L-C
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Posts posted by L-C
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Become as rich as possible.
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There are two categories of people in politics: those who advocate the initiation of force, and those who don't.
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It is a despicable sight to see those who need charity spit in the face of those from whom they demand it as a right.
This is a recurring theme. The businessman is as despised as he is needed.
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Equal in effect regardless of cause. Translation (read in Ralph's voice (The Simpsons)):
Force force force force force force ... ...
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It's not just a checklist, you know. There's more to people than the "cardinal virtues".
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How valuable could a family whose appreciation of you depends on irrationality be, to begin with? And certainly after you've discovered that this is the case?
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Psychologically this view of morality puts a wedge between his self esteem and desires; because he needs to choose if he wants to be good and obedient, or pursue his own desires and goals and give up being good (which means to give up self-esteem).
Like Craig Biddle put it, in altruism being good isn't good for you.
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Not all things are what they first appear to be. Every bullet leaving your barrel is your responsibility. The outcomes are: 1. You attack, and it turns out he really was a criminal. Hero saves the day. 2. Same, but you misjudged the situation and he was innocent/set up/whatever. You're in deep dung. 3. You walk away, and he turns out to be innocent. Good call. 4. Same, but the crime was indeed a crime. Too bad.
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I believe that time travel is impossible. I don't think time is a stream you can travel on. It's just a concept we created to describe motion not being instantaneous and lets you measure "how long it takes" for something to happen. To travel back in time, you'd have to rewind every particle in the universe to the state it was in in the target time.
Isn't forward time travel possible, in a way? Not that you'd "pop up" in the future, like some sort of time-teleportation, but travelling really fast might have you age 5 years and the people on Earth 20.
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Quote from the book: "The Swedes have demonstrated the power of that form of semantic manipulation Orwell called Newspeak: the changing of words to mean something else. In this way, thought can be directed, and undesirable concepts elimited, because the means of expressing them have been removed."
Once again, thanks for the link. This should be interesting.
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Extra challenging curricula for giften children is actively discouraged as "elitism". Even if (thinking in terms of "their" system for the moment) it helps everyone. Inequality is practically Satan. There are extremely few real alternatives to public schooling. Thanks for your info about that book, Derek. I'll try to find it, seems like it'd be an interesting read.
You know, all my life I've been a loner. And people have ridiculed and criticized me for it. I refused to go against my character, however, and today I am only starting to realize how valuable that has been. I would never have become an Objectivist otherwise. In real life I've hardly known anyone no one who isn't a socialist. My father is the only man I know who has a distinctly un-Swedish sense of life, ambition and values to be achieved, but he's politically agnostic.
Altruism and statism is everywhere. Schools, philosophy, language, mentality. I owe much to the Internet for enabling me to find that which I had been looking for but was nowhere to be found.
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I can't even talk to Swedish people about many of the issues we discuss here. The words of ethics (in general) and justice are so distorted that we hardly speak the same language. Of course this has a lot to do with the philosophy most people subscribe to, but there's definately a "language barrier" as well.
To put it simply, Sweden's ideology is inbedded in its language.
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...Since one's resources, including (perhaps especially) time, are limited.
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Actually, love is the most conditional action, its the most selfish of all things.
I would be inclined to say that, yes. Thus the term "unconditional love" sounds like an absurd joke to me.
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Every choice you make affects and alters your moral character. One of the most important positive benefits of acting virtuously is the effect it has on building your character, and making it easier for you to act morally in the future. Accepting something you know you don't deserve, even if others think you do, undermines the connection in your mind between acting virtuously and gaining values.
This is something I've only recently begun to realize and work on. I've agreed with Objectivism for years, but ideas are one thing; moral character based on consistent action upon those ideas has taken more time and effort than understanding and agreeing with the ideas ever did.
If you stole the money or don't deserve it, the pleasure of the ice cream reinforces the idea that you can benefit without desert (heh, no pun intended) and undermines your character.I find it fascinating that I'm understanding and appreciating this ever more clearly. It is so contrary to the Swedish mentality, exemplified by the local saying "free (of charge) is good". But I can really see what you mean and I agree with it fully.
This goes for people who steal goods, pirate software or recieve unearned gifts. Look at how they treat "their" belongings. Compare the enjoyment they get out of them to that of people who earn their stuff.
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Arresting a drunk driver is not an initiation of force, if the owner of the road made it clear that the rules of his road don't allow drunk driving. The person initiating force is the driver who broke the rules of someone's property.
And as a note, the practical consequence for road owners that permit drunk driving would probably be bankruptcy, since most people would refuse to drive there. Lots of people pose "what if" questions about Capitalism, from education to roads, not realizing that Capitalism is the only system that promotes personal responsibility and accountability.
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I don't see how elections of political representatives in an individual rights-respecting country (where the initiation of force is banned) constitutes democracy anyway. The term democracy is meaningless if it doesn't enable people to (make the state) violate rights. That's what it's all about.
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Imagine there only being one tax, a 5% income tax. Now calculate the savings your parents would've had given the same lifestyle.
As they say, oh shi-
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I can think of few if any things more conditional than love.
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Separately, 100% of people agreeing with Objectivism seems unreal to me. I think there will always be people challenging even the basic premises, and calling for government to force people to be their brother's keeper. There are always some who will question what the vast majority considers to be settled science.
Good thing it wouldn't have to be agreed to. It's written in stone in the Constitution.
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However, I think it would be wrong to imply that English in some way is "richer" as a language than Swedish or Norwegian. It is merely a question of being creative and able to make use of the language's grammar and vocabulary.
But what I was getting at was that the Swedish language is colored by Swedish ideology. There's a reason we don't have a real word for justice. Most Swedes don't acknowledge the concept of justice, apart from their egalitarian view that there is no good and evil apart from equality and inequality, forced or not.
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This is a very interesting topic. I would think that one way to get around the problem is to just use the foreign word when you want to use the foreign concept. That's what we do in English, and is the reason for so many adopted non-English-origin words.
I have to resort to that all the time. Recently I was discussing government force, and there's no Swedish word as all-inclusive as force. Threat/violence/extortion/etc gets old after a few sentences.
Seldom does it swing the other way, though there is one word missing from English, as far as I can tell: the verb "to X", as in "I X [my name]" or "They X Tom, Bill and Sarah".
...in a world without "I" there can be no individual rights, or even any concept of the individual at all.QED.
...in common parlance, [selfish] refers to someone who acts in their own interests without regard for the rights of others - in the eyes of most people, a selfish person is not a individual pursuing their interests, but a brute.And how useful it is as a weapon of philosophical war. Distorting its meaning is even better than removing the word altogether, since it occupies the slot of the real meaning.
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Everyone here is against that. Some of us just support the idea of elections, without the right of the elected government to initiate force.
I have no major objections to that, given the limited nature of what the elected would be able to actually do.
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Well, in an Objectivist society, there will be a lack of political variety in that it won't be legal for elected officials to violate rights, but there will still be huge variety in how given politicians go about protecting/establishing rights in given situations.
Pretty much. Right now it's a battle between people who want to violate individual rights in various ways and to various extent. In O-land, it would be about efficiency at one, given, unchangeable task: upholding rights.
How do I find out if someone is really Objectivist?
in Questions about Objectivism
Posted
On the other hand, what legitimate reason could such a person have to not become an Objectivist?