kainscalia

Soth: "It's for safety! It's for safety!" Think about how much you can get away for the sake of 'it's for safety!'- it's not whether it is safe, but whether it is appropriate and constitutional. No warrant. No probable cause. Paul is dead right- this is a violation.

You were speeding and putting other people at risk. You know that, so why do you want to contest this ticket?

If there was a way to identify the owner- her ID card- and they returned the wallet after having extracted the money, yes, it was definitely stealing. Of course, the $30 could have become separated from the wallet in the fall and someone else may have picked the money up after someone else took the wallet, but that's really just speculating.

The tone of that argument sounds very Bill Clinton circa Lewinskygate. You are attempting to be obtusely naive, or otherwise you are trying to pretend that the suggestion and the act have nothing in common, which is honestly quite disingenuous. You are trying to say that the subject and the object are divorced and unlinked--- while at the same time agreeing to a certain contextual connection. There is either a context or there isn't, you can't have it both ways. Lady Gaga is vulgar and sensationalist, and she embodies and uses a view of sexuality and sex that is unhealthy and sensationalist, this is the fact you cannot escape. People who admire and respect the beauty of the human body don't toss off their clothes to shock an audience into silence anymore than the Regietrash directors who use nudity in the middle of an opera in a vulgar and superfluous fashion to cause a rise out of the audience for purely shock's sake. Rather, they turn both the human body and sexuality into a mockery by thrusting it into a context in which it clashes and becomes discordant, distorted and objectified, bereft of all deep romantic meaning. I have heard a lot in this argument about context, well here's the gist of it- what they do is contextually incoherent and therefore seeks to reduce the object to an object of mockery, and therein lies the depravity of these so-called artists.

It can, though I imagine it would be very uncomfortable

Class, as defined within the context of an artist's behavior, is possessing elegance, the attribute of being tasteful, maintaining refined grace and a dignified state. In other words, to take oneself and what one does seriously enough to respect it-- and to have enough respect for one's audience. So yes, I am sorry, but it is a superior way of behaving insofar as artists go. It marks the difference between Lady Gaga and an actual artist- be they popular or otherwise. By saying that 'it isn't superior to any other way of behaving' you are essentially saying that behavior is relativistic. If there are standards of ideas, thoughts, and interactions, there must necessarily exist a standard of behavior that corresponds to the best possible and a standard of behavior that corresponds to the worst possible, you can't escape that classification. People like Lady Gaga fall squarely in the second category. The manner in which you treat others Then you need to do your research more thoroughly. "At 18, thereabouts, you started working in clubs, yes?" said Walters. "Yes," said Lady Gaga. "And at one point when you were performing, some of the customers did something you didn't like, and you did what?" "Well, the name of the club was The Bitter End, and I played there all the time, but I had been gone for a while and it was my first time playing my new glam-inspired music," explained Gaga. "And nobody would be quiet. I walked into the room and before I even opened my mouth they were yelling and chatting and drinking and slamming their glasses, And I, I kept [saying], 'Excuse me, hello,' and nobody would stop. So, um, something just came over me and I, I took my clothes off." "You took all your clothes off?" asked Walters. "Not all of them..." "But most of your clothing." "I left my bra and underwear on." "You take your clothes off a lot." "I do." And the girl, of course, did this out of no desire to shock. The poor thing was suffering from heatstroke. Indeed. By this strange definition, then, what a stripper does has nothing to do with sex, since she never engages in sexual intercourse. This is a willing dissociation of related concepts in an attempt to try to salvage a fixation from an association. What Madonna did wasn't "performance art", it was using sex to shock- the same thing Gaga does.

Let's call a spade a spade here: You're applying rationalization in order to justify your admiration for a slattern and somehow present this as a healthy view of sexuality. A cheap, classless woman who uses shock and sex as her calling cards because her musical gifts are nothing spectacular and -as it has been pointed out- her eccentric persona consists of a grand number of plagiarized ideas. If this is who you wish to hold up as a representation of your values, sia, I prefer to admire artists who make good money and are successful whilst maintaining a modicum of class and decorum that respects the art they are performing - for the Gesamtkunstwerk- as opposed to (as the song in Chicago says) Girls who'll touch your privates for a deuce. No class, no sprezzatura.

Sex is one of the most important aspects of man’s life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually. A sexual relationship is proper only on the ground of the highest values one can find in a human being. Sex must not be anything other than a response to values. And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important . . . . [sex should] involve . . . a very serious relationship. Whether that relationship should or should not become a marriage is a question which depends on the circumstances and the context of the two persons’ lives. I consider marriage a very important institution, but it is important when and if two people have found the person with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives—a question of which no man or woman can be automatically certain. When one is certain that one’s choice is final, then marriage is, of course, a desirable state. But this does not mean that any relationship based on less than total certainty is improper. I think the question of an affair or a marriage depends on the knowledge and the position of the two persons involved and should be left up to them. Either is moral, provided only that both parties take the relationship seriously and that it is based on values. -“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” March 1964.

"I have personally observed a larger degree of individuality in people who still (by all appearances) were rationally happier than Objectivism allows." That's an interesting turn of phrase. I have observed many mystical christians who, by all appearances, were rationally happier than 'Objectivism allows'-- but that's because they were refuting reality and clinging to a feel-good set of non-standards that served as an escapist balm. Anyone is apparently happy if you would like to equivocate the unconsciousness of avoidance or inconsistency with happiness. If I went by appearances alone, the hollowed-eyed mystics who throw themselves away to the pursuits of a religion are 'happier' than people who see the world, judge it and must deal with its pleasant and unpleasant sides.

So you are in disagreement that sex is one of the most important aspects of man’s life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually? Rand's position was that sex must not be anything other than a response to values. I made my above statement with the assumption that this was common knowledge. If you disagree, then please explain where you diverge from this, and how Gaga's statement is anything but the antithesis of romantic love and sexuality.

That requires a level of sophistication she lacks. Furthermore, an objectivist asked here why is it wrong to have her sexuality on display: The question is this, what exactly is she displaying? As objectivists you know precisely of what sexuality is an expression, and to what ends it is used. Do you see Lady Gaga being an embodiment of romantic love and sexuality? Hardly. Her personification is actually the opposite, with a heavy dose of anti-intellectualism thrown into the mix. If anything, Gaga's 'artistic statement' (and here I am being very generous in calling what she does that) is essentially the cult of hedonism and the cultivation of image over substance. Who is lady Gaga without the blatant vulgarity and her plagiarized costumes? When examined without her persona, her 'artistic identity' stripped from these gimmicks leaves a body of work that is indistinguishable from the majority of mediocre poppers out there. By popular opus alone, Monique Serf ( ), Juliette Noureddine ( ) and Mika ( )'s works display a more coherent and original artistic personality, and far more positive bodies of work than Gaga's self-glorified hedonism.

This parody nails the essence of Lady Gaga. As far as her brand of sensationalism, you can have an artistic statement being sensational because it is new and creative, or you can have the cheap and tawdry sensationalism that tabloids and yellow press aim for-- shock, vulgarity and an unhealthy desire to portray a base and degraded nature. Lady Gaga's sensationalism belongs to the yellow press' desire to shock. If you listen to the lyrics of her "Bad Romance", you won't have to go very far to be appalled at how un-intellectual they are. They are almost the utterances of a pre-literate savage.

Making money is not an indicator of virtue-- money can be made dishonestly (see Francisco's Speech). Gaga is a non-value who plies entertainment not based on positive statements but on tawdry sensationalism and outrageousness. She is to popular music what Christo is to art: trash. The beginning of her career started when an audience started booing an early performance of hers, her reply? She took off all of her clothes. She's not a woman who could still be, but rather a woman who never was.

You say that a collective mind exists. I have thought of one word. Since we collectively share the same mind- if I get your gist- then please, furnish me with the word I have set aside for this exercise.