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I have no disagreement with anything above, just an add-on. I would recommend pointing out that her believing that her faith makes her stronger does not make it so anymore then her belief in god causes him to exist. Believing something you have no knowledge about(and worse, no way to gain) is a bad habit to start. It typically will bleed through to other aspects of life. It causes you to be dependent on other people in a very fundemental way. That is, you require their oppinions to make decisions for your own life, which is primarily the sort of person churches are interested in. Jesus may have been his most accurate when he called his followers sheep. Independence of mind; your independent judgement is what makes you strong in reality, not placebos.

Maybe we have an excess accountants here. I have a pretty good one who charges $400 for corporate taxes and $200 for personal. There is more expense if you have him do monthly bookkeeping and payroll, but it is all pretty reasonable. I gather that they farm most of the work out to assistants who are not cpa's so as to lesson costs. Yours may have been overpriced/high end or just not expecting an ongoing relationship. If he was used to working with bigger clients or whatever. I would be surprised if he was typical.

This one, assuming that they are real expenses is not illegal. There are certainly a number of loopholes that can lesson the the amount you pay, but anyone who says they pay no taxes is either lying, not making any money, or doing something illegal. One example is with regard to capital gains tax(in the US). If you buy stocks and they increase in value before you sell them you have to pay capital gains on the increased amount of %33. If you do not sell the stock, but rather hold onto it for 10,20, or 50 years you do not pay tax on any of that increase until you sell it, which means you can earn the increase in value on the whole of it for all of that time. Another related way is to put as much as you can in a 401k if your company offers one or a roth IRA on your own. That money is taken out before taxes are assessed, and will therefore reduce your liability on that % of your money. Again, this applies to the US, and as complicated as tax law is here, you would probably do best to speak to an accountant in your area who would certainly be more knowledgable about the laws and less likely to get you into trouble. However, this will hopefully give you an idea as to what sorts of things you should find that would be legitimate ways of reducing(notice I said reducing and not eliminating) your tax liability. If something sounds to good to be true it probably is.

By 'humans' I take it that you mean only the ones who choose to live by reason?

I'm not sure I agree with this. Many people act on their feelings, so if you can control what they feel, shouldn't you also be able to control how they act through their feelings? Is it coincidence or related to the way the individual person's mind operates? Waiting for some folks' minds to 'conciously assert itself' can be a dreadfully long wait

This demonstrates why I don't think you can't remove generalities from a definition of masculinity or femininity. They are groups of traits possessed by groups of people. If I were to say that muslims believe that they get 70 virgins after being killed in battle, it would be an accurate statement even if some believed otherwise. The exceptions do not disqualify the accuracy or usefulness of generalized knowledge. If I say that tallness is a masculine trait because men tend to be taller then women, it is an accurate assessment even if exceptions exist. If I were to state that men and women were the same height, you would look out at the world, see that most men are taller then women, and realize that my statement was only occasionally true. Some women are as tall or taller then some men, but the trend is obviously the other way around. It would not help you in any way to believe it. It would not be a good predictor of reality. So if the average height of humans is 5'6", tallness means more then average and shortness means less then average. So saying that tallness is a masculine trait means that men tend to possess that as opposed to women who usually possess a trait of shortness relative to the average line. So to answer your last line, it does possess an opposed relation when you limit it to its proper context of variation off of the average.

This seems to be very substantive to the argument. But to expand on this, I think it is important to keep in mind that being concious means being concious of something. Free will can't exist in a vacuum for the same reason god can't. The decisions one makes can only be in regard to that which exists-and whats more, that which exists for them. If you raised a child from infancy forward in an empty, spherical room, you can't be surprised that he won't choose to develop good language skills, let alone conclude that capitalism is the only moral economic system. He might retain the ability of choice but there would be nothing to choose. Nothing to be concious of. This is why montessori education is so successful for young children. It allows them to keep their freewill and controls the outcome of their choices by strictly controlling the environment rather then the child. I am wondering if the reason that operant conditioning seems to work well is because many people operate on that whim based level where they respond to things without much(if any) thought. Free will being the choice to be in focus(which I take to mean 'think deliberately'); when they choose to not be in focus, the default response system seems to be very similiar to behaviorant conditioning.

I read those fellows a good deal before discovering rand. Take heart in the fact that reading these two is a great sign that they are philosophically interested at the very least. By way of making a connection to them, I recommend you reading and then recommending to them 'will to power' by nietche -and this is very important-, edited by a man named HL Mencken. It is a good reason based intro to nietche that probably gives him more credit then he deserves. You will find that a great deal of it falls in line with objectivism. If they like it, getting them to read some objectivist literature might not be as hard. Best of luck Gordon

I don't understand how they could not be opposites. Whatever masculinity is, it has to be whatever femininity is not, otherwise there would be no purpose for the differentiation. Something which applies to both sexes equally would not qualify to be under either title. Even traits which both possess...say height...would be opposites. The particular aspect of height pertinent to m/f differences would not be that they have some height but that men typically have more then women which means women typically have less then men. That is where the opposite aspect exists, in the particular being differentiated. I will try and read over the 75 million pages of the homosexuality thread when I have a few weeks to spare but based on your assessment, I would suggest that evidencing isn't the proper way to look at it since you can find so many examples of each type of relationship where all parties involved seem happy. There is no way to quantify the happiness of either group. It seems to me, that induction might work better. For example, if someone were to possess organizational skills, something which I might not possess in great degree, then in a partnership of any kind with them, I would be benefited by that trait as they would be benefitted in some other equitable way. In short, specialization of labor works better then everyone being tolerably good at everything. Being really, really good at what you do tends to make you more irriplacable. People like to feel special and specialization allows that more readily.

I would like to take another crack at an explanation to justify the rationality of choice without getting into specifics or definitions. This also might help to explain the stongly held differences of oppinion on the issue. For a given I will call the conglomeration of traits which masculinity represents, Y and the conglomeration of traits that femininity represents, X. So now, picture these traits on a number line, Y being to the left of zero and X being to the right of zero such that as the sum of these traits becomes less of X it becomes more like Y and vice versa. So to be more masculine is to be less feminine whatever those traits might turn out to be. If a person were to the far left of that scale, it would be rational to desire someone to the far right in order to make up, in a way, for things which they lack. If, on the other hand, someone were more toward the center, the more stongly expressed traits of a very feminine woman or very masculine man might be something of an annoyance rather then a turn on. When people were more extreme in their expressed traits, the balance that their opposite brings to the table would lead more to the "you complete me" feeling in a relationship rather then the," I am an independent spirit and like your values and like having you around but it probably wouldn't crush me if you left" type of relationship. I would guess that Miss Rand preferred the first type of relationship rather then the latter. Whether or not it is rational or not is probably situationally dependent. From my own experiences, I prefer the first as well. It felt more committed and more meaningful. More of a gain to me and to her then in relationships where we were more or less equal in expectations and requirements. But again, that is me personally. If someone is more toward the middle, in terms of masculine and feminine traits, it would seem irrational to get into a relationship where strong differences were expressed. The relationship would not balance. I feel a little uncomfortable saying that someone ought to change and become more feminine or more masculine in order to experience a more fulfilling relationship, but that being said, I do think that sort of relationship to be more enjoyable. Let me know if I am on to something.

So let me get this straight, "the david" is not even good art but an impressionistic helicoptor qualifies as breathtaking?

I believe it is covered in some depth in opar, but the basic answer is that to be concious you must be concious of some thing, and in order to properly identify that thing, you must be aware of it as existing as opposed to something else. So in other words, to identify a thing, you must also possess a differentia which implies another object. If god existed as conciousness before the universe, you have a conciousness with nothing to be concious of. Additionally, conciousness implies volition, and volition requires the ability to make choices. Choices can only be made with regard to existents. Gordon

That is a good theory for falls below a certain height(20 feet maybe?) where you still have forward momentum, but that curve turns into a vertical line pretty quick. Not sure you could roll out from it when goin straight down. Also, since we are not cats, adjusting your position is a relatively difficult thing to do without a bit more time then a 50 foot fall provides(a little more then one second). Your best shot at position would probably be in the slipping stage where you might be able to push off of the cliff edge. Hehe....this discussion of how best to fall and land from great heights can't be helping anyone get over a fear of heights.

I read about a guy, Rigoberto Stewart, awhile back attempting to do just that in Limon, a pverty stricken province of costa rica. http://bastiat.net/en/Bastiat2001/rigoberto.stewart.html Not sure how likely it is to succeed. Governments tend to not give up tax revenues very easily. I think it might be more likely to succeed if it was a lease. That way, the government could be assured that after capitalism turns it into a booming economy, they could take it back and steal all the cookies again.

I am not sure about that...landing feet first from that height can probably damage your spine quite a bit. I have seen a few guys fall from roofs and land on their feet and they get hurt pretty bad, whereas the ones who land horizontally often times hop up and walk away. I would think(if you have any say in the matter) a somewhat relaxed horizontal landing might be best. The force of impact would be distributed over a wider area. Not the sort of thing I'd like to test though.

Being a roofer, I spend most of my life in high places, and my experience has been that there are essentially 2 types of afraid. The first and most common type I have encountered is fairly rational and consists of a couple parts. First, your balance is thrown off quite a bit when you have no horizontal plane of reference. So when walking across a 4 inch iron beam for example, it is necessary to develop the ability to either extend an imaginary plane out frim the beam or to simply focus on the 4 inch surface exclusively as your point of reference(this is what "not looking down" helps with. On a pitched roof it is similiar. Even though you have a plane, the plane is tilted, so in combination with only acknowledging the surface you are on, it is necessary to develop a good feeling for your center of gravity in order to make sure it always stays above your feet. These skills take a bit of time and practice, so most people are initially uncomfortable up high when any of these necessary elements are missing. The worst for me is walking a beam on a barrel roof(curved) because all of those elements are involved plus the tangent angle of the roof changes as you move up and down it. The other type I have seen is more properly described as horror then fear. Knees literally knocking together, white knuckled grip on anything and irrational behaviour that puts himself and everyone else at risk. On guy after getting up onto a flat roof with a 3 foot tall parapet wall surrounding it refused to move within 6 feet of the edge. So literally no chance of falling but scared anyways. To get him off the roof it took me and 2 other guys to literally lift him up and set him on the ladder. So to sum up, there is the rational discomfort you feel from not having the necessary skill set to keep yourself safe and then there is the irrational fear that makes you frantic and puts you in more danger then you were ever in if you could keep your head together. The first, like I mentioned comes with a fairly small amount of practice. It is what many roofers refer to as "gettin your roof legs". The second, I have not yet seen anyone over come. Not that it can't be done...just that they don't stay in a job that requires heights for very long. I am not sure how people could get past that. Hope that helps a bit. .

I really don't know. I guess it is kinda like irregardless. Which means what? without-without regard? English can be stupid.

Not that I am aware of. Like I mentioned before, this is unabashed psychologizing on my part.

Procative? What the hell does that mean? hehe Anyways Proactive is what I had in mind.

I dont know about that. It seemed that the second only happened because she didn't look up to the first(I would feel great disrespect were I in his shoes-I mean, cuckoldry is pretty much anti-herowroship by definition) and later she believed the second to be a mistaken judgement of character at the very least.

Sorry about the difficulties with my pics. The feminine and romantic are both by bill mack. When rich and famous I fully intend to collect his things. I really like em. Masculine Independent Efficacious Feminine Introspective Delicate Romantic 'Forever' is difficult for me to consolidate into a single word(or 2). Maybe someone can help me. It has always looked to me like the guy was walking around, found some cozy spot and thought "hmm...that looks like a comfortable place to sit." Then the woman comes walking along and sees the nook formed by the mans bent and relaxed body and thinks "hmm...that looks like a comfortable place to sit." I think there is an element of integration there for me. Not sure if that's the right word or not. Like they were quite literally made for each other. The woman also looks posessed and protected. Incidentally, Kendall, I really admire this idea of yours for sorting out femininity and masculinity. Very procative. Thanks for the idea.

That's an interesting idea. I wonder, at the risk of psychologizing a bit, if Rand's statements about not thinking a rational woman would want to be president stem from her personal difficulty in finding someone to look up to.

Hello again, Miseleigh. Sorry for the delay in my response...been a little busy. I get the impression that you are looking for a deductive process derived from known principles which would show hero worship to be a rational requirment for all women. Kind of an... a is a, the universe exists,...therefore all rational women must be hero worshippers. But that is not how you can get an answer to most ethical problems with objectivism. Induction is the necessary process that I think you are missing with regard to this which is evidenced by your opposition to 'generalities'. In induction, you extract general principles from few examples. I alluded to this issue in an earlier post where I used humans having arms as an example, but I will attempt to be more explicit. If we take peikoffs example that a ball rolls when you push it, we percieve very quickly(1 or 2 examples) that the shape of the ball allows this behavior. We do not need any other knowledge about balls in general. Nor do we need to understand the principles of physics to proove that the spherical shape creates the least amount of friction possible which allows the rolling motion. It is inductively derived from direct sensory experiences. We can gather these same general principles regarding femininity in the same inductive manner, but they are always going to be generalities to some extent. Women are less efficacious with regard to a large number of physical activities, kinestheically they are at a great disadvantage, they have bodies designed essentially for childbirth and lack speed and strength, have worse vision except with regard to color discernment, perform worse on spatial tests, are better at noticing detail, especially regarding facial recognition, are more empathetically aware of the feelings of others, have better verbal skills, more refined senses of taste and smell, are more emotionally reactive, other more obvious physical differences, etc. To define femininity for you in a rational way, it is important to first dispense with the notion that these differences are all cultuarally derived. That is a leftover notion from 1970's era feminism that modern science wholly rejects. Men and women are differnt physically and mentally virtually from the moment they exist. It is also necessary to defime female since it is relational too it. In short I would define femininty as a group of physical and mental traits possessed by females. Female I would define as being in the genus human and is differentiated from male by the traits I list above in addition to any more that didn't occur to me off the top of my head which are predominantly possessed by them-otherwise called feminine traits. So, more fluidly I would define femininity as a description of all of those traits which differentiate women from men. The essential difference that I see as the most obvious is that men are by far, more physically efficacious by design, whereas women are more emotionally empathetic and socially aware. So I have to partially at least, reject your notion that these differences are cultuarlly derived. These differences are becomming more and more documented everyday as having physiological roots. That being said, we have freewill and can alter our behavior and to some extent, our capabilities. In the same way that a 5'1" guy can try really hard to get good at basketball but never make it to the nba, a man can learn to behave in a feminine way and a woman can learn to behave in a masculine way but it will never be as natural or easy to them. The exceptions one can find to these general rules are no more useful then finding a hermaphrodite and then deciding that since things in between men and women exist, there is no logical point in calling men and women different things. Some men are paralyzed and are not physically efficacious. Some women lift weights and work in construction. These exceptions do not change the validity of the inductively derived definition of femininity any more then finding a ball that did not roll because it was superglued to the floor would change the principle that balls roll. The charactaristics, capabilities, and limitations of both exist regardless of how pronounced they appear in any particular example. Femininity and masculinity are very simbiotic and to the extent you are feminine you will desire masculinity in your life and to the extent that you are masculine you will desire femininity. A rational women, fully aware of here capabilities and weaknesses will want a hero in her life. Someone to protect her and make her feel secure. Heroism can be stretched to be a lot of things but hero's are almost always physically capable in some way. Superheroes, even more so. Heroism requires action on some level and men(especially masculine men) are better at action. Women, especially feminine women are very very aware of others. In the context of a romantic relationship between a man and a woman, the only place where this comes up, the man acts and the woman notices him acting and responds to that. So I agree with Miss Rand to this extent, that if you honestly assess your capabilities and shortcomings, it is rational to desire someone who posesses stengths that you lack. And if you choose to not pursue a value that completes you to the extent that a balanced proper relationship does, whether by not acknowledging those traits in yourself, or dismissing them as unimportant, then you will miss out on a very valuable and enjoyable experience in life. And that would not be rational.

I was just rereading our first few exchanges to attempt to see what was insulting to you personally or to women in general and I really don't see it. This leads me to the conclusion that I must have have a context in mind that I am keeping which you are not. I, and I assume most people, have a tendency to fill in gaps in their written arguments automatically. Perhaps something like that is going on. The above is one such circumstance where we may be thinking of different things. What I meant by my answer was that you could worship and admire all of those qualities which she posesses except those parts which are exclusively feminine. For example, Eddie Willers wroshiped Dagny, which is 1/2 the reason why he never had a chance. They could be considered equals in many ways. They shared essentially the same basically good philosophy with one pretty forgivable philosophic error, they got along well, enjoyed each others company, in short, would probably make great "companions". But most people want something more then that. Eddie would have great difficulty feeling masculine around Dagny while worshipping her and Dagny would have great difficulty feeling feminine around him while being worshipped. I suggest that this inequality is the something more that most people desire.

I apologize...I meant to write woman qua female. In other words, a woman seperated from any gender nuetral traits. I don't think rationality has anything to do with it. What I am saying is that a woman who is strong or stocky or carries herself in a masculine way is not feminine by definition. I don't doubt that. The particular type of strength I am referring to is the fairly well documented idea that men have a higher tolerance for risk and everything that would deductively follow from that fact. They should be. But they are simply the initial criteria. When I am interested in a woman, it is a given that she has to be inteligent, rational, and virtuous in every other regard just to warrant consideration. Those are traits I require to like anybody. But the attraction I feel towards her is because of her feminity expressly. I have quite a few male objectivist friends who possess all of those traits while doing nothing to inspire any sexual desire or romantic interest. They lack that critical elemat-femininity. Actually I watched very little TV as a child and have hardly ever watched it as an adult.(I made an exception for firefly) Without getting to far into the nature/nurture debate, I believe that there is a complex and very intertwined relationship between genetic and environmental forces as well as freewill which allow for quite a bit of variation in personality traits. That being said, similiarities in the genetic and other metaphysically given aspects will have a tendency to yield similiar results. Hmmm...really not the case at all. I'm sorry that that's what I communicated. I couldn't agree more. What I meant was that that women tend to be attracted to men who challenge them in that way. That when they don't initially agree, like Dominique with Roark, but are later convinced and overcome by him, they are then more attracted then they were initially. In the context of the fountainhead, Dominique was annoyed and intrigued by Roarks seeming to be unaware and unaffected by the people around him when she couldn't ignore them. It was a trait that I think is largely masculine whereas women-Dominique included- tend to be more empathetic and perceptive with regard to their relationships. This is something which seems to have roots not explicitly cultural. Later she was convinced that his method of dealing with them was more effective. She was "dominated" if you wish to use that term but I think it's more accurate to say that she was convinced of his strength. I don't buy that. Companionship can be found in any friendship. It's cheap and easy to come by. A romantic relationship requires things much more profound. You need to be inspired and elevated. This misconception reminds me of when someone gets into a relationship with someone who is an objectivist as if that were enough. Sharing those basic values is probably less important in most regards then the ability to share someones sense of life. And that is all secondary to feeling attraction to the masculinity or femininity of the person in question. If you don't feel that, as in the case of 2 same sex friends with everything in common(assuming heterosexuality) then a relationship is simply not realistic and if attempted guranteed to end in a platonic mediocrity. You would be justified in your deduction if being an a**hole was the general behavior of most men, for certain. If you view men as simply being more often an a**hole then women, then there probably is some aspect of being an a**hole that is connected to masculinity. However, the term a**hole is a little too abstract for me to be certain. If you would care to break down and concretize the components of an a**hole, perhaps I could give you a more definite answer as to whether I agree or disagree that men are more often a**holes and whether a**holish behavior is connected to masculinity as such. If that is the question at hand, then I started to answer it above. It would probably be a combination of those things working simbiotically, not entirely unlike masculinity and femininity. I do apologize if I suggested in some way that women were inferior to men in a general sense. Truth be told, I love women. I think they are truly great creatures. But I dont believe in any way that we are equal and I will not apologize for that because we simply, are not. Egalitarianism is a fiction in any sphere but the political one;and this fiction is especially true of the romantic sphere. When weighing the value of an individual you do just that, you weigh them as an individual. But when discussing feminity and masculinity you are making a social commentary and must do so based on generalties. My perception of those generalites are that men are stonger in some respects and women are stronger in others for a number of reasons. These particular strengths lead properly to relationships where the feeling of hero worship or intense admiration are evoked in the woman and protectiveness and possessivness in the man. As a caveat to my apology, I ask only that you consider whether you are upset only by the way I phrased things or by my actual content. If it was my phrasing then I would appreciate the opportunity to clarify my meaning. If you could send me the particular phrases that were troubling to you on this thread or privately, I will do my best to convince you that I hold the highest regard for your gender and, in point of fact, think that these alleged weaknesses I point to are actually strengths in many ways. If your offense is taken at my content, there is likely little I can do except to recommend that you ask yourself why the lack of equality I believe exists is so troubling to you. My very best regards, Gordon Damn it! I can't seem to get the quote boxes to work. Any people with greater computer "strengths" then I have any suggestions? Regarding the presidency thing, I undertood Miss Rand to mean that a woman ought not want to be president, not that she would be incapable of the task. That never seemed to be a big issue to me since it is a quick derivation from her beliefs about the nature of a romantic relationship. To sort out the first issue is to sort out the second, whichever way you decide.