LovesLife

You might started with these two, written by the Fed itself: http://landru.i-link-2.net/monques/FRSpurfunct.html http://landru.i-link-2.net/monques/mmm2.html

I would include one of the works of Lenin on the list -- either "What is to be done?" or "Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism".

Are you referring to this comment? If so, what I meant was not that providing commentary from an objectivist perspective was more difficult than from a mystical one. Rather, that from the perspective of someone who believes in mysticism, objectivism is difficult to understand if all they see is your behavior without the associated commentary -- and even with the commentary, they usually still don't get it, because their entire worldview is distorted. For example, consider the following conversation, although the o-ist perspective is only implicit (based on a real-life recent experience): A: Look at those clouds, they're spelling a word! B: Oh, pretty. A: A spirit is trying to communicate with us. B: No, those are just clouds. A: But things like that don't just happen by accident. B: Yes, they do. A: How can you say that? Those are too intricate to just happen randomly. There are hidden forces that we can't explain. B: Forces that are fully understood can explain the clouds. A: You don't get it. The universe is more complex than anyone understands. There are other dimensions, you know. Sprits could be reaching through to communicate with us. B: Why do you think that's true? A: I saw it on TV and read a book about it written by a really famous guy. There's a lot on the Internet, and my friend agrees with me!

So there seems to be general consensus in this thread that the best approach is to teach by example. Actions over words, etc. I think that's a fine place to start, but it isn't nearly enough. I don't know about you folks, but I don't spend every hour of every day with my kids. I work. They go to school, spend time with friends, read, watch TV and otherwise interact with the world around them. I like to think that I provide a good example. But I'm not the only example in their lives. The approach that you're advocating sounds like the one that many parents use when it comes drug abuse or sexual ethics. "Be a good example". It's not enough. I for one to not believe that teenagers are too young to be taught how to think. I believe that it's something that needs to be taught, just like reading or math. Someone mentioned being clear about what's real and what's not. I agree that's important, but you would be surprised at how many places in a kid's everyday life those lines are blurred. The distinction, and how to tell the difference, is actually something that my kids can't do very well, and yet I've provided a solid example for them their whole lives, and have confronted non-reality at every opportunity. I agree with a post above that mentioned Lisa VanDamme's hierarchical learning approach -- and in fact that's really the core of what I was trying to ask in the OP: what are the core, foundational principles that should be taught first? How can those ideas be effectively communicated? For example, how do you approach the subject of differentiating reality from imagination? A common situation that I see around me is that someone reads a book or an article on the web or sees a documentary, and believes what they're told; the descriptions are self-consistent, they can imagine how it would work, and it feels right (to make it concrete: something like the meaning behind an out of body or near-death experience). Those beliefs are then reinforced through exposure to related ideas, and after a while, people develop a worldview that's based on the not-real. They conflate reading or listening about something with thinking and understanding. They eventually assess the world not with rationality but with "gut feelings".

My experience with this has been that most IQ tests are very poor at testing the high end of the range. Working on the tail of the bell curve is tricky. I suspect one reason for the problems might be that the designers of the test have lower IQs than the people they're trying to test, so they don't see patterns or solutions that others might, or they don't see ambiguity where others might. I think that having well above-average intelligence can easily lead to an unhappy or unfulfilling life. When you see connections and patterns that others don't, and when others can't even understand your explanations, it can lead to a lonely existence. I wouldn't be surprised if the world's happiest people are those with average intelligence. There are actually some physiological interactions between emotions and your ability to think rationally. When emotions are raging, the rational part of the brain is unable to function as well -- which implies some interesting social ramifications.... FWIW, I agree that IQ is a poor measure of intelligence. It looks at a narrow range of skills and attempts to extrapolate to general intelligence. The reality is that some people have a very superior intelligence in one or more areas that don't happen to overlap with the tests -- which, again, makes we wonder about the intelligence of the people who design the tests.

I'd guess you've never been married....

Sure. Spouse, grandparents, TV, society in general. It's not religion, but other forms of mysticism. That hasn't been my experience. I've found that objectivism is difficult for others to understand, especially for mystics, when viewed from the outside. It's interesting to me that many people readily accept the need for church for their kids (even someone in this thread), and yet teaching kids the foundations of objectivism seems to not be necessary or even possible.

Speaking as a man who has been happily married for 20 yrs, I can say that the answer to this question is very easy: women can do everything better than men.

In objectivism, when sharing a creation with others, participation is voluntary and the benefits obtained by that sharing would in general be in proportion to the amount of work or capital invested. With collectivism, participation is mandatory and those who try to refuse are compelled to participate, by force if necessary -- and the benefits of sharing are distributed in proportion to "need" (or other arbitrary metrics).

Understand the difference between intelligence, knowledge, wisdom and facts. Google "smart drugs" or "piracetam".

She has some great ideas on how to teach, using knowledge hierarchies. Wonderful stuff. I didn't see anything specifically about objectivism, though. Did you have something specific in mind? My goal isn't to make them into objectivists (they have to do that part themselves). My goal is to teach them about objectivism -- in particular as a different way of looking at the world compared to mysticism and collectivism, which are the primary world views that most of society preaches and believes. My kids would have the same response if I gave them a book like that to read. That's why I think it needs to be done verbally. And yet kids seem able to understand and evaluate mysticism and collectivism from a very young age. Why is objectivism different?

I've been thinking about how to teach objectivism to my kids. They are between 12 and 16 yrs old -- old enough to have solid language skills, but not so old that they're firmly stuck in their personal philosophy. They also have a tendency toward mysticism. The everyday application of objectivism is my goal, more than the theory behind it. Asking them to read a book about it wouldn't work. It would need to be taught verbally. Ideas?

Starbucks is not the cause of the problem you're describing; they are a victim here as much as any other company that does business in Saudi Arabia. The "problem" is the Saudi government combined with moslem customs (it's only really a problem when viewed from the perspective of Western ethics and morals; moslems appear to be perfectly happy with those rules). If you don't want to indirectly sanction that behavior, then you should avoid anything related to Saudi oil or that otherwise provides revenue to the Saudis, directly or indirectly -- not just Starbucks. Given the prevalence of oil and its use to manufacture or transport so many components of American society, I suspect that will be a challenging thing to do while living in the US (though not impossible).

Based on casual conversations, a surprising number of Americans seem to support the move by Chavez against Exxon. It makes me wonder what's next in the US, as its financial situation continues to crumble and continue down the slippery slope of socialism and fascism. If the government did decide to seize assets, what would some of the early candidates be? Oil companies? Banks? Media? Transportation?

The regular "every day" flu kills more than 40,000 people in the US every year. Compare that to deaths by terrorists, west nile, the Iraq and Vietnam wars, etc, and it's easy to see where the real threats to American health and well being are coming from.

They have a website with detailed photos, plans, etc, and they offer tours: http://www.damanhur.org/ Plus a report from ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4216350&page=1

No. The "stimulus package" is going to make things worse, not better. They are borrowing most of it from foreign investors. Only about 7% of the national debt is owned by the Fed. Yes. This is political pandering, pure and simple. Invest it just like you would any other money you have. If you want to help the economy, then invest in productive assets. Since the government is destroying the value of the dollar, buying gold is a reasonable option to preserve purchasing power (it isn't really an investment).

Yes, that would definitely help. I moved to NZ about a year ago from the States, and live in Nelson. I haven't had any luck finding others like me in the area yet, although I'm definitely working on it.

Of course it's possible. How would it be done? Imagine a commercial center something like the NSF. They sell shares to the public, interested companies, etc, who have an interest in supporting that type of research, and dole out the funds to universities and others who submit "worthy" proposals. The company would license the resulting patents, thereby generating a return for the investors. If the company doesn't produce good results within a reasonable amount of time, donations stop and they go out of business. Easy. You might say that such an organization couldn't raise the billions of dollars needed to build something like the superconducting supercollider. I agree, and therefore claim that such a thing shouldn't be built. If enough funds can't be raised voluntarily, then why would raising the funds by force (taxation) be justifiable? Because of some hoped-for benefit for the group at the expense of the individual? The more important issue here, though, is why government should not be doing basic research. In order to do so, they have to tax the public, depriving them by force of the fruits of their labor. Those taxes are then applied to things that individuals may have no interest in. I could care less about the Higgs boson, for example. I don't care if it increases the understanding of the universe. I would rather apply my resources in other directions, so why should I be forced to pay -- it's immoral.

No, that's not the case. I understand that people operate on a spectrum of positions. The issue for me is that in-depth interactions with people who are more mystic and less reasoned tend to sap the life out of me. It's an exhausting and unpleasant way to live -- for me at least. Most of life doesn't consist of major decision like marriage, etc. It's the day-to-day stuff that's a challenge for me. I didn't mean to suggest that I want to disown anyone. I'm trying to find a way to survive. I care about the people who are close to me, but I'm allowing them to damage me. I need to find a way to fix that. Yes, exactly right.

It's not so much the day-to-day affairs that are an issue for me; superficial relationships aren't a problem. Instead, the irrationality shows up during in-depth interactions. Have you ever spent much time asking people why they do certain things? It's a scary experience. However, you bring up a good point: avoiding only those who are a threat is a sound strategy. If only it was so easy!

Very good advice; thanks for that. With the rest of world largely populated by manimals, does it ever feel lonely? I'm generally pretty happy working by myself and for my own benefit, but that only seems to work up to a point.

Let's say (as an example; not my situation) that you wake up one day and realize that your spouse is extremely religious, and makes all of their day-to-day living decisions based on religion. Discussions about why they live that way always come down to the mystic: feelings, faith, etc. You care for your spouse, you have kids together who believe as they do, and you care for them as well. They judge you based not on your actions, but on how you make them feel, according to some irrational set of rules. Removing yourself slowly from involvement with them only gets you so far. In my case, it's bad dogs who can't be trained. They're not vicious, just on the wrong path -- but they very strongly believe they're on the right one. Also, I'm afraid I'm not a very good trainer. What I'm trying to do is simple: to live a happy, full and satisfying life. I've tried the "ignore them" approach. The result is that I'm often miserable; it's clearly self-destructive in some way. Ignore, confront, train or leave -- are those the only options? Leaving is sometimes tempting, but I'm not convinced that it will solve anything. It seems just as likely that it would make things worse.

Exactly: it's not trivial. I am able to very reliably identify the manimals now. It's stopping the life-threatening onslaught that's the challenge. What if everyone in your immediate and extended family was a manimal who sacrifices reason to emotion? I'm looking for ideas on how to logically and morally reason a solution to a problem where on the surface, all options seem to point to pain and suffering for everyone involved.

For pretty much my whole life, I've known that something is wrong with the world. I only recently discovered Ayn Rand and objectivism, which has finally provided a wonderful framework in which I can describe and discuss what I've known for so long. However, I now finding myself facing a crisis. As a rational person, I find that nearly everyone around me is not. How is it possible for a rational person to survive and stay sane in an irrational world?