BreathofLife

Before I read the books I can't say that I was really like any one character, it was kind of a mix. I had a lot of ideas that are part of the basic foundation of objectivism but I also had some irrational notions/premises that got corrected. It was kind of like some things were really blurry and fuzzy and objectivism cleared it all up.

First off I would like the point out that I never tried to justify the glorification of professional athletes. Personally I find sporting events to be rather boring and I am not really a fan of any professional sports teams. I value sports when I engage in them from the enjoyment I get out of playing them. That is why I said "completely on it's own". Chess, all alone, just a two men in a room playing chess could only be considered productive work in that if others desire to pay to watch them they are then producing entertainment. Same thing with a basketball game and anything of the like. Though i'm still not sure on whether the fact that it entertains people counts as productive work. Music and film and whatnot I think are different because you are offering them a product. It may be entertaining them but that is secondary, the primary is that you are producing a piece of art. I guess the next issue is whether or not men who are playing a game and they are good at it, is it art? if it is it could be considered the same as music and film and the like. Gonna do some more thinking on this one.

You don't necessarily have to create it to own it. You can own it by making use of it assuming that it does not belong to anyone in the first place. Let's say I find some land that no one owns, it is not being used, and I build a house on it and start a farm. You are saying that my occupation and use of this land is a violation of the rights of others because I won't let others use it? You are saying that I (or someone, somewhere) owe them a certain amount of land value simply because they were born? You are not entitled to land just as you are not entitled to claim the "right" that someone must sustain your existence for you. You have the right to buy land but not the right to claim that others owe it to you. By occupying my land and making use of it (as opposed to sitting alone on an entire continent, doing nothing, simplying claiming that it is mine) I own the land until the day I decide to sell it or if I die, etc. Therefore government is initiating force and therefore breach of rights of innocent people.

Any mandatory tax is a violation of rights. A proper government does not have the power to initiate force against any innocent person and a mandatory tax is just such a violation. A government having the ability to take your money against your will means that you only have your money by the permission of the government, this then extends not only to your property but to your life; leaving your entire life at the government's whim because it may dispose of your life or your possessions at any time.

I meet people that are a lot like the negative characters all the time. Rarely do I come across people that remind me of positive one's though. There are a couple though.

I started reading the comments from that person on Rand's description of values. I stopped very soon after. If these are the kind of objections they are going to offer then I am not going to waste my time reading any of that. The objection I came across was that values can exist without an ultimate value. They offer no proof of this whatsoever. What they fail to realize is that your ultimate value does not have to be conciously known to you, everyone has an ultimate value whether they know it and can describe it and why in detail or whether it is subconcious and they have on clue. They are ex-objectivists because they failed to understand the philosophy.

As a rational being it is not in one's own interests to violate the rights of others because by doing so you lose all claim to your own rights. Therefore you steal- you have no reason to complain when someone steals from you. probably the shortest answer to the original question.

The reason math is considered productive work is not in it's application but merely because it is a science of understanding reality- understanding the things in our world, how they interact, and how they behave. Math is productive work simply because of it's nature as a science of understanding reality- it can then be applied in any number of ways. Chess is not because the "reality" is made up and therefore not applicable to our world (which is why it is a game). It may be a fun game but a game it is and as such cannot be considered productive work completely on it's own.

In reply to the original topic ( yea i'm a bit late). I listen to lots of different classical music and whatnot (Mozart is amazing) but I mainly listen to/play a form of rock music called Metalcore. A mix of american heavy metal and melodic swedish metal. At first glance a lot of people would be turned off to this right off the bat and I don't blame you, but I find the music incredible in that it can convey such intense energy and it really completes the mix when bands of this sort have positive, individualistic messages (not all of them do though). I listen to everything though. acoustic stuff, swedish/nordic folk, rock, heavy metal, classical, some blues. Basically almost anything but pop.

I just enjoyed the fact that his character was so capable with his hands. That alone made it worth it.

Guitar ( mainly electric but occaisionally acoustic). For a little over 4 years now.

If they have an honest interest in learning about objectivism and don't cause any trouble I say let them be. If they come to argue senselessly and post propaganda- ban them

I agree with the others in that you should read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead in order to get a proper presentation of the philosophy in it's entirety. I find anything appealing that is right. In my explorations of objectivism I have yet to find any fallacies or contradictions. Just as nature cannot have any contradictions, a philosophy that follows Man's nature correctly can not have any contradictions. Once you grasp a few of the core concepts of objectivism things start to clear up incredibly- and it becomes very appealing to live your life by a code that promotes freedom instead of slavery. Right instead of wrong. Reason instead of nonsense. You realize that life is an "either, or" decision. Either Life or Not Life. Life or Death.

*breathes a huge sigh of relief* It's nice to know there are still sane people in this world. There are a couple other forums I visit and I enjoy arguing with them to an extent but it loses it's fun after a while and becomes frustrating (they can't see a proof when you explain it 10 different ways). It's nice to come here and see that some people actually know how to live.

Also the act of creating said law in the first place can be called an evil action. The law is not evil itself but rather the product of an evil action, since laws are obviously created to be enforced on people.

Very true. This seems to be the case with my parents. I don't get confrontational with them (my dad more than my mom, I have a hard time believing that my mother really believes in religions at all), but my dad will use that scolding tone of voice when it comes to my views on religion. He was raised around that nonsense (he was an altar boy when he was a kid) so I can see how he hangs tight to those ties but he has no arguments. The religion issue wasn't too much of a problem because my family is not very religious at all, at least not in the sense that we ever went to church or anything but I think my dad still believes in it. They never forced it on me though, which i appreciate, they just let me have my space and I took care of myself. He won't argue with me when I talk about Atheism though because I think he knows that he has no valid reasons- he knows that it's faith he's hanging onto, he just hasn't accepted that there is nothing beyond reason. I'm pretty sure I could make him see the problem in religion and the reason why I'm an atheist but I just don't care that much.

People who don't see will be forced to when everyone is about to die and they're next. Remember James Taggart when Galt told him how to fix the torture device?

I think on the male part it is a worship of 1) her mind and 2) her femininity. A relationship is an exchange of the masculine and the feminine as well as an exchange of values. I don't think there's anything wrong with the conclusion that Carla deduced: They both worship eachothers minds and the values those minds hold, and the female worships the male's masculinity and the male worships the female's femininity. It's not that the male worships her because she worships him, but for the reasons that she does so.

Exactly what I was going to say. now I don't have to type it out, hahah. Agreed.

Don't confuse government NOW with how government should be. If a government was set up to protect individual rights and do nothing else, I don't see how the people in it's domain could live for it's rulers. How do you live for your rulers in a society where there are no "rulers" and your government officials say "live your own life".

Absolutey not. The fact that everyone presumed them to be impossible is irrelevant. All of those people (einstein, wright bros...etc) had reason to believe that it was possible, and then they proceeded to try to prove it.

My girlfriend bought me "The Virtue of Selfishness" for my birthday last year because I was explaining to her how I thought Selfishness was a virtue (this was before I knew who Ayn Rand was) and I was kind of shocked and thought it was really cool. I started into it a bit but never got to finish it because I was busy and just wasn't able to fight my way through how dense and technical it was. A bit later I was told to read Atlas Shrugged by my girlfriend and did so and I was amazed (I had read all Terry Goodkind books before this and thought it was cool to find an author with the same sort of values and philosophy- then I learned she was his biggest influence). So after Atlas I picked up Anthem which was very good, quick read. I'm now somewhere in the midst of The Fountainhead. Next up is We The Living and after that I'm not sure.

I'm not so sure I agree that if I'm walking along and see someone in danger and it's of no risk to me to help them out, that I'm obligated to help them. I probably would simply because I value human life and would not want to see one die when I could have stopped it at no risk to myself (assuming that the person in danger is not someone I consider to be evil). Sure, in most cases most people probably would, but that doesn't mean that you're obligated. I am obligated to do nothing for anyone, my only duty is to myself- However (and I think this is the point you are making), if you value an innocent human life like that then you are obligated by your own values to do so, but not for any other reason; and to take the point further I think you're saying that most people do value life in that way (at least the rational ones anyway) and so would be obligated by their own values to do so. Thanks for posting this topic, I just learned something from myself. I love doing that.

Isaac had it right, that bit taken out of Peikoff is basically what Aristotle was saying: In order to find Man's purpose, you must find the ultimate goal which serves no other goal (ie the goal that is an end in itself) which Aristotle concluded was Happiness. A man who is an end in himself is serving no other goal than himself, no other cause than his own. His highest value is himself and therefore his values and his ability to live his life by those values.

I see a problem here in that something either IS rational or it is NOT rational. Dolphins may be able to communicate and to recognize and classify objects based on their characteristics but this is still not a conceptual faculty, as intelligent as it may be for an animal. There is no evidence that dolphins see a purpose to doing that sort of thing other than being rewarded with treats and whatnot. I remember seeing some sort of monkey use a sweet substance on the end of a stick to fish ants out of a hole- they grasp in that particular instance that if they use the stick, they'll get ants to eat but it shows no evidence that they can conceptualize this into the monkey equivalent of "Hmm, how can I do this more efficiently? how can I do everything I must do more efficiently?".