Caramello

Talking about installing the Shah, I think a lot of people would then argue that Britain initiated force against Iran by installing Pahlavi, making sure someone would make oil consessions for those oil companies. That the British forced the Iranians to be governed by someone who would give those potential oil fields "away", instead of letting the Iranians themselves decide about their government.

Yeah, but that wasn't really my question. My question was, how these Oil fields were aquired by those oil companies, did it take place by initiation of force? Didn't those locations BELONG to someone before they were taken from those oil companies? Were are the sources confirming the status of ownership of those locations BEFORE those oil companies took over?

I have frequently read Peikhoff's article "End States That Sponsor Terrorism", available on http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2635. I find it hard to find sources that really support a lot of claims implicit in his article. Those include: - The West had valid property rights on Mideast oil, the locations have NOT been taken away from any private person by means of post-WWI division of land and they have NOT been taken away by the West by means of initiation of force. - "The Muslim countries embodied in an extreme form every idea--selfless duty, anti-materialism, faith or feeling above science, the supremacy of the group--which our universities, our churches, and our own political Establishment had long been upholding as virtue." Where do you get the material, translations of those head-of-states' speeches, plans, intentions, data on the general attitude of people in those countries, support for the notion that these are Muslim views, not fundamentalist? That people in these countries do not only support "the greater jihad", but also are in favour of the destruction of the West? Support for the notion, that it is really the PEOPLE that want that, not only a minor group of fundamentalists? - Terrorists exist ONLY because of the states that sponsor, sanction and support them. The financial power of private supporters, millionaires, inside and abroad doesn't really matter. - The fundamentalist's motive is NOT poverty, NOT Western presence in the middle east, but the creation of Allah's world empire. I'm asking for sources not in the form of other people's claims, but by generally accepted, known facts.

Hey, you're really writing pretty impressive stuff considering your age. I'm sorry I haven't had the time yet to look closely at everything you wrote. So for now, I would have some suggestions: Always make a comparision. Look closely at all the possibilities, the alternatives you can choose from right now. Try to put the best one of them into some form of image. Paint it, or if you have any idols representing your goals, get their pictures, put them somewhere where you can see them all day long. Write down your goals on a piece of paper, a goal card, carry it with you every day and read it as often as possible. It might sound corny, but you really need to do it. It DOES make a difference. You must train your subconscience to know what to do all the time. You must keep your goals on your mind all the time. The fact that your environment can drive you into different directions does not mean that it's because you don't know what you want. It's because you havent programmed your subconscious to take and stay on the course to where you once saw you wanna go. The process of realizing what's best for your life does not occur by looking at what looks good and worth following around you. It occurs by COMPARING all the possible "around-you's" you've collected so far, including the ones one could think of by combining elements of what you have perceived. Once you've seen what's best, the next step would be to create ways of programming the goals involved into your consciousness, using the means mentioned above besides others. This has helped me to achieve things in different fields and I believe it will help you, too. I frequently have a look at the mr. olympia pages, and articles about different bodybuilders. I'm not going to be a bodybuilder, but I'm trying to do quite some bodybuilding on myself. And even if I know I'm never gonna be like Schwarzenegger, I always pretend like I'm getting there. I prefer to set goals that I can never achieve, but always approach and get closer to. If you don't aim at the top, you might not even land in the middle sometimes. And let's be honest, it's much more enjoyable "making yourself a Schwarzenegger" than just "giving yourself some clear muscle definition". I especially enjoy working on my goals after watching some good movies with characters who have achieved them. I hope this helps keeping you "on track" a bit. I might have a better look at your post sometime, but for now, I hope I have touched some parts of what you said. And also, I think you should still consider yourself pretty lucky to have had a life changing discovery of a philosophy before even becoming an adult, and highly grateful to yourself to have already developed those mental abilities and accumulated such a big treasure of concepts and conceptual integrations at that early age. Cheers ;-)

Yeah, sure. There needs to be a common basis of what both value in a more abstract way. As for the wife being your "ordinary run of the mill homemaker", I'm not very familiar with that term. Is it "I don't reflect about life very much but just do things instinctively and I don't have very strong feelings for heroism" or "Being a homemaker is what I can do with great passion and ability. I really admire heroes, but I don't have the (mental etc.) capabilities to be one the way my husband is. But I do LOVE it very much, more than many who have those capabilities but don't love it. That's why I'm very happy for anyone who can achieve that. Thus I'm trying to support it in any way I can in my husband. I think that's the best I can do to support my values." ? I wouldn't see any problem with the latter case, would you? What you're calling wrong is a one-sided-gain-relationship. And I think you're right about it being inproper if that's all the relationship involves. If timidity is constant and persistent to the extend that hardly a word is uttered, I agree. But if timidity comes in the context of carefulness and consideration, but the "ice" can be broken through encouragement and showing that you have an open ear for her feelings and are highly interested in what she thinks and will try to understand rather than despise her thoughts or feel hurt, then that shouldn't be a problem. Also, her carefulness can remind you of how to deal with people in society and help you learn to be more careful at times. And your openness could also teach her some more outspokenness towards people in cases where she should rather stand up for herself, rather than accept too many things from other people. If you are uplifting and joyous in a temperamental way and view it as something you wanna be all the time, then you can't live with someone who is rather calm in temperament all the time, even it is a happy form of calmness. But what I'm thinking of is: You bear that ability to be full of enjoyable temperament. And you wouldn't need any inspiration to live like that, because it's inside of you. But you also feel, that you really need to calm down half of the time, you're missing the calmness to enjoy other things due to your temperament. But you don't really know how to initiate that enjoyment, how to get into it and hold it. You need someone who exumes that "aura" or however you call it to inspire you. And let's say your partner needs your temperamental joyful inspiration in the same way, but bears that automatic calm joy inside of her that she wants to get out of half of the time. I would say that in this case, two people could "complete" each other. I hope to say "complete each other" does not already have any other, negative meaning. But you see, this isn't a burdening relationship, but a "net profit" one. And you're enjoying things together, it's just a matter of "timing". I'm not talking about a relationship with a "lesser" one, you see? It's about a relationship with MUTUAL exchange of values that both enjoy together.

Yeah, I also meant to say they both share this value, meaning that it is valued by both of them, but I think it wouldn't do anyone any good if they were both just fighting for it. I think that one of them, it's HER in the movie, must be actually LIVING it, so HE can enjoy it. Her too, of course. And of course SHE also gets something in return, namely heroism, dedication to protecting the country and courage from HIM, which SHE can enjoy. Him too, of course. Again, they both have common values, but there is a division of roles in WHO lives which one. This way it's a double-gaining relationship. Right, there are also values you can't or don't want to live, but you want to fight for as a woman, such as masculine sexual expressiveness in your partner. And vice versa. Again, both of them value it, but only the right sex can live the sexual expressiveness of his respective gender. But there is a mutual exchange of values. Two MEN living in a relationship would miss the other side, since what they're providing to each other doesn't include the sexual counterpart. Of course gay couples would tell you they don't need it, though I have a bad feeling about it. But that's a different topic.

what i can tell you is, i think you can know you're happy, when you compare the life you're living, have lived so far, and are going to live to all the other possible lifes you could be living or could have achieved to live, had you made other choices in your life, or where you to make other choices in the future than the ones you're going to make. looking at all this and coming to the conclusion that what you are living is the best of all those possible lives should give you real happiness.

hey guys, i sometimes find it a little confusing when people say that good relationships are based on "sharing of values". just let me give you this: i watched the movie "mission impossible III", where you have ethan hunt marrying that woman. at some point in the movie ethan tells us why she married her. it's because she represents what life was "before all this", meaning before his carrer as a secret agent with all the time consuming missions, hardly having time for family life, constantly having to tell off going out with your wife/friends and so on. some part of him misses that kind of life. i don't believe that ethan is unhappy with the life he's living, but i believe what he needs is someone who lives that other life for him, he likes to see that other life "being lived", too, he needs someone from the "other world" on his side. someone who still has what we might call a "normal" life. because having such a person on your side gives you some sort of "balance" and "compensation". by watching her live that life, he feels like he is somehow getting that life back. that her enjoyment of that life somehow "swops over" to him, and i don't mean that in any mystical way at all, i think most of you will know what i mean. and his wife, the one he marries in that movie shortly before his next assignment, gives him all that what he's lacking. now, why am i giving you all this? first of all, let me say, i don't see anything wrong in that relationship, do you? nothing wrong in ethan's motives, provided i have understood them correctly. it appears to me that he engages in a proper relationship. i just have problems integrating it into the well-known phrase that you must "share values". basically, i find that phrase ambiguous. i could understand it in two ways: 1.) you have certain important "common" values with your partner, meaning they are the same. 2.) you can provide certain highly important things for your partner (in your caracter, your attitude, your life and feeling of life) that your partner lacks and can never provide for herself and vice versa. i think you can find examples of proper relationships for both 1.) and 2.). but as for 1.), i think there are cases in which this isn't neccessarliy sufficient. and i think my mi III example is already one of them. i'm trying to put the value ethan is seeking into a term. let's just call it "normality in life" for now. i know it probably doesn't cover everything he wants, but it gives us at least an element to start with. according to 1.), ethan could have as well married someone with the same problems he has. someone like that chinese female colleague at work, provided she feels the same lack in her life. he could marry her according to 1.), because they would both be pursuing the same thing, it would be the same object of desire they would be running after, in other words they would have a common value which they "share". but obviously that wouldn't satisfy either of them. after having made some love to each other in an orgy of mutual compassion, they would still both have to look for some counterpart to themselves to make love to. someone who not only LOVES "normality in life" but also HAS it. and i'm sure that love would be much more meaningful to them than the love between these two secret agents. to me, ethan hunt is the number one candidate for "sharing of values" in the sense of 2.) and it appears to be a proper basis for a relationship in my eyes. examples like these just tell me that "sharing of values" in the sense of 1.), the sense that i perceive to be widely used in society, can be highly insufficient in a lot of cases. personally, i believe i could use a mixture of both. it is not just to have values "in common". it's also to "have important values provided to you, that you can't provide for yourself". i think this makes a relationship special and interesting. i don't think you MUST have a type-2.)-relationship to make it perfect. i think it's just that some two people are the same and don't need anything new or different, they are just happy to have someone like them, while other two people are totally different and therefore need and and enjoy each other, too. what do you think? you're also very welcome to put my observations and descriptions into some better language, using the proper philosophical or psychological terms. i'd be glad to learn about their usage.

I'm sorry, I didn't notice there already IS a thread on Guiliani. I have placed my latter comment there now, so please post your replies there.

Hey, I'm sorry I didn't discover this thread earlier, I originally posted this comment in "Presidential hopefuls 2008", but it seems to better fit in this thread. Here's my comment: I have read Peikoff's comments about voting republican. He seems to hold that anyone who votes Republican does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism. I find this very confusing. I see that there are a lot of Christian conservatives running that party, but still, I am not convinced that most of them really LIVE by the standards of their religion. It would be much much worse if they really would, but in fact, I think it's exaggerated to say that party would bring us back to the dark ages. To me they are religious in name only, just in love with certain traditions which seem to give them a sense of identity and self confidence that they fail to discover objectively. I look at them more like a club of traditionalists who happen to count economic freedom as one of their traditions they proudly try to maintain. Although many of them may not understand the true basis of freedom, I think Guiliani does much more than most of them. And most of all, the degree to which their poor remnants of religious convictions could ever affect American lives negatively seriously is far less than the amount of added socialism by the Democrats could do. And given the list of potential candidates, I think Guiliani qualifies in the field of leadership, I think he can bring that original sense of RATIONAL self confidence back to the country, I think he can remind Americans WHY their country is so great on a rational, objective basis, rather than just by quoting the bible. And I think by presenting America with his rational views, he could give the rest of the world some REAL arguments to ponder on, and remind the rest of the world why America ORIGINALLY has a properly founded constitution. Because most people outside America seem to think America was founded on the Bible. It is time for the world to get the right impression. It is time that America gets a President who can really DEFEND America's actions rationally, rather than lowering America to a false basis even LOWER than that in many middle and western European countries by arguing with religious commandments. I can't think of any European head of state who would really talk about God in any assembly, meeting, or other public performance or try to justify or convince others of certain actions with religion. And this is why no majority in any of these European countries would EVER take America serious again. They will always feel morally superior as long as America has a president who tries to argue with that mysticism. I think a president who reminds Americans about the right philosophy is of fundamental importance now. I believe Guiliani is goal directed, nows how to set goals and motivate others to keep their focus, nows how to think positively, nows how to look at the important aspects in life, those that matter, he's the one that believes in progress and understands the joy it brings rather than statism. I believe he can lead America through ANY crisis without splitting up the country and without making Americans feel ashamed of themselves, because he will always argue rationally. I think America should use that rare opportunity and vote for Guiliani in hope of steering the country into the right direction philosophically.

Hi, I hope it's not too late to revive this thread after a 3 months break of no further comments. I have read Peikoff's comments about voting republican. He seems to hold that anyone who votes Republican does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism. I find this very confusing. I see that there are a lot of Christian conservatives running that party, but still, I am not convinced that most of them really LIVE by the standards of their religion. It would be much much worse if they really would, but in fact, I think it's exaggerated to say that party would bring us back to the dark ages. To me they are religious in name only, just in love with certain traditions which seem to give them a sense of identity and self confidence that they fail to discover objectively. I look at them more like a club of traditionalists who happen to count economic freedom as one of their traditions they proudly try to maintain. Although many of them may not understand the true basis of freedom, I think Guiliani does much more than most of them. And most of all, the degree to which their poor remnants of religious convictions could ever affect American lives negatively seriously is far less than the amount of added socialism by the Democrats could do. And given the list of potential candidates, I think Guiliani qualifies in the field of leadership, I think he can bring that original sense of RATIONAL self confidence back to the country, I think he can remind Americans WHY their country is so great on a rational, objective basis, rather than just by quoting the bible. And I think by presenting America with his rational views, he could give the rest of the world some REAL arguments to ponder on, and remind the rest of the world why America ORIGINALLY has a properly founded constitution. Because most people outside America seem to think America was founded on the Bible. It is time for the world to get the right impression. It is time that America gets a President who can really DEFEND America's actions rationally, rather than lowering America to a false basis even LOWER than that in many middle and western European countries by arguing with religious commandments. I can't think of any European head of state who would really talk about God in any assembly, meeting, or other public performance or try to justify or convince others of certain actions with religion. And this is why no majority in any of these European countries would EVER take America serious again. They will always feel morally superior as long as America has a president who tries to argue with that mysticism. I think a president who reminds Americans about the right philosophy is of fundamental importance now. I believe Guiliani is goal directed, nows how to set goals and motivate others to keep their focus, nows how to think positively, nows how to look at the important aspects in life, those that matter, he's the one that believes in progress and understands the joy it brings rather than statism. I believe he can lead America through ANY crisis without splitting up the country and without making Americans feel ashamed of themselves, because he will always argue rationally. I think America should use that rare opportunity and vote for Guiliani in hope of steering the country into the right direction philosophically.