aequalsa

There is nothing wrong with “Fantasy” or other activities with someone, but this also assumes that you are both participating. What you seem to be describing, is that only you are doing this and further you are doing it to pretend your wife is someone else without her knowledge.

Well, my question is simple: If you wish to have sex with someone other than your wife then why are you not having sex with the other person instead? Who do you really want to be with?

You can’t have the other person because you are married? Then you may need to analyze your marriage at that point. Because you can’t have the other person? So you recreate the encounter you can’t have through someone else? What does that tell you? You have some soul searching to find out where the split is coming in and why other people seem more interesting than the women you married. You married her so she should be your ultimate desire. That is the point of sex to begin with! You deserve to have that answered and so does your wife.

If you are confident and have stuff going on in your life, you are not going to be showing those looser tendencies that women hate. That is why confident dudes don't need to read those pick-up-artist guides. Because the people who read those things are attempting to fake that sort of behavior.


I have found it is best to be yourself. Well myself.

I mean if you suck, I could see why that would be a problem. In which case you should probably not be trying to date anyone, and should be busy filing up your life with meaningful activity.

This is that kind of phony privatization, like a lot of cities have with different private corporations for trash, public transit, etc. It inevitably leads to corruption as long as the State weaves itself in. And with prisons, it's an even bigger issue, since it is intricately woven in with the State by the nature of prisons. An Objectivist would say a prison system must be nationalized. I would say it needs to be abolished as it stands.

This applies not just to war, but to all sorts of historical events. For instance, what was the reason England became the ascendant world power at one point in history. Or, what was the reason we have a financial crisis? And so on.
There are often a host of reasons, but I think one can often identify the more important ones.

(Analogously, while analyzing historical figures, there are so many facts about them that one will often find a counter-example to refute any summary. So, if someone says Washington was a great general, there will be examples to show that he was not. )

I would go about Zeno's paradox in a somewhat different way. While Achilles never reaches the tortoise in the scenario, neither does time ever get past the limit. And in fact if you wanted to put in the work, you can calculate how long it takes Achilles to catch the tortoise (in reality) by the limiting series of distances. So I would put it as Zeno's paradox is true in the relative context of finite time defined by the limits. In terms of physics, the wave nature of quanta means you can't keep subdividing distance down to infinitesimals.

This is an idea that seems to be at the root of this issue for me. Even if, through some feat of genetic engineering, they could change a man into a woman, from the chromosomes up, I couldn't get myself on board with having a relationship with one. In some more fundamental way, they would still not be a woman to me. I wouldn't try to argue formally that he is not a she since all evidence would imply otherwise, but on a psycho-epistomomological level I could never alter it in my mind once I knew.
My only introspective guess as to why I feel that way, is that I see being a woman as more than a set of XX's. A large part of being a woman is that she grew up as a little girl. All of the truly formative years of her self concept were spent being, and being reacted to, as a girl and a woman. That life and those experiences are, by and large, completely different from the the life of a little boy turning into a man. Even a troubled little boy without a strong sense of his masculinity and any number of more typically female experiences, cannot be thought to have experienced and developed his sense of life as a woman would have.

To me, they are what they are, which is a man who had a surgical procedure so that he might be more womanlike, but he is not a woman. Sex isn't a perfect dichotomy so exceptional cases in the middle get their own names, like hermaphrodite, or transgendered.

Psychologically speaking, them identifying with another sex and taking surgical steps to identify further does not obligate me to identify them as the other sex so that they might feel better about themselves. And anyways, it would never work since accepting the sum total of who they are, an individual who wants to be fundamentally different than what they are, is the only way to close that kind of book. I wouldn't go as far as Peikoff and suggest that they are immoral, but I think that a reasonable assumption is that being so fundamentally opposed to your own identity usually comes out of an unhealthy place.

I wish more people would try to start a small business for that experience alone. Until you do it is not as obvious how very owned we are. I feel your pain, man.

I wish more people would try to start a small business for that experience alone. Until you do it is not as obvious how very owned we are. I feel your pain, man.

Forbes tells us what happens when Julia tries to start a business.

Oh, it's horrible! I couldn't stop reading.

I had a similar experience when I wanted to sell at local events that required setting up on the street. The only legal method for doing this is to build a "push-cart," for which you need a license, which has exacting standards on all measurements so as to make them completely uniform between business people -- we wouldn't want any competition! To sell downtown, a lottery is drawn every day, and if you aren't picked, you don't sell. If you want to sell food, many more standards need to be met, along with many extra fees depending on your heat source or if you will offer water.

At any time, the police can make you leave, with a catch-all reason like "public disturbance." So, don't make enemies!

Is there a way around operating a pushcart if you don't like all this? Sure, you have option (singular)! You may carry all of your merchandise around with you, on your person, at all times... which requires separate licensing.

All this, in addition to the EIN number and the employee hoops mentioned in the article.

NO. THANKS. I'll just look to selling online. To note, it took almost a full day of work just to find out about all of this, including a drive to the agency itself because I kept getting contradictory answers from government workers on the phone... when I could even reach them. They would use language like, "You get to," or, "You can't do that," with a superior attitude.

While I disagree with EC's stance on this and many matters I don't think it is fair to call it trolling.

Allowing for gay marriage would in fact be a change from norms that have been accepted for a very long time and across cultures.
Some think that is a bad thing, some do not.

But! The point is if we're going to change it because "people have a right to marry who they want" we need to ask- are there any boundaries on that?
If there are boundaries what are they?

As a gay individual I use to get very offended by people asking the question "so can people marry their pets then?" "people can have 5 wives?" "can they marry children?" and so forth.
But being objective means that I don't get to just look at this as a gay individual. Being objective means I have to get outside of that.
That many are being ignorant or snarky or just plain dumb when they ask these questions does not mean that they don't need answering.
If marriage is to be redefined then part of that is asking tough uncomfortable questions.

I also disagree with another assertion in this topic that people being against gay marriage are basing that on religion. While many, and certainly often the most vocal, anti-gay activists are often religious I've known plenty of atheists and agnostics that are anti-gay.

Lol! What a way to phrase it.

Sex as a romp, guilt-free and uncommited. Sort of a healthy gym work-out,
leaving both of you glowing. Great, so far.
But I don't know. It's more, in my experience.
Sex always involved intimacy, which meant feeling, and ultimately, thought -
self-examination, and introspection, mainly.
Even (I repeat) when that was the last result I wanted.
Maybe, in my escapades, I have never known 'casual' sex.
Is there really such a thing? Where's the passionate emotion? The interest
in another human? What are we distancing ourselves from? It's personal, dammit.
In truth, I really don't know whether to feel envy, or sympathy, for anyone
who experiences it differently.

He defeats his own argument with that quote, as he acknowledges that they are in fact in competition with other entities in the marketplace. Why is this a problem?

I would say that electric wires run to your house is just one method of delivering energy, there are many alternatives that would be in competition with that method of delivering energy, alternatives technologies like solar power and wind. Even natural gas combined with fuel cell technology could compete.
People could also explore alternatives like purchasing less power by building more energy efficient homes and business. Large user like manufacturing could go back to producing there own like they used to.

1) I stuck to far ends of the spectrum just to make it really obvious that there is more than one possible type here. I wanted to make that clear here first before things possibly got into arguments over things like, "But where does green end and blue start? Is it here? Or here? Or here? Can you say at all? So is there really any blue at all? Is it all green?" Somebody else mentioned the part about "that one can find" being important and that taking less gets into sacrificing and this I pretty much agree with. I would say though that if what you can find doesn't reach at least some minimum then it just isn't worth it at all still anyway. Now, exactly where that bar belongs for separating enough from too little even when it is the best one can find, that I think has room for some argument and/or variation between people, but there are definite points of enough and not enough somewhere even if the exact edges are a bit hazy. It's a bit like the question of what the proper dividing line is between child and adult - there are kids and there are adults without a doubt, just coming up with exactly where the dividing line is isn't so simple and obvious. I've mentioned before though elsewhere that if you know almost nothing about somebody or if you have a little that looks promising but don't know enough yet to say with confidence about if somebody may make the cut for "good enough" by the above mentioned standards then going ahead anyway is a pretty lame attempt to cheat the system. There's no emergency that would force one to have sex without getting to know a potential partner first so doing so just seems like an attempt to keep an excuse available for later, "Oh? So he/she is actually thoroughly rotten? Well, I didn't know that at the time so it can't say anything about me."

2) lololol

That is a hedonist's justification. This is true in this case, as it is in general: If we choose hedonism, we choose it at the expense of our values. I'll explain how it is true in this case, I'll leave justifying the more general statement for another time:

The inter-connectedness of values and sexual desires isn't a choice. It is a fact of nature. If we treat sex as if it stands in a vacuum, and have sex with no concern for our highest values, that is a costly mistake. Those values will be corrupted by that choice.

By getting into the habit of having "mutual masturbation", we sacrifice something of greater value: the enjoyment of real sex. This insight has to come with experience, I guess, but the fact is we can't enjoy both at the same time. A man for instance can't be wildly attracted to both superficial, promiscuous partners he has no regard for, and the woman he loves (assuming that the woman he loves is not superficial and promiscuous, of course). That is not how human sexuality works. It has to be one or the other.

From Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics


Now each man judges well what he knows, and of these things he is a good judge: on each particular matter then he is a good judge who has been instructed in it, and in a general way the man of general mental cultivation.

Hence the young man is not a fit student of Moral Philosophy, for he has no experience in the actions of life, while all that is said presupposes and is concerned with these: and in the next place, since he is apt to follow the impulses of his passions, he will hear as though he heard not, and to no profit, the end in view being practice and not mere knowledge.

And I draw no distinction between young in years, and youthful in temper and disposition: the defect to which I allude being no direct result of the time, but of living at the beck and call of passion, and following each object as it rises. For to them that are such the knowledge comes to be unprofitable, as to those of imperfect self-control: but, to those who form their desires and act in accordance with reason, to have knowledge on these points must be very profitable.

Let thus much suffice by way of preface on these three points, the student, the spirit in which our observations should be received, and the object which we propose.

Ayn Rand has not made explicit remarks equivalent to Aristotle's preface but she should have. Ayn Rand's opinions on sex make the most sense when applied to adults in their 30's and 40's (Reardens), persons who can possibly be said to be well-integrated. I can not speak about what it is to be a teenaged girl, but no teenaged boy's sexuality can possibly meet the standard given by Rand and it only slowly bends closer to that description with age as the flood of testosterone ebbs a bit.

Another relevant Aristotle quote on youth: "Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing." Although everyone including the young can be expected to have full control over their behavior they will not have the same control over their desires. Integrating body and mind into a harmony such as Aristotle and Rand describe is a long term project, a kind of gardening project of the mind comprised of making connections and severing others while letting time perfect the growth.

Since the majority of forum members are U.S.-based, almost all the current-affairs topics tend to be about things happening in the U.S.

I know we have some non-U.S. members. Personally, I'm curious about what's going on elsewhere in the world, and would enjoy reading commentary from Objectivists living anywhere in the world. So, post away!

A friend of mine is a self employed web designer and leftist guy, very much in favor of regulation. After a long and heated discussion I asked him to imagine a world where it was decided that regulating the programming of computers was in the public's best interest. So now imagine that I(who can barely spell Drupal) am politically connected enough to acquire the position of director in chief for the division of safe programming. After some difficulty with comparing different software systems I decide that C is a very useful, multifunctional language and that from now on all programs must be written in C so that we can decrease our approval turn around times for new programs that are going to be allowed to be sold to the public. So after you manage to write a program in C as best as you are able, you send it in. 6-10 weeks later, my organization sends you a letter of rejection. You file an appeal and 6 weeks later you get a hearing where it is decided that you can be allowed to sell the program if you alter about 40% of the code that is outside of regulatory standards and resubmit for final approval.

Of course, he had no answer, but that is exactly the world you live in if you try to start a business in any established industry from groceries to construction, let alone the well known, heavily regulated industries like insurance, banking, healthcare or education.

I'm not trying to make the argument that we live in a country where masked government agents break into your home in the middle of the night and shoot you. That only happens to really bad folks, like the one's who try to sell unpasteurized milk. I'm suggesting that if you die from some debilitating disease because the drug or treatment you need is tied up in the FDA for 18 years, then it doesn't really matter that you aren't being starved to death in the Ukraine. Or if you get plowed with an $80,000 OSHA fine because an employee did something stupid that you have no control over, then it doesn't really matter that you are "free" to start a construction business.

The beauty of this system is that the damage done, the amount stolen and mal-invested, the lives ruined by poor, standardized educational practices, all of it is almost completely obfuscated by this pretense of freedom and the difficulty(near impossibility, actually) of measuring opportunity cost and the fact that a pretty small subset of people are baring the majority of this burden in such a way that the vast majority never see it. Basically the freedom is there just so long as you don't try to do much of anything. If you make $400 in an ebay selling business you're probably fine. Even if you don't bother filling out a tax form. Change that to $400,000 in revenue and see how many people you need to talk to for permissions or what happens when you "make a mistake."

Aequalsa,

My point precisely.
I always joke that it is better to commit a mortal sin than a paperwork error- Jesus might forgive you, a bureaucrat never will.

I've started and run businesses and promise you it is not a "far cry" from being government owned and controlled. I can follow my own beliefs and philosophy less then 50% of the time without running afoul of regulation. This is to say nothing of the amount of my production I am able to actually keep nor does it compare in anyway to the kinds of regulations larger companies than mine, in almost all industries are subjected to or the amount of taxes that are paid through the double whammy of a 50% tax on profits with a 38% capital gains tax on the remainder. The government controls and owns far more of the economy than most communist rulers could ever have hoped for, not least of which is banking and oil which are secondary ways of taxing and controlling what is allowed to exist.

I agree with you about not being too defeatist but you shouldn't kid yourself about how far gone it is or how difficult the challenge we face is either. They've been very successful at hiding the governments involvement from the 99% of people who are employees. With automatic withholding and a relative lack of regulation on private individuals it is not very apparent how completely controlled we are but we very much are.

I would call it a gross over simplification, but really that whole page is. It was written in the context of a brief explanation of freewill so I would recommend thinking of it in that light. That said, I doubt many Objectivists would argue that freewill exists independently of existence. A man can not will himself to float into the air or make a cheeseburger materialize in front of him. Choices have to be made with regard to something and that something is reality. What(I assume) they mean is that if your given a choice to drink either a glass of water or a glass of cyanide, your choice isn't predetermined in any way by the facts of your existence. You bring your rational faculties to bare on the circumstance before you and make the best choice freely, within the context of those choices available to you. If those are your only choices then you can't choose orange juice, but that's not the same thing as being determined, philosophically. The relevent part is your freewill applied to the specific reality you happen to be in.

Same with the more complex issues of genes and upbringing. Those things massively shape the choices available to you, but they do not free you from the burden of being responsible for the choices you do make with regard to what is available to you.

Obviously you would hold those things as relevant in determining someone's moral worth. Making a million dollars from scratch is a world away from making a million dollars after inheriting a million first. Likewise in considering a disability or emotional disorder.

I would call it a gross over simplification, but really that whole page is. It was written in the context of a brief explanation of freewill so I would recommend thinking of it in that light. That said, I doubt many Objectivists would argue that freewill exists independently of existence. A man can not will himself to float into the air or make a cheeseburger materialize in front of him. Choices have to be made with regard to something and that something is reality. What(I assume) they mean is that if your given a choice to drink either a glass of water or a glass of cyanide, your choice isn't predetermined in any way by the facts of your existence. You bring your rational faculties to bare on the circumstance before you and make the best choice freely, within the context of those choices available to you. If those are your only choices then you can't choose orange juice, but that's not the same thing as being determined, philosophically. The relevent part is your freewill applied to the specific reality you happen to be in.

Same with the more complex issues of genes and upbringing. Those things massively shape the choices available to you, but they do not free you from the burden of being responsible for the choices you do make with regard to what is available to you.

Obviously you would hold those things as relevant in determining someone's moral worth. Making a million dollars from scratch is a world away from making a million dollars after inheriting a million first. Likewise in considering a disability or emotional disorder.

I would call it a gross over simplification, but really that whole page is. It was written in the context of a brief explanation of freewill so I would recommend thinking of it in that light. That said, I doubt many Objectivists would argue that freewill exists independently of existence. A man can not will himself to float into the air or make a cheeseburger materialize in front of him. Choices have to be made with regard to something and that something is reality. What(I assume) they mean is that if your given a choice to drink either a glass of water or a glass of cyanide, your choice isn't predetermined in any way by the facts of your existence. You bring your rational faculties to bare on the circumstance before you and make the best choice freely, within the context of those choices available to you. If those are your only choices then you can't choose orange juice, but that's not the same thing as being determined, philosophically. The relevent part is your freewill applied to the specific reality you happen to be in.

Same with the more complex issues of genes and upbringing. Those things massively shape the choices available to you, but they do not free you from the burden of being responsible for the choices you do make with regard to what is available to you.

Obviously you would hold those things as relevant in determining someone's moral worth. Making a million dollars from scratch is a world away from making a million dollars after inheriting a million first. Likewise in considering a disability or emotional disorder.

Sarchasm. n. the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it.

"Sarchasm" was an entry in a "change one letter to create a new word" contest some newspaper held a while back.