volco

Integration of Polish citizens used to be a whole point before the 40s (Eastern and Southern Euros were considered undesired as legislated in the Johnson Reed immigration act of 1924). Then came the war with Poland as somewhat of the (passive) trigger. Catholics (or ex Catholic atheists) in Baptist land were never welcomed with open arms. When you add atheism with slavic heritage images of Communism might come to the average mind of your county.
There was a time when Germans were considered difficult to integrate but now American whites identify their ancestry with Germanany more than with any other Old World nation - that is unless you live in either coastal metro area where the mix only leaves Italians as a majority within European Americans.
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I'm not even American but I believe you as, while ridiculous as this sounds to my urban mind, I understand inter European racism and I even see it's a theme in literature.
In your case
"I am not a Pollack. People from Poland are Poles. They are not Pollacks. But what I am is one hundred percent American. I'm born and raised in the greatest country on this earth and I'm proud of it. And don't you ever call me a Pollack. " Stanley Kovalski, a Streetcar called Desire, Tennessee Williams

Why did Ayn Rand believe that certain types of modern art, certain types of modern dance, certain types of modern music have a disintegrating effect on consciousness?
Why is integration/“dis”integration important enough for her to refrain from giving work she perceived as disintegrating the title “Art”?


Integration is a key concept in the formation of Existence/Identity/Consciousness.


Non-objective art seems to project a world that does not exist, void of anything that could be construed as existing in reality. How does existence integrate/disintegrate when viewing non-objective art?

What is the significance of purposefully barring the inclusion of an entity, an identity, from non-objective art? How does Identity integrate/disintegrate when viewing non-objective art?

How is the mind to concretize broad abstractions based on context of what is in their perception when viewing non-objective art? How does Consciousness integrate/disintegrate when viewing non-objective art?

If non-objective art seems to be what ever the viewer wants it to be, how does this concept apply to the rest of the viewers existence?

Yes, let's politicize this tragedy! It's all the fault of the right wing!
Oh no, Leftists are going to stick chips in my brain and monitor me!

Neither of these are true. I've found very few Democrats, in fact not any, that have said that now everyone on the Right is suspect. Let's leave the silly conspiracies to the nutjobs at Info Wars.

You are correct that this is off topic.

So you don't believe that the current enlightenment (sorry I didn't mean enlightment, my fault), that is, the fall of the Soviet Union, the freedom of its satellite states, the liberalization of China, Vietnam and Cambodia, Democratization all over Latin America, Thatcher and Reagan, slow but constant progress of the new African countries, Worldwide globalization with less trade barriers than in the preceding five decades, and unprecedented free flow of information, all of which happened right after Ayn Rand's demise, will make any difference, or as I put it, affect Objectivism in any way? Wow!

I didn't even say that it would change its core principles, I just implied it is and it will be fascinating to see how Objectivism is taken by a wholy different generation(s) and World than the one its creator lived in.

Thank god Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas didn't "close" their systems, otherwise Ayn Rand could not have studied them, maybe even heard of them!
and thank god for all the minds (like Ayn Rand's) who can differentiate a euphemism from literal speech. i.e.
"God Bless America" - Ayn Rand

can't wait to see all the reputation this post will give me, but sorry I couldn't help it.

You've got to realize that for the vast majority of the existence of the human race, slavery has existed and was assumed to be as natural as the family or marriage. Aristotle's ethics largely reflect the conventional wisdom of his day, including the acceptance of slavery and aristocracy. But you have to differentiate between the specific content of Aristotle's ethics and the Aristotelian approach or method, which subsequent followers have taken up. This is a naturalistic approach to ethics, which holds that reason is capable of apprehending the good for man. It should be common sense that this does not require one to agree with everything someone ever said, why this should be assumed by the question is unclear.

The abolition of slavery is an entirely modern event built on the liberal and Enlightenment ideology, which is rooted in Aristotelianism and the theory of individual rights. So in this way, you can say Aristotle is also responsible for the abolition of slavery.

what is an objectivist state? a state staffed by students of objectivism or objectivists? should we call the canadian state a relativistic state and the saudi state a mystic one? well i guess, but my point is that objectivism is not a political movement, but a cultural one - the political ramifications of that are just as important in shaping how we live as other ramifications, like aesthetics, or more importantly metaphysics.

ayn rand wrote extensive warnings about the ethics of emergencies not to be confused with the ethics or every day life, and you can search for that.
as for regional disasters and how would be handled, she said that the government is there to provide security, I assume part of that security can be against the elements.

humans are able to organize ourselves in many ways and different cultures deal with disasters different ways. You may remember haiti and its dependence on foreign aid and the local population making things worse. You may also remember Japan, more recently, and how criminal organizations openly, spontaneously, collaborated with other civilians and with government agencies to bring relief. as in a spontaneous unspoken agreement in which every party would be better off.

In new orleans, city government prevented reconstruction because of too much french red tape, while there are cases of americans driving by the city and voluntarily helping locals rebuild without regulations or organization (there's a penn and teller episode showing jsut a case)

in an objectivist culture, people would act according to individual, unforced, value judgments, I can assume that such a culture wouldn't allow much value to be lost.



Objectivism doesn't strive for world dominance, it does for cultural change, at first within the United states and western culture (of course it's not exclusive, atlas shrugged has just been recently translated to mandarin). That said, you are pretty much correct in your assumption of an industrial, technological and cultural renaissance but terribly wrong about the "sudden" part.

If you take a look back the last 500 years out of the last 5,000 years of human history you'll be able to see by yourself how drastic and utterly unexpected changes have been. no hunter gatherer expected or could conceive the agricultural revolution, and to this day there are semi/contacted tribes in the amazon, new guinea and most interestingly in the andaman islands, that reject it. Try and extrapolate that change of the way people live to a next stage.
Unrestricted mutually beneficial individual achievement and heroism (for lack of a better antonym to fear and submission) for anyone who cares to is just as unthinkable for most of the world population as it was growing your own food instead of gathering it.

Just see how long (and well) people live now, 50 years ago, 500 years ago and before the agricultural revolution.

Consider the 1680’s, when John Locke was writing (but unable to publish) his most influential works, in exile from the Catholic James II, while Louis XIV was revoking the Edict of Nantes, and witches were swinging in the Massachusetts of Cotton Mather. Fast forward 100 years and it’s unthinkable that you have the founding of the United States, where freedom of religion and the press are part of the founding principles. The point is that big changes can happen, ideas are vital to those changes, and history is very unpredictable. As is the future.

New art: Kinetic Wave Sculptures. Why do I have this odd feeling Ayn Rand would think this is pretty fantastic?



Reuben Margolin, a Bay Area visionary and longtime maker, creates totally singular techno-kinetic wave sculptures. Using everything from wood to cardboard to found and salvaged objects, Reubens artwork is diverse, with sculptures ranging from tiny to looming, motorized to hand-cranked. Focusing on natural elements like a discrete water droplet or a powerful ocean eddy, his work is elegant and hypnotic. Also, learn how ocean waves can power our future. Learn more about Reuben at http://www.reubenmargolin.com/

Thanks for the responses guys. Although I'd like a better idea of what you think the results of the US not instating the draft in World War II would be like. Did it not matter at all whether the US got involved in World War II? Would it be fine if (for the sake of argument) Hitler won the war because the US couldn't conscript people?

Here's question #6 for you. Are drivers licenses a moral evil? That is, is it wrong for the government to require you to get a driver's license before you can drive a car? Do two year olds have an inalienable natural right to operate a motor vehicle?

Question #7. Should personal ownership of nuclear weapons be legal?

Except that it is not raw. Nothing in nature looks like what the artist recorded on his canvas. The images have been selected and processed in accordance with the sentiment Picasso wished to express.

It's a matter of making another turn of the screw.

If you value reason above all else then you are bound to accept the uncertainty of reality. Objectivism seems to demand certainty.

No rational person can assert that one individual was omniscient and Ayn Rand would have been the first to confirm this.

There might be other topics in this forum where the possible dogmatism of Objectivism is discussed.

I just want to remind you that by personal and alien experience I've found that deeply valuing and loving Ayn Rand's works is not mutually exclusive with being your own un-tagged self.
There are many non Objectivists who either love or see truth in Ayn Rand while professing similar but nor exactly similar views with no hostility whatsoever.
Celia Green is my favorite example. Jerome Tuccille my least favorite example (but worth a gaze)

It's a matter of making another turn of the screw.

If you value reason above all else then you are bound to accept the uncertainty of reality. Objectivism seems to demand certainty.

No rational person can assert that one individual was omniscient and Ayn Rand would have been the first to confirm this.

There might be other topics in this forum where the possible dogmatism of Objectivism is discussed.

I just want to remind you that by personal and alien experience I've found that deeply valuing and loving Ayn Rand's works is not mutually exclusive with being your own un-tagged self.
There are many non Objectivists who either love or see truth in Ayn Rand while professing similar but nor exactly similar views with no hostility whatsoever.
Celia Green is my favorite example. Jerome Tuccille my least favorite example (but worth a gaze)

It's a matter of making another turn of the screw.

If you value reason above all else then you are bound to accept the uncertainty of reality. Objectivism seems to demand certainty.

No rational person can assert that one individual was omniscient and Ayn Rand would have been the first to confirm this.

There might be other topics in this forum where the possible dogmatism of Objectivism is discussed.

I just want to remind you that by personal and alien experience I've found that deeply valuing and loving Ayn Rand's works is not mutually exclusive with being your own un-tagged self.
There are many non Objectivists who either love or see truth in Ayn Rand while professing similar but nor exactly similar views with no hostility whatsoever.
Celia Green is my favorite example. Jerome Tuccille my least favorite example (but worth a gaze)

That is a very accurate depiction of reality. Being poor and unemployed is not directly a crime, but drug addiction is, all the pieces fit together very well. That "First country" you describe is the US o' A.

Most Objectivists claim we don't live in a true Free Market, nor in Socialism, so basically agree that we live under some sort of Corporatism. Hence, but by the thread's title, I don't see why this post should be taken as inflammatory.

Welcome to Objectivism then!

It is certainly true that in the past that men have not scrupled to use the government to gain themselves advantages, or material goods or money, either through outright expropriation by the government or by passing laws favoring you over your competitor (e.g., a charter granting an enforced monopoly, but also simply by means of getting the government to pass a regulation that only big companies can afford to comply with, or (conversely) by passing a regulation that only applies to big companies).

What Objectivism did was identify that this is wrong in principle. There was an implicit understanding of this by some Americans in the early days of this country but it is eroding, because it was never logically validated with a correct philosophy, an ethics validated by reason. Without that understanding, a possible--and ethically permissible so far as one knows--response to the government granting others privileges that disadvantage you is to try to gain countervailing privileges, and that is much easier to accomplish politically than repeal of the previous privileges.

Now that we understand all of this, we can fight against the imposition of improper laws in the first place (by being able to argue that they are improper), but also work on structuring government in a way that makes it *far* easier to repeal laws than to implement them, in case that an improper law manages to be instituted in spite of understanding by the populace that the law is improper (this is all predicated on changing our culture in an Objectivist direction!). For example after writing clauses into the constitution that (ought to be) ironclad prohibitions on the government mucking with the economy, we could also ensure that laws require a 2/3 majority to pass and a 1/3 minority to repeal. (One of a series of suggestions made in Heinlein's "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.") Thus it would have taken a 2/3 majority to pass Obamacare and only a 1/3 minority to repeal it. (And under such a government Obamacare would also be instantly tossed out by the Supremes as unconstitutional--the more safeguards the better!)

So I tend to agree with Bastiat in his context--a context where the proper role of government was not understood at all by almost everyone (and partially understood by a few), and where governments are structured so that laws get passed and never get repealed (a later contradictory law might get passed, leaving it to the people who codify the laws to sort the mess out and determine what the current law actually is). But I do not thing all hope is lost--the context *can* change.

I'm glad I came upon this thread, because I've been thinking about tattoos a lot lately. I absolutely hate them; I don't understand why anyone would do something like that to their bodies. Tattooing, like piercing, is a tribal custom for the love of God! I think it's stupid to even think about it.

Recently I asked a friend if she would ever consider getting a tattoo, after three seconds I said: "No way!" I couldn't believe she actually had to think about it. I could never get a tattoo, and I don't think it's a matter of preference or taste, tattoos are always a step backward, never forward.

Earlier kenstauffer said that the human body is beautiful naked. That's an understatement. The Human body is the most beautiful thing that exists. Howard Roark would never get a tattoo, why would he possibly want to? Are you kidding? This is hilarious. Would Howard Roark pierce his ears? Or his nipples maybe? Maybe after completing the Wynand building, he would have liked to urinate on it...?

How can none of you see this? Tattoing is anti-reason. Tattoos corrupt the beautiful purity of a human body, and hinder development personal development. I don't see why anyone truly commited to anything should need to brand themselves in such a manner. Like I said, it is anti-reason, even if it intends to celebrate it's full use.

Can you imagine Michelangelo's David with tattoos?

Also consider what it is that the pain experienced during tattooing implies: "Pleasure (in the widest sense of the term) is a metaphysical concomitant of life, the reward and consequence of successful action—just as pain is the insignia of failure, destruction, death."*

Sebastián

*TVS, pg. 71

Not too many decades ago it was common wisdom among poker players that a guy with tattoos should be invited into the game forthwith. He would be seen as less than the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

How would China feel about a full scale attack? Paranoid much? What would fill the void if the DPRK is "destroyed"?
Don't wake the cat that sleeps.

They are already at war - formally for the last 50 or so years. The last thing the South wants is to have to go to actual war. It is understandable also: as illustrated in the picture, the North has NOTHING to lose but a petty fiefdom vassal to Beijin. The South has Everything to lose and is governed by more than one person or committee. Furthermore, it is a hyper productive society ruled by a certain corporation or jaebol that has assets in both China and the DPRK - as well as awhole branch and very decisive penetration plan for North Korea.

The South doesn't want war. China wont allow war. Russia can't have war. The DPRK can't defy China (or Russia). Where will War come from? A bug in the chain of command that sets out an unexpected domino effect?

If they went to war the NK population would only feel that they had been preparing and diverting all their food to their tallest soldiers for a reason. The Leadership would be validated.



Yes the aid goes to the soldiers. Yet, are you sure you hope for that to happen? Law of unintended consequences.



What makes you think the South Koreans want that support?

What would fill the void of NK? Fratricide Guilt-ridden South Koreans backed by American forces a few miles away from Beijin and Vladivostok? Or Chinese troops realizing they have conquered their first territory, expanded, for the first time in 50 years?



There are many ways around that, some are even worse than NKs using them. If you're not going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have nukes as a deterrent agent, then at least you might as well consider that they developed nukes as a commercial venture to sell to even crazier parties -

And of course there is an unintended possibility that could begin shaping a new East Asian geopolitical climate. I don't find it likely as SOuth Koreans don't want the burden of owning North Korea. This is Huntington's theory:

North Korea's government progressively liberalizes (as it happened in every other Asian Communist country), eventually joins South Korea and a new unified hyper-productive Capitalist Korea emerges with inherited Nuclear weapons. That would mean the first non Communist Asian Tiger would become military self-reliant. The American troops would be expelled, and the East Asian Arms race would accelerat e à la 1910 Europe.

----
Now, conciliatory arguments said; Korea is a tinderbox. I can't imagine any way in which a war there could be contained within the peninsula.

I've turned into an intelligent individual without any moral issues or laziness or what have you. I received zero physical punishment. That's my evidence. I did, however, receive punishment in the form of loss of privileges. This is the same for my siblings, so I don't think I'm some sort of anomaly. I also know I question any and all authority figures, and maybe that's the result of being raised as I was, but that's actually a good outlook; don't do something just because someone says to. I would also note that yes, those facts about your 8 year old are good, it's still yet to be seen how he ends up when he's 25. Is he trying to grasp geometry because someone told him to (teachers for instance) or because he enjoys it? Does he do homework because you say so, or is he starting to grasp that homework should be done because education is good? Will he be going through college because he's supposed to? The concrete results are decent and all here, but the most important question is why is this method the *best* and most desirable method? What is your end goal in raising your kid? Basically, I think you need to better explain what you mean by "working as intended".

Your relationship with your kid is obviously far broader than anything you say in a single post. So, I was reacting only to the aspects you chose to stress, and the rationale you mentioned for that: i.e. teaching him rationality.
Every now and then, people come on the forum and ask why they ought not to lie in some situations where they can get away with it. Such people are probably not routine liars who are callous about their lying, because those types don't bother asking about it on forums. The point is that the consequences of lying often come a few steps away from the lying and are therefore not obvious. If one wishes to teach a kid reason, then one has to teach him that lying is bad for a reason. Also, it cannot be done in the abstract, but has to be done with concretes. A concrete like "you don't get allowance" or "you get a spanking" is a consequence, but it does not reflect the real-world consequences of lying. So, if that is all a kid gets, one lose the chance to explain the real reasons one ought not lie. One might reinforce "do not lie", but it remains as a dogmatic rule. If it is not tied back to "why", it is not well-suited to a human thinking mind.

For instance, I might remind my son of little Frankie who fibs about all sorts of things. Frankie thinks he's fooling us all, but we're laughing at him behind his back. He's trying to get people to think better of him, and everyone thinks he's pathetic. Then, there are some examples of adults who lied to me and consequences that followed from that: instances where those adults would have received so much more value in life by telling the truth. Finally, there is some example of when I lied and how I felt and what the consequences were. An eight year old will be able to understand this at some level, even if a single iteration won't be enough. However, much more importantly, he will get a meta-message: ethics can be rational and can be designed to ensure long-term value to me. One cannot give a kid such an abstract message directly, but this is what they need to conclude in some wordless way.

Those are the types of things that will reinforce the value of reason and rationality. After that, if you still want to belt or spank, that's something incidental that will not have a long-term consequence either way if done in moderation.

Of course, more important than all these is what your son sees you do in your relationships. If he sees you lie, even to get some type of tiny value, all the lecturing and spanking is going to be dismissed as dishonest. From the fact that you hold lying to be one of the "top sins", I assume you're up-front and honest in your life. Use this to your advantage: tell your son of an instance where you could easily have lied, and why you did not, and more importantly what value you gained by your honesty. Help him internalize the motivation: heroes do not lie, heroes will tell the truth even if they're belted for doing so.

I am currently reading The Logical Leap by David Harriman, a book much discussed. I recommend it highly, not so much for the things people argue about, but for what is not up for discussion: objectivism is rational empiricism. (Note the lowercase letters.) Whether your mathematics suggests an empirical test or your experience suggests a rational explanation, the two must come together for your assertions to be valid -- and that cannot contradict anything else already proved to be true. (Unless we go back and refute the earlier proof.) My point is that so far, almost everything that has been offered are rationalist claims without empirical context.

One post -- from Iowa -- mentioned school furniture made at prisons.

Here in Michigan, we used to do that, also, have the prisons make the office furniture for the state government. But Grand Rapids has a lot of companies making furniture and they always objected, eventually successfully. Prisons making furniture for public school presupposes public schools, of course, a different problem entirely. For a while, they had prisoners making workboots for the state police, but when the workers found out where the product of their effort was going, the result was like something out of Atlas Shrugged.

Rather than argue this or that detail without context, you have to start with empirically valid generalizations. My bachelor's is in criminology with a concentration in administration. My master's is in social science with a criminology concentration in global crime. In criminology we speak of the "mass mediated hyper-reality of crime" a bit of post-modernist jargon sorry to say but nonetheless properly identifying the fact that most people get their ideas about crime from television, newspapers, movies, and the Internet. You do not sit in courts all day long. You do not patrol the streets. You do not work with offenders on probation or parole. You do not counsel victims.

Basically, you have no idea what crime is, so you have no idea what prisons are.

It is absolutely true that the purpose of prison is pain. Reform of the offender was one minority experiment in Philadelphia in the 18th century. The method for that was solitary confinement to allow the offender to come to terms with God. Letting prisoners work in shops just lets them make weapons, but at least they are occupied and therefore easier to control. Most people -- even offenders -- are social animals. Solitary confinement is so severe that it is torture by definition. So, we have populations of prisoners in prison societies, working in the laundry, playing baseball, and otherwise not going crazier than they must seeing as how they are isolated from family, friends, and society at large -- the first level of pain we inflict.

Generally, people who harm others were harmed themselves. Remediate their damage and you prevent future crimes. It is also true that some perpetrators have chemical imbalances that can be corrected. Some predators are predisposed by genetics and sometimes they can find socially-acceptable outlets, for instance in the military. (In Alduous Huxley's utopian novel, Island, the burly guys were sent into the forests to chop trees.) Finally, some predators are so genetically defined that they will never be changed by externalities. What do you with them?

Prison is exile. It is a matter of topology. Instead of sending them outside the city walls, you wall them up away from the city: same result. The historical example of Australia (and the USA, in fact, also), suggests that a larger dumping ground with fewer internal controls is one way to solve the problem: just have someplace the size of Wyoming with deadly walls around and put all your problems there: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. But watch out...

Sociologist Robert King Merton analyzed anomie, first identified by Emile Durkheim. Merton's typology of deviance is explained at the bottom of the Wikipedia biography here. Deviants (so-called) may be innovators and rebels. If you only reward people who sit down, shut up, and do as they are told, you will not make much material progress. (Merton's full essay is here.) Like all mid-range social theories, it has limitations of explanation for phenomena beyond its scope, spousal abuse, for example.

We idealize the 19th century and in that, we blank out on inconvenient truths: on the unsettled frontier, in the boom towns, gold rushes, and landgrabs, life was more brutal. We are kinder and gentler. (In Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, Hank Morgan is sent on his fantastic journey after being hit on the head with a wrench. We don't allow violence in the workplace. Back then, it was normal. Prisons and the retributionist theories that created and maintain them are a zombie from that more primitive time, forced-fed our lifeblood by political conservatives.

It costs about $60,000 per year to incarcerate someone. How much would you pay not to imprison someone? How much would you pay for community corrections, reintegrative shaming, reconciliation tribunals, negotiation, arbitration, and adjudication, alternative sentencing, and restorative justice -- just some of the many alternatives to prison. In the final analysis, would you be willing just to write off a loss rather than to throw good money after bad trying to change the past?

Luck is a valid concept that can be best described as something that occurs by pure chance and has a positive impact. An example of luck, of course, would be winning the lottery. Nothing you can do will cause you to win, except simply buying the ticket. Basically, luck arises out of identifying what cannot be predicted (if a meteor will hit your house tomorrow) and what you cannot cause (you cannot cause or prevent the meteor from hitting your house). Still, I think the word luck is extremely overused and even abused.

Similar to what bluecherry is saying, something like discovering Rand (or any author, really) isn't a matter of luck. As you grow older and wiser, different things pique your interest, which is usually determined by what you've been thinking about. Especially with wikipedia around now, you find out about lots of ideas, and in concrete terms see that running into new ideas isn't a matter of luck, it's a matter of what you do and cause.

The thing about luck is that it basically implies some event could not be caused by yourself. When people use the word, it's as though much in life can't be controlled, meaning you're left with trying to deal with things as they happen. That can lead to a very damaging mindset, a sort of mindset where you are not a long-term thinker in any real way. If even meeting friends is a matter of luck, who really can make long-term plans in a society? Such an idea is false because not even meeting people is a matter of pure chance. People tend to seek out like-minded people, so even meeting anyone here on this website isn't exactly a matter of luck.

Predictability might not even be something worth considering either, since that is almost like thinking about the arbitrary. Why think about if some drunken lunatic may be driving down the road tomorrow and hits your car? There's nothing to suggest that such a thing might happen. If such a thing does happen, you could say you got unlucky, but not even that event is pure chance. Somebody had to drink enough alcohol to get drunk, then decide to get into the car, then decide to drive far enough to reach the same road as you. You could even prevent such an accident if you become a car engineer and popularize those cars that require a breathalyzer test before starting.

Origins to the concept of luck might involve, for instance, the need to make people less envious of success (this point is much like what JayR was saying about an egalitarian motive). If something really good happens only out of luck, other people wouldn't attribute that success to ability. Why feel sore about something that only happens mainly out of luck? This literally hides the fact that some people work hard and achieve their goals by thinking. Luck makes things "fair" for everyone, because luck cannot be controlled. Bottom line is that I think the concept of luck is mostly damaging and shouldn't be used at all, since it reduces the meaning of achievement.

Kind of an aside, but I'll mention anyway. About the concept of luck in general. It may be interesting to note that some cultures don't even have the concept of luck, such as the Navajo. For them, good or bad events are literally caused by people, through mystical means even. Get struck by lightning? Someone made that happen with the evil eye. Also interesting is that the German word for both "luck" and "happiness" is glück.

That equation is wrong. People who smoke a pack or more a day die ten years early on average (not 5-10, by the way, but 10). That doesn't mean you're guaranteed 25 good years, far from it. You could die (or get a debilitating disease) from smoking next year.

The actual equation is that smoking doubles mortality rates in both middle and old age. About half of smokers die because of their habit, the other half don't. But out of those who die, half (duh!) die even earlier than that 10 year average.

So if you continue smoking, your odds of dying more than ten years before your time are 25%, and your odds of dying during middle age are two times greater than mine. If you quit before the age of 50, the chances of dying, from that point on, from your previous smoking are cut by at least half, but a lot more the faster you quit. (for instance, if you quit before the age of 30, you're almost completely safe).

The above facts are one of two reasons why I quit (the other was that smoking was affecting my appetite and physical condition). Looking back on it, I also realize that one of the arguments I used to come up with for smoking (that it relaxes me, and helps me think and work) was in fact dead wrong. I was comparing my mental state while smoking not with the state of a non-smoker, but rather with my mental state during times of withdrawal (whenever I was stuck in a place where I couldn't light up). Of course you can't think while going through withdrawal. But that says nothing about your ability to think once you've quit. There is no evidence to suggest those who stop smoking are negatively impacted as far as their ability to focus and make good decisions. If anything, I'm more functional and calm now, that I quit (since I'm never going through withdrawal).

On Morality superceding politics: Yes, good to make the distinction between legal and moral. But using your example of crack cocaine:
A) It is immoral for the user to engage in self-destruction.
but
It is immoral for the state to stop him; but it would be moral not to.

C)onclusion: The addict doesn't cese to be immoral, but the society he lives in does. I thought we were talking about that situation.

The question of the 100% is tricky. All other percentages involve a majority (or minority who cares) forcing another group to have it their way. But conceptually, a situation where 100% agrees on something is thought of as if it constituted an individual. 100% is the 1 of irrational numbers. Just do te math = 100 / 100 :S

The question about voting is even trickier, that's why I insist so long as the document they are signing, not voting (I added that) is not fraudulent, is not ad infinitum, and is not signed at the poit of a gun. Then a group of people doing that would not be immoral as they will be engaging in preventely protecting their lives, or whatever collective purpose they unanimously had agreed on, without forcing or defrauding others. Why is furthering one's life infrastructure is immoral when not harming anyone? Because it touches the word Government?

In Reality, the second example the thread opener proposed is so improbable that isn't worth a thought. The equivalent would be as said, things like the Rotary Club, Lions, etc. But if the whole country (small enough to make it thinkable) voted on it - and then signed a document proving the checks and limits to this agreement - then why isn't it perfectly moral?

In a situation I have been warned by officials not to talk about anymore in this board, the scenario of political consent becomes more plausible.

As it is, the scenario is so ridiculously unlikely that whatever could be said is trivial . as pointeed out.

Why the context dropping? During a talk-show, on an late stage of her life when she'd already writen most if not all of what she's left us, probably being aware of it being her last long public appearance for the coffers of history; in such a context, Ayn Rand gives herself and us the luxury of a small window into her private life. She had given us her soul with her fiction works, but now, very in tune with my punctuated allegory, she shows us that it was all true. That the soul she disclosed for the public to be "handled" was actually hers, and there, and talking like any other human being about sex and death, about the beginning and the end. What I loved about that appearance is that I could see the consistency and integrity of her philosophy and herself at the same time (as it is the nature of author and work when integrated).

Very nicely put though, my hat's off to you.