially the last one that discusses high school issues: Experiencing Objectivism through Quicken Objectivism and the Five Loves Objectivist Clubs and the Four Basic Human Needs Advice for Those Considering NCSSM I am really glad your psychiatrist had the sense to prescribe The Fountainhead rather than drugs!

Vicki, I graduated NCSU in 1988 and I can see things have not improved philosophically there. In fact, my freshman year roommate left NCSU to attend the more philosophically astute Saint John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. (The NCSU poster showing a cow next to a computer concretized his view of NCSU.) Anyway, I support the suggestion of simply not wasting your time on such a board. The ones who actually have interest will read the books and join boards like this one. In fairness to myself, I will still defend their engineering school as top notch which explains why I went there to earn a BSME degree.

See my article "Houseguests from Hell" at http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Setzer...from_Hell.shtml in which I illustrate: "Speaking of utterly useless things, allow me to share what I have learned about platonic relationships. I want to tell you a tale in which I learned that such relationships have all the downsides of romantic relationships with none of the upsides of romantic relationships. In more colloquial terms, they offer all of the nagging and none of the physical affections!" That said, I am good enough friends with at least one Objectivist woman that I call her just to chat briefly about once a month. However, both my wife and I are secure enough that we both have good long-distance friendships with people of the opposite sex with no worries of cheating. I agree with the gist of your article warning against forming close relationships with people of the opposite sex you have no intention of dating. Based on my article, I would warn against that even for someone single and not dating anyone!

I wrote several articles at http://rebirthofreason.com/Florida/ about FranklinCovey, the training company Stephen Covey founded with Hyrum Smith some years ago. Basically, I showed how the company's concepts of governing values, roles, and mission statement can integrate smoothly with the Objectivist values of self-esteem, reason, and purpose, respectively. I agree that the conventional moral thinking mars what would otherwise be a great book. However, I would not dismiss the entire book on that basis alone because the good parts are very good indeed. I condensed the relevant relationships into a club brochure at http://files.meetup.com/14567/PROPEL-Brochure.pdf I also suggest Covey's book The Eighth Habit in which he explores the increasingly autonomous nature of work in the new century. Hyrum Smith's books such as What Matters Most are worth reading as well.

The idea of drinking to release inhibitions has never appealed to me. I need to inhibit my animal desires already! I admit I like an occasional pina colada or rum and coke just to enjoy the taste of the alcohol, but I have never had more than the equivalent of two glasses of red wine in one night. New Zealand Sense Of Life Objectivists (SOLO) founder Lindsay Perigo will of course extol the virtues of drinking as will many of his fellow SOLO members. I noticed much more drinking at the SOLO conference some years ago than I ever expected although I never saw any of them get smashed. So I can only comment from inexperience rather than experience. They were shocked when I told them I had never been drunk and tried to get me to drink just to experience it, but I declined. In retrospect, maybe I should have named some sexual position I had never tried and solicited the ladies there egging me into trying drinking just to see if they would offer their "services." That would have put things into perspective (about nagging people to try something after they have said "no") and shut their mouths in a hurry!

That will be jolly well interesting. I look forward to a jolly good time reading their jolly e-mails. I hope they jolly well consult actual law and the jolly values of their jolly target audience and not just their own jolly wishes and desires. A is A. Do you really think that their express desires to the contrary will stop people from recording to iPods the posted streaming media files for their own convenience -- to listen in their cars or while jogging or whenever they desire? As I said, to think that amounts to wishful thinking just as someone who opposes TiVo engages in wishful thinking. Perhaps they can also explain why WM Recorder remains in business -- claiming 100% compliance with law -- and whether they intend to mount a class action lawsuit against them. I said it already and I will say it again: I have registered at the site and so given them the information they desire. I click the links just as I would if I sat tied to my PC to experience the media streams. The only difference is that I download the material to my Palm Treo 680 using the aforementioned software so I can listen in my car. I do this for personal use only and not for sharing. At this point, I have argued the issue with myself to my own satisfaction and nothing anyone says will change my mind about the rightness of my actions.

Oy! You can "think" anything you jolly well wish. The television broadcasting industry already went through this exercise decades ago when they tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the blossoming VCR industry from recording signals to tape for personal use. The courts finally ruled it as okay. Whether you agree with it or not thus becomes a moot point. Attempting to stop private individuals from recording data streams for personal use via finger waggling and "saying so" has only slightly greater effectiveness than the king who attempted to legislate away the motions of the tides. Better simply to accept the new technology and the human urge for convenience and work with those facts. Certainly I intend to do so. If you think I will tie myself to my PC to enjoy this material when I have means of accessing, recording, and enjoying it at my convenience while still satisfying the intent of registering me as a user of the site, you have engaged in wishful thinking. From the WM Recorder site: 100% Legal WM Recorder records all streaming media not protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management), and is fully compliant with all copyright laws, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (Only 1% of all online video and audio is DRM protected.)

This has no difference in essence from recording a show on television for personal use -- not for redistribution to others -- to watch later over and over again. However, if you reason differently , feel free not to follow my suggestions.

I neglected to mention that you should register at no cost at http://www.aynrand.org to access dozens of hours of free streaming audio and video featuring Ayn Rand and other Objectvist intellectuals. You can record these using http://www.wmrecorder.com and then convert them to iPod formats using http://www.winavi.com or http://www.ezsoftmagic.com/mp3_audio_converter.htm or http://www.boilsoft.com/rmtomp3/ or similar software.

You probably already know this but http://www.audible.com offers many of Ayn Rand's books in the format you seek as well as Leonard Peikoff's book on Objectivism. You can also find some of Nathaniel Branden's books there such as The Psychology of Self-Esteem which came almost verbatim from his articles in The Objectivist Newsletter as I understand it. I should also mention sites like http://www.ebookmall.com/ and http://www.ebooks.com where you can download some of these books in digital formats like PDF and perhaps use text-to-speech software in conjunction with recording software to convert them to MP3 with questionable results, e.g. reading page numbers and headings, etc. you do not want.

I also wrote a critical review of What the Bleep Do We Know!? at Rebirth of Reason and Amazon which you can read at http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Movies/134.shtml My main problem with these and other self-growth materials is that, whatever their virtues, hardly any bother to appeal to the objective nature of reality and the need to appeal to reason, not "visualization" and "belief" and "passion," as the final arbiter of the worth and achievability of any particular goal. However, I disagree with the book SHAM which goes in the opposite direction toward an almost fatalistic view of human potential. So I published a critique of that book at Rebirth of Reason and Amazon which you can read at http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Setzer...oble_Soul.shtml I have written some articles on self-growth using Objectivism such as this one on Quicken: http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Setzer...h_Quicken.shtml Click my name at the top of that page to find other articles by me.

I wrote a review of this movie for the Rebirth of Reason site -- and in abbreviated form on Amazon -- and reproduce it here in full: The Law of Attraction -- Subjectivist Style The self-help and actualization movement (SHAM) in America today offers two polar opposites of empowerment and victimization. The former argues that anyone can accomplish anything with enough force of will while the latter claims that everyone ultimately has no control and that someone or something else warrants blame for any misfortune one experiences. Admirers of Ayn Rand would likely much prefer to spend time with empowerment types than victimization types due to the former's optimistic sense of life. Nevertheless, the empowerment movement has so enamored itself with New Age "primacy of consciousness" metaphysics as to drive away even the most open minded Ayn Rand fans living by her realist philosophy, Objectivism. Given the amazing feats that people can accomplish with reason as their guide, this makes the empowerment movement especially tragic. If anyone wants to grasp in one concentrated place the best and worst aspects of the empowerment movement, The Secret offers such an experience. In a single 92 minute rapidly paced video documentary filled with impressive visual effects, a moving score and a parade of impressively credentialed and influential speakers and authors widely respected within the empowerment movement, the viewer gets a feast of all that the movement has to offer. Sadly, that feast comes laced with a poison of profound, misleading, mystical errors and evasions that can literally lead multitudes of gullible viewers off the cliff of reason into the abyss of self-delusion. The Web site for The Secret tantalizes viewers with trailers reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code claiming that "the secret" has remained the private information of select elites throughout history. With this information, the teasers claim, these elites have risen to power, earned fortunes, and kept the masses at bay in the toil of fields and factories. The creators of the movie assert that they have become the first in history to make "the secret" available to common people across the globe. The video opens with a woman in dire straits attempting to get her life on track. She learns of "the secret" after researching the successes of great men and women throughout history. After more staged theatrics, the movie finally gets down to business. What exactly constitutes "the secret"? Talking head after talking head explains it as the "Law of Attraction." The entire video argues that the universe responds to thoughts and manifests whatever a person habitually thinks. With dazzling special effects, the film shows various actors "reenacting" different situations, "broadcasting their thoughts" into the world and then experiencing externally the content of their internal, repeated, focused thoughts. So, the argument goes, if you focus on the rotten nature of your job, your marriage, your social life and so forth, you will continue to manifest those awful experiences. Conversely, if you change your habitual thoughts to how great you want those parts of your life to become, then eventually the universe will respond like the genie from Aladdin's lamp: "Your wish is my command." Under this alleged natural law, anyone who couples enough emotion and sincere belief with repeated affirmations and habitual thoughts will eventually coax the universe into delivering the goods to his doorstep. To abuse further the key term "natural law," Dr. John Hagelin, a Transcendental Meditation champion and former Natural Law Party presidential candidate, figures prominently in this documentary. As do his many fellow gurus, he excitedly talks about how wonderfully well the "Law of Attraction" works for all who sincerely apply it. Testimonial after testimonial gush forth from true believers. They claim that because they wished, affirmed, felt and visualized with enough "power of intention," they encountered abundance in all areas of life. Naïve persons unfamiliar with the basic axioms of Objectivism -- existence, identity, consciousness -- and seeking a better life while avoiding the victimization route will find much appealing here. Unlike the morally arrested, subjectivist dupes of The Secret, however, Objectivists grasp that to act with genuine purpose requires knowing exactly what one wants, why one validly wants it, and then employing reason to achieve it. In that regard, then, "visualizing" exactly how one wants to experience the future can guide a person into experiencing that future provided he acts rationally and productively toward that purpose. If The Secret admitted to this limit then Objectivists would have little quibble with it. However, this movie goes well beyond those objective limits. It asserts, in effect, that one does not need reason at all but can simply focus on "visualizing" and "experiencing" the future using "affirmations" in order to "attract" what they want from a universe that becomes as obedient to human will as Aladdin's genie: "Your wish is my command." Objectivists know better: A is A, and existence possesses primacy over consciousness. Can an Objectivist employ a variant of the Law of Attraction that maintains sane metaphysics? Yes! The Law of Attraction -- Objectivist Style In the Objectivist metaphysics, the root of volition consists of the choice to focus. A person can focus his mind to bring reality into cognitive clarity, defocus it to turn his cognition into a fog, or even focus it away from reality to a fabricated world of evasions. In addition, the "crow epistemology" captures the finite nature of human consciousness. A person can only hold so many units of focus in his conscious attention at any one moment before his mind turns into a fog of "too many units." Because a rational person needs to act with a clear sense of purpose, he needs to choose a life affirming purpose consciously and then maintain that purpose at the center of his focus so he can act productively toward it. His purpose gives his subconscious "standing orders" to begin working on the challenge of achieving it. Through reason, he can evaluate all concretes he encounters as beneficial, irrelevant or detrimental to his purpose. Because he keeps his productive purpose "in front of himself" cognitively, resources he might not otherwise notice begin to grab his attention. They existed already, but he never noticed them until he focused on his purpose and his need for those resources. His consciously chosen purpose thus "attracts" his focus toward the resources he needs to achieve that purpose. This sequence of explanations preserves the sane "primacy of existence" of Objectivist metaphysics and offers a fully grounded version of the "Law of Attraction." It stands in stark contrast against the insane "primacy of consciousness" subjectivist metaphysics of the "your wish is my command" crowd in The Secret. Learning to focus on a manageable number of productive purposes and to achieve them through rational action offers the real formula for earned success in any endeavor. But the people behind The Secret want to keep that fact a secret. Otherwise, they would have to pack their bags, return to the primitive swamps of their Witch Doctor ancestors, and wallow in the mud in which they would have to live without the assistance of the authentic producers -- those who proudly apply reason to accomplish life affirming, consciously chosen, productive purposes.

I cannot comment on how well Ayn Rand performed in school as I have not studied (!) that aspect of her life. Based on her writings, I suspect she would respect the academic achievements of moral people for moral purposes. By contrast, a high academic achiever like Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead would still earn scorn from her. A non-academic like Gail Wynand had a higher stature in the novel despite his ultimate self-betrayal. As for motivating yourself toward all As, read Objectivist psychologist Edwin Locke's excellent book Study Methods and Motivation.

I like the current domain name and agree that it carries considerable weight and ought not to change.

Congratulations! I attended NCSU 1984-1988 and graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. I also started reading Ayn Rand my last semester there thanks to a classmate who loaned me The Virtue of Selfishness. Do expect an unusual number of Jesus freaks, however, as the state does compose part of the so-called "Bible Belt"! I have yet to see the Ayn Rand Institute list an Objectivist or Ayn Rand Club at NCSU. Perhaps you can break new ground there. I hope so.

Amen, brother! "[A]nyone who wants to be understood, has to make damn sure that he has made [her]self intelligible." --Ayn Rand, "The Psychology of Psychologizing" When Mary Jane Watson started her noisy and embarrassing "Who Is Gwen Stacy?" whine fest at the French restaurant, I sat there rolling my eyes and wishing Peter Parker would cite this passage to put her in her place. Do these two naive young [presumably] virgins really need to jump into a committed engagement to marry? I advise against it.

After reading your stream of lecturing that had all the trappings of a finger-waggling school marm, I conclude: You have the character of an overbearing, domineering, pompous ass. You asked. As someone who runs several Ayn Rand Meetups, I can understand completely why Todd expelled you. I would have done the same. Running such an organization offers enough challenges without having to deal with such unduly self-important snobs. Todd has already explained himself and I see no point in further elaboration as I would simply beat a dead horse in repeating his sentiments. Granted, I have never met any of you, but you did ask us to draw conclusions based solely on that thread.

Hyrum Smith wrote an excellent secular book years ago called The Ten Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management derived in a way from Objectivism. By that I mean that he drew upon The Psychology of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden which in turn drew from material published in The Objectivist Newsletter. Basically, Smith argues that productivity and self-esteem have strong psychological links and that a third element, event control, ties those together to make them accessible to us in a systematic fashion. He based his famous Franklin Day Planner on this fundamental "tri-quation" and it still remains basically the same since he started his company back in the middle of the 1980s. Smith articulates the idea of governing values or standards by which each person judges his own moral worth. He gets this idea from Benjamin Franklin's autobiographical story of his "little book" that he used to track his own adherence to his "thirteen virtues" for the sake of reaching "moral perfection" -- hence the name of the Franklin Day Planner. Smith, a devout Mormon, lists his adherence to God and "Christian living" among his top governing values in his sample "Personal Constitution" in the book. Fortunately, Smith takes a "natural law" approach in advancing his ideas and does not rely on supernaturalism or mysticism to make his case. Thus, Objectivists will gain much from reading this book despite Smith's own mystical errors. You can read a summary of the book here: http://attitudeadjustment.tripod.com/Books/Ten-Laws.htm Visit http://www.franklincovey.com to order their day planner. I will never forget the semester when I had three roommates in a two bedroom condominium we all shared while on work study. I shared a room with a devout Mormon while the two hedonists shared the other room. Despite my atheism, I still had more in common with the calm, reserved, studious Mormon than I did with the carousing, drinking, womanizing hedonists. The Mormon spent 30 minutes every single morning reading from his holy books without fail. They do teach discipline and focus and productiveness and that has advantages in all areas of life. But they still have some very wrong ideas that demand evasion. My local acquaintance Mike Earl, a former Mormon, has an entire site that might help: http://www.reasonworks.com Perhaps their strangest belief, which my roommate confirmed, involves their faith that if a person cultivates a good enough soul, he can literally become god of another world in the hereafter. You would need to do some research to learn more about that. My own Christian church considered Mormonism a cult but not part of the occult -- a church that teaches exemplary character but also beliefs at odds with the "proper" divine inspiration of the Bible though due to human evil rather than Satanic influence. From a secular viewpoint, I see no way around classifying all of them as Christian given their common denominator of accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the following of his teachings as the worthy ideal in this world. The only disagreement centers on exactly what constitutes those teachings and how to implement them in a way that pleases God and achieves salvation. To answer your questions succinctly: 1. Yes, Mormons consider themselves Christians. 2. No, other Christians generally do not consider Mormons Christians. 3. Yes, Objectivists and other secularists ought to consider Mormons Christians.

This is actually the argument that Intelligent Design proponents make at major debates with secularists. I know this because someone who helped to arrange a national atheist conference included such a debate as part of the program. I am not making this up! They actually agreed to have these same two debaters conduct the same debate at a religious conference also. Worse, campus religious groups distribute this argument in booklet form with the title "The Atheist Test." For giggles, I had a photograph taken of myself eating a banana while reading the booklet at a campus Objectivist booth. You can see that here: http://aynrand.meetup.com/12/photos/4549/88449/

I assume by your profile that you matriculate in Atlanta, GA. Feel free to use our Meetup site at http://aynrand.meetup.com/172/ to announce events to the general public. Just register there and e-mail me at [email protected] to let me know you want Assistant Organizer privileges and I will oblige. This will allow you to add your events to the calendar there. Meetup offers many lessons so I recommend studying their site in detail. Howard Dean used the service to great effect to organize his campaign years ago and only failed because of, well, because of being Howard Dean. Luke Setzer http://www.PropelObjectivism.com