A Kat

Sweet, another superhero fan. Did anyone else here dig the Ninja Turtles? Yes, they were completely silly, but they were hilarious and it was also funny to see how flatly incompetent the villains were. And X-Men was just awesome. The story of mutants has a great appeal to any kid who ever felt different and excluded even when their difference made them special in a good way. People fear what they don't understand can easily equal stupid muscleheads throw nerds in lockers. It's also kind of a metaphor for adolescence too, I think.

I don't think the draft is going to happen. But if it does, and they decide to draft the ladies as well, I got a plan to get out of it. My friend and I have agreed to go put on a nice make-out show for the army recruiters so we get the boot for being icky lesbians. I know it sucks to fake reality, but if they're going to be stupid enough to continue to exclude people based on their sex lives I'm taking advantage of their stupidity. They don't have to know me and my buddy both dig the fellas... On a more disturbing note, the draft may not be popular, but this idea of "national service" is. You know, the notion of taking young people out of high school or college and forcing them to "serve their country" in a non-military way, doing other pet projects for the government. A lot of people are in favor of this, even my own damn mom! I tried to explain to her that I own my life and that it's immoral for the government to make (yet another) claim on it, but she's of the mind that "we owe it to the nation to give back to the community", whatever that means. I think we should be focusing our energy on stopping the much more real possibility of this national service crap.

I would like to add: Bill Frist Tom Delay Ann Coulter and all those lovely mouthpieces of the "science" of Intelligent Design In addition to some of my other beefs against them, all of these people are PROFOUNDLY anti-reason.

Looks like most people took this to be the equivalent of cops and soldiers. That makes sense. In ref to Iakeo's question, i think I meant it more along the lines of comic book hero (i.e. Spider-Man) In other words, the presumption was that the normal functions of government were either unable to help (you're fighting Magneto) or are unwilling (cops suck/are corrupt/you're living in feudal times). This was why I gave the disclaimer about it not being entirely relevant to the here and now, though it could be argued that there are some people out here the cops would be unwilling to touch, even if they hurt you. The USA is not entirely free, though it's probably the best we're gonna get.

A friend of mine, also a huge Buffy fan, is a Firefly fanatic. She has the entire series on DVD. The other day when we were cleaning up the kitchen for House Day we were playing the Buffy musical and ended up singing all the different parts. There were like 3 or 4 of us in there all singing "Walk through the fire."

Sup, I'm new here and have been enjoying browsing for a couple days. Especially the Ethics folder since that is probably my favorite area of philosophy. They call me the Kat in certain socially unacceptable circles, and that's just the way I like it. I'm a college student at the Greenest Ivy of them all, majoring in evolutionary bio. I don't know if I'd call myself an Objectivist with the fancy capital O and everything. This could be because I've met some rather scary and cultlike "Randians" who seemed to want to dogmatize the lady. That said, I adore Ayn Rand. I read her work after I graduated from high school in a sort of reverse chronological order (AS, then Fountainhead, then Anthem and WTL). I can't remember what book it was from, probably Fountainhead, where she talks about looking at the work of another and feeling a resounding "yes" answer back from your own mind. I had that experience while reading Rand. I wondered why it was when I took Philosophy in senior year of HS a lot of the concepts just didn't seem to make sense to me. I was picking up on contradictions but it turns out I wasn't asking the right questions. Rand's stuff turned me on to some questions that really needed asking (a doozie, for example: what is the PURPOSE/STANDARD of morality? "Serving God" or "the common good" just wasn't cutting it for me, and this was a big hint why) On a more personal note, I consider myself a scientist but that's hardly my only passion. Like AR I love writing, both fiction and nonfiction but mostly fiction. I'm a huge nerd. My head is filled with all sorts of information most people consider useless. I also love sports, preferably what I love to call "impact" activities. I'm a music buff and love nothing more than cranking my amp up to 10 and hammering out some power chords (though my current living arrangement somewhat precludes this). That's about it, I suppose.

I want to throw a question out there. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think it's an important topic, though maybe not in modern-day USA. Police force and all that. If you are a warrior, that is, someone who fights for the preservation of values, is this consistent with an Objectivist philosophy? To clarify: 1) I am not sure whether a warrior actually creates values or adds to them. For example, if you are getting mugged on the street, and I, the warrior, come kick the mugger around and make sure that you are unharmed and nothing of yours was taken, I didn't give you anything you didn't already have (your physical safety or your possessions), though were it not for me just then you would have been deprived of those things. This is not to say a warrior could never create value (he might have a veggie garden in his backyard or write brilliant treatises on quantum physics in his spare time), but does he create it AS A WARRIOR? Does objectivism conclude that everyone must produce his own values and is the warrior therefore some kind of moocher? 2) There is an initiation of force issue too. Presumably in the above mugging scene I did physical harm to the mugger or at least threatened it. Chances are I've never seen him, or his victim, in my life. He never initiated force against ME, but he initiated force against SOMEBODY. Does his obvious lack of concern for the rights of others cause him to abdicate his own right not to be harmed by me (a stranger), or is it that only the mugger's victim has the right to fight back in defense of his own life and property? Does the situation change or not change if the victim is incapable of fighting back (that is, he is perfectly willing, but he is not strong enough/good enough of a fighter to successfully defend himself)? Does it change if he specifically asks for my help ("Wow, I'm sure glad you showed up! Help, he's gonna take my little kid's birthday present money!") Like I said, I know in a modern world this question isn't as relevant because we have a police force (that we pay for, I might add, so in my eyes we traded fairly for their protection). But somehow I feel these questions are still important because of the question they raise about creating vs. preserving. One last thing to add lest somebody catch me on this point (and I know they would): the warrior is NOT running around saving people altruistically, because he feels that other people's suffering is a claim on his skill and bravery. This warrior fights because he values a world in which people's rights are protected, not just in word but in deed, knowing that if the rights of some are not secure then no one's are. Defending the values others have created and defending his own and others' rights is his PURPOSE, because that is what gives his life joy and meaning. In other words, he wouldn't have been happier or better off as a stockbroker.

I have been recently introduced to the Buffy musical (though not the show...I just didn't catch a lot of Season 6). I ADORE it. First of all I feel like on a purely musical level the songs are awesome. Melodic, well done, with outstanding lyrics. The only actor who I feel flat out couldn't sing was Alysson Hannigan (and she's so awesome in so many other ways that we can forgive her). Secondly, it integrated incredibly well with the plot and foreshadowed a lot of things ("I'll Never Tell" and Xander's subsequent jilting of Anya at the altar just one example). It furthered the show rather than just being a musical for its own sake. How bout Marti Noxon (a writer) doing the parking ticket song? "I'm not wearing underwear" thrown in at the end there...cute. I'm surprised nobody mentioned the song "Give me something to sing about" at the end there. Even though Buffy's singing about something kind of sad, not being able to enjoy life on earth after being yanked out of a blissful afterlife, I think she drives home the point that simply being alive is not where the value comes from, but what we do with our lives. And ultimately she does find reasons to go on. I especially like the way Spike puts it: "You have to go on living...so one of us is living..." The experience of living, the things we think and feel, the things that make each of us who we are..."I am the warrant and the sanction", anybody?

I would like to say a few words about hazing from the standpoint of a college student in a fraternity. I'm in a rather special kind of fraternity, though it is nonetheless fully and standardly Greek. First of all, we're co-ed. We've got both guys and gals in fairly equal ratio (actually at present we might be slightly tilted towards the female side). So I think we lack a lot of the destructive single-sex dynamics you find in other houses that compounds hazing. Secondly, we do have new-member initiation, but it is FUN for both brothers and pledges. We do not haze. We are a small house and are more like a huge, goofy family than anything else (only about 30 active bros). Our bonds are based on mutual trust, respect, and affection, not on hierarchy or authority. Hazing would only detract from the dynamic we have as a house. I feel that it can actually harm the bonds of brother/sisterhood that Greek organizations are supposed to foster. Then again, I like to think our house is considerably less collectivist than other frats, so perhaps our intentions for joining a house were different. A lot of other houses aren't about bonding, they're about drinking and doing stupid stuff. So as far as hazing goes from the standpoint of college frats/sports teams/clubs/what have you, I see it as mostly if not entirely negative. Last term there was a huge scandal because one of the sororities sent some pledges on a mission over to one of the frats where they basically got sexually harassed (we're not talking catcalls, more like physical stuff). It's not worth it, and I hate the kind of mentality it fosters.