Tenure

Courage is an necessary component of conviction, which as GC states, links it to integrity. If integrity is the refusal to sacrifice oneself to any irrational, anti-life activity; and from the positive side, to practice what one preaches - if this is true, then courage is not so much a virtue, as it is an attribute. It describes someone who has integrity, but it also describes that persons integrity with relation to the challenges against their integrity.

Ok, so I understand that if we were involved in a war, it would obviously make sense to introduce legislation to cut off exports to enemy powers. My question however, is whether it is wrong to cut off those exports when they are aiding a neutral country, involved in a war with another country? Maybe this is a contextual issue. I'll present two problems: 1) County A provokes war with Country B. Country B retaliates. War ensues, as these things often do. Country B has the capita, but not the time or industrial quality to produce war winning weapons. It buys weapons from Country C, to help win its war. Is this permissable? 2)Country C is fighting for liberation. Perhaps rebels fighting for a free-society from socialist oppressors, or from an occupying, tyrannical country D. Is it permissable to supply Country C with weapons in this instance? Perhaps I'm just not just grasping where the exact cut off point for an 'illegal' initiation of force lies. Does it lie as far back as simply selling weapons to a country at war, fighting for liberty?

Something caught me eye whilst traversing through Wikipedia. I was skimming through a list of inventors, clicked this one guy, followed through to the company he founded, and eventually came across this court case from the 1930s (1936 to be exact). The essence of it is, that FDR imposed a regulation which conflicted with the issues of an aeronautical company, Curtiss-Wright (more like the company, much like Taggart Transcontinental was the railroad company) which produced military aircraft. The regulation was a foreign policy maneuver (of importance which I don't really understand) to prohibit the sale of military weaponry or vehicles to countries involved in a conflict. Curtiss-Wright disobeyed this regulation and went to the Supreme Court over the matter, which ruled in favour of FDR/Executive Branch. The details being that they sold illegal (at least in terms of foreign trade) products to Bolivia during the Chaco War, I believe. It is also interesting to note that apparently, these sales made up a vital portion of the company's foreign sales. The importance of the case seems to be in terms of abuse of power and regulation of the economy, however I'm wondering under what justification such a legislation was introduced, and whether the economy can ever be regulated when dealing with foreign affairs. Is it ever justifiable to intervene with exports, if those exports somehow conflict with the interests of ones nation (I'm thinking the most extreme example would be selling nuclear-weapon technology to individuals in a hostile nation)? Also, does the power to regulate sales to foreign markets really count as a justifiable action of the executive branch? I would argue not, according to the very strict guidelines (or lack thereof) of Laissez Faire capitalism, although there may be dissent over the nuclear weapons issue.

I'm 17 and only recently got into the whole subject of Objectivism. I came from a background that went roughy: Ambivalent Anglican, Agnostic, Atheist, Confident Atheist, Militant Atheist (notice that it was the atheism that I allowed to become my defining philosophy), Socialist, Anarchist, Hedonist, Dutiful-Stoic. I've been a very impressionable youth, but I'm quite confident that after my hellish years of adolescence, where I've gone through some VERY bizarre phases, that I've finally arrived at a Philosophy that actually makes sense. Before, I'd make a lot of leaps of logic to defend rather strange ideals. I'm now on my road to trying to understand how Objectivism really integrates with my life. Edit: Just to clarify, 'dutiful-stoic' is not where I am now. It was where I was at before I started getting into Rand. I'm also interested to know the results of people studying via the induction method of Objectivism, and how long it took them to snap out of the superficial-Objectivism that a lot of us seem to come at it with. I came here pretty soon after reading The Fountainhead a few months ago - fascinated by all the concepts I'd read, and eager to understand how it all integrates. The thing is, I love systems, and learning how everything fits together and how everything works. Unlike a friend of mine, who gets bored once he's learned the trick to something, I get more and more inquisitive about these things, which probably saved me from falling into the trap of saying "Ok, Objectivism says 'X is good, Y is bad, because of Axiom Z, etc etc". Instead, I'm trying to find out how one can learn via the induction method without having to travel (for me) 4000 miles to the ARI. If I start to study via textbooks and the likes, I will have to constantly spend more and more time here searching for threads where people have discussed problems that I'm having. I think it's important, most of all, to trust yourself. One of the lines that I love from AS is somewhere along the lines of "We see life as being full of hope, rather than calamity". I read that as saying I should just be willing to act, and to trust myself, and if I screw up, to accept that screw ups do happen, but that they do not have to define me; i.e. one shouldn't feel guilty because they can't act with a fully-integrated system of Objectivism from the get go, nor should they decide simply not to live their lives until they've mastered the subject. On the subject of Arts: Yeah, I've found the same thing. I really like My Chemical Romance, but I recently went to see them live and... it just did nothing for me. The whole thing was such a joke. I spent the second half of the gig just sitting against a wall, trying to understand why I couldn't enjoy these songs anymore. It was just... so nihilistic. The guy talks about moving through depression and trying to help people with his songs, but then he focuses on his attention on just being as nihilistic as possible.

Ack, realised that with the split of that topic, I never actually posted a greeting. Hello there, Catherine, who has signed up at roughly the same time as me. That is all.

Ah but that's the thing. Being a protagonist does not make you a hero. It simply means you're the person we should pay the most amount of attention to in a story, and you're the barometer by which we measure the themes and such of the book. We don't have to like a protagonist, that's why he's a kind of anti-hero really. Like I said, the problem is that people are stupid and emotional, and take the position that it's the big bad world that's out to get him, falling right into the emotional trap that people like him create; rather than realising that it's the intolerably selfless attitude of Holden's which is being demonised by Salinger.

Well, yes, the incredibly annoying fact is that people do seem to worship the character of Holden. The same way they think Tyler is the hero of 'Fight Club' and that Johnny The Homicidal Maniac is just a misunderstood guy. Yes, these are stories about losers, but there is merit in that fact - not in itself of course, but because of what it teaches you about the mentality of a loser, and the importance of things like judgement, imagination and individuality. I think that it's important to understand why people act the way they do, and these sorts of books are very clear in explaining why that is; you just have to consider it beyond "this is a whiny teenager" to "Why is he a whiny teenager?".

Ok, so maybe Teen Angst isn't the right phrasing to use, but it's what these sorts of books are generally described as. It's not an adequate description, but it will suffice for now. Now, first, a bit (a fair bit) of background. If you've not read these two novels they're pretty much this (SPOILERS!): Catcher in the Rye - Holden Caulfield is an obviously talented student who could be a great writer. He has a talent for being sensitive about all he sees (think John Galt, who manages to find great love for the simple act of sensory perception), but he is eternally cynical of everything he sees, except children, who sees as intrinsically pure. This fits in with his perception of women, as either innocent virgins or whores. He doesn't give much reason behind his judgements, he just makes them and moves on. Sometimes he'll call himself "crazy" and he will very often call people "phonies" because of, well, various reasons. The actual plot is just following him pissing around in New York for a day or two after being kicked out of boarding school a few days before the Christmas holiday. Unlike Roark, Caulfield simply doesn't work. What he does do is good stuff, but generally he doesn't apply himself at all (the typical gifted student who flunks essays). So, he goes around New York, becoming more and more obsessed with reasons for why people are phonies, before becoming completly disconnected with reality sometime between the final chapter and the epilogue. We don't know exactly what happened, but from foreshadowing, it's assumed to be attempted suicide. All we know is that he's in a mental hospital and he's thinking about applying himself. It ends with the lines: "Never tell anyone anything. Otherwise you just end up missing them." This is probably in relation to his younger brother Ally, who long before the events of the novel, died of some disease or something. He's the only person who Holden ever opened up to, and it is probably a key factor in why he avoids facing up to reality, especially the reality of his thoughts. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - This book is quite an interesting book, in that it's meant to be a response to Catcher in a way, according to the author. It's about Charlie (no surname mentioned, it's an epistolatory novel and he changes names to 'protect their identity', much like in Les Liasons Dangerous), a teenager in the early 90s, who's far more connected to his family than Holden. He gets on well with his sister, and his parents are far more supportive than the distant parents of Holden. What is most important is Charlie's perception of the world however. Unlike cynical Holden, he acts far more naively, making an honest effort to 'participate' with the people around him. This is very important because it highlights the key issue that's troubling Holden and Charlie. Charlie tries to 'participate' so hard, rather than distancing himself from people like he used to, that near the end of the novel he is practically living for other people. Holden could barely live his own life, never facing up to what all his actions meant. He simply chose not to participate in life at all. However, Charlie's idea of participation is love, in the altruistic sense. This is so superbly summed up by his best friend, Samantha, who tells him in their eponymous scene near the end (splicing together the key quotes): "It's like you're not even there sometimes, Charlie ... You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love ... If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am ... and I want to know where you are, what you need, and what you want to do". Needless to say, he doesn't really understand what Sam means by all this, and in the same way as Holden does: hospitalised. Although we did learn that he did have a nervous breakdown, and causes of his trauma lay in an incident in his past, which triggered all the altruistic living that he did ever since. I really have no clue if Chbosky, the author of 'Perks', is an Objectivist, but at the very least his ideas are very much in tune with the themes of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In fact, the character of Charlie reads The Fountainhead near the end of the book, before Sam's speech. It's quite important what he says here in fact, as I think it underscores the values missing from these boys lives. Salinger leaves it to be inferred, whilst Chbosky is more obvious about it, hence why I am about to quote this section: "The architect says something like this: 'I would die for you. But I won't live for you'. Something like that. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people." You've most likely read 'Catcher in the Rye', so you at least understand what I mean when I say that Holden cuts himself off from reality. His problem is that he can't face up to who he is, he can't examine his life because he's too scared, or because he's got no one to help him do it. Charlie could examine his life, but he doesn't realise why he should. He misses the advice that his teacher Bill constantly imparts onto him, and fails to learn from the lessons that teach him that his mindless altruism just isn't working. If anyone here has kids, you should give them these books to read as teenagers. Let them read them and then make up their own minds. It took me two years to finally come to the realisation of what these books meant (aided by the beginning of my quest to understand Objectivism) and I'm all the better for it. They're books you should read, if you want to understand the motivation that drives someone who is blinded by reality, or lives altruistically. It won't garner you any respect for them, it may make you aggravated, and it most certainly may actually force some pity out of you. But it will teach you what it is that can get grounded in you from a young age, that can lead to the many evils we see around us today.

Are you talking about philosophy in general? The fact that although Objectivism seems so simple, there are a ton of nuances that are quite complex to understand, which can get very aggravating (to use the example again - that debate on instinct in humans)? That's how I feel at least.

It depends on what you believe the imagination is. Personally, I believe it is the act of self-examination. If for example, you take a dream. It is a wonderful work of the imagination, piecing together all sorts of information. The important bit however, is that it is all about you. Even if you dream about someone dying, it is all about what value they are to you. The imagination is our tool for externalizing everything we feel and think. Creativity, on the other hand, is about a very different approach. Creativity is about exploring the unknown. It's kind of like algebra. You start out from what you don't know (say for example, you ask 'What is love?'), and you use creative methods to deduce what you can know. Some methods will work, some won't. Creativity is the process of trial and error. I'm not saying it's a blind process, but that the real beauty of creativity, is in how you figure things out. It is, to put it bluntly, the scientific method. You try things, see how far they work, and discard them if they don't work. The imagination, I should put it better, is a process for expression. Creativity is a method of exploration. I just get annoyed at people calling things 'creative' and 'imaginative', on the sole merit that it is fantastical or different. Fantastical and different can be good, but I think people use all these terms without thinking about what they mean.

Oh well, when you guys put it that way, she does have great potential to be a great artist. And come to think of... she's squandering that ability! She's choosing to go to the local Theology College, rather than an Art college. I'm not saying you have to go to Art college to be a good artist, but she actually said herself that learning about God and all that was more important than her art. I'll give it time and move on. I've got my life to live and I can't waste a second of it trying to carry her by my strength.

That's weird. My ex didn't hate my arrogance so much. In fact, she liked it and claimed that it was part of what made me 'sexy' (gotta say, only person who ever described me as sexy ). The problem for her was that she was a Christian, and in the true sense of what being a Christian means, not just a sunday-church one. She believed she had a relationship with Jesus, that he had some sort of automagical rule over her actions, that she was less than him, etc etc. Of course, that raised a lot of problems with the whole sex issue and marriage and all that too.... so, yeah. Still, I find it strange that I had and still do have strong feelings (hell, we only broke up last week) for her, inspite of her delusions. Have you guys ever felt the same way?

Hah! I know what you mean! There's a friend of mine at school who really thinks very little of me, because of my supposed 'arrogance'. That is, if I try to make any claim to facts or to actually argue something as it is, rather than to say "Well it seems to me that...", she'll call me arrogant. Apparently believing in the truth is arrogance. The thing about my ex, is that I loved her for everything else, which is why I find this whole 'trading of values' thing a bit bizarre. It's meant to underpin the feeling of love, and yet I've always fallen for a girl who didn't share my values - i.e. the Christian girl.To be fair, this was probably because I only recently discovered my self-esteem).

I went to bed soon after my registration and first couple of posts, so sorry I'm so late to respond to all this. I would not go to me for recommendations of reading Victor Hugo. I love his art work, I've yet to read his writing. I understand he was a great writer, and I find it stunning that he managed to do both so well. I'll take the cue from BrassDragon to read Les Mis, once I finish Atlas. Well yes, I've kind of memorised who the big guns here are, and it is quite fun to imagine what their lives must be like outside the forum. Mind you, I've memorised a lot of people only by their avatar as I've scrolled through the many, many threads here, so that might be a bit awkward. Heh, well, it ended up with me losing a long-term girlfriend personally, so I hope that despite of arguments you are happy. I don't mean to drop something that personal in so casually, but, I'd be lying if I didn't say the confusion caused by that hasn't been a factor in wanting to find like minded individuals.

I started typing in a rebuttal to this, to say that the creation of a world for your ideas is just an additional component of fiction-writing, and that it does not make it any more creative than non-fiction. However, I concede that I simply mean that they both require the same amount of effort, as far as being able to write well is concerned, and as far as being able to research your writing is concerned. However, an interesting thought came to me that I've heard before and wanted to recycle. The true merit of fiction writing comes from the way it fully utilitises the imagination. If creativity is our means of exploring the unknown, and our imagination is our tool for truely knowing ourselves, then together, through fiction-writing, they actually work to create a wonderful means for self-expression and self-examination.

That rock experiment only succeeds to make him look a fool to you and like-minded individuals. It still does not aid in getting him to understand your position. I think it would be better to ask him where he draws his ideas of knowledge from, his epistemology. Must he have a perfect knowledge of everything to know it exists? Or can he deduce an objective, reasoned judgement of facts which is dictated by logic? This whole 'object permanence' thing, as aequalsa calls it, is nothing short of an evasion from reality on the part of your friend.

Thread split from this one. I just wanted to pick up on this. I know it seems pedantic, but I think it's important. You think fiction writing is more creative than non-fiction writing. I would say it's a very difficult thing to judge, probably impossible, to say that one art-form is 'more creative' than another, unless we're considering oil painting against throwing excrement at a wall. I just get the feeling that you think non-fiction writing might not be all that creative. I would say that it's actually a very challenging thing to do. You're recording reality, as you see it. It's an incredibly creative activity, requiring a good discipline of the senses and a sharp use of vocabulary and style to correctly record an emotion, or a general sense of what something means, or even to accurately describe what something is. Just my $0.02 on that. As for the thing about computer games, I'd add that they have not just the potential for being aesthetically pleasing, but for being great test-maps for trying out all sorts of new computing architecture. The need to be able to create attractive environments drives companies to create better hardware, whilst the efforts to create some new way to play stretches us beyond our preconceived notions of how we use computers. Procedural generation for example, which is being explored in the game 'Spore' extensively, and with much more experimentation and exploration for the commercial field of video games, could one day be crossed over into scientific exploration of Artificial Intelligence. Hell, a friend of mine is confident that it could actually mean a revolution in how everything is constructed. In a sense, video games may be where the next 'Rearden Metal' will start.

Heh, well, I wouldn't say I can't wait for it to end myself. My education of the American school system lies almost entirely in what I've learnt from movies, but from what I can imagine, it's a bit different to ours. Honestly, although schooling has been worthless for the most part, there have been some subjects that I love, teachers I respect, and lessons learned that I wouldn't trade for anything. I've almost gained an affinity for my place here, but I know that it's only because I've grown enough to see it now. Back a few years back, I wouldn't have been able to understand that, but, meh, I'm growing up and moving on. I've read 'The Fountainhead' and am up to the point in Atlas Shrugged where Dagny Taggart is on her way to see Quinten Daniels before Galt gets to him. I think I've figured out that Galt might not actually be that far away from Dagny. I always over looked his significance, but I think the anonymous 'worker' who Eddie Willers talks to might actually be John Galt. If he is, I'll be very impressed. Other than that, I've read over a bunch of letters and various essays by Rand, including essays from the Atlas Society and the ARI, and a handful of essays with a critical analysis of Objectivism (which very rarely stemmed from superficial arguments about 'Randroids' and accusations of cult status). I got interested in her work due to two factors: 'The Fountained' was mentioned in a novel I was reading, where the narrator talks about reading about Howard saying "I would die for you, but I won't live for you", and he comments on how people must live for themselves. It took a while for that point to really sink in. I lived my life way too selflessly through much of time before reading that book (called 'The Perks of being a Wallflower', by the way), and I thought it was a good thing that I felt an affinity with the narrator. I didn't realise that the author was actually presenting what someone shouldn't be through his protagonist, and that the book was actually about knowing who you were and what you wanted. After that, the author of a blog I read frequently, posted an entry about how he felt a profound connection with Howard Roark. I really respect this guy, so I thought I must find out who this Howard Roark is. And that's how it all started.

Well, I've come to realise that I do most of all. I'm one of the many people that has come to Objectivism from the superficial side (Egoism, Individualism, Arrogance, etc), before exploring the actual axioms and such. Upon studying them, I've come into overwhelming agreement with almost everything I've read, so long as it has been fully integrated with the basic theory of Objectivism. I suppose it's the more obtuse arguments that I struggle with ('How do we handle prisoners?', 'Does looting really destroy the looter?'). That second question especially troubles me. In a world where I feel isolated from most everyone upon realising how shut off from reality they are, how irrational and selfless they are also, I still see that they are quite happy and can't imagine they will be too damaged by their immorality. I'm further confounded by the fact that I see very few individuals who value their own self-interest, even fewer who are morally better for it and very, very few who I could say are happy for it (if any). I remember reading Ayn Rand saying that she wrote to tell people that these heroes do exist, and that happiness is possible, but I still remain to be convinced. But enough of why I'm here. I should say who I am, afterall, I should know who I am, right? I'm a student in every sense of the word (ending High school in a month, entering into University after a gap-year). My mid-term goals (I say so because they aren't short term, but also aren't what I plan to spend the rest of my life doing) are to learn so that I may be competent in my intellectual reasoning. I want to be able to think clearly, and rationally, with an educated mind, so that I can use it for my purposes. I don't wish to learn for the sake of learning (though what I learn often fascinates me), but to learn so I can prepare myself for all the challenges of everyday. I love the theatre. I'm an actor-in-training - although some practitioners would argue that actors remain in training their whole life - and I want to be so much more. I love to act, but I'd equally love to craft a moving play, and to spend some time directing a play that I've fallen in love with. If I can't do this, I will find a way. As a hobby, I love to improve my drawing skills. I draw a lot of doodles, and I've turned that habit into a way to train myself in how to draw. I'm inspired by Victor Hugo who painted beautiful paintings on the side, which he only published for his friends and family (albeit, it wasn't just that he didn't care to show his paintings to the critical 'art circles', but that he wished people to focus on his political writings and not his personal art). I'm a student, and I'm here to learn. Part of learning is asking questions, part of it is arguing, and part of it is testing what you learn in the real world - though the last of these is something for me to do beyond the ephemeral walls of this forum. -Rory