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aequalsa

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Everything posted by aequalsa

  1. You know that part of emotionally driven relationships just before the breakup, when people go way, way out of their way to find fault in every word and action of their partner?
  2. Hi, I'm Bob. My priest used to rape me with a 2x4 when i was a Choir boy. I think that I tolerated it because it was so similar to how my mother had shown me love. I still cry myself to sleep on nights that I find another splinter. How's your relationship with your mother? -Don't answer that! I'm only kidding of course. The point is that relationships with other people have a flow to them and to skip "small talk" often makes things pretty uncomfortable. People need to be somewhat familiar with you before they can reasonably be expected to understand your meaning or tolerate your personal idiosyncrasies and beliefs. Even in intellectual subjects, if you lead with, I hate affirmative action, for example, you could quickly be labeled a racist and blocked out of their minds before you even have a chance to provide a principled argument against institutionalized racism. Of course some people live in a world of ongoing and unstoppable small talk which can be pretty unbearable. I've found that you can get them to open up a bit Socratically, especially if you can find something they're passionate about. That said, if the most important thing in their lives is their miniature poodle, "Weebles" then you're fucked. Avoid them at all costs and find someone with something interesting that they're passionate about.
  3. Besides education and emotional advancement there are a lot of advantages to a church set up. Social interactions, business networking, hobbies, spouse searches, etc. Not going to church can be a pretty severe disadvantage to a group of people on net. I don't go obviously, but theoretically I could see myself doing so.
  4. This whole thread reminds me of the Peikoff Rape thread. When people are speaking extemporaneously, in the ring, so to speak, even if they are professional philosophers with something of a duty to accuracy in their thoughts, they're still human and their previous opinions simply must be held in mind when deciding if your own understanding of what they said in the spur of the moment is a reasonably accurate representation of what was actually going on in their minds. If you get to the point where Leonard Peikoff advocates rape and Diana Hsieh advocates eating babies, look back at their record and actually check your premises before you check theirs. If they have what appear to be contradictions in their thoughts, feel free to ask for clarification, but when you assume the worst and the worst is almost patently absurd, your accusations say much more about you then they do about them to anyone caring enough to listen.
  5. I found this book very helpful in that regard, http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-About-Weird-Things/dp/0767420489
  6. On the face of it, it sounds like a response to shame. Like there were reasons to be not proud surrounding the circumstances and clinging to the opposite will make i easier to bare, though admittedly there are a lot of assumptions in that assessment. Outside of that, the only circumstance where I can see it making sense in an Objectivist world view is if it did require some effort beyond sex. Fertility problems, finding the right person to do it with, that sort of thing. Otherwise, I would guess they're operating on an alternative definition of pride.
  7. In addition to the above good advice, I would recommend martial arts. The more hardcore the better. When you're doing full contact, or anything close, you have to switch the aggression button on and off pretty quick, which can be tough if someone just landed their elbow in your face. Makes for great practice with that kind of self control. In addition, it gives you a socially acceptable outlet for anger and frustration. If self-esteem based "proving your toughness to yourself" is an issue, it tends to satisfy that as well. I don't mean to state the obvious, but if you have more deep seated issues then therapy would probably be helpful in finding out what you're truly angry about.
  8. James Madison Federalist Papers #41 As I understand him in that paper, he argues that it is not and could not be the carte blanche that it has, in point of fact, become today since the powers of the federal government are so clearly enumerated in the constitution. The meaning of the phrase at the time would essentially, in current vernacular, be to provide for those things which affect all people generally. So things like a military, for example, would protect all people inside the border generally. The idea that the obvious meaning of the phrase could be so far contorted was considered impossible in its absurdity. At least by Madison.
  9. Sorry, I didn't realize the initial question was rhetorical and that you had something in particular in mind. What you write has a number of terms and assumed concepts which you'll need to define if I am going to be able to understand your meaning. What does it mean to "support something?" Is it financial? Is it moral? Is it devoted time? What in your opinion is the "source of your capability to value?" How do you "support" that source and how is it in conflict with other chosen values?
  10. To start, you are the only one who can accurately gauge whether and to what extent you are benefiting from an action. "Helping" other people always requires a fairly large degree of psychologizing and assumption.
  11. For some perspective http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1ECrLO/jackadam.net/misc/radio_broadcasts/radio_broadcasts.jpg/
  12. I've always had a thing for Zephyr. Even before RHCP
  13. /sarcasm I did not think that the video that you posted was particularly useful to the discussion.
  14. Not within the context of the question he is answering about whether using fraud. If you listen to his whole answer, the whole section in question is basically a parenthetical, in the sum context of answering a question about whether the use of fraud to get laid is the same as rape which, he answers that fundamentally, it is, even if it's not realistically enforceable. That line is meant to illustrate the difficulty and complexity of those issues by showing a way that a woman can be fraudulent in her ambiguous actions just as well as a man. Thanks for the rape scene, btw. I wasn't sure what exactly rape was until I saw that. Now I realize that that must be what a leading defender of negative liberties is advocating. Since she's his wife, and therefore only chattel, I think you might find a better example though, like the scene from Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, maybe? That anal rape would really improve my understanding of how Leonard Peikoff thinks we should treat bitches and hoes.
  15. I don't think that what you describe here is within the context of the question he was answering for the reasons that I describe above.
  16. In that part, since clearly a woman can say, "No, I do not consent" I took him to mean she could not give "every evidence" that she wanted to have sex with a man, then say she does not consent and still be moral or honest. In other words, in that case she is not a victim of fraud where he tricked her into his bedroom, but rather a perpetrator of fraud, herself, who communicated one message to a man very clearly with the intention of pretending to be misunderstood in order that she can accuse him of rape later, as has been known to happen to celebrities on occasion. Again, I think he chose a poor way to phrase it, but holding the question in mind and his whole(somewhat convoluted)answer, I think this interpretation makes more sense, since it is connected to the original question. Otherwise, throwing in a, "oh by the way, it's ok to rape some bitches" has very little connection to whether or not a man who pretends to love a woman to sleep with her has committed fraud which is on par with rape. Incidentally, his answer was that a man who used fraud to get a woman to sleep with him was morally equivalent to a rapist so I have to think that someone who did commit rape would also be a rapist in his mind.
  17. I think a lot of the difference in opinion might hinge on different readings of the phrase "in certain contexts," which he uses. I'm inclined to think that since he did not explicitly define those contexts, they would be rather narrow and unusual and difficult to explain out of an actual context. People who think he is advocating rape seem to hold that his position is that almost anytime you have a woman in your room then you have every right to rape her. My inclination is based on my past exposure to his beliefs which would contradict the broader interpretation. Most people that know me well at all, know that I'm an atheist, so when I say something like this or that action will rot your soul, they do not take it to mean that I have suddenly found Jesus. I, and it seems that most who hold my opinion are choosing to extend Peikoff that same courtesy. It's only anecdotal, but I can count on one hand the number of times that I have explicitly been granted approval to have sex with women, and you would be hard pressed to find one who would accuse me of rape. Most human communication is nonverbal and this is especially so in relationships, so when a woman decides on no, it is imperative that she make that clear and explicitly, verbally so as a bare minimum. If she doesn't, and further gives many nonverbal indications that she does acquiesce, like coming up to your bedroom and taking her clothes off, then it would be hugely immoral for her to call it rape. That is what I am inclined to imagine those "certain contexts" are what he had in mind. Until and unless he clarifies the point though, I would encourage everyone to keep in mind his formal defense of rights generally, and especially with regard to abortion rights and a woman's right to her body, as the best barometer of his actual thoughts on it.
  18. Not even that much, really. We are working from the expectation the Peikoff is NOT horribly depraved, which is what you have to assume to think that he was meaning to endorse rape.
  19. This example http://jsiegel.blogspot.com/2007/02/rape-law.html where, mid coitus, a man took 5 seconds to stop after the woman said stop and was convicted of rape, would probably have been better in his answer. If you replace this example with his off the cuff example it makes more sense. He's saying, no, you don't get to call something like this rape, morally. It's an affront to real victims to even put something like this in the same category.
  20. I agree that that is the right place to start. Starting from the assumption the LP would not endorse rape, because he probably wouldn't, I notice that the section in question is immediately followed by "So, we're assuming it's not that type of case and you actually have created some kind of false identity; she falls for it and she never would have otherwise." The "So" implies that this sentence follows from the point made in the previous example. The false identity a guy in the actual question he is answering, would be using, was not used in the case of Kobe Bryant. He invited her up to his bedroom to have sex. She agreed and then changed her mind at some point in the encounter. I take it to mean that a woman in that position could not claim that she was defrauded into going up to his room. ,Since the Kobe case was dismissed and charges dropped, he may have, rightly or wrongly, been thinking of that as one of those cases where a woman goes to a man's bedroom and consents to have sex, does so, and then remembers being raped the next day, either for money or to protect her opinion of her own chastity. To which he is saying, "you cannot do that." You cannot have your cake and eat to. edit: I agree, btw, that it wasn't clearly said, but having listened to most of his podcasts, read his books and having met him personally I can't imagine for a second that anyone similarly familiar with his writing and being honest about it would think he was actually, or would ever endorse rape.
  21. I'm pretty certain that she answered that in 'Philosophy Who Needs It.".... "Life is a process of self-sustaining, self-generating action." Morality is something that applies only to living things possessing volition. If someone chooses to become an inanimate object, no philosophy is relevant to them.
  22. His insistence that the power given by the NDAA to have the military arrest and detain people indefinitely without charge or trial be applied to Americans on US soil.
  23. . I think that, semantically, you are correct... but it seems a gross injustice to put a voluntary arrangement that takes advantage of one party's ignorance(at worst) in the same conceptual category as forcing an individual at the point of a gun to fight and often die for a cause they do not agree with all while being trained or worked against their own will in various military tasks. If you place slavery at the far end of a continuum of exploitation, then a draft is about 97% of the way to the slavery end, and in practice, can often be much worse for the "exploited" individual than a well run plantation might be since slaves as an object of value don't usually have to watch their friends arms and legs being blown of their bodies or experience that for themselves involuntarily. Taxation, since it can vary as a percentage of a persons time, can fall anywhere on that spectrum. An effectual 100% tax, assuming it didn't just end of turning everyone into randomly persecuted criminals(as in the former soviet states of china a few decades ago) would amount to the same as slavery. Your life, in all measurable respects would not be your own. At 6% it would be little more than a nuisance. The purpose of the separation, I understand, is to avoid minimalizing the evils of slavery, but to then ignore the massive and often permanent harm of another injustice like the draft is a mistake also in my view.
  24. I'm only familiar with it in passing but from what you wrote, Antinatalism sounds like an emo psychology that never grew up predicated on a pack of stolen concepts. "All life is pain, man..." The idea that no amount of pleasure is worth enduring any amount of pain is preposterous on its face. Any human presented with the option of, say, receiving a paper cut followed by a payment of a billion bucks would easily disagree on their relative values and importance. I would need more context, but I would assume that the category error is that without religion there is no ultimate base for values. No ultimate meaning for existence. Values, of course presuppose a valuer and without the ultimate valuer(god) it can not be said that something "should" exist in any cosmic sense. Seems like some member of the nihilist camp and subject to similar problems.
  25. http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/205085-dems-propose-reasonable-profits-board-to-regulate-oil-company-profits "Reasonable Profits Board" ....I seriously had to double check to make sure that this wasn't taken out of Atlas Shrugged For perspective, Exxon currently earns $0.02/gallon of gas and State governments "earn" $0.48/gallon of gas. So with their 100% windfall tax on anything above what the "reasonable profits board" approves of, oil companies would become little more government employees with the chance to earn larger than usual bonus for good performance.
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