Tenderlysharp

Just the one when it's required to enter a store or something.
 
 

How many masks do you wear?
I chose to present and ponder this topic as a Metaphysical and Epistemologcal exploration of identity.  
This thread is not so much to argue the benefits and safety of the mask.  Another thread seems to do a thorough job in favor of the mask: https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/34048-rebloggedit-is-not-self-interest-to-take-illness-lightly/&tab=comments#comment-368272
I wear the mask every day, I had Covid in February, never been more sick in my life... I definitely don’t want my three grandmothers in their 90’s to die from it, and I miss hugging them terribly.  I've been seriously trying to figure out how I might be able to quarantine for two weeks just to have the privilege of being in the same room with each of them.  
You can submit to the mask and still hate it and still speak out against how dehumanizing it can be.  As well as give careful attention to the ways opportunistic power struggle groups seize upon fear.    
The Chinese Congress spent $2 Billion for covid in the U.S.  That is $40M in each state… Money from China is slave labor money.  The money seems to be spent on social media ad campaigns promoting their agenda. You can spot the underlying theme in a deluge of memes that try to alienate, belittle, polarize, dehumanize, take for granted, and intellectually cripple America for respecting freedom and success.
If you are faceless, what identity do you have?

Have you ever had a personal sentimental item, attached to the memory of a person who is gone, stolen from you?  I have.  No amount of shouting in the street about what is fair is going to stop human malevolence and ignorance.  If I want to approach fair human interactions, I've got to build my own foundation, inspire the cretins to educate themselves, and not waste time bloviating to a choir of one.  
I come here to find real, unique, interesting intelligent human beings, who happen to adore Ayn Rand for reasons she might have appreciated.  I am not here to run around in circles with puppets who spout ideologies with no thought of what any of it means to them personally, individually here and now in the real world.

Yeah, no I don't think I have ever thought that when meeting someone.  If I think about the truth I always have a sense that I have something to learn from each person I talk to.  They might be dumb as a box of rocks and funny as hell.   

What are you going to do with this assumptions? Do you seriously thinking 40% 60% etc. while talking to people? If you are actually having a conversation, It does not take much to start forming an opinion of another person... at which point class probabilities are rendered pretty useless. And, if you start to assume that before hand, you will hinder your own ability to be objective, and will therefore miss spotting reality.

One of the greatest regrets of my early life is cutting off ties with a girl I loved, and several of our common friends, because I couldn't have her.
Yes, staying friends would've been painful...and, back then, I thought pain was a hindrance to any kind of accomplishment or success, and therefor to be avoided at all cost...but, as I found out later: pain is a part of life. A necessary, and therefor GOOD part of life. It would've TAUGHT me a lot, about both myself and the nature of the human experience in general.
So just take the pain. Don't betray your values, by removing a good person from your life, because you're scared of a little pain. If you take the pain of a short term, probably illusory heartbreak, you will be rewarded for it with a learning experience you can't access in any other way... and possibly a lifetime of friendship as well.
P.S. You DO want to stay away from any kind of an exploitative relationship. My post assumes that your relationship with her is a straight forward friendship (like mine was), and she is not taking advantage of your feelings in any way.

That is in no way, shape or form true. Ayn Rand is not Jesus Christ the Savior, she was just a person, like the rest of us.
Also, she's been dead for 37 years now. Stone cold dead. Not resurrected, not sitting on the right hand side of God, but buried in some dirt, and well on her way to decomposing. There's no Objectivist, in any faction, who would think that we all got done coming up with useful philosophy 37 years ago.
Ayn Rand herself wouldn't have thought that humanity is all done coming up with useful philosophy, after she died. That's not what closed Objectivism means. Closed Objectivism simply tries to preserve her work for posterity, uncorrupted by people who claim to speak for her. She deserves that much.
If you wish to come up with new philosophy, go right ahead. I'll read it if it's interesting. And if you think your philosophy has been influenced by Objectivism (the philosophy of Ayn Rand), go ahead and cite her as an influence. But that's all the level of familiarity you're allowed, as far as "closed Objectivists" like myself are concerned. You're not allowed to claim any kind of deeper connection than that, because, guess what: you don't have it. Objectivism is HER philosophy, and hers alone. Anyone who contributed only did so with HER direct approval. Anyone else, who claims to be adding to HER philosophy without her approval, is an interloper.
The book on Objectivism closed when Ayn Rand died. The book on rational philosophy is wide open, you just have to earn your paragraph, page or chapter in it on your own, as a philosopher,  without claiming any kind of magical connection to Ayn Rand.
 

"You don’t think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. "-Ayn Rand, For The New Intellectual
A living person is to parrot someone who has died... for a philosophy of life?  I don't believe any living Objectivist claims to be Ayn Rand.  Only you can direct the action you take to quote her.  If it were all quotes it would be like she was just here talking to herself... 

Tenderlysharp, Quite a journey. I concur with Ninth, you have a special writing/thinking expressiveness which (I think) you should keep building upon. I experience too that mind-shift from verbalizing to visualizing when I take up the camera after a while, it feels like almost a physical effort at first, before engaging that important visual clarity and fluidity again.
(As aside, you must know of the neuroscience findings of "neuroplasticity", a brain self-consciously directing, establishing, re-establishing - and creating - new neural pathways, which bears out our minds' volition, the "self-made soul" . The scientists have lately begun to catch up with the philosopher and the artist-creator who has always known or sensed this phenomenon...!)
May I add: I realize you must satisfy your own standards, but you don't need to be too unforgiving on yourself. It may not be so clear at the time, but one develops even in 'failure', as one pushes at the boundaries of existence and one's mind to bring them together.

A good psychologist wouldn't take on the role of some spiritual advisor. Meditation is very important to do for dealing with depression symptoms, but some people then take that step to do a full dive into Buddhism and discover egoless-ness. A good psychologist will give you strategies on how to deal with emotions. It's like hiring a personal trainer for working out. Sometimes you'll get good advice, but other times you might not learn anything new.

The Virtue of Selfishness is a 173 page book.  According to me... It means self esteem, self respect, trusting myself, introspection, keeping my own counsel, doing the best I can, calling myself out on my own BS, learning.  I don't always know if I made an irrational decision, when I notice or when someone I respect points it out, and I agree, then I correct it.  
Your self is your body/consciousness/memories, a sum total of everything you are and have been.  I believe I am a Self first, the -ish follows.  If I want to value rational values it is my self that chooses, and I gain confidence on that path.  
I don't agree with mullahs.  Every woman I know has had their body trespassed upon by a man at some point.  Having been inappropriately touched by strange men several times in my life brings painful clarity.  In theory it is true that it is the man who needs to correct his behavior, not the woman who needs to cover up.  But I won't risk my body to prove that point.  I choose the level of protection I need for a given situation.  Sometimes a bikini, sometimes layers and a weapon.  A woman wearing a Burqa believes it is a symbol of honor, it ought to be her own choice, I wouldn't force her to wear it, nor tear it off of her.  
I believe in this world, as an objective reality, an orange is an orange and not my imagination.  This reality contains irrational people and mystics who believe in other worlds. An Objectivist forces no one, but if forced, will respond with force.  
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selfishness.html

What you say is accurate, but I think the benefits of saying sorry are much bigger than what's being mentioned here.
 
I find that when I say sorry on a frequent basis (and I make mistakes every single day), it inspires courage. I'm not afraid of being wrong, because I can trust myself to correct my mistakes. Because I know I'll make mistakes and can correct them, I can steam ahead and crash into walls and have the resiliency to get up very fast.
I'm also not very worried about hurting people, because many times after I've hurt them and say sorry, the relationship to that person is actually improved. In other words, it's better to hurt them, acknowledge the mistake and fix it, then not taking any action at all.
Saying sorry has so many benefits. Another is that the internal fear of being "discovered" goes away. "What if someone finds out" becomes a though of the past, and instead there comes the pride of "yes, I did this, and I stand by it, because I've corrected my mistake".
 
So I'd say; make heaps of mistakes, learn from it, apologize, and go full throttle. Life is short, make the most of it. You cannot drive a formula 1 car with a lot of weights hanging behind it. Fix errors and move on.

From Hellenistic History and Culture:
The reapers in Idyll 10 are a gruff, perhaps elderly workman called Milon, given to coarse rustic proverbs, and a lovestruck young man, Boukaïos, whose name suggests a cowman and his song: in the Iliad Hector uses it as an insult to Ajax, as Antinoös does to Iros in the Odyssey. Homer says βουγάïος, not βουκάïος, and the two citations confirm one another, but the difference of spelling is nothing. It is typical of the freakish pedantry of the Alexandrians to use a Homeric word in a corrected form. Bougaïos or Boukaïos has fallen for the girl from Hippokion's farm, the daughter of Polybotas, who must be a farm slave if not a wage laborer. She plays the flute for the reapers, and Milon's advice about her is “Take what you want and pay for it.” Boukaïos sings a song about love:
If the translation of Milon's advice is accurate, it provides a source of the citation of greater antiquity than the 1920's. To know how or why, or even if, this is true, is hardly axiomatic. As was pointed out in Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology "reason" is "a complex, derivative concept." This translation of the Tenth Idyll of The Idylls of Theokritus provides Milon as having said: "God finds out the guilty. You've been asking for it."

Having a good attention span is critical, if you have a short attention span then you will never fini

I don't quite understand a world where an objectivist would defend a mystic junk food Buffett, and devalue an engineer who works tirelessly toward technological innovation.  If that future Capitalist economy were real I think Musk would adjust his business plan and be very successful in that world.  Unfortunately I wonder if there are Objective Capitalists who put themselves in a position to value or make profound investments in technological advancement.  

I saw an interview where Musk is talking about this.  They try to discourage him, saying we have enough problems here on earth.  He mentioned some ancient wonders that we forgot how to build.  The way space travel has been gaining inertia since the 60's.  Knowledge and progress are not automatic.  It takes a lot of work by a lot of people to get us to another planet.  
I sometimes wonder if Objectivism has the vital vigor it had when Ayn Rand was alive?  
I like that his companies have a "No Assholes Policy".  
 
 

It is because of individuals, such as Elon Musk, that I remain an optimist, albeit a cautious optimist. The innovations of today are the conventional and common-place of tomorrow. Modern marvels, such as the 3D printer and genomic mapping, might be enough to persuade any skeptic as to the possibilities of a world such as envisioned in The Jetsons and Star Trek. The fantastic doesn't seem so much like fantasy anymore. Nonetheless, it would only take a misguided movement, or even one psychotic individual to take humanity in the wrong philosophical/ideological direction, and into reverse rather than real progress. One day, there may be more humans living in outer-Terrestrial habitats than on Earth, or the human race could revert to a new dark age, and once again on the verge of extinction.
"If men grasp the source of their destruction-if they dedicate themselves to the greatest of all crusades: a crusade for the absolutism of reason-the twenty-first century will have a chance once more."--Ayn Rand from Philosophy: Who Needs It. (p. 111).

NY times had a surprisingly good op-ed by Harvard geneticist David Reich, researcher on "ancient DNA" wherein he makes several points that sound downright Rand-tastic. Some snippets:
institutional discrimination also has a negative impact on I.Q. of populations, which when those factors are controlled (education, economic upbringing, even being adopted and raised by parents who are of a different race), leads to even less substantial difference in even the average I.Q. of populations.
Differences in individuals vary far more widely than populations. Especially with intelligence. 
The key point is that whatever science finds should not affect the way we behave toward one another. Whatever small average differences across groups might exist (and genetic studies have already made it clear that average differences across populations are much less than those between individuals), we are members of a single species, all of whom must be given every opportunity to flourish in every realm.
 “Race” is fundamentally a social category — not a biological one — as anthropologists have shown.
As a society, we are already committed to giving everyone a full opportunity for self-realization — regardless of the particular hand each person is dealt from the deck of life.

https://nyti.ms/2GmRY2n
Of course the mainstream right and left want to "provide opportunity" by coercive legislation, and the postmodern leftists want to provide it by tearing everything down, but ah, we can't have everything can we.

Initially, I was not going to respond. 
This is beside the point and sidesteps an honest inquiry. 
The way the world is poses no barrier to rationally conceiving of how the world should be.  Anyone who has read all of Ayn Rand's books should know that, she is the perfect exemplar of just such an exercise.  The very act of perceiving society as deficient, that there is a possible better society, presupposes a concept of society as it should be, and an identification that the reality of society does not match.
Not knowing how to get to society as it should be is certainly a difficulty all Objectivists recognize, but to accept for a moment that we do not or cannot know what that society can be and ought to be would be disastrous.  No steps whatever, however small, could be taken to change the current situation, without the knowledge of which direction to go, and you cant know which direction to go if you don't know where you are going.  In fact, you cannot rationally know that society is wrong without the certainty of knowing what would constitute a society which was proper.  it is not that one then is confused about which direction to step in, one is confused about whether one should bother to any take step at all and why.
Rand's entire philosophy is about that proper, just, rational, and moral desirable destination, and this is what motivates and grounds (in reason) every criticism she has ever levied against the immoral philosophies, religions, and societies of the world.  Every time she said something is wrong, it was not with a shrug of ignorance of why it is wrong or confusion about what would be right, it was done in clear sight of it.
 
I realize we here are all fallible and our ideas and musings quite simply do not compare to the titanic importance of Rand's genius,  but many here are motivated to make clear in our minds the correct conclusions regarding metaphysics, ethics, and politics.  What is morality, what is the proper society, politics, governmental system etc.
If we have no idea what our ideal is we are truly lost.
 

The failings of THIS very real society happening now.  
As much as I want to believe in the rightness of a proper free Objective society, how can it be achieved when the money and power are being stacked in favor of mystics and collectivists?  I have read all of Ayn Rand's books. I feel pride in my capacity to understand Objective Epistemology, and many abstractions in Ayn Rand's work affect me deeply.  Yet , I still don't know the best concrete systematic steps I can take to create a better world.  
I have read, and sometimes re-read every response in this topic, and value the time and attention that each person invests into ideas that they care about.  
I often feel too emotional, and a lack of efficacy.  

@Sameak I'm from South India. What do you think my race is? What race are Dravidians/Malayalis? I'm curious to know.

"How do I live in a country…"
…This translates (to me) to mean, how do you manage your frustration with things you think are never going to get better?
Universal Health Care is a scam.  The people pushing it know its never going to work.  The more they push it the worse it gets.  Which intern insights delusional people to scream louder for it.  The terror of death is what keeps it going.  Everyone wants to live forever and they will give their last dime, their home, any legacy they have for their families future, and get themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt.  Just to stay alive as a guinea pig for another couple years.  This is what they want the government nanny state to pay for.  
Cry SAFETY!!  The ultimate tool of stagnation.  No one is safer than the man is a straight jacket in a padded cell.  Death is so horrifying for most mystics that they will buy any snake oil that promises eternal life.  The safest sounding prescriptions from the oldest biggest churches.  All hail big FDarma.  
 
It is difficult for a person who doesn’t want “power over another person” to understand, communicate with, or come to an agreement with a person who does want power and does want control over others.  They want so much control and power, that they perceive your refusing their power or control as another power/control tactic.  
“Attention whore control freak” is a label that pops into my head more and more as I contemplate the problems in the world that my mind can’t seem to turn away form.  
Every mystic who stands in front on the pulpit is desperate to keep their audience attention.  Their focus is not on quality, but on quantity.  They get people to listen by playing to their weakness and telling them what they want to hear.
Every decision in an irrational person’s life seems to be rooted in fear.  They are so saturated with fear that telling them they do not have to live a life of fear causes them panic and terror.  As though you are taking away their only protection, their only lifeline.  The alternative you offer them seems impossible for their atrophied mind to grasp, the amount of mental effort to get themselves to a better place is alien.  They can not see the context of the better place, they only see the loss of their traditions, and their feelings of belonging.  Are you offering them anything better really?  Does your approach reflect how ‘good’ your own system is?  
It seems so much easier to be a forgiven sheep, than it is to stand up as a man.  
Calling them evil is making yourself a target.  JudaeoChristian values have survived for 5000 years, as countless others have fallen or been absorbed.  The Bible is full of the ample examples of physical and psychological warfare they have engaged in.  Have you ever read the Bible?  Do you even know who your enemy is?  They are masters of war, and your cries of despair fuel their fire.  
Darwin states that it isn’t the strongest or the smartest that survive, but the most adaptable to change.  The Judaeo/Christian movement has certainly adapted.  
How long will your own personal movement last?  Are there paths that will help mystics adapt to greater and greater rationality?  

 

I love Nietzsche.  I suppose it comes from a familiar unbridled rebellion that runs in my family.  I was raised by teenaged alcoholic drug addicts.... I love my family.  A thousand generations of prostitutes daughters got to this point in time just as surely as a thousand generations of preachers sons.  Any time you are faced with the stanch pride of an idiot arrogantly defending his right to his beliefs, remember his DNA is 3.8 Billions years as old as you are.  Remember also, your children's DNA is 14 to 75 years older than yours. 
The same rebellion that drove us across the ocean in rat infested wooden ships, the same rebellion that drove us across the prairies... makes us gaze at Mars in strange anticipation.  Forever running from the controllers.  Nietzsche explores the intricacies of rebellion with such a playful rhythm.  Irrationality as a necessity of evolutionary adaptation.  Imagination can get you through years of imprisonment and a few dark ages.  
"Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music" - Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil begins: "What if the truth is a woman?  What then?"  By the time I get to the end of it, I think maybe a woman wrote this book, used his name, and she is the reason Nietzsche went crazy and spent his last ten years in isolation.  If you go through the whole book and replace truth with false, false with truth, man with woman, woman with man, woman with truth, man with false....  And pay extra special attention to the very intricate broad abstractions he punctuates with a "WHAT?" throughout.  Its just breathtaking how many ways I can imagine him meaning everything and its opposite.  It is an Olympian sized exercise in exploring any given topic from as many angles and positions as possible, you find the truth in there, and she is not such a weakling as to need rescuing.  
I forgive his shortcomings thinking you can only do so much, on your own, during the times in which you live.  

"How do I live in a country…"
…This translates (to me) to mean, how do you manage your frustration with things you think are never going to get better?
Universal Health Care is a scam.  The people pushing it know its never going to work.  The more they push it the worse it gets.  Which intern insights delusional people to scream louder for it.  The terror of death is what keeps it going.  Everyone wants to live forever and they will give their last dime, their home, any legacy they have for their families future, and get themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt.  Just to stay alive as a guinea pig for another couple years.  This is what they want the government nanny state to pay for.  
Cry SAFETY!!  The ultimate tool of stagnation.  No one is safer than the man is a straight jacket in a padded cell.  Death is so horrifying for most mystics that they will buy any snake oil that promises eternal life.  The safest sounding prescriptions from the oldest biggest churches.  All hail big FDarma.  
 
It is difficult for a person who doesn’t want “power over another person” to understand, communicate with, or come to an agreement with a person who does want power and does want control over others.  They want so much control and power, that they perceive your refusing their power or control as another power/control tactic.  
“Attention whore control freak” is a label that pops into my head more and more as I contemplate the problems in the world that my mind can’t seem to turn away form.  
Every mystic who stands in front on the pulpit is desperate to keep their audience attention.  Their focus is not on quality, but on quantity.  They get people to listen by playing to their weakness and telling them what they want to hear.
Every decision in an irrational person’s life seems to be rooted in fear.  They are so saturated with fear that telling them they do not have to live a life of fear causes them panic and terror.  As though you are taking away their only protection, their only lifeline.  The alternative you offer them seems impossible for their atrophied mind to grasp, the amount of mental effort to get themselves to a better place is alien.  They can not see the context of the better place, they only see the loss of their traditions, and their feelings of belonging.  Are you offering them anything better really?  Does your approach reflect how ‘good’ your own system is?  
It seems so much easier to be a forgiven sheep, than it is to stand up as a man.  
Calling them evil is making yourself a target.  JudaeoChristian values have survived for 5000 years, as countless others have fallen or been absorbed.  The Bible is full of the ample examples of physical and psychological warfare they have engaged in.  Have you ever read the Bible?  Do you even know who your enemy is?  They are masters of war, and your cries of despair fuel their fire.  
Darwin states that it isn’t the strongest or the smartest that survive, but the most adaptable to change.  The Judaeo/Christian movement has certainly adapted.  
How long will your own personal movement last?  Are there paths that will help mystics adapt to greater and greater rationality?