jimmay

Greets.... this shall be post #2, as I only noticed that there was an Introductions forum this evening... I'm Jim May, an Objectivist since 1987, and once fairly active on alt.philosophy.objectivism and then later humanities.philosophy.objectivism, from 1994-96. (Speaking of which, I'd like to know if anyone knows where Jason Kuznicki is these days.) Hailing originally from Canada, I've spent the last six-plus years in the United States, living in Las Vegas, Portland OR, Minneapolis and now Los Angeles. I'm a 3d artist, now working in commercials. I was introduced to Objectivism via a box of AR's books sent to me by my Objectivist cousin in the summer of 1987. The thing that I remember the most about that, was that I made a point of noting disagreements and objections along the way, and then going back and crossing them out if AR answered it later. I ended up with a few pages of such notes, and then realized that one book was missing from the collection -- The Virtue of Selfishness. I tracked down a copy at the local library, and was surprised at how perfect the fit was between that book and my remaining unanswered questions. More than once I had the impression that the book was specifically written to answer my questions, even though VoS is about as old as I am. After 17 years, I think I'm pretty good at it now.

That just about summed it up for me in 1994, and still does to this day. My view of the whole issue from the start, was that it was about the biggest mountain made out of the smallest molehill that I saw in the whole PK debate (Peikoff-Kelley). Not that serious issues weren't at stake once the mountain got built, but dammit, at root it was the merest of semantics. It took me weeks of work to complete my analysis of T&T, but this particular issue was done in about eight seconds, as follows: If Objectivism is considered as an Aristotelian philosophy in a general sense, in terms of its relationship to the rest of philosophy, then here "Aristotelianism" is used in the "open meaning", which refers to later ideas that are based on or otherwise have strong, fundamental similarities to Aristotle's. But Aristotle, like Ayn Rand, is dead, and left behind a definite body of work. This "Aristotelianism" would be the closed meaning. So if Objectivism is an open system, later ideas that are based on Objectivism can be referred to as Objectivist ideas, or even Objectivist philosophies. But if it is a closed system, we need a new term to designate these. So coin a new term and be done with it. Knowledge is open, whatever it's called. Incidentally, I'd like to thank Diana for sparking my return to active participation in Internet Objectivism. Before this post, my last activity was in 1996 (and a few token posts in 1998) on h.p.o. I washed my hands of the scene when someone who seemed an awful lot like an unruly teenager in 1994 still seemed like that in 1998 I rediscovered Diana indirectly via the Glocktalk firearms forum; an issue she was having with a certain firearms facility was being discussed there, and I became curious about the combination of familiar and unusual names this person had. After a brief reintroduction, I became an occasional reader of her blog. Her split with the TOC and the reasons given sparked a double-take and made me a regular reader, and the links she's been posting to other blogs and fora have pulled me in. Jim May ... once known as "The Practicing Objectivist", and then later "Your Friendly Neighborhood Objectivist" (which was a Spiderman reference, but so few got it).