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iouswuoibev

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Posts posted by iouswuoibev

  1. Not logged in in 12 years.  Was 23 then, 35 now!

     

    I never thought, when I was last here, that I would ever part ways with Objectivism.  I like to think that I haven't -- I still have my roots in Objectivism and agree with a lot of its sentiments, but I think it requires evolution and qualification and modulation.  I believe my philosophy to be far more advanced than Objectivism (I believe I have outgrown my teacher).

    Anyway, just saying hello.  Not sure I have anything to offer the community.

     

     

  2. Hi,

    Let me first start by saying that what i'm after here is no easy to explain. I will probably have to clarify it a bit later, but for now i'll try to make it brief.

    As the topic implies i'm looking for help in becoming more open and extroverted as a person.

    If you want my view of extraversion and introversion, and you do, then it's that introversion is "inside doing", and extraversion is "outside doing". They are functions, not predispositions. There is a philosophical and cultural reason why men seem to get chronically attached to one method or the other, and seem to find that being more of one means being less than the other. It's a very prevelent perception, and it is to do with false dichotomies (that's your hint) and upside-down standards (that's another hint) but it's far too large a subject to write more than 1% on in this context, and besides, I don't know what i'm talking about. So here's the 1%.

    Extraversion is not an advancement over introversion, nor in competition with it. It, along with introversion, are methods, and a man with integrity uses both. Now you just have to find a man with integrity so that you'll know the example. If you want to become more of an extrovert, try to also become more of an introvert at the same time. If you neglect being an extravert while being an introvert, your introspective self will suffer and feel less real; you will become less contingent, more floating. Even if you act in reality on a daily basis, it's your attitude that counts, and it will affect you. The sense of realness that the real world possesses, will mirror itself in your minds concepts, and your concepts in turn will bring you closer to reality. Without tending to both sides, you will either feel that your thoughts aren't real, or that the world isn't.

    The whole idea of introvert versus extravert is due to a false dichotomy between being yourself and being "open", as you dub it (which is an offshot of more fundamental splits). In other words, to have integrity and honour your ideas, is to shrink from a world you won't be permitted to live in. Or you can stop saying what you think and function in the world. This is the symptom of the genius who has every right to have more self-esteem than anyone else, but actually has the opposite. This man actually spends more time thinking about people than the people whom he resents for doing the same, and feels that they only "make him do it because they're what the world is".

    Let me tell you, 1 leader, 1, lonesome human being, can make the world a different place on a massive scale, for good or evil, and a trillion followers will not affect a damn. It's being frightened of the role they're born to fill that's their problem. They don't have to be history-changers; there are different degrees of genius. But they feel presumptuous for who they helplessly are. And I say, go ahead, presume to be what you are. Who will stop you?

    Even if there is only 0.01% of the world's population who are worth surrounding yourself with, that's 60 million people, and with the communication means we have today it won't be hard to have a HUGE circle of friends of people whom you ONLY admire and don't have to feel bad about giving an honest opinion to. Or let's go mad, 0.001%. That's still a huge six million people. How many of them do you need? A hundred? And do you need to think of the other 5, 904, 000, 000 people or sense their existence as important? Still, with those percentiles, there's a 99.9% or 99.999% chance that the parents who raised you, your teachers, etc. were not in that category. Thinking like this will give you what I'll colloquially call "perspective". As an adult, you have a choice, that you didn't have as a child, to get the exact "world" that you want.

    I happen to think that men who are able to seek quality are the ones who get quantity. Being selective and eliminating what you don't want, will get you what you want. Regardless of the size of the elimination. Don't settle, ever. There's no reason and no excuse and if you think there is, your view of reality at the least, and your view of yourself at the most, is distorted.

    More on the false perception of intro-extra-version. Some people have adaptability, because they're of lower intelligence and genuinely don't see corrupt ideas that are second-nature for the genius to see. They have no trouble being their extraverted self, because they don't perceive "threatening ideas" in others, and they will hold those "threatening ideas" themselves, blindly, and sometimes even virtuously, with no self-checking. The dumber someone is, the greater their "tolerance for contradictions". It's not really a tolerance, but mental short-sightedness. See it for what it is. You can tell when someone is doing something on purpose, and when they rather don't get it, and if they don't get it you'll be able to utter something that is more congruent with who they are and strikes them on the forehead like a bell. Half of speaking well is minding who you're speaking to, so that you can talk to them, and not just at them.

    I want to make a point, here, though. Every man, of every intelligence, has ideas of his own, first-born. He just doesn't respect his first-born thoughts as much if he is of less intelligence, and so defaults to relying on others who seem oh-so-much-more-like-they-know-what-they're-doing. This is the mistake. Even if your thoughts are modest or small, they can be built on, and they are the ONLY THING THAT COUNTS. You can always get a life that most people would envy, whoever you are.

    It may seem unfair to the bright but repressed man that extraversion (usually) comes naturally to dumb people. The fact of the matter is that the intelligent man can be just as "extraverted", but he has to earn it. Everyone does, but it doesn't take as long for some; it's easy to be bolstered by the world when it doesn't seem to extend its thinking range too above or too below your own. If you're not one of those people, then swallow the fact that you've got work ahead of you.

    A really intelligent man- and I'm talking about a genius among geniuses, here - may find it very hard not to absolutely hate and distrust his fellow men. He has a chance to become a neurotic self-checker. That's until he learns to accept that they're not what he is and they're not his equal (he views himself as normal) and are not just being dumb on purpose, and suddenly finds it unnecessary to seek their validation anymore, and generate his own ideas, Ayn Rand-style. He becomes an extravert (Ayn Rand had all the symptoms of both categories), but not by adapting.

    I think another reason some introverted men are not extroverted, the reason they hide, is because some of their ideas genuinely are offensive, petty, and malevolent, and dearly believed, and independently formed, and belligerent, and deep, and wrong, and not of who they'd want to be if they had a choice (which they do), and they are self-righteous (privately) in holding onto to these ideas and feel that they'd be erasing themselves out of existence to question them. This is a worldview that is very false and self-damaging but keeps being "reaffirmed" with their confirmation bias. That's more than I want to go into, here, and it only applies to a very small number of men (I was one of them).

    Extraversion doesn't mean "ability to make friends without standards or reason". You gain it by being comfortable with yourself and your relationship to the world: WHOEVER YOU ARE. The rationale, "He's stupid, how can he permit himself to act so freely like that? Evil is winning!" is just not how it works. The fact is, like it or not, that he has found away to relate to the world, knows his place, likes his place, and it is pretty much handed to him on a platter. It doesn't matter how offensively big or small of a brain you have, or if you have a nose that can severe people's heads. You can be extraverted, but it is YOUR extraversion, and you won't get it by looking at other people's.

    Once you actualise your potential, you can go and teach those below you how to be, because they won't figure it out on their own.

    Remember when Ayn Rand wrote in The Fountainhead that Wynand was "Not born to be a second-hander"? The implication of this statement is that some people are born to be second-handers. That's not the damning, free-will-denying notion that it may seem. It just means that without someone like Ayn Rand to come along and straighten them out, they won't have the mind to become the master of what they are doing. It means that consciousness has limits and treading the domain of philosophical abstractions is next to impossible for a great many people without someone to guide them through the steps. They don't have the power to influence what has already influenced them. You have to be a leader yourself, and there is no such thing as a leader who doesn't lead by example.

    This is why Ayn Rand said that Kant was so evil, and that Robert Stadler had the most guilt. Intelligence has the mind to know better.

    Now people have less of an excuse, and more guilt, today, because Ayn Rand finally existed and her writing is available. Before her ideas were around, there was more of a reason to be excused. But still, some can be. Ayn Rand was the creator, not a middle-man. To approximately adopt another quotation from Rand, there is the great man, and then the man perhaps greater who is able to see greatness and say so. There are not enough men who are seeing greatness and/or are saying so, today, so the one's who ought to be middle-men are guilty, the one's who perhaps would like and need a message translated through middle-men, not so guilty.

    Some lack the seeing it but not the saying so (cultists, mob-mentality), some lack the saying so but not the seeing it (cowards, introverts), and some do both, and others neither (evaders, fools, people you probably don't want to know). These are useful categories to detect.

    What i'm referring to, however, is not just about basic social skills - that's pretty simple. I'm talking more about being completely free and open towards others. This could for example mean being better at initiating contact with others(especially women, I guess), being clear, honest and straightforward when showing both thoughts and feelings... and, perhaps above all, speaking and acting in the way you want just because you want to - because it gives you pleasure just being the way you are without boundaries and percieved social limits.

    Or to put it more simply; how can I become better at showing others my lovely wonderfull self? ;)

    Hmm, that's about as appealing as waving your willy in my face. No, wait. Don't. Stop!

    The self-efacing wink there has to go. No man on earth, regardless of potential ability, has a right to wink about himself like that.

    Seriously though,

    Yeah. Seriously. See? Were you unserious when you said you had a lovely, wonderful self? Is that chucklesome? Well, I did laugh a bit.

    Allright, I was only making some assumptions and of course I don't know your friend. What I don't understand though is how your friend comes off as a cold blooded bastard?

    I, for one, would love to meet ifat's boyfriend, and get some of the cold-blooded treatment. I am sure that I'll be hearing nothing but praise as a result of his brutal honesty. A honest man who is also a right man, is a "mirror". Only vampires hate mirrors. Virtuous men love mirrors. You know that you can only see your appearance by looking in a mirror, right? Well, that or a webcam.

    And when you look in one of those bendy mirrors and you look distorted, you know that it is the mirror and not your body structure that's awry, right.

    You do, right? Well I hope so.

    Then go figure.

    When someone says that you're "too honest", they are not speaking of your fortitude. Oh, no. They said HONEST. Honesty means being true to reality. They resent your being true, your BEING RIGHT.

    An "honest man" doesn't turn into a crusader for finding fault in people, and don't let anyone get away with suggesting it. He doesn't do it, because he has better things to do (and that's a good reason), not because he can't see something wrong and not because he's afraid to state what he says. Remember how Keating would sometimes freak out around Roark without Roark saying anything at all to him? Sometimes a simple gesture or ignoring someone is as much an offense to them as stating what they think, and they might have the gall, if they're stupid (because body language can never lie) to complain about it as if you had actually uttered something. Sometimes they'll take the offense from your just pursuing your values and minding your own business. They view it as an affront. These are all just different degrees of the same thing. If you think one is bad, then why not the whole?

    You know what I notice about good and strong men? It's that they hold the power, at least in the moment, to do a great deal to you. They can compel you to do things you wouldn't normally do, and they can crush your short-term self-confidence with a single remark. Once you've established that they're above you, smarter than you, more right than you, and seamlessly act as if they know it and can prove it in your own mind if challenged, and once you've accepted that status in your own mind, they might be able to do that to you. And it might be good for you, if you try and learn something from it if it happens, learn why and how he did it. Getting angry at a man saying what he thinks, true or false, is as futile and pointless as getting angry at a post that you've walked into (unless it has a face on it). The kind of men who kick objects when they're in a temper are that sort of out-of-control human being.

    I think, though, that you can make yourself more pallatable in your strength to those who can't handle it, by putting a humorous spin on it; saying something arrogant in the first place someone would expect you to say the opposite, and let them wonder whether you're for real or not and like you all the same. What people dislike is someone who doesn't translate their potential greatness into actual greatness. That's a disgusting sight. Although I still want to help them. I think that humour is *the* means for a smart man to inoffensively show that he's smart. Humour is also the way to communicate assumption of someone elses context and premises. It's doing something with what you say, so that you're actually demonstrating by doing rather than by saying, AND saying something, because the something said has something "done to it". Right? There are two fundamental categories of humour (write this down), there's lying (sarcastic humour) and telling the truth (unintentional humour). Actually, it's all lying. I mean telling the truth.

    --

    Anyway, please don't think that my above post was any good. It wasn't. It may be helpful, but it's not good, not for me. I rushed it actually. So no compliments.

  3. Lighten up? Let me welcome you to this forum, where people are responsible for the content of their posts. I can see from your posting that you like to see Ayn Rand and her philosophy being mentioned, supported, and promoted...but that particular writer of the article is not properly doing that. It's more like what drewfactor mentioned above...a disservice to Objectivism.

    I thought it was doing both. :thumbsup:

  4. Meh, I disagree a little. Families and friendships are *often* lopsided relationships. How many of us have a troubling or draining relative who contributes much less than they take? Do we dump them on the side of the road? Usually not, unless they go way overboard. What about kids, one is good and self-sufficient, the other has learning disabilities and behavior problems? We stick with them, and put MORE effort into them. It's classic communism.

    What an evil thing to say. "I don't love you kids, I have no selfish interest in your welfare. It's just communism."

    That's not a bad thing, though, on the samll scale of the family. If you want to make it more self-serving, you could say we place an extremely high internal value on having a family, and on having members with their basic needs met, above the value we place on our own needs. It's due to biology, our need to support our own family, of course.

    Now you're violating the forum rules.

  5. Here's an interesting take on it, maybe you will like it:

    Communism exists, and is useful today.

    (Wait, stop screaming at me, and hear me out for a second!)

    Communism exists and is useful in REALLY SMALL GROUPS. Like a family. Your spouse has an itch, you scratch it. Your kid is sick, you take care of them, no questions asked.

    Communism is strictly a theory of government; that of a slave state where all private ownership is abolished. Your examples have nothing to do with it (unless your "no questions asked" part means "No questions asked because you'll be shot if you do ask them").

    They do however raise the question: "is this action altruistic or selfish?". What do you know of the Objectivist ethics?

  6. Spelling in an online forum? Serious discourse, sure. If you're using a long post to expound on theories, okay. But a quick reply? Picking on everythign is counterproductive.

    That said, I *am* a grammar- and spelling-Nazi, and it does color my opinion somewhat.

    It makes a lot of difference when you say that if your own spelling doesn't contain any errors.

  7. Charlize Theron- The Italian Job: need I say more?

    She has both the most gorgeous face and the sexiest voice of any famous woman I know of. Unfortunately she poses nude a lot. Am I the only guy that doesn't like a woman to do this? It destroys the mytique around her when she reveals the goods to millions of men. Kind of like an unwrapped present. I'd rather she made herself seem like a goddess for some god than torture lesser men with a promiscous display. I can't help but think that it's a quest for self-esteem.

    < Seconds GRACE KELLY:

    gk1port1.jpg

    :P

    I don't know if she always looks like that, but in that picture the adjective I would summon would be "statuesque". I prefer that quality on a man. Not that she looks any less feminine for it, but it's a beauty that doesn't invoke much lust in me.

  8. Freedom Call, the side project of Gamma Ray drummer Dan Zimmerman. But on a sidenote, I'm known to give the horns when listening to Dragonforce and Powerquest as well. :)

    I'm a Helloween man myself. I have about 5 of their albums. I also have some Gamma Ray, but their whiny "religious angst" and nihilism in their lyrics really annoys me.

    I'll check out those bands you mentioned.

  9. Not really, its just a different way of defining terms. People who say that you cant be certain are using "certain" to mean 'incapable of being wrong'. Saying that you cant be certain is then just an admission of fallibility; that empirical theories can always be revised in light of future evidence. You can question the wisom of using these definitions (I think theyre pretty silly myself), but it isnt nihilism as such. Noone is saying that you cant be fairly sure about X or that you arent justified in believing X, they are just saying that theres always a possibility, no matter how small, that you could be wrong.

    Ok, but I wasn't refering just to certainty. I gave perfection as another example. I had observed that just as you can't have a percentage of a zero, so you can't have a percentage of an anti-concept. I use this in response to people who assert that you "can't be 100% of something", but by implication can be another fraction of that concept. I'm not sure what my question was asking, so never mind.

  10. I arrived at this conclusion a while ago and then forgot all about it. There must be a principle that covers it. I noticed a mathematical and existential parallel: that you can't have a fraction of a zero. For example, when you say: "Noone can be 100% perfect" or: "Noone can be 100% certain", you are saying, analogically, that 100% of the unit in question is inconcievable, which means that what you are refering to is an anti-concept. I like to ask someone, if not 100% certain/perfect, then how much; 50%, 2%?

    Is there a name for the principle that covers this?

  11. "For instance, if you have a scene with two characters who have different 'understandings' of the circumstances and have a conversation that is thoroughly coherent from either's point of view but which each of them takes completely differently, that can be quite funny, especially if their ideas of what is going on are quite divergent." What is ridiculous in that? What in that is "absolutely beneath contempt and not worth giving thought to"?

    You need to stretch the definition. It is to do with focus rather than regarding something as ridiculous universally. This is why I keep saying it is contextual. Your focus keeps moving in and out from one context to the other (which you have to contextually accept) and from each POV the other conversation appears ridiculous.

  12. The thing is, you know your parents are in the wrong. Instead of attempting to string their irrationalities together and sympathise with whatever bizzare logical connections they've made, you should have just questioned them on their assertions using nothing but reason, until it is clear in the front of their minds. Then they can see how ill-thought their emotions are just as well as you do, and if they still attempt to assert the irrational then they are evading. Don't give in to the expectation that certain people can't be reasoned with.

    This is all assuming, of course, that there is no objective reason as to why they should worry about you in that way.

  13. You mean this? "Something is ridiculous in regard to both context and humour - it is what they regard, in respect to context, as absolutely beneath contempt and not worth giving thought to (silly is a synonym for ridiculous)." I paid it quite a bit of attention and told why I disagreed with it in that very same paragraph, which for some reason you didn't consider worth reading down to.
    I read your paragraph. I don't see how you drew the conclusion that ridiculous does not cover the examples you gave. Ridiculousness is an emotional quality in respect to context.

    So let's get down to brass tacks here--are you actually interested in a discussion or just in an uninterrupted stream of applause?
    Pardon?

    Isn't it funny that people sometimes use the phrase "that's funny" when they mean "that's interesting"? I suspect a common psycho-epistemological root. To say something is interesting to you is to say that it has cognitive significance to you.
    Did you notice you started with "Isn't it funny"..? :P

    To sum up my preliminary (cursory?) thought on this: I think there is value in understanding the working of humor from an Ethic-neutral perspective, i.e. by abstracting away the particular Ethics of the person who is laughing.
    That's a good idea.

    (Edit: Added names of members to quote blocks - softwareNerd)

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