themadkat

Clearly sexuality is tied to reproduction. Humans are biological organisms and just like every other sexually-reproducing organism if we do not have sex there won't be any more of us. So selective pressure to have not only sex, but sex capable of yielding offspring, is going to be very strong. And indeed many of the things that men and women find attractive in each other, cross-culturally, are tied to indications of health and fitness. BUT, and this is a very big but, humans have sex for many reasons that are not reproductive, and it has probably been so ever since humans arose. Sex serves a social bonding function in humans found in few other organisms. This actually reinforces the point that sex is in fact a response to values. So for the thinking person reproduction has taken a backseat to other considerations when it comes to sexuality, and that is probably a good thing. It has become much more about bonding, which is as it should be. We choose our own purpose in this life, and unlike other organisms we need not be bound to perpetuating ourselves endlessly for no particular reason.

Token straight butch happy to oblige LMAO Yes, I love throwing guys around, including and most especially my own, although I admit that with him being not so young anymore I am a little more careful with him now haha. And when I say I love throwing guys around I mean real guys with some meat on them. I have always been drawn to athletic guys, probably because I myself am athletic but also just because competent body movements are a beautiful thing to behold. I don't accept it's a given that it's going to do them any good against me though

I didn't think you were trying to intimidate me. I feel like I have a decent enough feel for the tone of your posts and I do not see you coming from anything more than a position of honest curiosity. Honestly, yes, I do disagree with Rand on this issue, and I think she does border on gender essentialism, although not to the degree that I have seen expressed on this board by other posters (not picking on you btw, there are many and one in particular has been prolific in this thread's history). There is much about Rand's theories of sex that I wholeheartedly agree with, such as that sex is good, that in its best form it is the perfect union of mind and body, and that it ideally should be a response to values. But her interpretation of female sexuality has never made any sense to me. I do not have any doubt that SHE experienced her sexuality that way, and you know what, more power to her as there's nothing wrong with it. If you want to be a "traditional" woman in that sense (I'm using quotes because I don't think the word itself is good enough for the meaning I'm trying to convey but I think you understand) there is nothing wrong with that and I would not stop anyone from that. But many, many women do not experience sexuality in that way. I do not feel the hero-worship thing. I don't need a hero to worship, that's what I'm for. And I don't admire men for their masculinity, or at least not in the way Rand describes. I like masculinity well enough, but it's not the determinant of my desire so much as, I think, just the aesthetic form of a male is interesting to me (in a physical way). I should probably mention that I'm not with a "new man" or whatever they call those poor fellows these days. My mate (more like spouse at this point really) is a typical guy in that respect, big, furry, with a broad streak of Southern honor. I'm not with him because I want him to dominate me. Trust is a factor but I really think it is for men as well as for women. Women can get raped, but men can be lured into passing out and wake up alone with their valuables gone It's not as visceral, perhaps, but speaking of a long-term relationship I do think trust is equally necessary on both parts. I like my mate because he is a good companion, a wonderful friend, a trustworthy ally, and damn nice to look at. He's my protector if I ask him to be, but not by default...similarly I would rush in to defend him were he to be in a bind and not me. One thing I'd like to address about your previous posts is you seem to be coming from the position that all men are stronger than all women. Certainly if you take the average of male strength, especially about the arms and shoulders, and compare it against the average of female strength, it will be more, but what does that really tell us? Not a lot, and especially not much about individuals. Given the incredible variation in society it is not really that far out of the realm of possibility that a couple gets together with similar levels of strength or at least general physical prowess. In my case that is true (my fella is not weak, I just happen to be very strong). And on top of that, even being strong doesn't necessarily make you a good fighter. It helps, sure, but a little training goes a long way. A 150 lb. guy can take out a guy with 50 lbs. on him if he knows what he's doing. Also I agree with bluecherry that who can kick whom's ass is not really something to build a relationship around. I had more points but I think I'm just rambling now so I'll stop and maybe some further posting will focus my thoughts a bit.

Prepare to be surprised. I am a female who likes men, currently in a longstanding relationship, and I find your description of female sexual psychology fits me not at all. Nor is it my experience of love. If anything, I could be construed to be the dominant one in the relationship, at least in terms of defining its direction. Lest you seek to place me in the "fetishist" category, I think my sexual interests are more or less typical, if a bit excessive on the appetite side of things. There is not "man" and "woman". There are only men and women. Until we get this ridiculous Platonic essentialism out of the way we think about sex and gender this argument is never going to go away.

Well, the President's here speaking about service at my school today. It's actually consistent with the mission of A&M that he do so as one of our core values is "selfless service". I trust that all parties will behave themselves thoroughly badly today.

Absolutely not. You are never obligated to tell the Nazis where your Jews are hiding. When telling the truth will enable someone else to commit a rights violation they have not earned the truth from you.

I am also leaving B of A for these reasons. Not because I have been unfairly charged (I have not, I don't bounce checks and I don't use a debit card which sets you up for weird timing problems), but because I am aware that their business practices widely approach fraud and I don't want to deal with that. I only have a few bucks with them now and have moved all my stuff over to a local credit union. This credit union offers excellent customer service and their branch agents are friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable. They treat me with respect even though I don't have much money. Is a customer owed this kind of treatment from a business? No. Will a smart business do it to attract customers like me? You betcha. I agree with aequalsa's assessment of banks in general.

I don't know. I see a lot of reason for people to personally choose not to celebrate Columbus Day. I really don't anymore, not that it was a huge celebration or anything for me in the first place. My favorite holiday is just in a few days, a profoundly selfish one...my birthday.

Man, this is the topic that just will not die.

This is not true, and this is perhaps where you might be missing something here. Discussing philosophy necessarily DOES depend on building a model of the world and how it is and what exists in it, even if implicitly, because your every assumption and assertion depends on it. Disconnecting philosophy from the real world is rationalism and the major problem with the practice of analytic philosophy today. Rand was ultimately concerned with building a philosophy for living on this earth, as it is now, taking the facts of reality into account. So "debating" with nothing but conjecture and unsubstantiated logical phrases will not actually gain you anything. I think one problem you are having is that you are starting with political philosophy. The political philosophy is a higher-level derivation of more basic principles in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Rand's ideas about rights and politics are built upon answers to questions like "What IS a human?" and "How must a human live?". If you pass over those questions of course you will never understand where the political conclusions come from. Now, if you want to disagree with her conclusions to those more fundamental questions, that's fine, but we need to figure that out first. Starting with politics and working backwards is a bad call. I may be going out on a limb by saying so but I think your frustration in the discussions here so far is that the other posters are actively refusing to discuss things on the terms you are presenting them. They are not doing that to mess with you. They're not trying to be demeaning, though that may be how it's coming across. The reason they are doing this is because from an Objectivist point of view the terms themselves are wrong, and so to discuss the topics on the same terms you are is to admit error from the start. If you're willing to give it another shot, try thinking about the more basic questions and then work from there. Specifically, what does a human need to live as a human (not an animal)?

Here's your problem. You're trying to subsume Objectivism under social contract theory. There is no social contract in Objectivism. You need to discard this idea. Yes, she does. This is the key insight you're missing. The reason why this is true has something to do with the fundamental nature of what a human IS.

I would not say this is the case. Depending on the type of dishonesty, either civil or criminal penalties may be called for. I'm not sure if you've run across the "looter" terminology yet in your readings of Rand but understanding the Objectivist concept of "looter" might put your mind at ease about the attitude towards some of these businessmen. To give a more relevant and timely example, just about everyone here is against "healthcare reform" and the public option as Obama is currently presenting it. Does this mean we love the insurance industry and think they're saints? Of course not. They're largely part of the problem. A lot of them lobbied for exactly the broken system that we have now, and are lobbying to keep it that way, to maintain something close to a state-sanctioned oligolopoly. Remember in Massachusetts it's basically illegal to not have insurance. Who do you think asked for that? A free market in health insurance would eventually help the good companies but it's understandable why industry groups as a whole feel threatened by it - it would open them up to competition and they want the easy way out. But do keep in mind that this would not be possible without government manipulation of the market, and that's the point that Objectivists work so hard to point out. Compare, say, John Allison of BB&T vs, say, Ken Lewis of Bank of America and you'll get a good idea of the difference between a virtuous businessman and a looter.

Best. Job. Ever.

Hi Doug! With regard to the dictators, the answer is a most emphatic 'no'. By Objectivist morality, dictators and absolute rulers are the worst kind of altruists (yes, really) and true happiness is not ever going to be found by having power over others as this is a second-handed lifestyle. To understand what is meant by 'second-handed' and why a dictator is 'altruist' does require a more in-depth explanation of the Objectivist POV but I think you are beginning to see how the layers interact now and that there's a lot going on here. Remember when discussing higher-level 'outcomes' like what is "better" in a global sense (which is a bit of a misleading question given our context but most people do want to know this) that Objectivism is primarily from the point of view of the individual trying to decide how to live their life, and it's got to be by the same principles for every person. The content of everyone's life is different, but reason and rights form the "ground rules" by which people can interact with each other in a mutually beneficial way. There will always be irrational people, if that's what you're asking. But so what? When irrational people act irrationally within their rights, rational people choose not to deal with them. A good example of this would be a business owner who refuses to serve a class of people, like blacks. A rational customer will no longer do business with him and may tell their friends too. When an irrational person's behavior crosses the rights-violation line, rational people (actually anyone) then do what is necessary to defend themselves. An example of this would be is if someone is trying to harm you, you can legitimately do whatever is necessary to stop that threat to yourself. However in civil society we delegate this function to the government as this is the whole point of having one. But of course in the heat of the moment no one would expect you to die waiting for Johnny Law to show up. Does this help to clarify things?

You should provide housing for the poor and pay for others' health care. You have just given the appropriate rationale for charity. The key is that you should not be FORCED to do so, and you should not do so if it will come before other values that are more pressing. If you see that your neighborhood is crumbling and falling apart and your neighbors are in dire straits, and you happen to be a billionaire, the benevolent thing to do would be to help them (but again no one can FORCE you). On the other hand, if you are a starving artist and you have your last fifty dollars to spend on essential art supplies that will finish your breakthrough masterpiece vs. give it to a soup kitchen, it would be totally immoral not to buy the art supplies. Concern for others' well-being for their own sake can be a rational value, it just doesn't come as high in the hierarchy of value as the altruists would have you believe. It is totally in your self-interest to not have drug-addicts running around in the streets posing a threat to you and the population at large. It is up to you to shape the kind of society you want to live in, it's just not a duty or an all-consuming responsibility like the "activist" types make it out to be. Oftentimes I find that when singlemindedly pursuing your rational values you end up effecting change in your general social vicinity in a positive direction, as a happy byproduct. Certainly this will be so for me, for instance, when I start my teaching career. I guess the point I'm trying to get across is, self-interest does not require you to try to "put one over" on others, or reality for that matter. I think this is what RationalBiker and David are trying to say as well.

Because they have not surrendered their reason in EVERY facet of their lives, or they would be starving on the street covered in sores. Even the most irrational of people behaves rationally given certain everyday situations. And that is the way in which you can deal with them. You participate in trade with them to the extent they are rational. You shouldn't sell a junkie some heroin, but that doesn't mean it is also wrong to sell him a sandwich.

I have to laugh at this because traditionally "chalking", as it's called, has been a tool of the activist left. Glad to see it turned to better purposes.

I think many musicians would argue that weed has been a great boon to their careers. In all seriousness though, there is some limited evidence that weed can improve creativity in some regards and give you a particular kind of focus over the short term. But my intent here is not to hijack the thread, and as I'm sure David would be happy to remind me there are already tons of threads that address this very topic that you can look up yourself. I guess I just wanted to show there is not consensus on this issue. And in case anyone asks, no I don't use weed and have no interest in doing so. I just don't think it's a particularly bad thing, but it is not a particularly good thing either.

Seconded that. She ought to go where she needs to go in order to feel safe, provided that there are people there willing to take her in. She doesn't come off as very rational, but the need to preserve one's life is central and acting to achieve that is a reasonable aim even if done wrongheadedly. If she does discover some day that her parents are not the monsters she thinks they are, she will owe them a very big apology and then it is up to them if they want to have anything more to do with her.

Scientists are just as capable of asking the wrong questions as anyone, and they frequently do ask the wrong questions as you can see. Also, most scientists are not good philosophers. Because time is a feature of existence, it makes no sense to ask about a time when there wasn't anything. So existence has always "been". If you find the idea of an eternal God more plausible than an idea of an eternal existence (i.e. universe, when universe is taken to mean everything that exists), you are probably operating from a primacy of consciousness viewpoint. But don't forget, consciousness can't exist without something to be conscious OF. It ALWAYS comes second, and existence comes first.

No one should sacrifice themselves. But dying for your ultimate value, in an attempt to preserve or protect it, is not a sacrifice. In fact, it is a very loud proclamation of a love of life in the face of anti-life. Remember, in Objectivist parlance a sacrifice is the destruction of a greater value for a lesser one. That is not what those men and women did on Sept. 11. They were fighting to preserve the one value, life, which makes all other values possible. I'd say that's worth dying for.

Having just watched a show on the Brown Pride in Nashville, it struck me that the truth of the matter was they were mostly killing people with tiny little handguns that can be stashed in one's pants or sweatshirt pocket. By and large gang violence does not occur with large assault rifles or even rifles at all. Now, granted, in incidents where policemen are killed it is more likely that the criminals involved had some heavier firepower, which I can understand then why the police would be concerned. But I guess what I'm saying is that if one is concerned with random violence from criminals, someone breaking into your home is going to kill you with a small handgun or even a baseball bat, not an AR-15. And having a nice shotgun in your home or, in my case, lots and lots of pointy objects can help take care of that problem. So the laws which are seeking to ban larger weapons don't really have anything to do with stemming the lion's share of violent criminal activities (is anyone surprised?). Honestly, every time I hear about a convenience store owner taking out a robber with a gun behind the counter I want to cheer, because that person just cleaned up the world a little bit. My fiancee had a cousin who was killed at the age of 18 because she was working late at night at a Circle K and some thug shot her in the head during a robbery. Would that it could have been the reverse.

My understanding is that the state should only be involved in marriage insofar as it is involved in the enforcement of any contract. The current structure of marriage mostly hearkens back to when it constituted an economic alliance between two families with property and the need to designate legitimate heirs.

Great, so now we're getting somewhere. I know there is a lot of garbage out there about the world's resources being "our common heritage" or something like that, and of course that's nonsense. But what do we do with the tricky situations where either a) something is completely unowned (patches of distant forest, highly mobile wild animals, air, etc.) or "public" property (national parks, other government-owned materials). These are the tough cases, in my mind. Obviously in an Objectivist or rational society there wouldn't BE public property, but as it stands now there is, and lots of it.

OK. Let's try this, at the risk of confusing the issue further. Do ya'll think that inherent in the idea of sustainable development is the supposition that the resources you are either consuming or depleting are not yours or not entirely yours? I think this is an important key that both sides here are missing. To concretize, if I object to slash-and-burn agriculture of the rainforest am I not saying, at least implicitly, that I have a stake in that resource? Leave aside for the moment the question of whether I truly am a stakeholder or no. I'm trying to keep this simple.